Archive of Our Own

--

“Tony, are you even listening to me?”

No, he wasn't. Tony was reeling in shock, swept up in a wave of nostalgia at the mere mention of a name he hadn't heard spoken aloud in years. Pepper was tapping her exquisitely shod foot; Tony ignored that too.

This was Tony's life. Almost nine years out of college, and on a day that had started out as mundane as any other, Pepper had stepped into his office to tell him that the lead architect on the Stark-Consplant project was downstairs: one Steve Rogers of Liberty Architects. Now there was a name Tony couldn't wilfully tune out, even if he'd wanted to, even if Pepper had said it in the same businesslike tone she always used at work.

“Tony!” Pepper shouted, safe in her insubordination behind his soundproof office walls.

Tony winced. He looked up at Pepper. He didn't know what expression was on his face, but it softened Pepper's somewhat.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” lied Tony.

“Don't lie to me, you know that never works.”

Tony sighed. “I just...” he started, and stopped. “It's nothing. I'm sorry, I wasn't listening, you're going to have to repeat everything you said.”

She clearly didn't believe him, but did as requested. “I said, the lead architect for the Consplant project, Steve Rogers, is here early, and I've put him in the conference room to wait. The Consplant rep should be here soon,” she added, and then, with her eyes narrowed at him, “Okay, no, there is definitely something up with the architect. Your face did a, a thing when I mentioned him. Spit it out, Tony. Who is he?”

Who was he, indeed, thought Tony with a slight edge to his inner voice. What was the protocol for meeting long lost best friends, asked the same voice.

Outwardly, he said, “An old friend,” with only the slightest hitch over the last word, so small that surely even Pepper wouldn't notice it, “from college.”

“College,” repeated Pepper, with a furrow in her brow that meant that she was putting things together in her head, and no, that was bad, he had to stop her from thinking—“wait a second.”

Fuck.

“Steve Rogers,” she said slowly, eyes widening, and Tony resisted the urge to twitch again at the name. “As in, your college boyfriend. The ex you spent months whining about when you left college and started at SI.”

“He wasn't my boyfriend,” muttered Tony, eyes firmly on his desk.

“Tony, you hooked up with me to get over him.”

He winced again, despite his best efforts. “I did not,” said Tony. “I hooked up with you because you were amazing. Are amazing. And anyway, it was a one-time thing.”

“Yes, and also you were desperate to move forward from this Rogers fellow,” said Pepper, her smile wry.

“We weren't like that,” Tony insisted, because it was true. No matter how much Tony had wanted it to be different, they were only ever friends. Best friends, yes, but nothing else. “We were just really good friends, we lost touch after college, it happens. Staying connected with college buddies is rarer than not, ask anyone.”

“Okay. So your reaction to meeting an old buddy is usually panic and denial?”

Tony didn't answer. He twirled a pen deftly through his fingers, for want of something to do, until Pepper spoke again.

“Do you need me to reschedule this meeting? I know you insisted on being the lead engineer on this project, but if you don't want to see him, we can get Yin to do it. She'll be back from Germany on Thursday.”

“No, I'll do it,” said Tony quickly. The Stark-Consplant project was one he had a lot of interest in, and he wouldn't feel right letting anyone else take the role of lead engineer. He wasn't going to let anything mess with that, no matter what. Besides, he didn't not want to see Steve. On the contrary, the part of him that wasn't shrivelling in restrospective embarrassment over his one-sided crush back then was actually pretty curious to see if Steve had changed much in the last eight years. Surely some of Steve's more attractive qualities had been embellished in Tony's rose-tinted nostalgia (although his being the lead architect from Liberty suggested that his talent, at least, hadn't been exaggerated by Tony's infatuation).

“Are you sure?” asked Pepper. Tony nodded, and found a smile for her from somewhere.

“Yeah, I'll be fine. We were best friends. Catching up will only be the tiniest bit awkward, the rest will be a breeze,” said Tony. He mostly believed it, too.

--

The walk to the conference room was simultaneously too long and too short. Somewhere between leaving his office and placing his hand on the conference room door handle, Tony gave up trying to figure out if he was excited or filled with dread over meeting Steve again, figuring he would take each step as it came. He took a slow breath, arranged a friendly smile on his face, and pushed.

From behind and in a seated position, Steve Rogers didn't look very different from Tony's memories. Still the same soft blond hair, the same broad shoulders. Then Steve turned around, jumped to his feet, put out his hand, and oh.

“Hi, I'm Steve Rogers, from Liber—Tony?” Steve's eyes widened. His voice dropped from formal introduction to confused surprise. Tony just stared right back. He'd had a quip ready, he had, but then he lost it somewhere as he took in Steve's appearance.

Steve looked... well, good, Tony thought. Really good. Better than Tony remembered, and wasn't that mind-boggling? The years had given him another inch in height, maybe, and even more muscles than he'd had as a varsity athlete (how?), and there were tiny, fine lines at the corners of his clear blue eyes that hadn't been there in college. Some part of Tony that he didn't control was glad that Steve had smiled a lot in the past eight years. Steve wasn't smiling just then, though, and that didn't feel right. Tony returned to the moment and grinned happily at Steve, grabbing his hand to shake it.

“Long time no see, Rogers,” said Tony. “You know, I should've known all that amazing stuff Liberty sent us was your work.”

Steve blinked, and instantly smiled back, like they were the friends they hadn't been in years. “And I should have known that of course Tony Stark would insist on being lead engineer for his company's biggest joint venture yet,” he returned.

“You should.” Tony found that he couldn't quite stop smiling.

Well, at least it looked like Steve couldn't, either.

“Gosh, it's been what, eight years? Nearly nine? How have you been, Tony?” asked Steve, once they'd settled down at the huge conference table. They were both grinning like excited idiots.

“Good, mostly,” said Tony. “The first couple of years when I started here were rough for SI”—and by extension, Tony—“but we've been doing better than ever these days. This project with Consolidated Plantations is only the first of our proper moves into energy supply, and, well, it looks promising already, with Liberty's tender.” Steve smiled even wider at that. “What about you, what have you been up to?”

“Pretty much what you see here,” said Steve, shrugging slightly in that way that Tony remembered meant he was being modest. “I got my degree, joined Liberty straight after, and now, somehow, I'm here as the lead architect for our highest profile project yet. Thanks for choosing us, by the way—I know there were some really big names who sent in tenders for this project.”

Tony waved his thanks away. “It wasn't just me; your ideas were loved across and by the board. You'd be surprised, but some of those big firms were still under the impression that 'green design' meant we wanted vertical gardens and hanging planters on every external wall.”

“I'm actually not that surprised.” Steve laughed. His laugh was exactly the same as Tony remembered, and Tony found himself reacting to it as though he were twenty all over again, lighting up with glowing warmth and eagerness to keep hearing that wonderful sound.

But that wasn't right. That had been the case before because Tony had had a crush on Steve in college, which he was definitely over, after eight years. There was no longer any reason to swoon and blush when Steve smiled at him, or light up like a damn Christmas tree when he made Steve laugh. Tony gave himself a good mental shaking; he was clearly adopting behavioral patterns from college without thinking them through.

He'd expected the reunion to be awkward as hell, thought that it would be weird to revert to an old dynamic because neither of them was the same person as they had been eight years ago—but there they were, bantering like college was just a month ago. Tony asked after Bucky, Steve asked after Rhodey, and then they both giggled over their respective Jameses, their old running joke from way back when. Tony paused after that, a lightbulb flickering on in his head.

“Hold up,” he said, “James Barnes. As in, the one who's getting married in two months?”

Steve blinked. “How did you know that?”

“Friend of the bride,” Tony said. “I knew the bridegroom's name, I just hadn't associated it with Bucky Barnes until five seconds ago.”

“You know Natasha? Well, it looks like we would've met again anyway, at the wedding,” said Steve. He looked pleased at the idea. Tony rather liked it, too.

“Let me guess. You're best man.”

“I am,” confirmed Steve. “What about you, Tony? Maid of honor?”

Tony let out a surprised laugh. “No, but not for lack of trying. Nat said the dress she had in mind wouldn't fit my body shape.”

That got another laugh out of Steve. Tony glowed.

“Her loss,” Steve chuckled, “you would have made a great bridesmaid.”

“I would be the best bridesmaid,” said Tony emphatically.

There was an embarrassed cough at the door. They both turned and saw a short woman in the open doorway, hand raised to her mouth to poorly conceal a smile. Steve immediately choked back a laugh, while Tony flashed her his best, schmooziest charming grin.

“You must be the Consplant representative,” said Tony. “This is Steve Rogers, the lead architect, and I'm Tony Stark, lead engineer. Pleased to meet you.”

The woman shook his and Steve's hands firmly. “Devi Manan, Consolidated Plantations,” she said, “I'm looking forward to working with the both of you on this project.”

The kick-off meeting went smoothly after that, with Devi politely refraining from commenting on the Stark Industries CEO's earlier mention of wanting to rock a bridesmaid's dress. Steve matched her professional attitude the whole way through, and Tony... Tony managed to do his part without too much staring in open admiration at Steve. He couldn't help the occasional glance, but he figured it was normal, since he had never seen Steve being all professional like that while they were just dumb students. It was pleasantly different from the hopelessly obvious pining that he had done back in college, and Tony was glad that they could maybe go right back to being friends without that silly, embarrassing crush messing everything up.

--

The Stark-Consplant joint venture project was a multi-billion dollar investment in biofuel and green energy, the biggest yet in North America. Talks between Tony and Laura Hines, his counterpart at Consolidated Plantations, had been underway for the better part of two years before the announcement of the upcoming research facility was made to the public. By agreement, all third party firms to be involved in the project were to be selected by closed tender, which was open to any company with the resources and capability to run with the joint needs of Stark-Consplant. That Liberty Architects had won the tender had nothing to do with its lead architect being an old friend of Tony's, and everything to do with the brilliance of Steve's work. Tony couldn't help feeling warm little bursts of pride whenever they came together to work on the facility's design and Steve offered clever ideas on integrating its research needs into a coherent overall design. For the time being, early in the project as they were, most of the discussions were between Tony and Steve, with Devi representing Consplant and inputting suggestions where she saw fit.

Working with Steve was something of a joy for Tony. The Stark-Consplant project had already been his baby from its inception, but having one of his best friends—because it didn't take long before they found their old sense of camaraderie again—working with him on the same wavelength was something of a rarity for Tony, now that Rhodey had been promoted and didn't have much time to muck about in weapons dev with Tony anymore.

They fell back into a familiar pattern around each other, filling up the space they'd each occupied in the other's life as though they'd never left. Working in close quarters with Steve reminded Tony of why they made such good friends before: all the good-natured bickering and seamless cooperation; the silly old jokes that they communicated across the table using only their eyebrows; the cheerful lack of professionalism when they disagreed with each other; and the random references that had poor, unsuspecting Devi throwing her hands up with confusion. Their meetings were both productive and fun, and were now the highlights of Tony's week.

“And it's not weird at all?” asked Pepper skeptically, when Tony laughingly mentioned Steve for the third time during lunch one afternoon. “You’ve just gone back to being best buddies without addressing the fact that he stopped taking your calls after college and you haven’t been in contact for nearly a decade?”

Tony shrugged and waved a spear of asparagus about on his fork. “A lot of people you meet in college drop out of your life after. It happens, Pep, and maybe it bothered me what, nine years ago, but I’ve since learned that it’s pretty common.”

Their waiter stopped by to refill their glasses, and Pepper smiled her thanks at him before turning a frown back on Tony.

“I’m just worried,” she said. “He deliberately avoided talking to you—I remember that much, alright, you whined a lot—and he shouldn’t get to act as though nothing happened.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Tony. “Look, when you’re young, you talk about the future as if it’s forever and everyone who’s your friend at the time features in that forever. Then you grow older, and there will always be people who just… fade out as fond memories, serendipitous reunions notwithstanding. It happens,” he repeated, with a touch more emphasis.

“Yes, Tony, I am aware of how social circles age out,” said Pepper, “and I’m trying to tell you that your friendship with Steve didn’t end organically like normal friendships do. Sure, you eventually got too busy with SI to keep trying to reach him, but he pulled away before that and you were hurt. Who’s to say he won’t hurt you again?”

“You make me sound like a jilted lover, which I keep reminding you I wasn’t.” Tony sighed.

“Tony.”

“He won’t, Pep,” said Tony, and continued before she could voice the retort he could see forming on her lips, “because I won’t let him. I was a dumb kid with a crush, and now I’m an adult in a working partnership with an old friend. Even if Steve disappears again after this job, I won’t be sobbing into my whisky over it, okay?”

Pepper made a noise that expressed something between disbelief and disgruntlement. It was entirely undignified. Their waiter, who had been hovering behind her chair with his carafe of ice water, looked scandalized.

“If he hurts you again, I’ll grind Liberty into dust,” she muttered.

Much as he enjoyed it whenever Pepper threatened to unleash the full might of her business acumen and pulverise (deserving) companies like an avenging CEO, Tony decided to steer the conversation into safer waters.

“So enough about my friendship issues,” he said. “Tell me about my company. Have we sorted out the issue with the plant in Singapore?”

She gave him one last exasperated stare, then gracefully picked up the new thread of conversation. “Not yet. The local staff are still insisting on a ninety percent local majority. They’re arguing that if we wanted to hire immigrant workers, we should have set up shop in China or Bangladesh instead. Even though we do have branches in those countries.” Pepper sighed. “You would think for a country so developmentally focused, they’d be less xenophobic.”

“They’re not really xenophobic. America’s more truly xenophobic. Have we told them we hire on merit basis?”

“They’re not going to like being told that the immigrants hold more merit than some locals.”

“Tough. Do it anyway.”

“Fine,” said Pepper, and she pulled her tablet out of her handbag.

Tony paid for lunch as she tapped through her email. He returned to the table just as she was reading her messages.

“Huh.” She sounded surprised.

“What is it?”

“News on Consplant,” said Pepper, frowning at the screen. “Laura Hines’ daughter got caught at a nightclub last night—or rather, this morning.”

Tony made a face. “Isn’t her daughter twelve?”

“Fifteen,” Pepper corrected absently. He glanced over her shoulder. She was going through the articles online, thumbing through the comments.

“How bad are the reactions?” Tony asked. “Is this going to affect their stock?”

“It’s showing up more as a ‘Lifestyles of the Mega-Rich’ piece of news so far,” she said. “It’s not likely to affect them from a business perspective, except for a slight smudge on Ms Hines’ reputation.”

“That woman is terrifying,” chuckled Tony. “I don’t really blame the kid for rebelling.”

Pepper snorted delicately. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“So our project won’t be affected?”

“I highly doubt it will.”

--

“What’s going on here?”

Steve wore a look of utter confusion on his face as he entered their usual meeting room, staring at the harsh lines of Laura Hines’ face where she sat, arms crossed, glowering at Tony from what was usually Steve’s seat. Devi threw him a nervous glance from where she had chosen to remain standing. The Consplant CEO only spared Steve the barest of glances before returning the full force of her fury to Tony. Tony stared her down defiantly.

“Hey, Steve,” said Tony. “This is Ms Laura Hines, Devi’s boss.”

“Mother of Alexis Hines,” added Hines, icily. “Whom you claim to have never met, of course.” Her distrust dripped from every syllable.

“I’m not the one who’s been taking your daughter to nightclubs, Laura,” Tony said sharply, for the nth time. Hines’ expression didn’t change. Tony sighed inwardly; she was notorious in business circles for her bull-headedness, but he had never experienced it quite so drastically before. It was surprising that she would believe her daughter (her stupid kid of a daughter, thought Tony uncharitably) so easily and without doubt, but even business titans had their blind spots, he supposed.

Tony chanced a look at Steve; Steve’s eyebrows were drawn together, piecing together the situation, and damn it, it was hardly the time but Tony had always appreciated Steve’s quick mind and its ability to assess situations, to get them out of trouble when they got caught doing silly stuff. He wondered idly if Steve could get him out of this mess.

“It’s your word against my daughter’s, Stark, and she’s not the one who lies for a living,” spat Hines. Tony felt his lips pull back in a silent snarl of offense. Devi took a tiny step back behind Hines’ chair.

“Look, I have no idea why your daughter told you she was seeing me,” said Tony, struggling to remain calm. “But she’s lying to you. I mean, do you really think I’m the sort of scum who would date an underage kid?”

“My daughter doesn’t lie to me,” said Hines, and Tony wanted to slam his head into the table.

“She’s fifteen, Laura. For god’s sake, of course she lies.”

“How did you know how old she is, Stark?”

“It was in the article.” Tony gave in to the urge to cross his arms in frustration. Probably a bad move, since Hines would interpret it as a defensive gesture—but she would have read guilt in anything he did at that point, she was that blind in her rage.

Hines’ expression turned cold.

“I can’t get you jailed on only Lexi’s word,” she said, “but I will absolutely not do business with someone like you. I'm calling this partnership off.”

Tony gaped at her. “You can’t!” he said. “We’ve already made so much progress, Laura, we can’t just abandon everything over a stupid misunderstanding—”

“Excuse me,” said Steve, breaking into the conversation at last. Tony and Hines turned to look at him, and Tony felt hope blossoming in his chest that Steve would be able to save them, save their project somehow. “Ms Hines, there’s definitely been a misunderstanding here.”

Hines’ eyes narrowed at him. “You’re the architect, aren’t you? Devi told me you’re a good friend of Stark’s, but this is none of your business. Your services will no longer be needed.”

“Actually, it is my business,” retorted Steve, looking her steadily in the eye. Tony might have swooned a little. “You’re accusing my boyfriend of cheating on me with a teenager; I’d say that’s definitely my business.”

What?

“Your what?” said Hines, stunned.

Tony silently choked on his tongue. What the fuck was Steve doing?

“I’m dating Tony,” Steve repeated, blushing faintly but looking for all the world like it was God’s honest truth. He always was good at the sincere innocence shtick, was Steve Rogers. “And I can say with certainty that he’s telling you the truth, ma’am.” There it was, thought Tony slightly hysterically, the “ma’am”, the secret weapon. Hundred percent success rate against professors and security guards and janitors alike.

“That’s very convenient, isn’t it?” said Hines. Well, she wasn’t a professor or a janitor; she was a corporate shark. “Your friend is in trouble and you have the perfect alibi to bail him out?”

Steve ploughed on with a stubbornness that would be adorable, but the current situation was simply mortifying. “I can’t help it if you don’t believe me either, but Tony and I are not just friends.” He turned to Devi. “Devi, did we ever seem like just friends to you?”

Alarm flitted across Devi’s face at being called forth into the exchange, but she managed a steady, “I didn’t want to pry, but I thought… I did think there might have been something else there. There was a lot of, ah, special tension.” Damn, but she was quick to catch on to Steve’s mad plan. Tony himself wasn’t entirely behind whatever was going on there, but if it would save his project… He schooled his face into something he hoped looked like someone whose secret relationship just got outed.

Hines didn’t look convinced, but there was a suspicious, considering look in her eyes. It was one thing to throw away a major investment on a perceived truth, but doing so and making an enemy of SI when there was a decent chance that Tony was innocent was poor business sense, and Tony could almost see the war between businesswoman and mother going on in Hines’ head. Finally, she nodded.

“I’ll believe it for now,” she said, “but only until I find concrete evidence, either way. If I’ve wronged you”—she gave Tony a look that suggested she didn’t believe she had—“I’ll apologize and make it up to SI. If not, Consplant backs out of the project and I’ll see you in court.”

“Fine,” said Tony with cool he wasn’t feeling, “and the project proceeds as planned in the meantime?”

Hines nodded. Tony started breathing again, very slowly.

“I’ll see myself out,” said Hines, but Devi followed her as she left anyway.

The conference room was painfully silent in the minute or two that followed. Then Steve let out a stunned laugh and said, “I can’t believe I just did that.”

Tony jerked out of his daze and rounded on Steve. “I can’t believe you just did that. What the hell? You realise she’s going to set her in-house investigators on us both now, right?”

“Shouldn’t she be setting them on her kid instead?” said Steve, which was completely not the point. Tony made a garbled noise in his throat. Steve ignored him. “Anyway, it was the first thing that came to mind. I guess we’ll have to fake flirt in front of Devi a bit from now on, but it’s better than Hines cancelling the project because she thinks you committed statutory—”

“Don’t even say it,” snapped Tony, rubbing at his temples. “Fuck, Steve, it won’t be just Devi; she’ll have PIs set on us to see if we’re going on dates and having lunch together and staying at each other’s and all the rest of it. You really couldn’t come up with a better idea for fending her off?”

“Oh, like you were doing such a good job of it,” said Steve. He’d crossed his arms and put a frown on.

Tony flailed a little, trying to find a good retort, but Steve had him there. He had nothing to combat Laura Hines’ particular brand of selective blindness, at least not until he sent his own investigators after Lexi Hines and her real beau. Presumably, the kid had given Laura Tony’s name under the impression that her mom wouldn’t persecute a major business partner. Clearly, she’d underestimated her mother’s protective instinct. Tony would have found Hines’ display of maternal love almost touching had it not been used to attack him.

“So what, we play house for a few weeks until I can get the dirt on Lexi Hines?” Tony asked, his tone more morose than he’d intended.

Steve shrugged. “It can’t be that difficult.”

Tony refused to let himself feel stung that Steve didn’t foresee any awkwardness that would come with fake-dating Tony. After all, Tony had known since college, had known for eight years that Steve was never interested in him like that. Of course it wouldn’t be difficult for Steve. As far as Steve was concerned, he was helping a friend and business partner out for the mutual good. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to behave a little closer to Tony, because they were close. Steve wasn’t in any fear of accidentally re-developing a crush that he had sworn was over years ago. No, that was all on Tony.

--

“What do we tell our friends?” asked Steve, pen raised above a new page in his notebook.

Tony sighed. They were at something that was ostensibly a lunch date, but which Steve seemed to be treating as a tactical planning session. They’d spent the last twenty minutes hashing out details regarding their (still ridiculous) sham of a relationship, with Steve dutifully taking notes along the way.

Notes. Ridiculous. Not adorable in the slightest.

“We can’t risk Hines' PIs digging stuff up from our friends, so I guess we let them in on the secret?” Tony suggested.

“Or we could just tell them we’re dating,” said Steve, a touch of laughter in his voice. “I’d love to see their faces when we tell them. Plus, Bucky’s a shit liar.”

“Trust you to turn corporate intrigue into an opportunity to prank your friends,” said Tony, but he was grinning back at Steve as he said it.

“I’m always on the lookout for exciting new opportunities,” deadpanned Steve, quoting Tony’s last magazine interview almost word for word. Tony chucked a breadstick at him.

“We can trick your friends if you want,” Tony acquiesced, “but, uh, Pepper already knows the whole situation. Kind of has to, being my COO and all.” And she’d given him the most exasperated, despairing look he’d ever seen on her, but that was a story for another day. At least she’d immediately set her own investigators on Lexi Hines.

“What about Rhodey?” Steve asked.

Tony did not want to tell Rhodey anything. Rhodey had been present during Tony’s high-key pining days and would therefore give Tony a Look™ regardless of which story he heard. But it would be unfeasible for one of Tony’s best friends to remain unaware of his relationship status, especially if Steve’s friends all knew that they were “dating”, so he figured he would rather have Rhodey’s teasing over his old crush coming true than have Rhodey’s pity over the ridiculous situation he’d put himself in (or rather, that Steve had put them both in).

“Okay, fine,” said Tony. “We can fool Rhodey. We should, anyway; he’s also hopeless at lying. And wait, holy shit, do you think we’ll be able to fool Natasha?”

“Probably not.”

“But we can try, right?”

“Oh, we definitely should.”

They beamed at each other.

“Don’t look now,” said Steve, still smiling sunnily, “but the guy in the brown suit across the street just took a photo of us.”

Tony’s smile didn’t fade, but he felt it stiffen a little. “Our first PI, already?”

“Looks like it.” Steve put down his pen and reached across the table to hold Tony’s hand. The dry warmth of his skin sent a jolt along Tony’s nerves. Which was due to surprise at the sudden movement, of course, because they had always been pretty touchy-feely as friends and this was nothing compared to the way they used to curl up on the couch together.

Well. Tony used to have some pretty embarrassing reactions to Steve touching him back then, too, but that was neither here nor there.

“What are you doing?” Tony managed to ask through his wide smile.

“Posing for the camera,” Steve promptly replied. “We agreed we’d feed them some discreet PDA, didn’t we?”

It was difficult, but Tony managed to hold back an unromantic eye roll. “Holding my hand on the table in a crowded lunch place is not discreet, Rogers.”

“Is Tony Stark going to school me on discretion, then?” Steve laughed.

Tony didn’t dignify that with a verbal response. Instead, he slowly slid his feet forward until his ankles were hooked around Steve’s.

Steve’s eyes widened a fraction. Mostly to avoid watching the tiny hint of pink rising in his face, Tony casually turned to glance out the floor-length window.

“Brown suit guy just took another photo,” he murmured. “Think we’ll be Insta-famous?”

Steve blinked, then burst out laughing, his strangely tense expression dissolving. He squeezed Tony’s hand, then let go, although he didn’t move his feet.

“Okay, you win this round. But I’ll out-romance you the next time, Stark.”

“Nope,” said Tony airily.

“Oh, I will.” Steve picked up his pen again and scrawled something in his notebook. Tony leaned forward to try and catch what it said, and Steve held it up: Tony 1, Steve 0.

Tony nodded appreciatively. “I’m off to a good start,” he said.

“For now,” said Steve.

There was a small kerfuffle when they asked for the bill, and they ended up at Tony 2, Steve 0 when Tony managed to lob his AmEx at the poor waitress’ face and she caught it out of self-preservation.

The next day, Steve called Tony “sweetheart” in front of Devi at their weekly project meeting, and raised the score to Steve 1, Tony 2 while Tony was still gaping in shock.

They had a ridiculous competition to see who could make the mooniest eyes at the other after their tea break, much to Devi’s exasperation and which Steve agreed Tony won, albeit due to his unfair advantage “with the Bambi eyes”. Tony gleefully accepted the points at Tony 3, Steve 1.

Tony suddenly realised, halfway through the late half of their meeting, that Steve’s body language had been subtly tuned towards Tony all day. He gracefully allowed Steve 2, Tony 3.

By the end of the first week, Tony and Steve had been on three dates, stood at Steve 21, Tony 23, and hadn’t even had their first (fake) kiss yet. They were caught up in a game of one-upmanship, each of them trying to out-boyfriend the other, and Devi was pulling at her hair in irritation.

Tony loved and hated it at the same time. He tried his best to approach the arrangement with a friendly mindset, making jokes out of their antics and laughing along with Steve like it was all a big game, but then Steve would smile at him fondly or linger his touches on Tony’s shoulder, and Tony’s heart would soar, then clench painfully at the reminder that that could never be real. And there he had thought he was doing such a good job at being just a friend to Steve this time around.

On the bright side, they had spotted no less than five different people trailing them in that one week, and were hopefully doing well in stumping Laura Hines’ suspicions.

--

Their great plans to trick their friends went rather flat when most of the reactions were just variations along the theme of their friends being happy for them. The first one they told was Rhodey, who just rolled his eyes so hard Tony could hear it over the phone, and told Tony, “I called that since college, Tones.”

“You could at least pretend to be surprised,” Tony whined, pouting.

Steve, who was sitting next to him, laughed silently and prodded at Tony’s outstretched bottom lip. Tony’s heart stuttered, stopped, then wheezed into life again. Rhodey was saying something again, but Tony was lost in the phantom heat of Steve’s finger on his lips and heard none of it.

“Just because you and Carol are postcard-perfect as ever,” he managed, taking a shot in the dark because he had no idea what Rhodey was saying anymore, and talking about Carol always made Rhodey happy.

“Damn right we are.”

“Say hi to her for me, by the way.”

“Will do. Tell Steve I’ll drop a bomb on him if he hurts you, by the way.”

Bucky was second on the list, and according to Steve, he was too wrapped up in wedding preparations to spare more than distracted congratulations and a disappointingly generic shovel speech.

They told Natasha next, which turned out to be a mistake.

She smiled at them both over the coffee Tony had bought her, and gave them her warmest congratulations. Steve was holding Tony’s hand under the table, and Tony felt a little squeeze of triumph as Natasha seemed to believe them.

“So,” Natasha said, just as Tony raised his own cup to his lips, “I’ll put you two down as each other’s plus ones for the wedding, shall I?”

Tony coughed up his coffee. Steve started to turn red very slowly, like a crustacean in hot water.

Neither of them expected the Lexi Hines case to take that long—but despite the tone and punctuation, Natasha’s question wasn’t actually a question. She smiled expectantly at them all the same, as though waiting for a confirmation, but Tony knew that expression actually meant that she was daring them to challenge her. He sure as hell didn’t dare; Natasha made normal Bridezillas look like docile lambs.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks, Natasha.” Evidently, Steve didn’t dare either. Tony squeezed Steve’s hand tightly, hoping to convey an eloquent what the hell through touch. He might have been reading into things, but Steve’s answering squeeze seemed to say what else was I supposed to say?

--

Two weeks into their fake dating scheme, the SI situation in Singapore blew up. Half their workers were on strike, demanding the dismissal of nearly one third of the active workforce at the local SI plant simply because they were immigrant workers. Tony came into the Stark-Consplant project meeting early, head pounding with stress, to find Steve already at the table with more drafts. Steve glanced up with a smile as Tony entered the conference room, but it was quickly replaced by a worried frown as he took in Tony’s appearance. Tony found a weary smile for Steve, then dropped into his chair heavily.

Steve stood up and came around the table to lean against it, closer to Tony. “Rough day?” he asked.

“Yeah. Pep and I are handling it.”

“Have you taken anything for the headache?”

“Not yet. How did you know I have a headache?” Tony squinted up at Steve from his seat. Steve tilted his head knowingly.

“You always used to get them when something stressed you out. I learned to recognise the look you get,” he answered. “Take an aspirin, Tony.”

“Yes, dear,” said Tony, and it got a little smile out of Steve. They smiled at each other for a second longer than was probably acceptable, and then Steve pushed away from the table, and leaned in to press a gentle kiss to Tony’s forehead.

Tony froze.

Steve straightened up abruptly, his expression inscrutable, and Tony was just about to ask him what he was doing when there was a knock at the door. Tony jumped, but Steve didn’t react. Devi walked in, smiling knowingly at them both.

“Don’t mind me,” she joked, but Tony wasn’t listening. He was staring at Steve, who seemed to be ignoring him in turn. Steve nodded at Devi in greeting, then went back to his seat as though nothing had happened; Tony stared at him hard, but he couldn’t seem to catch Steve’s eyes once throughout the meeting.

Right. Of course Steve was uncomfortable. He’d decided on a whim to show Devi a realistic display of affection, knowing she answered directly to Hines, and the act was probably weirding him out more than he’d expected. He probably regretted the hell out of it. Tony’s misery grew exponentially, even though he knew it wasn’t his fault; even with the memory of Steve’s soft lips against his skin. He already knew he was failing in maintaining purely platonic feelings towards Steve; he really didn’t need the reminders that Steve never saw him like that.

He went through the rest of the meeting feeling awful, and when he accidentally let out some of his frustration at Pepper later, he felt even worse.

Pepper only raised her perfect eyebrows at him. The lines under her eyes, unlike the shadows, couldn’t hide quite as well under her makeup.

“I’m sorry, Pep,” mumbled Tony. “It’s just been a pretty long day. Not saying that yours was any shorter, of course, I just…” He trailed off with a sigh.

“It’s fine, Tony. I know you’ve had a lot to deal with too, with the Lexi Hines situation.” Pepper gave him a sympathetic look he didn’t deserve, then frowned down at her tablet. “Speaking of the girl, she’s been lying low lately. No one’s managed to catch her with her boyfriend yet.”

“She probably knows her mom’s got people shadowing her,” said Tony. “That’s inconsiderate.”

Pepper huffed out a wry laugh and said, “Hines Junior doesn’t make it easy for anyone either, I suppose.”

“Guess not.”

“And you’re doing a terrible job of not falling back into the Steve Rogers snake pit, obviously.”

“What?” Tony jolted, staring guiltily at her. “How could you tell?”

“Need I remind you that I was there when he left you high and dry the first time, Tony?” said Pepper, and her voice was sharp, but he knew it held no blame. Not for him, at least.

Not for the first time, Tony questioned his own seeming masochism. Pepper was justified in her worry, he knew, but he also knew that he wasn’t the kid he was eight years ago. He was an adult; he could handle unreturned feelings like an adult. (He wasn’t entirely sure how adults handled them, but he was certain it would be with more grace than he’d possessed eight years ago.)

It wasn’t as though he and Steve hadn’t talked about their falling out of touch. They just hadn’t… talked about it. They’d both referred to it as though it had happened naturally, just drifting apart when both parties got too busy to stay in contact. Neither of them had mentioned the part where Tony had tried to call, countless times, only for Steve to brush him off with weak excuses over text. Steve seemed as determined to maintain the status quo as Tony was, so they did. They were adults. They moved on.

“Tony,” said Pepper sadly, when he told her as much.

“I’ll be fine, Pep,” Tony said. “Just keep me posted on Hines. I’ll be fine.”

--

Tony finally met the other main architect behind Liberty Architects a few days later. Steve had showed up at lunchtime, acting completely normal, as though the forehead kissing incident had never happened, and Tony had gone along with it. Halfway through a conversation, Tony had realised that, unfairly, Steve went to SI offices all the time when Tony had not once been to Liberty Architects, so he’d wheedled his way into a trip to Steve’s office in the middle of the week. Their office was modestly sized, but well-lit and full of clean lines and contrasting materials, smelling faintly of the flowers on someone’s desk, with plan filing cabinets in every room. Tony loved it immediately.

He also liked Sam Wilson immediately, despite being a little jealous of him for having earned a spot as one of Steve’s best friends sometime in the years when Steve was still in college and Tony had left. It was impossible to hate Sam, who was all friendly good humor and sly jokes right from the get-go.

“I’ve heard a lot about you from this guy here,” said Sam, pointing at Steve, “so it’s good to finally meet you, you know? I mean, all those drunk rambling sessions in the year or three after you left, hooo boy—”

“Sam,” Steve interrupted, his cheeks and ears bright pink, “No. Don’t you dare—”

“What?” said Sam, grinning, and oh, he was fun. He was definitely Tony’s new favorite. “Come on, what are friends for, your boy needs to know—”

“He really doesn’t,” said Steve desperately.

Tony was intrigued despite himself. He knew he shouldn’t explore the past, hoping for anything to be different, because that way lay a whole fucking mountain of unrequited pining and embarrassing nightmares, but the thought that Steve had maybe missed him after he left was a comfort he could certainly appreciate.

Then again, if Steve had missed him at all, why hadn’t he ever answered any of Tony’s calls?

“I’m going to go get some coffee for Tony,” said Steve, moving towards what Tony assumed was the pantry. “Sam, I will disown you if you tell Tony anything that was said in confidence.”

“You don’t own me to begin with, man,” called Sam. Steve pulled a face at him and disappeared around the corner. Sam smiled back at Tony, and when he started speaking again, his tone was sober. “In all seriousness, though, congratulations to you both. I’m really glad he met you again, and that you’re together now.”

Sam’s sincerity and goodwill chafed at Tony’s conscience. He wished he and Steve weren’t lying to Sam, who clearly cared a lot about Steve’s happiness. Well, there was another, rather bigger reason for Tony to wish that their relationship was real, but that was really not the point. He guiltily tried brushing Sam’s words off, saying, “Thanks, but there’s no need for congratulations; we’re not the ones getting married in a few weeks. Besides, I was more expecting a shovel talk from you.”

“No, of course not,” Sam laughed, “and I bet Bucky already gave you the shovel talk, so I ain’t wasting my time; I’ll just leave the shovel talk implied.”

“Efficient, I like it.”

“I mean it about being glad, though,” said Sam. He gave Tony a serious look. “I was getting kind of worried about Steve. He got a little withdrawn after his last girlfriend left him, and I thought he was just going to mope around rejecting our attempts to matchmake for the rest of his life. So yeah, I’m glad he’s got you now and he’s happy.”

Tony dimly registered an ache in his chest, but his attention stayed focused on Sam. He wondered what kind of person Steve’s ex-girlfriend was, to be able to do something like that to someone as wonderful as Steve Rogers. And of course, of course Steve had had a great love, a One True Love in the time when they weren’t in contact, because it had been eight, nearly nine years of life lived without Tony, and Tony had known this, had known that it was hopeless, but hearing about it still hurt. And even though he knew it wouldn’t change his situation one bit, Tony itched fiercely to know more about the ex who had broken Steve’s heart, wanted to know who she was and where she was, whether she would ever be back.

He opened his mouth to ask Sam for more details, but Steve came back just then, carefully holding three gently steaming mugs of coffee.

“If you’ve been telling Tony anything you shouldn’t have, I’m taking yours back and pouring it down the sink,” Steve warned Sam as he passed him one.

“Nah, man, nothing of the sort. I only talked about the good stuff; really talked you up in front of your man.”

Steve looked at him like he was seriously considering doing as he’d threatened with Sam’s coffee. Sam shot him a beatific grin. Rolling his eyes, Steve stepped toward Tony to hand him his mug. As he did, he slipped an arm around Tony’s waist, perching it comfortably just above Tony’s hip. They’d practiced their casual displays of affection so many times by then that it felt familiar, right. Tony didn’t even startle at the feeling anymore. Adjusting back to interacting without it was going to be tough, but Tony would worry about that when the time came, he decided. For now, he was going to secretly bask in satisfaction whenever Steve initiated any kind of physical contact.

Steve looked at Tony strangely.

“Tony, whatever you’ve heard from Sam, it’s rubbish,” he said. “I deny all knowledge of incidents he’s mentioned.”

“Mm,” said Tony, winding his hand around Steve’s on his waist, “is that because you were drunk during all of them?”

Sam snorted; Steve look betrayed.

“I thought you were supposed to be on my side, Tony,” Steve complained. “I should never have brought you here.”

“No, you should have,” Tony said.

--

Like the proverbial cat, Tony’s curiosity would kill him one day, he knew. Even so, he couldn’t, really couldn’t stop himself from scheduling a coffee date with Natasha to see if she knew about Steve’s ex-girlfriend. He’d tried to let it go, but it turned out that trying not to think about it was not so very different from actually thinking about it, and his thoughts had been distracted enough after he’d met Sam that Steve had actually asked if he didn’t like Sam. Tony had assured him otherwise and brushed off his distractedness by claiming something or other about work.

And then he’d promptly given Natasha a call.

“Explain why I’m here in three sentences or less,” she warned as she dropped gracefully into the seat opposite him. “I have a fitting session with Jan and Pepper at four.”

“Wait, with Jan? Why wasn’t I invited?” Tony pouted.

Natasha shrugged, unrepentant. “Bridesmaids only,” she said.

“I’m still upset about that,” said Tony mildly, and couldn’t move fast enough to dodge the light flick to his forehead. “Ow.”

“Hurry up and ask me what you called me to ask,” said Natasha. “I know that tone of your voice, Tony. You’re freaking out about something.”

Nothing else for it, then.

“What’s the deal with Steve’s ex-girlfriend?” Tony blurted before he could second-guess himself, then cringed inwardly at his own bluntness.

Natasha levelled him with a stern look. “I don’t know if this is information I should be sharing with you when Steve himself hasn’t seemed ready to,” she said sharply, and Tony cringed again. Something in his expression must have been pitiful enough to incite sympathy, however, and she softened as she continued, “But I’ll acknowledge that Steve is a little dense when it comes to the finer points of emotional investment. Knowing him, it probably hasn’t even occurred to him that you might be feeling uneasy about Sharon.”

“Sharon?” Tony tested the name out on his tongue.

“Sharon Carter,” said Natasha. “I don’t know much about what happened between them, but I know they dated for a long while and she was the one who broke up with him. Something about him being stifling, I don’t know the details.”

Tony sputtered indignantly at that. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“Don’t even start. It ended poorly, but that’s on neither of them. I like Sharon,” she said. “She’s coming to the wedding, too, which is the primary reason I’m even telling you all of this. I will not tolerate any dramatic showdowns at my wedding, understood?” The last word was delivered with so much threat embedded in it that Tony leaned away from her instinctively.

Tony wondered if Steve was still in love with Sharon. Probably, given that he had been single right up until they’d decided to play their silly game of pretend. The thought was depressing, but nothing that Tony hadn’t expected.

“Tony,” said Natasha, her gaze steady on his face. “You wanted to know,” was what she said next, although it wasn’t unkind.

“I did,” agreed Tony. “Thanks for the intel, Tasha.”

“I saw the way Steve looks at you, Tony,” she said, reaching across the table to pat his hand. “You have nothing to worry about, okay? Talk to Steve. You’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” said Tony, scrounging up a smile. Somewhere in the back of his vast mind, he wondered at Steve’s acting skills and how he’d managed to fool Natasha, but he pushed that away before she could read it on his face. “Hey, just wondering though: if he and I broke up, whose side would you be on?”

“Depends on the circumstances of the break up,” she answered, which was far too objective for Tony.

“You were my friend first, Tasha,” he whined.

“You’re not five years old. Behave like it.”

--

Tony's meetings with Steve became rarer as they entered the second stage of planning on the Stark-Consplant project. They were working with different people; Steve spent most of his time wrangling contractors and Tony spent his meeting with—well, with every other type of person, really. As they each got busier with their respective jobs, they cut back on their so-called dates; it'd been over a week since Tony had last seen Steve. He told himself it made sense to wean off the Steve contact, especially after Pepper dropped by to update him on the Lexi Hines case—the kid was relaxing her guard, they would be able to catch her soon. The farce would be over very soon.

The next time Tony saw Steve, it was two days before the Barnes-Romanoff wedding. They had a hastily-pencilled in project meeting in the morning with Devi to discuss some changes to the materials being used due to a supply shortage, and they were so busy working throughout that Tony barely even noticed when Devi kicked off her punishing heels and went the remainder of the meeting barefoot.

Tony in particular felt run off his feet with work; unlike the other two, his involvement with the Stark-Consplant project was not expected to take up all of his time, and he was still expected to keep up with full-time CEO duties. Which, to Tony's despair that morning, included defending his choice of hiring policies to the rest of the board of directors. He came into the late-morning meeting already tired beyond the hour, and didn't even startle when Steve's fingers brushed against his own, but the contact boosted him a little.

The three of them dealt with what they could within the limited time slot, then arranged for a follow-up meeting the next day before hurrying off again. Tony caught Steve’s arm as he and Devi were leaving the conference room. Devi smiled at them knowingly and left.

“We haven’t had a date in a while,” he said without preamble, scrounging up a tired smile for Steve.

“Fake date,” corrected Steve, with a glance towards the door through which Devi had already left. Tony felt his smile stiffen, and hated himself for it.

“Yeah, sure,” said Tony. “Point is, we haven’t given Hines’ PIs their quota of sightings in a while. Do you—we should have dinner. Tonight, that is.”

“I’d love to, Tony, but I’ve got plans,” said Steve, frowning, “An, uh, old friend of mine is in town for the wedding, and we’re catching up.”

“Right, of course,” Tony said, and then because he really didn’t know when to stop probing, “Old friend? Anyone I know?”

Steve’s expression changed; it was almost imperceptible, but Tony could tell Steve was deliberately trying not to look shifty, which of course only served to make him appear shifty. “I don’t think you know her,” Steve said with as little inflection as possible, and fuck, that was shifty too.

And then it hit Tony.

“Is it Sharon?” Tony asked, and he couldn’t quite keep all the jealousy from his voice, although hopefully Steve wouldn’t recognise it.

“Wait, what—how did you know about Sharon?”

“You think I don’t do my research on my fake boyfriends’ histories?” snarked Tony, and no, that wasn’t what he’d intended to say, but fatigue and stress were pressing in on his throat and jealousy was making him petty. He recognised the character defect, but didn’t have the energy to rein it in at the moment.

“That’s not funny,” said Steve, and his neck was turning pink. Tony distantly thought that Steve had had a pretty long week himself. “And so what if it is?”

“Is it really a good idea to be going out with an ex when you haven’t been seen with your boyfriend lately?”

“It’s not like this is real,” snapped Steve. His eyes were alight, his body language was tense. “And even if it were, I wouldn’t need your permission to meet my friends.”

Tony took a step back, cursing himself. Fuck, he’d gone and done it again, hadn’t he? He was behaving like a complete tool to people who didn’t deserve it because he was stressed, because he was tired, because he was overthinking things and getting upset over something that wasn’t even real.

“Right,” he said, feeling a little numb, “I’m sorry, I’m overstepping.” He even managed a mostly-sincere “Have fun tonight” that he was quite proud of.

Steve visibly un-bristled at Tony’s apology. “It’s not just the two of us,” he admitted, “Bucky will be there too.”

And wasn’t that a bigger kick to the face, Tony realised with some surprise, because Bucky had never had much time for Tony, even back in college—he’d visited Steve several times, but never when Tony was around—and they’d met only twice, briefly, over Tony’s entire friendship with Steve. But of course, Bucky was friends with Sharon. Sharon, Steve’s actual ex, not the distant old buddy from college who was just playing at it for show.

Tony decided that he really needed a nap, before his thoughts got even more depressing.

Steve went off to his next meeting, and Tony went straight to the couch in his office to curl up and sleep for two hours straight.

--

The Barnes-Romanoff wedding was a credit to Natasha and her bridezilla tendencies. Every last detail was perfect, from the lighting to the flowers, the music to the timing, the seating arrangements to the reception menu. Everything worked to a level of efficiency Tony usually appreciated in his machines, and this was with people involved. He expressed an appropriate degree of awe to Natasha and received a beautiful smile in reward. They were dancing at the reception to her carefully vetted string quartet, Natasha’s custom Van Dyne skirt twirling gracefully around their feet, surrounded by merry friends. Somewhere off the dance floor, Steve was probably chatting with Bucky.

Steve had insisted on their attending the wedding together, citing something about seating arrangements and not wanting to mess with Natasha. Tony had asked about managing the fallout from everyone at the wedding who would be asking questions when they “broke up”, but Steve had remained ridiculously stubborn and insisted all the same. Tony suspected he was being used as cover from Natasha’s and Jan’s aggressively eager matchmaking, but a short flash of fantasy, of dancing with a dressed-up Steve under warm golden lighting, had been enough to convince Tony to extend their ruse to the wedding dinner. He hadn’t had that dance yet, but he would get around to asking for it soon; it was practically required, given their pretense.

“You’re looking distracted,” said Natasha, and Tony turned his attention back to her. “Stop drooling at the best man, you’ll get your dance with him later.”

“Astute as ever,” said Tony, stepping deftly to her right. “I can’t help it, Tasha. You’re the one who put him in a Van Dyne suit, need I remind you.”

“Technically, Jan was the one who did,” she said. “And she definitely enjoyed it.”

Tony chuckled. “I bet she did. Thanks for putting her and Pepper at our table, by the way. I know I already complimented the planning, but that was perfect.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You couldn’t have put your nosy Russian aunties somewhere else, though?”

“It was them or worse, believe me,” Natasha said, with a snort.

The dance ended, and Tony went back to his table. The gaggle of Russian aunties were nowhere to be seen, Jan was dancing again, and Steve was still doing whatever best men were supposed to do, but Pepper was there, tapping away at her phone.

“You’re not supposed to be on that,” Tony reminded her, dropping into the seat beside hers.

Pepper looked up at him with a look of fierce triumph, the sort he usually associated with exceeding sales targets and successful product launches. “Tony, we’ve got him,” she said, her voice low but excited. “Our investigators have caught Lexi Hines’ with her boyfriend, we’ve got it all, picture proof and everything we need to throw at Laura Hines!”

Tony felt his stomach do a funny combination of a swoop and a flip. He’d known they were closing in, had known their ruse was nearing its end, but the timing threw him off. It was perfect, though, logistically speaking—they could stage a breakup immediately after the wedding, tell their friends they’d only been holding it together because of the wedding—

“That’s great,” he told Pepper. “I’ll tell Steve. Get our evidence backed up ASAP and send all of it over to Laura Hines’ private email.” She nodded, already typing again. “Also, start thinking of what we want to ask Hines for, she’ll be offering a formal apology and I want it milked for all it’s worth.”

Pepper’s smile took on a shark-like edge. Tony grinned at her in kind. He left her gleefully tapping away at her phone, figuring it was about as much fun as a good wedding to her, and sought out Steve to break the news.

Ending their pretend relationship was… something of a relief, Tony was surprised to find. It stung, surely, but the weight of the act had been getting rather heavy anyway, a gradually increasing pressure that left Tony feeling like a slow-boiling frog. He wondered if Steve would feel the same.

Steve was mingling dutifully, making small talk with people Tony vaguely recognised as Natasha’s coworkers off to one side of the hall. Tony extracted him smoothly, with all the ease and practice of a lifetime’s experience with formal functions, and led him off to an empty corner.

“What is it, Tony?” Steve asked, smiling happily at him, and oh, God, who had Tony been kidding? It was going to be hell reminding himself to keep a friendly distance from that smile. The universe was just being rude, at this point.

“Tony?” repeated Steve, smile dimming a little in confusion. Tony blinked, clearing his thoughts.

“Our investigators caught Lexi Hines out with her beau,” said Tony, in a rush. “It’s done, Steve. We’ve got them.”

“Oh!” Steve looked startled. “That’s… pretty sudden. It’s really done?”

“Done,” confirmed Tony, licking his lips and nodding. “We don’t need to pretend anymore. You’re—we’re free.”

“Free,” echoed Steve faintly, then his face twisted in what looked a little like panic. “But we can still pretend for the rest of the wedding, right? It’s only for another few hours, tops, then you’re free to go.”

Tony wondered at Steve’s insistence, but remembered that he’d been insisting on maintaining their cover at the wedding from the beginning. Maybe Steve was trying to prove a point to Sharon Carter, seated just two tables away, thought Tony, and brushed the thought away before he could examine it too closely.

“Shall we—shall we head back to our table?” said Steve, gesturing loosely at their table. Pepper had disappeared, probably to make some calls, but Jan and the gaggle of Russian aunties had returned and were laughing uproariously at whatever Jan was saying.

Tony nodded, and they headed back towards their table together. As they crossed the room, Steve curled his hand around Tony’s and held it until they reached the table. Jan and the aunties cooed as they approached.

“You two are just adorable,” said Jan, beaming benevolently at them. “It’s almost enough to make me forgive you for turning up in a suit that’s not mine, Tony.”

“You were busy,” deflected Tony. “Besides, not working on me gave you more time to work on Steve, for which I know we are all thankful.”

Jan laughed. Steve blushed. The aunties cackled; one gave an appreciative whoop.

“You two are next, hey?” said another, waving at Bucky and Natasha, who were dancing together again with hearts in their eyes. Steve blushed even harder while Tony choked on his water. “Maybe we should ask you questions too.”

“Ooh, I've got a classic question for happy couples,” Jan said. “When did you two start seeing each other?”

“In college,” said Tony, at the same time that Steve said, “After college.”

There was a brief silence. Tony stared at Steve, hard, because one of the first things they had agreed on at the very start, which Steve had definitely written down in that ridiculous notebook of his, was a fictional backstory for their relationship. Tony had been the one to craft their story, which had featured them getting their heads out of their asses while they were still in college together, before Tony had to leave and take over SI.

Why was Steve messing up now, of all times?

“We met in college,” said Tony quickly, trying to cover their asses, smiling beatifically at the aunties. His mind wheeled about trying to come up with a suitably charming story on the fly, but Steve beat him to it.

“We were good friends in college,” said Steve. “We were good friends, but only that, for a long time, even though we were so close that I really should have known better.” A couple of aunties tittered knowingly. “We spent almost all of our time together, did almost everything together, and everything we didn’t, we would tell the other about. I thought Tony was one of my best friends.

“And then Tony had to leave, one day. He had to go back to New York, to take over his father’s company, and even though I missed him every day, I still didn’t realise why I felt like a part of me was missing.” Steve’s audience was captivated, hanging on his every word. Tony wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. Steve continued, “Eventually, Bucky”—he flashed a wry smile in the direction of the dance floor—“came to visit and saw me moping about. He told me to stop pining, and I—I hadn’t even known I was pining, but then he asked if I ever moped that much when he was away, and I—I realised he was right. I realised I was… in love with Tony.”

Tony definitely wasn’t breathing.

“I’m—not proud of how I behaved after that,” said Steve. He was facing Tony directly now, eyes focused on Tony’s. Behind him, in Tony’s peripheral vision, Jan’s eyes were round. “I started avoiding calls from Tony, because I was terrified that I would say all of two words to him and it would be obvious, that he would be able to tell immediately how I felt about him. So I made up some stupid excuses and never answered any of his calls, until one day he stopped calling.

“And then I got it into my head that I had to do something. I had to make some sort of, of gesture, something to let Tony know how I felt. I didn’t want us to fade out into nothing because I was too afraid to make my feelings known. I didn’t want to end up losing my chance because I’d spent weeks trying to figure out if the feeling was mutual. So I bought a train ticket down to New York and went to SI to see Tony.”

And this was definitely where fiction deviated from fact, thought Tony wildly, even disregarding the hopelessly romantic spin Steve had put on the story thus far. There was no way that Steve, living on his scholarship shoestring, would have done that.

Steve hesitated, pausing in his story to glance around. If he was doing it to add narrative drama, he was doing it very well.

“I came to New York,” said Steve, quieter now. “Went to SI and asked to see Tony. I was told to wait, so I waited. And waited and waited, and waited some more, because something big was happening at SI and I don’t think the receptionist even remembered I was there. I heard them shouting a lot, saying something about some guy called McLaughlin and how he’d fucked up on a major contract. So I waited, and then finally, late in the evening, I saw Tony come out, with Pepper by his side.” Steve paused again, and Tony saw one of the aunties nodding slightly, like she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. The rest of them, and Jan, looked similarly enraptured. “So I… said Tony’s name. Just called out to him and he turned around and it was like, like a scene from a movie, all wide eyes and huge smiles and sappy confessions. And that’s how we—how it happened.”

The aunties burst into adoring exclamations, gushing about the wonderfully romantic story.

Tony was... confused. He didn’t understand. Steve's story was unbelievable and definitely did not happen, except—except Tony remembered McLaughlin, remembered the terrible day on which a mistyped report had very nearly cost them a contract on which they had been slaving for weeks, remembered a day on which he and Pepper were in an uproar fixing the error, and how did Steve know about that? How could Steve possibly know about that?

Steve, who was looking back at him like he was waiting for a verdict, a blow, a meltdown: clear eyes, braced jaw and stiff shoulders.

“Excuse me,” said Tony abruptly, standing. His gaze didn’t leave Steve’s. “Steve, will you walk with me to the foyer?”

The rest of their table exchanged sly looks and knowing smiles with each other; they assumed it was about a moment of passion, but they didn’t know, they had no idea—Tony was freaking out inside, and they thought he was dragging Steve outside for a quickie, he almost laughed in hysteria—

The cooler air in the foyer didn’t help clear Tony’s thoughts.

Had Steve been telling the truth, back there? Had he really come down to New York that day? He must have, because how else could he have known about the events of that day? And if he had, why had he done it? Tony thought back to the part in the story where Steve had admitted to being confused and taking too long to sort out his feelings towards Tony, and was that why he'd never answered Tony's calls, because he thought he wouldn't be able to hide it? Did he really not know how gone for him Tony had been—was? And then why hadn’t—

Tony needed to stop asking all those questions in his head, because the only way he was going to actually get answers was by asking Steve. Steve, who was right there, who had just told a table full of Russian aunties (and Janet van Dyne) a fantasy version of their history, in which they had got together years ago.

Tony finally looked at Steve and said, “That didn’t happen.”

“It didn’t,” said Steve.

“But that did happen,” said Tony, “that day, the thing with McLaughlin.”

“It did,” said Steve.

“Were you even telling the truth in there?” asked Tony.

“Everything except the part where I called out your name,” said Steve, and everything, everything. That meant everything.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Steve didn’t answer immediately. He looked away and back again, before saying, “I saw you with Pepper. I figured I was too late.”

And Tony remembered even more clearly: the day he and Pepper had had their… thing. They’d both been high on adrenaline after narrowly saving the company, they’d spent weeks practically sequestered together working on the contract, Tony had been hurting from every failed phone call to Steve, and Pepper had been so solidly wonderful and there for him…

He was fuzzy on the details, but he recalled standing outside the lobby that day, and one of them had initiated the first kiss, and then they had tumbled exhaustedly into the waiting car, and they had never done it again since, because they figured out pretty quickly that they worked best as friends and business partners.

“Pep and I didn’t last,” was all Tony said.

“I know.”

They stared at each other. The sounds of the reception drifted over; the low buzz of conversation, the faint strains of music, the clinking of cutlery.

“I need to know what’s going on here,” said Tony at last. “What are you trying to say?”

Steve took a deep breath, and a determined look came over his face. “I'm looking for a second chance, Tony,” he said. “I missed my first chance with you because I was too slow on my own feelings, and then I took too long getting into gear, even after I'd figured them out. I just didn't want to say nothing and miss this chance again. I meant what I said in there; I've been in love with you pretty much since the day you helped me make those flashcards for my 101.”

Tony just stared at him. Steve forged on awkwardly, “And of course I'll respect your decision if you'd rather just stay friends.” His voice twisted on the last words. “Our friendship is important to me, and—”

“Yes,” said Tony abruptly, his mouth and brain finally catching up to the situation, “I mean, yes to the. The love thing, not the staying friends thing. Steve, I helped you make those flashcards because I was in love with you already, how was that not the most obvious thing in the world? I kept calling after I had to leave college and you kept avoiding me, and I thought you'd figured me out and didn't want to deal with me and my stupid feelings—“

“I would never—”

“And now, now you're telling me we've been missing out on eight years of each other just because our timing didn't match up, oh my god—” Tony rambled on, propelled by a strange mix of euphoria and outrage. His hands waved wildly in the air between them.

“Well, we can start now—” Steve’s voice was rising in hope.

“Damn straight we’re going to start now, I can’t believe—”

“Tony, I—”

“We've been fake dating for weeks when we could have been real dating—”

The rest of Tony's words were lost as Steve kissed him.

Tony settled immediately; he tilted his head into the kiss, let Steve nudge his lips open, let himself sink into the heat of Steve's mouth. Steve's hands were holding his, having caught them mid-flail, and their fingers were laced together between them, contact points of tingling electricity and warmth resting lightly on Steve’s bespoke lapels. They kissed and kissed, and by the time they pulled apart, they were both breathing heavily. Tony's lips felt as swollen as Steve's looked. He could count Steve's eyelashes from this distance, could see the lines where gold darkened to soft brown in each one.

“You know, Nat's already cut the cake,” Tony said. His voice was hoarse. Steve shot him a bemused look that made him look a little cross-eyed, with their faces only inches apart. “So
it's socially acceptable for guests to leave,” Tony explained further, “Although maybe the rules are different for the best man?”

Steve's confused expression resolved into something with a lot more intent.

“Let’s make a run for it,” said Steve; his grip on Tony's hands tightened. He started pulling Tony towards the exit, and Tony followed him with a bright, happy laugh.

--

“Natasha told me, you know,” said Tony. “She said she could see it. How much you cared.”

“I told you it was obvious,” mumbled Steve, half his face buried in a pillow. Tony was up on his elbows, looking down at him fondly.

“No, you told me you were afraid it was obvious. Different things entirely.”

“But Natasha saw,” Steve argued.

“Nat is observant to the point of paranoia.”

“She was right.”

“I know,” said Tony. He felt his face soften as he looked at Steve, all loose and happy and smirking up at him. “I guess I didn't dare believe it. The folly of being comforted, and all that.”

Steve blinked. “Did you just quote Yeats? At”—he checked his phone—“eight in the morning?”

“Too much?”

“No, no; I knew I was in love with a nerd from the start.”

Tony's smile was foolishly wide and bright; he said, “Says the nerd who recognised it.”

“I'm not the nerd who quoted it.”

Tony shrugged, unrepentant. He leaned down and stole a kiss simply because he could, slow and lingering. Steve followed his lips a little way when he pulled back up.

“It's appropriate,” Steve murmured. “It's been nine years, and I'm just as stupid about you as I was, if not more.”

“Well then, it's a good thing I'm so smart about you, stupid,” quipped Tony.

Steve threw a pillow at him. Tony caught it, hugged it to his chest, and rolled over onto his back, laughing so hard it almost hurt.

--