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Steve groaned into his coffee. He would've taken a deep sip to soothe the screaming in his chest and his soul, but the coffee in Stark Tower was simply too evenly roasted, too consistently ground, too well-brewed. He yearned for the black tar he could rely on back in his real life.
No. This was his real life, too.
It was just so different, though. And lonely.
He had friends, kind of. Maybe just colleagues who were friendly. He knew a few things about Natasha; it wasn't anything deeper than surface-level, and he wasn't sure how much of it was true, but he knew some stuff. He knew Hawkeye had a family, a wife and kids. Might not know anything else about them, but he knew they were out there somewhere. Steve wasn't sure if there was a dog or anything. Clint didn't seem like a cat guy, but it wasn't like he worked from home, which was a thing people could do now.
Thor… well, he knew that he didn't know much about Thor, and what he did know, he didn't totally understand. So maybe Thor didn't really count.
And then there was Sta—Tony. Tony was a friend, sort of.
A really annoying kind-of-maybe friend.
Normally with his enhanced hearing he could make out the buzz of every light fixture in a room, but this tower was silent in its modernity. Sometimes he hated it. He couldn't make out the ringing in his ears when they were filled with different kinds of buzzing.
It hadn't made sense at first that this was Howard Stark's kid. Howard was more brilliant than the sun above and he'd contributed to the war effort in real, meaningful ways, and then he had to go and die before Steve could ever see him again. He heard Howard had spent the rest of his life looking for him, and he was truly touched by that.
And then here was this grown man who looked so much like him but not in any of the ways that mattered. They had the same deep brown eyes, but none of the same pain and anxiety. Howard was trying to end a second world war and St—Tony was showing off stuff Steve didn't even understand, stuff that couldn't possibly end a… they didn't even have wars, these days, just "conflicts" and "interventions" and "operations."
As if he'd been waiting just outside for his cue, Iron Man strolled into the common kitchen in the flesh (and a pair of jeans that let Steve know the exact shape of that flesh) and made a beeline for the coffee maker. "JARV, am I allowed to have a real coffee or are you gonna give me secret decaf again?" He hadn't noticed Steve. Too focused on getting his fix and berating his… AI assistant? He didn't completely understand the relationship. What did you call an assistant that was actually in charge of their boss?
"If you insist I fill another half-gallon growler with iced coffee," said that smooth posh voice that definitely didn't remind Steve of anyone because he definitely wasn't still doll dizzy over her, "I will in turn insist it be brewed using the decaffeinated beans Ms. Potts had imported from Peru."
Tony threw his hands up. "Fine, I'll take a hot cup of regular," (the machine had started to whir and Tony slipped a ceramic mug under the dispenser) "useless, dull, boring," (it was already draining coffee into the corporate-branded cup) "flavorless, actively uninteresting, completely approachable coffee."
He took the now-full cup and whipped around to leave (did it have those weird little ridges to keep it from spilling? Steve hated those ridges), only then noticing Steve.
"Uh," said Steve super smooth-like. "Hi."
Tony squinted at him like he wasn't sure he was real. "Hey."
Steve was going to let him walk away but his earlier spiral of thoughts threatened to wash over him again and he found himself asking, "Want to sit? I have some regular coffee, too." He sipped his own and even tried to pretend he actually liked it. "I wouldn't tell Ms. Potts it's flavorless or anything, though."
"Oh, yeah," Tony said with a general wave of his hand, "I'm not telling Pepper a thing."
Suddenly he was standing at the edge of the dining table like he wasn't sure if he was welcome, so Steve gestured at the seat across from him.
It was already weird, and then Tony made it weirder.
"Eight o'clock on a Saturday night," he observed. "I'm an eccentric billionaire inventor, I'm allowed to be a shut-in. You don't have a hot date?"
Steve snorted. "Yeah, me and Cookie are headed to the soda fountain, it's gonna be a real gas."
"Don't be shitty," Tony complained. "I wasn't even asking to be shitty."
Steve reminded himself he was playing nice and trying to make a friend. He forced his eyes (about to roll into the back of his head) to meet Tony's and plastered on a sheepish smile. "Sorry. No, no date."
"Yeah, I got that." This was possibly the most interested Tony had ever looked in what Steve had to say. "Cookie is who?"
"A real dish," Steve said in a half-explanation, laughing when Tony got the gist and leaned back in his chair with a huff.
"Nobody told me America's golden boy was sassy," he pretended to complain, but he was clearly more comfortable now than before. "Stop being sassy. Seriously, no hot date? I know half of Manhattan would climb you like a tree."
"No date," Steve said shortly. Too shortly, because Tony was gesturing for him to keep talking. He stalled with a sip of that stupid coffee but it was too good to drink more. "I'm still, uh, getting over someone."
Tony heaved a sigh. "Damn it." Steve looked at him with raised brows for an explanation and he said, "If Captain America can't get over heartbreak, there's no hope for the rest of us."
"I hope the rest of you aren't planning on waking up seventy years in the future," Steve said with a hint of condescension. "Things might've turned out for me if I stayed put."
He had the good grace to look apologetic. "Yeah, but before that there had to be some heartbreak. Everyone deals with it."
Steve's mind wandered to a cleft chin and wandering hands and too much stubble and a long walk back to Italy. "I used to be stuck on a real hunk of heartbreak," he admitted. It felt easier to talk about feelings if he couched it all in the slang he grew up with. "Stuck on him for a real long time."
Tony nodded along to the story, then blinked a few times and sat back up straight in his chair. "Wait, sorry, stuck on who?"
He really didn't like when Stark got ideas that made him perk up like that. "No one you know!" The words came out of his mouth so fast they almost slurred together. "It was a fella I knew back in the day," Steve said easily, more slowly, like Buck wasn't the most important person in his life, like just thinking of him didn't set his insides on fire.
And then he witnessed something he never thought he was gonna see in his life.
For once, Tony looked genuinely astonished. "You like men?"
Steve frowned. "Is that a problem?"
"Buddy, I'm not gonna try to beat you up—" not that you even could, Steve thought spitefully— "not that I even could," Tony added in a mutter. Steve liked that. "I'm just surprised. Like, really, really surprised."
Well, that didn't actually explain anything. "Why?" He lowered himself gently back into his seat. He hadn't even realized he'd started to stand.
Tony set his coffee down before he could spill it laughing; the scent of it wafted over and still smelled like Steve wouldn't drink it, but it was hardly the most irritating thing at the table. "God, you look like a puppy when you're confused." Steve did not like that, and his face must've shown it."You're Captain America. You're the stars and stripes and the pole the flag hangs on." He paused, tapped his fingers on the table in a staccato. "Wait, actually, that wor—never mind. Point is, you're like, the thing guys are supposed to aspire to be."
He still wasn't understanding something. "But I thought people aren't bothered about, you know, friends of Dorothy anymore."
"Yeah." Tony grimaced. Looked down into the mug nestled between his calloused hands. "Theoretically."
He didn't speak for a moment, then another. The silence stretched long enough for Steve to open his mouth just to break it, and then Tony spoke again.
His voice was firm. He was finally looking up at Steve again. "Did my dad know?"
A knot started to form in his stomach. "No." Tony held eye contact (warm, brown, sad eye contact) but didn't say anything. Steve could try and tell himself later that his voice wasn't strangled when he asked, "Why?"
One of the muscles in Tony's jaw tensed. "Makes sense." He seemed to work to make his next words come out smooth and unbothered. One slow blink. "He wasn't super cool about it when I came out."
A punch to the gut still hurts if you know it's coming. He felt a cold flash of anger on Tony's behalf, sharp and sudden, before it settled into a dull ache for the Howard he thought he knew. "I–I'm sorry."
Tony waved the apology off, leaned back in his chair, focused on drawing circles around the rim of his cup. "Not your fault."
"It is, though." The fervor in his voice made Tony look up again. "If I'd told him, he might've—"
"He probably wouldn't have put the serum in you," Tony said harshly, "and we wouldn't be having this conversation." He took a measured breath. "Howard was a genius, but he wasn't a good person." Steve felt sick. "He was set in his ways and he didn't like it if anyone hinted he was wrong about anything. If you told him after taking the serum, he wouldn't have talked to you if he could help it and he definitely wouldn't have looked for you when you went under. It's better that he died with an idealized version of you in his head."
Well, damn it. "Can't argue with that logic," Steve mumbled. It didn't make sense, any of it, except that it did. He hid that side of himself from everyone but Bucky and his mama, and even then he didn't tell them, they just knew. The Army wouldn't have stood for it, so why would a guy the Army contracted? "I don't like that people don't know." It felt like a lie, now that he had a better picture. It felt like if he didn't say anything now, even just a casual comment, he was hiding it just like if he was ashamed of it.
"You should tell people, then." Tony's words cut through his thoughts and Steve looked up. He seemed a lot more calm than Steve felt. "Throw a rainbow in your Twitter bio with a hashtag love is love." He wasn't totally sure what that meant but felt the urge to write it down in his notebook. Tony snapped his fingers. "No! Repost that Macklemore music video, hashtag same love, hashtag coming out. And then a bunch of photos of Diana Ross, she's a gay icon." Steve tried to interrupt, but he just kept going. Like he always did. "No, do Judy Garland! Kids might not get it, though…"
This was getting out of hand. God, Steve would've killed for something out of his old grime-filmed percolator. "People might get the wrong idea."
"What, that you like men?" Tony looked unimpressed. "Kinda seems like the whole right idea to me."
"No, they'll think I'm gay and that's not—" He was saying this all wrong based on the look on Tony's face. "I like dames—I mean, I like women, too." It didn't feel like enough, didn't make it sound like she mattered enough. "I loved a woman. I wanted to take her dancing when it was all over, would've married her in a heartbeat if she let me." He hadn't talked to anyone about it since waking up, even ignored it if someone brought her up, and here he was spilling his whole guts and blinking away tears the second he really let himself think about her. It was almost a little embarrassing, even if he knew there wasn't anything wrong with loving somebody.
"Peggy Carter," Tony said quietly, and Steve's attention was explicitly on him again. Why— "Jarvis told me. The original one," he explained when Steve glanced at the ceiling. "He was our butler. They worked together on a thing, helped dear old Dad out of a tough spot, and really got to know each other. She loved you, too."
His heart felt like it was being pinched. "She didn't know about me."
"She was a good woman, though." Tony laughed a little too hard. "God, she hated my dad by the end."
"A lot of good people back then would be bad people now." Steve could feel muscles throughout his body tensing, his hands gripping his still-full mug a little too tightly. He forced his hold on it to ease but couldn't help the rest. "A lot of us."
"You're a good guy." Steve rolled his eyes, but Tony pressed on. "You got prisoners of war out of camps and you're filming those stupid high school PSAs. Equally exhausting, I'm guessing." Steve wasn't sure if he said the last part to get him to laugh or if Tony was actually that maladjusted.
"Yeah, well." He tried to busy his hands, look down at some task, but there really wasn't anything except fiddling with the handle of his mug some more. "All part of the job."
Tony snorted. "You don't see the rest of us doing that shit." He rolled his neck, grunting when it cracked. "The PSA part, obviously. We're regular goddamn heroes about everything else." He looked at Steve slyly, then, and added, "Sorry about the language."
He was just trying to get him to laugh, and the annoying part was that it was working. "Yeah, alright."
"Back to the pride thing," Tony said lightly, and Steve could've bashed his own head into the table. "So what if you're into guys and dolls?" He squinted at Steve, who felt like he was under a microscope. "Okay, putting that on your watchlist. Take a bisexual flag and staple it to your forehead or something."
Steve had a thought. "How often are you at pride parades?"
"I don't have to be," Tony said with a snooty affectation. "Everyone knows, I give out scholarships to queer kids, do employee resource groups at SI, all that stuff."
Okay, so you could just call people queer these days. Steve could feel the word rattling around in his head trying to smooth the violent edges off itself. "What if I just have them add a note to my Smithsonian exhibit?" he tried.
"God, what is your deal?" It normally would've been really satisfying to see Tony this confused; the guy looked ready to pull his hair out. "Is it the bi thing? People get that! Just because Captain America wants his booty plundered every now and then doesn't make him a full-time pirate, you know?"
He would've choked on his fancy coffee if he'd been willing to drink any. As it was, he choked on his own breath. "I'm sorry?"
"That was a joke about anal sex," Tony explained after huffing a laugh.
"No, I got that it was supposed to be, but it didn't even make sense." Steve paused. "And please don't talk about my anus."
"Seriously. I think it would mean a lot to a lot of people if you went to a parade. You don't even have to talk, just put on a flag cape—"
"Superheroes don't need capes—"
"I see you finally watched The Incredibles." He stopped again to see if Steve recognized the reference and seemed satisfied at his half-smile. "Like I said, staple a little one somewhere. Who gives a fuck?" He scrubbed a hand from his hairline down to his lightly stubbled chin. "You don't even have to talk. Just 'be here, be queer,' all that shit. Inspire some people."
Steve finally took the time to look Tony over more closely. He was almost jittering with energy: the fingers of his right hand were tapping his thumb in a tight rhythm and he kept running his other hand through his hair, tousling it more and more. "I'll go if you go."
All of Tony's motion stopped. His left hand was frozen with strands of hair peeking through his fingers. "Yeah?"
"It clearly means a lot to you, not just other people."
He looked at Steve, dark eyes wide. Whatever he saw made him let out a short, sharp breath. "Okay. You want to do the whole song and dance." The hand fell from his hair and met the other, toying with the handle of the Stark Industries mug again. "Rainbows, marching, the works."
It was actually starting to sound like a good idea and not just something to do to keep Tony from looking all miserable. "Yeah, the works."
"And you want me to go with you." How did Tony manage to look like he was picking Steve apart like a science experiment?
"If it's important as you say it is," Steve said, holding his gaze, "and if you're as proud as you say you are." Tony almost flinched and Steve cringed. He didn't mean it like that. He made himself let the challenging tone go and allow vulnerability to surface again. "I'm not going out there alone, Tony. I don't know what I'm doing."
He didn't think he'd ever seen Tony this nervous. For a few seconds he just stared down into his coffee like it could tell him what to do.
"Fine," he finally muttered, breaking the silence. He stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor with a harsh screech. Absently, Steve was surprised chairs that expensive could even make that noise. "But I'm picking the outfits. I have a reputation to uphold and I don't trust you not to dress like a lesbian."
He picked up his mug and Steve slid him his own. Tony headed toward the sink, his movement a bit more jagged than usual.
He'd rinsed the mugs out and was pulling the dishwasher open when Steve approached him from behind and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'm really sorry about your dad."
"Me, too," Tony muttered. "It's fine."
"Maybe you could start a charity for queer—" (and didn't that word still feel dirty?) "—kids who got kicked out," Steve mused. "You could name it the Howard Stark Foundation."
He laughed out loud and Steve smiled at the sound of it. "There's already a foundation called that, but I can figure something out." He dried his hand on a slate blue dish towel. "I have the rights to his likeness. Maybe I'll plaster his face on the logo." Tony shut the dishwasher with only a little more force than necessary. "Yeah, his face with a giant 'X' over it."
"The folks up at Xavier's school might take issue," Steve said lightly, grabbing Tony by the arm to drag him somewhere with fewer fragile things. Clint said video games were good for getting out aggression, maybe Tony'd like that.
"Ha!" The tension was already easing out of his shoulders, though. "Half of them are gay for each other anyway, they won't care."
Steve shook his head but laughed. Maybe they wouldn't be the only superheroes marching in June.