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“One night,” Tony says, and just flies himself bodily into one of the canary yellow beekeepers like a red and gold battering ram. “I ask for one measly night. One single goddamn night with my boyfriend—”
“Oh, is the boyfriend label on now?” Clint asks over the comms.
“—one fucking night with my longstanding crush with whom my relationship has no official designation as of yet, thank you, Agent Barton, without any supervillains or annoying teammates to rain on my parade—”
“Sorry,” Clint says.
“—and what do I get? A swarm of evil henchpeople whose only accomplishment in life is managing to make HAZMAT suits even less sexy than they were originally.”
“We also managed to kidnap Captain America,” says the goon Tony is currently hauling up to a roof for interrogation. “Right from under your nose, even.”
He sounds downright gleeful.
“You know what?” Tony says, pouring on the speed. “I was planning to set you down gently, but now you’ve gone and made it all personal.”
He drops the guy in front of Nat then swings down to land beside her.
“My arm!” the guy wails.
“Stop being a baby,” Nat says, kicking the guy over so that his eye screen thingy is facing them. “Nothing’s broken.” She pauses, then looks at Tony. “Right?”
“Of course not,” Tony says, pulling off his helmet. “The force from that fall wasn’t enough to do more than bruise.”
“You can do those kinds of calculations on the fly?” asks their captive, sounding surprised and impressed, which leads Tony to wonder whether the nasal pitch of his voice is the result of the suit he’s wearing, or if he sounds like that all the time.
“Pun not intended?” Tony asks, possibly sneering a little. “I can do those kinds of calculations in my sleep, buttercup. Did you not get the ‘genius’ part of my resume? I built this shiny flying suit of armor myself, you know. I can handle a simple physics equation.”
“Whoa,” says the guy. “We should be working for you.”
Nat gives Tony a Look. Tony whines. Nat raises an eyebrow. Tony grumbles and relents.
“You can have a job at my very cool international tech company, if you tell me where your pals took Steve,” Tony says, crossing his arms and privately consoling himself with the knowledge that it can’t be long before a guy whose prior employment involved villainy and poor fashion choices commits a fireable offense. “And any other information that could be relevant to the pursuit of getting him back, or our general work as default opponents of evil entities with bad catchphrases.”
“'Advanced Idea Mechanics' always did sound kind of forced to me,” the guy admits. “But still not actually as bad as—”
“Hold up a second,” Tony says, holding out his hand. “Hold up one fucking second. You work for AIM? I already torched AIM!”
“Uh, well, that’s what my paychecks say.”
“I hate everything,” Tony says, crossing his arms. “What is it with AIM and stealing my people? If Killian came back to life somehow I swear to god I’m gonna—”
“Maybe they took Steve hoping that something in his supersoldier blood could help stabilize Extremis,” Bruce suggests over the commline. They’d decided this wasn’t Hulk-worthy (yet, Tony thought bitterly, and only because they’d already made off with Steve and hadn’t left a particularly large force behind to occupy the team), so Bruce had stayed in the Tower to monitor the situation. “That’d make sense, right?”
Tony frowns. “If they wanted to stabilize Extremis, why not take me? We already know that I can do it.”
“True, but from you they’d need cooperation, whereas a blood sample from Steve works just the same whether he's conscious while it’s taken or not.”
“I don’t like that,” Tony says. “I don’t like that even a little bit.”
Nat asks the goon about it while he wrestles off his headpiece, and when he looks at them he just seems confused. “I’ve never heard of anything called Extremis, but I guess that’s as likely as anything. I just go where they point me, you know?”
“We have to find him,” Tony says. “Like, yesterday.”
Nat purses her lips and nods. “You know where they took him?” she asks the goon.
“Yeah!” he says, smiling brightly. “The island.”
Tony rubs a hand over his face. “The island. What island?”
“Oh. I don’t know. It’s somewhere in the Caribbean, I think.”
“Right,” Tony says. “Somewhere in the Caribbean. Sure. We can search the entire Caribbean, no problem. Hey, before we do that, could someone please come over here and kill me real quick?”
Nat makes a sympathetic noise and pats Tony on the head.
“Hey, look on the bright side,” Clint says, voice crackling over Tony’s earpiece.
“The bright side. Please, Clint, tell me. What is the bright side of Steve being kidnapped?”
Clint snorts. “I mean, at least this time it wasn’t you.”
*
In a faraway cell, somewhere in the Caribbean, Steve is having a very similar thought process. Getting kidnapped may not be his idea of a good time, but at least, for once, it isn’t Tony.
You’d think people might come after Clint from time to time, even Natasha, but no. Every single time someone wanted to snatch an Avenger, they came for Tony.
And then, of course, there were all the people who came after Tony for Tony’s own sake, not even anything to do with the Avengers.
Steve doesn’t know how they all missed the message that kidnappings of Tony Stark do not end well for the kidnappers, because they really never, ever do, and the Iron Man armor is kind of the perfect, shining, explosive example of that, but apparently everyone has to try it first. Just to be sure they won’t the one who lucks out.
Everyone.
Half of the time, Tony’s out before they even get to him, but that still doesn’t mean it’s ever fun for Steve in the interim. If he weren’t in peak physical condition, he’d be worried for his blood pressure.
Actually, if their roles are reversed this time, does that mean Steve should be worried for Tony’s blood pressure now? He does have a heart condition.
Steve groans.
“I have to get out of here,” he says to the wall.
The wall provides no useful input.
*
“So everyone thinks this is a good idea?” Tony asks, instilling as much skepticism into his voice as he can. Then, concerned that it’s still not clear, he adds, “Because I disagree. Emphatically.”
Thor chuckles. “Worry not, my friend, your stance on this matter is quite clear.”
“Oh, good,” Tony says. “So why is this still happening?”
“Because he’s our best bet for information when our only clue is ‘secret evil island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea,’” Nat says. “And he likes Steve, so he’ll probably help.”
“He likes Steve, yes. I am not Steve.”
“But he’ll believe that it’s serious if you’re the one begging him for help,” Clint says. “Be sure to beg, by the way.”
“I am not going to beg,” Tony snaps, at the same moment that Namor sweeps into the room. How he sweeps anywhere while wearing nothing but a scaly green speedo is one of the few questions Tony has come up against in his life and never been able to scrape up a plausible answer for, but half-naked sweeping is indeed what happens.
Namor raises an eyebrow at Tony. Tony glowers back. In an unprecedented display of common decency, Namor does not comment on the begging thing.
“I was under the impression that you had some urgent matter to discuss with me, Stark,” Namor says, lip curling as he looks at Tony in a way that Tony is beginning to think really is just reflexive. Maybe Namor’s allergic to him.
“And you still kept me waiting for more than two hours,” Tony says. “Even after I flew all the way out here.”
“I’m a busy person,” Namor says, radiating disinterest.
“Yeah, well, so am I, so I’ll cut to the chase. Have you heard of an island somewhere in the Caribbean occupied by a group called AIM? Or Advanced Idea Mechanics, if you want the mouthful.”
“Possibly,” Namor says, crossing his arms. “Why do you ask?”
Tony grinds his teeth. “Captain America was abducted and taken there. Wherever ‘there’ is.”
Namor’s face goes through an odd series of muscle twitches that might be associated with expressions of concern or sympathy, if the face in question belonged to someone capable of emoting anything other than disdain, disgust, and associated sentiments like a normal person. “I see.”
“I’m not going to beg,” Tony says, stiffly, even though he probably would. If he had to.
“No, no need,” Namor says, waving Tony to follow him as he turns back out the way he came in. “I’ll give you what intelligence I have on the island.”
“What, really?” Tony asks, speedwalking (not running, shut up) to catch up with Namor. “Well...thanks.”
“You have a very low opinion of me,” Namor observes, not actually looking at Tony as he says it.
“I don’t—okay, yeah, sort of. But it’s mutual, isn’t it?”
Namor slants a Look at him. The sort of look that makes Tony feel like the team really should have sent Natasha for this.
“I have urgent matters of my own that require attending, once we’re done here,” Namor says, not bothering to actually answer the question. “I regret that I will most likely be unavailable to aid your team when you go to retrieve the Captain, but if you should encounter any—” he glances at Tony “—setbacks, you may contact me to request assistance.”
“Gee, thanks,” Tony says. He’s not actually sure if he’s being sarcastic or sincere.
Namor just nods, though, so it doesn’t really matter.
*
Steve almost makes it.
He’s not Tony, so he can’t produce a flash grenade or satellite radio from concrete shavings and the shirt on his back, but he can hit the guard who comes into his cell really hard on the head and steal his uniform.
He’s been tooling around the facility for a good twenty minutes before alarms start going off and they’ve apparently reached the “kicking and running” part of the escape plan. That’s fine by Steve. Kicking and running are specialties of his, and the violence and adrenaline are doing wonders for the frustration that’s been building in him since he woke up here and realized that date night was going very much not to plan.
“Holy shit,” says one of the… guards? Soldiers? Lackeys? Yellow pseudo-stormtroopers? Whatever he is, he’s dropping his gun. Apparently, watching Steve take out his six companions without breaking a sweat made an impact.
Good.
“Which way to the exit?” Steve asks, taking a menacing step forward. Well, he assumes it’s menacing, considering he’s the one doing the stepping. The lackey slash stormtrooper slash mustard bottle is certainly acting menaced.
“That way,” he says in a near-whimper, pointing down a hallway to Steve’s right. “Left, then right, then a big door.”
“Thanks,” Steve says, then pistolwhips the guy with a stolen weapon. He drops like a sack of rocks.
It’s a clean knockout, though, and the worst the guy will have to suffer through tomorrow is a headache, which is more than can be said for many of his colleagues. Steve feels like that’s reward enough, considering the man’s chosen career path.
The directions do indeed take Steve to a big door.
After some judicious application of supersoldier strength, the door takes Steve outside.
Right up to a cliff.
A cliff overlooking the ocean.
The ocean... gives Steve pause.
He does not have the greatest track record with the ocean.
Before Steve can come up with an actual plan, there’s a sort of whirring noise behind him, and a really obnoxious voice says, “There’s nowhere to go, Captain! You are MODOK’s now.”
And then Steve turns around, and his brain just kind of stalls out.
“A… giant head,” Steve says.
“A Mental Organism Designed Only For Killing,” the giant head says proudly. “MODOK.”
“A giant head,” Steve repeats.
“No,” says the giant head. Its mouth twists into something between a pout and a scowl. But uglier.
“Uh, yes,” Steve says. “If you don’t own a mirror, you can check out your reflection in the water down there.” He hooks his thumb over his shoulder, pointing past the cliff.
“Take him to his cell!” the giant head warbles, turning in its hover… seat… thing… to float-wobble away. “Out of my sight, out of my sight!”
“You work for a giant head,” Steve says to the lackey who steps forward from the crowd to grab Steve’s arm and yank him back toward the building. “A really ugly giant head.”
Steve doesn’t know how he recognizes the look of existential despair that that comment earns him with the mask in the way, but it somehow comes through.
“I had a date,” Steve says, glancing back at the ocean over his shoulder. “Again.”
The universe is playing one hell of a game with Steve Rogers.
“I’m guessing your date was nicer to look at than MODOK?” asks the not-stormtrooper, and apparently it’s a girl under there. She sounds kind of sympathetic, but also like she just doesn’t care that much about anything these days.
“So much nicer,” Steve says. “Good company too. Funny, smart, pretty—the whole deal.”
“You really like ‘em, huh?”
“Yeah,” Steve says, despairingly. “We’ve been friends for a while now, but it took us so long to get to the dating part. It’s been hard for us, you know? Getting our feelings for each other sorted out, and then just trying to make time. But we thought we finally had our chance.”
“That sucks,” she says. “MODOK’s the worst. He’s always threatening to kill everyone around here. It’s so goddamn annoying. Like, talk about a hostile work environment, right?”
“Why do you stay, then?” Steve asks.
“What choice do I have? Even if this weren’t an ‘only way out is death’ kind of deal—which, by the way, I so did not sign up for—I’m not exactly the most employable person at this point.” She groans. “I just wanted to do science.”
Steve laughs a little at that. “You sound kind of like Tony.”
“Tony Stark, you mean? Wow. That’s a hell of a compliment to a science geek, Captain Rogers.”
“You’re a fan of his?”
“So much. The biggest.”
“No way,” Steve says with a grin, despite the sheer absurdity that is his life and this entire situation. “You’ll have to fight me for that title.”
“Oh,” she says. “So, uh, your date?”
Steve clears his throat. “Er, sorta. I mean, yes.”
“Well, now I feel bad. We totally ruined Tony Stark’s night.”
“Gee, thanks,” Steve says.
“Gotta be honest, Cap, if Iron Man comes to your rescue and takes out MODOK in the process, you should absolutely be expecting a formal invitation to fight me sometime next week.”
“What if I take out MODOK?” Steve asks, as they finally reach his cell.
She pats his arm as she opens the door. “If that’s what happens, I will generously cede the title of fanclub president to you.”
“You’re wasted here,” Steve says.
She sighs her agreement as she locks him in.
*
“And we’re really, really sure that it’s AIM?” Rhodey is asking.
“Really sure,” Nat says.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Really, really, really sure,” Clint says.
“Well, fuck.”
“I take it you guys have some sorta history with these guys?” Falcon asks from where he’s seated behind Natasha.
“Understatement,” Pepper spits out. She starts looking a little orange around the edges.
“Well, at the very least, Killian’s still dead,” Tony says. “I checked and everything.”
“I’m still coming with you,” Pepper says, crossing her arms.
“Not arguing,” Tony says, raising his hands in surrender. “But, sweetheart, the glowing is a bit premature at this point.”
“Oh,” Pepper said, looking down at her arms and apparently noticing the ember-tinged veins running under her skin for the first time. “Sorry. I’ll try to calm down.”
“Pepper is the only one of you who gets me,” Bruce announces from the pilot’s seat.
“I do not support this ‘Bruce and Pepper against the world’ dynamic becoming a thing,” Tony yells back, eyes narrowed as he looks between Pepper and Bruce. “Do not make this a thing.”
“It’s already a thing, Tones,” Rhodey says. “Seriously, man, where have you been?”
“Neglecting his dearest friends to sigh wistfully after Steve Rogers, that’s where,” Pepper says.
“So it does go both ways,” Sam says. “I was wondering.”
“You think I’m helping you weirdos get Rogers back out of altruism?” Rhodey snorts. “Hell no. The way I see it, the sooner we get this relationship really going, the sooner it just becomes a normal part of our lives. Then Tony can stop doodling hearts in sparkly gel pens all over the paperwork Pepper gives him, and maybe we all get some approximation of our best friends back.”
Tony gasps, affronted. “Pepper, you traitor.”
“I did not say sparkly,” Pepper says, holding up a finger. “They were, but I did not say so.”
Rhodey shrugs. “It was a reasonable assumption.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to save Steve myself, and none of you are invited.”
“No one leaves this plane until we reach our destination!” Bruce shouts. “I am so sick of you people throwing open emergency exits and jumping out of planes whenever you please like that is remotely acceptable behavior.”
“But they’re making fun of me,” Tony whines.
“Then come sit up here. Or drown them out with music. Or something else, anything. I don’t care. Just no skydiving.”
“I’m going to sit with Bruce,” Tony says. “Bruce is my only friend here.”
Everyone laughs, except for Thor, who looks mildly heartbroken.
“Bruce and Thor,” Tony amends. “Thor is an angel who has done nothing wrong. Thor likes my gel pens.”
“I do,” Thor agrees. “They’re very pretty.”
“Damn right they are. I am so sorry to leave you with these cultureless monsters,” Tony says solemnly, placing a hand heavily on Thor’s shoulder before retreating to the cockpit.
Bruce rolls his eyes. Tony sticks out his tongue. Bruce scoffs.
It’s fine.
*
The cell door opens, and Steve finds himself staring down the barrels of a decently impressive number of guns.
“Are you guys for real?” asks the girl from before, who also happens to be the only person in the crowded hallway that is not pointing a weapon at him. “Just ten or twelve of you didn’t feel like enough?”
They all ignore her. “MODOK wants you,” the agent closest to Steve says, adjusting his grip on his gun. It’d be pretty easy to take the kid out—to take all of them out, honestly, small army or no—but punching his way out of this would land him right back where the last escape attempt did.
On a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Steve still hasn’t worked out a solution for that one, so he pulls a face and says, “Well, it’s not at all mutual.”
Steve’s maybe-friend snorts. The rest of them shift around uneasily.
The kid who spoke before rallies himself and tries again. “MODOK wants you… brought to him?”
Steve considers being difficult about it, but he figures he might as well go along. If they take him to MODOK, he can punch the lights out of MODOK, and then they can all call it a day. It’s not like he’s going to be caught by surprise again. He’s already seen the giant evil head once now; he’s ready for it.
So he allows himself to be ushered through the complex, into a very large chamber holding two pods and a control station of some kind, which all pretty much screams evil science. MODOK hovers in the center of the room, wearing a disgustingly huge grin.
Like, really. Disgusting. Extremely unpleasant to view. That special kind of awful that you can’t bring yourself to look away from. Steve is clearly going to have to get to the punching sooner rather than later.
“Greetings, Captain,” MODOK trills, apparently enjoying himself. “So glad you could be with us today. We have something very exciting planned for you, you know!”
“Yeah, okay,” Steve says. Then he lunges.
Only to have the air knocked out of him by something—something that had better not be what he thinks it is—colliding with his side. He gasps as he drops, then rolls to face the direction the attack had come from.
“Now, now, Captain,” tuts the Red Skull, displaying Steve’s shield on his arm like a trophy. “That just won’t do.”
*
“Why is this place so poorly laid out!” Tony yells, blasting his repulsors at a wall out of sheer frustration. He’s run out of AIM agents to hit and is just running around like a rat in a maze. “JARVIS, nothing?”
“Apologies, sir. I’m working on it.”
“Um, excuse me?” comes a voice from a branching hallway that Tony honestly cannot remember whether he’s been down or not. A girl wearing the full AIM bodysuit but for the headpiece, which is tucked under one arm, turns the corner to approach. Her free hand is raised in a way that Tony assumed is meant to be appeasing. “Tony Stark, right? Wow.”
“The one and only,” Tony says. He considers aiming his repulsors at the girl, but she’s going to great lengths to appear nonthreatening and doesn’t seem to be armed, so he decides that that would be kind of a dick move and holds off.
“Wow,” she says again. “Can I just say, I’m a really big fan. I am so sorry about your date.”
“What,” Tony says, voice coming out a little strangled even to his own ears.
“So sorry,” she repeats. “If I take you to where Cap is now, can you maybe not hate me?”
“Uh, yes,” Tony said, glad she couldn’t see his expression behind the faceplate; it probably would have made him seem a little less cool. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, yes, that can definitely be arranged. As long as this isn’t a trap.”
“It’s not a trap!”
“That’s not exactly a convincing argument, kid, but I’m willing to risk it. Lead the way.”
“Well… follow me, I guess,” she says, and takes off back down the hallway she’d first emerged from. Tony jogs after her, and she keeps shooting him these awestruck looks, but he’s not completely unused to that. If this is what she’s like with him, though, he can only imagine how intense she must have been with Steve.
He might have to ask her later what an Avengers fangirl is doing with AIM. After Steve is safe.
They arrive at a set of double doors with a keypad on the wall beside them.
“I don’t have access to this area,” the girl says. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries,” Tony says. “I can take it from here. Thanks for the help.”
“Are you gonna hack the doors?” she asks, sounding excited.
“Nah,” Tony says, and fires a repulsor blast at the lock. “Why bother?”
The doors slide open.
He hears her say something that sounds an awful lot like cool, but his attention is elsewhere now.
*
Steve had managed to get his shield back in the first few minutes of the fight, which was pretty great. The fact that that fight is still ongoing, however? Not so great.
Red Skull is as fierce an opponent as ever, and Steve can’t be sure whether his personal feelings (read as: all-consuming rage) toward his old enemy are making him sharper or sloppier. MODOK’s lasers certainly aren’t helping anything.
“I’m surprised that you haven’t asked how it is that I’m alive, Captain Rogers,” Red Skull says, narrowly dodging Steve’s punch.
“Don’t care,” Steve says, teeth gritted as he raises his shield to deflect another of MODOK’s attacks. “Won’t be that way for long.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
Then MODOK’s gleeful laughing, which has served as a thoroughly annoying soundtrack to this whole event, is abruptly cut off, replaced by a familiar and far more welcome sound.
“Tell me,” Steve says, slamming his shield into the Red Skull’s shoulder. “Did a fella in a suit of armor just blast your backup out of the air? I’d look myself, but I wouldn’t want you to feel like you don’t have my full attention.”
Red Skull snarls, lashing out. Steve kicks him in the stomach.
“Hey, Steve, just checking,” Tony yells from somewhere behind Steve. “That’s the Red Skull you’re fighting, right? The Red Skull is alive? Because, of all the reasons to stand me up, I’d count that as one of the more forgivable.”
“I didn’t not stand you up!” Steve yells back without actually turning around. It’d be kind of hard to turn, considering he’s currently struggling to wrestle a superpowered nazi to the ground.
From the sound of things, Tony’s busy too—trading blasts with MODOK, Steve guesses. “But that is the Red Skull?”
Red Skull howls. “I am Johann Schmidt, founder of—”
Steve slams Schmidt’s head against the concrete of the floor, which puts a stop to that.
He drags himself to his feet, staggering upright just in time to turn and watch Tony plow into MODOK, flying them both straight into the wall.
“That’s what you get for kidnapping my boyfriend,” Tony says from his position over the crumpled heap of MODOK, ripping his helmet off to reveal a triumphant grin.
“Tony,” Steve says, reaching out for him. It has been a really, really shitty day, and right now he just wants Tony in his arms as soon as humanly possible.
Instead of that happening, Tony’s eyes widen in shock and a hand flies to cover his mouth. “Oh shit, is that—I mean, am I allowed—”
“Tony,” Steve says, voice bordering on a whine now. “Come here.”
Tony obligingly flies to Steve’s side, but he continues to babble nervously. “I know we haven’t talked about labels or anything—I don’t want to freak you out, like, what am I even saying, we haven’t even had our first date, of course you aren’t my boyfriend—”
“I’m not?” Steve asks, hastily pulling back from where he’d halfway draped himself over Tony’s shoulders.
“What—I don’t know, are you? Do you want to be?”
Steve stares at Tony.
“You’re giving me one of those looks,” Tony says, pouting. “Stop it. I’ve already gotten too many of those tonight.”
“Tony,” Steve sighs.
“Hey, this is a pretty bad time for this conversation, isn’t it? We should get you checked out, deal with the zombie nazi—” Tony starts to pull back, turning to bolt towards the door, head ducked down.
Steve catches his arm and reels him back in, pressing their lips together in a kiss that hopefully clarifies the situation. Steve, at least, finds it very educational, when Tony melts into the kiss and wraps his arms around Steve like he intends to keep him there forever.
“I mean, I’ve had worse first dates,” Tony says, when they finally break apart.
Steve laughs. “If you say so.”
“No, really,” Tony insists. “At least this one’ll make a fun story.”
“Coulda turned out worse, I suppose,” Steve says, cupping Tony’s face and just enjoying looking at him for a minute.
Tony averts his eyes, looking embarrassed. “Well, yeah. Beat the bad guys, all that.”
“Got the boy,” Steve agrees, smiling.
“God, I missed you,” Tony says, and his voice is so low and earnest that Steve can’t find it in him to point out that they haven’t even been apart a full day.
It’s not like he doesn’t feel the same way, after all.
“You two are sickening,” Nat announces happily from the door. “Is that the Red Skull?”
“Is that a giant head?” Clint asks.
Steve groans. “I’m now realizing how exhausted I am.”
“You alright?” Tony asks, shifting to be better positioned to help support Steve’s weight, if necessary.
“I will be,” Steve says. “But I think you need to take me somewhere to rest. Right now.”
Tony’s eyes light up. “Good idea.”
“Ugh, gross, get the hell out of here,” Clint says. “We’ll clean up after you, as usual.”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s just as useless for these things as you two,” Nat says, scoffing. “Go have fun, you crazy kids.”
“You’re kind of ruining this for me,” Tony says.
“Tony,” Steve says, pointedly intertwining their hands.
“Right, yes, sorry,” Tony says, leaning into Steve with a soft smile. “Date night.”
Steve hums his agreement.
(They still end up getting yelled at by a few different people about PDA and boundaries and get a room, you assholes, but Steve is firmly of the opinion that the team signed on for this, so it’s hard to make himself care.)