Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s Captain America, the poster boy of liberty, justice’s own favourite flavour, and Tony Stark wants him on sight. He knows his own body well enough by now to know that beneath the sharp sticking point of pride, of his own arrogance, there’s a flutter of something more, desire thick on his tongue. Tony takes one look at him, blonde and broad, mouth turned down at the corners like a deflated balloon, and he longs to press him up against the nearest wall and shove his hands in his hair. He wants, inexplicably, to claim him, to make him look at Tony like he’s something, be the only one in a room of people that know him too well to hear him. It’s a new sensation, frightening, devastating in a way he couldn’t comprehend. Tony has only begun to evaluate it when the other man takes a step forward, looks at Tony with wide blue eyes and says,

“You’re Howard’s son.”

It gets easier after that to pretend the hate had been instant.

Tony’s entire body becomes unyielding and Rogers gives him this look, surprise flickering over his face and he’s sure asshole is written right across his forehead because the other man squares his shoulders like Tony is the enemy. He’d like to pretend it’s a new record, but there are just too many people who’ve hated him instantly, after one look in the reflection of his sunglasses and decided they didn’t like what Tony Stark threw back. It’s not unexpected, but it still stings.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” he spreads his hands in a wide arc, calls over the man’s shoulder, “Hey Barton, it seems like the American hero is on par with you when it comes to stating the obvious.”

Clint’s screw you, Stark is muffled by the arrow clamped between his teeth, and Tony’s sure there was a health and safety memo somewhere about that.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, and Steve’s blue eyes widen before they narrow again, the only fitting response to Tony’s smirk, “They only thaw out half your brain or something?”

Rogers holds his breath, there’s a moment where Tony thinks he might punch him, knock his billionaire ass onto the floor, but all he does is exhale, exhaustion creeping into his voice, “I think the reports were right about you.”

As he turns, Tony thinks maybe he’d have preferred that punch.

It takes him three hours after the meeting to get riotously drunk, and he keeps it going steadily for another ten because when he’s committed, he’s committed. From the awful, sweet smell in the air, he might have thrown up at some point. The edge of his phone is digging into the shell of his ear, he feels hot all over, like he’s ashamed, and he can’t quite figure out why.

“He hates me,” Tony argues into the phone, doesn’t know where the break in his voice has come from, but it’s there, and it fills up the pause horribly.

“Tony,” and oh - that’s Rhodey’s voice, okay maybe he’d forgotten quite who his safety call was, “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

“It’s four am, Tony,” he replies gently, voice tired but filled with undeniable concern.

“Oh hey, why didn’t JARVIS tell me? JARVIS, why didn’t you -?”

“Because he’s worried,” Rhodey interrupts, like he knows exactly where Tony’s going with his rant, wants to derail it before they even get out of the station, “Because JARVIS monitors your calls, and to unlock them this late means there’s something wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong, it’s a malfunction, he can’t be worried.”

“Tony-.”

“There isn’t.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

And he wants to say yes, he really wants to say it so badly, hates that it’s just him, sitting in one of his souped up cars, the engine seized by protocol because he’s drank far too much, and he may be reckless, but he’s not going to be a murderer on top of that. He doesn’t care about himself, but other people -.Other people matter.

“No, m’fine,” he mumbles instead, brings the near empty bottle to his lip, “Y’know me.”

“Yeah,” Rhodey breathes, like a sigh that’s built up, “I do, Tony. Call me tomorrow, okay? Drink some water, take some aspirin, go to bed, don’t fall asleep in the car.”

“Did you and Pepper bug this place, because -.”

“Go to sleep, Tony.”

Tony makes people tired. He sees it all the time, the echo of his mother’s pinched brow, the downturn of his father’s mouth, plain in every person he meets. Even Pepper gives him that look sometimes and it’s so shocking how fast he feels five years old all over again, uncomfortably aware of how little patience people have for him, how they’d like him to go away.

“Can you sign this please, Mr. Stark?”

Her voice is carefully pitched, just above bitterness, smoothed over so well he wants to complement her on her professionalism. Tony fucked it up. He takes one look at her, pressed away in her sharp suit, and knows it’s all his fault. it’s a wonder she didn’t give up long before now.

“Hey Pep, Pep, Pepper,” he croons softly, signing before waving the pen she handed him in front of her face like he’s a magician about to pull a rabbit out of a hat, “come to dinner with me tonight.”

“Busy,” she replies, still in that same dry tone. He feels something in his chest knock.

“Okay, how about tomorrow? It’s been ages since you and I -.”

“I’m trying to make sure this company can pull itself up from the ash, Tony. Everything may be all right for you now, but Stark Industries isn’t fairing so well. I’m going to be busy for the foreseeable future.”

She pauses, for just a moment, gaze sweeping over him. He must look a mess, he knows he does, rattled up to the office too late in clothes he pretty much didn’t sleep in. He’s not sure what she sees, but she stifles her sigh between pursed lips as she gathers the papers and takes a step back. He wonders if she misses Malibu. Wonders if she misses him.

“Why don’t you let Happy see you to your car?”

He finds Captain Rogers on his doorstep. He’s tired, neck aching from the way he’s been hunched over all night in his lab, and the ride back from the office has done nothing to abate that. All Tony wants to do is get inside, grab the nearest bottle, and hide until the world needs saving again. As it is, he’s not quite prepared for the slab of patriotic hero looking at him as though he’s just solidified out of smoking hell mist. He’s really got to work on his pitch somehow.

“What are you doing here?” the Captain asks, voice clipped, his eyes are ringed red. Tony doesn’t quite know how that makes him feel.

“I live here.”

“You - oh.”

He wonders what that’s like, having the pieces but not quite being able to put them together because the picture on the box is different. The Captain looks completely lost, hands clenched at his side, and Tony aches for him suddenly, burns in a way he hasn’t done for anyone before. He recognises that look, and can’t help thinking it’s a little ironic that Howard behind to break.

“You can come in, if you want.”

Which isn’t what he wanted to say, but it’s out there now and Rogers is looking up at him like he hasn’t quite seen him before, as though he’s a different man from the one in the boardroom. It makes Tony prickle between his shoulder blades, makes him want to flee from that intense gaze.

“I’m going to crash, but Howard’s office is pretty much the same. He was unnaturally sentimental about his youth, I guess.” Tony bites back the lucky you he wants to add as he swipes his keycard in the door. JARVIS forgoes his usual greeting, and he wonders just how long the other man’s been standing there staring at the empty house and hoping for - what? Instead he just waves him in the vague direction of the room he’s seeking, moves with purpose towards his own bedroom without looking back. He doesn’t want to be there when Captain Rogers finally gets in touch with the good old days.

He wakes up only to discover it's a brilliant, sunny day out to which Tony makes a noise of pain and JARVIS takes care of him without a word by easing the blinds shut. Tony’s only a morning person when he’s around to see it arrive, and the past few days have been hard on him. It takes a surprising amount of time for him to get out of bed, stumble down the hall in nothing but his pajama bottoms, and swerve into the kitchen with barely a sound. The coffee machine makes his coffee at just the right temperature for him to gulp down quick mouthfuls, and it’s only when he looks up that he realises his guest is still here. Tony can see him through the hatch, sitting cross-legged on the couch, gaze transfixed on the television. Maybe JARVIS turned it on for him, but he imagines the AI would choose something a little less mind numbing than the neon array of cartoons he’s watching now. Rogers missed the eighties so he’s not used to the plethora of drug-induced, children-orientated delights, and reading the slope of his expression, he looks tired, Tony can feel his toes curling in sympathy, the not-quite exhaustion that wears a person down and doesn’t let up. He’s never seen that look on this particular man like that before, and the few meetings he’s seen him in have always been with someone who seems as though he knows what he’s doing. It’s strange, Tony can’t afford to get involved, but he wants to.

“You’re still here,” he states loud enough for it to carry, and Rogers’ head swivels up, peers at him through the gap. Tony’s not close, but he can see the blush from across the room.

“I -- uh, I’m sorry, I just -. I didn’t mean to stay, but it got … I’ll just go.”

He’s babbling, already rising from the seat, moving in the same kind of way that Tony does whenever he’s caught with his defences down. Fight or flight, and right now, he looks like he never wants to fight again.

“Oh hey, don’t sweat it, I just thought you wouldn’t wanna hang ‘round here once you got your fill, is all.” Steve pauses, stares at the carpet for a moment, then tips his head towards the door. Tony wonders if he slept anywhere, or just sat and stared at the walls, “Should I - ?”

“Nah,” Tony refills his mug, leaves the kitchen to move into the living area, “Go on. Sit your red, white and blue ass back down.”

Tony takes the chair without glancing at him again, curls his feet up, his elbow on the arm, coffee still in hand. He only looks up when the silence gets too much and finds Rogers staring at the blue glow of his arc reactor through his thin t-shirt. Huh. He doesn’t panic, but it’s a near thing. Undue attention brings too many awful memories back, and he can feel them beginning to rise. He lets himself have one single clammy second of dread before he squashes it all down.

“Hey Cap, turn the channel over or something. This crap is giving me a headache.”

It does the trick, Steve looks up guiltily, glances at the remote on the table as though it’s the enemy, “It got stuck on this and I couldn’t get it off.”

“Oh hey, that’s okay. JARVIS? Switch to something less nauseating. The Captain here is on an embargo of choice until he learns how to use the remote.”

“Steve,” Steve states quietly, and Tony looks up, one eyebrow cocked, “You can call me Steve.”

They end up watching the tail end of an episode of House, Steve glancing at him every time the main character does something rude or antisocial and something that offends his forties sensibilities, but he’s too polite to say. Maybe he recognises Tony in all the assholes of the world but it’s enough to keep him occupied. Tony keeps his smile hidden in the rim of his coffee mug and only moves to fill it up again and again. Then they switch to Buffy and surprisingly Steve is a fan. Tony has the sneaking suspicion that Rogers might just be a Good Guy, all for the empowerment of everyone and funny quips he doesn’t quite get. It’s totally going to endear Tony and that’s the last thing he wants.

Around lunchtime, his phone starts to ring and he silences it without a word. Studies the profile of Steve as he laughs. There’s nothing here that reminds Tony of their first meeting, none of that stern disapproval. Steve looks young, a little off around the edges, like he’s worried but smothers it up, keeps it covered by good humour. Tony wishes he could be that kind of guy, but he wears rude like another form of armour instead. But still, it’s nice, pleasant to spend time with someone who doesn’t want him to explain himself and needs nothing from him but his quiet company. Eventually they both tire of the television, and Steve elects to make them a sandwich, gaze sliding over Tony’s sides like he’s trying to decide quite how much he weighs. Which is how Tony ends up at the table, bare feet curled around the rungs of his chair, something that looks mouthwatering and wholesome on a plate in front of him.

“Not that I’m not pleased you’re here, because this is delicious,” Tony comments around a mouthful of lettuce and ham, “but why are you still here?”

Steve eats much more neater than Tony does, swallowing before he answers. “I just didn’t want to go back.”

Tony pauses, eyebrows lifting. “Why not?”

“I don’t have a window,” he replies, voice dipping, and Tony knows, captivity is still captivity no matter which way you colour it, “And everyone’s real nice and all, but it feels like everything’s an act, and you don’t -.”

“Don’t what?”

“You don’t care about my feelings -.” Tony’s not sure if he should defend himself at that, but he doesn’t get the chance because Steve’s still talking.

“You just act like you act, and sometimes you’re not the nicest, but it’s not fake.”

“How do you know?”

“My best friend was like that,” Steve answers, smiles a little but it’s sad, “He gave me so much shit every day, he never played it easy. I wasn’t always like this - I was kind of a sick kid, and people would baby me a lot. And Bucky -,” he winces and Tony’s possessed with the urge to reach out and touch, “He just didn’t. It was always sink or swim. I mean he’d probably never let me sink, but he always pushed to get me to do my own thing.”

Tony twists his mouth, reaches for his fresh mug, “And you think I’m like that?”

“Yeah? I’m sorry I was a jerk to you, when we met, you just looked so much like -.”

He’s not sure what his face is saying, because Steve pauses, lays down his sandwich and places one giant hand on Tony’s shoulder. “You look like you’re a lot of work, but I’m kinda in the business of being stubborn.”

Tony waits two days before he barges into SHIELD. Coulson raises his eyebrow in a way that Tony’s sure means I plan to eviscerate you with my coffee stirrer, keeps his voice bone dry as he places his mug down. He can see foam on top of the liquid, smell cinnamon.“Stark.”

“You can’t keep him in a room with no windows,” Tony blurts, breathing a little off kilter. He had to run before they noticed him hacking into the systems, and this particular agent isn’t exactly giving him time to cool down and gather his senses.

“Our team of highly trained psychologists believe that too much of a cultural shock would be detrimental to Captain Roger’s health.”

Tony has to give him points, at least they’re not bullshitting him around in circles for once. “He lived through singing lesbians and a red demon in a snappy suit, I’m sure he can deal with a pane of glass and the New York streets.”

Coulson doesn’t even bat an eyelash. “You’re hardly the poster boy for the well-rounded, Stark. What makes you think you know better?”

Tony rocks back on his heels, hands tucked in his pockets, his expression blank.

“Because I know what it’s like to be kept in the dark.”

Dr. Banner is their responsible adult and turns up at the same time as Steve with a battered suitcase clutched in his hands and an intrigued but guarded expression on his face. Tony’s not sure whether he should be insulted or not. How is a guy who can turn into an enormous green monster any more responsible than he is?

He knows the answer, but it’s the principle of the thing.

He lets them pick their own rooms then leaves them to settle, but hours later he comes across Steve hovering in the doorway of Howard’s old study. Tony sidles up to him, glances in and away; he can only deal with the mementos of his father in small doses.

“Your house talks,” Steve states. Tony listens out for any sign of panic, but it doesn’t really come.

“Yeah, that’s JARVIS. You okay with that?”

“Your dad was going to build the world’s first flying car,” Steve replies, and no matter how many times he brings it up, Tony still feels like he’s being kicked in the gut, “I guess that didn’t work out, huh? Your car stays on the ground.”

“It’s kind of a clichéd idea anyway,” Tony mutters, taking a step into the room and then hovering. It’s not that he hasn’t come in here before, but it’s different with Steve at the doorway, one shoulder pressed into the wood like he belongs there. As though maybe he has more right to this than Tony does. Greatest creation he may be, but the man in the doorway is the one thing Howard Stark was proud of.

“You didn’t like him much, huh?”

“I liked him fine,” Tony says, bristling and angry, twisting on his foot. No matter what he says to the press, what kindness he affords his father in public, it still hurts, still makes him angry. He lost so much before he’d even buried his father in the ground. Someone like Captain America couldn’t understand that, only sees the great man Howard once was. His fancy Italian loafers squeak against the wood floor as he moves back to the door. “But me liking him was never the issue. Look, I gotta go, classy dinner to attend.”

Steve looks surprised when Tony brushes past, but he doesn’t catch the expression when Tony calls, “try not to watch too many cartoons.”

He almost dies twice in one week. The first is from a guy ransacking New York - Doctor Doom, what kind of lame self-obsessed name is that? Someone’s been watching one too many Austin Powers films because it’s ridiculous. He’s got a hundred and one things he could be doing instead of listening to this super-villain spiel. It’s not even a good one. How can a monologue about killing people be this boring? The fight is messy, ending, for him at least, when Tony flies into the path of a ‘Doom Bot’, gets electrocuted, and passes out.

The second time has Tony tired as he heads towards his car, the bruises scattered across his back from his ‘meeting’ with Doctor Doom, talking quietly on his phone to Pepper. He’s missed another boring but important meeting according to her, leaving him to try and coax over her ruffled angry feelings when he hears the screech of tires, the world moving too fast for a moment. He’s a man in a metal suit only some of the time, and suddenly he realises just how not-special he actually is.

“... Tony?”

There’s too much white. He’d panic if not for fact that he can hear a soft, insistent voice to his left. He knows that voice anywhere, can’t count the amount of times he’s woken up like this.

“No, it’s okay,” the voice is saying. “He’s fine, just dinged a bit. You can come and see him when Hogan’s free. You don’t want to follow his example and get knocked out. Okay? Okay. Bye.”

“Hey, Rhodes,” he mutters, voice croaky. Things go dark before clearing up when Rhodes leans over into his line of vision, looking exhausted and anxiety sparking in his eyes. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“Maybe if you stop throwing yourself into the path of danger.”

“Seducing you the normal way would be so boring.”

Rhodey laughs, squeezes Tony’s wrist gently. “Plenty of people do it every day, Tony. Maybe just buy me flowers next time.”

“Who were y’talking to?”

He makes a move to sit up, but Rhodey has a firm hand on his shoulder, keeps him down, “Don’t pull your stitches out.”

“Ooh, I have stitches?”

“Glass, stomach, quit wriggling or I’ll make them sedate you.”

The threat has the desired effect, Tony stops moving, gives up with a huff of noise. Rhodey pats him softly before leaning back. “So,” Tony said unhappily.

“I was talking to Pepper. She was all for charging down here, but she’d only cry on you.” Dryly, “and I know you’re allergic to that.”

“She’s worried?” he asks, hates the fact that there’s doubt in his voice. Rhodey’s frown deepens.

“Yeah, she’s worried. You think you’ve burnt all sorts of bridges with her, but you haven’t. You got hit by a car, of course she’s worried.”

“It was only a little car,” Tony protests.

“How do you know? You weren’t looking,” Rhodes counters, managing to convey both his worry and how unimpressed he is with Tony. “Maybe next time you’ll follow the rules of the road, huh?”

Tony mutters, “maybe next time, your dick.”

He gets an eyeroll in return, but he doesn’t feel so awful for a moment. “C’mon,” Rhodes said with a little smirk, “you get no sympathy from me, I know you do this just to flirt with the nurses.”

“And you.”

“And me,” Rhodey agrees, mouth twitching upwards into a smile, “but that’s ‘cause you’re easy.”

Steve’s there when he gets back, sitting on the couch like a puppy waiting for its master to come home. The smile he gives Tony can only be described as blinding as Steve bounces up to slide a hand under his elbow. Tony wants to say he’s fine, really, but it’s almost nice to lean into all that firm, solid muscle and let himself be guided.

“You had us worried there, champ.”

The thing is, Tony wants to laugh, because he’s tired and in pain and the nurses were about five seconds away from putting the drugs he refused into his coffee, but Steve is talking like Tony’s a child who fell off his bike. He’s half expecting a lollypop and a pat on the head for his troubles.

“Clint recorded Miami Ink for you.”

“I can’t believe Fury moved everyone in while I was laid up,” Tony complains, trying not to wince when Steve pushes him to the couch with gentle hands that are still not as gentle as he’d like. “There’s gotta be some kind of law against that.”

“How about next time you don’t put yourself in the hospital and you can veto anyone you like?” Steve replies, kneeling down to tug off Tony’s shoes.

“Everyone makes it sound like I did this on purpose. It wasn’t even a cool injury, okay?”

“No injury is cool, Tony.” His jacket gets eased off next, bandages pulling tight against his stomach, but at least this way he gets a whiff of Steve’s scent, musky and warm, something that makes his head spin.

“You haven’t seen Clint’s scar shaped like Australia yet.”

Steve laughs, breath tickling Tony’s scalp, and Tony closes his eyes for a moment, smile soft on his face even though he doesn’t want it there. “I’m not sure I want to,” Steve mumbles, and Tony’s sure he can feel fingers on his cheek for a second, but when he opens his eyes Steve’s leaning back. “I’ll get you a glass of milk. It’ll help.”

They hang out more after that, and if Tony’s house is a little bit louder, a little noisier, it doesn’t actually bother him. Steve’s a lot easier to get along with once they find a gelling point. They don’t talk about Howard, and if sometimes Tony wanders into the wrong room and comes back out feeling sick and furious with everyone, Steve doesn’t mention it, just lets Tony throw wrenches around his lab and hustles everyone else away. Steve starts shadowing him a little though, bringing down his sketchbooks and drawing. Tony gets convinced that Steve has a sixth sense for when he wants to lift the nearest bottle because Steve’ll always ask a question that gets Tony involved in an explanation that lasts until the urge is gone.

He’s being played by a man from decades ago. It’s a little disconcerting.

The thing is, the Avengers work; they mesh well together as a unit. Tony comes home with fewer bruises, doesn’t quite have to keep up with his quota of Stupid Shit. He settles for want of a better word into a routine that would kill anyone else. His house is probably about two steps from falling down thanks to the Hulk’s frequent appearances added on to Clint’s habit of shooting things in his sleep, but it feels more lived in than it ever did when it was just him and the ghost of his parents, so that’s okay too.

“Where’s Steve?” Tony asks, watching Natasha as she peers at his coffee machine.

“Out.”

“Oh c’mon, you’re living in my house, don’t you think that gives me a promotion from one word answers?”

“No,” she retorts, hair shorter than when she worked for him, the curve of a cruel smile pointed in his direction. He wonders if she’s always been like this, sharp around the edges and the deadliest thing in every room.

“Is he going to be long?” Tony asks, hedging his bets, hoping eventually she’ll get bored, like a cat tiring of playing with his entrails.

“Maybe.” There’s no denying how smug she looks, her gaze trained firmly in the middle of his face.

“Okay, I’ll go ask Banner.” Tony knows when he’s beat, turns about on his heel and doesn’t look back to see if she’s got her victory face on.

“I don’t know, Tony,” Bruce says without looking up from his microscope. They had to convert one of the gym rooms on the third floor into a lab for him, but it seems to make him happy. Nine times out of ten they abate the green mist of rage by shoving him in amongst all his favourite science things.

“Well, at least that was three words more than Natasha was willing to give me,” he retorts, leaning his hip against the lab table and peering around him.

“Maybe he’s out on a date.” Bruce’s joking; Tony can hear the laugh in his voice. It’s not like Steve shows any interest for his spare time other than their television marathons, but Tony can’t stop the spike of jealousy deep in his stomach. It’s unsettling, unexpected, and he’s not sure what excuse he’s babbling to Bruce, he just knows he needs to get out.

Tony’s known attraction before, of course he has; he’s the master of it. Pepper once told him he was like a lemming when it comes to lust, that he’d dive straight off without looking, but love is a new matter entirely. Tony doesn’t know what to do with the weight of his feeling. He nurses it along with his scotch, staring at Steve’s half finished painting, propped up on its easel beside Dummy, caught in the glow of his holograms.

It’s of the armour. Tony had laughed when Steve started by carefully choosing the right shade of red. It had been a o’clock in the morning, and the next look over, Steve had been leaning over his easel with his hair a mess and a smudge of colour on the sleeve of his pyjama shirt. He’d shushed Tony every time he opened his mouth, quieted him with the patented Captain look. Tony can’t even remember what he’d been working on, only that the way Steve’s brow furrowed in concentration had been the most distracting thing, the care he’d taken to replicate the suit something Tony didn’t quite know what to do with.

He’s in love with Captain America.

There’s a bottle of whiskey in the third drawer down of the filing cabinet marked Pepper, and Tony plucks it out deftly, because when you find yourself in love with the kindest person on the planet what else are you supposed to do? He’s in love, and he’s not sure he has any right to be.

There are warm hands under his shoulders, helping to ease him up into a standing position, and Tony lists with the motion, wonders when he decided to board a boat. Surely that was an awful idea, if the way his knees are about to buckle are any indication.

“Mrrrf,” he comments eloquently, feels the arm move from around his shoulders to his waist, haul him up and closer to a solid, warm body.

“You get cranky when you fall asleep down here,” someone is saying, but opening his eyes requires the effort Tony left at the bottom of his bottle, so he just lets himself be guided slowly through the room. “For a guy who doesn’t eat, you sure do have a lot of dead weight about you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not even properly conscious, are you?”

“Mmm..”

“Okay, stairs, up you go. Tomorrow me and you are going to have a proper talk.”

It takes an hour to get out of bed the next morning. He vomits twice into the bucket that’s mysteriously by his bed, buries his head under the pillows for the next twenty minutes, eyes screwed shut against the hammering behind his temples. It’s not often that the hangover is like this, raging under the curve of his skull, but he’s older and not necessarily wiser, and it’s taking an awful lot out of him just by doing what he did last night.

He spends forty minutes in the shower, elbows crossed against the wall and his head dipped so the water can slide down the back of his neck. He feels like he’s been run over with a truck, then the thing reversed over him just for fair measure. Now he actually knows what that feels like, mores the pity.

So if he doesn’t quite notice the lurking presence until he’s actually in the kitchen, it’s not really his fault.

“Hey Tony,” Steve murmurs, but it’s still sharp enough surprise that Tony yelps, twists, and bangs into the open cabinet door in front of him. His vision swims long enough for Steve to have moved, a hand on Tony’s elbow, fingers under his chin to direct his head.

“Are you okay? Do you have concussion? Do you need to go to the doctor?” Steve asks, a barrage of questions running in on each other. Tony’s not really sure what’s been said, just makes a confused noise and rubs weakly at his forehead. “Oh damn, you’re dying, please don’t be dying.”

“I’m not dying,” Tony replies, eventually opening his eyes to find Steve incredibly close, his blue eyes fixed on Tony like he’s certain he’s about to pass out or keel over or something else ridiculous and embarrassing. “Steve, I’m fine. Look, this isn’t the first time I’ve hit my head on a cupboard door. Thor doesn’t understand the practise of closing them after himself. Maybe they don’t have suspended plate holders in Asgard. He still smashes his mugs sometimes when he wants to compliment JARVIS’ coffee, so it’s not really like we should be surprised that this has happened, and um -”

He’s babbling, he’s so babbling, but Steve is too close and Tony already feels awful. He wants to run, but at the same time he’d quite like to chase the other man’s heat and wrap around him. Steve’s still touching him, skin like fire where they join, and Tony opens his mouth. Closes it again.

“Here,” Steve finally responds before pushing Tony gently towards the seat he’s just vacated and eases him into it. “I’ll get you some aspirin.”

“There’s not even a bump -”

“For the hangover.”

Oh. He lets his head drop to the table, hearing Steve’s faint that’s not going to help, Tony from where he’s folded his arms over himself.

“You totally carried me up the stairs last night,” Tony comments, voice sounding too much like a whine.

“What did you think you were gonna do, fly? You couldn’t stand.”

“You’re supposed to leave a man to die alone in his alcohol fuelled state, Rogers.”

“Once Bucky got so drunk he decided to go to sleep on a barge and it took me a day to find him. He got sunstroke and was sick for ages after.”

Tony half lifts his head when Steve knocks the water glass against his arm and takes it with a hum. It hasn’t passed his notice that he’s getting more and more stories lately, and the thing is, he likes hearing them. Maybe it helps Steve by telling them. “So I’m not taking you out with me next time I wanna get drunk, huh?”

Steve smiles, places the aspirin next to him, and takes the opposite seat. His hair is curling funny this morning and Tony itches to run his fingers through it and fix it back. Instead he just focuses on getting the pills out of their shitty bottle.

“I was a lightweight back then,” Steve explains, like that makes everything obvious, “and I had school to pay for.”

“You miss it?” He means the art school, but he realises the mistake he’s made the moment Steve looks away, something dark and hurt crossing his face, gaze drifting to the window.

“Yeah.”

“So, you guys banging or what?”

Tony pauses, blowtorch in one gloved hand, glances up through his goggles to where Clint is perched on the edge of his desk with his feet up on his stool in front of him.

“How the fuck did you get in here?” Tony asks, sounding impressed when he shouldn’t be. He’s going to have to work with JARVIS about better security. But Clint just lifts the corner of his mouth in a smirk like the mysterious fucking bastard that he is.

“Answer my question first, dick. You and Steve, are you banging?”

Turning the torch off, Tony sheds his gloves slowly, goggles next, anything to give him enough time to gather his wits. Clint has a habit of cutting straight to things, but he still hates feeling pinned down.

“Please tell me you haven’t asked him that.”

“Nah, he’d blow a fuse. But I know you haven’t got any shame --.”

“Hey.”

“I’ve seen your dick on Perez Hilton, man.”

“What are you doing looking at my dick?”

A shrug. “Natasha wanted me to see it.”

There is a whole level of wrong with that statement, and Tony knows he’s gawking, but Clint just keeps up his smug act, picking up things from his desk without a care. He’s probably already broke half of them, and Tony should really throw him out, he should.

“Okay, that’s too much information for one day, man.”

“So has Steve seen your dick or do we need to google that shit again.”

“Christ, Barton.”

“I’m just saying,” Clint replies, using a rubber band to send projectile bits of wiring across the floor, “that you and him are getting really buddy-buddy, and I wanna know if we have to book plane tickets to San Fran for the wedding. Nat looks hot in a tux.”

“Are you trying to get me hitched so you can live out some sex fantasy with our friendly neighborhood assassin?”

“Quit stealing other people’s catchphrases, man. It doesn’t make you cool. But, yes.” A beat that lasts a little too long. “We need to know if you need The Talk, okay? She likes Steve; they bake together sometimes. She wants to find out if you’re fucking him so she can threaten to disembowel you with a whisk in case you mess him about.”

Tony holds his breath for a minute as he let’s the absurdity of the situation wash over him. All he can imagine for the moment is Natasha and Steve, matching pink frilly aprons, deadly instruments of kitchen torture in their hands. He wants to laugh, but can’t quite get it out past the lump in his throat. He thought he’d been better than this, not straying too close to Steve when he has a spare minute, avoiding rooms when he knows he’s in there alone. It’s not getting any easier. “Steve and I are just friends, Clint. You’re going to have to let that tux thing out some other way. Prom crash or something.”

“Y’know,” Clint starts conversationally, rises from his perch with a fluidity Tony envies. “I think they photoshopped your photo. You had a lot more balls on the internet.”

Loki is a fucking lunatic. Tony holds an icepack to his head, watches as two SHIELD agents try to debrief the God of fucking Thunder on what is the correct etiquette when your adopted brother comes back from the space grave to attack. Tony wants them out of his house, can feel the headache building beneath his skull. There’s too much to do now, the small matter of the east wing having caved in on itself, Clint’s in the hospital, Thor’s probably about three minutes from hammering Shield Agent One through the kitchen wall, and nobody knows where Steve has disappeared to. It’s been too long a day, and he just wants to go to bed.

Instead he ushers Dumb and Dumber out of his home, sits Thor down with a crate of beers, goes to fetch Bruce for babysitting duties, calls Natasha to get an update on Clint, and then he slopes off down to his lab to ignore the pulse of worry in his stomach.

“JARVIS, fire me up a list of all contractors in the area, would you? We’re going to need some heavy duty machinery to get this place cleaned up and I don’t have the time to go through blueprints and forms. Just make sure everything’s the way it was before. Fury’s going to ride all of our asses long and hard about this thing, probably won’t be here long enough to complain about the mess”

Right away, Sir.

Tony mutes the news feeds on the screens because he doesn’t need to look up to know that half of New York is covered in ice and rubble. Loki caused a lot of damage giving the chase and people are out for blood, but there’s nothing Tony’s going to get by listening to it. Instead of wondering where they went wrong. He’s going to have to focus on figuring out how they’re going to stop it from happening again as Loki’s theatrics certainly point towards a rematch. They have to be prepared for when he resurfaces because if they’re not prepared, what’s the point in them?

He dumps half his inbox before Pepper’s ID comes up on the screen. He waits half a second before pressing his fingertips to the answer logo.

“Tony?”

Her voice sounds far away, and he’s not sure if it’s geographical distance due to her move, or just because things have changed so much. Pepper went back to Malibu a month ago, citing her need to be out of the noisy city, to focus on her work. Tony just knows it was because she wanted to bow out, couldn’t afford to go down in flames with him. He has that effect on a lot of women.

“Hey, Pep,” he sounds tired even to himself. Tony scrubs fingertips over his forehead and is glad that there’s no one around to see him. He feels haggard; there’s no other way around it.

“I saw what happened,” she starts, and he already wants to cut her off. “Tony, are you okay?”

“Yeah, m’golden. Nothing to it. When you’ve met one Norse God, you’ve met them all.”

Doubtfully, “he doesn’t act like Thor at all.”

“You haven’t seen him when we accidentally tape over My Little Pony. That’s when shit gets real.”

“Tony.”

“What? What do you want me to say, Pepper?” Tony’s dimly aware of the rise in his voice, the tight feeling pinching around his chest, something uncomfortable squeezing inside him, but he can’t stop himself. He can’t hold it together much longer. “We’re fucked, there’s no other way around it. There’s six of us, six, and even then we couldn’t stop him from causing all that damage. People are dead, and we couldn’t do jack squat. The Mansion’s in pieces, Howard’s study is --,” he lets the tremor wash over him, “Steve’s gone AWOL. I think he’s having a crisis, and I can’t just go and find him and help him deal with that, and -.”

“Tony,” Pepper’s voice cuts through his tirade, and he slumps further into his chair like a ragdoll with its strings cut, “Tony, breathe. Look, you did your best, that’s what’s important. That you’re out there and defending all of us. Without you, without the Avengers, it could have been much worse.

She takes a breath, tone going terribly gentle, he can almost picture her in her office, staring out of the window at the sun glinting off buildings. He misses her terribly, “You can’t keep adding up the casualties, you’re not God-,”

“Close enough,” he mutters rebelliously, hands itching for the feeling of smooth glass beneath them. Pepper continues without hesitation.

“You’ve saved so many people’s lives, Tony. And I know you, you don’t think it counts when you’ve got it into your head that you’ve failed, but it does.”

“Okay, enough of that pep-talk from Pepper,” he announces, wiping his hands against the rough of his jeans, feeling sick in his stomach.

“I’m proud of you.”

It’s like a sharp strike of lightning to his chest, Tony stops breathing for a moment, too caught up in how this doesn’t make sense. They barely even speak to each other anymore, it’s always strained to the back teeth, but there’s something soft and vulnerable in this and Tony yearns for the good old days with so much force that he’s nearly knocked away with it.

“You --.”

“You’re doing wonderfully, and I know you’re worried, I’m sorry about your dad’s things, and I’m sure Captain Rogers is fine. New York is his home, he’s probably just as upset about it as you are about the Mansion.”

“I’m not --.”

“I know you, remember?” He can practically hear the smile in her voice, “You should come down soon, the Starbucks waitress misses threatening to sue you for harassment. It’s just not the same.”

His laugh diffuses something, like the phantom claws of all of his mistakes are eased off for the moment. Tony feels bone-weary, but okay.

“Tell Carla --.”

“Caroline.”

“Stop interrupting me, Pep. I’m an important man. Tell Caroline I’ll be down to see her soon.”

There’s a laugh, before, “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

“That will be all, Ms. Potts.”

There’s a dip at the foot of the bed that pulls him from his sleep with a lurch. He never sleeps so deep that he can’t feel his surroundings change, old habit bred by his more than tumultuous past. He’s constantly on the alert, but unlike half the people he knows, he doesn’t immediately spring into action It’s dark, and for the moment his heartbeat thunders in his ears, eyes straining to see anything beyond the black of his room.

“If you’re here to kill me, you need to take a ticket.”

“Do people usually come into your room at night to kill you?” Steve asks, and if Tony squints he can make out the strong shape of his shoulders, hunched over where he’s sat. There’s something off, a little down in the timbre of his voice, but he immediately relaxes with the knowledge of who’d be prowling about in the dark. Steve may have wanted to lock Tony away once upon a time, but they’re friends now, and whatever their midnight encounter means, it’s not a dangerous escapade.

“Only Edward Cullen,” Tony retorts, sitting upright, the sheets cinching at his waist from where they’re stuck. His arc reactor casts an eerie glow over the man in front of him, still wearing his uniform, Tony can see the tear from where one of Loki’s creatures had tried to drag him down and take him out. He wonders if Steve has just been wandering around New York like that, battle-worn and messed up, if this is something they need to be worried about. Maybe they’ll have to do a little recon with the press, just in case. Steve acting weird is not uncommon, he’s a mystery man from the forties, his whole being screams bizarre and unexplainable, but that’s not what this is.

“Who’s Edward Cullen?” he asks, and Tony can practically feel Steve radiating confused puppy dog. He smiles, then realises Steve can’t see it.

“He’s just some guy who creeps into women’s bedrooms, don’t sweat it. JARVIS, lights.”

Whatever Tony’s about to say is cut off the minute the red rings around Steve’s eyes are thrown into sharp relief. He’s been - Tony wants to say crying, but he can’t imagine the man in front of him letting himself break like that - but the red of his eyes is just shouting emotional damage right in his face. Tony hasn’t seen grief like that on anyone in such a long time, actively avoids it whenever he can. That kind of pain has always terrified him. Steve shifts, angles his face away as though he can hear Tony’s thoughts, attempts to hide it.It doesn’t do much, just throws him into shadows.

“Shouldn’t something be done about that?”

“About what -?”

Steve sighs, lips tight, “About the man, Tony.”

“He’s not, uh, never mind Steve, I’ll get Clint to explain to you some other time. Instead I think we should talk about the fact that you look like the world has come to an end.”

Tony pulls himself to his knees, thankful he at least made the concession of boxers before bedtime, but it’s not as if Steve really even notices, too caught up in whatever’s going around in his skull to even see Tony’s frantic attempt at finding a shirt. Steve always notices, he’s the first in line to pinpoint something out of place. SHIELD agents have been ambushed with orange juice and cold meds on several occasions, and Tony’s still sure his coffee’s been tampered with if he so much as sniffles. To see him now, worn down to the point where he’s not telling Tony to put on a shirt -- New York is covered in ice, seriously -- then there’s a lot going on in that stupid blonde head of his.

“The world hasn’t come to an end,” he comments, staring down at his hands, gloves still firmly in place and Tony wonders if this is a breakdown, if he should maybe call Coulson and say sorry, I was wrong, your team of psychologists told me not to give him too much all at once, but I wanted to play with the other sad kid on the playground and I think I broke him. What he does instead is move to sit beside him at the end of the bed.

“Yeah? But there’s something bugging you, isn’t there?”

“It’s stupid, it’s --.”

“Hey, Rogers,” Tony ducks his head so that Steve has to look at him, “Nothing’s ever gonna be stupid if it’s got you worked up like this, okay? So just spill before I have to get the big guns out.”

“Thor’s busy with -.”

“I’m going to pretend I’m not insulted by that, okay? I meant that fucking awful teapot you have, the one you and Nat go gooey for.”

Steve’s smile is a fractured little thing, lifting and then falling again, and Tony feels his heart skip a worrying beat.

“There used to be a diner on one of the streets Loki blew up,” he states, and Tony doesn’t speak, let's Steve take it at his own pace. He knows if he tries to push, he’ll stop, and that’s the last thing either of them needs, “They were great, the best malts anyone could ever wish for. Bucky and me, we used to save up every pay day in this dumb pink piggy bank that he won at a fair when we were kids. But we’d go every last Sunday of the month, just me and him, buy the blueberry pancakes and the strawberry shake and pretend we were the bees knees. Bucky used to flirt with the old ladies, said it brightened up their days.”

Steve stops, his hands clenching immediately like the wealth of his feeling is too much, and Tony tries and tries not to be jealous of a dead man, but his record so far is atrocious. “It wasn’t even a diner anymore,” Steve continues, and he tries to figure out where this is going, “I saw it a few weeks back, they were using it to sell video games now, but the rubble, and. It’s just another piece that’s missing, another thing that I’ve lost, all I could think about was that Bucky used to write our names on that wall and now it’s gone, because someone blew it up, and I just couldn’t - I miss him.”

His voice breaks at the end, head bowing, and Tony can now see why his eyes were so red in the first place. He tries to think of how bad it must feel, losing the one thing you’ve had all your life, because for Steve it must be worse. Normal people have memories that can be ignited with every breath, this man isn’t even given that.

“Hey.”

Tony reaches out, a hand pressing against Steve’s giant shoulder, the rough leather feel of his armour odd underneath his skin, “Hey, that’s not dumb at all, okay?”

“I couldn’t save him,” Steve says, leaning towards him with a sigh, “I couldn’t save him and now it’s like there’s this giant hole in the universe, and all I want, all I want is to have my best friend back.”

There’s nothing Tony can say to that, so he simply keeps holding on.

Steve doesn’t mention his late night breakdown again, and Tony’s not sure if he’s allowed to, doesn’t want to bring it up just in case Steve is a hair’s breath away from spiralling out of control. But Tony thinks about it a lot, thinks about how he’d feel if he lost Rhodey, or Pepper, thinks about how it must be for Steve. It’s not nearly close enough, because he can’t bring himself to imagine it for long without pulling away from the thought, the agony that could be felt if he’s not careful enough, if he doesn’t save them on time, if he fails. Being Steve Rogers must feel like being the last man crawling out of rubble at the end of the world, blinking into the sunlight and finding everything else dead and buried.

He hopes they help, the Avengers, he hopes they make it better, but he’s never so sure of himself to believe that he might.

“Is that how you would wield a hammer?” Thor bellows, and Tony looks up from the tablet he’s working on, finds the God towering over a terrified looking builder. He’s practically cowering in his hard hat, grip shaking around his tool, and Tony wants to laugh, but can’t find it in himself. They’re all strained, Thor included.

“Hey buddy,” he calls, already switching his emails off and putting the machine aside, “How about we go see Clint at the hospital, huh? You can stop in to the science labs on the way.”

As ever, the promise of seeing Dr. Foster smooths out his features, and he takes a step back, nods in Tony’s direction. He doesn’t blame him, Jane is smoking and Tony probably wouldn’t leave the labs if his girlfriend looked like that. Not that he does his own in any case, but it’s the principle of the thing. It’s his cue to rise and follow him out of the gaping hole in the middle of the wall they’re using as a doorway, blinking furiously into the sunlight. They walk, because Tony’s seen what Thor looks like folded into one of his cars, and the last time he nearly wrapped them both around a tree for laughing too hard.

Fishing his sunglasses out of his pocket, he looks over at Thor. The ice has melted now, it took two days and a lot of chanting before it did, and New York doesn’t look as crystalline, the water mostly drained away except for a few spots, the dip in the streets collecting it. It makes the rebuilding effort a lot easier, he should know, he’s already funneling the cash into government bank accounts to help. The quicker it gets done, the quicker people stop ranting about them on late night television. It’s never great to hear yourself be referred to as a menace at three in the morning. It always ends up more bitter than his coffee.

“My brother,” Thor starts, eyes following the path of a woman and her children. Her son is wearing a green raincoat, follows after splashing in the puddles that do remain, “He would have this world destroyed in the blink of an eye if he could.”

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t get any dust in it then.”

Thor pauses, head tilted towards Tony like he’s something unexplainable, “You have the strangest way of dealing with things, Tony Stark.”

“Hey, it works.”

He shrugs, tries not to fidget under the way it feels like he’s seeing into his very soul. He has a habit of doing that. But they get on well, and it’s something he wasn’t quite expecting, how he genuinely likes him. Sometimes Tony doesn’t get how any of this happened, how he became friends with a group of crazy maniacs he should despise on principle. They’re better than him, he knows that, good people with special abilities, or people with a cause. Tony’s a billionaire with too much time and not enough sense, he’s not special and he should react against that, did to begin with. But here he is now, living in his dad’s old house with a bunch of people he doesn’t quite get but likes anyway, would probably die for, and he wouldn’t change it. There isn’t a moment he’d take back, not now.

They walk in silence for a bit, Tony’s hands in his pockets and his focus on the man beside him. Thor keeps glancing around him, watching people mill about their daily lives, and he can’t help wonder what humans must look like to him. Like ants running around a glass farm, repeating their steps because it’s the only thing they can do? Even Steve, the miracle that he is, could just be a small blip on life’s radar to a guy like Thor.

“You should inform Steven of your affections,” he states suddenly, voice a warm rumble, as though he’s breaking into Tony’s thoughts and seizing on the one thing that he can use. Tony hates the way his stomach clenches, and it’s only through Thor laying one big hand on his shoulder and yanking him back that he doesn’t get run over. Again. He’s too busy gaping at the Norse God to even really process the slew of profanity coming from the car careening away.

“What?” Tony hisses, arching an eyebrow over the edge of his sunglasses. Panic edges around his breathing, makes him tighten his hands, knuckles bending the fabric of his trousers.

“Your feelings, they are very obvious.”

“No they’re not,” he replies, waving his freed hands now, like whatever this is can’t be contained by being still. If he stops for long enough, they may have to deal with it, and Tony does not want that, how could he want that?

“My friend, the love of a warrior bond is a strong one, you needn’t be worried. Steven will surely reciprocate and we may buy you gifts to celebrate your union.”

“We’re not getting married, fuck. Nobody around here is getting married, there is no union, or strong warrior bond, or whatever the hell you’re hinting at,” Tony snaps, tempted to turn back around and leave Thor to his fate.

“Tony Stark,” Thor starts, and there’s something in his voice that makes him still, “What is it that you’re so afraid of?”

The question haunts him for the rest of the week. Tony barely comes out of his lab, keeps the music cranked up over the sounds of sawing coming from above, reprogrammes JARVIS twice to keep everyone else out. It’s petty and childish, but he learnt the avoidance decades ago and he’s not about to change his mind now. Besides, the armour needs fixing and he’s been meaning to work on the newest bow for Clint, check everything out in triplicate, spend some quality time with Dummy and Butterfingers, he doesn’t need anyone else.

And he manages to tell himself that until he sees the bow of Steve’s blond head through the glass doors, one hand raised to knock. Tony hasn’t seen him in days and his stomach clenches in pain, sends a spike through his entire system. He can’t resist, he’s already lost.

“JARVIS, let him in.”

Right away, Sir. Good afternoon, Captain Rogers.

“Hey, JARVIS.”

Steve looks surprised, and Tony wonders just how many times he’d come down here to be denied access, how often he’d stood just outside the door and waited to be let in. It shouldn’t make him feel guilty, he’s been busy, but one look at the other man’s hopeful expression, the way his face lights up when his gaze falls on Tony, and he feels like the shittiest thing in the world. He doesn’t deserve Steve Rogers, which is precisely why he’s not going to tell him anything.

“You’re not here to sell my girl scout cookies, are you?” he asks instead, laying down the wrench and wiping his hands on his jeans. Tony probably looks a mess, he’s surprised Steve hasn’t run away screaming yet.

“No,” he replies slowly, forehead creasing like he’s worried he should have been, “Thor ate all the thin mints, sorry.”

“We had thin mints?”

“Not any more.”

“Oh.”

Steve keeps walking, crossing the room with his slow, easy gait. He looks better than the last time Tony saw him, slightly rumpled, but more alert, less on the verge of a time-displaced meltdown. He watches him drag his fingers along Dummy in greeting, come to pause at Tony’s desk.

“How are you?” he asks, a hesitance in his voice that Tony sometimes has trouble matching with the same man he sees in the battlefield. It endears him to Steve more than he’d like, how underneath everything, Captain America is just a man doing his job. He’s normal when you look at the core of him, unsure of certain things, he’s not infallible.

“Uh -- fine?”

“Have you been avoiding me?”

Tony pauses, and it’s the hesitancy that breaks Steve’s calm expression, worry spreading across his face like wildfire. He gives himself a mental kick, swallows down the lump in his throat.

“No?”

“Tony -,” he starts, voice soft and unhappy.

“What?”

“Why - we’re a team, we’re supposed to be getting along, and I can’t help with any of that if you’re not around to tell me what I’ve done.”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, Rogers,” Tony says, voice curling in on the edge of a sigh, his fingernails scratching at the skin on his elbow. He feels awkward and off-center, hates that he’s even in this position in the first place.

“Then why are you hiding down here, Tony? I thought we were passed all this.”

The exasperation is what gets him first, sinks in so he can’t hear the lonliness in Steve’s voice, can’t see the weary look of abandonment over his expression. This is like a sped up version of all the bad scenarios he’s been imagining, Steve upset and pained looking, Tony’s insides squirming with venom. The feeling makes him sick, scared, so he does what he always does, lets his hackles rise and bites back.

“I’ve been busy, I have a billion and one things to do, okay? We can’t all make being a superhero our only day job, and Pepper needs these schematics like yesterday, Rhodey fucked up his suit and I need to do some shit with that. There’s just not enough time in the day to deal with everything, so I’m sorry if I don’t have time to hang out and play buddies.”

True to form, Tony feels that familiar swoop of self-loathing in his stomach, takes a shaking breath and refuses to look up when he hears Steve’s retreating feet.

It’s like the early days again, Steve’s face pinched whenever he’s in the same room as Tony, the heat in their bicker rising to cover up wounds. Tony pretends he doesn’t care, keeps to himself even more, and not even the promise of baseball and hotdogs from Clint can get him out of the Mansion with them when offered.

It means Tony has time alone to brood, takes the steps down to at a time and enter his lab. Nothing seems out of place, so that means of course he jumps five foot in the air when Natasha appears out of nowhere.

“You’re a bastard, Stark.”

Without looking at her, “That’s three more words than usual. Dummy, mark it down.”

Dummy’s pincers click up a marker next to his whiteboard, lets the felt edge squeak under the tally Tony’s been keeping. He can sense the glare at his back, feels like the cloth of his shirt is smouldering.

“You don’t care, do you?”

“You wrote up my psych report, you already know how much I don’t care.”

“I think perhaps,” Natasha starts, and he doesn’t hear her move, but he’s suddenly so sure she’s behind him, her voice taking a faint foreign purr to it, “That I should remove your spine for you, Mr. Stark, you’re clearly not using it.”

His own voices goes tight, staring down at his desk, “Look, whatever you think I’ve fucking done, it’s none of your business. So you can stop solidifying out of the dark, you don’t need to add to my history of heart problems.”

“He’s lonely,” she says, tone still very neutral and he doesn’t know where she’s going with this, but he finds he doesn’t want to know. They all think he’s an asshole anyway, Tony Stark who made a few changes only to retreat as far back as he possibly good again. Whatever good he’s done, it’s all gone now.

“Tell it to a bleeding heart already, I don’t care what you’re looking for, it’s not with me.”

She appears to his left, leans back against his desk, her hands small looking against the wood and he knows how easy it is for people to think she’s sweet and innocent, not the deadly blade shaped like a woman that he knows. If there’s any of them that he doesn’t trust, it’s her.

She knows this, giving him a slow once over, “What are you doing, Tony?”

He’s not sure what possesses him to answer her truthfully, but it spills from him anyway, catches at his throat, “Protecting him.”

“And has it occured to you that Captain America doesn’t need you to protect him?”

“Natasha terrifies me,” Tony complains, throwing himself down beside Rhodey, beer bottle still in hand. They’re in Rhodey’s apartment because Tony is a coward and he runs when things get hard, and he knows he’s being silently judged, but there’s not much he can do about that. Being silently judged by Rhodey is always far more easy to swallow than being openly judged by others. He’ll keep liking Tony anyway, because he has to, they made a very drunken pact and he’ll continue to hold him to that.

“I think she terrifies everyone,” Rhodey comments, attention half on the game playing out on the television. He doesn’t think the other man is very scared of her, all things told, they actually get on like a house on fire. It’s not fair, he’s surrounded by too many genial people.

“Do you think it’s written in her DNA? She could be a mutant or something.”

“She’s not a mutant.”

“How do you know? I’m sure your clearance isn’t that high.”

“She’s just not, Tony,” he mutters, turning towards him, “Besides, if she’s terrorising you, that means you’ve done something wrong and deserve it. So you can either tell me about it properly, or you can shut up and let me watch the game.”

The way his mouth closes is an audible click, Tony swallowing down his tirade immediately. He waits five minutes, twenty three seconds before he speaks, voice wild and terrified sounding, “I fell in love with Captain America.”

To Rhodey’s credit, he leans forward immediately, reaches for the remote and switches the television off. Then he breathes out, stands up.

“I’m making coffee, and we’re going to talk, okay?”

Tony pauses to mull it over, “Okay.”

He ends up at Rhodey’s creaking kitchen table, holding a too hot mug of coffee in his hands and trying to withstand the silent third degree. There’s a mark on the surface, the burn of a stubbed out cigarette, and Tony remembers being young and scared, his parents buried six feet in the ground, remembers the way Rhodey held onto his hand until he bruised, until he was absolutely certain Tony wouldn’t be joining them. He’d offered to replace it, when the paranoia and fear stopped clawing at his throat, when his funeral suit had been shoved into the very back of his wardrobe. Rhodey had just waved him off, helped him pack up an empty house.

Tony’s never thanked him for that, but he’s not sure how he’d ever begin to.

“So,” Rhodey starts, stirring creamer into his cup, “You’re in love.”

“Um, that’s what you’re focusing on? Not the fact that it’s with the peak of human perfection and an American hero?”

“You had Captain America sheets in your closet, Tony. I knew he’d be an object of something, I just didn’t think it would be love. Which is why we’re focusing on that bit first.”

Instead of acknowledging it, Tony takes a hot gulp of his coffee, feels it burning all the way down, splash hot and hard in his stomach.

“C’mon, Tony. Don’t block me out with this.”

Rhodey looks at him, a frown building a trench in his forehead, his own hands wrapped around his mug, and Tony suddenly wishes he’d tried harder with them, been a better friend somehow, reached out instead of locking himself away but that’s all he’d ever learnt how to do, push things away so they didn’t get in and infect the cold, hard edges of him. He doesn’t know how anyone ever holds on, not to him.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“Okay, well, let’s start with how you know.”

“I just do,” Tony admits, a little too quick to catch himself, “I -- it’s just whenever I look at him, I know, and then I know it can’t work? So there’s no point having this conversation.”

“Why can’t it?” he asks evenly, “Who says?”

“Look, I know I have an ego, I get that. But I’m not under any illusion that someone like him would love someone like me. That shit only happens in fucking Disney films, okay? He’s not going to be able to look past the noxious shit I do and see something worthwhile. Admitting it would just be opening myself up for target practise, and I’m not -- I’m not doing that, Rhodey. I already get that from enough sides.”

“You know,” Rhodey murmurs, voice soft and all too knowing, “I never know how your ego survives the constant suicidal dive. You really are one of a kind, Tony.”

Tony makes a noise then, a soft, derisive sound, rolling his shoulders and glancing up at his friend. They could argue about this until both of them are blue in the face, but there’s nothing either of them can do. And as much as Tony looks to the future, they can’t change what the past made him.

“I think you should talk to him about this,” he continues, turning his mug around in his hands, “You need to give yourself a chance, because nobody else is going to. And I think you deserve it, even if you don’t.”

He holds his breath, watches the way Rhodey’s mouth twitches up, and tries to believe him.

“Tony-?”

Bruce’s voice is soft coming from his lab, freezes Tony in his tracks where he’s been lurking in the hall for a half an hour. The gap in the wall where he’d unscrewed the service hatch gapes at him guiltily, and he shifts on to his left foot guiltily, leans into the doorway.

“Yep?”

“Can you give me a hand?”

Tony’s grin goes wide, abandoning his task immediately, shoving the wrench he’d been playing with haphazardly into his pocket. He leaves things as they are, because if anything, it gives Clint somewhere new to invade and he wants to see how long it takes Agent Coulson to figure out where he is. He’ll take his entertainment where he can get it, thanks.

“So, what do you need?”

Bruce waves impassively, and Tony takes that as his cue to just start messing with stuff. He’s always like this, asking for Tony’s help and then just letting him get on with it, and it’s nice, to just keep each other company. Tony certainly wasn’t expecting it, didn’t really think there would be this connection, but there is, and they get on. Bruce is his antithesis, calm and honest, but he doesn’t shun him away like he’d assumed he would. They actually seem to get on, and Tony’s not used to having so many friends, but he’s glad one of them is Bruce.

“So do you want to talk about it?” Bruce asks about ten minutes into Tony’s dismantling of his microscope. There are parts everywhere, scattered along the workbench, one knut on the floor beside his foot. He’d been thinking of making him a new one, something automatic, robotic, a lab helper like Dummy, but okay maybe a little bit more behaved, because Tony’s frustrations get tested with his tech and he’s not the one liable to expand, turn green, and try to smash everything in sight. Occasionally tossing a hammer doesn’t count.

“About what?” he asks, throwing the lens in the air to catch it in his palm, completely oblivious to how delicate things are when they’re not metal and his. The glass doesn’t crack though, which is a bonus.

“About you and Steve,” Bruce replies, slowly, because he’s got his tongue sticking between his teeth as he leans in, eye pressed to the lens of yet another microscope. It’s really a good thing he has so many, because the question comes mid toss, and the glass skitters past his fingers to smash into the floor. Tony immediately look up, over to Bruce, testing the waters, who simply shrugs back at him.

“It’s fine, people drop things all the time around here.”

Which pretty much sounds like code for you’re not getting away from this, Tony. What he actually wouldn’t give for the Hulk right now, because at least he’s mostly rage, doesn’t look at him with kind, tired eyes. To buy himself time, he kneels, gathers up the bits of glass in front of him, keeps his head bowed, his expression blank.

“There’s is no me and Steve.”

“Well, if there were - I am a surprisingly good listener.”

“You say that, but I know it’s the big bag of weed talking.”

Bruce laughs, a quiet, unassuming thing in the back of his throat, moves away to jot something down on the
whiteboard in the back of the room. He doesn’t stop to look at the other man, just divides his attention evenly between science and personal growth, and he kind of wishes Bruce would be a bit more selfish, because then he wouldn’t be trying to help.

“There’s a wastebin by the desk,” Bruce comments, nodding to the glass in his hands, “Please don’t cut yourself. Phil has been talking about introducing new health and safety forms, and if he finds you bleeding after he notices the hole in the wall, we’ll be in trouble.”

“He’ll be too busy trying to find his boyfriend in the air ducts,” he replies, a hopeful hint in his voice. It’s a masterful plan, Tony’s got it all worked out. But he does take care when getting rid of the glass.

“When have you ever known him to not know where Clint is?”

And yeah, okay, Tony shrugs, conceding the point, “Do you think he had his wings clipped? I think they have to hold on to the beak, y’know? And then boom a microchip in the wing. It’ll be sad when he migrates, but at least we can watch his progress on a computer.”

Bruce’s noise of amusement carries, and Tony grins, glances at the stuff cluttering his desk. They have this in common too, at least, organised mess.

“Try the third drawer down,” he comments, and Tony smirks to himself, opens it with a giddy kind of rush. Bruce stores all sorts in here, and sure enough, he comes back with a Snickers, unholy glee written across his face. Tony loves Bruce, Bruce has science and candy, Bruce is his favourite.

“Natasha wants us to try that new Mexican place tonight,” he continues, keeps his attention on his experiment while Tony starts clearing a space to perch on the end of the desk, “And she arm-wrestled for it, so.”

“You do realise this means we’re never going to ever choose right? Unless we piss you off in the first place. Doesn’t constantly having Thai just bug you?” Teasing, “Think of all that pizza we’re missing out on, how the others just kind of abuse their strength and pick on us, doesn’t it make you angry?”

He can practically feel the force of his eyeroll, “You should fight your own battles.”

“Yeah, but the suit kind of makes it hard to eat, you know?”

He’s halfway into his Snickers by now, sorting out the clusters of paper from where he’s half sitting on them. There’s something digging into his hip, and he makes a noise, takes at least three files off the top pile to find the culprit. It’s a photoframe, and he picks it up without thinking.

“Hey, who’s this?”

The woman in the photograph is smiling, the sun catching the light in her hair, and she looks happy, joyous. Tony’s never seen her before, and when he holds it up to Bruce, he catches the flash of pain there, watches it flare up before Bruce can get control of it.

“That’s Betty.”

Oh.

“Hey man, I’m sorry, I didn’t -.”

“It’s all right.”

Bruce has come across the room now, and Tony gives up the photo without a fight, watching him carefully. He knows she’s someone he loved once, but Bruce isn’t exactly into sharing his own personal pain, and he can see why. The agony there is pretty clear.

“You still don’t keep in touch with her?”

“It’s better this way,” he answers, like it had been a mantra to repeat to himself, and Tony knows how that goes, has his own. Where people have prayers, they have self destructive promises.

“You sure?”

The look Bruce gives him doesn’t seem very sure, but Tony knows he’s not going to get him out of this. He stays here on strict terms, has built a wall around himself to keep those he’s loved well protected. They live a dangerous life, there will always be casualties as long as they let them remain in the sphere. It’s not fair, but it’s what it is.

“If I had a second chance, Tony, I would do everything so differently. I wouldn’t let there be a day when I didn’t tell her I loved her,” he looks up, holds his gaze for a moment, “I just want you to know that, sometimes you have to take the leap and hope you’ll take flight. It’s better than having regrets, it’s better than wondering what if.”

“But what happens if you have to regret the leap, Dr. Banner?”

“Then you fall, and you get back up.”

His fingers brush the glass in the frame once, and Tony looks away, allows him the moment. The photo gets placed on top of the stack this time, Bruce turning away with a slump to his shoulders.

“Iron Man, come in.”

Steve’s voice is an angry, static blur on the comm link, and Tony wants to tell him to stop being so grouchy, but there’s blood in his mouth and he’s too tired to try and speak. His armour is in pieces around him, fractured bits of metal that he can’t even reach, and he’s probably going to die out here, he doesn’t even know where here is, only that he’d been hit and everything had been too hot suddenly, his systems down and the suit hurtling towards the ground at a speed he couldn’t hope to stop.

There’s a buzzing in his ear, but he knows the blood will soon short-circuit his device, and besides, nobody’s talking anymore. He hopes the team are doing fine without him, then hisses air out of his teeth, he knows he’s hardly the glue keeping them all together, but there’s a sense, a belonging, a responsibility that coils in his stomach. His whole body burns with a pain he hasn’t felt in a long time, there’s bound to be something broken,but he can’t move. When the suit loses power, it becomes nothing more than a metal anchor, and the bits still attached to him are pressing him into the rubble here. He’s the only person he knows who’s essentially built his own coffin, and sometimes Tony thinks maybe he should have stopped before he started, but he wouldn’t change this, not for the world. Blood is dribbling down his chin, meaning Tony has to tilt his chin, cough onto the ground. It splatters, accusatory and red, and his chest seizes as he takes a breath, his whole body shuddering. Pain slams into him full force and he thinks this is it, this is how it goes down, shot out of the sky There’s no JARVIS, that’s what stings the most, there’s no JARVIS, and no way to record what he’s feeling, the heavy roll of his stomach, the regret building up and up and up. Tony has made so many mistakes in his life, he’s done so much that he wishes he could take back, wishes he could actually do, or do better. Tony’s dying, and all he can think about is how it isn’t fair, how none of it is.

He should have said more.

To Pepper, to Rhodey, to the team, to Steve.

He can practically hear the echo of Captain America’s voice in his skull, Tony, Tony, Tony. He should sound more angry, that’s what he’s used to irritation and upset and that timbre of command that always follows. Not this, not what Tony’s imagining now, repeating his name with concern. Tony doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, he’s dying, the least his mind could give him would be fondness, not the desperate tint of fear. There’s other sounds now too, the echoing of something that sounds like footsteps, but his vision’s blurring over at the edges.

“Tony.”

And that’s - he’s got good imagination, because right now that looks like Captain America kneeling down beside him. His cowl has been knocked back, blonde hair rumpled, his face smudged with soot, and Tony can see blood but no graze, wonders just how quickly Steve actually heals, thinks it probably doesn’t matter anyway. He’s probably too far gone by now, is all he can think, too deep down the slippery path.

“So, is this what heaven’s like?” he asks, voice weak beyond the slight rasp. Steve’s hands hover like he’s not sure what to do, what to move first, where to even start. It’s a nice gesture, careful, worried.

“Heaven?”

“Well yeah, I’m dead, right?”

Steve’s face is stricken for a moment, his fingers curling momentarily at Tony’s cheek. And that feels good too, actually, warm and soft and inviting. He wants to tip into it. He wants to go to sleep.

“You’re not dead, Tony, just hold on, okay? The medics will be here soon, and you’ll be fine.”

“Are you going to kiss me?”

It’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself, watches the question settle, surprise flickering through Steve’s haze of fear. He opens his mouth, closes it, and Tony almost starts to laugh, is kind of glad he’s been banged up to high heaven, because he’s not responsible for this, not right now.

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

There’s a hesitancy there, but it’s not like Tony expected, all hard lines and aggression. No, Steve sounds almost nervous, a quiver to his voice while he finds Tony’s hand underneath the rubble, fingers touching gently against his wrist.

“I -,” Steve starts, then swallows, breathes in slowly like he’s vying for time. Tony can hear more noise now, even with his sight going black around the corners, but he’s bleeding out into the shell of what’s left of him and it hurts, it all hurts so much. His voice wavers on his breath, agony mixing into it, and he sounds so weak, so pathetic. Tony doesn’t even get to be dignified in his own death, just his luck.

“It’s okay, I wouldn’t kiss me either, I think I threw up a little, the pain was -.”

His fingers twitch, and he misses the moment where Steve gets closer, barely even registers until there are lips being pressed to his forehead. It wells up into him, a feeling so strong he has to blink back the sudden damp of his eyes, and it’s just like Steve, just like him to do something so simple, to take Tony’s breath away.

“You’ll be all right.” he whispers, and there are fingers in his hair, and the darkness doesn’t feel so daunting.

There are balloons in his immediate line of vision, gold and red, bobbing together with the slight breeze coming from a nearby fan. He’s seen plenty of hospital rooms before, and not one of them has come fully equipped with balloons. He’d begun to think them a myth bred by awful daytime movies. But no, there they are, tangled up and attached to his hospital bed. He lifts his gaze a little higher, a lump forming in his throat. On his bedside cabinet there are cards. One is suspiciously handmade, because he doubts even Hallmark would stock something that reads Get Well, Motherfucker in purple. Where did Clint even get glitter fucking pens? He’s already banned from a dozen craft stores.

Tony doesn’t turn when the door opens, but that’s mostly because he isn’t sure how he feels right now, if this floating feeling is something to be worried about, or if he’s just being pumped by glorious drugs. He has the best health care anyone can afford, which means excellent painkillers, if he does say so himself. But if it’s the drugs, he doesn’t want to unbalance the calm that’s fallen over his battered body, he doesn’t want to agitate it any further.The likelihood that it’s just a doctor with a series of mind numbing boring questions also adds to his reluctance. He fell out of the sky, he’s beat up, end of story, can they give him the drugs to go?

“I’m just saying, Tony cares about you a lot. It’s not a common thing.”

That’s Pepper’s voice, Pepper is here. The floating hospital drugs to go seem less and less likely if Pepper is actually gracing the building with her presence. She usually starts by threatening to have the orderlies strap him down, “He tends to think mostly about himself, he’s selfish, reckless, arrogant. I’m surprised you’ve even lasted as long as you have. Most people run away screaming.”

It’s true, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t send a flash of hurt straight through him, that it doesn’t make something shrivelled up and dark inside him clench, eyes squeezing shut again for a moment. Pepper knows him better than anyone, his flaws are right there for her to read, to pick apart, and he can’t blame her really, she also knows how good he can be when he tries, and the effort is never really lost on her.

“I’m sorry, Ms Potts,” Oh. “But Tony seems to care about a lot of people; the Avengers, you and Colonel Rhodes, He may not know how to express himself all that well, but he’s cares, he’s a good man.”

Steve sounds at once angry, angry and a little bit sad, and Tony hates that the tone of his voice is probably all of his fault. Steve sees the best in people, he’s a kind soul, the precise opposite of what he is anyway, and to hear the defence in his voice - all on Tony’s behalf as well - that’s something. His throat is dry and hurting, his fingers clenched against the sheets, and they haven’t noticed yet that he’s awake, and he wonders what they’ve talked about, how much has been dragged up from the past for them to dissect. He wants to know why Steve even continues to try, when Tony has done nothing but avoid him, when he keeps running away.

“You like him.”

His heart seizes fast, and it takes him a second to remember she’s not talking to him. There’s no question in Pepper’s tone, she deals with the facts, doesn’t tend to hypothesise, because that’s his job anyway. He’s the what if guy, always has been. But right now, she’s laying down something like it’s the ultimate truth, and he’s not sure he should be even hearing this. Part of him is waiting for the inevitable decline.

“He’s very important to me,” Steve replies, Tony can almost imagine him twisting his hands in front of himself like he does when he’s nervous, mouth turned down at the edges.

“How important?”

“With all due respect, ma’am, I think Tony should be the first to know that.”

There’s a lengthy pause, and he wants to open his eyes, to see what’s going on right now, but the fact that they’d find out he’s awake is unbearable, makes his skin run cold and clammy. He can still hear breathing though, and after a moment, Pepper sighs, takes a step further away from the bed. Her heels click against the floor, and he exhales slowly.

“Tell him soon,” she states, her voice gone quiet and less authoritative, “I think he needs to hear it, contrary to popular belief, he is not actually made out of iron.”

“I know, believe me, I do know that.”

His shoes make noises now, moving to Tony’s right and he can imagine Steve going toward the window, hears the sound of the blinds rattling as though he’s pushing them apart. Tony wonders what he’s seeing, what he’s thinking,

“You think he’ll listen?”

Pepper makes a noise, and he feels a hand settle against his ankle, light and careful, her fingers brushing down over the blankets covering him.

“I think he’ll fight, but that’s just Tony, that’s just how he is. You just have to know how to fight back, Captain Rogers, that’s all we can do.”

Steve fusses like an old mother hen. He should have realised that long ago, but to be fair Tony’s not exactly the quickest when it comes to affection, or to being treated like a patient, and he’s unprepared for the onslaught. Steve’s hand is warm and gentle at Tony’s side, taking his weight with a practised ease, and he can feel heat in his face, burning up at the fact that he’s practically being fucking carried here. It’s embarrassing, and not at all mostly because he wants to keep doing it. He wouldn’t mind, he could set up scientific consultations from the warmth of Steve’s arms.

“Honestly, Steve, you made me stay in that hospital for-fucking-ever, the least you could do is let me walk with my own two legs into my own damn house,” he bitches, for the sake of it, to prove that he can.

“Do you want to go back, Tony? Because your track record kinda looks like you maybe need constant supervision. Maybe some toddler gates. I bet JARVIS would help me..”

He’d be angry, but Steve’s smiling at him, the car door slammed behind them, his body a warm, firm leaning post. He smells good, cologne drifting through the light breeze, and Tony can sense spice and soap and the faint musk of his skin, feels dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with how weak he is right now. Captain America’s a fucking hazard of a man, and they really should have warned him about that.

“You’re being mean, you can’t be mean to the patient.”

“You made four nurses cry and one ask for a transfer,” Steve points out, gently chiding, but he knows that Steve had something to do with the bunches of expensive flowers arriving the day after, knows he smoothed over the cracks for him. It’s kind of touching, how he comes to bat for him, but he won’t admit that out loud, “Your karma’s pretty out of balance.”

“You’re out of balance.”

Steve’s laugh is surprised, bending to pick up Tony’s bag off the sidewalk, and he’s momentarily distracted, eyes up the strip of skin at the back of his neck with an alarming intensity. He wants to press into him more, wants to memorise that scent so he can recreate it. There are a lot of things that Tony wants to do actually, and mostly all of them are not for the sidewalk, and certainly not for a day when his entire body feels like it’s seizing up.

“I think you damaged your funny bone in the crash.”

“I think maybe you stole it, what’s with all the joking, Cap? Huh? You trying out for my spot as resident prankster?”

“No, but Clint did do something to most of the pillows on the third floor, so I’d watch out for him with your crown.”

“That -,” he pauses, going a little cross-eyed as Steve leads him up to the Mansion, “It’s the purple glitter, isn’t it? He got purple glitter everywhere.”

“It made you smile though, didn’t it? I think it’s worth a few pillows.”

“They’re at least a hundred -.”

“Brother Tony.”

The booming voice makes him jump even though he really should have expected it, though the wince is entirely the product of the way Thor flings the front door wide, the glass shaking in its hold. From here he can see them all, Clint standing off to the side, covering his mouth to hide his laughter, Coulson just beyond him, Blackberry in hand and a slight nod in Tony’s direction. Bruce is holding a sign, seemingly under duress, examining the windows to make sure they’re still there. Natasha’s just surveying him like she’d quite like to prey on his weak state and eat him.

He’s never felt quite this happy coming home before.

“Jesus, Thor, we’ve only just got those installed, and is that - why is their jam on the walls? Steve, who’s fingerprints are those? They’re small, like super small, like a woman small, Natasha why are there - oh, please don’t hit me, your hands are not woman small, they are strong and mighty and Steve, Steve, protect me.”

Steve’s laugh is warm in his ear, fingers pressed into the small of his back, “Welcome home, Tony.”

“Yeah,” he breathes out, feeling the solidity of that statement slip into place. He watches them all, jostling each other as they head back inside, bickering about who gets the first slice of cake, shoving each other playfully, and Tony feels right in himself. “Hey Cap?”

“Yeah?”

Tony shifts until he’s leaning more against his front now, the silk of his shirt soft against his arm, Steve’s perplexed expression sweet and intoxicating. He pushes up on his toes, mouth inches away from his, and it’s now or never, do or die, a handful of other cliches he could think of. Tony starts the kiss slow, feeling panic well up inside him.

But Steve’s fingers tighten on his waist, lips parting for him beautifully and Tony thinks okay and yes, and he hums a note and smiles as they pull away.

“Wrestle you for the first peice of cake?”

Laughter fills his ears, and Tony thinks maybe everyone else was right all along. This moment is perfect.

“Hey Stark,” comes Clint’s shout from the doorway, and he looks up, over with a guilty expression flickering across his face, but the grin in response is cocksure and amused, “Your balls look mighty fine from here.”