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cherryFor author's notes, summary, and the like, please see Part 1.
It’s no wonder that Tony and Emma get along, Steve thinks. They come from the same world, grew up in the same way. He wonders what it was like: flatware and silverware and summer homes. Private lessons, probably, piano or dressage or dance. Did they ever go cold or hungry? Living here now he finds everything almost impossible to comprehend and far too easy to take for granted.
He thinks of his childhood, of their single room with its bare bulbs and drafts and worn floorboards, of his mother and her determined, tired eyes, and he is filled with a fierce warmth.
They are worlds apart, and he’s not sure if he’s the anomaly, or if they are.
*
Steve’s mother always told him that if you hurt someone, you apologize to them. Actually, she first told him that he should always do his best not to hurt others, but if he messed up and did so, the first thing he had to do was to apologize, and mean it.
Problem is, Emma is making it very hard for him to apologize. He’s not sure if he’s offended her – though he can’t see how not – but the fact that he finds himself unable to catch her alone makes him suspect there’s something he should do to put the situation right.
("I do not understand, friend," Thor says, brows drawn together in confusion. Steve thinks that this world must be both easier and harder for Thor, because while he is so very far from home, Steve still stumbles the most when things are closest to what he remembers. He is thrown not by the colours women (and men) dye their hair, but by the way they let their roots grow back in; coffee shops unsettle him not in that they exist and serve tea from Japan, China, India, but in the fact that no one in them smokes. "If there was no shame to be found, why is an apology necessitated?")
After a few days, he finally tracks her down. She’s up on the roof, sunbathing. He is thrown first by the fact that he actually found her, and second by the fact that her skin doesn’t appear to be darkening, the wings of her shoulder blades still alabaster.
It takes him a moment to realize she’s topless.
“Please,” she says, head resting on her crossed arms. She doesn’t look up, angles her head back to where he hovers behind her. “Just because I enjoy a little sun doesn’t mean I want to court wrinkles and cancer.”
“Right,” Steve says. He tries to keep his thoughts as neat as possible. He concentrates on the scent of sunscreen that he’d somehow missed before, tries to focus on the chemical-coconut smell of it and not look at the oiled sweep of Emma’s spine. He wonders briefly if she’s set this up to be as uncomfortable for him as possible, but he squashes the thought down.
“Out with it, then,” Emma says. “You haven’t got all day.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, stiffly. “I just wanted to apologize.”
Emma sighs at that. Raises herself up on one elbow and angles her head back towards him. The blond spill of her hair means that he can’t see anything, but –
Her eyes are like diamond. “Whatever for?”
Steve swallows. “I thought –”
“I’m aware of what you thought. That’s not what you need to apologize for.”
Steve steps forward. His shadow is tattooed across the small of her back. “But there is something I need to apologize for?”
Emma raises an eyebrow at him. “Let me know when you figure it out,” she says, and lets her head rest back down on her forearms. “You’re in my light.”
*
“Emma’s not offended that you thought she was a stripper,” Pepper tells him. “She’s offended that you’re sorry about it.”
*
“What does Emma like to do?” Tony repeats back to Steve. Steve shuffles his feet a little and nods.
“Um,” Tony says. Reaches up to scratch his forehead, and catches the fact that he’s holding a still-lit blowtorch just in time. “Fight or commit crimes? Crush people’s dreams while wearing white negligee?”
Steve frowns, because really, it’s like Tony isn’t putting any effort in at all, which – okay, not unexpected, but – “That’s not very nice, Tony,” he says in rebuke.
Tony blinks at him, owlishly. “Steve,” he says. “I’m not sure if you noticed this – and if you haven’t I’m definitely going to have to re-evaluate the ’super’ part of super serum – but neither Emma nor I are nice people. You want nice, you’re going to have to borrow Jane from Thor or something. The Avengers have a limited supply of ’nice’ and you’re hogging it all up.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Steve says. “I’m not – I’m not nice, I’m decent. And besides. There’s not a finite supply of niceness.”
Tony snorts, and finally shuts off the welding torch that’s still spitting blue flame into open air. “Of course you are. And of course there is. It’s the good cop/bad cop thing. We can’t all be good cops, and there’s a good chance I might be genetically incapable of not being an asshole.”
Tony has that look on his face, pinched and challenging and set around the eyes that he gets sometimes when he’s thinking of his father. Crosses his arms a bit and angles forward, like he’s looking for a fight. Steve feels something low flip in his stomach. He knew Howard. He liked Howard. He finds it difficult to integrate the man he owes so much to with this one Tony remembers; he’s not sure where their own biases line up and there’s still that undercurrent sometimes where he doesn’t know how the Howard he did know would feel about this man his son has become. And he hates to think ill of the dead, but – there’s the way Rhodey never mentions Howard’s name. The way Tony seems to spend pretty much all of his time shouting himself hoarse, like he thinks he’ll disappear if he stops yelling ’Look at me!,’ and no one will notice. Tony’s still looking at him, challenging, and Steve sighs and drops his eyes.
“Of course,” Tony says, as if they hadn’t been staring uneasily at each other for several minutes, “I might have to re-evaluate the nice thing, given that Emma’s in a relationship. You know that she’s in a relationship, right?”
“What?” Steve feels his ears colour as the implication sinks in. “That’s not what – I wasn’t asking because I wanted – I’m not –” He hadn’t realized that she and Tony were that – were –
“You dog,” Tony says, and he’s laughing, but he’s not.
“I wouldn’t,” Steve says, because that’s important. It’s important that Tony know he wouldn’t. “I would never –”
“Of course not,” Tony says, voice mocking. “What would the press say, Captain American and someone with a history like that?” There’s something in his eyes that Steve can’t identify, but Tony flips the welding shield back down over his face and turns back to the armour.
Steve has no idea how this conversation has gone so wrong. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, plainly.
Tony sparks the torch back to life and waves at Steve in a way that manages to convey a mixture of ’yeah, yeah,’ ’uh huh,’ and ’go away now.’ Steve stands there for a minute, watching Tony work, before he turns to leave the lab.
“She doesn’t dislike art,” Tony calls out finally, grudgingly, as the door closes behind him.
*
The thing is, Steve’s starting to suspect that he was wrong about this not being about Tony. Or rather – when he lets himself think about why he’s not thinking about it, he’s decided that maybe it’s about more than just the idea of Tony. Tony as someone who is there and available and has liquid smiles and quicksilver moods and tawny skin and –
When he lets himself think about it?
Well.
*
“You weren’t entirely wrong,” Emma tells him. They are standing in front of a piece of particularly confusing modern art. It’s a local gallery opening, high class. Lots of press and glitz and glimmer, exceedingly tiny food on silver plates that leaves his stomach grumbling. He doesn’t know how Pepper secured the tickets. Steve has his head cocked at a thirty degree angle as he tries to figure out if the piece is supposed to be mating jellyfish or a commentary on societal overindulgence.
His head snaps around to Emma, staring at the painting with her face a perfectly constructed façade. Her hair is caught up in an elegant twist, and her neckline exposes her bellybutton. “It’s not as if I’ve never been a stripper,” she says as she raises her flute of champagne to her delicately painted lips. Flashbulbs go off behind her, catching amber against the bubbles that rush against the glass. They are going to make the front page of at least a few papers, the society section of most of the others.
“I’m sorry,” he says numbly, because Pepper was right. If there’s nothing wrong with being a stripper, why is he so sorry that he thought Emma was one? Why would that have wronged her?
Emma delicately plucks a fresh flute of champagne from the tray of a passing server. She holds it to the light to admire the colour, the rise of bubbles. “Please, Rogers. I’ll admit to the tiniest bit of disappointment, but in order for you to have actually offended me, it would require that I care rather more about your opinion of me than I actually do.”
He feels awkward and ungainly, like everyone can see that he’s still just that boy from Brooklyn, like the expensive suit Tony poured him into sits on top of his old, frailer frame, an imperfect disguise everyone can see right through.
Emma reaches out to gently straighten his bowtie. “We all come from somewhere,” she says.
*
Steve has dreams sometimes. Ones about Tony that leave him red-eared and that he likes to pretend not to remember. Others, more common, about falling. Water and ice. Bombs and chain link fences topped with razor wire. Sometimes he wakes up gasping, remembering nothing of where or when he is, other than that it’s wrong, that it’s somewhere he doesn’t belong. Less and less these days, though, and it takes him less and less time to remember where he is, when he is. He used to go for a run when he couldn’t go back to sleep, slip out into early morning New York, but then JARVIS tattled on him to Tony, and Tony pitched a fit about safety and responsibility and who goes out by themselves to run through dark alleys at 3 am in New York, Jesus.
He’s making hot milk in the kitchen when Emma walks in. Her makeup appears to be somehow perfectly applied, hair neat and straight, and she’s wearing – he quickly turns back to the stove. Something made of lace and satin. “What are you doing up?”
“You were loud,” she says. She takes the cup of hot milk he hands her without comment, and he tries not to look at her in surprise as he settles beside her with one of his own.
“I’ll try to be more quiet in the future,” he says, wincing. Tony sleeps little enough as is, and if he woke her...
“Your dreams,” Emma clarifies as she sips her milk. “Your dreams were loud.”
Steve has a nasty, free falling moment where he can’t remember which set he was having, if he was freezing or hurtling, plunging into the ocean and made her live that with him. It was one of the other ones though, the ones that leave him hot and ashamed and disoriented.
“I could make that go away, you know,” Emma says. She’s staring down into her hot milk like she’s never seen anything like it before, and it takes a minute for her words hit him.
“No!” Steve says, more forcefully than he means it to come out. He’s still getting there – he’s still learning to accept who he is, and that it’s okay for him to – it’s okay if he likes men like that, it’s okay if he is attracted to men, it’s okay if he’s – it’s okay if he’s gay. If he is. “No,” he repeats, skittering back from the table a little bit, like she might already be in his mind and a few inches would make all the difference. “Why would you offer that? I read the news,” he says, up on his feet, pacing, feeling something build inside him. “There are kids being driven to kill themselves for being gay, even in this century. Because they’re told that it’s not okay. But it is. It is okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with –” Steve stops. Looks down at himself. “It’s okay,” he says, softly. “I have to – I have to go.”
*
He sits up on the roof of the mansion with his bare feet on the shingles and stares at the same city lights Emma is probably staring at. Cold night air seeps through the thin fabric of his pyjama pants, and he wraps his arms around his knees, the tiny hairs of his forearms prickling upright, and he lets himself think about the way Tony’s hands move when he talks, nails lined with grease and skin flecked intermittently with small cuts and healing contact burns. He thinks about Bucky, a bit. About the shell of Tony’s ear. About a beautiful man he saw in Denmark who had a light dusting of freckles and an easy smile. What Tony’s face might look like in the dark, soft with sleep and lit only by the faint blue glow of the arc reactor.
So men, yes. Tony – yes.
He thinks about Tony.
He lets himself think about Tony.
*
Emma is still sitting alone in the kitchen when he walks back in, empty mug sticky from milk between her palms, staring blankly out at the city lights. “I’m okay, ” he says, quietly. His face is numb, skin still raised in goose bumps, and his toes are starting to warm somewhat painfully back to life with pins and needles, a sharp contrast against the warmth that’s starting to grow somewhere in his chest, his heart, his head. “I’m all right, ” he repeats, and he’s not sure if it’s a confirmation or a confrontation or –
“If you’re quite done jumping to conclusions?” Emma asks as she turns to face him. She’d startled a little when he spoke, as if she hadn’t heard or sensed him coming and that’s – that’s a huge flashing sign of something. Her eyes are colder than he’s ever seen them, but he refuses to let them quell the sense of warmth growing inside him. He stares right back at her, shoulders back, and hangs on tight to that one belief, that it is okay. Emma continues to look at him, and something in her face – it doesn’t soften, but it shifts, and she looks so tired, and Steve feels all the righteousness leave his body.
“Who?” he asks as he seats himself gingerly back at the table. Because unlike Tony, Emma actually doesn’t care particularly about what people think about her. What he thinks about her.
She raises an elegant eyebrow. “That, darling, is because I learned eventually that the approval of my family was something that would, in fact, diminish me. ” Her voice is cold and controlled, and Steve thinks she’s baiting him.
"Who?" he repeats, because Emma’s hands are still clutched tightly around the mug. Because not everything is about him.
“My brother,” she says, finally. And Steve wonders – he wonders for a moment if maybe she hasn’t seen anything like that cup of warm milk before, if no one has ever handed her a glass of warm milk when she couldn’t sleep or when she thought there were monsters under the bed. “I was sixteen the first time he tried.”
Steve swallows. “He was – “
She looks up sharply. “He was the only person in my family who really had any sort of intrinsic value as a person, and yes, he was gay.”
Steve feels himself shrink. “So when you offered –”
“I meant the internalized homophobia, yes.”
“You were being nice to me,” he says.
“You’d be hard-pressed to prove it.”
He grins. “You were.”
“If you tell anyone –”
“What, you’ll make me regret it?”
She raises an eyebrow. “If you tell anyone, they’ll never believe you.”
“You’re not very good at it.”
“It’s not a skill I’ve had much call to develop.”
Steve looks down at his interlaced fingers resting on the wooden table. He still remembers the original width of his palms, the slenderness of his knuckles. He forgets sometimes that he’s still growing into himself. That they’re all still growing into themselves, really. He looks up at Emma. “I’m sorry,” he says, and means it as much as he’s ever meant anything. He’s sorry about her brother; he’s sorry about himself; he’s sorry that –
She reaches out to cover his hands with hers. “You really are,” she says, with something in her face that’s almost like wonder. “How remarkable.”
*
The morning paper has a picture of Steve and Emma at the art gallery on the front page. Their heads are inclined ever so slightly in towards each other as they look at a canvas of turquoise and citron swirls; his hand hovers by her lower back and she is toying with one diamond earring. The inset photo is from the battle the other day. Emma is punching the head off of a robot kitten while Steve hides behind a tree. He was actually dodging a series of laser beams, but as presented, it looks like he’s hiding.
Someone – probably Clint, but only because Steve hasn’t seen Pepper – has taped it to the fridge. Someone – almost certainly Clint – has drawn a heart around Emma and Steve and adorned it with frighteningly realistic-looking arrows piercing it. Bruce is standing at the fridge, drawing over the heart with red marker to make one that’s more anatomically accurate.
“Good morning,” Steve says when Tony shambles into the kitchen. “It’s not what it looks like,” he adds with a sigh when he sees Tony blinking at the picture Bruce is doodling on.
“Really?” Tony asks. His voice is only a little sharp, but considering the hour, that’s the equivalent of razor fine.
“Really,” Steve says. Because, the whole maybe-possibly-gay thing aside, Tony can’t really think that Steve would steal his girl, could he? That Steve would be able to steal his girl?
“Of course it’s not,” Tony says. “Why would the great Captain America deign to be involved with someone like us?”
Emma appears out of nowhere (Steve wonders if maybe she’s been taking lessons from Natasha and isn’t that a frightening thought) and flicks Tony across the back of the head. “Be nice,” she says.
“First of all, oww, and second – what the hell? Did Steve infect you with nice? How did that happen?” Tony skitters along in front of her as she glares him down the hall and towards the elevator.
“Wait,” Steve says, staring after them as they disappear.
Bruce caps the pen heavily and opens the fridge. “I can’t believe I’m the only one here who gets treated as less than stable.”
Someone like us? Steve blinks. “Wait, what?”
Bruce shrugs and goes digging through the fridge. “You do all know that I don’t actually have a problem with blueberries, right?”
*
Steve lies flat on his back on his bed with his arms crossed and glares up at the ceiling. Somewhere in the basement lab, something bangs loudly.
He’s trying to have an epiphany here, he really is, but the intermittent banging is making it very difficult. It’s making it difficult for him to finish realigning his worldviews when he keeps being forcibly reminded of what is probably going on in the workshop with Tony and Emma right now. It’s not that he has any problem with the idea of mixing business and pleasure (he might). He supposes that working on electrical upgrades and improved neurological interfaces for days on end must get exhausting. Boring. Something you require a break from. It just seems unprofessional. Which, really, isn’t anything that should surprise him, Steve thinks. It’s just –
“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS’s cool voice asks. “Your vital heart rate and pulse indicate you are experiencing some amount of distress. Is there anything that I can do to assist you?”
Something crashes again, and Steve forces the muscles in his hands to relax out of the fists they had apparently curled themselves into of their own accord. “I’m fine, JARVIS. Thank you.”
“If you’ll pardon the observation, that does not appear to be the case.”
“Thank you, JARVIS,” Steve says through gritted teeth, hoping the AI will get the hint. And he seems to, leaving Steve alone to do something that is definitely not sulking or dwelling for what is either an hour or five minutes.
“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS asks again.
“Yes, JARVIS?”
“At Ms. Frost’s request, I have transferred several files to your computer,” JARVIS says. “It consists primarily of security camera footage from the workshop.”
Steve bolts upright. “Wait, what, no. There is no way I should have access to that sort of thing.”
“She believes it will be most illuminating,” JARVIS continues as if Steve hadn’t interrupted. “I must say that I concur.”
“Take it away, JARVIS,” Steve says desperately.
“The files have already been transferred,” JARVIS says. “You may do with them what you wish.”
“JARVIS...”
“Good day, Captain.”
*
Steve has every intention of deleting the files. It’s the only reason he turns on the computer that Tony helpfully installed in his room. The keyboard and mouse are specially reinforced, because at first Steve kept accidentally ending up permanently compressing keys and smooshing the mouse.
He means to throw the files away. He’s really not sure where Emma is coming from on this one. There was no way she hadn’t picked up on how he felt about her boyfriend. Maybe she thought that she was doing him a favour – a glimpse of Tony’s arched back or of his – Steve blushes. If she – if she wanted to introduce him to porn, he was under the impression that the internet was approximately 30% made up out of the stuff. The computer isn’t his favourite part of the 21st century, but he can deal with it. And there were a few places he accidentally wandered into, but.
He starts to delete the files five, ten times. Once he actually drops them into the trash bin before pulling them back out again.
It’s probably a slip of the mouse that opens the largest video.
Okay, that’s a lie. He looks away quickly, fingers laced over his eyes. His face is hot. From his computer’s tiny speakers, he hears Tony say, “Ready to go?”
Emma’s voice is level. “Everything appears to be in order.”
“Safeties?”
“In place.”
“Hopefully this time we’ll have worked out the kinks.”
Emma snorts. “If I get stuck again...”
“No, no, no, we should have enough flexibility this time.”
And then the banging starts.
“Good,” Tony says. “That’s it.”
“Here?”
“To your left and just a little harder.”
It’s... vigorous. Steve can feel himself flush down to the back of his neck. The thoughts that are running through his head are – there’s no way that they’re any more graphic than what’s actually happening on screen, and he lets himself peek up through his interlaced fingers.
It takes him a moment to parse what he’s seeing, even as his hands drop limply to his sides.
Emma, glittering diamond, is punching the Iron Man suit. She appears to be targeting the shoulder joint at the moment, as Tony monitors a string of readouts spilling from the suit and onto a holographic display.
She’s not. They’re not.
Steve feels Emma’s telepathic presence filter into the back of his head, and she laughs, not unkindly.
Which means she was in his head, when.
When he was thinking those thoughts.
When he was thinking those thoughts about Tony.
She laughs as Steve puts his head down and thumps it against his desk.
*
“Tony?” Steve calls. He’s standing at the entrance of the lab, shifting awkwardly on the balls of his feet. JARVIS has assured him that Tony was down here (and had offered that Emma had gone back to Westchester the day before), but he can’t see him.
“Steve?” comes the muffled reply, and Steve sees Tony roll out from underneath something that looks to be somewhere between a car, a plane, a motorbike, and the Batmobile. “Hi?” Tony asks. “What are you doing down here in my den of debauchery?”
“Hi,” Steve says, moving to stand by Tony as he levers himself up and off of the rolling contraption he was laid out flat on. “I just – hi.”
Tony blinks at him. “Hi. Okay.”
“Hi,” Steve repeats, leaning back against Tony’s workbench.
“Yeah, I think we covered that.” Tony’s hands are covered with grease, oil worn into his knuckles and smudged across his forehead. “If you’re looking for Emma, she headed back to the school. Something about how everyone here except Bruce has PTSD and dreams at excruciating volume.”
“I know.” Steve fights the almost overwhelming impulse to check his hair, fiddle with the edge of the plain white shirt that it took him longer to pick out than it probably should have. He blinks. "I thought you were just done."
"And that, but she’s never been one to waste an exit." Tony shrugs. "Bruce and Thor, but apparently, Thor ’dreams in wretchedly alien tongues about battle, blood, and glory.’ Seems all-speak gives her a migraine."
"Oh," Steve says, and tries to remember to focus. Tony’s wearing a stained tank top and old jeans, ripped and faded, worn until they cling to his butt in a way Steve is entirely okay with. “I just wanted. I wanted to apologize.” And that’s not really what he wants to do at all, but it’ll have to do.
Tony cocks his head. “For?” He reaches past Steve for an old rag on the table behind him, clearly expecting Steve to give way. Steve forces himself to stay still, fingers tightening against the cool metal edge of the work bench. Tony has to lean in close to grab the rag, biceps brushing his, breath ghosting over Steve’s neck. The glow of the arc reactor is cast faintly though the thin white fabric of Tony’s tank and across the cotton of Steve’s t-shirt. Tony smells like metal, oil, and old coffee, and Steve doesn’t remember the last time anything smelled that good. He drops his chin a bit as he breathes, fingers digging into the bench in a way he’s pretty sure doesn’t leave dents.
Tony looks at him somewhat strangely as he draws back with the rag and starts wiping down his hands. “Is this one of those apologies where you’re actually trying to reverse psychology me into apologizing myself? Because those are the only type I usually get.”
“No?” Steve offers. Takes a deep breath. It would be so easy to back out now. Say something about not mistrusting Emma after all, or something about how he drank the last of the milk, or – “It’s possible Emma might have picked up some thoughts from me that were not entirely pure.”
Tony laughs. “Steve. She’s a telepath. She dresses herself. That’s kind of the point.”
“No,” Steve says slowly. His fingers tighten on the workbench and this time he knows he feels something give.
“I guarantee you she’s picked up worse. She probably thinks you’re cute,” Tony says, continuing like Steve wasn’t even trying to speak. “I will bet you several million dollars that she has overheard more explicit fantasies involving you just from people in your general vicinity.”
“Not thoughts about her.”
“And that is a bet you will lose because I can personally, 100% guarantee you she has heard worse, because Emma may have more than a passable grasp on electronics, but that doesn’t overcome the lack of knowledge about the Iron Man suit or arc reactor technology, so she’s kind of been living in my head a bit for the last few weeks.”
“Thoughts about you.”
“In fact, if it makes you feel better – you know, that probably doesn’t make you feel better, so um, before this gets awkward I will note that I may be a bit mushier about you, but you are not the only one she has heard me – ” Tony stops. Freezes. Points at Steve. “Wait. Back up here a second. What did you just say?”
Steve’s ears redden, but he refuses to drop Tony’s gaze. “That the thoughts your girlfriend picked up might not have been about her. Weren’t about her.”
Tony’s face is almost blank, slack with shock, and that in and of itself is almost worth the price of admission, Steve thinks. Tony shakes his head. “Okay. Not my girlfriend. No. First, her boyfriend, Cyclops, who happens to be able to shoot force beams from his face, would probably beat me to death with the stick he keeps up his ass. Also, second, given the fact that we had rich, drunken parents with loose morals who ran in the same drunken social circles, there is a non-zero chance that we are related. Third: you know what, I don’t even have a third.”
Which really, is kind of what Steve had been hoping for. Except for some of the details, but. “That is the part of this conversation you’re focussing on?” he asks.
Tony goes to run his hands through his hair, then stops and reaches out to pick up something from another workbench, then paces and just waves his arms widely. “That. I wasn’t sure if that other part actually happened or if I just dreamed it.”
“I understand,” Steve says stiffly, “if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“What? No. Why would it?” Tony stops pacing. “Wait. We are talking about the same thing right now, right? You are saying that you, Captain America, have had thoughts about me that are less than pure.”
Steve nods, stiffly. “Yes.” He can feel the heat coming off of his face, but he refuses to back down.
Tony takes a step towards him. “And by less than pure, you mean of a sexual nature, correct?”
Steve can feel his ears and the back of his neck flush. “Yes,” he says, and he lets his gaze wander significantly down Tony’s body. By the time his eyes get back up to Tony’s face, Tony’s looking at him with something soft in his eyes, something that he flickers aside when Steve meets his eyes again. It’s still there, but it’s like Tony feels the need to sweep it aside so it’s not visible. Steve thinks it’s something he might enjoy teasing out again and again.
Tony steps in towards him again, giving Steve time to react, to move away, but Steve stays where he is as Tony’s thighs brush up against his, as Tony reaches out slowly with grease-stained hands to rest them against Steve’s sides, pressing dark handprints against the fabric. “You know that I’m not a very good prospect, right?” Tony asks. “I mean, you saw how things went with Pepper.”
“Tony?” Steve says. “Be quiet.” Because Steve’s not an idiot, really, and he knows what he’s getting into. Or he has a good idea, anyway. “I’ve thought about it.” He’s thought about it a lot, and standing here with Tony’s hands warm against his side, knees touching, he’s pretty sure.
“So,” Tony says. “The thoughts I’m having right now? Not entirely pure.”
Steve leans forward until his face is scant inches from Tony’s, breath gusting against his cheek. Presses his lips to the shadowed stubble at the corner of Tony’s jaw. “I’d certainly hope not,” Steve says, a weight somewhere deep in his chest releasing as Tony laughs into him.
EPILOGUE
Something bangs down in the basement. Steve winces automatically, shoulders drawing up a little tight before he makes them relax back down. Tony was gone when Steve woke this morning, later than he’d like, but on less sleep. Tony is down in the basement with Emma doing a second round of stress tests on armour upgrades. Something crashes again, and Steve feels himself flinch.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, ” Clint says. “Why do you keep twitching like that? ”
“Seriously? ” Steve asks, because while he really doesn’t expect anyone to have had the same reaction as he did, it’s still loud noises! People with super human reflexes! “Doesn’t the random crashing coming from the basement at intermittent intervals ever startle anyone else? ”
The breakfast table is silent. He can hear the soft creak of paper as Scott Summers, who had apparently turned up with Emma, flip a page in his newspaper.
“… No? ” Natasha offers.
Bruce looks up from his yogurt. “You’re aware that the basement is soundproofed, right? ” he asks.
Steve blinks. “But! The banging. ”
Thor looks at him in some concern. “What banging? ”
Somewhere in his head, someone laughs. Steve sighs, and puts his head down on the table. It’s a position he’s starting to get used to.
“Don’t worry, ” Scott says, idly. “You get used to it. Do you want the entertainment section? ”
“I’ll take the sports section if you’re done with it, ” Steve says, forehead still resting on the table.
This century, he thinks.
That would be a rather more convincing thought, Emma says inside his head, if you didn’t exhibit such a blatantly noisome love for it.
Forehead still resting on the table, Steve shakes his head, because he kind of does.
Something crashes again. Out of the corner of his vision, he sees Bruce startle slightly, and Steve narrows his eyes in suspicion. Bruce smiles guiltily and looks away.
Most days, anyway.
It’s no wonder that Tony and Emma get along, Steve thinks. They come from the same world, grew up in the same way. He wonders what it was like: flatware and silverware and summer homes. Private lessons, probably, piano or dressage or dance. Did they ever go cold or hungry? Living here now he finds everything almost impossible to comprehend and far too easy to take for granted.
He thinks of his childhood, of their single room with its bare bulbs and drafts and worn floorboards, of his mother and her determined, tired eyes, and he is filled with a fierce warmth.
They are worlds apart, and he’s not sure if he’s the anomaly, or if they are.
*
Steve’s mother always told him that if you hurt someone, you apologize to them. Actually, she first told him that he should always do his best not to hurt others, but if he messed up and did so, the first thing he had to do was to apologize, and mean it.
Problem is, Emma is making it very hard for him to apologize. He’s not sure if he’s offended her – though he can’t see how not – but the fact that he finds himself unable to catch her alone makes him suspect there’s something he should do to put the situation right.
("I do not understand, friend," Thor says, brows drawn together in confusion. Steve thinks that this world must be both easier and harder for Thor, because while he is so very far from home, Steve still stumbles the most when things are closest to what he remembers. He is thrown not by the colours women (and men) dye their hair, but by the way they let their roots grow back in; coffee shops unsettle him not in that they exist and serve tea from Japan, China, India, but in the fact that no one in them smokes. "If there was no shame to be found, why is an apology necessitated?")
After a few days, he finally tracks her down. She’s up on the roof, sunbathing. He is thrown first by the fact that he actually found her, and second by the fact that her skin doesn’t appear to be darkening, the wings of her shoulder blades still alabaster.
It takes him a moment to realize she’s topless.
“Please,” she says, head resting on her crossed arms. She doesn’t look up, angles her head back to where he hovers behind her. “Just because I enjoy a little sun doesn’t mean I want to court wrinkles and cancer.”
“Right,” Steve says. He tries to keep his thoughts as neat as possible. He concentrates on the scent of sunscreen that he’d somehow missed before, tries to focus on the chemical-coconut smell of it and not look at the oiled sweep of Emma’s spine. He wonders briefly if she’s set this up to be as uncomfortable for him as possible, but he squashes the thought down.
“Out with it, then,” Emma says. “You haven’t got all day.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, stiffly. “I just wanted to apologize.”
Emma sighs at that. Raises herself up on one elbow and angles her head back towards him. The blond spill of her hair means that he can’t see anything, but –
Her eyes are like diamond. “Whatever for?”
Steve swallows. “I thought –”
“I’m aware of what you thought. That’s not what you need to apologize for.”
Steve steps forward. His shadow is tattooed across the small of her back. “But there is something I need to apologize for?”
Emma raises an eyebrow at him. “Let me know when you figure it out,” she says, and lets her head rest back down on her forearms. “You’re in my light.”
*
“Emma’s not offended that you thought she was a stripper,” Pepper tells him. “She’s offended that you’re sorry about it.”
*
“What does Emma like to do?” Tony repeats back to Steve. Steve shuffles his feet a little and nods.
“Um,” Tony says. Reaches up to scratch his forehead, and catches the fact that he’s holding a still-lit blowtorch just in time. “Fight or commit crimes? Crush people’s dreams while wearing white negligee?”
Steve frowns, because really, it’s like Tony isn’t putting any effort in at all, which – okay, not unexpected, but – “That’s not very nice, Tony,” he says in rebuke.
Tony blinks at him, owlishly. “Steve,” he says. “I’m not sure if you noticed this – and if you haven’t I’m definitely going to have to re-evaluate the ’super’ part of super serum – but neither Emma nor I are nice people. You want nice, you’re going to have to borrow Jane from Thor or something. The Avengers have a limited supply of ’nice’ and you’re hogging it all up.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Steve says. “I’m not – I’m not nice, I’m decent. And besides. There’s not a finite supply of niceness.”
Tony snorts, and finally shuts off the welding torch that’s still spitting blue flame into open air. “Of course you are. And of course there is. It’s the good cop/bad cop thing. We can’t all be good cops, and there’s a good chance I might be genetically incapable of not being an asshole.”
Tony has that look on his face, pinched and challenging and set around the eyes that he gets sometimes when he’s thinking of his father. Crosses his arms a bit and angles forward, like he’s looking for a fight. Steve feels something low flip in his stomach. He knew Howard. He liked Howard. He finds it difficult to integrate the man he owes so much to with this one Tony remembers; he’s not sure where their own biases line up and there’s still that undercurrent sometimes where he doesn’t know how the Howard he did know would feel about this man his son has become. And he hates to think ill of the dead, but – there’s the way Rhodey never mentions Howard’s name. The way Tony seems to spend pretty much all of his time shouting himself hoarse, like he thinks he’ll disappear if he stops yelling ’Look at me!,’ and no one will notice. Tony’s still looking at him, challenging, and Steve sighs and drops his eyes.
“Of course,” Tony says, as if they hadn’t been staring uneasily at each other for several minutes, “I might have to re-evaluate the nice thing, given that Emma’s in a relationship. You know that she’s in a relationship, right?”
“What?” Steve feels his ears colour as the implication sinks in. “That’s not what – I wasn’t asking because I wanted – I’m not –” He hadn’t realized that she and Tony were that – were –
“You dog,” Tony says, and he’s laughing, but he’s not.
“I wouldn’t,” Steve says, because that’s important. It’s important that Tony know he wouldn’t. “I would never –”
“Of course not,” Tony says, voice mocking. “What would the press say, Captain American and someone with a history like that?” There’s something in his eyes that Steve can’t identify, but Tony flips the welding shield back down over his face and turns back to the armour.
Steve has no idea how this conversation has gone so wrong. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, plainly.
Tony sparks the torch back to life and waves at Steve in a way that manages to convey a mixture of ’yeah, yeah,’ ’uh huh,’ and ’go away now.’ Steve stands there for a minute, watching Tony work, before he turns to leave the lab.
“She doesn’t dislike art,” Tony calls out finally, grudgingly, as the door closes behind him.
*
The thing is, Steve’s starting to suspect that he was wrong about this not being about Tony. Or rather – when he lets himself think about why he’s not thinking about it, he’s decided that maybe it’s about more than just the idea of Tony. Tony as someone who is there and available and has liquid smiles and quicksilver moods and tawny skin and –
When he lets himself think about it?
Well.
*
“You weren’t entirely wrong,” Emma tells him. They are standing in front of a piece of particularly confusing modern art. It’s a local gallery opening, high class. Lots of press and glitz and glimmer, exceedingly tiny food on silver plates that leaves his stomach grumbling. He doesn’t know how Pepper secured the tickets. Steve has his head cocked at a thirty degree angle as he tries to figure out if the piece is supposed to be mating jellyfish or a commentary on societal overindulgence.
His head snaps around to Emma, staring at the painting with her face a perfectly constructed façade. Her hair is caught up in an elegant twist, and her neckline exposes her bellybutton. “It’s not as if I’ve never been a stripper,” she says as she raises her flute of champagne to her delicately painted lips. Flashbulbs go off behind her, catching amber against the bubbles that rush against the glass. They are going to make the front page of at least a few papers, the society section of most of the others.
“I’m sorry,” he says numbly, because Pepper was right. If there’s nothing wrong with being a stripper, why is he so sorry that he thought Emma was one? Why would that have wronged her?
Emma delicately plucks a fresh flute of champagne from the tray of a passing server. She holds it to the light to admire the colour, the rise of bubbles. “Please, Rogers. I’ll admit to the tiniest bit of disappointment, but in order for you to have actually offended me, it would require that I care rather more about your opinion of me than I actually do.”
He feels awkward and ungainly, like everyone can see that he’s still just that boy from Brooklyn, like the expensive suit Tony poured him into sits on top of his old, frailer frame, an imperfect disguise everyone can see right through.
Emma reaches out to gently straighten his bowtie. “We all come from somewhere,” she says.
*
Steve has dreams sometimes. Ones about Tony that leave him red-eared and that he likes to pretend not to remember. Others, more common, about falling. Water and ice. Bombs and chain link fences topped with razor wire. Sometimes he wakes up gasping, remembering nothing of where or when he is, other than that it’s wrong, that it’s somewhere he doesn’t belong. Less and less these days, though, and it takes him less and less time to remember where he is, when he is. He used to go for a run when he couldn’t go back to sleep, slip out into early morning New York, but then JARVIS tattled on him to Tony, and Tony pitched a fit about safety and responsibility and who goes out by themselves to run through dark alleys at 3 am in New York, Jesus.
He’s making hot milk in the kitchen when Emma walks in. Her makeup appears to be somehow perfectly applied, hair neat and straight, and she’s wearing – he quickly turns back to the stove. Something made of lace and satin. “What are you doing up?”
“You were loud,” she says. She takes the cup of hot milk he hands her without comment, and he tries not to look at her in surprise as he settles beside her with one of his own.
“I’ll try to be more quiet in the future,” he says, wincing. Tony sleeps little enough as is, and if he woke her...
“Your dreams,” Emma clarifies as she sips her milk. “Your dreams were loud.”
Steve has a nasty, free falling moment where he can’t remember which set he was having, if he was freezing or hurtling, plunging into the ocean and made her live that with him. It was one of the other ones though, the ones that leave him hot and ashamed and disoriented.
“I could make that go away, you know,” Emma says. She’s staring down into her hot milk like she’s never seen anything like it before, and it takes a minute for her words hit him.
“No!” Steve says, more forcefully than he means it to come out. He’s still getting there – he’s still learning to accept who he is, and that it’s okay for him to – it’s okay if he likes men like that, it’s okay if he is attracted to men, it’s okay if he’s – it’s okay if he’s gay. If he is. “No,” he repeats, skittering back from the table a little bit, like she might already be in his mind and a few inches would make all the difference. “Why would you offer that? I read the news,” he says, up on his feet, pacing, feeling something build inside him. “There are kids being driven to kill themselves for being gay, even in this century. Because they’re told that it’s not okay. But it is. It is okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with –” Steve stops. Looks down at himself. “It’s okay,” he says, softly. “I have to – I have to go.”
*
He sits up on the roof of the mansion with his bare feet on the shingles and stares at the same city lights Emma is probably staring at. Cold night air seeps through the thin fabric of his pyjama pants, and he wraps his arms around his knees, the tiny hairs of his forearms prickling upright, and he lets himself think about the way Tony’s hands move when he talks, nails lined with grease and skin flecked intermittently with small cuts and healing contact burns. He thinks about Bucky, a bit. About the shell of Tony’s ear. About a beautiful man he saw in Denmark who had a light dusting of freckles and an easy smile. What Tony’s face might look like in the dark, soft with sleep and lit only by the faint blue glow of the arc reactor.
So men, yes. Tony – yes.
He thinks about Tony.
He lets himself think about Tony.
*
Emma is still sitting alone in the kitchen when he walks back in, empty mug sticky from milk between her palms, staring blankly out at the city lights. “I’m okay, ” he says, quietly. His face is numb, skin still raised in goose bumps, and his toes are starting to warm somewhat painfully back to life with pins and needles, a sharp contrast against the warmth that’s starting to grow somewhere in his chest, his heart, his head. “I’m all right, ” he repeats, and he’s not sure if it’s a confirmation or a confrontation or –
“If you’re quite done jumping to conclusions?” Emma asks as she turns to face him. She’d startled a little when he spoke, as if she hadn’t heard or sensed him coming and that’s – that’s a huge flashing sign of something. Her eyes are colder than he’s ever seen them, but he refuses to let them quell the sense of warmth growing inside him. He stares right back at her, shoulders back, and hangs on tight to that one belief, that it is okay. Emma continues to look at him, and something in her face – it doesn’t soften, but it shifts, and she looks so tired, and Steve feels all the righteousness leave his body.
“Who?” he asks as he seats himself gingerly back at the table. Because unlike Tony, Emma actually doesn’t care particularly about what people think about her. What he thinks about her.
She raises an elegant eyebrow. “That, darling, is because I learned eventually that the approval of my family was something that would, in fact, diminish me. ” Her voice is cold and controlled, and Steve thinks she’s baiting him.
"Who?" he repeats, because Emma’s hands are still clutched tightly around the mug. Because not everything is about him.
“My brother,” she says, finally. And Steve wonders – he wonders for a moment if maybe she hasn’t seen anything like that cup of warm milk before, if no one has ever handed her a glass of warm milk when she couldn’t sleep or when she thought there were monsters under the bed. “I was sixteen the first time he tried.”
Steve swallows. “He was – “
She looks up sharply. “He was the only person in my family who really had any sort of intrinsic value as a person, and yes, he was gay.”
Steve feels himself shrink. “So when you offered –”
“I meant the internalized homophobia, yes.”
“You were being nice to me,” he says.
“You’d be hard-pressed to prove it.”
He grins. “You were.”
“If you tell anyone –”
“What, you’ll make me regret it?”
She raises an eyebrow. “If you tell anyone, they’ll never believe you.”
“You’re not very good at it.”
“It’s not a skill I’ve had much call to develop.”
Steve looks down at his interlaced fingers resting on the wooden table. He still remembers the original width of his palms, the slenderness of his knuckles. He forgets sometimes that he’s still growing into himself. That they’re all still growing into themselves, really. He looks up at Emma. “I’m sorry,” he says, and means it as much as he’s ever meant anything. He’s sorry about her brother; he’s sorry about himself; he’s sorry that –
She reaches out to cover his hands with hers. “You really are,” she says, with something in her face that’s almost like wonder. “How remarkable.”
*
The morning paper has a picture of Steve and Emma at the art gallery on the front page. Their heads are inclined ever so slightly in towards each other as they look at a canvas of turquoise and citron swirls; his hand hovers by her lower back and she is toying with one diamond earring. The inset photo is from the battle the other day. Emma is punching the head off of a robot kitten while Steve hides behind a tree. He was actually dodging a series of laser beams, but as presented, it looks like he’s hiding.
Someone – probably Clint, but only because Steve hasn’t seen Pepper – has taped it to the fridge. Someone – almost certainly Clint – has drawn a heart around Emma and Steve and adorned it with frighteningly realistic-looking arrows piercing it. Bruce is standing at the fridge, drawing over the heart with red marker to make one that’s more anatomically accurate.
“Good morning,” Steve says when Tony shambles into the kitchen. “It’s not what it looks like,” he adds with a sigh when he sees Tony blinking at the picture Bruce is doodling on.
“Really?” Tony asks. His voice is only a little sharp, but considering the hour, that’s the equivalent of razor fine.
“Really,” Steve says. Because, the whole maybe-possibly-gay thing aside, Tony can’t really think that Steve would steal his girl, could he? That Steve would be able to steal his girl?
“Of course it’s not,” Tony says. “Why would the great Captain America deign to be involved with someone like us?”
Emma appears out of nowhere (Steve wonders if maybe she’s been taking lessons from Natasha and isn’t that a frightening thought) and flicks Tony across the back of the head. “Be nice,” she says.
“First of all, oww, and second – what the hell? Did Steve infect you with nice? How did that happen?” Tony skitters along in front of her as she glares him down the hall and towards the elevator.
“Wait,” Steve says, staring after them as they disappear.
Bruce caps the pen heavily and opens the fridge. “I can’t believe I’m the only one here who gets treated as less than stable.”
Someone like us? Steve blinks. “Wait, what?”
Bruce shrugs and goes digging through the fridge. “You do all know that I don’t actually have a problem with blueberries, right?”
*
Steve lies flat on his back on his bed with his arms crossed and glares up at the ceiling. Somewhere in the basement lab, something bangs loudly.
He’s trying to have an epiphany here, he really is, but the intermittent banging is making it very difficult. It’s making it difficult for him to finish realigning his worldviews when he keeps being forcibly reminded of what is probably going on in the workshop with Tony and Emma right now. It’s not that he has any problem with the idea of mixing business and pleasure (he might). He supposes that working on electrical upgrades and improved neurological interfaces for days on end must get exhausting. Boring. Something you require a break from. It just seems unprofessional. Which, really, isn’t anything that should surprise him, Steve thinks. It’s just –
“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS’s cool voice asks. “Your vital heart rate and pulse indicate you are experiencing some amount of distress. Is there anything that I can do to assist you?”
Something crashes again, and Steve forces the muscles in his hands to relax out of the fists they had apparently curled themselves into of their own accord. “I’m fine, JARVIS. Thank you.”
“If you’ll pardon the observation, that does not appear to be the case.”
“Thank you, JARVIS,” Steve says through gritted teeth, hoping the AI will get the hint. And he seems to, leaving Steve alone to do something that is definitely not sulking or dwelling for what is either an hour or five minutes.
“Captain Rogers?” JARVIS asks again.
“Yes, JARVIS?”
“At Ms. Frost’s request, I have transferred several files to your computer,” JARVIS says. “It consists primarily of security camera footage from the workshop.”
Steve bolts upright. “Wait, what, no. There is no way I should have access to that sort of thing.”
“She believes it will be most illuminating,” JARVIS continues as if Steve hadn’t interrupted. “I must say that I concur.”
“Take it away, JARVIS,” Steve says desperately.
“The files have already been transferred,” JARVIS says. “You may do with them what you wish.”
“JARVIS...”
“Good day, Captain.”
*
Steve has every intention of deleting the files. It’s the only reason he turns on the computer that Tony helpfully installed in his room. The keyboard and mouse are specially reinforced, because at first Steve kept accidentally ending up permanently compressing keys and smooshing the mouse.
He means to throw the files away. He’s really not sure where Emma is coming from on this one. There was no way she hadn’t picked up on how he felt about her boyfriend. Maybe she thought that she was doing him a favour – a glimpse of Tony’s arched back or of his – Steve blushes. If she – if she wanted to introduce him to porn, he was under the impression that the internet was approximately 30% made up out of the stuff. The computer isn’t his favourite part of the 21st century, but he can deal with it. And there were a few places he accidentally wandered into, but.
He starts to delete the files five, ten times. Once he actually drops them into the trash bin before pulling them back out again.
It’s probably a slip of the mouse that opens the largest video.
Okay, that’s a lie. He looks away quickly, fingers laced over his eyes. His face is hot. From his computer’s tiny speakers, he hears Tony say, “Ready to go?”
Emma’s voice is level. “Everything appears to be in order.”
“Safeties?”
“In place.”
“Hopefully this time we’ll have worked out the kinks.”
Emma snorts. “If I get stuck again...”
“No, no, no, we should have enough flexibility this time.”
And then the banging starts.
“Good,” Tony says. “That’s it.”
“Here?”
“To your left and just a little harder.”
It’s... vigorous. Steve can feel himself flush down to the back of his neck. The thoughts that are running through his head are – there’s no way that they’re any more graphic than what’s actually happening on screen, and he lets himself peek up through his interlaced fingers.
It takes him a moment to parse what he’s seeing, even as his hands drop limply to his sides.
Emma, glittering diamond, is punching the Iron Man suit. She appears to be targeting the shoulder joint at the moment, as Tony monitors a string of readouts spilling from the suit and onto a holographic display.
She’s not. They’re not.
Steve feels Emma’s telepathic presence filter into the back of his head, and she laughs, not unkindly.
Which means she was in his head, when.
When he was thinking those thoughts.
When he was thinking those thoughts about Tony.
She laughs as Steve puts his head down and thumps it against his desk.
*
“Tony?” Steve calls. He’s standing at the entrance of the lab, shifting awkwardly on the balls of his feet. JARVIS has assured him that Tony was down here (and had offered that Emma had gone back to Westchester the day before), but he can’t see him.
“Steve?” comes the muffled reply, and Steve sees Tony roll out from underneath something that looks to be somewhere between a car, a plane, a motorbike, and the Batmobile. “Hi?” Tony asks. “What are you doing down here in my den of debauchery?”
“Hi,” Steve says, moving to stand by Tony as he levers himself up and off of the rolling contraption he was laid out flat on. “I just – hi.”
Tony blinks at him. “Hi. Okay.”
“Hi,” Steve repeats, leaning back against Tony’s workbench.
“Yeah, I think we covered that.” Tony’s hands are covered with grease, oil worn into his knuckles and smudged across his forehead. “If you’re looking for Emma, she headed back to the school. Something about how everyone here except Bruce has PTSD and dreams at excruciating volume.”
“I know.” Steve fights the almost overwhelming impulse to check his hair, fiddle with the edge of the plain white shirt that it took him longer to pick out than it probably should have. He blinks. "I thought you were just done."
"And that, but she’s never been one to waste an exit." Tony shrugs. "Bruce and Thor, but apparently, Thor ’dreams in wretchedly alien tongues about battle, blood, and glory.’ Seems all-speak gives her a migraine."
"Oh," Steve says, and tries to remember to focus. Tony’s wearing a stained tank top and old jeans, ripped and faded, worn until they cling to his butt in a way Steve is entirely okay with. “I just wanted. I wanted to apologize.” And that’s not really what he wants to do at all, but it’ll have to do.
Tony cocks his head. “For?” He reaches past Steve for an old rag on the table behind him, clearly expecting Steve to give way. Steve forces himself to stay still, fingers tightening against the cool metal edge of the work bench. Tony has to lean in close to grab the rag, biceps brushing his, breath ghosting over Steve’s neck. The glow of the arc reactor is cast faintly though the thin white fabric of Tony’s tank and across the cotton of Steve’s t-shirt. Tony smells like metal, oil, and old coffee, and Steve doesn’t remember the last time anything smelled that good. He drops his chin a bit as he breathes, fingers digging into the bench in a way he’s pretty sure doesn’t leave dents.
Tony looks at him somewhat strangely as he draws back with the rag and starts wiping down his hands. “Is this one of those apologies where you’re actually trying to reverse psychology me into apologizing myself? Because those are the only type I usually get.”
“No?” Steve offers. Takes a deep breath. It would be so easy to back out now. Say something about not mistrusting Emma after all, or something about how he drank the last of the milk, or – “It’s possible Emma might have picked up some thoughts from me that were not entirely pure.”
Tony laughs. “Steve. She’s a telepath. She dresses herself. That’s kind of the point.”
“No,” Steve says slowly. His fingers tighten on the workbench and this time he knows he feels something give.
“I guarantee you she’s picked up worse. She probably thinks you’re cute,” Tony says, continuing like Steve wasn’t even trying to speak. “I will bet you several million dollars that she has overheard more explicit fantasies involving you just from people in your general vicinity.”
“Not thoughts about her.”
“And that is a bet you will lose because I can personally, 100% guarantee you she has heard worse, because Emma may have more than a passable grasp on electronics, but that doesn’t overcome the lack of knowledge about the Iron Man suit or arc reactor technology, so she’s kind of been living in my head a bit for the last few weeks.”
“Thoughts about you.”
“In fact, if it makes you feel better – you know, that probably doesn’t make you feel better, so um, before this gets awkward I will note that I may be a bit mushier about you, but you are not the only one she has heard me – ” Tony stops. Freezes. Points at Steve. “Wait. Back up here a second. What did you just say?”
Steve’s ears redden, but he refuses to drop Tony’s gaze. “That the thoughts your girlfriend picked up might not have been about her. Weren’t about her.”
Tony’s face is almost blank, slack with shock, and that in and of itself is almost worth the price of admission, Steve thinks. Tony shakes his head. “Okay. Not my girlfriend. No. First, her boyfriend, Cyclops, who happens to be able to shoot force beams from his face, would probably beat me to death with the stick he keeps up his ass. Also, second, given the fact that we had rich, drunken parents with loose morals who ran in the same drunken social circles, there is a non-zero chance that we are related. Third: you know what, I don’t even have a third.”
Which really, is kind of what Steve had been hoping for. Except for some of the details, but. “That is the part of this conversation you’re focussing on?” he asks.
Tony goes to run his hands through his hair, then stops and reaches out to pick up something from another workbench, then paces and just waves his arms widely. “That. I wasn’t sure if that other part actually happened or if I just dreamed it.”
“I understand,” Steve says stiffly, “if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“What? No. Why would it?” Tony stops pacing. “Wait. We are talking about the same thing right now, right? You are saying that you, Captain America, have had thoughts about me that are less than pure.”
Steve nods, stiffly. “Yes.” He can feel the heat coming off of his face, but he refuses to back down.
Tony takes a step towards him. “And by less than pure, you mean of a sexual nature, correct?”
Steve can feel his ears and the back of his neck flush. “Yes,” he says, and he lets his gaze wander significantly down Tony’s body. By the time his eyes get back up to Tony’s face, Tony’s looking at him with something soft in his eyes, something that he flickers aside when Steve meets his eyes again. It’s still there, but it’s like Tony feels the need to sweep it aside so it’s not visible. Steve thinks it’s something he might enjoy teasing out again and again.
Tony steps in towards him again, giving Steve time to react, to move away, but Steve stays where he is as Tony’s thighs brush up against his, as Tony reaches out slowly with grease-stained hands to rest them against Steve’s sides, pressing dark handprints against the fabric. “You know that I’m not a very good prospect, right?” Tony asks. “I mean, you saw how things went with Pepper.”
“Tony?” Steve says. “Be quiet.” Because Steve’s not an idiot, really, and he knows what he’s getting into. Or he has a good idea, anyway. “I’ve thought about it.” He’s thought about it a lot, and standing here with Tony’s hands warm against his side, knees touching, he’s pretty sure.
“So,” Tony says. “The thoughts I’m having right now? Not entirely pure.”
Steve leans forward until his face is scant inches from Tony’s, breath gusting against his cheek. Presses his lips to the shadowed stubble at the corner of Tony’s jaw. “I’d certainly hope not,” Steve says, a weight somewhere deep in his chest releasing as Tony laughs into him.
EPILOGUE
Something bangs down in the basement. Steve winces automatically, shoulders drawing up a little tight before he makes them relax back down. Tony was gone when Steve woke this morning, later than he’d like, but on less sleep. Tony is down in the basement with Emma doing a second round of stress tests on armour upgrades. Something crashes again, and Steve feels himself flinch.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, ” Clint says. “Why do you keep twitching like that? ”
“Seriously? ” Steve asks, because while he really doesn’t expect anyone to have had the same reaction as he did, it’s still loud noises! People with super human reflexes! “Doesn’t the random crashing coming from the basement at intermittent intervals ever startle anyone else? ”
The breakfast table is silent. He can hear the soft creak of paper as Scott Summers, who had apparently turned up with Emma, flip a page in his newspaper.
“… No? ” Natasha offers.
Bruce looks up from his yogurt. “You’re aware that the basement is soundproofed, right? ” he asks.
Steve blinks. “But! The banging. ”
Thor looks at him in some concern. “What banging? ”
Somewhere in his head, someone laughs. Steve sighs, and puts his head down on the table. It’s a position he’s starting to get used to.
“Don’t worry, ” Scott says, idly. “You get used to it. Do you want the entertainment section? ”
“I’ll take the sports section if you’re done with it, ” Steve says, forehead still resting on the table.
This century, he thinks.
That would be a rather more convincing thought, Emma says inside his head, if you didn’t exhibit such a blatantly noisome love for it.
Forehead still resting on the table, Steve shakes his head, because he kind of does.
Something crashes again. Out of the corner of his vision, he sees Bruce startle slightly, and Steve narrows his eyes in suspicion. Bruce smiles guiltily and looks away.
Most days, anyway.