Chapter 3
They aren’t stupid, none of them, even if Steve can be oblivious and Thor is adorably unaware and Tony likes to crow about his genius and how no one could possibly understand (they couldn’t), but none of them are stupid. They are all rather smart, actually. Bruce has a doctorate, Thor was raised to be a prince and that meant many types of lessons, Steve read a lot when he was a kid, and if Natasha and Clint weren’t sharp as tacks, they’d be dead.
Well, the same goes for all of them, but the twinsassins in particular.
Tony figured out the mark on his side as soon as he heard the news that Captain America was still alive. Honestly, he’d recognized the shield design, but he’d assumed it was someone who loved the comics or the movies, as he had when he was a child. Never in his wildest dreams was he the actual soulmate of the world’s first superhero.
The thundercloud also made sense now that Thor, Norse god of thunder, sat in his kitchen every morning eating pop tarts with a dreamy smile. It also made sense why it crackled with energy – Thor was a different species, it made sense that Asgardian marks would work differently. He heard Thor explaining once that Asgardian marks gave you a sense of when your partner was feeling strong emotions. There was no science to it, but Tony had long ago accepted that maybe soulmarks existed just outside of the known laws of physics.
During this discussion, Thor had shown them his mark and (Tony had predicted this) Steve, Bruce, Clint, and Natasha had all jumped to their feet in amazement. Pants were shed in the middle of the living room, and marks were revealed under hastily wiped off makeup. They all had the same ones.
Tony didn’t look, couldn’t stomach the thought of what would happen if he did. He stood up with a grin, wished them luck in what he was sure was about to become an all out orgy on the common room sofas, and hightailed it to his workshop. Blackout procedure. No one allowed in or out for three days. Didn’t matter. None of them came anyway. They had more important matters to deal with at the time.
When Tony resurfaced from his lab on the fourth day to refill his coffee reserves he walked into the common kitchen to find Clint and Steve making out against the counter. A quick glance into the living room showed Natasha sitting on Thor’s lap pushing intense kisses against his mouth, while Bruce gently laved bruises onto the god’s neck. None of them were wearing more than sweats and tank tops. The living room was a mess. Nobody noticed him as he stood there drinking his morning coffee, contemplatively looking over the bared marks on each of their shoulders. Steve’s mark was obviously the shield, Bruce’s was the neutron, Natasha’s, fittingly, was the spider, Thor’s the thundercloud, and Clint’s were the arrows. But each of them had the red star on their shoulder that Tony remembered from his own childhood.
Tony figured there would be someone new living in his Tower soon, but he didn’t have an idea who it could be.
Tony drank his coffee until it was all gone, set his mug in the sink, and left the room. No one noticed he was there.
The same tactic continued over the next few days while the others languished in their honeymoon phase. In fact, Tony became so invisible to the others he began to wonder if he’d acquired a new superpower.
He wasn’t sure he wanted it.