Chapter 2
It’s another shitty day of the shitty week of the most exceptionally shitty year Tony Stark has ever known.
Captured and tortured by terrorists wasn't enough. Being betrayed—twice!—by the closest thing he had to a healthy father figure wasn't enough. Now there's this. With a half-swallowed groan, he finishes his glass of whiskey. He leaves the open bottle of red wine alone and surveys the aftermath of the living room through the haze of his pulsing hangover. He brushes away a rose petal clinging to his knee and it drifts to the ground to land in a pile with the others.
The candles have burned themselves down to little stubs on the table still full of chocolate cake and still more rose petals and the cheesy HAPPY ANIVERSARY card that sings when opened. He’d even remembered not to order strawberries this time.
“JARVIS, what time is it?” Tony asks and covers his eyes again.
He’d fallen asleep on the couch after Pepper had left, thinking that maybe she’d change her mind and come back and he wouldn’t be able to hear it in his bedroom if she knocked so he’d stayed, hoping, until he was too drunk to make it back to his room anyway. His neck hurt from the angle and he had a golf-ball size bruise forming below his ribcage from when he’d rolled off the couch and hit the side of the oddly-shaped metal table. Fucking modernism.
“It’s 1:36 PM Sir,” JAVIS replies without the hint of disapproval he’s come to expect. But then, even JARVIS has been unusually reserved since last night. Tony wonders, somewhat hysterically, if he’s programmed his AI with enough independence to leave him too.
“You have nearly two hours until your timer zeroes out.”
Tony groans. “Not you too, JARVIS. Please, it’s too early.”
But he can’t stop himself from glancing at his newly exposed wrist and the glowing countdown: 00:02:15.
His heart clenches and Tony imagines that for a moment his reactor glows a little brighter to compensate. Unbidden, Pepper’s hurt words and teary face come back to him, a hollow after-image when he closes his eyes. Of all the fucking timing. They’d been sharing a romantic dinner a few days early since Pepper needed to be in Japan on company business on their actual anniversary date.
Tony had been, badly, spoon-feeding Pepper bits of cake while she giggled uncontrollably and ended up with most of the frosting on her face when that telltale ding went off. They’d both frozen, completely shocked. And then she’d slowly, trembling, peeled the artificial skin patch away from his wrist to read the numbers they both knew would be there.
00:24:00.
Tony had watched, dumbstruck, helpless, as the best thing in his entire life unraveled right before his eyes, helpless to stop it. The break-up was his fault, of course, as he'd always known it would be but not in the way he’d imagined, not in a way he could apologize for or fix.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Pepper had backed away when he tried to touch her face, the freckles on her nose standing out more than usual against her pale skin. She’d been working too much. “Was I just some distraction, some pastime before your timer went off and you drove off into the sunset without me?”
How could he explain that the last time he’d thought about his soulmate was the night before Yinsen had helped him operate on his own chest?
He’d taken off the skin patch for the first time since reaching puberty to run his fingers over the numbers. I’m sorry, he’d whispered in the dark, listening to Yinsen’s quiet breathing even out, listening to the insistent ticking of the pacemaker keeping his reluctant heart going, I’m sorry that I’m probably going to die soon and you’ll wake up with a line of faded zeros, years before you were supposed to.
What an awful thing. Tony had mourned for his unknown soulmate, all hazy with pain and lack of oxygen. The promise of a happy future one moment, and the next just—
He’d fallen asleep before ever finishing the thought.
His father had insisted he wear a skin patch shortly after his numbers had manifested on his thirteenth birthday to protect him from the press and anyone who might try to trick him with false countdown implants and faked electrical shocks. Those kind of things did happen, though it never worked for long. The longest case he’d ever heard of had been eight months and the mark had been struggling with dementia.
“A good con will have figured out how to take half your money by then,” His father had snorted, barely looking up from his desk. Tony remembers that day clearly—his last day of high school at only thirteen years old and he’d been so different. He’d just wanted to have this one thing. This one essential human thing that would prove he was just like everyone else.
“You’ll thank me one day.” And he was dismissed.
Tony thinks of the way Pepper’s smell clings to his sheets in the morning, the way her freckles distort when she scrunches her nose in annoyance, her little smiles, the smug way she asks will that be all, Mr. Stark? after they’ve made love.
Thanks dad, he thinks bitterly.
Through his suffocating self-pity, he hears the doorbell. Pepper. Pain spikes briefly behind his eyes but he ignores his headache and hurries to the front door, trying to smooth down the front of his shirt and pat down his hair. She came back. He tries to shake off the sluggishness of his hangover and composes a hurried apology, trying to cram together all the words he was too shocked to say last time.
Pepper, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. We can still make this work. Please don’t leave me.
He opens the door. It’s Coulson.
“Rough night?”
Coulson speaks with a bland impassiveness that makes it impossible to gauge any deeper meaning. But his eyes are sharp, taking in every detail of Tony’s disheveled appearance and obvious disappointment, categorizing and storing the information for later use.
Tony should make a joke, play it off, misdirect.
“Fuck off,” he says instead and brings up both hands to rub in vain at the pressure in his temples. It doesn’t help and he’s tired of playing games. “I’m not in the mood.”
He senses rather than sees Coulson stiffen in surprise.
Tony follows the man’s gaze and realizes that his wrist is still exposed, glowing innocently 00:02:04 and casting soft light against his face. He quickly drops his arm but it’s too late, the damage is done. He feels sick and vulnerable inside. Just one more detail Shield can use against him, to control him, to catalog him.
Not even once his father had warned him, gripping his wrist so hard it would leave bruises, his breath reeking of alcohol. Tony been so excited to show his dad, to prove that he was a grown-up now, with his grown-up timer. He was so excited to prove that he was worthy of being loved. Instead, Howard had gotten up to fill his glass, stopping to look at his old war pictures hung up on the wall. Tony can still remember his reflection in the glass, tear-stained, confused, young enough to still be disappointed.
“Fuck up once, and that’s it." Howard had said, almost a whisper. "You’ve got to be better, faster, smarter. You’ve got to be like him.”
But no matter what he did, Tony never was good enough.
Once, when he was still in college and just figuring out what sex was and how easy it was to get when your last name was Stark, he’d woken up to fingers trying to pry the skin patch off his arm. In shock, he’d pushed the girl off the bed and she’d started crying, saying that a reporter had offered to pay off her student loans if she could find out his timecode. He can’t remember her name anymore, but it hadn’t been until Pepper that he’d been able to fall asleep with someone again, although Tony admits that even then it was usually due to being on the brink of mental and physical collapse. Still, it was a good feeling to wake up with someone you loved. He’ll miss that.
“Why are you here, Coulson?” Tony asks and feels oddly detached from his own voice. Like the world has ended but his body hasn’t caught on yet and continues walking around out of habit. “I thought I got kicked off the guest list. Tony Stark, not recommended. Or did Fury finally admit he gets bored without me?”
“Oh, things are never boring at Shield,” Coulson says cryptically. “And there’s someone I think you should meet.”
They exit the nondescript black government-issue plane with its distinct lack of hot tub or mini bar to step onto the busy landing strip of the Sheild building. From the outside it looks like a successful advertising firm, one of many in this part of New York.
Tony glances at the dwindling numbers on his wrist and realizes with no small amount of bitterness that of course his soulmate would work for Shield.
“Just my luck I’d end up with some fucking paper pusher.” Tony says out loud, trying to blow off steam and get a rise out of Coulson, the patron fucking saint of paper pushers but the other man just ignores him.
He scowls, picturing Fury’s face when he finds out that he finally has a direct contact into Tony Stark's life to report on him. He hadn’t put his skin patch back on. What was the point? It would all be over soon and then he can find a place to sit still for a moment, alone, just him and the pulse of the reactor in the semi-darkness trying to reestablish equilibrium. There’s never been any solid ground for him to stand on so he’s learned to fly. Tony straightens his shoulders defiantly. He will get through this without revealing any more weaknesses.
Coulson doesn’t wait to check if he’s following, wind buffeting them from both sides until they enter the building.
He wishes briefly that he’d had the chance to brush his hair, change into a different shirt, pop a few aspirin. Ideally, he wouldn’t be meeting his soulmate looking like he just spent a night hitting the club but what the hell. They all know his reputation. He winks and shoots a group of female cadets a cheeky grin.
What’s the point in changing, when nobody wants to forgive or forget?
Despite his best efforts, Tony finds himself unconsciously rubbing at his timer, hiding the countdown from view. From the curious glances thrown his way as the agent leads him down a maze of hallways. Coulson notices and Tony grits his teeth and forces himself to let go. The stream of Shield hive workers thinned to a trickle as they headed deeper into the building. Coulson increases his pace, Tony matching him with gritted teeth. What's the point in hurrying? It was fate, after all. The whole point was that there was nothing you could do but sit back and watch it happen.
Pepper, he thinks, his heart still breaking. He wonders if she’ll take him back after he turns down whoever he’s about to meet. She really did deserve better.
They must be underground by now. Tony feels oddly uncomfortable imagining the layers of concrete over his head pressing down on him like the metal circle in his chest, making it hard to breathe, making his lungs shrivel, his numbers ticking faster now, slipping like quicksand, too fast, and there are no exits this is it he can’t he can’t—
“Aww, Coulson, if you were trying to get me to yourself, all you had to do was ask.” Tony keeps his voice steady through the rising panic, winking at Coulson and trying on his favorite salacious leer. “One last go before I meet my soulmate, what do you say? Help a guy out.”
The agent just cocks his head slightly, looking at him with those unreadable eyes.
“So you plan on being faithful then?”
Tony’s fake leer stiffens but he manages to hang on. Coulson always manages to draw something out of him he wasn’t trying to show.
“Sure, if they’re hot.” Tony says, a beat too late for Coulson to buy it.
The agent brings them to an abrupt stop outside a nondescript metal door but Tony notices the hinges are reinforced with a special steel alloy he invented for them. He feels a chill run down his spine and wonders how long it would take someone to realize he was missing now that Pepper is gone. The first twenty-four hours are critical, says the stupid part of his brain that’s watched too much CSI: Miami.
Get a fucking grip, Tony orders himself. He’s a goddamn superhero.
“Come on, the suspense is killing me,” Tony says with a smirk, folding his arms. Coulson gives him a searching look, before nodding and opening the door.
“After you.”
Tony doesn’t even register the ding ding ding at first over the whirring and clicking of the medical equipment hooked up to the man on the bed.
He doesn’t register anything really, but shock. Because he knows this man. Has seen that handsome face with its strong jawline and fluttery eyelashes and the hidden dimples grinning down at him from the walls in black and white since he was old enough to crawl.
“Shield recovered his body a month ago,” Coulson says quietly, behind him but the words don’t make sense, can’t make sense. “The serum kept him alive, frozen in the ice. We’ve been thawing him out.”
Without meaning to, Tony crosses the room. His mind is a mess of half-questions and absolute disbelief.
Captain America, his soulmate.
“There must be some mistake.” He barely recognizes his own voice. He licks his numb lips. “I mean, he had a soulmate back in the day, right? This has to be some sort of glitch, some sort of mistake.”
Coulson’s voice is tinged with annoyance when he answers, “Our scientists don’t know. They’re still working on an answer.”
For the first time, Tony takes in the medical equipment hooked up to the Captain. They look like leaches, hooked up to his skin and his hands curl at his side involuntarily. He glares at the monitor showing the steady spike of his heart rate and blood pressure.
“Is he… okay?” Tony forces his voice to be as steady and unconcerned as possible.
“Physically, yes.” Coulson sighs. “But he hasn’t woken up yet.”
Without thinking about it, Tony reaches out and gently brushes his fingertips against his soulmate’s face. The shock is instant, all-consuming. A hot, electric feeling crashes through him like a force of nature. It is a force of nature. How could anyone fake this? he thinks desperately, fighting to remain standing. He’s out of breath, his nerves tingling with the aftershock. He’s struck suddenly with the crazy, overwhelming urge to climb under the hospital sheets and wrap himself as close as possible around his soulmate and never let go.
He takes a step back, trying to clear his head.
He’d heard that the chemical reaction after bonding was intense but this, this almost violent need for closeness was stronger than he was expecting. Than he was prepared for.
A harassed-looking doctor pushes him aside before he can do anything stupid, and Tony realizes suddenly that the mechanical beeping and whirring around them has increased. On the monitor, his soulmate’s heart rate is a beautiful double-time pattern of ups and downs. Emotions still going haywire, Tony wants to print out the pattern and frame it.
“Stark.”
Relieved by the distraction, Tony turns to see Fury looming like a human-shaped thunderstorm in the doorframe. Underneath his bland expression, Coulson looks pleased with himself. He hands a thin, unmarked manila folder to his boss who takes it with a low grunt.
“We need to talk.” The Director says, beckoning. With a last, conflicted look towards the hospital bed, Tony follows him into the corridor.
Coulson shuts the door behind him but even through the metal he feels it. The pull to complete the bond, which wants to snap him forward like elastic, raw and buzzing right under the skin. It won’t stop until they kiss and the connection settles in their biochemistry—the science is still unclear on the why and how but the what has been the center of every romantic drama since the the dawn of human romantic dramas.
True love’s first kiss.
Tony feels a little lightheaded, but then he also hasn’t consumed anything but chocolate cake and booze in almost thirty-eight hours. He’s suddenly incredibly grateful that Captain America was knocked out cold and hadn’t met him like this, bleary-eyed and still smelling faintly of Pepper underneath the whiskey. He runs his tongue along the roof of his stale-tasting mouth, pleased that he’ll have a chance to brush his teeth before completing the bond and freezes suddenly with his hands trying to brush out the tangles in his hair, as he realizes that he is planning to complete the bond.
Which, of course, he can’t. As if in protest, the tug under his skin flares suddenly like a second shockwave. Tony sways with it.
Fury’s eyes flick back to the door, darkening.
“A plane is waiting for you up top,” He says gesturing and walks back up the corridor. Tony hesitates for the barest moment and forces himself to follow. The incomplete bond whispers under his skin. Then, teeth gritted, he pushes past the feeling and follows behind.
“You know, it was Howard’s technology that ended up finding him.” Fury’s good eye narrows slightly, searching his face intently as Tony catches up.
“Well, Dad always said he’d die trying.” Tony instinctively tenses at the mention of his father, hates hates that he can’t stop the bitterness from leaking into his voice. But whatever reaction Fury was hoping for, he’s disappointed, and after a long pause, he abruptly changes tact.
“There has never been a recording of a person having more than one soulmate,” Fury says, still watching him closely. “They are set to respond to one person, and one person only.”
Tony glances back down the hallway despite himself before they turn a corner and the door is lost from view.
“Do they have any guesses about—” He makes an all-encompassing gesture. “This?”
A thought strikes him suddenly, flooding him unexpectedly with a hot, uncomfortable feeling a lot like jealousy.
“Wait, his first soulmate is dead right? I mean, they’d be at least seventy by now even if they weren’t but they can’t still be kicking or the timer never would’ve reset. If it really reset.”
The corner of Fury’s mouth twists downward in a grimace, and he glances at the unmarked file.
“Yeah. Roger’s soulmate is dead.”
Tony doesn’t miss the passive-aggressive, singular use of “soulmate”. Something bitter and ugly twists in his stomach. He is for a moment, murderously angry at whoever came before him. Mine, his instincts scream. Not gonna happen, Tony reminds himself. Whatever this is between them is a glitch. A quirk of a still misunderstood science. There is no universe where Captain America will want him. If he even wakes up.
“So you know who his soulmate was?”
“Yes.” Fury answers curtly. “And it helps explain the current situation.”
“Well?” Tony says impatiently. He stops abruptly, forcing Fury to stop with him and turn around. He realizes Fury looks, for lack of a better word, apprehensive.
“Come on,” he whines, “It can’t be that bad. We’re talking about Captain America here. What, was his soulmate Hitler or something? Oh shit.” Tony squints at Fury, half-serious, half-mocking. “It wasn’t really Hitler was it?”
“Shut up,” Fury snaps and Tony fights to stop his real grin slipping out over his practiced smirk. It’s way too much fun to mess with the Director, who clearly isn’t used to insubordination anymore. With his patented why-do-I-put-up-with-your-shit sigh, Fury hands over the unmarked file. Tony takes it but doesn’t flip it open immediately, suddenly wary. He doesn’t want to read about Captain’s America first soulmate—his real soulmate, a voice whispers in the back of his mind—with Fury watching him so closely.
“Steve Rogers’ soulmate was your father.”
Silence.
The words slide over him without touching. Tony frowns, confused. The syllables fit together to make words but he runs the sounds over in his head and hears nothing but white noise. The default smirk feels numb on his face, pins and needles, like it’s melting. He suppresses the urge to touch his mouth and make sure it’s all still there.
“Excuse me?” Tony’s voice is amazingly steady, pleasant even.
Fury actually looks uncomfortable, god, someone should really get a picture. Tony should ask Jarvis, should make a joke about starting a photo album to commemorate the moment but he just keeps smiling, smiling, mouth buzzing, brain white-noise empty. He’s speechless. Literally speechless. Fuck, maybe someone should be taking a picture of him to commemorate the moment.
“Howard met Rogers before he was given the serum.” Fury continues, his tone softening, almost apologetic. Another first. “It was kept secret to keep him safe but also because male-male bonding pairs weren’t as… normalized as they are now. There was some concern that the knowledge would hurt the propaganda effort.”
Tony is nodding politely, still smiling. He probably looks quite manic.
“The current theory is that when Rogers was in the ice, it affected the chemistry of the timer, putting it in a limbo state. When he reemerged, the bond automatically reset to the closest biological match to Howard Stark.”
Tony is still nodding.
It feels like Afghanistan, like being held underwater. The words are very far away, distorted and foreign. The buzzing under his skin fills up his head. He is a replacement for Howard. He is a substitute for the original. Even his soulmate, the one essential thing that proved he was human, that he was like everyone else, is corrupted by his father, his father’s choices. But he is not his father. He has spent years not being his father.
Then, from far away, Fury’s hand is gripping him hard around the wrist, demanding his attention. He can almost smell the alcohol. Tony doesn’t like being grabbed, doesn’t like being held down. Tony says nothing, just keeps smiling. Tony is great. Tony is fine.
“You can’t tell him, Stark.” Fury’s face is too close to him.
They’ll beat him next, Tony thinks dully, sluggishly, but he prefers that to the water. He’d rather bleed out than suffocate.
“It will be easier for Captain America to wake up and accept all the other changes, without trying to prepare him for another soulmate.”
Trying to prepare him for you.
Tony is nodding, smiling. His lips are moving. He says things, jokes maybe, he doesn't know. He can't hear anything past the water in his ears, the distorted rush of it. Somehow, he gets on his plane and flies home. His house is still empty. The untouched bottle of red wine is still there on the table. He drinks it. Just for tonight Tony lets himself drown.