Chapter 5
Move in with me, Steve.
“But you hate me.”
The words startle themselves out of Steve, spoken without his permission. They reveal too much; too much frustration, confusion, pathetic hurt, and unwarranted resentment. Just too much. He turns away from Stark abruptly, wishing he hadn’t turned the lights on, that he could crouch low in the shadows and disappear. But no, that’s never been the Rogers way so he forces himself to square his shoulders and turns back.
Stark looks back, somehow more inscrutable than he was in the dark.
“Is that what you think?”
Steve has no patience for games, for the social shark circling and one-upmanship that poisoned high society and the upper levels of the brass. He’s a Brooklyn boy, from teeth to toes. Give him a straightforward fistfight, and he’ll even shake your hand when it's over. He’d thought Stark was like that too, when you stripped him down to the wire. The depth of the antagonism between them was damn perplexing but at least it had so far been honest.
“What else am I supposed to think? You can barely spend two minutes in a room with me and we’ve yet to have a civil conversation.”
“Oh, and that’s my fault?”
There it is, Steve thinks in satisfaction.
Stark’s neutral expression cracks open, a furrow between his heavy eyebrows, mouth twisting downward on one side, eyes narrowing. He glows with emotion; the man is never just one thing, he has layers of shifting thoughts and feelings playing out in tandem like leaves in the wind, his body alive in a way that Steve itches to capture. A study in contradiction with quick-silver moods. He has a dozen half-finished sketches shoved guilty in the back of his art drawer.
“No,” Steve admits, and then just to see the lovely tick in the other man’s jaw he adds, “I take about twenty percent of the blame.”
Stark breathes out hard through his nose and it sounds almost like a laugh. He drags a hand thoughtfully along his jaw.
“Thirty.”
“Twenty-five.” Steve counters.
“Twenty-five,” he agrees, and it sounds a little bit like an apology.
They look at each other a beat too long and it’s Stark who re-focuses first, gesturing again at the bare walls of his apartment, the old-timey black and white television set that had been there when he moved in, the gently dripping plastic bag in Steve’s hand—shit, he realizes, my Chunky Monkey—and asks again, “So what do you say, oh Captain, my Captain? I mean, Christ, I can barely believe that Shield lets you inflict this place on yourself.”
“It was very generous of them,” he defends reflexively.
“Nah,” Stark says flippantly, with something darker underneath. “They’re trying to keep you in the past.”
He stands up in a single motion, going from surface-level relaxation—arms sprawled carelessly across the back of the couch, presence taking up space so easily that for the first time his apartment doesn’t feel ridiculously big for one person—to the balls of his feet. He touches something on his watch and his armor is suddenly fluid in the air, liquid gold and red, draping itself lovingly across his form.
Steve knows his breath hitches, and flushes.
And Tony—Stark—grins at him, sharp and dangerous, all the way up into his eyes.
“Let me show you the future.”
He wants to say yes, of course. But he’s suspicious of the sudden offer, this seeming olive branch between them after three weeks of silence in the aftermath of the Invasion. Steve knows that good things, the things you want, don’t come free.
“Why me, Mr. Stark?”
A sharp intake of breath.
For a moment, Steve thinks the hero is going to slam his faceplate down and hurl himself off the balcony. He half-steps forward as if to—but it doesn’t matter because Stark takes a deep breath and stays put.
“Don’t call me that. Mr. Stark was my father.” Stark’s eyes blaze with electric fire, brighter than the gold of his armor and twice as arresting. “And I am not my father.”
“Of course not.” Again, the words leave him before Steve can think better of it.
“Is that an insult?” Stark’s voice is carefully controlled. “Because you’re going to have to try harder.”
“What?” Steve fumbles with the plastic bag in his shock, nearly dropping it. “No!”
With a sinking feeling in his gut, he realizes that Stark thinks that he and his father—that they were—why the thought makes him feel sick, guilty almost, he’ll have to de-tangle later. Other things click into place though, like his ill-received words at their first encounter. Meeting the apparently lost soulmate whose disappearance had obsessed Howard to the point of alcoholism, to the point of neglecting his marriage and his son, well. He could see where Stark’s bitterness was coming from, in that light.
“I’m sorry,” Steve blurts, not sure exactly sure what part he’s apologizing for.
“Keep your apology, Rogers.”
Stark's fire has banked, gone cold again. He doesn’t need to draw the metal mask down over his face, his expression smoothing out perfectly on its own. Utterly unreadable, except for the burning heat of his eyes.
“You see, I am not my father. I am better than him, a better man than he ever was. And unfortunately, that means taking care of the things he cared about, even when I don’t particularly want to. So I’ll ask you one more time.” Another smile, fang-toothed, vicious, the smile of a man before plunging into battle, a man who is dead and knows it and plans to take as many people he can down with him.
“Come home with me, Steve.”
Shiver running straight through him, Steve can do nothing but nod.
“It’s not working.”
With a frustrated hiss, Tony sets down his blowtorch and rubs at his temples. His forehead feels feverish, temperature elevated just enough to be uncomfortable. Beads of sweat cling to his hairline.
“Sir?” JARVIS inquires, a hint of worry.
“I thought it would get better,” Tony admits through gritted teeth as he shoves himself away from the workshop table to pace back and forth. He never used to do that, pacing that is. He would just fuck the excess energy out of his system instead or drink it away or blow something up. He tried, you know. Drove himself to a bar one night downtown, dressed in his best grey silk and tinted sunglasses, smile ready like a knife, and then just sat in the car unable to make himself go inside. Sick, half-gagging at the idea of some stranger’s hands touching him. Even thinking about it makes him feel vulnerable, which is fucking laughable because if there’s one place Tony knows how to put on a show, it’s in bed.
He wants to blame it on the bond but he knows that soulmates can still cheat. It was a big porn thing in the eighties, some kind of taboo kink, soulmates fucking other people, usually getting “caught”. There’s even a rumor that Tony’s in one.
But after forty minutes of watching beautiful half-naked people walking past his window, Tony just turned on the car and drove home.
“Perhaps you should complete the bond.”
Tony is shaking his head before JARVIS finishes the sentence, his fists clenched so hard that the fresh scabs on the back of his hands stretch painfully and sting. He forces himself to relax.
“What was I thinking?” He groans, slumping back into his seat.
“Sir thought having Captain Rogers in the building would lessen the effects of the incomplete bond.”
“Yeah, well.” Childishly, Tony throws his wrench at the wall. It startles Dummy, sending him rolling away into a corner, beeping shrilly. “I’m a fucking idiot.”
In some ways, having Steve constantly underfoot—in the kitchen making and consuming more scrambled eggs in one sitting than Tony had eaten in his whole life while Clint filmed him with disgusted fascination, or asleep on the couch with the TV buzzing white noise in the background, or pulling into the garage with his motorcyle humming between his legs, or grappling with Natasha or occasionally Thor in the gym boxing rings, flushed, dripping sweat, grinning with manic intensity—had made being around the man easier, forced him to blunt his sharp grieving edges. He could admit, grudgingly, to himself that they were forging a tentative, if not friendship exactly, a working relationship based on mutual respect and trust in the field and unicorn piss or whatever.
He’d had to invite all the Avengers into the Tower to prevent Fury from vetoing the move outright. The control freak was clearly suspicious since Coulson liked to drop by unannounced to check on their “team bonding”, suggesting combat maneuvers and drills and evaluating their training. Tony could admit that their handler wasn’t half bad when he wasn’t fan-boying over Mr. America and, for the first time since he lived with Rhodey in the dorms, he lived somewhere that felt happily full.
And still.
“Idiot,” he repeated.
“Would Sir like to review his IQ test results?”
Despite himself, Tony feels his lips twitch. JARVIS at his most dry was a force to be reckoned with. But his point stood.
Tony would wake in the middle of the night, choking. His chest burning, phantom pain and real pain and the hot glow of his clenching lungs underneath. He hated it—still hates it—the restless fucking pull to nowhere that would jerk him out of sleep. In that panic-filled half-daze, it always felt like falling into the wormhole. An irresistible force both with and without direction. And it wasn’t just at night. He would be sitting in his office and suddenly, like a wave, the feeling would hit. An itchy, breathless feeling. Unable to concentrate, he’d find himself up on the balcony or pressed up against a window, looking down at the city, the sprawl of streets and shops and human life below his feet.
Wondering where Steve was, if he was okay.
His plan had been simple and therefore, in theory, easy. He would not tell Steve that they were some fucked up parody of soulmates. And he would not allow some primitive biological pseudo-science bullshit to make him fall in love with a man who, as he would happily explain to anyone who would listen, was a relentless prick. Okay, so he could admit to himself that, occasionally, Roger’s shrewd and surprisingly dry humor could be hilarious and that, sometimes, during debriefs with Fury he was just the perfect shade of petty but that didn’t he liked the man or anything.
But the need to seek him out, to have some kind of physical proximity was wearing him down. There were no cases like his. No cases he knew of anyway where two soulmates met but didn’t complete the bond, the damn True Love's Kiss. There was a feeling of building pressure, like the beginning of a headache.
“A monumental clusterfuck of an idiot.“ Tony rubbed angrily at his temples.
He had made Jarvis run tests, every day for the last month to check for abnormal deterioration in case the unfinished bond had other side effects. It felt just like the palladium poisoning, his body betraying him again. There had been no sign of the effects worsening, nothing but headaches and the vague but aggravating pressure.
What would he do if it worsened anyway?
Tony pushes himself forcefully away from his desk, cutting off the line of thought. He’d deal with it if it came to that. He always did.
It makes him sick, thinking about Steve. About the way Steve had looked at him the first time, thinking he was—was someone else. A ghost. There was no going back after that look, no reconsidering if a bond was possible. Steve had looked at him with absolute soul-crushing hope. Had looked at him and seen Howard, had wanted him to be Howard. And for the tiniest, most desperate second Tony had wished he could be. And that was a line that he would not, could not, make himself cross.
“Sir, Captain Rogers is approaching the workshop.”
“Tell him to go away,” Tony snaps, but he was already running his fingers through his greasy hair, trying to comb through the snags. When was the last time he showered? When was the last time he’d left the workshop for more than a quick nap and a microwaved dinner of takeout?
“Stark?” Steve’s voice calls out tentatively, accompanied by the sound of the doors sliding open.
“JARVIS, you traitor.” Tony hisses furiously, quickly ducking behind a large hovering screen filled with blueprints. His AI does not respond. Disloyal spawn. Someday, he swears to himself, he was going to put JARVIS in a nice big box and send him off to MIT for the kids to play with. That would show him.
“Hello? …Stark?” His voice draws closer.
With one last steadying breath, Tony flicks the screen closed as Steve rounds the corner, his mask firmly in place.
“Rogers. Always a—well. You get the drift. What do you want?”
A flicker of irritation crosses Steve’s face before he forces himself to smile politely. Christ, the man had a nice mouth. It frustrated Tony that he couldn’t just dismiss Steve’s presence, was forced to let it affect him. The bond wouldn’t let him ignore his soulmate, even if he had been able to ignore how attractive Steve was. And he was ignoring that. He totally was.
Steve holds up a bag and the warm smell of food hit Tony suddenly, almost making him stumble. His stomach growls loudly in response and the blond super soldier across from him had the gall to look smug.
“I brought dinner.”
Tony blinks in surprise, derailed for a moment. “Dinner?”
Something in Steve’s body language softens, the tension around his mouth loosening. If he didn’t know better, he would say that Steve’s next words are almost teasing.
“Dinner. A common evening ritual of eating food. Heard of it?”
“Once or twice,” Tony says, forcing his lips not to twitch even as his mouth floods with spit.
Steve jiggles the bag enticingly.
“Fine,” Tony blows out a defeated breath and kicks a rolling chair in the other man’s direction. “Be grateful I’m not billing you for lost work hours.”
“Oh?” Steve raises an eyebrow, almost playful. “My pension was pretty generous.”
Tony laughs, head thrown back. He is a mess, hair grown out too long—Pepper used to schedule those appointments, no, don’t think about her—with engine oil under his nails, smeared at his elbows and in a streak across his neck. His band shirt is ancient, too big for him, something he stole from Rhodey probably, and exposes his collarbones. They jut a little too sharply, his eating habits having gone to shit. Yes, Tony Stark is undeniably a mess, and still, he catches Steve looking at him and then away a little too quickly, his cheeks pinking.
(Do I look like him when I laugh, he wonders, the laughter gone arsenic sharp in his throat. Tony had never seen his father really laugh.)
“Baby doll,” Tony croons, his grin a little too wide to be sweet. “You could not afford me.”
Steve hits the mat with a crunch. Oof. That was his nose.
“Really, Natasha?” He groans, rolling over onto his back and pinching his nose shut as the blood began to trickle down over his lips.
“You were ignoring me,” she shrugs one shoulder, unrepentant.
“I wasn’t—“ He begins but his eyes flick to the door involuntarily and Natasha kicks him, hard, in the shins while he isn’t looking. “Ouch.”
“Tell me,” she says. No coy wordplay, just a simple request. The question is for his benefit, then, she was giving him a chance to vent. If Natasha actually wanted to know something, you never knew till after.
His nose twinges sharply as it heals and Steve sulkily considers ignoring her olive branch.
“Tony said he’d come spar today,” he admits after a long pause. “Well. He didn’t say he wouldn’t.”
“That is almost the same thing,” Natasha agrees. “For Tony.”
Her easy agreement leaves him feeling both better and worse. After weeks of living in close quarters—figuratively speaking, given the decadent sprawl of the Tower—Steve only just now felt like he was beginning to unravel Tony’s prickly exterior and understand how to talk to him without tripping some invisible defense system. As their team leader, Steve knows he should be overjoyed seeing Clint’s target range studded with increasingly bizarre color-coded arrows or finding the matching Science Bro! coffee mugs sitting in the communal kitchen sink. And he is, really. He wants Tony to feel comfortable in his own home—which he’d so generously, if mysteriously, offered up to be their home—but the more Steve gets to know the other man, the more he feels like he is missing something vital.
“Natasha, do you know why…” He hesitates, not sure how make why doesn’t Tony want to be my friend? sound less pathetic. “Do you think Tony has a problem with me? Specifically, I mean.”
Natasha goes oddly still and Steve tilts his head back down, nosebleed having slowed to a trickle, to look up at her expression. She narrows her eyes at him thoughtfully.
“Why do you think he has a problem with you?”
“He’s so… so careful around me.” Steve struggles to explain it. “It’s like… either we’re fighting like cats and dogs, no punches pulled, which I know is terrible but at least it’s honest. In between, he’s so… well, not polite. Tony’s never polite. But he’s got this mask on and when he looks at me, I feel… I just want to know why.”
Because there were those rare moments when Tony seemed to slip up and forget to hate him. And they felt…
Steve flops back onto the mat and stares unseeingly up at the high beams of the ceiling. Instead, he imagined last night’s sky spreading out before him. The stars were dim pinpricks above the city's light pollution but still there, if you knew where to look. He had escaped up to the rooftop to let the cool air dry the sweat of a recent nightmare against his clammy skin. He didn’t know why he’d ended up here exactly, or what he’d been dreaming about, but the noise of the nightlife below, car honks and drunken laughter and rumbling music, were familiar enough to be soothing. Life went on somehow, didn’t it? Even when people like him walked around like ghosts, having lost everything. No past, no future, no present. No family. No soulmate.
“You too, huh?” Tony’s voice had drifted from a dark corner, a bench tucked away from the winds. Steve wasn’t even surprised anymore. They seemed to run into each other during their sleepless nights with uncanny precision but Steve secretly didn’t mind. Company was good for him, helped ground him in the correct time and place. He still woke up expecting the smell of lemon soap and his mother bent over him with a damp rag sometimes.
“Yeah.” Steve answered, feeling as old as every year he’d spent in the ice. He wondered, not for the first time, what kind of nightmares kept Tony up at night.
Steve eyed the empty space between them and eased his way closer slowly, knowing from past experience that he would spook Tony if he approached openly. He ran a hand along the smooth metal railing as he gazed down at the streets below, careful not to look at the other man. Tony was very aware of being looked at, he’d come to realize. A product of growing up practically on camera, he assumed, and felt a pang of sadness for the boy Tony had been. Steve knew what it was like to be looked at without being seen. He wondered idly if Tony would’ve been shy, if he’d been allowed to be. He didn’t know. Steve had seen so many facets of Tony and couldn’t decide which were real and which were smokescreens. He’d seen Tony manic, monosyllabic, charming enough to shame the devil himself, and infuriating enough to strangle. He’d seen Tony laughing with blood in his teeth. He’d seen Tony flushed and tongue-tied over a simple compliment. He’d seen Tony’s eyes go empty and haunted. He’d seen Tony’s eyes go dark with intent. He’d seen—
“I used to be scared of heights,” Tony said unexpectedly. His voice was softer than usual, half-asleep. His legs were tucked under him and his chin was propped in one hand as he looked not down at the city packed full of strangers but up at the faded stars.
“Really?” Steve risked half-turning to look at where he was curled up in the dark. “When’d you stop?”
Tony smiled faintly. Steve could just barely make out the shape of his lips.
“When I taught myself to fly.”
Steve couldn’t help but smile in response a little wistfully with one hand still curled loosely around the rooftop railing. He looked up at the sky. How high up would he have to go to really see the stars like he used to? To leave behind the sounds of city life? To actually as be alone as he felt?
“Maybe one day you’ll teach me.”
Another sharp pain in his shin.
“Ow,” Steve complains but he opens his eyes again, lets the memories of last night drain away. “I’m not ignoring you.”
Natasha snorts and draws back her foot to kick him again but Steve scrambles out of reach. She let him retreat, which he took as a victory, until she asked him casually, “So have you and Tony talked about his dad?”
Steve nearly trips right over his own feet.
“What? No! Are you crazy?” He blows out a breath, running a frustrated hand through his sweat-damp hair. “I mean, I tried once but it all came out wrong and… well, even Coulson told me it was off-limits.”
Natasha cocks her head, considering him for a long moment.
“You should know,” she says, looking strangely unhappy. “That even Sheild makes the wrong call sometimes.”
Steve frowns, opening his mouth to ask her what she meant when he was cut off by the sound of the gym doors opening. He twists around to see Tony, dressed in very non-standard issue red and gold workout gear, striding towards the training ring already firing off a stream of excuses.
“I’m not late, you people are just early. In fact, as I own this gym and technically set the hours I can—Steve?”
Tony jerks to an abrupt halt, staring up at him with concern.
Steve realized two things in rapid succession. First, he is smiling ear to ear like an absolute idiot and, second, his face is still covered with half-dried blood. He could feel whatever blood he had left rush to his cheeks in embarrassment.
You called me Steve! He wants to cheer.
“Oh, I’m fine. Nat just plays dirty.“ Steve hastily strips off his shirt and scrubs the blood from his face. “Did I get it all?”
He looked hopefully towards Tony but the other man was looking suddenly everywhere but at him. Steve glances in confusion towards Natasha whose face is so blank that she has to be laughing at him.
“Oh yes,” She says. “Want me to drop your shirt off in the laundry on my way up?”
“Would you?” He blinks, torn between gratitude and suspicion. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, идиот.” Natasha sighs fondly, slinging the bloodied shirt over her shoulder and slipping past them before Tony could do more than half-raise a pleading hand in her direction. In her absence, there was a half-beat of intensely awkward silence and then they were both speaking over each other.
“I’m really glad you came to—”
“How about a rain-check for—“
They both broke off at the same time. Steve tries not to let his shoulders droop; clearly, Tony had showed up hoping to bond with other members of the team. Not him. That's totally fine. Sometimes people just don't like you and that's just how it is, his mother had always reassured him when he came home with red eyes and scraped knees. It's nobody's fault. Steve prepares himself for another rejection, readies a reassuring totally fine, have a nice day! on the tip of his tongue.
“Well...” Tony lets out a slow breath, peeking at him through lowered lashes. “As long as Nat didn’t beat you up too badly, old man.”