Chapter 5
“Where has Peter been?” Peter’s short friend asks. “Is he– did he get hurt or something?”
“Can we see him?” Michelle asks.
Steve purses his lips, then says, “He was kidnapped.” Somehow, no matter how many times he goes over this, it never gets easier. “We’ve been looking for him for a month with no leads. There wasn’t a ransom demand.”
The two teenagers are silent in front of him, both processing what he’s just said. Finally, Edward asks, “Well, so, like… is he… are you going to find him?”
Steve rubs a hand across his stubble, unable to meet the two teens’ eyes. “Search efforts are… slowing down. We have nowhere to go with the investigation.”
“You don’t think he’s…” Ned asks. “Well, I mean,” he swallows, unable to finish his sentence.
“We don’t have any leads,” Steve repeats, still watching the clouds lazily change shape outside the window.
MJ stands up abruptly and leaves, letting the door slam behind her. Ned is crying, and he pulls the back of his hand across his face. “So, what? We just move on? Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
Steve doesn’t have an answer for the distraught teen in front of him. “We’ve been…” he says, “Looking into everything.”
Ned leaves too. Steve whispers, “James Buchanan Barnes, I could use you right about now. Same goes for you, Natalia Romanoff. And Sam–” Steve doesn’t finish. He rarely cries anymore. It’s like his body finally came to the realization that it does nothing. Clint returned from the recon mission and explained that there was no trace. Steve’s three best friends had simply vanished from the face of the earth. His son had been kidnapped, and he never knows if his husband will wake up knowing who he is or not. Tony has good and bad days, days that he’s frantic, that he remembers Peter and Steve and understands that his sister is missing. He’s had those days more and more often, but there are still days that he gives Steve a meaningless smile and says, “my head is pounding. I must have gotten plastered last night. Want a drink?”
Those are the days he almost takes Tony up on it, the days he’s sure he’s lost everything. To make matters worse, even when Tony is lucid, aware his son is missing, and desperate to find him, Steve has to explain that it’s been over a month. Tony's broken his longest lucid streak of around four days by waking up and offering Steve a drink. Knowing that he had to break the news to children who should never receive that kind of news, Steve didn’t reply, just got out of bed and started to make breakfast. Tony asked him why the liquor cabinet was full of board games, and Steve called Pepper, who explained it to Tony with more patience than he could muster. Rhodey comes on some days, wearing leg braces and sporting a walker. Tony’s convinced it’s some kind of practical joke, but there are pages of half finished schematics for better leg braces once it sinks in again.
And the case is colder than cold. The explosive turns up nothing, the car turns up nothing, no one has seen anything, and Steve spends his days split between trying to convince his husband that their son is missing and trying to find his son. The convincing always goes better than the finding.