Chapter 29
The next several days were terrible. Miss Hill had shown up briefly to introduce him to the lawyer The Avengers Initiative had hired for him. Their former law firm had dropped the Avengers when they had found out what the charges were for. Something about it being a conflict of interest. Miss Hill hadn’t even been able to talk them into giving a recommendation, but Davis, Slate and Moore had been Stark’s firm for years, they weren’t willing to represent any of the Avengers anymore.
Steve should have expected Stark to be petty like that. No doubt he had called and threatened them. He only hoped Hill knew what she was doing. But, he couldn’t help but think Hill could have done better; the lawyers she brought with her had been very disappointing.
The head lawyer was a whiny little defeatist, going on and on about video evidence clearly showing him grabbing Stark and breaking his wrist. They also showed him trying to drag Stark away and then attacking McGarret when told to let him go. But that hadn’t been what happened at all, no matter what it looked like.
Watching the videos Steve did have admit that they looked terrible. But that wasn’t all that was going on there! Stark had been cheating on him for months and then tried to just brush it off. Once he got out of here, they would be having words! If Stark thought he was going to get away with this, he was mistaken. Steve had always known that Stark wasn’t really Avenger’s material.
It was the rest of the videos, tablet held in front of the bars so he could see, that drove the spike deeper. He could see himself, collapsed on the ground as another Iron Man arrived carrying the reinforced handcuffs he had been wearing when he woke up. What caught his attention was Stark, stepping out of the armor and hovering over McGarret calling him ‘Steve’. Hadn’t that police officer called him Steve, too. Stark, standing by McGarret’s side as he directed the rest of the officers, letting himself be loaded into the same ambulance as the other man. Steve didn’t even notice as Miss Hill and his lawyer tried to talk to him. Steve; McGarret’s name was Steve.
Steve didn’t really listen to anything else the lawyers and Hill said to him that day. He was too busy thinking about Stark calling McGarret ‘Steve’. It almost made him doubt himself until he remembered how much time Stark had spent with him when they were both in New York. How Stark’s whiskey eyes always seemed to be laughing at something, trying to pull Steve into laughing along. The way the smaller man danced around in Steve’s presence, showing off his lithe form; posing.
Stark refusing to drop the charges or even meet with Steve was beyond insulting. When Hill had passed that along, Steve had wanted more than anything to be able to go beat on the heavy bags like he always did when he was upset. But he was stuck here, behind these bars. He never had any chance of breaking out either. There was always at least two people there with those rifles of theirs.