Help him.

The next morning was a lot less peaceful. Tony had slept well past noon, but when he woke up, he was grumpy and refused to cooperate with Steve, who tried to convince him to take a much needed shower. The genius didn't want to, and it took close to half an hour until finally he surrendered and locked himself in the bathroom. When he stepped out, his hair was dripping wet and he was only wearing a towel around his waist, exposing his damp skin.

He was way too thin. Steve could have counted his ribs if he'd wanted to, but he was barely able to look at him. The knot of guilt in his gut that had formed since the last night, twisted painfully whenever he did take a too close look.

Tony's fingers had grown thin like sticks, as if they could break any moment, the skin around is collarbones had sunken in, leaving it sticking out uncomfortably. His cheeks were hollow, his skin sickly pale.

It wasn't pretty.

“I don't want your help, Rogers!”, Tony spat, despite barely being able to walk properly. He was still tired as hell and his stomach was grumbling with hunger, yet he only stared at the toast in front of him, laying innocently on a plate on the table. “You can go back to your boyfriend and leave me the fuck alone!”

“Tony, don't be stupid.” Steve did his best not to snap, he really did. It's just that, in the end, he did snap and there was nothing he could do to take back what he'd just said, nothing he could do to keep the genius from flinching away from the harsh words.

Although they apparently only made him more angry, since he jumped to his feet, pointing a finger at Steve. “What do you care if I die?? You sure as hell didn't in Siberia.” That last part was more of a mumble, really. It seemed like it drained him of even more of his non-existent energy, as he sat back down at the table.

“You tried to kill Bucky!” This time it was even more than a snap, it was damn near close to a low growl, something deep and dark.

“You knew he killed my mom!” Tony was back on his feet again, wavering slightly, but ignoring it. “You knew and you didn't tell me! You didn't tell me and then you tried to protect him! He killed people! Killed my mom and you didn't care enough to tell me!” By now the mechanic was shaking with the effort of standing and yelling and breathing too fast, his face all read, eyes wide and teary. But he hadn't said all of it yet. “If you had actually tried to be a decent friend to somebody else than an assassin, you could have told me! You could have told me and maybe I wouldn't have reacted the way I did!”

“And who said we were friends?” His voice was quiet, but his stare was like ice, while Tony froze.

He literally froze, didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe. First he had his eyes open, staring at the other man in utter disbelief and shock, mixed with betrayal; then he squeezed them shut and consciously took a shattery breath. After several seconds, he looked back at the other man and croaked out a broken “What?”.

“Fuck!” Steve quickly stepped closer, but the mechanic nearly fell off the chair with how fast he flinched away, scrambling backwards until his back hit the wall. “I'm sorry!” The soldier followed, slowly, hands up in a pacifying manner, the ice in his look now replaced by worry. “I'm sorry, Tony, I didn't mean it!”

Tony let out a dry and breathless laugh. “How come I don't believe you.” He slowly got back on his feet, giving Steve a sad glance.

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head and turned to leave, but stopped in front of the other man once more.
“Yeah, me too.”

He didn't eat his toast.

“Captain, I called you so you could help him, not so you could make it worse!”, Peter snapped, staring furiously at the bigger man, who was drowning his sorrow in orange juice. “Listen, I know he did some things that weren't perfect, but that doesn't mean he has to blame himself for everything that ever went wrong in his life!”

“But it was his fault.”, Steve weakly protested, which earned him an incredibly filthy look.

Every trace of Peter's usual awkwardness had disappeared, and instead had been replaced by anger and concern, making him the most serious since the day Ben had died. “He only tried to help. He knew you Avengers needed control, no matter how great you are! And then suddenly he finds out that you, his friend, kept something that big from him, to protect a man who, at that point, couldn't even be trusted not to 'Soldier-out' any second!” He tried to regain some control over his emotions, but even he had to admit that he failed tremendously. “So yeah, screw you for not even having that bit of decency!”

“Kid, you don't know if he had reacted differently if I had told him!”

“But if you had, maybe then it wouldn't be your fault that he reacted the way he did.” There was no denying in that. “And now go and make this right! You have no idea how much he blames himself.”

Steve stood in front of Tony's lab for a solid five minutes before he finally worked up the courage to knock on the door. To his surprise, it wasn't locked, but was slightly ajar. “Tones?”

“Don't call me that.”, came back the raspy answer. The billionaire sounded like he'd screamed too loud, for too long. Or maybe cried.

“I'm sorry. For what I said. And … did.” He rubbed the back of his neck subconsciously. “I should have told you about your parents.”

Tony nodded. “Thanks.”, he quietly said. Then he sat down on his chair and sighed. “I'm sorry that you had to come here. You can leave if you want.”

“I don't – I don't want to leave you like this, Tony.”

“Like what?”

“Starving.” The word alone send a shiver through the mechanic's body and he averted his face from the other man's intense stare, clenching his jaw. “Not sleeping, isolating yourself.”

“It's not like I haven't done that before.”, Tony forced out, trying and failing to sound amused.

“This isn't a joke, Tony.”

He sighed. “Listen. I know you feel … obliged or whatever to 'help' me. But I'm fine. I was just busy in here” He gestured around the lab. “and forgot to take care of myself.”

“Yeah? And what exactly did you do all this time? What did you create?”

“I-I worked on the armour. The Iron Man suit.”

“Your suit.”, Steve clarified.

“Sure.”

“You don't sound very convinced of that.” The soldier frowned.

“Why do you care??”, Tony spat and shot the other man an icy look. “You're the mighty Captain America, who never makes any mistakes, innocent as an angel, who doesn't need to care about people!”

“That's not true and you know it!”

“Well apparently you don't. You walk around in your uniform, telling people what to do and call them soldiers! The war is over, Rogers!”

Steve sighed and ran a hand over his face. When he looked back up, he could see a bottle peeking out from under the table. “Did you drink again?”

“What's it to you?!”

“It affects your ability to judge.”

“You're so unbelievably thick!” Tony huffed out an angry laugh. “If I wasn't drunk, maybe I wouldn't say all this, but I'd certainly think 'em.”

“So you've never liked me, huh?”

“Oh I did.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I wanted to be your friend, wanted you and the other Avengers to live in the tower and be a team who could trust each other, but then Barnes came along and now everybody is god knows where, you're a fugitive from the government and the others left me, too.” He sat back on his chair. He looked Steve directly in the eyes, his own dark and sad, when he continued: “I wanted to be your friend. But you had better things to do.”

“Tony that's not what happened! I only tried to help the one person whom I knew from the 40s, the only one who knew me before I became Captain America! I loved him and I wanted him back.” He fought back the tears threatening to spill over, doing his best to ignore the mechanics broken look. “I still love him. I knew he was still in there and he's getting so much better at everything. He even allowed T'Challa to put him back into Cryo, so he wouldn't harm anybody. He never wanted to become the Winter Soldier, never asked for the years of torture and manipulation and darkness. He just wants to be happy.”

“Others want to be happy, too.”

“Tony, for once in your life, be reasonable. You damn well that I'm right.”

That sentence was enough to send Tony back to his feet, pointing an angry finger at Steve, voice wavering with all the anger in it: “I tried to be! I saw all the damage the Avengers did and I tried to be reasonable, I recognized that we weren't perfect, that we needed guidance! But then you came and decided that you knew better than 117 countries! The great Captain America!” He pressed his lips together into a thin line, before he forgot himself and spat: “Everything you are came from a bottle!”

Steve let out a shocked gasp at that. There was no way Tony had just said that. No matter how hurt or drunk he was, there was just no way he'd said it. He didn't have the right to. So naturally, he snapped back, equally viciously: “And everything you are came from your father!”

It was Tony's turn again to look hurt. Or like Steve had hit him in the face, would be more accurate. It took him two attempts until he managed to croak out a stuttered: “Fuck you!” Then he took a deep breath to sort his thoughts. “He made both of us.”, he finally hissed. “But he only loved one.”

Then he pushed past the taller man and fled to his bedroom, locking the door behind him. “Jarvis, keep everybody out, I wanna be alone!”

He spent the next two hours in there, telling himself he wasn't crying, telling himself he wasn't yelling at the walls and telling himself he wasn't broken.