Chapter 2
THEN:
Tony had his eyes closed. If he kept them closed and thought about nothing but how soft Pepper’s silk robe was against his cheek as he buried his head in her lap, then maybe, just maybe his brain would let him sleep.
Pepper reached down occasionally to run her fingers though his shower-damp hair whenever she didn’t need both hands for whatever it was she was doing on her tablet. There was a strange sense of calm surrounding them as they cuddled on the couch in the penthouse, listening to the midnight rain outside. Tony was finally starting to relax for the first time in days. Sokovia—Ultron—had been a shitshow of the first order. They’d only landed back on US soil a few hours ago.
If only he could Not Think for a while, maybe he could finally sleep.
FRIDAY’s voice broke the silence. “Boss, Captain Rogers is requesting entry to the penthouse.”
Tony felt his insides seize. Wrongwrongwrong. It hit him like a blow to the gut, worse because he wasn’t expecting it. JARVIS would know that Steve was the only other person that had unlimited access to the penthouse. JARVIS wouldn’t have to ask. But JARVIS couldn’t because he was dead—
“Let him up, FRIDAY.” Pepper’s steady voice cut through his panic. She set down her tablet and put one warm hand on Tony’s neck so that her fingers covered his pulse point and continued running the other through his hair. He tried to let her touch ground him. He breathed.
The soft ding of the elevator and the familiar tread of even footsteps helped him calm down even more. Tony made a face when the footsteps stopped before they reached the couch. That was no fun.
Steve huffed a soft laugh. “I had half hoped you both would be asleep by the time I managed to sneak up here.”
Tony could hear the fondness in Pepper’s voice as she replied. “You’ve met him, right?” She traced a little design with her finger near his collarbone. “No rest for the weary.”
Steve hummed in agreement. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here.” Tony whined. He wanted to be angry, but he didn’t have the energy. While he appreciated his loves’ attempts at levity, his momentary panic left him feeling even more spacey and drained.
With a soft rustle of fabric, Steve was crouched in front of Pepper, one hand on Tony’s back to steady himself and his nose nuzzling into Tony’s temple. “I’m sorry sweetheart,” Steve breathed into his ear, all earlier trace of joking gone. The hand on Tony’s back started making slow, soothing strokes. “I wish I could have been up here sooner.”
“S’Okay,” Tony mumbled, even though he figured both Pepper and Steve knew he was lying.
“No, it’s not.” Steve’s voice was getting a hard edge to it. “I hate that I can’t—” Pepper must have made some face or gesture to cut him off.
“It’s okay, Steve.” Her voice was calm, soft, reassuring. Exactly what they needed in this moment. “We both know you wanted to be here, and you came as soon as you could.”
Her hand left Tony’s hair; he assumed she was somehow reassuring Steve. Maybe she was petting his hair now. Pepper’s hair pets were the best.
They were all quiet for a moment before Pepper spoke again. “Tony told me that Clint had a wife and kids,” she began, almost hesitant. “And that he finally trusted you guys enough to tell you about them?”
Steve responded with a soft, “Yeah?”
“So maybe—and we can talk about this more in the morning, I just want to throw it out there so no one is blindsided when I bring it up—maybe we can start thinking about trusting the team with what we have between the three of us. It would certainly make our lives a little less complicated.”
Tony and Steve both froze. No one knew about the three-way relationship the three of them had managed to build for themselves in the months following the Mandarin debacle. They were only ever friends and teammates to each other outside of the penthouse, and even then, Steve had his own apartment in the tower that he used whenever anyone else would be close enough to snoop.
Of the team, Nat was convinced Steve was seeing someone, and her continued attempts to set him up were her way of annoying him into telling her who it was. The only person who might have any idea of what was actually going on was Bruce since he was the only other team member living at the tower full time. But he fucked off to God knows where, so it’s not like that mattered right now.
And now Pepper wanted to tell the team? The team was great, sure. They were some of the closest people Tony had to family, but what the fuck did he know about family? And there were still moments where he was so afraid. Where what the three of them had felt fragile. Where it felt more delicate than silence, that nothing more than naming it could break it.
The thought of breaking this relationship terrified him. Pepper and Steve had become the only two touchstones of stability Tony had, especially after JARVIS— he shuddered and forced his thoughts down a different path.
He was finally fucking happy for once.
Couldn’t the universe let him be happy?
Pepper resumed tracing patterns on his collar bone. “I don’t want to discuss it tonight. We’re all exhausted. I’m just putting it out there as an option. The three of us are in this together, no matter what we decide, we’re still playing for keeps.”
“Of course,” Steve said as Tony nodded into Pepper’s lap. Tony felt Steve relax as well at the familiar phrase; Pepper knew what she was doing when it came to her boys. “On that note,” Steve pulled away and Tony almost complained, but Steve pulled him into his arms and lifted him into the air. “It’s time for all genius billionaires and market dominating CEOs to be in bed. I’m beat.”
Tony gave half a second’s thought to putting up a fight, but he dismissed it immediately. Even if he wasn’t going to sleep, Pepper and Steve both needed it, and he didn’t particularly want to be alone right now. He curled deeper into Steve’s embrace and let his boyfriend carry him to bed.
The three of them buried themselves under the covers, Tony in the middle. Steve spooned up behind him, and Tony relaxed even more. Both of them had a tendency to cling in their sleep and slept better wrapped around each other. Pepper, meanwhile, took her preferred place facing the duo and offered one arm over to Tony. He gave her a sleepy smile before snatching it to his chest and cuddling it like a teddy bear. Ever since Extremis, she had been too uncomfortably hot to share body heat while sleeping. This small concession was as much as she could stand, even if she did wake up with a numb arm more often than not.
“FRIDAY, lights.” Pepper called, once they were all settled. The room dimmed to the point where it was only lit by the ambient light coming through the tinted windows.
As the darkness surrounded him, Tony’s heart started to race, and his anxiety started to creep up through his chest, a burning chill.
But then Steve was kissing the back of his neck. “Hey Sweetheart. Hey,” he whispered into Tony’s skin. “It’s okay. You can relax. You’re safe. Everyone’s safe.”
With Steve’s voice to ground him, Tony closed his eyes and concentrated on taking deliberately even breaths, trying to calm his heartrate. He was in bed with his loves. The crisis was over.
Pepper was safe.
Steve was safe.
The world was safe.
Pepper was safe.
Steve was safe.
The world was safe.
Pepper was safe.
Steve was safe.
The world was safe.
Eventually, in combination with Steve’s gentle assurances and kisses, Tony’s exhausted brain let him sleep.
~0~
Tony was walking through the living room of his Malibu house. He needed to call Steve. He wasn’t sure what he needed to tell him, or why it was so urgent, he had an overwhelming urge to call his boyfriend.
He leaned over the couch and reached for the phone when a high-pitched whine paralyzed him. Tony nearly choked in horror as past and present overlaid in his mind and Obadiah Stane lowered him slowly on to the pale leather couch.
“Breathe. Easy, easy, easy…” Stane started in on the monologue that was written in Tony’s soul whether he wanted to remember it or not.
The high-pitched hum was echoing in his skull. He couldn’t move. He’d been exposed to the noise for almost twenty seconds. Every two seconds of exposure equaled thirty seconds of paralysis. He couldn’t—
Something wasn’t right.
The pitch wasn’t right. He knew that machine. He knew that it needed to be generating 19,763.34281 Hz to paralyze a human being. Why was he still paralyzed when the frequency was too low? If he could audibly hear the difference in pitch, he should be able to move.
With that thought, Tony dropped to the ground, once again in control of his body. The Mansion was gone. It was just him and Stane in a completely white room.
“Well, that was fast. Maybe they weren’t mistaken in singling you out.” Their eyes met, and Tony felt cold as Stane’s pupils turned from black to a bright and swirling purple. “You do seem to have some intelligence after all.”
Tony pushed himself to his feet, refusing to let himself break eye contact. “Singling me out for what? And who are ‘they’? Who are you, for that matter?”
“We are the Infinite.”
But that wasn’t Stane’s voice. Nothing but the shock of hearing Yinsen again after so many years could have caused Tony to turn his back on whatever had taken the form of his bastard of a godfather. Tony had to swallow back tears as Yinsen continued to talk. “We are the consciousness that resides in what your people refer to as the Infinity Stones.”
“We are the essence of what created this universe.” Phil Coulson’s bland expression didn’t waver as he materialized into being on Tony’s right and continued the explanation.
There was an intrusive thought in the corner of Tony’s consciousness, something about wishing for the paralysis back so he didn’t collapse from shock. He forced himself to push it away as his fucking father appeared on his left, joining the circle of dead people surrounding him.
“Six elementals working together created the Big Bang, and then let themselves be carried off into different corners of the universe, just to add a little unpredictability to the forward progress of the cosmos.” Tony thought he had heard the last of Howard Stark’s lecture voice when the man died, but apparently not.
“A sufficiently powerful being could call forth and influence the powers of each of the stones.” White hot grief lit through Tony at hearing that voice. Pietro Maximoff leaned casually against one of the white walls. Not quite in the circle surrounding Tony, but not quite out of it either.
“Of course, we’ve been able to keep some influence over who uses the stones, and what they use them for, just to make sure that nothing completely universe-destroying happens. That’s where you come in.”
Tony looked into the eyes of Edwin Jarvis, who had joined the circle across from Pietro, and then blinked hard, hoping that would clear things up. It didn’t. Finally, he spoke:
“What the fuck.”
Yinsen gave a soft huff that could have passed for a laugh in a different situation. “You’ve been chosen. A being of immense power is working to gather all six of the stones. If he succeeds, the universe as we know it will be altered on a scale few have the capacity to understand. We scoured the stars to find someone who had a chance of standing against this being. And you, Anthony Stark, Death’s Merchant, Inventor, Mechanic, Avenger, are the most worthy adversary we’ve come across in all of the cosmos.”
Tony felt sick. He was dreaming right? This had to be a dream. “Yeah, sure cool. You’ve got my CV, glad my subconscious reads my Wiki page. But I’m still not buying this.” He glanced around at the people he could see without physically turning his body. They already had him at a distinct disadvantage because they were surrounding him. He refused to twist and squirm about like prey caught in a trap. “I would say this has been fun, but seeing dead people is not my idea of a great time. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to do my best to wake up now.” He turned away from Yinsen and Jarvis and tried to leave the circle without making eye contact with anyone else.
“You can’t wake up until we let you.” Coulson lifted an arm and prevented Tony from leaving. “Your consciousness isn’t even in your body right now. We’re in an alternate plane, outside of time and space. We could stay here for hundreds of your Earth years and it would only be a moment of time in your body’s reality.”
“Riiight.” Tony drew out the word. “You have an answer for everything don’t you?”
“We have an answer to your question about what was on the other side of the portal.” Pietro’s words stopped Tony cold. “We know who was coming for you in the vision Wanda gave you. We know Stark. And we can tell you.”
Tony turned to face him.
For the first time, the situation felt real. “Explain.”
“It’s simple enough really.” In the time Tony had been looking away, Stane had somehow acquired a cigar that he was now gesticulating with. “The being on the hunt for the stones and the one responsible for the invasion of New York are one in the same.”
Some of the pieces fell together for Tony. “So, Loki really was enthralled by the scepter as well?”
Jarvis looked him over carefully. “Why would you assume Loki to be a puppet and not the one collecting the stones?”
Finally, they had arrived at territory where Tony felt a bit more comfortable. “Easy. He’s not an idiot and direct confrontation isn’t his style. The guy from Thor’s stories is smart enough to know that the easiest way to rule the world is to manipulate the system that’s already in place, not overthrow it by brute force.” Tony paused, and then added, what he felt was, the most compelling evidence, “There was also that footage of him with green eyes after the Hulk used him to make a dent in my floor. In every surveillance video we have of him before that, his eyes are the same bright blue of Barton’s and the Doc’s after they were taken. It wasn’t that hard to put together.”
Howard dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Not bad. The most basic signs, perhaps, but still impressive for someone from a planet as primitive as yours.”
Tony raised one eyebrow. “Primitive? You’re contradicting your self a bit there. Am I worthy or am I primitive?”
Stane scoffed. “At this point, we don’t know.” His eyes met Tony’s in a hard stare that took Tony back to when he was a twenty-year-old kid who had just lost his parents. “That’s up to you. We can only see potential. Some of us believe you have it. Some of us don’t. But the truth of the matter is, you’re our only choice. So, are you ready to listen, or are we going to sit here listening to you yap for eternity?”
Tony turned in a slow circle to meet the eyes of every one that surrounded him. He took a deep breath. “Okay. Tell me what I need to know.”
~0~
Tony startled awake, still in between his loves. They had a lot to discuss.