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cap_ironman2012-07-05 12:15 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2012-07-05 12:15 am
Entry tags:
Reassembled, Chapter 9
Title: Reassembled, Chapter 9
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Universe: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.
Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Authors' note: Wow, it's been... almost eight months since we posted a chapter of this. And we don't even have a good excuse. We can promise that it will NOT be eight months before we post the next chapter, though.
Reassembled
Chapter Nine
Steve carefully smudged the shading around the curve of the vase until it was even, then studied it and considered the merits of erasing and starting over again. The entire thing was slightly but visibly lopsided.
Still lives were not one of his strengths, but then, that was what made them good practice.
The cat, curled up on the back of the couch, rearranged himself with a creak of leather and settled back into position with both of his hind feet shoved into the back of Steve's neck. A slight prick of claws warned that he would be displeased if Steve attempted to either move or push his feet away.
"See," Tony said. "I told you he liked you."
"As a foot rest," Steve returned. Thankfully, his hair was too short for chewing on — human hair seemed to inexplicably delight the cat, and he almost hadn't survived his first encounter with Carol, which had involved launching himself at her head from behind while she'd been sitting on the couch.
"Hmm," Tony said, the bulk of his attention already back on whatever he was doing with the laptop and tablet he had set up on the coffee table. On the screen, computerized wire drawings expanded, rotated through 360 degrees, and were minimized again, while his little plastic stylus flashed over the tablet's surface. He never actually looked at the screen, eyes focused on something invisible in the middle distance, probably the schematics in his head. Steve wasn't sure how much of that was the Extremis, and how much was just Tony's ability to design things in his head.
He had finally gotten used to the near-silence in which Tony often used computers these days; the lack of clacking keys was one of the few benefits of the Extremis, since Tony tended to type furiously and loudly. The quiet was nice, peaceful. They hadn't had many chances lately to just sit around and relax.
The constant stream of disasters in Manhattan hadn't stopped. If anything, it seemed to be spreading — there had been a three-alarm fire in Brooklyn yesterday, apparently caused by a single dropped cigarette, and a woman in Chelsea had stabbed her husband and two dinner guests to death with a kitchen knife, before turning it on herself. Disasters, accidents, and a wave of violent crimes, all frustratingly completely beyond their ability to stop. Half the time, there wasn't even anything Steve could try to do to help.
The chaos-tainted book at the museum was still unguarded, the museum administrators having taken Wanda's warning about it precisely as seriously as they did the insistence by museum staff that it was cursed. There had been a rash of minor accidents surrounding it, according to the security guard Sam had spoken to, but it was the keystone of their special exhibit, and they were reluctant to remove it.
Its presence could have been a coincidence, of course, but where chaos magic was concerned, very few things were.
In between crises, Steve and Sam had somehow managed to get Sam's things moved over to the mansion, after he'd decided that Steve and Tony staying there alone with Wanda wasn't a good idea. Steve wasn't sure if he was more worried about Wanda falling under Chthon's influence again, or about something — or someone — coming after Wanda, but his presence was welcome. Tony had been burying himself in his lab or his office at Stark Enterprises for the past week. Twice, he hadn't even come to bed, staying down there all night.
Sam had been remarkably good-natured about it when Steve had dragged him into the den to watch movies with him.
He didn't sleep well on his own, not after four months of sharing a bed.
Tony was poking desultorily at his computer now, resting his chin on one hand; Steve wasn't sure if he was putting the finishing touches on his project, or had just run out of steam. He had been working on it for at least an hour, by Steve's watch.
His own project, Steve decided, was hopelessly unfixable. He hadn't been paying enough attention to his work, and he'd nearly erased through the paper in two places, and the vase was still lopsided. He wasn't getting the curvature right, or the reflections.
He folded the page back, giving himself a pristine new surface to draw on, and let himself doodle absentmindedly. He was probably trying too hard, holding the pencil too tightly and over-controlling the lines.
"What are you working on?" he asked. Tony's answer might or might not make any sense, but listening to him ramble about engines or computers was always soothing.
"Some blueprints and computer models," Tony said, after a pause. He didn't sound particularly enthusiastic, which meant whatever it was probably didn't explode, break the sound barrier, pioneer a new computer operating system, or do anything else particularly interesting, at least by Tony's standards.
"What for?" Steve prompted, after a long moment of silence had stretched between them.
Tony sighed, and looked up from the computer, rubbing at his face with one hand. "Wind turbines. And the navigation system for the Boeing bid. R&D kept sending back crap, so I said I'd do it myself."
"Don't you always?"
"It would be nice not to have to once in a while."
Coming from a man whom Steve had known to personally redesign completely functional products from the ground up because they were only 'good' and not good enough, the statement ought to have been laughable, but some quality in his voice made Steve believe him. Tony sounded tired and frustrated.
A low, creaky purr started up behind him, and the cat's needle-sharp little claws dug into the back of his neck, then let go, then dug in again.
"Hey." Steve leaned forward, putting a hand to the back of his neck to protect it from Patton's sudden and violent affection. The cat flicked one ear back, and glared at him with baleful blue eyes.
Steve shifted to put himself sideways on the couch, his back against the armrest and his head and neck out of claw-reach. Designed to accommodate Thor if necessary, the couch was long enough that even with Tony sitting on the other end, he could stretch his legs out to their full length. He rested one foot against Tony's thigh and drew the other leg up to balance his sketchpad on his knee. "Is this what's had you pulling all-nighters?"
Tony shook his head. "I've just been busy." He offered Steve an apologetic smile. "Sorry."
"The cat misses you," Steve said, the words awkward. Their real meaning was probably painfully obvious. Steve's ears felt hot for a moment, and he wondered if his ridiculous inability to relax properly without Tony in bed next to him showed on his face.
He couldn't remember most of his dreams last night, but at least one had involved drowning, the water warm and metallic tasting. He wasn't sure if it had been Bucky's face staring down through the water at him, or Sharon's, or Tony's.
It wasn't just Tony not being there; he'd had nightmares after the team had fallen apart, when they'd thought Wanda had gone crazy, and he'd had them during the registration fight, too, and during the war. Wanda coming back had probably set them off again, or maybe Chthon's presence was affecting him, dredging up old nightmares. The security guard at the Metropolitan Museum had said that the John Dee book gave him nightmares.
"I'll stay here tonight," Tony promised.
Steve could feel himself smiling. He dug his toes into Tony's thigh and settled back against the couch arm. "I'll hold you to that."
Tony closed his laptop with a click, pushing it away, and rubbed at his face again, this time with both hands, digging his fingers into his temples in little circular motions. "I'll send Pepper an email," he said, the words muffled. "I'm supposed to come in for a meeting with the design team for the Boeing thing first thing tomorrow morning, and Fury wants to talk to me about something or other, and she's getting deluged with calls and emails from reporters who want an interview; Sally Floyd's left her six voicemails this week. And I'm getting nowhere with this." He waved a hand at the laptop. "I know I can increase the power output by another fifteen percent, but I can't think. It's theoretically possible. It has to be possible."
Tony leaned his head back against the back of the couch, closing his eyes, and Steve could see the pulse beating in the long line of his throat. "Sometimes I hate my job." He paused, then his mouth twisted into something that wanted to be a smile but didn't quite make it. "God, that sounds whiney. Ignore me; I'm just tired."
Tired, and probably nursing a headache. His eyes had been dark before he'd closed the laptop, the oily black of the Extremis spreading across the normal blue like cataracts; Tony was monitoring the surveillance equipment around St. Margaret's continually, keeping track of city police and emergency radio bands, and repeatedly hacking into SHIELD's communications, plus responding to all of his business email and cell phone calls on top of that.
Tony was watching SHIELD communications for Steve, he knew, keeping an eye on Sharon and Bucky for him. It made him feel better, to know that he — that they — would know immediately if either of them was in trouble, but if Tony was getting headaches again...
The next step was nosebleeds. Steve wasn't sure what happened after that — Tony had never pushed the Extremis that far, after damaging it so badly fighting the Mandarin — but it couldn't be good.
He pulled his foot away from Tony's leg and sat up. "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't do this anymore."
Tony opened his eyes, rolling his head to the side slightly. "Do what?"
"Run yourself into the ground until you collapse. It's not good for you, it's not good for your company, and it's not good for the team."
"I'm fine." Tony's voice was sharp. "I can do my job, Steve. I don't need you second-guessing me."
"Past evidence says that you do," Steve returned, annoyed now. "Drop the SHIELD links. I told Bucky they could call me if they needed back-up."
"I'm not watching SHIELD's communications just to make you feel better. There are-"
"Have you seen this?" The living-room door slammed open, and Jan strode into the room, the clack of her heels loud and angry on the wooden floor. She flourished a copy of TIME magazine at them, holding it so that the cover was clearly visible; inside the traditional red border was a press photo of the Avengers, taken just after Thor had rejoined the team. "Did you know about it? Damn it, Tony, you're supposed to give the entire team a say in any press releases we put out."
"What press release?" Tony reached for the magazine, fumbling it momentarily as Jan thrust it at him. "I've been dodging reporters all day. I haven't given an interview to anyone since Thor came back, and I haven't given a private interview since that bastard at the Meridian who thought we'd faked Steve's... him."
He opened the magazine, flipping through it to find the article. "That's why she kept calling Pepper," he muttered, staring down at the first page. "She was trying to get a quote."
Steve leaned forward, peering at the magazine over Tony's shoulder. 'Avengers Reassembled,' the title read. 'America's foremost superhero team has reformed, but can it last?' And below that, in small, discreet letters, the byline. 'Sally Floyd.'
"Give me that." Steve grabbed the magazine away from Tony, skimming the first page. The opening paragraphs were nothing but basic background information on the team, and a review of their activities over the past few months. No editorial commentary, no-wait.
He backed up and re-read the first paragraph on the second page again. "'Dr. Pym was previously under investigation for his role in the enforcement of the now-defunct Superhuman Registration Act,'" he read aloud, "'but all charges have since been dropped. Chief among those charges was the death of superhero and respected scientist Dr. William Foster, killed by a clone of Thor, Dr. Pym's teammate. Foster is not the first death that can be laid at the feet of one of Pym's creations...'" Steve broke off, his irritation at Tony redirecting itself toward a new target. "And then she speculates about whether Ultron and your clone had anything to do with Hank's 'psychological breakdown.'" He looked up at Jan, who was glaring down at both of them. Even seated and with her standing, he didn't have to look up far to meet her eyes. "I'm so sorry. Ms. Floyd and I didn't get along the last time we met. She's... abrasive."
"She implies that I divorced Hank because he's a crazy mad scientist," Jan said, her voice dangerously calm. "I think abrasive is an understatement. Keep reading. The next paragraph is about how Clint used to be a petty criminal before you gave him a 'second chance.' I didn't even read the rest of it. I'm sure I'll hear about it from everyone in the fashion industry tomorrow." She waved a hand at the magazine. "Veronica at work lent me this because there's a spread on her designs in it. It's an advance copy — the rest of them hit newsstands tomorrow morning."
"It's my fault," Tony said. "I should have answered her phone calls. If you don't give a reporter the story you want them to run, they'll find another one. And she's probably been dying to run a story on me since I threw her out of my office. And then she called me to ask for an interview after the SHRA was repealed, and I hung up on her."
"That was stupid," Jan told him bluntly. "Don't tick off reporters; it always comes back to bite you."
"It was after..." Tony shook his head, trailing off. "She said things about Steve, and about me, the last time I let her interview me. They weren't true, and I didn't want to listen to them. I don't really remember what I said then. Shouting might have been involved."
He was crumpling the magazine, Steve realized, and made his fingers relax. "I told her I wanted to apologize to you. What did she-"
"She said I did the right thing." Tony's voice was quiet, and his gaze was fixed firmly on his hands. "I don't remember most of it. Ben Urich was there, I think. I don't know. That entire week is sort of a blank. She probably thinks I owed her one; there were things she could have printed that she kept quiet about."
For a moment, Steve wasn't sure if he wanted to comfort Tony, or shake him — he hated hearing that particular dull note in Tony's voice. He almost reached out to lay a hand on Tony's shoulder, but thought better of it. Tony was holding himself stiffly, his shoulders hunched forward slightly, and didn't look as if he'd welcome a casual touch.
Steve made himself look away, back at the magazine, pretending that Tony hadn't just uncomfortably referenced the breakdown he'd nearly had while Steve had been gone.
Two pages later, he was gritting his teeth. Nothing he'd read so far was actually untrue, and aside from the swipe at Hank, none of it was phrased in such as way as to openly attack any of the Avengers' abilities or integrity. It just... raised questions. About Hank's stability. About Clint's record. About Carol and Hank and Tony's involvement with the Initiative. About Tony's long record of health problems and, of course, his drinking. About Thor's presence, and what kind of consequences could come from gods interfering in human affairs. About Wanda's reappearance after a long and unexplained absence. About Steve's ability to lead the team properly after the disaster that the fight over Registration had become. About Sam's vaguely described connection to Red Skull — vague, because specific details would have made it obvious that he'd been manipulated against his will. Jan, oddly, seemed to escape Floyd's journalistic scalpel, possibly because in her case, there was simply less dirt to be dug up.
They weren't even bad questions, except for the ones about Clint and Sam, who had both proven themselves dozens of times over and didn't deserve to have this kind of mud thrown at them, even by implication.
He closed the magazine in disgust, knowing he'd have to open it back up and read the last few pages and already dreading it. It would just be more pointed, entirely legitimate and thoroughly uncomfortable questions, and possibly some more dredged-up dirt from the Congressional hearings. There was probably more about Tony's drinking, as well; reporters rarely got tired of rehashing that, and Tony had, unfortunately, given them a lot of material to rehash.
"It's just gone up on TIME's website," Tony said. He was silent for a moment, presumably reading, then winced. "Fuck, Steve, I'm so, so sorry. I swear I checked for cameras. I'm sorry. I'll deny everything if you want me to."
That sounded ominous. "Deny-" Steve started, and broke off as Sam came rushing through the open door, Clint on his heels.
Both of them came to a halt when they saw the magazine in Steve's hand. Sam nodded at it, looking sober. "You've seen it, then?"
"Yeah." Steve winced. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this."
Sam was silent for a moment, tilting his head to one side the way he did when he was contemplating something — Redwing did the same thing, and Steve had never been sure whether the hawk had picked it up from Sam, or whether Sam had picked it up from him. "You're way too calm. You haven't read the entire article yet, have you?"
Steve shook his head. "Only the first few pages, but that's enough to get the picture."
"Um, Steve," Tony said, face blank, "you need to read the rest."
Clint stepped forward and took the magazine from Steve's hands, opened it, and shoved it back at him. "Actually, I think he just needs to see the last page."
Two photographs stared up at him from the glossy pages. The first, on the left page, was of Tony, his face buried in his hands and his body turned sideways to the camera, into Jan's shoulder. There was naked grief in every line of his body — the hunch of his shoulders, the glimpse of his twisted, tear-stained face just visible through his fingers. Jan was crying as well, her eye make-up smeared, and part of Hank's shoulder and arm were just visible at the edge of the frame, his hand on her arm.
Steve didn't need to read the caption to know when and where the picture had been taken. In the upper left corner, over their heads, he could see rows of identical white headstones, marching away into the distance.
Arlington. Jack Monroe was buried there, and Toro, and all the Howling Commandos save for Nick, Dugan, and Gabe Jones. Bucky had a headstone there, that still hadn't been taken down.
His own grave wasn't there anymore. It had already been empty, and Steve had asked them to take the stone down the last time he'd been in DC. Standing there and looking at his own name carved into the white stone, no different from thousands of others, he'd felt cold, numb; seeing the physical proof of his burial had made what had happened to him real in a way that even Tony sobbing in his arms hadn't — he'd been dead, buried — but the sick lurch in his stomach now was worse.
He didn't even see the second photograph at first, unable to process anything beyond the fact that he was looking at a picture of his own funeral.
He'd only seen Tony look that utterly broken twice; once in a nameless hotel in the Bowery, when he'd been trying to commit suicide with a bottle, and again in the security camera footage of Tony's 'conversation' with his body.
And Sally Floyd and TIME Magazine had put it into print for the world to see.
It would have made him uncomfortable even were it not Tony, even had it not involved him. That kind of devastation was private. They had had no right to—
Steve caught himself before he finished the thought, reminding himself that they had every right to publish photos taken at public events, just as Floyd had every right to print things that were technically true even if he didn't like them.
Then he noticed the second picture.
This one had been taken at the museum showing the week before last, a close-up of himself and Tony. They were standing only inches apart, Tony frozen in the act of smoothing down Steve's tie. "Steve Rogers and Tony Stark share an intimate moment at the opening of a Metropolitan Museum of Art special exhibit," the caption read, but the words, and their implications, were unnecessary. The picture alone was damning enough.
It wasn't just the touch — it was the way they were standing, too close, the flirtatious way Tony was smiling at him, the pleasure in his face and body language a sharp contrast to the raw misery in the other photo. The way Steve himself was smiling back, one hand on Tony's arm as if to pull him closer.
Nowhere in the article, Steve noticed with a detached calm that surprised him, did Floyd directly say that they were involved. She didn't need to. In concise, clear language, she described Tony's shock and dazed grief when she and Ben Urich had spoken to him after Steve's... after his death, and contrasted it with his clear joy at having Steve back, given how 'obviously close' they were. They had refused, she reported, to respond to questions about the nature of their relationship. Again, technically true — Tony had apparently refused to speak to her at all.
By next week, half the tabloids in the US would be asking those unspecified questions for her, in bold, two-inch headlines. And answering them.
What kind of lens and development technique had the photographer used to get that good a resolution in dim light without a flash? Peter would know, he thought.
"I'm sorry," Tony was saying, again. "I checked for cameras. I always do a scan for cameras and recording devices before I do something like that in public. They must have used analog film."
"You mean, like the video camera in the Helicarrier's morgue?"
The words just slipped out, Steve wishing even as he said them that he could take them back. Tony's half-hidden face in the first photograph drew his eyes again, and for a moment, he could almost see the slightly blurry video footage of his own motionless body, and hear Tony's voice, low and broken. "It wasn't worth it."
"I know," Tony groaned. "It was inexcusably stupid of me. I was... distracted that time. This time, I have no excuse."
"What were the two of you doing in the Helicarrier's morgue that you had to turn the cameras off for?" Clint sounded far too interested, his eyebrows raised questioningly. He hissed as Sam elbowed him in the side, and took a step away from him. "I was trying to lighten the mood."
"That's private," Steve said, forcing the words out around the tight knot in his throat. "And so was this." He touched the picture of himself and Tony at the museum with one fingertip.
"I'll..." Tony started, then stopped, and began again, "I should have read those emails. Maybe she was trying to warn us before this hit newsstands, or maybe I could have talked her out of it by giving her something else to print." He sounded calm, his face forced back into a careful lack of expression, but Steve wasn't fooled; he was probably blisteringly angry with himself for slipping up in such an obvious way, not to mention humiliated by the idea of thousands of readers seeing that photo of him at Steve's funeral. Tony didn't like publicly losing control of himself.
He looked at Steve then, his eyes draining back to blue and refocusing on the world outside his head. "I'll make whatever public statement you want. Denying it might make it worse — the media's been speculating about my sex life for years, and denying things just encourages them — but we can try."
"We're not denying it," Steve said, flatly, wanting to squash that idea before it could get off the ground. "I'm not lying about this when I don't have to." Not mentioning something was different from actively lying about it — he'd sworn never to do that again after he'd first woken up in this time, when he'd first realized that he couldn't be arrested or imprisoned for sex with men anymore. It had taken him much, much longer to work up to admitting that he might like said sex with men to anyone he knew, but that was different. Before Tony, there hadn't really been anything to admit to — nothing that was worth potentially losing the respect or friendship of someone he cared about. "And we're not making a statement. It's no one else's business."
His eyes went back to the picture of his funeral, and he made himself look away from it.
Tony shook his head slightly. "We have to. We have to take control of the story now, before it spins out of control."
"Our relationship is not a 'story.'"
"Yes," Sam said, "it is. You know it is. You're Captain America, and four months ago you came back from the dead. Everything you do is a news story, especially right now." He took the magazine away from Steve, folding it up again; Steve watched the pictures disappear from view with something like relief.
Steve's cell phone rang, then, a sudden burst of noise that made everyone in the room jump.
Jan snatched it up off the side table before any of the others could. "Avengers Mansion," she started, then, "Yes, I know. He knows. Yes, we've all seen it, Peter." She held the phone out to Steve. "It's Spiderman."
"I gathered that," Steve said, and took the phone from her. He brought it to his ear and found Peter midway through a stream of fast-paced speech. "-fire me again if I don't get the Bugle an exclusive, or maybe just fire me on principle for knowing all about it and not telling him. I can tell him no, though. It's not like Jameson hasn't fired me six times already, and he's mad enough right now that he'll probably do it anyway no matter what I do. And I can find out who took the picture, if you want; there aren't many guys good enough to get that kind of a shot in that kind of light. It was an old-school camera, right? That doesn't narrow it down much, but-"
"Peter," Steve interrupted, "we don't-"
"Man, I'm so sorry this happened to you guys. I know how much this sucks. Or, I don't know how much this exact thing sucks, but I know how awful it is to have the biggest secret of your life in the headlines. People are going to freak. Seriously, you have no idea how weird people are going to act around you, sometimes ones you don't expect."
"I know," Steve managed to get in. Sam hadn't 'freaked.' Sharon hadn't. Bucky hadn't. Hank and Jan and Carol hadn't. Even Clint, despite Steve's initial worries, had reacted more to the fact that he was sleeping with Tony in particular than to the fact that he was in love with another man. Thor had narrowed his eyes and told him that the bond between warriors was a sacred thing, and he should be certain that he gave his trust and affections only to those who were worthy of it, and said nothing when he'd snapped back that Tony was worthy.
Rhodey knew and didn't mind, he reminded himself. Pepper didn't. Jarvis was happy for them. All the people who were important to them already knew. How much of the rest of the world's reactions really mattered, in light of that?
He met Tony's eyes, and managed to summon up a smile. "Tell him we'll talk to Ben Urich or Robbie Robertson," he said to Peter. "Nobody else."
"I can do it, if you want," Tony said, at the same time that Peter said,
"Are you sure you want to? Like, you're not going to be able to take this back. Everyone will know."
Tony was smiling, a lopsided, rueful little smile. "I've discussed my sex life with reporters enough that it would barely even be news anymore if you weren't involved. I can-"
"No," Steve said, to both of them. "I'm not sure. But I'll do it. Tell Jameson we'll give the interview together."
Several hours later, when he'd finally joined Tony in his hiding place in the lab after one too many phone calls from people who wanted to express either shock or sympathy, he still had no idea what he was going to say. The truth, he supposed. That he loved Tony. It had taken months before he'd been able to work up the nerve to tell Tony himself that. Telling the entire world ought to be even more intimidating, but oddly, it was the one aspect of this that he wasn't dreading.
No more hiding what Tony meant to him as if he were ashamed of it. No more need to carefully avoid touching him in public. All he would have to do was tell a newspaper reporter, and the Bugle's entire readership, that he wasn't straight.
He'd testified against the Registration Act in front of Congress. He'd fought Hitler and alien warlords and supervillains and demons and gods. He'd come back from the — Steve mentally flinched away from the word, then made himself think it, from the dead. I was dead. And he'd died still keeping that part of himself a secret, a small regret when stacked up against so many larger ones, but a regret nonetheless.
Compared to all that, this ought to be easy.
Tony hadn't even looked at him yet. He was fiddling with part of a computer circuit board, tiny bits of gold wire glittering between his fingers. As Steve watched, he reached up to rub at his forehead, just over his left eye.
"Would you really deny it, if I ask you to?" The words just came out, awkward and unplanned. He'd meant to ask some variation on 'are you all right,' the image of Tony's grief-stricken face and hunched shoulders still far too clear in his mind.
Tony looked up, his hands stilling. "You've been through enough because of me. You hate media attention, and coming out is going to get you tons of it, a lot of it nasty."
Steve shook his head. "Let people say what they want. They will anyway."
They'd already started. The magazine wouldn't even hit newsstands until tomorrow morning, but going by the reaction to the internet article, which thus far seemed to consist of titillated snickering and indignant proclamations that Captain America wasn't gay and anyone who suggested otherwise was an anti-American terrorist, it was going to be an absolutely miserable media circus. Exactly the kind of thing they didn't have time for right now.
He almost wished that Tony had never shown him how to read the comments on online news articles.
"I said I'd dance with you somewhere public," he went on. "How could you think I'd want you to lie about us?"
Tony's eyes went back to the bits of computer he was still holding loosely. Without any particular emotion in his voice, he asked. "Remember the way Miriam Sharpe looked at us, in that restaurant in DC? Remember those anti-mutant protestors who camped out around the mansion when you brought Wanda and Pietro onto the team?"
"Vividly. Just think about how angry it will make them to know that Captain America is fucking a guy." He said the words deliberately, not bothering to soften it with a euphemism. "Maybe we shouldn't have kept it secret in the first place." He'd been made forcibly aware over the past year of how much the actions of a single individual could affect the entire superhero community, the entire country; people listened to him, even when he didn't want them to. Maybe for once he could use that for a good cause and not have it backfire painfully.
Tony set the circuit board to one side, lining it up so that its edges were exactly parallel with the edge of the work table. "I just wish we had more control over how and when this came out." He set the tools he'd been using down next to it, in a neat, perfect line. "I hate lying to the media. I did far too much of it, last winter. And I hate trying to have a relationship while reporters scrutinize every imaginable aspect of; it got bad enough with Rumiko, sometimes, and that was nowhere near as deliciously scandalous." He met Steve's gaze, then, jaw tight, and his voice was strained as he added, "But nowhere near as much as I hated losing you. I..." he hesitated, then, "I hung up on Sally because I couldn't handle the thought of talking to her. Not then, and not now."
"Tony-" Steve started.
Tony pushed his chair back from the workbench and stood; for a moment, Steve thought he was going to start pacing, or shove the chair back in hard, or maybe sweep something off the workbench with his arm. Something violent or restless. Instead he stood perfectly still, his body humming with tension.
"I told you I was fine now," he said quietly, looking down at his hand on the back of the chair. "I... might have stretched the truth somewhat." He rubbed at his face again, the gesture disturbingly like that photograph. "I've made so many mistakes," he said, the words low and hoarse. "And they keep popping back up again every time I manage to forget them. Thor, you, the Initiative..."
This wasn't really about the fact that their relationship was about to be outed, then. Steve wasn't surprised; Tony had never seemed to care that deeply what people thought of his sex life, or who knew about it. His confession that it had made him uncomfortable when the media had speculated about his relationship with Rumiko was something Steve had never suspected.
Sex wasn't something Tony was ashamed of. Failure, or what he perceived as failure, was.
Steve took a step closer to him, until they were standing only inches apart, close enough to feel Tony's body heat and smell his aftershave and the faint metallic tang that the Extremis had given him. "They shouldn't have printed those pictures. The rest of the article was justified, mostly, but those were private."
Tony shook his head fractionally. "It was all justified, except for the shit about Sam and Wanda. And Clint." His eyes were red-rimmed, and Steve would have bet that Tony hadn't slept any better than Steve had last night, if he'd even gone to bed. "I thought I could make this team work, that we could make it work. It has been working."
"Just because the questions she posed were justified doesn't mean her prediction that our team's going to fall apart is worth anything." That insinuation had been almost as bad as the blatant invasion of their privacy at the end of the article, and just as uncalled for. Steve tried a smile. "I won't let it. Not after all the time and effort we've put into getting this far."
Tony smiled back, but only for a moment. "Even you can't keep things from happening just by willing them not to. I've screwed up before. I'll do it again. And next time, it might not be as relatively harmless as forgetting that someone might have a camera the Extremis can't detect."
"Considering how much chaos energy Wanda detected in that room, it's probably not a coincidence that some photographer was looking at us at exactly the wrong moment."
Tony nodded, swaying forward slightly into Steve. "Thor is right. I don't deserve you."
The impulse to pull Tony even closer to him warred with annoyance. "I get to decide who deserves me." Steve settled for grabbing Tony by the arms to prevent him from pulling away. "I was dead," he said, remembering what he'd told Luke Cage months ago. "I can sleep with whoever I want. And I don't care who knows about it."
* * *
Everything about this evening had been scripted, with a little help from Jan and Pepper. Tempting as the idea of giving the interview in either business attire or, even better, armor had been, he had deliberately worn casual clothing. It created the illusion of intimacy, and not appearing in costume would subtly make the point that this was about Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, not about Captain America and Iron Man.
That had been Steve's idea, as had the plate of cookies on the coffee table. Tony had pointed out that Ben Urich was legendarily immune to bribery, and Steve had given him a shove that was somewhere between playful and admonishing and told him that it wasn't a bribe; it was good manners.
Ben was regarding them seriously now, his eyes moving between them as if watching for some visible sign of their relationship. He looked much the same as he had the last time Tony had seen him, at the press conference after the SHRA's repeal; graying hair, glasses that he presumably wore by choice, since he could easily have replaced them with contacts, with the kind of good-quality wool trench-coat that lasted for years draped over one arm.
"People are going to want to know how long you've known that you were gay, how long you've been together, why you haven't come out before now, and some kind of salacious intimate detail about your relationship," he was saying. "But what I actually want to ask is whether your relationship played a role in your decision to reform the Avengers and whether it influenced your actions regarding the SHRA."
Tony flashed him a brilliant smile. "Actually, I think many women would be able to attest that I'm bisexual. And... Since I was in college, since the Helicarrier blew up, and because the media was still having so much fun with all the other ways I've publicly exposed myself to them that it would have been a shame to distract them."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you want me to print the double-entendre?"
"No," Steve said.
"Yes," Tony said.
"Are you going to answer the question about Registration? I spoke with you during the repeal process; I know how hard both of you worked to get the SHRA repealed, and how much New York City owes your entire team, both past and present."
'No,' Tony thought. 'I'm not going to answer it.' He didn't know how to. Sharing the details of his sexual history with the press was nothing new, even if he'd never been quite this honest about it before, and any shame he'd had over the process had died a humiliated death during Kathy Dare's trial, when the judge had actually questioned him — and several of his ex-girlfriends — about it under oath. Sharing that kind of personal information about his feelings, for Steve or anyone else, felt like stripping himself bare for everyone to see.
Of course it had influenced his actions. He'd tried not to let it, to do what Steve would have done and soldier on regardless of what it cost him personally, no matter how much it hurt, but in retrospect... He'd lied to Steve to protect him, kept secrets from him for what Tony had thought at the time was Steve's own good. If he'd been acting entirely rationally, maybe he'd have done things differently, allowed Steve to make his own choices with all the information available to him, rather than not explaining things until the situation had gotten out of hand and it was far too late. Steve had insisted more than once that he himself would have tried much harder to come to some kind of compromise if he'd known what Tony's true goals had been.
Tony forced himself to smile, the expression feeling stiff and fake. This would be easier with a glass in his hand, something to make him just a little less tightly wound. He cut the thought off before it could go any further; nothing good ever followed it.
"Can we go back to the double entendres?" he asked, managing to work some humor into his voice. "There's one about Cap's mighty shield that I prepared specifically for the occasion."
Steve gave him a stern look, presumably meant to convey that he was Captain America and that Tony ought to be taking this much more seriously, and furthermore, that he was not secretly snickering over the shield comment at all. Then he turned to Ben, face and voice appropriately serious.
"I wanted to serve my country, and I knew that if I were completely open and forthcoming about certain aspects of myself, I wouldn't be able to. Things were different then; I don't know if I would make the same decision now."
"And do you regret that decision?"
Steve shook his head. "It didn't seem like a sacrifice at the time. I fought alongside people who were willing to give their lives for a country that didn't even treat them as full citizens; compared to that, I felt like I had it easy. I wish now, though, that I'd spoken up, come out sooner. I never tried very hard to hide it, I never lied about myself, but... people see me as a role model, as something to look up to, because of what the costume I wear represents. And I don't know if they're always right to do that, but I think it makes visibility important." Tony could hear the sincerity in his voice. Steve never gave himself to things half-heartedly; when he believed in something, he was ready to sacrifice and fight for it. He'd lay money that Steve felt guilty about not being openly out, that he believed it was his responsibility to be an example to others, some kind of duty that he'd been shirking. "I never had any role models who were gay or bisexual growing up," Steve went on. "There were men who everyone knew were fairies or queer or a variety of other lovely words the Bugle's editors are not going to let you print, but people didn't talk about it."
Ben nodded. "I imagine they didn't. Mr. Stark said you'd been involved since shortly after the Helicarrier was blown up last spring. That was immediately after your return from the dead. Did that-"
"Dying makes a man re-evaluate things. Tony's always been one of my closest friends, and as we began trying to work out our differences in order to stop Red Skull, Doom, and the Mandarin, and get Registration repealed, I realized that he had become much more than that."
Tony found himself unable to look away from Steve for a moment; the little smile he was directing at Tony made his entire face look soft and happy and young, and even the knowledge that he wasn't entirely worthy of it couldn't diminish the warmth he felt at knowing he could cause that expression, knowing that Steve thought he was worthy of it. It made him want to sit up straighter and fight harder and be someone who deserved Steve's respect and affection.
Trying to took so much energy, more these days than it had before he'd been exposed to AIM's toxin — or maybe it just felt that way — but it was worth it. More than worth it.
Steve almost never mentioned dying, even after he jerked out of sleep gasping for air and shaking, something he'd done a lot those first few weeks. It didn't seem to bother him now, but Tony reached for his hand anyway, laying his own hand overtop of it and brushing his thumb along the back of Steve's knuckles. There was a faint, white scar across one of them, barely detectable even by touch. It was the only scar on Steve's body, now that the bullet graze by his hairline from fighting Red Skull had long since healed away into nothing.
"That's a nicely restrained summation, Mr. Rogers, but there must have been more to it than that." Ben turned to Tony, his eyes serious. "I spoke to you after Mr. Rogers' death, Mr. Stark. I came in to this interview expecting to hear that the two of you had been involved since well before that point."
"I'm surprised you were able to get a coherent sentence out of me at that point," Tony admitted. He kept his voice light, acutely aware of Steve sitting only inches away from him. Most of the interview he'd granted Ben and Sally Floyd was a blur, and the hours after it were one long, grey blank. It had been dark when he'd come to himself again, his knees stiff from the way he'd been huddled on the floor, and his head aching dully. There had been sunlight in the room when he'd spoken to Ben and Sally, and the notation in his schedule had blocked out time for them for an hour in the afternoon, starting at four-fifteen.
The lost time hadn't alarmed him then, unimportant in the face of everything else; it was only looking back that he could see how fucked up he'd been.
Just hearing Sally's voice on the phone last week had brought the memory back, made him long simultaneously for both the scotch he still kept in his office — not offering prospective business associates a drink would be a sign of weakness, as well as a breach of unwritten social rules — and for the sound of Steve's voice. He'd made himself get back to work, ignoring the temptation to call Steve just to make sure he was okay.
"There are things you could have made public after the Registration fight that you kept quiet about," he said, slowly. He doubted Ben meant the mention of that interview to be anything other than either the lead-in to another question about their relationship, or maybe a subtle offer of sympathy, but the unspoken knowledge of everything else they had discussed then hung in the air. "I owe you for that. So I'll give you a freebie. You can ask me one question, about anything you want, and I'll answer it honestly."
Ben gave him a measuring look, the lines in his forehead deepening as he frowned speculatively, and Tony felt a slow, sinking sensation; that had been a stupid offer to make. You never gave a dedicated reporter an opening like that, even one whom you liked and trusted.
At the end of the day, Ben had to walk back into the Bugle's offices and face Jonah Jameson, who didn't believe in letting anything, including friendship, loyalty, or libel suits, stand in the way of a good story. And a man who was willing to let the Kingpin break his fingers rather than squelch a new story would not be put off by evasions.
"The Scarlet Witch has just rejoined the Avengers," Ben said slowly, "after nearly two years where no one heard so much as a whisper about her. The Avengers Mansion was destroyed by Kang and Ultron, and then she was simply gone, with no explanation. A lot of our readers thought she was dead, possibly one of the mutants who were killed when the so-called M-Day event happened. Now she's back, and at the same time, thousands of mutants around the world have regained their powers. The X-Men have refused to answer any questions about the phenomenon. I'm hoping you'll be a little more forthcoming."
Steve went still, his eyes going to the living room door for a moment before returning to Ben and Tony. Sam, Clint, and Jan were probably all waiting on the other side, trying to listen in. Jan, as co-chairperson of the Avengers, had an actual reason to be present for this interview. Clint claimed he was waiting outside to 'offer moral support,' by which he meant 'satisfy my burning curiosity.' Sam was also there for moral support, but in his case, the offer was genuine — he didn't need to spy, not when he knew he could just ask Clint for all the gory details later.
Wanda was not there. Once upon a time, she would have been out there reminding Clint that spying on one's teammates was juvenile and silly, all the while elbowing him out of the way so that she could have a chance to listen at the keyhole.
Tony gave Ben his best bland smile. "Wanda spent the past year in Transia, her home country. She lost a great deal when Ultron attacked us; she and the Vision were married for years. Anything more than that is Wanda's story to tell. As for the X-gene, Dr. Pym can tell you far more about that than I can. It's a combination of genes, some of them encoding the potential for mutant abilities, and some of them governing the expression of those abilities, and no one in the scientific community has been able to figure out how or why so many people's abilities were suppressed, much less how they began working again. I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe in science, and much as it pains me as a scientist and an engineer, in magic, and I believe that there has to be an explanation, either scientific or supernatural. I just don't know what it is."
He spread his hands apologetically, waiting for Ben's follow-up question.
In the long moment of silence while Ben considered his answer, no doubt looking for ways to pick it apart, the mental jolt from the Extremis as one of the subroutines he was running threw up a giant red flag was startling enough to make him twitch.
Steve had been right about over-using the Extremis; the headaches had been getting worse, and after the first nosebleed in months had hit him when he tried to do an everyday round of checking and answering email while running all the surveillance and data collection processes in the background, he had reluctantly taken Steve's advice and dropped the SHIELD connection, replacing it with a worm that he'd sent crawling through Fury's computers, programmed to send him notifications if anything of interest came up. He'd had to rewrite the code twice over the past week to keep SHIELD's IT specialists from tracking down and deleting his spy programs, more often than he'd expected to, but less often than he would have been satisfied with were he still head of SHIELD. Fury ought to be thanking him for the training exercise he was providing; SHIELD's personnel clearly needed it.
He'd replaced his previous direct, real-time link to the Metropolitan Museum's security systems with a notification system, too, designed to go off if any alarms were triggered.
It was doing so now.
"What is it?" Steve asked.
"The security alarms at the Met just went off. I'm pulling up video from their cameras now." Compared to hacking into SHIELD's systems, hijacking the museum's security cameras was child's play. The datafeeds popped up in his head, dozens of mental screens to sort through, and the spike of pain in his left temple was instantaneous.
A wave of dizziness nearly dragged the entire network out of his grasp, and it took all of his control not to let it show on his face. He dropped the local news channels and the police and emergency communications frequencies, everything but the museum's network and the armor, and breathed in slowly through his nose, willing it not to start bleeding.
Two of the cameras were damaged, transmitting nothing but static. A third, located close to the malfunctioning ones, but at a higher and harder to reach angle that had probably hidden it from even wary and suspicious eyes, showed him the motionless body of a security guard, dark liquid spreading in a pool around his head.
Blood always looked black in monochrome.
Tony offered Ben an apologetic smile, trying to ignore the trails of yellow and grey sparks that obscured half the man's face. "I'm sorry; we're going to have to cut this short. Duty calls."
Ben capped his pen, sliding it back inside his breast pocket — he'd been taking notes by hand, either because he didn't want Tony to look at them, or because he preferred a pencil and paper to a PDA. "We can reschedule." He stood, shrugging back into his coat. "I'll see you at the museum, gentlemen."
Steve was already standing. "Armor up," he said. "I'll round up the troops. They're all listening at the keyhole anyway."
"Call Don." Tony cut contact with the security cameras, just to be safe, and reached out for his armor's communication systems, signaling Carol's communicator. "Either he's blocked my armor's frequency from his cell phone, or he's gone back to Nebraska where telecommunication signals go to die."
"He'd better hope it's the cell phone reception in Asgard," Steve said, in an undertone just low enough that Ben probably didn't hear it. "Because if he's not either there or on the subway-"
"Later," Tony said, holding up a hand to cut Steve off. He grabbed the back of the couch and shoved himself to his feet, half expecting the dizziness to get worse when he stood, and relieved to find that it didn't. He stretched carefully, feeling his spine pop, and triggered the underarmor, the liquid metal a spreading warmth over his skin that almost immediately cooled to room temperature. "Someone's broken into the museum, first floor, and taken out the security cameras in the special exhibit area. They've killed at least one guard already. With," he pulled the footage back up, enhanced it, "a very familiar-looking knife."
Steve groaned. "Damn it. I was hoping she'd stay Nick's problem." He turned to Ben, holding out a hand for the other man to shake. "Thank you for being understanding. Jarvis will see you out. We can finish the interview later."
Ben nodded. "I think I have more than enough for an article already, but far be it from a reporter to miss a chance to dig for more information."
Tony wasn't sure if that sounded friendly, or ominous. Friendly, he decided. But still interested in getting a good scoop, despite the fact that they had just handed him the news story of, if not the year, then at least the month. By the time the ink was dry on this one, he and Jameson would already be looking for the next story.
The rest of the team — minus Thor and Carol — were waiting in the front hallway. Sam and Jan were already in costume, and Clint, whose costume didn't entirely fit under his clothes, was sitting at the bottom of the steps, pulling on one purple boot. His mask lay crumpled on the stair next to him, waiting.
Hank was there as well, with Tony's briefcase in one hand, saving him the extra minute fetching it from the monitor room would have taken; they really had been listening at the keyhole.
Tony glanced around for Wanda as he took the briefcase, its weight comfortably familiar in his hand. Behind him, he could hear fabric rustling as Steve stripped out of his street clothes to the costume he was wearing underneath them.
The museum was eight blocks away, a ten minute walk for a normal person and a three-minute run for Steve. Neither Clint nor Steve could fly, and Jan and Sam couldn't carry another person with them while airborne, which meant that Tony was going to have to give one of them a lift. Clint, he decided, as the armor slotted into place around him. Steve could handle an eight-block sprint without so much as breaking a sweat, even carrying twelve pounds of metal on his back.
The police would still be en route. If they hurried, they could beat them there, and maybe no one else would have to die. Sin would have automatic weapons, probably still had poison on all those knives.
He shouldn't have stopped monitoring the security systems; if he'd kept an eye on it non-stop, he would have seen this coming.
"The rest of you, go," Tony started. "Hawkeye and I will-"
He broke off mid-sentence as Wanda appeared at the top of the stairs, still pulling on one long, red glove.
She was wearing the red leather pants and bustier and ankle-length red cape that she'd worn before everything had fallen apart. The old, pointy headdress was gone, but aside from that detail, it was like stepping back in time a year and a half; for a brief, weightless moment, Tony half-expected Vision to glide through the wall behind her, or for Scott Lang to stroll in, helmet in hand, trading half-serious barbs with Jack of Hearts and followed by a trail of ants.
They'd agreed to put her back on active duty, he reminded himself, and turned to Steve, wanting to gauge his reaction.
From the slight wistfulness in his eyes, Steve was remembering old times as well. He glanced from Tony to Jan, who nodded ever-so-slightly, and then turned to Clint. "You're with me, Hawkeye," he said, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. "Wanda, Tony will fly you to the museum."
Clint groaned, and Sam grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him to his feet. "Running builds character," he said, giving Clint a slap on the shoulder.
"Says the man with wings," Clint muttered.
Wanda was still frozen at the top of the steps, staring down at them all, her face still and tense. She reached up with one hand and touched the hood of her cloak, as if to adjust it, then let her hand drop.
"The costume has nothing to do with what happened." Hank's voice was loud in the charged silence. Tony turned to find him staring fixedly up at Wanda, his body angled carefully away from Jan. "Wearing it will get easier."
Wanda nodded silently, the two of them sharing a moment of wordless communication whose content Tony didn't need to guess at. Then she pulled up the cloak's hood and walked briskly down the steps.
Steve clapped his hands together. "Let's move it, Avengers. People could be dying while we stand here staring at each other. You can brief us on the situation on the way, Tony."
He led the way out the front door, Clint and Sam at his heels, Jan a black and gold blur zipping over their heads.
Outside, the air was cool — 57 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the armor's sensors — and the sky had already turned the deep blue of twilight. Carol swooped downward out of the sky as they hit the front gate.
"Glad to see you haven't left without me," she said, and extended one arm out toward Sam. "Grab on, Falcon. I'll give you some altitude."
Sam took two long steps forward and reached up, letting her lock her hands around his forearms. Unlike Tony and Carol, he didn't have any independent means of propulsion; his hard-light wings allowed him to glide, but not take off from a standing start. He needed a tall building or someone to act as a tow plane.
Steve and Clint were already out the gate and running, their footsteps loud on the pavement.
Tony turned to Wanda. "Put your arms around my neck," he instructed. "And hold on."
She weighed almost a hundred pounds less than Steve did; he didn't even have to adjust the armor's power output to compensate.
As the mansion shrank into the distance below them, Tony could see Hank staring after them from the open door, his face rendered a pale blur by dim light and distance.
* * *
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonUniverse: 616, AU from the end of Civil War
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan, various other supporting character pairings, both canon and not.
Warnings: Some swearing and violence, references to past dub-con (mind-control-induced).
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work. We're paid in love, people.
Beta:
dorothy1901, who did a wonderful job of catching our many, many typos. grey_bard and several others helped with brainstorming.Summary: The long-delayed conclusion to Resurrection-verse. Registration is long gone, several people are back from the dead, and Steve and Tony have put their lives and their team back together. Mostly. One long-time Avenger is still missing. Now she’s back, and Chthon has come with her.
Authors' note: Wow, it's been... almost eight months since we posted a chapter of this. And we don't even have a good excuse. We can promise that it will NOT be eight months before we post the next chapter, though.
Steve carefully smudged the shading around the curve of the vase until it was even, then studied it and considered the merits of erasing and starting over again. The entire thing was slightly but visibly lopsided.
Still lives were not one of his strengths, but then, that was what made them good practice.
The cat, curled up on the back of the couch, rearranged himself with a creak of leather and settled back into position with both of his hind feet shoved into the back of Steve's neck. A slight prick of claws warned that he would be displeased if Steve attempted to either move or push his feet away.
"See," Tony said. "I told you he liked you."
"As a foot rest," Steve returned. Thankfully, his hair was too short for chewing on — human hair seemed to inexplicably delight the cat, and he almost hadn't survived his first encounter with Carol, which had involved launching himself at her head from behind while she'd been sitting on the couch.
"Hmm," Tony said, the bulk of his attention already back on whatever he was doing with the laptop and tablet he had set up on the coffee table. On the screen, computerized wire drawings expanded, rotated through 360 degrees, and were minimized again, while his little plastic stylus flashed over the tablet's surface. He never actually looked at the screen, eyes focused on something invisible in the middle distance, probably the schematics in his head. Steve wasn't sure how much of that was the Extremis, and how much was just Tony's ability to design things in his head.
He had finally gotten used to the near-silence in which Tony often used computers these days; the lack of clacking keys was one of the few benefits of the Extremis, since Tony tended to type furiously and loudly. The quiet was nice, peaceful. They hadn't had many chances lately to just sit around and relax.
The constant stream of disasters in Manhattan hadn't stopped. If anything, it seemed to be spreading — there had been a three-alarm fire in Brooklyn yesterday, apparently caused by a single dropped cigarette, and a woman in Chelsea had stabbed her husband and two dinner guests to death with a kitchen knife, before turning it on herself. Disasters, accidents, and a wave of violent crimes, all frustratingly completely beyond their ability to stop. Half the time, there wasn't even anything Steve could try to do to help.
The chaos-tainted book at the museum was still unguarded, the museum administrators having taken Wanda's warning about it precisely as seriously as they did the insistence by museum staff that it was cursed. There had been a rash of minor accidents surrounding it, according to the security guard Sam had spoken to, but it was the keystone of their special exhibit, and they were reluctant to remove it.
Its presence could have been a coincidence, of course, but where chaos magic was concerned, very few things were.
In between crises, Steve and Sam had somehow managed to get Sam's things moved over to the mansion, after he'd decided that Steve and Tony staying there alone with Wanda wasn't a good idea. Steve wasn't sure if he was more worried about Wanda falling under Chthon's influence again, or about something — or someone — coming after Wanda, but his presence was welcome. Tony had been burying himself in his lab or his office at Stark Enterprises for the past week. Twice, he hadn't even come to bed, staying down there all night.
Sam had been remarkably good-natured about it when Steve had dragged him into the den to watch movies with him.
He didn't sleep well on his own, not after four months of sharing a bed.
Tony was poking desultorily at his computer now, resting his chin on one hand; Steve wasn't sure if he was putting the finishing touches on his project, or had just run out of steam. He had been working on it for at least an hour, by Steve's watch.
His own project, Steve decided, was hopelessly unfixable. He hadn't been paying enough attention to his work, and he'd nearly erased through the paper in two places, and the vase was still lopsided. He wasn't getting the curvature right, or the reflections.
He folded the page back, giving himself a pristine new surface to draw on, and let himself doodle absentmindedly. He was probably trying too hard, holding the pencil too tightly and over-controlling the lines.
"What are you working on?" he asked. Tony's answer might or might not make any sense, but listening to him ramble about engines or computers was always soothing.
"Some blueprints and computer models," Tony said, after a pause. He didn't sound particularly enthusiastic, which meant whatever it was probably didn't explode, break the sound barrier, pioneer a new computer operating system, or do anything else particularly interesting, at least by Tony's standards.
"What for?" Steve prompted, after a long moment of silence had stretched between them.
Tony sighed, and looked up from the computer, rubbing at his face with one hand. "Wind turbines. And the navigation system for the Boeing bid. R&D kept sending back crap, so I said I'd do it myself."
"Don't you always?"
"It would be nice not to have to once in a while."
Coming from a man whom Steve had known to personally redesign completely functional products from the ground up because they were only 'good' and not good enough, the statement ought to have been laughable, but some quality in his voice made Steve believe him. Tony sounded tired and frustrated.
A low, creaky purr started up behind him, and the cat's needle-sharp little claws dug into the back of his neck, then let go, then dug in again.
"Hey." Steve leaned forward, putting a hand to the back of his neck to protect it from Patton's sudden and violent affection. The cat flicked one ear back, and glared at him with baleful blue eyes.
Steve shifted to put himself sideways on the couch, his back against the armrest and his head and neck out of claw-reach. Designed to accommodate Thor if necessary, the couch was long enough that even with Tony sitting on the other end, he could stretch his legs out to their full length. He rested one foot against Tony's thigh and drew the other leg up to balance his sketchpad on his knee. "Is this what's had you pulling all-nighters?"
Tony shook his head. "I've just been busy." He offered Steve an apologetic smile. "Sorry."
"The cat misses you," Steve said, the words awkward. Their real meaning was probably painfully obvious. Steve's ears felt hot for a moment, and he wondered if his ridiculous inability to relax properly without Tony in bed next to him showed on his face.
He couldn't remember most of his dreams last night, but at least one had involved drowning, the water warm and metallic tasting. He wasn't sure if it had been Bucky's face staring down through the water at him, or Sharon's, or Tony's.
It wasn't just Tony not being there; he'd had nightmares after the team had fallen apart, when they'd thought Wanda had gone crazy, and he'd had them during the registration fight, too, and during the war. Wanda coming back had probably set them off again, or maybe Chthon's presence was affecting him, dredging up old nightmares. The security guard at the Metropolitan Museum had said that the John Dee book gave him nightmares.
"I'll stay here tonight," Tony promised.
Steve could feel himself smiling. He dug his toes into Tony's thigh and settled back against the couch arm. "I'll hold you to that."
Tony closed his laptop with a click, pushing it away, and rubbed at his face again, this time with both hands, digging his fingers into his temples in little circular motions. "I'll send Pepper an email," he said, the words muffled. "I'm supposed to come in for a meeting with the design team for the Boeing thing first thing tomorrow morning, and Fury wants to talk to me about something or other, and she's getting deluged with calls and emails from reporters who want an interview; Sally Floyd's left her six voicemails this week. And I'm getting nowhere with this." He waved a hand at the laptop. "I know I can increase the power output by another fifteen percent, but I can't think. It's theoretically possible. It has to be possible."
Tony leaned his head back against the back of the couch, closing his eyes, and Steve could see the pulse beating in the long line of his throat. "Sometimes I hate my job." He paused, then his mouth twisted into something that wanted to be a smile but didn't quite make it. "God, that sounds whiney. Ignore me; I'm just tired."
Tired, and probably nursing a headache. His eyes had been dark before he'd closed the laptop, the oily black of the Extremis spreading across the normal blue like cataracts; Tony was monitoring the surveillance equipment around St. Margaret's continually, keeping track of city police and emergency radio bands, and repeatedly hacking into SHIELD's communications, plus responding to all of his business email and cell phone calls on top of that.
Tony was watching SHIELD communications for Steve, he knew, keeping an eye on Sharon and Bucky for him. It made him feel better, to know that he — that they — would know immediately if either of them was in trouble, but if Tony was getting headaches again...
The next step was nosebleeds. Steve wasn't sure what happened after that — Tony had never pushed the Extremis that far, after damaging it so badly fighting the Mandarin — but it couldn't be good.
He pulled his foot away from Tony's leg and sat up. "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't do this anymore."
Tony opened his eyes, rolling his head to the side slightly. "Do what?"
"Run yourself into the ground until you collapse. It's not good for you, it's not good for your company, and it's not good for the team."
"I'm fine." Tony's voice was sharp. "I can do my job, Steve. I don't need you second-guessing me."
"Past evidence says that you do," Steve returned, annoyed now. "Drop the SHIELD links. I told Bucky they could call me if they needed back-up."
"I'm not watching SHIELD's communications just to make you feel better. There are-"
"Have you seen this?" The living-room door slammed open, and Jan strode into the room, the clack of her heels loud and angry on the wooden floor. She flourished a copy of TIME magazine at them, holding it so that the cover was clearly visible; inside the traditional red border was a press photo of the Avengers, taken just after Thor had rejoined the team. "Did you know about it? Damn it, Tony, you're supposed to give the entire team a say in any press releases we put out."
"What press release?" Tony reached for the magazine, fumbling it momentarily as Jan thrust it at him. "I've been dodging reporters all day. I haven't given an interview to anyone since Thor came back, and I haven't given a private interview since that bastard at the Meridian who thought we'd faked Steve's... him."
He opened the magazine, flipping through it to find the article. "That's why she kept calling Pepper," he muttered, staring down at the first page. "She was trying to get a quote."
Steve leaned forward, peering at the magazine over Tony's shoulder. 'Avengers Reassembled,' the title read. 'America's foremost superhero team has reformed, but can it last?' And below that, in small, discreet letters, the byline. 'Sally Floyd.'
"Give me that." Steve grabbed the magazine away from Tony, skimming the first page. The opening paragraphs were nothing but basic background information on the team, and a review of their activities over the past few months. No editorial commentary, no-wait.
He backed up and re-read the first paragraph on the second page again. "'Dr. Pym was previously under investigation for his role in the enforcement of the now-defunct Superhuman Registration Act,'" he read aloud, "'but all charges have since been dropped. Chief among those charges was the death of superhero and respected scientist Dr. William Foster, killed by a clone of Thor, Dr. Pym's teammate. Foster is not the first death that can be laid at the feet of one of Pym's creations...'" Steve broke off, his irritation at Tony redirecting itself toward a new target. "And then she speculates about whether Ultron and your clone had anything to do with Hank's 'psychological breakdown.'" He looked up at Jan, who was glaring down at both of them. Even seated and with her standing, he didn't have to look up far to meet her eyes. "I'm so sorry. Ms. Floyd and I didn't get along the last time we met. She's... abrasive."
"She implies that I divorced Hank because he's a crazy mad scientist," Jan said, her voice dangerously calm. "I think abrasive is an understatement. Keep reading. The next paragraph is about how Clint used to be a petty criminal before you gave him a 'second chance.' I didn't even read the rest of it. I'm sure I'll hear about it from everyone in the fashion industry tomorrow." She waved a hand at the magazine. "Veronica at work lent me this because there's a spread on her designs in it. It's an advance copy — the rest of them hit newsstands tomorrow morning."
"It's my fault," Tony said. "I should have answered her phone calls. If you don't give a reporter the story you want them to run, they'll find another one. And she's probably been dying to run a story on me since I threw her out of my office. And then she called me to ask for an interview after the SHRA was repealed, and I hung up on her."
"That was stupid," Jan told him bluntly. "Don't tick off reporters; it always comes back to bite you."
"It was after..." Tony shook his head, trailing off. "She said things about Steve, and about me, the last time I let her interview me. They weren't true, and I didn't want to listen to them. I don't really remember what I said then. Shouting might have been involved."
He was crumpling the magazine, Steve realized, and made his fingers relax. "I told her I wanted to apologize to you. What did she-"
"She said I did the right thing." Tony's voice was quiet, and his gaze was fixed firmly on his hands. "I don't remember most of it. Ben Urich was there, I think. I don't know. That entire week is sort of a blank. She probably thinks I owed her one; there were things she could have printed that she kept quiet about."
For a moment, Steve wasn't sure if he wanted to comfort Tony, or shake him — he hated hearing that particular dull note in Tony's voice. He almost reached out to lay a hand on Tony's shoulder, but thought better of it. Tony was holding himself stiffly, his shoulders hunched forward slightly, and didn't look as if he'd welcome a casual touch.
Steve made himself look away, back at the magazine, pretending that Tony hadn't just uncomfortably referenced the breakdown he'd nearly had while Steve had been gone.
Two pages later, he was gritting his teeth. Nothing he'd read so far was actually untrue, and aside from the swipe at Hank, none of it was phrased in such as way as to openly attack any of the Avengers' abilities or integrity. It just... raised questions. About Hank's stability. About Clint's record. About Carol and Hank and Tony's involvement with the Initiative. About Tony's long record of health problems and, of course, his drinking. About Thor's presence, and what kind of consequences could come from gods interfering in human affairs. About Wanda's reappearance after a long and unexplained absence. About Steve's ability to lead the team properly after the disaster that the fight over Registration had become. About Sam's vaguely described connection to Red Skull — vague, because specific details would have made it obvious that he'd been manipulated against his will. Jan, oddly, seemed to escape Floyd's journalistic scalpel, possibly because in her case, there was simply less dirt to be dug up.
They weren't even bad questions, except for the ones about Clint and Sam, who had both proven themselves dozens of times over and didn't deserve to have this kind of mud thrown at them, even by implication.
He closed the magazine in disgust, knowing he'd have to open it back up and read the last few pages and already dreading it. It would just be more pointed, entirely legitimate and thoroughly uncomfortable questions, and possibly some more dredged-up dirt from the Congressional hearings. There was probably more about Tony's drinking, as well; reporters rarely got tired of rehashing that, and Tony had, unfortunately, given them a lot of material to rehash.
"It's just gone up on TIME's website," Tony said. He was silent for a moment, presumably reading, then winced. "Fuck, Steve, I'm so, so sorry. I swear I checked for cameras. I'm sorry. I'll deny everything if you want me to."
That sounded ominous. "Deny-" Steve started, and broke off as Sam came rushing through the open door, Clint on his heels.
Both of them came to a halt when they saw the magazine in Steve's hand. Sam nodded at it, looking sober. "You've seen it, then?"
"Yeah." Steve winced. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this."
Sam was silent for a moment, tilting his head to one side the way he did when he was contemplating something — Redwing did the same thing, and Steve had never been sure whether the hawk had picked it up from Sam, or whether Sam had picked it up from him. "You're way too calm. You haven't read the entire article yet, have you?"
Steve shook his head. "Only the first few pages, but that's enough to get the picture."
"Um, Steve," Tony said, face blank, "you need to read the rest."
Clint stepped forward and took the magazine from Steve's hands, opened it, and shoved it back at him. "Actually, I think he just needs to see the last page."
Two photographs stared up at him from the glossy pages. The first, on the left page, was of Tony, his face buried in his hands and his body turned sideways to the camera, into Jan's shoulder. There was naked grief in every line of his body — the hunch of his shoulders, the glimpse of his twisted, tear-stained face just visible through his fingers. Jan was crying as well, her eye make-up smeared, and part of Hank's shoulder and arm were just visible at the edge of the frame, his hand on her arm.
Steve didn't need to read the caption to know when and where the picture had been taken. In the upper left corner, over their heads, he could see rows of identical white headstones, marching away into the distance.
Arlington. Jack Monroe was buried there, and Toro, and all the Howling Commandos save for Nick, Dugan, and Gabe Jones. Bucky had a headstone there, that still hadn't been taken down.
His own grave wasn't there anymore. It had already been empty, and Steve had asked them to take the stone down the last time he'd been in DC. Standing there and looking at his own name carved into the white stone, no different from thousands of others, he'd felt cold, numb; seeing the physical proof of his burial had made what had happened to him real in a way that even Tony sobbing in his arms hadn't — he'd been dead, buried — but the sick lurch in his stomach now was worse.
He didn't even see the second photograph at first, unable to process anything beyond the fact that he was looking at a picture of his own funeral.
He'd only seen Tony look that utterly broken twice; once in a nameless hotel in the Bowery, when he'd been trying to commit suicide with a bottle, and again in the security camera footage of Tony's 'conversation' with his body.
And Sally Floyd and TIME Magazine had put it into print for the world to see.
It would have made him uncomfortable even were it not Tony, even had it not involved him. That kind of devastation was private. They had had no right to—
Steve caught himself before he finished the thought, reminding himself that they had every right to publish photos taken at public events, just as Floyd had every right to print things that were technically true even if he didn't like them.
Then he noticed the second picture.
This one had been taken at the museum showing the week before last, a close-up of himself and Tony. They were standing only inches apart, Tony frozen in the act of smoothing down Steve's tie. "Steve Rogers and Tony Stark share an intimate moment at the opening of a Metropolitan Museum of Art special exhibit," the caption read, but the words, and their implications, were unnecessary. The picture alone was damning enough.
It wasn't just the touch — it was the way they were standing, too close, the flirtatious way Tony was smiling at him, the pleasure in his face and body language a sharp contrast to the raw misery in the other photo. The way Steve himself was smiling back, one hand on Tony's arm as if to pull him closer.
Nowhere in the article, Steve noticed with a detached calm that surprised him, did Floyd directly say that they were involved. She didn't need to. In concise, clear language, she described Tony's shock and dazed grief when she and Ben Urich had spoken to him after Steve's... after his death, and contrasted it with his clear joy at having Steve back, given how 'obviously close' they were. They had refused, she reported, to respond to questions about the nature of their relationship. Again, technically true — Tony had apparently refused to speak to her at all.
By next week, half the tabloids in the US would be asking those unspecified questions for her, in bold, two-inch headlines. And answering them.
What kind of lens and development technique had the photographer used to get that good a resolution in dim light without a flash? Peter would know, he thought.
"I'm sorry," Tony was saying, again. "I checked for cameras. I always do a scan for cameras and recording devices before I do something like that in public. They must have used analog film."
"You mean, like the video camera in the Helicarrier's morgue?"
The words just slipped out, Steve wishing even as he said them that he could take them back. Tony's half-hidden face in the first photograph drew his eyes again, and for a moment, he could almost see the slightly blurry video footage of his own motionless body, and hear Tony's voice, low and broken. "It wasn't worth it."
"I know," Tony groaned. "It was inexcusably stupid of me. I was... distracted that time. This time, I have no excuse."
"What were the two of you doing in the Helicarrier's morgue that you had to turn the cameras off for?" Clint sounded far too interested, his eyebrows raised questioningly. He hissed as Sam elbowed him in the side, and took a step away from him. "I was trying to lighten the mood."
"That's private," Steve said, forcing the words out around the tight knot in his throat. "And so was this." He touched the picture of himself and Tony at the museum with one fingertip.
"I'll..." Tony started, then stopped, and began again, "I should have read those emails. Maybe she was trying to warn us before this hit newsstands, or maybe I could have talked her out of it by giving her something else to print." He sounded calm, his face forced back into a careful lack of expression, but Steve wasn't fooled; he was probably blisteringly angry with himself for slipping up in such an obvious way, not to mention humiliated by the idea of thousands of readers seeing that photo of him at Steve's funeral. Tony didn't like publicly losing control of himself.
He looked at Steve then, his eyes draining back to blue and refocusing on the world outside his head. "I'll make whatever public statement you want. Denying it might make it worse — the media's been speculating about my sex life for years, and denying things just encourages them — but we can try."
"We're not denying it," Steve said, flatly, wanting to squash that idea before it could get off the ground. "I'm not lying about this when I don't have to." Not mentioning something was different from actively lying about it — he'd sworn never to do that again after he'd first woken up in this time, when he'd first realized that he couldn't be arrested or imprisoned for sex with men anymore. It had taken him much, much longer to work up to admitting that he might like said sex with men to anyone he knew, but that was different. Before Tony, there hadn't really been anything to admit to — nothing that was worth potentially losing the respect or friendship of someone he cared about. "And we're not making a statement. It's no one else's business."
His eyes went back to the picture of his funeral, and he made himself look away from it.
Tony shook his head slightly. "We have to. We have to take control of the story now, before it spins out of control."
"Our relationship is not a 'story.'"
"Yes," Sam said, "it is. You know it is. You're Captain America, and four months ago you came back from the dead. Everything you do is a news story, especially right now." He took the magazine away from Steve, folding it up again; Steve watched the pictures disappear from view with something like relief.
Steve's cell phone rang, then, a sudden burst of noise that made everyone in the room jump.
Jan snatched it up off the side table before any of the others could. "Avengers Mansion," she started, then, "Yes, I know. He knows. Yes, we've all seen it, Peter." She held the phone out to Steve. "It's Spiderman."
"I gathered that," Steve said, and took the phone from her. He brought it to his ear and found Peter midway through a stream of fast-paced speech. "-fire me again if I don't get the Bugle an exclusive, or maybe just fire me on principle for knowing all about it and not telling him. I can tell him no, though. It's not like Jameson hasn't fired me six times already, and he's mad enough right now that he'll probably do it anyway no matter what I do. And I can find out who took the picture, if you want; there aren't many guys good enough to get that kind of a shot in that kind of light. It was an old-school camera, right? That doesn't narrow it down much, but-"
"Peter," Steve interrupted, "we don't-"
"Man, I'm so sorry this happened to you guys. I know how much this sucks. Or, I don't know how much this exact thing sucks, but I know how awful it is to have the biggest secret of your life in the headlines. People are going to freak. Seriously, you have no idea how weird people are going to act around you, sometimes ones you don't expect."
"I know," Steve managed to get in. Sam hadn't 'freaked.' Sharon hadn't. Bucky hadn't. Hank and Jan and Carol hadn't. Even Clint, despite Steve's initial worries, had reacted more to the fact that he was sleeping with Tony in particular than to the fact that he was in love with another man. Thor had narrowed his eyes and told him that the bond between warriors was a sacred thing, and he should be certain that he gave his trust and affections only to those who were worthy of it, and said nothing when he'd snapped back that Tony was worthy.
Rhodey knew and didn't mind, he reminded himself. Pepper didn't. Jarvis was happy for them. All the people who were important to them already knew. How much of the rest of the world's reactions really mattered, in light of that?
He met Tony's eyes, and managed to summon up a smile. "Tell him we'll talk to Ben Urich or Robbie Robertson," he said to Peter. "Nobody else."
"I can do it, if you want," Tony said, at the same time that Peter said,
"Are you sure you want to? Like, you're not going to be able to take this back. Everyone will know."
Tony was smiling, a lopsided, rueful little smile. "I've discussed my sex life with reporters enough that it would barely even be news anymore if you weren't involved. I can-"
"No," Steve said, to both of them. "I'm not sure. But I'll do it. Tell Jameson we'll give the interview together."
Several hours later, when he'd finally joined Tony in his hiding place in the lab after one too many phone calls from people who wanted to express either shock or sympathy, he still had no idea what he was going to say. The truth, he supposed. That he loved Tony. It had taken months before he'd been able to work up the nerve to tell Tony himself that. Telling the entire world ought to be even more intimidating, but oddly, it was the one aspect of this that he wasn't dreading.
No more hiding what Tony meant to him as if he were ashamed of it. No more need to carefully avoid touching him in public. All he would have to do was tell a newspaper reporter, and the Bugle's entire readership, that he wasn't straight.
He'd testified against the Registration Act in front of Congress. He'd fought Hitler and alien warlords and supervillains and demons and gods. He'd come back from the — Steve mentally flinched away from the word, then made himself think it, from the dead. I was dead. And he'd died still keeping that part of himself a secret, a small regret when stacked up against so many larger ones, but a regret nonetheless.
Compared to all that, this ought to be easy.
Tony hadn't even looked at him yet. He was fiddling with part of a computer circuit board, tiny bits of gold wire glittering between his fingers. As Steve watched, he reached up to rub at his forehead, just over his left eye.
"Would you really deny it, if I ask you to?" The words just came out, awkward and unplanned. He'd meant to ask some variation on 'are you all right,' the image of Tony's grief-stricken face and hunched shoulders still far too clear in his mind.
Tony looked up, his hands stilling. "You've been through enough because of me. You hate media attention, and coming out is going to get you tons of it, a lot of it nasty."
Steve shook his head. "Let people say what they want. They will anyway."
They'd already started. The magazine wouldn't even hit newsstands until tomorrow morning, but going by the reaction to the internet article, which thus far seemed to consist of titillated snickering and indignant proclamations that Captain America wasn't gay and anyone who suggested otherwise was an anti-American terrorist, it was going to be an absolutely miserable media circus. Exactly the kind of thing they didn't have time for right now.
He almost wished that Tony had never shown him how to read the comments on online news articles.
"I said I'd dance with you somewhere public," he went on. "How could you think I'd want you to lie about us?"
Tony's eyes went back to the bits of computer he was still holding loosely. Without any particular emotion in his voice, he asked. "Remember the way Miriam Sharpe looked at us, in that restaurant in DC? Remember those anti-mutant protestors who camped out around the mansion when you brought Wanda and Pietro onto the team?"
"Vividly. Just think about how angry it will make them to know that Captain America is fucking a guy." He said the words deliberately, not bothering to soften it with a euphemism. "Maybe we shouldn't have kept it secret in the first place." He'd been made forcibly aware over the past year of how much the actions of a single individual could affect the entire superhero community, the entire country; people listened to him, even when he didn't want them to. Maybe for once he could use that for a good cause and not have it backfire painfully.
Tony set the circuit board to one side, lining it up so that its edges were exactly parallel with the edge of the work table. "I just wish we had more control over how and when this came out." He set the tools he'd been using down next to it, in a neat, perfect line. "I hate lying to the media. I did far too much of it, last winter. And I hate trying to have a relationship while reporters scrutinize every imaginable aspect of; it got bad enough with Rumiko, sometimes, and that was nowhere near as deliciously scandalous." He met Steve's gaze, then, jaw tight, and his voice was strained as he added, "But nowhere near as much as I hated losing you. I..." he hesitated, then, "I hung up on Sally because I couldn't handle the thought of talking to her. Not then, and not now."
"Tony-" Steve started.
Tony pushed his chair back from the workbench and stood; for a moment, Steve thought he was going to start pacing, or shove the chair back in hard, or maybe sweep something off the workbench with his arm. Something violent or restless. Instead he stood perfectly still, his body humming with tension.
"I told you I was fine now," he said quietly, looking down at his hand on the back of the chair. "I... might have stretched the truth somewhat." He rubbed at his face again, the gesture disturbingly like that photograph. "I've made so many mistakes," he said, the words low and hoarse. "And they keep popping back up again every time I manage to forget them. Thor, you, the Initiative..."
This wasn't really about the fact that their relationship was about to be outed, then. Steve wasn't surprised; Tony had never seemed to care that deeply what people thought of his sex life, or who knew about it. His confession that it had made him uncomfortable when the media had speculated about his relationship with Rumiko was something Steve had never suspected.
Sex wasn't something Tony was ashamed of. Failure, or what he perceived as failure, was.
Steve took a step closer to him, until they were standing only inches apart, close enough to feel Tony's body heat and smell his aftershave and the faint metallic tang that the Extremis had given him. "They shouldn't have printed those pictures. The rest of the article was justified, mostly, but those were private."
Tony shook his head fractionally. "It was all justified, except for the shit about Sam and Wanda. And Clint." His eyes were red-rimmed, and Steve would have bet that Tony hadn't slept any better than Steve had last night, if he'd even gone to bed. "I thought I could make this team work, that we could make it work. It has been working."
"Just because the questions she posed were justified doesn't mean her prediction that our team's going to fall apart is worth anything." That insinuation had been almost as bad as the blatant invasion of their privacy at the end of the article, and just as uncalled for. Steve tried a smile. "I won't let it. Not after all the time and effort we've put into getting this far."
Tony smiled back, but only for a moment. "Even you can't keep things from happening just by willing them not to. I've screwed up before. I'll do it again. And next time, it might not be as relatively harmless as forgetting that someone might have a camera the Extremis can't detect."
"Considering how much chaos energy Wanda detected in that room, it's probably not a coincidence that some photographer was looking at us at exactly the wrong moment."
Tony nodded, swaying forward slightly into Steve. "Thor is right. I don't deserve you."
The impulse to pull Tony even closer to him warred with annoyance. "I get to decide who deserves me." Steve settled for grabbing Tony by the arms to prevent him from pulling away. "I was dead," he said, remembering what he'd told Luke Cage months ago. "I can sleep with whoever I want. And I don't care who knows about it."
Everything about this evening had been scripted, with a little help from Jan and Pepper. Tempting as the idea of giving the interview in either business attire or, even better, armor had been, he had deliberately worn casual clothing. It created the illusion of intimacy, and not appearing in costume would subtly make the point that this was about Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, not about Captain America and Iron Man.
That had been Steve's idea, as had the plate of cookies on the coffee table. Tony had pointed out that Ben Urich was legendarily immune to bribery, and Steve had given him a shove that was somewhere between playful and admonishing and told him that it wasn't a bribe; it was good manners.
Ben was regarding them seriously now, his eyes moving between them as if watching for some visible sign of their relationship. He looked much the same as he had the last time Tony had seen him, at the press conference after the SHRA's repeal; graying hair, glasses that he presumably wore by choice, since he could easily have replaced them with contacts, with the kind of good-quality wool trench-coat that lasted for years draped over one arm.
"People are going to want to know how long you've known that you were gay, how long you've been together, why you haven't come out before now, and some kind of salacious intimate detail about your relationship," he was saying. "But what I actually want to ask is whether your relationship played a role in your decision to reform the Avengers and whether it influenced your actions regarding the SHRA."
Tony flashed him a brilliant smile. "Actually, I think many women would be able to attest that I'm bisexual. And... Since I was in college, since the Helicarrier blew up, and because the media was still having so much fun with all the other ways I've publicly exposed myself to them that it would have been a shame to distract them."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure you want me to print the double-entendre?"
"No," Steve said.
"Yes," Tony said.
"Are you going to answer the question about Registration? I spoke with you during the repeal process; I know how hard both of you worked to get the SHRA repealed, and how much New York City owes your entire team, both past and present."
'No,' Tony thought. 'I'm not going to answer it.' He didn't know how to. Sharing the details of his sexual history with the press was nothing new, even if he'd never been quite this honest about it before, and any shame he'd had over the process had died a humiliated death during Kathy Dare's trial, when the judge had actually questioned him — and several of his ex-girlfriends — about it under oath. Sharing that kind of personal information about his feelings, for Steve or anyone else, felt like stripping himself bare for everyone to see.
Of course it had influenced his actions. He'd tried not to let it, to do what Steve would have done and soldier on regardless of what it cost him personally, no matter how much it hurt, but in retrospect... He'd lied to Steve to protect him, kept secrets from him for what Tony had thought at the time was Steve's own good. If he'd been acting entirely rationally, maybe he'd have done things differently, allowed Steve to make his own choices with all the information available to him, rather than not explaining things until the situation had gotten out of hand and it was far too late. Steve had insisted more than once that he himself would have tried much harder to come to some kind of compromise if he'd known what Tony's true goals had been.
Tony forced himself to smile, the expression feeling stiff and fake. This would be easier with a glass in his hand, something to make him just a little less tightly wound. He cut the thought off before it could go any further; nothing good ever followed it.
"Can we go back to the double entendres?" he asked, managing to work some humor into his voice. "There's one about Cap's mighty shield that I prepared specifically for the occasion."
Steve gave him a stern look, presumably meant to convey that he was Captain America and that Tony ought to be taking this much more seriously, and furthermore, that he was not secretly snickering over the shield comment at all. Then he turned to Ben, face and voice appropriately serious.
"I wanted to serve my country, and I knew that if I were completely open and forthcoming about certain aspects of myself, I wouldn't be able to. Things were different then; I don't know if I would make the same decision now."
"And do you regret that decision?"
Steve shook his head. "It didn't seem like a sacrifice at the time. I fought alongside people who were willing to give their lives for a country that didn't even treat them as full citizens; compared to that, I felt like I had it easy. I wish now, though, that I'd spoken up, come out sooner. I never tried very hard to hide it, I never lied about myself, but... people see me as a role model, as something to look up to, because of what the costume I wear represents. And I don't know if they're always right to do that, but I think it makes visibility important." Tony could hear the sincerity in his voice. Steve never gave himself to things half-heartedly; when he believed in something, he was ready to sacrifice and fight for it. He'd lay money that Steve felt guilty about not being openly out, that he believed it was his responsibility to be an example to others, some kind of duty that he'd been shirking. "I never had any role models who were gay or bisexual growing up," Steve went on. "There were men who everyone knew were fairies or queer or a variety of other lovely words the Bugle's editors are not going to let you print, but people didn't talk about it."
Ben nodded. "I imagine they didn't. Mr. Stark said you'd been involved since shortly after the Helicarrier was blown up last spring. That was immediately after your return from the dead. Did that-"
"Dying makes a man re-evaluate things. Tony's always been one of my closest friends, and as we began trying to work out our differences in order to stop Red Skull, Doom, and the Mandarin, and get Registration repealed, I realized that he had become much more than that."
Tony found himself unable to look away from Steve for a moment; the little smile he was directing at Tony made his entire face look soft and happy and young, and even the knowledge that he wasn't entirely worthy of it couldn't diminish the warmth he felt at knowing he could cause that expression, knowing that Steve thought he was worthy of it. It made him want to sit up straighter and fight harder and be someone who deserved Steve's respect and affection.
Trying to took so much energy, more these days than it had before he'd been exposed to AIM's toxin — or maybe it just felt that way — but it was worth it. More than worth it.
Steve almost never mentioned dying, even after he jerked out of sleep gasping for air and shaking, something he'd done a lot those first few weeks. It didn't seem to bother him now, but Tony reached for his hand anyway, laying his own hand overtop of it and brushing his thumb along the back of Steve's knuckles. There was a faint, white scar across one of them, barely detectable even by touch. It was the only scar on Steve's body, now that the bullet graze by his hairline from fighting Red Skull had long since healed away into nothing.
"That's a nicely restrained summation, Mr. Rogers, but there must have been more to it than that." Ben turned to Tony, his eyes serious. "I spoke to you after Mr. Rogers' death, Mr. Stark. I came in to this interview expecting to hear that the two of you had been involved since well before that point."
"I'm surprised you were able to get a coherent sentence out of me at that point," Tony admitted. He kept his voice light, acutely aware of Steve sitting only inches away from him. Most of the interview he'd granted Ben and Sally Floyd was a blur, and the hours after it were one long, grey blank. It had been dark when he'd come to himself again, his knees stiff from the way he'd been huddled on the floor, and his head aching dully. There had been sunlight in the room when he'd spoken to Ben and Sally, and the notation in his schedule had blocked out time for them for an hour in the afternoon, starting at four-fifteen.
The lost time hadn't alarmed him then, unimportant in the face of everything else; it was only looking back that he could see how fucked up he'd been.
Just hearing Sally's voice on the phone last week had brought the memory back, made him long simultaneously for both the scotch he still kept in his office — not offering prospective business associates a drink would be a sign of weakness, as well as a breach of unwritten social rules — and for the sound of Steve's voice. He'd made himself get back to work, ignoring the temptation to call Steve just to make sure he was okay.
"There are things you could have made public after the Registration fight that you kept quiet about," he said, slowly. He doubted Ben meant the mention of that interview to be anything other than either the lead-in to another question about their relationship, or maybe a subtle offer of sympathy, but the unspoken knowledge of everything else they had discussed then hung in the air. "I owe you for that. So I'll give you a freebie. You can ask me one question, about anything you want, and I'll answer it honestly."
Ben gave him a measuring look, the lines in his forehead deepening as he frowned speculatively, and Tony felt a slow, sinking sensation; that had been a stupid offer to make. You never gave a dedicated reporter an opening like that, even one whom you liked and trusted.
At the end of the day, Ben had to walk back into the Bugle's offices and face Jonah Jameson, who didn't believe in letting anything, including friendship, loyalty, or libel suits, stand in the way of a good story. And a man who was willing to let the Kingpin break his fingers rather than squelch a new story would not be put off by evasions.
"The Scarlet Witch has just rejoined the Avengers," Ben said slowly, "after nearly two years where no one heard so much as a whisper about her. The Avengers Mansion was destroyed by Kang and Ultron, and then she was simply gone, with no explanation. A lot of our readers thought she was dead, possibly one of the mutants who were killed when the so-called M-Day event happened. Now she's back, and at the same time, thousands of mutants around the world have regained their powers. The X-Men have refused to answer any questions about the phenomenon. I'm hoping you'll be a little more forthcoming."
Steve went still, his eyes going to the living room door for a moment before returning to Ben and Tony. Sam, Clint, and Jan were probably all waiting on the other side, trying to listen in. Jan, as co-chairperson of the Avengers, had an actual reason to be present for this interview. Clint claimed he was waiting outside to 'offer moral support,' by which he meant 'satisfy my burning curiosity.' Sam was also there for moral support, but in his case, the offer was genuine — he didn't need to spy, not when he knew he could just ask Clint for all the gory details later.
Wanda was not there. Once upon a time, she would have been out there reminding Clint that spying on one's teammates was juvenile and silly, all the while elbowing him out of the way so that she could have a chance to listen at the keyhole.
Tony gave Ben his best bland smile. "Wanda spent the past year in Transia, her home country. She lost a great deal when Ultron attacked us; she and the Vision were married for years. Anything more than that is Wanda's story to tell. As for the X-gene, Dr. Pym can tell you far more about that than I can. It's a combination of genes, some of them encoding the potential for mutant abilities, and some of them governing the expression of those abilities, and no one in the scientific community has been able to figure out how or why so many people's abilities were suppressed, much less how they began working again. I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe in science, and much as it pains me as a scientist and an engineer, in magic, and I believe that there has to be an explanation, either scientific or supernatural. I just don't know what it is."
He spread his hands apologetically, waiting for Ben's follow-up question.
In the long moment of silence while Ben considered his answer, no doubt looking for ways to pick it apart, the mental jolt from the Extremis as one of the subroutines he was running threw up a giant red flag was startling enough to make him twitch.
Steve had been right about over-using the Extremis; the headaches had been getting worse, and after the first nosebleed in months had hit him when he tried to do an everyday round of checking and answering email while running all the surveillance and data collection processes in the background, he had reluctantly taken Steve's advice and dropped the SHIELD connection, replacing it with a worm that he'd sent crawling through Fury's computers, programmed to send him notifications if anything of interest came up. He'd had to rewrite the code twice over the past week to keep SHIELD's IT specialists from tracking down and deleting his spy programs, more often than he'd expected to, but less often than he would have been satisfied with were he still head of SHIELD. Fury ought to be thanking him for the training exercise he was providing; SHIELD's personnel clearly needed it.
He'd replaced his previous direct, real-time link to the Metropolitan Museum's security systems with a notification system, too, designed to go off if any alarms were triggered.
It was doing so now.
"What is it?" Steve asked.
"The security alarms at the Met just went off. I'm pulling up video from their cameras now." Compared to hacking into SHIELD's systems, hijacking the museum's security cameras was child's play. The datafeeds popped up in his head, dozens of mental screens to sort through, and the spike of pain in his left temple was instantaneous.
A wave of dizziness nearly dragged the entire network out of his grasp, and it took all of his control not to let it show on his face. He dropped the local news channels and the police and emergency communications frequencies, everything but the museum's network and the armor, and breathed in slowly through his nose, willing it not to start bleeding.
Two of the cameras were damaged, transmitting nothing but static. A third, located close to the malfunctioning ones, but at a higher and harder to reach angle that had probably hidden it from even wary and suspicious eyes, showed him the motionless body of a security guard, dark liquid spreading in a pool around his head.
Blood always looked black in monochrome.
Tony offered Ben an apologetic smile, trying to ignore the trails of yellow and grey sparks that obscured half the man's face. "I'm sorry; we're going to have to cut this short. Duty calls."
Ben capped his pen, sliding it back inside his breast pocket — he'd been taking notes by hand, either because he didn't want Tony to look at them, or because he preferred a pencil and paper to a PDA. "We can reschedule." He stood, shrugging back into his coat. "I'll see you at the museum, gentlemen."
Steve was already standing. "Armor up," he said. "I'll round up the troops. They're all listening at the keyhole anyway."
"Call Don." Tony cut contact with the security cameras, just to be safe, and reached out for his armor's communication systems, signaling Carol's communicator. "Either he's blocked my armor's frequency from his cell phone, or he's gone back to Nebraska where telecommunication signals go to die."
"He'd better hope it's the cell phone reception in Asgard," Steve said, in an undertone just low enough that Ben probably didn't hear it. "Because if he's not either there or on the subway-"
"Later," Tony said, holding up a hand to cut Steve off. He grabbed the back of the couch and shoved himself to his feet, half expecting the dizziness to get worse when he stood, and relieved to find that it didn't. He stretched carefully, feeling his spine pop, and triggered the underarmor, the liquid metal a spreading warmth over his skin that almost immediately cooled to room temperature. "Someone's broken into the museum, first floor, and taken out the security cameras in the special exhibit area. They've killed at least one guard already. With," he pulled the footage back up, enhanced it, "a very familiar-looking knife."
Steve groaned. "Damn it. I was hoping she'd stay Nick's problem." He turned to Ben, holding out a hand for the other man to shake. "Thank you for being understanding. Jarvis will see you out. We can finish the interview later."
Ben nodded. "I think I have more than enough for an article already, but far be it from a reporter to miss a chance to dig for more information."
Tony wasn't sure if that sounded friendly, or ominous. Friendly, he decided. But still interested in getting a good scoop, despite the fact that they had just handed him the news story of, if not the year, then at least the month. By the time the ink was dry on this one, he and Jameson would already be looking for the next story.
The rest of the team — minus Thor and Carol — were waiting in the front hallway. Sam and Jan were already in costume, and Clint, whose costume didn't entirely fit under his clothes, was sitting at the bottom of the steps, pulling on one purple boot. His mask lay crumpled on the stair next to him, waiting.
Hank was there as well, with Tony's briefcase in one hand, saving him the extra minute fetching it from the monitor room would have taken; they really had been listening at the keyhole.
Tony glanced around for Wanda as he took the briefcase, its weight comfortably familiar in his hand. Behind him, he could hear fabric rustling as Steve stripped out of his street clothes to the costume he was wearing underneath them.
The museum was eight blocks away, a ten minute walk for a normal person and a three-minute run for Steve. Neither Clint nor Steve could fly, and Jan and Sam couldn't carry another person with them while airborne, which meant that Tony was going to have to give one of them a lift. Clint, he decided, as the armor slotted into place around him. Steve could handle an eight-block sprint without so much as breaking a sweat, even carrying twelve pounds of metal on his back.
The police would still be en route. If they hurried, they could beat them there, and maybe no one else would have to die. Sin would have automatic weapons, probably still had poison on all those knives.
He shouldn't have stopped monitoring the security systems; if he'd kept an eye on it non-stop, he would have seen this coming.
"The rest of you, go," Tony started. "Hawkeye and I will-"
He broke off mid-sentence as Wanda appeared at the top of the stairs, still pulling on one long, red glove.
She was wearing the red leather pants and bustier and ankle-length red cape that she'd worn before everything had fallen apart. The old, pointy headdress was gone, but aside from that detail, it was like stepping back in time a year and a half; for a brief, weightless moment, Tony half-expected Vision to glide through the wall behind her, or for Scott Lang to stroll in, helmet in hand, trading half-serious barbs with Jack of Hearts and followed by a trail of ants.
They'd agreed to put her back on active duty, he reminded himself, and turned to Steve, wanting to gauge his reaction.
From the slight wistfulness in his eyes, Steve was remembering old times as well. He glanced from Tony to Jan, who nodded ever-so-slightly, and then turned to Clint. "You're with me, Hawkeye," he said, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. "Wanda, Tony will fly you to the museum."
Clint groaned, and Sam grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him to his feet. "Running builds character," he said, giving Clint a slap on the shoulder.
"Says the man with wings," Clint muttered.
Wanda was still frozen at the top of the steps, staring down at them all, her face still and tense. She reached up with one hand and touched the hood of her cloak, as if to adjust it, then let her hand drop.
"The costume has nothing to do with what happened." Hank's voice was loud in the charged silence. Tony turned to find him staring fixedly up at Wanda, his body angled carefully away from Jan. "Wearing it will get easier."
Wanda nodded silently, the two of them sharing a moment of wordless communication whose content Tony didn't need to guess at. Then she pulled up the cloak's hood and walked briskly down the steps.
Steve clapped his hands together. "Let's move it, Avengers. People could be dying while we stand here staring at each other. You can brief us on the situation on the way, Tony."
He led the way out the front door, Clint and Sam at his heels, Jan a black and gold blur zipping over their heads.
Outside, the air was cool — 57 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the armor's sensors — and the sky had already turned the deep blue of twilight. Carol swooped downward out of the sky as they hit the front gate.
"Glad to see you haven't left without me," she said, and extended one arm out toward Sam. "Grab on, Falcon. I'll give you some altitude."
Sam took two long steps forward and reached up, letting her lock her hands around his forearms. Unlike Tony and Carol, he didn't have any independent means of propulsion; his hard-light wings allowed him to glide, but not take off from a standing start. He needed a tall building or someone to act as a tow plane.
Steve and Clint were already out the gate and running, their footsteps loud on the pavement.
Tony turned to Wanda. "Put your arms around my neck," he instructed. "And hold on."
She weighed almost a hundred pounds less than Steve did; he didn't even have to adjust the armor's power output to compensate.
As the mansion shrank into the distance below them, Tony could see Hank staring after them from the open door, his face rendered a pale blur by dim light and distance.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven Part One | Chapter Seven Part Two | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten Part One | Chapter Ten Part Two | Chapter Eleven
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Happy to see an update! Can't wait for more
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/happydance
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