fic: remember when [avengers, pepper/steve/tony, pg-13, 1/?]
Title: Remember When
Fandom: Avengers Movie!verse
Series: Unconventional Geometry
Rating: PG-13, although it'll be NC-17 in the next part
Pairing: Pepper/Tony leading into Pepper/Steve/Tony
Word Count: 6,100
Warnings/Content Advisory: References to neglectful/alcoholic parenting and prior torture, but nothing outside of movie canon.
Notes: I'm posting this as 1/2 on my DW/LJ, anticipating that I might need to make changes to it once I finish 2/2. When it's complete, I'll post it to AO3. It's just easier to keep going if there's a little mid-way feedback, you know? (Which is basically code for "I'm greedy and insecure and new at this pairing, and could use some encouragement.")
Summary: Steve gets advice from Coulson, Tony loves his robots, and it's all Pepper's fault.
*
Pepper started it.
That's Tony's story and he's sticking to it. Not that anyone's actually doubting him, which is weird, because a) he's not used to people believing him, and b) it's sex. So really, Tony's kind of the expert in the tower. Except for maybe Natasha, but he's not going there. Except in some fantasies sometimes but come on he's got photos of her posing in lingerie, and even if he had wiped them off his hard drive, he can't wipe them off his brain. Probably. Yet. He's got a project down the line that might be able to do that. Anyway.
Pepper started it.*
There’s only three of them in the tower for dinner, which isn’t all that unusual. Just Tony, Pepper, and Steve. Clint and Natasha had gone off with Coulson to do some super-secret spy shenanigans (or maybe just off to have lasagna at Coulson’s place; Tony has yet to figure out the trio’s patterns), Bruce had run off to India to-his words-buy some good tea, and Thor’s in Canada with Jane, probably having loud, enthusiastic sex and scaring off all the moose.
"Tony's got a lot of memorabilia you might want," Pepper says. Steve’s sitting at Tony’s dining room table across from Pepper. Pepper’s still in her power suit and doing that weird thing she does sometimes where she spears her food without ever looking at her plate. She's like River from Firefly, only with salads and cutlery instead of guns. "His father collected a lot of things from the war. Didn't he, Tony?" Tony nods obediently, because he’s used to blindly obeying Pepper when she’s in CEO-mode.
"He was obsessive about it. There's probably toenail clippings in the attic of our old place." Steve looks grossed out. "You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Sources of your DNA were highly sought-after commodities for a while."
"Right," Steve says. Steve, unlike Pepper, stares at his plate a lot. The food's not even weird-Tony had Jarvis switch the food delivery preferences from cutting-edge culinary trends to Italian places and diners that served good ol’ fashioned American food. (In completely related news, Dummy’s been working overtime in the lab filling Tony up with smoothies.)
"He also collected your personal belongings," Pepper adds, glaring at Tony and gesturing at Steve with her fork.
"He missed you," Tony says, searching his mind for small talk to make (and even though thinking about Howard still pisses him off, he doesn't want to make Captain America sad. Or make Pepper angry). "You, uh. You were close?"
"We were in the war together," Steve says tentatively. "He made weapons that saved a lot of lives." Tony can feel his throat closing up a bit, because the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Stark Industries stockholders had made similar arguments to Tony when he shut down weapons manufacturing. Steve's quiet words are more convincing than the rest of the US military had been. "And he made-well, me. And he taught me a lot. Just like you're teaching me," Steve says with a smile at Tony. Tony grimaces back uncertainly. People don't smile at him the way that Steve smiles at him; he never knows what to do. "I was a fish out of water back then, too."
"Pepper helps teach," Tony says hastily. "Pepper, talk about your helping. Now. Please."
Pepper takes a sip of her wine and takes over the conversation effortlessly. Tony looks at the last cherry tomato hiding in the salad on his plate and stabs it.
*
Because Pepper is relentless and Steve has the convincing powers of a sad puppy, a week later Tony finds himself at his parents' old house in Westchester, ready to trawl the attic for Steve’s old belongings. (Out of a fit of pique Tony hadn’t invited Coulson, although Pepper will probably bring him something anyway, because Pepper and Coulson are work friends, whatever that is.)
No one's been the house for years. Tony's the last one who'd been in the building, closing the huge double doors behind him before getting in his Jag and driving off to MIT. His parents died, leaving him three houses, a business, and all of his funds and future in Obie’s care.
Tony still has the key to the padlock on the door but he’d lied, back in New York; said he’d misplaced it. He’d put bolt-cutters in the boot of the car but Steve just kind of squeezes the lock and it falls apart in his palm.
The door opens with a creak and reveals a dark, cavernous entryway. Dust has settled on all the surfaces but when Tony finds the discreetly hidden light switch and flips it on, tastefully placed chandeliers still illuminate the room. The furniture in the entryway and nearby receiving room are covered in dust cloths and the artwork has been removed from all the walls.
It looks like a ghost’s house. Tony expects to hear Jarvis’s voice scolding them all for not wiping off their shoes before they entered (even though now the only footprints they’re leaving are marks in the dust: Pepper’s stilettos and Steve’s boots and Tony’s custom-made Gucci, which do not have lifts built into the heels. They’re just modified to better accommodate the suit. Really).
The house is too empty, given its size. He'd auctioned off a lot of the furniture and art and put the proceeds towards the Maria Stark Foundation. His mom hadn't left as much behind as Howard had, but her legacy, Tony thinks, will do more good.
"It's a beautiful house," Steve says, turning in a circle to take in the architecture of the foyer. "It's very...big."
"Yeah, I hear that a lot," Tony says. Pepper slaps his arm.
"What did I- Oh. Oh. Very funny, Tony. Haha." Steve's not quite got the hang of sarcasm, but his deadpan works just fine. Tony glares at Steve, who grins back at him.
"So where did you store Howard’s things?" Pepper interrupts.
Steve looks at her curiously. "Haven't you been here before?"
"I've only worked for Tony for...six years, now? Six years this August."
"You seem like you've been friends for longer than that,” Steve says.
They've been friends for less time than that, actually. The transition from employee to friend had been delayed by Tony's obliviousness (okay, dependency on substances or self-centered-ness or whatever) for a good four years of that time.
Steve’s probably the first person who hasn’t been employed by Tony, or assigned to him by the military, who’s become Tony’s friend. Acquaintance. Teammate, actually, is more accurate.
Tony reminds himself that he doesn’t have friends; doesn’t need friends. Except for maybe Bruce, but Bruce is more like a lab partner. Bruce likes Science. Tony’s given him a lab and a place to live that has reinforced walls and floor and ceilings and hopefully Tony's bribes will be sufficient and one day Bruce will stay.
"Pepper's only after me for my money," Tony says with a sigh. Steve walks past him into the house, bumping Tony's shoulder playfully as he goes. Tony stumbles, because, ow, goddamn serum. Steve doesn't notice but Pepper holds Tony’s hand as she pulls him into his childhood home, so he doesn't make a big deal out of it.
He shows Pepper and Steve to the attic, which is honestly just a giant storage room, climate controlled, well-lit, organized.
"Have at it," Tony says, gesturing at the stacks of boxes. "I'm sure it's in there somewhere."
"But...where in there?" Steve asks.
“Beats me. The movers did all of this. I’m not cut out for manual labor.”
Pepper sighs. "Let's get looking."
"Be right back," Tony says. "Just gonna duck out to the loo." He leaves Pepper explaining to Steve what a loo is. (Poking Steve with modern references had only been fun for so long; Tony’s moved on to bigger, more multicultural vocabulary.)
The house is quiet. He’s used to that, though; he’d walked these halls a lot after the servants had gone to sleep.
He finds the back staircase, the one almost no one had used (he doesn’t turn on the lights becaue he doesn’t need to, memory and blue glow lead him) and goes one floor down. He exits, walks down two hallways, and stops at the fourth door on the right.
It’s unlocked. There’s dust on the handle, but the hinges don't make a sound when he swings it open.
Inside, he finds a four-poster bed, neatly made, with perfectly positioned pillows. His mahogany desk is clean but there are gouges scattered over the lacquer. It had never been clean when his parents were alive. Maria had pestered him to clean up after himself; Howard hadn't noticed. Tony had swept all the junk into a box and brought it to MIT with him when he moved out.
Dummy's propulsion system was built in this room. Tony's fascination with Captain America (and accompanying realization about his flexible sexuality) were born in this room.
Tony had been alone, a lot, in this room.
He'd had a nanny until his parents died. Jarvis (Jarvis Mark 1) had kept him company, but always at a distance. Tony's JARVIS acts like a butler too. He takes care of Tony but doesn't use his first name.
He goes back upstairs, makes space for himself between Pepper and Steve, grabs a box, and sets his Stark phone to blast classic rock while they work. He's supposed to be helping Steve get acclimated, after all.
*
First they find Steve's old combat uniforms. Then reels of film, commercials and movies, most of which have been transferred to digital by now. Steve doesn't care about those.
They find his original enlistment forms, and Tony crows for hours about Steve's dishonesty. Steve takes it in stride, but Tony can't quite reconcile the perfect specimen of manhood in front of him with the height and weight listed on the forms.
They find pictures of the Commandos and two scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings. Steve flips through them randomly until he comes across Bucky’s obituary, then he puts them back in their box. (He does keep a collection of dog tags. There’s an old set that had once belonged to Steve, and every single set that had belonged to the commandos except for Bucky’s. Bucky’s body, unlike Steve’s, had never been found.)
In one portfolio they find charts: Howard's search grids, estimates of the crash trajectory projections, background information about the Red Skull and speculation about the items that had gone down into the ice with Steve.
Most boxes are full of things like curtains and dishes and bedskirts, small worthless knickknacks and cooking utensils.
In the back there's a box of Tony memorabilia that the nanny must have put together. Steve finds the box and pulls out Tony’s elementary school report cards, and then asks, "When, exactly, did you make JARVIS?"
Tony pulls the yellowing paper from Steve’s hands. Tony's straight A's and comments about his erratic behavior are on one side, "Good job, but keep working! ~Jarvis" is written on the other.
"I made JARVIS the AI when I was twenty-nine. Jarvis the butler was probably born...well, about the same time as you, I'd imagine."
"You named your AI after your butler?"
"Yeah," Tony said, grabbing the box, putting the cards back in it, and shutting it before Steve can dig anything else out. "Alfred was just too cliche."
*
Pepper never met Howard, but she’s made some assumptions based on information gathered.
Tony surrounds himself with an AI and robots and retreats to them when he feels unsafe. When she offers him human comfort-hugs and words, flesh and voice-he hesitates before deciding how much of it he can handle. (Sex is different. Sex he knows. Cuddling, not so much.)
This is how Pepper knows Howard: the legacy he left Tony killed hundreds of thousands of people and Tony drank himself into oblivion for the years between losing his parents and getting lost in Afghanistan. She does not think that Tony has recovered from either loss.
Here is what Pepper knows of Maria Stark: she liked jade jewelry and riding bikes. The legacy she left Tony is one he’s kept strong, one he’s fed, one that’s flourished after she died. Pepper wishes that she saw more of Maria’s influence in Tony’s life and less of Howard’s.
She has never seen a happy or candid photo of Howard or Maria (or Tony as a child. That she’s only seen in magazines: Tony in little business suits, holding onto a grown-up’s hand, not smiling) in any of Tony’s homes.
Pepper knows Howard because of what he's done to Tony, and she hates him for it.*
They don't stay in the house. They pile Pepper's car (Pepper's car, which is a sensible sedan, for god's sake) with the boxes that Steve and Pepper want to bring back to the tower, and, because it’s late, they spend the night in a motel. It advertises its color televisions and air conditioning on a giant yellowing sign.
"I'm going to catch a disease from this bed," Tony announces, standing in the middle of the tiny room and surveying his temporary domain. Steve settles down on one of the double beds and bounces a little.
"Seems all right to me."
"No complaining," Pepper calls from the bathroom. "We’re a half-hour away from the nearest four star hotel, and they’re already booked up. So unless you want to sleep in a janitor's closet at the four seasons, this is our only option."
“If we were in a janitor’s closet there would at least be some bleach to huff.”
“Bleach to what?” Steve asks. Pepper crosses over to him, pats him on the shoulder, and tells him that he doesn’t want to know.
Tony recognizes the look on Steve’s face as his Remember to Google this later expression. “Huff,” Tony says, because he doesn’t like it when Pepper thwarts his attempts to alienate Steve. He explains the burn it causes, the high that follows, the availability of the substance and the good and damage it can do.
“Why do people do that?” Steve asks, horrified.
Tony opens his mouth to answer, but Pepper beats him to it. “They do it because it’s better than the alternative.”
Tony shuts up and doesn’t slam the door to the bathroom when he goes to brush his teeth.
*
Tony dreams about Afghanistan, which is a nice change, because it’s been New York and the wormhole for a long time, and, to be honest, Tony had been getting bored of the same terror every night.
None of his suits rescues him because he’s taught them all not to. Taught them all the pattern of his sleep and breath and dreams, and programmed in a safety zone around Pepper that all of Tony’s creations now respect. (Pepper still sometimes flinches when the suits are around and Tony thinks, I must have terrified her, thinks, I wouldn’t have made these changes if she had stayed in my bed that night.)
No suit rescues him, but that’s okay, because he’s woken up from a dream of Yinsen waterboarding him to find Captain America holding his arms and asking if he’s okay. So he wakes up from one nightmare into another, and then Pepper wakes up too and he realizes Oh, okay, so this can get more embarrassing.
His lungs are tight and his body aches for the suit to fit itself around the reactor and shield it and him from the rest of the world, from Steve and Pepper’s prying eyes.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Tony says. “It was just a dream. I’m fine.”
Steve lets go of him. Tony looks at the white bands around his biceps. Captain America had marked him. “Sorry,” Steve says, gesturing at the Tony’s arms, which are flushing dark as blood starts circulating there again. “You just…you wouldn’t wake up.”
Tony knows the sounds he makes when he has nightmares because JARVIS records everything, so he knows exactly how mortified to be. “Sorry,” Tony says. “Won’t happen again. Everybody go back to sleep. Show’s over.”
“But it will happen again,” Pepper whispers, scooting further up the bed and sitting with her back against the wall.
Tony’s lungs tighten.
The memories from the dream are fresh.
They had tied him to a chair and tipped it backwards. Put a cloth over his mouth and poured bucket after bucket of water over his face. He doesn’t know how long it went on. JARVIS says that sometimes his nightmares last all night, but Tony doesn’t think it lasted that long the first time around. He thinks he probably would have died. The battery holding the shrapnel at bay would have stuttered, stopped, run out of power trying to keep pace with the speed and panic of Tony’s heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” Tony says, to Pepper instead of to the room at large, because Pepper’s the one who would have been in danger if she’d woken him up instead of Steve. “It’s getting better, though, isn’t it?”
He knows what Pepper’s going to say from the twist of her lips and the sad expression of her eyes. “Right. Okay. I’m just-” He gestures at the bathroom but then realizes that everything in the bathroom involves water, and gestures to the door instead. “I’m going to take a walk.”
He untangles himself from sweat-soaked sheets, evading Pepper’s grasp, and Steve says, “I dream about the crash.”
There are no lights in the room except for the lamps in the parking lot shining through the window and the blue of the arc reactor. When he turns to look at Steve the blue shines on his face, illuminates the trace of shadows under his eyes, reveals his hair in an atypical state of disarray. Tony makes a mental note to tell JARVIS to take a picture of Steve like this sometime when they’re back in the tower, a picture of Steve looking messed up and vulnerable and human. Then he hastily deletes that mental note because, no, he shouldn’t want that; he has Pepper.
(Pepper who is afraid of him.)
“I went down with the plane,” Steve says, looking down at his hands. “A lot of people ask about the ice. About if I dreamed all those year, which, thankfully, I didn’t. But the cold didn’t hurt as much as hitting the water did. After the impact, I-I couldn’t tell which way was up. There was, um-there was a little bit of air that was trapped in the cockpit. I managed to breathe for a while before it escaped.” Steve reaches out and taps Tony’s chest. Tony’s too startled to move away from him. “The cube I took down with me was this same exact shade of blue.”
Tony reaches up to cover the reactor, because he doesn’t want to contribute to Steve’s nightmares, but Steve stops him (so easily; he is so strong). “Don’t worry. It’s kind of…comforting. It was the last thing I saw before the cold took over.” Steve spreads his fingers slowly, and the skin around Tony’s heart that still has feeling-the nerve endings that haven’t been fried-burns under his touch.
“My nightmares are very mundane,” Pepper says. She’s tucked her legs up so that her knees are under her chin. She looks tiny, especially given that Tony has Steve sitting right next to him, Steve who-no matter how much he hunches-always seems to loom. “Silly stuff like getting lost in hallways, or showing up to board meetings without being prepared. Once I dreamed about looking for my keys every night for a month.”
Tony wonders why she’s never told him about her nightmares before.
He feels selfish for not having asked.
“I save my nightmares for the day,” she says drily. “There’s really nothing I could dream up that would be worse than watching you all go into battle. I’m glad it doesn’t follow me into bed.”
The only nightmare in her bed is Tony.
“Sorry about that,” Steve says.
“Don’t apologize. I’d rather see you rescuing New York on the five o’clock news than be incinerated by mad scientists with attack octopi.”
“That was a weird one,” Steve agrees. Belatedly, he takes his hand back. Tony’s chest-even the missing, damaged parts of it-aches for his touch.
“I thought touchy-feely sharing was supposed to make us feel better,” Tony grouses, not rubbing at his chest because Pepper would be able to figure out why he was doing it.
“Well…you haven’t actually shared,” Steve says. “I mean, you don’t have to, obviously, and I’m sure Pepper already knows, but-”
“He dreams about New York,” Pepper says, which is an invasion of Tony’s privacy so deep and sharp that he wishes he had a suit on; wishes that he had a faceplate that he could snap up to hide his hurt. “The end of the battle, with-with the missile.”
“Oh,” Steve says.
“How’s that for self-sacrifice,” Tony mutters, because he can hold grudges for a really long time.
“I’m sorry,” Steve says. He looks even more sincere than usual in blue light. “I had no idea.”
“Wasn’t even about New York this time,” Tony says, glaring at Pepper, who looks calm, like always. She looks like she’s listening and Tony feels that cruel twist inside of him that he wishes he could outgrow. “I dreamed about Afghanistan,” he says, because if he’s hurting, he wants Pepper to hurt too. “I was held hostage there,” he tells Steve, “for months. They broke my ribs and spread my chest open and hooked me up to a car battery, and then they tortured me until I agreed to make weapons for them. They-they’d unhook the battery, sometimes, or threaten to drop one of the wires into the water, when they-when they were holding me under.”
Pepper looks shaken and Tony grins. “You don’t know everything about me,” he says to her, vindicated and victorious in his quest to get back at her. Tony’s more than willing to cause himself pain to get back at Pepper for telling Steve Tony’s secrets when Tony had fought so hard to give them to Pepper in the first place.
Now there are four people who know about Tony’s nightmares. (Tony includes himself and JARVIS in that count.)
Steve reaches for the arc reactor. He probably wants to touch it again; the man’s developing a fetish or something. Tony lurches to his feet. “I’m taking Steve’s bed,” he says. “You two can share. That way I won’t wake anybody up.”
“You can stay,” Pepper says, at the same time that Steve says, “Don’t leave.”
“I almost killed her,” Tony says, because Steve doesn’t get it and Pepper’s nicer than she is smart. “Last time I had a bad nightmare. One of the Iron Man suits thought I was in danger-I thought I was in danger-and I almost blasted her through the wall of our bedroom.” He’s panting, he realizes, and he’s backed himself up against the wall. Steve’s hands are raised in a gesture of harmlessness but Tony can’t help reaching up to the arc reactor, covering it as much as he can with just his flesh and bone. “I could have killed you,” he says to Pepper, who looks so small.
“But you didn’t,” she says softly. “And you’re not going to do it again.”
“Sleep with Steve,” Tony says. “At least for tonight. I’m not-I can’t-” His breath is gone and his fear hurts and there are too many ways his heart can stop working.
“I’m going to push the beds together,” Steve announces, in the silence filled only by Tony’s frantic breath. “And then I’m going to sleep in the middle of it. You two can do whatever you want.”
Tony stands in shocked silence as Steve moves a dresser, the phone, and a lamp out of the way, and then shoves the double beds together. Steve moves his pillows around, tugs his blanket into place, and settles himself in the middle of the double beds like it’s the most comfortable place he’s ever been. Like he hasn’t dreamed of crashing and suffocating and freezing often enough to catalogue and rank the separate fears.
“He’s not going to let you hurt me,” Pepper says. “Come to bed.”
Tony walks to the opposite side of the bed, slips under the sheets, and pretends to sleep until the sun rises.
*
Steve remembers Howard the same way he remembers everything from his own era: carefully, vividly, and repeatedly. He remembers Howard by sketching him in the last pages of his sketchbook (far enough back that Tony won’t bother to browse through them when he’s bored).
He remembers Howard by being brave and trying to get the things he wants. He remembers Howard when he sees the fever of excitement in Tony’s eyes and wonders how he’d never felt attracted to it in Howard. He recognizes the same facial features, the same hair, the same wit, the same sophistication. Tony, though, is singularly reckless, his moods like quicksilver; Tony embodies his own era and mocks Steve’s.
(Steve thinks sometimes, What would it be like if I left this time, too? What will the world be like seventy years from now; what will I remember from this time, these years, these people?)
Steve remembers Howard carefully, vividly, repeatedly, and, when he sees Tony beaten down and tired and angry at himself, he remembers Howard critically. He wonders what happened to Howard in the years Steve was lost. He wonders if it would have made a difference to Howard if Steve had survived. (He thinks maybe Tony would have been better off, but he cannot regret meeting Tony now, at this age, in this era, no matter how selfish that desire is. Howard had taught him that too.)
Howard was one of the few people who knew Steve before and after the serum. Howard’s the only one who didn’t seem to notice a difference. Like Tony, Howard had always been good at seeing inside of things and figuring out how they worked. Steve knows that all the important things (being stupidly brave, artistic, big-hearted) have always existed inside of him.
The Howard that Steve remembers and the Howard that Steve knows from Tony’s silences and smiles and blank stares are not the same man.*
The only time Tony and Pepper can reliably be found together is Friday evenings at 7pm, because every Friday Pepper hunts Tony down (‘for the good for the good of the company’) and forces him to sign off on all of the important proceedings that have taken place over the business week.
She saves the tech contracts and updates for last, as a bribe and a timesaving strategy, since he can get-understandably!-sidetracked when presented with innovative or inaccurate data. Given the competency level of their current staff, it's almost always innovative, but sometimes shit still gets done wrong.
They spend time together outside of that timeslot, of course, it's just that it's the only set time that they ever meet. Tony had come back from a mission once to find Pepper on the helicarrier at 7:13pm on a Friday, tapping her foot on the flightdeck and holding out a clipboard. She'd cursed him out and checked him over at the same time, all the while flipping pages and pointing to the post-it-note arrows indicating signature lines.
Clint had laughed and Natasha had helped Pepper with the papers and Coulson had looked on with admiration. That’s probably when Steve learned that if he wanted to talk to them both at the same time, 7pm on Fridays was the way to go.
*
"I would...I would like to take you out to dinner,” Steve says, after You lets him into the workshop with a string of happy beeps. You’s taken a shine to Steve.
Steve’s got on his ugliest (and favorite) shirt, freshly-pressed slacks, shiny shoes, gelled back hair, and a serious expression. He’s also apparently lost his damn mind.
Pepper narrows her eyes at him. "We’re already dating each other. You do know that, right?"
"Yes, I know, that's why I-I wanted to ask-both of you?"
Oh.
Huh.
Wait, what?
"Pepper," Tony hisses in a loud stage whisper. "I think Captain America is asking us out."
"I can see that," she says, in that CEO-smile-voice that means she has no idea what’s going on but has no intention of letting anyone else figure that out.
"Am I dreaming?"
"I don't know," Pepper says. "Dummy, pinch Tony."
"Ah-no, do not-ow!"
Steve runs a hand over the perfectly styled lines of his hair and ducks his head. "So…that’s a no?"
"No," Pepper says, levering herself off of Tony's desk, "it's not a 'no.' It's a...a..."
"Captain America," Tony repeats, fending off Dummy's attacks. "Captain America is asking us out."
" I know who I am," Steve says, the lines of his body stiffening. "And also I can hear you. I could hear you even if you were in the next room and actually whispering."
"...Captain America."
"Tony's going to need a minute to reboot," Pep cuts in smoothly. "You've taken him by surprise, and you know he doesn't deal well with change."
"I don't-deal well with-with what-have you even met me? I’m Tony freaking Stark, I-"
"Why are you asking us out?" Pepper continues, ignoring Tony's bewildered stammering.
"I like you," Steve says. His voice is more confident, he's on surer footing here. "I'm attracted to you both physically, I think we are compatible socially, and I-I miss you when you're gone. Put together those seemed like good reasons to instigate more intimate relations. With you. Both of you."
Pep's eyes narrow. "Who have you talked to about this?" She's got a point. Those words sound like they belong to someone else. Steve the good soldier makes an excellent parrot.
"Um. No one?"
"Who?"
Steve-Tony blinks to make sure he's seeing things right-Steve actually scuffs his feet on the floor. Tony bets Steve was just as ridiculous in the forties, since there's no way this much endearing idiocy is era-specific. Tony's watched old movies. No one in the forties looked this damned cute.
"I...maybe have consulted with Coulson."
Tony's pretty sure he isn't eating anything so he doesn't know what he chokes on, but he definitely chokes on something. "Agent? You went to Agent for dating advice?"
"He seemed like the most knowledgeable party," Steve says angrily. He's getting angry now. Tony mentally kicks himself (it's a reflexive Pepper kick so it's extra pointy, her heels are vicious) for finding that hot. "Given his relationship with Agents Barton and Romanoff." Whatever Tony had been choking on is definitely gone, and it took all his words with it.
"He...wuh? Pepper? Pepper, have there been orgies? Have I been missing team orgies? Have we been dosed with sex pollen?" He takes a closer look at Steve's flushed face. "Have you been dosed with sex pollen? I bet you know there's procedure for that. If not, Agent can tell you all about them, while you two gossip some more-"
"Tony?" Pepper says, laying a hand on his forearm (right over a fresh sub-dermal implant, since Tony had been tuning up the suit's sensors while Pepper talked his ear off about stockholders). "Stop kidding for a minute."
"I wasn't kidding. There really are sex-pollen procedures."
She turns his chair so that he’s looking at her instead of Steve. "Steve's asking us out."
"I know that, Pepper, that's why I'm trying to figure out what’s wrong with him."
“I think I’d want to date him,” Pepper says, holding on to his tender arm, “as long as you were onboard too." Tony stares at her, because her face is familiar, and he's trying to tie himself down to what's happening to him, right here in this moment, but he feels like an unmoored air balloon.
"It's just dinner," Steve says. He's standing at parade rest. Tony wonders if Steve even realizes he does it. Probably not. "If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I just-I try not to leave things undone anymore." He gives a nod (sharp, militaristic; he's got this shtick more imbedded in his muscle memory than Rhodey does).
"Yes," Pepper says. Steve and Tony repeat it back to her like a pair of broken stereo speakers. Yes? "Yes to dinner," Pepper clarifies. "Did you have a place in mind?"
"Agent-uh, Phil recommended a place, ma'am."
She smiles (when did she start looking so much like a shark?) and says, "Splendid. Assuming there's no unexpected Avengers business, when should we expect you?"
"Tomorrow night? Eight? The restaurant’s a bit far, so I can call for a taxi, but I figured Tony would probably want to drive." Tony recoils like a snake because no one except for Pepper, Happy, and JARVIS are supposed to know him that well. "Or not?"
"We'll take care of transportation," Pepper says smoothly. "If Tony doesn't want to drive, we can always take my sedan."
"No. No, we are not taking your sedan, because you should not even have a sedan, I don't even like the way the word sounds. Sedaaaaaaan. Pepper, have you even seen my car collection? They're like shoes, the shinier and sleeker they are, the better, and you should never have just one, not if you have a big enough closet. Or garage, or whatever, metaphors are for the weak." He lets himself ramble, his chair still turned to face Pepper. Eventually he shuts up. "Is he gone?"
"Yes."
"Did that really just happen?"
"Yes."
He stares at his hands for a while. Pepper sits on his desk and kicks her heels. She used to do this in Malibu, back when she was his assistant, and not his-his Pepper. She'd sit for hours while he tinkered and rambled. Back then, she'd had to be patient in order to eventually catch his attention enough to get him to sign things or answer phone calls. Now she only waits for him when he deserves it.
"I love you," Tony says. She nods and lets him continue. "I don’t want to fuck this up. I've done...I’ve been in threesomes before. Hell, even foursomes. There’s a porn vid floating around somewhere on the internet of me right smack dab in the middle of an eight-some-my point is, I’ve tried this relationship before. It doesn’t work.”
"Really? You've tried dating a national hero before?"
"Well, only if you count Elton John. Which, judging by your expression, you do not, so, no. But I've done the threesome thing, and it always-it always ends badly."
"Have you had any relationships before me that didn't end badly?" Tony thinks about it. "Any relationships that lasted longer than a night, anyway?"
"Well, if you're going to put parameters on the answer, then…no."
"You and me," Pepper says, her voice soft (Tony is glad that JARVIS is always recording; Tony will always have a record of how she says that, You and me), "we're the real deal. We're solid. Nothing that's going to happen tomorrow night is going to change that."
“I need to think,” he says.
She takes her clipboard-some of the papers still unsigned, which she’s never let him get away with before-and kisses the top of his head before she leaves. “If you decide to say no, that’s a no for both of us,” she says before leaving. “Never doubt that. Never doubt me.”
The door closes behind her and Tony, surrounded by his creations, his children, wishes he knew how to believe her.
*
Tony remembers Howard. Tony remembers the scent of whiskey (the good stuff) poured by the finger and then fingers and then a bottle upended by a whole hand. Tony remembers being briefed for public outings and being chastened for unseemly behavior in public (wiping his nose on his sleeve; nodding off; looking bored; running to his mother when he lost track of Jarvis).
Tony remembers Howard examining Dummy and giving Tony what Howard called ‘Constructive Criticism.’ Tony is now the only one who remembers Dummy the First, which he cannibalized for parts. The current Dummy-the Dummy who has endeared himself to the entire team-had not been introduced to Howard.
Tony does not remember being held when he was colicky; Howard’s attempt to teach him to catch a baseball; the scathing letter Howard had sent to a teacher who gave Tony a C in middle-school for not paying attention in class; the difference between the Howard he knew and Howard when he still held out hope for finding Steve.
Tony did not know Howard before the war. He did not know Howard before Little Boy and Fat Man fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Stark logo printed large and proud on their metal bodies. He did not know the Howard who still held out hope that he would find Steve and salvage something good from the war.
The distance between what Tony knows and what Tony has yet to learn is growing.
~
Feedback and concrit are honestly appreciated! http://hoosierbitch.dreamwidth.org/99226.html |
comments | Comment at Dreamwidth
Fandom: Avengers Movie!verse
Series: Unconventional Geometry
Rating: PG-13, although it'll be NC-17 in the next part
Pairing: Pepper/Tony leading into Pepper/Steve/Tony
Word Count: 6,100
Warnings/Content Advisory: References to neglectful/alcoholic parenting and prior torture, but nothing outside of movie canon.
Notes: I'm posting this as 1/2 on my DW/LJ, anticipating that I might need to make changes to it once I finish 2/2. When it's complete, I'll post it to AO3. It's just easier to keep going if there's a little mid-way feedback, you know? (Which is basically code for "I'm greedy and insecure and new at this pairing, and could use some encouragement.")
Summary: Steve gets advice from Coulson, Tony loves his robots, and it's all Pepper's fault.
*
Pepper started it.
That's Tony's story and he's sticking to it. Not that anyone's actually doubting him, which is weird, because a) he's not used to people believing him, and b) it's sex. So really, Tony's kind of the expert in the tower. Except for maybe Natasha, but he's not going there. Except in some fantasies sometimes but come on he's got photos of her posing in lingerie, and even if he had wiped them off his hard drive, he can't wipe them off his brain. Probably. Yet. He's got a project down the line that might be able to do that. Anyway.
Pepper started it.*
There’s only three of them in the tower for dinner, which isn’t all that unusual. Just Tony, Pepper, and Steve. Clint and Natasha had gone off with Coulson to do some super-secret spy shenanigans (or maybe just off to have lasagna at Coulson’s place; Tony has yet to figure out the trio’s patterns), Bruce had run off to India to-his words-buy some good tea, and Thor’s in Canada with Jane, probably having loud, enthusiastic sex and scaring off all the moose.
"Tony's got a lot of memorabilia you might want," Pepper says. Steve’s sitting at Tony’s dining room table across from Pepper. Pepper’s still in her power suit and doing that weird thing she does sometimes where she spears her food without ever looking at her plate. She's like River from Firefly, only with salads and cutlery instead of guns. "His father collected a lot of things from the war. Didn't he, Tony?" Tony nods obediently, because he’s used to blindly obeying Pepper when she’s in CEO-mode.
"He was obsessive about it. There's probably toenail clippings in the attic of our old place." Steve looks grossed out. "You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Sources of your DNA were highly sought-after commodities for a while."
"Right," Steve says. Steve, unlike Pepper, stares at his plate a lot. The food's not even weird-Tony had Jarvis switch the food delivery preferences from cutting-edge culinary trends to Italian places and diners that served good ol’ fashioned American food. (In completely related news, Dummy’s been working overtime in the lab filling Tony up with smoothies.)
"He also collected your personal belongings," Pepper adds, glaring at Tony and gesturing at Steve with her fork.
"He missed you," Tony says, searching his mind for small talk to make (and even though thinking about Howard still pisses him off, he doesn't want to make Captain America sad. Or make Pepper angry). "You, uh. You were close?"
"We were in the war together," Steve says tentatively. "He made weapons that saved a lot of lives." Tony can feel his throat closing up a bit, because the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Stark Industries stockholders had made similar arguments to Tony when he shut down weapons manufacturing. Steve's quiet words are more convincing than the rest of the US military had been. "And he made-well, me. And he taught me a lot. Just like you're teaching me," Steve says with a smile at Tony. Tony grimaces back uncertainly. People don't smile at him the way that Steve smiles at him; he never knows what to do. "I was a fish out of water back then, too."
"Pepper helps teach," Tony says hastily. "Pepper, talk about your helping. Now. Please."
Pepper takes a sip of her wine and takes over the conversation effortlessly. Tony looks at the last cherry tomato hiding in the salad on his plate and stabs it.
*
Because Pepper is relentless and Steve has the convincing powers of a sad puppy, a week later Tony finds himself at his parents' old house in Westchester, ready to trawl the attic for Steve’s old belongings. (Out of a fit of pique Tony hadn’t invited Coulson, although Pepper will probably bring him something anyway, because Pepper and Coulson are work friends, whatever that is.)
No one's been the house for years. Tony's the last one who'd been in the building, closing the huge double doors behind him before getting in his Jag and driving off to MIT. His parents died, leaving him three houses, a business, and all of his funds and future in Obie’s care.
Tony still has the key to the padlock on the door but he’d lied, back in New York; said he’d misplaced it. He’d put bolt-cutters in the boot of the car but Steve just kind of squeezes the lock and it falls apart in his palm.
The door opens with a creak and reveals a dark, cavernous entryway. Dust has settled on all the surfaces but when Tony finds the discreetly hidden light switch and flips it on, tastefully placed chandeliers still illuminate the room. The furniture in the entryway and nearby receiving room are covered in dust cloths and the artwork has been removed from all the walls.
It looks like a ghost’s house. Tony expects to hear Jarvis’s voice scolding them all for not wiping off their shoes before they entered (even though now the only footprints they’re leaving are marks in the dust: Pepper’s stilettos and Steve’s boots and Tony’s custom-made Gucci, which do not have lifts built into the heels. They’re just modified to better accommodate the suit. Really).
The house is too empty, given its size. He'd auctioned off a lot of the furniture and art and put the proceeds towards the Maria Stark Foundation. His mom hadn't left as much behind as Howard had, but her legacy, Tony thinks, will do more good.
"It's a beautiful house," Steve says, turning in a circle to take in the architecture of the foyer. "It's very...big."
"Yeah, I hear that a lot," Tony says. Pepper slaps his arm.
"What did I- Oh. Oh. Very funny, Tony. Haha." Steve's not quite got the hang of sarcasm, but his deadpan works just fine. Tony glares at Steve, who grins back at him.
"So where did you store Howard’s things?" Pepper interrupts.
Steve looks at her curiously. "Haven't you been here before?"
"I've only worked for Tony for...six years, now? Six years this August."
"You seem like you've been friends for longer than that,” Steve says.
They've been friends for less time than that, actually. The transition from employee to friend had been delayed by Tony's obliviousness (okay, dependency on substances or self-centered-ness or whatever) for a good four years of that time.
Steve’s probably the first person who hasn’t been employed by Tony, or assigned to him by the military, who’s become Tony’s friend. Acquaintance. Teammate, actually, is more accurate.
Tony reminds himself that he doesn’t have friends; doesn’t need friends. Except for maybe Bruce, but Bruce is more like a lab partner. Bruce likes Science. Tony’s given him a lab and a place to live that has reinforced walls and floor and ceilings and hopefully Tony's bribes will be sufficient and one day Bruce will stay.
"Pepper's only after me for my money," Tony says with a sigh. Steve walks past him into the house, bumping Tony's shoulder playfully as he goes. Tony stumbles, because, ow, goddamn serum. Steve doesn't notice but Pepper holds Tony’s hand as she pulls him into his childhood home, so he doesn't make a big deal out of it.
He shows Pepper and Steve to the attic, which is honestly just a giant storage room, climate controlled, well-lit, organized.
"Have at it," Tony says, gesturing at the stacks of boxes. "I'm sure it's in there somewhere."
"But...where in there?" Steve asks.
“Beats me. The movers did all of this. I’m not cut out for manual labor.”
Pepper sighs. "Let's get looking."
"Be right back," Tony says. "Just gonna duck out to the loo." He leaves Pepper explaining to Steve what a loo is. (Poking Steve with modern references had only been fun for so long; Tony’s moved on to bigger, more multicultural vocabulary.)
The house is quiet. He’s used to that, though; he’d walked these halls a lot after the servants had gone to sleep.
He finds the back staircase, the one almost no one had used (he doesn’t turn on the lights becaue he doesn’t need to, memory and blue glow lead him) and goes one floor down. He exits, walks down two hallways, and stops at the fourth door on the right.
It’s unlocked. There’s dust on the handle, but the hinges don't make a sound when he swings it open.
Inside, he finds a four-poster bed, neatly made, with perfectly positioned pillows. His mahogany desk is clean but there are gouges scattered over the lacquer. It had never been clean when his parents were alive. Maria had pestered him to clean up after himself; Howard hadn't noticed. Tony had swept all the junk into a box and brought it to MIT with him when he moved out.
Dummy's propulsion system was built in this room. Tony's fascination with Captain America (and accompanying realization about his flexible sexuality) were born in this room.
Tony had been alone, a lot, in this room.
He'd had a nanny until his parents died. Jarvis (Jarvis Mark 1) had kept him company, but always at a distance. Tony's JARVIS acts like a butler too. He takes care of Tony but doesn't use his first name.
He goes back upstairs, makes space for himself between Pepper and Steve, grabs a box, and sets his Stark phone to blast classic rock while they work. He's supposed to be helping Steve get acclimated, after all.
*
First they find Steve's old combat uniforms. Then reels of film, commercials and movies, most of which have been transferred to digital by now. Steve doesn't care about those.
They find his original enlistment forms, and Tony crows for hours about Steve's dishonesty. Steve takes it in stride, but Tony can't quite reconcile the perfect specimen of manhood in front of him with the height and weight listed on the forms.
They find pictures of the Commandos and two scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings. Steve flips through them randomly until he comes across Bucky’s obituary, then he puts them back in their box. (He does keep a collection of dog tags. There’s an old set that had once belonged to Steve, and every single set that had belonged to the commandos except for Bucky’s. Bucky’s body, unlike Steve’s, had never been found.)
In one portfolio they find charts: Howard's search grids, estimates of the crash trajectory projections, background information about the Red Skull and speculation about the items that had gone down into the ice with Steve.
Most boxes are full of things like curtains and dishes and bedskirts, small worthless knickknacks and cooking utensils.
In the back there's a box of Tony memorabilia that the nanny must have put together. Steve finds the box and pulls out Tony’s elementary school report cards, and then asks, "When, exactly, did you make JARVIS?"
Tony pulls the yellowing paper from Steve’s hands. Tony's straight A's and comments about his erratic behavior are on one side, "Good job, but keep working! ~Jarvis" is written on the other.
"I made JARVIS the AI when I was twenty-nine. Jarvis the butler was probably born...well, about the same time as you, I'd imagine."
"You named your AI after your butler?"
"Yeah," Tony said, grabbing the box, putting the cards back in it, and shutting it before Steve can dig anything else out. "Alfred was just too cliche."
*
Pepper never met Howard, but she’s made some assumptions based on information gathered.
Tony surrounds himself with an AI and robots and retreats to them when he feels unsafe. When she offers him human comfort-hugs and words, flesh and voice-he hesitates before deciding how much of it he can handle. (Sex is different. Sex he knows. Cuddling, not so much.)
This is how Pepper knows Howard: the legacy he left Tony killed hundreds of thousands of people and Tony drank himself into oblivion for the years between losing his parents and getting lost in Afghanistan. She does not think that Tony has recovered from either loss.
Here is what Pepper knows of Maria Stark: she liked jade jewelry and riding bikes. The legacy she left Tony is one he’s kept strong, one he’s fed, one that’s flourished after she died. Pepper wishes that she saw more of Maria’s influence in Tony’s life and less of Howard’s.
She has never seen a happy or candid photo of Howard or Maria (or Tony as a child. That she’s only seen in magazines: Tony in little business suits, holding onto a grown-up’s hand, not smiling) in any of Tony’s homes.
Pepper knows Howard because of what he's done to Tony, and she hates him for it.*
They don't stay in the house. They pile Pepper's car (Pepper's car, which is a sensible sedan, for god's sake) with the boxes that Steve and Pepper want to bring back to the tower, and, because it’s late, they spend the night in a motel. It advertises its color televisions and air conditioning on a giant yellowing sign.
"I'm going to catch a disease from this bed," Tony announces, standing in the middle of the tiny room and surveying his temporary domain. Steve settles down on one of the double beds and bounces a little.
"Seems all right to me."
"No complaining," Pepper calls from the bathroom. "We’re a half-hour away from the nearest four star hotel, and they’re already booked up. So unless you want to sleep in a janitor's closet at the four seasons, this is our only option."
“If we were in a janitor’s closet there would at least be some bleach to huff.”
“Bleach to what?” Steve asks. Pepper crosses over to him, pats him on the shoulder, and tells him that he doesn’t want to know.
Tony recognizes the look on Steve’s face as his Remember to Google this later expression. “Huff,” Tony says, because he doesn’t like it when Pepper thwarts his attempts to alienate Steve. He explains the burn it causes, the high that follows, the availability of the substance and the good and damage it can do.
“Why do people do that?” Steve asks, horrified.
Tony opens his mouth to answer, but Pepper beats him to it. “They do it because it’s better than the alternative.”
Tony shuts up and doesn’t slam the door to the bathroom when he goes to brush his teeth.
*
Tony dreams about Afghanistan, which is a nice change, because it’s been New York and the wormhole for a long time, and, to be honest, Tony had been getting bored of the same terror every night.
None of his suits rescues him because he’s taught them all not to. Taught them all the pattern of his sleep and breath and dreams, and programmed in a safety zone around Pepper that all of Tony’s creations now respect. (Pepper still sometimes flinches when the suits are around and Tony thinks, I must have terrified her, thinks, I wouldn’t have made these changes if she had stayed in my bed that night.)
No suit rescues him, but that’s okay, because he’s woken up from a dream of Yinsen waterboarding him to find Captain America holding his arms and asking if he’s okay. So he wakes up from one nightmare into another, and then Pepper wakes up too and he realizes Oh, okay, so this can get more embarrassing.
His lungs are tight and his body aches for the suit to fit itself around the reactor and shield it and him from the rest of the world, from Steve and Pepper’s prying eyes.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Tony says. “It was just a dream. I’m fine.”
Steve lets go of him. Tony looks at the white bands around his biceps. Captain America had marked him. “Sorry,” Steve says, gesturing at the Tony’s arms, which are flushing dark as blood starts circulating there again. “You just…you wouldn’t wake up.”
Tony knows the sounds he makes when he has nightmares because JARVIS records everything, so he knows exactly how mortified to be. “Sorry,” Tony says. “Won’t happen again. Everybody go back to sleep. Show’s over.”
“But it will happen again,” Pepper whispers, scooting further up the bed and sitting with her back against the wall.
Tony’s lungs tighten.
The memories from the dream are fresh.
They had tied him to a chair and tipped it backwards. Put a cloth over his mouth and poured bucket after bucket of water over his face. He doesn’t know how long it went on. JARVIS says that sometimes his nightmares last all night, but Tony doesn’t think it lasted that long the first time around. He thinks he probably would have died. The battery holding the shrapnel at bay would have stuttered, stopped, run out of power trying to keep pace with the speed and panic of Tony’s heartbeat.
“I’m sorry,” Tony says, to Pepper instead of to the room at large, because Pepper’s the one who would have been in danger if she’d woken him up instead of Steve. “It’s getting better, though, isn’t it?”
He knows what Pepper’s going to say from the twist of her lips and the sad expression of her eyes. “Right. Okay. I’m just-” He gestures at the bathroom but then realizes that everything in the bathroom involves water, and gestures to the door instead. “I’m going to take a walk.”
He untangles himself from sweat-soaked sheets, evading Pepper’s grasp, and Steve says, “I dream about the crash.”
There are no lights in the room except for the lamps in the parking lot shining through the window and the blue of the arc reactor. When he turns to look at Steve the blue shines on his face, illuminates the trace of shadows under his eyes, reveals his hair in an atypical state of disarray. Tony makes a mental note to tell JARVIS to take a picture of Steve like this sometime when they’re back in the tower, a picture of Steve looking messed up and vulnerable and human. Then he hastily deletes that mental note because, no, he shouldn’t want that; he has Pepper.
(Pepper who is afraid of him.)
“I went down with the plane,” Steve says, looking down at his hands. “A lot of people ask about the ice. About if I dreamed all those year, which, thankfully, I didn’t. But the cold didn’t hurt as much as hitting the water did. After the impact, I-I couldn’t tell which way was up. There was, um-there was a little bit of air that was trapped in the cockpit. I managed to breathe for a while before it escaped.” Steve reaches out and taps Tony’s chest. Tony’s too startled to move away from him. “The cube I took down with me was this same exact shade of blue.”
Tony reaches up to cover the reactor, because he doesn’t want to contribute to Steve’s nightmares, but Steve stops him (so easily; he is so strong). “Don’t worry. It’s kind of…comforting. It was the last thing I saw before the cold took over.” Steve spreads his fingers slowly, and the skin around Tony’s heart that still has feeling-the nerve endings that haven’t been fried-burns under his touch.
“My nightmares are very mundane,” Pepper says. She’s tucked her legs up so that her knees are under her chin. She looks tiny, especially given that Tony has Steve sitting right next to him, Steve who-no matter how much he hunches-always seems to loom. “Silly stuff like getting lost in hallways, or showing up to board meetings without being prepared. Once I dreamed about looking for my keys every night for a month.”
Tony wonders why she’s never told him about her nightmares before.
He feels selfish for not having asked.
“I save my nightmares for the day,” she says drily. “There’s really nothing I could dream up that would be worse than watching you all go into battle. I’m glad it doesn’t follow me into bed.”
The only nightmare in her bed is Tony.
“Sorry about that,” Steve says.
“Don’t apologize. I’d rather see you rescuing New York on the five o’clock news than be incinerated by mad scientists with attack octopi.”
“That was a weird one,” Steve agrees. Belatedly, he takes his hand back. Tony’s chest-even the missing, damaged parts of it-aches for his touch.
“I thought touchy-feely sharing was supposed to make us feel better,” Tony grouses, not rubbing at his chest because Pepper would be able to figure out why he was doing it.
“Well…you haven’t actually shared,” Steve says. “I mean, you don’t have to, obviously, and I’m sure Pepper already knows, but-”
“He dreams about New York,” Pepper says, which is an invasion of Tony’s privacy so deep and sharp that he wishes he had a suit on; wishes that he had a faceplate that he could snap up to hide his hurt. “The end of the battle, with-with the missile.”
“Oh,” Steve says.
“How’s that for self-sacrifice,” Tony mutters, because he can hold grudges for a really long time.
“I’m sorry,” Steve says. He looks even more sincere than usual in blue light. “I had no idea.”
“Wasn’t even about New York this time,” Tony says, glaring at Pepper, who looks calm, like always. She looks like she’s listening and Tony feels that cruel twist inside of him that he wishes he could outgrow. “I dreamed about Afghanistan,” he says, because if he’s hurting, he wants Pepper to hurt too. “I was held hostage there,” he tells Steve, “for months. They broke my ribs and spread my chest open and hooked me up to a car battery, and then they tortured me until I agreed to make weapons for them. They-they’d unhook the battery, sometimes, or threaten to drop one of the wires into the water, when they-when they were holding me under.”
Pepper looks shaken and Tony grins. “You don’t know everything about me,” he says to her, vindicated and victorious in his quest to get back at her. Tony’s more than willing to cause himself pain to get back at Pepper for telling Steve Tony’s secrets when Tony had fought so hard to give them to Pepper in the first place.
Now there are four people who know about Tony’s nightmares. (Tony includes himself and JARVIS in that count.)
Steve reaches for the arc reactor. He probably wants to touch it again; the man’s developing a fetish or something. Tony lurches to his feet. “I’m taking Steve’s bed,” he says. “You two can share. That way I won’t wake anybody up.”
“You can stay,” Pepper says, at the same time that Steve says, “Don’t leave.”
“I almost killed her,” Tony says, because Steve doesn’t get it and Pepper’s nicer than she is smart. “Last time I had a bad nightmare. One of the Iron Man suits thought I was in danger-I thought I was in danger-and I almost blasted her through the wall of our bedroom.” He’s panting, he realizes, and he’s backed himself up against the wall. Steve’s hands are raised in a gesture of harmlessness but Tony can’t help reaching up to the arc reactor, covering it as much as he can with just his flesh and bone. “I could have killed you,” he says to Pepper, who looks so small.
“But you didn’t,” she says softly. “And you’re not going to do it again.”
“Sleep with Steve,” Tony says. “At least for tonight. I’m not-I can’t-” His breath is gone and his fear hurts and there are too many ways his heart can stop working.
“I’m going to push the beds together,” Steve announces, in the silence filled only by Tony’s frantic breath. “And then I’m going to sleep in the middle of it. You two can do whatever you want.”
Tony stands in shocked silence as Steve moves a dresser, the phone, and a lamp out of the way, and then shoves the double beds together. Steve moves his pillows around, tugs his blanket into place, and settles himself in the middle of the double beds like it’s the most comfortable place he’s ever been. Like he hasn’t dreamed of crashing and suffocating and freezing often enough to catalogue and rank the separate fears.
“He’s not going to let you hurt me,” Pepper says. “Come to bed.”
Tony walks to the opposite side of the bed, slips under the sheets, and pretends to sleep until the sun rises.
*
Steve remembers Howard the same way he remembers everything from his own era: carefully, vividly, and repeatedly. He remembers Howard by sketching him in the last pages of his sketchbook (far enough back that Tony won’t bother to browse through them when he’s bored).
He remembers Howard by being brave and trying to get the things he wants. He remembers Howard when he sees the fever of excitement in Tony’s eyes and wonders how he’d never felt attracted to it in Howard. He recognizes the same facial features, the same hair, the same wit, the same sophistication. Tony, though, is singularly reckless, his moods like quicksilver; Tony embodies his own era and mocks Steve’s.
(Steve thinks sometimes, What would it be like if I left this time, too? What will the world be like seventy years from now; what will I remember from this time, these years, these people?)
Steve remembers Howard carefully, vividly, repeatedly, and, when he sees Tony beaten down and tired and angry at himself, he remembers Howard critically. He wonders what happened to Howard in the years Steve was lost. He wonders if it would have made a difference to Howard if Steve had survived. (He thinks maybe Tony would have been better off, but he cannot regret meeting Tony now, at this age, in this era, no matter how selfish that desire is. Howard had taught him that too.)
Howard was one of the few people who knew Steve before and after the serum. Howard’s the only one who didn’t seem to notice a difference. Like Tony, Howard had always been good at seeing inside of things and figuring out how they worked. Steve knows that all the important things (being stupidly brave, artistic, big-hearted) have always existed inside of him.
The Howard that Steve remembers and the Howard that Steve knows from Tony’s silences and smiles and blank stares are not the same man.*
The only time Tony and Pepper can reliably be found together is Friday evenings at 7pm, because every Friday Pepper hunts Tony down (‘for the good for the good of the company’) and forces him to sign off on all of the important proceedings that have taken place over the business week.
She saves the tech contracts and updates for last, as a bribe and a timesaving strategy, since he can get-understandably!-sidetracked when presented with innovative or inaccurate data. Given the competency level of their current staff, it's almost always innovative, but sometimes shit still gets done wrong.
They spend time together outside of that timeslot, of course, it's just that it's the only set time that they ever meet. Tony had come back from a mission once to find Pepper on the helicarrier at 7:13pm on a Friday, tapping her foot on the flightdeck and holding out a clipboard. She'd cursed him out and checked him over at the same time, all the while flipping pages and pointing to the post-it-note arrows indicating signature lines.
Clint had laughed and Natasha had helped Pepper with the papers and Coulson had looked on with admiration. That’s probably when Steve learned that if he wanted to talk to them both at the same time, 7pm on Fridays was the way to go.
*
"I would...I would like to take you out to dinner,” Steve says, after You lets him into the workshop with a string of happy beeps. You’s taken a shine to Steve.
Steve’s got on his ugliest (and favorite) shirt, freshly-pressed slacks, shiny shoes, gelled back hair, and a serious expression. He’s also apparently lost his damn mind.
Pepper narrows her eyes at him. "We’re already dating each other. You do know that, right?"
"Yes, I know, that's why I-I wanted to ask-both of you?"
Oh.
Huh.
Wait, what?
"Pepper," Tony hisses in a loud stage whisper. "I think Captain America is asking us out."
"I can see that," she says, in that CEO-smile-voice that means she has no idea what’s going on but has no intention of letting anyone else figure that out.
"Am I dreaming?"
"I don't know," Pepper says. "Dummy, pinch Tony."
"Ah-no, do not-ow!"
Steve runs a hand over the perfectly styled lines of his hair and ducks his head. "So…that’s a no?"
"No," Pepper says, levering herself off of Tony's desk, "it's not a 'no.' It's a...a..."
"Captain America," Tony repeats, fending off Dummy's attacks. "Captain America is asking us out."
" I know who I am," Steve says, the lines of his body stiffening. "And also I can hear you. I could hear you even if you were in the next room and actually whispering."
"...Captain America."
"Tony's going to need a minute to reboot," Pep cuts in smoothly. "You've taken him by surprise, and you know he doesn't deal well with change."
"I don't-deal well with-with what-have you even met me? I’m Tony freaking Stark, I-"
"Why are you asking us out?" Pepper continues, ignoring Tony's bewildered stammering.
"I like you," Steve says. His voice is more confident, he's on surer footing here. "I'm attracted to you both physically, I think we are compatible socially, and I-I miss you when you're gone. Put together those seemed like good reasons to instigate more intimate relations. With you. Both of you."
Pep's eyes narrow. "Who have you talked to about this?" She's got a point. Those words sound like they belong to someone else. Steve the good soldier makes an excellent parrot.
"Um. No one?"
"Who?"
Steve-Tony blinks to make sure he's seeing things right-Steve actually scuffs his feet on the floor. Tony bets Steve was just as ridiculous in the forties, since there's no way this much endearing idiocy is era-specific. Tony's watched old movies. No one in the forties looked this damned cute.
"I...maybe have consulted with Coulson."
Tony's pretty sure he isn't eating anything so he doesn't know what he chokes on, but he definitely chokes on something. "Agent? You went to Agent for dating advice?"
"He seemed like the most knowledgeable party," Steve says angrily. He's getting angry now. Tony mentally kicks himself (it's a reflexive Pepper kick so it's extra pointy, her heels are vicious) for finding that hot. "Given his relationship with Agents Barton and Romanoff." Whatever Tony had been choking on is definitely gone, and it took all his words with it.
"He...wuh? Pepper? Pepper, have there been orgies? Have I been missing team orgies? Have we been dosed with sex pollen?" He takes a closer look at Steve's flushed face. "Have you been dosed with sex pollen? I bet you know there's procedure for that. If not, Agent can tell you all about them, while you two gossip some more-"
"Tony?" Pepper says, laying a hand on his forearm (right over a fresh sub-dermal implant, since Tony had been tuning up the suit's sensors while Pepper talked his ear off about stockholders). "Stop kidding for a minute."
"I wasn't kidding. There really are sex-pollen procedures."
She turns his chair so that he’s looking at her instead of Steve. "Steve's asking us out."
"I know that, Pepper, that's why I'm trying to figure out what’s wrong with him."
“I think I’d want to date him,” Pepper says, holding on to his tender arm, “as long as you were onboard too." Tony stares at her, because her face is familiar, and he's trying to tie himself down to what's happening to him, right here in this moment, but he feels like an unmoored air balloon.
"It's just dinner," Steve says. He's standing at parade rest. Tony wonders if Steve even realizes he does it. Probably not. "If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I just-I try not to leave things undone anymore." He gives a nod (sharp, militaristic; he's got this shtick more imbedded in his muscle memory than Rhodey does).
"Yes," Pepper says. Steve and Tony repeat it back to her like a pair of broken stereo speakers. Yes? "Yes to dinner," Pepper clarifies. "Did you have a place in mind?"
"Agent-uh, Phil recommended a place, ma'am."
She smiles (when did she start looking so much like a shark?) and says, "Splendid. Assuming there's no unexpected Avengers business, when should we expect you?"
"Tomorrow night? Eight? The restaurant’s a bit far, so I can call for a taxi, but I figured Tony would probably want to drive." Tony recoils like a snake because no one except for Pepper, Happy, and JARVIS are supposed to know him that well. "Or not?"
"We'll take care of transportation," Pepper says smoothly. "If Tony doesn't want to drive, we can always take my sedan."
"No. No, we are not taking your sedan, because you should not even have a sedan, I don't even like the way the word sounds. Sedaaaaaaan. Pepper, have you even seen my car collection? They're like shoes, the shinier and sleeker they are, the better, and you should never have just one, not if you have a big enough closet. Or garage, or whatever, metaphors are for the weak." He lets himself ramble, his chair still turned to face Pepper. Eventually he shuts up. "Is he gone?"
"Yes."
"Did that really just happen?"
"Yes."
He stares at his hands for a while. Pepper sits on his desk and kicks her heels. She used to do this in Malibu, back when she was his assistant, and not his-his Pepper. She'd sit for hours while he tinkered and rambled. Back then, she'd had to be patient in order to eventually catch his attention enough to get him to sign things or answer phone calls. Now she only waits for him when he deserves it.
"I love you," Tony says. She nods and lets him continue. "I don’t want to fuck this up. I've done...I’ve been in threesomes before. Hell, even foursomes. There’s a porn vid floating around somewhere on the internet of me right smack dab in the middle of an eight-some-my point is, I’ve tried this relationship before. It doesn’t work.”
"Really? You've tried dating a national hero before?"
"Well, only if you count Elton John. Which, judging by your expression, you do not, so, no. But I've done the threesome thing, and it always-it always ends badly."
"Have you had any relationships before me that didn't end badly?" Tony thinks about it. "Any relationships that lasted longer than a night, anyway?"
"Well, if you're going to put parameters on the answer, then…no."
"You and me," Pepper says, her voice soft (Tony is glad that JARVIS is always recording; Tony will always have a record of how she says that, You and me), "we're the real deal. We're solid. Nothing that's going to happen tomorrow night is going to change that."
“I need to think,” he says.
She takes her clipboard-some of the papers still unsigned, which she’s never let him get away with before-and kisses the top of his head before she leaves. “If you decide to say no, that’s a no for both of us,” she says before leaving. “Never doubt that. Never doubt me.”
The door closes behind her and Tony, surrounded by his creations, his children, wishes he knew how to believe her.
*
Tony remembers Howard. Tony remembers the scent of whiskey (the good stuff) poured by the finger and then fingers and then a bottle upended by a whole hand. Tony remembers being briefed for public outings and being chastened for unseemly behavior in public (wiping his nose on his sleeve; nodding off; looking bored; running to his mother when he lost track of Jarvis).
Tony remembers Howard examining Dummy and giving Tony what Howard called ‘Constructive Criticism.’ Tony is now the only one who remembers Dummy the First, which he cannibalized for parts. The current Dummy-the Dummy who has endeared himself to the entire team-had not been introduced to Howard.
Tony does not remember being held when he was colicky; Howard’s attempt to teach him to catch a baseball; the scathing letter Howard had sent to a teacher who gave Tony a C in middle-school for not paying attention in class; the difference between the Howard he knew and Howard when he still held out hope for finding Steve.
Tony did not know Howard before the war. He did not know Howard before Little Boy and Fat Man fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Stark logo printed large and proud on their metal bodies. He did not know the Howard who still held out hope that he would find Steve and salvage something good from the war.
The distance between what Tony knows and what Tony has yet to learn is growing.
~
Feedback and concrit are honestly appreciated! http://hoosierbitch.dreamwidth.org/99226.html |
comments | Comment at Dreamwidth