Ghost in the Wires 8/10 (Steve/Tony--PG-13)
“This place is completely maddening,” Anthony says three days later. “Really, I don’t think I can stand another second of it. These people with their needles and poking and prodding and seriously, the food is awful. I’m not one to bitch about hospitality, but this is subpar. I would like to complain to the manager.”
Which is interesting, because as Steve comes further into the room after spending a few hours at the mansion he sees that Anthony is complaining to Director Fury.
The man stands at the end of Anthony’s bed, looking increasingly frustrated. Steve has the sense that this has not been the first time he’s heard some variant of this rant. Or the first time he’s heard it in the last ten minutes.
Anthony carries on, “And this décor? You don’t set the mood for anything light or fluffy do you? I mean the least you could do is try to put up some crappy fake flowers to try to lighten the mood. Did you take interior decorating from Edgar Allen Poe? Mary Poppins couldn’t crack a smile here! I want to leave. Or at least have something positive. No, scratch that! I want to leave.”
“Stark,” Fury says, his voice carrying the hint in it that he is reaching the end of his rope. “You don’t have anywhere else to go. You are sick and as of right now everything you own belongs to someone else. We’re working on the details, but until then you will stay here.”
Something shutters in Anthony’s eyes, something visceral that he’s unable to hide completely. Steve sees it and knows exactly what it is. He’d said earlier that this felt like a smaller cell than the one he was afforded at Stane’s hands. To hear Fury say that probably helps his theory to ring true.
The look leaves quickly, secreted away to somewhere no one but himself will ever know. Anger blooms across his face quickly, and he snaps back, “Look, I’ve spent the last two years in captivity. I’ll be damned if I’ll spend another day here. Now, you can either help me or I can see myself out, but either way I’m going to be leaving regardless of personal health and-or monetary status!”
Fury looks ready to pop a blood vessel.
Steve intervenes. He takes another step forward, catching their attention, and says, “He can stay at the mansion.”
“Oh! Now that! That’s a great idea!” Anthony quickly throws in, anger fading marginally under Steve’s offer though he still glares at Fury.
Fury’s eye narrows on him, and his lips tighten. “With you? At Avenger mansion?”
Anthony quickly stares at Steve. “Avenger mansion? Wow. That name is going to be emblazoned on the gate!”
Steve shrugs the idea unfolding perfectly in his mind. “It is technically his. And it’s not like there’s any shortage of space. He can come back for appointments, and we’ll take his IV stand with us…”
Fury settles his not unimpressive one-eyed glare on him. “You would let him into Avengers mansion with as much intel as we have set up there-“
He takes a deep breath, steeling himself just a little as he says, “He’s been hacking into our systems for a few months now, sir. I think if there were anything he wanted to sell to enemies, he probably would have taken the opportunity by now.”
The man looks apoplectic as his gaze switches from Steve to Anthony and back. Finally he decides to focus his considerable rage on Steve, his finger flying up accusingly at Steve as he says, “You and I need to have words, Rogers. My office.”
From the bed, Anthony says, “No more than thirty minutes.”
“Stark!”
“I’m not joking! I will take your pretty IV stand and run!”
Fury stares at him. “I’m posting security.”
Anthony waves at him. “Thor’s probably already out there.”
And he is. Thor makes it his mission to make sure that Anthony has everything he wants as well as surveillance to make sure the staff doesn’t do anything untoward to his newest friend. Steve spares a few words to Thor to see if he can keep Anthony from running off with the IV stand and if can, will he try to keep him in the room?
When he has that settled he makes his way to Fury’s office, where he’s surely waiting after not having stopped to make sure Steve was following. He spares a wave to Ms. Potts, and she looks at him like he is in so much trouble now. He has no doubt that her look tells the absolute truth.
After shutting the door to the office, the takes a deep breath and jumps in, knowing this will probably end with Fury yelling no matter what direction he takes. "Look, sir, I know I should have told you earlier, but the information was incredibly helpful, and at the time I thought it was a subprogram of JARVIS."
He spins on his heel, having been staring at the wall in silent contemplation apparently. Leveling his eye on Steve he seethes, "I don't give a good god damn about how helpful or not helpful Stark was, Rogers, when there's a breach of security you report it!"
"Sir,” Steve responds, his spine immediately straightening at the tone. “I understand I breached security by not coming to you, but technically so is having JARVIS in the mansion. I'm sure you know he records everything."
Fury inhales deeply through his nose, and Steve has the briefest, unexpected thought that the man may actually breathe fire at him. His good eye is burning into his skin. "Rogers, so help me, you are not helpin' your case here. Do you know anything of what Stark did before he convinced everyone that he died?"
"Stane convinced everyone of Anthony's death. He had his hands tied. As for what he did, it isn't necessarily a well kept secret." He meets Fury’s eye equally, refusing to back down from this despite knowing it is his folly.
"You say that sentence to yourself again and I think we'll hit the heart of the issue. He broke through our security while Stane was tying his hands. What makes you think he had nothing to do with any of the attacks you and your team have had to deal with?!"
Steve’s reaction is immediate. Fury’s words are filled with accusation and insinuation, making it seem like Anthony had undergone the last two years as a dead man on his own. As if there had been no choice. But he knows, with the arc reactor, then the palladium poison, and probably more reasons Anthony has yet to say. His jaw sets, and he bites out the words, "Sir, the only thing he had to do with any of the attacks we dealt with stem from the fact that Stane had leverage over him and his body.”
The director puffs his chest out in indignation, at his tone or his implication, Steve isn’t sure. "And that give him a free pass to break into our data sources whenever he damn well feels like it?!"
"No, but he did it to help. He was the one who disabled the robots more often than not, including in Stark Industries. He was the one who helped Bruce with the treatment. He helped SHIELD with the outbreak of palladium poisoning. He's been trying to help us whenever he can. I don't think he would want to sell us out when he could have given all of our information over to Stane months ago!" Steve impresses, stalking closer to Fury as he argues his point.
Fury is suitably unimpressed. "You got a lotta nerve, Captain Rogers. Maybe Stark didn't sell us out then; maybe he did help us like you say he did. But the fact remains, he broke in, he had access to our information, and you didn't report it!” He gestures at the wall as if Anthony is just on the other side of it, but with each jab a flame of irritation stokes and recedes in him. Fury has the right to be angry at him. Has the right to question him. He tries to remember that. “If you were me, would you trust him not to do it again? Because for where I'm sitting, I trust Stark about as far as I can throw him!"
"I'm not you, sir. But I do trust Anthony not to break into our system as long," He cuts himself off, unsure if he wants to actually say this. He isn’t sure if he wants to just throw it so carelessly onto the table. He has to though. He has to try to get Fury to understand. "As long as he has a link to me and what's happening."
Fury, for all Steve’s effort to put himself on the line, just gives him a look that says there's something wrong incomprehensively wrong with him but I can't bring myself to delve into the psychosis right now. He walks behind his desk and plops down into his chair. With an expectant look he folds his hands over this desk top and demands, "You wanna tell me something about what's going on between you and Stark?"
"Not really, but if it gets Anthony out of here fine."
Fury only crosses his arms over his chest, sets his face into a glare, and waits.
And for a while, Steve waits with him, used to interrogation. He’s been stared down before by several impressive bad guys. He performed in front of thousands of people. But in the end he finally caves. Someone has to if he expects to leave with Anthony. "I love him... Okay? You asked, and that's, that's it."
Fury looks at him incredulously. "You love him." He parrots before he presses his fingers to bridge of his nose and exhales. There’s half-hearted muttering about crazy superheroes and not getting paid enough for this shit. Steve thinks he may have just succeeded in breaking Director Fury. Then still pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose he snaps, "You know what, Rogers? Fine. You take him home, but that man is your responsibility. If he so much as sneezes without permission then I'll have him right back here where we can monitor him. I find his signature snooping around my mainframe, and it's your ass. Got it?"
Steve can’t help the dopey grin that takes over his face. "Of course, sir."
"Don't make me regret this, you hear me?"
"Yes sir."
Director Fury gives him another long stare down obviously trying to debate whether or not the decision he just made is the right one, but finally makes up his mind and demands, "Get out of my office."
Steve doesn’t wait for Fury to change his mind. He exits the office, still feeling a little dopey as he heads back towards medical. He doesn’t even make it five steps before Ms. Potts is there, glaring him down and crossing her hands over her chest.
“Director Fury just told me you’re taking Tony back to the mansion.”
He stares at her for a moment, trying to detect where this may be going. He knows she’s aware of his condition, but she also has to be aware how Anthony is handling this. How close it must be for him to being in Stane’s prison? How maddening it is to sit and wait idly for someone to tell him something he already knows?
Steve has been kept in a room similar to that one before. He remembers the way it felt like desolation.
“I think he’d be more comfortable there,” he says, hoping that she’ll actually be for this plan. An angry Director Fury is one thing. A worrying Ms. Potts is an entire battle he doesn’t have any weapons for.
Her lips thin. “He would be more comfortable, yes, but Steve, what about the palladium treatment? What if something goes wrong and there are no doctor’s there to help him? There is no recorded case of palladium poisoning this bad. Who knows what could go wrong.”
They’re all viable questions, ones he had taken into consideration on the second day after watching Anthony stalk around the room.
“Ms. Potts,” he says reaching out a hand to reassure her. She’s wound nearly as tight as Anthony is right now. He tries again, “Pepper, the IV can come with us to the mansion, and if something goes wrong there’s an entire team of heroes trained in rapid response.”
She exhales just a little of her tension, but not much. She stares at him with her worried eyes her unease with this. Then, blinking, and probably organizing protocol should something happen to Anthony, she says, “Okay, I’ll go with you and have his doctor’s appointments set up. Hopefully with that I can send a car three hours in advance to head him off before he runs.”
He smiles, thinks that after these last four days she should probably make it five.
IMCA
Anthony near visibly sags with relief when they enter the mansion, Steve and Thor following behind him. He jerks off the sunglasses Pepper had given him and just stands in the entrance way, taking everything in. He palms the medium sized case filled with a newly condensed serum to counteract the palladium as if it’s the only thing that will keep him grounded right now.
Steve hears him murmur, “I never thought I’d miss this place so much.”
And then Thor’s puppy comes scrambling from around the corner, disproportionate paws working for traction on the wood flooring. Thor kneels to pick him up proclaiming, “My steadfast hound!”
Anthony stiffens immediately and takes a step away from Thor and his puppy as if they have mutated before his eyes. He turns his unhappy gaze onto Steve, who may have forgotten to mention the dog living in the mansion. With so many other things going on, it just slips his mind so easily. Most of the time unless he’s at the mansion he completely forgets that Thor even snatched up the puppy three weeks ago.
He rubs the back of his neck, and says a quiet, “Sorry,” but that’s all he gets to say before Clint and Bruce come from their respective entrances. Clint comes strolling out of the kitchen. Bruce strolls down the staircase.
Anthony stiffens more, mask back in place. “Wow, a welcoming committee. I’m honored, really. You guys didn’t have to do this just to me,” he says with a practiced ease that he still has after two years away from the paparazzi.
Clint just smirks and crosses his arms. “I just came to find out where the dog went. If I wanted to see your ugly mug, I’d turn on the news.”
Bruce comes up to Anthony, reaches for his neck to see the patterns creeping up after the last injection thirty minutes ago. “You are pretty much everywhere in the media right now. Thankfully no one’s thought to look for you here yet, or you probably wouldn’t have been able to get through the gate,” he says distractedly, as he inspects the network of veins.
Anthony bats him away, looks at him incredulously. “Excuse me. Where did the Avengers learn the definition of personal space, because you all have none."
Steve takes over then, says, “Guys, he just got here. Give him some space, will ya?”
Clint puts his hands up. “I’m just here for the dog. Hey, Thor, let’s go teach him to play the Wii!”
Thor noticeably perks up and jostles the dog a little. “Come great four-legged friend. Verily, we shall teach you the ways of chucking stones at strange logs!”
He strides off after Clint, explaining the basics of bowling incorrectly.
Bruce lingers for a brief second longer, before thrusting out his hand. “Enjoy the insanity,” he says. “It’s incurable.”
Anthony takes his hand and gives a firm shake, before Bruce turns to follow the other two, pulling out his iPod and earbuds. When everyone is gone the mask falls off and crashes to the ground. So many pieces of his energy scattered around their feet. Steve reaches out, takes Anthony’s free hand in his, reveling in the openness he finds there.
“What do you want to do?” he asks. Anthony doesn’t really have anything other than the case in his hand.
Ms. Potts said she would get him clothes tomorrow, moving behind him to check tags and make suitable guesses as to what his waist size is for at least some jeans. Anthony had looked somewhat uncomfortable when she had made the offhand comment that he had lost a lot of weight. He isn’t skin and bones, but Steve has to say he agrees with her earlier statement. The man he sees in front of him now is much thinner than the one in the media photos.
Anthony shrugs, looking down at the medicine container in his hand. “I suppose I should put this down somewhere,” he says, a slight scowl on his face. After this it would be unsurprising if he went running at the sight of needles.
Steve nods, gives his hand a gentle tug toward the staircase.
IMCA
He sets Anthony up in the sixth room on the floor everyone else sleeps in after Anthony says that he didn’t really claim a room when he lived there three years ago and he doesn’t want to stay in his parents’ old room. His room is just across the way from Steve’s. When the Avengers had first moved in they had all seemed to shy away, that ghost, Anthony’s ghost lingering in it.
Anthony puts his case down on the bedside table, looks around the room with relief written on his face. Steve feels his sense of freedom, just as he had the first day SHIELD had left him alone in this house, with four other superheroes, but four superheroes that were largely unconcerned with him, who mostly left him to his own devices unless electronics were involved. Even then, once Steve had become accustomed to JARVIS, they hadn’t even done that. Steve knows how nice it is to feel that.
“I never thought I’d come here again,” Anthony says. “Even before…” he pauses, just stares at the lushly colored walls. “I just never really had an affinity for this house. Too many memories; not a lot of them good.” He looks around the room, making a complete three-sixty. “I can hardly feel them anymore. The last few months I even thought of this place…”
He stops but locks his eyes on Steve, takes a deep breath. Steve can guess what he was going to say, and steps further into the room. He touches his fingers beneath the collar of the shirt Anthony had been procured upon his discharge from SHIELD medical. The green lines are raised ever so slightly from his skin, and feel like a strange netting threaded under his skin. Anthony’s pulse is escalated, but it isn’t racing.
“Anthony,"
He’s cut off. “No! I’m really done with that now. No more ‘Anthony’s.”
Steve smiles slightly. “I like ‘Anthony’.”
He snorts. “You grew up in the ‘30’s. You probably like names like Alfred and Edmond. Knew little girls named Eunice and Gretchen.”
“I never knew a Gretchen,” Steve replies quickly, stroking his thumb across Tony’s jaw, knowing that that will be the name he asks to be called. “Alright, Tony.” He nods, rolling it over his tongue. “Tony.”
Steve brings him close, presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his lips. Tony turns his head and there’s this perfect moment where their lips are just touching, just enough pressure that it feels real and special. They breathe each other’s air; stand in each other’s space that Tony had been bemoaning earlier. His hand slips from Tony’s neck, over his shoulder and down his shoulder blade, while Tony raises his hands to rest on Steve’s hips.
He can feel Tony’s reactor pressing against his chest, feels the whir of it against his shirt and inside his ribcage as if it were part of him. The warmth between them is comforting as Tony moves his lips to his jaw down his neck before pressing his face into the crook of Steve’s neck, breathing deeply as his hands tighten on his hips.
Steve wraps his arms around him, the air in the room changing quickly into something sullen and lost. No more freedom. Tony is still losing to his own body, and Steve has no way to help.
IMCA
At 0200, Steve is awake and staring at the ceiling, listening to sounds of the mostly quiet house.
Most of his team is sound asleep. He thinks he can hear Thor meandering about the house with his unnamed puppy. He hasn’t asked Tony if Thor can name the dog after him, but he’s thinking that perhaps he’ll tell Thor no. Cruel voices keep whispering in his mind, all the what ifs, and Steve doesn’t want to listen to them, but if they, if they are right, he also doesn’t want to run around calling a dog ‘Anthony’.
Other than him though, he’s pretty sure the mansion is asleep. Natasha and Ms. Potts sleep in her room after a long day. Clint is in his room snoring up a storm. It seems he only sleeps quietly when Agent Coulson spends the night. Nothing can be heard from Bruce or Tony’s room.
But he can’t sleep. Something nags at him, something longing and bone-deep. He feels an itch in is bones to go to Tony’s room, to make sure he’s not staring at the ceiling and convincing himself this is a dream. He wants to make sure that Tony is with him, here not just a ghost. This is the first night since Tony came back that he’s even tried to sleep away from him.
Somehow four days has become enough to become addicted to someone’s breathing pattern, the way they sleep and can sometimes jerk him out of slumber just by the way they tense.
He sighs and turns over on his side, stares at the far wall and his shield which rests next to his closet door. He waits for sleep to overtake him, though at this point in may be a long time in coming. It’s a need that slithering up his skin, urging him to just make sure Tony is okay.
He closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.
He breathes deep and even, trying to coax himself to sleep until his eyes shoot open again. This isn’t working. He has to go make sure Tony is okay. It’s nearing an ache that he doesn’t understand.
He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this way about anyone, least of all another man. It was different when Tony had been Anthony as a computer program, and even up until they rescued him. But these last few days, Steve, he feels a deeper connection than he has with anyone.
He pads quietly across the carpet of his room, opening the door as quietly as possible into the darkness of the hall. He’s a step and a half out when he sees a shadow resting against the wall next to his door. Steve stops, stares at it for a moment before he recognizes the shape of a man in the dark, back to the wall and knees drawn up to his chest. His arms are wrapped around his legs and his forehead rest against his arms. There’s a blue glow reaching out from beneath limbs.
It’s not hard to see its Tony after a second.
Steve crouches next to him and reaches out to touch his shoulder. It causes a flinch below his fingertips, a sharp intake of breath, before Tony’s form relaxes under him. The blue backlit form blinks at him with shadowed eyes then lets out a sigh. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I was up anyway,” Steve says, offering his hand for Tony to take, closing his fingers gently when Tony’s hand trembles tiredly in his. “C’mon,” he goads gently as Tony rises to his feet.
For a moment he hesitates as to where he actually wants to take Tony, whether back to his room, or to the closest bed behind him. But Tony’s treatment case is beside him as well as an alarm clock. He looks like he hadn’t been planning to sleep in the room given to him anyway. With that in mind, he takes Tony into his room, only briefly pausing to grab up the case and clock.
He checks the alarm clock as he and sees it’s set for ten minutes from now. He has no doubt he could keep Tony up for the remaining time, but wonders if it would harm him to take it a few minutes early. His mom used to give him his medicine a few minutes early or late depending on the day. It shouldn’t hurt Tony to take another dose before the precisely scheduled time.
He settles him on the bed, takes the case and prepares the injection in the half-light of Tony’s arc reactor.
Tony moves to take it from him when it’s ready, but he pulls it back a little and asks as he kneels on the floor before Tony, “Let me.” Tony gives him a choked sort of look. “Please? I want…”
He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants to feel useful. He wants to help. He wants this to go away all together.
When he receives a nod, he aims the injector like he had been taught to do and presses the trigger. Tony hardly flinches, but Steve feels the need to kiss his cheek anyway, to run his lips across the expanse, just below his ear. Tony brings his hand to hold him there, his breath immediately shortening. He turns his face into Steve for a moment, his lips against Steve’s temple.
Steve returns the injector into its carrier, looking over at Tony sliding hesitantly under the covers. He feels his heart pound in his chest, for a moment, unsure what to do with this. This isn’t something he’s ever done before. He’s never really shared his bed. Yet as he’s thinking this, the thoughts are, they’re melting away.
Steve just, takes himself over to the open side of the bed and slips behind Tony, keeping respectable space between them until Tony inches just a little closer to him. He smiles to himself, knowing that Tony can see it.
It’s strange to try sleeping with the arc reactor between them. At SHIELD, some light had always been on, sure, but he’s never seen the arc glow so brightly or so…ominously.
Tony touches Steve chest, before his hand covers his eyes. “You think too loud. It’s time for sleep. And that’s something coming from me.”
His eyes move beneath Tony’s hand, before he brings Tony closer to him, resting his hand on his hip and testing his own bravery enough to slip his last two fingers just a little below the elastic of Tony’s borrowed sleep pants.
Tony’s hand eventually goes slack.
The blue glow fills the space between them.
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