Fic :: Avengers :: A Very, Very, Very Fine House :: 2/5
A Very, Very, Very Fine House [2/5]
Fandom: Avengers (movie)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Steve/Tony pre-slash (background Tony/Pepper)
Spoilers: post-movie
Summary: The Avengers take initiative. Or, the story of how a group of remarkable people came together to drink cocktails, eat ice-cream and wait for Fury's call.
A/N: Title from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Our House, because it seemed appropriate. AO3
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
*
It’s dark and cold and quiet, beneath the pounding rhythm of the rain; the kind of quiet that comes from even the most hardened criminals taking a look outside and deciding to stay in for the night. Steve sprays water in an arching wave as he pulls over in front of Stark Tower. Through the haze of rain, he can see Mr Coulson dashing down the steps with a giant, red umbrella. They share a grim nod, and Steve passes him the keys to his bike wordlessly and trudges through the door into, at last, a little moment of warmth and of peace.
It’s the same receptionist as last time, five weeks ago. She clucks her tongue in sympathy at the sight of him.
“I’ve seen oceans drier than you, Captain. Mr Stark isn’t in right now, I’m afraid, but-”
Steve feels his shoulders sag. He’s dripping water on the floor. “Darn it. Never mind, I can go... somewhere. Home's only fifty minutes away, and the streets are quiet, so it shouldn't-”
“Oh, no, no. There’s no need for that. Mr Stark isn’t here, but Ms Potts is in. You’re authorised to come and go as you please, regardless.”
As she speaks, she pulls a box of tissues from a desk drawer and holds them out to Steve. “Take the box, Captain. They’re company property. You need them more than I do, right now.”
“Much appreciated, ma’am. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name...”
“Andrea Clark.”
“Thank you, Miss - er, Mrs?”
“Ms,” she says firmly, with a smile.
Steve’s face still feels half-frozen, but he summons up a smile of his own as he plucks the box of tissues from her hands. He drips his way into Tony’s private elevator once more, prods the wall - and then, when nothing happens, wipes his hands dry with a couple of tissues and tries again.
“Password override zero-zero-four,” the computer man murmurs, as polite as ever.
*
“Well, look what the catfish dragged in,” exclaims an unfamiliar voice as soon as the elevator door opens. There’s a log fire burning, and Steve has to close his eyes for a second as he steps into the penthouse, has to just stop and breathe it in. When he opens his eyes again, there’s a pretty woman with reddish hair walking towards him, hand outstretched. She’s wearing a dress clearly designed for business, but on her feet are fluffy red slippers.
“You must be Captain Rogers,” she says. “You’re - wow, you’re really wet. You’re just in time for Dancing With The Stars.”
“I don’t know what that is, ma’am, but it sounds one whole lot better than what’s outdoors.” Peering around as he shakes her hand, Steve spots Agent Romanoff stretched out on the couch in front of the fire, with her arm in a sling. He grins, turns his attention back to- “You’re Miss - Ms Potts? Tony’s girl?”
“That I am. But call me Pepper. I can - I really don’t think any of Tony’s clothes are going to fit you-”
Agent Romanoff snorts with what sounds like laughter. Steve glances at her, but her face is resolutely blank, one shoulder slightly lifted, one eyebrow slightly quirked.
“-But I can get you a towel.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Best make it a lot of them.”
He watches her go until she’s disappeared up a sweeping staircase, and then he kneels down and sets about removing his boots. It’s a tough job, with cold fingers and wet knots and leather sticking to denim. Once he’s pulled one off, he looks up to meet Agent Romanoff’s watchful gaze.
“What happened to you?” she says.
“What happened to you?” he retorts, motioning at her injured arm. She smirks. He ducks down to fiddle with his other lace.
“It was raining,” he says. “I got wet.”
Agent Romanoff makes the noise that sounds like laughter again. Unpicking the final knot, Steve grins down at his boot.
“Did you stop to buy coffee for spies on your way here?”
“Tony told you about that?”
“Stark told Pepper, Pepper told me. Fury mentioned it, too. Congratulations, I think the entirety of SHIELD has a crush on you right now.”
Steve eases his boot off at last and leaves the pair standing against the wall again, with a grimace. His wet jeans rub against his legs as he stands.
“And your arm?”
Agent Romanoff tilts her head to the side, gazing up at him in consideration. There’s something amused deep down in her eyes that makes him feel like she’s staring at the punchline of a joke. He hopes it’s a good one.
“I got stabbed a little,” she says, eventually, once he’s starting to shift uncomfortably from foot to damp foot. “They sent me home to rest and recuperate.”
“You’re okay? And Barton?”
“Yes. And yes.”
Steve smiles. He walks over to the edge of the stone flooring, where the ground sinks down into a thickly carpeted circle. Water is dripping down his arms and down his ankles, forming a puddle on the floor.
“Good to see you again, agent.”
“You too, zero-zero-four.”
“What?”
“Oh,” says Ms Potts from overhead, emerging at the top of the stairs with her arms full of towels. “You’re zero-zero-four? Natasha’s six. I wonder who five is?”
“Banner,” says Agent Romanoff.
“Thor?” Ms Potts suggests. She reaches the bottom of the stairs and drops her armful of towels onto the floor, staring up at Steve with her hands on her hips. “You can’t stay in those wet clothes. I know Captain America isn’t meant to get sick, but I’d rather not test the theory. We’ll need to... do something.”
“Banner,” Agent Romanoff says again. “Or the pizza delivery guy, knowing Stark. I have safety pins.”
Ms Potts raises an eyebrow at her, and Agent Romanoff shrugs, adding, “They’re effective.”
“Right. Let’s not... pursue that avenue. Here.” Ms Potts digs into the pile of towels and digs out a particularly fluffy red one, taller than her as she holds it up to Steve. She stares at it and then down at her slippers and adds, with a resigned expression, “Red’s his favourite colour, would you believe it?”
“I’m guessing gold’s his second favourite?”
“He’d have done the whole tower in Iron Man colours if I hadn’t stopped him,” she admits, pushing the towel into his hands. “Now, the best shower’s on level three of the penthouse, if you want to clean up. Then we can rig you up some kind of toga with Natasha’s... effective safety pins.”
“Then mojitos,” Agent Romanoff says. “It’ll be fun.”
*
After a hot shower on the third level, the water pressure so perfect it almost makes him want to cry, Steve almost feels like a human again. He dries himself vigorously with the towel, and performs a few simple stretches, and splashes cold water on his face when he’s done. The whole bathroom is white marble and practically the entire wall over the sink is one, big mirror; it must be hell to clean.
He wipes a hand through the condensation, leaving a thick, curving stripe of mirror behind, his eyes and half his face staring out at him through it. With his thumb, Steve adds more lines - which become legs, a tail, pricked up ears - until he’s drawn a cat in the mirror, sprawled as if it’s basking in front of the fire. There’s a secretive look in its eyes, already melting away.
Feeling suddenly foolish, Steve scrubs the cat away. He ties the towel around his waist, so big it’s practically a ball gown even on him - what does Tony do with towels this big? - and gathers up his pile of damp, cold clothes. And hesitates.
“Um... Mr Jarvis?”
“Good evening, Captain Rogers,” says the computer man immediately, voice emitting from somewhere right in front of Steve. There must be a speaker behind the mirror. “I trust your shower was a pleasant one?”
“Were you there the whole time?”
The computer pauses, then says, “I am everywhere Mr Stark programs me to be, at all times. However, let me assure you that, as an electrical appliance, I lack all emotive capacity. It may help you to think of me as a particularly helpful lamp.”
That startles a laugh out of Steve. “Illuminating?”
“Precisely, sir.”
Steve smiles at the mirror, in lieu of a face to look at; or to direct his next question to, as he hefts his bundle of clothes and waves it uncertainly for the cameras. “Where should I dump these wet clothes?”
“Mr Stark’s favoured approach is to leave them on the floor to be picked up by someone else. However, if you are feeling adventurous, Captain, there is a little-used laundry chute at the end of this corridor.”
“Thank you, Mr Jarvis.”
“JARVIS will do, Captain.”
Steve pads out into the corridor. Up here the place feels almost like a normal home, albeit one with an impossibly thick carpet; but there are pictures on the walls. Not the strange modern art he’s caught glimpses of downstairs, but photographs of what can only be Tony when he was young, standing next to some kind of robotic arm, and of a woman with his dark eyes, and of Ms Potts and Tony standing somewhere tropical, him with shades and her with an open smile.
Steve examines them all closely, for a little while, and then he hefts his bundle of clothes higher and pulls his towel tighter. He walks past a row of firmly shut doors to the laundry chute JARVIS had indicated, but the door at the end of the row is slightly ajar. No lights are on inside the room, but the far wall is all windows, and as Steve passes he catches a glimpse of a bare bed, bare walls, a closet door half-open with a few shirts poking out. Hesitating, he reaches out a hand and gives the door a gentle push. It swings open easily. The bed looks as if it’s been reinforced with steel.
“The laundry chute is to your left, sir,” says JARVIS as polite as ever.
“Right,” Steve says. “Sorry, I’ll just-”
He pulls the door shut.
*
At some point in the night, probably while she’s fastening towels with safety pins with one hand and balancing some kind of fruity cocktail in her sling, Steve finds himself thinking of Agent Romanoff just as Natasha. He’s drinking mojitos and he’s only wearing his underpants under what’s essentially a very fluffy dress and he’s squeezed on a couch between two women who definitely aren’t his girls. If it’s not the most comfortable Steve’s ever been, it still beats the hell out of plenty of things. The Red Skull. Losing everyone he’s ever known. Asthma. Every single second of The Star-Spangled Man With A Plan.
If nothing else, it’s warm and the fire is crackling. He realises, halfway through the third episode of this celebrity dancing show (he doesn’t know anyone on it, but Ms Potts assured him nobody does, not even the other contestants), there’s a little robot stoking the fire and periodically sucking up ash with sad beeping noise.
“I thought there would be more robots in the future,” he says.
Natasha, with her feet up on the coffee table, groans. Ms Potts found her a spare pair of slippers, but she’s still got knives strapped to both ankles. She says, “Don’t tell Stark that. He’ll take it as an invitation.”
“He’s still on his robotics kick,” Ms Potts says mournfully to Natasha, as if picking up the thread of some conversation they had before Steve arrived. She’s on her fifth mojito. “It’s not that I mind the new robots. Some of them are quite useful. And goodness knows without JARVIS, Tony would probably have died in a horrible, self-inflicted accident by now.”
“Cut his throat shaving a new shape into his bead,” Natasha suggests. “Forgot he wasn’t in the Iron Man suit and walked off the balcony.”
“Yes, exactly. JARVIS is wonderful-”
“Thank you, Ms Potts.”
“-but he thinks it’s funny to give them personalities. Not even good personalities. Look at that little one.”
She waves her glass at the robot by the fire. They sit and watch as it slowly drags a fresh log from the pile and, with a small chainsaw that unfolds from its body like a penknife, sets about cutting it up into manageable pieces.
“Look at it. It always looks so sad. It looks sad and it’s got a chainsaw. I worry about it.”
Natasha murmurs something in Russian. It’s probably a swearword.
Ms Potts sniffs, then drains her glass.
Outside, over the sound of the rain still going strong, there’s a metallic thump, followed by a whirring noise.
“Oh,” Ms Potts murmurs. “Tony’s home.”
Steve peers over the edge of the couch. Mechanical things are moving in the darkness through the window, in fluid flashes of arc reactor blue or gold and red when the suit catches the light. It’s like abstract art. He resolves to watch it in daylight one day.
The lights sink back into the ground and Tony emerges from the shadows, jogging to the door. It opens for him.
“JARVIS, memo to self,” he’s saying as he comes inside. “Umbrella. Roof. Something. That got wet fast.”
“Eloquent as ever, sir. Memo saved.”
Tony shakes himself like a dog, still grumbling under his breath as he wipes a hand across his face and scrubs at his wet hair.
“Honey, I’m home. Honeys,” he amends, looking up to take in the sight of Steve, Natasha and Ms Potts staring over the top of the couch at him. He doesn’t look surprised to see Natasha, but he raises an eyebrow at Steve. “What’s this? You’re having a toga party with Sleeping Beauty and you didn’t invite me?”
“Girl’s night in,” Ms Potts says. “Steve was our mystery guest.”
“He’s something alright. Have you got all my towels there? Are they - What? What is this, a cape? Fashion tips from Thor?” Tony leans on the back of the couch, peering at him and tugging at the corner of one of the towels covering his shoulders. “These are attached. Good god, Pepper, what have you done?”
“Sorry,” Steve says. He reaches up to fumble with the safety pins, but Ms Potts taps him on the knuckles and undoes it herself.
“There you go,” she says. “Now mix us fresh drinks and maybe we’ll tell about all the fun we’ve had while you were gone.”
“Pillow fights?”
Grabbing the towel from her, Tony leans across and kisses Ms Potts on the lips. He gets - Steve looks away resolutely, tugging his remaining towels closer together over his bare shoulder - a bit handsy. When he draws back again, she’s rolling her eyes but smiling.
“Off the shoulder number, Cap. I like it. Ooh, warm towel. Even better. Black Widow,” he adds by way of greeting as he drapes the towel around his neck. “You’re looking as prone to eating your mates as ever.”
“Thank you.”
Tony pats Ms Potts on the head, and then pats Steve on the head, ruffling his hair, and then - Steve cranes his neck to watch - reaches out a hand half-heartedly towards Natasha. She smiles widely up at him.
“Well, that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tony says, dropping his hand and backing away behind the bar.
Natasha’s sarcastic smile shifts into something smaller and warmer and, Steve thinks, genuinely amused as she glances sideways to meet Steve’s eyes. But Tony’s still talking, over the sound of clinking glasses and bottles.
“What lies has he been telling you, ladies? Has he been letting you try to get him drunk? Sorry to disappoint, but it won’t work.”
Not everyone drinks solely to get drunk, Tony,” Ms Potts says. “Some people even enjoy the taste.”
“Quitters.”
He emerges from the bar with four glasses - three contain something vividly yellow with a little umbrella and a curly straw stuck in each glass; the remaining one, Steve notes with a raised eyebrow, is just whiskey. Tony raises an eyebrow at Steve’s raised eyebrow, thrusting a glass into his hands. The whiskey, Tony keeps for himself.
“I call it a repulsor blast.”
“It looks disgusting,” Ms Potts say, staring at the drink he holds out to her as if it might bite, but with a sigh she takes it from his hands and puts it down on the coffee table. “How’d it go tonight?”
“Well, there was a scary moment when I couldn’t find the cocktail umbrellas, but-”
“Tony.”
“The usual.” Tony groans, extravagantly. Picking Ms Potts’ drink up again, he shoves a load of magazines and papers off the table and onto the floor with his toes, balanced on one foot with a drink held steady in each hand. It’s an impressive display of dexterity, if nothing else
“There was paperwork in that pile,” Ms Potts says.
Sitting down on the freshly cleared space on the table, Tony peers over at the mess of papers now spread across the floor. “It’s still in a pile. Technically.”
Ms Potts makes a face that Steve can clearly read, for all he only met her a few hours ago; it spells out, in her raised eyebrows and pursed lips, that whoever picks this mess up it certainly won’t be her. Tony chooses to ignore it.
“Some wannabe supervillain declares they’ve replicated my repulsor tech, public demo, mad with power, yada yada, save us from your bastardised technology, Iron Man! Day saved. Pepper, remind me to send a cheque for the broken fire hydrant.”
Steve, drink halfway to his mouth, gapes. “Someone’s replicated your technology? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“No. As in, no, it’s not dangerous because no, nobody’s replicated my repulsors. This guy was all talk and no walk. All smoke and no fire - actually, the problem was too much fire. His crappy repulsors kept exploding. Idiot was crying for help more than his hostages in the end. Fireballs everywhere.”
“In this weather?”
Tony points a finger at him. “That’s what I said. Repeatedly. You’d think you wouldn’t be able to set a mailbox on fire in this weather, but this guy proved everyone wrong. He’d deserve a Nobel prize if he wasn’t such an idiot.”
“But you’re okay?” Ms Potts says.
“Peachy. Dandy. Singed.”
She touches his knee. Tony looks up from the bottom of his whiskey glass and covers her hand with his own. “I’m fine. You know me, 100% impossible to set on fire. Wish I could say the same for that mailbox.”
“Okay,” she breathes.
She leans forwards, one hand on his knee and the other braced on the edge of the coffee table, and she kisses him lightly. Steve watches Tony’s free hand rise up to cup her face. She pulls away and climbs to her feet.
“It’s been a long day, and I’ve had - a lot to drink,” she says, voice catching. “And now I am... going to bed. Steve, it was nice meeting you at last.”
Steve stands. “You too, ma’am.”
She smiles at him wanly.
“He talks about you a lot,” she says as she walks away.
“Traitor,” Tony calls after her. “I don’t say anything nice.”
“I believe you,” Steve says. He sits back down once Ms Potts has disappeared from view. Tony remains sitting on the coffee table, cross-legged and shadowed, staring across at him. It’s gotten dark, Steve realises; the fire has died down.
“In my day,” he says, looking down into his still full glass, “we didn’t put miniature umbrellas in our drinks.”
“Yet another reason why the past sucked.”
Rolling his eyes, Steve lifts his drinks and takes a sip through the straw at last. He swallows carefully, smacks his lip. “This is disgusting.”
“But strong,” says Natasha.
Tony jumps, first genuinely and then exaggeratedly, turning to her with his mouth open in mock-surprise as he raps his knuckles again his chest, against - with a muffled knocking sound - his arc reactor. “You! I forgot you were here.”
Natasha smirks at him and sucks the dregs of her drink noisily up through her straw, cheeks hollowed. Once it’s all gone, she plucks a piece of ice from the bottom of her glass and pops it into her mouth, chews it with a slow, deliberate crunch.
“You’re terrifying,” Tony says. Looking around, he grabs Ms Potts’ discarded, still mostly full drink and holds it out to her; she shrugs and takes it. “I mean it, you scare me. More than aliens. More than the stock market.”
“I know,” she says. “But you make good drinks.”
“And that’s why you let me live.”
Natasha inclines her head in agreement. She unfolds herself from her seat on the couch, her movements so smooth that even with one hand incapacitated and the other hand full, the ice in her glass barely rattles as she stands. She nods to Steve, quirks an eyebrow at Tony as she passes them by.
Steve is climbing to his feet automatically to bid her goodnight, but when she turns to look back at him, what he says is, “Natasha, wait - what do you know of Fury’s plans?”
She pauses and frowns. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see Tony, tense, watching her as closely as he is.
“Not a lot,” she admits after a moment’s silence. “But I know he has plans. I know he’ll call us when he needs us. I know we all deserve a break after saving the world.”
“Wow, ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ from an entire covert ops organisation?” Tony says. “I can’t tell if that’s a high point or a low point in my life, no, really, I genuinely can’t.”
“You’re not SHIELD agents-”
“For which I’m eternally grateful-”
“-and you don’t want to be,” Natasha continues coolly, cutting Tony off. He snaps his mouth shut. “Neither of you do. But if Fury sent us - the Avengers after every little threat, that’s what you’d become. So we wait.”
“Until the next alien invasion?” Steve asks.
“Yes,” she says. “If that’s what it takes.”
Tony scoffs. “So that’s it? Fury’s grand scheme? I don’t know about you and nineteen-forty winks here, but I don’t plan on sitting by the phone twiddling my thumbs until Fury’s ready to invite me to the planetary crisis prom.”
“Then don’t. Nothing changes. We just have to keep doing what we always do, okay?
“Okay,” Steve says, with a nod and a sigh. He lowers himself back down onto the couch.
“Okay,” Tony echoes, holding up a hand. “Sure. So I’ll keep being a genius, Cap’ll keep modelling my laundry closet, and you’ll keep sneaking into my home to give me nightmares.” He counts them off on his fingers. “Is that the plan?”
“Yes,” Natasha says.
She nods at Steve again, then turns and continues on her way - up the stairs, not down into the elevator, Steve notes, watching her red hair swinging a little longer than it had been the last time he saw her. Even in slippers, her footsteps are as steady and precise as a dancer’s.
He wonders, briefly, what it feels like to have a body that is strong because you trained it to be strong, that is graceful because you learned grace. He wonders, briefer, if Natasha learned to dance. He’s startled from his thoughts by sudden movement, as Tony spins around to face him again and grabs the repulsor blast from Steve’s lax hands.
“Gimme that,” Tony is saying. “I need a drink.”
Steve lets him take it.
“You needn’t be so rude to her,” he says. “It’s unnecessary.”
“She likes it. I like it.” Tony slurps Steve’s drink, pulls a face, staring at Steve with wide, innocent eyes. “It’s a win-win situation. Good god, this is vile. What was I thinking? I can’t remember what I put in it.”
“And that makes it okay?”
“You’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll make JARVIS scan the cocktails next time.”
“I’m talking about Natasha.”
Tony shrugs. “I’m not seeing the problem.”
“You-” Steve begins, before he stops himself. He pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a deep breath, and then takes his drink back from Tony. He pulls the straw out and swallows a deep mouthful. It’s still disgusting, but it tastes better than last time; it could grow on him, Steve supposes.
When he looks up again, Tony is watching him, still sitting on the coffee table, holding himself as quiet and still now as if he could be Natasha. There is an orange glow over his shoulder, and Steve shifts his gaze to watch the robot poking uselessly at the embers of the fire. A futile endeavour.
“I thought there would be more robots in the future,” he says.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, I - you’re the most futuristic person I’ve ever seen, but back home I thought the twenty-first century would have robots like people. Flying cars, monorails, space colonies. Everyone living in glass domes and wearing space suits.”
“World peace and no more hunger, right?”
“I don’t think I could have imagined that.” Steve smiles wryly. “But I couldn’t have imagined the internet or reality TV either.”
“Yeah, what did you do for fun in the good, old days?”
Tony says it flippantly, like most things he says and does, but somehow the fact that he is still there and still listening, when he could have walked away or - heck, it’s his apartment they’re sitting in - kicked Steve out long ago, feels like an achievement. This is progress.
This is Steve, moving forwards, even further into the future.
He stares down at his hands. “Some people went dancing. Not like - nothing like how people dance today. That’s, um. Very different. People are different now. I think - that’s the biggest change. Cars still have wheels, sure, and nobody lives on the moon, but people...”
He pauses. There’s a moment of silence that isn’t really so silent - he can hear the wind and the rain; he can hear Tony’s robot moving ash around; he can hear Tony. Breathing, then clearing his throat.
“People haven’t changed as much as you think.”
“No?”
“Well, we still have boy scouts, right?”
Steve sighs, climbing to his fest. He pulls the straw and umbrella out and downs the remainder of his drink in three gulps that he barely tastes, and then holds the glass out until Tony, startled, takes it.
“Goodnight, Tony.”
“Spare rooms,” Tony says, still staring up at him, still holding the empty glass.
“What?”
“I have - I don’t know where the laundry goes, or who even washes it, but I’m pretty sure I’m not a slave driver so they’re probably not washing right now, so you’re not gonna get your clothes back ‘till tomorrow.”
“Ms Potts already-”
“You can’t go out in towels. You’ll get arrested, public indecency, even in the depraved future. Or you’ll get wet. Whichever is your least favourite, that’s what’ll happen.”
“Ms Potts already offered me a room for the night,” Steve says. “I accepted her offer.”
Tony snaps his mouth shut. “Right. Great. I knew that.”
He puts the glass down and jumps to his feet, clapping his hands together. “Where are you staying, anyway? When you’re not crashing parties in my penthouse, I mean?”
“If you don’t want me to come...” Steve begins, but Tony waves a hand and makes indignant noises before he can finish. “I’ve got an apartment. Near my old neighbourhood. It’s strange, but I’m not there a whole lot.”
“You can afford someplace better. I’ve seen your bank account.”
“Of course you have.”
Tony looks unrepentant, already walking away. With a sigh, Steve follows him - up the stairs and up to the third floor, into the same corridor Steve walked down before, where Tony pauses.
“JARVIS, where’s Romanoff? She might get confused and break your neck with her thighs if we put you in her room, and what a scandal that would be.”
“Agent Romanoff is located in room four, sir, opposite Dr Banner’s room. Her legs do not currently appear to be homicidal, but I will be sure to inform you if this status changes.”
“Dr Banner? Bruce has a room?”
“Sure,” Tony says vaguely as he wanders up and down the corridor. “He stops by sometimes, when he gets bored of the tropics. It’s hard to book hotel rooms when you might sometimes turn big and green and smash things. Here,” he adds, pointing at a door. “You can probably see your neighbourhood from this one. I’d say you could spot your apartment from up here, but it’s got to be revoltingly small, right?”
“It’s cosy. Not everyone needs a whole tower to feel comfortable.”
Tony tosses him a grin over his shoulder, all teeth, as he pushes the door open and disappears inside. “Me and my phallic symbol are extremely happy together. JARVIS, lights, 60%. There’s, uh - there’s probably a light switch somewhere, if you wanna do things the old fashioned way.”
“The light switch is next to your right elbow, sir,” JARVIS says.
“Would you look at that?” Tony flicks the lights off and on a few times. “Must’ve been Pepper’s idea. She thinks it’s more homely not having to constantly rely on the whims of a sarcastic robot butler.”
“Imagine that, sir.”
Steve steps around Tony, into the room. It must be, he’s almost sure of it, bigger than his whole apartment, with the curving wall on the far side of the room another stretch of the floor-to-ceiling windows he’s grown accustomed to seeing in Tony’s home.
He reaches over Tony’s shoulder and turns the light off. He crosses the room, barely taking in the thick carpet, vast bed, armchair, tables, desk, bookshelves, and he stands in the front of the window. Through the glass it’s night time in New York City, which means so many streetlights, traffic lights, windows, fluorescent signs it’s almost brighter than daylight. It’s beautiful, of course, and it’s very alive.
“That’s some view,” he breathes.
“Can’t get that from your tiny, little apartment, right?”
“It looks over a back alley. There’s pigeons.” Steve shrugs. “I like pigeons.”
“Bet you didn’t think there’d still be pigeons in the twenty-first century.”
Steve glances over his shoulder. Tony is standing in the open doorway, backlit against the bright light of the corridor, a shadow slouched against the frame with his hands in his pockets. Steve shrugs again, allows himself a smile.
“I don’t think I could imagine New York without pigeons,” he says.
He can’t see Tony’s face, but he thinks he sees him nod. The shadow of Tony straightens, pushes away from the doorframe and for a second when he turns his head, Steve sees his profile in perfect silhouette.
“Not so different, then,” Tony says. “You, go sleep. Or whatever, I’m not the sleep police. JARVIS will tell you anything you need to know. I’ve got some work to do so I’ll be down in my lab all night. Have you been in my lab yet?”
“Not yet.”
Tony snaps his fingers, pausing in the doorway. “Come by sometime. No flying cars or monorails, nobody wants flying cars and monorails, I mean, nobody except you, sorry, Cap, but - In fact, come by in a couple weeks. I’ve been working on something, it’s a surprise. Okay? Okay.”
“Okay,” Steve says warily.
Tony grins wide enough that there’s a flash of bright, white teeth and then he waves a hand and disappears through the door. It stays swinging open on its hinges for a long while after, until Steve crosses the room and pushes it shut. He stands a moment, staring down at himself, before grabbing a fistful of towel and tugging until the safety pin comes free with a ping, the metal bent all out of shape.
He feels bad about it as soon as he’s done it. Steve carefully undoes the rest of the safety pins, leaving them in a pile on the nightstand, and he folds the towels on the armchair.
He sits down on the side of the bed, rests his chin on his hands, and stares out the window at his city. Bright lights, pigeons. Some things never change.
*
In the morning, he finds his clean clothes stacked neatly outside the door, with a piece of grid paper folded on top. It reads, in messy handwriting, ‘one boy scout uniform, freshly laundered.’
Steve slips the note into his pocket as he leaves.
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
*
Fandom: Avengers (movie)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Steve/Tony pre-slash (background Tony/Pepper)
Spoilers: post-movie
Summary: The Avengers take initiative. Or, the story of how a group of remarkable people came together to drink cocktails, eat ice-cream and wait for Fury's call.
A/N: Title from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Our House, because it seemed appropriate. AO3
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
*
It’s dark and cold and quiet, beneath the pounding rhythm of the rain; the kind of quiet that comes from even the most hardened criminals taking a look outside and deciding to stay in for the night. Steve sprays water in an arching wave as he pulls over in front of Stark Tower. Through the haze of rain, he can see Mr Coulson dashing down the steps with a giant, red umbrella. They share a grim nod, and Steve passes him the keys to his bike wordlessly and trudges through the door into, at last, a little moment of warmth and of peace.
It’s the same receptionist as last time, five weeks ago. She clucks her tongue in sympathy at the sight of him.
“I’ve seen oceans drier than you, Captain. Mr Stark isn’t in right now, I’m afraid, but-”
Steve feels his shoulders sag. He’s dripping water on the floor. “Darn it. Never mind, I can go... somewhere. Home's only fifty minutes away, and the streets are quiet, so it shouldn't-”
“Oh, no, no. There’s no need for that. Mr Stark isn’t here, but Ms Potts is in. You’re authorised to come and go as you please, regardless.”
As she speaks, she pulls a box of tissues from a desk drawer and holds them out to Steve. “Take the box, Captain. They’re company property. You need them more than I do, right now.”
“Much appreciated, ma’am. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name...”
“Andrea Clark.”
“Thank you, Miss - er, Mrs?”
“Ms,” she says firmly, with a smile.
Steve’s face still feels half-frozen, but he summons up a smile of his own as he plucks the box of tissues from her hands. He drips his way into Tony’s private elevator once more, prods the wall - and then, when nothing happens, wipes his hands dry with a couple of tissues and tries again.
“Password override zero-zero-four,” the computer man murmurs, as polite as ever.
*
“Well, look what the catfish dragged in,” exclaims an unfamiliar voice as soon as the elevator door opens. There’s a log fire burning, and Steve has to close his eyes for a second as he steps into the penthouse, has to just stop and breathe it in. When he opens his eyes again, there’s a pretty woman with reddish hair walking towards him, hand outstretched. She’s wearing a dress clearly designed for business, but on her feet are fluffy red slippers.
“You must be Captain Rogers,” she says. “You’re - wow, you’re really wet. You’re just in time for Dancing With The Stars.”
“I don’t know what that is, ma’am, but it sounds one whole lot better than what’s outdoors.” Peering around as he shakes her hand, Steve spots Agent Romanoff stretched out on the couch in front of the fire, with her arm in a sling. He grins, turns his attention back to- “You’re Miss - Ms Potts? Tony’s girl?”
“That I am. But call me Pepper. I can - I really don’t think any of Tony’s clothes are going to fit you-”
Agent Romanoff snorts with what sounds like laughter. Steve glances at her, but her face is resolutely blank, one shoulder slightly lifted, one eyebrow slightly quirked.
“-But I can get you a towel.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Best make it a lot of them.”
He watches her go until she’s disappeared up a sweeping staircase, and then he kneels down and sets about removing his boots. It’s a tough job, with cold fingers and wet knots and leather sticking to denim. Once he’s pulled one off, he looks up to meet Agent Romanoff’s watchful gaze.
“What happened to you?” she says.
“What happened to you?” he retorts, motioning at her injured arm. She smirks. He ducks down to fiddle with his other lace.
“It was raining,” he says. “I got wet.”
Agent Romanoff makes the noise that sounds like laughter again. Unpicking the final knot, Steve grins down at his boot.
“Did you stop to buy coffee for spies on your way here?”
“Tony told you about that?”
“Stark told Pepper, Pepper told me. Fury mentioned it, too. Congratulations, I think the entirety of SHIELD has a crush on you right now.”
Steve eases his boot off at last and leaves the pair standing against the wall again, with a grimace. His wet jeans rub against his legs as he stands.
“And your arm?”
Agent Romanoff tilts her head to the side, gazing up at him in consideration. There’s something amused deep down in her eyes that makes him feel like she’s staring at the punchline of a joke. He hopes it’s a good one.
“I got stabbed a little,” she says, eventually, once he’s starting to shift uncomfortably from foot to damp foot. “They sent me home to rest and recuperate.”
“You’re okay? And Barton?”
“Yes. And yes.”
Steve smiles. He walks over to the edge of the stone flooring, where the ground sinks down into a thickly carpeted circle. Water is dripping down his arms and down his ankles, forming a puddle on the floor.
“Good to see you again, agent.”
“You too, zero-zero-four.”
“What?”
“Oh,” says Ms Potts from overhead, emerging at the top of the stairs with her arms full of towels. “You’re zero-zero-four? Natasha’s six. I wonder who five is?”
“Banner,” says Agent Romanoff.
“Thor?” Ms Potts suggests. She reaches the bottom of the stairs and drops her armful of towels onto the floor, staring up at Steve with her hands on her hips. “You can’t stay in those wet clothes. I know Captain America isn’t meant to get sick, but I’d rather not test the theory. We’ll need to... do something.”
“Banner,” Agent Romanoff says again. “Or the pizza delivery guy, knowing Stark. I have safety pins.”
Ms Potts raises an eyebrow at her, and Agent Romanoff shrugs, adding, “They’re effective.”
“Right. Let’s not... pursue that avenue. Here.” Ms Potts digs into the pile of towels and digs out a particularly fluffy red one, taller than her as she holds it up to Steve. She stares at it and then down at her slippers and adds, with a resigned expression, “Red’s his favourite colour, would you believe it?”
“I’m guessing gold’s his second favourite?”
“He’d have done the whole tower in Iron Man colours if I hadn’t stopped him,” she admits, pushing the towel into his hands. “Now, the best shower’s on level three of the penthouse, if you want to clean up. Then we can rig you up some kind of toga with Natasha’s... effective safety pins.”
“Then mojitos,” Agent Romanoff says. “It’ll be fun.”
*
After a hot shower on the third level, the water pressure so perfect it almost makes him want to cry, Steve almost feels like a human again. He dries himself vigorously with the towel, and performs a few simple stretches, and splashes cold water on his face when he’s done. The whole bathroom is white marble and practically the entire wall over the sink is one, big mirror; it must be hell to clean.
He wipes a hand through the condensation, leaving a thick, curving stripe of mirror behind, his eyes and half his face staring out at him through it. With his thumb, Steve adds more lines - which become legs, a tail, pricked up ears - until he’s drawn a cat in the mirror, sprawled as if it’s basking in front of the fire. There’s a secretive look in its eyes, already melting away.
Feeling suddenly foolish, Steve scrubs the cat away. He ties the towel around his waist, so big it’s practically a ball gown even on him - what does Tony do with towels this big? - and gathers up his pile of damp, cold clothes. And hesitates.
“Um... Mr Jarvis?”
“Good evening, Captain Rogers,” says the computer man immediately, voice emitting from somewhere right in front of Steve. There must be a speaker behind the mirror. “I trust your shower was a pleasant one?”
“Were you there the whole time?”
The computer pauses, then says, “I am everywhere Mr Stark programs me to be, at all times. However, let me assure you that, as an electrical appliance, I lack all emotive capacity. It may help you to think of me as a particularly helpful lamp.”
That startles a laugh out of Steve. “Illuminating?”
“Precisely, sir.”
Steve smiles at the mirror, in lieu of a face to look at; or to direct his next question to, as he hefts his bundle of clothes and waves it uncertainly for the cameras. “Where should I dump these wet clothes?”
“Mr Stark’s favoured approach is to leave them on the floor to be picked up by someone else. However, if you are feeling adventurous, Captain, there is a little-used laundry chute at the end of this corridor.”
“Thank you, Mr Jarvis.”
“JARVIS will do, Captain.”
Steve pads out into the corridor. Up here the place feels almost like a normal home, albeit one with an impossibly thick carpet; but there are pictures on the walls. Not the strange modern art he’s caught glimpses of downstairs, but photographs of what can only be Tony when he was young, standing next to some kind of robotic arm, and of a woman with his dark eyes, and of Ms Potts and Tony standing somewhere tropical, him with shades and her with an open smile.
Steve examines them all closely, for a little while, and then he hefts his bundle of clothes higher and pulls his towel tighter. He walks past a row of firmly shut doors to the laundry chute JARVIS had indicated, but the door at the end of the row is slightly ajar. No lights are on inside the room, but the far wall is all windows, and as Steve passes he catches a glimpse of a bare bed, bare walls, a closet door half-open with a few shirts poking out. Hesitating, he reaches out a hand and gives the door a gentle push. It swings open easily. The bed looks as if it’s been reinforced with steel.
“The laundry chute is to your left, sir,” says JARVIS as polite as ever.
“Right,” Steve says. “Sorry, I’ll just-”
He pulls the door shut.
*
At some point in the night, probably while she’s fastening towels with safety pins with one hand and balancing some kind of fruity cocktail in her sling, Steve finds himself thinking of Agent Romanoff just as Natasha. He’s drinking mojitos and he’s only wearing his underpants under what’s essentially a very fluffy dress and he’s squeezed on a couch between two women who definitely aren’t his girls. If it’s not the most comfortable Steve’s ever been, it still beats the hell out of plenty of things. The Red Skull. Losing everyone he’s ever known. Asthma. Every single second of The Star-Spangled Man With A Plan.
If nothing else, it’s warm and the fire is crackling. He realises, halfway through the third episode of this celebrity dancing show (he doesn’t know anyone on it, but Ms Potts assured him nobody does, not even the other contestants), there’s a little robot stoking the fire and periodically sucking up ash with sad beeping noise.
“I thought there would be more robots in the future,” he says.
Natasha, with her feet up on the coffee table, groans. Ms Potts found her a spare pair of slippers, but she’s still got knives strapped to both ankles. She says, “Don’t tell Stark that. He’ll take it as an invitation.”
“He’s still on his robotics kick,” Ms Potts says mournfully to Natasha, as if picking up the thread of some conversation they had before Steve arrived. She’s on her fifth mojito. “It’s not that I mind the new robots. Some of them are quite useful. And goodness knows without JARVIS, Tony would probably have died in a horrible, self-inflicted accident by now.”
“Cut his throat shaving a new shape into his bead,” Natasha suggests. “Forgot he wasn’t in the Iron Man suit and walked off the balcony.”
“Yes, exactly. JARVIS is wonderful-”
“Thank you, Ms Potts.”
“-but he thinks it’s funny to give them personalities. Not even good personalities. Look at that little one.”
She waves her glass at the robot by the fire. They sit and watch as it slowly drags a fresh log from the pile and, with a small chainsaw that unfolds from its body like a penknife, sets about cutting it up into manageable pieces.
“Look at it. It always looks so sad. It looks sad and it’s got a chainsaw. I worry about it.”
Natasha murmurs something in Russian. It’s probably a swearword.
Ms Potts sniffs, then drains her glass.
Outside, over the sound of the rain still going strong, there’s a metallic thump, followed by a whirring noise.
“Oh,” Ms Potts murmurs. “Tony’s home.”
Steve peers over the edge of the couch. Mechanical things are moving in the darkness through the window, in fluid flashes of arc reactor blue or gold and red when the suit catches the light. It’s like abstract art. He resolves to watch it in daylight one day.
The lights sink back into the ground and Tony emerges from the shadows, jogging to the door. It opens for him.
“JARVIS, memo to self,” he’s saying as he comes inside. “Umbrella. Roof. Something. That got wet fast.”
“Eloquent as ever, sir. Memo saved.”
Tony shakes himself like a dog, still grumbling under his breath as he wipes a hand across his face and scrubs at his wet hair.
“Honey, I’m home. Honeys,” he amends, looking up to take in the sight of Steve, Natasha and Ms Potts staring over the top of the couch at him. He doesn’t look surprised to see Natasha, but he raises an eyebrow at Steve. “What’s this? You’re having a toga party with Sleeping Beauty and you didn’t invite me?”
“Girl’s night in,” Ms Potts says. “Steve was our mystery guest.”
“He’s something alright. Have you got all my towels there? Are they - What? What is this, a cape? Fashion tips from Thor?” Tony leans on the back of the couch, peering at him and tugging at the corner of one of the towels covering his shoulders. “These are attached. Good god, Pepper, what have you done?”
“Sorry,” Steve says. He reaches up to fumble with the safety pins, but Ms Potts taps him on the knuckles and undoes it herself.
“There you go,” she says. “Now mix us fresh drinks and maybe we’ll tell about all the fun we’ve had while you were gone.”
“Pillow fights?”
Grabbing the towel from her, Tony leans across and kisses Ms Potts on the lips. He gets - Steve looks away resolutely, tugging his remaining towels closer together over his bare shoulder - a bit handsy. When he draws back again, she’s rolling her eyes but smiling.
“Off the shoulder number, Cap. I like it. Ooh, warm towel. Even better. Black Widow,” he adds by way of greeting as he drapes the towel around his neck. “You’re looking as prone to eating your mates as ever.”
“Thank you.”
Tony pats Ms Potts on the head, and then pats Steve on the head, ruffling his hair, and then - Steve cranes his neck to watch - reaches out a hand half-heartedly towards Natasha. She smiles widely up at him.
“Well, that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tony says, dropping his hand and backing away behind the bar.
Natasha’s sarcastic smile shifts into something smaller and warmer and, Steve thinks, genuinely amused as she glances sideways to meet Steve’s eyes. But Tony’s still talking, over the sound of clinking glasses and bottles.
“What lies has he been telling you, ladies? Has he been letting you try to get him drunk? Sorry to disappoint, but it won’t work.”
Not everyone drinks solely to get drunk, Tony,” Ms Potts says. “Some people even enjoy the taste.”
“Quitters.”
He emerges from the bar with four glasses - three contain something vividly yellow with a little umbrella and a curly straw stuck in each glass; the remaining one, Steve notes with a raised eyebrow, is just whiskey. Tony raises an eyebrow at Steve’s raised eyebrow, thrusting a glass into his hands. The whiskey, Tony keeps for himself.
“I call it a repulsor blast.”
“It looks disgusting,” Ms Potts say, staring at the drink he holds out to her as if it might bite, but with a sigh she takes it from his hands and puts it down on the coffee table. “How’d it go tonight?”
“Well, there was a scary moment when I couldn’t find the cocktail umbrellas, but-”
“Tony.”
“The usual.” Tony groans, extravagantly. Picking Ms Potts’ drink up again, he shoves a load of magazines and papers off the table and onto the floor with his toes, balanced on one foot with a drink held steady in each hand. It’s an impressive display of dexterity, if nothing else
“There was paperwork in that pile,” Ms Potts says.
Sitting down on the freshly cleared space on the table, Tony peers over at the mess of papers now spread across the floor. “It’s still in a pile. Technically.”
Ms Potts makes a face that Steve can clearly read, for all he only met her a few hours ago; it spells out, in her raised eyebrows and pursed lips, that whoever picks this mess up it certainly won’t be her. Tony chooses to ignore it.
“Some wannabe supervillain declares they’ve replicated my repulsor tech, public demo, mad with power, yada yada, save us from your bastardised technology, Iron Man! Day saved. Pepper, remind me to send a cheque for the broken fire hydrant.”
Steve, drink halfway to his mouth, gapes. “Someone’s replicated your technology? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“No. As in, no, it’s not dangerous because no, nobody’s replicated my repulsors. This guy was all talk and no walk. All smoke and no fire - actually, the problem was too much fire. His crappy repulsors kept exploding. Idiot was crying for help more than his hostages in the end. Fireballs everywhere.”
“In this weather?”
Tony points a finger at him. “That’s what I said. Repeatedly. You’d think you wouldn’t be able to set a mailbox on fire in this weather, but this guy proved everyone wrong. He’d deserve a Nobel prize if he wasn’t such an idiot.”
“But you’re okay?” Ms Potts says.
“Peachy. Dandy. Singed.”
She touches his knee. Tony looks up from the bottom of his whiskey glass and covers her hand with his own. “I’m fine. You know me, 100% impossible to set on fire. Wish I could say the same for that mailbox.”
“Okay,” she breathes.
She leans forwards, one hand on his knee and the other braced on the edge of the coffee table, and she kisses him lightly. Steve watches Tony’s free hand rise up to cup her face. She pulls away and climbs to her feet.
“It’s been a long day, and I’ve had - a lot to drink,” she says, voice catching. “And now I am... going to bed. Steve, it was nice meeting you at last.”
Steve stands. “You too, ma’am.”
She smiles at him wanly.
“He talks about you a lot,” she says as she walks away.
“Traitor,” Tony calls after her. “I don’t say anything nice.”
“I believe you,” Steve says. He sits back down once Ms Potts has disappeared from view. Tony remains sitting on the coffee table, cross-legged and shadowed, staring across at him. It’s gotten dark, Steve realises; the fire has died down.
“In my day,” he says, looking down into his still full glass, “we didn’t put miniature umbrellas in our drinks.”
“Yet another reason why the past sucked.”
Rolling his eyes, Steve lifts his drinks and takes a sip through the straw at last. He swallows carefully, smacks his lip. “This is disgusting.”
“But strong,” says Natasha.
Tony jumps, first genuinely and then exaggeratedly, turning to her with his mouth open in mock-surprise as he raps his knuckles again his chest, against - with a muffled knocking sound - his arc reactor. “You! I forgot you were here.”
Natasha smirks at him and sucks the dregs of her drink noisily up through her straw, cheeks hollowed. Once it’s all gone, she plucks a piece of ice from the bottom of her glass and pops it into her mouth, chews it with a slow, deliberate crunch.
“You’re terrifying,” Tony says. Looking around, he grabs Ms Potts’ discarded, still mostly full drink and holds it out to her; she shrugs and takes it. “I mean it, you scare me. More than aliens. More than the stock market.”
“I know,” she says. “But you make good drinks.”
“And that’s why you let me live.”
Natasha inclines her head in agreement. She unfolds herself from her seat on the couch, her movements so smooth that even with one hand incapacitated and the other hand full, the ice in her glass barely rattles as she stands. She nods to Steve, quirks an eyebrow at Tony as she passes them by.
Steve is climbing to his feet automatically to bid her goodnight, but when she turns to look back at him, what he says is, “Natasha, wait - what do you know of Fury’s plans?”
She pauses and frowns. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see Tony, tense, watching her as closely as he is.
“Not a lot,” she admits after a moment’s silence. “But I know he has plans. I know he’ll call us when he needs us. I know we all deserve a break after saving the world.”
“Wow, ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ from an entire covert ops organisation?” Tony says. “I can’t tell if that’s a high point or a low point in my life, no, really, I genuinely can’t.”
“You’re not SHIELD agents-”
“For which I’m eternally grateful-”
“-and you don’t want to be,” Natasha continues coolly, cutting Tony off. He snaps his mouth shut. “Neither of you do. But if Fury sent us - the Avengers after every little threat, that’s what you’d become. So we wait.”
“Until the next alien invasion?” Steve asks.
“Yes,” she says. “If that’s what it takes.”
Tony scoffs. “So that’s it? Fury’s grand scheme? I don’t know about you and nineteen-forty winks here, but I don’t plan on sitting by the phone twiddling my thumbs until Fury’s ready to invite me to the planetary crisis prom.”
“Then don’t. Nothing changes. We just have to keep doing what we always do, okay?
“Okay,” Steve says, with a nod and a sigh. He lowers himself back down onto the couch.
“Okay,” Tony echoes, holding up a hand. “Sure. So I’ll keep being a genius, Cap’ll keep modelling my laundry closet, and you’ll keep sneaking into my home to give me nightmares.” He counts them off on his fingers. “Is that the plan?”
“Yes,” Natasha says.
She nods at Steve again, then turns and continues on her way - up the stairs, not down into the elevator, Steve notes, watching her red hair swinging a little longer than it had been the last time he saw her. Even in slippers, her footsteps are as steady and precise as a dancer’s.
He wonders, briefly, what it feels like to have a body that is strong because you trained it to be strong, that is graceful because you learned grace. He wonders, briefer, if Natasha learned to dance. He’s startled from his thoughts by sudden movement, as Tony spins around to face him again and grabs the repulsor blast from Steve’s lax hands.
“Gimme that,” Tony is saying. “I need a drink.”
Steve lets him take it.
“You needn’t be so rude to her,” he says. “It’s unnecessary.”
“She likes it. I like it.” Tony slurps Steve’s drink, pulls a face, staring at Steve with wide, innocent eyes. “It’s a win-win situation. Good god, this is vile. What was I thinking? I can’t remember what I put in it.”
“And that makes it okay?”
“You’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll make JARVIS scan the cocktails next time.”
“I’m talking about Natasha.”
Tony shrugs. “I’m not seeing the problem.”
“You-” Steve begins, before he stops himself. He pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a deep breath, and then takes his drink back from Tony. He pulls the straw out and swallows a deep mouthful. It’s still disgusting, but it tastes better than last time; it could grow on him, Steve supposes.
When he looks up again, Tony is watching him, still sitting on the coffee table, holding himself as quiet and still now as if he could be Natasha. There is an orange glow over his shoulder, and Steve shifts his gaze to watch the robot poking uselessly at the embers of the fire. A futile endeavour.
“I thought there would be more robots in the future,” he says.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No, I - you’re the most futuristic person I’ve ever seen, but back home I thought the twenty-first century would have robots like people. Flying cars, monorails, space colonies. Everyone living in glass domes and wearing space suits.”
“World peace and no more hunger, right?”
“I don’t think I could have imagined that.” Steve smiles wryly. “But I couldn’t have imagined the internet or reality TV either.”
“Yeah, what did you do for fun in the good, old days?”
Tony says it flippantly, like most things he says and does, but somehow the fact that he is still there and still listening, when he could have walked away or - heck, it’s his apartment they’re sitting in - kicked Steve out long ago, feels like an achievement. This is progress.
This is Steve, moving forwards, even further into the future.
He stares down at his hands. “Some people went dancing. Not like - nothing like how people dance today. That’s, um. Very different. People are different now. I think - that’s the biggest change. Cars still have wheels, sure, and nobody lives on the moon, but people...”
He pauses. There’s a moment of silence that isn’t really so silent - he can hear the wind and the rain; he can hear Tony’s robot moving ash around; he can hear Tony. Breathing, then clearing his throat.
“People haven’t changed as much as you think.”
“No?”
“Well, we still have boy scouts, right?”
Steve sighs, climbing to his fest. He pulls the straw and umbrella out and downs the remainder of his drink in three gulps that he barely tastes, and then holds the glass out until Tony, startled, takes it.
“Goodnight, Tony.”
“Spare rooms,” Tony says, still staring up at him, still holding the empty glass.
“What?”
“I have - I don’t know where the laundry goes, or who even washes it, but I’m pretty sure I’m not a slave driver so they’re probably not washing right now, so you’re not gonna get your clothes back ‘till tomorrow.”
“Ms Potts already-”
“You can’t go out in towels. You’ll get arrested, public indecency, even in the depraved future. Or you’ll get wet. Whichever is your least favourite, that’s what’ll happen.”
“Ms Potts already offered me a room for the night,” Steve says. “I accepted her offer.”
Tony snaps his mouth shut. “Right. Great. I knew that.”
He puts the glass down and jumps to his feet, clapping his hands together. “Where are you staying, anyway? When you’re not crashing parties in my penthouse, I mean?”
“If you don’t want me to come...” Steve begins, but Tony waves a hand and makes indignant noises before he can finish. “I’ve got an apartment. Near my old neighbourhood. It’s strange, but I’m not there a whole lot.”
“You can afford someplace better. I’ve seen your bank account.”
“Of course you have.”
Tony looks unrepentant, already walking away. With a sigh, Steve follows him - up the stairs and up to the third floor, into the same corridor Steve walked down before, where Tony pauses.
“JARVIS, where’s Romanoff? She might get confused and break your neck with her thighs if we put you in her room, and what a scandal that would be.”
“Agent Romanoff is located in room four, sir, opposite Dr Banner’s room. Her legs do not currently appear to be homicidal, but I will be sure to inform you if this status changes.”
“Dr Banner? Bruce has a room?”
“Sure,” Tony says vaguely as he wanders up and down the corridor. “He stops by sometimes, when he gets bored of the tropics. It’s hard to book hotel rooms when you might sometimes turn big and green and smash things. Here,” he adds, pointing at a door. “You can probably see your neighbourhood from this one. I’d say you could spot your apartment from up here, but it’s got to be revoltingly small, right?”
“It’s cosy. Not everyone needs a whole tower to feel comfortable.”
Tony tosses him a grin over his shoulder, all teeth, as he pushes the door open and disappears inside. “Me and my phallic symbol are extremely happy together. JARVIS, lights, 60%. There’s, uh - there’s probably a light switch somewhere, if you wanna do things the old fashioned way.”
“The light switch is next to your right elbow, sir,” JARVIS says.
“Would you look at that?” Tony flicks the lights off and on a few times. “Must’ve been Pepper’s idea. She thinks it’s more homely not having to constantly rely on the whims of a sarcastic robot butler.”
“Imagine that, sir.”
Steve steps around Tony, into the room. It must be, he’s almost sure of it, bigger than his whole apartment, with the curving wall on the far side of the room another stretch of the floor-to-ceiling windows he’s grown accustomed to seeing in Tony’s home.
He reaches over Tony’s shoulder and turns the light off. He crosses the room, barely taking in the thick carpet, vast bed, armchair, tables, desk, bookshelves, and he stands in the front of the window. Through the glass it’s night time in New York City, which means so many streetlights, traffic lights, windows, fluorescent signs it’s almost brighter than daylight. It’s beautiful, of course, and it’s very alive.
“That’s some view,” he breathes.
“Can’t get that from your tiny, little apartment, right?”
“It looks over a back alley. There’s pigeons.” Steve shrugs. “I like pigeons.”
“Bet you didn’t think there’d still be pigeons in the twenty-first century.”
Steve glances over his shoulder. Tony is standing in the open doorway, backlit against the bright light of the corridor, a shadow slouched against the frame with his hands in his pockets. Steve shrugs again, allows himself a smile.
“I don’t think I could imagine New York without pigeons,” he says.
He can’t see Tony’s face, but he thinks he sees him nod. The shadow of Tony straightens, pushes away from the doorframe and for a second when he turns his head, Steve sees his profile in perfect silhouette.
“Not so different, then,” Tony says. “You, go sleep. Or whatever, I’m not the sleep police. JARVIS will tell you anything you need to know. I’ve got some work to do so I’ll be down in my lab all night. Have you been in my lab yet?”
“Not yet.”
Tony snaps his fingers, pausing in the doorway. “Come by sometime. No flying cars or monorails, nobody wants flying cars and monorails, I mean, nobody except you, sorry, Cap, but - In fact, come by in a couple weeks. I’ve been working on something, it’s a surprise. Okay? Okay.”
“Okay,” Steve says warily.
Tony grins wide enough that there’s a flash of bright, white teeth and then he waves a hand and disappears through the door. It stays swinging open on its hinges for a long while after, until Steve crosses the room and pushes it shut. He stands a moment, staring down at himself, before grabbing a fistful of towel and tugging until the safety pin comes free with a ping, the metal bent all out of shape.
He feels bad about it as soon as he’s done it. Steve carefully undoes the rest of the safety pins, leaving them in a pile on the nightstand, and he folds the towels on the armchair.
He sits down on the side of the bed, rests his chin on his hands, and stares out the window at his city. Bright lights, pigeons. Some things never change.
*
In the morning, he finds his clean clothes stacked neatly outside the door, with a piece of grid paper folded on top. It reads, in messy handwriting, ‘one boy scout uniform, freshly laundered.’
Steve slips the note into his pocket as he leaves.
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
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