Fic :: Avengers :: A Very, Very, Very Fine House :: 3/5
A Very, Very, Very Fine House [3/5]
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
*
The first thing Steve sees when he gets home is a tower of mail on the table.
It’s a normal sight for him, since the Chitauri invasion and the extremely public return of Captain America. At the time, he would have been perfectly content to just give out his address to any gal or fella who wanted to take the time to write him, but Fury had loudly say no to that. His apartment is a secret, leased with a false name, and all Steve’s mail goes through SHIELD to be checked and checked again before he ever sets eyes on it.
He supposes some poor new recruit, signed up to SHIELD for a life of espionage and intrigue, got stuck with the job of redelivering the safe mail to him. He doesn’t know for sure, as he’s never seen them. He’s rarely there. It’s not his home.
At first, he just hadn’t been able to stop moving - as if seventy years on ice had left a surplus of energy unspent; as if the second he let himself stand still, he would sink back down into the sea again. He had broken more punch bags than he cares to count, then saved the world, then got on his bike and drove and drove. If this is the world he fought and essentially died for, and if he’s going to be here forever, then he wants to know every last inch of it - and maybe then, he thinks sometimes on the darker nights - he’ll know if his sacrifice was worth it.
Almost as soon as he began joining the geographical dots, the letters started pouring in. The vast majority of it, he’s sure, is culled by SHIELD, and most of what’s left is fanmail from strangers and children and friendly young women. But sometimes it gets more personal. It seems like there’s a person in every major city who knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone, who had fought alongside him. Sometimes he even gets letters from people he’d known; most of them had been younger than him, seventy years ago. He tries to see them all while he still can, wherever they are, because if there’s one thing Steve’s learned, it’s that you never know who might be dead and gone when you wake up in the morning.
So he’s been out of the state for a week, when he opens his apartment door - shoving it with his shoulder when it jams; if he ever moves out of this place, he sure as heck isn’t getting the deposit back - and he finds his mail on the table. In among all the letters he sets aside for later, there’s a note on paper thicker than his credit card, embossed with a Stark Industries letterhead. It reads, in an unfamiliar hand, ‘Whatever you said to him to make him build something other than comedy robots, thank you - P.’
Steve tucks the letter under the paperweight on his night stand, mingled in with Tony’s laundry note and memos from SHIELD and a picture of his mom he found on the internet. He looks at the calendar on his wall.
It’s been a couple of weeks.
*
The elevator reaches level one and Steve steps out into the Penthouse. He removes his boots automatically, leaving them in their usual spot against the wall, but when he looks up he realises he’s alone. The living room is quiet and empty, a cool breeze blowing in through the door to the balcony.
He drifts into the centre of the room, picking up a few loose sheets of paper from the floor and moving an empty coffee mug off the bare table and onto a coaster. He glances down at the papers in his hand, which have on them Tony’s scruffy signature and a smear of what looks like ketchup. They look confidential - most things in Tony’s home look as if they aren’t meant to be seen by the general public - so Steve leaves them on the edge of a desk, with a pen on top to keep them blowing away.
Hands on his hips, he looks around himself.
“Where is he, JARVIS?” he says.
*
He follows JARVIS’ directions and then, once he’s reached the top of the corridor, just follows the noises: the sound of small explosions; the sound of booming laughter that Steve’s pretty sure he recognises. He’s not surprised, when he pushes open the kitchen door, to find Thor bent over something Tony is showing him, laughing raucously over a noise like the rattle of gunfire.
The kitchen is vast, of course. Tiled floor; marble countertops; a whole, separate square of work surface in the middle of the floor, covered in drafting paper and screwdrivers and what looks like the remains of breakfast, which still leaves enough room around it for a small game of baseball. There are, Steve notices and then carefully chooses to ignore, three ovens.
Tony straightens up and turns around as Steve enters the room, moving aside enough for Steve to catch a glimpse of what looks like a microwave in front of them, although Thor remains bent over and keeps on loudly laughing.
“What is this, Come Visit Tony Stark day?” Tony says.
Steve frowns, moving closer to the microwave and trying to peer into the little window around Thor’s bulk. He has a microwave, but he’s never heard one make noises like this before. “You told me to come by in a couple weeks, so here I am.”
“I did? Hey, I did.” Tony jostles Thor out of the way to take a look at the flashing, green digits on the front of the microwave. “Huh, precisely fourteen days ago. You wrote it on your calendar, didn’t you? You went home and counted forwards two weeks and wrote ‘come visit Tony Stark’ on your calendar.”
“Pretty much,” Steve admits, because it’s true.
“My god, you have a paper calendar, don’t you? What are the pictures of? Apple pies? Eagles? Patriotism?” Tony points an accusatory finger at him. “It’s patriotism, isn’t it.”
“It’s Modigliani, actually.”
Tony pauses, his finger remaining hanging in the air before him. “Sculpture or painting?”
“A mix of both.”
Making a thoughtful noise, Tony slowly lowers his hand. He frowns up at Steve. Steve clasps his hands behind his back and stares stonily down at him. Next to them, the machine gun racket from the microwave finishes at last and Thor, still laughing, straightens up and turns around.
“Captain!” he exclaims. He grabs Steve by the hand and by the shoulder and gives him a full body shake. “Well met! You too are a patron of this noble tradition?”
“Good to see you too, buddy,” Steve says, massaging the feeling back into his fingers. “What tradition? Micro-waving?”
“His beloved Jane-” Tony begins in a sing-song voice, as if he’s telling a fairy story.
“My beloved Jane,” Thor says, “who is as wise and knowledgeable as she is beautiful, has travelled far across the lands of America to attend a meeting of great minds. She explained to me that when your travels bring you to this New City of York, it is a great and noble Midgardian custom to seek shelter with the richest warrior you know-”
“That filthy rich bastard with his name stamped on all the landmarks, was how she put it,” Tony stage whispers to Steve.
“-rather than, ah, ‘forking out on a hotel room the same size and cost of a Lamborghini’, I believe were her words. Of course, I did not wish to offend Tony, so I made haste to his mighty tower to uphold the customs of his people.”
“Right,” Steve says. “Yeah, I guess I am a - a patron of that noble tradition.”
“Of course, even the fortune of our host pales in comparison to the wealth of fair Asgard, where the streets are paved with gold and mead runs like water. But what he lacks in riches, he makes up for in Midgardian sorcery. Behold!” Beaming magnanimously, Thor presses a button on the microwave and, as the door springs open, pulls out a bag of fresh popcorn. “See how the grains have ‘popped’ and yet the magic box contains no flame!”
“I keep telling you, it’s not magic-”
“Geez, you can make popcorn in those things?”
Steve grabs a handful, throwing a few into his mouth at once, and savouring the salty, oily taste. His mom had always hated popcorn, had always complained that it was tasteless and barely filled you up, but most years it was the only snack they could afford, and she tried to treat him to nice things - she had always tried.
He eats the rest of the popcorn in his hand slower, and licks his fingers when he’s done.
“I feel like a babysitter here,” Tony says, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re giant, muscular children. Here, go nuts, I’ve got another packet. Eat popcorn while you watch popcorn. Who needs the movies, right?”
He tosses what looks like a thick, brown envelope into the microwave, smacks the door shut and jabs a few buttons on the side. As the machine begins to hum and the popcorn packet begins to spin, Steve drags a stool up next to Thor and sits down to watch. He has a microwave in his apartment; he’d read the manual thoroughly and pressed all the buttons, and marvelled at how soon after his time it was invented, and then never really touched the darn thing again.
Tony grabs a handful of popcorn while Thor is distracted by the show, shoving it into his mouth and speaking around it. “I’m telling you, it’s not magic. Really, it’s not. It’s just science. Say it with me, okay? Suh-eye-ence.”
Thor shakes his head, looking amused rather than offended by Tony’s patronising tone. Then, through the window of the microwave, the popcorn starts to rattle and generally live up to its name and Thor leaps forwards with a shout, yanks the door off and sticks his hand inside. The edge of the microwave door hits the countertop with a thud, dangling from Thor’s grip, the hinges ripped clean away from the oven.
Steve glances at Tony. Tony’s mouth is hanging open.
“The bag of grain is warmed,” Thor declares, wiggling his fingers in the now-broken microwave obliviously, “and yet the air inside the magic box is not! My father will be most impressed when I tell him of this sorcery.”
“Great,” Tony says. “Good. I probably needed a new microwave anyway.”
Thor looks down and looks surprised - Steve biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the property damage - to see the whole door in his hands. He props it up against the front of the microwave.
“My apologies, Tony. Oft I forget how fragile these Midgardian trinkets are, despite the great power they contain.”
Tony waves a hand, shrugs. Smiling again, Thor pats him on the back, hard enough to knock him forwards and Tony stumbles. Steve sees in his mind’s eye the sharp, hard edge of the work surface rising up to meet him and he reaches out a hand without thinking, grabbing Tony by the collar of his shirt. Tony jerks to a halt, coughs and glares and rubs his neck and bats Steve’s hand away.
“But come,” Thor is saying, watching them mildly as if their scuffle were totally normal. Heck, for all Steve knows, it is in Asgard. “You need not be humble about your talents where you are among friends! Jane has told me much of your Midgardian legend. Have you not magic in your heart?”
He taps his finger against the arc reactor under Tony’s shirt, gently enough this time that Tony doesn’t stumble. Tony takes a step back anyway, frowning up at Thor. He puts a hand over his chest.
“Hey,” Steve says.
At the sound of Steve’s voice, Tony seems to shake himself and he grins, hooking a finger into the collar of his t-shirt and tugging it outwards to peer down at his chest. The blue glow washes over his face.
“Magic in my heart?” he says. “I like it. You should write my next press release. I mean it. If you ever get bored of the heir to an alien throne gig, we’ll put you in a suit and make you head of PR. Stocks would go through the roof.”
Thor laughs. “A generous offer. My father would have me learn more of Midgard, now the Tesseract is returned to us and the bifrost restored to its former glory. He wishes for me to be a diplomat between our worlds.”
“I’ll call my tailor.”
“Asgard is well, then?” Steve asks, and when Thor beams and nods, he adds, slowly, “And how’s... your brother?”
The smile drops from Thor’s face. He sits down on a stool and rests his chin on his hand, cape pooling on the ground around his feet. He looks, for a moment, as grave and as ancient as a statue. After a pause, and a heavy sigh, he says, “Nay, he is not well, he is troubled. There is a darkness to his thoughts and a shadow in his eyes. He has become blind to how his family loves him and that cage, I fear, is stronger even than the prison we must keep him in.”
“Troubled? Oh yeah, sure, he started an alien invasion. That’s troubled, alright.”
“I mean you no offence, Tony. He has wronged you and your planet gravely, and that can never be undone. But Loki... he is young, and Asgard is changing. I too once sought out battle in the stars and thought it glorious, and I was older than he.”
Thor sighs again, sonorously. Helping himself to another handful of popcorn, he turns his head and stares out the window. From this high up, the view is mainly sky, and clouds, and the beginnings of a hazy golden sunset. Somewhere out there, past the sunset and the stars, must be Thor’s home.
“Oh geeze,” Tony says. “Quit looking so sad, the pair of you. You’re making me feel bad about Loki. Christ, we need some vodka and some - doughnuts, I know I have doughnuts somewhere.”
As Tony begins moving around the room, lifting sheets of drafting paper and opening cupboard doors, there’s a faint whirring hum from overhead, as if JARVIS were clearing his throat.
“Sirs, there is a half a box of doughnuts in the living room work station, where Mr Stark left it, and Dr Foster requests use of the private elevator.”
Thor straightens up from his forlorn slump so sharply he almost knocks his stool over.
“Yeah, yeah, permission granted. What, you barely budge for vodka and doughnuts, but you leap out of your chair for Jane? Your priorities are...” Tony pauses, taps his chin. “Sickeningly well-balanced, I guess. Well done, you.”
“Come, let us feast and be merry with your vodka and baked delights. Now is the time to relive our great victories, not dwell in darkness, for Jane has returned to us!”
“Was she gone long?” Steve asks.
“Aye,” says Thor.
“Nay,” says Tony. “What, don’t give me that look, she’s been gone four hours. Pepper’s been gone four days and I’m not making faces like that. Okay, okay, fine, let’s feast and be merry with vodka and Jane. Now go wait for her by the elevator, would you? Go, leave, your enthusiasm is hurting my eyes.”
Thor, from a whole alien realm where people wear amour and talk like Shakespeare, seems to have a better handle on Tony’s sense of humour than Steve’s managed yet. He laughs and pats Tony on the shoulder as he leaps to his feet, and he grabs the bag of popcorn, exclaiming, “For Jane!”
Steve watches him stride away, cape flapping behind him. Maybe it’s Asgardian culture, or maybe Thor really is just that adaptable.
“Do you think he wears that cape everywhere,” Tony says, “or just to the really important microwaving functions?”
He drops down into Thor’s vacated stool and snaps his fingers under Steve’s nose until Steve bats his hand away, turns and says, “Do you mind?”
“Your eyes had gone out of focus. I thought maybe you were slipping into a coma.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
Tony leans back in his seat, legs crossed so casually, propping his elbows up on the work surface behind him and for a moment he just looks at Steve. Then,
“My mistake,” he says with a shrug.
“No, sorry, I’m just- Although it would help if you weren’t so abrasive sometimes.” Steve sighs. He stands, pinches the bridge of his nose and tries again. “Sorry. Not my place to tell anyone what to do out of uniform, least of all my friends. Shouldn’t we go say hi?”
Tony, who is still looking at much Steve too thoughtfully, tilts his head. “What, to Jane and Thor? Good god, no, not yet. Those two are, uh, you know, young love. Those crazy kids, gonna make it. I dunno what happens if you come between them when they’re saying hello after a whole four hours apart, but it probably ends in a threesome.”
“Pardon?”
“Well, you see, Cap, when three horny people love each other very, very much...” Tony cackles as Steve, feeling himself flush, holds up his hands. He pats Steve on the shoulder. “Never mind, forget I spoke, erase it from your mind, we’ll have to ease you into it. Which is, of course, what she said. Forget that too. Just - sit down, sit, there’s something I wanna show you.”
Steve sits. As Tony bustles about around him, he spreads his hands over the countertop and can’t help but wonder what anyone does with a kitchen so big.
“Are you a good cook?”
“I chop, I stir, I apply fire. I haven’t died of hunger yet.” Tony glances up from the breadbox and seems to read something in Steve’s expression that makes him snort. “Oh, I see. Hey, size matters. Even you know that, right? Look.”
He lifts a metal box out of the breadbox and slides it across the work surface towards Steve. It hits up against his fingers, so he lifts his hands and tugs it in front of him. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of lock or catch, just a smooth, black panel on the top of the box. Tony leans against the cabinets and watches him study it, hip cocked, ankles crossed.
“Something you said a couple months ago gave me the idea,” he says. “Woulda been done weeks ago, but bureaucracy, you know how it is - what am I saying? No, you don’t. Let’s just say, thank god I already had Stark Phone to paper over the legal cracks. How do geniuses who aren’t billionaires ever get anything done? Seriously.”
“Hard work and good luck?” Steve says, running his hands over the box.
“You give up?”
“I guess I do.”
Tony leans around Steve’s shoulders and presses his thumb to the panel. When he lifts his hand away, Steve catches sight of a bright blue thumbprint which quickly fades away and morphs into a number pad. Tony types in a code, the lock releases with a click and a hiss and he lifts the lid. Inside the box is six rectangular pieces of what looks to Steve like shiny black plastic, packed in two rows of black foam. Tony pulls out the first two and hands one to Steve; it’s heavier than it looks, which doesn’t say a lot, and about twice as thick as his credit card.
“Touch the top left corner,” Tony says. He’s grinning.
Steve taps the corner as instructed - he’s expecting something to happen, or possibly to explode, so he’s not surprised when the rectangle lights up at the press of his hand: beneath his thumb, a picture of his shield rendered in those familiar bright, blue lines of light; in the main body of the rectangle, three rows of tiny pictograms set out like the dial of a modern phone. Steve examines them carefully, then looks up at Tony.
“These are us,” he says.
Tony grins wider. “Tap me. Twice - first to select, second to call.”
The first touch to the miniature Iron Man helmet turns it red; the second, bright white, and then the - the cell phone? Steve supposes - in Tony’s hand starts to beep, the picture of his shield flashing red on it.
Tony taps the shield and says, “Ta-da,” his voice coming from the phone in Steve’s hand almost faster than it comes from Tony’s mouth.
“Communicators,” Tony says, cutting the call with a press of the shield. He bounces on his heels and stares at the - communicator in Steve’s hand. “Neat, huh? Beats the hell out of SHIELD’S tech - I don’t even know what those were made from, Lego? I’m pretty sure it was Lego. These are still just prototypes. Need to Hulk-proof them, coordinate with Thor, don’t think my network reaches all the way to Asgard just yet. They’re only touchscreen now, so you’d have to pull off your fabulous red gloves to press the buttons and that’s exhausting, I’m tired just thinking about it. Who cares about touchscreen anymore, anyway? Even grandmas use touchscreens, I’m just saying. Touch is over, I’m thinking earpieces, voice command. Give me a week and a copy of Neuroscience for Dummies and I could probably whip up an implant-”
Steve lets Tony’s voice wash over him, barely understanding every other word but Tony sounds - beneath the bluster and the wisecracks that Steve is only starting to learn how to see through - as enthusiastic as a kid showing his mom a fingerpainting. He lifts his communicator up close to his face and examines each pictogram: a hammer; a little bow and arrow; a scowling face that can only mean the Hulk.
“Tony,” Steve says. “You keep these in the breadbox?”
“I got hungry.”
“You - right. Well, they’re great. Great prototypes. I’m sure they’ll be amazing when they’re done.”
“Sweet talker. Just for that, I’m giving you the first hands-free device. And a doughnut.”
Steve doesn’t know what that is, but he smiles. He swipes his finger across a row - a geometric shape he knows from Black Widow’s belt buckle; a stylised ‘A’ he doesn’t recognise - and watches the pictograms turn red. A second touch turns them silver and at once every communicator in the box, and the one in Tony’s hand, starts to beep and vibrate furiously, the box shaking with the force of it.
“So that’s what that button does.”
“Okay, well done, that’s enough of that. I’m awesome, they’re awesome, gimme.” Tony plucks Steve’s communicator out of his hands and ends the call. The room falls silent again. Tony, with a relieved sigh, packs their communicators away.
Then he pauses, and tugs Steve’s back out again.
“You might as well keep hold of yours, right? Prototype StarkTech is better than no StarkTech at all.”
“If you’re sure...”
“Of course I’m sure. Come on, come on, take it, my arm’s going numb here.”
Tony thrusts it at Steve and lets go. Steve catches it automatically. He turns it over and over in his hands, grinning as he presses his thumb to the corner and watches the blank screen come to life again.
“What about SHIELD?
“What about SHIELD what?”
“You’ve got everyone on here except them. We have to communicate with SHIELD, don’t we?” Tony pulls a face and Steve shrugs, adds, “It would be kinda dumb having to carry their communicators and yours into battle, right?”
“Maybe we don’t have to communicate with SHIELD.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean...” Tony huffs out a breath, fiddling with the corners of the metal box. “I will never say this again, so listen carefully, but - to give Fury some credit - to give him one tiny iota of credit, he made a good call. This thing. This whole - us - world-saving team thing. But I’m not going to sign my life over to them. They don’t get exclusive rights to point my suit at whatever Fury says needs pointing at.”
“I’m sure Fury wouldn’t abuse his power like that”
Tony looks up at him. “Are you? How sure? And are you sure that’s sure enough? Bastards abuse power, and I’m saying that from a takes one to know one viewpoint.”
“If you’re saying Fury’s anything like you,” Steve says, “then I guess I’m sure enough.”
Tony taps his fingers against the edge of the box. He tugs his communicator out, turns it over in his hands, and then slots it back into place again. Steve watches his eyes dart around the room, never quite landing on him.
“Come on,” Tony says at last, snapping the lid shut. “It’s time to break Thor and Jane up before they actually fuck on my rug.”
He walks away quickly, but Steve follows. He can keep up.
*
Contrary to Tony’s dire predictions, Thor and the pretty woman who can only by his girlfriend - even in this century, buddies don’t sit that close together, surely? - aren’t doing anything untoward. They’re sitting on the couch; she’s reading a science magazine, with her legs slung over his and his cape tugged around her shoulders; he’s got hold of a little robot and is watching its wheels spin in the air. He quickly puts it down when he sees Tony enter the room.
“I saw that, mister,” Tony says, bypassing the couch and making a beeline straight for the collection of desks and computers in the corner. He grabs a cardboard box from one of the desks before moving on to the bar.
Steve clears his throat and says, “Hi, you must be, uh, Ms-”
“Doctor,” she says, looking up. She smiles and climbs to her, jumping over Thor’s long legs. “Dr Foster. But call me Jane, anyway. You’re Steve, right? Should that be Captain Rogers? Sorry, I spend half my life living in a van, chasing storms, and the other half with a Viking, so I’m not great at formalities.”
“Steve’s fine, ma’am - Jane.” He shakes her hand. “So, uh, you’re a doctor? That’s-”
“Don’t say unladylike,” Tony calls from the bar.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Steve tells her, flushing. “Impressive. It’s impressive. What of? I mean, what are you a doctor of?”
“Thank you. And - astrophysics. I’m actually in town for a conference, to present my findings on the bifrost. The bits of it that SHIELD haven’t classed as state secrets, anyway.”
“I’ve got three PhDs, you know,” Tony says, emerging from the bar at last. He’s got a bottle of vodka in one hand and the box of doughnuts in the other. “I don’t like to brag-”
“Yes, you do,” she says.
“-but there it is, me, my three PhDs. I had a phase. Everyone has a collecting stuff phase. Thor, buddy, a gift for you as promised. You ever collect stuff?”
“Only the swords of my slain enemies, to bring them the shame of an improper burial,” Thor says. He catches the bottle of vodka Tony tosses him with barely the blink of an eye. “But now Asgard is a realm of peace and it is I who feels the shame.”
“Have a doughnut,” Tony says, holding the box out to him.
Thor leaps to his feet joyously, the past shame forgotten as he takes a particularly sticky doughnut. Jane, ducking under his arm, grabs one for herself.
“Aye, let us be merry!” Thor proclaims around his pastry. “And then tomorrow we shall rise early from our beds and seek the glories of knowledge with my dear Jane and her comrades!”
Thor, declaration made, beams at the pair of them. Steve glances at Tony, who is staring at Thor with a look of abject horror; then at Jane, smiling with her hand on Thor’s arm, just smiling. Thor’s own smile dims.
“But surely he who has dedicated his life to the Midgardian sorceries would wish to-?”
“Sorry, I, uh, what was it? I save my glories of knowledge for after breakfast.” Tony crams half a doughnut into his mouth and adds, thickly, “And I don’t have breakfast before eleven am.”
Thor turns his hopeful gaze to Steve, who shrugs and spreads his hands and says, “I’d love to Thor, Jane, but... I’m still adjusting to colour TV. The kind of stuff Jane does is like science fiction to me. And anyway, wouldn’t you rather spend the day as just the two of you?”
Tony snaps his fingers and points at Steve. “Yeah, yeah, a romantic getaway. Nothing says I love you quite like a glorious quest for science, right, Cap?”
“Well, I - I don’t know if I’d put it quite like that, but... yes?”
The words are barely out of his mouth before Tony shoves the rest of the doughnut into his mouth and jerks his head towards the balcony door. Steve hesitates, rubs the back of his neck and glances at Jane.
She rolls her eyes, flapping her hand. “Go, go, oh my god. You don’t need my permission, I promise.”
“Aye, take your leave freely. We are all guests in Tony’s dwelling. Except Tony, of course,” Thor adds. “And our host has spoken wisely! Jane and I shall make our quest together in the morning, as we shall surely make many quests together when she is Queen of my realm.”
He leans down, making to kiss her on the cheek, but Jane turns her head and catches him on the mouth. The kiss they share is chaste and lingering. Steve hears a door open behind him. He’s pretty sure neither of them would notice even another alien invasion right now, but he treads softly anyway, following Tony out onto the balcony.
Tony whistles between his teeth as soon as he’s outside. He dumps the box of doughnuts on the low wall and props his elbows on either side of it, hands loosely clasped over the thousand foot drop, and he shakes his head.
“Jane Foster’s going to be Queen of Asgard. Unless those two break up, which - you’ve seen them now, you know that’s not going to happen this millennia. Dr Jane Foster, Queen of Asgard. It’s got a ring to it.”
“It’s something, alright.”
“I think my ego just crawled into a corner and died. Nothing I say to a girl will ever measure up to, ‘hey baby, wanna be queen of an alien realm where the streets are paved with gold and everyone’s really attractive?’”
“I don’t know,” Steve says. He leans against the wall next to Tony. “Apparently you’ve got magic in your heart.”
“There is that. And you’re the star-spangled man with a Hitler-punching plan.”
“I didn’t punch Hitler. How many times...?”
Tony grins toothily up at him, grabbing another doughnut. “I want to believe.”
Steve sighs. He glances at the window into the living room, then back at Tony again. Tony, frosting in his goatee, raises his eyebrows at him.
“Hey,” Steve says. “Where’s Ms Potts - I mean, Pepper gone?”
“Malibu. Company stuff.” Tony waves a hand, knocking sprinkles off his doughnut. “She’s - it’s physically impossible to overstate how much better a CEO she is than I ever was. It turns out there’s actually a buttload of work involved in running a company as awesome as mine! Who knew, right? So she’s - in Malibu, doing that.”
“You miss her?”
“Look at me, I’m practically comfort eating. Did people do that in the forties?”
“Generally, I didn’t have enough food for that. Maybe richer folk were comfort eating behind closed doors. You’ve, uh, you’ve got some in your...” Steve waves a hand at his chin.
“Shit. You saw nothing. Tell no one of this.”
Quickly eating the rest of his doughnut and licking his fingers, Tony tugs the cuff of his shirt down over his hand and wipes at his beard with it.
Steve bites his cheek, not laughing. Ignoring Tony’s curses, he turns and leans back against the wall, crossing his arms. He cranes his neck to look up at the top of the tower, unable to suppress the memory of how it had looked with a portal to another world torn into the sky above it.
He looks down again.
Through the window, in the living room, Jane is sitting on the couch with her magazine held up to her nose. She barely seems aware of Thor, sitting on the floor next to her with his chin on her thigh, but as Steve watches she turns a page and drops her hand to Thor’s head, running her fingers through his hair. Thor gazes up at her with a look of such pure, naked adoration in his eyes it’s visible even from where Steve is standing. He’s not sure it’s possible for someone to look more in love than that.
Tony taps him on the arm. Steve jumps and swallows heavily, wrenching his gaze away from the sight of Thor and his girl. He meets Tony’s eyes and has to swallow again.
“What?” Tony says. “You look like you just saw a ghost kick a puppy. Am I wearing a white sheet and abusing animals here?”
“No, it’s not-”
“Then what?”
“I - had a girl - woman - Peggy,” Steve says, and he’s halfway through the sentence when he realises he’s about to cry. It’s absurd. He clenches his jaw tightly, twists his head away from Tony to glare out over the city and stamp on this sudden surge of grief. It’s absurd, it truly is, when in the last month or so he’s been able to talk about her and think about her again and sometimes even smile at the memories; and now, in front of Tony Stark of all people, his hands are shaking.
“Shit. You, uh.” Tony stammers, breaks off, starts again. “You want the last doughnut?”
“Geez,” Steve grits out through clenched teeth.
“No, right, sorry, ignore me.”
“It’s been seventy years since I saw her, twenty since she passed. Whichever way, it’s long enough to...”
He trails off. There’s a pause, Steve still shaking, and then he feels Tony’s hand on his forearm, the touch gone as quick as it came.
“It’s - it’s okay?” Tony says, as if he doesn’t quite believe his own words. “I mean, I’m sorry. That she’s gone. And that I talked about doughnuts. Who cares about doughnuts? Doughnuts solve nothing.”
“Pass it here,” Steve says. He ignores the sound of his own voice, wrecked and stuffy with unshed tears, and looks back up at Tony.
Tony looks down at the doughnut.
“Really?” he says.
“Yes.”
With a sigh, Tony thrusts the box at him. “Take it. Enjoy it. Happy to help.”
“Thank you,” Steve says automatically, reaching into the box and peeling the lone doughnut away from its sticky cardboard. He sniffs, rubs a hand across his face and takes a huge bite. The frosting is pink and sweet.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Tony run a finger through the frosting stuck to the box and lick it. He forces himself to swallow.
Tony clears his throat. He looks at Steve warily, as if he’s scared he might start crying again.
“I’ve got a communicator app installed in my suit,” he says, “but I have to check how high altitudes affect the sound quality. Need someone to stand on the ground and listen to me talk.”
“No so different from your everyday life, then.”
Tony grins. “I guess not.”
*
Down on the street corner, Steve stops to chafe his hands together. The chill doesn’t really bother him, but he’s still aware of it and he’s used to feeling the cold, especially with arms bare and a thin t-shirt. Rubbing his hands together, he turns around and looks up at the tower at the other end of the street. As the sun is going down and stars are slowly, faintly coming out, the tower’s becoming a curve of light, that big A at the top like the star on a Christmas tree. Steve’s still not a fan of the tower in daylight, but he can’t deny it’s beautiful at night.
He taps the Iron Man helmet on his communicator as discreetly as possible, hiding the small device easily in his hand, and he murmurs, “Ready.” The crowd flows on around him regardless. He’s just another obstruction to get by. Either people don’t recognise him out of costume or they just don’t care; it’s hard to tell in New York.
“Houston, we have lift off,” says Tony, in his ear. His voice has a metallic quality that must be from the suit, but it’s still as clear and as close as if he were talking to Steve through a tin can on a bit of string.
Shielding his eyes, Steve backs up and cranes his neck to watch the light at the very top of tower flare up and launch itself out into the sky. A comet, ascending.
“Hey, I can see my house from here.”
“It’s still missing a couple letters, I see.”
“And you still haven’t told me if you want that aardvark.”
Steve snorts, earning himself a suspicious glance from a woman passing by. Despite the hands-free device sitting alien in his ear - which Tony had insisted is used by ‘corporate douchebags the world over’ and won’t make him stand out in the crowd - he lifts the communicator up to his ear as well. He stuffs his free hand into his pocket and begins to stroll, keeping an eye on the stars.
“How’s it sounding?”
“Crystal clear.”
“Great. Okay, increasing altitude. Let’s see what this baby can do.”
Steve has to duck under some awning, and dodge a group of slow-moving tourists, and there are skyscrapers constantly blocking his view in every direction. When he looks up again, he can’t see Tony. He walks on.
“Testing, testing,” Tony says. “I can see your house from up here. You left the stove on. Everything’s on fire. Still clear?”
“Still clear,” Steve says, ignoring the rest of it.
“Hey, where you up to now? In the seven decade catch-up, I mean. You must be in the eighties by now, right?”
“I’ve reached 1980.”
“Yeah? How’s that treating you?”
Steve pauses. Someone swears at him and he steps neatly into the entrance of a back alley, out of the way. He leans against the wall.
He’s already been in the twenty-first century long enough that he’s picked up on the cultural echoes of the eighties without studying it, without even really meaning to. The little he’s seen already feels like enough: everything seems to become so artificial, so materialistic and money-hungry. So driven in a way that exhausts Steve just thinking about it. He’s met many driven people in his two lifetimes, but mostly - even now - it’s been the drive for survival.
He frowns up at the faint, polluted stars. 1980 hangs above his head like a dividing line, over thirty years of missed time on either side of it. One day soon, he’ll stop learning about what came after his time and start learning about what came before this time. There’s a difference there Steve can’t quite explain.
He went to see a Colonel Pete Jeffries last week, who had been barely eighteen when Steve knew him. Now Pete’s in his eighties and deaf in one ear, with shrapnel in his knee; and Steve’s older than him, technically. He’d told Steve that he’d barely touched a computer in his life. Didn’t understand how his TV worked. Had a grandson, a good kid, who set it all up for him and showed him twice a week how to change the channels. It never stuck. It’s perfectly possible, he’d told Steve, to get by in 2012 without really understanding it and to still be happy. You don’t need to know everything.
Pete has a grandson. Pete has five grandkids, in fact, and two daughters and a son. Pete has a life, a full eighty years of it plus change, and when he dies - which they both know will be soon - he’ll probably die happy.
Steve needs to know everything, or else what has he got?
In his ear, Tony clears his throat. Steve blinks, realises he’s been staring up at the sky in silence and he doesn’t know for how long. His neck doesn’t hurt, because he’s a super soldier, but it feels as if it wishes it hurt.
“I’m not so sure about the eighties,” Steve says.
“Nah, wasn’t my favourite decade either. Skip it. Hey, I think I see you. Wave.”
Steve waves, and spots Iron Man halfway through the motion, a hovering trail of light. He waves again. Iron Man loop-the-loops in response.
“But seriously,” Tony adds, a little breathless. “Skip it. Actually, catch up on all the tech advances, because that’s important. Computing, cell phones, the world wide web, et cetera. You might actually understand some of what I say then and that’d benefit all mankind. Watch Back to the Future, you’ll like it. Avoid everything with shoulder pads, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Avoid me in the eighties too. I mean it. Puberty. Couldn’t grow facial hair. It wasn’t pretty.”
“That’s why you hate the eighties? Because you couldn’t grow your dumb beard?”
He watches. Up in the sky, Tony falls silent and Iron Man flies in another giant loop before Tony responds. Steve suddenly, abruptly, can’t remember what year it was that Howard died.
“Love me, love my goatee. How’m I sounding?”
“Perfect.”
“Great. Let’s call it a night.”
He should know what year Howard died.
“I’m sorry,” Steve blurts out. “About your beard. That was rude of me.”
Tony laughs with a metallic echo. “It’s fine. I’ve heard worse. Pepper’s said worse. Hey, race you back to the bar.”
“You’re in a flying metal suit.”
“And you’re Captain America. Come on, make George Washington proud.”
Steve huffs out a breath, part sigh and part laughter. Overhead, he sees the light flare outwards brightly for a second and then it streaks across the sky, Tony whooping in his ear. He’s fast, but - Steve thinks, as he walks back out of the alley - he’ll have to get out the suit before he can get to the bar and the disassembly line only goes at walking pace. JARVIS can probably work the elevator faster than that if you ask him nicely.
Steve breaks into a jog and then, shoving the communicator into his pocket, breaks into a run.
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
*
The first thing Steve sees when he gets home is a tower of mail on the table.
It’s a normal sight for him, since the Chitauri invasion and the extremely public return of Captain America. At the time, he would have been perfectly content to just give out his address to any gal or fella who wanted to take the time to write him, but Fury had loudly say no to that. His apartment is a secret, leased with a false name, and all Steve’s mail goes through SHIELD to be checked and checked again before he ever sets eyes on it.
He supposes some poor new recruit, signed up to SHIELD for a life of espionage and intrigue, got stuck with the job of redelivering the safe mail to him. He doesn’t know for sure, as he’s never seen them. He’s rarely there. It’s not his home.
At first, he just hadn’t been able to stop moving - as if seventy years on ice had left a surplus of energy unspent; as if the second he let himself stand still, he would sink back down into the sea again. He had broken more punch bags than he cares to count, then saved the world, then got on his bike and drove and drove. If this is the world he fought and essentially died for, and if he’s going to be here forever, then he wants to know every last inch of it - and maybe then, he thinks sometimes on the darker nights - he’ll know if his sacrifice was worth it.
Almost as soon as he began joining the geographical dots, the letters started pouring in. The vast majority of it, he’s sure, is culled by SHIELD, and most of what’s left is fanmail from strangers and children and friendly young women. But sometimes it gets more personal. It seems like there’s a person in every major city who knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone, who had fought alongside him. Sometimes he even gets letters from people he’d known; most of them had been younger than him, seventy years ago. He tries to see them all while he still can, wherever they are, because if there’s one thing Steve’s learned, it’s that you never know who might be dead and gone when you wake up in the morning.
So he’s been out of the state for a week, when he opens his apartment door - shoving it with his shoulder when it jams; if he ever moves out of this place, he sure as heck isn’t getting the deposit back - and he finds his mail on the table. In among all the letters he sets aside for later, there’s a note on paper thicker than his credit card, embossed with a Stark Industries letterhead. It reads, in an unfamiliar hand, ‘Whatever you said to him to make him build something other than comedy robots, thank you - P.’
Steve tucks the letter under the paperweight on his night stand, mingled in with Tony’s laundry note and memos from SHIELD and a picture of his mom he found on the internet. He looks at the calendar on his wall.
It’s been a couple of weeks.
*
The elevator reaches level one and Steve steps out into the Penthouse. He removes his boots automatically, leaving them in their usual spot against the wall, but when he looks up he realises he’s alone. The living room is quiet and empty, a cool breeze blowing in through the door to the balcony.
He drifts into the centre of the room, picking up a few loose sheets of paper from the floor and moving an empty coffee mug off the bare table and onto a coaster. He glances down at the papers in his hand, which have on them Tony’s scruffy signature and a smear of what looks like ketchup. They look confidential - most things in Tony’s home look as if they aren’t meant to be seen by the general public - so Steve leaves them on the edge of a desk, with a pen on top to keep them blowing away.
Hands on his hips, he looks around himself.
“Where is he, JARVIS?” he says.
*
He follows JARVIS’ directions and then, once he’s reached the top of the corridor, just follows the noises: the sound of small explosions; the sound of booming laughter that Steve’s pretty sure he recognises. He’s not surprised, when he pushes open the kitchen door, to find Thor bent over something Tony is showing him, laughing raucously over a noise like the rattle of gunfire.
The kitchen is vast, of course. Tiled floor; marble countertops; a whole, separate square of work surface in the middle of the floor, covered in drafting paper and screwdrivers and what looks like the remains of breakfast, which still leaves enough room around it for a small game of baseball. There are, Steve notices and then carefully chooses to ignore, three ovens.
Tony straightens up and turns around as Steve enters the room, moving aside enough for Steve to catch a glimpse of what looks like a microwave in front of them, although Thor remains bent over and keeps on loudly laughing.
“What is this, Come Visit Tony Stark day?” Tony says.
Steve frowns, moving closer to the microwave and trying to peer into the little window around Thor’s bulk. He has a microwave, but he’s never heard one make noises like this before. “You told me to come by in a couple weeks, so here I am.”
“I did? Hey, I did.” Tony jostles Thor out of the way to take a look at the flashing, green digits on the front of the microwave. “Huh, precisely fourteen days ago. You wrote it on your calendar, didn’t you? You went home and counted forwards two weeks and wrote ‘come visit Tony Stark’ on your calendar.”
“Pretty much,” Steve admits, because it’s true.
“My god, you have a paper calendar, don’t you? What are the pictures of? Apple pies? Eagles? Patriotism?” Tony points an accusatory finger at him. “It’s patriotism, isn’t it.”
“It’s Modigliani, actually.”
Tony pauses, his finger remaining hanging in the air before him. “Sculpture or painting?”
“A mix of both.”
Making a thoughtful noise, Tony slowly lowers his hand. He frowns up at Steve. Steve clasps his hands behind his back and stares stonily down at him. Next to them, the machine gun racket from the microwave finishes at last and Thor, still laughing, straightens up and turns around.
“Captain!” he exclaims. He grabs Steve by the hand and by the shoulder and gives him a full body shake. “Well met! You too are a patron of this noble tradition?”
“Good to see you too, buddy,” Steve says, massaging the feeling back into his fingers. “What tradition? Micro-waving?”
“His beloved Jane-” Tony begins in a sing-song voice, as if he’s telling a fairy story.
“My beloved Jane,” Thor says, “who is as wise and knowledgeable as she is beautiful, has travelled far across the lands of America to attend a meeting of great minds. She explained to me that when your travels bring you to this New City of York, it is a great and noble Midgardian custom to seek shelter with the richest warrior you know-”
“That filthy rich bastard with his name stamped on all the landmarks, was how she put it,” Tony stage whispers to Steve.
“-rather than, ah, ‘forking out on a hotel room the same size and cost of a Lamborghini’, I believe were her words. Of course, I did not wish to offend Tony, so I made haste to his mighty tower to uphold the customs of his people.”
“Right,” Steve says. “Yeah, I guess I am a - a patron of that noble tradition.”
“Of course, even the fortune of our host pales in comparison to the wealth of fair Asgard, where the streets are paved with gold and mead runs like water. But what he lacks in riches, he makes up for in Midgardian sorcery. Behold!” Beaming magnanimously, Thor presses a button on the microwave and, as the door springs open, pulls out a bag of fresh popcorn. “See how the grains have ‘popped’ and yet the magic box contains no flame!”
“I keep telling you, it’s not magic-”
“Geez, you can make popcorn in those things?”
Steve grabs a handful, throwing a few into his mouth at once, and savouring the salty, oily taste. His mom had always hated popcorn, had always complained that it was tasteless and barely filled you up, but most years it was the only snack they could afford, and she tried to treat him to nice things - she had always tried.
He eats the rest of the popcorn in his hand slower, and licks his fingers when he’s done.
“I feel like a babysitter here,” Tony says, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re giant, muscular children. Here, go nuts, I’ve got another packet. Eat popcorn while you watch popcorn. Who needs the movies, right?”
He tosses what looks like a thick, brown envelope into the microwave, smacks the door shut and jabs a few buttons on the side. As the machine begins to hum and the popcorn packet begins to spin, Steve drags a stool up next to Thor and sits down to watch. He has a microwave in his apartment; he’d read the manual thoroughly and pressed all the buttons, and marvelled at how soon after his time it was invented, and then never really touched the darn thing again.
Tony grabs a handful of popcorn while Thor is distracted by the show, shoving it into his mouth and speaking around it. “I’m telling you, it’s not magic. Really, it’s not. It’s just science. Say it with me, okay? Suh-eye-ence.”
Thor shakes his head, looking amused rather than offended by Tony’s patronising tone. Then, through the window of the microwave, the popcorn starts to rattle and generally live up to its name and Thor leaps forwards with a shout, yanks the door off and sticks his hand inside. The edge of the microwave door hits the countertop with a thud, dangling from Thor’s grip, the hinges ripped clean away from the oven.
Steve glances at Tony. Tony’s mouth is hanging open.
“The bag of grain is warmed,” Thor declares, wiggling his fingers in the now-broken microwave obliviously, “and yet the air inside the magic box is not! My father will be most impressed when I tell him of this sorcery.”
“Great,” Tony says. “Good. I probably needed a new microwave anyway.”
Thor looks down and looks surprised - Steve biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the property damage - to see the whole door in his hands. He props it up against the front of the microwave.
“My apologies, Tony. Oft I forget how fragile these Midgardian trinkets are, despite the great power they contain.”
Tony waves a hand, shrugs. Smiling again, Thor pats him on the back, hard enough to knock him forwards and Tony stumbles. Steve sees in his mind’s eye the sharp, hard edge of the work surface rising up to meet him and he reaches out a hand without thinking, grabbing Tony by the collar of his shirt. Tony jerks to a halt, coughs and glares and rubs his neck and bats Steve’s hand away.
“But come,” Thor is saying, watching them mildly as if their scuffle were totally normal. Heck, for all Steve knows, it is in Asgard. “You need not be humble about your talents where you are among friends! Jane has told me much of your Midgardian legend. Have you not magic in your heart?”
He taps his finger against the arc reactor under Tony’s shirt, gently enough this time that Tony doesn’t stumble. Tony takes a step back anyway, frowning up at Thor. He puts a hand over his chest.
“Hey,” Steve says.
At the sound of Steve’s voice, Tony seems to shake himself and he grins, hooking a finger into the collar of his t-shirt and tugging it outwards to peer down at his chest. The blue glow washes over his face.
“Magic in my heart?” he says. “I like it. You should write my next press release. I mean it. If you ever get bored of the heir to an alien throne gig, we’ll put you in a suit and make you head of PR. Stocks would go through the roof.”
Thor laughs. “A generous offer. My father would have me learn more of Midgard, now the Tesseract is returned to us and the bifrost restored to its former glory. He wishes for me to be a diplomat between our worlds.”
“I’ll call my tailor.”
“Asgard is well, then?” Steve asks, and when Thor beams and nods, he adds, slowly, “And how’s... your brother?”
The smile drops from Thor’s face. He sits down on a stool and rests his chin on his hand, cape pooling on the ground around his feet. He looks, for a moment, as grave and as ancient as a statue. After a pause, and a heavy sigh, he says, “Nay, he is not well, he is troubled. There is a darkness to his thoughts and a shadow in his eyes. He has become blind to how his family loves him and that cage, I fear, is stronger even than the prison we must keep him in.”
“Troubled? Oh yeah, sure, he started an alien invasion. That’s troubled, alright.”
“I mean you no offence, Tony. He has wronged you and your planet gravely, and that can never be undone. But Loki... he is young, and Asgard is changing. I too once sought out battle in the stars and thought it glorious, and I was older than he.”
Thor sighs again, sonorously. Helping himself to another handful of popcorn, he turns his head and stares out the window. From this high up, the view is mainly sky, and clouds, and the beginnings of a hazy golden sunset. Somewhere out there, past the sunset and the stars, must be Thor’s home.
“Oh geeze,” Tony says. “Quit looking so sad, the pair of you. You’re making me feel bad about Loki. Christ, we need some vodka and some - doughnuts, I know I have doughnuts somewhere.”
As Tony begins moving around the room, lifting sheets of drafting paper and opening cupboard doors, there’s a faint whirring hum from overhead, as if JARVIS were clearing his throat.
“Sirs, there is a half a box of doughnuts in the living room work station, where Mr Stark left it, and Dr Foster requests use of the private elevator.”
Thor straightens up from his forlorn slump so sharply he almost knocks his stool over.
“Yeah, yeah, permission granted. What, you barely budge for vodka and doughnuts, but you leap out of your chair for Jane? Your priorities are...” Tony pauses, taps his chin. “Sickeningly well-balanced, I guess. Well done, you.”
“Come, let us feast and be merry with your vodka and baked delights. Now is the time to relive our great victories, not dwell in darkness, for Jane has returned to us!”
“Was she gone long?” Steve asks.
“Aye,” says Thor.
“Nay,” says Tony. “What, don’t give me that look, she’s been gone four hours. Pepper’s been gone four days and I’m not making faces like that. Okay, okay, fine, let’s feast and be merry with vodka and Jane. Now go wait for her by the elevator, would you? Go, leave, your enthusiasm is hurting my eyes.”
Thor, from a whole alien realm where people wear amour and talk like Shakespeare, seems to have a better handle on Tony’s sense of humour than Steve’s managed yet. He laughs and pats Tony on the shoulder as he leaps to his feet, and he grabs the bag of popcorn, exclaiming, “For Jane!”
Steve watches him stride away, cape flapping behind him. Maybe it’s Asgardian culture, or maybe Thor really is just that adaptable.
“Do you think he wears that cape everywhere,” Tony says, “or just to the really important microwaving functions?”
He drops down into Thor’s vacated stool and snaps his fingers under Steve’s nose until Steve bats his hand away, turns and says, “Do you mind?”
“Your eyes had gone out of focus. I thought maybe you were slipping into a coma.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
Tony leans back in his seat, legs crossed so casually, propping his elbows up on the work surface behind him and for a moment he just looks at Steve. Then,
“My mistake,” he says with a shrug.
“No, sorry, I’m just- Although it would help if you weren’t so abrasive sometimes.” Steve sighs. He stands, pinches the bridge of his nose and tries again. “Sorry. Not my place to tell anyone what to do out of uniform, least of all my friends. Shouldn’t we go say hi?”
Tony, who is still looking at much Steve too thoughtfully, tilts his head. “What, to Jane and Thor? Good god, no, not yet. Those two are, uh, you know, young love. Those crazy kids, gonna make it. I dunno what happens if you come between them when they’re saying hello after a whole four hours apart, but it probably ends in a threesome.”
“Pardon?”
“Well, you see, Cap, when three horny people love each other very, very much...” Tony cackles as Steve, feeling himself flush, holds up his hands. He pats Steve on the shoulder. “Never mind, forget I spoke, erase it from your mind, we’ll have to ease you into it. Which is, of course, what she said. Forget that too. Just - sit down, sit, there’s something I wanna show you.”
Steve sits. As Tony bustles about around him, he spreads his hands over the countertop and can’t help but wonder what anyone does with a kitchen so big.
“Are you a good cook?”
“I chop, I stir, I apply fire. I haven’t died of hunger yet.” Tony glances up from the breadbox and seems to read something in Steve’s expression that makes him snort. “Oh, I see. Hey, size matters. Even you know that, right? Look.”
He lifts a metal box out of the breadbox and slides it across the work surface towards Steve. It hits up against his fingers, so he lifts his hands and tugs it in front of him. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of lock or catch, just a smooth, black panel on the top of the box. Tony leans against the cabinets and watches him study it, hip cocked, ankles crossed.
“Something you said a couple months ago gave me the idea,” he says. “Woulda been done weeks ago, but bureaucracy, you know how it is - what am I saying? No, you don’t. Let’s just say, thank god I already had Stark Phone to paper over the legal cracks. How do geniuses who aren’t billionaires ever get anything done? Seriously.”
“Hard work and good luck?” Steve says, running his hands over the box.
“You give up?”
“I guess I do.”
Tony leans around Steve’s shoulders and presses his thumb to the panel. When he lifts his hand away, Steve catches sight of a bright blue thumbprint which quickly fades away and morphs into a number pad. Tony types in a code, the lock releases with a click and a hiss and he lifts the lid. Inside the box is six rectangular pieces of what looks to Steve like shiny black plastic, packed in two rows of black foam. Tony pulls out the first two and hands one to Steve; it’s heavier than it looks, which doesn’t say a lot, and about twice as thick as his credit card.
“Touch the top left corner,” Tony says. He’s grinning.
Steve taps the corner as instructed - he’s expecting something to happen, or possibly to explode, so he’s not surprised when the rectangle lights up at the press of his hand: beneath his thumb, a picture of his shield rendered in those familiar bright, blue lines of light; in the main body of the rectangle, three rows of tiny pictograms set out like the dial of a modern phone. Steve examines them carefully, then looks up at Tony.
“These are us,” he says.
Tony grins wider. “Tap me. Twice - first to select, second to call.”
The first touch to the miniature Iron Man helmet turns it red; the second, bright white, and then the - the cell phone? Steve supposes - in Tony’s hand starts to beep, the picture of his shield flashing red on it.
Tony taps the shield and says, “Ta-da,” his voice coming from the phone in Steve’s hand almost faster than it comes from Tony’s mouth.
“Communicators,” Tony says, cutting the call with a press of the shield. He bounces on his heels and stares at the - communicator in Steve’s hand. “Neat, huh? Beats the hell out of SHIELD’S tech - I don’t even know what those were made from, Lego? I’m pretty sure it was Lego. These are still just prototypes. Need to Hulk-proof them, coordinate with Thor, don’t think my network reaches all the way to Asgard just yet. They’re only touchscreen now, so you’d have to pull off your fabulous red gloves to press the buttons and that’s exhausting, I’m tired just thinking about it. Who cares about touchscreen anymore, anyway? Even grandmas use touchscreens, I’m just saying. Touch is over, I’m thinking earpieces, voice command. Give me a week and a copy of Neuroscience for Dummies and I could probably whip up an implant-”
Steve lets Tony’s voice wash over him, barely understanding every other word but Tony sounds - beneath the bluster and the wisecracks that Steve is only starting to learn how to see through - as enthusiastic as a kid showing his mom a fingerpainting. He lifts his communicator up close to his face and examines each pictogram: a hammer; a little bow and arrow; a scowling face that can only mean the Hulk.
“Tony,” Steve says. “You keep these in the breadbox?”
“I got hungry.”
“You - right. Well, they’re great. Great prototypes. I’m sure they’ll be amazing when they’re done.”
“Sweet talker. Just for that, I’m giving you the first hands-free device. And a doughnut.”
Steve doesn’t know what that is, but he smiles. He swipes his finger across a row - a geometric shape he knows from Black Widow’s belt buckle; a stylised ‘A’ he doesn’t recognise - and watches the pictograms turn red. A second touch turns them silver and at once every communicator in the box, and the one in Tony’s hand, starts to beep and vibrate furiously, the box shaking with the force of it.
“So that’s what that button does.”
“Okay, well done, that’s enough of that. I’m awesome, they’re awesome, gimme.” Tony plucks Steve’s communicator out of his hands and ends the call. The room falls silent again. Tony, with a relieved sigh, packs their communicators away.
Then he pauses, and tugs Steve’s back out again.
“You might as well keep hold of yours, right? Prototype StarkTech is better than no StarkTech at all.”
“If you’re sure...”
“Of course I’m sure. Come on, come on, take it, my arm’s going numb here.”
Tony thrusts it at Steve and lets go. Steve catches it automatically. He turns it over and over in his hands, grinning as he presses his thumb to the corner and watches the blank screen come to life again.
“What about SHIELD?
“What about SHIELD what?”
“You’ve got everyone on here except them. We have to communicate with SHIELD, don’t we?” Tony pulls a face and Steve shrugs, adds, “It would be kinda dumb having to carry their communicators and yours into battle, right?”
“Maybe we don’t have to communicate with SHIELD.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean...” Tony huffs out a breath, fiddling with the corners of the metal box. “I will never say this again, so listen carefully, but - to give Fury some credit - to give him one tiny iota of credit, he made a good call. This thing. This whole - us - world-saving team thing. But I’m not going to sign my life over to them. They don’t get exclusive rights to point my suit at whatever Fury says needs pointing at.”
“I’m sure Fury wouldn’t abuse his power like that”
Tony looks up at him. “Are you? How sure? And are you sure that’s sure enough? Bastards abuse power, and I’m saying that from a takes one to know one viewpoint.”
“If you’re saying Fury’s anything like you,” Steve says, “then I guess I’m sure enough.”
Tony taps his fingers against the edge of the box. He tugs his communicator out, turns it over in his hands, and then slots it back into place again. Steve watches his eyes dart around the room, never quite landing on him.
“Come on,” Tony says at last, snapping the lid shut. “It’s time to break Thor and Jane up before they actually fuck on my rug.”
He walks away quickly, but Steve follows. He can keep up.
*
Contrary to Tony’s dire predictions, Thor and the pretty woman who can only by his girlfriend - even in this century, buddies don’t sit that close together, surely? - aren’t doing anything untoward. They’re sitting on the couch; she’s reading a science magazine, with her legs slung over his and his cape tugged around her shoulders; he’s got hold of a little robot and is watching its wheels spin in the air. He quickly puts it down when he sees Tony enter the room.
“I saw that, mister,” Tony says, bypassing the couch and making a beeline straight for the collection of desks and computers in the corner. He grabs a cardboard box from one of the desks before moving on to the bar.
Steve clears his throat and says, “Hi, you must be, uh, Ms-”
“Doctor,” she says, looking up. She smiles and climbs to her, jumping over Thor’s long legs. “Dr Foster. But call me Jane, anyway. You’re Steve, right? Should that be Captain Rogers? Sorry, I spend half my life living in a van, chasing storms, and the other half with a Viking, so I’m not great at formalities.”
“Steve’s fine, ma’am - Jane.” He shakes her hand. “So, uh, you’re a doctor? That’s-”
“Don’t say unladylike,” Tony calls from the bar.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Steve tells her, flushing. “Impressive. It’s impressive. What of? I mean, what are you a doctor of?”
“Thank you. And - astrophysics. I’m actually in town for a conference, to present my findings on the bifrost. The bits of it that SHIELD haven’t classed as state secrets, anyway.”
“I’ve got three PhDs, you know,” Tony says, emerging from the bar at last. He’s got a bottle of vodka in one hand and the box of doughnuts in the other. “I don’t like to brag-”
“Yes, you do,” she says.
“-but there it is, me, my three PhDs. I had a phase. Everyone has a collecting stuff phase. Thor, buddy, a gift for you as promised. You ever collect stuff?”
“Only the swords of my slain enemies, to bring them the shame of an improper burial,” Thor says. He catches the bottle of vodka Tony tosses him with barely the blink of an eye. “But now Asgard is a realm of peace and it is I who feels the shame.”
“Have a doughnut,” Tony says, holding the box out to him.
Thor leaps to his feet joyously, the past shame forgotten as he takes a particularly sticky doughnut. Jane, ducking under his arm, grabs one for herself.
“Aye, let us be merry!” Thor proclaims around his pastry. “And then tomorrow we shall rise early from our beds and seek the glories of knowledge with my dear Jane and her comrades!”
Thor, declaration made, beams at the pair of them. Steve glances at Tony, who is staring at Thor with a look of abject horror; then at Jane, smiling with her hand on Thor’s arm, just smiling. Thor’s own smile dims.
“But surely he who has dedicated his life to the Midgardian sorceries would wish to-?”
“Sorry, I, uh, what was it? I save my glories of knowledge for after breakfast.” Tony crams half a doughnut into his mouth and adds, thickly, “And I don’t have breakfast before eleven am.”
Thor turns his hopeful gaze to Steve, who shrugs and spreads his hands and says, “I’d love to Thor, Jane, but... I’m still adjusting to colour TV. The kind of stuff Jane does is like science fiction to me. And anyway, wouldn’t you rather spend the day as just the two of you?”
Tony snaps his fingers and points at Steve. “Yeah, yeah, a romantic getaway. Nothing says I love you quite like a glorious quest for science, right, Cap?”
“Well, I - I don’t know if I’d put it quite like that, but... yes?”
The words are barely out of his mouth before Tony shoves the rest of the doughnut into his mouth and jerks his head towards the balcony door. Steve hesitates, rubs the back of his neck and glances at Jane.
She rolls her eyes, flapping her hand. “Go, go, oh my god. You don’t need my permission, I promise.”
“Aye, take your leave freely. We are all guests in Tony’s dwelling. Except Tony, of course,” Thor adds. “And our host has spoken wisely! Jane and I shall make our quest together in the morning, as we shall surely make many quests together when she is Queen of my realm.”
He leans down, making to kiss her on the cheek, but Jane turns her head and catches him on the mouth. The kiss they share is chaste and lingering. Steve hears a door open behind him. He’s pretty sure neither of them would notice even another alien invasion right now, but he treads softly anyway, following Tony out onto the balcony.
Tony whistles between his teeth as soon as he’s outside. He dumps the box of doughnuts on the low wall and props his elbows on either side of it, hands loosely clasped over the thousand foot drop, and he shakes his head.
“Jane Foster’s going to be Queen of Asgard. Unless those two break up, which - you’ve seen them now, you know that’s not going to happen this millennia. Dr Jane Foster, Queen of Asgard. It’s got a ring to it.”
“It’s something, alright.”
“I think my ego just crawled into a corner and died. Nothing I say to a girl will ever measure up to, ‘hey baby, wanna be queen of an alien realm where the streets are paved with gold and everyone’s really attractive?’”
“I don’t know,” Steve says. He leans against the wall next to Tony. “Apparently you’ve got magic in your heart.”
“There is that. And you’re the star-spangled man with a Hitler-punching plan.”
“I didn’t punch Hitler. How many times...?”
Tony grins toothily up at him, grabbing another doughnut. “I want to believe.”
Steve sighs. He glances at the window into the living room, then back at Tony again. Tony, frosting in his goatee, raises his eyebrows at him.
“Hey,” Steve says. “Where’s Ms Potts - I mean, Pepper gone?”
“Malibu. Company stuff.” Tony waves a hand, knocking sprinkles off his doughnut. “She’s - it’s physically impossible to overstate how much better a CEO she is than I ever was. It turns out there’s actually a buttload of work involved in running a company as awesome as mine! Who knew, right? So she’s - in Malibu, doing that.”
“You miss her?”
“Look at me, I’m practically comfort eating. Did people do that in the forties?”
“Generally, I didn’t have enough food for that. Maybe richer folk were comfort eating behind closed doors. You’ve, uh, you’ve got some in your...” Steve waves a hand at his chin.
“Shit. You saw nothing. Tell no one of this.”
Quickly eating the rest of his doughnut and licking his fingers, Tony tugs the cuff of his shirt down over his hand and wipes at his beard with it.
Steve bites his cheek, not laughing. Ignoring Tony’s curses, he turns and leans back against the wall, crossing his arms. He cranes his neck to look up at the top of the tower, unable to suppress the memory of how it had looked with a portal to another world torn into the sky above it.
He looks down again.
Through the window, in the living room, Jane is sitting on the couch with her magazine held up to her nose. She barely seems aware of Thor, sitting on the floor next to her with his chin on her thigh, but as Steve watches she turns a page and drops her hand to Thor’s head, running her fingers through his hair. Thor gazes up at her with a look of such pure, naked adoration in his eyes it’s visible even from where Steve is standing. He’s not sure it’s possible for someone to look more in love than that.
Tony taps him on the arm. Steve jumps and swallows heavily, wrenching his gaze away from the sight of Thor and his girl. He meets Tony’s eyes and has to swallow again.
“What?” Tony says. “You look like you just saw a ghost kick a puppy. Am I wearing a white sheet and abusing animals here?”
“No, it’s not-”
“Then what?”
“I - had a girl - woman - Peggy,” Steve says, and he’s halfway through the sentence when he realises he’s about to cry. It’s absurd. He clenches his jaw tightly, twists his head away from Tony to glare out over the city and stamp on this sudden surge of grief. It’s absurd, it truly is, when in the last month or so he’s been able to talk about her and think about her again and sometimes even smile at the memories; and now, in front of Tony Stark of all people, his hands are shaking.
“Shit. You, uh.” Tony stammers, breaks off, starts again. “You want the last doughnut?”
“Geez,” Steve grits out through clenched teeth.
“No, right, sorry, ignore me.”
“It’s been seventy years since I saw her, twenty since she passed. Whichever way, it’s long enough to...”
He trails off. There’s a pause, Steve still shaking, and then he feels Tony’s hand on his forearm, the touch gone as quick as it came.
“It’s - it’s okay?” Tony says, as if he doesn’t quite believe his own words. “I mean, I’m sorry. That she’s gone. And that I talked about doughnuts. Who cares about doughnuts? Doughnuts solve nothing.”
“Pass it here,” Steve says. He ignores the sound of his own voice, wrecked and stuffy with unshed tears, and looks back up at Tony.
Tony looks down at the doughnut.
“Really?” he says.
“Yes.”
With a sigh, Tony thrusts the box at him. “Take it. Enjoy it. Happy to help.”
“Thank you,” Steve says automatically, reaching into the box and peeling the lone doughnut away from its sticky cardboard. He sniffs, rubs a hand across his face and takes a huge bite. The frosting is pink and sweet.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Tony run a finger through the frosting stuck to the box and lick it. He forces himself to swallow.
Tony clears his throat. He looks at Steve warily, as if he’s scared he might start crying again.
“I’ve got a communicator app installed in my suit,” he says, “but I have to check how high altitudes affect the sound quality. Need someone to stand on the ground and listen to me talk.”
“No so different from your everyday life, then.”
Tony grins. “I guess not.”
*
Down on the street corner, Steve stops to chafe his hands together. The chill doesn’t really bother him, but he’s still aware of it and he’s used to feeling the cold, especially with arms bare and a thin t-shirt. Rubbing his hands together, he turns around and looks up at the tower at the other end of the street. As the sun is going down and stars are slowly, faintly coming out, the tower’s becoming a curve of light, that big A at the top like the star on a Christmas tree. Steve’s still not a fan of the tower in daylight, but he can’t deny it’s beautiful at night.
He taps the Iron Man helmet on his communicator as discreetly as possible, hiding the small device easily in his hand, and he murmurs, “Ready.” The crowd flows on around him regardless. He’s just another obstruction to get by. Either people don’t recognise him out of costume or they just don’t care; it’s hard to tell in New York.
“Houston, we have lift off,” says Tony, in his ear. His voice has a metallic quality that must be from the suit, but it’s still as clear and as close as if he were talking to Steve through a tin can on a bit of string.
Shielding his eyes, Steve backs up and cranes his neck to watch the light at the very top of tower flare up and launch itself out into the sky. A comet, ascending.
“Hey, I can see my house from here.”
“It’s still missing a couple letters, I see.”
“And you still haven’t told me if you want that aardvark.”
Steve snorts, earning himself a suspicious glance from a woman passing by. Despite the hands-free device sitting alien in his ear - which Tony had insisted is used by ‘corporate douchebags the world over’ and won’t make him stand out in the crowd - he lifts the communicator up to his ear as well. He stuffs his free hand into his pocket and begins to stroll, keeping an eye on the stars.
“How’s it sounding?”
“Crystal clear.”
“Great. Okay, increasing altitude. Let’s see what this baby can do.”
Steve has to duck under some awning, and dodge a group of slow-moving tourists, and there are skyscrapers constantly blocking his view in every direction. When he looks up again, he can’t see Tony. He walks on.
“Testing, testing,” Tony says. “I can see your house from up here. You left the stove on. Everything’s on fire. Still clear?”
“Still clear,” Steve says, ignoring the rest of it.
“Hey, where you up to now? In the seven decade catch-up, I mean. You must be in the eighties by now, right?”
“I’ve reached 1980.”
“Yeah? How’s that treating you?”
Steve pauses. Someone swears at him and he steps neatly into the entrance of a back alley, out of the way. He leans against the wall.
He’s already been in the twenty-first century long enough that he’s picked up on the cultural echoes of the eighties without studying it, without even really meaning to. The little he’s seen already feels like enough: everything seems to become so artificial, so materialistic and money-hungry. So driven in a way that exhausts Steve just thinking about it. He’s met many driven people in his two lifetimes, but mostly - even now - it’s been the drive for survival.
He frowns up at the faint, polluted stars. 1980 hangs above his head like a dividing line, over thirty years of missed time on either side of it. One day soon, he’ll stop learning about what came after his time and start learning about what came before this time. There’s a difference there Steve can’t quite explain.
He went to see a Colonel Pete Jeffries last week, who had been barely eighteen when Steve knew him. Now Pete’s in his eighties and deaf in one ear, with shrapnel in his knee; and Steve’s older than him, technically. He’d told Steve that he’d barely touched a computer in his life. Didn’t understand how his TV worked. Had a grandson, a good kid, who set it all up for him and showed him twice a week how to change the channels. It never stuck. It’s perfectly possible, he’d told Steve, to get by in 2012 without really understanding it and to still be happy. You don’t need to know everything.
Pete has a grandson. Pete has five grandkids, in fact, and two daughters and a son. Pete has a life, a full eighty years of it plus change, and when he dies - which they both know will be soon - he’ll probably die happy.
Steve needs to know everything, or else what has he got?
In his ear, Tony clears his throat. Steve blinks, realises he’s been staring up at the sky in silence and he doesn’t know for how long. His neck doesn’t hurt, because he’s a super soldier, but it feels as if it wishes it hurt.
“I’m not so sure about the eighties,” Steve says.
“Nah, wasn’t my favourite decade either. Skip it. Hey, I think I see you. Wave.”
Steve waves, and spots Iron Man halfway through the motion, a hovering trail of light. He waves again. Iron Man loop-the-loops in response.
“But seriously,” Tony adds, a little breathless. “Skip it. Actually, catch up on all the tech advances, because that’s important. Computing, cell phones, the world wide web, et cetera. You might actually understand some of what I say then and that’d benefit all mankind. Watch Back to the Future, you’ll like it. Avoid everything with shoulder pads, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Avoid me in the eighties too. I mean it. Puberty. Couldn’t grow facial hair. It wasn’t pretty.”
“That’s why you hate the eighties? Because you couldn’t grow your dumb beard?”
He watches. Up in the sky, Tony falls silent and Iron Man flies in another giant loop before Tony responds. Steve suddenly, abruptly, can’t remember what year it was that Howard died.
“Love me, love my goatee. How’m I sounding?”
“Perfect.”
“Great. Let’s call it a night.”
He should know what year Howard died.
“I’m sorry,” Steve blurts out. “About your beard. That was rude of me.”
Tony laughs with a metallic echo. “It’s fine. I’ve heard worse. Pepper’s said worse. Hey, race you back to the bar.”
“You’re in a flying metal suit.”
“And you’re Captain America. Come on, make George Washington proud.”
Steve huffs out a breath, part sigh and part laughter. Overhead, he sees the light flare outwards brightly for a second and then it streaks across the sky, Tony whooping in his ear. He’s fast, but - Steve thinks, as he walks back out of the alley - he’ll have to get out the suit before he can get to the bar and the disassembly line only goes at walking pace. JARVIS can probably work the elevator faster than that if you ask him nicely.
Steve breaks into a jog and then, shoving the communicator into his pocket, breaks into a run.
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
*