Fic :: Avengers :: A Very, Very, Very Fine House :: 5a/5
A Very, Very, Very Fine House [5a/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
*
This time, there’s no doorman, no secretary, no business folk passing by or catchy wireless tune in Steve’s head, although the door still springs open for him when he touches it, too tired to do little more than mumble his thanks to JARVIS. Of course, this city never truly sleeps, and the lights of Stark Tower never truly go out but it’s darker and quieter than Steve has ever seen it before. The sun will rise, soon.
Steve’s bag strap is cutting into his shoulder. Steve’s head is beginning to ache. He leans his forehead against the smooth, cold wall of the elevator and closes his eyes. Home he thinks, take me home.
*
Steve’s expecting to find the penthouse deserted at this hour, but he steps out of the elevator into dim, warm lights. The TV is on with the volume so low Natasha must be lip reading, while sitting on the couch and quietly cleaning her nails with the point of a knife. Next to her, Clint snores softly, his head tipped back and his mouth hanging open, his fingers knitted together over his stomach.
Natasha turns to look at Steve as he enters the room, and she smiles, satisfied.
“You took your time,” she says.
Steve grins at her, as best he can. His face aches. Everything aches. The last time he felt this satisfyingly exhausted was after they had stopped Loki’s army and he had almost fallen asleep in the sandwich Tony made them all try.
“Isn’t that bad for your knife?” he asks.
She looks down at the knife in her hand, then down at her nails.
“Yes,” she says. “But it’s Clint knife.”
At the sound of his name, Clint’s eyes snap open and he sits up sharply.
“Heard my name,” he says.
“Yes. We were talking about you.”
Relaxing back into the couch, Clint rubs his eyes. He yawns and stretches and swings his feet up onto the coffee table, nudging coffee cups and random screwdrivers out of the way with his toes.
“Hey Cap,” he says around another yawn, closing his eyes again. “We were wondering when you’d show up.”
“You look like you’re adjusting to civilian life better now.”
“This isn’t a civilian nap, it’s a spy nap. Spies need naps.”
He drifts off again. Natasha looks at him with such incredible, open fondness Steve has to look away. It feels too intimate to watch.
“So,” she says at last, turning back to her nails and the quiet flickering light of the television screen. “What did you find?”
Steve hesitates.
“I found... something,” he says. “But I’ll tell you in the morning - uh, later in the morning, I guess. I really need to...”
He waves a hand vaguely, but Natasha nods in understanding, polishing her nails on her shirt.
“Go,” she says. “Sleep. It’s okay, Cap. We’ll still be here when the sun’s up.”
Steve doesn’t need telling twice.
*
Yawning and stretching, eyes screwed shut, Steve fumbles to the side for the light switch as he walks into his room and then he opens his eyes and he stops, with his hand frozen on the wall.
The room is dark, but there’s a pale grey light inching over the horizon, creeping through the gaps between the skyscrapers. It’ll be a while yet before it becomes a real sunrise. Till then, the room is lit with a blueish glow, lighting up the bed, lighting up his shield on the bed. Lighting up the figure on the bed.
Steve lowers his hand.
No matter how dark the room, Tony will always be recognisable, even with his head turned away from the door. His shirt is open, half-off and tangled around one arm, and the arc reactor shines out through the gap. It’s a cold kind of light, for something that keeps the heart beating. Tony could be a corpse in a light this blue. He could be cold as ice.
Treading softly, Steve moves into the room. He eases his bag off his shoulder and onto the floor, and he switches on a bedside lamp. In the dim wash of yellow light, Tony comes back to life again.
Steve picks his shield up off the foot of the bed. It warms something inside of him, to hold it again, to tilt it into the light to check for scratches and find it pristine. Steve rubs the face of the shield gently with his sleeve, then he flips it over to check the strength of the straps. He lowers it down onto the floor next to his bag.
When he looks up again, Tony is still there.
Steve stares down at the back of his head. Tony is barefoot, although Steve finds his socks tossed on the floor at the foot of the bed. One of Tony’s arms dangles over the edge, the other draped across his stomach, wrapped around one of his flat computers. Steve eases it out from under his arm. Moving around to the other side of the bed, he places it on the nightstand next to Tony and leaves his socks folded on top. He looks at Tony again.
Tony’s mouth is slightly open, his face turned towards the window, as though he fell asleep watching the sunset or the stars. With every breath he lets out slowly, the hand on his stomach curls and uncurls in the loose folds of his open shirt. And the arc reactor glows.
Steve crouches down next to the bed. It brings his eyes level with Tony’s face and up this close he can see a smudge of motor oil under Tony’s ear and another on the inside of his wrist. He can see a streak of ink along Tony’s jaw, as if he were tapping his chin with a pen and his hand slipped. Steve can picture it and can imagine Tony’s cursing; he smirks to himself.
Lifting Tony’s dangling arm, he eases it back up onto the mattress, untangling the shirt. Tony’s breath catches at the movement and his eyes slit open.
“It’s fine,” Steve breathes. “Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.”
He can’t tell whether or not Tony’s awake enough to hear him, or even really see him, but his eyes slide shut again all the same and he mumbles something too soft for even Steve to hear, words dying out on a sigh. His breathing evens out again.
Steve looks at him. From this close, he can see every scar on Tony’s chest. He can feel Tony’s pulse against the hand still resting on his wrist.
The light through the window is getting brighter.
“Everything’s fine,” he says again, the words catching in his throat.
He swallows. Tony’s pulse reverberates through his fingertips, so strong and steady it feels as if Tony’s heartbeat could seep straight into Steve’s skin and stay there. It feels as if it’s already there inside of him.
Lodged inside his own ribcage, beating in tandem with his own shaky heart, and Steve wants--
“Oh,” he breathes.
He swallows again, thickly, pushing the heartbeat back down from where it’s sticking in the back of his throat. He lets go of Tony’s wrist and stands, turning to the window and staring out over the ghost of the city while he peels off his jacket and overshirt, leaving them both draped over the footboard. Moving back around to the other side of the bed, he sits down on the edge of it, then swings his feet up onto the mattress.
He should probably find another room for the night - the tower is huge, it would be easy - but instead he curls his toes into the bedspread. He leans back against the headboard, and laces his fingers over his stomach, and closes his eyes.
*
Steve wakes suddenly and for a moment he doesn’t know why. The sun is bright against his eyelids; he keeps them closed, keeps breathing slowly and holding still while his ears do the work, the sound of familiar voices filtering through.
“The time is 8:17 am, sir,” JARVIS is saying.
“News?” Tony mumbles.
“Agents Romanoff and Barton are currently located in the kitchen, sampling the range of coffee. Mr Odinson remains in New Mexico with Dr Foster.”
Steve cracks an eye open, turning his head against the headboard. Tony rolled fully onto his side at some point in the night, his back to Steve now, his legs curled towards his chest and an arm draped over his face.
“Dr Banner continues to make his way north through Peru, coordinates...” JARVIS pauses for only a second. “Coordinates -6.768528,-79.782393. He appears to have become aware of your tracker, sir, and sends his salutations.”
“Mm. Cap?”
JARVIS seems to hesitate, while Steve clenches his jaw and holds his breath, and then, “Captain Rogers is present, sir.”
Tony mumbles something, smothering a yawn with his forearm and flopping over onto his back.
“You’re tracking us?” Steve snaps.
It takes Tony a moment to react. He drags his arm slowly down his face and peers blearing out at Steve from under it. He blinks.
“Hi,” he says.
Steve frowns down at him, while Tony blinks again. He shakes his head and rubs at his eyes with clumsy fists - and then his head snaps up and he jerks upright, whipping around to stare at Steve.
“Jesus - you - why’re you here?”
“Me?” Steve exclaims. “Why are you here?”
Tony looks around himself and lets out a groan, which becomes a yawn. “Pep’s away. Couldn’t sleep without her icy feet kicking me every five minutes, so I went for a stroll.”
“Fine. You’re tracking us,” Steve says again.
“I, uh.” Tony scrubs a hand down his face. “What about Chile? Did you find... stuff?”
Crossing his arms, Steve keeps on frowning.
“Okay, okay. Tracking. Yeah, that’s - that’s a thing.”
“For goodness sake, Tony.”
“Well, how else’m I meant to know where you all are?” Tony spreads his arms and shrugs lopsidedly, looking truly baffled, as if secretly tracking your buddies really were the most logical step when you’re Tony Stark. “Two super spies, and Bruce is busy making hide-and-go-seek an Olympic sport or something, and then there’s you and Thor just bumbling around like America’s Next Top Tourists.”
Steve stares at him and lets out a slow breath. “You could ask us where we are.”
“Imprecise,” Tony says. He rubs his hands through his hair and shakes himself, blinking away the last clinging dregs of sleep as he flops back down onto the bed. He props himself up on his eyebrows and points at Steve. “And who here is without sin? Mister I watch you while you’re sleeping?”
“That’s not even close to the same thing.”
“I coulda been naked. That’s pretty creepy, Cap.”
“You were lying on top of the covers,” Steve points out. “I think I would’ve notice right away if you... had no clothes on.”
“Pervert.”
Sitting up straighter, rubbing a crick out of his neck, Steve watches Tony grab his socks from the nightstand and give them an experimental sniff before he pulls them on.
“Who else knows about it?”
“Well, Bruce now, obviously. Natasha might and if she does Barton might - or might not, girl likes her secrets. Thor... is a man of impeccable character and musculature, but he still can’t tell the difference between Midgardian tech and cinderblocks yet. Give it time, I believe in him. And then there’s you.”
“Are they in the communicators?”
“Hm?”
“The trackers?”
“Obviously.” Tony tugs the loose ends of his shirt together and begins to button it back up, frowning down at his chest as the arc reactor disappears from view. “You’re not cars. Can’t slap a device to the underside of your engine. I mean, I could try, but it sounds messy-”
“Would you get rid of them if I asked you to?”
Tony’s fingers slip and the button pops back out of its hole. He tuts, catching hold of the button and twisting it back and forth between his finger and thumb in silence for a little while.
“I guess. If you asked. You’re the leader, right?” He does the errant button up at last and only then looks up at Steve. “Are you asking?”
Steve has to think about it. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, Tony is still looking across at him, fingers curled motionless in his shirt, still only half buttoned. It leaves framed a glimpse of his stomach, rising and falling with every slow breath Steve watches him take.
“No,” Steve says at last. “No, don’t get rid of it. It’s not... impractical. But I want full disclosure. Make it available for all of us to use, not just you, and show me everything it does. It could be useful - if we do move away from SHIELD, we’d lose that support network.”
Tony smirks across at him. Then, lowering his gaze, he quickly finishes buttoning his shirt and he smoothes a palm down the shirtfront. Steve can see the corners of his mouth still curling up.
“See? You’re coming round to the idea.”
“I’m thinking about it,” Steve says, because there’s no sense in denying it. He can’t deny how good it had felt to be back on a mission again, either. “But it’s still something the whole team needs to discuss. I’m not going over anyone’s heads with this.”
Tony salutes him, “Aye aye, Cap,” and then he leaps to his feet, rubbing his hands together. “Enough chitchat. Chile. HYDRA. What have you got for us? Show me the souvenirs.”
He stares expectantly until Steve swings his feet over the side of the bed, standing up and picking his discarded bag up from the floor in one smooth motion. He carries it over to the desk as he speaks over his shoulder, hearing Tony bound after him.
“There was no base by the time I got there,” he says. “But there obviously had been something going on - it was all ripped out, and just a couple weeks ago, judging by the dust build-up.”
“That’s weird, right? HYDRA weren’t known for being the shy and retiring, flee at a hint of trouble types, right?”
“Right.” With a nod, Steve lowers his bag onto the desk. He takes a step back, glancing across at Tony, who’s bouncing on his heels beside him like a kid at Christmas. “They’re definitely up to something. I found this at the bottom of a mineshaft.”
He motions and Tony leaps forward eagerly, tugging the zipper down, his mouth running a mile a minute while he digs into the bag.
“Sloppy. You think they left it on purpose? If I were a terrorist organisation - and I’ve been accused, in the past. That was an accusation. Come on, guys, I said, I’m working with the military, if anything I’m, what, militia, right? - I’d be more thorough, anyway.”
“I’m not sure it was left on purpose. The shaft had no elevator or ladder, so I had to climb down.”
“Deep, was it?”
“Yes,” Steve says, with a shrug.
Tony - drawing a bundle wrapped in sweatshirts out of the bag - pauses. He glances sideways at Steve, raising his eyebrows, and sweeps his gaze up and down Steve’s body.
“Huh,” he says.
They look at each other for a moment, Tony’s face unreadable. Tony looks away first, his attention returning to the bundle in his hands. He flips back a corner of the sweatshirts; there’s a flash of gunmetal grey before he inhales sharply, quickly covering it up again and dropping it back onto the desktop. He stares down at the bundle as if it might explode and he’s looking forward to the view when it happens.
“Interesting,” he says.
Stepping forwards again, Tony grabs the end of a sleeve and tugs, letting the gun roll out of its layers of sweatshirt and onto the desktop with a thud. It rock gently where it lands.
Something about the sight of it makes the hair on the back of Steve’s neck prickle uncomfortably. It is, at first glance, so thoroughly ordinary - practically a toy gun or a cartoon prop, its appearance is so basic, like an overgrown handgun in a child’s drawing - but it unsettles Steve. And not just because of the HYDRA logo scratched into the side. The whole thing sits wrongly, somehow, lines curved strangely, edges blurred, as if they’re looking at it through water that’s very clear but very deep. It makes his eyes itch.
“That...” Tony trails off, staring, then snaps back into motion to nudge Steve in the ribs. “Pay attention now, Cap, I’m teaching you a vital twenty-first century phrase here - that shit ain’t right.”
He steps closer, bending down over it until his nose is barely an inch away from the surface, but he doesn’t just grab hold of it and start examining it like he would, Steve’s sure, with anything else. That, more than the slightly unsettled expression on his face, speaks volumes.
“Are you seeing this too?”
“I still don’t know enough about modern weaponry yet to tell what looks right,” Steve says. “But this definitely... didn’t look right.”
“You’re telling me.” Tony waves his hand back and forth over the gun, still not touching, muttering under his breath. “Where’s the light source?”
“Pardon?”
“It’s... Where’s that coming from? It’s - glowing, or something. How’d you find it? I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume you don’t just climb down mine shafts for kicks.”
“It’s giving off some kind of energy, I think. Your recon robot picked up on it.”
“Yeah?” Tony glances up at him with a crooked grin and a hint of pride. “Maybe it’s not one for the scrapheap, then. How’d it do?”
“It did good. It was handy. Not so good with stairs, though. Strong enough to fall down them, but it can’t throw itself up them.”
“Stairs,” Tony breathes. “It needs to fly. Our own personal flying monkeys.”
His gaze turns distant for a moment, as though he’s already drawing up schematics and working out equations behind his eyes; but then he blinks and his attention snaps back to Steve, and then back to the gun.
Grabbing hold of Steve’s forearm for support, Tony hops onto one foot and then the other, tugging his socks off again. He pulls them over his hands with a smirk at Steve, saying, “Pays to be cautious. Don’t tell anyone I said that, I’ve got a reputation to maintain. I figure it’s safe with fabrics unless the superduper serum’s rubbed off on your sweatshirt somehow.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Tony picks the gun up with his makeshift mittens and lifts it up close to his face. He squints at it from all angles, turning it over and over, running his fingers along every component and weighing it in his hands.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve held water pistols heavier than this,” he says and he flips it around to peer down into the barrel of the gun.
“Careful,” Steve begins, but Tony ignores him. He’s frowning in concentration and, as Steve watches, he sniffs the gun barrel and then passes the whole gun back and forth under his nose, inhaling deeply.
“What are you?” he mutters.
He gives it one last sniff and he pulls a face, shakes his head, nose crinkling in irritation at whatever’s eluding him. Ducking his head down, he licks the side of the gun.
“Jesus, Tony!” Steve exclaims.
Tony blinks, glancing sideways at Steve as if he’d forgotten he were there. Then he smirks.
“Made you curse.”
“Please don’t lick it,” Steve says weakly. “You don’t know where it’s been.”
“Once was definitely enough.”
Tony runs his tongue along his gums, sucking thoughtfully on his teeth with his head tilted to the side, as though tasting a fine wine. He smacks his lips.
“Tangy,” he declares, before his expression turns serious. He looks down at the gun and then up at Steve, his gaze dark. “This is new. I don’t know what it is... I mean, I don’t know what it’s made of, and I - you know I discovered my own element once, right? Well, rediscovered. Resynthesised. It was kinda a big deal, anyway. I should know what this is and I - don’t.”
Steve watches the muscles in Tony’s jaw shift as it clenches and unclenches. Tony swallows, frowning, and his gaze drifts away from Steve again, back down to the gun in his hands.
“It looks like a gun built by an idiot,” he says. “An idiot who’d never seen a gun before and was going off descriptions given by a different, more idiotic idiot. What the hell? Does it even work?”
His expression is distant, as though he’s talking to himself, but when Steve doesn’t respond he turns and prods him in the chest and says, “Well?”
“I didn’t try. It seemed like a bad idea.”
“That’s your problem, Cap,” Tony says, swinging the gun up and pointing it at the window. “Impulse control. Not enough bad ideas.”
As he takes aim, Steve is already starting forwards with a shout, ready to pull the gun out of Tony’s hands, when Tony himself pauses. Steve grabs hold of his elbow before he can stop himself, and Tony cocks his head to the side, smirking up at him. He lowers the gun again.
“Yeah, yeah, stupid and reckless,” he says. “I guess I like my walls intact. See? I’m growing as a person. I blame you.”
Steve lets out his breath. Tony’s arm is warm - and deceptively muscular, but Steve’s hand can still wrap practically all the way around it, and this close Tony has to tilt his head back to look up at him, eyes hooded, gaze unreadable. When Steve lets go and takes a step back, Tony steps forward, filling the space Steve puts between them. There is an intensity to his gaze that Steve can’t decipher.
“I’ve had plenty of bad ideas,” he says, once the silence had stretched uncomfortably long. “But I always tried to point them at the bad guys instead of at my own home.”
Tony huffs out a breath of laughter. He pats Steve on the chest - sock still on his hand, masking the feel of his fingers but not the warmth of them - and then he takes a step back, turning away from Steve.
“Come on,” he says. “It might not be Nazis, but I know just the wall to fire this at.”
*
In the elevator, Steve lets out a shaky breath. And then another, his heart still hammering. Next to him, Tony hums to himself, fussing with the sweatshirts wrapped around the gun as if he were swaddling a baby. Steve glances sideways at him, but Tony is staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide and distant.
“So.” Steve clears his throat. “Pepper’s on vacation?”
Tony’s gaze swings across to him and he blinks, frowns, coming back to himself. “Oh, yeah, uh. Minibreak. She’s decided I’m old enough to be left home alone so long as I promise not to answer the door to strangers.”
“Where’s she gone?”
“Iceland,” Tony says, turning his attention back to the ceiling. “You ever been? It’s actually not that icy. Someone should report them. False advertising of an entire island, very illegal. But, uh - good air there. It’s good the lungs, right? So Pep’s literally gone for some breathing space.”
“No, I’ve never been,” Steve says. His mouth has gone dry; he has to swallow heavily, trying not to think of the argument that he overhead, trying not to ask Tony why he didn’t go away with her. He controls the impulse. “Is she - gone long?”
Tony doesn’t reply.
At last, the elevator reaches the basement level and Tony steps out, Steve following him to those same heavy metal doors he passed through a week ago.
“We should go to Iceland sometime,” Tony says suddenly, as he presses his thumb against the identification pad. The door slides open and he strides into the antechamber, spinning around on his heel and walking backwards so he can keep talking to - looking at - Steve without missing a beat.
“The team, I mean, all of us. Springbreak. It’d be great. It’d be swell. You know, vanquishing Icelandic evil, bathing in Icelandic springs.”
He doesn’t look back to check the next set of doors will open in time for him - and they do, of course, open in time for him. Tony walks backwards into darkness, his eyes on Steve all the while.
The basement workshop is absolutely pitch black and silent, but as they step inside the first set of lights click on and hum over their heads, triggering the next set and then the next in a domino effect all the way down to the far side. With the Hulk inside, the workshop had seemed merely big; without, the place is cavernous.
“Remind me to give you a proper tour of the subbasements sometime,” Tony is saying, turning around to face forwards again, his voice and footsteps echoing as he leads Steve deeper inside. “This baby goes deep. And the arc reactor, she’s beautiful, you’ll probably cry a little bit.”
Reaching his array of desks, Tony dumps the gun on top of one and tugs a drawer open. He pulls out goggles, ear defenders, thick leather gloves. He’s practically humming with excitement, the sight of it making Steve’s own hands tingle, Steve’s own heart rate pick up.
“Up, wake up,” Tony says. He snaps his fingers at one of the desks. “Vacation’s over, guys, back to work. JARVIS, rouse the chorus. And scan this thing too, while you’re at it. I want a full reading.”
“Of course, sir,” JARVIS says. “As ever, I live to serve.”
“Damn right you do.”
Tony unravels Steve’s sweatshirts, laying the gun bare on the desktop, and a bright beam of light shoots down from the ceiling to the desk. Steve watches it zip back and forth over the gun, weaving a 3D framework of light over the top of it, until movement catches his attention - things on wheels are rolling out from under one of the larger desks, their necks unfolding like strange metal birds.
“Butterfingers,” Tony says. “I want you down the far end. Whatever comes outta this gun, you follow it. Not literally, don’t follow it, use the camera, okay? Try not to fall over,” he adds, as one of the robots trundles past them to the other end of the workshop. “You, stay where are you, film from here-”
“Me?”
Tony whips around from his conversation with his robots, staring up at Steve. He cracks a grin. “No, not you. You stand wherever you want, my permission. This pile of nuts and bolts is called You. Kinda. It was an accident.”
“You accidentally named your robots?”
“I underestimated my robots. They named themselves, based on, I dunno, horoscopes, colour charts, patterns in my vocabulary. Dumbasses. They’re lucky they’re not all responding to liquors.” But Tony says it with something like affection, patting the nearest robot on the back of its long, shifting neck. “Dummy, you’re on fire safety again. I’m trusting you with this. Don’t ruin it.”
The robot beeps at Tony, bobbing its head up and down while Tony, muttering, “Hold still, would you?”, slots a small fire extinguisher into place on its neck. He steps back with his hands on his hips and watches the robot roll away.
“Sir, the scan is complete,” JARVIS says.
“Save, upload. Hit me.”
“Results inconclusive. Immediate readings suggest it is not giving off anything harmful. Materials, unknown. Energy source, unknown. Origin, unknown. Shall I alert Mr Fury?”
Tony snorts. “Over my handsome dead body.”
“You can’t avoid him forever,” Steve says. “He’ll need to know about something like this.”
“He’s already got plenty of HYDRA tech. Remember? You trust him with this one too?”
“I’m not saying let’s just pass this thing over to SHIELD without - without thinking. But I’m not so sure doing this here is a good idea. We don’t know what this thing is or what it does-”
“Don’t you wanna find out?”
Steve hesitates, which is apparently enough of an answer for Tony; he smirks and thrusts a pair of goggles into Steve’s chest, letting go so Steve has no choice but to catch them or let them drop. He catches them.
“I wanna find out,” Tony adds, taking a step back and watching, head tilted to one side, while Steve slowly tugs the strap over his head and pulls the goggles into position over his eyes. “Come on, it’s Captain America and Iron Man, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“We could blow this place sky high.”
“This place is Hulk proof - you know, the Hulk? That one guy who’s stronger than our buddy the alien Viking god? I have literally set off bombs in here. Next question.”
“This could be dangerous,” Steve mutters.
“So stop me, Mr Super Soldier,” Tony says and he waits, with a bright, angry light in his eyes as he stares up at Steve, and Steve - Steve isn’t perfect. Steve’s full of bad ideas. He shakes his head.
Tony passes him a pair of ear defenders, with that same bright look in his eyes, and he says, “Of course it’s dangerous. That’s what we’re here for, right?”
Whatever else he’s planning on saying, Steve slots the ear defenders over his ears and the world goes silent. Tony follows suit and then carefully picks up the gun, keeping his fingers clear of trigger, and he moves away from the desks to stand in the middle of the workshop floor. Steve moves with him, until Tony lifts his free hand and pushes against Steve’s chest, the meaning clear: keep back.
Steve takes a deliberate step back, raising his eyebrows, and Tony nods. He shoots Steve a questioning look and Steve nods back.
Tony raises the gun. He pulls the trigger.
Part 5b
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
*
This time, there’s no doorman, no secretary, no business folk passing by or catchy wireless tune in Steve’s head, although the door still springs open for him when he touches it, too tired to do little more than mumble his thanks to JARVIS. Of course, this city never truly sleeps, and the lights of Stark Tower never truly go out but it’s darker and quieter than Steve has ever seen it before. The sun will rise, soon.
Steve’s bag strap is cutting into his shoulder. Steve’s head is beginning to ache. He leans his forehead against the smooth, cold wall of the elevator and closes his eyes. Home he thinks, take me home.
*
Steve’s expecting to find the penthouse deserted at this hour, but he steps out of the elevator into dim, warm lights. The TV is on with the volume so low Natasha must be lip reading, while sitting on the couch and quietly cleaning her nails with the point of a knife. Next to her, Clint snores softly, his head tipped back and his mouth hanging open, his fingers knitted together over his stomach.
Natasha turns to look at Steve as he enters the room, and she smiles, satisfied.
“You took your time,” she says.
Steve grins at her, as best he can. His face aches. Everything aches. The last time he felt this satisfyingly exhausted was after they had stopped Loki’s army and he had almost fallen asleep in the sandwich Tony made them all try.
“Isn’t that bad for your knife?” he asks.
She looks down at the knife in her hand, then down at her nails.
“Yes,” she says. “But it’s Clint knife.”
At the sound of his name, Clint’s eyes snap open and he sits up sharply.
“Heard my name,” he says.
“Yes. We were talking about you.”
Relaxing back into the couch, Clint rubs his eyes. He yawns and stretches and swings his feet up onto the coffee table, nudging coffee cups and random screwdrivers out of the way with his toes.
“Hey Cap,” he says around another yawn, closing his eyes again. “We were wondering when you’d show up.”
“You look like you’re adjusting to civilian life better now.”
“This isn’t a civilian nap, it’s a spy nap. Spies need naps.”
He drifts off again. Natasha looks at him with such incredible, open fondness Steve has to look away. It feels too intimate to watch.
“So,” she says at last, turning back to her nails and the quiet flickering light of the television screen. “What did you find?”
Steve hesitates.
“I found... something,” he says. “But I’ll tell you in the morning - uh, later in the morning, I guess. I really need to...”
He waves a hand vaguely, but Natasha nods in understanding, polishing her nails on her shirt.
“Go,” she says. “Sleep. It’s okay, Cap. We’ll still be here when the sun’s up.”
Steve doesn’t need telling twice.
*
Yawning and stretching, eyes screwed shut, Steve fumbles to the side for the light switch as he walks into his room and then he opens his eyes and he stops, with his hand frozen on the wall.
The room is dark, but there’s a pale grey light inching over the horizon, creeping through the gaps between the skyscrapers. It’ll be a while yet before it becomes a real sunrise. Till then, the room is lit with a blueish glow, lighting up the bed, lighting up his shield on the bed. Lighting up the figure on the bed.
Steve lowers his hand.
No matter how dark the room, Tony will always be recognisable, even with his head turned away from the door. His shirt is open, half-off and tangled around one arm, and the arc reactor shines out through the gap. It’s a cold kind of light, for something that keeps the heart beating. Tony could be a corpse in a light this blue. He could be cold as ice.
Treading softly, Steve moves into the room. He eases his bag off his shoulder and onto the floor, and he switches on a bedside lamp. In the dim wash of yellow light, Tony comes back to life again.
Steve picks his shield up off the foot of the bed. It warms something inside of him, to hold it again, to tilt it into the light to check for scratches and find it pristine. Steve rubs the face of the shield gently with his sleeve, then he flips it over to check the strength of the straps. He lowers it down onto the floor next to his bag.
When he looks up again, Tony is still there.
Steve stares down at the back of his head. Tony is barefoot, although Steve finds his socks tossed on the floor at the foot of the bed. One of Tony’s arms dangles over the edge, the other draped across his stomach, wrapped around one of his flat computers. Steve eases it out from under his arm. Moving around to the other side of the bed, he places it on the nightstand next to Tony and leaves his socks folded on top. He looks at Tony again.
Tony’s mouth is slightly open, his face turned towards the window, as though he fell asleep watching the sunset or the stars. With every breath he lets out slowly, the hand on his stomach curls and uncurls in the loose folds of his open shirt. And the arc reactor glows.
Steve crouches down next to the bed. It brings his eyes level with Tony’s face and up this close he can see a smudge of motor oil under Tony’s ear and another on the inside of his wrist. He can see a streak of ink along Tony’s jaw, as if he were tapping his chin with a pen and his hand slipped. Steve can picture it and can imagine Tony’s cursing; he smirks to himself.
Lifting Tony’s dangling arm, he eases it back up onto the mattress, untangling the shirt. Tony’s breath catches at the movement and his eyes slit open.
“It’s fine,” Steve breathes. “Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.”
He can’t tell whether or not Tony’s awake enough to hear him, or even really see him, but his eyes slide shut again all the same and he mumbles something too soft for even Steve to hear, words dying out on a sigh. His breathing evens out again.
Steve looks at him. From this close, he can see every scar on Tony’s chest. He can feel Tony’s pulse against the hand still resting on his wrist.
The light through the window is getting brighter.
“Everything’s fine,” he says again, the words catching in his throat.
He swallows. Tony’s pulse reverberates through his fingertips, so strong and steady it feels as if Tony’s heartbeat could seep straight into Steve’s skin and stay there. It feels as if it’s already there inside of him.
Lodged inside his own ribcage, beating in tandem with his own shaky heart, and Steve wants--
“Oh,” he breathes.
He swallows again, thickly, pushing the heartbeat back down from where it’s sticking in the back of his throat. He lets go of Tony’s wrist and stands, turning to the window and staring out over the ghost of the city while he peels off his jacket and overshirt, leaving them both draped over the footboard. Moving back around to the other side of the bed, he sits down on the edge of it, then swings his feet up onto the mattress.
He should probably find another room for the night - the tower is huge, it would be easy - but instead he curls his toes into the bedspread. He leans back against the headboard, and laces his fingers over his stomach, and closes his eyes.
*
Steve wakes suddenly and for a moment he doesn’t know why. The sun is bright against his eyelids; he keeps them closed, keeps breathing slowly and holding still while his ears do the work, the sound of familiar voices filtering through.
“The time is 8:17 am, sir,” JARVIS is saying.
“News?” Tony mumbles.
“Agents Romanoff and Barton are currently located in the kitchen, sampling the range of coffee. Mr Odinson remains in New Mexico with Dr Foster.”
Steve cracks an eye open, turning his head against the headboard. Tony rolled fully onto his side at some point in the night, his back to Steve now, his legs curled towards his chest and an arm draped over his face.
“Dr Banner continues to make his way north through Peru, coordinates...” JARVIS pauses for only a second. “Coordinates -6.768528,-79.782393. He appears to have become aware of your tracker, sir, and sends his salutations.”
“Mm. Cap?”
JARVIS seems to hesitate, while Steve clenches his jaw and holds his breath, and then, “Captain Rogers is present, sir.”
Tony mumbles something, smothering a yawn with his forearm and flopping over onto his back.
“You’re tracking us?” Steve snaps.
It takes Tony a moment to react. He drags his arm slowly down his face and peers blearing out at Steve from under it. He blinks.
“Hi,” he says.
Steve frowns down at him, while Tony blinks again. He shakes his head and rubs at his eyes with clumsy fists - and then his head snaps up and he jerks upright, whipping around to stare at Steve.
“Jesus - you - why’re you here?”
“Me?” Steve exclaims. “Why are you here?”
Tony looks around himself and lets out a groan, which becomes a yawn. “Pep’s away. Couldn’t sleep without her icy feet kicking me every five minutes, so I went for a stroll.”
“Fine. You’re tracking us,” Steve says again.
“I, uh.” Tony scrubs a hand down his face. “What about Chile? Did you find... stuff?”
Crossing his arms, Steve keeps on frowning.
“Okay, okay. Tracking. Yeah, that’s - that’s a thing.”
“For goodness sake, Tony.”
“Well, how else’m I meant to know where you all are?” Tony spreads his arms and shrugs lopsidedly, looking truly baffled, as if secretly tracking your buddies really were the most logical step when you’re Tony Stark. “Two super spies, and Bruce is busy making hide-and-go-seek an Olympic sport or something, and then there’s you and Thor just bumbling around like America’s Next Top Tourists.”
Steve stares at him and lets out a slow breath. “You could ask us where we are.”
“Imprecise,” Tony says. He rubs his hands through his hair and shakes himself, blinking away the last clinging dregs of sleep as he flops back down onto the bed. He props himself up on his eyebrows and points at Steve. “And who here is without sin? Mister I watch you while you’re sleeping?”
“That’s not even close to the same thing.”
“I coulda been naked. That’s pretty creepy, Cap.”
“You were lying on top of the covers,” Steve points out. “I think I would’ve notice right away if you... had no clothes on.”
“Pervert.”
Sitting up straighter, rubbing a crick out of his neck, Steve watches Tony grab his socks from the nightstand and give them an experimental sniff before he pulls them on.
“Who else knows about it?”
“Well, Bruce now, obviously. Natasha might and if she does Barton might - or might not, girl likes her secrets. Thor... is a man of impeccable character and musculature, but he still can’t tell the difference between Midgardian tech and cinderblocks yet. Give it time, I believe in him. And then there’s you.”
“Are they in the communicators?”
“Hm?”
“The trackers?”
“Obviously.” Tony tugs the loose ends of his shirt together and begins to button it back up, frowning down at his chest as the arc reactor disappears from view. “You’re not cars. Can’t slap a device to the underside of your engine. I mean, I could try, but it sounds messy-”
“Would you get rid of them if I asked you to?”
Tony’s fingers slip and the button pops back out of its hole. He tuts, catching hold of the button and twisting it back and forth between his finger and thumb in silence for a little while.
“I guess. If you asked. You’re the leader, right?” He does the errant button up at last and only then looks up at Steve. “Are you asking?”
Steve has to think about it. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, Tony is still looking across at him, fingers curled motionless in his shirt, still only half buttoned. It leaves framed a glimpse of his stomach, rising and falling with every slow breath Steve watches him take.
“No,” Steve says at last. “No, don’t get rid of it. It’s not... impractical. But I want full disclosure. Make it available for all of us to use, not just you, and show me everything it does. It could be useful - if we do move away from SHIELD, we’d lose that support network.”
Tony smirks across at him. Then, lowering his gaze, he quickly finishes buttoning his shirt and he smoothes a palm down the shirtfront. Steve can see the corners of his mouth still curling up.
“See? You’re coming round to the idea.”
“I’m thinking about it,” Steve says, because there’s no sense in denying it. He can’t deny how good it had felt to be back on a mission again, either. “But it’s still something the whole team needs to discuss. I’m not going over anyone’s heads with this.”
Tony salutes him, “Aye aye, Cap,” and then he leaps to his feet, rubbing his hands together. “Enough chitchat. Chile. HYDRA. What have you got for us? Show me the souvenirs.”
He stares expectantly until Steve swings his feet over the side of the bed, standing up and picking his discarded bag up from the floor in one smooth motion. He carries it over to the desk as he speaks over his shoulder, hearing Tony bound after him.
“There was no base by the time I got there,” he says. “But there obviously had been something going on - it was all ripped out, and just a couple weeks ago, judging by the dust build-up.”
“That’s weird, right? HYDRA weren’t known for being the shy and retiring, flee at a hint of trouble types, right?”
“Right.” With a nod, Steve lowers his bag onto the desk. He takes a step back, glancing across at Tony, who’s bouncing on his heels beside him like a kid at Christmas. “They’re definitely up to something. I found this at the bottom of a mineshaft.”
He motions and Tony leaps forward eagerly, tugging the zipper down, his mouth running a mile a minute while he digs into the bag.
“Sloppy. You think they left it on purpose? If I were a terrorist organisation - and I’ve been accused, in the past. That was an accusation. Come on, guys, I said, I’m working with the military, if anything I’m, what, militia, right? - I’d be more thorough, anyway.”
“I’m not sure it was left on purpose. The shaft had no elevator or ladder, so I had to climb down.”
“Deep, was it?”
“Yes,” Steve says, with a shrug.
Tony - drawing a bundle wrapped in sweatshirts out of the bag - pauses. He glances sideways at Steve, raising his eyebrows, and sweeps his gaze up and down Steve’s body.
“Huh,” he says.
They look at each other for a moment, Tony’s face unreadable. Tony looks away first, his attention returning to the bundle in his hands. He flips back a corner of the sweatshirts; there’s a flash of gunmetal grey before he inhales sharply, quickly covering it up again and dropping it back onto the desktop. He stares down at the bundle as if it might explode and he’s looking forward to the view when it happens.
“Interesting,” he says.
Stepping forwards again, Tony grabs the end of a sleeve and tugs, letting the gun roll out of its layers of sweatshirt and onto the desktop with a thud. It rock gently where it lands.
Something about the sight of it makes the hair on the back of Steve’s neck prickle uncomfortably. It is, at first glance, so thoroughly ordinary - practically a toy gun or a cartoon prop, its appearance is so basic, like an overgrown handgun in a child’s drawing - but it unsettles Steve. And not just because of the HYDRA logo scratched into the side. The whole thing sits wrongly, somehow, lines curved strangely, edges blurred, as if they’re looking at it through water that’s very clear but very deep. It makes his eyes itch.
“That...” Tony trails off, staring, then snaps back into motion to nudge Steve in the ribs. “Pay attention now, Cap, I’m teaching you a vital twenty-first century phrase here - that shit ain’t right.”
He steps closer, bending down over it until his nose is barely an inch away from the surface, but he doesn’t just grab hold of it and start examining it like he would, Steve’s sure, with anything else. That, more than the slightly unsettled expression on his face, speaks volumes.
“Are you seeing this too?”
“I still don’t know enough about modern weaponry yet to tell what looks right,” Steve says. “But this definitely... didn’t look right.”
“You’re telling me.” Tony waves his hand back and forth over the gun, still not touching, muttering under his breath. “Where’s the light source?”
“Pardon?”
“It’s... Where’s that coming from? It’s - glowing, or something. How’d you find it? I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume you don’t just climb down mine shafts for kicks.”
“It’s giving off some kind of energy, I think. Your recon robot picked up on it.”
“Yeah?” Tony glances up at him with a crooked grin and a hint of pride. “Maybe it’s not one for the scrapheap, then. How’d it do?”
“It did good. It was handy. Not so good with stairs, though. Strong enough to fall down them, but it can’t throw itself up them.”
“Stairs,” Tony breathes. “It needs to fly. Our own personal flying monkeys.”
His gaze turns distant for a moment, as though he’s already drawing up schematics and working out equations behind his eyes; but then he blinks and his attention snaps back to Steve, and then back to the gun.
Grabbing hold of Steve’s forearm for support, Tony hops onto one foot and then the other, tugging his socks off again. He pulls them over his hands with a smirk at Steve, saying, “Pays to be cautious. Don’t tell anyone I said that, I’ve got a reputation to maintain. I figure it’s safe with fabrics unless the superduper serum’s rubbed off on your sweatshirt somehow.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Tony picks the gun up with his makeshift mittens and lifts it up close to his face. He squints at it from all angles, turning it over and over, running his fingers along every component and weighing it in his hands.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve held water pistols heavier than this,” he says and he flips it around to peer down into the barrel of the gun.
“Careful,” Steve begins, but Tony ignores him. He’s frowning in concentration and, as Steve watches, he sniffs the gun barrel and then passes the whole gun back and forth under his nose, inhaling deeply.
“What are you?” he mutters.
He gives it one last sniff and he pulls a face, shakes his head, nose crinkling in irritation at whatever’s eluding him. Ducking his head down, he licks the side of the gun.
“Jesus, Tony!” Steve exclaims.
Tony blinks, glancing sideways at Steve as if he’d forgotten he were there. Then he smirks.
“Made you curse.”
“Please don’t lick it,” Steve says weakly. “You don’t know where it’s been.”
“Once was definitely enough.”
Tony runs his tongue along his gums, sucking thoughtfully on his teeth with his head tilted to the side, as though tasting a fine wine. He smacks his lips.
“Tangy,” he declares, before his expression turns serious. He looks down at the gun and then up at Steve, his gaze dark. “This is new. I don’t know what it is... I mean, I don’t know what it’s made of, and I - you know I discovered my own element once, right? Well, rediscovered. Resynthesised. It was kinda a big deal, anyway. I should know what this is and I - don’t.”
Steve watches the muscles in Tony’s jaw shift as it clenches and unclenches. Tony swallows, frowning, and his gaze drifts away from Steve again, back down to the gun in his hands.
“It looks like a gun built by an idiot,” he says. “An idiot who’d never seen a gun before and was going off descriptions given by a different, more idiotic idiot. What the hell? Does it even work?”
His expression is distant, as though he’s talking to himself, but when Steve doesn’t respond he turns and prods him in the chest and says, “Well?”
“I didn’t try. It seemed like a bad idea.”
“That’s your problem, Cap,” Tony says, swinging the gun up and pointing it at the window. “Impulse control. Not enough bad ideas.”
As he takes aim, Steve is already starting forwards with a shout, ready to pull the gun out of Tony’s hands, when Tony himself pauses. Steve grabs hold of his elbow before he can stop himself, and Tony cocks his head to the side, smirking up at him. He lowers the gun again.
“Yeah, yeah, stupid and reckless,” he says. “I guess I like my walls intact. See? I’m growing as a person. I blame you.”
Steve lets out his breath. Tony’s arm is warm - and deceptively muscular, but Steve’s hand can still wrap practically all the way around it, and this close Tony has to tilt his head back to look up at him, eyes hooded, gaze unreadable. When Steve lets go and takes a step back, Tony steps forward, filling the space Steve puts between them. There is an intensity to his gaze that Steve can’t decipher.
“I’ve had plenty of bad ideas,” he says, once the silence had stretched uncomfortably long. “But I always tried to point them at the bad guys instead of at my own home.”
Tony huffs out a breath of laughter. He pats Steve on the chest - sock still on his hand, masking the feel of his fingers but not the warmth of them - and then he takes a step back, turning away from Steve.
“Come on,” he says. “It might not be Nazis, but I know just the wall to fire this at.”
*
In the elevator, Steve lets out a shaky breath. And then another, his heart still hammering. Next to him, Tony hums to himself, fussing with the sweatshirts wrapped around the gun as if he were swaddling a baby. Steve glances sideways at him, but Tony is staring up at the ceiling, eyes wide and distant.
“So.” Steve clears his throat. “Pepper’s on vacation?”
Tony’s gaze swings across to him and he blinks, frowns, coming back to himself. “Oh, yeah, uh. Minibreak. She’s decided I’m old enough to be left home alone so long as I promise not to answer the door to strangers.”
“Where’s she gone?”
“Iceland,” Tony says, turning his attention back to the ceiling. “You ever been? It’s actually not that icy. Someone should report them. False advertising of an entire island, very illegal. But, uh - good air there. It’s good the lungs, right? So Pep’s literally gone for some breathing space.”
“No, I’ve never been,” Steve says. His mouth has gone dry; he has to swallow heavily, trying not to think of the argument that he overhead, trying not to ask Tony why he didn’t go away with her. He controls the impulse. “Is she - gone long?”
Tony doesn’t reply.
At last, the elevator reaches the basement level and Tony steps out, Steve following him to those same heavy metal doors he passed through a week ago.
“We should go to Iceland sometime,” Tony says suddenly, as he presses his thumb against the identification pad. The door slides open and he strides into the antechamber, spinning around on his heel and walking backwards so he can keep talking to - looking at - Steve without missing a beat.
“The team, I mean, all of us. Springbreak. It’d be great. It’d be swell. You know, vanquishing Icelandic evil, bathing in Icelandic springs.”
He doesn’t look back to check the next set of doors will open in time for him - and they do, of course, open in time for him. Tony walks backwards into darkness, his eyes on Steve all the while.
The basement workshop is absolutely pitch black and silent, but as they step inside the first set of lights click on and hum over their heads, triggering the next set and then the next in a domino effect all the way down to the far side. With the Hulk inside, the workshop had seemed merely big; without, the place is cavernous.
“Remind me to give you a proper tour of the subbasements sometime,” Tony is saying, turning around to face forwards again, his voice and footsteps echoing as he leads Steve deeper inside. “This baby goes deep. And the arc reactor, she’s beautiful, you’ll probably cry a little bit.”
Reaching his array of desks, Tony dumps the gun on top of one and tugs a drawer open. He pulls out goggles, ear defenders, thick leather gloves. He’s practically humming with excitement, the sight of it making Steve’s own hands tingle, Steve’s own heart rate pick up.
“Up, wake up,” Tony says. He snaps his fingers at one of the desks. “Vacation’s over, guys, back to work. JARVIS, rouse the chorus. And scan this thing too, while you’re at it. I want a full reading.”
“Of course, sir,” JARVIS says. “As ever, I live to serve.”
“Damn right you do.”
Tony unravels Steve’s sweatshirts, laying the gun bare on the desktop, and a bright beam of light shoots down from the ceiling to the desk. Steve watches it zip back and forth over the gun, weaving a 3D framework of light over the top of it, until movement catches his attention - things on wheels are rolling out from under one of the larger desks, their necks unfolding like strange metal birds.
“Butterfingers,” Tony says. “I want you down the far end. Whatever comes outta this gun, you follow it. Not literally, don’t follow it, use the camera, okay? Try not to fall over,” he adds, as one of the robots trundles past them to the other end of the workshop. “You, stay where are you, film from here-”
“Me?”
Tony whips around from his conversation with his robots, staring up at Steve. He cracks a grin. “No, not you. You stand wherever you want, my permission. This pile of nuts and bolts is called You. Kinda. It was an accident.”
“You accidentally named your robots?”
“I underestimated my robots. They named themselves, based on, I dunno, horoscopes, colour charts, patterns in my vocabulary. Dumbasses. They’re lucky they’re not all responding to liquors.” But Tony says it with something like affection, patting the nearest robot on the back of its long, shifting neck. “Dummy, you’re on fire safety again. I’m trusting you with this. Don’t ruin it.”
The robot beeps at Tony, bobbing its head up and down while Tony, muttering, “Hold still, would you?”, slots a small fire extinguisher into place on its neck. He steps back with his hands on his hips and watches the robot roll away.
“Sir, the scan is complete,” JARVIS says.
“Save, upload. Hit me.”
“Results inconclusive. Immediate readings suggest it is not giving off anything harmful. Materials, unknown. Energy source, unknown. Origin, unknown. Shall I alert Mr Fury?”
Tony snorts. “Over my handsome dead body.”
“You can’t avoid him forever,” Steve says. “He’ll need to know about something like this.”
“He’s already got plenty of HYDRA tech. Remember? You trust him with this one too?”
“I’m not saying let’s just pass this thing over to SHIELD without - without thinking. But I’m not so sure doing this here is a good idea. We don’t know what this thing is or what it does-”
“Don’t you wanna find out?”
Steve hesitates, which is apparently enough of an answer for Tony; he smirks and thrusts a pair of goggles into Steve’s chest, letting go so Steve has no choice but to catch them or let them drop. He catches them.
“I wanna find out,” Tony adds, taking a step back and watching, head tilted to one side, while Steve slowly tugs the strap over his head and pulls the goggles into position over his eyes. “Come on, it’s Captain America and Iron Man, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“We could blow this place sky high.”
“This place is Hulk proof - you know, the Hulk? That one guy who’s stronger than our buddy the alien Viking god? I have literally set off bombs in here. Next question.”
“This could be dangerous,” Steve mutters.
“So stop me, Mr Super Soldier,” Tony says and he waits, with a bright, angry light in his eyes as he stares up at Steve, and Steve - Steve isn’t perfect. Steve’s full of bad ideas. He shakes his head.
Tony passes him a pair of ear defenders, with that same bright look in his eyes, and he says, “Of course it’s dangerous. That’s what we’re here for, right?”
Whatever else he’s planning on saying, Steve slots the ear defenders over his ears and the world goes silent. Tony follows suit and then carefully picks up the gun, keeping his fingers clear of trigger, and he moves away from the desks to stand in the middle of the workshop floor. Steve moves with him, until Tony lifts his free hand and pushes against Steve’s chest, the meaning clear: keep back.
Steve takes a deliberate step back, raising his eyebrows, and Tony nods. He shoots Steve a questioning look and Steve nods back.
Tony raises the gun. He pulls the trigger.
Part 5b
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
*