Fic :: Avengers :: A Very, Very, Very Fine House :: 5b/5
A Very, Very, Very Fine House [5b/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
*
Part 5a
The shot rings out with a boom like they’re standing in the middle of a thunder cloud, even with the ear defenders in place. There’s a flash of white light that envelops Steve’s vision, forcing his eyes to squeeze shut. The light echoes behind his eyelids and he feels the air ripple with a rush of movement, feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Squinting through his eyelashes, Steve makes out a great ball of energy streaming from the gun barrel, trailing fiery blues and reds in a comet’s tail and expanding, expanding as it rushes across the room.
Steve feels - doesn’t hear; even without these ear defenders he wouldn’t be able to hear it over the great rushing movement - Tony tense up and suck in a sharp breath, stepping back until his shoulders hit Steve’s chest and he has to stop, gun still held out high in front of him, shining in the light still shooting out of it.
The ball of energy smacks into the far wall with such force it reverberates through the floor all the way back to where they’re standing, and white light licks up the walls from floor to ceiling. The ripple in the air picks up until suddenly wind is rushing past them, away from the light - or out of the light, Steve can’t tell, the wind so strong he has to grit his teeth and grab hold of Tony’s arm - until the light has covered the entirety of the far wall and begins to creep out over the edges, growing bright and brighter, and Steve has to close his eyes again.
Just as suddenly as the wind began, it starts to blow in the opposite direction, back towards the wall of light and energy which is shrinking in on itself. Tony shouts something Steve can’t hear, yanking the gun down so the stream of light breaks off at last, the tail end of it whipping away from the gun barrel as it’s pulled towards the wall. Tony shakes Steve’s hand off his arm and starts to run towards the light, already half the size it was, spiralling inwards like a whirlpool.
“What are you-? Tony!” Steve shouts, running after him. The wind drags him forwards. Papers are blowing in the air, screwdrivers rolling across the floor, the light is twenty feet away and ten feet across - six - three - one foot - an inch -
With a crack that rings through the workshop, the very last speck of light disappears. The wind cuts out immediately, papers dropping down onto the floor. Tony skids to a halt. He tugs off his goggles and ear defenders and tosses them onto the floor.
“God - damn - it,” he shouts, smacking his hand against the wall.
Right over Tony’s head, there’s a dent in the wall where the energy first struck it, three feet across and crumpled at the edges as if it were only cheap drywall. Steve eases off his own safety gear, letting it drop to the ground as he steps forward for a closer look. He presses his own palm to the wall.
“It’s stronger than the Hulk,” he says.
“What?” Tony snaps.
“Look at this. You said this place was Hulk proofed. That - whatever the heck that was, it’s stronger.” Steve reaches over Tony and gives the crumpled edge of the dent a tug but even he can’t budge it. “Even Loki couldn’t have done this.”
Tony looks up at Steve over his shoulder, his gaze passing over Steve’s face and following the line of Steve’s arm around and back up to that hole in the wall. He runs his fingers along one of the tiny cracks spidering out from it and he shakes his head.
“That’s not important.”
“Are you crazy? Of course it’s important. I’m having a hard time coming up with something more important than a weapon stronger than our strongest fella.”
“It’s not a weapon.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a - it’s a vehicle. It’s transport. It’s disguised. Didn’t you see the stars, Cap? That was the beginnings of a portal.”
It takes Steve a moment to process.
“No,” he says. “No. It’s not - You saw stars in there?”
At Tony’s wordless nod, Steve groans and rests his forehead on his forearm, up against the wall. He’s aware, peripherally, of Tony pacing back and forth behind him. Steve closes his eyes and breathes out slowly.
“Are you sure? Are you certain? Because if you’re right... if HYDRA have the technology to open portals we’re in for a whole heap of trouble.”
“I’m sure,” Tony says. “Certain. Completely, one hundred per cent. It felt like - like the other one.”
“The other-” Steve lifts his head from his arm, looking across at Tony, down at the gun - the portal opener - still hanging in Tony’s hands, then up at the hole in the wall. “What the heck were you doing just now?”
“What?”
Steve pushes away from the wall, turning around. “What were you thinking, Tony? This thing was a portal, you knew this thing was a portal and, and you went running at it? Alone?”
“I - wanted to see-” Tony begins, eyes wide, but Steve cuts him off.
“What, you were just planning on jumping inside into goodness knows where?”
Tony goes still last, and his expression shutters down, his chin lifts up. “Like you wouldn’t have jumped right into that mineshaft solo if HYDRA and the Nazis had been playing Twister at the bottom.”
“I would have called back up if there’d been something serious,” Steve says. “I would’ve called Bruce back, or Thor, he can fly. So can you. I would’ve called you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Stop being so goddamn flippant!” Steve shouts.
His breath catches in his throat and his hand curls into a fist, slamming sideways into the wall. Tony flinches back a step. Steve feels something crunch beneath the skin, but the wall doesn’t give, the paint doesn’t even scratch, there’s only so much Captain America can do.
Chest heaving, Steve grabs hold of his injured hand and hisses. The pain is sharp and bright, but it won’t stay. He’ll wake up in the morning and it’ll be gone again.
“Is this what the twenty-first century is? Always doubting what people say, never being sincere? What the hell happened to you people?”
“You want sincere?” Tony spits, a full six feet away now, though Steve never saw him move. “Okay, sure. Dad’s favourite - hell, Dad’s only bedtime story was that one special time he flew out over enemy territory and watched you jump outta his plane. Sure, maybe Captain America’s the bravest fucking hero this country will ever know, but believe me when I sincerely say Captain Rogers is just as reckless and goddamn stupid as the rest of us.”
“You can’t compare-”
“I just did.”
Steve’s fists clench and pain jolts through his hand again, making him wince. Tony’s gaze jerks down to his knuckles for a second before it snaps back up to his face again, Tony’s eyes wide and bright. He stands his ground like he’s made of iron. His feet are bare, Steve realises with a jolt that leaves him almost as breathless as the pain in his hand.
“You’re right,” he says, and Tony snorts. “I’ve done reckless things. I’ve fought alone when I should’ve waited for back up, and I can’t say I regret any of it, and I don’t want to argue about it with you.”
“You started it.”
Steve takes a deep breath. He cradles his hand. He stares down at Tony’s bare, incongruous toes, poking out under the ends of his jeans. “Tony, everyone and everything I’ve ever known or loved or, heck, even just plain hated is gone. Dead and gone. Do you - do you get that? Do you understand how damn lonely that is? I’m done fighting alone. I’m sick of fighting alone. Right now, I could really go for some back up.”
He lets his breath out and leans back against the wall. He doesn’t look up, waiting for Tony to speak, and then when Tony doesn’t speak he adds, softer, “Why do you want this team so bad if you’re going to... to throw yourself at portals? That’s not how a team works.”
“You weren’t complaining last time,” Tony says, but although the words are harsh there’s a note of uncertainty. Steve lifts his head. Tony is still standing six feet away, body tense as if he is the one with his back to a wall, deciding whether to run or fight.
“No,” Steve agrees. “But I don’t know if I could stand to watch you do it again. Please... please don’t make me.”
He has to pause, to clear his throat, before he can continue.
“Why do you want this team so much, Tony?”
Tony flinches slightly, dropping his gaze and taking another step back, but he goes still again when Steve holds up his uninjured hand.
“Please. Argument over, okay? Truce? But if HYDRA have something big planned that needs stopping, I need to know whether I’m doing it SHIELD or with you.”
Still looking away, Tony says, “Me, of course.”
“But why?” Steve says. “You said yourself you weren’t a teamplayer. Nobody would have been offended if you took a step back from this after New York.”
There’s a pause. Tony shifts back and forth on his feet, looking around at the mess left in the portal’s wake. His gaze finally settles on the robot with the camera, which had somehow managed to stay upright in the chaos, and Tony stands and stares at it.
“I... I’m bored,” Tony begins, before cutting himself off with a wave of his hand, shaking his head. “Wait, no, that didn’t come out right. I’m not saying I wanna make you all dance for me just because I’m bored. I’m not that much of an asshole.”
He lets outs a frustrated breath, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “Let me - let me try this again. Take two.”
He falls silent. He presses the heels of his palms to forehead and twists his fingers tightly in his hair. Steve waits, and waits.
“Forget it,” Steve says at last. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. It’s fine. You need to talk to Fury about all this anyway, maybe you should take it up with him instead.”
He straightens up, pushing himself away from the wall. The exit is all the way on the other side of the workshop, but Steve focuses on the distant grey rectangle of the doors. He pauses when he walks past Tony, but Tony has his back to him, eyes shut, face still half-hidden by his hands, and Steve begins to turn away.
“I don’t want to take it up with Fury,” Tony blurts out. “Christ, are you kidding? Can you imagine me and him having a heart to heart? Someone would lose an eye and, you know, there’s already one too few between us.”
Steve stops. He looks back at Tony again, who has dropped his arms. His hands hang by his sides, fingers curling and uncurling. He shrugs slightly when he meets Steve’s gaze and he says, “Steve. Come on, I - I’m trying to... I’m trying-”
Shaking his head, Tony turns on his heel and walks away from Steve, but Steve can barely process the wash of disappointment before Tony reaches the wall and turns around again. He leans back against it and slides down to sit on the ground, with his legs sprawled out in front of him and the portal gun placed gently on the floor next to him.
He pats the space on the other side and says, again, quietly, “Steve.”
“Careful,” Steve says. “If you keep on calling me by my name, you won’t be able to manipulate me with it for much longer.”
He sits down next to Tony, crossing ankles and folding his arms, and Tony rocks his head back against the wall to look across at him, mouth quirking up at the edges. He doesn’t move his hand.
“Save the Steve for special occasions,” Tony says. “Got it.”
Steve can feel the very tips of Tony’s fingers brushing against his thigh, but Tony doesn’t move his hand. And Steve doesn’t move his leg. He’s waiting for something to happen. He’s waiting for something, anyway.
“I died up there,” Tony says suddenly, eyes never leaving Steve’s face. “I was actually dead. Crazy, I know. In space. In a whole alien universe. My heart stopped and I was - alone. I was going to die alone, that was it, nothing to be done.”
“Must’ve been scary,” Steve says.
Tony huffs out a breath of laughter, knocking his knuckles against the seam of Steve’s jeans. “Don’t get me wrong, it was fucking terrifying, but I’ve had more near death experiences than you’ve had - apple pie. Freedom fries.”
“I’ve never had freedom fries,” Steve murmurs automatically, but Tony barely seems to hear him, although his gaze drifts down to watch Steve’s mouth as it moves.
“Dying alone in space was the least scary option, because I wanted it to happen. Not like a death wish, been there, done that, bought the race car. I mean, I...”
“Knew you were gonna die doing the most important thing you’d ever get to do?”
“Yeah, that. I’d accepted it. Three minutes is a helluva long time to come to terms with your own impending doom when you’re giving a nuclear missile a piggyback. Never accepted it before. Always told myself I’d never go down without a fight. That’s what this is, right?”
Tony pulls his hand away at last. He raps his knuckles against the arc reactor through his shirt, and then spreads his hand over it. He looks down at the back of his hand, the faint blue light between his fingers.
“Tony Stark refuses to die,” he says, with a smirk. “I’m like a cockroach. I - One time, couple years ago, I thought I really had accepted my fate. Gave Pep the company, took care of Rhodey, ready to fistbump my maker, the full shebang. But even then I guess I believed something would happen, and it did. That was great, I’m not knocking that. Happiest I’ve ever been to have Black Widow stab me in the neck.”
Tony lowers his hand again, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. He stares down at his feet.
“Three minutes is a long damn time to spend with a nuclear missile. I was ready for it. Hell, I was kinda glad, I think. Shit scared and - and a whole load of other things, but glad, cause I knew it was gonna work. My one good deed. Nobody could call Tony Stark flying a bomb into space and dying alone selfish, right?”
“They’d be a liar if they did.”
“There were stars,” Tony murmurs. “There were whole other worlds out there. I could see-- And then I closed my eyes. Died. Woke up. Bam. What do I - This is the second chance, right? Everything else was just... just practice runs, 1.5 chances. Nothing seems - What do I do? How do you move on from your own freaking self-sacrificing death?”
He lapses into silence. Steve lets it linger for a little while and then he knocks his feet sideways against Tony’s until Tony snaps out of his reverie. He lifts his head, looks up at Steve, something wide open in his expression.
“It takes time,” Steve says. “It’s taking me seventy years and counting.”
Tony smiles at that, softly, as though it’s a private joke. Which, Steve realises with a flush of warmth, it is.
“Yeah, I guess you’re kinda the world expert on... things to do Denver when you’re not as dead as you thought.”
“This is New York,” Steve says, before he can stop himself, and adds, ruefully, “Reference, right?”
“Got it in one.” Tony knocks his bare feet into Steve’s. He leaves them there, resting against Steve’s ankles. “I keep building these dumb little robots and, yeah, the clean energy breakthroughs we’re making are terrific and there’s a deal coming up with Wakanda that’s going to be great, but I’m bored. It’s boring. None of it feels like what I’m meant to be doing with my afterlife.”
“Since when have you ever done what you’re meant to do?”
“Yeah, well, maybe now’s the time to start.”
Tony picks the portal gun back up off the floor and lays it down across his lap, running his hands back and forth over the barrel of the gun. He prises at a panel in the side, almost absentmindedly, fingers blunt in his leather gloves.
“I’m not saying I believe in any higher power Thor couldn’t take in a fistfight,” he says. “Or fate, or destiny, or that I’m some kind of chosen one - even I’m not that egotistical. But a guy evades certain death enough times, he starts wondering if there’s a reason.”
“The Avengers?”
“Seems like a pretty good reason to me.”
“I can understand that,” Steve says slowly. “Needing a reason to still be here. For it to be worth it.”
“And is it? Worth it?”
He watches Tony’s hands toying nervously with the portal gun. The sight of the HYDRA logo, etched clumsily into the side as if it were an afterthought, still makes something lurch sickly in his stomach, as much rage as it is grief; and the wall against his back is cold and hard; and he’s god only knows how deep underground. But he glances sideways at Tony, who is watching Steve out of the corner of his eye, and Steve lets out the breath he’s been holding for upwards of seventy years.
“Maybe,” he says. “I sure hope so.”
Tony nods. His face is still mostly turned away from Steve, towards the exit, only the dark brown corner of his eye visible through darker lashes. He glances down into his lap, and then sideways into Steve’s lap, and then he reaches out a hand towards him.
Steve tenses up automatically, until pain shoots up his arm and he remembers.
“You did a number on yourself here, buddy,” Tony says, lifting up Steve’s hand. His grip is delicate despite the leather gloves. “Hold on.”
Shoving the portal gun back onto the floor, Tony tugs his gloves off with his teeth, chucks them to the side and takes careful hold of Steve’s hand again. Tony’s fingers are warm and calloused and precise, and he slips them under Steve’s palm.
“Squeeze.”
“It’s fine, really,” Steve says, but Tony shoots him a look and, rolling his eyes, Steve grips Tony’s hand as best he can, with a hiss and a wince.
“Not too bad. You’ll be back to punching Hitler again in no time.”
Steve chuckles, letting Tony slip his fingers back out of Steve’s grip and take hold of his hand again, gently wiggling each finger and prodding one of the bruises. It already hurts less than it did, the swelling going down, the bruising rising up.
“It’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”
“You’re gonna have to hurry up if you want Black Widow to kiss it better, then.”
“What? No, I don’t - want -”
“Or Barton?” Tony smirks. “Probably less high risk, knowing him. And knowing her.”
“Shut up, Tony,” Steve says, pushing Tony’s hands away. He frowns down at his swollen knuckles. “We’ve got more important things to think of right now, anyway.”
There’s a pause, before Tony says, “You’re right.”
Drawing his hands back to himself, he pulls his gloves on again and straightens up, climbs quickly to his feet, portal gun held tight in his grip.
“JARVIS, retrieve video footage from cameras You and Butterfingers, upload to private server. Keep it locked for now, but ready to make available for whitelist uh, zero-zero-four through eight once I’ve reviewed it.”
“Certainly, sir. And shall I alert Mr Fury to recent developments?”
Tony shrugs and looks down at Steve. “Decision time, Captain.”
Steve breathes out slowly. It only takes a moment to reach his decision, then he uncrosses and legs and stands up in one smooth motion. Tony takes a step back and watches him, his eyes wide and his face so readable, waiting for what Steve will say.
“No,” Steve says. “Don’t contact Fury yet, JARVIS. We need to talk to the team first.”
*
Back up in the penthouse, Tony leads Steve straight to the kitchen. It’s just as huge as Steve remembers it being, brightly lit in the mid-morning sunshine. Its two occupants are a new sight, though.
“Top of the morning to ya,” Clint declares as they enter, lifting up his coffee mug in greeting. He’s sitting on the edge of the island work surface, his feet up on a stool.
Sitting on the stool next to him, Natasha lowers her cereal spoon from her mouth and looks them up and down. Her expression inscrutable, her gaze lingers on the gun in Tony’s hand and then moves on to Steve’s.
“What happened to your hand?” she says.
“I hit something.”
She studies his face. “Not Stark.”
It’s not quite a question.
“No,” Steve answers, anyway. “Not - not Tony.”
Natasha nods and returns to her breakfast, apparently satisfied. Tony, meanwhile, strides across the floor and, sweeping detritus out of the way with an arm, drops the portal gun onto the work surface before them.
Clint whistles lowly through his teeth, lifting his feet up off the stool and swivelling around to sit cross-legged, already reaching out for the gun.
“Stark,” he says, “you brought us a present?”
Tony smacks his hand away. “Get off the conference table, Barton.”
“We’re in the kitchen.”
“I don’t believe snacking and avenging have to be mutually exclusive,” Tony says. “It’s a brave new world. Now scram. Get.”
“Better be good,” Clint grouses, but he hops down off the worktop and lands on a stool. For all his complaining, he sits with his back straight and his eyes, alert, focussed on the gun before him.
“And anyway,” Tony says. He presses something on the underside of the worktop and a panel in the surface rotates over, without a sound, revealing a console. “It’s Steve’s present, and he’s brought enough for the whole class.”
Natasha puts her cereal bowl down and folds her arms on the worktop, looking at Steve. “Chile?”
Steve nods.
“Did you two ever see anything like this in SHIELD’s stores?” he asks. Drawing a stool out from next to Tony, he sits and looks back at her and then across at Clint. “Be careful, we don’t know for sure if it’s safe to touch.”
Natasha quirks an eyebrow, her eyes flickering to Tony, but she reaches behind her - without looking; she must have memorised the room’s layout and its contents the second she stepped inside - and snags a dishcloth. Wrapping it around her hand, she pulls the gun towards her and lifts it up for a closer look.
“No,” she says after a moment’s study.
She turns to Clint.
“Not like anything I’ve ever seen,” Clint says, shaking his head. “It doesn’t look like typical HYDRA tech either. This is pretty weird. Don’t they like showing off? You’d think they’d want something that people can stand to look at for longer than five seconds.”
“They do,” Steve says, at the same time as Tony looks up from his console and says,
“This is them showing off. Kinda. JARVIS, record this conversation. Not for my jerk-off material,” he adds to the room at large. “I’m calling the others. We might need a record of it for later.”
Clint shrugs, unconcerned, and Natasha nods. She lowers the gun back down to the worktop and raises her eyebrows, leaning forwards on her forearms.
“Is this a weapon or is it something else?” she asks.
Tony grins at her, pulling his communicator out of his pocket. “Something else. Just - give me - a second.”
He slots the communicator into a space in the console, presses the symbols for Thor and Bruce and flicks his fingers out at the free seats around the island. Beams of light shoot up out of the edges towards the ceiling, spreading into rectangles that hang in the air. They’re fuzzy with static at first. But as Steve watches, the one on the left suddenly snaps into colour, as bright and sharp as any twenty-first century TV screen, and Bruce blinks out at them.
“Hello,” he says.
“Come home, baby,” Tony says. “The children miss you.”
Clint lifts a hand and waves.
“O - kay,” Bruce says slowly. He runs a hand through his hair and sits up straighter. He’s outdoors somewhere, under a bright blue sky that fills the kitchen with the sounds of birds and insects. “Are we up again?”
“Could be,” Steve says. “HYDRA has cleared out of Chacabuco, but I found-”
He’s cut off by movement and an unfamiliar voice
“Oh my god, stop - too goddamn early for this - shut up,” the voice is saying, and the other light screen flickers into life, filled with the view of a table and some half-shut blinds. It tilts, shifts, revealing a young woman squinting down at them suspiciously.
“What?” she snaps.
“Who the hell are you?” Tony says.
“Who am I? Who are you? I was sleeping, and I was having an awesome dream, and now...” She pauses, blinking, and she shakes her head and screws her eyes up tight. When she opens them again, she says in a very faint voice, “Oh my god, you’re Tony Stark. Okay, deep breaths, Darcy, deep breaths.”
The view tilts wildly again, settling on the idle spin of a ceiling fan, and over the speakers they hear the girl’s voice, fading away into the distance as she shouts, “Thor! All your superhot friends are on your cell and they saw my freaking bedhead!”
There’s a moment of silence on both ends of the conversation, broken by Clint saying, “I like her.”
“Can I just ask-?” Bruce begins, but Tony hushes him loudly, holding up a finger. Bruce sighs and sits back.
The view on Thor’s screen shifts again, blurring with movement until at last the picture goes still and Thor’s face appears. He beams out at them.
“My friends!” he exclaims. “Well met!”
“And the same to you,” Steve says, leaning forwards as he speaks to the screens. He’s peripherally aware ofTony sitting down next to him, leaning back. “Bruce, Thor - and you two as well,” he adds, with a glance at Clint and Natasha. “You’ll want to hear this, too. Have either of you ever seen something like this before? You especially, Thor - do you think this could be from your realm?”
Natasha wordlessly holds the gun up again. Thor leans forward, the smile fading from his face as he studies it.
“Nay, Captain,” he says. “Would that I could be of more help, but your weapon is unfamiliar to me. In Asgard, we craft weaponry of great beauty, and with great care. This - this is crude. And ugly. It has no place in my realm.”
“Darn.” Steve sighs. “Bruce?”
Bruce shrugs, shaking his head. “Never seen it before. It doesn’t look like much. Why the focus on Thor, of us all?”
“Because up till now, Thor’s folks were the only people we knew with the technology to travel between worlds.”
Around the table, Natasha hisses something in Russian and Clint sits up even straighter. Thor’s expression turns grim.
“That’s... bad,” Bruce says.
“Alright, boys and girls,” Tony says, leaning forwards again to prop his elbow up on the worktop. “No need to clutch your pearls too tightly. This is - not great, yeah, but we’ve got a silver lining. Judging by this thing’s general ugliness, HYDRA have got someone else doing their dirty work - and whoever that is? They haven’t got it right either.”
“How do you know this?” Natasha asks.
Tony shrugs. “Tried it, fired it, basement remains one hundred per cent portal free. Sure, they’ve got the tech, but they haven’t got it working yet.”
“If we can study it properly,” Bruce says, rubbing his chin, “we might be able to work out where it’s come from.”
“My scans couldn’t turn anything up,” says Tony. “Not even what it’s made of. Which is why you, the gamma guy, and me, the - well, me - need to put our science hats on and figure this out. So get your butt back here already.”
Bruce nods. He looks off to the side and the picture on the screen goes shaky as he lowers his arm. There’s the rustling of a map before his face reappears. “It’s about an hour to the nearest airport. I’ll need to catch a flight to a bigger city if I want to get a flight to New York, but I’ll probably make it back by tonight.”
“JARVIS, remind me to invent a teleporter, already. It’s time. I think the world’s ready,” Tony says with a groan. He drops his forehead into his hands and shakes his head. “Bruce, just try to make it across the border and back into the US. I’ll send a jet to meet you. It’ll still take time but it might, if we’re lucky, be a less annoying time.”
“I think it’s time you invented yourself some patience,” Bruce murmurs, but he nods again. With a click, his screen goes dark and the beam of light disappears back into the work surface.
“Can you get back here too, Thor?” Steve says. “You know the most about alien tech.”
Thor nods, his expression losing some of its gravity again as he sits up straight. “Aye. I must say farewell to Jane first-”
“Well, that’ll take five hours,” Tony murmurs to Steve.
“Shh,” Steve breathes, shaking his head minutely and staring straight ahead at Thor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Natasha turn to look at them.
“-for she is too busy to take such a voyage with me on this day, but I will make haste.”
“Thor,” Natasha says, looking away from Steve again. “How long does it take you to fly here?”
“Perhaps sixty of your Midgardian minutes.”
“And it’s safe to carry us Midgardians with you?”
“Aye, Jane often joins me on clear nights.”
Natasha nods once. She crosses her arms. “Get back in touch with Banner, get his location. You can fly to him and bring him back with you.”
“Ah, Fair Widow, your wisdom puts us all to shame.”
Natasha inclines her head in agreement, her lips twitching. Next to her, though, Clint is frowning. Steve glances down at Clint's hands on the worktop and sees them clenching into fists.
“Do you think your brother could be behind this, Thor?” says Clint, voice low. “Couldn’t keep his portal open first try, so he has another go with another device?”
“I would not think it so,” Thor says. “But there is a lot of Loki I thought not possible. Perhaps when this new device is in my hands, I will feel his presence about it. Though I hope it will not be so.”
He sighs heavily, and the sound of it reverberates around them long after his screen too has gone dark and disappeared. Steve looks around at Tony, who is frowning with his chin in his hands, and then around at the others. He watches Natasha touch the back of Clint’s hand, murmuring until Clint nods at her.
“Thor can fly,” Tony says, breaking the silence. “How the fuck did I forget Thor can fly?”
Clint snorts with laughter. “Yeah, Stark, thought you were a genius.”
“I’m the genius whose tower you’re living in,” Tony says. “And I’ve got a supercomputer that’s trained to kill, so watch yourself.”
He stands, kicking his stool away and wandering over to the cupboards, while Natasha picks up her cereal again and Clint stares uncertainly up at the ceiling.
“JARVIS?”
“Whilst it’s true that I have very rigorous security protocols, Agent Barton, I assure you none of them are necessarily intended to kill.”
“Comforting,” Clint mutters.
Sniggering, Tony emerges from the cupboards with a big bag of potato chips. He tugs it open and pours a bunch straight into his mouth before tossing the bag at Clint. Clint catches it without turning around.
“Well, we’ve got a couple hours to kill before Thor and Bruce get here,” Tony says as he chews. “Who’s up for a game of twister? Poker? Strip poker? No, I’ve got it, strip twister.”
“Tony,” Steve says, “we should-”
Natasha licks a drop of milk from the end of her spoon and says, levelly, “You want the team to be independent from SHIELD.”
“How did you-” Steve begins, but when Natasha lifts her head, it’s Tony she looks at.
“You’re unsubtle. You gave Clint food, so you want him on your side. You argued with Steve this morning, though the two of you have become good friends-” and at this, her gaze swings around to Steve, although she keeps talking to Tony. “You’ve been frustrated by Fury’s silence for months. You seem cheerful today.”
“I’m always cheerful,” Tony says.
Shaking his head, Clint makes a scornful sound around his potato chips. Natasha keeps looking at Steve, unblinking, her head to one side.
“No,” she says simply, turning back to her cereal at last. “You aren’t.”
Steve looks down at the worktop.
“So are you in?” he asks after a moment’s silence.
Natasha glances across at Clint, who lifts a shoulder and raises an eyebrow, and whatever she reads in that is enough to make her nod and say, “Yes.”
“Anything to avoid a deskjob,” Clint says.
“We’ll remain agents of SHIELD,” she adds, “and we will work for them when they need us.”
Nodding, Steve says, “That’s fair,” and then he looks around at Tony.
The second he catches his eye, Tony’s face breaks into a grin. An honest to goodness grin that reaches all the way up to his crinkling eyes, without any sarcasm or evasion or insincerity. It’s just about the warmest, brightest thing that Steve has ever seen.
“Guess we’re in for some fun times,” Tony says, patting him on the arm.
He drops his hand when Steve doesn’t respond, though he’s still smiling faintly as he looks away, rummaging around the clutter for a screwdriver. Natasha pushes the portal gun back towards him and Tony grabs at it eagerly. He runs his thumb along the barrel until he finds that panel again, jabbing the end of the screwdriver into the edge with a satisfied smirk.
“Yeah,” Steve manages. He swallows once, heavily, and then again. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t need the feel of Tony’s heartbeat under his skin. He doesn’t need -
He watches Clint murmur something to Natasha, fishing another handful of chips out of the bag. She nods and looks up at Steve, her gaze so sharp and focussed and knowing.
But it’s Tony Steve looks back to again, hunched down over this gun with his tongue sticking out in concentration. It’s Tony Steve can’t look away from, even as Tony glances at him out of the corner of his eye and Steve can’t decipher his expression.
It’s Tony. Just out of reach.
“Oh,” Steve breathes.
Oh, hell.
Oh, fuck.
Coming soon: A SEQUEL!
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
*
Part 5a
The shot rings out with a boom like they’re standing in the middle of a thunder cloud, even with the ear defenders in place. There’s a flash of white light that envelops Steve’s vision, forcing his eyes to squeeze shut. The light echoes behind his eyelids and he feels the air ripple with a rush of movement, feels the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Squinting through his eyelashes, Steve makes out a great ball of energy streaming from the gun barrel, trailing fiery blues and reds in a comet’s tail and expanding, expanding as it rushes across the room.
Steve feels - doesn’t hear; even without these ear defenders he wouldn’t be able to hear it over the great rushing movement - Tony tense up and suck in a sharp breath, stepping back until his shoulders hit Steve’s chest and he has to stop, gun still held out high in front of him, shining in the light still shooting out of it.
The ball of energy smacks into the far wall with such force it reverberates through the floor all the way back to where they’re standing, and white light licks up the walls from floor to ceiling. The ripple in the air picks up until suddenly wind is rushing past them, away from the light - or out of the light, Steve can’t tell, the wind so strong he has to grit his teeth and grab hold of Tony’s arm - until the light has covered the entirety of the far wall and begins to creep out over the edges, growing bright and brighter, and Steve has to close his eyes again.
Just as suddenly as the wind began, it starts to blow in the opposite direction, back towards the wall of light and energy which is shrinking in on itself. Tony shouts something Steve can’t hear, yanking the gun down so the stream of light breaks off at last, the tail end of it whipping away from the gun barrel as it’s pulled towards the wall. Tony shakes Steve’s hand off his arm and starts to run towards the light, already half the size it was, spiralling inwards like a whirlpool.
“What are you-? Tony!” Steve shouts, running after him. The wind drags him forwards. Papers are blowing in the air, screwdrivers rolling across the floor, the light is twenty feet away and ten feet across - six - three - one foot - an inch -
With a crack that rings through the workshop, the very last speck of light disappears. The wind cuts out immediately, papers dropping down onto the floor. Tony skids to a halt. He tugs off his goggles and ear defenders and tosses them onto the floor.
“God - damn - it,” he shouts, smacking his hand against the wall.
Right over Tony’s head, there’s a dent in the wall where the energy first struck it, three feet across and crumpled at the edges as if it were only cheap drywall. Steve eases off his own safety gear, letting it drop to the ground as he steps forward for a closer look. He presses his own palm to the wall.
“It’s stronger than the Hulk,” he says.
“What?” Tony snaps.
“Look at this. You said this place was Hulk proofed. That - whatever the heck that was, it’s stronger.” Steve reaches over Tony and gives the crumpled edge of the dent a tug but even he can’t budge it. “Even Loki couldn’t have done this.”
Tony looks up at Steve over his shoulder, his gaze passing over Steve’s face and following the line of Steve’s arm around and back up to that hole in the wall. He runs his fingers along one of the tiny cracks spidering out from it and he shakes his head.
“That’s not important.”
“Are you crazy? Of course it’s important. I’m having a hard time coming up with something more important than a weapon stronger than our strongest fella.”
“It’s not a weapon.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a - it’s a vehicle. It’s transport. It’s disguised. Didn’t you see the stars, Cap? That was the beginnings of a portal.”
It takes Steve a moment to process.
“No,” he says. “No. It’s not - You saw stars in there?”
At Tony’s wordless nod, Steve groans and rests his forehead on his forearm, up against the wall. He’s aware, peripherally, of Tony pacing back and forth behind him. Steve closes his eyes and breathes out slowly.
“Are you sure? Are you certain? Because if you’re right... if HYDRA have the technology to open portals we’re in for a whole heap of trouble.”
“I’m sure,” Tony says. “Certain. Completely, one hundred per cent. It felt like - like the other one.”
“The other-” Steve lifts his head from his arm, looking across at Tony, down at the gun - the portal opener - still hanging in Tony’s hands, then up at the hole in the wall. “What the heck were you doing just now?”
“What?”
Steve pushes away from the wall, turning around. “What were you thinking, Tony? This thing was a portal, you knew this thing was a portal and, and you went running at it? Alone?”
“I - wanted to see-” Tony begins, eyes wide, but Steve cuts him off.
“What, you were just planning on jumping inside into goodness knows where?”
Tony goes still last, and his expression shutters down, his chin lifts up. “Like you wouldn’t have jumped right into that mineshaft solo if HYDRA and the Nazis had been playing Twister at the bottom.”
“I would have called back up if there’d been something serious,” Steve says. “I would’ve called Bruce back, or Thor, he can fly. So can you. I would’ve called you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Stop being so goddamn flippant!” Steve shouts.
His breath catches in his throat and his hand curls into a fist, slamming sideways into the wall. Tony flinches back a step. Steve feels something crunch beneath the skin, but the wall doesn’t give, the paint doesn’t even scratch, there’s only so much Captain America can do.
Chest heaving, Steve grabs hold of his injured hand and hisses. The pain is sharp and bright, but it won’t stay. He’ll wake up in the morning and it’ll be gone again.
“Is this what the twenty-first century is? Always doubting what people say, never being sincere? What the hell happened to you people?”
“You want sincere?” Tony spits, a full six feet away now, though Steve never saw him move. “Okay, sure. Dad’s favourite - hell, Dad’s only bedtime story was that one special time he flew out over enemy territory and watched you jump outta his plane. Sure, maybe Captain America’s the bravest fucking hero this country will ever know, but believe me when I sincerely say Captain Rogers is just as reckless and goddamn stupid as the rest of us.”
“You can’t compare-”
“I just did.”
Steve’s fists clench and pain jolts through his hand again, making him wince. Tony’s gaze jerks down to his knuckles for a second before it snaps back up to his face again, Tony’s eyes wide and bright. He stands his ground like he’s made of iron. His feet are bare, Steve realises with a jolt that leaves him almost as breathless as the pain in his hand.
“You’re right,” he says, and Tony snorts. “I’ve done reckless things. I’ve fought alone when I should’ve waited for back up, and I can’t say I regret any of it, and I don’t want to argue about it with you.”
“You started it.”
Steve takes a deep breath. He cradles his hand. He stares down at Tony’s bare, incongruous toes, poking out under the ends of his jeans. “Tony, everyone and everything I’ve ever known or loved or, heck, even just plain hated is gone. Dead and gone. Do you - do you get that? Do you understand how damn lonely that is? I’m done fighting alone. I’m sick of fighting alone. Right now, I could really go for some back up.”
He lets his breath out and leans back against the wall. He doesn’t look up, waiting for Tony to speak, and then when Tony doesn’t speak he adds, softer, “Why do you want this team so bad if you’re going to... to throw yourself at portals? That’s not how a team works.”
“You weren’t complaining last time,” Tony says, but although the words are harsh there’s a note of uncertainty. Steve lifts his head. Tony is still standing six feet away, body tense as if he is the one with his back to a wall, deciding whether to run or fight.
“No,” Steve agrees. “But I don’t know if I could stand to watch you do it again. Please... please don’t make me.”
He has to pause, to clear his throat, before he can continue.
“Why do you want this team so much, Tony?”
Tony flinches slightly, dropping his gaze and taking another step back, but he goes still again when Steve holds up his uninjured hand.
“Please. Argument over, okay? Truce? But if HYDRA have something big planned that needs stopping, I need to know whether I’m doing it SHIELD or with you.”
Still looking away, Tony says, “Me, of course.”
“But why?” Steve says. “You said yourself you weren’t a teamplayer. Nobody would have been offended if you took a step back from this after New York.”
There’s a pause. Tony shifts back and forth on his feet, looking around at the mess left in the portal’s wake. His gaze finally settles on the robot with the camera, which had somehow managed to stay upright in the chaos, and Tony stands and stares at it.
“I... I’m bored,” Tony begins, before cutting himself off with a wave of his hand, shaking his head. “Wait, no, that didn’t come out right. I’m not saying I wanna make you all dance for me just because I’m bored. I’m not that much of an asshole.”
He lets outs a frustrated breath, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “Let me - let me try this again. Take two.”
He falls silent. He presses the heels of his palms to forehead and twists his fingers tightly in his hair. Steve waits, and waits.
“Forget it,” Steve says at last. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. It’s fine. You need to talk to Fury about all this anyway, maybe you should take it up with him instead.”
He straightens up, pushing himself away from the wall. The exit is all the way on the other side of the workshop, but Steve focuses on the distant grey rectangle of the doors. He pauses when he walks past Tony, but Tony has his back to him, eyes shut, face still half-hidden by his hands, and Steve begins to turn away.
“I don’t want to take it up with Fury,” Tony blurts out. “Christ, are you kidding? Can you imagine me and him having a heart to heart? Someone would lose an eye and, you know, there’s already one too few between us.”
Steve stops. He looks back at Tony again, who has dropped his arms. His hands hang by his sides, fingers curling and uncurling. He shrugs slightly when he meets Steve’s gaze and he says, “Steve. Come on, I - I’m trying to... I’m trying-”
Shaking his head, Tony turns on his heel and walks away from Steve, but Steve can barely process the wash of disappointment before Tony reaches the wall and turns around again. He leans back against it and slides down to sit on the ground, with his legs sprawled out in front of him and the portal gun placed gently on the floor next to him.
He pats the space on the other side and says, again, quietly, “Steve.”
“Careful,” Steve says. “If you keep on calling me by my name, you won’t be able to manipulate me with it for much longer.”
He sits down next to Tony, crossing ankles and folding his arms, and Tony rocks his head back against the wall to look across at him, mouth quirking up at the edges. He doesn’t move his hand.
“Save the Steve for special occasions,” Tony says. “Got it.”
Steve can feel the very tips of Tony’s fingers brushing against his thigh, but Tony doesn’t move his hand. And Steve doesn’t move his leg. He’s waiting for something to happen. He’s waiting for something, anyway.
“I died up there,” Tony says suddenly, eyes never leaving Steve’s face. “I was actually dead. Crazy, I know. In space. In a whole alien universe. My heart stopped and I was - alone. I was going to die alone, that was it, nothing to be done.”
“Must’ve been scary,” Steve says.
Tony huffs out a breath of laughter, knocking his knuckles against the seam of Steve’s jeans. “Don’t get me wrong, it was fucking terrifying, but I’ve had more near death experiences than you’ve had - apple pie. Freedom fries.”
“I’ve never had freedom fries,” Steve murmurs automatically, but Tony barely seems to hear him, although his gaze drifts down to watch Steve’s mouth as it moves.
“Dying alone in space was the least scary option, because I wanted it to happen. Not like a death wish, been there, done that, bought the race car. I mean, I...”
“Knew you were gonna die doing the most important thing you’d ever get to do?”
“Yeah, that. I’d accepted it. Three minutes is a helluva long time to come to terms with your own impending doom when you’re giving a nuclear missile a piggyback. Never accepted it before. Always told myself I’d never go down without a fight. That’s what this is, right?”
Tony pulls his hand away at last. He raps his knuckles against the arc reactor through his shirt, and then spreads his hand over it. He looks down at the back of his hand, the faint blue light between his fingers.
“Tony Stark refuses to die,” he says, with a smirk. “I’m like a cockroach. I - One time, couple years ago, I thought I really had accepted my fate. Gave Pep the company, took care of Rhodey, ready to fistbump my maker, the full shebang. But even then I guess I believed something would happen, and it did. That was great, I’m not knocking that. Happiest I’ve ever been to have Black Widow stab me in the neck.”
Tony lowers his hand again, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. He stares down at his feet.
“Three minutes is a long damn time to spend with a nuclear missile. I was ready for it. Hell, I was kinda glad, I think. Shit scared and - and a whole load of other things, but glad, cause I knew it was gonna work. My one good deed. Nobody could call Tony Stark flying a bomb into space and dying alone selfish, right?”
“They’d be a liar if they did.”
“There were stars,” Tony murmurs. “There were whole other worlds out there. I could see-- And then I closed my eyes. Died. Woke up. Bam. What do I - This is the second chance, right? Everything else was just... just practice runs, 1.5 chances. Nothing seems - What do I do? How do you move on from your own freaking self-sacrificing death?”
He lapses into silence. Steve lets it linger for a little while and then he knocks his feet sideways against Tony’s until Tony snaps out of his reverie. He lifts his head, looks up at Steve, something wide open in his expression.
“It takes time,” Steve says. “It’s taking me seventy years and counting.”
Tony smiles at that, softly, as though it’s a private joke. Which, Steve realises with a flush of warmth, it is.
“Yeah, I guess you’re kinda the world expert on... things to do Denver when you’re not as dead as you thought.”
“This is New York,” Steve says, before he can stop himself, and adds, ruefully, “Reference, right?”
“Got it in one.” Tony knocks his bare feet into Steve’s. He leaves them there, resting against Steve’s ankles. “I keep building these dumb little robots and, yeah, the clean energy breakthroughs we’re making are terrific and there’s a deal coming up with Wakanda that’s going to be great, but I’m bored. It’s boring. None of it feels like what I’m meant to be doing with my afterlife.”
“Since when have you ever done what you’re meant to do?”
“Yeah, well, maybe now’s the time to start.”
Tony picks the portal gun back up off the floor and lays it down across his lap, running his hands back and forth over the barrel of the gun. He prises at a panel in the side, almost absentmindedly, fingers blunt in his leather gloves.
“I’m not saying I believe in any higher power Thor couldn’t take in a fistfight,” he says. “Or fate, or destiny, or that I’m some kind of chosen one - even I’m not that egotistical. But a guy evades certain death enough times, he starts wondering if there’s a reason.”
“The Avengers?”
“Seems like a pretty good reason to me.”
“I can understand that,” Steve says slowly. “Needing a reason to still be here. For it to be worth it.”
“And is it? Worth it?”
He watches Tony’s hands toying nervously with the portal gun. The sight of the HYDRA logo, etched clumsily into the side as if it were an afterthought, still makes something lurch sickly in his stomach, as much rage as it is grief; and the wall against his back is cold and hard; and he’s god only knows how deep underground. But he glances sideways at Tony, who is watching Steve out of the corner of his eye, and Steve lets out the breath he’s been holding for upwards of seventy years.
“Maybe,” he says. “I sure hope so.”
Tony nods. His face is still mostly turned away from Steve, towards the exit, only the dark brown corner of his eye visible through darker lashes. He glances down into his lap, and then sideways into Steve’s lap, and then he reaches out a hand towards him.
Steve tenses up automatically, until pain shoots up his arm and he remembers.
“You did a number on yourself here, buddy,” Tony says, lifting up Steve’s hand. His grip is delicate despite the leather gloves. “Hold on.”
Shoving the portal gun back onto the floor, Tony tugs his gloves off with his teeth, chucks them to the side and takes careful hold of Steve’s hand again. Tony’s fingers are warm and calloused and precise, and he slips them under Steve’s palm.
“Squeeze.”
“It’s fine, really,” Steve says, but Tony shoots him a look and, rolling his eyes, Steve grips Tony’s hand as best he can, with a hiss and a wince.
“Not too bad. You’ll be back to punching Hitler again in no time.”
Steve chuckles, letting Tony slip his fingers back out of Steve’s grip and take hold of his hand again, gently wiggling each finger and prodding one of the bruises. It already hurts less than it did, the swelling going down, the bruising rising up.
“It’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”
“You’re gonna have to hurry up if you want Black Widow to kiss it better, then.”
“What? No, I don’t - want -”
“Or Barton?” Tony smirks. “Probably less high risk, knowing him. And knowing her.”
“Shut up, Tony,” Steve says, pushing Tony’s hands away. He frowns down at his swollen knuckles. “We’ve got more important things to think of right now, anyway.”
There’s a pause, before Tony says, “You’re right.”
Drawing his hands back to himself, he pulls his gloves on again and straightens up, climbs quickly to his feet, portal gun held tight in his grip.
“JARVIS, retrieve video footage from cameras You and Butterfingers, upload to private server. Keep it locked for now, but ready to make available for whitelist uh, zero-zero-four through eight once I’ve reviewed it.”
“Certainly, sir. And shall I alert Mr Fury to recent developments?”
Tony shrugs and looks down at Steve. “Decision time, Captain.”
Steve breathes out slowly. It only takes a moment to reach his decision, then he uncrosses and legs and stands up in one smooth motion. Tony takes a step back and watches him, his eyes wide and his face so readable, waiting for what Steve will say.
“No,” Steve says. “Don’t contact Fury yet, JARVIS. We need to talk to the team first.”
*
Back up in the penthouse, Tony leads Steve straight to the kitchen. It’s just as huge as Steve remembers it being, brightly lit in the mid-morning sunshine. Its two occupants are a new sight, though.
“Top of the morning to ya,” Clint declares as they enter, lifting up his coffee mug in greeting. He’s sitting on the edge of the island work surface, his feet up on a stool.
Sitting on the stool next to him, Natasha lowers her cereal spoon from her mouth and looks them up and down. Her expression inscrutable, her gaze lingers on the gun in Tony’s hand and then moves on to Steve’s.
“What happened to your hand?” she says.
“I hit something.”
She studies his face. “Not Stark.”
It’s not quite a question.
“No,” Steve answers, anyway. “Not - not Tony.”
Natasha nods and returns to her breakfast, apparently satisfied. Tony, meanwhile, strides across the floor and, sweeping detritus out of the way with an arm, drops the portal gun onto the work surface before them.
Clint whistles lowly through his teeth, lifting his feet up off the stool and swivelling around to sit cross-legged, already reaching out for the gun.
“Stark,” he says, “you brought us a present?”
Tony smacks his hand away. “Get off the conference table, Barton.”
“We’re in the kitchen.”
“I don’t believe snacking and avenging have to be mutually exclusive,” Tony says. “It’s a brave new world. Now scram. Get.”
“Better be good,” Clint grouses, but he hops down off the worktop and lands on a stool. For all his complaining, he sits with his back straight and his eyes, alert, focussed on the gun before him.
“And anyway,” Tony says. He presses something on the underside of the worktop and a panel in the surface rotates over, without a sound, revealing a console. “It’s Steve’s present, and he’s brought enough for the whole class.”
Natasha puts her cereal bowl down and folds her arms on the worktop, looking at Steve. “Chile?”
Steve nods.
“Did you two ever see anything like this in SHIELD’s stores?” he asks. Drawing a stool out from next to Tony, he sits and looks back at her and then across at Clint. “Be careful, we don’t know for sure if it’s safe to touch.”
Natasha quirks an eyebrow, her eyes flickering to Tony, but she reaches behind her - without looking; she must have memorised the room’s layout and its contents the second she stepped inside - and snags a dishcloth. Wrapping it around her hand, she pulls the gun towards her and lifts it up for a closer look.
“No,” she says after a moment’s study.
She turns to Clint.
“Not like anything I’ve ever seen,” Clint says, shaking his head. “It doesn’t look like typical HYDRA tech either. This is pretty weird. Don’t they like showing off? You’d think they’d want something that people can stand to look at for longer than five seconds.”
“They do,” Steve says, at the same time as Tony looks up from his console and says,
“This is them showing off. Kinda. JARVIS, record this conversation. Not for my jerk-off material,” he adds to the room at large. “I’m calling the others. We might need a record of it for later.”
Clint shrugs, unconcerned, and Natasha nods. She lowers the gun back down to the worktop and raises her eyebrows, leaning forwards on her forearms.
“Is this a weapon or is it something else?” she asks.
Tony grins at her, pulling his communicator out of his pocket. “Something else. Just - give me - a second.”
He slots the communicator into a space in the console, presses the symbols for Thor and Bruce and flicks his fingers out at the free seats around the island. Beams of light shoot up out of the edges towards the ceiling, spreading into rectangles that hang in the air. They’re fuzzy with static at first. But as Steve watches, the one on the left suddenly snaps into colour, as bright and sharp as any twenty-first century TV screen, and Bruce blinks out at them.
“Hello,” he says.
“Come home, baby,” Tony says. “The children miss you.”
Clint lifts a hand and waves.
“O - kay,” Bruce says slowly. He runs a hand through his hair and sits up straighter. He’s outdoors somewhere, under a bright blue sky that fills the kitchen with the sounds of birds and insects. “Are we up again?”
“Could be,” Steve says. “HYDRA has cleared out of Chacabuco, but I found-”
He’s cut off by movement and an unfamiliar voice
“Oh my god, stop - too goddamn early for this - shut up,” the voice is saying, and the other light screen flickers into life, filled with the view of a table and some half-shut blinds. It tilts, shifts, revealing a young woman squinting down at them suspiciously.
“What?” she snaps.
“Who the hell are you?” Tony says.
“Who am I? Who are you? I was sleeping, and I was having an awesome dream, and now...” She pauses, blinking, and she shakes her head and screws her eyes up tight. When she opens them again, she says in a very faint voice, “Oh my god, you’re Tony Stark. Okay, deep breaths, Darcy, deep breaths.”
The view tilts wildly again, settling on the idle spin of a ceiling fan, and over the speakers they hear the girl’s voice, fading away into the distance as she shouts, “Thor! All your superhot friends are on your cell and they saw my freaking bedhead!”
There’s a moment of silence on both ends of the conversation, broken by Clint saying, “I like her.”
“Can I just ask-?” Bruce begins, but Tony hushes him loudly, holding up a finger. Bruce sighs and sits back.
The view on Thor’s screen shifts again, blurring with movement until at last the picture goes still and Thor’s face appears. He beams out at them.
“My friends!” he exclaims. “Well met!”
“And the same to you,” Steve says, leaning forwards as he speaks to the screens. He’s peripherally aware ofTony sitting down next to him, leaning back. “Bruce, Thor - and you two as well,” he adds, with a glance at Clint and Natasha. “You’ll want to hear this, too. Have either of you ever seen something like this before? You especially, Thor - do you think this could be from your realm?”
Natasha wordlessly holds the gun up again. Thor leans forward, the smile fading from his face as he studies it.
“Nay, Captain,” he says. “Would that I could be of more help, but your weapon is unfamiliar to me. In Asgard, we craft weaponry of great beauty, and with great care. This - this is crude. And ugly. It has no place in my realm.”
“Darn.” Steve sighs. “Bruce?”
Bruce shrugs, shaking his head. “Never seen it before. It doesn’t look like much. Why the focus on Thor, of us all?”
“Because up till now, Thor’s folks were the only people we knew with the technology to travel between worlds.”
Around the table, Natasha hisses something in Russian and Clint sits up even straighter. Thor’s expression turns grim.
“That’s... bad,” Bruce says.
“Alright, boys and girls,” Tony says, leaning forwards again to prop his elbow up on the worktop. “No need to clutch your pearls too tightly. This is - not great, yeah, but we’ve got a silver lining. Judging by this thing’s general ugliness, HYDRA have got someone else doing their dirty work - and whoever that is? They haven’t got it right either.”
“How do you know this?” Natasha asks.
Tony shrugs. “Tried it, fired it, basement remains one hundred per cent portal free. Sure, they’ve got the tech, but they haven’t got it working yet.”
“If we can study it properly,” Bruce says, rubbing his chin, “we might be able to work out where it’s come from.”
“My scans couldn’t turn anything up,” says Tony. “Not even what it’s made of. Which is why you, the gamma guy, and me, the - well, me - need to put our science hats on and figure this out. So get your butt back here already.”
Bruce nods. He looks off to the side and the picture on the screen goes shaky as he lowers his arm. There’s the rustling of a map before his face reappears. “It’s about an hour to the nearest airport. I’ll need to catch a flight to a bigger city if I want to get a flight to New York, but I’ll probably make it back by tonight.”
“JARVIS, remind me to invent a teleporter, already. It’s time. I think the world’s ready,” Tony says with a groan. He drops his forehead into his hands and shakes his head. “Bruce, just try to make it across the border and back into the US. I’ll send a jet to meet you. It’ll still take time but it might, if we’re lucky, be a less annoying time.”
“I think it’s time you invented yourself some patience,” Bruce murmurs, but he nods again. With a click, his screen goes dark and the beam of light disappears back into the work surface.
“Can you get back here too, Thor?” Steve says. “You know the most about alien tech.”
Thor nods, his expression losing some of its gravity again as he sits up straight. “Aye. I must say farewell to Jane first-”
“Well, that’ll take five hours,” Tony murmurs to Steve.
“Shh,” Steve breathes, shaking his head minutely and staring straight ahead at Thor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Natasha turn to look at them.
“-for she is too busy to take such a voyage with me on this day, but I will make haste.”
“Thor,” Natasha says, looking away from Steve again. “How long does it take you to fly here?”
“Perhaps sixty of your Midgardian minutes.”
“And it’s safe to carry us Midgardians with you?”
“Aye, Jane often joins me on clear nights.”
Natasha nods once. She crosses her arms. “Get back in touch with Banner, get his location. You can fly to him and bring him back with you.”
“Ah, Fair Widow, your wisdom puts us all to shame.”
Natasha inclines her head in agreement, her lips twitching. Next to her, though, Clint is frowning. Steve glances down at Clint's hands on the worktop and sees them clenching into fists.
“Do you think your brother could be behind this, Thor?” says Clint, voice low. “Couldn’t keep his portal open first try, so he has another go with another device?”
“I would not think it so,” Thor says. “But there is a lot of Loki I thought not possible. Perhaps when this new device is in my hands, I will feel his presence about it. Though I hope it will not be so.”
He sighs heavily, and the sound of it reverberates around them long after his screen too has gone dark and disappeared. Steve looks around at Tony, who is frowning with his chin in his hands, and then around at the others. He watches Natasha touch the back of Clint’s hand, murmuring until Clint nods at her.
“Thor can fly,” Tony says, breaking the silence. “How the fuck did I forget Thor can fly?”
Clint snorts with laughter. “Yeah, Stark, thought you were a genius.”
“I’m the genius whose tower you’re living in,” Tony says. “And I’ve got a supercomputer that’s trained to kill, so watch yourself.”
He stands, kicking his stool away and wandering over to the cupboards, while Natasha picks up her cereal again and Clint stares uncertainly up at the ceiling.
“JARVIS?”
“Whilst it’s true that I have very rigorous security protocols, Agent Barton, I assure you none of them are necessarily intended to kill.”
“Comforting,” Clint mutters.
Sniggering, Tony emerges from the cupboards with a big bag of potato chips. He tugs it open and pours a bunch straight into his mouth before tossing the bag at Clint. Clint catches it without turning around.
“Well, we’ve got a couple hours to kill before Thor and Bruce get here,” Tony says as he chews. “Who’s up for a game of twister? Poker? Strip poker? No, I’ve got it, strip twister.”
“Tony,” Steve says, “we should-”
Natasha licks a drop of milk from the end of her spoon and says, levelly, “You want the team to be independent from SHIELD.”
“How did you-” Steve begins, but when Natasha lifts her head, it’s Tony she looks at.
“You’re unsubtle. You gave Clint food, so you want him on your side. You argued with Steve this morning, though the two of you have become good friends-” and at this, her gaze swings around to Steve, although she keeps talking to Tony. “You’ve been frustrated by Fury’s silence for months. You seem cheerful today.”
“I’m always cheerful,” Tony says.
Shaking his head, Clint makes a scornful sound around his potato chips. Natasha keeps looking at Steve, unblinking, her head to one side.
“No,” she says simply, turning back to her cereal at last. “You aren’t.”
Steve looks down at the worktop.
“So are you in?” he asks after a moment’s silence.
Natasha glances across at Clint, who lifts a shoulder and raises an eyebrow, and whatever she reads in that is enough to make her nod and say, “Yes.”
“Anything to avoid a deskjob,” Clint says.
“We’ll remain agents of SHIELD,” she adds, “and we will work for them when they need us.”
Nodding, Steve says, “That’s fair,” and then he looks around at Tony.
The second he catches his eye, Tony’s face breaks into a grin. An honest to goodness grin that reaches all the way up to his crinkling eyes, without any sarcasm or evasion or insincerity. It’s just about the warmest, brightest thing that Steve has ever seen.
“Guess we’re in for some fun times,” Tony says, patting him on the arm.
He drops his hand when Steve doesn’t respond, though he’s still smiling faintly as he looks away, rummaging around the clutter for a screwdriver. Natasha pushes the portal gun back towards him and Tony grabs at it eagerly. He runs his thumb along the barrel until he finds that panel again, jabbing the end of the screwdriver into the edge with a satisfied smirk.
“Yeah,” Steve manages. He swallows once, heavily, and then again. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t need the feel of Tony’s heartbeat under his skin. He doesn’t need -
He watches Clint murmur something to Natasha, fishing another handful of chips out of the bag. She nods and looks up at Steve, her gaze so sharp and focussed and knowing.
But it’s Tony Steve looks back to again, hunched down over this gun with his tongue sticking out in concentration. It’s Tony Steve can’t look away from, even as Tony glances at him out of the corner of his eye and Steve can’t decipher his expression.
It’s Tony. Just out of reach.
“Oh,” Steve breathes.
Oh, hell.
Oh, fuck.
Coming soon: A SEQUEL!
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five
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