Chapter Text
1. Avengers Tower, New York City, 2013
“First of all,” Tony said, “and I need everyone to hear this on multiple levels: how dare you?”
The effect of this pronouncement was somewhat marred by the fact that it was issued upside-down and almost directly into Steve’s lower back: the position Tony had been occupying since Steve had thrown him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry a few minutes earlier.
Hauling Tony bodily out of his lab hadn’t been Steve’s intention when he’d decided to drop by with some chili left over from the team dinner. It hadn’t even been Steve’s intention when he’d noticed that Tony’s monologuing had increased in pace – from a mile a minute to a brisk, two-minute 5k – even though that was a sure sign that Tony was riding a caffeine bender through serious sleep deprivation. Ever since their fight about the infamous “sentient espresso machine” episode had ended in Clint adding “no yelling during Top Chef” to the list of Tower rules on the refrigerator, Steve had been making a real effort to stop micro-managing Tony’s coping strategies. And so, despite a worrying number of coffee mugs littered around the room and what looked suspiciously like a muscle twitch developing in Tony’s left cheek, Steve had tried to limit his expressions of concern to one pointed look, which he directed at the spoon that Tony had picked up, not in order to eat the chili, but rather to tap out a drum solo against the side of his desk.
In fact, Steve had just made up his mind to make a tactical retreat from the scene when Tony had jumped up to show Steve a new design for Hawkeye’s body armor and promptly folded like a piece of paper. Steve had barely had time to catch him under the arms before he hit the floor.
“I may be the tiniest bit dehydrated,” Tony had admitted, his head flopping forward onto Steve’s chest.
“Right,” Steve replied.
And that was when he had pulled Tony carefully over his shoulder and marched him out of the lab.
So really, Steve thought, after the near heart attack it had caused him to see Tony pitching toward the ground in a sudden collapse, he was being remarkably level-headed by carrying Tony to the kitchen and not – as had been his first inclination – sprinting him straight to SHIELD medical and demanding a full work-up. He hadn’t yelled for Bruce or interrupted anyone’s enjoyment of cooking-competition shows. He hadn’t verbalized even one of the dozen versions of “Tony, you have to take better care of yourself” that had flashed through his head. All in all, Steve was counting this as progress.
Of course, the sight of Tony hanging over Steve’s shoulder still attracted the attention of their teammates, who were in the process of cleaning up dinner when Steve toted Tony into the kitchen. It was perhaps because of their varying degrees of fussing (Bruce) and catcalling (Clint) that Tony had decided he needed to regain his dignity with a series of declarations, the first of which he finished right before Steve deposited him gently but firmly into a dining-room chair.
“Second,” Tony continued, “you’re all being evicted. Consider this your notice to vacate.”
“Water, Tony,” Steve responded, indicating the glass that Natasha was bringing over.
“And last but not least –”
“You don’t like to be handed things,” Natasha finished for him, pushing the glass across the table instead.
“Okay, new final point: you’re fired. Again,” Tony said. “Ow! Ow! Fine, Romanov. Jesus, you’re a menace.”
He winced, rubbing his leg under the table where Natasha seemed to have found a pressure point. But he did take three long gulps of water from the glass, and Natasha shifted to patting his knee in approval.
"You should get some potassium too,” Bruce said, dropping a banana onto the table and picking up Tony’s wrist to take his pulse. At first it looked like Tony was going to protest against the gesture, but he seemed to think better of it when he saw Steve staring him down from across the table.
“You know, I was managing just fine before this whole band of underemployed, overpowered babysitters moved in,” he said instead.
“Yeah, you were doing so well that you blacked out in your garage after dropping your suit through several stories of your home,” Clint pointed out with a grin. “We’ve all seen the footage.”
“I haven’t,” Steve said, his frown deepening.
“It is very entertaining,” Thor affirmed, clapping a heavy hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I liked it almost as much as the video challenge Barton showed me for the Best Human Flails.”
“That’s best ‘fails,’ Norwegian Road House,” Tony said, “and my test flights weren’t failures. Technically, I made it into the air and back to the ground every time. The icing problem was a one-time thing.”
“Icing problem?” Steve asked, his eyes narrowing.
“I feel like we’re getting off track here,” Tony said quickly. “The point is that I survived, clearly. And a few minor safety incidents didn’t stop me from saving half the Eastern Seaboard while running a multi-billion-dollar corporation.”
“Pepper runs your company,” Natasha retorted.
“So you admit I saved half the Eastern Seaboard,” Tony replied, marking the point with an emphatic wave of the banana.
“What’s the statute of limitations on how long you get to use that to win arguments?” Clint rolled his eyes.
“Hey, I’ll be happy to pass my trump card whenever one of you wants to fly an armed nuclear weapon through a magical portal into space.”
“Do we have to take your insomnia too?” Bruce asked, pushing the waving banana out of his face and back toward Tony. “Because, Tony, you are looking a little worn out.”
“Yeah, well, the last time I took a break, a bunch of fake terrorists showed up to try to kill me, Barton got shot, and Cap took a header from a helicopter. So forgive me if I’m not feeling terribly relaxed,” Tony snipped.
Steve grimaced. He should have suspected this was about Malibu. It had been hard enough convincing Tony to let the SHIELD contingent of the Avengers accompany him to California after the incident with Happy and the threats from the Mandarin. Tony had tried to downplay the danger, but after Thor had let slip that he’d used the hammer to restart Tony’s heart, Steve had been feeling particularly stubborn about the issue. And when Tony’s house had indeed been attacked, Steve had felt so relieved that Tony hadn’t been alone to fend off the assault that he must have missed the signs that Tony was blaming himself for the leg injury Clint had sustained in the fight.
“I get shot all the time, Stark,” Clint said. He kicked his legs up onto the table: a move that Steve suspected was calculated to show Tony how quickly he was healing. “You’re not that special.”
“That’s true,” Natasha confirmed. “We used to have a betting pool at SHIELD about how many field injuries Barton would rack up in a month.”
“I can’t prove this, but I think Nat pushed me off a building once to win $200,” Clint said.
“It was a small building,” she shrugged. “And I needed new boots.”
“So am I disqualified from betting if the first injury of the month happened because you were standing next to me?” Tony asked. His tone was light but sharp, and even though Tony was turning the edge toward himself, Steve felt it like a blade against his sternum.
“It’s part of the job to stand next to each other when the fight starts,” Steve said firmly. “You know that, because you’re the one who knew we’d all show up in New York. You’re the one who invited us all into your home. You made us a team. That means your enemies are our enemies. And if someone comes for you, we’ll be there. Every time.”
The speech had poured out of Steve in a rush of feeling. But now Tony was staring at him with an inscrutable expression on his face, and Steve felt a flush creeping up the back of his neck. That had probably been too much, he thought ruefully, because Tony’s eyes were searching his face, and Natasha was giving him a smirk across the table that looked too knowing by half.
Luckily for Steve, Thor chose that moment to pick up Tony’s water glass and smash it onto the floor with an emphatic, “Here, here!” Steve took advantage of the distraction to jump up and grab the broom.
“Thor, we talked about this, buddy,” Bruce said, a small smile playing on his lips. “On Earth we show our appreciation by rinsing out our glassware and putting it carefully in the dishwasher.”
“My apologies, friends,” Thor replied, still beaming at them as Steve bent to sweep the shards into a dustpan. “I found the Captain’s speech very stirring.”
“He certainly has that effect,” Tony murmured, just loudly enough to make Steve blush even more furiously.
“Okay,” he said, straightening up and gripping the handle of the broom to pull himself together. “Tony, if you eat that banana and drink another glass of water, we will all let you choose the movie for tonight.”
A collective groan went up around the table.
“Cap, please,” Clint begged. “None of us want to see Tony pass out – well, okay, only if it happened in a really hilarious way and he recovered very quickly – but that price is too high. You know he’s just going to make us watch Robocop again.”
“I was going to say that I don’t negotiate with banana pushers,” Tony said, “but now that I know it will annoy Barton, I’m in. JARVIS, order us the finest fruit baskets in the land and cue up Robocop Returns.”
“I thought we were all getting evicted,” Natasha pointed out.
“As soon as the movie is over, you pack your bags,” Tony agreed. “Now where’s my ride to the couch?”
He smirked up at Steve with an expression on his face that looked – unfortunately for Tony – like a dare.
“Coming right up, sweetheart,” Steve responded. And then, prompting a renewed round of catcalls from Clint and another cheer from Thor, he scooped a very startled Tony into a bridal carry and whisked him over to the couch.
2. Capital Beltway, Washington D.C., 2014
Tony and Clint got the message from Natasha at noon, were suited up by 12:15, and arrived at the overpass at 12:40: just in time to see Steve take a hit from a rocket launcher and get thrown fifty yards through the air and into a bus. Tony was already swearing viciously, fighting to keep his gauntlet loose where it was clasped around Clint’s waist. But then a man with a metal arm – the Winter Soldier, Natasha had called him – jumped down from the highway and started strafing the bus with gunfire, and Tony saw red.
After depositing Clint onto a nearby roof where he could get into sniping position, Tony dove at the Solider and knocked him backward into a parked car. The Solider retaliated with a flurry of bullets, but Tony twisted into the air, whirling through an evasive maneuver until he could blast the gun out of the Soldier’s hand.
“Nice of you boys to show up,” Natasha called out, and Tony saw two gunmen drop off the overpass as she ducked out from behind a tractor-trailer.
“Would have been even nicer before my car got totaled!” shouted a voice Tony didn’t recognize but assumed must belong to Sam Wilson.
Tony didn’t have time to shoot back a sarcastic reply, because the Winter Soldier was ripping a door off a nearby mini-van. He hurled the sheet of metal at Tony, and Tony veered into a dive, catching a glancing blow off his left arm. He twisted with the momentum and then flew forward, dodging a flurry of punches to his head until he could grab the Soldier’s arm in one gauntlet. It was tough work hanging on, and Tony had to grit his teeth against two particularly vicious kicks to his left knee. But after a few moments of grappling, he was able to line up his free hand to deliver a repulsor shot to the Soldier’s chest.
“No!” Steve yelled, and Tony froze instinctively, turning toward the sound of Steve’s voice.
In the split second during which Tony hesitated, the Soldier heaved backward, using his weight and Tony’s grasp on his arm to flip Tony onto his back. Tony made a grab at the Soldier’s face, but the man’s fist was already descending toward the arc reactor on Tony’s chest. Tony just managed to close one gauntlet around the edges of the Soldier’s mask before the body looming over him was gone: Steve had launched himself in between them, tackling the Solider to the ground.
“Bucky stop! It’s me!” Steve shouted.
He was struggling to pin down a maskless form that Tony now recognized, impossibly, as James Buchanan Barnes.
Tony barely had time to take in that incomprehensible information before an alert pinged on the suit’s display.
“Sir, there are multiple vehicles converging on this location,” JARVIS said. “They are marked as law enforcement, but I suspect –”
“HYDRA,” Tony cursed, remembering the other part of Natasha’s message. He used the repulsors to push himself off the ground into the air. “Cap, we’ve got to run,” he yelled. “Barton, company’s coming. Do you have eyes on Romanov?”
“That Wilson guy’s with her,” Clint responded over the comms. “I gave her the high sign – she’ll know how to get them off the grid.”
“Roger that. Meet you at the secret lair,” Tony affirmed. He turned to where Steve was still trying to get through to Barnes. Unfortunately, Steve’s pleading seemed to have rather increased than decreased the fury of the Winter Soldier’s attack. Tony winced when Steve took a punch to the head and then figured that turnabout was fair play.
“Sorry, Cap, reunion’s over,” he said, blasting forward to scoop Steve over one shoulder and fly them both upward, away from the circle of armored vehicles squealing into place around them. Steve let out one noise of frustration and then went silent, and Tony was almost glad that the armor made it impossible to feel the tension he knew was probably radiating off of him as they flew out of D.C.
By the time they arrived at the location Maria Hill had given them, two bruises had bloomed on Steve’s temple and jaw, and Tony had to fight the urge to reach toward them as he set Steve down on the walkway above the dam. Instead, he retracted his helmet and stepped out of Steve’s space, waiting.
Steve didn’t look at him immediately, turning to grip the railing next to the reservoir and dropping his chin forward toward his chest. His face looked empty in a way that Tony hadn’t seen since their first meeting in Stuttgart: not sad, exactly, but blank, like someone had cut the tendons that held him together. And, just as he had then, Tony felt an overwhelming urge to poke and needle until some other expression – any other expression – took the place of the desolation behind that seventy-year stare.
“So were you even going to call us in if Romanov hadn’t tipped us off?” Tony asked. “You remember you’re an Avenger, right? Fought off a hoard of genocidal aliens together…share a coffee maker in the mornings…ringing any bells? You were in trouble – you jumped out of an elevator and then got caught in an exploding bunker – and you went to this Wilson guy you just met?”
“I didn’t know what we were dealing with yet,” Steve replied guardedly, still not meeting Tony’s eyes.
“You knew who he was before I even grabbed the mask,” Tony pointed out. “You stopped me from shooting him.”
Steve winced.
“I didn’t know for sure until today,” he explained. “Loki told me Bucky was alive – back in New York, when he was impersonating me after the battle. I didn’t tell anyone at the time, because it took me a while to even remember what Loki had said. Getting hit with the staff made the whole thing feel like a dream. And then I wasn’t sure whether it was true or whether he was just manipulating me. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But when I saw the Winter Soldier outside my apartment, he caught my shield, and I was almost positive I recognized his eyes.”
Tony felt something twist in his stomach, and he wound it into an angry knot before it could start pinching at his insides.
“So my enemies are your enemies, but your brainwashed ex-lovers you get to keep to yourself?” he quipped acidly.
“Bucky’s not my –” Steve clenched his jaw, and Tony could practically hear his teeth grinding. “What happened to Bucky is my problem.”
“Just like what happened to Killian was mine, but I don’t seem to remember you being eager to sit that one out,” Tony retorted.
“That was different, Tony,” Steve shook his head. “You weren’t responsible for Killian. But Bucky – I left him. I got him into a fight, and I didn’t get him out of it. I can’t do that again.”
The sour feeling was still roiling in Tony’s gut, and he couldn’t shake the image of Steve crashing through metal, taking punches, hardly even trying to protect himself.
“He tried to kill you,” Tony said, and it came out sounding harsh and flat. “He doesn’t know you.”
“He will,” Steve replied simply, and in that moment his expression was clear and unworried.
Tony shut his eyes. The knot in his stomach had disintegrated into what felt like a swarm of needles, and Tony allowed himself a moment to acknowledge what it must mean that hearing Steve say those words could sting so badly.
“Well, you’re not facing him alone,” Tony said finally, keeping his own voice even through herculean effort. “You want to get your face punched in some more by Soviet-edition Bourne Identity, fine, but you’re taking me with you.”
Steve’s mouth twisted.
“Tony, I almost got you hurt today. When I called out to you –”
“We need a better plan, I agree,” Tony broke in. “But from what I hear, you’re the just the star-spangled man to see about getting one of those.”
That earned him an eye roll, and Tony wondered how fondness could feel like someone was sewing your insides together with hot wire.
“We’ll figure it out, Cap,” he continued. “And if we can bring him in, we’ll bring him in.”
Steve gave him a long stare, an expression flitting across his face that Tony couldn’t quite track.
“Tony,” he said finally, and his voice sounded suddenly horrible, “there’s something else about Bucky.” He choked, swallowed, and started again, “I just realized, and I didn’t want to – I still don’t know for sure, but I –”
“It’s okay, Steve,” Tony said, trying for a smile as he clapped a gauntleted hand carefully on Steve’s shoulder.
He knew he should probably let Steve finish. Steve had never officially come out to him – maybe he hadn’t told anyone how he felt about Bucky at all – and it looked like it was taking him an immense effort to get the confession out. But Tony didn’t think he could stand to hear the truth confirmed just now, not when he was still reeling from the recognition of his own feelings on the matter.
“I get it,” Tony said instead. “Don’t worry. You’re going to get him back.”
Steve paused for a moment, his jaw still clenching like he was working over something painful in his throat. Then he reached up and squeezed the gauntlet on his shoulder, his grip strong enough for Tony to feel it through the metal.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”