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There was music in the sound of coffee splashing into his mug; sweet, sweet music. Tony lifted it to his mouth for a quick taste test, then scratched DUM-E on the ‘head’ approvingly. “God, I knew there was a reason I invented you,” he sighed, giving the curls of steam a satisfied look before drinking the mug down halfway.
“Sir,” JARVIS interrupted his coffee-break, and Tony waved a silencing hand at the disembodied voice of his AI, his eyes rolled up towards the ceiling in coffee-fueled delight. Bitter, sharp, delicious coffee - everything else could wait, including his AI.
DUM-E whirled its rotor arm with enthusiasm, following Tony hopefully as he moved across the room and opened up a cabinet. A quick glance at the glass-paneled entryway to his lab guaranteed his momentary privacy, so he topped the (oversized, bright red, officially licensed Invincible Iron Man™) mug off with a generous splash of whiskey.
Okay, so it was less like a splash and more like a shot. Or three. Any connoisseur of the stuff would have cringed to see him mixing 18 year old Jameson with anything that wasn’t ice or a bit of water, but DUM-E never judged. Besides, the fancy, imported coffee Pepper routinely bought him for Christmas was at least half as expensive as the booze itself, so it wasn’t as if he was dumping it into a diet coke. This was practically classy.
Technically, a proper Irish coffee should be served in a tall glass, topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, but Tony had always liked his drinks stiff, and this one.... well, it was stiff enough, and he was hardly going to walk upstairs for a little whipped cream.
“Jarvis, reduce the gauge of the wiring by 4% and run the project at 8 times magnification. It’s got to be thinner, or it’ll never escape anyone’s notice.”
“Yes, sir. A reduction in gauge renders the simulated model 1.847% thinner.” Jarvis spun out a pale, three-dimensional holograph of a narrow rectangular tube, and Tony shook his head, frustrated.
“Clunky. It’s too damn clunky. Can we rearrange-”
“Only you would consider something 3 millimeters wide ‘clunky’,” observed someone behind him, and Tony nearly jumped out of his skin. He whirled around, clutching his coffee cup with white knuckles, the other hand pressed to his man-made heart.
“Christ on a cupcake, Steve, really?” It just wasn’t fair that someone so large could be so stealthy. Steve was a huge person, his broad shoulders and thunderous thighs (okay, maybe not quite so thunderous as Thor’s, bit Tony felt the adjective applied anyway) making it difficult for him to do anything but loom over his (non-Hulk, non-supersized, non-alien) teammates. Combine that with ninja-like stealth skills and you had a heart-attack inducing package. “Thanks for the heads up, JARVIS. Good man!”
“Sir, I attempted to inform you that Captain Rogers had entered the lab,” JARVIS observed, pique layered into his tone. “You were in a state of caffeine-induced non-responsiveness.”
“This is why DUM-E is my favorite,” Tony muttered, clinging to his mug. “Attitude, attitude, attitude, and also he makes the coffee. What can I do for you, Steve?”
Steve watched Tony with a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. “Clint is calling for take-out and I’ve been instructed to take your order.”
“Eh,” Tony waved away the offer. “I’m good.” Only a crazy person would curb the edge of a perfectly good buzz with carbs and salt. He needed to stay focused, to finish this, to solve this problem and then he would worry about things like food and drink and the routine maintenance of his body.
“JARVIS, when was the last time Tony ate?” Steve asked the ceiling.
“Master Stark’s caloric intake over the last 33 hours has been entirely liquid, sir.”
Steve’s brows shot up and Tony glowered. “Not helping, JARVIS. I had that protein shake!”
“That was sixteen hour ago, sir, and still qualifies as a liquid, if a slightly more healthy option than your current beverage of choice.”
Sixteen hours? Really?
“In that case, JARVIS, would you please bring up the menu for Wok & Roll on seventh?” Steve asked sweetly.
JARVIS did exactly that, ignoring Tony’s muttered You and Benedict Arnold while Steve grinned. “I’m going with Kung Pow chicken, sesame chicken, and General Tso’s... tried and true, if you want some of those we can split them.”
Tony made a cursory selection, then added three orders of egg rolls and a second bowl of egg drop soup, since Clint always stole his. “I swear we single-handedly keep this place in business.... DUM-E will come up and grab my share, thanks Cap.”
Closing out the menu and flinging it into the holographic digital trash can, Tony let JARVIS relay the information to Clint upstairs. His brain was already back on his project, so he single-handedly increased the magnification and turned it ninety degrees and upside down. It took him two tries to swipe the display correctly - he squinted one eye shut and took another long pull of his whiskey-laced coffee-concoction and began re-arranging the wiring for the umpteenth time. He’d forgotten Steve was there at all when the good Captain broke into his thoughts for the second time that evening.
“What’s so important that you can’t come up and eat dinner with the team, Tony?”
Tony jumped, again. “Mother of mercy, really, would it kill you to - I don’t know - cough first or something? Genius at work, Steve, genius, I don’t know if you’ve seen the press releases or what, but there’s a multi-billion dollar international investment team that will pretty much kill you if I keel over of a heart-attack due to your untimely interruptions. Also, Pepper. Pepper would definitely be upset if you killed me.”
“I haven’t moved,” Steve pointed out, brows peaked.
“But I ... I’m... Steve, what do you need? I’ll eat, but I can’t eat until the food’s here, doesn’t matter how long you sit and stare and think hungry thoughts at me, I’m not gonna start chewing on a lug wrench.”
The massive blond man gave him an impassive look, then twitched his head at the holographic model. “I was just curious what you’re working on. You’ve been at it for days now, so it must be interesting.”
“Not interesting, pick another adjective, interesting is too good for this ridiculously frustrating piece of crap. Irritating. Obnoxious. Difficult to miniaturize, and I’m blaming Doom for that because I can and it seems fair. Not interesting, just... important.”
“What does it do?”
Tony sighed, because this was a conversation neither coffee nor whiskey could bolster him for. “It’s a modified version of the Skrull-detector Doom hand-delivered to the house in Malibu. I’m trying to outfit it for personal use.”
Steve’s brows hitched upwards again. Much more of that and they were going to crawl right off his forehead and nest in his hair. “More personal than the unibeam? I thought they were mass-producing your previous version.”
“They are, but it’s too...flashy.” Tony glared at the model, then snapped twice and brought up two sets of blueprints. “I want something small that can be embedded in every last door and window frame, every air conditioning vent, every goddamn chimney in the entire mansion. It’ll emit low-levels of the same frequency I patched into my unibeam, just enough to cause a ripple effect on the Skrull shape-changing, but not quite enough to reset their bodyshifting or saturate our people and cause any kind of, I don’t know, uncontrolled cancerous growths; although really I have to say I suspect our stylishly irradiated superhero team is immune to every form of cancer ever. But, you know, other than not causing horrible diseases, if I dampen the emissions to keep the dosage low, it should render the emissions invisible enough unless you’re looking through a secondary spectrometer...”
His ramblings gradually fell from explanation to hypothesis, and Steve seemed content enough to listen, nodding along occasionally as though he understood more than every fourth word. Of course he was polite and attentive, Tony observed distantly, because he was Captain America. He represented everything that was Great and Noble about their grand old flag, but in a Wholesome and Steadfast way, not a middle America supersized Big Mac with extra cheese kind of way. Tony waggled his fingers and the model miniaturized and multiplied a thousand times over. He had the plans memorized, of course but for Steve’s benefit he instructed JARVIS to bring up the blueprints of Stark Tower and the Avengers mansion, then overlay them with the miniaturized specs. Each tiny device began to emit an animated cone of pale white energy to indicate the field through which visitors would have to pass in order to gain access to the building. It would be thorough, it would be secure, it would protect his people.
It also made the blueprint twinkle like a Christmas tree, and Tony paused for a moment to appreciate the asymmetrical beauty of his own design. He loved being a genius.
Steve dropped a hand on Tony’s shoulder and spun him around, away from the flickering holographic lights. “Do we need to talk about this?” he asked gently, in that irritatingly calm way he had of stabbing straight at the heart of things.
“There’s not much to talk about,” Tony observed, flatly. “I’m the leader of the Avengers, I support, protect, and house the team - and I let the Skrulls take me, take us, by surprise. It took me two months to notice something was wrong, and then only because Nick freaking Fury shoved it down my throat. I stood around and ... and sparred and laughed and talked to and fought with someone wearing your skin, and didn’t even notice.”
The moment he’d heard the Skrull-Steve speak over Veranke’s radio easily charted amongst the Top Five Worst Moments of Tony Stark’s Life. Tony had been hearing that voice - not-Steve’s voice - in his dreams for days; mocking, laughing, smug and superior in every way that Steve wasn’t... it was half the reason he’d given up sleep. He’d missed the clues. How had he missed the clues?
Steve’s face was soft and gentle and stern. He squeezed Tony’s shoulder, blue eyes meeting brown. “Tony, it wasn’t your fault.”
“How can you say that?” Tony asked, dark eyes narrow. Cap’s gaze was almost painful to maintain, and he dropped eye contact as quickly as his ego would allow. “We knew the Skrulls were coming, Kang spelled that out for us. He made it pretty clear that the Earth would be involved in the war, and that you would be a catalyst....” Tony folded his arms across his chest, coffee cup resting against his bicep. “I should have completed this device months ago; Doom did. I should have seen it coming.”
Steve brought his hands up to Tony’s shoulders again, but before he began to speak he sniffed slightly and frowned. “Is there... liquor in your coffee?”
Tony sniffed at the drink suspiciously, smelling nothing; he was pretty sure Steve didn’t have super senses... at least if he did it wasn’t in his file. Maybe this drink was stiffer than he thought. “Well, yeah. You can’t make an Irish Coffee without the Irish Whiskey, now can you.”
“You’ve been down here drinking and designing for the past thirty three hours?”
“I wasn’t drinking for all of it. For most of it, even. I just... you know, it helps me focus, and it ...”
Steve very gently - yet very firmly - separated Tony’s fingers from the coffee cup and set it down on a workbench. When he turned around, his arms were folded and his stance as determined and immovable as a linebacker’s. Tony made a sad little noise of protest, which Cap drowned out with another irritating string of Logical Conclusions and Reasonable Assessments.
“Tony, even if we knew the Skrulls were coming, and guessed that they could shapeshift; nothing could have prepared us for their ability to osmose memories, personality, preferences and behaviors. Even if Viper’s impostor, the only Skrull in captivity wasn’t being hoarded and heavily guarded by Nick Fury and his secret Shield breakaway team, their tech, their methods, their genes and their goals were completely foreign to us. Fury knew they were coming, knew they were here, and his team was still compromised! There’s no way you could have devised something like this - ” he gestured at the tiny flickering Skrull-detectors - “without any of those variables.”
“Doom did,” Tony pointed out, sullenly.
“He knew the variables. At least, he knew the scope of their abilities better than we did.”
“Even if I would have failed, I should have tried,” Tony heard a note of despondent disappointment in his own voice and tried to crush it away. “I should have seen it coming. I’m a futurist, Steve - that’s all I’m good for. Seeing what’s coming.”
“I let myself get jumped and beaten into submission in my own bedroom,” Steve pointed out. “Do you know how embarrassing it is to face down rogue AIs and inter-dimensional conquerors only to be taken down by little green men your own home?” The minute he said it he seemed to realize it had been a mistake. Tony shut his expression down and looked back at the comforting twinkle of his project.
“That’s my point. They shouldn’t have been there. I should have... I was too distracted by the team, by everything else going on to notice... I just can’t...”
“Tony.”
“I know it sounds pathetic, Cap, but you’re one of my best friends. One of my only friends, even if you do show up at weird hours and collude with my AI to force-feed me crappy Chinese. You were acting off and I just ignored it because I didn’t understand it. The way you reacted with violence before diplomacy when the Kree rolled in at the United Nations should have told me everything I needed to know... or at least made me marginally suspicious of your motives.”
"Tony," Steve said, with enough emphasis to derail Tony’s rambling train of thought. His blue eyes were soft. “There is a difference between being busy and being distracted. You’re running a superhero team, a company, butting heads with S.H.I.E.L.D, Hill, and half a dozen international organizations. You trusted me - well, the thing you thought was me - enough to believe that even if my M.O. had changed, I still knew what I was doing. You trusted me to take care of myself. I’m happy that I have..... had that trust, to know you didn’t doubt me, even if a little doubt would have been convenient.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll admit that... well, at first I was angry that nobody came for me. I spent two months in a cell and my hosts weren’t particularly kind. They...they wanted things from me, of course, but it wasn’t a real interrogation. I couldn’t figure out what they wanted from me. It was only when I saw what they did to the others that I realized there wasn’t anything they didn’t already know. When I realized that I’d been replaced, that nobody was looking because nobody knew to look, and that the Skrulls were just keeping me around in case something happened to their impostor and they needed another go at the source material... yes, I was angry. I was furious with them, with myself, and with you, too.
“But I’m not mad, now. I’ve seen the tapes, read the files as many times as you have,” his eyes dared Tony to challenge that assertion, but the shorter man stayed silent. “You made your calls to the best of your ability. I’m the one who should be apologizing, Tony. If I was more worthy of the trust you placed in me I never would have allowed myself to be captured. I try to protect the Avengers, but I couldn’t even protect myself.”
The long, hard stare Tony fixed on Steve made the taller man shift almost imperceptibly, something nervous flickering through his face and vanishing behind his careful frown.
“So...” Tony took a step closer, then another. “So you know how I feel, then. I should have been there to protect you. All of you. Once I finish this scanner, I’ll have them installed and I’ll finally get some sleep knowing that what happened two and a half months ago can’t happen again. And then we’ll ... we’ll all sit around and stuff our faces with take-out and everything will be just like it used to be, and it’ll be great, you’ll see.”
Steve faltered slightly before reaching out for Tony’s arm. It should have been awkward, this grasping for contact when they were standing so close, but it felt nice to be touched after so many days of self-imposed isolation. Tony tried to hide his trepidation as Steve scanned his face and - once again, with that charismatic bluntness that really shouldn’t be charming - said quietly: “Are you saying you still don’t trust the team? After that battle - after we unveiled the Skrull invasion on the steps of the capitol building? You’re afraid there are still Skrulls in the mix.”
That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? Steve had neatly guessed what Tony was afraid to admit to himself; his team had been compromised, and Tony was having a hard time believing that their comfortable superfamily dynamic could ever be repaired. What if someone wasn’t themselves? Or worse... what if they were themselves, but too angry with him to move past it?
What if his paranoia - warranted or otherwise - had ruined everything?
“I want to protect them,” Tony repeated, pulling his arm away. “from the Skrulls, and from... from my own suspicions. I’m supposed to be our leader, but my doubts almost destroyed the team, Steve. I need to erase them completely, or I won’t be able to do my job the way it needs to be done. Or didn’t you see that tape?” he couldn’t help from asking, an edge to his voice.
“You mean the footage from the entry hall. I saw the tape,” Steve admitted. Tony wasn’t proud of the way that confrontation in the foyer of the mansion had gone, and he wasn’t sure if it was made better or worse by the fact that Clint turned out to be himself after all. Good news - he’d been right to trust Clint for so long, the man was a valuable asset to the team. Bad news - said valuable asset was completely pissed at Tony for giving him a starring role in their own personal version of The Crucible.
“I can’t very well go around unibeaming my teammates to make sure they haven’t been kidnapped by little green body snatchers.” Tony looked down at his hands. “And I’m not a trusting person to begin with; I barely trust myself half the time, and knowing the Skrulls could be out there, have the ability to hit so close to home...”
He trailed off, then said quietly: “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this leadership thing.”
At that, Cap bodily turned him around again and slung a heavy arm over his shoulders. Tony stared at the mansion blueprints twinkling in front of them, then felt a soft shaking of Steve’s arm and chest. He stiffened when he realized the feeling was quiet laughter, tensing up defensively.
“Is it really so funny? I’m not the leader type, Steve. Running a company is different than running a superhero squadron,” Tony frowned, a hint of a whine in his voice. “You, T’challa, Carol... you’re leaders. Even Carol handled it more gracefully than me, and she’d only been on the team for two weeks! At least she apologized to Hawkeye as she tried to bring him in to S.W.O.R.D. for questioning... I just walked away.”
“I’m not laughing at you - well, I guess I am laughing at you,” Cap observed, apologetically. “Since the moment we’ve met I’ve been impressed by your personality - you’re magnetic, Tony, and people want to be around you. You have the same capacity as any of our teammates to lead, and you’re better cut out for it than Carol or T’challa because you have Pepper to help with Stark Industries ... you can devote your time fully to assessing and meeting the needs of the team. T’challa has a nation to run. Carol’s loyalties are already divided between the Avengers and S.W.O.R.D. I... well, the Skrulls borrowed my face, I’m hardly in a position to go around commanding teams of super heroes. It’d be a public relations nightmare.”
Steve smiled at the thought and Tony winced. How could he be so good-natured about this? It must be incredibly painful for him; the public certainly hadn’t forgotten, and beyond his original statements to the press he was refusing to grant any more interviews. Tony had seen how many extra blows he’d thrown in when his double was incapacitated in the dirt on the National Mall - he’d never seen Captain America take something so personally.
Despite that, here he was in Tony’s lab, all gentle humor and earnest compliments.
God, he was a good man.
“Tony,” Steve said gently, pulling him back to the conversation at hand and gesturing to the Skrull-scanners. “Could anybody else on the team create something as complex as these? Just whip them together in a coffee-fueled frenzy and install them in every property the Avengers frequent? You’re blazing trails here, you’re making things safer for everyone. You apologized to Clint, in the end - but you were right to be suspicious. The team had been infiltrated, it would have been a mistake to go along with Jan and ... and the Skrull impostor just because it was easier than confronting your teammates.”
Despite himself, Tony felt himself relax. “How do you do that?” he asked, cynically. He looked over and up at Steve, resisting the urge to lean into his huge, comforting, totally Skrull-free warmth.
Steve's blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “Do what?”
“Give pep talks like this. Seriously, you’re the most convincing, charismatic - do you practice them in the mirror before you go to bed at night?”
“Tony,” Steve smiled, patiently. “You’re doing that thing where you joke around instead of digesting what I’m trying to say. Let me spell it out - you’re a brilliant leader and an exceptional teammate. What happened with the Skrulls doesn’t change that.”
“Am I?” This time it was Tony who laughed. When had Steve gotten so good at reading him? Maybe he did have previously undisclosed super senses. “Is that a thing that I do?”
Steve smirked and shook his head. “I’ll tell the team you’re too busy for Chinese and send your share down with DUM-E. But when all of this is said and done,” he waved a hand at the projections, “I expect you to resume the twice-weekly all team dinners. It’s bad for morale to have you missing; nobody else can get the Hulk to agree to Thai, and movie night is a heck of a lot quieter when you’re gone.”
“Bad for morale? Right.”
“Bad for my morale, anyway.” Steve gave his shoulder a squeeze and pulled his hand away; Tony felt the loss keenly, fighting the urge to trail after him like a heeling dog. Have some dignity, Stark, he told himself, running a hand through his (ugh, wow, actually quite greasy) hair. He couldn’t believe Steve had just voluntarily touched him, considering how long he’d gone without showering. What a guy.
Steve glanced up at the twinkling lights again. “Let me know if you need anything. You really should sleep at some point, too, but I’ll start hustling you towards bed once you’re all fattened up on MSG and rice.”
Tony grinned and waggled a brow at his friend, then slid backwards and snagged his coffee from the workbench again and gave Steve a cheeky little toast. “I’ll look forward to it, Cap. Go on, DUM-E, head upstairs with Uncle Steve.” He shooed the little bot at Steve before Cap’s ears could go any pinker, then turned his full attention back to Operation Skull-Proof The Avengers Mansion. He listened to the other man’s retreating footsteps - and the whirr of DUM-E’s treads - until the workshop door hissed shut and he was left alone.
“JARVIS....?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Ping me when the food shows up. Maybe I’ll be hungry by then.”
“Of course, sir.”
His brain sank back into calculations, into angles and voltage and particulate projection. It was strange how all vestiges of his earlier frustration had eased away; funny how Steve’s steadfast, stalwart presence was all it took. The man just stood there and listened, absorbed, asked the questions that nobody else would ask.
And Steve thought he could finish this; Steve believed it would work and, what’s more, that it was a good idea.
Tony rolled his sleeves back up and leaned back in. He could crack this project; he could crack anything, eventually.