Stony is my new obsession. Don't read if you don't like the pairing, because the pairing is the point. I won't make any promises on updating quickly or anything, but I've already planned this short story out fairly well. I've planned for 9 or 10 chapters, and it will probably evolve (devolve?) into smut towards the end. This chapter takes place about six months before Age of Ultron.

This is mostly from the movie canon. I was going to write from the comic version or combine the two, but good lord what an undertaking. So I took liberties, as writers are wont to do. I borrowed from the comics in that it was Tony who discovered Steve, not some random agents.

Warning for mentions of animal testing, something I'm personally against, but that doesn't mean my characters are.

Like a Moth to a Flame

It is getting to him, goddammit.

Afghanistan. Loki. Extremis. All the "little" guys that popped up in between, causing only a "little" damage, costing a relatively small "just a few million" and a never small enough number of causalities.

Especially when it came to his team.

Nat's cracked cranium, Rhodey's painful journey through physical therapy after a bomb that was too much even for the Iron Patriot, Clint having to undergo surgery to repair his common flexor tendon, that time that even the Hulk couldn't entirely protect Bruce from the beatings he endured. Only Steve yet remained untouched. They were resilient, but most of them were just human, and all of them had started that way.

Tony couldn't pretend that his own mortality wasn't dropping by occasionally, to remind him of his limited existence. Tony was…well, he was certainly middle-aged. Not that he was out of the loop, oh no. Tony was more modern than the iPhone that was going to be released in 2020, because he was already thinking fifty—no, a hundred years ahead of that. But at the rate he was going, the damage to his heart wouldn't get the chance to finally kill him, and one day, one day scarily soon, a new alien looking to take over might do it for him.

So he retrieved the small notebook and the solid livermorium box that had taken the destruction of his childhood home for him to discover. His father clearly never meant for it to see the light of day, and Tony had the feeling that he had hidden it during one of his numerous drunken benders that resulted in explosions from the underground lab that rocked his bedroom on the 8th floor. The small (but heavy, oh so heavy, with physical and metaphorical weight) package was a secret even from Jarvis, from Dum-E, from S.H.I.E.L.D, from Cap, even from Nat. He avoided even thinking about it with her in the same building, just in case. He had no proof, but he was pretty sure she could read minds.

After the fiasco of losing the serum that turned tiny Steve from Brooklyn into a tall, Adonis of American justice, Howard Stark had been anything but idle in recreating and refining it. However, shortly before completing the project that could've literally changed humanity, Steve Rogers, that boy from Brooklyn, crashed a plane of explosives into the ocean and disappeared for 70 years. He never asked, because you just didn't ask Howard Stark many questions, but something about Cap's "death" destroyed his ability to continue on with the project, and caused him to switch from bioengineering to technology, prompting breakthroughs of pretty much every kind, years before such things were thought possible, much less probable. Tony had always vaguely regretted that his father didn't get to see the age of the internet usher in, the age of smartphones and technology he only wrote about, but couldn't achieve.

After he had found it and managed to open the box (he had to wonder how his father even sealed the damn thing, he only managed to open it without destroying the contents by using a laser he designed, based on Asgardian technology). Then, he worked on it in secret, saying he was "going out", sending a stunt double in his place, and heading to his secret lab. Well, his most secret lab. Tony Stark had to have layers of secret labs. While his stunt double was out partying it up (in a much more tame manner than how the real Tony Stark partied back in his day), he was working on refining, completing, and making plans to implement what his father had done, and the scientists before him.

It was slow going. Without his bots to help, he had to do everything by hand. It reminded him of building his first computer out of spare parts when he was six. Or, you know, that time he built Iron Man in a cave. But whatever. It also reminded him that he was getting a little bit lazy in the day-to-day, as fetching his own equipment every few minutes grew laborsome.

But Tony wasn't just looking for the ability to grant immortality, good looks, and strong as hell biceps with the serum. He was looking to do that, but more mundane stuff, like regenerating tissues at a lightning fast rate. Like slowing, rather than completely stopping, the aging process. Extending lives and making them more healthy and comfortable. And, reversing the process. That last bit was so secret that he barely admitted it to himself. He knew that Steve had a hard time emotionally with his perceived immortality, which Tony privately felt had been tested entirely too much. If, and only if Steve wished to go back to a normal life, well, a relatively normal life, because the serum had altered his every cell and the fundamental nature of his cells, and while Tony might be able to completely reverse the process, he couldn't figure out a way to do it without Steve immediately and rapidly aging into an old man and dying. Which Tony obviously didn't want. And besides, it would be downright criminal to deprive the world of those abs…wait what? Anyway, back to a normal life where he could get married and grow old with someone, but only after they were done saving the world of course.

Tony had made some remarkable strides, but what he needed were test subjects. He took a break that lasted nearly six months while he mulled it over, because the only options truly available to him were either to test it on himself (something he could feel Natasha punching him out over just by thinking of it), or to test it on animals, preferably primates.

Tony ate a mostly vegan diet out of health concerns, rather than ethical ones, but still. Animal testing was not something that his scientific adventures had ever led him to. Also, creating super solider monkeys was just asking for trouble. But, eventually, he did place an order for several chimpanzees and bonobos.

The monkeys were a lot of work, because if he was going to do this animal testing thing, he was going to do it right. Well, as right as possible. Not that doing animal testing right was possible. But, you know. He donated a large chunk of money to the World Wildlife Fund shortly after he got his order confirmation. He also set to work building several robot caretakers and creating a habitat that they would be comfortable in. It was such a headache, he had to buy a new super-secret but temperate property, convert it, build the robots, stock it, teach the robots, and then settle the monkeys into their life, and try to not feel too guilty about the protocols in place in case anything went south. By the time he had his monkeys and he felt safe leaving them with the new bots (Jane, Tarzan, and Jeff) another almost six months had passed, and he was another year older. He had a mild panic attack at the grey hair that now complimented the black. And he resolved to begin testing.

He instructed the new bots to contact him the second one of the monkeys was injured. After a dispute over some papaya, he had confirmation that the serum he isolated to exclusively heal the body worked. He should've felt more relieved, but in truth he spent several days improving the enclosures…just in case.

After coming home from his "bender" and nursing his "hangover", Captain Righteous himself came to see him in his lab. Tony was catching up on work for Pepper, having Jarvis run simulations, directing Dum-E and You to start framing a prototype, repairing some circuiting with one hand and drinking straight out of the coffee pot with the other, all while a Metallica CD blared.

Jarvis, the traitor, didn't even warn him about Steve's approach.

"Stark!"

Tony decided to ignore him. He was a bit distracted after all, and he really didn't want to fuck up this wiring. Again.

"Tony, we need to talk."

Again, he ignored him, gesturing to the bots, ordering Jarvis around, and muttering to himself about polarities and circuits.

Steve slowly approached and gently pried the coffee pot from his left hand. Tony wanted to blast him with the suit. Tony didn't like people touching his coffee.

"That's not very sanitary you know. Barton drinks that coffee too."

Tony shot him an annoyed look. "Dum-E broke the one I had down here and I haven't had time to replace it. Every time I get my to-do list down to only a dozen or so things, Pepper and S.H.I.E.L.D. decide to unload a hundred more on me and something new attacks New York. I can only defy the laws of physics and time without caffeine for so long."

"Well, that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. You go out for days, partying god-knows-where, we barely hear from you, if at all, and then when you come home you don't sleep, you barely eat, and you rarely leave the lab. It's been getting worse in the last six months. It used to be only a few times a year, and now it's nearly every week. Tony...I know you're better, but as the team Captain I've gotta know, are you drinking again?"

Tony was calculating that the suit was less than 50 yards away, and it can move safely at 200mph to reach him, minus the 2.2 second delay for it to be released from its cell, he could put it on in less than 8 seconds now, minus a few moments to adjust…but it would still be a good fifteen seconds until go, and Cap was close enough that his reaction time was in the millisecond category…sigh.

"Jarvis! Please print the record for the last six years or so of near daily blood alcohol tests, indicating the night Pepper and I celebrated our engagement two years ago with a glass of champagne, the last time I consumed alcohol since Cap over here was kind enough to defrost, if only a little."

"Right away, sir."

Tony turned back to his wiring without a word, barely flinching when the door to his lab quietly shut several minutes later, the pages left untouched and still-warm on the printer.

He set the wiring down with a sigh.

"Jarvis, Lockdown protocol Howard Stark Jr., code: Delta India Charlie Kilo 8514."

"Right away sir."

"Dum-E, can you get me the pizza from the fridge?"

Dum-E beeped in response, hurrying to fetch the pizza and heat it up in the microwave.

Tony spent the rest of the evening eating old, greasy pizza, pondering the super solider, and wondering why the hell he even cared what he thought anyway, before falling asleep on the ancient couch he kept down there.

Steve, having been informed by Jarvis that the lab was in lockdown but that 'sir' wasn't in any danger, settled on the couch in the living room with his sketchbook and a sigh, to wait for Tony to resurface. He had to eventually; after all, there was no coffee pot down there.