DISCLAIMER: The Avengers and related properties were created by various writers at Marvel. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In this universe, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were just never dating. I make no apologies.
The heavy blanket of night should have made the changes in the city harder to see, but instead they glowed out of the darkness everywhere he ran. Headlights and neon signs, blaring in unfamiliar shapes around every ghost of a familiar corner, blotting out the stars with their brightness. Kids today thought of the Milky Way as just a place where they were, not a thing they could see.
At least the chocolate bar was still around. Steve tried not to keep a list of things that had changed and things that were the same, but every once in a while something like that would jump out at him. Something stupid, usually. But it was the stupid things that made him feel like this was somehow still his world. And on nights when he couldn't sleep, when he couldn't take anymore of watching his regrets flash before his eyes to the tune of his fists on the punching bag, sometimes he'd jog around the city and a familiar corner would take him by surprise. Suddenly, his fingers tracing crumbling brick, he'd feel for just a moment like he was home.
Some nights. Not tonight.
Tonight he found himself staring up at the brightest lights in town, leaning against a corner of Stark Tower as he stretched his legs, wondering what in his aimless course had brought him here. It was over eleven miles from the S.H.I.E.L.D.-owned apartment complex in Brooklyn to the heart of Manhattan, and that was if you went straight for it. He definitely hadn't done that. The flyer he'd stuck in his pocket had come from a community center in the exact opposite direction, and whenever the walk lights hadn't been in his favor, he'd just turned down whatever street was clear. Anything to keep on the move. He had to hand it to the goons Fury had on shadow duty for keeping with him down all those roads that were too busy for the now-early hours of the day.
The string of footsteps grinding over the sidewalk behind him couldn't have been more distinctive if they'd been a repulsor blast settling the man down on the road. Tony Stark, with his collar unbuttoned and no tie to be seen, leaned against the building and winked as he took a swig from a flask. "Thought that might be you, Cap."
"How'd you figure?"
"I can spot that upright posture from a mile off, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. tail is a dead giveaway." Tony offered the silver flask, and Steve turned it down with a shake of his head. "You know, I bet if you told those morons you don't need a babysitter, they'd back off. At least the guys on you now would. They look pretty green."
"The military always kept a handler on me, from day one. You get used to it."
"Yeah, and the paparazzi had cameras outside the hospital when I was born. Sometimes people need to fuck off and leave you alone. But it's your call." There was an oddity to how Tony could make the craziest things seem natural, like putting up his hand for a blue light to scan next to the door that opened itself. "I think Bruce is asleep, if that's who you were looking for."
"Just in the neighborhood, that's all. I might as well head home." Not that he was feeling any less on edge than before he'd set out.
"Sure you won't come up for a drink? You know, as long as you're in the neighborhood."
"I bet you say that to all the defrosted soldiers on your doorstep at three in the morning."
And yet he was following Tony inside, watching lights click to life along the vaulted granite ceilings. Even in a state of half-destruction after Loki's invasion,Stark Tower was bigger and gaudier than an opera house. "Just you," his sort-of friend answered. "Is it really only three o'clock? I was sure I'd passed into 5AM levels of irresponsibility."
"You can set your watch by how drunk you feel, Mr. Stark?"
The billionaire turned backwards so that even while walking Steve could see his wrinkled nose and his scowl. "Come on! Did we not repel an alien fleet together, from these very streets? It's Tony. Only people wielding microphones and/or business contracts call me Mr. Stark. T-O..."
"I believe I said I'd call you Tony when you call me Steve." The elevator arrived without so much as a push of a button, doors hissing open so they could both walk in.
"Steve," the man laughed, as if it was just as hard for him to believe that was a name as it was for any sane person to think this was a house.
"Steve. S-T-E..."
"See, that's what I like about you, Steve. You don't take shit. Except, apparently, from S.H.I.E.L.D., which we're going to fix. And you have a fabulous ass, obviously," Tony said, laying a slap on the aforementioned rear end that left Steve blushing. No one had smacked him like that since the Howling Commandos. "That's very likeable."
"Exactly how drunk is 5AM drunk, Tony?"
"If you're asking whether I'll remember in the morning that you're signing up for little league, the answer is yes. I'm 5AM irresponsible, not 5AM drunk." Seeing the creased paper in Tony's hands, Steve checked for the flyer he'd tucked away only to find that his host had definitely picked his pocket during that slap. "And don't try to deny that your ass is legitimately fabulous. There are entire Tumblrs devoted to it. Multiple Tumblrs."
Tumblers? Didn't sound like he meant acrobats or glassware. The future could do with a glossary.
"Jarvis! Pick a random floor between 14 and... 35, please."
"Very good, sir," the... the house answered, and the elevator started up. The future needed more than a glossary, really. It needed an instruction manual, and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s immersion process had hardly helped a bit. But first things first.
It took about two floors of feints and grabs before Steve could snatch the paper back from Tony. "Keep your hands out of my pants, or I'm going home."
"If you insist."
"I mean it, Tony. I'm not..." He bit his tongue on the lie he'd gotten used to before a lifetime had passed him by in the blink of an eye. The world couldn't ask him to pretend half his feelings didn't exist anymore, he'd learned. Not even the Army could, now. Seventy years too late to tell Bucky everything he'd never said, so it didn't matter in the particular sense, but he hated lying in general - even to rude, handsy friends who probably wouldn't remember this in five hours no matter how drunk they said they weren't. "I'm not above telling Dr. Banner you've been getting fresh."
"Who do you think showed me the Tumblrs?" Tony was out the doors before Steve even realized they'd opened, tossing his suit jacket over the back of a chair in a room lined with books where it wasn't filled with overstuffed leather sofas. Honest to goodness paper books, in Tony Stark's house. He'd started to think the man would die before he'd touch anything that wasn't digital. "A)..." his host said, putting two glasses up on a bar as Steve took a long look around the room, "Bruce and I have an entirely platonic relationship based on science, completely independent of this adorable girlfriend he turns out to have. Her father has a restraining order on him so they talk over Skype on the sly. Did I mention they're adorable? So anyway, long story short, he's indifferent to whose ass I'm grabbing flyers off of, and B)... what're you drinking?"
"Water." He met the businessman glare for glare. "Tony, I just accidentally ran a marathon. I wouldn't want whisky now even if I could feel it."
"Water it is. Sit. Make yourself at home. Tell me why a 92-year-old isn't too old to play t-ball."
"You tell me something first." No doubt that day of sharing the front lines in an interstellar war was why he suddenly felt like he could ask Howard's asshole son anything over a 3AM drink. He didn't have a bit of that fish out of water feeling that Fury and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. gave him with their chrome and their hologram computers, even though the man knocking back a bourbon on the rocks had no doubt designed every circuit in this possibly sentient skyscraper. Steve set down his glass and asked, "What's a tumbler? And why is my... you know..."
Tony pressed his hand against his forehead. "Ugh. You've been here a month, and Fury hasn't even explained the Internet? Why's he got you in a bubble? Nobody's allergic to knowing things! Here..." He set his bourbon down and reached into his pants for the black slip of glowing glass that seemed to be his pocket supercomputer, like a tiny window on the year 3012 instead of 2012. The box that fell out with it, however, scattered cards all over the table that were anything but futuristic.
Flipping over some of the mint trading cards, not at all foxed around the edges, Steve waited for Tony to finish playing with his gadget. "These are for Agent Coulson, I assume?" He winced at all the stupid poses the propaganda photographers had made him hit. Oh, to never be a dancing monkey again. But the card had meant a lot to a good man, and replacing them was a damn fine thing for Tony to do. "If you want me to sign them, it'd be an honor."
"They were for Coulson. Fury beat me to it, so now I have to think of what else you can get an idiot who talks his way out of Valhalla to spend his immortal afterlife working for S.H.I.E.L.D. Any ideas?"
"All I did was draw a portrait of him landing on the Helicarrier with that squad of Valkyries."
"God," Tony laughed with a shake of his head. He had a nice smile when he wasn't putting on a show. "I bet he was over the moon." He looked up and slapped the couch cushion. "That's it! I'll get him the Moon! Jarvis, open new project file: Moonbase Coulson. Populate with atmospheric data and run scenarios for terraforming to determine an optimal location. Send a memo to Pepper referencing procedures for acquiring lunar real estate."
"Indeed, sir. I presume you wish me to deliver it to Miss Potts's morning mail, and not to wake her in the middle of the night?" Steve could have sworn the computer's voice had a touch of disapproval in its tone for Tony's early morning madness, but who programmed a computer to talk back? That'd be silly.
"Sure, why not? She won't be able to work with it til we've picked a spot anyway. Thank you, Jarvis. And you, Steve..." said the man who he had to assume wasn't joking about the moonbase, "You get to name the space shuttle. I should talk things out with you more often. Perfect idea. Genius, and I should know. This, by the way, is a Tumblr."
He took the gizmo Tony was holding out over the table, and wasn't any more clear about what he was seeing than before he'd seen it. There was a picture of him on the screen, a still frame off a news camera that had been around after the attack. Most pictures he saw of himself were from the front; that, however, was definitely his backside, just like Tony had said. He might not have been allergic to knowing things, but seeing a computer gallery named ".com" was just damn odd. Sliding his finger over the glass like he'd seen folks doing on Fury's ship, he found picture after picture, sometimes with captions, all showing him from behind. A few were even moving pictures of clips from old newsreels. Cut so he was stuck in an unending loop of shaking his hips back and forth.
The world never stopped getting stranger.
"Tony, tell me you didn't just break into someone's computer to look at pictures of my rear end."
"Didn't have to. That's the beauty of the internet. People put things out there for the whole world to enjoy. If you think that's special, you should see the one somebody made about Hawkeye's arms. I recommend against searching 'HulkDong', though."
He opted to stick with the place where he was instead of asking how he got to any of the other things on this internet, since Tony hadn't mentioned anything he wanted to look at galleries of. Then a picture caught his eye that looked like someone had snapped it in a hallway on the Helicarrier.
"Wait a minute." Steve turned the picture for Tony to look. "This one had to come off of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s security footage!"
"No shit. Well, you know you've got fans in the biz. Maybe in WikiLeaks, too. Who knows?"
"If I ask what 'WikiLeaks' are, do I get a real answer, or are you going to show me pictures of someone taking a piss?"
After staring at him in silence for a few seconds with a frown deepening on his face, Tony rolled his eyes up at the ceiling and called out, "Jarvis, render the latest specs on a phone. I'll tweak the details and send it to fabrication for tomorrow morning. Version note: for Steve."
"One moment, sir."
"Does black work for you, or do you want something snazzier?" Tony asked, tapping the edge of the glass with the internet in it. "You'll have Google, voice recognition, image search. Anything you want to know, right there, and all my software is set to warn you and counterattack if Fury or anybody tries to hack in, so you can stop worrying about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fetish for locking you in the 20th century. Sound good?"
Steve held up the slim prism glowing in his hand, which might as well have been magic for all the parts he could see. "Are you telling me that this is a telephone?"
The man swiped the little computer back, clearing the pictures away with two flicks of his fingers. "That's what it is. And to prove it, I'm ordering pizza. What do you want? Pepperoni, olives, pineapple?"
"Tony, it's after three. All the stores have got to be closed. Sensible people are asleep."
"This is New York," he answered with a shrug and poked at a few orange menus on the... device. "And don't think I forgot about your little league escapades. I'm not that easy to distract. Inquiring minds need to know."
"There's not that much to tell." Steve pulled out the flyer from his pocket and read it over for the tenth time. The wheres and whens of the community center's baseball team hadn't changed a bit since last time. Paper was like that. "They need a coach. I was thinking it might be a good way to... you know, to give something back to the community."
He chose to ignore the eyeroll that said the billionaire had no idea why. "Steve. The community respectfully submits that repelling an interstellar army complete with giant flying eel tanks counts as 'something'. Don't let those glass-is-half-empty-and-the-cake-is-a-lie loonies in the Senate get you down, all right?"
Howard's son had probably never played catch with anything but a robot, which was kind of sad. Maybe he'd ask Tony if he wanted to play ball sometime, just for kicks. The Avengers, as scattered as they were, were the best friends he had in this world, after all.
Whether or not it was really a phone, a ringing noise came out of the glass sheet in Tony's hand. He wasn't holding it to his ear, though, just out in the air, and Steve couldn't see a speaker or a microphone. As far as he knew, this was one of Tony's jokes. "It's not about the senator, Tony. I want to. You know, I never got to play baseball with a team as a kid, since I was always sick and scrawny and the other kids beat me up, but I went to every game at Ebbets Field when I could buy, borrow, or sneak my way in. I love baseball. If I could be their coach, I figured... if I could teach these kids about the love of the game and fair play and... and sticking up for your fellow man... That's better than being Captain America."
The blank look Tony was giving him, like trying to get the idea of baseball into his brain had shoved every other thought out the door, was too much for Steve to keep looking at. He could feel himself blushing again as he looked toward the window and a young voice called out of nowhere, "Thanks for calling Carve Sandwiches and Pizza. Is this for pick-up or delivery? ... Um, hello? ... Hello?"
"Tony, answer your phone."
His host still had on a shell-shocked look as he stammered, "I... ah, I'm sorry. I... just developed a childhood dream and simultaneously had it come true. I'm gonna need a minute."
Shaking his head, Steve grabbed the glass plate. Tony, meanwhile, collapsed onto the couch. What a ham. "Please don't mind my friend. He's a little off," he said to the picture of a pizza box glowing on the screen. This sure didn't feel like a phone.
"Don't worry about it, he calls here all the time. Delivery to Stark Tower, right?"
"Ah... right. I guess." Assuming this was a real person, and not an elaborate prank. "Does Tony have a usual?"
"Oh, sure."
"Um. Great. Could we get the usual, plus two large pepperoni pizzas, please?"
"No problem. Someone'll have that to you in about half an hour."
"Thanks a lot," Steve answered and slid the phone back into his friend's grip, which hadn't moved an inch since he'd fallen onto the sofa. Either they were going to have pizza in half an hour, or he was going to make Tony show him where the kitchen was as punishment for lying and teasing, because that multi-hour run was hitting his stomach like a sinkhole opening up.
And he was definitely taking Tony out to a field someday.
~/~
The chirp, chirp, chirp of his phone roused Tony just enough that the daylight streaming through the windows woke him the rest of the way. He was sure there was a good reason why he was curled up on a windowseat in the library under a blanket instead of in his bed or at his workbench, but mornings pre-coffee (when he had bothered sleeping) had never been his best time of day.
"Ugh. Who is it, Jarvis?"
"Miss Potts, sir. Shall I bring up the data you requested last night?"
"Please." The tint on the window darkened, easing the glare from the sunlight and bringing all his data right onto the glass. 'Project File: Moonbase Coulson', it read across the top, and vague memories started filtering into his head about how all that had happened. And hey, now he had a list of four ideal spots to build it. Not to mention a To Do list that he sure wished he could remember how he'd gotten.
Reminder: 1 item in Amazon cart
Check/set up phone (version note: for Steve)
Filigree! [sic] Reapportion!
Steve's birthday - buy Dodgers.
Huh. Well, the phone he remembered. He'd decided to make one for...
Tony whipped his head around, suddenly remembering the main reason he wasn't anywhere near his bed. Sure enough, next to the table stacked with empty pizza boxes, there was a blond passed out cold on his couch. Stocking feet sticking out of the end of a fleece blanket, one chiseled arm flopping almost to the floor and the other hand tucked up to his chin, his nose in profile looking like a memorial coin's wet dream. He wasn't snoring, of course. Why would Mr. Perfect snore?
Captain America. On his couch. He'd had a sleepover pizza party with Captain America.
Steve. Who wanted to coach baseball. Hopefully in addition to being a superhero, not instead of. But, God, those were going to be the luckiest kids on Earth...
"-not buying the Moon! Tony, are you listening to me?"
"Ah, Pep, I'm actually going to take this call out of the room, okay? I don't want to wake Steve."
"Wake... Steve?"
"Seriously, watching him sleep is like looking at the Platonic form of the Good Itself. I have to go before I have a transcendental experience and forsake all worldly pursuits to contemplate the truth of existence for eternity. I like worldly pursuits." Tony paused by the back of the couch for one last look before he stepped over to the elevator. From the window, the extent of Steve's bedhead hadn't been visible, and the temptation to comb the hair smooth above his ear was nearly irresistible. Leaving it there was just so...
Forcing himself away from the sleeping, helpless Captain, Tony backed into the elevator.
"Jarvis. When Steve wakes up, show him where to get anything he wants. Shower, shaving kit, spare clothes if we've got 'em in his size. Then send him and his phone down to the kitchen. That's where I'll be."
"Certainly, sir."
"Tony, did Steve Rogers spend the night with you last night?"
"Ah, signs point to yes," he answered, staring at the back of the sofa until the doors closed on the elevators. "Unfortunately, I don't think there was any naked sexy funtime. Just pizza."
"Please don't ever refer to Captain America and 'naked sexy funtime' in the same sentence while I'm in the office. Some of us are trying to work. Now, explain why I found a request to buy the Moon in my morning email."
"What? You don't think it's a good gift for Phil?"
"I think Phil would appreciate something more down to Earth. He seemed very happy with the season tickets to the Portland Symphony and accompanying airfare you already gave him."
"Right, but I was already going to do that before he died and then came back to dwell with us mere mortals." As the elevator whooshed down, he sketched in a few improvements to the moonbase air recycling system he'd sleep-designed last night. He could probably test a prototype in the Mark 8 Iron Man suit, which would be handy if he ever found himself delivering a nuke into space again. "Although the Moon thing will definitely take awhile to turn around. Possibly too long for a timely gift." He estimated at least a year to get the schematics finalized, let alone fabrication and transport.
"You're not buying the Moon, Tony."
He minimized the file to study again later when he'd had more coffee, and crossed the reference to 'Filigree' off his To-Do list for being objectively meaningless. If it was important, he'd remember when the time came. "Maybe I can design him a holographic cape as an aperitif. One that appears and disappears like Thor and Loki had. He's technically Asgardian now, right? Sort of, anyway. He should get a cape."
"Why don't you take another day to think about this? I have a shareholder's meeting to go to, and you're not buying the Moon."
"What about the Dodgers?"
"Tony..."
"Not for Phil, for Steve. His birthday's coming up, and I want to bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn for him."
Jarvis cleared his non-existent throat. "Sir. Captain Rogers specifically requested me to remind you that he wants you not to buy him the Dodgers."
Boy, did that put a look on Bruce's face when Tony walked out of the elevator into the kitchen. That snarky, nuclear physicist slash biochemist extraordinaire slash bubbling faunt of rage smirk, to be exact, reserved for occasions when he wanted to make it clear he knew something was up. But he didn't say a word. Just smirked his smirk and flipped over the sandwich and slice of ham he was frying on the stove.
"Tony," Pepper said in her best kindergarten teacher voice, "if Steve doesn't want a baseball team, then you definitely can't get him one. Now, I'm going to the shareholder's meeting-"
"But-!"
"And you're not buying the Moon. Goodbye."
The click of the phone line cutting off left him staring at Bruce's cocked eyebrow and listening to the sizzle of frying ham. "What? Can you think of anyone who deserves the Dodgers more than Steve?"
"Would you even know how to take care of a baseball team?"
"What? You mean feed them, groom them, take them for walks, change their litter? That kind of stuff?"
Bruce shook his head and slid his breakfast out onto a plate. "You might want to decide if they're a dog or a cat before you buy."
"Is that some kind of Brazilian breakfast delicacy? Do you think Steve would like it? He was asleep when I came downstairs, but he seems like the breakfast type. Breakfast is generally wholesome. I mean, not the root beer floats I used to have for 'breakfast' in college, per se, but-"
"It's grilled cheese with spinach."
"And ham," Tony supplied, pointing at the browned slice of meat on the plate.
"And ham. I guess there's enough stuff for more, sure." Folding his arms over his chest, the doctor leaned back against the counter. With that smirk again. "I didn't realize you were having Steve over."
Tony certainly wasn't avoiding that look as he called up his Amazon cart to see what he'd wanted last night that, for whatever reason, he hadn't just gotten. He wasn't even entirely clear exactly what implication he wasn't avoiding. Like most people who could crush a man's arm in their fist, Bruce had a knack for implying general misbehavior without worrying about specifics. "It was an impromptu evening. Well, morning, really. You know, one thing leading to another. I think he needed a place to crash that isn't monitored by S.H.I.E.L.D. every second of the day. Looked like he hadn't slept in a week. And Jarvis? Why didn't this order for the extra large American flag blanket go through? That's a fabulous idea!"
"Sir, after the Kentucky incident, you insisted that I hold all requests of a decisive nature between 4:30AM and 9AM unless you were able to successfully calculate sonic velocity at a random depth within the Dead Sea. Would you like me to cancel that protocol?"
"Um. No. You'd better keep that one." He heard there were still robotic spiders popping up in some parts of Kentucky. At least they weren't self-replicating. Enlarging the picture of the blanket, he asked Bruce, "What do you think? I should get it for next time, right?"
"Oh, I definitely think you should save the roleplay sheets for the third date, at least."
"Ha ha." Although he did send the blanket to his 'Save for Later' list. He'd hurt Steve's feelings once by making fun of the uniform the first day they'd met, and even if that was partially Loki's fault, he didn't plan to risk a repeat. Better to be sure he'd appreciate it. Hurting Captain America's feelings was worse than kicking puppies. "Anyway, it wasn't a date. It was pizza, and passing out on couches. Separate couches, which is too bad. Believe me, I would not have said no."
The doctor cut some more slices off the ham sitting on the counter. "I've seen the way you look at him, Tony. Believe me, I can tell. You want to get the cheese and spinach back out of the refrigerator? How much does Steve eat, anyway? That half dozen plates of shawarma wasn't a fluke, right?"
"Dad's notes said the procedure quadrupled his metabolism, so- ooh, eggs. That's a breakfast thing." Setting out all the spoils of his fridge raid on the counter, Tony counted the eggs and tried to remember where he kept the big bowls. "Two for me, two for you, eight for Steve. How convenient that eggs come in dozens. The basic principle behind eggs is to scramble thoroughly and apply heat, I think." The man assembling five stacks of bread, cheese and greenery on a cooking tray laughed, but didn't contradict him, so Tony started cracking the eggs into a metal bowl. "I can manage that."
"Must've been some pretty good pizza if you're giving up your breakfast virginity."
"Shush, you."
"I'm not saying anything." And he didn't, for a few minutes. But he meant it. Tony could hear. Damn Bruce and his not exactly being wrong about him having a tiny crush on the nation's permanently stalwart, incurably pig-headed pillar of integrity and idealism. But who didn't? "This is too much to fry. Your oven has a broiler setting somewhere, I assume..."
"It should be fully-" Tony froze, staring at the fragments of eggshell that had just fallen into his bowl of proto-breakfast goop. "Oops. That looks like it's not supposed to happen."
Bruce finished turning dials on the back of the stove and glanced over. "Yeah, most chefs recommend not getting shell in your eggs."
"Do they say anything about getting shell out of your eggs?" Every time Tony poked at it with a fork, the shift in the liquid pushed the fragments away, and trying it with his finger wasn't doing any better.
"I'm not sure if you're ready for the secret egg techniques of the Old World masters."
"See if I need your help!" He grabbed the sharpest knife he could find and tested the egg flow at different angles. "All I need... is to calculate the best approach vector to counteract... the viscosity, and..."
A shadow loomed over his shoulder, smelling vaguely of the hazelnut shower gel from the 23rd floor bathroom and making Tony very aware of the rate at which his heart was hitting the metal implants in his chest. Without a word, Steve plucked the knife out of his hand. Then, he took an empty eggshell from the carton, dipping the edge into the egg and lifting out the floating fragment as easily as picking up a paperclip with a magnet. "You were saying?" the soldier asked.
"I had it covered."
"I know you did." With that toothpaste-ad grin that looked so good on all the posters and better over a Def Leppard t-shirt Tony had always considered 'extremely oversized' (a blond someone's shoulders and pectorals begged to disagree), he held up an uncracked egg. "May I?"
Tony backed away across the kitchen, feeling his heartrate drop closer to normal with every step. "Knock yourself out. I'll be over here making coffee. And keep the shirt. It looks good on you."
'Not saying anything,' Bruce mouthed, slipping the tray of sandwiches into the oven.
'Shut up,' Tony mouthed back.
"Morning, Steve. Sounds like you two had fun last night."
"Good morning, Dr. Banner. I'm sorry to impose on you with no warning like this."
"Oh, I don't think you're imposing. Is he, Tony?"
Shaking his head over the loud whine of the coffee grinder, he yelled out, "Absolutely not. Mi casa es Steve's casa." By the time he was done dumping the grounds into the filter and punching all the right buttons, Steve had mixed up the whole dozen eggs and put them in a larger skillet than Tony had remembered having. And if a man who seemed to know what he was doing wanted to sprinkle paprika and a little salt during the scrambling process, he wasn't going to argue. He did, however, pull a computer screen down from the cabinetry and call up the biometric recognition protocols. "Right hand here, if you don't mind."
Steve wiped his hand off on a towel and did as he was told. Fury definitely needed to stop coddling this man. It was insulting.
"I'm entering your handprint into the house systems and granting you full access to all the facilities. There's a gym in the basement with a pool and everything, library, media center. Or, you know, if you just want to be somewhere that S.H.I.E.L.D. is, on average, unable to have eyes on you. The door's always open."
"Thanks, Tony."
"Well, technically the door's locked with triple-reinforced adamantium bolts operated by a program I protect with encryption I think the NSA would kill to get their hands on, but the door will open for you. Because I'm telling it to."
"Thanks, Tony."
"Right. Say cheese." He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of a recently-showered Captain America, wearing his own personal t-shirt and cooking, with a dubious pout that Steve probably had no idea was sexy. The internet would weep with envy if they ever found out that picture existed. "There. Now when you call me," he said, swiping the new, navy blue phone out of the delivery unit on the wall and handing it to Steve, "I'll know it's you. All the Avengers are already in your contacts list. You might want to text them so they have your number. I hooked you up on my personal phone network since... well, frankly, there's no commercial network that can handle the data load for that phone. So let me know if it's running slow or anything."
Bruce waved Steve aside so he could pull the tray of sandwiches out of the oven. "Food first. Technology can wait."
Tony's disagreement with that statement lasted about as long as it took for him to get a bite of eggs into his mouth. Granted, his Dr. Jekyll housemate was right about him generally skipping breakfast altogether, but who knew eggs could taste like that? "Actually, Steve," he said, swallowing another bite, "You should move in."
"What?"
After a moment's consideration, that idea was sounding better and better. "Live with me. Us. Here. Stay forever."
"That's very kind of you, Tony, but I have an apartment," he answered, shaking his head. "That's enough for me."
"I can be enough for you." He heard how that sounded as soon as he saw Steve looking at him askance. "My building. My building can be enough for you. I'll give you a floor. And I swear, I don't just want you for your eggs. Although they are amazing."
The blond turned to the silently chuckling physicist standing by the coffee. "Have you found a way to tell him 'thanks but no thanks' yet, Dr. Banner?"
Shaking his head, Bruce answered, "Persistence. And I feel like this deserves a comment about the way to a man's heart being through his stomach, but, ah... I think you had him at hello."
Jackass.
~/~
The light of day streaming over the broken skyline of Midtown Manhattan shimmered with the dust that hadn't settled. The news said it might be weeks til the air cleared. All over, road crews were laying down asphalt where the rubble had been cleared away and teams were working on scaffolds around the shattered buildings. All new stones going up, where the old ones couldn't be patched in. It wasn't so bad, Steve thought, looking at an old town getting made new.
Or having a crazy magic phone, which he had to learn how to use as soon as possible so he could change the ID photograph for Miss Romanov to something... decent. And a standing invitation to move into the ugliest building in New York was something he could learn to live with.
Even if he wasn't planning to live in Manhattan any time soon.
Steve pulled the device out of his pocket, the image of how proud Tony had looked to have made it still lingering in his mind. He'd thought Howard was a genius and a man of the world, but Tony...
Say what you would about Tony Stark. When he was in, he was in to hell and back. All the Avengers were. But Tony didn't seem to realize there was any other way to be.
Tapping the holographic square that brought up a keypad, Steve reached for the flyer sitting folded in his pocket. Punching numbers to call someone was sure a lot faster than dialing on a rotary phone. He could handle a change like that.
"McKenzie Center, front desk. May I have your name please?"
"Yes, it's Rogers, ma'am. Steve Rogers. Do you still need a coach for a baseball team?"