A/N: WOOHOO! I DECLARE MYSELF OFFICIALLY BACK! FIRST CHAPTER, BITCHES! I've been working on this idea for a couple of months now, and now I am infinitely proud to present you with the first chapter of my very first Avengers chapter fic! Many thanks to the awesomazing Dancing Eyes, who's my sort-of-unofficial beta at the moment. Without her, I believe these first two chapters would suck. Because I suck at writing Steve. BUT ANYWAY. I APOLOGIZE FOR THE CAPS LOCK BUT I'M SUPER-EXCITED RIGHT NOW.
Read on, my fellow fangirls (and boys, must not forget the boys if there are any-)! Reviews are always appreciated; I can always use advice on how to keep things rolling, but for now, I hope you enjoy!
Three weeks after the operation and nearly two months after activating the Clean Slate protocol, Tony opened the front door to find Hawkeye, Thor, Black Widow and Golden Boy Captain America, complete with baggage, standing on his doorstep.
One blink; two. Tony regarded them for the second it took to process that all the Avengers, not including the already-present Bruce, had suddenly turned up at his equivalent of a house. He didn't hesitate to open his mouth.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he snapped almost immediately, eyes trained particularly on Steve, who scowled darkly.
Clint stared for a moment, then shook his head in disbelief. "You don't know?" He shouldered the backpack that had rested beside him on the ground, grabbing his precious bow and arrow. "Okay, that's it," he announced resolutely, starting forward. "We're moving in." He shoved past Tony and into the first-floor front hall of Stark Tower.
"What the—?" Tony spluttered, grabbing him by the arm and trying to force him back outside. Clint caught his wrist, glowering dangerously.
A sigh from Natasha; she lifted her bag easily and crossed her arms, a contemplating look flitting across her face. "You really don't know why we're here, do you?" she muttered with a tone of slight amusement, and Tony let out a bark of humorless laughter.
"For reasons other than tormenting me, you mean?" he snapped sarcastically. "Oh please, do inform me about this matter of utmost importance."
Natasha rolled her eyes slightly, fingers tapping agitatedly against her arm. "It's you, Tony. That's why we're here. If you can't seem to keep yourself out of trouble, you need someone with sense who can."
"Oh, and you all plan to be those someones?" Tony snorted dryly. "Tell me, what were you doing, exactly, while I was almost getting my face ripped off by Aldrich Killian and his band of flaming mutant freaks?"
"That's not the point, Tony—"
"And you tell us what you were doing when you destroyed Iron Man." The frigidity in Steve's 'Captain' voice broke into the conversation like a knife.
He stepped over the threshold, glaring down at Tony and holding his stare with defiance. Tony cursed the lack of a few extra inches, sneering up at Captain Fucking America with as much venom as he could muster.
"I am Iron Man," he murmured dangerously, simply daring anyone in the room to defy him. Steve didn't waver. "Your suits are gone," he said, taking another step forward. "Their power source is gone." He threw a critical downward glance at Tony's chest, glaring at the vacant dark place where the Arc had used to lie.
Shit shit shit; Tony forced his gaze to stay locked vengefully on Steve, smothering the beginnings of terror stirring in his chest.
"You're exposed."
Not now.
"There are people who want to kill you, and whether you've called it a day or not—"
Sinking deeper and deeper into frigid, airless darkness—the shocks of a battery streaking through his body to light his nerves on fire—
"—they're not going to relent."
Flashes of battle—Pepper, not picking up his final farewell call—falling aimless through space, into the freezing vacuum—
"You're unprotected."
Steve's voice was painfully clear, Tony vaguely aware that he was stiff as a board, fists clenching, gaze wavering downward.
"And until you can stop making impulsive decisions like this, we're staying to keep you safe whether you like it or not, Stark."
Breathe. In, out; in, out. Breathe.
"Tony?"
Steve's harshness had faded slightly, and the floor slid out from beneath Tony, world churning and making him stumble. He couldn't stop gasping—his chest was too tight, the hole where the Arc had been eating him alive beneath the stitches. His heart. His heart was gone.
He grabbed at his chest—it wasn't there. The suits weren't here. His pulse rushed in his ears, eyes forced to stay open, seeing nothing, until a sudden warm hand on his shoulder jolted him into reality long enough to catch a flash of Steve.
"Tony, you're fine. We're here. You're fine."
Blue eyes, Tony noticed. Blue eyes like Pepper's, but purer.
The rest of Steve's face wavered into focus through the sea of black spots, and Tony bit his lip, feeling like a child, forcing his breathing to slow just in time to hear Pepper's heels clacking and warm arms thrown around him.
"Shh..." she breathed softly in his ear, holding him close and running hands through his hair.
"I took the liberty of alerting Miss Potts of your situation, sir," JARVIS' cool voice informed him. Tony let out a shaking breath, feeling Pepper's warm floral scent wash over him, and holding her tight.
"Thank you, JARVIS," he murmured into her hair. Her small hands still held him close as she buried her face in his neck.
Another few moments of heavy silence, and finally, Thor shook his head.
"Friend Tony, we are moving in," he declared, and everyone nodded solemnly in agreement. Steve looked a bit shaken; Clint jumped when the elevator gave a loud ding and the doors slid open to reveal a worried-looking Bruce. Stilted, uneasy laughter broke the sacred silence as the Avengers hoisted their bags and stepped in through his front door.
Tony didn't let go of Pepper to stop them from getting their way.
It was awkward—the moments between when the front door shut behind the Avengers, and when Pepper gently pushed at Tony's chest, alerting him to the world around them. He nodded, whispering something in her ear, before finally pulling away and turning to face his teammates. Thor looked oddly sentimental, Steve and Bruce varying degrees of awkward, Clint smiling that shit-eating grin, and Natasha standing mildly at his side, ever unreadable.
"Well, that'll be all, Miss Potts," he announced loudly to the stiflingly quiet room. Pepper smiled cryptically, starting back for the elevator.
"Of course, Mr. Stark," she replied over her shoulder, cracking the haze of strained silence and magically injecting the room with a sense of warmth before the doors slid shut with another ding, and the brief comfort vanished with her.
"So," Tony started again, clapping his hands and glancing around. "JARVIS can show you around, and you can each have your pick of any of the suites on the guest floors. I'll be in the shop, so have fun and don't kill anyone or break anything that looks too important. Adios."
And with a brief sarcastic wave, Tony was gone.
Steve wondered briefly if he was actually the same man who'd had a rather horrendous panic attack right in front of their eyes only minutes before, then simply shook his head and decided not to burden himself with attempts to understand the anomaly of a human being that was Tony Stark.
And thankfully, he wasn't the only one to jump a foot in the air when JARVIS spoke again; everyone did but Natasha and Bruce, but even he looked a bit startled as the smooth voice began emanating from the walls.
"Shall we begin the tour, sirs and madam?" he inquired, and Bruce nodded after a moment, recovering himself after the many events of the past fifteen minutes before leading them off for the sweeping grand staircase that spiraled up through the heart of the tower itself.
It didn't take long for Steve to realize that while the guest floors of Stark Tower had most likely been used occasionally whenever Tony felt like throwing a party and a bunch of strangers passed out in his rooms overnight, they had never been truly lived in. The suites were sprawling and luxurious, each with a different theme; while the others generally picked something flashier, save for Bruce's quiet, simplistic space full of equipment and empty of too many possessions, Steve's suite had pale yellow walls and a warm red-white-and-blue American flag bedspread. Clint had teased him until Natasha's comment about his own neon purple walls sent him into an abrupt silent sulk. The companionable quirk of her lips made Steve smile slightly in return.
Though the halls had seemed cold and unwelcoming a couple of hours before, by the next time Steve poked his head outside, that had already begun to change; a bright red stray sock had found its way to the center of the floor, Clint's occasional crash or swear echoed faintly from down the hall, and Natasha's quiet footsteps trailed in the telltale patterns of unpacking in the room directly above his. Thor's door stood wide open and he stretched out comfortably on the couch, in plain view, chatting conversationally with JARVIS.
After at least three hours of on-and-off assistance from the strange supercomputer in the ceiling that called itself an 'AI', Steve still couldn't decide if he appreciated the sleek disembodied voice, or whether its smooth accent unnerved him.
On the floor above, where Natasha and Bruce resided, the opening and closing of doors and pacing of footsteps and rising and falling of voices was enough to bring a quiet half-smile to his lips.
He had watched the ever-suave Tony Stark have a panic attack. He'd moved into an enormous skyscraper with a downright ugly exterior design, with five new people he'd never actually properly met. He'd managed to come up with the idea that their presence would somehow discourage Tony from making any more stupid decisions to piss off Fury and endanger his own life, completely of his own accord. And even after this entire catastrophe, he still somehow managed to process it with relative ease. Being chucked seventy years into the future, it seemed, effectively widened one's mental capacity just a bit.
Steve chuckled, and shook his head in spite of himself, wondering for the first time in quite a while, what exactly he thought he was doing. Seriously, what was he getting himself into? Within a week the Tower's inhabitants would most likely all be brutally murdering each other, anyway.
In that case, they might as well have a final meal before their fate was decided.
Tony was far more shaken than he let on.
He lay sprawled across the couch, blueprints for a new design of earthquake-resistant bridge open and pulsing softly on the tablet screen in front of him. Dark eyes watched them vacantly, mind streaking through broken fragments of equations and new concept references to examine.
It had been years since his fingers had fallen still on the screen and he'd sat making repeated attempts at work, for at least a couple of hours, without a single bit of progress.
He was going to murder them all.
The presence was just too much—the triggered memories, Steve's voice digging at them like he was intent on killing him through terror, and on top of it all, there was no refuge from the faint sounds of inhabitants and the growing signs of life. Bruce, Tony could handle. Quiet, brilliant, unintrusive scientists he could handle. Legolas, Capsicle, a Nordic God, and an assassin, not so much. He was, quite frankly, fucking scared that one of them would slit his throat while he slept.
Tony let the tablet fall, closing the blueprints and massaging his temples against the incredible distraction of the Avengers' near-undetectable, but still all too loud moving-in noise. His chest ached with a ghost of the Arc's comfortable warmth and thrum where the stitches now dug into his skin.
Warm hands settled gently on his shoulders, and Tony hummed quietly, leaning back into Pepper's gentle, massaging touch.
"I'm gonna fucking die with them here, Pep," he groaned, shaking his head.
Pepper just chuckled softly, shaking her head and leaning down to whisper to him gently. "You'll get used to it, Tony," she murmured. "You've put up with me all these years; you can do it for them, too."
Another groan, and Tony dropped his head onto the table in defeat.
"But you're you," he sighed, opening one eye to watch her. "You're the incredible Pepper Potts and you manage to put up with me, too!"
Again, Pepper laughed, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to his forehead. "You know what? You need friends more than you think. It'll be fine."
"I really fucking hope so," he muttered under his breath, returning her kiss briefly, before slamming down his stylus and retreating to his workshop.
He needed some time to think, and food was not worth the trouble of interruption; Steve didn't manage to get them all to eat together that day. Or the next. Or the next—until sometime Thursday morning, when Tony had dozed off at least twice, mind racing and a collapse from exhaustion inevitable.
That was the morning Steve came down to the workshop smelling of bacon and saying something about the Avengers being called to assemble.
He eyed Tony for a moment, expression calculating and utterly unreadable beyond that. "But without your suit... well, Fury wants you to keep an eye on things from here."
Fury wanted him on camera duty.
Fury wanted him on camera duty?
"WHAT?"
Tony had never been awake faster in his life.