In Which Steve Accepts Another Drink

Tony Stark usually spends a little bit of time in his workshop every day. Okay, he spends a lot of time in his workshop every day. But what he doesn't usually do is spend three consecutive days there working on an apparently hopeless project. He was tired, he was hungry, he was irritable, and he had not talked to a single person in 60 hours- save for JARVIS, of course, who doesn't really count. In regards to this, one can only imagine his reaction when said AI informed him that he had a 'visitor.'

"Who the hell would be visiting me, JARVIS?" He growled into the air, leaning over his screen. "If you don't tell me who it is, I swear, I wil-" He was cut off by a knock on the glass behind him: two slow, hesitant, knocks. He groaned and leaned forward on the table, burying his head in his arms. Great. Reaching to his right, he slammed his hand on a button, opening the sliding glass door.

"Let me guess, Cap," he said when he heard footsteps entering the room, "blew up another iPod? Smashed a TV remote?" He grinned and jumped up, spinning around and pointing a finger at the blonde man standing before him, "No, no, give me one more. Your Bluetooth snapped in half again!"

Steve, who was standing a few feet away, pulled a face. Tony, however, could tell that he was slightly impressed as he gently laid the shattered pieces of his mechanics on the workbench. "Am I really that predictable?" He grumbled disappointedly, looking more than slightly ashamed.

Moving from his desk to the workbench, Tony picked at the pieces of what resembled a mobile. "Ah, your phone… Your phone! That was my next guess." Turning to the soldier, he raised an eyebrow and held up a large piece of keyboard. "What did you /do/ to it?"

"Well, um," Steve was mumbling, looking down at the floor with the demeanor of a kicked puppy, "the uh… the 'W' key wasn't working… and that, eh, annoyed me… a lot..."

Tony looked back and forth between the remains of the phone and Steve. "The hell…" after a moment, he burst into laughter, dropping his piece of phone and bending over, clutching his stomach as he howled. It took him a moment to compose himself before he cleaned up the pieces of phone and dumped them in a trash bin. "Thanks kid. That's just what I needed."

Steve gave the trash bin a confused look and stumbled over his words. "But. But. But aren't you going to, go to, you know…"

"I need a drink," Tony interrupted, ignoring his blathering, "You want a drink?"

Steve, who still looked upset about hurting the phone, looked a bit bewildered. "A drink? Like, as in alcohol? Yeah, sure… okay I guess."

Tony moved to the bar that was located in the corner of the room, because he is Tony and he keeps a bar in every room of the mansion, and started to pour two drinks. "Tell me something, Cap," said he as he measured out the alcohol, "Did you manage to destroy every piece of technology that existed in the forties too? Or is this just a twenty-first century thing?"

Tony leaned casually against the bar counter and held out the drink for Steve as he approached. Taking it, the man studied it wearily, holding it up to the light and sniffing it with some distrust. "Well… before the serum, I was a tiny little twig. I probably couldn't have broken a toothpick then if I tried."

"Probably broke easier than a toothpick, too. It's not poison, by the way- at least not that kind." Satisfied with the hesitant sips Steve was drinking, he leaned back and tugged open a draw, sifting through it with his free hand.

Steve looked over his shoulder curiously. "Looking for something?"

With much triumph, Tony pulled out a sleek black phone. It was then that he realised how incredibly close Steve was to him. Tony could feel warm, minty, breath on the back of his neck as his muscles froze up. It's not like he was attracted to Steve or anything. Tony was always one hundred percent totally honest with himself. So if he happened to have interest in the tall, muscular, blonde, then he would have definitely known it. His nervousness was attributed only to the fact that he was afraid of falling over after bumping into him or something, because he really was built like a brick wall and… right. Not attracted. "Here," he choked out, twisting awkwardly to hand the phone to him. "Steve-proof model. You know, you're about as bad as Thor with these things." As a rule, Tony was always humourous, no matter what, "But he's not human. He has an excuse. You, on the other hand…" He chuckled and managed to smoothly slip around the counter, out of the close premise he had seconds earlier been trapped in.

Steve scratched his head and continued to slowly sip the alcohol, "I guess I'm still getting used to my strength, is all."

"No," Tony shot him down immediately. "Not true. You had time enough when you were fighting and dancing to get used to that. This is something different. An anger management problem is what you've got, or," Tony paused. He could see it now. Stress, fatigue, exhaustion, loneliness. Steve was not in a good place. It must be hard, he mused, to have to go through such drastic changes, lose everything you love… and then, how frustrating to be in a world you don't understand. Steve was not in a good place, and Tony had no right to go there. He had no invitation. "or something like that." He quickly downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another.

Yes, he definitely wasn't attracted to Steve. He wasn't even Tony's type anyway- and his being a man had nothing at all to do with it. Eyeing the other man over his liquor, Tony sorted out the situation in his mind. True, he did allow himself to spend more time with Steve than the rest of the Avengers, and maybe he was just a bit more lenient with him… But that didn't mean anything. It's not like he found that perfectly real smile he got sometimes breathtakingly adorable or anything, and he definitely did not love the way Steve would sometimes reminisce on the past and forget about the world around him. Because if either of those things were true, that would mean that he was interested in Steve and that the feelings would never be returned because it was Steve and he was Tony. It wouldn't ever work even if he were attracted to him, which he wasn't, so there was no point whatsoever, nope, absolutely none.

But what if, for some reason, in some alternate universe… what if Steve was attracted to him? What if Steve did like Tony's company? What id Steve didn't care about all of Tony's problems?

Yeah. Alternate universe.