It's one of those bright sunny - and quiet- days at the top of Avengers Tower, but only because the night before they vanquished a herd of what Thor calls "Slugthropes", so everyone managed to catch at least five hours of shut-eye before sunup.
"Have you heard of the Kübler-Ross model, Cap?" Tony asks. He hands Steve a three quarters-full mug of prepared coffee - "I like my sugar with coffee and cream!" Tony had crowed when he first saw how Steve liked his caffeinated sludge, but of course that reference was met with confusion - and sits down on the stool next to him. "I have theories to express, but you need a frame of reference here if you're going to keep up."
"Does it end with "Yo home to Bel Air"?" Steve asks. His hair is sticking up in random directions and his face is lightly furred. His eyes are also not open at all.
Tony makes a face. "Show of hands, who would actually intervene if I were to duct tape Clint's mouth closed?"
Clint is in the living room cackling over early-morning C-SPAN, but it's likely he can hear everything Tony says. At the very least, if he continues threatening him, Natasha will get upset.
Tony doesn't know where that woman is at this very moment, and it makes him nervous. But at least Bruce is here! Sleeping facedown on the table, yes, but still here as a line of defence between his poor fleshy monetarily significant body and the supple bendy assassin.
"It's not a meme?" Steve asks. His eyes are open a crack now, and that crack is focused on the coffee cup.
"It's not a meme," Tony confirms. He gestures for JARVIS's benefit, and a wikipedia article pops up holographic and wavy over the table. "It's a checklist - heavily disputed, of course, but a still used anyway - of the various stages of grief. People like the late Fury would call it "DABDA" because yes to acronyms, but the rest of us use the proper name."
Steve nods along. His cup is empty now, so his eyelids are at half-mast. It makes him look like Jessica Rabbit, and isn't that an image Tony needs to photoshop during the next board meeting?
"Is the proper name Bel Air?"
Tony smacks both hands down flat on the table. "There is no Bel Air, stop fixating. Leave Bel Air alone, what did it ever do to you?"
Steve shrugs. "Nothing. Just Clint said-"
"And don't ever listen to Clint. Clint's knowledge is suspect to bribery and blackmail."
And suddenly, Steve is awake and sharp as hell, looking Tony in the eye very Blue Steel, but without the sucked in cheeks.
"That explains the hoverboard," he says evenly.
Damn. Tony considers the pros and cons of three different avenues of response; none of them result in him getting out of here with his metaphorical hide intact.
Thus, avenue four: "What do you mean? Oh look, the hologram is flashing because we're ignoring it! You're hurting the hologram's feelings, Steve."
Steve rolls his eyes and gets up to molest the kitchen without saying a word. Tony stands and follows him, JARVIS helpfully trailing the illustrative wikipedia article behind them like a persistent rodent metaphor.
Tony clears his throat. "Right, so Bucky. James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes-"
Steve dumps at least a half a cup - dry-measure - of sugar into his coffee cup. "I know his name."
"Sargent Barnes is enmeshed in a riotous cycle of grief, Captain. Of the possible outcomes, the most prevalent - and you can check with JARVIS, I ran the numbers through him - is going positively nutzo and killing us all."
Steve stirs his mug and eyeballs Tony stoically.
"Stage one is denial," and here Tony indicates the blender that has Thor's Hello Kitty stickers all over the base, "which means he's been going around and around in his head, nay, in his life, his psyche being chopped into non-uniform pieces from the upright torsion."
Tony ignores Steve's raised eyebrows to rifle through the overlarge cutlery drawer for a serving spoon. He brandishes his shiny stainless steel at the kitchen as a whole. "Stage two is anger, like this spoon."
"Anger is a spoon," Steve drawls. Who taught him how to drawl, they should be shot.
"No, Barnes' anger is a spoon." Tony puts the spoon back into the drawer. "My anger is nothing like his, mine is a raging bull through a crowd of infants caged inside strollers in comparison."
Steve opens his mouth. Tony talks over him.
"Stage three is bargaining, okay? Bargaining is best illustrated by a coffee maker."
They both contemplate the barren expanse of counterspace that usually holds the coffee maker.
"Clint!" Tony shouts.
"I'll fix it!" Clint shouts back.
Tony is dubious about Clint's methods of fixing things - he suspects it entails taking the broken appliance out back and shooting it, then buying a new one - but he believes in giving people, assassins, enough rope to hang themselves so he shouts "Okay!"
"That's some bargaining there," Steve says, sipping his coffee.
Tony narrows his eyes. "How did you get coffee?"
Steve lifts his mug in a salute. "Instant."
Revulsion rears its head and lets out a plaintive roar. Before Tony can answer with one of his own, he staggers sideways and reminds himself as he leans against the sink that he had a thread here, he needs to keep on with that.
"Stage four, the all-encompassing depression," he continues, weakly, "is like my feelings when you tell me there's instant coffee in this house. Why do you hurt me?" He waves a hand at the saucepan in the drainer that he now knows was an accomplice to the crime. "Are you a sadist? Is this some kind of sexual thing that I am an unwilling participant?"
Steve drains his mug and walks over to stand next to Tony. He's putting out a terribly amount of body heat, it's very distracting.
Tony doesn't lean in, but it's a close thing. "And here's stage five: the terrible acceptance, which Barnes will never get to because it's his face that causes this cycle of grief, and he's behind it, so he'll never be quite aware that he's the inducer."
He makes a flourish with his hand, elbows Steve in the ribs entirely on accident, and JARVIS complies with the vanishing of the holograph wikipedia.
Steve rinses the mug and puts it into the drainer. He'll wash it in the sink later if no one has stolen it for nefarious dishwasher kibble before he gets back, the cretin.
"I get it that you and Bucky don't get along," Steve says, "but can you try? For me?"
"We get along fine, what does anything I am saying here tell you otherwise?" and as Steve leaves for the elevators, he shouts, "This method is also applicable in cases of infertility diagnoses!"
Bruce snorts and jerks upright. He blinks like a flirting cartoon and locates Tony still in the kitchen.
"Who has an infertility diagnosis?" he slurs.
"Barnes," Tony answers.
"Ah. Makes sense." Bruce puts his head back down onto the table.
. . .
No call on the Avengers line from a distraught "uphold the peace" organisation means watching television and arguing over Chinese menus. Tony holds court from the place of honour, his imitation LA-Z-BOY recliner that is actually much better because he made it himself.
It's not stuffed with eagle feathers like Clint likes to accuse, but a ploy-fibrefill mixture is close enough for true.
Natasha and Bucky made Clint give up the Senatorial Sex Scandal Watch on C-SPAN, and now they've got one of the Networks on. Tony doesn't like the Major Networks, otherwise he'd own one by now.
"Should I launch my own satellite station?" he asks Thor, because external input is an important part of decision making and aiding in development of impulse control.
Thor does not take his eyes off of the Disney Princesses cartoon, or whatever this show Sleeping Beauty is flouncing around on, but he does wrinkle that broad forehead up as he contorts his face in confusion. "What is this satellite station? Can one eat it?"
Before Tony can explain the concept of satellite reception and bouncing signals, Clint squawks like a chicken and points at the television. Flashing across the screen are muppets, one with a cape, and a couple Sesame Street characters singing.
Then neon lettering scrolls past, reading "Muppets! Avengers! LIVE!"
"Drinking game, fuck yes!" Clint crows. Bucky high-fives him, then does a fist bump with Thor behind Natasha's head.
"Do I want to be a part of this?" Bruce asks the room at large.
"Do you have a choice?" Natasha answers and raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow for emphasis.
. . .
Steve hits a squat man wearing overalls in the head with his shield, then catches him as he falls. "Any luck on that brainwave jammer, Iron Man?"
"You know, if anything this would be a brainwave peanut butter," Tony replies. He's got his bare hands buried deep in a machine with Hammer Ent., engraved along the outside. His skin is crawling, all right, he's got a damn good reason to be a little upset over here. "Or brainwave poutine, let's just keep going with the gross stuff until we hit it."
"I like poutine," Clint says over the comm. Then he puts an arrow carrying a lightweight but very strong net over two elderly ladies screaming about "procedures".
Tony rolls his eyes and pulls out another hunk of extraneous wiring. "You have no taste."
"I like poutine," Natasha says, right behind him.
Tony doesn't jump, he already knew she was there. But if he were any lesser of a man, he would probably have peed himself a little. Probably.
"Do we know where these people came from?" Bruce asks from his safe spot back in the police van. He's tapped into the comm and drinking a cup of hot chocolate unless they need him, like always. "Is it Canada? I liked Canada, but not enough for this."
"Did you come from Canada?" Steve asks a teenager dressed like a goth who is trying to spray him with something. "Do you need a bus ticket back?"
"They help people!" the teenager shrieks, then lights a match and tries to firebomb Captain America like an idiot.
Steve hits him on the head too, probably not as hard as he should because his head stays firmly attached to his neck.
Tony yanks a handful of wires out and shakes his head. Always with the mercy, mon capitane.
Thor sidles up to Tony and shifts his weight from foot to foot. "Man of Iron, you needed my assistance?"
Tony tosses the wires to the side and peers inside the big boxish thing. "Yeah, can you just.. Smash this? I don't think it'll go nuclear after what I did to it."
"Wait, Iron Man, you don't think-" Steve's voice is panicked over the comm, and Captain America starts over to them, cowl pushed off his head and hand outstretched.
Thor doesn't wait, he just smashes it with his hammer like a jubilant toddler.
Nothing explodes. Thor has his fun, Steve comes to a stop two feet away from Tony and grabs him by the shoulder to give him a shake, and Tony brandishes his ruined repulsor gauntlet at him as a silent reprimand.
A silent reprimand that doesn't work in the slightest, because Steve hauls him away from the ruined Justin Hammer Tech and hisses at him, "You didn't think it would explode? There are civilians in the area!"
Tony shrugs. Steve's grip on his shoulder tightens enough to make the metal plating groan. "Okay, come on Cap we're fine. I was being facetious, it's fine."
"Don't be facetious when we're relying on important information!" Steve all but shrieks.
"Hey guys, what do we do with the terrorists?" Barnes asks over the comms. He's got a couple of them sitting at his feet and looking mulish. "Do I stuff them into dumpsters or what?"
"We're not terrorists!" the spinster white guy wearing a sweater that prominently features a grey tabby playing with a ball of string says. "We're Attachment Therapy Practitioners!"
Tony doesn't care about the paps hanging out just thirty feet away, he flips off the guy with the hand that doesn't have ruined repulsor tech associated with it. "How's that working out for you, huh?"
"Tony," Steve groans. He rubs at his bruised jaw and gives Tony such a look of disappointment and sorrow that Tony almost apologises.
Barnes wanders off while Clint takes over and brandishes rope at them. "Come on, I got best knots at SHIELD retreats!" he says, perky as a chipmunk.
"Not the best thing to brag about," Tony sing-songs. Steve's face does this angry flexing thing that really gives the lantern-jaw a workout.
Barnes chortles from the side. Steve looks over and rolls his eyes, turns full from Tony to face the other man. "Bucky, come on."
Barnes has his metal arm wrist-deep in a bag of popcorn. The street vendor is still chugging away two hundred feet behind him, who gives a little wave when he sees that Steve is looking his direction.
"What?" Barnes drawls, mouth packed full and spewing bits all over. "He was there! And you guys're yelling, so I decided why not?"
Tony grits his teeth. What does this mean here, that Steve is into guys who are terribly uncouth and are into carnival foods? He can deal with this. He can. Absolutely.
"If the guy's selling churros I'm there," Tony offers.
Steve turns his exasperated look back onto Tony, and it's all he can do to not stick his tongue out at Barnes.
. . .
Tony has to take his sunglasses off as soon as he's inside the Costco. There's a distinct lack of decent lighting, and he is forced to assume that it's because everything would be terribly depressing if it were otherwise.
"That model will be obsolete in two months," he helpfully tells a young couple looking at big screen televisions. The two women look at the salesman like wrathful furies, and he in turn looks at Tony like he's going to murder his family given half the chance.
Tony is unconcerned. He hasn't got any family left except some wretched facsimile, and they can take care of themselves.
Speaking of facsimile. He flicks his phone on with his thumb and tell JARVIS, "Locate Clint and Thor."
"On the liquor aisle, Sir," JARVIS says, helpfully bringing up the GPS to lead him right to them. "Mister Barton requests that you bring an additional cart."
He gets there - additional cart brought despite his misgivings - to find Thor hugging a ten gallon bottle of vodka that isn't good enough to clean medical equipment, not to mention drink, and Clint piling one of five carts full of boxes of beer.
Tony pushes the cart next in line, and examines the wall of Bourbon. Ten dollars for a bottle, what is this country coming to?
"I'm thinking of having Barnes electrocuted and thrown off the top of the Tower," he says. "Thoughts?"
"Not wise, my friend," Thor intones. He pats the bottle of vodka like it's a fluffy purse dog. He obviously loves his new friend very much. "Steven would be saddened by the good Warrior's downfall."
"Ha, punny," Clint cackles. He completes his leaning tower of beer and grabs the fresh cart, wheels it over to the tequila. "Don't do it, dude. Steve'll have you executed or something."
"Steve doesn't have anyone executed, our lives would be hellishly better if he did." Tony swipes through some documents and pretends not to notice Clint lift his wallet from his jacket as he slides past. "Barnes is malingering in my Tower. I don't like it. And as the lord and master of all you miscreants, that means I get certain perks. Like having him destroyed."
"Bucky's not malingering," Clint says. He has Tony's wallet in his own jacket pocket now, Tony's certain. "Drop it, nothing good will come of this."
"JARVIS, malingering protocol for Sargent Barnes," Tony says loudly into his phone. Thor sighs loudly and shakes his head.
"Please specify, Sir. There are currently three hundred and forty seven malingering protocols in place."
Clint snorts a laugh. Tony wrinkles his nose at his phone.
"How many per, Jay?"
"Two hundred and ninety eight assigned to Mister Barton-"
"Hey!"
"-and the rest equally distributed between the remaining Avengers, sir. Excepting Captain Rogers, of course."
Silent for a moment on the liquor aisle. Then Clint cackles again.
"Can you be more obvious?" he hoots.
Tony grimaces and pockets his phone. "Come on, let's hurry. I left Steve outside being harassed by the greeter, I don't want to hear it."
"What, they're reminiscing about old times?" But Clint does as asked and starts to load the tequila more quickly into the cart.
"Nah, he won't give the guy hush money because he doesn't have a membership." Tony waggles his eyebrows at Thor, who nods solemnly. "I slipped the guy a hundred, I'm golden."
"I would never expect anything less from one so gilded as yourself," Thor agrees.
. . .
Back at the Tower with all of the alcohol - well, some of the alcohol, Thor is still loading the freight elevators down in the basement with boxes of the stuff - Tony is hit with a brilliant flash, an epiphany of sorts.
He points at Clint to get his attention.
"We could've ordered all of this," he says, serious as the grave.
Clint nods. That's the nice thing about Clint, he knows when to take things with a certain gravitas, and when to make light. Now is obviously for the former.
"But would you have had as much fun?" Clint asks, as sage and wise as Freud before his jaw fell off.
Tony considers this point as he takes a sip of something carbonated. It might be a coca-cola product, it might be pepsi co.
"...no," he says, drawing out the vowel, "No, I wouldn't have."
Clint nods again, satisfied. He hoists a cardboard box full of party-sized bottles of Seagram's Vodka onto the kitchen counter.
Tony gets another idea while he watches this. "Next time lets go look at the clothing so we're not surprised at what Steve'll wear next."
"Only if you leave the repulsor tech at home," Clint replies. He puts another box onto the counter.
Tony tries to pout, but it's not very satisfactory since the only one who is available to make a note of his displeasure is JARVIS. He leaves his glass full of unknown liquid on the kitchen table and saunters downstairs by way of elevator to Bruce's labs.
Bruce giggles in greeting. Tony pauses at the doorway, and tries to surreptitiously check for a gun being held to the scientist's head.
"Ten bucks say you won't stand still in the SDP for a full twenty minutes," Tony challenges.
Bruce claps a hand over his mouth and shakes. His eyes are actually watering behind his glasses.
Tony, with great deliberation and strategic undertaking, strides into the room and drags Bruce into the Skrull Detector Prototype, then runs back out to turn it on.
Twenty minutes later, Bruce isn't a Skrull and there's no one with mind-controlling x-genes lurking; but the giggling has continued, and Tony is at the end of his rope.
"I'm all out of ideas," Tony tells him. He claimed the only rolling chair while Bruce was in hysterics at the machine going beep beep, and he uses that asset now to roll over to the workstation Bruce was at when he came in.
There's a petri dish full of the green mould, right there in the centre of the table.
Tony is suspicious, so he leans over and sniffs.
"Oh!" He points an accusing finger at Bruce, who goes from giggles to full-blown guffaws. "You scurrilous mad scientist you!"
Then he joins in with the laughing.
. . .
"So they have a mutant in the group," Steve asks, tone flat. He's got his arms crossed and his brow furrowed, because Captain America Mode means constipation.
"It certainly explains the muscle cramps, sir," JARVIS says.
"I want to go home," Tony whines. He's partway into his suit and he's feeling like shit because he only came down from his fridge mold-induced high an hour ago and it's too soon. "You can deal with Charlie Horse on your own, leave me and Bruce behind."
Bruce has his head in his hands and groans in solidarity.
Steve doesn't look at either of them, just keeps focusing on the QuinJet controls that Clint already has well in hand. "You shouldn't be up all night doing science, you know better."
Bruce lifts his head enough to exchange a glance with Tony.
Tony shrugs. He's not saying anything if Bruce isn't.
"Yeah, you guys needs to be in top shape, you know?" Barnes drawls from his seat. Steve glances a grin at him and then leans over the console to read some incoming data.
Tony scowls at Barnes with every ounce of pained contempt he has in his bones.
Barnes grins and gives Tony a thumbs up.
. . .
The Psychic Surgeon Squad - or whatever they call themselves, Tony'll commit their Evil Villain Name to his memory banks as soon as they do something worthwhile - show up in Times Square courtesy of the three major news stations serving the Metropolitan Manhattan area.
The Quinjet drops them off right in the middle of it, lots of jumping around and landing on some people they shouldn't be landing on. Tony flies over the whole group, picking out the hostiles and pointing at the trapped civilians for Clint's benefit still in the jet.
Tony spots the teenager from last time standing clear in the street. No one is around him at all. And he's waving both of his hands at Tony.
"Walk it off, loser!" the teenager crows as Tony swoops over him. And that's when his leg seizes.
Tony shouts "Gah the fucker!" and Steve's voice is over the comm in an instant.
"Iron Man, get out of range, we'll take it from here until you're good to go again!"
"Fucking teenagers and their distrust of authority!" Tony shouts. Then he makes another - albeit wobbly - pass over the teenager and flips the kid off. "I'll just shock it out if you don't mind!"
"JARVIS, set to fifteen percent power in knee prods," he says over Steve's inarticulate rage and Barnes "give it a rest, Stark!" Then he lands on one foot, rather clumsy, so the shocking can commence.
The pain is bad, but not as bad as a car battery in the chest. He's got comparison charts and everything for this. He still falls over onto his side after the first shock, and writhes around yelling during the second. But then he's fine, absolutely and totally fine.
Steve tries to drag him out of the fight by a newly made dent in the metal on the armor's backplate, but Tony fires the repulsors at the ground and flies out of his grasp. Steve, of course, follows him.
"You are an idiot!" Steve screams into his faceplate. Tony flips it up so he can scream back with the best effectiveness.
"I fixed it! You just don't like it when I do!"
Barnes runs past chasing an older woman waving a gun. He looks pissed, but he's gaining on her. Steve throws his shield without looking and takes her down, continues screaming at Tony as he catches it.
"You don't need to hurt yourself just to stay in a battle! What kind of self-destructive issues do you have that spark this-"
Tony repulsors a group of the Psychic Surgeon Squad who are trying to creep up behind Natasha. She startles, then kicks the one that tries to get back up in the head.
"Don't bring your introductory Psych 101 courses into this, Steve, you're just as fucked up as I am!"
"This is textbook-"
"Narcissism, right?"
"-attention seeking behaviour, don't put words in my mouth damnit! And here I am enabling your idiocy because you're going to get yourself killed-"
"No I'm not! I've never gotten myself killed!"
"-or you're going to kill yourself, and it'll be pure accident!"
"Well that's one thing you can be smug about! Tony Stark, killed himself by accident, right there on my grave. Do you have plans for my funeral, some grand speech for the kiddies as a cautionary-"
Barnes smacks them both upside the head simultaneously. Tony's faceplate snaps down from the force of the blow, Steve staggers to the side.
"Battle's over, thanks for the spitting mad thing," Barnes says with a grin. With a gesture he shows the mass of groaning and sobbing quasi-villains, and Clint tying up the bulk of them.
"We gotta hurry if we're gonna make the live showing," Clint shouts at them.
Tony gives a double thumbs up.
"Right, my work here is done," he says, then fires up the repulsors. "Meet you at the telvision."
Steve tries to grab at him, but Tony flies off to the tower otherwise unmolested.
. . .
"Why am I Big Bird?"
Clint shushes him, eyes never leaving the television.
"See, Cap," Tony offers, because he's a pal like that and has already forgiven the battlefield reaming due to being the bigger man and all, "That's not you as Big Bird. That's Big Bird as Captain America."
Steve is sitting squished in a chair with Barnes, and looking confused as balls. Barnes for his part is chewing on his metal fist to keep from laughing at the Miss Piggy muppet that's dressed like Natasha and trying to high-kick Animal in the head.
"But Big Bird isn't a muppet," Steve points out.
Tony waves a hand in dismissal. A bit of his scotch sloshes out of the glass and onto Bruce's arm, but no one pays it any mind. "Semantics. Jim Henson empire, owned by Disney, blah blah blah Capitalism, Socialists all of them, blah blah."
Big Bird earnestly tells the Muppet Avengers about friendship, and the Human Avengers all take swigs from their drinks.
Clint coughs up some of his beer cos he tried to swallow too much. Natasha kicks the back of his head with her bare foot to help him not die.
"Capitalist swine is an interesting term, coming from you," Bruce comments. Then he notices his wet sleeve and frowns at it.
Tony shrugs in way of answer.
"And why is Big Bird not Steve who's Captain America?" Barnes chimes in. He's grinning full-on shit eating. There's a reason Natasha demanded no weapons in the living room for tonight, and that reason is Tony trying to repulsor Barnes' face on the regular.
"Passing of the mantel," Tony says as he grinds his teeth.
Kermit the frog insists that Baron Yip Yip is trying to steal the cookie batter from the citizens of New York City. The "running" montage happens, and everyone takes another swig.
"Not the passing of Steve, though?" Barnes asks.
Steve frowns at his jar of specially purchased moonshine that Tony imports for him from fucking Appalachia just because he says he likes the taste. "Bucky..."
"Why the hell would the muppets be passing Steve around?" Tony asks. He might be coming off a bit aggressive, because Bruce scoots away from him until he's pressed against Natasha. Which isn't a terrible place for him to be, naturally, but still. Tony's feelings would be hurt if he wasn't so focused on kicking Barnes in the teeth. "They're muppets, Barnes, they don't have extracurricular bits."
"Who said anything about extracurriculars?" Barnes asks, both hands up, the human one holding his gallon jug of Absolut. "You're so focused on what Steve's packing, it's kinda obsessive."
"Packing? What?" Steve looks between Barnes and Tony like a fleshy version of Pong. "Guys, there are muppets on the television, can we not turn this into-"
"I'm not the one implying that you're part of a puppet orgy," Barnes interrupts.
"I'm not implying that, you're implying that!" Not the best comeback Tony's ever made, but he's had half of a fifth of scotch at this point and is feeling it in the head portion of his body. "I'm not edging on your territory, okay? Though if you want so much to keep him pristine, you should just mark him with piss or something."
Grover - dressed gamely in pots and pans with a steel colander on his head and a grater strapped across his eyes- thrashes about because he's so excited for blinking lights that make noises when he presses them. No one drinks anything, because they're too busy staring at Tony.
"Tony, we're not-" Steve breathes, like Marilyn Monroe but with more testosterone. And a bit of a stubble-beard. "We're not judging you if that's what you.. Get up to-" Tony squawks and Barnes starts to cry silently, "-but that doesn't mean that Bucky is.. Into that too."
"Your kink is not his kink," Clint adds solemnly. Natasha boots him hard enough in the shoulder to send him onto the floor and halfway across the coffee table. He does not spill a drop of his beer.
"I'm not into golden showers!" Tony urgently corrects Steve, hands out, drink ending up on Bruce's corduroy-clad leg now - which this time Bruce notices it and says "Hey!" - "I was implying that you're a fire hydrant!"
Silence reigns from the humans. The muppets, on the other hand, enjoy a duet between Big Bird and Grover about the healing power of teamwork and brotherly love.
Steve opens his mouth, forehead creased and that little furrow between his eyebrows that Tony is unashamed of having wet dreams that consist entirely of licking it.
Tony shakes his head, abandons his drink, and escapes the room in favour of his lockable penthouse and high-end booze instead of waiting to hear what it is Steve has to say about that.
. . .
Tony drags himself from Surprise! R&D Inspection Day back to the Avengers levels in the Tower, still hungover, still mopey, and surprised to find Steve in the kitchen cooking something in a huge stockpot.
"I've got a list," he says instead of hello.
Steve hums but doesn't look at him.
"It's of all the reasons why Bucky pisses me off," he explains, "and why I'm sorry for telling him to urinate on you but I had a good reason."
"I'm cooking," Steve says. He stirs the pot a little too vigorously, the contents slide over the edge and splatter on the hot stovetop.
"You wouldn't drink the urine!"
The elevators slide open and Barnes saunters out. He's dressed like a workout, and he grins very very wide at Tony as he manoeuvres into the kitchen to stand next to Steve. Because of course he'd stand there.
"What's goin' on?"
Tony forces himself to relax his jaw. "I have a list of your faults, and I was about to read them to Steve here."
Barnes nods solemnly. "Did you add insufferable to it?"
"You're not supposed to help me besmirch your virtue," Tony points out.
"Is that what they call pulling pigtails now?" Barnes looks between Steve, who is still focused on the pot, and Tony who is standing there shaking with barely repressed fury. "Funny how things change."
Tony is appalled. "I'm not pulling your pigtails!"
Barnes grins at Steve while he addresses Tony. "Not mine you're not."
Steve jerks up his head finally and blinks at Tony, which enough is enough.
Tony decides that the best course of action would be to flee to his workshop, and does so with great haste.
. . .
Tony powers down the computers with a wave of his hand and tells JARVIS to start the weekly server backup protocols since he plans on getting at least six hours of sleep this time. Then he switches the light off and leaves the lab, heading for the elevator.
"Sir, perhaps the stairs.." JARVIS says instead of opening the elevator doors like he's supposed to.
"Come on," Tony whines. No one else is around to hear him, so he can indulge if he wants. "I'm going to bed, not run a marathon."
"Your LDL level is point three four too high for ensued heart health, sir."
Tony grabs at his head with both hands. "So I'll run a marathon tomorrow, just let me go get some sleep!"
"Might I remind sir that my protocols are in place to make Sir's health top priority?"
Tony does not let out a strangled scream. He's too dignified for that. And too tired.
"Fucking Skynet," he grumbles, parting blow and all that, then goes back to his workshop to get the boots from the Mark IX.
JARVIS doesn't say a thing about the loophole, just as Tony expected him to. There are eighty levels to the tower between his workshop sublevel and the penthouse, and he's not going to walk it.
He zooms up the centre of the stairwell like an avenging angel with fire coming out its ass. It's pretty fun, he should use this method of transport more often.
Of course, he alights on the landing to the penthouse door and there's Steve, sitting on the top step and playing solitaire next to a fully intact plate of chicken parmesan.
Tony kicks off the jet boots with practised movements and eyeballs Steve. It looks like he's been here for a while.
"JARVIS, what's my LDL again?"
"I'm afraid my memory bank is inaccessible at the moment, Sir, perhaps in the morning when the backup processes are not running?"
Steve stands up stiffly, kinks working out of his knees as he moves.
Tony sighs. Definitely been sitting there for a while. "What, your cards are so interesting you forget to eat? That's my shtick, not yours. And you know what? I resent you moving in on my territory like this."
Steve picks up the plate and hands it to him. Tony takes it automatically. The sauce is congealed like newly clotted blood. So appetising.
"JARVIS tried to raise you for dinner, but you had a blackout going," Steve says. He starts to shuffle the game up into the deck. "That's your portion."
"Cap, I know you've got a point to make, but isn't this a little.." He waves his unladen hand around to grasp for the word. "I don't know, excessive?"
Steve stands with the deck of cards in his hand. He lifts his arms over his head and stretches. His shirt rides up just enough to show a strip of skin that Tony would very much like to slaver over, but he can't, because fucking Barnes.
Just the thought of it makes him feel a little vicious. He grins, and feels the word get nasty on his tongue before he can even bother to spit them out.
Steve talks before he can get the venom dripping on the floor, though.
"It's been a full year since the Chitauri, you know?" he drops his arms down to his sides, and gives Tony a half-grin, only one side twisting into something that might contain mirth in a different life. "So this is a celebratory dinner for not dying then. I cooked it myself, it came out okay I think."
He turns and starts down the stairs, leaving Tony standing there with his mouth open.
"Thanks for flying a nuke into space, Tony," Steve calls over his shoulder, on the ever-pressing descent. "Thanks for not dying between now and then, too."
Tony stands there until Steve's footsteps reach the door to the floor below, the Communal Level, and it opens and shuts.
Then he just stands there in the silent stairwell, looking at a plate of food.
. . .
Bruce wakes Tony up by shaking his shoulders violently; JARVIS helps by playing the Skillerex Dub Remix of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, original version as recorded by the Andrews Sisters.
The harmonious screeching layered over a slow thump of bass and the chittering of synthetic dinosaurs yanks him out of the Land of Nod far more effectively than Bruce's tentative tugging at his shirtsleeve.
"Wha? What?" Tony sits straight up, takes in Bruce's wide eyes and snotty nose, and tries to lay back down. "JARVIS, execute evacuation procedures, the Hulk's going to start sneezing soon."
"No no no, Tony," Bruce grabs him by his arm firmly this time and drags him out of bed. Tony barely gets his feet under him before he's being drug down the hall to the elevators. "This is so bad, Tony, this is really bad."
"Are you having a crisis of self?" Tony asks, bewildered.
They stumble into the elevator. JARVIS sends them down to Bruce's lab without prompting.
Bruce looks Tony in the eye and holds onto both his shoulders for added gravitas.
"It's something bad, Tony," he says seriously.
The elevators slide open to Bruce's empty lab. Tony advances, with Bruce uncharacteristically trailing behind.
There's nothing there. He looks at the ceiling. He checks behind the storage lockers that are set partially away from the wall for maintenance purposes. He even gently prods the floor with one sock-clad toe.
He coughs a little. There's a smell he's not quite used to, but is familiar.
"Tony," Bruce says from the entrance to the labs.
Tony turns around slowly, and there's an outrageously large animated globulins hovering in the centre of the room, burping and glooping as it morphs and wiggles in space.
"JARVIS, high alert for Avengers, Assemble please," Tony says as careful as possible.
"Sir?"
Bruce runs through the lab, grabbing Tony's arm as he passes. They stumble into the Skrull Detector Chamber with the thing wobbling after them, Tony screaming "It's a blood protein gone bad! AVENGERS ASSEMBLE NOW, JARVIS!"
The red alarm starts to blare. Flashing lights, a klaxon wail, the whole nine yards. Tony yanks the door to the chamber closed before the globulins gets to them, it hits the clear reinforced polymer sheeting and rebounds backwards from the impact.
Clint drops into the lab first through the vent system. He looks around wildly, chokes on the air a little, then says in a squeaky voice, "Oh shit it's Mister Buggles."
"You named a globulins?" Bruce asks loudly over Tony's "Who does that kind of shit?"
Clint tucks and rolls behind a worktable and shoots an arrow at a maintenance cupboard. There's nothing there, but okay, everyone's entitled to miss once when gripped by extreme terror.
Barnes is next in, and he skids to a stop outside of the stairwell door and shouts "Threat assess, team leader on the way!"
"Unnaturally large and sentient globulins!" Tony shouts at the same time Clint hollers "Evil evil tyrannosaurus from a video game brought to life" from his protected area under the table.
Bruce takes off his glasses and fiddles with them. "Oh, I know what's going on..."
Tony checks his eyes for green. Not a speck in sight.
"Hulk? It's okay to come out here now."
Bruce shakes his head. "No, it's really not."
Steve and Thor run off the elevator with Natasha following at a more sedate pace. Barnes clutches at his mouth with both hands and howls. "A clown! Steve, who let a fucking clown in here?!"
Steve looks at Barnes, then looks at the room at large. He takes in Clint under the table. He raises an eyebrow at Tony and Bruce clutching at each other inside the Skrull Detector Prototype. He skims his eyes all over the place, then looks at Thor.
"You sense anything?" he asks.
Thor shrugs, scratches at his scalp with the handle of Mjölnir. "I do not sense any magical forces present."
Natasha has a gas mask from one of the cabinets next to the doors. She wears it very elegantly, and offers one to Barnes, who doesn't take it.
"Sorry guys," Bruce says. "It's the mold."
. . .
Steve ends the video call with the head HAZMAT suit guy and turns to face the room.
Clint, Tony and Bruce hunch their shoulders like synchronised swimming. Barnes just yawns and scratches at his scalp with his human hand. Natasha starts the microwave in the kitchen, reminding them all that if they try to run and Steve somehow can't catch them, she will.
"They've finished collecting the hazardous material," Steve says through clenched teeth. "If there's anywhere else you two hid that stuff, now would be the time to tell me."
"I resent the implication that we'd ever hide the fun stuff from you," Tony says. He wants his voice to be strident and confident, but it comes out more like a croak. "You wound us all with your attitude here."
"You can grow more right?" Clint asks Bruce. "By the repeat showing of the muppets thing?"
Bruce opens his mouth, sees Steve's glare, and snaps it shut. He shakes his head at Clint.
"Stick with alcohol," Natasha's voice calls from the kitchen. "Less chance of us thinking that the Chitauri are back, da?"
Everyone in the room except Steve winces.
"You need to lighten up Stevie," Barnes says, pointing a finger at the quietly raging Captain. "Just because we had a bit of fun doesn't mean you get to be a wet blanket."
Tony raises his eyebrows at Barnes. That doesn't sound very supportive. He agrees with Barnes, of course, hopefully the only time the year because his arc reactor can't take more than that, but still.
"I have to leave before I say something regretful," Steve finally growls.
They watch as a collective unit as Steve stomps out of the room and into the elevator, barking "JARVIS, gym" before the doors close.
"Huh," Tony says. "So all I had to do to stop him making eyes at you was to get everyone high?"
Barnes pinches the bridge of his nose with his metal hand. Must be some headache. "He doesn't make eyes at me, and he's angry at you too, shortstop."
. . .
The dulcet tonal inflections of Billy Holiday is coming from the room on the gym level that has the punching bags and practice mat. Tony does his best to saunter in through the doors, but it turns into more of an awkward slide by the time he's actually there and seeing Steve do his thing.
His thing that turns out being a careful rehanging of a punching bag.
"So how's the Feng Shui in here now?" Tony asks. Steve doesn't pretend he didn't hear him come in, just shrugs and leaves the bag alone to turn to his water bottle that's perched on the sideboard.
"You worked really hard on this layout, the chi better be improved here," Tony continues. He shifts the plate he's carrying from one hand to the other. "I can call Strange and have him do his magical whammo thing if that'll help-"
"Give it a rest," Steve says, quiet. He caps his water bottle and replaces it on the sideboard, then turns to face Tony for the first time since he got there. "Just leave it alone."
And there it is, the defeated and forlorn expression. Tony thought they had taken care o that with the birthday party that had the stripper pop out of the cake and right on top of Bruce, but apparently not. "Pepper would be proud that I'm paying attention without the threat of maiming, why aren't you?"
"Because I'm not Pepper," Steve points out. "This was just something to do, it wasn't important."
"But I thought it was important to you and-"
Steve slashes the hair with his hand, cuts Tony off right there. Tony's mouth snaps shut.
They regard each other for a moment. Then Steve notices the plate in Tony's hand, and his forehead goes wrinkled and concerned.
"What's-"
Tony hurries forward a handful of steps, closes the distance between them, plate outstretched. "It's the food you made me, but I-"
"What did you do?" Steve's eyes go wide. "If it wasn't edible you should have thrown it out, Tony!"
"But look! I bronzed it!"
Steve's mouth hangs open, and Tony waves the really heavy plate around as he talks.
"You made me dinner, I wanted to commemorate it but since I wasn't at the table to eat it and take a picture I decided to make it immortal!" He stops and looks Steve in the eye, serious as he can manage with his arms feeling really tired from swinging around fifty-pounds on a plate. "This is what we do in the future, we make things last forever."
"You do not bronze food in the future, Tony," Steve strangles out, "don't mess with me like that, I know you don't do this in the future."
JARVIS' voice cuts in over the intercom. "As much as I hate to interrupt Sir having a riveting conversation-" Tony shouts at that, the AI keeps going, "-but the Superintendent of Precinct House 5 in Lower Manhattan is calling in regards to their recent prisoners and your hopefully speedy assistance."
Tony presses the plate against his chest for maximum airspeed velocity, then runs for the elevator.
"Wait, Tony! We're not done, Tony!"
"Meet you there, Cap!" Tony shouts over his shoulder, because like hell they're not done here.
. . .
The QuinJet touches down on the cleared out street in front of the 5th precinct off of Elizabeth Street. Tony elected to fly his own way, so he got there first and is standing outside next to the reporters, brandishing a deck of cards at a street hawker who is cowering before his Iron Mightiness.
Everyone looks at Tony as they get outside the jet except Steve. Tony waves, and is perfectly fine staying where he is for the moment. He can wait.
Steve heads straight to the open doors, shield up and chiselled jaw set in a very stubborn and attractive line. He looks inside, watches for a moment, then turns right back around, stomps past the confused Avengers and stops in front of Tony.
"Why are they-" Steve stops himself. He shuts his mouth, looks down at his feet, and takes a deep, fortifying breath. "Tony, report?"
Tony flips the faceplate open. He doesn't care if his own eyes are a bit wild, he needs to be a human presence for Steve right now. Also, he needs Bucky to see how fucking smug he's feeling, it's good for his soul.
"JARVIS, tell the good Captain what they call it?"
"Aggression Therapy, Captain Rogers," JARVIS promptly replies.
"Yup," Tony says, popping the P, "it's aggression therapy."
Steve pushes the cowl back to scrub a hand through his hair. He glances around them at the reporters and a few shell shocked police officers with cups of coffee from the opportunistic vendor working the street. Then he looks Tony in the eye.
"The blankets and the wrapping are-"
"A re-birthing kind of thing, supposed to sap the anger right out of them."
Steve nods, a jerky motion that doesn't express anything other than an acknowledgement of someone speaking.
Tony shifts to the side and conspiratorially whispers, "It's a PR stunt gone mad." Then he pulls back and smiles brightly. "We've handled plenty of those!"
Steve closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose, exhales through his mouth.
"The whole world is watching courtesy of CNN and FOX," Tony offers, points out the trucks with their logos emblazoned along the sides. "It's a train wreck, we'll help everyone out if we just do an in and out."
"I'll take point," Steve says. His resolve is back with a vengeance if that thinning of lips has anything to say about it.
He stomps back to the open doors of the Precinct. His shield is up, head exposed because his cowl is down, his back ramrod straight.
Barnes looks at Tony with a scrunched up forehead. "What did you tell him?"
Tony fires the repulsors so he's about four feet off the ground, and flies after Steve at a slower pace. "The truth," he snaps at Barnes.
"Hawkeye, get as high up as you can with a sightline through the door," Steve is saying on the comm. "Black Widow, Thor, you're on frontal assault with me. Winter Soldier and Iron Man are on rear guard and to keep hostiles from reaching the street."
He turns to establish an understanding of the borders to the cleared area, and a huge three-level metal filing cabinet flies out the open doors and smacks right into Steve's head.
Captain America goes down like a sack of red white and blue bricks. Everyone starts forward, shouting expletives and roaring "VENGEANCE" in the case of Thor, and Tony puts on the speed to fly ahead of everyone and barrel right into the midst of the action.
There are police officers wrapped like mummies in comforters and towels. There are Psychic Surgeons everywhere, smoking cigars and looking smug. There's a lot of paperwork that's highly flammable, especially if Tony lobs it at the heads of the hostiles.
Time loses meaning. He sets things on fire, crashes through furniture and people in a two-to-one ratio, and he punts the guy wearing the cat sweater out the door on headfirst because he's probably the one with the bright idea of attacking an Avenger with a file cabinet.
There's an enraged inarticulate noise rattling around in Tony's helmet, and he distantly notices that it's a noise he himself is making. He doesn't try to shut up, just blows up the Police Chief's desk so that the shards hit the fleeing Psychic Surgeons in their collective asses.
Barnes tackles him down to the floor after that. Tony doesn't fight it, he's tired and too pissed to care.
"He's fine, damnit!" Barnes shouts right at the faceplate. "He got up right after you flew in, if you'd just waited-"
Tony flings Barnes off of him, sends him into the Chief's office to land on the charred remains of the desk. His repulsors sputter but give him airlift, he flies out of the police house and out to the street in less than a minute, and there Steve is, blood down his face but otherwise standing upright and looking fine.
He lands in front of Steve and fuck the faceplate, he takes off the entire helmet and drops it onto the pavement. He grabs Steve by the arm and checks his pupils.
"I ducked," Steve says, calm and with pupils of equal sizes. "Lots of yelling in there, were you okay?"
Tony lets him go and tries to take a step back. He bumps into Thor and bounces forward instead, almost collides with Steve. Thor shrugs under his dirty look, then goes back to picking lint off of Mjölnir.
"I'm fine," Tony bites out. He tries to manoeuvre past Steve the other way, but Clint and Barnes appear with linked arms and matching shit-eating grins. "Move."
Barnes has bits of pressboard stuck in his hair. He looks past Tony at Steve. "Man up."
Tony stiffens. He doesn't need to be told jack shit from this little malingering sociopath and if he thinks he's going to get away with this then he has another thing coming and-
Steve's hands is huge on the back of Tony's neck, it serves quite well to the purpose of hauling Tony around and slotting their mouths together.
It's an insistent kiss, could be interpreted a lot of different ways. Tony's eyes close automatically, registers that Steve is kissing him, and he nearly has a coronary right then and there.
Steve releases him, Tony's eyes snap open. His mouth is hanging agape. He can feel the breeze at the back of his teeth. He snaps his mouth shut and looks Steve dead in the eye.
Steve stands a step away and has his shield held up between them like he'll need the defence. His face is serious, waiting for a blow.
Barnes and Clint exchange high fives, and Tony says, "Huh, really?"
Steve relaxes marginally, and nods once. "Yes, really."
"Well." There's only one thing he can say to that. "Okay, awesome."