Title: Readjustment 1/6
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony. Shout outs to various canon ships, including May/Jarvis, and a nod to Carol/Jessica/Simon.
Warnings: No much, really. A little swearing at some point, probably. Oh, and Cap and Iron Man are still sleeping with each other.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Resurrection, Reconstruction, and Redemption, which you probably ought to read first, since this won't make much sense on it's own. The various Avengers head to Washington to deal with Registration, and end up having to deal with each other. Meanwhile, Steve continues adjusting to life, Tony continues to have Issues, and they get used to the whole relationship thing.

And again, our thanks to angelofharmony and tavella for the great beta job.

Chapter One

The remnants of last night's red and blue streamers were still scattered around the officers' mess, drooping limply off the edges of the tables. The room itself was mostly deserted, save for Peter and MJ, who were sitting opposite Steve at the table nearest the door.

It was nearly nine-thirty, and SHIELD's abbreviated officer corps had already eaten and gone, as had the other superheroes -- except for Tony, who had still been asleep when Steve had left their room. Steve had had to disentangle himself from his arms before getting up, and even that hadn't woken him; Tony had simply transferred his grasp to Steve's pillow.

Peter was out of costume, his hair sticking up every which way. He poked discontentedly at his eggs. "These taste like plastic packing foam."

MJ speared a piece of his egg on the end of her fork, ate it, and made a face. "I think it is plastic packing foam."

Steve was not going to ask why MJ knew what plastic packing foam tasted like. Having long familiarity with military-issue powered eggs, he'd bypassed them completely in favor of oatmeal. Oatmeal was supposed to be tasteless.

The coffee was good, though. It was neither stale, nor burned, nor cold, which made it unusual for SHIELD coffee. "Where did this come from?" Steve hefted his coffee mug. "There wasn't any last night." Tony had spent half the evening sitting quietly at his side and rubbing at the bridge of his nose, suffering from deserved caffeine withdrawal. Even knowing that he'd had it coming, Steve had felt faintly bad about that; Tony was in shaky enough physical shape -- bruised, battered, and worn out from whatever the Extremis had done to him. He didn't need extra headaches on top of it all.

Peter shrugged, still poking at his eggs. "Director Fury sent some guys ashore to get it."

People were already calling Nick "Director Fury" again, as if Tony had never been in charge of SHIELD. He wasn't sure if that was a good sign, or a bad one.

"He gets cranky when he doesn't have coffee," Steve said.

"How can you tell?" MJ asked.

Footsteps sounded in the doorway behind Steve. Peter wrinkled his nose, and Steve glanced over his shoulder to see Tony standing a few feet away, white dress shirt untucked and hair disheveled.

Without looking at Peter and MJ, Tony silently walked to the table and sat down beside Steve, close enough that their arms were touching.

"Good morning," Steve said, amused.

Tony looked as if he were still half-asleep and blinked at him, eyes barely focused. "I woke up and you were gone," he said faintly.

"Ookay, too much information," Peter said.

Steve's mug was still half-full. He handed it to Tony, who took it and cradled it in both hands. "Have some coffee," Steve told him.

Tony buried his face in the coffee mug, silent again.

"I'd say that was creepy and zombie-like," Peter started, "if it weren't... Wait, it is zombie like. Nice to see some things haven't changed." He ate another forkful of powdered eggs, averting his eyes from Tony's slumped figure.

Tony ignored this remark; Steve wasn't sure he'd even really heard it, or if he'd have said anything if he had. Tony had slept for almost twelve hours -- nearly eighteen, if you counted his crashing after Steve arrived on the Helicarrier -- and yet he still seemed exhausted.

Peter sighed, setting down his fork. "These are really, really bad. The food last night wasn't this bad."

Steve succumbed to curiosity, and reached across the table with his fork to steal a bite of Peter's eggs. "Actually, they're not as rubbery as I thought they'd be. Powdered eggs have improved since 1945."

"Yeah, and I bet you had to walk uphill through the snow to get to the battlefield, too."

"Only at the Battle of the Bulge," Steve said, keeping his voice completely deadpan.

"Damn," Peter said, as MJ and Tony snickered.

"Just think," Tony offered, still staring intently down at his coffee mug, "if it were Valley Forge, you could have done it without shoes."

Steve grinned. The magic of coffee; Tony could now speak coherently and understand human speech. And for what might have been the first time, he was relaxed enough around one of the anti-registration heroes to actually make a joke, albeit one at Steve's expense.

MJ made a soft, half-laughing noise, and set down her spoon, pushing her empty cereal bowl away. "And if you were a Gaul fighting Caesar, you'd have had to fight naked. Also in the snow. And think about how much that would suck."

"It wasn't that funny," Peter said. He glanced at Tony for second, then looked away. "Okay, um... We'll just let you guys eat breakfast. Because mine is gross, and, um, yeah." He stood up, picking up his plate, and started for the conveyer belt that took empty dishes back to the kitchen.

MJ shrugged, and followed him, shaking her head.

Tony watched them go, a pained look in his eyes. The bad guys had been dealt with, the Registration Act was on its way out, yet Peter still couldn't sit down at a table with Tony. Tony had practically adopted Peter as a little brother back before everything had gone to hell; the obvious awkwardness between them now had to hurt.

"You know, this re-uniting the superhero community thing really would be much easier if I wasn't part of the equation."

"You promised I wouldn't have to do this by myself," Steve reminded him. Regardless of what Tony thought of himself, it wouldn't work without him. And Steve wasn't willing to contemplate doing it without Tony at his side.

Tony smiled ruefully. "Doing it by yourself might be easier. There are a lot of people who are still angry with me, and with good reason."

The line between the pro- and anti-registration sides would stay just as sharply defined as ever if Tony and the other pro-registration people didn't work with them to repair registration.

Tony and his side hadn't been quite as misguided as Steve had thought; he'd made some mistakes of his own, and he knew that he was partially responsible for the depth of that division, and he wanted to be able to make that right. Otherwise, Luke and Peter and the others would just stay angry, and the superheroes would never really be able to work together again.

More importantly, if the anti-registration heroes never came back into the fold, their voices wouldn't be heard, and they'd never truly be able to fix the mess the SHRA had gotten them into. If Doom, Red Skull, and the Mandarin had shown them anything, it was that they couldn't afford to stay divided. A house divided against itself could not stand.

"Trust me," he said. "It wouldn't be."

"You!" Maya whirled on him, pointing an accusing finger at the center of his chest.

Tony froze in the engineering lab's doorway, as Maya went on, "You're the one who told Dugan to toss the Mandarin's rings into the ocean. I can't believe you, Tony." She threw up her hands, disgust on her scarred face. "Think of what we could have learned from them!"

Very little that was worth learning, if what the Mandarin had done with them over the past decade was anything to go by. "They were too dangerous," Tony defended, walking over to one of the workbenches. Schematics for the SHIELD satellite system were laid out across it, Sal's messy scrawl decorating the margins. Like Tony, Sal liked having something concrete to work with. Maya, left to her own devices, would have planned out the overhaul of the satellites solely with computer models. "You're re-routing the signals. You think that and a frequency change will be enough?"

"Don't try to change the subject. What kind of a scientist are you?" She glared at him, arms folded across her chest.

Tony leaned his hip against the side of the workbench and wrapped his arms around his ribs. The bruises the Mandarin's force ring had left all over his torso were nice and purple now, and standing up straight made his ribs ache. "One who's learned that some things aren't meant to be played with." Which, unfortunately, was not something Maya was ever going to learn. If the disaster that the first Extremis test had devolved into hadn't shown her that, nothing would. "They weren't compatible with human technology," he went on, giving her a reason she could understand. "Try to hook them up to a computer, and all you'd do would be to fry its mainframe."

Maya raised her eyebrows. "You sound awfully certain for a man who had them thrown into the San Marinas trench before you had a chance to take a look at them."

"I did more than look," Tony told her. "I accessed them with the Extremis during the fight, and I haven't been able to use it since. The most sophisticated piece of computer programming on the planet, and they fried it dead." The pain had been like nothing he'd ever felt, like the rings were searing his body to ash from the inside out. No wonder the Mandarin was insane; he'd bonded those things to his nervous system.

Tony had been linked to one of them for less than a minute, and his head still ached dully; the part of his mind that should have been filled with data streams and digital information flared with pain anytime he tried to access anything other than his armor, like an ice pick being jammed into his temples.

Maya stared at him. "That's not possible," she said flatly. "If the Extremis were dead, you'd be dead."

"Well, not dead, dead," he clarified. "It's still there, I just can't use it without blacking out. The connections are burned out." And he could learn to live with that, he could. He still had the armor, and he'd gotten by just fine before he had the new powers. But if he had to live with this headache for the rest of his life, it was going to drive him back to drinking. Or, well, not quite that, because as long as he had Steve, nothing was bad enough to warrant that, but he'd end up buying stock in aspirin.

"Burned out," Maya repeated. "Do you know what happens to telepaths when they burn themselves out?" When he shook his head, she went on, "We studied it, when we were designing the Extremis. Their powers are still there, they just can't access them because the neurons they need for it are damaged. And for a normal person, that can take years to heal. For you, it will probably take about a month."

Tony blinked. "It's going to come back?"

"Maybe." She shrugged. "I'd have to do an MRI to be sure. What happens why you try to use it?"

"Blinding, excruciating pain happens. And I've been getting nosebleeds. Anytime I try to access anything other than the armor."

Maya nodded. "And did this start when you accessed the rings, or during the two weeks you were using the Extremis continually? Initial simulations predicted that it would over-stress the human body if used non-stop for an extended period of time."

"It started after the first week," he admitted. "But it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. It didn't get really bad until the rings. Which is why I'm here."

She frowned, the scar pulling tight across her cheekbone. "I don't think you burned yourself out, not if the armor still works. It sounds like you over-stressed the connections, and what you did with the rings was just the final straw. The Extremis is a biological technology, it's part of your body, and you strained it, like an athlete with a stress fracture. Now you're just going to have to wait for it to heal."

"I can't completely shut it down, though. It flares up whenever I'm around electronics, and since working with electronics is my job..." he trailed off, waving his hand, and then flinched as his bruised right shoulder protested. The Extremis wasn't the only thing that was going to be inconvenient for the near future.

"Pain is your body's way of telling you not to be an idiot. Take some Advil and do your best not to use it. You'll never heal otherwise. You should really let me do an MRI."

"Right," Tony said. He resisted the urge to rub at his shoulder. Or his temples; talking about the headache had made it worse, though he knew that was just psychosomatic. "I don't have time for that. I'm going back to Stark Tower today, since I need to check on the company and get ready to go talk to Congress, and there's only about eighty percent as many electronic security devices there." And Steve was coming back with him. He hadn't been sure Steve would want to, despite the promises they'd both made; it would take months to rebuild the Avengers Mansion, and there was nowhere else for Tony to go, but Steve would have been more than welcome with the New Avengers. And his apartment in Brooklyn was still there; it had been left to Tony, with instructions to give it to James Barnes. Tony hadn't been able to bring himself to go and look at it, so it would be exactly the way Steve had left it. But when he'd mentioned that he needed to return to Stark Tower, Steve had just nodded and asked when they were leaving.

It still didn't seem entirely real.

Maya shrugged. "Fine. It's your central nervous system."

"Tony?" Steve's voice.

Tony turned to see him standing just inside the doorway, eyeing Maya a little suspiciously. He had his artist's portfolio slung over one shoulder, and was wearing one of Tony's shirts again; all of the clothing he'd bought while they were lying low in the city had blown up with Sharon's flying car. The t-shirt looked much better on Steve than it ever had on Tony, fabric stretched tight across the muscles of his chest. "Did you get what you need?" Steve asked. "The ferry to the mainland is leaving."

"If I had that to go home to," Maya said, sotto vocce, "I'd want to go back to Stark Tower, too."

Tony grinned at Steve, who was now blushing and rubbing at the back of his neck, not looking at Maya. "Yes," he said. "I have everything I need."

The lobby of Stark Tower was full of scaffolding and marble dust. Half of the stone floor had been pulled up, exposing the concrete underneath, and the remaining flagstones were covered in blackened scorch marks.

"What happened here?" Steve asked, staring around at the chaos.

Tony shrugged, looking vaguely guilty. "The Mandarin. It was supposed to distract me while he took down the Helicarrier. It worked."

"From what Dugan told me, there wasn't much you could have done." Steve adjusted the strap of his artist's portfolio and nudged Tony towards the elevators. Thank God the damage hadn't included them; the last thing Tony needed at this point was to hike up fifty flights of stairs.

"I could have gotten there faster." Tony punched in the key code for the tower's penthouse, eyes focused on the buttons he was pressing. "I was so close; only a few dozen yards and I could have-"

"Exploded?" Steve interrupted.

Tony glared at him. "De-activated one of the bombs. We might not have lost the whole carrier, then."

From what Steve had heard, and from the grainy cell-phone camera footage of the explosion Fox News had shown on repeat for the entire next day, the only difference a few more yards would have made was that Tony might have succeeded in getting himself blown up after all. "It feels like it's been years since I was here," he said, changing the subject. He didn't want to think about Tony's attempts to get himself killed right now.

Tony looked away, shrugging uncomfortably. "You didn't have to come back," he said. "Thank you."

Steve stared at Tony for a second, before carefully pointing out, "You're here. Where else would I have gone?"

Tony gave him a little smile, eyes bright. Even though the dark circles under them were still evident, he suddenly looked a lot less tired.

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. Steve rested a hand on the small of Tony's back for a moment as they stepped into the apartment's entryway.

"You!"

Steve looked up, grabbing for the portfolio -- he could throw it with the shield inside it, if necessary -- to see Spiderman crouching upside-down on the ceiling, back in his red and blue costume. "Peter? What are you-"

Peter dropped to the floor, pointing an accusing finger at Tony. "What have you done with my aunt?" he demanded.

Tony stared at Peter blankly, looking pole axed. Steve understood the feeling; Peter had left the Helicarrier at the same time they had, heading for Strange's place. What was he doing here?

"Your aunt?" Tony repeated, still staring at Peter.

"MJ and I went to the hospital, and she was gone!" Peter was about two feet away from Tony now, jabbing a finger under his nose. "Somebody picked her up in one of your cars. What did you do with her?"

"Nothing," Tony protested. "I don't know where she is!" He took a step back, out of range of Peter's expansive hand gestures. "That was part of the arrangement; I just gave Jarvis the money for the hospital bills, and he didn't tell me where he was spending it, so that when the police showed up looking for you, I could legitimately say I had no idea where you were."

"That was your money?" Peter cocked his head to one side, righteous outrage temporarily derailed.

"No," Tony said. "Jarvis embezzled it behind my back."

Steve looked from one of them to the other. He had a feeling that he was missing about half of this conversation. The last he'd heard, May Parker had been in the coma ward at St. Vincent's, after being shot by the Kingpin's men. "Are you sure it wasn't Fisk, trying to finish what he started?"

Peter went stiff. "Oh God, I hadn't thought of that."

"If he has, he's probably holding her hostage," Tony said. He took a step towards Peter, reaching out as if to touch him on the shoulder, then stopped, letting his hand fall to his side. "I can connect to SHIELD's satellite network and find her with-" he broke off, as Steve and Peter stared at him. "Or, wait, I suppose I can't right now. I'm sorry, Peter. I'll have SHIELD start looking."

That was right; Tony could use the Extremis to track people via satellite. Or had been able to until yesterday, anyway. In retrospect, it was incredibly convenient that he'd never been able to use that ability to find any of the hiding places Steve had used during the fighting over Registration.

"There's no need to do that, sir." Jarvis stepped out into the hallway, impeccably dressed as usual. May Parker followed just behind him, leaning on a cane.

"Aunt May!" Peter cried, throwing himself at her, only to bring himself up short and hug her carefully. "You're awake!"

Steve grinned, relieved, and not just on Peter's behalf. He liked May; it was good to see her awake and unkidnapped. It was even better to see Jarvis.

"Jarvis," Steve said, still grinning. He crossed the room in two long steps and seized Jarvis in a hug. "It's great to see you again."

Jarvis patted him on the back and then stepped away, straightening his jacket. "Sir," he said, "it's very good to see you as well." Which, from Jarvis, was unbridled enthusiasm. "I'll have your things brought out of storage, shall I?"

He had things? Steve had assumed that all he owned in the world at the moment was his shield; even the clothes on his back were borrowed from Tony and Nick Fury. He grinned. "Put them in Tony's room."

Jarvis raised an eyebrow. "Are congratulations in order?"

Steve knew he was blushing, and tried to think of something to say. Jarvis had practically raised Tony; it was good to have his approval. There were a lot of people who weren't going to approve, either because of Tony's role in Registration, or because they were both men.

"Edwin," May chided. She extricated herself from Peter's grasp and took Steve by the hand. "It's good to see you well." She smiled up at him, the expression slightly evil and very familiar. Steve suddenly knew where Peter had gotten it from. "And congratulations, Steven."

Tony's expression was priceless. Steve wasn't sure if it was embarrassment at the fact that they were all standing around commenting on his love life, or mild outrage at the fact that everyone was acting as if Steve had just brought home a blushing bride. Or possibly it was just that people were being nice to him, and he didn't know how to respond to that anymore.

"Wait, why are you awake?" Peter asked, completely ignoring Steve and Tony. "How long have you been awake? Why are you here?"

"Nearly two weeks. When I regained consciousness, you and Mary Jane were nowhere to be found, and since the hospital seemed to be under the impression that my last name was still Riley, I thought it might be better not to have them try and contact you."

"Um, about that," Peter began.

"So I called Edwin," May went on, "and he apprised me of the situation and brought me here."

The elevator dinged again, and the doors opened to reveal MJ, who flung herself at Peter while the doors were still moving. "Peter! The hospital said that she woke up and Edwin Jarvis took her -- oh. May! You're here!"

"Yes. I'm here."

MJ let go of Peter and went to hug May, turning to glare at her husband. "I told you to wait for me. You ran off before I could finish talking to the doctor, who knows you're Spiderman, by the way." She paused for breath, then, "and how did you get up here? The doorman said he hadn't seen you."

Peter managed to look embarrassed despite the fact that his mask was hiding his entire face. "Through a window."

Tony sighed. "Which one did you break?"

"You have a lot of windows."

Tony held up a hand. "I just want to know so that I can get the repair crew downstairs to come up and see to it before three."

"Why?" MJ asked. "What happens at three?"

"They go home," Jarvis told her, sounding as if he found this mildly offensive. "I recommended that we not hire this contracting firm again."

"I won't," Tony said. He frowned, and reached up to rub at the bridge of his nose, a gesture Steve was beginning to find far too familiar. "I've had to remind them that the columns in the lobby are load bearing three times."

"Perhaps we could all go sit down somewhere?" Steve suggested, watching Tony, who had closed his eyes.

"Ah yes." Jarvis gestured in the direction of the kitchen. "I just put on a pot of tea."

The kitchen was exactly as Steve remembered it, except that his sketch of the Manhattan skyline, which had once hung on the far wall, was gone. Also, there was a small, orange kitten sitting in a basket on the breakfast counter.

Tony stared at the kitten, which stared back at them all with huge, blue eyes. "What," he said, "is that?"

"A kitten," May said, taking a seat at the table. "There was a homeless man outside of the hospital who was trying to find a home for it, as he couldn't take care of it himself, so Edwin decided to take it in."

Peter, who seemed to have forgotten his distrust of anything to do with Tony in the face of small, fluffy animals, scooped the kitten up and cuddled it. The kitten yowled, and attempted to claw his face off. "Aw!" Peter cooed, holding the growling cat at arm's length. "He's all scruffy and psychotic and doesn't trust anyone. You should call him Matt! I mean, Daredevil. You should call him Daredevil."

Steve rescued the kitten from Peter, holding it on one palm. The kitten regarded him with disdain. "It's very small, but it still manages to look down its nose at you. You could call it Patton."

"Who said we were keeping it?" Tony asked.

Everyone ignored him. "I was thinking of Churchill," Jarvis said.

Steve smiled. The kitten was now attempting to eat his fingers, its teeth needle-like. He put it carefully down on the counter. "That would also work."

Tony poked the kitten with one finger. "It's a very small cat," he said doubtfully. The kitten closed its eyes and rolled over onto its back, purring blissfully.

"It's a kitten," May told him. "It will grow."

"It likes you," Peter said, tone accusing. "Why does it like you?"

MJ reached down and scratched the kitten under the chin. It gave a wriggle of feline pleasure.

Peter reached for it tentatively, and the kitten sprang to its feet, growling, its blue eyes narrowed to slits.

"I think it thinks you're a giant spider," MJ offered helpfully. She turned to Jarvis. "You could call it Logan."

"Churchill," Jarvis said, "leave Spiderman alone."

Peter abandoned the cat and went to stand in front of May's chair. "I'm so, so glad you're okay," he said. "I was worried that, um... I was worried." He looked away, scratching at the back of his head, then said, apologetically, "I'd say you could come home with us now, but, um, we're kind of staying with Dr. Strange until we can get things worked out."

"Don't worry, dear," May said. She smiled up at Peter serenely. "I'll be staying with Edwin for the time being."

Steve missed whatever Peter's reaction to this announcement was. Tony had shifted his weight slightly, wrapping one arm around his injured side. Steve pushed him gently in the direction of one of the chairs. "Sit down."

Tony stood his ground. "I'm fine."

"You passed out on me yesterday." It was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. Steve had half-carried Tony from the infirmary to their room. His own stitches, which he'd obtained at the same time that Tony had gotten the sling that he wasn't wearing, were itching furiously now, and he resisted the urge to scratch at his forehead. "And you're still favoring your right arm."

May extended her cane to Tony. "You look as if you need this more than I do. What happened to you?"

"He was electrocuted yesterday," Peter said, voice deliberately cheerful, the way it was when he wanted to lighten the mood. "Also, the Mandarin punched him a lot."

"I conducted electrical energy through my armor to overload the Mandarin's rings," Tony corrected him. "I didn't have any other options."

Other options or not, Tony was pale, and there was a tight look around his eyes and mouth that Steve knew from long experience meant that he was in pain. Also from long experience, he knew that Tony wouldn't do anything about it while other people were watching.

"We have to get an early start for Washington tomorrow," Steve announced, "and anyway, I'm sure you four have a lot to talk about. I'll see you in the morning, May. Jarvis," he nodded at the man, "it's good to be home."

He left the room then, Tony following on his heels, as Steve had known that he would.

Tony's room had a distinctly un-lived-in look, as if its owner had been gone for far more than a fortnight. The bed looked completely unslept in, and Steve suspected that this was not simply due to Jarvis's housekeeping. He felt a moment's gratitude that it was a queen-sized bed and not a double; Steve was too tall for most double beds. Actually, come to think of it, the choice made sense; Tony was almost as tall as he was.

"What was that about, Steve?" Tony turned to him, one eyebrow raised. "It's two o'clock."

Steve grinned, knowing the expression probably looked slightly sheepish. "I know. I just wanted to get you alone."

"We've been alone for two weeks," Tony pointed out.

"I know," Steve said again. And during those two weeks, there had been times when he would have killed for fifteen minutes conversation with someone who wasn't entirely wrapped up in the Extremis. He was almost relieved that Tony couldn't access it at the moment, now that he knew for a fact that it could hurt him.

With anyone else, two weeks of enforced solitary proximity would have driven Steve crazy. With Tony, it had been almost pleasant, or would have been if they hadn't had to dodge supervillains the whole time.

Steve took a step closer to Tony. "What, are you tired of my company already?" he asked teasingly.

Tony regarded him seriously, his expression not teasing at all. "Never."

Steve understood what Tony meant by that, but he was tired of being serious. The past forty-eight hours had been one emotional conversation after another, and they could both use a break from that. Tony, at least, hadn't had any downtime since their reunion, unless hours spent unconscious counted, and they were going to have to jump right back into the fray tomorrow.

He really wasn't looking forward to DC. The people he and the other Avengers would be talking to wouldn't have changed their opinions; they'd just be pretending that they had, to distance themselves from Dickstein and the House Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee, and from a politically embarrassing scandal. They would apologize, and backpedal, and tell Steve how happy they were that he was alive, all while doing everything that they could to salvage the remnants of Registration, and he would have to pretend to believe them.

Thank God he would at least have Tony at his side. He'd been prepared to face off against the full might of politics and the law on his own before Red Skull had intervened, but that didn't mean he hadn't been dreading it.

Doom and the Mandarin had been taken down, Red Skull was dead (permanently this time, Steve hoped), and at this point, he deserved a few peaceful hours with Tony, some time that was just for them.

"Good," he said, and took another step forward, until he was close enough to Tony to feel the heat coming off his body.

Tony leaned towards him slightly, giving him a lidded smile, and Steve placed both hands on Tony's shoulders and pushed him down gently until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. "Take off your shirt and let me look at your ribs. Or are you going to pretend they don't hurt?"

Tony glared at him, unbuttoning his shirt. "This is pointless. There's nothing you can do right now; they're already wrapped."

Steve sat beside him, the edge of the bed dipping under their combined weight. "I know. This was really just a clever ploy to get you to take your shirt off."

"There are easier ways to do that." Tony grinned, visibly more relaxed now that it was just the two of them.

Steve leaned forward and kissed him, sliding one hand inside Tony's open shirt and running his palm carefully up Tony's bandaged ribs.

Tony tilted his head to one side, and put a hand on Steve's knee, sliding it up his thigh.

The door creaked open. The two of them sprang apart; Steve snapping his head around to face whomever was about to walk in on them.

The orange kitten sauntered into the room, tail waving behind it like a banner, waddling slightly on its still-short kitten legs.

Tony stared at the kitten, expression flat. "You know, last time I checked," he said conversationally, "I was sure this was my house."

Steve laughed, the momentary tension draining out of his muscles. "I always thought it was Jarvis's."

Tony grinned, teeth white against the black of his goatee, and shook his head. "You're probably right," he said, leaning in against Steve's side. "Welcome back."

Steve slid an arm around Tony's back, just enjoying the closeness for a moment. "It's good to be home." The Avengers Mansion would always be what he really thought of as home, but Stark Tower had Tony, and that would do for now.