Blissful Unaware
Tony never really wants to sleep. He has a thing against the time you are supposed to spend just lying in bed, doing nothing, while your body recovers from the day's work. For Tony, you shouldn't have to sleep at all, that would be the perfect world – a sleepless one.
From time to time, however, he knows he has to crash. Close his eyes, let go from the calculations and the projects and ideas and just sleep. It's not easy. It's a case of love with his own insomnia – he hates how he gets when he's gone too long with no sleep whatsoever, slower and a bit silly, but he loves the fact he doesn't have to sleep as much as others do.
Like Rogers, for instance.
Military still running through his veins, he goes to bed early, and wakes up as if he doesn't want to.
The first few weeks when they are all in the Tower are ones of adjustment, no one really knows the boundaries they are supposed to have – they are not really friends. They fight together, and that's it. How does one figure out how much to say, what is appropriate to wear, and such other nonsense? Tony is the one who actually manages to set a pattern and put most of them at ease. He is the king of making people believe he is at ease anytime anywhere when in reality is exactly the opposite: he's never at ease. He's never comfortable, never completely lets go of his own thoughts and defenses.
But he shows up in the kitchen at three in the afternoon still wearing just a pair of pajama bottoms, looking for coffee and asking about breakfast, and little by little the others understand that when they moved in the Tower they were actually offered a home, not only a place to crash after missions. Bruce starts to leave his teas and bread in the kitchen, and Clint starts complaining about the lack of junk food. Natasha criticizes their lack of a balanced diet, and actually sticks a line of post-it's to the door of the fridge with schedules for food and what they should be eating that everyone but her and Bruce ignores.
They get comfortable around each other, in a way Tony can't remember ever being – not even around Pepper. Messing with Pepper is always fun, but she doesn't truly gets him. She tolerates him, and thinks his antics are funny. She likes him, loves him even, and he loves her with all his arc reactor, but she doesn't get what it's like to be the freaky one – the others do.
Bruce knows what it's like to be so smart you turn into an outcast in any setting, even among other smart people. He also knows what it is to be dangerous, and to do the wrong things, even if not meaning to do them. Natasha gets the whole red-in-my-ledger better than most people, and they do understand each other – he's never gone hands on with the killing, but sometimes even he is afraid of his own insomnia when he thinks about the thousands and thousands of people he and his father have lent a hand to kill.
Clint is basically him without all the money and smarts – ok, so they are not that alike, but they get along just fine. They'd rather make crude jokes about something than suffering for it in silence, and basically truly enjoy making a nuisance of themselves as long as it's safe.
Which means whenever Natasha is either in a good mood or far from home.
It's easy to accept them in his life, he, the man with no one by his side, actually has friends, for the first time in his life. He genuinely likes Bruce and Clint, and even Natasha, and, to hell with it, even Coulson – after they get the awkward, you see I wasn't dead, but it was a good strategy to get you all to play nice with each other.
The one he – and the others – can't honestly like is Rogers.
It's not that he is arrogant, or pretentious. It's not even that he is a difficult guy to like, or that he's annoying, and they dislike him. It's just that he's never there with them – they can't like him, because they do not know him. Not outside the battle.
He isn't with them, they are not in the same page. They live together, they get the good and the bad with each and every one of them – they get Bruce's great breakfast pancakes, and his moodiness when his work isn't going as he has predicted. They get Clint's infectious good mood, and they get his snappish remarks when something is bothering him. They get Natasha's care and thoughtfulness when she is okay, and they get her cold shoulder and sneers when she's feeling left out of something. They get Tony's happiness and babbling when he's fine, and they get his bad mood and crankiness when he's gone too long without sleeping. They are there for all of it, they can take it. Bruce will apologize for whatever mean things he might have said, and Natasha will make something nice for them and deny doing it later, and Clint will cook something as an apology, and Tony will make them something expensive and useless, or something creative and nice for them to use as a weapon.
They get through it. They build something out of different personalities and moodiness and good will.
They are a team.
But Rogers isn't a part of it.
They never actually talk about it, and at first Tony thinks he's like that because he doesn't like them. They aren't his sort of people. An arrogant billionaire, a guy who can't control his rage, an ex-professional killer, the guy who came from the streets and turned into one of the most valuable assets in SHIELD – they aren't good and honest and simple and true. They don't sing praises to the flag and always walk in a straight line, they are kind of at the margin of everything, and all of them have their shady pasts – while Rogers is the American One True Dream.
He is, as Fury says at some point, their leader. He can keep them in line at battle, and he has a good head for strategies and battle tactics. They haven't lost a fight – ever – and part of it it's his own success, because Rogers knows how to work his soldiers. But a greater part of it is because they are a team. They can act together. They don't have to talk to know what to do, or how one thing or another will affect their behavior and responses during the fight – they just know.
They come home from missions and Natasha stiches Tony up because she knows he doesn't want to go the medical bay. Clint starts makes a nuisance of himself, cursing and cussing like a bad mannered sailor, because he knows Bruce would like to do the same, but is afraid to. They call each other by their first names, and they call each other bad names, and they feel comforted by it. By the fact that there is someone to stich up, and to cuss at, and to just be there.
But the Captain keeps his distance, and Tony starts to think it isn't because he's disgusted with them – it's because he feels as if he doesn't belong there.
He acts as if he's afraid of being with them, and Tony can't quite figure out why. But before he can get along his inquiries, he gets sidetracked.
Because Pepper leaves him, and suddenly he doesn't even know what to do with himself anymore.
She makes her decision to leave after a particularly grizzly fight, where Tony knows he's risked his life at least four times. It's not that he doesn't do it in other fights, but that one was really bad - he just wasn't going to let his other teammates be hurt if he could help it.
When she's leaving, she tells him she's happy he's found a family, but she can't be with someone who would do what he did, what he is doing, putting his life on the line all the time. And he listens to her subtle warning – she would stay, if he left them. But he can't. He loves her, but not more than anything – he's got a family now. Dysfunctional and wrong, but his; and he loves them, and wouldn't change them for anything in the world, not even Pepper.
Natasha throws away all the alcohol in the house that night, and Clint has suddenly decided Tony needs a shadow. He is annoying just because he knows they won't have the heart to ask him to stop whatever he's doing, and he actually makes Bruce Hulk out, which is a personal achievement. He's not afraid of crossing boundaries, and he isn't even afraid of getting hurt by the Hulk – he trusts them.
And suddenly he feels very, very bad for someone who isn't him – the Captain. Because he can see it all, he's not stupid, he sees they are a family, and they are somewhat happy, and he knows he's not a part of it.
And that's when Tony decided he has to fix it. If not for the Captain, then because of them. They need him, and they can be even better than they already are if Rogers could get his head out of his ass, and see what he has going on for him.
Tony starts the whole thing out by trying to understand why the Captain is so decided not to become a part of them, to be a part of their dysfunctional family. It's not hate, it's not disgust, it's not that he doesn't want to – then what?
He finds out from Coulson, who shares what he learns from Fury, that Rogers hasn't asked about his old teammates. He's never asked about the Howling Commandos or even Peggy Carter, his girl back then. Tony thinks this is strange, because god knows he's crap at feelings and relationships, but even he knows he'd like to know what happened to the people he was so close to if he had been frozen for almost seventy years – and that's when it hits him, Rogers doesn't want to be a part of their team, because he simply can't let go of his old one.
This intrigues Tony more than anything else. He is not very good at his own feelings, and trying to understand someone like Steve Rogers is harder than creating a new element with the help of his dead father, and so he tries to surreptitiously observe the Captain when they aren't in action, and he starts noticing things – how he flinches away from anything too technological, how he avoids de news, how he doesn't like to walk around New York to see the changes.
He's refusing to belong in the present, locking himself away in a world he doesn't belong anymore simply because it doesn't exist. He draws a lot, and stares out of windows, and trains in the gym. He eats quietly and goes to bed, where Tony knows for sure he has a hard time sleeping, because he has nightmares, and yet he insists, almost as if he enjoys them.
He is so complex he eventually makes Tony forget about the whole Pepper leaving him thing – yes, it hurt, but he had been expecting something like that ever since they kissed for the first time. He never gets to keep the ones he loves around. They either leave him, like his mother; betray him, like Stane; or distance themselves from him, like Rhodey.
Pepper is just a new away of leaving – she's leaving because she can't actually take how little regard he has for his own safety, and he understands that. She's still his CEO, but they don't talk everyday anymore.
He goes a few days not knowing what to eat or when was the last time he did it. He also has a hard time remembering when he last slept, but it's okay, he doesn't need someone to tell him what to do, he can handle it, and he has a new puzzle to play with – and this one will actually help someone, so it's all okay.
He finds out all of the commandos are dead. They either died in the war or from old age, the last one dying five years ago. Phillips, Rogers's old Colonel, died twenty years ago. It's Carter, however, who actually manages to outlive them all.
He finds her file through Coulson, who gives it to him with the smallest hint of a smile – the man is actually happy someone is finally doing some digging for the Captain, and that's when it occurs to Tony that maybe Rogers hasn't done this himself because he is afraid to find out they are all gone, and he is alone.
Tony knows it will be hard, but even he can see that accepting that there is no turning back for him, no time machine to take him back to all he's lost, is the first step to bring Captain America to the present.
He looks for Peggy Carter, and finds her in a small and comfortable nursing home in London. Through some bribes and influence from SHIELD, he manages to get the address and permission to see her, and under the pretense of a business trip, he goes away to see her.
She is a tough old lady, all hard stares and mocking tones, and he kind of likes her on sight. The thing he likes most is when she says he gets all the good parts from Howard, and none of the bad, as if she knows what his father has become in the years after Rogers's gone missing, and he smiles a little at her.
He asks if he can bring Steve Rogers to see her, and her eyes tear up. She is not sure she can handle it, and then Tony actually says everything he's doing is not exactly for the benefit of only Rogers or Carter – it's for the team, it's for them.
Rogers is stuck in the past, and he needs someone from his past to tell him to let it go.
He's to the point and blunt, and she blinks at him for a few moments, as if considering what he is saying. It doesn't occur to him that he's just asked her to let her go of Steve too. That maybe, just maybe, she would have liked to see him more often than on the news. That she misses him, and she wishes with all her heart he had been the one to spend his life with her – but she doesn't say any of that.
She's a soldier before anything else, and she knows they need to help Steve before he is beyond any kind of help.
She agrees to see him in a week's time, and after Tony leaves, she has a breakdown, knowing that letting that man go will be the hardest thing she's ever done. But Tony doesn't know that, because he is particularly single minded these days – he just realizes they need Captain America to be okay, and he considers it his mission to make it happen.
He doesn't even question why.
Tony has a whole week to decide what he is going to do about actually taking the good old Captain to London to see Carter, but he doesn't really think giving the man a week will help anything. So he doesn't tell him. He knows Rogers will be in the kitchen at an ungodly hour, eating his healthy breakfast, and so, the day he has arranged for him to see Carter, he simply slides her folder in front of him, and tells him he has a jet waiting.
He's not expecting him to go so easily, but he's also unprepared for the amount of fear Rogers is showing. He gets annoyed when he notices not even Rogers himself has realized why he's so unhappy all the time, making ridiculous excuses about why he hadn't asked information about his old teammates.
So he simply throws at him that they are all dead. He wants to finalize it by saying that the sooner he realizes it the sooner he can become one of them, that he has a new family he can be a part of, he has new people around him, but he doesn't say any of that, and actually spends the rest of the trip trying to pretend to be doing some very important project, when in reality he's playing Draw Something to keep from being too bored.
And then all he can do is wait. While he's in the plane, fielding a million calls from Pepper – or actually pepper's assistant – who doesn't know where he is, he thinks about Rogers, and how he'll be when he comes back. He can't focus on anything else, and it's starting to get on his last nerve, because he's never been so preoccupied with someone like this, why does he care anyway?
And that's when it occurs to him that he cares about this whole thing because he cares about Rogers. Not the Captain America, Cap is fine, Cap is great, they fight just right with him, but that boy is so lost and so completely out of his league, and something about him just makes Tony want to make life better for him. He remembers things he's heard about his father when Steve was still around, and how Howard was a better person back then – and normally his line of thought would be that Howard had grown bitter because of Steve's disappearance, but knowing Steve Rogers he knows it's not: it's because the man manages to bring the very, very best in every single person he meets.
He has already affected Tony, and Clint, and Natasha and Bruce. And he isn't even trying.
He doesn't deserve to be this sad and depressed – he is, in some ways, just a boy. He knows virtually nothing of the world he's living in, but he can learn; Tony knows for a fact that Steve Rogers is very intelligent and a fast learner. He also knows he can't remember a time when he cared about someone else like this. Sure, there was Pepper, but he kind of always saw her as the one who would do the caring for both of them. He could actually admit that sometimes he liked playing useless just to know she wouldn't abandon him, to make her see he needed her.
But with Steve it was different. He cared… because he did. He wanted to see the man take care of himself when they were in the battle field. He wanted to see him smiling, because he's never seen a full out smile on his face before. He wants to make him see he has a whole team of freaks who'll love him for everything he is.
He wants Steve to see all of that because he's in love with him.
Just like he does with a piece of information he can't process right now, he shoves the thought to the back of his head, and refuses to bring it about again. The man basically hated him on sight, and even if everything goes alright with Carter it's a long way between Rogers accepting them in his life, and wanting to be even remotely involved with Tony – that's not something Tony has seen many people do in their lives, anyway.
Rogers comes back deflated and elated, all at once. He's quiet and gloomy, and as the plane starts taking off he seems to be having a mental break down, and Tony lets him.
He thinks, about halfway through it, that Rogers might actually need a hug or something, but he can't bring himself to do it, to remind Rogers that he isn't alone when he's so completely falling apart.
When he seems to be done, he uncurls from the position he's been for the past hour, and Tony reaches out with a box of tissues, which he takes with a silent nod. They go home in silence, and Tony is decided to get to his workshop, before he does something ridiculous, like hugging Captain America to take his pain away, when Rogers thank him.
He smiles and says it's okay. Then he proceeds to his workshop, pondering on how to deal with this whole situation, and he decides not to do anything.
He can't, anyway.
The next day, when he shows up for breakfast, everyone is already in the kitchen and Rogers is cooking. He tries to engage people in conversation, and he opens up a little bit. Tony sees him realizing he hasn't told any of the others about their little memory trip the day before, and he can see the Captain is grateful.
It takes some time for the rest of the team to actually take the Captain into their fold – their lives have never been easy, and they don't take anything for granted, not even a team member. But little by little, Capsicle shows them he's here to stay, and he becomes Steve for them, one by one.
The last one to be in a first name basis with Steve is Tony, because he's just feeling like being difficult, and he honestly doesn't know how to deal with anything if they become closer than they already are.
Thor comes back, and the team feels like it's gained a new puppy, but he fits in – and with Captain America actually willingly leading they get to be even better as a team than they were before. Thor can be seen booming around the place, talking about such worthy warriors to his dear Jane on the phone Tony gets him.
And then comes the day when Tony is cut off from them, and he actually thinks he's going to die inside his own suit. And the only thing he can think of is how he's never told Steve he loves him, and that hurts like nothing else.
When he's fine again, working on his flawed suit, he actually starts mulling over options, because he's never been someone to give something up without running out of options first – he's so stubborn he's created a new element, damn it! – and that's when Steve Rogers himself enters his workshop, and kisses him.
What follows next is a blur, but Tony knows for sure he loves every second of it – he's home. He's found something he's never thought he could ever have. He's never trusted anyone to stay, but he can trust Steve with that, he knows it. He can see Steve is inexperienced and new to the whole thing, but he sure isn't, and they balance it out. It feels as if Steve knows his own feelings and never expressed them physically, while Tony hides from his, and expresses everything by taking physical action.
And when they are joined, together, in Tony's bed that night, strong, perfect arms around him, on the verge of sleep, he asks for something he would never ask of anybody else, because they would only lie and hurt him in the end – but Steve won't.
He asks Steve to never leave him.
And Steve promises that he won't.
Life is never the same for wither of them. There are days Steve is sad of the thought of his old friends being dead, and Tony feels bad about things he's said in the past. There are days when Tony is impossible to deal with, because he's irritated at things that have nothing to do with Steve, but it's at him Tony screams and shouts anyway.
There are moments they can't seem to stand the mere thought of each other, and yet they always come back together, because they simply belong. They fit easily together, like a puzzle with a strange cut you have to think about for a long time before understanding how it'll work, but when you do, you get to thinking how come you haven't seen it before, it's so obvious. They fight with each other, and they fight for each other, they have a team, they have a home, they belong.
And neither of them would change it for the world.
Tada! Tony's POV, much less angsty than the Capsicle's, but Tony is actually the grown up one in this series. Lol.
Thank you all for your amazing reviews, favs, comments, alerts and kudos, you guys are amazing!
REVIEW!