It started with "You're just like Howard" and ended with Loki.
They had been ordered into the charity event by Fury to try and raise funds to help the rebuilding of New York city. Tony had tried to grumble and throw his own money at it instead of attending, but Fury had smiled coldly and threatened to bring Pepper into the mess and force Tony into attending. Tony had, of course, gone predictably white and still, eyes narrowed and glaring even as he gave in. As he and the others left the office, Steve had paused long enough to hear Tony say, voice quiet and hard, "You can try your shit with me, Director, you will leave her out of this."
It was the first time that Steve had ever paused to consider that there might be more to Anthony Stark than the "billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" persona he wore. It made him think of another man that had laughed with him and clapped him on the shoulder in a time when war and death and violence had ruled his life.
After they had arrived, Tony had charmed the press and done his damned best to get Bruce drunk for the sheer novelty of seeing the other scientist loosen up a little. Natasha and Clint, being the lesser known of the Avengers, had vanished into the shadows to keep an eye out for those who might try to harm their comrades. Thor...precocious Thor...had gravitated to the buffet where he had immediately impressed the other guests by almost diving into the food and simultaneously draining six mugs of beer while regaling those who would listen to him with tales of the battles he had fought so long ago.
Pictures had been taken, politicians had been swayed into favorable opinions of them, and the press were having an absolute field day interviewing Tony Stark in a less than formal manner. Steve had been more than happy to let Tony take that particular spotlight and handle more than one delicate question handed to him by a snotty, pinch nosed old man that had more money than sense.
Then, as the wine and whiskey began to take its toll on the guests and wear the careful civility from their manners, the hero-worship had started gushing forth in rivers and rivers of praise. It was exactly what Fury had wanted with those in power and those with wealth when they began to listen a little more attentively and becoming more generous in the checks they wrote, but he wasn't comfortable and he didn't like the way some of them were looking at him.
One woman, a brown haired lady with shapely breasts and well toned legs, either ignored or didn't understand the ways in which he was subtly trying to keep a polite distance and refuse her advances. Steve was getting just a little desperate and embarrassed with the way she kept hanging onto his arm and brushing her shoulder to his while she leaned in far too close to whisper something to him.
Then, Tony was there with another glass of scotch and an arm around his shoulder. His smile was genuine and just a touch apologetic as he said, "I do apologize, but I'm afraid I must steal the Captain from you. Feel free to order another drink and put it on my tab."
And that was how he had found himself being whisked away by Tony Stark of all people and being deposited into a chair by Thor. "Just a word of caution, Cap, but don't go around these things without someone at your back. You're far too polite," he had chuckled before letting himself be swept away into the crowd again.
He hadn't really expected that Tony would invite them all to live in the Tower with him, not after the way they had first argued. The intervening months hadn't helped matters much, either, not with the way Tony constantly clashed with him outside of the field and jabbed at past wounds enough to make him want to punch the other man. Every encounter after a mission when the adrenaline was still making everyone edgy sharpened his own temper when Tony sharpened his tongue on Steve, but it was the words, the tone, the voice that made him pause and put up with it. He did it, wanted it, craved it because when Tony set his sights on provoking a reaction out of him he almost felt like he hadn't been frozen in the ice for seventy years and that Bucky or Peggy might be just around the corner waiting to chuckle at his latest clash with the infamous Stark wit.
"Necessity" he had called it when he told them his plans, but there had been a kind of painful hope to the casual tone he used when pointing out the pros of them all being in one place when a crisis cropped up. That didn't mean he had to provide everyone with more than the bare necessities, make them feel comfortable. It didn't mean that he had to give Natasha her own floor because she was a light sleeper or build Clint an inside shooting range to practice his archery. It didn't mean he had to give Thor a room with access to the roof just because their resident thunder god had an affinity for heights and storms. It didn't mean he had to provide an endless supply of punching bags for Steve in the gym for the times when the press of the modern world became too much for him to bear. Tony did it anyways and thought nothing of it.
The differences he saw between father and son never stopped him from seeing the similarities.
"You're just like Howard," he mused.
It was an absent thought, a careless phrasing of words. Tony had been prodding Bruce again, talking with him about things that flew right over Steve's head. Something about the arc reactor and the chemical composition of a new element. He had been in the middle of frying himself breakfast when he glanced at Tony and saw the high spirited gleam in his eye as he explained something new to Bruce.
By the way Tony's back stiffened and his eyes narrowed, the comment wasn't appreciated or wanted. A long silence stretched between the three of them growing and expanding with only the break of sizzling eggs.
"No, I'm not," Tony said slowly. "Stan was more of a father to me than that bastard and look how well that turned out."
He set the pan aside, ignored the warning look that Bruce was giving him, and said, "Stane sold you to terrorists."
"And?"
"And he tried to kill you." It was a logical statement of facts. Despite the public records, Tony had glossed over the facts of how he had become Iron Man and it had felt like a moment of truth when no one accused him of lying or murder as the public had seemed too willing to do these past few years. This, though, felt like he was stabbing something in the back without knowing fully what he was grasping at. "I'm pretty sure Howard never did any of those things to you."
Tony's smile was a little brittle and his shoulders hunched a bit. "Cap, you don't need to go to extremes to make someone hate you," he said and that was the end of it. He just left and Bruce followed him, casting a worried glance over his shoulder. Steve was left scratching his head and scraping his breakfast out of the pan. Howard had certainly never reacted to things so strangely.
A giant squid, a freak snow storm via Loki, and giant rubber bouncing balls attempting to assault their city later and Tony was still locking himself in his lab for long periods of time. Well, that was how it seemed to Steve every time he tried to get a word in with their resident inventor. No one else seemed to be experiencing the same amount of difficulty finding the man except Fury, but that was common enough to be dismissed.
When Pepper finally took him aside and asked him to stop "trying to corner" Tony, he sighed in frustration and shrugged. "Debriefing after a mission is hardly attempting to corner someone, especially when they have a resident AI that can lock me out of whatever room he currently inhabits," he said.
The look she gave him was a long, searching one that made him uncomfortable. "You really don't know then?"
"Know what? When someone is actively avoiding me? Yes, I do understand that, Ms. Potts. I might be from the 40s, but some things don't change through the decades," he said patiently. "What I don't understand is the why."
Another silence stretched between them for an endless count of moments before she sighed and turned her head away. "Tony's father did everything just shy of beat him. He was never good enough for words of praise or more than passing criticism," she said softly. "Howard was always too busy, too drunk, or too involved with something to do more than find fault with Tony's intelligence. Comparing the two of them is tantamount to calling Tony the devil in his book."
Steve blinked and blinked again. That hand on his shoulder, the offered hand after a spar, advice about Peggy, laughter and sharp words, burnt hair, the manic gleam in an eye over a new break-through, and the silent presence of the man while he tried to get drunk after Bucky didn't add up to a father that didn't care. "No," he said, shaking his head slowly. "I knew him...I knew him and men like him don't turn around and simply ignore their children or offer only criticism."
The look on her face had softened to one of sympathy and Steve found himself stepping away from her. Memories were all he had left of his life before. Memories and gravestones. When those were tainted and broken, what did he have left?
"Not everyone is meant to be a parent, Captain," she said, voice too gentle. "Howard was brilliant, but brilliance doesn't make up for what isn't there in the first place. He didn't give a damn about Tony and that's all that matters to him, so please don't compare them again whatever your opinion of the father."
Steve wasn't big on reading, but he wasn't comfortable asking one of the Shield agents or the other Avengers about what he wanted to know. Natasha, Clint, or even Bruce might have been able to answer his questions, but he didn't want them to guess the reason behind the quires. So, that only left one thing: the internet.
JARVIS actually had to talk him through bringing up the internet on his phone and navigating the touch screen before he could start, but, when he did, he looked through psychology website after website until his phone shut off on him. While waiting for it to recharge, he tried to digest everything he had read. Everything about Tony seemed to say that he had been an attention seeking teenager and a thrill seeker as an adult because he hadn't received enough positive attention as a child. They said it was a way of acting out to get the attention that one needed to be stable and they didn't even know Tony.
He wanted to dismiss it, he really did, but it was difficult to ignore how well those things seemed to click into place except for his own memories, except for the experiences he had with Howard. Digesting it, feeling his mind slip from the facts, he left his phone and disappeared into the gym. Too much, too fast, too soon left him scrambling to hold onto what was left of his past and beating the sand out of one of those punching bags sounded like an excellent distraction, even if just for a bit.