Possible triggers: An asexual character participating in sexual situations because of social expectations. Also, this is from Tony's POV and Tony thinks he's unnatural, please remember that this is because he's in a bad place and doesn't understand, it gets better I promise.
This work was inspired by this post: tmblr . co /ZZtr0t1SRYWZ1 (just delete the spaces) and it kind of consumed me until I wrote it. So I did.
Enjoy!
—§§§—
When Tony is is twelve, Howard says he needs to talk to him. It's surprising, considering that Howard usually swears around his cigar and shoos him out of the workshop whenever Tony's underfoot, so Tony's quite interested—almost excited. As long as it's not about boarding school, again.
That's when he gets The Talk, two nondescript dolls and awkward words and euphemisms, sighing and just saying it straight, and Tony listens with some kind of morbid fascination. He's got questions, of course, because the mechanics of it are clear enough but these "strange and powerful urges" Howard talks about about absolutely mystify him.
Howard gives up, pats his shoulder, tells him to just bring home a nice girl someday and go to Jarvis with the rest of his questions.
So it's Jarvis who teaches Tony to shave, once he gets facial hair, who explains that he can't get away with infrequent bathing anymore, but it isn't Jarvis who explains the thing about the urges. No one does, really, and the incomplete, inexact nature of the information bothers him, but maybe this is one of those things where he'll just know it when he feels it.
For now, he leaves it alone.
—§§§—
He's fifteen and in MIT before it really sinks in that he isn't going to know it when he feels it, because he plain doesn't seem to feel it. The other boys' snickers and jeers about the fairer sex, the magazines and hushed, dirty conversations only succeed in making Tony vaguely uncomfortable. He understands the visceral, species-wide drive toward reproduction, but is he supposed to want a girl to take off her clothes?
It's one more disconnect that he could really do without. He's already years younger than everyone else and smarter than all of them to boot. Those aren't things he regrets, or is ashamed of, but attraction and sexuality are things that other boys bond over and Tony is inevitably left by the wayside.
Building and learning are things Tony is doing at least partially for his father's pride. But he's starting to get the idea that bringing home a nice girl is going to be a little harder than it seemed at first, and that's already affecting how he interacts with his peers.
So he convinces himself that he can at least attempt an experiment: collect data about how everyone else acts about their apparently endlessly fascinating and amusing reproductive capabilities, and then mimic it.
Tony's used to faking for the cameras. This can't be that different.
The effect isn't quite immediate, but before the month is out he's been invited to a college party, probably mostly because of his last name, but he's not afraid to use that.
The girls at the party aren't all wearing outfits Tony would see them walking around town with, and by the end of the night most of them are wearing less. The other boys wolf-whistle at them and offer them drinks and Tony tries to bland in while keeping his distance. There's a pit in his stomach and he doesn't feel to good about this, but he chugs the beer he's been holding with both hands for the past half hour and goes to get more.
A blond girl—Tony doesn't know her name, hasn't even seen her before—pounces on him before he can retreat back into his lonely little corner. Her hands are under his shirt, smoothing over his stomach before Tony can stammer more than a word or two, completely blindsided. She kisses him to shut him up.
The kissing isn't bad. It's actually quite nice, or would be, if it were a little less messy and forceful. But her hands on his stomach are psyching him out and he'd really rather she didn't—
"I have to go to the bathroom," he blurts, and practically runs to get away.
He actually does go to the bathroom, locks the door, and stares at the mirror. He's a little wild-eyed, but he looks fine. A regular kid. The youngest kid here, but in the end, basically normal.
So what's wrong with him?
He shakes his head viciously to clear out the lingering doubt, swallows thickly and notices the taste of beer on his tongue. So when he lets himself out of the bathroom, he makes a beeline for the alcohol and drinks enough to get comfortingly dizzy before trying to find that girl again. If everyone likes it, it probably will be fun, and being drunk would only help.
He doesn't know if it's the right blond that he ends up trying to seduce, but whoever it is she humors him and after it's over, Tony's head is pounding and he stumbles off of the bed and throws up. Some other girl finds him, pats his hair, asks him if this is the first time he's ever been drunk.
Tony shakes his head before realizing she thinks it's the alcohol that made him throw up.
—§§§—
Tony tries to ignore the seemingly universal obsession with sex, after that, but it doesn't work for long. He ends up in bed with a brunette, then with a redhead, then with a myriad of other girls, wondering if it's just the aesthetic of his targets that's bothering him.
He turns sixteen and he still can't get turned on without getting drunk first.
And then, in the hall of one of the engineering buildings, someone mutters something uncomplimentary about fags and Tony almost stops in his tracks, because oh. That's must be it—he's not interested in women. He's… one of them, he's a fag. He must like men.
It's not that hard to find a gay bar, when you've got enough pocket money to bribe a small country. And that's how Tony figures out that he really is a freak, because guys don't really do it for him, either, he still has to drink several classes before he can stomach the act and it's—the whole idea of it, with either gender, it's just messy, kind of gross, and not all that interesting.
So Tony watches girls flaunt their bodies and men turn into animals about the whole thing and if it makes Tony feel kind of dirty to pretend that he's like them, well, better than anyone knowing that he's not.
Robots are cooler anyway.
He turns seventeen and he's breezing through classes with spectacular grades and he's going to parties and telling himself that it's okay if he throws up, he's drinking so much that he shouldn't really be surprised. He'll probably get used to it eventually.
So he gets the reputation for being kind of a slut, but hey, everyone's always smiling when they say it unless they're older than thirty and therefore ancient, so he could really care less. One of these days, he'll find a nice girl, and he'll bring her home, and things will be normal and perfectly fine. He just hasn't found her quite yet, but he will.
His parents die in a car crash before he turns eighteen. Jarvis follows with a heart attack not long after.
Tony needs to drown himself in—something. And maybe the rest of the world expects him to do it in warm bodies, but he can't stomach it on top of everything else that's tearing him apart from the inside, so he does it in robotics and alcohol.
He ends up with a engineering marvel that he calls Dum-E mostly because it won't answer to anything else anymore—he was drunk and probably crying his eyes out at that point, okay, he thinks it was in the black-out period and it's really not his fault—and some black guy standing in front of him with a pillow, a blanket, and a really determined look on his face.
Tony squints up at him, because even the artificial lighting is hurting his eyes at this point. Sifting through his muddled mind, he realizes that this is not, in fact, the private workshop in New York, but the one that Howard donated money to have built in MIT. Not exactly private, though he did usually get preference here.
So technically this guy was allowed to be here. Doesn't mean Tony has to like it. "Do I know you?" he asks, because he actually might. He just really hopes he hasn't slept with this guy.
"No, you don't, and no, you haven't," the guy says. Tony realizes belatedly that he said more of that out loud than he meant to. "My name is James Rhodes and you are going to drink some water and then go to sleep because some of the seniors have started taking bets on how long you're going to be in the hospital when you come off this bender."
Tony stares at him. Tilts his head and squints, because he's not a hundred percent sure that this James guy is even real. "Do you want to sleep with me?" Tony asks suspiciously.
He snorts. "Hell no. I'm very straight, and you are very underage."
"I'll be eighteen in—" Except Tony can't remember how many months right now, so instead he says, "soon."
"I repeat that I am very straight. And besides, you're drunk."
Tony glares. "Just for that, Imma call you Rhodey."
Rhodey chuckles. "Sounds like a deal." Then he throws a water bottle at Tony, who doesn't catch it, but it lands in his lap, so that's almost as good. "As long as you drink that."
If he's not going to be getting any, then water sounds like a fantastic idea. After he downs half the bottle, a hazy memory drifts back into focus and he frowns at Rhodey. "You cut me off."
Rhodey shrugs. "Someone had to."
Tony doesn't actually have a good response to that.
So he ends up actually sleeping and not waking up with a deadly hangover because hello, yes, he'll drink that water again, and apparently Rhodey is basically a stand-up guy who absolutely doesn't want to sleep with him and likes him anyway, and Tony might be a little bit in love. Even if it makes him feel guilty because that's the not-normal part of him talking, here.
He realizes maybe three weeks later that this is actually what they call friends and Tony almost breaks Dum-E, he startles so hard.
—§§§—
The problem with trying so hard to be normal is that it's a distinct possibility that he's trying too hard. He seems to get a lot more desperately sensual women throwing themselves at him than the average Joe Shmoe, thought admittedly a large part of that might be the money.
Rhodey just laughs sometimes, shakes his head and rolls his eyes sometimes, or some combination of the two. Tony considers telling him that he doesn't ask for this, doesn't even like it, really, but he chickens out because he could really do with a friend and doesn't want him to know he's broken.
Obie yells at him after the third PA gets fired after he sleeps with her, and Tony wishes he had the guts to tell him that the girls had started flirting with him, first, and what, is he supposed to ignore him? It feels like everyone passed puberty with this secret rulebook and Tony had somehow not gotten his copy, because this never makes any sense. He's supposed to say yes, but only when he's not supposed to say no. He's supposed to stare at girls, but only when other guys would want to.
In the end, Tony decides he'd rather go for socially acceptable than politically correct and just kind of sleep with whoever advances. It leads to a few close calls with some truly creepy guys and one particularly psycho chick, but he figures that sometime he'll get a decent PA out of his trouble.
Which is how he meets Pepper, because besides that accounting error that she caught—smart ones are the only ones worth the effort, anyway—the first time Tony meets her, he smiles at her and she doesn't smile back. Instead, she looks at him, not glaring, just very passive and polite, squares her shoulders and says, bluntly, "I'm not going to sleep with you like the others did so don't even try it."
Tony's polite smile spreads quickly into a real one. "Of course," he says. Her eyes narrow briefly, like she thinks he's hearing her words as a challenge. Tony doesn't mind; this way, if he slips up and flirts with her on accident, just by habit, she'll probably snap at him instead of flirting back.
In the end, it almost becomes a game, of how ridiculous Tony can be and how efficiently Pepper can shut him down. So somehow Tony has two friends, if Pepper would allow herself to be called that in relation to him, and he isn't a freak to them because apparently there's this thing where it's totally socially acceptable to not want to bang your friends (although an alarming amount of greasy old men seem to still think he and Pepper are secretly a thing) and Tony wouldn't give that up for anything.
—§§§—
Sometimes, though, he goes home with people—mostly women, though there are some men, too—because he just needs someone to touch him. He doesn't like how they do it, not really, but he'll keep the kissing going for as long as possible, and then they fall asleep before he does and he just lays there next to them, trailing his fingers across their shoulders and through their hair, wishing someone would touch him just like this, simple, gentle, in that way that's close but not overtly sexual.
There's something beautiful about bodies, about the strength in a man's legs and the slope of a woman's back. But he doesn't think this aesthetic appreciation is what drives anyone else in their mad scramble to each others' beds.
It's this horrible, vicious cycle, because all Tony actually wants from the long lines of potential lovers is a little bit of touching without the followup. But he'll take what he can get, and all that means is that anyone out there like him, if they even exist, if they don't want sex then they know better than to get within touching range of Tony Stark. Hence more meaningless encounters, increased desperation, and strings and strings of exes.
Pepper's always utterly professional, but Rhodey, when he's not actively representing the whole of the United States Military to SI, will sweep Tony into a side hug and squeeze his shoulder or ruffle his hair, and when no one's watching Tony will lean into the touch a little, or sometimes hold onto his sleeve until his knuckles turn white.
Would it kill anyone to just touch him, sometimes, remind him that he's human?
Tony's pretty sure that's what sex is for. If he could just feel it the same way other people did…
—§§§—
The doctors say he's perfectly healthy. Tony doesn't tell them how wrong they are to their faces, because then he'd have to explain how he knows, but it's beginning to look like maybe this is something about him that can't be fixed.
—§§§—
The world goes to hell faster than he thought it could and frankly he's just too busy to care about if he should sleep with that movie star or that model, so it just kind of falls by the wayside. People throw out phrases like PTSD and beyond eccentric, and he knows it's because he stopped the weapons production but it feels like they're really whispering behind his back about other things, doubting him.
The insecurity is kind of obnoxious and Tony hates it. Yeah, that's him, survivor and hero, can mow down his enemies at thirty paces but still feels so small and lonely inside.
(And Rhodey's mad at him, so he just wants some kind of contact that won't lead to something he'll regret in the morning, so he won't apologize for dancing with Pepper because it won't be like that. It won't, he won't let it, she won't let it—)
—§§§—
"I'd do whatever I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with," Natalie Rushman says.
Tony's stomach twists, because he doesn't know what he wants. Who he wants. All he knows is that Pepper's mad at him and Rhodey's mad at him and his own heartbeat is killing him slowly.
Time to put on a show again, he supposes.
—§§§—
They're shouting and it's crazy and Tony's heart is pounding and the world's just fallen apart but then somehow he and Pepper are kissing. She's good at it, it's good, it's sweet and then Rhodey tells them to get a roof.
Something in Tony freezes when he realizes what he's just ruined.
—§§§—
Life goes back to normal. Except now there's more explosions and more superheroes and, somehow, Tony's now dating Pepper.
Being in a relationship with someone he actually cares about is roughly twice as terrifying as Vanko and the palladium poisoning combined. For months, though, it's okay. They go on dates and they're still friends, they just kiss now, too. Tony manages to look like the perfect gentleman because Pepper hasn't moved in on the more physical aspect of their relationship yet, and Tony is certainly not going to be the one to push it.
Rhodey barks out a laugh when Tony confesses they haven't consummated their relationship yet. "Wow, Tony. Some social decency finally found its way through your brain?"
Tony smiles, but the part of him that he keeps under lock and key even when it screams really wants him to stand up and smack him and demand what exactly social decency is, because he's been getting some pretty severely mixed signals for his entire life. He just wants to be normal, thank you very much, and if no one else is going to help out then he's going to go careening off the edge in the other direction.
Everyone says Tony Stark, playboy extraordinaire, is compensating for something.
He always just raises an eyebrow, but he wants to smile and hide in almost equal measure, because they're exactly right and they don't even know it.
"See," he tells Rhodey, "I didn't have to with any of the others. But, Pepper—I'll do this right. I can't lose Pepper." Because he really, really can't afford to lose her. He cares about her. And it terrifies him, because he's not sure he can keep her when he's this broken.
"Damn straight you can't," Rhodey agrees, and smiles warmly. It's friendly because hello, Rhodey is his friend, but somehow to Tony's ears, the words sound like a threat.
—§§§—
Tony still doesn't believe that Agent has a first name, but Pepper's greeting him kindly and warmly and Tony wonders kind of wistfully why he couldn't have that instead of a relationship that was inevitably going to lead places he really would rather not go, so Tony is probably still calling him Agent at least partially out of spite. Because he's mature like that.
Tony's pretty sure relationships are supposed to be something to be happy about, which he is. Mostly. He likes the dates and the talks and the smiles, the handholds and even the kisses, but sometimes Pepper will wear clothes without sleeves or something particularly formfitting and give him a look like she knows what it's doing to him—or what it would do to anyone else, anyway. And Tony's stomach clenches because he's suppose to feel something that he doesn't.
(Earlier today, he said, "Nice shorts," with the flirty kind of grin that he only rarely pulls out around Pepper since it makes him feel like a fake, because he's supposed to notice things like this.)
Pepper stands up on her toes to bribe him with something dirty whispered in his ear and Tony's jaw drops more out of shock than anything else. He thought she'd work up to it, or something. Hit the bases one at a time, give him time to possibly acclimate.
Apparently not.
Agent looks away like he can sense the awkward—or maybe that's one of the social cues Tony has never in his life understood, since apparently he was born a freak—and Tony looks away for a moment because he can't look Pepper in the eye. He hopes he manages to make it look like he's trying to compose himself.
"Square deal," he says, because that's probably what he'd say if that was an enticing offer.
Pepper smiles at him, just coy enough to make Tony's insides squirms, and she walks out with Agent, who is not looking at her legs at all. How does he get away with that, exactly?
"Sir," Jarvis says softly, once the doors are closed. "Perhaps if you explained to Ms. Potts—"
"Don't wanna hear it, J," Tony says flatly. Oh, sure, explain. This isn't her fault. She's beautiful, he can see that much, and if he were like any other red-blooded man in the world he'd be delighted. It's not her fault he's like this.
Part of him thinks that maybe this isn't his fault either, since it's not like he asked for this, but there's no one else to blame.
Besides, he's the one who has to live like this.
—§§§—
"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." None of it is a lie.
I am the lie.
—§§§—
If he's completely, guiltily honest, right up until Loki kills Agent, Tony's kind of relieved that there's a extraterrestrial threat to give him a little breathing space from Pepper for a bit. He'll figure out what to do about their relationship—after they kick the aliens' asses.
For a moment, staring up at the sky beyond the portal, Tony thinks it's all over. Wonders if that wouldn't be a good thing.
But then he wakes up, city in pieces around him, and for the rest of the day he's mostly just making sure that he takes the next breath.
—§§§—
It's almost three weeks before he and Pepper are in the same city without urgent, time-sensitive issues pulling one of them away until it's taken care of. Tony hides out in his workshop with the plea of investigating the remains of the aliens until finally Pepper's got a free night after six and Tony doesn't have any kind of excuse that would slide by her radar.
He starts drinking before she gets there. By the time she does, he's a little loose, maybe tipsy, but not full-out drunk, just enough to put a nice, pleasant haze over the world to hopefully make this as un-awkward as possible. Pepper rolls her eyes at him, but they go upstairs together.
In the past weeks and even months, Tony has been considering the idea that maybe, this time will be different. Because it's not about the physical sensations. It'll be different, this time, Tony tells himself. I love her. He hadn't loved the others, not like this.
But there's a reason he drank almost three full tumblers of scotch before coming here, trying to hold himself straight, and his hands feel stiff and cold as he stands behind Pepper and puts them on her waist. He knows they're not actually cold, or Pepper would react to it, but it feels like it, and dammit, what's wrong with him, that he can't even make himself want this with the love of his life?
He kisses the nape of her neck, allowing his lips to linger there, safe, gentle, and takes a deep, silent, bracing breath.
And he unzips the back of Pepper's dress.
—§§§—
Tony's gagging into the toilet bowl when Pepper gets up the next morning, and he begs off her worry by saying it's just the tension, he saved the world not that long ago, it happens, he's fine, and it's not until she's gone and not touching him that Tony lets himself relax enough for his muscles to start shaking. He heaves again, then tilts his forehead against the cool plastic of the seat and just breathes past the spasming of his organs.
"Sir," Jarvis says, tinny voice worried, and Tony regrets ever allowing emotion to make itself known because his skin is crawling and he can't right now, okay, he's too broken to love his girlfriend and he just can't. Not right now. "I believe it would benefit you to know that your, ah, condition—"
"I don't want to hear it," Tony says, voice hoarse and throat burning from the bile.
"The medical examinations were inconclusive because—"
"Shut up," Tony roars, jerking his head up to glare at the ceiling. His hands are shaking and he'd rather pretend that it's anger rather than whatever this fearful, lost sensation is and Jarvis is the only one he can be angry at right now. "I said I don't want to hear it. So don't you ever mention it to me, alright? I don't want to hear another word about it. And that's not an excuse to go manipulate someone else into being your mouthpiece. I mean don't mention it again. Am I absolutely understood?"
There's a conspicuous pause that has Tony narrowing his eyes before Jarvis says, unmistakably stiff: "Yes, Sir." Tony doesn't give him many orders, really, but he's bound to follow the ones that he does.
Tony's inexplicably tired again, and he looks at his shaking hands, his fragile fingers. He can't do anything in the workshop right now, and going back to his bed—the idea stings and makes him tense again. Oh god, what is he supposed to tell Pepper, because he can't do that every night.
Everything's breaking. He's broken and now everything around him is. Tony doesn't know why he's even surprised—this is him that he's talking about.
—§§§—
"Excuse me?" Pepper says. She's staring at him like he's personally punched her grandmother and let Dummy play with her favorite dress. And maybe something else, like missing a board meeting—
Or, well, this could be whole 'nother kind of hurt that Tony hasn't seen on her before. Has never given her reason to feel.
"Wow," she says. There's a tremble underneath her voice and Tony's gut is tightening, ready for the backlash, because he's a horrible person and he deserves everything she's about to say but that doesn't mean he's going to be able to stop the flinch. "Wow," she repeats. "I actually thought, you know." She swallows, her eyes suspiciously bright. "But you never really changed, did you? I can't believe I let you drag me into this."
"Pepper," Tony whispers, but he keeps his hands fisted at his sides, because if he can't give her the physicality that her body needs, he has no right to hug her.
"Don't Pepper me," she snaps, and there's the start of it, there's the angry tears, and Tony actually flinches.
For a moment, she looks at war with herself: whatever pain she sees on Tony's face comes right up against the pain she's feeling, but it resolves quickly. Pepper shakes her head in abject disgust and storms out of the room.
Tony slowly eases himself down to sit. There's no chair, but the floor, the floor is good. Better than nothing when his heart is beating like a rabbit's and he wishes down to the bottom of his heart that he could make himself enjoy it, just for her sake, so maybe he could have one good thing in his life and he could maybe even be her good thing, because Pepper deserved them all.
Tony sits on the floor and Jarvis knows better to say anything or send anyone up, and he doesn't move for a long time.
—§§§—
"Really, Tony?" is the first thing Rhodey says when Tony answers the phone, and anything Tony was going to say, seeking out a friend who maybe could understand without him saying anything, dies, still in his throat. "She's the best thing that ever happened to you and you treat her like that? Are you kidding me?"
Tony doesn't say anything. He can't. Can't find the words, can't find the heart.
Rhodey sighs. "Why?" he asks, softer, but still tight and angry.
Tony remembers, suddenly, that Rhodey is Pepper's friend too. And to everyone else in the world it just looks like he's the asshole who got into the girl's pants and doesn't want her anymore. Tony's head spins, a little, but he refuses to sit down. He's going to hold on through this. It's going to be okay.
That doesn't stop him from having to unstick his throat before he can speak. "Because I'm the worst thing she could ever have."
He hangs up before he has to hear Rhodey tell him he's right.
—§§§—
He convinces the Avengers to move in at least partially because Pepper won't talk to him in anything other than an official capacity and Rhodey keeps giving him disappointed looks, whenever they meet.
Natasha gives him long stares when he sees her from the corner of his eye and he bets that's because Natasha told her, too, and you know what, that's fine. This mess isn't Pepper's fault, she got caught in the crossfire, she should be allowed to vent about the asshole she dated against her better judgment to anyone she wants to. Tony will just… sit here. He doesn't want to tell anyone why, anyway. They wouldn't understand.
But if there's one thing Pepper is, it's professional, so besides telling Natasha in what Tony assumes is a friendly capacity, she doesn't talk about it to anyone else. The media has been trying to dig for dirt, but Tony didn't cheat on her and Pepper said they parted on friendly terms and Tony's at least socially aware enough to shut up and follow her lead.
She won't let him apologize. He doesn't really blame her.
If any of the Avengers get tired of the women and men he brings home and sends off in the morning in some desperate attempt to pretend that he can act, for all intents and purposes, like a regular human being, then they don't mention it.
—§§§—
It's life as usual until Steve calls a team meeting almost six months after the Battle of Manhattan.
Tony blinks. "You're what?"
"Bisexual," Steve repeats patiently. He's got a determined look on his face and his shoulders are tensed like he thinks he's going to war.
Personally, Tony's kind of jealous that he likes anyone at all, that way. Instead, he shrugs, because he's been pretending he's the same way since he was sixteen, and giving Captain America shit about this kind of thing just seems really low of him. Lower than he's willing to go, anyway.
"I do not understand," Thor rumbles, frowning. "What is 'bisexual'?"
"It means you want to screw guys and girls," Clint says, ignoring Steve's scandalized look.
"That is not normal on Midgard?" Thor says, like he's honestly confused.
"Not really, but it's cool," Tony says. "I am too. Uh, why is this a team meeting?"
Bruce elbows him. Tony yelps and gives him a betrayed look; that was entirely unnecessary.
"Is this a coming out thing?" Clint asks, looking around. Seeing no outright negative answers, he shrugs and throws out, "I'm gay," before snuggling back in with Coulson, who graciously allows Clint to reset his arm around the archer's shoulders.
"I'm pretty sure everyone knew that, Clint," Natasha says.
"No, but seriously," Tony says. "Congratulations, Cap's bi, but why is this a meeting?"
"Because I'd like the whole team to go to the Pride Parade that's happening next month."
"Ha," Tony says, then stops, because no one else is laughing. "Is this one of those representation things?" he asks warily.
"Yes." Steve looks at him with a kind of pleading in those baby blues that is completely, totally and utterly not fair. Tony thinks that if he has to be apparently immune to the sensuality of everyone, ever, then he should at least be immune to puppy dog eyes too, but apparently it doesn't work that way.
The whole team is looking at him, like they'd already unanimously decided while he wasn't listening for, like, two milliseconds. Tony huffs noisily. "Fine."
Steve smiles like he's just made everything right in the world and Tony scowls and has to look away. It's a Pride Parade, so what, all it's going to mean is more smiling and possibly more flirting and it's not like it's going to suck more than anything else does lately.
—§§§—
If there's one reason Tony is glad that he's at the parade, it's that Steve actually looks adorable in pink, purple, and blue. Also, the faces on some of the assholes holding signs on the sidewalks when they saw Captain America in the parade was going to be rainy-day fodder for a while to come.
But he gets bored pretty quickly, and if flirting with a whole bar makes him feel like a fake, then hanging out here makes him feel like a puppet, like a machine. He doesn't belong here. He isn't bisexual, or gay or apparently even straight, he doesn't want anyone. He's just a freak.
So, as adorable as Steve's radiant grin and Thor's boisterous laughter are, Tony slips away from the bi group far too long after his smile starts feeling plastic.
Tony can see Clint and Coulson over with the homosexuals, but he's pretty sure he'd get a lot of dirty looks if he went and joined them. The reputation follows him everywhere, and if it didn't hide how broken he was so well, Tony might resent it.
Over to the side, he sees a group of people—much smaller than any of the other groups—wearing shirts with gray triangles on them. People walk by them quickly, and when one of the group, a teenage boy, tries to hand out a flyer, the person he's trying to give it to brushes past without taking it and the flyer flutters to the ground.
Tony frowns. The group seems to be defined by black, white, purple and gray, but he doesn't think he knows who they are. So with his usual curiosity, he wanders over just close enough to pick up one of the discarded flyers on the ground.
Asexuality.
Frowning, Tony considers that. The prefix is is traditional, a, without, but—without sexuality. Tony's mind whirrs and he reads a little blurb on the front, some kind of definition: The same way heterosexuals are sexually attracted to the opposite gender and homosexuals are sexually attracted to the same gender, asexuals feel no sexual attraction at all.
Tony stares at it. Blinks a few times, squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, but the words don't change. Cautiously, he raises his head and looks around: still the same parade, still Steve and Thor hanging out with the bis and Clint and Coulson hanging out with the gays. The world still spins on.
But Tony's world?
Has just been completely flipped upside down.
—§§§—
"What the hell is this?"
In retrospect, Tony recognizes that maybe those weren't great opening words to a group that apparently a lot of people tend to ignore, but he can't keep his mouth shut.
The teenager Tony saw trying to hand out the flyers—and he's still trying, judging by the size of that stack—looks up at him mistrustfully. "It's a flyer."
Tony does his best to bite back a sarcastic comment. "I realize that," he manages levelly. "I meant—asexuality."
"It means we don't feel sexual attraction," the teen says. The words are obviously ones that he's said over and over, but Tony can't escape the suspicious tone directed at him.
He ignores it. "But that's not normal," he says. His head is spinning a little—it isn't, right? Every piece of evidence he's ever seen has told him that lacking sexual attraction isn't normal, isn't acceptable, and, and he'd pretended, he'd done it well, and—could he have had this the whole time?
The teen scowls at him. "Look, if you haven't noticed we've already been getting crap about it, this is a Pride Parade, okay? I'm allowed to be proud of my sexuality. It is too real and if you don't think so then you can just—"
"Cameron," a woman says sharply, then strides up to Tony with a smile that is simultaneously friendly and a kind of subtle warning. "Hello, Mr. Stark. I'm Michelle. If you have any questions about asexuality, I'd be happy to answer them, but if you can't do that respectfully then I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
Respectful? He can be respectful, he can respect the hell out of anyone who's going to tell him more about what this is. Tony takes a deep breath, realizes he doesn't know what to say, and lets it out. Then he tries again. "Sorry," he says, because that seems like a good place to start, especially since Cameron is still glaring at him. "I've, uh, never heard of this before. So. Asexuality, you don't feel sexual attraction?"
"That's right," Michelle says.
"But isn't that not—" Tony reigns himself in, tries to think of a way to say it that won't scare them off. "I mean, a majority of the population do feel sexual attraction, right?"
"Sure," Michelle agrees. "But that doesn't mean it's unnatural, or 'not normal.' It just means it's not common." Somehow, her smile manages to look a lot like a challenge.
Tony opens his mouth to ask something else, maybe something like so do you guys even like kissing, but what comes out is, "You mean I'm not broken?"
Michelle's expression morphs into one of shock and Cameron's jaw drops. Tony kind of wants to bite his tongue off. But Michelle's face swiftly goes kind again, and this time it looks much more real. "No, Mr. Stark. You're not broken."
Tony takes a shaky breath and tries to swallow, but he just ends up doing it over and over because there is a very stubborn lump in his throat that does not want to move. His vision is starting to get suspiciously blurry so he looks down at the flyer and resists the urge to blink until he thinks his eyes are sufficiently dry again. Then he flips the flyer open.
There's a section on the sliding scale of asexuality, from the people who can find sex enjoyable but don't really feel the craving, down to people who are repulsed by the act and find participating disgusting. Another section on aromanticism and how it's not the same thing as asexuality, but can overlap—but just because a person's asexual it doesn't mean that they don't want or can't be a part of a fulfilling romantic relationship.
The woman waits patiently as Tony skim reads the flyer. It's not like there's anyone else to talk to, for the moment, but Tony appreciates it anyway.
"This is a thing," Tony says blankly, finally. "Oh my god. I didn't think this was a thing. But it has a name."
Michelle's smiling now. "Happy to help. Any other questions?"
"Uh." Tony laughs lightly. "Probably like, a million, but none of them are actually formed in my head yet. You know, this thing on aromanticism, it's—so, you can really not want sex but want other stuff? Like, what about kissing?"
"Believe it or not, romance and sexuality are different things," Michelle says, almost amused.
"See, that!" Tony pointed at her with the flyer. "No one ever told me that. They all act like they're the exact same thing."
"Now you know. As for kissing, it really depends on the ace."
"Ace?"
"Asexual."
"I like it," Tony says, suddenly animated. "Like, Red Baron flying ace? Awesome." It is, it's great, all of this is. Tony feels alive, he feels okay for the first time in—well, a long time. "Anyway, sorry, go on."
"It depends on the ace," Michelle repeated. "Some like kissing. Some even like touching, but they don't want sex the way everyone else does. Others don't like kissing, and some don't even like holding hands. Boundaries are things you just kind of have to experiment with."
"Okay," Tony breathes. Boundaries, those elusive things. "So, um." He feels his ears heating and he tries to ignore it. "Can I ask you a really personal question?"
"I'm asexual homoromantic, which means I like non-sexual, romantic relationships with other women. I think sex can be kinda fun but about half the time it's really boring, kind of a toss-up. That answer your question?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Tony sighs, long and deep. "Wow, so this is a thing."
"It is," Michelle confirms, again. Tony needs to hear it, though; he's still not completely convinced that this isn't a really vivid dream. Michelle hesitates before asking, almost cautiously, "Can I ask you a really personal question?"
And Tony realizes that, much like she'd known, he knows exactly what she's going to ask. "I didn't know," he says. "I—I was just trying to be normal," he tries to explain, because he suddenly really, really needs this open-minded woman to understand.
"I guess that makes sense," Michelle says, thoughtful. "Well. You're normal for you. You know?"
Tony blinks at her. "I think I'm starting to," he says.
Her smile's back in full-force, and Tony is really starting to like her smile. "Well, then while all the other groups are trying to figure out what they want to find when they reach into someone else's pants, we have cake. Want any?"
"Oh god yes," Tony says fervently, and follows her with a brand-new spring to his step.
—§§§—
"Of all the places I did not expect to find you," Clint says.
Tony blinks up at him. He probably makes quite the picture: new shirt, a size too small, with a grey triangle on it and brand-new purple shoelaces. He's still wearing his jeans, but only because they didn't have any black sweats in his size, and there's a triangle of black, gray, white, and purple painted on his cheek. And that's not even mentioning the frosting that's probably all over his mouth, on his hands, and possibly smeared on his clothes at this point.
Tony swallows the latest bite of cake. Maybe he should be worried about how this looks, a known serial playboy hanging out with the aces, but he feels invincible. "Problem?" he says perkily.
Clint gives him a confused look. Kind of like Tony's somehow grown a second head by hanging out with people who hold no interest in what, as far as Clint knows, takes up a huge part of his processing power daily. "We're leaving." He shakes his head, as though dismissing the confusion and weirdness of the picture and puts his phone to his ear. "Hey, guys, I found him. Let's go."
"Wait!" Michelle grabs his flyer and scrawls a phone number on it, presumably hers. Clint openly gawks, but Tony just smiles and thanks her, stowing the flyer in his back pocket.
Tony gets a few odd looks and double-takes from what are apparently the people who have an idea of what the colors he's wearing mean. But hell, Tony can't find it in himself to care. He's found himself in a not-so-lonely, though admittedly small, corner at a Pride Parade and he will be as proud about it as he wants to be.
"So," Clint says, about the time they find Coulson, Natasha, and Steve. Bruce is apparently fetching Thor. "I wasn't going to say anything, but did you seriously get an ace's number for a callback?"
Steve gives him a patented Captain America Disapproves look, and Tony rolls his eyes. "As you pointed out, she's ace, and she's homoromantic. The number is in case I have any more questions."
"About people who don't have sex," Clint says, aghast. "Buddy, that's like, a fourth of your personality."
"And that fourth of my personality is actually a lie," Tony says simply. He sees Bruce and Thor walking up and barrels on, "Look, people have been saying I'm compensating for something for years. As it turns out, they're right. I just didn't know it had a name."
Clint stares at him, gaping. "You're ace?"
Tony grins, because that sounds so good said aloud. "Yup," he affirms, popping the 'p.'
Bruce's eyebrows fly up, as he gets within hearing range just in time to hear Clint. "I did not see that coming," he says.
"That was kind of the point," Tony admits. "I figured I was just kind of broken. And may have overcompensated a bit."
"A bit," Clint splutters.
"The thing with Pepper," Natasha says suddenly.
Tony sighs, a little of his bright mood dampening as he recalls that particular train wreck. "Yeah."
"You're telling her about this," Natasha says calmly, but it's definitely not a request.
"Oh, I plan to," Tony assures her. "The reason I didn't before—I mean, you saw that there aren't many aces here, right? I'd never even heard of it until I was like, hm, who are those grey triangle and purple people over there? I didn't have words for it. Now I do."
Natasha whips out her phone.
"I guess we learn something new every day," Steve says philosophically, clapping Tony on the back, and they start to walk on towards their ride. There's going to be paparazzi everywhere in about ten feet. There's going to be pictures, and everyone's going to know whose colors Tony wears. There will be questions and arguments and people trying to tell him who he is even if they've only ever seen him on TV.
"No, Pepper," Natasha says into her phone. "He wants to talk to you. I'm just saying that you are going to sit down and hear him out—sure, bring Rhodey, you know he's been on your side so far—because otherwise I'm going to have to shoot something very human shaped and I hear you like your art collection a little more than that."
Tony finds he's looking forward to it.
—§§§—
I am not done with this series. I have a few more things planned, like the conversation Tony has with Pepper and Rhodey, Tony dealing with assholes in the press, and a short piece for Tony and Natasha. I will take prompts on tumblr (my username is miniongrin) if any of you have scenes in this 'verse that you'd like to see.