Oddly enough, this story came from being on Facebook for two hours trying to find a girl I'd met on my trip. Stories come from the weirdest places, my friend.
First time writing Tony and Steve interaction! Hopefully it's up to scratch. :) Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Tony Stark, but I do not. Neither do I own Steve Rogers. Or any of the other Marvel characters.
Tony Stark usually doesn't wake up in the wee hours of the morning.
But when you do, the snarky voice in his head says, it's for a good reason. Right?
"It had better be," he grumbles into the dark corners of his room.
Jarvis hums to life. "Sir, it is three forty seven in the morning."
"Well, thank you, Jarvis," he says with a huge dose of sarcasm. "What's the weather outside? Dark and stormy?"
"Actually, sir, the weather outside is quite mild, seventy degrees, and it is expected to reach the mid to upper eighties today. Quite a lovely day by all accounts."
"Rhetorical question, Jarvis."
"Is that a touch of irony I detect, sir?"
"What you're detecting is a heavy dose of sarcasm." Tony reaches for his bathrobe. "Why am I up, Jarvis?"
"Should I take that literally or rhetorically, sir?"
"Oh, you've developed a wisecracking streak, have you now? I bet Pepper installed that in you." Tony opens his bedroom door and begins heading towards the sound of cups clinking. "Where is Pepper?"
"DC trip, sir. She informed you about this a week ago."
Tony just ignores his computer system when he arrives in the kitchen to find Steve Rogers hastily bending down to sweep up the broken pieces of a red and yellow cup off the floor. "Sorry," Steve says hastily when he sees Tony standing there. "I'll pay for it. Buy you a new one."
Tony glances at the cupboard where there are exactly ninety-nine identical cups sitting there. "I wouldn't worry about that if I were you, Cap. In fact, break a few more. It'll give me an excuse to buy more cups."
"Why do you have so many of the same kind?" Steve wonders aloud as he opens the cupboard trying to find the trash can. "And where's the trash can?"
"To your left. It senses movement, so don't freak out when it magically opens." Tony folds his arms. "Pepper decided it would be funny to get me a red and yellow cup every day for a week after I revealed myself to be Iron Man. So I bought all the stock they had just to stop her from doing it."
Steve looks like he's not sure whether to nod blankly or answer, so both men just stand there awkwardly. Well, Steve stands there awkwardly. Tony just eyeballs the man as though he's still not quite sure what to do with the recently defrosted Captain America. "Well," he says suddenly. "If there's nothing else here I'm going to go back to bed." He's about to go when something catches his eye.
It's a laptop. In front of Steve Rogers. The very Steve Rogers who up until a week ago was convinced that there were no such thing as a laser pointer.
Honestly though, the look on his face when Tony showed him the laser pointer and then had him convinced it was a sniper's mark… it was priceless. Unfortunately, Steve hadn't thought so. Neither had Clint and Natasha, who had immediately thought someone was trying to assassinate the Captain.
Tony shakes himself out of his memories and focuses instead on the anomaly in front of him. "Cap, what are you doing with a laptop?"
"Getting acquainted with it. Bruce let me use it." Steve scratches his chin. "It's fairly confusing, though."
"Bruce let you use it? He let you use it? He let you use his computer that has all his sensitive files on it?" Tony is gaping now. "Are you sure he wasn't drugged?"
The Captain only frowns tiredly at him. "Relax, Stark. I haven't done anything stupid to it."
Tony takes a few steps towards him before he realizes why the Captain is so confident in his assertion. "That's cause you haven't turned it on."
"I assumed it needed a power source." Steve gestures around him. "That's why I was trying to find it in your cupboards- I assumed technology would be handily accessible around here."
"You were trying to find it among my cups?" Tony is skeptical.
"Actually, I was trying to make myself some warm milk." Steve grimaces. "But apparently you don't have milk."
"Milk is for old people," Tony retorts, "which I suppose applies to you. What are you now, like eighty years old?" He completely disregards Steve's answer and goes back to the laptop. "What are you trying to do with this anyway- were you only trying to turn it on?"
"I don't know, to be honest. I was going to use that one thing you told me about a while ago- you said it was a networking site- uh-" Steve begins scrabbling in the heap of papers by his side. "Bruce wrote it down for me. Gave me directions to it."
He hands the slip of paper to Tony, and the billionaire almost has another heart attack from laughing. "Myspace? You were trying to get onto Myspace? I certainly never told you to get onto Myspace." He continues laughing and isn't quite sure how nobody's woken up from his chortling so loudly yet. "Don't trust Banner when it comes to this."
"He's a scientist," Steve says in confusion. "According to Coulson, he was a Stephen Hawking. Whatever that means…"
"Yes well, Stephen Hawking is also paralyzed and can't speak," Tony chortles as he boots up the computer and creates a guest account for Steve. "Again, don't trust Banner. He's smart but he's out of touch." He looks up to see Steve's disbelieving eyebrow. "What? The man stayed in rural India for ages. He still thinks that hippies exist." Tony just waves off Steve's confused question. "I know, I know, you don't know what hippies are. Just come to me whenever you have tech-related questions, okay?"
The other man simply gives up trying to keep up with Tony and goes back to the slip of paper. "Right. Well. If it's not Myspace, what are you suggesting?"
The familiar blue and white screen pops up, and Tony turns back to the Captain with a smirk. "Facebook, Cap. It's all the rage among teenagers these days. You'll fit right in. Just don't scare them off being a creepy old guy, all right?"
The man is just blinking at the screen, completely lost. "But… all I need to do is find one person."
"Hate to break it to you, Cap, but your parents are probably dead," Tony says dryly.
"No, I…" Steve glances to the side and Tony's gaze follows to the pile of papers. There's a woman's photo there, along with several letters- they look waterlogged, but they're there. "I'm just trying to find a girl," Steve says at last, looking back at the screen.
"A girl?"
"Well, I don't know how old she'd be now." Steve squints at the screen.
Tony resists the acidic quip that's lying on the tip of his tongue and walks back over to Steve. "Rogers," he says with as close to sympathy as he will ever get, "she's probably dead."
"You don't know that," the other man argues, but he doesn't look at Tony's face.
Tony only quirks an eyebrow but shuts the laptop screen down. "It's four a.m. in the morning-"
"Four fifteen to be precise, sir," Jarvis chimes in.
"Thank you, Jarvis, and yes, that was extreme sarcasm." Tony rolls his eyes. "It's four fifteen in the morning, Rogers, and you look tired. Go to bed. You can continue the search at a reasonable time in the morning."
"Stark, I-"
"There! There's the yawn." Tony points at the first Avenger. "Go to sleep, Cap. And yes, I'm taking the laptop with me."
He waits for the door to close behind the weary man before turning back to go to his room. "Jarvis, is it too early to run a search?"
"I'd say it's never too early to run a search, sir, but I am unsure as to whether you were employing sarcasm or not."
"Run a search on Peggy Carter," Tony says, completely ignoring his computer's quip. "Anything you can find. And don't immediately wake me up when you've found it, for heaven's sake."
"Should I stop Steve Rogers from accessing the information as well, sir?"
"The man doesn't know how to access a computer, Jarvis, what do you think?"
"Only asking, sir."
…
Stark strolls in at ten the next morning, already dressed in a suit and hair combed and brushed back. "Good morning," he says cheerily.
Bruce grunts from his newspaper and Clint only blinks wearily as he puts another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. Only Steve has the energy to look up and give Tony a curt nod as he downs a glass of orange juice.
"Where's Natasha?" Tony asks Clint with not a little degree of smirk in his voice. He is sorely disappointed, however- Clint only mumbles around his spoon "Training" and then goes back to contemplating the meaning of life in his cereal bowl.
"All that woman does is work, I swear. She's almost like Pepper." Tony whirls back to the counter and slams his palms down in front of Steve, who jumps in alarm. "Cap, you keen on going on a field trip?"
"Field trip?" Steve's eyebrows furrow. "Why?"
"You were looking for answers last night. If you had continued looking, you'd have found them sixty billion years from now." Tony turns to Bruce. "Why did you let him use your laptop? Without guidance? The man could have burned us all to pieces!"
"I wrote down instructions," Bruce says indignantly, but Tony completely ignores him as usual.
Steve's countenance visibly brightens. "You found her?"
"Meeehhhh… as a manner of speaking," Tony hedges. "Are you sure you want to go?"
"I'll go get dressed," Steve says eagerly.
Tony's voice stops him in his tracks. "Cap. Are you sure you want to go?" Something in his tone is different. It's not the usual I'm messing with you tone, it's the I'm actually halfway decently serious here so you better stop and think about what you want tone.
Steve stills. "Is there something I should know, Stark?"
"Say the word and I'll tell you," Stark answers. "Yes or no, Cap. Simple as that."
Steve turns to look at Tony, who is leaning against the counter watching him. He knows that the other two in the room are watching: Bruce isn't turning the pages of his newspaper and Clint's stopped chewing. "Is it bad?" he asks, his voice even as always and never belying the nerves that run underneath.
Tony's expression never changes. "It really depends on what your definition of 'bad' is, Captain."
Just then, the door hisses open and Natasha walks in, towel looped around her neck. "What?" she asks, immediately catching on to the tense atmosphere when all four men turn to look at her.
Steve takes a deep breath and holds it. Peggy used to tell him to do that, to hold his breath for as long as he could until he made a decision. He uses it sometimes when he needs to make a fast decision- because when he's holding his breath, to him, it seems like time is ticking down faster. The first decision to come to mind is often the most instinctive, Peggy told him.
So he holds his breath and then lets it out. He knows, he's always known. Turning to Stark and ignoring Natasha's confused expression, he says only one word: "Yes."
…
"And this is Arlington Cemetery," Stark says later as the car pulls up in front of beautiful gates. "This is the only national cemetery that holds soldiers from every war ever fought in US history. Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Iraq war-"
"There was an Iraq war?"
"Is," Tony corrects.
Steve sighs. "You would imagine that after the senseless carnage of world wars…"
"…that we would learn from them?" Tony shrugs. "Where's the fun in that?"
Steve gawks at him as they climb out of the car. "You're joking, right?"
"Course I'm joking," Tony says sharply. "Sarcasm, Rogers. Did you and Jarvis miss that day in basic human training?"
"No, we missed the day in 'Learning How to Understand Tony Stark'," Rogers mutters.
"A joke!" Tony claps his hands. "A sarcastic one at that. How about that? You might just blend in after all."
Steve glances around him, at the green rolling hills and the shapely trees that decorate the cemetery. It is completely still, with only the occasional chirp of a bird and the rustle of the trees to break the silence. It almost feels like they've stepped into another world. "Is this where she's buried?" he murmurs.
Tony's face is unreadable as he only says, "Come along then."
Steve follows him, taken aback by the beautiful grounds of Arlington. "This is magnificent," he murmurs, half to himself.
"Never visited?" Stark asks, a little way in front of him. "It was built in 1864, after all."
"Never had time." Steve shakes his head. An idea strikes him. "Is this where my friends-" He stops and clears his throat. "-my friends are buried?"
"Most likely," Tony responds. He doesn't add If their bodies were ever found, that is.
Steve glances at him, as though to ask, and Tony nods. "I have time. Let's go find your friends, shall we?"
…
They finally end up in front of a small grave on the edge of Arlington, fairly unnoticeable among the sprawling gravestones and mausoleums of the other soldiers. It is small and gray and Steve can't help but admire its simplistic beauty, so much like the girl he had loved during the war.
"I didn't bring flowers," he suddenly realizes.
"Oh, hold on a jiffy." Tony strolls over to the nearest rose bush and picks out five flowers. "Here." And he hands them to a flabbergasted Steve.
"We can't do that, that's private property," Steve protests.
Tony only shrugs carelessly. "What are they going to do, make me replant them? If they fine me, then it's all on me. I'll pay for it. Do what you need to do, Cap. I'll just be… over here." He strolls away, hands in his pockets.
Steve looks at the flowers in his hands and then back at the gravestone before slowly kneeling and putting them in front of the headstone. "Sorry I missed our date," he whispers, and the wind seems to carry his words on its breath, whispering back sorry, sorry.
He's imagined this moment. Somehow, in the aftermath of his reanimation, he knew that she was gone. That he'd be kneeling in front of her grave. That she died without him holding her close, without him telling her how much he loved her. He'd imagined, back in his time, that they'd get married maybe. Have two kids named Betty and John. Live to see the end of the war. Be visited by Bucky, maybe visit Howard.
He'd imagined telling her all the things he wished he said.
Now that he's here, now that he's confronted with nothing but a cold stone- all those words seem to have flown out the window. And he's left with nothing but an aching feeling inside of his heart. He kneels there for a few minutes, staring blankly at the stone with numbers etched into it- she died at seventy two years old, his brain tells him eventually- until Tony's footsteps crunch behind him. "Ready?" the billionaire asks.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Steve answers wearily.
Instead of going towards the exit, however, Tony heads west. "Where are you going?" Steve calls after him. Honestly, he's just tired and wants to go home, get some rest, forget this ever happened.
"Changing of the guard," is Tony's answer over his shoulder.
"What?"
"Just- come-" And Tony beckons.
They arrive on the scene just as the rain begins to fall lightly, drizzling in a sleet of misty rain that only wets, not soaks. Steve watches as the three men execute the most detailed, disciplined routine he's ever had the privilege of witnessing. "What are they doing?" he whispers as softly as he can to Tony.
"Changing of the guard," Tony answers just as an officer barks orders acknowledged. "It's meant to honor the unknown soldiers who served in the wars." He glances at Steve. "I thought… sine we were here, you'd want to honor your compatriots and all."
The two men stand in silence as the ritual is completed. As the bystanders begin to filter away and the sentinels begin to patrol, Steve glances at Tony. "Didn't know you cared so much about the military."
"I don't," Tony shrugs. "I have bad experience with military weapons."
"Then why bring me here?"
"Because the people you care about are here," Tony says simply. "Your friends, your girl. Your whole world-" and he gestures vaguely around them- "-is here." He shrugs. "I thought… well, I thought maybe we could put to rest some ghosts."
Steve huffs out a laugh. "Somehow, Stark, I don't think it'll be that easy."
"No," Stark agrees as they fall into step with each other, "I don't. But we tried."
They are both silent, the Captain and the man of iron, as they begin their walk back to the gates to the real world. "Why'd you live?" Tony asks abruptly.
"Pardon?"
"Why did you live?" Tony repeats. "Do you know why?"
Steve shrugs. "They might have explained it to me, but I was overwhelmed at the time."
"So you don't know."
"No."
"Huh." Tony grunts.
"You have a theory?" Steve is partly wondering if the man is actually certifiably insane.
"None at all." Tony continues walking, the leaves crunching under his footfall. "It's just…" He hums for a moment. "It's just strange how we all turned out, isn't it? Banner survived a gamma ray exposure that should, by all means, have killed him. You survived extreme freezing even though you were in the ocean for decades."
"God's divine purpose," Steve says serenely.
"I'm a scientist, not a religious man," Tony counters. "I think it's strange. That's all."
"You don't think God saved us all for a reason?"
"I highly doubt it." Tony sniffs.
Steve is silent for a moment, pondering the truth of Tony's statement. "I just don't see how we were given that big a second chance," he says thoughtfully. "Why do we deserve it?"
"A wise man once told me not to waste my second chance," Tony says.
"Your father?"
"No," Tony says, "the man who saved my life, got shot, and then ended up dying in my arms."
Steve isn't quite sure how to respond to that one so he just says, "Oh."
"Yeah. He. Uh. Well. He got shot. End of story." Tony shoves his hands into his pockets.
"I'm sorry, Stark." Steve stops and puts his hand on Tony's shoulder, but the latter shrugs him off.
"Don't be," Tony says shortly, "he wanted it anyway." He pulls out a folder from his jacket and hands it to Steve. "Here's all the information Jarvis pulled up on Peggy Carter. Figured you'd want to read it, put to rest all the ghosts in your mind about her."
Instead of diving into it like Tony expected him to, Steve holds it by his side and continues looking at him. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks. "About the man, I mean."
"Not really. Nothing much to say about him, you know." Tony shrugs. "I didn't even know very much about him. Only that he saved my life twice. And then martyred himself saving me the second time."
Steve only waits.
"I mean," Tony goes on, "I guess he was sort of silly, you know? We could have gotten out of there alive. Started over."
"Did he have family?" Steve asks gently.
"They'd died. He spouted some nonsense about seeing them in the afterlife." Tony rolls his eyes. "I could have gotten him to New York, shown him the women, introduced him to new family-"
"But family was more important," Steve supplies.
"Never saw the point," Tony snorts.
"Your father was a good man."
"Maybe to you, Cap." Tony only shrugs. "But not to me. Certainly not to me." He grimaces. "Some days I wish he hadn't passed the company down to me."
The Captain is at a loss at how to reconcile Tony's bitter memory of Howard with his own memory of a driven, optimistic man. So he goes for what he does best these days- ask questions. "Why not?"
"I didn't want it." Tony turns and begins walking away, so Steve follows. "The plan was to start my own company, make my own money. Not inherit what he had already started. But then he had to go and die in a car crash, so, you know. Here we are."
"You regret where you are now, Stark?"
"In some ways," Tony says dryly. "I'm standing in a cemetery with a man out of time, I have a pair of assassins back at my place, a man who goes insanely green when he's angry, and a demigod who comes down occasionally and destroys my landing platform." He stops and turns back around to face Steve. "Tell me, Cap, if there is a God, why do we have to go through so many trials of fire?"
"Because we have to learn to grow." Steve takes a step forward and holds Tony's gaze. "Because we have to learn what truly is important to us."
"Yeah see, I don't believe that. Nothing's really all that important to me."
"I don't think so." Steve folds his arms. "You spent all this time getting me from your apartment to Virginia. And then arranged a limo to take us to Arlington. You also dug up information on Peggy, something I never asked you to do-"
"Please tell me you aren't going to haul me over on charges of spying."
"-so clearly, despite the fact that you're irritating and often make me want to punch you, you do have a heart in there somewhere." Steve squints at Tony.
"Yes. That's true," Tony deadpans before turning to walk away.
"You know something, Stark?" Steve calls after him "I think what you're missing is your family."
That stops Tony Stark in his tracks. "Excuse me?"
"That's why you feel bad for me, isn't it?" Steve is delighted at getting this epiphany. "You feel bad that I've lost my entire world- because that's what happened to you. You lost your parents in a car crash. I lost mine because- well, because I was frozen."
"I don't feel bad for you," Tony says defensively.
"Yes, you do. You wouldn't have brought me here to 'rest my ghosts' just for fun." and Steve makes air quotes with his fingers (completely ignoring Tony's halfhearted groan of "Not air quotes."). "What is this, some way for you to make amends?"
"I'm not making any amends." Tony begins walking back towards the gates again.
Steve only shrugs and follows. "Sure. You can keep telling yourself that. But I think you miss your family, so you're creating a new one with Ms Potts and with the Avengers."
"Well, then we're a very dysfunctional family aren't we."
"Aren't the best families?"
"Well played." Tony sighs as they reach the gates. "Don't read too much into it, Captain."
"Steve," Steve corrects him as he holds out his hand for Tony to shake.
"Oh, are we on a first name basis now?" Tony shakes Steve's hand firmly. "Well then, Steve, I'm Tony. And I'm the most heartless man you'll ever meet."
Steve only grins. "I'll believe it when I see it, Tony."
Tony is at the car before he realizes Steve isn't following. "Are you coming?" he calls.
"No," Steve yells back. "I think I'll stay here a while longer." He holds up the folder. "A lot of things to read and catch up on."
Tony only nods understandingly. "Can you get home?"
"I think so." Steve pulls out his wallet. "I have thirty dollars- that should get me dinner and a flight home-"
He is stopped by Tony's slamming of the car door and striding towards him. "Wait, where are you going?"
"Thirty dollars," Tony says through gritted teeth, "is going to get you nowhere except maybe a halfway decent dinner and certainly not a flight home. Honestly, I told Banner to tell you all this." He points at the folder. "So where are you going to read that?"
"Uh…"
"Tell you what," Tony goes on, "there's a brilliant coffee shop down the road. Pepper used to rave about it all the time." He suddenly perks up. "Oh! She's in DC. She could probably come meet us."
"Oh she doesn't have to-" Steve begins awkwardly.
"Pish posh she loves you," Tony waves his protest away. He begins striding off, phone pressed to his ear. "Well?" he asks when he notices that Steve is just standing there, confused. "Come along, Steve. Coffee waits for no one."
Steve breaks into an easy grin as he lopes after Tony, who waits for him to catch up before the both of them fall into step together.
Yeah, Steve Rogers is a man out of time and Tony Stark is a man with metal for a heart, and they may have different personalities and may be different people; but no one can deny now that they are part of the same family, bound together by understanding and trust.
To make a confession, my favorite character in this entire fic was Jarvis. I love that sassy computer. :)
Let me know how I did by clicking the review button. It's always nice to hear from you guys. Thank you so much for reading.
Much love,
ohlookrandom