"How did you not figure it out when you were undercover at SI? The way they treated me was kind of obvious."
Natasha stopped where she was, halfway in the door of Tony's lab. The engineer hadn't even looked up from his soldering, had barely moved at all since the door had started to slide open.
"Some packs treat all of their Omegas like they're at the fringe. The corporate pack was no different than several other packs I've seen. Why did they let you stay around after Stane excommunicated you?"
Tony finally looked up, lifting the visor that covered his eyes. "I may not be part of the pack anymore, but I own 60% stock in SI. I held the power to completely destroy their company. I have no say in anything that goes on with my own family business anymore, but they can't remove me completely."
Natasha nodded and took a seat on Tony's Ducati, bending over the handlebars as she watched him. Meeting her eyes for a second, Tony straightened his shoulders defensively.
"What are you doing here? You can't court me. I'm a lone wolf. Even showing interest in me makes the pack seem like it's full of morons. Birdbrain might be kind of stupid, but the rest of you are relatively smart. You should be avoiding me, pretending that you never thought courting me was a good idea. You should leave."
"Do you want me to leave?" At Tony's shrug, Natasha stood up and moved to the table he was working at. "There are things I can't tell you right now, that I don't want to tell you. But you shouldn't think so lowly of yourself. Stane was a bastard. What he did to you means nothing to our pack. You'll see. Just keep an open mind, Stark. Surely you know how to do that?"
"What do you mean 'things you can't tell me'? I've been excommunicated. There's no reason for you guys to pursue me. I'll still be on the team, if Fury doesn't kick me off for some reason. That's all that really matters. The way I act around you guys isn't going to change. Just forget that you ever wanted to court me. We can go back to life as normal."
Natasha shook her head, grabbing Tony's shoulders and forcing him to really look at her. "Just don't shut us out." She let go of him and turned to leave the lab. "Steve still expects to see you in the gym in an hour. Don't get lost in a project. I've already told JARVIS to make sure you're there."
Tony waited until she had left the lab to turn away from the door, shaking off the confusion that she'd instilled in him. The Avengers pack wasn't going to court him. He knew that without a doubt. They may be unconventional, especially considering the ratio of superhumans to regular humans in the pack, but no pack would ever court an excommunicated Omega. It wasn't done.
Sure, Tony had, immediately after Obi's death, researched to see if anyone had ever heard of an excommunicated Omega being courted by another pack. He'd been holding on to the foolish dreams he'd had as a kid, dreams that he would one day be showered with courting gifts. Hell, he'd still refused to throw away his courting chest, gifted to him by his mother after his first heat. Despite knowing that he'd been excommunicated, Tony had hoped that he would find a way to get around it, that he would still be courted someday. When he'd found out that no one had ever heard of a lone wolf being assimilated into a new pack, he'd gone on a bender, shattering his courting chest and attempting to burn down the lab around him. Since then, he'd come to accept that he would never be part of another pack again. Obi had made sure of that.
It wasn't like Tony needed a pack anyhow. After the first year of taking care of his heats by himself, he'd developed a suppressant, a dangerous thing for any Omega to take, and managed to stop his heats completely. He'd preserved his sanity and eliminated his biological need for a pack all in one move. Tony had managed to turn his excommunication into something that worked to his advantage, allowed him to focus solely on his work and on Iron Man rather than his biology. He was better off this way.
At least, that's what he'd been telling himself for years. Living with the other Avengers, watching as the original pack of three evolved into a pack of six, Tony had felt some of those old desires, relived some of those old dreams of being courted. A night alone with a very expensive bottle of Glenfiddich had remedied his temporary bout of insanity, returning him to his normal state of sarcasm and snark, with a small amount of guilt for wasting a $70,000 bottle of scotch. He'd dealt with the jealousy that pooled in his gut every time he saw Clint wearing a new piece of courting jewelry, telling himself to stop being foolish. When the other six residents of the house had been incommunicado for a week because of Clint's heat, Tony had buried himself in work, completely redesigning Natasha's Widow Bites and building yet another shield for Steve.
Tony was managing, as he always had. Even this, the knowledge that the pack had wanted to court him, wouldn't affect him. He was Tony fucking Stark. He didn't need a pack. He had survived without one for the past four years; he would continue to survive without one for the foreseeable future. Frustrated, concentration wrecked, Tony set his work aside and headed for the gym, prepared to have Steve wipe the floor with him. He might as well do something somewhat productive rather than wallow in his own self-pity.
As Tony walked down to the gym, he mentally braced himself for Steve's reaction to his inadvertent revelation that morning. Steve was from a different time, a time when lone wolves held less respect than the average Omega, when they were no good for anything other than prostitution, and even then it was nigh on impossible to get by. Tony had no doubt that Steve would treat him differently now. The other man had already made his opinion of Tony very clear. If anything, Tony's revelation would cement Steve's low opinion of Tony even stronger. Tony entered the gym geared up for a fight, on the defensive before he even saw the look on Steve's face.
"Let's get this over with, Rogers. I want to get back to my lab before I get grey hairs." Tony headed to the locker room he'd put in just off of the gym, stripping down and pulling on his sweatpants and a white shirt. Steve, as usual, remained in the gym waiting for him. Once changed, Tony walked back out to the gym, arms crossed over the arc reactor. "What are we doing today? Boxing again? If so, you might want to call Hawkeye in here. I could barely walk last time."
"No, Tony. We aren't boxing." Steve sat on an overturned punching bag, carefully unwrapping the tape he'd had around his hands. "I want to talk to you."
"What? You want to talk to me?" Tony sneered. "I suppose you want to tell me you don't want to work with a lone wolf, or that I'm not fit to be on the team. Or are you going to tell me about how my father would be disappointed in me? Maybe use me the ways others like me were used in your days? I'll tell you one thing, Stripes. It isn't happ-"
"Tony! I don't want any of that." Steve had stood and grabbed Tony's shoulder with one hand, shaking the smaller man lightly. "I would never think less of you because you're a lone wolf. I may be from a different time but that doesn't mean I'm a caveman! There's nothing wrong with being a lone wolf. My mother was a lone wolf."
"What?" Tony stared blankly at the other man, a frown marring his brow.
"I know you expect me to be completely naïve and prejudiced because I'm from a different time, but I'm not. A lone wolf Omega, a woman abandoned by her pack because she gave birth to a sickly son, raised me. I was in the army. Do you have any idea of what my life was actually like, or do you just base your assumptions on the idol worship your father spewed at you?" Steve released his shoulder and sat back down on the punching bag, running his hand over his face. "I was the one who asked Phil if he planned on courting you, Tony. I want you to be part of the pack. I want the freedom to pull you into my lap during bonding nights and just hold you. I want to be chosen to accompany you through your heat. I want you, Tony. The fact that you're a lone wolf makes no difference to me."
Tony stood, dumbfounded, staring at Steve for a long moment. "You were the one who asked Agent if he was going to court me for the pack?"
"I asked him, yes. But we all wanted you to be part of our pack. We still want you, Tony." Steve stood back up and approached Tony slowly, pulling a small box out of his pocket. "Excommunicated or not, I intend to court you, whether or not the rest of the pack does."
Tony floundered for a minute, not sure what to say. Finally, he took the box, fingering the seam on it as he stared at Steve. "You'd go against one of the traditions that the quintessential American hero should hold closest to his heart? Not very Captain America of you, Spangles."
"It's time America changed a bit, I think. Some of the traditions we hold so dear are a bit archaic." Steve nudged the box in Tony's hand. "Are you going to open it?"
"Shouldn't Agent Agent be giving me my first courting gift since he's the Alpha?" Tony knew he was stalling but he couldn't help it. The weight of the small jewelry box in his hand was something he had never thought he'd feel, not after Obi had banished him from the SI pack.
"Phil will speak with you later. He had business to take care of with Director Fury. I am doing this with his full knowledge. Will you open it?"
"Oh. Yeah." Tony opened the box slowly; almost afraid it would be snatched away from him. When he looked down at the earring within, he stared silently for a moment, one finger tracing over the ruby. "This is- Thank you, Steve."
"You are very welcome, Tony. I look forward to see you wearing it."
"Right. I'm just going to go- do some work now. Thanks, again, for the earring. It's amazing." Tony beat a quick retreat, rushing to his lab and activating lockdown protocol. He needed time to think about what Steve had said, about the earring resting in the box on his table. He needed to refocus his mind and center himself. Putting on some mind-numbing music, Tony focused on the improvements for the Iron Man suit he'd been doing before, setting aside the questions Steve's actions had raised as he set to work.
