A/N: When I was brainstorming with Claire earlier this week, I suddenly realised that I needed to make it clear why Tony isn't with Pepper any more, and while I couldn't be bothered to go into massive detail, it had to be a fairly spectacular fuck-up for it to properly end it, and Steve had to cope with the aftermath. Thus, this chapter was born.

Thank you all so much for the favourites, story-alerts and reviews! /squishes

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters!


- Three weeks later -

"This is notabout... the company, Pepper!"

A glass sails past him and hits the wall dangerously close to Tony's head. He watches the bright red wine begin to drip down, and tries not to think of blood. He has never seen Pepper quite like this, dishevelled, chest heaving, and angry. Not in the least bit composed. He can count on one hand the times he's seen Pepper lose her temper. And not even that time on the roof, after the Stark Expo was all but obliterated when things got more than a little out of hand with Ivan Vanko, topped this for loss of composure.

Pepper rounds on him and all but shrieks it into his face.

"Yes it is, Tony, that's the whole point! You never think about the company, you never think about me,you just do whatever you want and everything else is just collateral damage!" Her chest is heaving, body shaking with rage, and her hair is coming out of its elaborate style, tendrils falling across her face.

"I've been cleaning up after you for years, and this was my time to shine, to really show people what I've been putting so much work into, and you just completely undermined me! In front of all those people, Tony!"

She swipes the hair from her face angrily, "You can't just waltz back in whenever you feel like it! You are Iron Man! I don't have that! I don't have a second persona to hide behind! This?" She gestures at the huge canvases splashed with her face, the company logo, the new project tagline, "This is everything I've got. I have put my heart and soul into getting this company back on top and you just came so close to ruining it all for me! How many times are you going to do this to me? How many more times am I going to have to put up with this?"

Her eyes are full of tears but it is the anger in her voice that shocks him. Inside, Tony is a seething mass of emotions. He is angry, so blindingly angry, but more than that, he is hurt. It wracks him like physical pain, radiating through every fibre of his being. How many years has he known Pepper? How many ridiculous fucking hiccups and sticky situations have they slogged through together? Granted, nine times out of ten it was him dragging her into them, and her hauling his ass out but still. They are a team. They know everything about each other, the good, the bad, the downright ugly. He is Butch Cassidy to her Sundance Kid. They are Yin and Yang. Sure, sometimes it's been rocky, and there have been times he's watched her walk away thinking she might never come back, but she always did. And he loved her all the more for it. They never fight; not seriously. They never fight like this.

Tony grinds his teeth together, jaw set, vein jumping in his temple.

Pepper takes his silence for obstinacy, "Oh my God, Tony, you don't even care, do you?" she whispers, appalled.
"Of course I care, Pepper, please," he starts, reaching for her, and there is bile like venom in his mouth, but she cuts him off, throwing her hands up in front of her like a barrier. His outstretched arm flops uselessly back to his side.
"No, you know what, you don't, because if you did? You wouldn't be able to do this to me, and you just keep doing it, Tony! You keep on doing it and I can't just keep brushing it aside or sweeping it under the rug and cleaning up after you! I'm trying to do my job!" She collapses into a chair, breathing heavily, and he sees tears fall onto her upturned hands.

His breath catches in his throat. He never meant to hurt her, never. But he is a wrecking ball, acting on impulse, he always has been. And they've always been able to work around that, to accept it and deal with it. But this time, the silence stretches and screams at him and suspicion crawls along his skin, and from her ragged breathing he knows that, this time, something inside Pepper has snapped.

Tony hangs his head, and his hands clench into fists and unclench again. Rage and hurt burn and boil in his chest. They bubble higher and higher, rising in his throat.

"Pepper, please. I didn't mean to do that, I'm sorry. I just got, I just got carried away. It was so familiar, and I forgot and just slipped back into it and I…" he trails off. She waves her hands at him, dismissing his half-formed excuses. When he meets her eyes, he realises they don't matter anymore, because what he sees there makes his heart stop. He draws in a slow breath that comes more painfully than he could have imagined, and the finality in her words almost breaks him.

"How many times are we going to have to do this, Tony?" comes the ragged whisper, then what is almost a sob, "You're a loose cannon, you always have been, but you won't let me help you, and I just cannot do this anymore."

"And what is "this", exactly?" the words escaping him in a hiss so quiet he barely hears it himself.

When he sees the tears well in her eyes, he already knows.

"We should never have started this, Tony. It was never going to work. Not when you're so…" She throws her hands up towards him, and that movement says everything. In that unfinished sentence Tony reads so many things; things she did mean, things she didn't, things she has never said, things she will and would never say.

He stands there and lets the silence soak in. His nails are dug so far into his palms that somewhere deep in his mind he notes distantly that the marks will be there for days.

Pepper gives a strange choked hiccup, and stands up abruptly. She straightens her dress and brushes her hand angrily across her eyes, past trying to salvage her makeup.
"I'm taking the jet to DC, Tony. Don't call me, don't write me, just don't try to contact me at all." Her voice trembles as she brushes past him towards the door.

"I'm sorry, Tony, but this is over."

And she leaves him standing in an empty hotel lobby, rooted in place, the chilling, heart-wrenching finality in her voice still ringing in his ears.

...

Steve is heading to bed when he hears a loud crash from Tony's end of the hall. Checking his watch, Steve notes with little surprise that it is nearly 4am. He's been training, result of a pretty bad nightmare of swirling ice and screaming red faces. Basically, he woke up needing to punch something. Hard.

Steve learned fairly early on that crashing noises in the lab in the small hours of the morning are not often a good sign. So he drops his towel and gym bag by his door, and moves quietly down the hallway, the ghostly blue glow of the access keypad lighting his way. Descending the steps to the lab, the first thing he notices is that the lights are off. Well, dimmed, to be precise. The last time he was here the lights were dimmed as well, and he recalls the constellations spread out across the walls. The stars are scattered now, as then, across every surface. But there is no soft jazz this time. As soon as the door hisses open, granting him access, loud, angry music blasts out. That is some soundproofing.

He steps into the darkness of the lab.

"Hello? Tony? You in here?" The music drowns out the sound of his voice, "Hey Jarvis, would you cut the music?"

"Sir." comes the reply, music immediately fading out.

Steve can smell alcohol, and he can smell a lot of it. Suddenly he hears a groan, accompanied shortly by a slurred voice, "Heyyyyyy, whadd'ya do that for, I was lissn'n to that…"

As Steve crosses the room his footsteps crunch over broken glass. The lab is a mess. Panels shattered, tools and components in total disarray. The floor is a minefield of metal parts. He accidentally kicks an empty bottle, sending it skittering across the floor. The sound provokes another unintelligible groan from Tony and what Steve imagines is some fairly colourful disgruntled swearing.

Steve finds Tony slumped in the front seat of his Audi in the dark.

He leans over the door of the convertible, looking at the empty bottles in the footwell. Tony is splayed, arms wide, across the seat, clutching a half-empty whiskey glass, Ray-Bans hiding his eyes.

Steve sighs. How many times has he seen Tony drunk by now? It never fails to make him a strange mixture of guilty and sad. He's still trying to work that one out, to be honest.

He tries to prise the whiskey glass from Tony's hands, and meets fierce resistance. Tony growls up at the hand attempting to wrench the glass from his grip, swatting at him.
"Okay, Tony, right now we need to remove Mr Scotch, and then we are going to have a conversation."
Tony turns to stare blearily at Steve over the top of his sunglasses. His eyes are heavily bloodshot, and Steve wonders vaguely how long exactly Tony has been on this particular bender.

It takes Tony nearly a minute of squinting and blinking before he appears to actually recognise who is talking to him, but when he does, his face splits into a huge grin, which looks more than a little manic to Steve.

"Hey Steve! Hey, hey why are you… Wait, wait wait, c'min here, c'min here with me, c'mon Steve" he babbles, slapping the empty seat beside him. Then he promptly loses his balance and sways towards the door Steve is leaning on. Whiskey sloshes over the upholstery.
Tony hiccups and squints into the bottom of his suddenly empty glass, "Hey, hey, Steve, Steve fill me up would ya, I'm fresh outta gas", he manages, before collapsing into giggles.

"Hey, hey, maybe we should take this baby out for a driiiiiiiiiive…," He slaps at the steering wheel, "Get away from this fucking place and all the fucking people that want to fucking fuck around with us and… hey," he gropes around in the door pocket and under the seat before realising with a slur, "Hey Steve, d'you, d'you know where I put the keys…?" His confusion then subsides into mad cackling.
Steve can't quite believe what he's seeing. What the hell happened for Tony to get so spectacularly drunk? Not that Tony ever needed a reason to get drunk, but right now Steve can tell that something pretty bad must have happened to him. The sheer number of empty bottles testifies as much. That, and the warzone that is Tony's lab. Whatever it is, Steve can't put his finger on it just yet.

"Yeah, maybe it's for the best that we don't find them..." Steve says quietly, watching the ridiculous spectacle before him.
Tony blinks slowly up at him, and sighs theatrically, "Could you, could you stop being so, so damn tall for like, just a, like, millisecond here, pal? It's just, I can't quite see your face, s'all swimming and uh…" Tony leans, or falls - more precisely, back against the seat, motioning Steve to get in, patting the empty seat again, "C'mon now Mr Rogers, sir, time for a good ol' heart t' heart, let's get to know each other a little better," Tony slurs, pouring whiskey into his glass from another bottle that has miraculously appeared in his hand. Where the hell is he getting these? Steve wonders.

Tony waves his arm, obviously trying to motion Steve to just get in the car, when he gets his sleeve caught on the gear stick, and throws whiskey all over the dashboard. And himself.
"Oh shit, now I'm gonna hav'ta get this shirt all dry cleaned, and oh maaaaaan, Pepper's gonna…" And in the split second it takes for him to realise what he's just said, Tony's face darkens, turns absolutely thunderous, and he upends the whiskey bottle into his glass. He knocks back a full measure and then looks at the glass with manic rage swirling in his eyes, before tossing it over his shoulder out of the car. It smashes on the ground, joining the rest of the debris. It's when Tony makes to start drinking directly out of the bottle that Steve gets into the car beside him and snatches the bottle from his grasp.

So this is about Pepper. And from the utter state the lab is in, Steve suspects the worst. He wishes Tony was sober enough to tell him what had happened, but instead he resigns himself to damage control.

He puts the whiskey bottle down out of Tony's reach. This earns him a death glare and Tony screws up his face and shoves his hands up under his arms.

"Oh c'mon Steve, why'd you gotta be such a party pooper?" He draws out the "c'mon Steve" like a recalcitrant child.
Steve sighs heavily, "Tony, I doubt you'll remember this in the morning but I heard what sounded like you, uh, "re-decorating" the lab again and I just wanted to check in on you, because God knows you could have broken something important. Namely yourself. "

He turns his head to see Tony tip up another glass to try and coax out a few more drops of whiskey, scowling at Steve as he does it.

Steve sighs, "You know, I'm not sure if anyone's ever told you this, Tony, but you may have a drinking problem…"
"Whoa, hey, hey, it's not a drinking problem if you're good at it, Steeeeve. 'N besides, I'm enjoying it, thank you very much, Cap'n Killjoy." He is slurring so badly that Steve has trouble distinguishing one word from another.

And suddenly he is off, rambling, words all mushing together in a huge, angry, slurred rush. Pepper… only trustworthy constant thing in my whole damn life, only constant variable, y'know? … s'probably for the best we aren't together though… I'd only end up hurting her… like father like son, huh? Just another fucked up genius playboy rich kid…
And Steve decides he's heard enough. He's heard more than he thinks he should have anyway, uneasy at having heard Tony say so much, so freely. He was just privy to bits of Tony that, in the morning, once the drink had worn off, Tony probably wouldn't be too happy to know he'd witnessed… Then again, a small part of Steve was happy that Tony had let him in…

Only because he's drunk, says a small voice in the back of his head, only because he is too out of it to know any better. He's not opening up to you, it doesn't mean anything, he doesn't know what he's saying…

Steve shakes his head as if he can dislodge the thoughts that way.

"Okay, Tony, that's it. Let's get you to your room, because you need to sleep this off. The bots can tidy this mess up, and Jesus, Tony, you really have made a mess of this place. I don't envy you for the hangover you're gonna have tomorrow either because, my God, you are going to feel like a piece of…"

A loud, rattling snore echoes around the room.

Steve then realises that Tony has fallen asleep on him, mouth lolling open. And drooling.

"Great. Now I have to move a dead weight. Fantastic." Steve says to no one in particular, sighing and rubbing his eyes. He is far too tired for this.

He climbs out of the car and crosses to Tony's side. One arm round his waist, he half drags, half lifts Tony from the seat, the other man muttering under his breath and vaguely resisting being moved.

" 'm sorry, Steve…" he mumbles.

Steve sighs, and fireman-lifts Tony over one shoulder, carefully stepping over and around the debris littering the floor before brushing his fingers down the keypad to kill the lights as he leaves.

"Night, Jarvis."
"Goodnight, sir. And thank you."
"Don't mention it." Steve mutters, readjusting Tony's weight and earning a sleepy grunt in response.

...

After much struggling, Steve finally manages to parcel Tony into bed. He has somehow coaxed him out of his shirt and suit trousers, but can't quite force him into pyjamas. So Tony is currently lying under the blankets in just his boxers. Steve had to choke back a laugh when he saw the Superman pattern on them. He feels a little pang of something, and wonders what Tony would say if Steve ever told him how endearing it was to see the mighty, charismatic Tony Stark wearing superhero-patterned underwear… Nothing good, he imagines, almost sadly.

When he returns with a glass of water and an aspirin bottle he sees Tony has star-fished sideways across the bed, blankets tangled around his body in what looks like a very uncomfortable mesh. Steve puts the glass and bottle on the bedside table and sits down next to him.

He has come to realise that the only time Tony Stark looks truly peaceful is when he is either working, or completely and totally unconscious. He doesn't look much younger, granted, but it's a nice change from seeing his face contorted with sarcasm or condescension. Steve likes it best when Tony looks this way, because actually, he looks rather beautiful. For a man.

And he catches himself with that thought, a little shocked. Where the hell did that come from?

He finds himself brushing a stray hair away from Tony's eyes, and that's when Tony mumbles, "… mmm, Steve…"

He freezes, hand hovering above Tony's head. Tony smacks his lips and mushes his face further into the pillows.

"Mm'yeah… like you… Steve…"

As his heart starts to thud erratically and inexplicably in his chest, Steve can't help but smile.

...

He hears a sigh, and through the haze of drink and sleep Tony can just about make out the words, "Yeah, Tony, I, uh, I like you too."

And for a second he is confused, because that sounds a lot like Steve Rogers, and why would Steve be in his bedroom in the middle of the night? Plus he doesn't remember ever saying he liked Steve… He's pretty sure he'd remember saying that if he did. As if he'd ever say something that made him sound so pathetic? Not to mention the fact that he is approximately 87% sure he hasn't quite decided what he feels about Steve anyway…

And actually, Tony suddenly thinks, and not without painful effort, why is he in bed in the first place? How did he get here? Last thing he remembers is rooting around for the second bottle of whiskey hiding in the compartment under the footwell in his Audi… And, hold on one second, where the hell are his pants?

He opens one eye very slowly, trying to make it look like it is still closed, and through the tiny sliver of vision, he sees Steve Rogers sat by his bed, watching him sleep.

"What in the actual fuck is going on here?" Tony thinks, before sliding back into drunken, sleep-clad oblivion.