Steve bustled about the thirtieth floor, picking up the odd discarded sweatshirt here and a random box of pizza there. It was really strange how they worked, him and Tony- Tony was in the kitchen, scraping the burnt remains of a blender off of the ceiling, while he'd ambled meekly back to their room and tried not to catch anything on fire again. As he picked up around their bedroom, though, he couldn't help but thinking about how it all started, this…thing they had. And also how messy his boyfriend is.

As he ponders balconies and shattered windows, he curiously picks up a discarded hoodie, lovingly thrown on the floor near Tony's overly-spacious closet. Dirtied by what looked like years of motor oil and misuse, it looked to have been red when it began its long, cotton life, he flips it over to see the front.

It had a startlingly familiar shield on it. With a star smack dab in the middle.

For a moment, Steve feels like laughing, and then he feels like crying, because it's clear that this hoodie had seen years beyond the short time Steve and Tony had known one another, and even less in the time they had become…a thing, this together, almost functional beautiful thing that follows no normal relationship rules. So they call it a thing, and it works.

Eyeing the sweatshirt, he turns it over and over in his strong hands, admiring the faded, grimy red against his sooty, normally pale fingers. He suddenly thinks of Howard Stark, and the man he knew him as. And then the man Tony knew him as, and somehow, he just knows that Tony grew up being dwarfed by the giant of Captain America and in that moment he feels slight nausea and the worst guilt he thinks he's ever felt in his life.

(Tony's father was too busy being hung-up on a supersoldier to care for his son.)

(The son which said supersoldier was now dating. And making scrape blender pieces off the kitchen surfaces.)

(Ain't life fun?)

The guilt becoming overwhelming now, Steve gently set the Febreeze he was spraying onto a particularly foul pair of jeans he had found and twirled the Captain America hoodie around with his hand idly, looking at in disdain. Torn between (after a proper Febreezing) throwing it under the bed or possibly cleaning it up and hanging it nicely in the closet and hope Tony doesn't say anything, he finally sighs and realizes he probably should talk to Tony about it and make sure Steve's existence wasn't one of the leading factors in his bad childhood.

Holding the hoodie at arms-length because it honestly smelled like a sweaty robot (a little like Tony when he hadn't showered after a long day in the lab) and giving it a once down with his Febreeze, he set off into the kitchen, long legs bringing him there rather quickly and also stopping abruptly when he realized his dark-haired lover was no longer standing on the counter with a washrag to reach the ceiling. There was a distinct lack of Tony in the kitchen at all, actually, and Steve tsked when he noticed the black marks still on the ceiling and across the counter.

I'm a terrible cook and my boyfriend is a lazy bastard, Steve thought to himself, looking shamefully at the chrome finish of the counters he probably flamed to death trying to make toast. Straining his ears for any sound of the suddenly missing Tony (he probably wouldn't stay missing, big things tended to happen with Tony Stark around), he picked up the light plinkplinkplinking of a piano coming from a room at the end of the hall he'd never bothered to check out. Curious now, his feet made their own little trail with no help from his brain into the Room At The End Of The Hall, as he decided to call it for about fifteen seconds, if only for the dramatic flair.

And then he steps into the room, and Tony and Bruce are singing.

And Tony is playing the piano.

And it sounds beautiful, almost hauntingly so, the pair singing together. Tony's quick, tan fingers fly over the ivory in a complicated dance Steve's baby blues can't even hope to follow, the music swelling and falling until it reaches an almost unbearable crescendo, on which the two men finish the song, giving each other satisfied, sated smiles like they'd just beaten the world.

Until Steve clears his throat, leaning awkwardly against the metallic doorframe, and Bruce turns the color of a tomato and excuses himself from the room. Tony's eyes follow Banner out the door, his face still wearing a smile, when he turns his head back to the piano and starts to play a few soft keys. Glancing up at Steve through dark lashes, Tony wolf whistles, his grin turning into a wide smirk. "Well, hello there sexy," he greets Steve, patting empty seat on the piano bench beside him. "C'mon, sit!"

After a moment of debate and prodding from Tony, Steve makes a face at the grimy hoodie he was still clutching between his fingers, and throws it behind him nonchalantly with an unnerving, lopsided smile, hoping Tony didn't notice. Wiping the oil smugdes from his fingertips into his too-tight jeans, he crosses the room, bare feet sinking into to the plush, white carper before taking a seat on the black piano bench Tony is poised upon. It feels different, somehow, than other pianos, like plastic and glass and metal all at once, the sounds reminescient of howling ghosts and laughing children.

Breathing an unsteady breath when Tony's fingers begin to fly across the keys again, he murmurs, "Since when did you play the piano?"

"The Other Guy likes it," Tony supplied, looking away from the ivory keys to give Steve a smile. "But if you want to argue with him, be my guest."

Steve is momentarily horrified at the thought of disagreeing with Big, Mean and Green. "No thanks. I'm good. But I meant, when did you start playing?"

The tempo of the song slowly decreases, before becoming only a few light notes filtering throughout the room (which Steve has renamed from The Room At The End of the Hall to the Music Room, due to the sheer amount of instruments and sheet music spread across the carpets and black leather furniture).

After a long pause in which Steve can almost hear the gears turning in Tony's head, Tony shoots him a look over his shoulder and smiles a thin smile that really isn't there at all. "You know how…when as a kid, you'd get lonely, and build yourself from friends?"

The implications of that sentence hit Steve heavily in the gut like a well-thrown punch and he thinks briefly of the abandoned Captain America hoodie in the hall. "Not….exactly?" He replied, seeing the expectant set of Tony's face and realizing he wanted an answer. "But by all means, continue."

"Well…after I had finished working on the blueprints for DUM-E, I flicked the TV on to see someone playing the piano and thought, "Man, I could never do that." To which I quickly rethought that I was motherfucking Tony Stark and if I wanted to play the piano, I damn well could. So. I build one."

Steve is fazed by the knowledge that Tony created this haunting instrument, running a light finger across the wood/metal/glass of the exterior and breathing in through his teeth. "You got bored. And then build a piano."

"Sounds about right," Tony replies flippantly, starting the beginning notes of a song again as Steve stares in bafflement. "See? The Stark Industries logo is right here. Stark issued, Stark approved," he says cheerfully, motioning with his head toward the top of the piano and there it was, a small little logo, and Steve is beyond amazed. "I keep trying to convince the instrument making industry to let me Stark Up some of their equipment, but they just think I'm doing it for press reasons, I think."

Steve is still hung up on the fact that Tony designed and build all of these things. "And how old were you?"

"Um. Ten or eleven, maybe."

Steve has to pick his jaw up off the floor, snapping it back on with a pop of disbelief as Tony begins singing softly along to a folk song he thinks he recognizes from Movie/Music Mondays, when him and Bruce and Thor and whoever else they can rope into it watch movies the trio have missed and listen to music as suggested by team members.

Looking up from the fragile waltz Tony's fingers have picked up on the keys, he scans the room, seeing several other instruments designed in a fashion similar to the piano. "And, those, too? You designed all of these?"

Tony nods, focusing on the music. "A whole band's worth," he interjects randomly, before halting his fingers and looking at Steve with an alarmingly devilish smile.

"I've got a whole band's worth of instruments just sitting here."

Suddenly, between the inky black of the piano and the huge smile on Tony's face, the kind that crinkle at his eyes, Steve thinks he may have just given Tony a really, really bad idea.

It is with much bribery and open-ended threats to pull his tech from SHIELD that it goes unnoticed that when anytime the semi-famous cover band, Stark Naked, plays a gig, all of the Avengers go missing.

Even Nick Fury.

I think Tony would be a wonderful pianst. Now I want to go learn to play the piano! (The song folk song that Steve somewhat recognizes Tony playing is Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Peter, Paul and Mary. I was going to write that in but couldn't make it flow well with the story.)

Stark Naked's Band Lineup:

Lead Vocals: Bruce Banner and Pepper Potts
Guitar: Natasha Romanoff
Bass: Clint Barton
Drums: Thor Odinson
Piano and Backup Vocals: Tony Stark
Electric triangle and Backup Vocals: Steve Rogers
The Recorder: Nick Fury
Ocassional Background Dancer Who Resembles a Stripper: Maria Hill

Of course, they all have stage names, and Tony insists on being called Big Daddy, but no one ever really does. Except for Nick.

By the way, if any of you guys need writing ideas, go check out theavengersheadcanons on Tumblr. It really gets the creative juices a'flowing.

Thanks for reading!