Here's an extra-special early chapter as thanks for over 2,500 views! I'm amazed that this is so well liked, even if not many people actually tell me so.
Thanks to Tigerlilly and Oblivion772 for their encouraging words. Things are indeed getting complicated. I just hope that the eventual resolution is at least somewhat satisfactory!
Anyone interested in more Stony from me should check out my Avengers one-shot, Genesis. It's not so much time travel as reincarnation, but if you're still reading this then it may be your cup of tea.
For reference, I do not own the image being used as the cover photo. I found it on Google Images. All the credit to whoever did create it!
Blame my fiancee for the title of this chapter. He gave me a dare and I fulfilled it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing under copyright.
Chapter 11: The Cheese Stands Alone
"There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for."
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
That was far from the last mission. Of course not. That would be too easy, it was only 1944.
On June 3, the Commandos were called into the SSR headquarters. Mostly confused, they came, but Tony only felt the beginnings of terror mixed with excitement. He knew what was happening in three days and wasn't sure if he wanted a part in that.
When they were told what to expect, the others looked just as stunned as Tony felt. "So we're finally launching an invasion?" Jim asked, daring anyone to refute him.
The Colonel agreed, and Frenchie almost started crying from sheer happiness.
Tony patted his friend's shoulder with a grin. "Hear that? You're going home," he said, utterly jubilant for what this meant.
"Not quite yet. First we've got to invade, and that's going to be the biggest engagement in the entire damn war so far," Colonel Phillips said, grim as ever, "That's what we're calling on you for. You're going to do your usual hit and run strikes, but on German defensive positions instead of HYDRA factories." It was exactly what Tony expected. He almost looked forward to it.
"What's Steve doing, if he's not here?" Bucky asked shrewdly, frowning at the implication. They would be going it alone.
Old film reels flashed before Tony's eyes, and suddenly he knew. "He's wading ashore with everyone else, isn't he?" he asked, settling back into his chair.
The Colonel looked impressed and disparaging at once. "Symbols are meant to be seen," he stated with all the derision possible.
It was a better response than Tony expected. He and Phillips had always butted heads. "Okay then, what's the plan for us, beyond parachuting in and doing our thing?" he asked.
"Wait a minute, we're a unit. All of us, including Cap. Shouldn't we be with him?" Dum Dum asked, mustache wiggling as his expressions changed.
The thought was touching, but Tony shook his head. For all that they were the best, the Howling Commandos were not meant for open battlefields.
Agent Carter agreed. "If anyone is capable of getting through this battle, it's Captain Rogers. He needs you to support his movements instead of making them with him, this time," she said, dark eyes burning into them as she looked around the table.
"What's the plan?" Jim repeated.
It sounded simple: get dropped behind the lines and raid in pairs. Kill sentries, steal cars, disable weapons, that sort of thing. Little hit and run jobs, just enough to disrupt the defenses. It sounded like a good plan.
"There are seven of us," Monty pointed out.
Tony was so used to accounting for Cap that he forgot about it. "Somebody's going to have to go solo or there's gonna be a group of three," he said, settling back. He already knew which he preferred.
"One of you is going to accompany the captain at Omaha Beach," Colonel Phillips corrected.
"It needs to be in pairs," Agent Carter explained, "More will get you caught, less will be too dangerous even for you." She gave Tony a look that dared him to protest.
He did anyways. "I think we've proved that we defy the meaning of the word impossible," Tony said with a raised eyebrow. He folded his arms over his chest, set on his course of action.
"Thank you for volunteering to accompany Captain Rogers, Starosta. Now that we have that settled, you can report to General Montgomery and we'll plan our part of this mess," the Colonel told him with a biting smile. He wasn't putting up with any of Tony's bullshit today.
This result actually worked with him. "I'd rather save Cap's stupid ass anyways. Have fun with your super secret girl scout meeting," he said cheerfully and gave a cute little wave as he swayed out the door, sure to wiggle his hips as he walked.
Before he could close the door, he heard Jim sigh. "Something's wrong with him."
Tony giggled. It was time to report for the most dangerous part of the battle for the Western Front.
To put it nicely Steve was displeased when he heard that the man he loved would be accompanying him into the line of fire. "What are you going to do, Tony? This isn't 'get in and get out' and they're prepared for us," he said as they were loaded onto the transports.
"What I do best: keep your fine ass from getting shot," Tony responded lightly.
In front of them, a guy snickered. He was ignored.
"I have the shield," Steve argued, hefting it for emphasis.
"And you usually throw it as a weapon, meaning that it's not much defensive use," Tony countered.
"By the time I can use it that way, I'll be out of the line of fire," Steve said sourly, "You don't have that kind of protection." The vibranium disc that he had grown so fond of was only big enough to cover one of them. To end this battle quicker and keep more people from getting injured, it had to be him.
The smile that Tony gave him was fond as he rubbed at his chest. "I can handle whatever they throw at me," he assured the blonde. He made a motion to take the other man's hand, but they were still shuffling up the gangway. Instead he patted the other man's lower back.
It would have to be enough. Steve nodded, still unhappy.
They were some of the last onto the ship, meaning that they would be some of the first off. Once across the Channel they were going to get unloaded onto landing crafts and storm the beach codenamed Omaha. It sounded like a plan, to Steve.
From the look on Tony's face, it wouldn't be nearly as easy as anyone thought. He gazed sullenly down at the water as the walkway was detached in preparation for take-off. Not once had his 'precognition' been wrong, but Steve hoped that it was this time.
"Think the guys are alright?" he asked, instead of worrying about their chances. They were the ones making the head-on assault, but the Commandos had no safety or any way of pulling back if it came to that.
"Those idiots? They're fine," Tony said dismissively, "I just hope they get to our spot as soon as they can." He waved a hand flippantly, not even trying to be serious.
It was a relief. Just enough for Steve to take advantage of them pulling out of port and offer a gloved hand under the cover of his shield. The deck around them was too crowded for the motion to be seen.
A warm hand took his, and squeezed tightly before withdrawing again. "So, got any plans for when we get back to England?" Tony asked unconcernedly.
Steve ignored the incredulous looks they got for their casual conversation. "Pretty sure the guys are going to drag us out to the pub to find some beer and women," he said with a fond roll of his eyes. It was to be expected by now.
"What about you? Planning on going dancing?" Tony teased. His eyes glinted in the light cast by the rising sun, barely enough to skim off the water.
"Nah, I don't know how," Steve admitted.
Tony wasn't surprised, but there wasn't any pity on his face either as he leaned on the railing. "It can be fun if you have the right partner," he said with a tight smile.
"I think I've found the right partner," Steve said, returning the smile longingly, "I'm just not allowed."
"We will," Tony told him, as seriously as any other prediction, "You might not be sure it's me and I might not know it's you, but I will teach you how to dance." It was a beautiful, if unlikely idea.
There was no way two men could dance together in public like that, holding each other close as they swayed and turned with the music. If there was… He could almost feel the tempting warmth of Tony's smaller frame in front of him, smell the hot metal and cloves and a smoky pub.
But there was no use in daydreaming right now. They had a mission.
It was too quiet as they lowered themselves into a landing craft. Even the lap of the waves was subdued, and Steve got a bad feeling. Anytime it was this quiet right before a major battle, it heralded a mess.
His assessment wasn't wrong. The moment they landed they were swept up in a hail of gunfire and mortars, the noise deafening as the screams of men already dying. Of that first landing craft only Steve, Tony and four other men made it ashore to some kind of cover.
Most of them took a breather behind the metal obstacles that had been placed in their way, getting up the courage to go out there and get shot at again. Steve and Tony looked across the open space between them, doing the same. They would do it, if only to keep each other safe.
"We'll have to go fast!" Steve shouted. There was no other way to get to any area with cover but praying that their speed would let them pass through unscathed.
"Only if we can go slow next time!" Tony called back with a wink. Of course he turned it into a joke, that was how he handled everything.
Didn't mean it wasn't annoying. Steve rolled his eyes and counted down. "Three, two, one!" On one he turned and began running, shield held protectively in front of him to ward off the bullets. Hopefully it was enough of a distraction for everyone else to get through with better luck. It was one of the reasons he had his shield painted with what amounted to a giant bull's-eye; so that he would be the target everyone tried to kill.
From the sounds of the crowd behind him, all rushing up, it was working.
The invasion of Omaha Beach had begun.
Tony hated that he couldn't find it in himself to get out of bed. It wasn't that he was lazy, or stubborn or too comfortable to bother. Those were very rarely issues. No, he just couldn't.
If he got out of bed, he was sure that he would find himself back on that beach with blood and sand flying everywhere, iron and sea water and dirt heavy in his nose as bodies fell around him. Abruptly he was reminded of when a vet had half-joked at a party that Omaha Beach wasn't meant for mortal men. That was the unembellished truth, he knew it now.
The Commandos were worried, he knew it. Tony just couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't leave the safety of his covers, the warmth that proved that he wasn't on that damn beach anymore, or in those fields or between hedgerows. He didn't want to go back to the hell that was open war and not knowing whether he would live five seconds longer.
May Thor strike him dead where he stood if he ever again disrespected a veteran.
But more than that, everything was flashing before Tony's eyes and making him hyperventilate and tear up and shake like an earthquake. Everything. He was in what may as well have been a foreign country with no exit visa, he could be thrown in prison for loving the wrong person, he could irrevocably screw up time with a wrong word or gesture. The arc reactor could be discovered at the wrong time, by the wrong people. He could be stuck here forever. He wouldn't live long enough for that, it was set in stone upon those damned innocuous pieces of paper he had dug through a lifetime ago. It was sheer hell and it had all hit him at once.
He missed 2014 more than he could say, so much that it weighed more in his chest than his arc reactor ever had. If the world was kind he would go to sleep and wake up to Thor burning that stupid symbol on his balcony with the Bifrost again and Bruce falling asleep in his cereal and Clint snickering because he drew dicks on Tony's sleeping face while Nat watched impassively from behind a comically over-sized mug of coffee. Then Steve would come in the door, sweaty and rosy from the gym and sigh because how the hell did this become his life, and make breakfast because he wasn't ready to deal with any of this just yet.
Life wasn't that kind. Bucky slipping in the door with a tray proved it.
Tony buried himself under his covers again and moaned for his friend to, "Go to hell and take that stupid shit you know I won't eat with you." He had been an unholy terror for the past two days.
"You need to eat. Steve's worried about you," Bucky said, ignoring the litany of swear words aimed at him and his mother.
"Of course he is, he's Steve," Tony agreed dryly. It would be strange if he wasn't concerned.
From the snort that Bucky gave, he agreed. "Seriously though, we all are. Was the beach really that bad?" he asked, his own worry shining through. Regardless of how unwelcome he was he sat on the edge of the bed and set the tray on a side table.
It came back in scraps. "We waded in and everybody started dying. Only me and Steve and four other guys even made it to the low tide obstacles." Explosions were everywhere, men dropped as they ran. "If it weren't for the thing in my chest I'd be dead." Deader than usual: he'd been hit four times straight in the middle of the chest. The arc reactor was barely even scratched, he'd checked it the second he had some privacy. "I could hear the screams of the dying and more and more just kept coming, kept getting mowed down as soon as they got onto the sand or drowning under their gear 'cause they got dropped too soon." He turned haunted eyes on his friend, everything else hidden under his blankets.
Thankfully Bucky didn't try saying anything. Instead he burrowed under the covers too, offered a comforting presence.
It was enough for most of Tony's other worries to come spilling out. He had never possessed much of a brain to mouth filter, but he kept enough of one to not say anything about being from the future. All the worries he had, from Steve being a half suicidal son of a gun to whether he was turning into the very thing he fought, went from his mouth to Bucky's ears. By the end of it, he actually felt a little better.
"Why are you doing any of this?" Bucky questioned the moment his friend wound down.
"Because I have to. I said I'd do it, so I'll do it. I don't want to be separated from Steve or you. I don't have anywhere else to go." Tony couldn't decide which of those reasons was the most pressing.
"Are there things you won't do?" Bucky continued.
"Yes." The answer was immediate, out of Tony's mouth faster than his brain could move. There weren't many lines, but those he did have, he refused to cross no matter who asked.
Bucky gave him a barely-visible smile. "Then you're fine. I know you better than that. You're not a monster, no matter what you think," he said, gripping the other man's shoulder for a quick moment, "Now, you hungry?"
The emotional upheaval of the day so far guaranteed it. "What's on the menu this morning?" Tony asked sarcastically.
"Only the best this shithole has to offer," Bucky said with a bark of laughter. He threw the covers off of them and pulled the tray over, presenting it proudly. He looked like he just won the Olympics.
On the tray was a soggy omelet (probably made with reconstituted egg) with a shit-ton of mushrooms, two pieces of sparsely buttered toast, a ball of terrifyingly thick oatmeal, a bruised peach, a wrinkled sausage, and some watery baked beans. The glass of milk and cup of coffee looked slightly more palatable. Honestly, Tony had come to prefer the MRE's, even of this time. He took it anyways. "You didn't cook this, did you?" he asked warily.
"Hell no. They wouldn't let me into the kitchens if I asked," Bucky answered, affronted.
With a shrug, Tony dug in. He probably would have even if Bucky had made it, just gone to the medical tent to be treated for food poisoning later. He might have to anyways, he thought as he struggled with the oatmeal that just didn't want to leave the goddamned tray.
"That Winter Soldier tried taking another shot at me," Bucky grimaced as he sat on the edge of the bed. His face was pale, rings under his eyes deep, as he sighed.
"What happened?" Tony asked around the sausage. He and Steve had both been on the beach, so who saved their friend?
Bucky shrugged. "I shot back. Got him in the leg, but he still disappeared too fast for me and Dum Dum to catch," he relayed, obviously disappointed.
Instead of replying, Tony let out a laugh through a mouthful of peach. What else had he expected?
It was only when the tray was nearly empty that the door burst open. "Don't eat it!" Steve shouted, only to stare in horror at what food was left: a piece of toast and the milk.
"What's wrong with it? What did you convince me to eat?" Tony demanded of Bucky, but without heat. If he got the runs from this, he would kill the man.
"I don't know!" Bucky protested, staring wide eyed at the tray and then his friends.
"Somebody put something in food and now everyone is hallucinating," Steve reported grimly, "We need to get you to medical." He came in the door and offered a hand to help his boyfriend up.
Tony stood up under his own power and kept his balance just fine. "Looks like we need to get to the kitchens to see what happened," he declared. No way in hell was he going to medical, they would insist on running the full battery of tests and that would lead to them seeing the arc reactor.
"You need to go to medical," Steve corrected him gently, dropping his hand in favor of moving to the side of the doorway.
"Shit, I feel fine," Tony said, waving a flippant hand. He really did. Whatever happened, his system was taking care of it just fine.
"Me too," Bucky volunteered. His eyes were clear and focused as he frowned at the other men.
Though Steve looked doubtful, he allowed them out the door. "The second you start feeling badly, tell me and I'll take you straight to medical," he ordered. This was in his non-negotiable, Captain America voice, so they knew not to disagree.
Instead they waded out into chaos. The hallways around the sleeping quarters were mostly uninhabited, aside of some vomiting from the bathrooms, but the second they got into the common areas it was like walking right back onto a battlefield. Well, half the room was. The other half was giggling and chasing things that only they could see, poking at each other, or running screaming away from whatever they were hallucinating.
"Well this narrows down the suspects," Tony said, half amused as he watched his dad stumble over and pet Steve happily on the face. He was never going to let the old man live this down.
"We need to stop the fights. The happy ones, we can leave where they are for now," Steve said, batting away Howard's searching hands, "Tony, can you get the emergency manual out of the cabinet? It should say something in there about if the whole base is out of commission." He eventually resorted to trapping the inventor's hands and standing as far away from the man as possible to keep him from rubbing against him like a cat.
Bucky didn't even try to resist the urge to punch Phillips in the face when the man came skipping by, chasing something. The satisfaction on his face as he wrung out his hand was actually really funny. "I wanted to do that for the past year," he announced, stepping over the Colonel's unconscious body in favor of stopping the biggest fist fight in the room.
Meanwhile, Tony flipped through the manual only to find that the single option they had left was calling up the regular army. With a sigh he picked up the phone, leaning against the wall to watch the chaos around him.
"This is the British Army Medical Headquarters in London, how may I help you?" asked a nice female voice.
"I'm Anthony Starosta of the Howling Commandos. We've got a situation at SSR HQ. Something got slipped into the breakfast menu and now nearly everybody is hallucinating," he said conversationally. It took everything he had not to cackle like a madman as Bucky got kneed by a wild-eyed Peggy.
"Alright, I'll inform the doctors. How many people are affected?" the woman asked professionally.
"However many people are in the SSR, minus three. About a third of them are violent, another third are currently harmless, and the rest seem to be out cold or puking their guts up," Tony estimated. He snickered when Monty swaggered up and appeared to be sweet-talking Howard and Steve at the same time.
"We'll gather up the doctors and nurses and have them en route as soon as possible. Can you tell me who the other two are who are unaffected? Are they able to assist the medical personnel?" the woman asked.
"Steven Rogers and James Barnes, also Howling Commandos. And if neither of them get punched out or forcibly undressed by the time you get here, they can definitely help," Tony answered promptly. He twirled the phone cord around his finger idly as he watched his honorary aunt kick his best friend's ass.
"Is anyone in the chain of command available?" the woman asked.
Tony took a look around and saw them fighting, passed out under tables or humping the Colonel's unconscious body. "Nope," he chirped.
"What symptoms are you seeing in those affected?" the woman asked after a short pause.
"Hallucinations and stomach upset, mostly. I'm also seeing some anxiety and panic, some utter happiness, and, uh," Tony said awkwardly, before he had to bark at his dad, "No, Howard, Steve wants to keep his clothes on!" Turning back to the phone, he added, "Some amorous intentions. Basically some of them are having a really good drug trip and some are having a really bad- oh damn." It just struck him as he recounted what he had just said, and watched Jim hiss at anyone who came near his chair.
"Yes, Mr Starosta?" the woman prompted.
"The symptoms match up with psychedelic mushrooms," Tony said, not entirely sure if he believed it himself. But it all added up, and that omelet did have a shit-ton of mushrooms in it. Until other evidence came up, that was what he was going with.
There was another pause on the phone. "Alright, thank you Mr Starosta. There don't happen to be any weapons available to the affected, are there?" the woman asked hesitantly.
When Tony looked again, he was relieved. There wasn't a gun or knife in sight, aside of the butter knives from breakfast. "No purpose-made weapons are in the room, but this is a special division and they can probably kill someone with a coffee cup," he said, grimacing when he saw Howard wrap himself around Steve like an octopus. That's it, the second he was off the phone he had every intention of locking his father in a closet somewhere far away from his boyfriend.
"Noted. The doctors should be there momentarily," the woman reassured him. She deserved a gold star for being calm in the face of such ridiculousness.
"I need to go before somebody rapes Captain America. Get them here asap," Tony said, and hung up before the woman could protest. Instead he marched over to where Steve had managed to half-unwind himself, and tapped Howard on the shoulder.
The man looked at him and his face spread into a wide grin. He tearfully launched himself at Tony, crowing, "I always knew my kid would be a genius!"
Tony froze up for a moment, blindsided for the sudden cuddly affection. "Err, Howard? Come on, let's get you to bed," he said with false calm, and half-carried his father out of the room. Listening to the man blab on and on about how proud he was and how much he couldn't wait to meet him hurt and made a bubble of happiness well up in his chest at the same time.
At the first empty bedroom he could find, Tony shoved Howard in and allowed a single-minded Monty in after him. The moment they were both inside, he closed the door and prayed that they would be too dumb (or busy) to figure out how to work a doorknob. Well, right now anyways.
"Thanks. Now let's help Bucky," Steve said, visibly wilting at the very thought of facing down an angry, drugged up Peggy.
"You get him out of there, I'll handle her," Tony agreed. He fingered the handcuffs that he had lifted off a giggly MP on the way back in.
Fifteen minutes later the Army Medical Corps walked in to find that half the building had either been locked into closets or bedrooms, or was happy to go along with anything they said. Tony, Steve and Bucky were in less than ideal shape, sore and hungry, but assisted them as best they could. Especially with the difficult cases, like Peggy. Who knew that it would take Captain America to restrain her?
By noon the entire base was empty, all evacuated to a hospital on the edge of London.
Tony let out a groan as he laid back in one of the beds of the room that he, Steve and Bucky had to share. It was awfully crowded, the SSR having taken up most of the hospital. Not to the point that there were people laying in the hall, but still.
"That was a mess," Bucky agreed, flopped down on the other bed. He was face down, barely audible where he spoke into the sheets.
"What happened to them?" Steve asked, bewildered, as he sat at the head of the bed he was sharing with Tony.
"It looked like a certain kind of mushrooms," Tony answered, wanting nothing more than to go back to bed despite it being the middle of the afternoon. He knew it was a bad idea to get up today. No matter how much blackmail material he had gathered.
It was probably accidental, they decided quickly, though they wouldn't put it past a disgruntled cook to do it on purpose. Nobody had died or gotten seriously injured and that was what mattered. Bucky came the closest, with two cracked ribs where Peggy had kicked him.
"How you not… go nuts?" Steve asked quietly as they all began to drift off in the quiet heat.
"Eh, I picked the mushrooms out. They were all soggy," Bucky said with a flop of his hand. It was a lie and Tony knew it, the man loved mushrooms. He'd never sacrifice any, no matter if their texture left a lot to be desired.
Steve looked over to his boyfriend and Tony resigned himself to telling the truth. Hopefully. "With the amount of drugs I used to take? Please. I used to party with the stars," he snorted.
The horror on Steve's face almost made him regret saying so. "Then how did you stop?" the blonde asked. He looked like he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
"I had a burger so bad it made me rethink my whole life," Tony said, chuckling as he remembered staring down at that wrapper and realizing that this was complete bullshit, "I threw it all into the ocean and sobered up that night." Not counting the alcohol, because he was far too fond of his drinking problem to give it up. Just the drugs went.
This time when he looked up at Steve, there was a smile on the man's face. "I don't know how a burger of all things would bring it on, but I'm glad you made that decision," Cap said, sliding a large hand into the dark hair.
"Me too," Tony mumbled. He curled into his boyfriend's side, wrapped his arms around that nearly impossible waist, and fell asleep again. This time there were no nightmares.
He credited Steve for that.
Things only picked up from there. Tony and Bucky still ran assassination missions, and still succeeded in every single one. The Commandos kept destroying HYDRA bases, interrupting supply lines, and generally being gremlins in a toy store.
The Winter Soldier kept taking pot shots at his previous self, but Tony or Steve were always there to block it. Sometimes they could chase him off and sometimes they could do nothing more than get to cover until reinforcements arrived. Bucky obviously hated being the one to need defending, was realistic about his chances; he complained but didn't protest.
They were out on a mission in Poland when Steve's 26th birthday came around; their mission accidentally freed a village, and the Commandos convinced him to stay the night. A huge party had been put on, celebrating their relative freedom, with plenty of beer and dancing like Tony barely believed.
Automatically his feet began moving, remembering the steps that his mother had taught him so many years ago. It was just too bad that he couldn't dance with the one he really wanted. So instead he took the hand of a pretty woman who reminded him a little of Pepper (dear gods, he missed her) and danced the night away.
When she made it clear that she expected something at the end of the night however, he gave her a kiss on her cheek and slurred in Polish about being too drunk to get it up. Thank goodness the woman simply smiled kindly, if disappointedly, and allowed him to stumble off to where the Commandos were crashing for the night. He didn't feel guilty at all, as he crawled in next to Steve.
"Tony?" the blond asked, waking up when the mattress squeaked.
"Yeah," Tony whispered. He laid on his side, watching the handsome face on the other side of the mattress slowly come to.
"Did you just get in?" Steve asked, eyes going to the piece of the floor that Bucky had claimed as his own. Last Tony saw, he had been lured into the home of a pretty little blonde that reminded him of Steve before the Serum, not that he would ever say so.
Tony made an affirmative noise, and instead of speaking laid a kiss on those pretty pink lips in front of him. Steve was seriously too tempting for his own good.
Slowly the other man kissed him back, sighing into his mouth with pleasure when a skilled tongue licked at the seam of his lips. It was a hard thing to not press Steve into the mattress and have his filthy way with him right then.
When they paused to breathe, Tony so proud that he managed to drive the super soldier breathless, a question made his heart speed up. "What's that thing in your chest?"
"It's called a heart. Or were you asking about the lungs or aorta?" Tony answered sarcastically even as his brain scrambled for an answer to tell him.
The snort he got for it almost made him smile. "You know what I mean. This… metal? thing sticking out," Steve clarified. He put a big hand over the metal in his lover's chest, holding the most vulnerable part of him without even knowing it.
Somehow the panic didn't come. Maybe because this was Captain America or maybe because it was Steve; probably because Tony was stupidly in love with him. Instead of his usual response (knock the hand away, tell them to get the hell out of his home, then crawl into the bathroom to have a panic attack) he cradled Steve's warm palm closer against his constantly cold chest. "It's more than my life's worth to tell you that," he said, honest if not totally truthful.
"One of those things?" Steve asked sadly.
"Yeah," Tony replied, wishing that he could tell him. There was Bucky, but it wasn't the same. He hated not being able to tell the truth to the one he cared about most, hated that he had to preserve the timeline, loathed the metal in his chest almost as much as he loved the man in front of him.
There was a moment of silence, but it was busy and tense with thought. Even in the dim light, Tony was able to see perfectly how his boyfriend's brow furrowed and he nibbled on his lips. No fair, he wanted to do that.
"Do you think you'll ever be able to tell me about those things?" Steve asked hesitantly.
If only he knew the answer. "I won't know until I do," Tony shrugged, "But nothing stays secret forever, even if it should. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes things don't happen in the right order. I think the real question is how long you'd be willing to wait for your answers."
The answer only took a few minutes for Steve to come up with. "After the war."
That was fair even though it wasn't. Neither of them would make it that long. Kissing him to cover up the sudden fear and melancholy over that thought, Tony nodded. "After the war I'll tell you everything I can," he promised.
He remembered answering all the strange questions he could that Steve asked him in the 2010's. They made a whole lot more sense since he got here. It was just a pity that he didn't think he'd ever be able to answer them all.
"C'mon, let's get some sleep while we can," Tony prompted with a disappointed sigh. It was a real pain to keep himself from trying to get into Steve's pants, between the glowing metal issue in his chest and the other man's prudery. Err, morals. Not that they ever had the time or privacy for anything to happen anyways.
It was a quick thing to rearrange themselves, Steve curled protectively around Tony on the small mattress. The man from the future was sure his heart tried beating out of his chest when a large hand cupped his arc reactor protectively. Even without knowing what it was or what it did, Cap seemed to understand that it was important. Fragile.
"Shhh… Sleep. You're safe," Steve murmured comfortingly in his ear.
Tony clutched the other man's hand to his chest. That hand was safe, it would protect his mechanical heart and not rip it out; he knew it instinctively. It was enough to help him fall asleep.
That was when the Commandos started covering for the two of them. About Tony, they would joke and say that he would chase anything in a skirt that didn't say no. Steve, they more seriously took as being too dedicated to the cause, pure and ridiculously shy to have anything to do with anyone's bits. Bucky especially got into it, telling cheerfully about the mission in Switzerland where Tony had to hide behind a furiously blushing Steve from a mob of ladies he had flirted with earlier.
They all knew the truth though. Even if some of them didn't approve. Though that seemed to all be from the thought that Tony would ever had the balls (and lack of sense) to cheat on Steve with his best friend. Even if it was a reaction to a kind of trauma that (thank everything science-y) didn't happen. The thing was, that it was better than anyone knowing the truth. So he let them keep thinking it.
That probably wasn't helped when Bucky dragged him into a closet aboard the ship that was going to take them back to London. "Whoa tiger, I know you're hungry for this-" Tony was cut off by the sheer terror in Bucky's face. "What's up?"
"Are we even human anymore?" the other man asked desperately, "Don't you feel something… off? Different? and not in a good way, inside of you somewhere?" It was breaking him apart on the inside, Tony could see that clearly.
Truthfully, he had felt that same thing since they got out of that goddamned lab. The energy that he had gained during their escape hadn't faded, his already single-minded focus had only grown greater. Speed that had never been inconsiderable got more so, strength and dexterity taken to extremes. It made his skin crawl to think that maybe he had been-
Oh who was he kidding, they had tested an experimental super soldier serum on him just like they had on Bucky. It was obvious.
Luckily no one else had noticed yet. They hadn't known each other well before Azzano and even their time there couldn't be used as a measure because of the conditions they had been stuck under. So when Bucky and Tony had been able to keep a steel beam as thick as their combined waists from flattening the other Commandos, no one thought it was out of the ordinary. At the time, Tony had been happy to play it off as adrenaline.
He told himself that his sudden increase in speed and endurance was from the amount of exercise that he had to do. That his suddenly perfect recall evolving from an eidetic memory was out of necessity. His immunity to the shrooms was from all his years of hard drugs. It was bullshit and he knew it; he had just been running away from what was new and scary.
Now, with Bucky demanding answers almost hysterically, he realized that he had to face it. "The stuff that Zola did to us was a bastardized version of the Super Soldier Serum that we used on Steve. I'm not sure what that says." Tony almost regretted the words when Bucky collapsed onto the floor.
"Super soldier," Bucky repeated numbly.
Tony slid down the wall to sit beside him. "Yeah. Just like Steve," he said. It was ironic that for most of his life he had wanted to be like Captain America and now that he was, he wished it had happened any other way. The wounds were long healed, but he still felt the scalpels and needles tearing into him and the chemicals burning him from the inside.
It was a moment before Bucky spoke, and when he did it was with the determination Tony had come to expect from him. "Then we're still human where it counts," he said firmly.
"Speak for yourself," Tony countered dryly.
When Frenchie opened the closet, they were laughing. If it was a little hysterical, he didn't say anything about it.
