"Tell them he's worse than dangerous. No! You do not get to yell at me in judicial court and then demand my help! That's not how this works!"
Despite the caustic tone, his voice is quiet, soft even. An angler fish's lull before it bites down. Not that there is any reason to be muted in this sound proofed room.
At five in the morning, the beginnings of dawn spill over the treetops, through the wall length windows. Just a hint of the heat this unseasonably warm September day will bring.
Steve's shoes make no sound on the springy flooring. He leans on the ballet barre, arms folded and face neutral, hoping it will project something non-confrontational for when Tony turns around from his agitated pacing.
"Rumlow?"
Steve straightens.
Tony's expression falls slightly, duplicated in the row of mirrors.
With a rushed intake of breath, Steve crosses the studio. Tony holds up a hand without turning around. "I'm not doing this for you…I'll be on the next flight out."
Hanging up, Tony scrubs a hand through his hair. He finally swivels on his heel. "Joint chiefs are milking that 'advising' clause in our statement."
Steve forces himself to resume leaning on the barre. "Still angry about the hiatus announcement, huh?"
Tony isn't fooled by the casual tone, locking onto Steve's eyes.
For a long time Steve's world is nothing but the pulsing in and out of veins in Tony's face. The twitch around his upper jaw. His mouth's tsunami-like rise and curl.
"Where?" asks Steve.
"Near Nigeria."
"I'm going."
"Absolutely not." Tony slashes his hand downwards. "Sure, you know Rumlow's style, his weaknesses, but that just means he knows yours too. He'll exploit you."
Steve feels the phantom sting of a taser around his ribs. He doesn't realize he's made an agonized sound until Tony's eyes fall even further. Something bubbles up in them, hot and empathetic.
"Hey. Steve, I get it. But I already fished your shield out of the water once when you wouldn't let me help you. Let's learn from our mistakes, shall we?"
Then Steve spends another few minutes in a stare off with the floor.
"The army is handling it," says Tony, "And I promised to go and consult on clean up. That was our agreement, remember? We're on hiatus because that child comes first now. We help in an advising role only. No fighting."
"Rumlow's dangerous," says Steve, stalling.
"I know. You heard me tell them that."
Steve's eyes lift, though his head does not. "What about Ross?"
Tony scoffs. "The UN is treating Ross like the joke he is. He's not a threat anymore, not after he tried to kidnap a physicist and a teenager. The Accords have been scrapped in favour of our own documented statement. Pepper helped draft it, a protocol for superheroes—not us—who do overseas missions."
A pebble rolls around in Steve's forehead, pain both real and imagined. Memory pain. Escaped pain.
"Steve? You can trust me, you know."
Steve finally takes a deep, genuine breath. Tony has dropped any dramatic armour and stands there with his arms at his sides, completely open, letting Steve read his face. He's an unsolvable puzzle that way.
"Steve?"
"I do trust you." Steve says the words and they sound like his heartbeat. "I…I let Rumlow get away the first time."
"Ah." Something clears in Tony's face. "Guilt. Got it. Guilt I can work with."
He heads for the door, straightening his tie. "Besides. We have a much more important mission now."
Like two phantoms, Steve follows Tony out of Nat's ballet studio and down the darkened hallway. With their resident spies on vacation at the farm and Thor away to deal with "family issues," the compound is rather deserted. It's the reason they don't run into anyone on their trek down the stairs and into a smaller, cozier bedroom.
Tony opens the door and navigates silently around a beanbag chair and a study desk. The dim lighting takes a minute to adjust to.
Steve's head swirls with arguments and their no-fighting agreement and the memory of Rumlow lunging for him in that elevator…
He doesn't hear what Tony says to Peter in a low murmur. The boy's eyes are still closed, lashes clumped with sleep. He only wakes when Tony's hand brushes from his hair to his cheek.
It's like all the exhaustion hit Peter at once on their Mediterranean vacation. He can't seem to sleep enough, finally making it through a whole night without any traumatic memories interrupting. Clint has found him asleep against the door, on the ceiling, tucked under a table.
The whole month has passed this way. Steve finally relaxed, knowing he wouldn't hear screams down the hall.
"S've?" a higher, slurred voice asks.
Tony smiles, that big, goofy one he can't seem to stifle when Peter looks young like this. "Yeah. Stevie's on watch. I'll be back so fast you won't even notice I'm gone. I just have to call MIT and tell them I can't give that speech today."
Peter's lips turn up a little, cheeks flushed. "Come?"
"Of course you can come to MIT with me. We'll tell Principal Morita you're sick and everything."
Steve rolls his eyes.
Then Tony's crinkled face drops. He gazes for a long moment at Peter. "You'll be great. First day of eleventh grade. I'm proud of you, Pete. No matter what."
Peter links his pinky finger through Tony's in that new gesture they repeat often. "No matter what."
"That's right," says Tony again, "no matter what."
The tumult in Steve's chest dissipates. He's still troubled over not facing the one who knowingly took Bucky away from him, but here, looking at this son none of them deserve, he breathes easier.
Tony nods at Peter and it is somehow more loving than any kiss or hug he could give.
Then he is gone with a quick look at Steve. Steve mirrors that nod, open. It's a promise.
"Steve?"
Peter, on his right side, has his legs tucked up to his chest. A blanket is half off him, probably from where he overheated in the night, if the patchy, flushed cheeks and sweat curled roots are anything to go by.
His eyes are dazzling, even in the dark, half lidded.
The sight steals several beats of Steve's heart. Something so rare, unfathomably precious, staring back at him.
Peter is too tiny even now. The doctors can't figure out why he won't grow.
His metabolism, let alone his healing factor, were shut down for such a long period that they don't seem to be compensating an inch. They all know Tony worries over it late into the night, poring over charts and nutrient formulas.
Now, lax with sleep, Peter has the looks of someone three years younger. It's like he's barely changed from when they met him.
He's still the most beautiful thing Steve's ever seen.
Steve comes over and kneels down, his elbows resting on the bed. "Hey, Frodo. Sorry for waking you so early; we figured you'd want to say goodbye to Tony before he left. Just you, me, and Bruce in the compound for the week."
"Bad one?"
Steve grins at the boy's clipped way of talking. "Nothing big, no. Just a little squabble in Africa. Tony benched me because I'm too close to this one."
Peter's eyes droop a little, then suddenly snap back open. He lifts a wobbly hand off his mattress and the pads of his fingers close ever so gently around Steve's nose.
Steve stills, letting the hand roam from his nose to his hair, clamping in the blonde locks still wet from the shower.
The hand is unsteady, Peter's depth perception not fully awake, but he manages to smooth his smaller fingers over Steve's eye lids and cheek and ears before his arm tires. Steve again feels the slow close and the slight pressure of finger nails around his nose.
To an outsider, it might seem like a childish action, some long lost toddler habit in Peter's mind surfacing when he's not fully conscious.
Steve knows better.
He sees the solemn gaze also roaming over his face.
Peter grips Steve's hair in a butterfly light grip as if to keep his arm upright. Steve leans into the forearm brushing his right cheek.
Always so tiny…
"You're not that old," Peter whispers.
Steve's eyebrows shoot up. He closes his mouth when he realizes he's gaping. "I thought we had this conversation yesterday."
Peter doesn't fall for the tease. "You're only twenty four. Must be tough sometimes."
Steve has absolutely no idea what to say to that so he just leans forward and kisses Peter's own nose. The boy blinks. He twitches his nose as if to make sure it's still there.
With a soft chuckle, Steve tenderly pries the hand out of his hair and holds it. "What's up, baby boy?"
Peter shifts. Steve's heightened sense of touch can make out striated whorls in Peter's fingerprints, all five of them closed around Steve's. He feels Peter's bird wing heartbeat. The rush of blood under the boy's skin. He feels the mattress dip when Peter leans his head back on the pillow to better meet Steve's eyes.
"S…Are you…sad you're not goin' instead of Tony? That you agreed…no fighting?"
It's a jumbled mess of a question.
Steve understands it perfectly. It makes the backs of his eyes burn. He has to inhale and exhale, deliberately, a few times.
Peter, apparently unnerved by Steve's pause, rearranges his fingers so they're fisted around Steve's thumb joint.
"Peter…"
"Sorry I asked."
"No, Peter. You have no need to apologize." Steve uses the top joint of his thumb to rub Peter's knuckles. He sifts through how to answer. "You know what PTSD is, right?"
A beat passes. Peter nods, brows drawn. "You have it."
"In a weird way, we all have it."
Peter says nothing. It is strange yet appropriate for their crazy lifestyle, Steve thinks, that such aged and somber eyes gaze out from such a young, stunted body.
"But when it was…particularly bad, to the point where it controlled my life, I…"
Steve's lips thin and he sucks in a breath through his nose, noisy in the dead silent room.
"Two years ago and I would have answered your question with a definite 'yes.' Fighting was my life but domesticity was the worst battle field of all. I could never have what I fought for. I couldn't wait to die."
Peter's grip tightens.
"It scared me too. And even on days it didn't, it was always something sharp, keeping me out from being a part of the life I was so eager to leave behind. Don't you see, Peter?"
Peter breathes raggedly.
Steve laughs but it's not a steady sound. "This is everything I never thought I'd get to have. So, no. Not for one bloody second do I regret not going. I'm excited to not fight, to enjoy this for the rest of my life."
The room's lighting hasn't changed but Peter's eyes flash. He sums up all the words swimming in his stare by scooting forward, forehead pressed to Steve's chest.
"Steve."
Steve huffs another wet and broken sound. He closes his eyes, cups the boy's head closer, and feels truly home since the day his mother died. "Peter."
(The back of the boat hinges down into a kind of ramp. Water pools over it, close to the sitting area of the deck. Clint holds onto it in shock.
Balmy winds float over the boat. They aren't what raise goosebumps on Peter's skin where he crosses them defensively over his bare chest.
"What do you mean you can't swim? Peter!" Clint's mouth drops open again. "Are you telling me you've never learned?"
Peter says nothing. Seagulls screech overhead.
"Do the others know?"
Peter hesitates. Shakes his head.
And Clint bobs up and down in the water, treading with his legs. His jaw clenches, teeth tight. Something about those grey eyes brightens when they fix on Peter, ribs starkly visible, blue swim trunks too big for his pointy hip bones.
"Do you trust me, Peter?"
A pause. Peter looks at his feet. "You're a good swimmer."
"But do you trust me?")