Tony could not have asked for a better person to review the body armor designs. Duo understood the functionality, the limitations, asked all the right questions. He even got Duo to try on a prototype for him. Duo tested his range of motion, giving his thoughts on how different hostlers would fit against it.
"Is it comfortable?" Tony asked, two screens up, FRIDAY taking notes of Duo's responses.
"It's not uncomfortable," Duo said, swinging his arms. "Way more comfortable than traditional Kevlar, that's for sure."
The Jesus tattoo on his neck seemed like it was taunting Tony, very dark against Duo's pale skin.
"Why the tattoo?" Tony asked because it was eating at him. In Tony's experience, it was the kind of things that girls with low self-esteem and self-worth did. Young and dumb and overly romantic in best-case scenarios.
"Huh?" Duo asked.
Tony motioned to his own throat with a couple fingers. "The tattoo."
Duo looked at him somewhere between confused and amused. "Not a fan?"
"It… just… doesn't seem like…" He floundered, not able to come up with anything that wouldn't be insulting. Duo crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, going for a stern face but eyes gleaming with humor, and Tony gave up. "Just not what I'd expect from someone like you."
"Someone like me?" Duo asked, but he was still on the curious side of amused.
Tony had started this conversation. He reserved the right to end it. "How are the edges?"
"Oh, no," Duo said, "Nice try. Tell me what I'm like."
Too late Tony remembered what Winner had said about Duo not believing he was valued beyond his skills. He changed tack. "I can't imagine wanting someone's name on me," he admitted.
Duo gave him a look that said he was well aware of what Tony was doing, but he was going to let it go—at least this time. "Jesus's idea, obviously."
"But he did have your name, too," Tony remembered.
"Also his idea. I'd like to say that I threw a fit and said I wasn't doing it if he wasn't, but I didn't. It just got to a point where I loved him, and it would make him happy, so refusing it just seemed petty, though I did draw the line and insist it could be hidden. He wanted it to be this big, obnoxious script that took up the whole side of my neck and screamed cartel." He rolled his eyes, but there was something affectionate in it. "He surprised me by getting my name on our honeymoon." His eyes went distant and sad, but he shook his head as if shaking it away. Tony opened his mouth to ask another question, but Duo cut him off. "Nope. No more talking about me tonight. This morning? Today?" He chuckled, that slightly giddy laugh of the way overtired. "Your turn," he said.
"My turn?" Tony asked.
"Yeah, you've been asking me all these questions, but you haven't told me anything about you."
"You haven't exactly seemed interested," Tony pointed out gently.
"Yeah, well, I'm listening now. So tell me something I couldn't just look up about you."
"Have you researched me?" Tony wondered.
"No, well, not more than I knew before. I'm enough of an engineering nerd to read your papers and shit. I could never get into giving a damn about celebrities' personal lives though. I used to pick up some just from office gossip, but it's been a while."
"You know one thing that's different about you?" Tony asked, beginning with that querying tone he liked to lead with.
"I thought we weren't talking about me anymore?"
"You haven't asked me about my money. Not once. You don't assume I can spend it freely on you—even though I obviously can."
Duo turned away. "I don't get your point."
"My point is that you don't seem interested in it at all." Tony waved a screwdriver in his direction. "That makes you different. Especially because you, more than literally anyone else living, have a claim to it. You grew up with, literally nothing, as far as I understand. How do you not care?"
"I told you we weren't talking about me anymore."
"You told. This is me ignoring it."
"And this is me telling you no and meaning it."
"Come on," Tony said, throwing his head back dramatically before looking at Duo again. "You have to care, or at least be curious."
"It's your money, not mine, and I know that being rich doesn't make you happy."
"Most people think it does."
"Do I strike you as 'most people'?" Duo asked dryly, meeting his eyes.
"But you are aware of it. You told Barnes about all the costs of maintaining and outfitting the Avengers."
Duo sighed. "Last question I'm answering, and I mean it."
"Fine," Tony agreed. The glare Duo shot at him made him put his hands up. "Swear. Last question tonight. Today."
Duo eyed him for another moment, gauging his insincerity before saying, "I grew up with nothing, so I don't take where things come from for granted. I do read the news, and the lawsuits you're facing are in it. That Barnes and Rogers didn't know about them when the knowledge is so accessible doesn't say a lot nice about them. Also, Quatre Winner is one of my best friends. I understand what all this"— He indicated the workshop or the Tower, or maybe both.—"costs better than most. And if I ever so much as breathed that I needed money in Quat's general direction, he'd probably throw more at me than I could spend in a lifetime. All of which means, I don't need your money, so it's none of my business what you do with it." He leaned against the table. "So your turn to do some sharing."
"What do you want to know about?"
"Well, you've never been married, so I can't nag you to tell me about your spouse." Tony fidgeted, wondering what Duo might ask, resolving to answer as honestly as he could. Tony had asked some fairly personal questions, after all. "Tell me about going to college when you were a snot-nosed brat."
Tony did not sigh in relief because the look Duo gave him said he knew he was pitching Tony an easy topic. Tony was both relieved and disappointed. Relieved because answering the hard questions was going to be, well, hard. Disappointed because Duo wasn't letting him off the hook as much as he was keeping him at arm's length. Tony cared about the hard questions, needed the answers because he needed to know whatever he could about his son. Duo didn't ask them because he wasn't there yet.
That was okay. Duo had trust issues—and well-founded ones by the looks of it. Tony wasn't going to win him over in a day or even a few weeks, even if it was hard to admit. He had plenty of kid-in-college stories he could share. If he could make Duo laugh, he'd count that as a win.
When FRIDAY told Natasha that Tony was in the workshop at 8 a.m., she wasn't surprised. She was surprised to find Maxwell down there with him, sitting up on the oversized couch that had ended up in the workshop back when Steve used to hang out there and had never found its way out again. Tony's head was pillowed on his thigh, an arm around Duo's waist, another wrapped around a thigh as if Tony was making sure no one could pry Duo away from him. Natasha was familiar with Tony's tendency to cling onto anyone near when he slept, but it had been a while since she'd seen it.
She must have made a noise because Maxwell's head jerked up, eyes alert, looking for a threat until they found her. Tony made a grumbling noise, and Maxwell relaxed, running a hand through Tony's hair, soothing him back into sleep automatically.
Making a decision, Natasha let herself into the workshop. She took a chance and signed Trade you?
Maxwell blinked, actual awareness returning instead of instinctual reaction. He looked down at Tony, took in his situation, and shrugged. "Don't think he's letting go until he wakes up," he admitted. He pitched his voice perfectly to be heard but not to disturb Tony.
"You sure?" she asked. "He needs the sleep, but you look like you could use it too," she pointed out. Sleeping upright like that couldn't have been very restful, and he hadn't been deeply asleep.
He stretched his neck with care, working out kinks, but he settled back. "Yeah. I do this too. Move the person I'm attached to, and it's over."
"You weren't," she pointed out, moving closer, raising an eyebrow.
"I was just dozing."
"You could have left before he curled up on you," Natasha pointed out.
"I was reading through the Accords. Didn't seem worth waking him up. Figured he sleeps better with someone else."
It was the same thoughtless kindness that Tony sometimes had—doing something because it was the right thing to do, not because he was being nice or trying to impress anyone. Tony's were harder to pick up on because his often came in the form of throwing money at things, but she thought it came from the same place.
"Do you have anywhere to be today?" she asked, deciding not to comment on the Accords.
"Technically, but I'm really tired of being treated like the bad guy. NYPD knows where to find me if they need to." He shifted carefully, managing to uncross his legs without dislodging Tony, and propped his feet up on the coffee table.
"He really wants this to work." Natasha shouldn't have been the one to say it, but it needed to be said and she wasn't sure anyone else would.
Maxwell quirked an eyebrow exactly like Tony did, and for the first time, she saw the physical resemblance. It wasn't in his features, exactly. It was in the animation in his face, the brightness in his eyes, the way he smirked. "Did you really think I hadn't noticed?" he asked. Tony cuddled in closer to Maxwell. Maxwell turned his attention back to him again, a hand rubbing at the nape of Tony's neck, soothing the tension there, and Tony sighed back into sleep. When he looked back up, his eyes were thoughtful. "Wouldn't have thought Tony Stark was touch starved."
His eyes were vaguely curious, but she could tell if she didn't answer the implied question, he'd shrug it away. "Howard Stark was a great man," she began, taking care with her words, and Maxwell's fingers continued their soothing.
"Not such a great father, I gather?" Natasha simply shook her head. "He doesn't know how to quit, does he?" he asked. "Even after everything with Rogers—they're here because of Stark. He went to bat for them. He's doing everything he can to make these Accords work for you all."
"If you're asking if he'll ever be okay with failing you, then no. Not sure if there's anything you can do to make him give up trying. Maybe kill babies?" It was teasing, but also kind of true. It would probably take a major atrocity for Tony to assume Maxwell was beyond saving.
Maxwell sighed, moving his hand to card through Tony's hair. He looked down at Tony with ancient eyes. Something around the edges tightened and he looked back up at Natasha, meeting her gaze, pinning her in place as surely as if he'd frozen her to the spot. "I need a promise." Natasha's heart began to pound because she knew that look. That look was one Tony had at his most dangerous, his most reckless. It wasn't one she enjoyed seeing reflected in his son.
"I need to know what I'm promising first."
"If I ever become a threat to him, I need you to put me down."
Whatever she expected Maxwell to say, it wasn't that.
"No," she said, sharp and immediate.
"He needs someone to do what's best for him, even if he will hate them for it. It can't be Rogers or Barnes. He'd kill them. I don't think Banner has enough control to do it, or he'd ever forgive himself if he did."
"You can't ask this of me," she said, low, a thread of anger in it.
"You don't know what I am. I hope you never have to learn. But Death walks with me, Widow." She glared as he invoked her code name. "And it doesn't play well with others. Loving me has been enough to get people killed in the past. If I'm going to take this risk, take this chance, I need someone who is on his side, above all. Someone willing to make the hard call if necessary."
"There is no world in which killing you will ever be the right thing for Tony," she said, and her voice was rough with emotion. "He's already all in. If something happened to you—"
"If something happens to me, he needs someone to hold him together. I think he has those. But if I happen to him, he needs someone to make the call he can't."
"I won't do it. I won't make that promise," she said.
"Then I can't stay."
If it wouldn't wake Tony, she'd have slapped him, but if there were ever a conversation she didn't want Tony to overhear, it was this one. "Damn you," she said and meant it. "There is a middle ground."
"Not in this. I've walked that edge before. If there's a next time… I don't know that anything's pulling me back. Quat would give the order, if he were there, but I doubt you'll have that luxury."
"I already told you no," she told him, turning to leave.
"Natasha," Maxwell raised his voice enough to make her stop. She looked back at him. "I need that promise, or I need to leave."
Those eerie, unnatural eyes were unyielding. He would do it. He would leave. Be gone. Somehow Natasha knew Tony would never find him. Maxwell had been a ghost for two years, and he hadn't even been trying to hide.
"Damn you," she repeated, barely above a whisper.
But Maxwell's eyes softened. "Thank you," he said, and his voice rang with sincerity and even relief. "And I'm sorry."
The only reason she didn't slam the door was because it didn't slam. Fucking Starks. Selfish even in their selflessness.
