Tony's not sure when he realized Steve's not going to come home. It could have been when his husband's phone started going straight to voicemail. It could have been after Porcupine's initiation, while Tony held miniscule cucumber sandwiches between his armored fingers with a delicacy that surprised even himself, although he couldn't eat them because of the faceplate. It could even have been when Tony started to dial the construction company Steve worked for, only to to realize he didn't even know the company's name, much less the phone number. But no matter when he realized it, it doesn't really hit him until he's twitching through a panic attack on the kitchen floor and reaching out for support that isn't there.

Eventually he calms himself down, if you can call hyperventilating until you grey out calming down. He sits up slowly, uncurling from the fetal position he held on the cold tile, and takes a deep breath. His head hits the kitchen drawers and he curses his own stupid decision to get light colored wood for the kitchen. God, it looks terrible. What would the League think, if they knew his identity and frequented his house?

Ah, who is he kidding. When has he ever given a shit about that sort of thing?

That's how he finds the phone; curled up on the kitchen floor, he just happens to have a perfect view of the space between the bookshelf and the wall by the door. The wall looks odd, and there's a blue light flashing in the dark space, a short distance above the ground. Tony admires how it's been positioned in such a way that, when the lights are off, the glow can't be seen throughout the rest of the house.

Well, no. First, he tenses up and wonders who had the guts to stick a recording device in his home and if it was someone from the League. He thinks of Porcupine and decides that some of them must be stupid enough. It's when he crawls closer, silent as a man on his hands and knees can be with a kitchen knife tucked into a belt loop, that he realizes the blue flashing is more indicative of a phone than the typical red glare of a bug. Then he admires how well it was hidden.

Then he wonders why Steve would hide it.

It was a good decision, Tony concedes, to hide it there. Tony never cleans, and he certainly never goes near the bookshelf. Nor does he make a habit of crawling around on the kitchen floor.

But Steve's a construction worker. What does he need with a hidden phone?

And it's clearly been there for a while. Steve had installed a pocket, the exact size of this cell phone. Which, Tony notes with disgust, is a six-year-old brick.

Ancient Nokia set aside, he shoves the shelf a little further away from the wall - there's a nerve-wracking moment where the contents wobble dangerously and Tony imagines Steve stopping everything before it can fall - and takes a closer look. The pocket's clearly been there awhile, nearly as long as the phone, although there are clear signs of duct tape having been used. A closer look at the pocket reveals a charging port inside, explaining how the phone is still alive. There's no dust to indicate how long the phone's been left there...

Tony snatches it up and checks the date of the newest message.

It's from one Clint Barton, a name Tony finds himself able to connect to a face. He's met Clint, at one of those after work parties the construction company throws when they've fulfilled a contract. He seemed like an okay guy, he supposes. Withdrawn, kinda moody, but easy enough to get along with. Once he got drunk he was the funniest guy in the room. But as far as Tony knows, he's no closer to Steve as any of the other coworkers. So why -?

He reads the text.

"cap: debrief at HQ, 1500. supe activity on phil-dar."

It was sent three days ago.

Tony frowns at the message. Cap? HQ? Supe activity? Phil-dar? Is this some sort of code?

He pulls up the next message.

"cap: retrieval from cover at 0800. bring your hard hat for tony."

That message, from a vaguely familiar 'Phil Coulson', was sent just hours before the one from Clint. It only served to confuse Tony further. Tony never went to Steve's workplace. It would only make sense for the hard hat to be used by Steve himself.

cover at 0800

bring your hard hat for tony

Unless Steve wasn't actually using a hard hat at work. After all, he's never actually seen Steve's workplace. And sometimes he comes home covered in more kinds of dirt than one can generally find at a construction site. Not to mention the injuries he gets: random bruising, small cuts and sprained wrists that Steve had always written off as part of the job. However, the more Tony thinks about all the times he'd blindly trusted his husband's word over his own suspicious mind (and why shouldn't he have?), the clearer the picture's starting to become.

cap

capkiller

nobody's really been able to so much as incapacitate him

something with an O sound and an E sound

Tony

Tony shoves himself to his feet and staggers over to the kitchen sink to throw up.

It can't be.

It can't.