I watched Iron Man 1 and 2, and then Captain America, Thor and The Avengers last night and today, and then I decided I was going to write a small ficlet, a page long, maybe two at the most, a funny one, you know?

This is the result – the first chapter of a romance with a little bit of angst thrown in for spice.

Hope you guys enjoy it!

I'm Gonna Build My Boy a Boyfriend

aka Captain America's history

by Howard Stark

Howard Stark was a ridiculously smart man. He was smarter than anyone he had ever met – with the possible exception of Erskine, who had actually made a serum that could not be replicated, but that was a different kind of cleverness.

Howard was, in reality, a genius. A proper, true genius, with so much smart he could share it with ten people and still have plenty to go around. The one kind of smart he lacked, though, was the emotional one. He had always been crap dealing with people, he would either treat them like objects, or keep them at arm's length because he didn't know how to deal with the feelings and relationships that came with those feelings. It had been that way with his wife, and even more so with his son. After all, a wife and a husband growing apart was not something unusual, but keeping your son away from you was not something one should do, but the thing is Howard never knew how to deal with Tony.

And one of the main reasons for that was simply because Tony was so much more of a genius than he himself was. The boy had built his very first circuit – working and properly engineered – at age four, and had made himself some AI when he was only seventeen. Tony was not normal by any standards - while Howard was smart and capable, Tony seemed to be able to think about ten different things all the time, giving each one just enough attention to get it done perfectly.

While he was little, he was a nightmare-child – up at odd hours at night, always talking and moving things around, driving nannies crazy within days. Maria was never any good at taking care of kids, and Howard, well, at first, Howard thought Tony was amusing. But when he started actually correcting Howard about some things in his projects – and being right about the corrections – and showing his teacher and tutors things his father was doing wrong, and he knew how to do it right, Howard started to… not dislike, but at the very least not be amused by Tony anymore.

It was about this time he started sending Tony to a prep-school – a boarding prep-school – where he could be smart, but not close enough to Howard to cause him any damage.

He loved his son, by all the gods, he did, but he was just not sure he could continue loving him if he kept his son around.

In all truth, he knew he had always been a wretched father-figure for his son. He had great problems about drinking, the main problem being that he couldn't stop doing it when he should, he didn't know how to deal with people, and he was always ordering someone around, as if the world was constituted exclusively by his employees.

He didn't want his son to be like that, that's why he sent him away.

The fact that he didn't feel threatened when Tony wasn't around was never brought up, not even by himself, alone, at night, in the darkness. Not even when he was so drunk he couldn't think straight.

His life fell apart very easily, and his death was not something he should have been surprised by, even if his last words didn't show it. He died, and along with him, his wife. They were dead, and they had left Tony, alone and cold, behind.

Now, Howard might have never said it to Tony himself, but he was proud of his son. He didn't like being outdone by a child – let alone his own child – but he was absolutely proud of the fact that Tony could outdo him. He truly was.

It was a constant battle, actually, between his father instincts and his – rather large – ego: he didn't want to have anyone smarter than him around, but if there had to be someone, than let it be a Stark of his own creation, damn it.

So that's what was left for Tony to live: a life not knowing much about his parents, thinking his mother cold, and unfeeling and drunk, his father a bastard who didn't even like him, and a company to run, the bane of his very own existence while being the very reason he felt he had a reason to live.

Starks were very smart, but they were also very confusing. And confused.

Tony had very few people in his life in whom he trusted. He trusted Pepper, and also… well. That was it. He trusted Pepper, and that's it. Even after the whole, 'hey, we're a team, let's share a Tower' thing he didn't fully trust any of the Avengers. Especially with the way their track-record went. Natasha had betrayed him once – apart from being a, you know, killer and spy. Hawkeye was too damn frustrating to be trusted, he took his own life as a joke, and Tony wasn't about to trust someone like that with his own life, not fully. Bruce wasn't so bad, and even the Hulk seemed a bit fond of Tony, but they were all a bit weary of the Big Guy, mainly because Bruce himself didn't trust his darker side; and Thor… well, Thor was like an overgrown teenager. He was learning to be mature and responsible and all that, but man, he was annoying, and a bit self-righteous.

Of course that left Captain America to be considered.

At first, Tony wasn't sure he even liked Captain America – he was too by the rules, too do as you're told to be fully trusted. Steve Rogers, however, seemed like a puppy.

This was it, a puppy, with his lost eyes, and the way he seemed to think of himself as a small, harmless guy all the time he was not wearing his uniform. He would go to the market and come back all flushed and timid because someone recognized him, and he didn't see what was so special about himself.

So, Tony learned how to take apart Steve and Captain, in a way he didn't seem to separate Tony and Iron Man. What he knew, for sure, was that both him and his suit – and Jarvis, apparently – trusted Steve, and were growing fonder and fonder of the Captain as he was learning to let go of his control issues, and assuming responsibility for the Team.

The Team which, by the way, was the reason for his break-up with Pepper. He didn't even know how that came to be, to be truthful, one minute they were arguing, the next he gave a wrong answer to something – which might be related to choosing to be Iron Man or her husband, and him choosing the suit without much thought, but he was not sure – and this was it, the end of Tony's steady relationship.

The day Pepper left the tower – Avenger's Tower now, even if Tony liked it better when it was Stark Tower -, Tony had a little bit of a breakdown. There were no tears involved, he wasn't very good at the crying bit, but he waited for everyone to go to bed while he hid in his workroom, and then he went to the kitchen, and tried to find some alcohol. He found a few bottles of whiskey, he turned Jarvis to mute, and he put five of those bottles on the table, and then he sat right in front of them, and stared.

He could drink them all. Drink himself into some kind of stupor, where he could deal with Pepper leaving him – not really leaving him, she said she would always be there, as his CEO and best best friend, but she couldn't deal with all the stress of being permanently by his side if he was more Iron Man than Tony. He could drink those five bottles in what? One hour? Two, if he didn't mean to get sick. He was pretty good with the drinking part, he had proved time and time again he could drink like the best – or worst? – of them. Like at that birthday party where he thought he was dying still, and he let Rhodey take one of his suits.

They all said his father had always been a bit of a drinker, though. When he was little, very, very little, he thought he wanted to be like his father. When he was older, he concluded he didn't want that anymore, but it seemed, if what he heard about his father and himself, that he was failing miserably. Maybe he should just, you know, end the whole thing, and assume what he was: a more damaged copy of Howard Stark.

His hand was already around the first bottle of the row when the lights were turned on, and a wild Steve Rogers appeared. He was wearing pajamas, and his eyes were red and tired.

It seems it was insomnia night at Avenger's Humble Abode.

The Captain stopped and stared at Tony for a full minute before looking at the bottles disapprovingly.

"Ms. Potts told me you didn't drink anymore," he said, staring at Tony, who shrugged, but put the bottle back on the table. It was one thing to be a coward alone, and another entirely when the leader of your team is staring at you as if he's your teacher, and caught you cheating on your finals.

"Ms. Potts has left the building and my life, so to speak. Maybe I should start a new lifestyle now, Cap. She's gone, so it's a new life for Tony Stark."

"A short one, I'm assuming it'll be", the Captain asked, taking some milk from the fridge and two mugs. He poured the milk in the mugs, and took them to the microwave, carefully pressing the buttons, and then turning it on with a look of deep concentration on his face that made Tony smile a bit despite himself.

Tash had taught the Captain and Thor how to use the microwave a few days before, but Steve still seemed to approach the thing as if it would blow him up if he wasn't careful.

The thing beeped, and Steve took the mugs out, setting one in front of Tony.

"Trade you the bottles for some milk? It might help you sleep."

Tony laughed bitterly at that.

"I do think alcohol will help me fall asleep faster", he replied, but put the bottles a little further than him anyway.

"I said sleep, not fall unconscious or pass out."

Tony didn't answer, he just grabbed his mug and took a sip.

"This thing is awful", he said, making a face, and putting the mug on the table before pushing it away from him, as if it might attack him any second, when he wasn't looking.

Steve laughed a little.

"It does taste different than I remember. As if they added some plastic to it", he took a sip, and made a disappointed face, before sighing, and looking at the windows, where the sky was acquiring the very deep shade of blue that comes before sunrise, "Before my mother got sick, she used to make this to me all the time. I was always sick when I was little, she did this for me to help me sleep."

They were in silence for a bit longer, and Tony took another tip of the milk, making another disgusted face.

"My mother… never did anything for me. She used to yell at the nannies, though, when I was up all night, it was wrong, I should sleep, they were incompetent, etcetera, etcetera. Very heart-warming", he finished with a self-deprecating smile.

Steve looked at him and kept silent for a few seconds. It was clear he wanted to say something, but he didn't know if he should.

"You might as well say it, Cap. I'm not in a very combative mood right now, it may very well be the first and last time you can ask whatever it is you want to ask and I won't put on the suit and beat you up for it."

Steve smiled at that, and then sobered up.

"I never imagined… Howard married. Or with a kid. He seemed so in love with his work and all the things he could do with his smartness. I couldn't imagine him falling in love. Having a kid. Raising a son."

"Well, as he never did any of those things, you don't have to worry about misconceptions, Cap. I honestly don't think love was in the equation of my parents' marriage – at least not from what I remember of it -, and he didn't raise a kid. He put me in the world, and the rest was done by the people he paid to do it, and the rest is all on me. I raised myself, because the people around me were idiots."

Steve was silent for a while longer, before he sighed and looked at Tony, sincerity shining in his eyes.

"Well, if you are something you made all by yourself, you did it well."

Tony looked at him as if he was going to say something witty and sarcastic and self-deprecating in response, but in the end, he simply got up and went to leave the kitchen.

"You know, Cap," he said right before he left, "I think the best thing my father may have done in his life is you."

And then he left – taking his milk, and leaving all the bottles.

Steve took that as a victory.

Don't even ASK what's going through my mind. It's just, I needed some Stony too. I won't abandon Hurricane, for those of you who are reading it, and I promise at least a chapter a week for this one too.

Did you like it? Are Tony and Steve convincing enough? I still think I'm not getting Tony right.

Let me know what you think.

REVIEW!