Chapter 13: Masterpiece

Steve wasn't entirely sure what he'd let himself get talked into.

He took a deep breath and tried to relax back into the mountain of cushions. He was dressed again, at least sort of, in a fresh gown and the immobilizer, but his pants remained crumpled on the bathroom floor.

He was vaguely anxious—a little afraid of pain, a little afraid of embarrassment—but the discomfort was tempered by drugs and arousal. The thought passed through his mind that If he were a better man, more principled, more self-disciplined, maybe he'd wait until he was sober to have sex with Tony. Their last round, with Tony dedicatedly drunk, had not gone well. But he also thought about what Nat had said, about how most people need something to get them through significant sex. Maybe it wouldn't be a crime to let himself off the hook and just have this. It wasn't as if he'd planned it this way, but now he wanted it so, so badly.

He was unbelievably aroused. He hadn't had sex in weeks, and the lengthy foreplay of the bath had him strung tight. If he closed his eyes for even a second, he could feel Tony's tongue all over his throat. The whole thing had made him so hot and bothered, he'd finally asked Tony to stop, as he'd assumed it would just be torture with no release. He still wasn't entirely convinced it wouldn't work out that way. He could easily see it: a prolonged episode of sexual tension, followed by more sexual tension for dessert. In theory, Steve knew you could have an orgasm without an erection, but he'd never done it in practice.

Boy howdy, Steve reflected, however he'd thought sex with Tony was going to go when he got back, this definitely wasn't it. But then, that was currently the overriding theme of his sex life, wasn't it? However Steve thought it would go, it was going to turn right around in the opposite direction.

"You," Tony said, chunking his newly untied sneakers onto the floor, "stop it."

"Stop what?" Steve frowned

"Thinking." Tony crawled up the bed towards him, still fully dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. "This is going to be fun, but only if you let it. Now spread 'em," he directed, nodding towards Steve's legs.

So Steve spread them, feeling himself starting to turn pink. The irony of blushing coupled with his inability to get an erection needled him; blood was moving around plenty, but not in the right direction.

Tony settled himself between Steve's legs, kissing the backs of Steve's knees, Steve's inner thighs, trailing his fingers lightly over the muscles. When he caught Steve watching, Tony winked and added a scrape of teeth to the proceedings. Steve sucked in his breath.

Tony inched along Steve's thighs, measuring the distance with his mouth, until he had his tongue in Steve's hip crease, running it slowly up and down. Steve shifted his hips, unable to keep them entirely still under Tony's attentions.

Tony pulled away, "Yeah?" he asked, grinning.

"I just can't believe I can feel like this," Steve said, breathless, "and still not get it up."

"Hey, it happens to old guys. Embrace it. Aging is living."

"Thanks." Steve rolled his eyes.

"You're welcome," Tony said, accompanied by a sexy scrunch of his nose, an expression of which Steve was particularly fond.

And even that, the nose scrunch, amazed Steve and turned him on. It wasn't something Tony would have done last time they'd seen each other. It was an expression that invited Steve to keep looking, with no motivation other than play. He remembered Tony on top of him, slowly stripping off his shirt before Steve's disbelieving eyes. It had been another invitation to look, but Tony's face had been a mask of grim determination then, as if Steve's gaze was something that had to be endured, not courted and enjoyed.

"Ouch!" Steve exclaimed, his thigh jerking. He'd let his mind wander, and Tony had nipped him.

"I can literally hear the gears grinding," Tony said, bathing the little red mark with his tongue. "What on earth are you thinking about up there? It isn't blow jobs."

"Ummm…" Steve's brain wasn't working fast enough to lie, "the male gaze?" He knew it wouldn't be a popular answer.

"The male gaze? The male gaze? Are you fucking kidding me right now? Where did you hear about that?"

"From a book. I can read, y'know. That lady at the feminist bookstore on Prospect recommended it—"

"Oh my god. Only you. Only you could take a blowjob and turn it into a lecture at the 92nd Street Y."

"You asked," Steve protested.

"And now I'm un-asking. Your speaking privileges have been revoked."

"You can't—"

But, apparently, he could. With one move, Tony had Steve in his mouth, all of him, crammed in at once. Tony's mouth was lovely: soft, hot, and wet around every inch of him. Fingers that were stroking the inside of Steve's thigh crept to his testicles, and Steve's brain whited out with bliss.

It was strange and erotic to see his cock completely gone in Tony's mouth; it wasn't something he'd witnessed before. There was a satisfying totality to it he couldn't quite place his finger on, not that he'd tell Tony. He did not want to increase the frequency of Tony's occasional, effortful attempts at deep throating, which Steve could take or leave. But this? It seemed so comfortable and relaxed, easy for both of them.

Tony's eyes, Steve noticed, had drifted shut, so he let his own do the same, and sank back further into the pillows. Tony's tongue was rubbing that sensitive spot on the underside of the head, and Steve was starting to believe that he could actually come like this, not that he ever wanted it to stop. After a few minutes of Tony's wet tongue, Steve was pretty sure his bones had melted. It took an effort of will just to move his hand into Tony's hair. He felt terrific: the combination of drugs and sex had turned him into a puddle.

His climax was building; he could feel it, though it was different than usual. The escalation was more gradual, and also more diffuse. He thought of Tony's description of his current sexual reality and wondered how much translated. His cock was still very much at the center of sensation, but he was also conscious of something going on his chest, a certain constriction.

Tony's fingers drifted lower to stroke the secret run of skin between his ass and his testicles, gradually increasing the pressure, until Steve started to pant in earnest, his lungs barely able to pull in air. His fingers tightened in Tony's hair, eliciting a moan around his cock.

The orgasm, when it came, shot sparks up his spine, then hit him again with a succession of warm waves, all through his body, one after the other. He could feel himself ejaculating, but it was an ooze rather than a burst. He shuddered, gasping, his thighs quivering. When it was over, he was even more boneless than before. Tony let Steve's dick fall from his mouth and rubbed his cheek against Steve's thigh like some kind of big cat.

"Speaking privileges restored," Tony said, "but only if you can keep it civil. None of that seventies, second wave feminism, male gaze, sex as sociopolitical expression crap. I've dated Playboy bunnies: stuff like that makes me feel called out."

Steve, still breathless with pleasure, laughed weakly. His eyelids suddenly seemed to weigh forty pounds, but he didn't want to drift off. He wanted to live in this moment with Tony as long as possible, comfortable together for the first time in what felt like an age. And Tony looked so good, his eyes dark and dancing, fringed with those beautiful lashes. With a jolt, Steve's good manners reasserted themselves, "Oh, Tony, I should do something for you—" though as soon as it came out of his mouth, he knew it was absurd.

Tony actually laughed, pushing himself up to sitting, "No offense, but we're not going Dutch on this one. I'm picking up the tab. Though," he said, running a finger over Steve's lips, "I'd take an IOU. If it would make you feel better." For a moment, Steve remembered Dream Tony wiping lipstick off his mouth with her thumb.

"Whatever you want," Steve said, meaning it.

"Careful, Cap," Tony said, smiling, maybe a little dangerously, "I might try to hold you to it." He smoothed back a stray lock of hair that had fallen over Steve's forehead, his expression softening, "Alright. You look like you're about to drop; time to let your nurse tuck you in."

Tony arranged him under the covers and turned off the lights in the bedroom. Rain blew sideways against the windows, thrumming against the glass.

"Stay with me," Steve said sleepily, "just for a few minutes?"

"I guess I don't have anywhere to be," Tony said, grabbing an unused pillow from the hospital bed before climbing back in with Steve. He assumed his position from the night before, head beside Steve's lap, arm over Steve's waist. "You know," he said to Steve's hip, "actually, there is something I want." From the quiet way he said it, Steve sensed it was important.

"Sure," Steve assured him.

"You can insult me afterwards if you want, but would you tell me, just one more time, if you'd gotten to choose…?"

So Tony still wasn't confident that Steve remembered all of last night. "You're still the one I'm taking to the dance, Tony," Steve said, running his hand over Tony's hair. "And you're still the one I'm taking home afterwards."

"And?" Tony teed up the joke.

"And? You're still stupid," Steve said tenderly.

"Thanks, Cap," Tony yawned. "Wake me up if you want something."

But Steve already had everything he wanted. He fell asleep listening to the sounds of the rain and Tony's steady breathing.

Rain was still sheeting down the windows when Tony woke up later in the afternoon. Beside him, Steve remained deeply asleep, his tawny brows knitted together by some secret concern. With his thumb, Tony gently rubbed between the furrows on either side of Steve's nose until his expression relaxed. Something about Steve remained boyishly handsome; Tony suspected it always would, but that pair of lines between Steve's brows was getting deeper by the day, and Tony wondered how much he was personally responsible for them. He put his contribution at fifty percent at least, and Tony loved them and felt guilty about them in equal measure as a consequence.

He stole out of the room in his sock feet, easing the door shut behind him, and checked his watch: almost two. Steve could sleep another hour before Tony had to wake him up for pain pills.

Wandering down the hall, Tony contemplated the possibility of lunch. He figured he'd better eat something since he'd had coffee for breakfast. The urgent voices, overlapping heatedly, didn't reach him until he turned the corner into the living room.

Bruce, Nat, and Pepper were around the table with a cell phone on speaker in the middle.

"Medical should have gotten Steve," Bruce said. "He was in no condition—"

"Steve's fine. He's tough. Besides, we couldn't just hand them the bait," Nat insisted.

"You're not the one that had to staple him back together! Do you understand how much morphine I gave him last night? You promised me he could handle the trip, Nat. You promised me. That was the only reason I agreed—"

"Hey, he handled it."

"What happened yesterday," Pepper said, talking over everyone, trying to keep her tone level, "is done. It's finished. Steve is here now, for better or for worse. What we are trying to establish in this meeting is what we will do going forward. Clint, you were saying?"

"I can only tell you what I can tell you," Clint said via speaker. "There is no general discussion on this anymore. Not on my channels. It's gone deep. Possibly to a different agency."

"But they don't actually have anything, right?" Bruce said. "My research is on a secure internal server; it's local access only."

"That video was out there for weeks," Nat reminded him. "And there could be other material they found before I did."

"They wouldn't know what they were looking at, would they?" Bruce asked hopelessly.

"You did, Bruce," Pepper pointed out. "And once you see that it's Tony, it can't be anyone else."

"Yeah," Bruce said, rubbing the back of his neck, "but…"

Clint cut him off. "Listen, they know. Or at least they know enough. Hell, maybe they just think they know. It doesn't matter. Point is, word has come down from on high to cut the chatter. Open speculation had dried up. Somebody is getting ready to move on this."

"And we confirmed to them yesterday there was something to move on," Nat agreed.

"We should have just let that guy in," Bruce muttered.

"He was an operative, Bruce," Nat explained patiently, "His whole goal was to get into this building; I couldn't let that happen. I guarantee he was wearing a camera and had someone in his ear. And if he'd gotten a real look at Rogers, he'd have insisted on a full med team."

"A med team for a gunshot wound?" Bruce scoffed. "Don't threaten me with a good time."

"But the med team would have been nothing but operatives, too," Nat said, "and this place would have had so many bugs, we'd never have been able to find them all. Hey, I don't like it either. And I don't like the fact that Fury hasn't called to ream me about leaving his guy on the doorstep."

"See, that Lack of SHIELD communication gives me bad vibes," Clint said. "It's time. There's lots of traffic in and out of that building. Won't be hard."

Bruce shook his head. "The Other Guy isn't so good at cloak and dagger. Hell, I'm not so good at cloak and dagger."

Pepper was shaking her head, too, "Tony won't agree to—"

"I won't agree to what?" Tony said, recognizing a cue when he heard one. He crossed to the table and leaned over it, palms flat on the tabletop. It was a classic board room domination pose, and made the seated participants fall silent. "I mean, you're probably right," he said into the lull. "I generally make it a point not to agree to things."

"They want to hide us, Tony. Smuggle us out of the building and then stick us somewhere," Bruce said with disgust.

"Hey, Tony," Clint greeted him, apparently unfazed by his feminine voice. "Yeah, we want to stick you somewhere. But only so the U.S. government doesn't stick you somewhere first. 'Cause they're going to."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "You're telling me SHIELD is going to kidnap me from the skyscraper with my fucking name on it?"

"Not SHIELD," Nat corrected. "Not at this point. I'm thinking CIA."

"See, and I think it'll be an interagency job involving branches of military intelligence," Clint said.

"Great," Tony said sarcastically, "Let's get a pool going. Everyone can pick an agency. Clint gets Defense Intelligence. Nat gets Central. I'm going to pick a wild card. Environmental Protection, maybe? What do you want, Bruce? National Security? Then we'll wait and see who shows up with the black bags—"

"Tony," Pepper laid a warning hand on his arm, "you have to take this seriously."

"No, I don't." Tony shook her off. "Do you hear yourselves? Are you actually suggesting that the baddies, employees of our own democratically elected government by the way, are going to kidnap a tech billionaire from an office building in downtown Manhattan? I'm sorry, did I accidentally wake up in theDie Hardcinematic universe? It isn't going to happen. They like my tax dollars too much. Besides, this is a secure facility. I've got JARVIS. I've got suits. I've got the Hulk—"

"Whoa," Bruce threw up his hands, "I am not on the security detail."

"The building isn't secure. The lab, maybe. The shop, maybe." Nat said. "But most of the tower is rented. Unknowns come in and out all day long. It might be better if the two of you disappeared for a while."

"Fine," Tony conceded. "It might be better. But this is not an ideal world, and unless Steve is coming, too, you can forget it. Bruce?"

"Absolutely not," Bruce said emphatically. "Yesterday was bad enough. In a couple of weeks, when Steve gets some real motor function back in the fingers, then maybe, maybe, I'd consider moving him. But those nerves need the opportunity to recover."

Tony spread his hands, "Sorry, then. Nuthin' doin'. What else you got?"

"You're an idiot, Stark," Clint said with a nasty laugh. "You better hope the men in black are using their vacation days, because if you get nabbed before Christmas, you're gonna rot in secret prison until after the new year. I'm spending the holidays with my wife and kids. Nat, you call me if this asshole sees sense." He hung up.

Nat crossed her arms and rolled her eyes towards the ceiling.

"Well, Merry Christmas to you, too, Barton. Give my best to the fam," Tony said to the dead air. And then, to the group at large, he added, "Anybody tells Cap about this conversation, and I'll exsanguinate you with one of those little coffee straws. I'm going to make a sandwich."

For several days, life was gloriously boring. Steve, still on a heavy dose of morphine, napped a lot, and Tony, unable to resist Steve's drowsy heat, napped with him. After weeks of insomnia, Tony felt he could suddenly sleep forever. The cold rain continued on and off, compounding Tony's desire to hibernate.

Real sex, for now, was a non-issue; they couldn't have it, so there was no pressure around it. Tony kept his clothes on and happily dispensed blowjobs whenever Steve seemed even mildly inclined. It was all relaxed and friendly, and they liked each other again when they managed to remain conscious.

Significantly, no one was kidnapped, confirming Tony's suspicions that it was all much ado about nothing. Did he think SHIELD was curious about his activities? Sure. When didn't those bastards have their noses up his ass? But what were they going to do? Seriously? Drag him out of his penthouse in front of the 1.6 million people living in Manhattan? Tony didn't even see how they'd get in. Was security perfect? Probably not, but it was pretty good, good enough to keep out the corporate espionage types, anyway. Tony wasn't too worried.

Or at least his state of denial kept him from feeling too worried. Which was a different matter entirely. But denial kept that from him, too.

Bruce started to reduce Steve's morphine, and Steve found himself awake for longer and longer stretches. At first, he watched television, but the charm wore off that activity within a couple of days, and he began prowling the penthouse like a lion in a zoo. Everyone entertained him as best as they could: Bruce let him hang out in the lab, though Steve understood nothing that went on there and usually wound up feeling more bored (and more stupid) when he walked out than when he'd walked in. Nat stopped by to play Scrabble and beat him mercilessly every time. Tony dispensed sexual favors like they were going out of style. Steve appreciated their efforts, but just days into his captivity, he already felt like he was losing his mind.

It was Pepper, finally, that took him in hand.

Steve was eating breakfast and preemptively mourning the completion of his Times crossword: it was a Monday puzzle and couldn't possibly occupy him more than half an hour. Pepper dropped into the seat opposite and plunked her coffee cup down on the table. He looked up from his paper, a little surprised to find himself on the receiving end of her direct blue gaze.

"Steve," she said in a firm tone she usually reserved for Tony, "you need a project. I don't care what it is. You can do a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. You can read War and Peace. You can record a podcast. But you have to tell me something you're willing to do, and you have to tell me right now. I will not continue to watch you mope around this apartment."

He didn't know what to say. She sipped her coffee, scrutinizing him over the rim of her cup. There would, her look suggested, be no wriggling out of an answer. "Well," he said finally, "I left a canvas out in Brooklyn." He wasn't sure he wanted to commit to painting, but he couldn't think of anything else he'd rather do instead.

"Perfect," she said with a smile. She whipped out her phone, already arranging its acquisition and delivery.

"It's big," he warned her. "It won't fit in a cab. And I'll need all of my supplies, paints and brushes and stuff. And there's a set of art books on the kitchen table—"

"I'll take care of it," she assured him. "I'll bring everything."

A few hours later, there was a studio set up in a spare bedroom, with drop cloths on the carpet, a new work table, and an organized shelf of materials. There was also a vinyl stereo system, new and expensive looking, beside a crate of jazz albums borrowed from the apartment's extensive collection.

"Thank you, Pepper," Steve said, surveying a stand of meticulously ordered brushes. Hadn't he had them all crammed in a jam jar? And the paints, now beautifully arrayed in spectrum, hadn't they been in a rusted toolbox?

"You're welcome," she said, watching him from the doorway. "I expect a masterpiece."

He laughed modestly, "I don't know about that, but I'll see what I can do."

"Just as long as you do something," she reiterated, leaving him alone to consider his blank canvas.

"I hear you have an art studio now," Tony said when Steve came into the shop. He didn't look up from his work table; he had a loupe screwed into his eye and was manipulating impossibly small gears with a set of forceps.

"Pepper set it up for me," Steve said, watching Tony work. It amazed him that anyone could build anything with parts so small, much less a whole suit of armor, if that's what it was. Sort of looked like the beginning of gauntlet.

"She bulldozed you, huh?" Tony traded the forceps for an ultra fine-tipped soldering iron.

"What? No. It was very thoughtful."

"Let me ask you this: when you woke up this morning, did you want an art studio?"

"Not exactly," Steve admitted. "My goals were more modest. I was hoping to finish the Monday crossword in under fifteen minutes."

"Like I said, bulldozed," Tony dripped solder into some impossibly exact location."Anyway, what can I do you for, Cap?"

"Well," Steve cleared his throat, "I was sort of hoping to get my bag back." This was the first time since Steve's not-so-triumphant-return that the bag had been mentioned at all.

Tony took the loupe out of his eye and switched off the soldering iron, his expression shifting from amused to opaque. Well, thought Steve, that answered that question; Tony had definitely looked in it. But what exactly had he seen? Some drawings were preferable to others.

Without a word, Tony dropped to the floor. He stuck a hand up under the work table and tugged out the olive green duffel bag. It was way up under there, the contents doubtless more crushed now than they'd been before the ignominious storage.

Steve reached for the handles, but Tony didn't make the transfer. "I'll bring it up." It was more a statement of fact than an offer of help.

Back in the bedroom-cum-studio, Tony set the bag on the bed and then set himself down beside it; there was no indication that he was going back to the shop.

"I take it you plan to watch me open this." Steve nodded towards the duffel. "How many of them have you already seen?"

Tony shrugged, "Just a couple." Steve was surprised by the answer; he'd figured Tony had ransacked the whole thing. "You didn't tell me I couldn't look," Tony pointed out.

"Would it have done any good if I had?" Steve asked.

"No."

"That's what I figured."

Steve unzipped the bag with his good hand and removed a wad of drawings. As he dropped them on the table, wrinkled iterations of Tony, both masculine and feminine, gazed back at him from the tabletop.

"Are they all me?" Tony came to stand beside Steve. His fingers reached tentatively towards the papers, then drew back, glancing at Steve, waiting for an invitation. And he'd have to keep waiting because Steve definitely wasn't offering. What had Tony seen already? Steve wondered anew. Something upsetting to him, apparently. Steve wanted to know, but didn't want to ask.

"They're all you," Steve confirmed. "Pieces of you, anyway." He selected a safe one as an offering, a crumpled page depicting a pair of lash-fringed eyes under masculine brows, and handed it to Tony.

Tony considered it a moment, new eyes surveying the old. "And these are for…?" he motioned vaguely at the seven-foot canvas set up on the easel.

"That was the idea," Steve confirmed, though the whole project felt increasingly dicey. Art had been a private outlet for him while they'd been apart, a way to indulge his complicated fixation. But here? The outlet wouldn't be strictly private; Steve couldn't ask Tony not to look at his own portrait, could he? And yet, a full-sized feminine nude seemed like more than Tony could handle. Maybe it was more than Steve could handle.

In the past couple of days, things had started to get…not tense, not exactly, but tension was brewing. Steve was growing discontent with their sex life; he didn't like the lop-sidedness of it, but Tony shrugged off any mention of reciprocity as impossible or unnecessary. Steve hadn't pressed the point, not yet, but the time was coming. And it wasn't lost on him that he hadn't seen Tony as anything other than fully dressed since he'd been home, an obvious fact neither of them had commented on. Tony's dressing and undressing had moved entirely into the walk-in closet.

"I don't know about a portrait now," Steve confessed. "I'd never really planned for you to see it. Maybe I'd never planned for anyone to see it."

"You were going to do a life-size portrait of me and then…what? Burn it? Stick it in the attic beside the picture of Dorian Gray?"

"I hadn't thought about it," Steve shrugged. "I figured I'd cross that bridge when I came to it."

"And here we are at that bridge, Steve."

Steve rubbed the back of his neck, hesitating, unsure if he should let Tony glimpse his vision or abandon the whole enterprise in favor of a paint-by-number. Thoroughly undecided, he shuffled one-handed through the duffel bag, looking for the big sheets of newsprint until he found the one he wanted.

"This is it." He extended the sketch to Tony. "This is the rough outline. But you've got the veto, Tony, if you want to use it."

Steve watched Tony closely as he studied the drawing and its surreal central figure with its doubled face. Tony's expression moved through a complex choreography of misgivings, before settling finally into something like chagrined recognition.

"While you were gone," Tony said, "I had this vision of myself as a Siamese twin, or like I was two people occupying the same piece of space time or something." Abruptly resolved, he thrust the drawing back at Steve. "Let's do it, Cap. I want to see it on the big screen."

"You sure? Not too late for a landscape."

"Do you still want to paint me?"

Steve could not tell from Tony's expression what the correct answer might be, so he considered the toned canvas, its green-grey expanse like the untroubled surface of a pool. The painting was still there, waiting for him; he could see it, as if it were submerged just below the waterline. All he had to do was dip in his brush, and he could bring it to the surface… "I do," he admitted, "but—"

"Alright, then. We're doing it," Tony said firmly. "What do we have to do to, I dunno," Tony gestured vaguely towards the bed, "French-ify this place? I want to recline in an atelier. Easel aside, this place still screams 'guest room.'"

Steve's brain whirred for a full thirty seconds before the implication of Tony's statement hit him full force. "Wait," he asked nervously, "you aren't offering to sit for this?"

Tony looked at Steve like he had three heads, "Of course I'm going to sit for it. Who were you going to use otherwise? Pepper? Good luck getting her clothes off. I used to try regularly."

"I wasn't going to use anyone," Steve explained. "That's why I did so many studies—"

"A live model is better though, right?"

Steve was quick to let Tony off the hook, "It's not necessary—"

"But if I wanted to?" Tony asked, and Steve noticed the fierce blush creeping up Tony's neck. Quickly, Steve tried to recalibrate: Tony wanted to do this, maybe a lot. What did that mean?

"Well, if you wanted to, but it would be really boring—" Steve said, trying to strike the middle ground.

"Boring?" Tony scoffed. "I know you had an exciting excursion to the former Soviet Bloc, but I haven't left the building in weeks. Weeks, Steve! At this point, lying around naked counts as a bona fide activity."

Tony clearly wasn't going to give up on this, leaving Steve no choice but to be direct. "I'm not trying to stop you, Tony, not if it's what you really want to do," he said anxiously, "but I also haven't seen you undressed since…well. And I don't really know how to say this, but it's been…" Steve didn't know what word he wanted next.

"It's been simpler," Tony supplied.

"Yes. It has," Steve agreed.

"And now you're afraid you won't be able to resist me with my clothes off?" Tony gave an ironic waggle of eyebrows, but it came close enough to the truth to make Steve uncomfortable. Steve cleared his throat, and dropped his gaze to the floor. "Oh," Tony said, realizing his mistake.

"I just don't want to wind up back where we were. I can't go back to Brooklyn, Tony. Physically or metaphorically." The more Steve thought about it, the more the proposition worried him. "You do this," he said warily, "you have to promise me I'm not gonna end up in the doghouse."

"You won't." Tony solemnly held up three fingers. "Scout's honor."

Steve rolled his eyes. "For the millionth time, Tony, I was never actually a Scout."

Steve got a few days reprieve as Tony and Pepper "French-ified" the studio. The two of them poured over a copy of the Manet'sOlympiain one of Steve's art books; Tony's loupe even made an appearance as he studied the wallpaper in the background. None of it was strictly necessary (or even peripherally necessary), but they were so absorbed by the project, who was Steve to try and stop them? He made himself scarce. Then, late one afternoon, he was summoned to admire their completed handiwork.

The minute study of the wallpaper had resulted in something suitable installed on the walls (dark, hand-flocked, hideously expensive), along with an antique canopy bed, complete with a stack of feather bolsters and drapes in green brocade. An oriental rug covered the floor, though it would certainly be out of frame. It was like stepping into an oil painting.

"Wow," Steve said, dazzled.

"Pretty good, huh?" Tony said, bouncing on his toes.

"But how did you do this so fast?"

"Liberal and sincere use of the phrase 'money is no object.' You know what? I think we need champagne to complete the French-ification. I'll be back." Tony disappeared to find a bottle and flutes, leaving Steve and Pepper alone in the tiny slice of 19th century Paris.

As soon as Tony disappeared, Pepper pinned him with her frank blue gaze. "I've seen the sketch. Do you know what you're doing?" Her tone made clear that she didn't think so.

"Only artistically. It wasn't my idea for him to sit," Steve said in defense. "And you're the one who set up the studio."

"You're right. And I have regretted it every second for the past three days. If I'd known what you planned to do, I would have left you alone with daytime television."

He had no idea what to say. A pit formed in his stomach.

"He's so much better," Pepper said, shaking her head. "He's himself again."

"I know, but I can't stop him, Pepper. I did try."

She stepped close to him, her voice low, "Maybe you didn't try hard enough. I picked up the pieces from your last mess, Steve. And I'll pick up the pieces from this one, too, if necessary. But—"

Steve didn't get the full force of the incipient threat because Tony bounced back in with a tray of champagne flutes, Bruce in tow.

"A toast to the muse. That's me," Tony proclaimed, dispensing drinks, "and to the set dresser. Pepper, that's you. And to the artist's drug dealer—"

"I object to that characterization," Bruce complained, but accepted the glass anyway.

"And last, and almost certainly least," Tony said, giving Steve a flute along with a wink, "to the artist. Tchin-tchin."

Steve raised his glass and then downed it, wishing, not for the first time recently, that he could still get drunk. Pepper was eying him, unimpressed.

"Be careful, Steve," she said, so softly only he could hear.