Chapter 1: Who's That Girl?
6:40 pm. The Penthouse. Halloween.
Steve sat on the bed eating a bowl of cornflakes. It was the only place to eat. The kitchen was full of catering staff, and he'd been hounded out of the living room by the party decorator's crew of professional cob-webbers. It was really something, the way some people made a living these days. He would bet his last dollar there hadn't been a single professional cob-web hanger in all of New York in 1945. Steve ate his cereal wistfully, if such a thing could be done, and recalled a time when all you needed for a Halloween party was a pumpkin and a tub of apples.
"Hey, Cap? You in here?" Tony cracked open the door, sticking his head in, "Pep told me you were hiding out with a bowl of cereal. You want blinis? Or shrimp? There's tons of party food in the kitchen. I'll steal a plate for you."
"No, thanks. I don't think seafood pairs well with cornflakes."
"You plan on getting dressed? The party starts in twenty minutes."
"I am dressed."
"Yeah? And what are you supposed to be?" Tony made a sweeping up-down motion with his hand at Steve's clothes: plaid shirt, khakis, and loafers.
"Comfortable?" Steve knew it wouldn't fly; Tony was already making a face.
"No costume, no candy, young man. Those are the rules."
"Tony, I spend my whole life in a costume. Can't I just be comfortable at the party?"
"It's a costume party, Steve. A costume party."
Tony swept all the way into the room and disappeared promptly into the walk-in closet. Steve could hear drawers opening and closing, hangers scraping along closet rods. There was a series of thumps, and then Tony re-emerged, dumping a small pile onto the bed: Steve's hiking boots, suspenders, and a knit cap.
"Put those on. You're a lumberjack."
"A lumberjack?"
"Sure. You've got that ridiculous beard, make it earn its keep. Come on, Steve, don't be an asshole. Only assholes go to costume parties in street clothes."
"What about you?" Tony looked impeccable in his black three-piece suit, but his only obvious nod to the occasion was a pocket square patterned with tiny bats.
"Oh," Tony opened his mouth wide and pointed to his teeth. In place of his usual canines, there was a set of porcelain fangs. "I'm a vampire," he said, by way of explanation.
"Shouldn't you have a cape or something?"
Tony rolled his eyes, "No, Steve. Get with the program. Vampires don't wear capes. They haven't worn capes in decades. Vampires are now strictly sexy. And occasionally sparkly."
"If you say so," Steve said, and set his empty bowl and spoon on a bedside table. He sighed and began to tug off his shoes, shaking his head ruefully. Here he was, voluntarily taking off his very comfortable loafers so he could clomp around the apartment all night in hiking boots. At least Tony was mollified. Steve stood up to pull on the suspenders.
"You're a good sport, Cap," Tony said approvingly.
"Thanks. I hope I get some kind of points for this." He tugged on the hat. It itched.
"Oh, you're earning mad points. You know," Tony sidled over, close enough that Steve could smell his aftershave, "you make a very strapping mountain man." He trailed a finger across Steve's chest, hooking it under a suspender. "Maybe later I'll let you log my wood," he let the suspender snap back to Steve's chest, "if you know what I mean."
"That," Steve laughed, "was awful."
"And yet," Tony pressed his palm to Steve's groin, "still somehow effective. Must be my boyish charm. Would sex count as points, by the way?" He squeezed gently at the semi-hard bulge in Steve's pants and smiled, looking pleased with himself.
"Tony?" Pepper appeared in the open doorway, throwing cold water over the scene. She was clearly irritable and, in her witch's hat, she looked ready to hex someone. "I need you out here. The DJ is late, and we're already low on alcohol. It's," she glanced over her shoulder, her voice dropping to a furious whisper, "it's the Asgardians. Again."
"God damn it," Tony threw up his hands, "I told them the bar was humans only. After New Year's, those drunks are strictly BYOB. Alright, Pep. I'll handle it. I'll march their happy asses back across the Bifrost on a liquor run if I have to."
Pepper nodded, her mouth pressed into a tight line, and scurried out, probably to deal with some other disaster. Steve suspected that Pepper did not actually enjoy their parties. He didn't blame her. Even though Tony was the team's official party planner, he was, by his own admission, more of an "ideas man" than an executor. Meaning, of course, that Tony spit-balled suggestions and Pepper did all the actual work.
"Alright, Grizzly Adams," Tony sighed. He stood on his toes and gave Steve a peck on the mouth, "Duty calls. I gotta go keep Pepper from turning someone into a newt. See ya on the dance floor."
The party started at seven, and Tony had assured Steve that everyone would be gone by eleven, twelve at the latest. According to Steve's watch, it was now 11:30, and somewhere in the last half-hour, the party had slipped noisily past full-swing and into full-on rager. From his perch on the penthouse's second floor balcony, he had a terrific view of the madness ensuing in the living room below. For example, there was Clint, in the corner next to the bar, wearing a stupid headband that made it look like he had an arrow shot straight through his temples, playing darts with a mummy. The mummy was winning, so Steve figured it had to be Kate. Natahsa, dressed as a ballerina, was doing a headstand on the bar, balancing shot glasses on the toes of her pointe shoes. And, of course, there was Tony, drink hoisted above his head, dancing in the middle of the scrum. So, technically, Steve had seen Tony on the dance floor—just from a distance. There was no way in hell he was going down there, and Steve wasn't a great dancer anyway. Still, Tony seemed to be having a good time.
"Some party," Bruce slid up quietly beside him, folding his arms on the balcony rail. He eyed Steve up and down, then asked, "Lumberjack?"
"Yeah. Tony said I had to go as something. What're you?"
"Um, mad scientist? I guess?" Bruce gestured vaguely at his lab coat, "I had a beaker earlier, but now I think Nat might be drinking out of it."
"It was clean, right?"
Bruce shrugged.
There was a crash from below and the sound of breaking glass. Bruce tensed, but Steve placed a steadying hand on his forearm. "It's alright. Volstagg just smashed a glass," Steve pointed to the group of roaring Asgardians. "I should get a broom before someone steps on the pieces." But before Steve could make a move towards the stairs, a second glass, this one lobbed by Sif, exploded against the wall.
"If I were you," Bruce said mildly, "I'd just wait. They'll just keep doing it. Oh, and look, Tony's got it."
They watched Tony shove his way through the crowd. He looked diminutive next to the Asgardians when he finally made it across the room. Now, he was jabbing a finger in Thor's face and gesticulating with his cup. There was some animated but inaudible back and forth, and then Tony abruptly downed his drink in one long swallow. He held up his empty cup theatrically before hurling it at the wall. When it bounced off harmlessly onto the floor, there was an eruption of cheers from the assembled Norsemen. Volstagg clapped Tony on the back so hard it nearly knocked him down.
"I guess they don't have plastic cups in Asgard," Steve commented, watching as they hoisted Tony up onto their shoulders.
"No," Bruce agreed, "I guess not. Think they'd do that to me if I gave them a paper plate?—Oh. Uh oh."
"'Uh-oh' what?" Steve craned over the railing as Tony's new group of admirers disappeared (with Tony) under the edge of the balcony, "Did they drop him?"
"No, but I think they're plying him with alien alcohol. Thor handed him a flask."
"Well," Steve sighed, "it'll be his hangover."
At midnight, the DJ was displaced by a karaoke machine. From their elevated vantage point, Steve and Bruce watched a string of unidentifiable ghosts, zombies, and costumed superheroes sing a series of unidentifiable songs. Well, unidentifiable to Steve at least.
"What was that supposed to be?" Steve asked, wincing, as an eye-patched pirate closed his number with a warbling sour note.
"In theory? Frank Sinatra," Bruce said, shaking his head, "In practice, though…"
The next song started: driving drums and frothy synthesizer. The crowd erupted in laughter and catcalls as the singer took the stage.
"Seems like everybody knows this one," Steve remarked.
"Madonna."
Steve nodded politely, assuming that 'Madonna,' in this context, must be something other than 'Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ,' and placed the name in his ever-expanding mental file of twentieth century pop-culture.
A woman took the stage, sweeping the microphone out of the stand with a grin and a wink. She was small, middle-aged, and trimly-curved, with loose waves of dark hair and a swipe of bright lipstick. Steve wasn't sure about her costume: Charlie Chaplin maybe, only without the bowler and cane. Whatever it was, it looked incomplete, as though she had shed some of its pieces over the course of the night. Now, she was down to a vest, baggy trousers, and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, exposing her fragile-looking wrists and forearms. Actually, she was sort of small and fragile-looking all over, but she managed the stage masterfully: strutting up and down, kicking up a flirty heel here and there, reaching down a slim hand towards the crowd. When she began to sing, her voice was controlled, but high and breathy.
"Is she good?" Steve half-shouted over the approving roar, "I can't tell."
"Well," Bruce half-shouted back, "she sounds a lot like Madonna. For what that's worth."
Despite her reedy voice, the audience clearly loved her and pressed in close to the edge of the DJ's platform. Steve remembered crowd energy like this during the war, rowdy and aroused. The servicemen had never given him this reception, of course, but some of the girls could make even the most battle-hardened marine units eat from their hands. He remembered one girl in particular, Carole the Carrot-top. She was pretty enough, though not quite beautiful, and shorter than the other girls by at least two inches, but there was something about her—the sway in her hips, the tease in her smile—that whipped whole crowds of men into a frenzy.
Just like this fire-cracker was whipping them now. She clearly knew what she was doing; she was no stranger to performance. When she reached the chorus, something about material girls or material worlds or maybe both, Steve thought the audience might mob the stage. She was magnetic; even Steve could not take his eyes off of her. And when she threw her head back, exposing the white column of her throat, and let loose a string of orgasmic little yips, Steve felt each one in the pit of his stomach. Or maybe somewhere lower. In any case, she made him squirm. He leaned towards Bruce, "What's she supposed to be?"
"Vampire."
"A what?" Steve laughed, confused.
"She's a vampire. When the chorus comes back around, the—the yapping part—you can see her fangs." Steve could feel his face freezing, morphing from smile to rictus.
"Steve," Bruce's expression was wary, "is something wrong—?" But Steve urgently shushed him. She was back to the chorus now, throwing her head back again, her hair a dark tumble around her shoulders. As she started to bark, her top lip pulled back from her gleaming teeth. In place of canines, she had a set of sharp little fangs. Steve ... Steve knew those fangs. And, with a dawning horror, he realized that he also knew those trousers and that vest and, now that he was really looking, he also knew that smile, and those dark eyes.
Something heavy dropped into Steve's stomach, and, by the end of the bridge, Steve had made it to the bottom of the stairs and was pushing none-too-gently through the sea of party guests.
As the last verse began, Steve made it to the short flight of stairs on stage right to wait for Tony's exit. He willed himself to be calm, to relax his balled fists. He recognized the almost overwhelming urge to grab Tony by the shoulders and shake him (Or maybe her?), but he wouldn't give in to it. Steve took a deep breath, exhaling noisily through his gritted teeth as the song bounced towards its conclusion.
Center-stage, Tony was standing with his back to the audience, singing coyly over one narrow shoulder as he delivered his final note. It was met with a chaos of hoots and applause, and he smiled brightly. As he turned to exit the platform and caught Steve's eye, the smile turned incandescent. He practically skipped off stage. Steve wasn't sure how to take it.
"Hey, Grizzly Adams," Tony said blithely. Liquor fumes were positively pouring off of him; the stuff was eking from his pores, but, Tony being Tony and a champion drunk, his alien voice was marked only by the subtlest slur. "I was pretty good, right?" It was clear from Tony's tone that it wasn't really a question. "It's amazing, isn't it? The way you remember the songs from when you were a kid? I still knew all the words, and I didn't even—hey!"
Steve grabbed Tony's elbow—an elbow that felt very small and fragile in his hand—and dragged him towards the elevator. Steve shoved him in, stabbing blindly at the button for some lower level. They descended a floor or two before Steve slammed the red emergency stop with his fist. "What have you done to yourself?" Steve exploded, his voice teetering on the edge of hysteria, possibly even tears.
"Calm down, Steve, it's—" Tony gave a ladylike hiccup, "—it's only temporary."
"Temporary?!"
"Yes, temporary. It was, I don't know, some sort of gag booze that Sif had. You should see Thor's tits. They're humongous. Waaay bigger than mine. But the effects only last as long as the buzz, and I only had a sip. I'll be back*hic*swinging my dick by morning."
"But, Tony, what were you thinking?" Steve wailed.
"Are you kidding? Have you seen these things?" Tony spread his hands over his soft, round breasts and laughed. "It's terrific! And besides," his voice dropped to a bedroom purr, "I thought this would be a fun model for you to test drive." And then Tony actually had the audacity to wink.
"I know," Steve put a hand to his brow, trying hard not to lose it, "that you didn't just suggest we—because that would be…I can't even—"
"Oh, come on," Tony scoffed and flipped his long brown hair over his shoulder, "don't tell me you aren't curious. Fuck," he hiccuped again, "I know I'm curious."
Steve finally snapped, grabbing Tony's narrow shoulders, just as he promised himself he wouldn't do, "Tony, listen to me. There is nothing that I am so curious about that I would willingly drink magic potion at a Halloween party. I can't believe you—"
"Now wait just a minute there, Spangles," Tony rounded on Steve, jabbing a finger into Steve's chest. "Of the two of us in this elevator, who is in fact famous for willingly drinking magic fucking potion? You need a hint? Surprise, Cap! It's you! You're the one that went from ninety-eight pound weakling to beefcake in point-seven seconds, and you went fucking permanently. And now you're angry at me for trying out tits for a couple hours?"
"That was—that was completely different," Steve sputtered, feeling himself going red in the face. "You know I didn't drink—it was the War! It wasn't something I did for fun, Tony. It was something I did for my country, for—"
"Yeah, yeah, save the speech for the constituents. I've heard it already," Tony said, rolling his eyes. "And to think I always heard a girl could get it whenever she wants."
Steve released Tony's shoulders with a furious groan. Tony was impossible. Why couldn't he understand how stupid, how dangerous…Steve could feel a rising tide of anger and fear in his throat. He felt, he felt—
"Steve," Tony said carefully, the first faint note of doubt creeping into his high, unfamiliar voice, "Steve, you're hyperventilating."
Tony was right; he was hyperventilating, and, suddenly, he also felt like he might pass out or vomit or both. Steve doubled over with his hands on his knees and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Steve?" Tony, or at least what passed for Tony these days, placed a small, tentative hand onto his shoulder. "You okay?"
The touch of that tiny, feminine hand was too much. Steve slid all the way down the elevator wall to sit on the tiled floor. "Give me a minute," he wheezed, pressing his face into his drawn-up knees. He sucked in a slow breath, then tipped his head back against the wall, looking squarely at his new Tony. "Okay," he said, as much to himself as to Tony, and as calmly and commandingly as he could, "this—It's temporary. You said it's temporary; I'll assume it is. You're drunk, and you're going to go to sleep it off. All of it."
As for Steve, he would try to sleep off the urge to strangle Tony with his bare hands.
Steve pulled away from Tony's hand, sinking to the floor, and now Tony felt as though he were slowly sinking, too. Tony had fully intended to take Steve's breath away, just in a crazy, sexy, taboo sort of way instead of a furious, horrified, hyperventilation sort of way. If someone had told Tony five minutes ago that he would be dragged bodily into an elevator by Steve Rogers, he would have assumed all was going to plan. In Tony's experience, ninety-nine times out of one hundred, being dragged onto an elevator was the first stop along the road to getting laid. But this seemed to be shaping up to be one of those 'one out of a hundred times' instead.
He hadn't hesitated when he'd been offered the little glass bottle from Sif's leather bag. Lady Thor was a fucking knockout, built like a brick house with enormous breasts and gold hair to the waist. Sif, on the other hand, instantly grew a beard like a long-lost member of ZZ Topp, and they'd had a terrific laugh. And then it'd been Tony's turn.
"A great beauty!" Thor declared, pulling him into a bathroom so Tony could look at himself in a mirror. Tony ran a finger along the delicate point of his chin, the new pout of his lips, the silken arch of his eyebrow. His features had transmogrified nicely into something not unlike Vivian Leigh: sharp, sly, and feline. He felt his stomach flutter, full of happy butterflies: he couldn't wait to see Steve. He had a vision of Steve's big hands around his tiny curve of waist, fingers spread wide across Tony's soft skin. Tony could almost feel Steve's mouth pressed to his neck, and the imagined tickle of Steve's beard made him shiver.
The shiver was accompanied by a second sensation, something entirely new, subtle and alien, a blossom of heat spreading inexorably in all directions from some place between Tony's thighs. He could feel it now in his chest as a tremulous excitement, in his limbs as a delicious tingle. He was pleasantly light-headed, and there was a low-level buzz of white noise in his ears. And, most of all, there was his growing awareness of a dull but pleasurable ache somewhere deep inside him, an unaccountable need to be filled. It was weird. It was hot. And holy shit, his panties were wet—well, his boxer-briefs, anyway.
He strode out of the bathroom, feeling both aroused and pleased with himself, his two favorite feelings. He decided he needed a grand entrance, something that would make Steve's heart stop. That was just about the time he noticed the karaoke machine.
"Hey, hey!" He snagged the elbow of a passing pin-up girl with bright red lips. "Can I borrow your lipstick?"
Which was how he had ended up here, lips slathered in Ruby Woo, watching Captain America hyperventilating on the floor of an elevator, and realizing, with a dawning horror, that he had royally, majorly, seriously fucked up.
"Steve," Tony's voice sounded small, even in his own ears, "what…what do you want me to do here?"
"You know, Tony," Steve said, with a humorless little snort that shot straight through Tony's guts, "I really think you've done enough." He tipped his face to the ceiling. "Jarvis?"
"Yes, Captain."
"Is there an empty guest room?"
"Yes, Captain. The 67th floor suite is unoccupied."
"Take us there. And then page an Asgardian and send them down pronto." There was a pregnant pause. "Jarvis?" Steve asked warily.
"The Asgardians are…no longer here, Captain," Jarvis almost sounded apologetic. "It seems they have departed for an unknown location. I will inform you should I receive any indication as to their whereabouts. Shall I still take you to the guest suite, Captain?"
Steve sighed, "Yes, Jarvis, I guess you'd better."
As the elevator once again stirred to life, Steve's eyes remained fixed on the ceiling tiles, looking determinedly not at Tony, and they descended smoothly downward in silence. The doors hissed open on a dark apartment. Tony extended a hand down to Steve on the floor, but Steve pointedly ignored it, standing on his own and then striding wordlessly into the shadowy living room, leaving Tony to trail after.
Steve sat heavily on the big sofa, peeled off his hat, ran a hand through his hat hair, and then aggressively tugged off his boots, dropping them to the floor with a thud. Edging towards the sofa, Tony tried to catch Steve's expression in the darkness, but Steve wouldn't look at him, instead punching at a throw pillow harder than strictly necessary to make an indent for his head. He stretched full-length along the couch, staring at the ceiling.
"Steve—"
"Go to bed, Tony," Steve's voice was brittle.
"But—"
"Go to bed."
Steve's tone was not one which brooked argument. Tony's face closed, and he slouched wordlessly to the bedroom. The room felt big and dark and anonymous as Tony fell back gently against the door, closing it with a soft click. He undressed in darkness and, even then, it was painful, an embarrassment. His whole body felt like a practical joke gone wrong. He didn't want to touch himself, not even to undress, and he was careful not to let his hands linger as he pulled off his clothes. He felt like the absolute opposite of sexy, a -50 on the Richter arousal scale.
He let his clothes drop to the floor and crawled naked into the bed, pulling the cold sheets up all the way to his chin. To his dismay, his nipples stiffened under the slide of the cold cotton, so he flopped over on his stomach, burying his face in the pillow, willing his body to just…just…liquify or implode or dematerialize or something. Anything. Fuck.
Not only did he have tits, but Tony also realized, even squished face-first into a pillow, the darkness was revolving around him. Not quickly or nausea-inducingly (well, not yet), but the room was definitely spinning slowly on an axis. He tried to think if he'd had any water (Did ice count?), but really, he just shouldn't be this drunk. Yes, sure, he'd had something or other in his hand all night, but he'd kept it at the level of steady drip rather than binge. At least he thought he had.
"Jarvis," he said, straight into the pillow, "I think I'm drunk. Like, really drunk. And I shouldn't be this drunk. Like, mathematically shouldn't."
"Sir, you are currently over the legal limit in all fifty states, as well as Canada, Mexico, Uruguay—"
"Thanks, yeah. I got it. So not helpful. How much did I actually drink?"
"Sir, you consumed 4 whiskey sours and a martini, totaling approximately six point five standard servings of liquor, plus small quantities of several alien beverages of unknown chemical composition and potency."
"Yeah, but over, what? Like, six or seven hours, right?"
"Your present blood alcohol concentration stands at 0.13%."
"What?" His face came out of the pillow from sheer force of shock. The room was gaining momentum now and had begun to tilt, "How?" 0.13? That wasn't right, couldn't possibly—
"At your present weight and rate of alcohol metabolism—"
"Oh, fuuuuuuck," Tony moaned through gritted teeth, and subsided back face-first into the pillow. He was totally shit-faced. He'd been drinking with the big boys and now he was a big girl instead. He felt suddenly exhausted, and the hang-over, he had no doubt, was going to be absolutely brutal. "Jarvis," he muttered into the stuffing.
"Sir?"
"Tell Steve to…" He trailed off. Tell Steve to what? Bring an aspirin? A glass of water? He could see Steve's face on the elevator, stricken with anger and fear. A hangover seemed preferable to asking for Steve's help. Hell, more than that: a hangover seemed like the least penance he deserved for upsetting Steve. In the tilting darkness, Tony shut his eyes tight and waited, alone, to fall asleep. In the morning, he knew he would be sick and repentant, but Steve would see how pitiful he was and, following a brief lecture about personal risk, all would be forgiven. It would be fine, Tony told himself, as he drifted off. It would all be fine.
Steve spent a couple of hostile, anxious minutes on the sofa, alternatingly cursing at and praying for Tony, and alternatingly cursing at and praying for himself. Tony's latest escapade was so far beyond the realm of usual stupidity that it boggled the mind, and Tony hadn't pushed Steve's buttons in the elevator so much as ground them in with a knuckle. Spangles. Steve snorted. On the other hand, Steve hadn't been so nice either. He was pretty sure Tony had been about to apologize when he'd issued the order for Tony to go to bed in his firmest do-not-pass-go, do-not-collect-$200 tone. Yes, Steve admitted to himself, his other cheek had remained staunchly unturned.
More than anything, Steve just wanted to fall asleep, skip over the current tortuous period of uncertainty, and wake up with Tony back to normal, or at least as back to normal as Tony ever came. He'd accept Tony's apology graciously and make an apology of his own. But sleep was impossible, even though he felt exhausted, and he gave up.
In his sock feet, he crept to the bedroom door, laid his ear flat against it. Tony had been pretty smashed, and when Steve didn't hear anything, he was confident that Tony had fallen asleep. He stood at the door a long time, wracked with indecision. On the one hand, he really wanted to check on Tony. On the other hand, he really didn't. Tony's current…state-of-being was upsetting Steve in a way that was hard to articulate. He'd been to a show once at the Museum of Modern Art, weird stuff, a teacup and a saucer wrapped with fur, an iron bifurcated by a line of tacks running down its face. There had been a painting, too, a detailed but ultimately workmanlike landscape, unremarkable except for the fact that something about it made his skin crawl. Steve had spent a long time with it, first staring at it from across the gallery, then moving close enough to make the guard cough meaningfully. Finally, at a middle distance, he began to notice the distorted faces in the trees, the fact that the rolling hills in the background were actually a pair of disembodied lips. He'd read a little Freud in art school, enough to know that uncanny was the word to describe the painting's particular brand of the creeps. Uncanny was probably the way he'd describe Tony now, too, an uneasy blend of someone he knew intimately and something that was entirely strange. Tony was the teacup wrapped in fur.
Steve took one more deep breath and held it while he turned the knob, creeping from the dark of the living room into the deeper dark of the bedroom. He eased the door almost shut behind himself and walked gingerly towards the bed. Tony was sleeping facedown, as he usually did, despite his claim that it caused wrinkles. The sheets were pulled all the way up over Tony's shoulders, but the coverage did not allow Steve to fool himself for even a second that things were as they should be. The shoulders were too narrow, the overall figure in the bed much too small. Moving slowly, as if he were underwater, Steve sat onto the edge of the bed, right beside the sleeping figure. Tony, he told himself. He stopped breathing as he slipped his phone from his shirt pocket and thumbed the screen, then angled the rectangle of light to shine on Tony's face. He (She? Steve still had no idea what to do with the pronouns.) frowned a little in sleep, but did not wake, and Steve finally released a stale breath.
He studied Tony in the rectangle of blue light. Tony's laugh lines were in the same place Steve had left them. The nose was familiar but a little too small. The chin was narrower, and the eyebrows were higher, though the long dark lashes had stayed just the same. The hair was too long, of course, but Steve wondered if…? With two fingers, Steve carefully brushed back a lock that had fallen across Tony's forehead. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it seemed to Steve like it was the right weight, the correct degree of softness. Impulsively, he leaned forward, close enough for his nose to graze the top of Tony's head. He inhaled deeply. He didn't consciously know what Tony was supposed to smell like exactly. He couldn't wax poetic about Tony's particular musk or essence or whatever, but Steve was damn sure he'd know if Tony smelled wrong. He didn't smell 't smell wrong? Tony didn't smell wrong. Tony smelled like Tony.
"Huh," Steve whispered to himself, "how about that?"
Feeling somehow comforted, Steve pressed the button on his phone to darken the screen. Surprising himself, he stroked Tony's hair as he rose from the bed, then shuffled his way back into the living room.
He wanted to pace or compulsively search the internet for some indication that the Asgardians had turned up somewhere, but he made himself lie down on the sofa instead and deliberately power off his phone. He was out of practice willing himself to sleep, but if he'd managed to doze in front line trenches with bombs going off, he could make himself sleep now, at least for a few hours. It wouldn't do anyone any good to stay awake all night. Either Tony would sleep and clear his system or he wouldn't. Either Jarvis would receive some intel about Thor and the others or he wouldn't. At this point, there was nothing productive Steve could do. In the morning, there could be decisions to make. Better to have a cool head.
Steve closed his eyes and concentrated hard on sheep, but his mind kept slipping inexorably backwards to that once-upon-a-time exhibition at MoMA and a taxidermied parrot wearing an artificial limb.