Chapter 24: The Little Bit of Magic in It

Tony ran into the bathroom, skin crawling. He urgently needed to wash something off, blood or sweat or guilt. Something.

He turned the shower on full blast, as hot as it would go, stripped off the red slip, stuffed it in the trash can, and then braced his arms against the bathroom counter, studying his reflection as the room filled with steam. The handprint was darker all the time, and so were the marks on his neck. The cut, which had scabbed over during lunch, was open again and oozing. A battered woman, he thought, the phrase popping into his head. But they weren't 'battered women' anymore, were they? Now they were victims of domestic abuse or family violence or something. He wondered vaguely when the term had changed and who had bothered to change it; 'battered woman' did sound old-fashioned, like 'unwed mother' or 'female hysteric.' Tony snorted; he was feeling that last one, too. Picking up a washcloth, he began to dab at the blood, dimly mulling contemporary etymology, when he felt the first dribble of ejaculate slide down his inner thigh.

Fuck.

He waddled to the toilet and sat down with his legs spread, dripping cum into the bowl as the steam swirled around him. There was still a little blood in it. Fun stuff. Very sexy. And to think just a couple of hours ago, he had thought life couldn't possibly get worse. But Tony was nothing if not an innovator, and the day that had begun with a beating and a brush with rape now also included, thanks to his visionary leadership, this lovely little interlude and the emotional crack-up of Steve Rogers. Tony could still see the look on Steve's face as Tony had pinned him to the bed, as quietly wounded as when Tony had shown him Old Yeller. How does Tony Stark do it, ladies and gentlemen?

But 'how' was the boring question, simple and easy to answer: treat the man who loves you like an object, tie him up, pin him down, fuck him within an inch of his life, all while showing a careless disregard for his feelings or his physical person. If you did all that, it turned out the even-keeled and indestructible Captain America was pretty fucking oddly-keeled and destructible after all.

The complicated question, the juicy question, was 'why.' Why had Tony done it? Because misery loves company. Because he was tired of being weak. Because he was tired of having no control. Because he was so angry with himself he didn't know what to do with it except lash out. Because he'd known Steve would let him. Because he could.

How was that for introspection? Wouldn't Pepper be proud? He was practically Hamlet. O that this too too solid flesh should melt, thaw, and resolve itself like a popsicle in July. Jesus, but total disintegration sounded fucking fantastic. And to think he'd always considered Hamlet a wallowing, gothy, little shit. Not anymore. Now he got it; he and Hammy were on the same rotten, Danish wavelength. He was going to call up Ophelia, ask her if she wanted to pick some wildflowers and then drown in a river somewhere—just as soon as he finished throwing up.

And quick as that he was on his knees, vomiting coffee and pinot into the toilet, with Steve's cum still leaking warm and slippery down his leg. He closed his eyes, retching, until his stomach was more than empty and he'd started coughing up pieces of his soul. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Tony slipped down onto the clammy tiles and curled into a ball. With his thighs pulled up practically to his nose, he could smell the reek of sex between his legs: the chlorine from Steve, the musk of vaginal fluid, with a top note of Hammer's shaving cream. It was disgusting. It made him feel dirty. But no, he liked feeling dirty. This was something else. He felt septic.

For the first time in his life, he couldn't imagine wanting to have sex again, and it made him furious. Just days ago he'd had some of the wildest, weirdest, hottest sex of his life, sex he'd been desperate to repeat, and Hammer and the goon squad had ruined it for him. They'd wrung any potential joy right out of it. Sex had morphed from the thing he wanted most to the thing he wanted least in less than a day. It was a fucking torment, and not the fun, kinky kind. And he'd turned right around and made sure it was a fucking torment for Steve Rogers, too.

Tony started to cry, tears dripping silently onto the floor in some otherwise inexpressible combination of impotent guilt and rage. And why the hell not? What was one more bodily fluid? Tears were the least offensive one.

Steve found Tony curled up naked on the bathroom floor. It was just like the morning after the Halloween party, only worse, because Steve couldn't pick him up, even though he was the tiniest, most broken-looking thing Steve had ever seen.

"Come on, sweetheart," Steve urged, reaching down a hand through the steam. Tony didn't move, vacant eyes directed towards some black inner pit. Steve figured on some kind of shock. "Listen," he said firmly, "I can't carry you, and you have to get up. If you can't do it on your own, I'll go get Bruce. What should I do?"

This roused Tony enough to peel himself off the floor. He allowed himself to be led to the bed, looking only halfway conscious, but he did accept Steve's clothes and pull them on. That was good. As long as he was participating in any capacity, Steve was satisfied.

When Steve tucked Tony's legs under the covers, he noticed they'd been shaved, the skin silky under his fingers. Tony had shaved them for somebody. Somebody who wasn't him. But there wasn't time to contemplate that, and he put the jealousy aside and switched on the bedside lamp. With Tony's chin in his hand, he tilted Tony's face to and fro, assessing the cut, the slap mark, the smeared lipstick. It was lipstick, Steve now realized, that Tony had scrubbed off his foot at the lunch table. Steve wanted to know exactly how it had all happened, down to the last detail, so he knew how much Justin Hammer would need to suffer before someone threw him down an elevator shaft. But Steve couldn't ask, not now, and maybe not ever. Gently, he reminded himself. Patiently. One step at a time.

"Can you hold this?" Steve asked instead, releasing Tony's chin, and offering a Ziploc of ice. Tony accepted it mutely, pressing it against the handprint, but he'd let the ice drop by the time Steve returned from the bathroom with a wet washcloth. He'd gone limp against the pillows, his eyes vacant again.

"Hey," Steve said, easing down on the bed, "I'm going to clean you up a little bit." No response. Steve pushed down the incipient panic: he didn't know what he'd do if Tony shut down on him completely. Dabbing at the bloody cut, he said conversationally, "So, after we had sex the other night, I kinda figured you'd call. I mean, a text at least."

It was the right thing to say. Tony laughed, just a little, but to Steve, it felt like proof-of-life. Thank you, God, he thought fervently. If Tony Stark could still manage to laugh at a time like this, maybe he was more psychologically banged up than broken completely.

"I thought I broke you, Steve," Tony said, echoing Steve's own thought.

"Who? Me?" Steve said cheerfully, glad to have Tony talking. Now he had to keep him that way. "Why'd you think that? Because things got a little rough?"

"Because I hurt you." Tony's voice was small. "I'm sorry."

Steve continued his slow, methodical cleaning of Tony's face. "You don't need to be. You had to blow off some steam."

"I did more than that. Your face…"

"What about it?" Steve's cheer faltered; he'd given something away he didn't intend. During their encounter, he'd meant to be stoic, but apparently he hadn't been, not entirely. He'd tipped his cards, and Tony had seen a flash of his bad hand: jealousy, insecurity, fear.

"I hurt you, Steve," Tony reiterated. "I know I did. Don't lie to me. You're terrible at it."

"Okay," Steve admitted uncertainly, "you hurt me. But if I'd wanted you to stop, I'd have said so."

"Would I have listened?" Tony wondered with a note of despair.

"Of course," Steve assured him. Tony didn't look convinced.

"But what are you doing here?" Tony asked, his tone somewhere half-way between disbelief and exasperation.

"Singing telegram?"

"Steve."

"You don't like that one? Alright, then, I guess I thought you might need me." He'd cleaned the cut best he could, so he moved on to the lipstick, wiping the stubborn red stain from Tony's mouth and face. For the first time in seventy years, he wished for the vat of cold cream from his USO dressing room. "Are you mad?" he asked, folding the washcloth to a clean section.

"Yes," Tony confessed. "And if our positions were reversed, you'd be mad, too. You'd have crammed me in a padded envelope and stuffed me through the mail slot with return postage as soon as you saw me."

"You're right. I'd want you as far from here as possible. And I thought about that, but," he shrugged, "Fury gave me the opportunity and I took it."

"Fury, huh?" Tony said, making a face. "He did you a favor, did he?"

"Yeah, he did, far as I'm concerned. I think he did his best to protect me and get me here as fast as possible."

"No. Unh-uh. Fuck that guy. Fury knew this was happening, and he let it."

"It's more complicated than that," Steve said, secretly thrilled that Tony had perked up enough to argue. "This is the CIA and military intelligence operating out here. SHIELD was deliberately cut out of the loop. Fury wasn't even sure where you were; what he did know, he knew from backchannels."

Tony narrowed his eyes, "Then how'd you get here?"

"Fury organized it for me with the CIA. You should have seen it, Tony. It was like a movie. They picked me up in an unmarked van outside the Central Park Carousel."

Tony snorted, "You think the CIA did you a favor, too? You gonna write them a thank you note for letting you have a conjugal visit?"

"Hardly a visit, seeing as I don't get to leave. But no," Steve took up a tube of antibiotic ointment and smeared a glob across Tony's cut, "I don't plan to thank them. They're the ones that shot me."

"They what?"

"That's right. Nat and I were supposed to be bait. I've been here, Tony. To this facility."

"This was the trap? With the sketchy shimmer and the sad security?" Tony was incredulous.

Steve nodded.

"Those goddamn, motherfucking—" Tony couldn't even complete the sentence, unable to think of anything bad enough to call them. "But…does that mean Nat knows where we are?" he asked hesitantly, as if afraid to even hope.

Steve smiled, wiping the excess antibiotic on a corner of his shirt. "Not yet, but she will. Probably tomorrow, maybe the day after that. One of my handlers agreed to take a message."

And just like that, the hope was snuffed out. "One of your handlers?"

"He's a decent guy, Tony. They both were."

"And what's Mr. Decent Guy's name? I'll call his mom. Arrange a playdate for you two scamps."

"I don't know his name," Steve admitted, stating for the record what they both already knew. "But," he added, "I freed his grandfather during the war."

"Riiiiight." Tony was unimpressed. "Spooks are famously honest, so I'm sure that's true. But let me get this straight, once and for all, just so I'm clear: our hope for rescue depends on some random, no-name guy from the same outfit that shot you up and then made you an honorary harem girl?"

"He'll handle it, Tony. I wouldn't have asked him if I wasn't sure. And I'm not a harem girl. The directive states—"

"The directive," Tony snorted. "Please. Hammer's right, you know. You're just here to fuck me at his say-so. All that bullshit about me being in charge—it's just semantics. Hammer tells me to do something, and I have to do it. Which means you have to do it or someone else will."

Abruptly, Tony looked away, blinking rapidly. With his face turned, Steve could see the marks all over the side of Tony's neck. Steve reached out a finger to touch one, but Tony instantly drew back, as if Steve's fingertip were a lit cigarette. Steve let his hand drop immediately. "Justin Hammer did this to you?" he asked, careful to keep his voice calm, aware they were now edging into dangerous territory.

"Yes," Tony said, and Steve could hear the shame. Tony started to say something else, then held it back.

"What is it?" Steve prompted. "You can tell me. Whatever it is." Again, he kept his voice soft. If Hammer had forced himself on Tony, Steve wasn't sure what he'd do, and the uncertainty terrified him. A series of very dark, very un-Captain America scenarios were presenting themselves to his mind.

But Tony ducked the question. "What did Bruce say to you? When he was taking out your staples?"

Steve ducked, too. "You know, Bruce," he responded vaguely. Bruce had told him plenty, but he wasn't sure just how much to repeat.

"Did he tell you I tried to have sex with him?" Tony asked pointedly, swinging his sharp brown eyes to Steve's face, gauging his reaction. It was some kind of test, and Steve knew he needed to pass.

"What Bruce told me," Steve said slowly, picking his words, "was that he offered to have sex with you, but, however it happened, I'm not angry about it. I'd never be angry about it, Tony. I'd never be angry with you about anything that's happened here. None of this is your fault."

Face shifting into lines of deep skepticism, Tony's expression indicated that, to the contrary, everything was his fault and that Steve was an idiot for thinking otherwise. "Come on. If I hadn't been so epically stupid at the Halloween party—"

"It doesn't work that way. You made one decision, and one decision is all you're responsible for. You don't have to claim the rest."

"I'd say there's a pretty direct line of cause and effect—"

"No," Steve shut him down. "Listen to me. If you want to go all the way back to Halloween, get ready to share the blame with me. Hell, just give me all of it. If we'd had sex that night, like you planned, everything would have been fine. Think about that, Tony. Everything would have been fine. But I didn't trust you, so I made a mountain out of a molehill, and I was angry, and I was mean, and I made you feel bad. I was a jerk that night and a terrible husband. So really, the last two months are my fault if they're anybody's. I'm the one responsible." It was hard to say, but it was also a relief, because the guilt had been heavy on him since the moment Fury had told him the fix. "I'm sorry," he concluded. "I'm so, so sorry, and I don't know how I can possibly make it up to you."

Tony laughed humorlessly and shook his head, "What I did on Halloween was insane, Steve. Insane. Even for me. I don't blame you."

"Well, that's good, Tony," Steve said, "'cause I blame myself plenty. Myself, and now Justin Hammer. I got some blame for him, too." Then he swallowed and plunged forward with the question that scared him the most, "Did he rape you?" It felt like ripping off the world's stickiest band-aid, one with adhesive so strong it took the skin with it.

"No," Tony said quietly. "We didn't even have sex."

Steve heaved a huge, stale breath, and felt an enormous weight lift from his chest. He cupped his hand against Tony's cheek, but Tony shied from the touch, his expression inscrutable.

"It was…consensual, Steve. Consensual-ish."

So Tony had willingly gone to bed with Justin Hammer. It wasn't a surprise. The pair's behavior at lunch had hinted at some mutual breach of trust. Still, there was a difference between suspecting a thing and knowing it for certain, and Steve found that absolute certainty stung. The weight was falling back into place around his heart, though he tried his best to keep it from settling. He wanted whatever Tony had done to be consensual, he told himself. He did. Why, then, did this revelation hurt so much?

"I'm sure you had your reasons," Steve said finally, realizing he'd been quiet.

"I had to choose," Tony explained to his hands, fidgeting in his lap with an edge of the covers, "and I was afraid of the other guys. I thought Hammer was somebody I could handle."

"Better the devil you know," Steve said with chagrin. "I get it, Tony. I hate it, but I get it. But just because you agreed to the sex doesn't mean you agreed to this." He reached again for Tony's face, cradling Tony's cheek gently in his palm. This time, Tony sighed and closed his eyes, letting the weight of his head fall into Steve's hand.

"I'm tired, Steve. I'm so tired of being this way. I hate it."

"Then let's fix it," Steve said, "You and me. Have something to eat, sleep a little, and then we'll take care of it."

"For a few hours maybe," Tony said miserably. "They'll just change me back again."

"No, they won't," Steve said with conviction. "Bruce told me extragen hasn't worked on anyone but you, and I'm pretty sure I know why. This stuff is made for pleasure. You can't co-opt it for espionage or anything else. Likewise, it takes pleasure to make it dissolve. That's why holding you down and forcing you to finish didn't work: it didn't feel good." Steve knew in his bones that he was right.

Tony looked skeptical, "A room full of biochemists says otherwise."

"Well, they're wrong. It didn't work because you didn't like it, not because of some arbitrary hormone level. I promise you, Tony, this stuff works because of intentions."

"'Intentions' is pretty vague from a scientific standpoint."

"But extragen isn't science. It's magic."

Tony scoffed, "There is no such thing as 'magic.' 'Magic' is just a lazy explanation for science you don't understand."

"Fine," Steve conceded. "Call it whatever you want. But I've got a sense about it."

Tony rolled his eyes, "A sense. Well, that's great. But if extragen is dependent on intention, then how come it dissolves in a beaker? Does lab glass have an inner life we don't know about? Are beakers always in some secret state of glassware ecstasy—?"

"I don't know how it works; I don't claim to," Steve said, sliding the tray of food into Tony's lap. "But give me a chance and I'll prove it."

"What is it?" Tony eyed the covered plate dubiously.

"A cheeseburger. And if you eat it, I'll give you some morphine for dessert."

Tony's second attempt at showering was more successful. He cried some more, but at least he did it under running water. All the things he hadn't quite said to Steve crowded his mouth, tasting bitter, and he stood under the scalding flow until he felt like he'd worked his way up to a full confession. Steve wouldn't be angry, Tony assured himself; he'd said as much. When Tony finally got out, he was the color of a lobster, but he felt only marginally cleaner. He put Steve's borrowed clothes back on, the ones that still smelled like home, and they made him feel cleaner than the soap had.

Steve was in bed, lying flat now that he'd had out the staples. Back in the immobilizer, with two morphine tablets under his belt, he looked like he was fighting gravity to stay awake. Tony had taken a tablet, too, and could feel its welcome pull. The drugs would make the truth easier to tell and easier to hear.

"Did you talk to Bruce? What did he say?" Tony asked, climbing in beside Steve. The lights were out, but the room was lit with December sun from the little window high in the wall.

Steve blinked at him heavily, a slow smile spreading across his face. "He didn't like my choice of courier. He thinks we're never getting out of here."

"Fancy that," Tony said drily. "How'd he like your magic theory?"

"Didn't like that either, but he was nicer about it than you were."

"He can't tell you you're an idiot because you're kinda his boss."

"I'm kinda your boss."

"Yeah, but I'm not scared of, like, The Man."

"Well, I hope not. I like to think of myself as a friend first and a boss second. Now, c'mere or you're fired," Steve said, and wrapped an arm around him, pulling Tony's head against his good shoulder. He sighed contentedly and shut his eyes. "Have you thought about it?"

"What? Your crackpot idea?"

"Crackerjack idea, I think you mean. But I appreciate your attempt at my native lingo." He yawned. "We should try it, Tony. Tell me you'll sleep on it."

"I will," Tony agreed. They lapsed into silence. It felt like a good time for a confession, here in the warm bed. Tony could cast out the whole truth into the long shadows of the afternoon and then let it sink under the drowsy morphine sea. When they woke up again, the confession would already be a memory.

"Hey, Steve?" Tony began. No response. He lifted his head from Steve's shoulder: out like a light. He'd missed his window. That was alright; he'd tell Steve when they woke up. Making up his mind to do it had been the hard part.

Subsiding back against Steve's warm chest, Tony listened to Steve's breathing, its regular in and out like waves on a shore. Tony was so, so tired. He was teetering on the edge of sleep, but he was preoccupied, his brain absently grinding. Like a pebble in a kid's rock tumbler, Steve's extragen theory turned over and over again in his mind.

At first glance, the idea wasn't special; it was sort of stupid, incredibly unscientific. In other words, it was just a damn rock. But the more Tony tumbled the theory around, adding in a pinch of intellectual grit, the better it looked. It still wasn't scientific, per se, and it still wasn't good, but there was a logic to it. The magic bit was nonsense, but what if extragen did respond to certain neurological conditions? Electrical patterns in the prefrontal cortex or something? Intentions, in the common parlance. Still didn't explain why extragen would dissolve in a beaker, but if you hand-waved that part away, it wasn't the dumbest idea in the world, no dumber than anything involving Cherenkov radiation or gamma rays. Turned out the damn rock had a little sparkle to it, a little color. Tony wasn't ready to declare it a diamond, but Steve's theory…sounded kind of true. Which meant it was probably worth a try.

Unfortunately, Tony didn't want to give it a try. Tony could still imagine that smell between his legs, the odor of some nightmarish threesome. Sex in any capacity sounded exhausting, about as appetizing as a used condom. But if Steve was right, Tony had to want to. Pressing his nose against Steve's shirt, he took a hit of showered husband and penthouse detergent. Sex can smell like this, he reminded himself, like Steve's clean skin and fresh laundry. He lay his cheek back flat on Steve's big chest, feeling the slow rise and fall. And sex can feel like this, drowsy, comfortable. It wasn't always intimidating or frantic. Sex could be nice. With Steve, it usually was.

Tony shifted, studying Steve's face in the winter light. Even asleep he looked tired. Poor, long-suffering Steve, a man who'd hauled ass across an ocean and signed away his freedom for the dubious honor of being Tony's fuck-buddy. God, but Tony was a miserable, ungrateful asshole. How could he have arrived at a point where he needed to convince himself to have sex with Steve Rogers?

He sighed, coming to the inevitable conclusion: sex was the only way forward. And it was either going to be here, now, and private, or it was going to be later, under the glare of lights and gazes. Probably, it was going to be both, but if there was any way Tony could spare Steve the humiliation of sex in front of spectators, he was obligated to try. And maybe that was it, maybe that's how he could bring himself to want to do it: frame it as a service for Steve. This was marriage vows stuff. With my body, I thee worship, for better or worse. Or something like that. His feelings seemed inconsequential next to protecting Steve from the psychopaths down the hall.

Tony closed his eyes, finally calm enough for sleep. He felt better, now that he'd made up his mind. When he woke up, he'd confess everything, make a clean breast of it, and then he and Gandalf would give the magic theory a try.

Abracadabra.