Truth or Dare, Do or Die

by itsallAvengers

Chapter 2

Bruce Banner was not a man who was naturally good with people. 

It’d always been the case. His father had been a botanist and his mother a seamstress. Both of them had made workspaces out of the spare rooms in the Queens apartment where Bruce had grown up in, and those workspaces had been their fortresses. Tucked inside the peeling, mildewy walls, constantly accompanied by books and papers on his dad’s side and reams upon reams of fabric on his mom’s, both adults had never felt the need for friends. The apartment had always been quiet, save for the predictable sounds of rumbling engines and rattling china as the hourly train raced through the city, 15 feet from Bruce’s window. And as Bruce had grown, he’d made a fortress of his own. His city had been built around science. 

Ask Bruce to name every single bone in the human body, and he could recite them with the same ease it took people to count to 10. Ask him to maintain a conversation with the body those bones belonged to, however, and the outcome was not quite so graceful. 

Nevertheless, his life had changed insurmountably in the last year or so. No longer did he live a life confined to solitude, running and hiding in any available shadow. Now, he lived a life that probably couldn’t get more ostentatious if you tried. He lived in the biggest tower in New York. One of his closest friends was a billionaire. Oh, and he turned massive and green and saved the world every so often. Go figure. 

“So what do you say to Kellick the next time you see her?” Natasha’s words were lilting - amused, verging on patronising. Bruce knew there was no ill-intent behind it, and reminded himself as such when he looked over to her. 

He sighed. “Sorry if I caused any offence. Earth customs are very different, and so I was taken by surprise.”

“And what are you not going to do?”

“Go off on any tangents, rambles, or otherwise-unruly conversing that could end with me saying something even worse.”

Natasha patted his back. “Good stuff. I’ll make an extrovert out of you yet, Banner.”

His eyebrows gave away his disbelief, but she just grinned at him before jumping off the bench where both of them had been sitting for the last twenty minutes. The Pavelixxian engineers were beginning to filter in through the entrance, so soon he would need to start getting to work.

“What are you guys doing to pass the time around here while me and Tony are doing the dirty work down here in the basement?” He asked her.

Natasha looked at her nails and shrugged. “Fighting one another. Lots of games of mercy. A bit of kissing with tongue. You know the drill.”

“Sounds fun.”

“You’ve not been kissed with tongue by Clint then.”

Bruce laughed. He laughed a lot these days, and he found himself liking it. Of all the people in the world he’d expected to be able to do that to him, Natasha Romanov was not someone who’d been high on his list. But as it turned out, Russian defects capable of killing men twice their size with a pair of pantyhose were also really funny. When they weren’t trying to kill you with their pantyhose, that was. 

As Natasha wandered off to leave Bruce to his work, she passed Tony, who was slipping in through the entrance on the far side of the room. Her gaze lingered on him sharply, smile falling off her face. Bruce watched their interaction from afar, pushing his glasses higher up his nose in time to see Natasha settle her hand on Tony’s shoulder. She stilled him in his path, her mouth moving quickly, brows drawing together. Bruce didn’t catch what she said. 

Tony rolled his eyes, but the indifference felt forced. Tony Stark was a man who could be dying and still try to pass it off with a glib remark. And he certainly looked worse for wear just then: dark circles around tired eyes, rounded shoulders that seemed to be dragging the rest of him forward. His face, normally bright and racing with thoughts, seemed colourless and slack. He watched Natasha talk with a sort of vacancy that was uncharacteristic of him - even when Tony wasn’t listening, it was only because his brain had wandered elsewhere. But it looked more like no-one was home now. 

She said something to him. He shook his head and waved her off, then continued walking forward toward the Quinjet. Natasha turned to watch him, and then caught Bruce’s eye. She pointed at Tony’s back. 

‘Check on him ’, she mouthed over to Bruce.

Tony’s gaze had moved to him, so Bruce couldn’t acknowledge her request. But she knew he would follow it anyway.

“Morning Brucie.” Tony’s voice was loud in the air, and he gave his body a full shake, rattling himself as one did to a remote that wasn’t working properly. “You’ll be glad to know I’ve had twelve lovely hours of sleep since our last tete-a-tete. No hallucinating. Pinky promise.”

Bruce knew he had to tread carefully. Tony could be like a bomb stuffed inside a hot potato sometimes. Proximity was nerve-wracking, but letting him fall was far, far worse.

“That’s good,” he said, which was true. “Although I am still perfectly capable of fixing the jet up alone, if you need more time,” he added, which wasn’t. Tony had built this Quinjet from within the wondrous mess of his own mind. Some of the mechanics were beyond even Bruce’s understanding. 

Tony exhaled. “Yeah. Sure.”

Bruce would never be as good a liar as Clint or Natasha. But in a way, he was grateful for that. He shrugged, letting the conversation slide into more technical matters as Tony delegated tasks to Bruce, to Sellon and Vrishi and a few of the other early-arrivers. He talked with a level of confidence in himself that’d taken a long time for Bruce to get used to. It was easy to mistake it for hubris, or vanity. But, for better or worse, Tony really did just know how to do most things better than most people. He didn’t hide that. 

Bruce watched him carefully, nodded in understanding as Tony told him what he needed of him. Then he got to work, letting his mind wander as he did so. Back home, it was nearing December. He was going to have to start thinking of Christmas gifts, which was bound to be the cause of mild worry for the next month. What the fuck were you supposed to buy for a God? Or a spy? Or a fucking billionaire? The only person who seemed simple enough was Steve, who he knew would be unequivocally grateful for anything provided to him. Growing up poor stuck with you like that. Bruce would know. 

He puttered around for a while, letting his worries soothe over him like a balm, a familiar background noise in his brain. He’d been told more than once that his anxiety was holding him back in life. But these days, he thought it was probably a virtue. He was on a team filled with trigger-happy, borderline insane superheroes. There needed to be at least one person in the madhouse who thought twice about some things. 

Beside him, Tony cleared his throat for the third time in the last ten minutes. A moment later, he excused himself to the bathroom. It was the third toilet break he’d had in an hour. Bruce watched him hurry away without a word, without anything at all. He’d barely made a peep all morning. 

The anxiety which lived in Bruce’s brain was talking to him. It was telling him that something was not right. And not just in the way things were often not-right, either. Things weren’t right in a way that meant things were really, really not right. 

Bruce didn’t know what it was exactly that gave him this impression. Tony got sick a lot, after all. And when it came to people, Bruce so often got the wrong end of the stick. Said the wrong thing. Jumped to the wrong conclusion. But with this, Bruce was confident. He’d come to learn of his teammates the same way he’d learned any other science. Their complexities, their characteristics. How to talk their language. 

“You’re awfully quiet,” Bruce commented a few minutes after Tony returned, pulling off a metal panel from the wing and chucking it to the side. The clang of it masked his conversation to any of the other engineers. “Usually when you’re sick I can’t get you to quit complaining for love nor money.”

Tony didn’t look up at him. He was covered in circuitry, meticulously fixing everything the blunt force of the collision had ruined. 

“Remember our audience, Bruce,” he said quickly, quietly. “I would rather they didn’t jump to any conclusions about the state of my health.”

Bruce had figured as much. But still, the worry wouldn’t stop. “Why did you lie to me yesterday?” He asked.

“Easier.”

“Not really. It just pissed me off and stopped you from working. And you love working.”

“What can I say, Bruce? I got worried. I thought it would be better if no-one knew at all. The less people know, the less people can blab.”

It was a lie, and Bruce knew it was a lie, because Tony trusted them too much to think that. Bruce was sure of it. The team had started off as strangers forced together in a chaotic blur of fighting and aliens and occasional screaming matches, sure, but they weren’t like that any more. Even Tony had yielded to the pull of camaraderie. At least enough to have admitted this to them, so they could help him cover it up. 

Tony was sick. But he was sick in a way that had him scared - too scared, even, to tell his team. 

Bruce knew, then. 

It dawned on him like a soft sunrise, and he sat in it for a few moments, just staring at Tony as he bent fastidiously over the wiring like a man in prayer. 

It seemed so antithetical to everything Tony was - he was the man the entire world wanted in some way or another. Everything he desired, he got. If he couldn’t get it, he’d make it. But either way, nothing stayed out of his reach for long. Bruce had never seen him leave a fight he hadn’t won, not once, no matter what it was. Even if it involved playing the long game for a bit, losing the battle to win the war. Tony danced around attorneys and military generals and slimy businessmen like they were little dogs yapping at his feet. 

Bruce had always struggled with people. But to Tony, people were as malleable as metal. Bruce had envied that once. Now all it felt like was a cruel joke: giving a man that power and then forcing him to suffer with the one thing he couldn’t manufacture or manipulate.

Bruce leaned forward and tapped Tony’s shoulder, demanding his attention. As soon as Tony’s eyes landed on him, Bruce signed:

You’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back.

And all the colour drained right from Tony’s face. 

He stumbled to his feet, sudden and unsteady. Bruce copied the motion, because if this was true, then Tony was in serious trouble, and Bruce wasn’t going to let him run away and face it on his own. 

Tony shook his head once, like he was begging Bruce to just drop it. To forget. 

“Tony,” Bruce said softly, “let’s take a break, huh?” He peered around the ship, over to the other group of engineers. “We’re gonna grab some caffeine. Be back in two ticks.”

Bruce’s mind raced as he pulled Tony’s elbow and guided him out of the room. He tried to think of solutions. He drew blanks. All the sparse bits of information that’d been fed to him over the last few days melded together, formed a rudimentary baseline of knowledge. He knew that whatever Tony had could not, under any circumstances, be discovered. He knew that it attacked the respiratory system, and that that must’ve been why Tony was coughing so much. And he knew that the anecdotal stories from various Pavelixxians had all implied it was fatal. 

He blinked and pushed that thought away. The Avengers had survived far worse than this. 

They were entirely silent as Bruce pulled them in the direction of his quarters. A five minute journey stretched into eternity, and Bruce’s grip did not shift from Tony’s arm the entire time. Finally, he pushed open the doors to his room. He locked it behind him and then turned to Tony. 

“How long have you been symptomatic?” He asked immediately.

Tony swallowed. “About three days now.”

Bruce recycled back the memories, plucked out faces of the people they’d talked to, people Tony had been near. But what was the use in tracing it back? Any self-respecting Pavelixxian would never admit to being infected. It could have been any one of them. It could have been Sellon, with all her disgust and all her harsh words covering up the true terror she felt at her own fate. “Do you know what kind of time-frame we’re looking at?”

“Respiratory symptoms first show up within 12 hours, but Pavelixxians usually last about two to three weeks until it becomes impossible to hide.” Tony’s voice was dull, like all the fight had simply seeped right out of him. “The books said that the petals only start after the first week of incubation. Mine took about 24 hours.”

Bruce processed this. “So it’s affecting you much faster.”

Tony just nodded. He coughed, laughed, and shook his head. “Christ,” he muttered, and then, losing all pretences, he spat out a slimy ball of petals from his mouth. They hit the wooden paneling with a disgusting splat. Bruce stared at it in disbelief. 

“Yeah,” Tony said, “drink it up, Brucie-bear. I’m a medical fucking marvel.”

There was an answer somewhere. There had to be. “It’s only for unrequited love,” he muttered, pacing back and forth.

But Tony beat him to it. “I’m not telling them.”

“Why the hell not?”

There was a second where Tony geared himself up to go in a particular direction - his eyes grew hard, his shoulders rolled, he pressed his tongue up against his top teeth, slicking them up to bark and bite and snarl. But the blow never came. He looked at Bruce for a long time, tapping his foot against the floor, and Bruce let him. He didn’t seek to fill the silence. 

Eventually, Tony sagged again. He held his head in his hands. “Textbooks say that Hanahaki can be carried by people who aren’t suffering from unrequited love. That’s its main mode of transmission, actually. The carriers don’t realise because they’re not susceptible. Then they touch someone who is , and bam- the spores that they’re carrying are transferred, and suddenly some poor bastard’s got a flower sapling jammed down their throat.”

“Okay. But what does this have to do with–”

“I’m pretty sure Steve was the one who infected me. And Steve is the one I’m in love with. Ipso facto…” Tony trailed off, and he smiled at Bruce sadly when Bruce let his mouth fall open in shock. “How’s that for a plot twist?”

Bruce reeled back, blinking once, twice, three times. He’d used to have a tic as a child- blink 7 times, twitch his cheek twice . That’d been the order. His mom had taken him to the doctors about it, but they’d just said he’d grow out of it and sent him home with some multivitamins. 

Tony loved Steve. Tony loved Steve Rogers. 

He blinked again and again, making very sure to stop at 6. “Steve might not have given it to you,” he said, but Tony shook his head again. Always one step ahead, always with an answer.

“Steve waded through a patch of them when we were in the jungle. The blue flowers. And it’s skin on skin contact that transmits the disease. Believe me Brucie, I’ve tried to think of any instance where someone else has touched me. It’s only been Steve.”

Another shoe dropped. Tony and Steve had been getting on well recently - far better than they had a few months ago. But only now did Bruce see the quiet smiles for what they were. Suddenly the gentle touches they gave one another so easily took on a whole new meaning.

“Are you - have you two been sleeping together?”

Tony sighed, turning away. “Don’t start–”

“We were told, Tony - they said for these exact reasons, we shouldn’t get involved with one another like this, and you did and now look what’s fucking–”

Bruce stopped himself and took a breath. There was no use for misplaced anger here. He needed to be rational, because that’s the only way they were going to figure this out. He stared at the floor where the lump of spit-soaked petals lay, deep blue, living things, making their home in Tony’s throat. A tiny smattering of crimson leaked out from the corners of his lips. He was spitting up blood alongside the flowers. 

Bruce thought about Tony’s diminished lung capacity. His weakened immune system. Something tight and terrified twisted in his gut. 

“It still might not be Steve,” Bruce tried, “they tested us when we first arrived and he was clean–”

“They quarantined us to look for symptoms , Bruce. Not to see if we were infected. They don’t care about spreading the disease all that much. They just care about killing the people found to have it.”

Bruce felt the anger again. It was always so close to the surface. He wanted to tell Tony to stop shooting down all his ideas, but he knew that was childish. This was what scientists did. They cut away and cut away and cut away at all the options until only one answer remained. Bruce could find it. 

“Telling him could change the way he feels,” he told Tony. 

Tony didn’t even consider it. “I’m not telling him.”

“And what’s the other fucking option? You die in 72 hours and leave Steve with that grief?”

“And you think me putting my life in his hands only for him to be unable to do anything about it is better?” Tony snapped back at him, a fiery determination in his eyes as he approached Bruce and jammed a finger into his chest. “If I tell him and he cannot force himself to love me, then he will never, ever forgive himself for it. I won’t risk that.”

Calm, Bruce had to be calm. 

He took a deep breath, glaring right back at Tony, thinking about how this idiot in front of him had always been the only one to ever stand up to him like this. Everyone trod on eggshells around him, always - even the rest of the team to some extent, he knew - but not Tony. No, Tony was willing to poke the bear over and over and over, as long as it meant he got his point across. Nothing stopped him. 

He’d used to think, at times like this, that maybe Tony wanted to die. Just a little - just under the surface, where all the bravado and brashness gave way to that shockingly vulnerable centre. These days, however, he realised it wasn’t quite that simple. Tony didn’t want to die. But his natural, intrinsic urge to survive just didn’t sit at the number one spot like it did for most of humanity. For Tony, his convictions came first. Came above even life itself. He would truly sooner die than stop being himself, and following what he believed, even if it was just for a moment. And he’d make that choice every single time.

“This is madness,” Bruce told him with a soft shake of his head, trying to plead with the rational, logic-driven side of the man. “Just listen to yourself, Tony. You’re throwing away the only chance you have at beating this because you’re worried about Steve’s feelings, but this is your life we’re talking about.”

“He already feels responsible for the death of one of his best friends.” Tony wasn’t moving. He was never going to move - Bruce could see it in his eyes, Tony had made a choice, and now he was going to see it through. “I will not be the one who forces him to bear the burden of another, and neither will you, do you understand?”

Bruce stared back at him, jaw clenched. “You can’t stop me,” he tried.

Tony looked at him with an icy gaze. Bruce knew before he even spoke that this was Tony at his most desperate - at his cruellest. In hindsight, he felt foolish for never cottoning on to the way he felt for Steve. When it came to that man, Tony had never been rational.

“Maybe not. But I’ll die hating you more than anyone else in the fucking universe,” he promised. “I’ll make those my last words, too. Just so they stay with you.”

Shoving past Bruce, Tony yanked the door open. He looked over his shoulder. “Do not tell anyone,” he demanded. “We fix this stupid fucking ship, we get off this stupid fucking planet, and then… and then, I don’t fucking know, we find an interstellar hospital that has a cure. No one else will have to know.”

Bruce shook his head - it was all he knew to do. Tony was right: if Steve couldn’t make himself love Tony, then he would spend the rest of his life blaming himself for Tony’s death. But if Tony said nothing, he was a dead man. He was riding on some wild belief that someone out in the universe would not only have a cure for a disease on a reclusive planet, but that they would be able to get there in time to administer treatment. Both were pipe dreams. Tony was clinging to them anyway. 

“Steve would want you to try,” Bruce tried in a final Hail Mary. “He’d want you to tell him.”

But Tony just waved and turned his back, marching away. “Well I’m not Steve Rogers, am I? I’m the stupid fucker who fell in love with him.”

He slammed the door behind him.

*

Tony knew he was going to die. 

He worked tirelessly at the Quinjet, stifling coughs between clanging metal and obnoxiously loud laughter from Bruce, he fought the exhaustion at every turn and stuffed handfuls of petals into his pocket every half hour, noting the larger and larger amounts of blood that came alongside them. 

He knew all of it was fruitless, but he tried anyway, because it was all he had. 

Bruce refused to speak to him, unless he was begging Tony to tell Steve. But eventually, he gave up on that and drifted into silence. He worked with a fervour that didn’t suit his placid attitude, but then again, these weren’t normal circumstances. Tony appreciated the concern. 

He and Bruce worked long after the other engineers went home for the day. Bruce left for dinner, and when he came back, he wordlessly gave Tony a portion of the food, before sitting beside him and getting right back to the work he’d taken a short reprieve from. They didn’t speak. Tony didn’t know what he could possibly say that would help the other man. He just knew that his mind wasn’t changed. 

Steve couldn’t know this was because of him. He couldn’t. And Tony was happy to die if it meant Steve never had to live with the knowledge. 

“Pass the wrench?” Tony wheezed, holding out a shuddering hand and looking behind him to double check no one was around before choking up. 

Bruce watched him for a second. He slid the wrench across the floor, and then wordlessly held out his hand, knowing Tony’s pockets were quite literally unable to hold any more of the disgustingly delicate petals. Tony thought about saying something snarky about his willingness to handle Tony’s spit-up, but he was too tired. He handed Bruce the smattering of bloody petals.

“Thanks.”

Bruce didn’t respond. 

Tony worked, and he thought about Steve, and he let his mind find peace in the other man. Sometimes in the mornings, after his 10-mile run, he’d bump into Tony in the kitchen or join him back in the bedroom where Tony was still asleep. And Tony would look at him and wince, pull a face, comment on how sweaty he was, and then Steve would be disgusting and flick it at him, or leap on him and wipe his forehead all over Tony’s cheek. It was gross. He loved that Steve let him see him be gross. No one else got to see Steve be gross like that. 

All Tony was wishing for right now was just a bit more fucking time. He could’ve made Steve love him, Tony thought. With time. He was already accustomed to Tony’s worst character flaws. He’d not been deterred by them. 

Then again, he supposed loving them was a different thing entirely. And they’d only been sleeping together for 6 months. Who knew at what point Steve would reach his limit? Tony knew he pushed the other man there, sometimes. They argued like the Earth depended on it - which Tony figured it did sometimes. 

A relationship with that many stakes would probably never have worked anyway. 

“I’m sorry Tony,” Bruce said eventually, and when Tony looked up, the world had gone dark. It was only the striplights that illuminated the scrapyard now. He watched Bruce as the man rubbed a hand across an exhausted face. His shoulders were hunched, back curved, like a physical weight sat on him and pushed him down. When he caught Tony’s eye, there was a defeated look there. “I’m fucking exhausted. I’m making more mistakes than I’m fixing. Give me a few hours of sleep, and I’ll be back, okay?”

Tony nodded to him, watching as the man cracked his back, stood up tenderly. He’d been sat on the floor for hours and it must’ve hurt. Bruce’s hands were blackened from grease, dust and dirt that’d built up within the mechanics of the ship. On the list of people Tony could safely call his friends, he was pretty sure he was undeserving of each and every one of them - but perhaps especially Bruce Banner. The man who never snapped back, never allowed himself his anger, for fear of what it’d bring. Tony should always have been softer with him. He should have held his tongue more. 

Should have, should have, should have. 

“I love you,” Tony told him before he could think twice about it, and his voice sounded fucking awful. Every breath hurt. He was pretty sure the roots were sinking down into his throat, piercing through the flesh. “And I’m sorry. For everything. I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I’m just an asshole.”

Bruce’s face twitched. He blinked six times. He stepped forward and squeezed Tony’s shoulder. “I love you too,” he said, and the two of them couldn’t help it: they waited, desperate for some kind of sign, some holy intervention as the Hanahaki flower accepted their love as a good enough substitute. 

But there was nothing. Bruce gave his shoulder one final squeeze, and as he slowly trundled out of the room, Tony could only feel as if he’d just told Bruce his last words. 

The tiredness felt like enough to overwhelm him, but luckily, Tony had a lifetime of practise at ignoring that. Now alone, he allowed himself the freedom to cough as much as he really wanted- a heave, a wheeze, and a petal almost every minute. He kept working despite the ache in his own back, the fiery pain that was coursing through his chest, the lack of air that was filling his lungs.

The whole thing was so pathetic. He’d had metal tear its way through his chest cavity and it was a fucking flower that was killing him. He’d been tortured relentlessly for three months and yet the thing that really broke him turned out to be love. It was sick. If he stopped too long to think about it, it felt too ridiculous to even be real. 

Steve had visited earlier, concern mounting at Tony’s absence at dinner, but Tony had told him he was busy, and Bruce had convinced him to leave. Now Tony was left wondering if he was even going to survive the night, or that was the last time he’d see Steve at all. It felt rather anticlimactic. 

But when they got home, Tony had everything prepared for them. Private messages, last will and testament. Everything was accounted for and they would have to worry about nothing, so at least there was that. 

He wiped his nose and shook himself back into full consciousness, hacking up yet another handful of petals and stuffing them into his sock while he did away with the freshly-repaired circuitry and stumbled to his feet, ready to test the engine. But as he turned around in the dark warehouse, he found himself jolting in surprise as he came face to face with Sellon. 

More accurately, Sellon and her gun, pointed directly at his skull. He hadn’t even heard her arrive. His senses were failing him.

“I knew it,” she hissed at him, “from the moment you started coughing I knew. You thought you could hide this? You’re filthy.”  

Pressing at a communicator on her shoulder, she spewed out a fast stream of her native language, clearly alerting someone to the situation before her. She had to have seen the petals Tony had only just hidden away– there was no way to miss it. 

Was she going to kill him on sight? Tony didn’t think so. Despite all her vitriol, her hands shook against the trigger. He did have to wonder, however, what happened next. 

Despite the situation, he found himself feeling calm. Maybe it was just the exhaustion, the hours and hours spent in pure panic. He was all run out, and there was no way to escape this planet without the Quinjet. Maybe it was better that he didn’t anyway - if this disease could transmit to humans, then it could also wipe out millions of souls that were just as stupid and hopeless as Tony. It would be an epidemic of unseen proportions.  

He held up his hands. “Scared you’re gonna catch my cooties, Sellon?” He asked her softly.

She spat at him. She wasn’t wearing her uniform - she must’ve checked in on him in her own time, determined to catch him in the lie that she’d suspected of him. In all honesty, Tony had thought this would happen sooner or later. Try as he might, there were very few ways to stifle a cough when it needed to come out. Anyone with a keen eye would’ve been able to see what he was doing. 

“You are everything that’s wrong with this city,” she declared. “It’s the people like you who are undermining everything we’ve built. Anarchists, all of you.”

“For doing something I can’t even control?” Tony laughed, and it hurt, and everything fucking hurt, and that was just life. “Let me ask you: if your society is dependent on refusing the most base instincts of its citizens, do you really think that society is destined to last? Those pesky feelings will always be there, whether you like it or not.”

“A true Pavelixxian would never succumb to the kind of emotional carnage you’re talking about.”

Tony just rolled his eyes. “You’re delusional honey. And deep down, you know that. It’s why you’re so goddamn twitchy right now. You’re just as capable as falling in a love you didn’t choose as the rest of us.”

She looked at him as if he’d just slapped her. Then her face sharpened, grew determined. Like someone about to dive from a plane, she marched forward, gun still drawn, until it pressed right into his temple and their noses almost brushed.

“I would sooner kill myself than whore my own emotions out in such a disgusting fashion,” she whispered, her breath hot and oppressive against his face. 

Tony coughed on her. 

It wasn’t his proudest moment. Then again, it wasn’t even close to being his most shameful either. It sorted the proximity problem out fairly efficiently too, as she stumbled away with a shriek of disgust, palming at her face and wiping the Hanahaki petal from where it had lodged itself to her cheek. She flung it across the room with a terrified snarl, and then turned on him with such a look of hatred that Tony thought she really might kill him. 

As she lifted her gun, he screwed his eyes shut and thought of Steve, and sunshine, and everything that’d gone wrong to get him here. It wasn’t a bad way to die, all things considered. 

There was a flash of pain, and then a familiar cloak of darkness fell across his vision. He was out before he even hit the ground

 

*

When he next came round, it wasn’t in the same pleasant fashion as it had been last time. But hey - at least he came round. That was an unexpected surprise. 

It took him a good few minutes to gain the physical and mental strength to open his eyes, and he did so with a lethargic slowness that informed him that this time, it was a blunt object that’d put him to sleep. No darts this time: Sellon had just clattered him the good old fashioned way. She’d always struck him as the type. 

He rolled onto his back and pressed a hand tenderly to his sore head. It didn’t feel wet, which was good - meant she hadn’t split his skull too badly. 

He wondered where he was. Unfocused eyes made out a plain grey ceiling, much like every other building in Pavelix, but this was certainly not the warehouse. The cool air was gone, as was the echo. The sense of space was inverted - it felt cramped. There was sweat on his forehead, and it could’ve been due to the illness, but it was also just fucking hot. He could feel as much. 

Suddenly, he was reminded of his current predicament in a big way when a choking fit overcame him. He felt the petals spill up into his mouth, but the dizziness and the lack of focus caught him off guard - he was too weak to even roll over, let them tumble from his mouth. Instead, they sat stagnant in his airway. 

He spasmed and began to choke, and thought about how this was always how he’d thought he would die, except with less flowers and more alcohol-induced vomit. People had always warned him about that , but never about this. 

He felt something shift beside him - and then a hand pressed against his shoulder, grabbed the hem of his trousers. He was rolled sideways hastily, and suddenly the petals lurched from his mouth, freeing up his airways and allowing what little space there was left in there to take some air to his lungs. He wheezed, gripping at nothing, pressing his nose against the mercifully cool floor. 

“ Ebe ,” said a faint voice from behind him, “you’re almost as bad as me. I’m impressed you managed to hide this so long. Easy. It’ll pass.”

Tony could do nothing but trust the disembodied voice as he coughed and coughed and coughed. Eventually, though, he was proven right. The petals stopped coming up. 

He slumped, exhausted, into the floor.

It was a while before he found the strength to speak. “Thanks,” he said hoarsely to the voice that’d saved his life. With what was left of his strength, he forced himself into a sitting position, and then turned his head to put a face to the voice. 

A large, blue man looked back at him. His eyes were a defiant yellow, and those familiar Pavelixxian markings wound their way across his forearms, chest, legs. He was bald aside from a black braid that started on his crown and went all the way down to his backbone, as if it were a tail. 

Tony looked at him and clocked it almost instantly, despite the differences in their biology. There was a look about him that Tony had seen in his reflection over these last few days. A heaviness which emanated from the depths of the soul and poured out of the eyeballs. 

Tony shifted, weakly pushing himself up against the wall as he took the other Pavelixxian in.

“So this is the Hanahaki infirmary ward, yeah?” He said drily. 

The man laughed. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“How would you put it?”

“Hanahaki death box?” The man shrugged. “Scum central? Depends who you ask.”

Tony shut his eyes and grinned. His head rolled onto his shoulder, not quite able to hold itself up. “Oh. A funny one. You do exist.”

There was a shuffling noise as the Pavelixxian also readjusted so that he was sitting with his back against the small bench in the centre of the room and they were face to face. His gangly legs extended, until bare feet settled themselves beside Tony’s knees. The guy was massive. 

“There’s more of us than you think” He told Tony. “But I assume you’re one of those intergalactic refugees, yeah? So all you’ll have been around are government officials in the compound, and they’re all clenched so tight I’m amazed their shit doesn’t get backed up and explode out through their teeth. You should’ve gone to Verekinilliom. That’s my hometown. We’re full of laughs, us.”

He stopped to cough, then, spewing a few of his own petals into his mouth. He chucked them carelessly to the side, and Tony didn’t fail to notice the amount of blood that was smeared on his hand, and on the plump curve of his bottom lip. It dribbled down the corner of his mouth, and Tony knew almost immediately that this guy was a bad, bad case.

Tony extended a hand. “Tony,” he said, and then when the Pavelixxian just looked at him blankly, Tony elaborated. “That’s my name. The hand thing is a human greeting. I’m inviting you to hold it for a bit, I’ll shake it about, we’ll be best pals after that, it’s a whole thing.”

“Ah. I’m Pellerimoniousenok. Call me Pell.” Pell put his hand forward warily, and Tony did the rest, connecting their palms and giving a half-hearted shake before releasing him. Not his best- but in his defence, they were both dying. 

There was a moment of silence, and Tony took the opportunity to properly take stock of his situation. Sellon had clearly knocked him unconscious, and he’d been brought here. This was where Hanahaki victims were kept. The door was thick metal, and there were no windows, no ventilation shafts, no nothing. No wonder it was so fucking stifling. Pell and Tony were the only occupants of the tight space, which was good considering there were only three beds - if you could call them beds. Thin foam spreads were laid out, side-by-side in the left corner of the room. There was a hole in the wall and a hole in the ground, the most careless approximation of a toilet you could imagine. He sighed. 

“What happens to me now?” He asked Pell quietly. “I’m going to assume it isn’t good, but please, if you feel like surprising me, I’d love to hear some good news.”

Pell just huffed in a weak approximation of what should’ve been a chuckle. “I can lie, if you want?” He asked. But Tony wasn’t that kind of guy. He shook his head, and so Pell told the truth instead. “They’ll take your case to the Senate. When Hanahaki numbers are low, they like to pretend they put some thought into the verdict. They don’t. Senate’s gonna come back with a verdict in a few hours, and you’ll be executed for treason and intention to commit terrorism against the state, or somethin’ like that.”

Tony thought of his friends. He couldn’t have been out cold for long - he wasn’t even hungry yet and he didn’t need to piss. That meant it was still dark, at least, and also meant that the rest of the team weren’t even going to know he was gone until at least the morning. By then, he was probably already going to be dead.

He forced his head upright and squinted at Pell. “So how long do we have left to chat before they cart you away then? Seeing as you were here before me.”

But Pell shook his head. “I’m an outlier. They’ve had me here for a week now - but only ‘cause my friend is the best lawyer in the city. I’m not joking. She’s been fighting tooth and nail for me ever since I accidentally sneezed in front of a border guard and spewed petals outta my nostrils. Most people don’t even get legal representation- how fucked up is that? But she just happened to be with me at the time. Pulled a lotta strings. That’s the only reason I’m not dead.”

Tony hummed. “That’s a good friend.”

“Yeah. One of the many reasons I love her. But you know, I’m also here ‘cause of that, too, so…” Pell made a balancing gesture with his hands, before shrugging and letting them fall back to the floor. “You should’a heard the life partner when she saw the first petal. Knew immediately who it was. I was never good at being subtle, what can I say?”

Tony raised his eyebrows at that. For the first time since arriving here, this felt like a real person, with a real, complicated life. And here he was, destined for the executioner’s block. That said a lot. “How’d you meet her?”

Pell’s face, previously stretched with pain, suddenly relaxed as he recalled his memories. “We grew up together,”  he explained. “Same street. Same school, everything. She was always smarter than me, but I was better at Shukkeh, so, y’know, that made me the cool one ‘cause I had all the extra life-force.” At that, he wheezed again. “Fat lot of use it’s done me, huh?”

“Does she know that she’s the reason you’re here?”

There was a brief interlude of quiet as Pell looked down at his lap. “I assume so,” he responded. “She was one of the biggest parts of my life. Aside from Rin.”

“Rin?”

“My assigned life partner.”

Tony nodded in understanding. “I’m sorry,” he said, for lack of anything else. “She’s still fighting for you though. That’s good, right? She doesn’t think you’re not worth saving.”

The light above them flickered briefly, and Tony glanced up at it. The extension of his neck tickled his throat, and he spent another few seconds coughing through his raw throat. Pell waited patiently for him to finish. 

“Evvevive believes everyone’s worth saving,” he told Tony. “Even the scum like us.”

“Or maybe it means she feels the same way.”

“Doesn’t matter if she did. She’ll never say it. Same way I never said it. That’d just be a surefire way to get us both killed.”

Tony nodded. He didn’t get this place. Didn’t get how it’d come to be like this. None of it made any sense, and in another life, he’d have been desperate to understand, in the same way he was desperate to understand everything else in the universe. Unfortunately, he’d run out of time to do that. There wasn’t even any point in fighting, really. It would only prolong the inevitable - that Tony was going to die, whether it be in 24 hours or 48, or maybe even 72. They were millions of miles away from any centralised cluster of civilisations, who weren’t even guaranteed to have a cure anyway. Tony didn’t want to spread this further than Pavelix. 

He looked at the door, with the bolt-lock and the food hatch, and thought of all the ways he could try and escape, if he wanted to. But he stayed right where he was.

It would be better if the team didn’t see him like this. 

“What’s yours like?” Pell croaked.

“Hmm?”

“Your person. The one you’re in love with. What are they like?”

God, wasn’t that a question. Tony smiled, tipping his head back against the wall and looking up at the ceiling. Steve was somewhere up there, sound asleep, all bedhead and drool and twitching muscles. There were a million ways to talk about him, to describe him, and yet somehow  none of them would properly encapsulate what it was to know Steve Rogers. 

“He’s a stuck-up asshole.” Tony rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the overgrown bristles of his beard. “And probably too young for me. And we’re such different people that sometimes I look at the two of us and I can’t believe we’ve not killed eachother yet.”

Pell nodded serenely, rolling a bloody petal absently between long fingers, until it was pasted into mush and discarded carelessly to the side. “Hmm. Okay. Now cut the shit and say something that matters.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re dying. You might as well die remembering all the reasons why it was worth it, right?”

Tony looked at this strange man, with his strange hair and his piercing sunshine-yellow eyes, and realised he felt more of a connection to him than he had to people he’d known for years. It was as if all the pretences had been stripped away. All the stupid shit that kept people from truly understanding one another, the anxieties and the hesitations, all of that was gone here. Both of them knew it didn’t matter.

They didn’t have time to work up to being friends. They just were. 

“He’s so kind.” Tony’s voice wavered, it was wet, and he felt the heat under his eyelids as he shook his head. “ So kind, to everyone, even when they don’t deserve it. And really - God, the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. You should see his goddamn eyes when the sun hits them - it’s like… I dunno, it’s like seeing water after you’ve been wandering around a desert for days and days. And he cooks for me when I’m busy. Like - makes actual meals, doesn’t just buy them. And even when he’s furious with me, all I’ve ever been able to think is that I’m glad that he’s giving me that much attention. I think I’d argue with him for the rest of my life if it just meant he’d stay close by. How pathetic is that, huh?”

It would never have worked. Tony wasn’t good at love, he never had been, no matter how hard he tried. Steve deserved someone who didn’t equate arguments to affection, didn’t veer toward self-destruction on purpose and then berate anyone who tried to help him go in another direction. Steve deserved someone put-together. A university graduate with a promising future in a nice, stable field, that encouraged a nice, stable personality. Steve needed someone who could ground him. All Tony ever did was push and push and push. 

“They’re wrong, you know,” Pell told him earnestly. He coughed again, hacking a handful of flowers and blood into the crook of his elbow. “They might try and tell you otherwise, but this Government is just terrified of change, that’s all. We built our world around this and it’s impossible for us to see any other way. But it’s not pathetic to feel for someone - for anyone, even if the state doesn’t mandate them as the right one. Unreturned feelings are sad, maybe a bit tragic, but they’re nowhere near pathetic.” His chin lifted, proud and defiant, and in a way, it reminded Tony a little bit of Steve. “I think it’s beautiful, actually. To love someone so deeply even when you know you’ll get nothing back from it - that’s devotion in the purest sense.”

It was very brave, Tony thought. To think like that, even when they were here, locked up, heading for the chopping block. Pell was adamant in his convictions - Tony didn’t doubt he would be right up until the very end. 

They fell into silence, and Tony’s cotton-heavy mind worked through a final handful of weak solutions, half-escape plans that would all result in the same useless outcome. This just wasn’t a situation that Tony could build his way out of. He could either make Steve love him or he couldn’t. And Steve didn’t love him. That was that. His fate was sealed.

Tony made his peace with it. He and Pell chatted - Pell told him about life on Pavelix, outside the government compound, while Tony told him about New York. Where you could choose who you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, and love wasn’t punishable by death. Pell listened, enraptured, and when tears sprung into his eyes, Tony didn’t mention it. 

“That must be nice,” Pell whispered.

Tony nodded, before gently lowering himself to the floor and lying down. He was lightheaded - there just wasn’t enough oxygen getting to his brain. 

“It is,” he agreed.

*

Bruce couldn’t sleep.

At this point in his life, he was excellent at meditation - he could compress even the loudest of thoughts until they were nothing but background noise, lost in the quiet of the night around him. It was a godsend for when he needed to catch short, sharp bursts of rest. But now, of all times, when he needed the extra sleep the most, it was seeming to fail him. Nothing could quiet the sickening barbed wire of an impending disaster as it tightened itself around his brain, his chest, his gut. 

He rolled onto one side, and then the other. He spent fifteen minutes not moving a single inch, not even to itch. He box-breathed and stretched and opened the window to let in the sounds of the evening, and absolutely nothing made a difference. 

The ceiling felt like it was getting lower. Bruce was being crushed. And he couldn’t get his fucking cheek to stop twitching.

“Jesus Christ.”

Sitting upright, Bruce crossed his legs on the bed and held his head in his hands, trying to think of what the hell he was supposed to do.

His closest friend was dying, because another one of his closest friends didn’t love him. Don’t act, and Tony died. Act, and Tony probably still died, but Steve was left with the guilt of that outcome on his shoulders. 

Bruce felt sick. He couldn’t believe this was happening. They weren’t even supposed to be here - it wasn’t a war, it wasn’t a fight, it was a fucking pit stop and now Tony was never going to leave this place, he was going to die and Bruce was going to lose one of the only people in the world that he cared about, and Steve was going to lose his… well. Whatever Tony was to him. Bruce didn’t even know what the hell they had going on.

He wondered if Natasha or Clint were aware of the situation between the two of them. They were more observant than he was, after all. It was their job to know about these things, and Bruce didn’t doubt that they still fed bits back to SHIELD if and when it was required of them. This was something important - something that they should know. 

Then again, it seemed as if Steve and Tony really had hidden their situation efficiently. Bruce hadn’t even been suspicious. Now he thought back, he supposed that the two of them did spend a lot of time together, for team planning or suit modification or liaising or whatnot. There was a different kind of level to them, a bond that wasn’t just friendship, it was true - but they saved one another’s lives twice a day, for crying out loud! Bruce had just thought it came with the territory!

“I must be fucking blind,” He whispered to himself, looking out to the window where the dawn light was just about to start peeking up through the jungle.

He found himself recalling the last time Tony had gone down in a fight - a messy affair that would almost certainly have ended with Tony dead if not for Steve. It’d been the right call: Tony had needed more than one pair of hands, so he’d put JARVIS in control of the suit and stepped out of it to double the workforce. But that, of course, meant that he was horribly vulnerable to things like superhuman watchmen. And their bullets. 

Tony got shot. But Steve - with his strange, innate ability to tell whenever Tony was in over his head, had already been heading to check on him when he heard the first gunshot had rung out. And while Bruce may not have been physically present, he’d known from the tight, austere look in Steve’s eyes - and the mission report he’d looked over the next week - that Steve had dealt with that guard severely. If Bruce recalled correctly, his corpse had been found with the dominant hand separated from the rest of the body. 

Bruce puzzled over it. He could remember that Steve had spent every day in the hospital with Tony while he’d been recovering. The first thing he’d done when Tony woke up was grip his hand in a gentle, desperate squeeze and ask how he was doing. The second thing he’d done was curse a blue streak at him for leaving the safety of his suit in the middle of a terrorist cell. And when Tony had refused to promise he’d never do it again, the third thing Steve had done was storm off to the bathroom and slam the door so hard behind him that the hinges gave out. 

Steve was always so composed, except when he was trying to wrangle Tony in some way. It was like he couldn’t help but invest everything he had into getting Tony to just listen to him. Staking all his chips on one volatile man, and doing it over and over and over again, no matter how much he lost in the process. 

People didn’t act like that unless they cared deeply about someone else. And if Steve cared deeply, then maybe the capacity was there for it to become more. For it to be love. 

Bruce realised then that he had to try. MaybeTony would hate him for the rest of his short life, and Steve would certainly be inconsolable if he found himself to be incapable of providing Tony with what he so desperately needed, but Bruce had to try anyway. Because not doing anything would be tantamount to signing Tony’s death warrant himself, and until they’d exhausted all available options, Bruce was simply not willing to do that. Never.

He rose unsteadily out of bed, mind suddenly clearing of all doubt as he leaned fully into his decision. The feeling he felt in that moment was similar to the way he felt when he first synthesized the compound that would later turn him into the Hulk - it was blind, manic conviction, lacking in pragmatism and overflowing with a basic instinct. A simple, bullheaded determination. This did not happen to him often - and when it did, it had the capacity to go very, very badly. Yet Bruce was not going to ignore it. He couldn’t. It wasn’t his nature.

He had a plan. And now, for better or worse, he was going to see it through to the bitter end.

Pulling on a shirt and the first pair of trousers he could get his hands on, Bruce hightailed it out of his room, sweaty fingers grappling at the door and throwing it open with little thought for the neighbours on either side of him. He headed left in the corridor, searching for Steve’s room amongst the many. He wasn’t sure if the man would be awake - maybe, maybe not, but it didn’t matter. He’d certainly be awake once Bruce started hounding on his door, and that was all that mattered. 

His eyes flicked around the hall skittishly. He passed Clint’s room. His feet thumped against hard wood panelling, and the echo felt ten times louder than usual, but Bruce wasn’t deterred. Up ahead, he could see the door to Steve’s spartan living space, and his pace sped up, the ticking timer in his head getting louder and louder. Every second was a second of Tony’s life that hung in the balance. There wasn’t any time for tact, for stealth.

This was it. If this went badly, Bruce would be responsible. He could accept that. He was happy to. 

He met Steve’s door and faced it head on. Then a curled fist slammed against the thin partition; once, twice, three times, four. 

“Steve!” He shouted. “Steve, it’s Bruce. I need to talk to you, now, it’s urg–”

Steve opened the door so quick that Bruce almost fell through it. He was still in his boxers, hair sticking up all over the place, and a thin white trail down the side of his chin indicated he’d been drooling peacefully not even a few seconds ago. But Steve’s eyes were wide, and he was alert. Somehow, immediately, he just knew.

“Is it Tony?” He asked urgently. “Is he okay?”

Bruce looked at this man in front of him, and thought for a moment about how young he really was. 25 years old, and already he’d lost so much, carried the burden of so much responsibility on his shoulders. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair of Bruce to do this to him. 

He did a quick prayer to a God he’d previously thought he didn’t believe in, and opened his mouth.

*

Tony got three more hours before the guards stormed through the reinforced door. There were four of them, all as large and imposing as the next, and they didn’t say a word as they approached the two prisoners. 

Tony had been drifting in and out of consciousness, but Pell grabbed for his shoulder hastily, and the sense of panic about the gesture was enough to wake him fully. He forced his eyes open and acknowledged the scene in front of him. 

“Ah.”

“The Senate has come to a verdict,” the man closest to Tony declared. In his hand, a large spear almost touched the roof above them. 

“He wasn’t given any legal representation,” Pell tried - but when Tony looked over to him, the man wasn’t even sitting up properly. His eyes were vacant, hazy, and his chest moved in shallow mockeries of what were once full breaths. He could barely even talk at all. “You can’t–”

“The decision was unanimous. You’re charged with treason, evasion of the law, and intention to commit domestic terrorism as seen in Section 98 of the Pavelixxian constitution.” The guard continued as if Pell hadn’t spoken at all, while his colleague leaned forward and hauled Tony up by the arm. The guards weren’t wearing any kind of protection- they wouldn’t dare - but Tony watched the way he flinched as he got close. “Under these charges, the punishment is execution. You will follow us.”

And with that, Tony was hauled unceremoniously forward, shoved toward the door by a guard who couldn’t care less if he struggled to walk or not. 

Behind him, he heard Pell give a sorry attempt at an argument on his behalf, but it was as useful as talking to a brick wall. The guards frogmarched Tony from the room, one man on each side, each dragging him forward. 

Tony struggled weakly, but it was useless. They had so much more mass than him, and even if they didn’t, he was half-dead anyway. The motion alone caused the flower inside him to grow irritated, and he coughed wildly, spewing out petals and blood and bile in a sickening trail behind him. His head rolled, chin bumping against his sternum, and he saw the red splatter-pattern that stained his plain grey shirt.

So this was it then. 

Tony looked at the guards dragging him to his death, and he allowed himself a moment to feel the hate, the bitterness at this whole situation. They had no right to decide he was unworthy of living, for nothing more than a feeling. Fuck them. 

“Fuck you,” he voiced it, made it real - and the guards didn’t even acknowledge him. There were hundreds of people like Tony, each of whom they brought to their deaths every day. Tony wasn’t special. Tony wasn’t going to think of something he could say that’d make them hesitate even for a second. 

Tony sagged, and let them pull him down the corridor.

He wasn’t sure how long it took for them to reach their destination, but eventually, Tony became aware of the fact that the thin corridor had opened up into a large room. His feet stumbled up a set of steps, and then the guards shoved him, wrangled him until he was lying on his back, upon some kind of table. His head hit the slab with a sharp thud, and had he been more cognizant, he would have felt the pain. As it was, it simply faded in amongst everything else going on. 

The guards pulled at his hands. Instinctively, Tony struggled - used everything he had left in him to try and break free, spare himself a precious few more seconds. 

It didn’t work. They got his hands into the constraints eventually, and nothing changed. 

Tony stared up at the ceiling, breathing raggedly. His eyes were wild, but they couldn’t focus. There was too much panic, too much fear. They were going to kill him. They were going to kill him and there was nothing he could do, and it didn’t matter because he was a dead man walking anyway. He hadn’t even said goodbye to his team. To Happy or Pepper or Rhodey. Oh fuck, he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready to die. 

There was the sound of clacking shoes, and then a long, thin, blue face appeared above him. Tony looked at him, and then at the heavy axe he held in his palm. Panic turned to outright delirium, and he made a pathetic noise in the back of his throat - a kind of choked-off scream that was lost amongst the petals that were also building up there. 

They were going to fucking behead him. 

“Do you have any last words you would like to go on your record?” The executioner asked candidly, as if discussing the weather. He repositioned the handle of the axe, and Tony caught the glint of its blade out of the corner of his eye. 

He stared at the Pavelixxian, chest heaving erratically, and thought about how the hell it’d come to this. He thought about Pell’s words, choked out through a handful of bloody petals. 

Then, of course, he thought about Steve. 

The quiet authenticity of his chuckle whenever he was doing his best not to laugh at Tony’s antics. His stony, infuriating sense of conviction - the one that’d almost gotten them killed a dozen times, and had saved all their lives a dozen more. The way his fingers liked to search for the curls at the back of Tony’s head when they were lying in bed together. It filled him with a wave of warmth that should never have been felt in a situation like this - impossibly, it calmed him. And maybe that was what it was all about. Maybe that was what people lived their lives for. Died for.

“I’m not sorry,” Tony found himself declaring, violent and forceful, choked out with more strength than he’d thought he had left, “not for any of it. And I don’t fucking regret it either.”

The executioner’s face turned cold at that. He curled his lip, and Tony took one precious moment to revel in the reaction. 

“You should,” he muttered, before swinging the axe up above his head. 

It’s okay, he thought hysterically, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Tony jerked his head away and looked in the other direction, refusing to watch the killing blow as it hit him, repeating those two words in his head like a mantra . But as he settled his eyes on the other end of the room, he saw an incredibly surprising sight. 

Clint locked eyes with him. 

A millisecond later and without even a moment of hesitation, the marksman threw one of the spears that’d previously belonged to the guards.

Suddenly the rest of the room seemed to explode into action as Tony became aware of things that weren’t just his immediate execution. There were frantic shouts of his name - the sound of clattering, violence. Above him, a wet slicing sound. 

Tony turned his head back to his executioner. He saw the spear that’d been in Clint’s hands only a second ago, now embedded squarely in the Pavelixxian’s head. Blood ran rivulets down his face, a splattering of it had sprayed Tony’s cheek. The only indication he’d even acknowledged his own death was his wild, surprised eyes. 

He stumbled back, dropping the axe as he fell from the podium. 

Tony saw the trajectory map out in front of him. The hilt spun, blade toppling forward, and maybe there wasn’t enough force in it to sever Tony’s head from his spine completely, but his throat was still getting slit. It wasn’t enough. They still couldn’t save him. 

He breathed his last breath and savoured what it tasted like as the blade flew down to meet him. 

The impact, however, did not come. Out of nowhere, an extended hand lurched into Tony’s view and caught the blade of the axe in its palm. It wobbled precariously for a few moments while the hand steadied it, and Tony blinked profusely as yet more warm red blood spilled onto his face, the hideously sharp metal edge searing straight through the first few layers of his savior’s skin. 

Tony was frozen in panic, and couldn’t make himself turn his head away from the axe, the bloody hand, and the sparse few inches it provided between Tony and a severed jugular. Despite that, he still knew who it belonged to. 

There was a huge, outrageous roar in the far distance. Hulk, Tony thought distantly. 

The axe hovering above him was discarded with a clumsy clang, and then Steve’s ashen face lurched into view. He didn’t seem to notice his own shredded hand as he clutched Tony’s face with it, utterly frantic, saying something that Tony had yet to find the strength or clarity of mind to focus on.

Steve shook him. Tony’s own name was rolling off the man’s tongue over and over - that much, Tony could parse. He felt a sharp jerk in his shoulder as Steve leaned over him, ripped the shackles from the wall and freed his upper body. He hauled Tony into his arms. 

“TONY!”

Tony blinked at him, feeling like a puppet, a rag-doll. Steve’s arm wrapped around his waist, pulled him close while his other ruined hand pressed into Tony’s jaw, giving him no choice but to look right at Steve and focus. 

“I love you,” Steve said it so loudly and confidently that it seemed as if he’d declared it a million times already, “Tony, are you fucking listening to me? I love you. I love you. I love you, I swear on everything, on Bucky and my ma’s grave, on the Avengers, on everything I am, I love you - do you understand?”

Tony blinked at him. Everything was happening so fast, but Steve’s face was utterly void of doubt, and he was holding Tony so close that Tony couldn’t even see what else was happening around him. It might as well have just been them in the room, in the world, in the universe. That was always how it felt to be around Steve. 

Steve just kept saying it. Over and over and over, stroking across Tony’s face with panicked, frantic hands, smearing his blood all across Tony’s cheek, so much so that it was trickling down Tony’s neck. I love you, he whispered, crashing his mouth into Tony’s, a motion that was barely even a kiss, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you–

And suddenly Tony couldn’t breathe. 

The air stopped coming entirely. His hands rose, clutched Steve’s shoulders in a panic as his eyes bulged. This was it. The fucking flower had finally done it, it’d finally sealed up his airways. He felt himself spasm in Steve’s arms, trying to cough, failing entirely. He was going to be sick. 

Steve gripped him so tight that even Tony noticed the pain. “Tony? What’s wrong, tell me, what the fuck - NATASHA, WE NEED BRUCE, GET HIM BACK NOW!” Steve was screaming over Tony’s shoulder, and there was outright pandemonium everywhere Tony looked, but he couldn’t even focus on it. Sometimes you’d see those sad little pictures of birds with plastic wrapped around their throats, and you’d pity them. Tony imagined that was kind of what he looked like just then.

Grabbing Steve’s shoulders, Tony looked at him with wide eyes and pointed to his mouth. He could feel it, it was pushing up into his mouth, he needed it gone , he needed Steve to understand. He had to focus. He had to find a way to make Steve–

But Steve didn’t even need any extra guidance. Looking at Tony’s mouth, he suddenly narrowed his gaze and grabbed Tony’s jaw, pushing his mouth open with firm, confident fingers. Tony let him, too scared to feel self-conscious about the spit falling out of the corners of his lips, the way he was writhing uncontrollably in Steve’s arms.

Steve’s eyes went wide. “Jesus Christ,” he hissed, and then without hesitation, he plunged his fingers inside Tony’s mouth. 

Tony couldn’t see what he was doing, but he felt it. The sharp, insistent tug of  something deep inside him as it was forced out. Steve had his fingers around the stem of the Hanahaki flower. He was ripping it straight out. More surprisingly, the Hanahaki flower was letting him. 

Tony instinctively smacked Steve’s shoulders and retched, the discomfort and the invasiveness making his body react, but Steve was determined. He pulled slowly, gently, but firmly, swearing an absolute blue-streak as the twirling green roots began to slip out between Tony’s teeth.

It happened over the course of three seconds, and yet it felt like an eternity. But when Steve finally got it all out and hurled it violently to the side, Tony immediately felt the relief, and sagged into his chest. 

For the first time in days, he breathed. Really, truly breathed. Wheezing, heaving breaths that made his whole body shake uncontrollably. It felt so good that Tony wanted to laugh - if only his throat wasn’t so ruined, he would’ve done. As things stood, all he could do was rasp.

Steve’s arms wrapped around him, and his hand settled against the back of Tony’s head, readjusting him onto the ridge of Steve’s shoulder so that he could get proper lungfuls. “Oh God, you’re okay,” he whispered, and Tony wasn’t sure who it was he was reassuring when he said it, “you’re okay, it’s over, I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Tony took a moment to properly process it that time. He was totally and utterly exhausted, but he heard Steve’s words and let them sink in. 

With his head resting on Steve’s shoulder, he could finally see the room around him. An auditorium of sorts, with a glass viewing panel on the far wall, somewhat like the one Tony had first been greeted with when he’d woken up in the medical bay. He and Steve were on a raised platform, but around them was a room that was covered in carnage. Two Pavelixxian guards lay motionless, as well as the executioner - although the spear was now missing, implying that someone had found a way to recycle the weapon. 

His team had found him. And, somehow, they’d managed to save him too. 

He dragged himself off Steve’s shoulder so he could look up at the other man. It felt so impossible that Tony wondered if he was just having a delusion, a fever dream. “You love me,” he repeated in a croak, a barely-there voice. 

Steve nodded frantically and gave him a wet laugh. He kissed Tony then - a softer, more intentional iteration of the one earlier. “I love you so much,” he agreed, “and I am going to fucking murder you for not just telling me this sooner. But I’ll do that later.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How… you can’t love me. You gave this to me.” Tony didn’t understand. It had to have been Steve who transmitted it to him. No one else had touched him - he’d recalled every interaction, every single moment of his time here, and no one else had laid a finger on him except Steve Rogers.

But Steve just sighed, bumping his head into Tony’s, squeezing his eyes shut as if he was trying to physically transmit the message into Tony’s brain. “ I don’t get sick , you fucking idiot,” He whispered, when it seemed the psychic transmission wasn’t working. “As soon as Bruce told me, I knew I must’ve been infected too. I didn’t think you could ever love me back - not in a million years. But Tony, the only difference is that one of us has a super-serum that stops every illness from making it past the gates.”

Oh. 

Tony tried to process the fact that he’d missed such a glaringly obvious fact and it’d nearly gotten him killed. It didn’t work - the knowledge sat at the top of his brain, floating just above the point of real acknowledgement. Other, more important things were taking precedent in his head. 

“You love me,” Tony said again, dumb. 

Steve nodded. “I love you.”

“You’re not just saying that to save my life.”

“Never. I’m pretty sure I was a little bit in love with you before we even started sleeping together. But -” Steve clicked his tongue, and for a moment, things were almost normal. It was as if they were sat bickering on the couch together, back home, back where no-one wanted them dead. “Tony, come on, you never even implied you felt the same!”

Tony took a moment to hack up the remaining leaves and petals in his throat. Then he pushed himself upright again, irritated. “What the fuck do you mean?” He asked hoarsely, “Steve, you’re my entire universe - that’s kind of hard to hide.”

“Well you did a damn good job–”

“You have the override code to every single one of my systems! JARVIS, the Iron Man Suit -”

“You were always the first one to tell me to get lost after we’d had sex, you always found a way to scarper before we got too close, it was like you knew how I felt and you were purposefully trying to keep your distance–”

“-- I was trying not to show you how badly I wanted it to be serious–”

“GUYS!” The unimpressed yell from the other side of the room forced both of them to pull their attention away from their current squabble, and they set their eyes on Natasha in all her professional glory. She was guarding the door with a familiar-looking spear, and the look on her face showed exactly how much time she was willing to let Steve and Tony spend hashing out who was the worse communicator. 

She clanged the hilt of the weapon against the floor, and the noise of it bounced off the walls and echoed around the barren room. “Hate to break up the love-in, but we’ve just committed a lot of crimes. Hulk is doing a great job of providing us with a distraction, but it’s not gonna last forever, so we should probably get going before backup arrives and stabs us all to death, hm?”

“Seconded,” Clint called out, joining Natasha at the entrance and then hurtling full-force into the wall, right-arm first. There was a sickening crunching noise, and Clint hissed as his shoulder popped back into place. He gave it an experimental roll, checking everything still worked.  “These guys pack a mean punch.”

Steve took a small breath and refocused himself, as if suddenly remembering where he was. He looked back to Tony. “Can you walk?” He asked.

Tony nodded. He was tired, bone tired, and his throat hurt like a bitch - but now the flower was gone, it was like he had become human again. A proper, functioning human. The haze that’d been suffocating him these last few days had lifted, returning a clarity of mind to him that he’d been sorely lacking.

“I can walk,” he confirmed. “What’s the plan?”

Steve, Clint and Natasha all looked at one another dubiously. “Well,” Clint began, “I’ll be honest, Tones, this was a bit of an on-the-fly kinda situation.”

“Bruce knocked on my door and explained the situation to me, and I went to try and find you, and then before we knew it we were blackmailing clerics into telling us where they’d taken you.” Steve looked slightly embarrassed as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Which was a good thing, considering how close you came… but still. There’s not really a plan , per se.”

Tony tried not to let his trepidation show on his face. His head was all over the place, caught up between terror and relief and joy and pain. He could hardly think of where to focus all his energy. But a thought popped into his head, and once it was there, he knew he needed to see it through. “We have to go to my holding cell,” he told Steve, grabbing the other man’s arm urgently. “There was someone else there. We have to get him out.”

“Is he infected?” Natasha asked.

Tony took a beat. “Yes.”

“Then he’s dead anyway. Tony, we can’t–”

“We can,” Tony cut in, his voice hard and determined. “We can, Natasha. I’m not saying we start a revolution or an uprising or whatever, I’m just… we can help one person. He helped me. I can’t go without trying.”

It was stupid. Tony knew that. There was nothing anyone could do for him - Pell was a dead man walking, condemned by the unkind world he lived in. 

But Pell had been kind nonetheless. He’d shown Tony a side of this fucked-up planet that he hadn’t seen before. Pavelixxians were not their government, as was so often the case. And Pell didn’t deserve to spend his final days in a tiny cell, imprisoned and abandoned. No one deserved that. Natasha could fight him about it if she wanted to, she could hate him for it, but Tony had been the only prisoner to make it out alive once before. He wasn’t willing to do that again - not if he had the chance to change things. He wouldn’t.

He stood up on wavering legs, and without another word, began moving in the direction he remembered being dragged from. 

Steve lurched into gear beside him immediately, eyes skirting to the other two spies and double checking that they were on board. Clint just sighed, and gave a shrug with his good shoulder. Natasha’s mouth drew into a thin, bloodless line, but she shifted the spear into an attacking position and then gestured to the entrance. 

“Do you know the route?” She asked curtly.

Tony nodded, pushing himself to his feet. Steve’s hand gripped Tony’s own, steadying him, and Tony held onto it long after he required the support. He could make space for real happiness later, but for now, he’d make do with simply not letting go of the other man. It wasn’t as if Steve minded, anyway.

Tony led them through the silent corridors determinedly, trying his hardest to remember the route that the Pavelixxian guards had taken him. He may have been in a bad way, but that wasn’t new - he knew that he could still trust his memory. There hadn’t been any turns, and Tony was certain that he would be able to tell what the right door was as soon as he saw it. 

“How’s your hand?” Tony asked Steve while they walked. He could feel the other man’s blood beginning to crust up against the side of his face, and was acutely aware of the fact that Steve had put himself in that position in order to keep Tony from harm. Behind them, an insistent trail of crimson followed in their wake. Tony didn’t want to know how deep the wound went - just thinking about it made him wince. 

Steve, however, didn’t even spare it a second glance. “I’ve had worse. Don’t worry about it.”

On Tony’s other side, Clint was marching beside him with a long Pavelixxian blade held high. He’d stolen it from one of the guards, and it was now coated in a smattering of blood that implied it’d sliced clean through something or another. “Is the Quinjet viable yet?” He asked tersely, before Tony could press Steve any further.

Tony looked over to him with a quick shake of his head. “Afraid not. There’s nothing in the scrapyard that’ll help us either. But if we can get to the Pavelixxian aircraft hangar, then I reckon we could jet off in one of their interstellar garbage pickups. You know what they were saying - they have to sweep up space junk all the time. Failing that, they’ve gotta have some kind of commercial aircraft. Sintar’s a big planet. There’s probably another less fucked-up civilisation or city we can go to.”

“And failing that?” 

Tony thought about it. “Back into the jungle?”

Behind him, Natasha scoffed. “I’ll just slit my fucking throat, thanks.”

Great. 

They hurried down the corridor, noting the continued sounds of Hulk-like rage coming from the floor above them. It seemed Bruce was doing a great job of keeping the Pavelixxians entertained while the rest of the team got on with their escape mission, but Tony was still left wondering how this was actually going to end. True, he was no longer due an imminent death, which certainly helped with morale - but they still needed to find a way to make it to the aircraft hangar. They didn’t even know where the aircraft hangar was . Nor did they know anything about Pavelixxian engineering, navigation, or whether they stood a chance of being able to actually use whatever equipment they were met with once they got there. 

All in all, things were looking a little tense. 

Then again: Steve loved him. So whatever was happening, Tony could safely say he still had that, at least. 

Above them, the harsh lights burned down on the corridor, lighting up the walls with a sharp white. Tony followed his own macabre trail of sickly petals, which were scattered sporadically along the route. Beside him, he could sense that Steve was looking at them too. 

“How did you even hide this?” Steve muttered, turning to look at Tony with an appalled expression on his face. 

Tony looked down at one of the petals. He aimed his foot toward it, crushing it under his heel as he walked. 

“Practise,” he responded tightly. “I think we’re close.”

“How close?” That was Natasha’s voice behind him, terse and displeased.

In answer, Tony pointed to the door in the far right of the corridor. “That close.”

He set off running as fast as his battered body would allow, honing in on the lock that sat in the centre of the prison door. It looked something fierce - thick and sturdy. No technology accompanied it, as far as Tony could see. Just a regular key entry. That made things more difficult. A keypad, Tony could crack. A lock, however, was much more difficult without the right equipment. Now he really wished that he’d spent more time on trying to figure a way out of there from the other side. At least then he could’ve directed Pell to the right places.

He swore to himself as one hand leaned against the frame and the other banged against the metal. “Pell!” Tony yelled, hammering on the surface and hearing it echo through the hall. “Pell, it’s Tony!”

There was no response. Tony bent double, trying to look through the keyhole, get a better idea of what he was up against. He swivelled his head and turned to Natasha and Clint. “You guys got any lockpicking tools on you?” 

Before either of them could respond, however, Steve’s hand settled on Tony and pulled gently. “Don’t worry about that,” he said, giving Tony a small smile before lifting his foot and ramming it against the door with all the force of a super-soldier under time constraints. That was a lot of force.

The door rattled, bent out of place, but didn’t quite swing open. So Steve did it again, and then once more - and the metal finally crumpled, swinging backward wildly and clashing against the wall it was fixed to. At the same time, Tony heard a tremendous crashing sound on the floor above them. The entire building shook, bits of dust and stone crackling against the floor as it fell from the ceiling - and Steve was strong, but he wasn’t that strong. Something big had just happened up in the main building.

The four of them all looked at one another with ominous expressions. Pursing his lips, Tony spun back around and entered back into the prison cell he’d just spent the night, clapping his hands enthusiastically. “Alright Pell, I imagine you’ve got a bunch of questions, but let’s just start by getting you the hell…”

He stopped dead in the middle of the room, the sentence dribbling away into nothing as his eyes settled upon the figure in front of him. Pell was curled in the corner of the room, arms tucked up into his chest like a newborn baby. His face was peaceful, eyes half-open and looking glassily at the petals he’d choked up onto the floor around him. There was no indication he’d noticed Tony was in the room - or even that he’d heard the commotion as they’d forced the door.

Tony moved forward, silent. Sprouting delicately from between Pell’s slack mouth, a flower sapling was unfurling. Thin green leaves popped out from between the gaps in his sharp teeth, making a desperate bid for the outside world. His chest, which had previously battled for each half-breath it’d pulled into Pell’s lungs, was now motionless.

Pell was gone.

Tony felt Steve’s hand settle gently on his shoulder. “I’m sorry Tony,” he murmured, but Tony couldn’t tear his eyes away from Pell’s corpse. This man - this body - in front of him, had been in love with his best friend too. But unlike Tony, there was no room for a last-minute saving grace in his story. He’d died believing that there was no happiness to be found in loving someone else. 

“We need to go,” Natasha said, and Tony could tell she’d forced herself to say it gently. He appreciated the effort. 

For a moment, Tony felt unanchored, adrift. He blinked, forcing himself to look away, and found Steve. The other man grabbed his hand, pressed his mouth to Tony’s knuckles. 

“I love you,” he promised, knowing that Tony needed to hear it. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you, alright? But we gotta go. I’m sorry Tony, we gotta–”

“Let’s go then.” Clearing his throat sharply, Tony shoved his hands over his face, rubbing off three different people’s crusting blood from his skin, ridding himself of the cartwheeling emotions and bone-deep exhaustion in order to focus on the next five minutes. And once those five minutes were up, he could do another five after that. And over and over and over until they were safe, warm, well. 

Just five more minutes. 

He bent down, carefully shutting Pell’s eyes. It was all he could do. It wasn’t enough. 

He straightened up and walked out of the room without looking behind him.

*

The sounds of devastation on the floor above turned out to be the sounds of a spaceship crashing into the West Wing of the compound. More specifically, the Guardians’ spaceship. Five minutes out from landing, and they’d picked up signals of Hulk’s destruction from the lower atmosphere. They’d figured the aggressive entrance was probably warranted - although that being said, the Guardians preferred an aggressive entrance for pretty much every occasion. 

The first thing everyone heard as they’d made their way up onto the ground floor had been Thor’s booming voice, demanding to see his comrades in arms. The air pulsed with a thrum of electricity, and everyone’s hair began to stand on end as they’d come closer to their teammate’s unmissable presence. Tony had felt so relieved he’d almost cried.

“Jesus Christ,” Quill exclaimed when he laid eyes on Tony and Steve, and the amount of blood that seemed to stain the two of them. “Did we just interrupt your ritual sacrificing?”

It made Tony snort, because it wasn’t even that far from the truth. Against his side, however, he felt Steve tense up. The man was angry - at the situation, at what had almost happened, at Tony to some extent. He was holding it together, but barely. “Something like that,” he muttered. His head turned, observing the room, glaring at each individual soldier, sneering at their drawn weapons and hard faces. 

“One day, you’re all going to realise how wrong you are,” he told them all with a shake of his head. I hope you’ll look back at this stain on your society and hate yourselves for it.”

“You will be silent ,” came a voice through the crowd, and Steve and Tony turned to see Zandar as the man pushed through the row of soldiers. He looked utterly disgusted. “After everything we did to host you, to look after you - and for all our hospitality, you respond by destroying our–”

“You imprisoned and tried to execute him!” Steve pointed a finger at Tony, his eyes wild and irate as he took an instinctive step forward. Tony immediately tightened his own hand around Steve’s, halting him before he could get carried away. The fighting had only just stopped. Starting round two was probably not the best idea, and Steve seemed to realise as much, because he let Tony stop him. Tony knew if he really felt like it, there was nothing on God’s green Earth that could’ve held him back. 

There were some more terse words rallied back and forth between the Pavelixxians and the Avengers, but ultimately, the Pavelixxians knew they were beat. Thor’s influence as an Asgardian royal seemed to extend even to this planet, and it was clear they were unwilling to deal with the potential fallout that would come from going toe to toe with him. Plus, Tony’s favourite trump card: they also had a Hulk, who had only just been convinced to stop destroying all nearby infrastructure. When you factored all those things in, it wasn’t a surprise that the Pavelixxians decided they were more trouble than they were worth. 

“If anyone needed a reason to believe Thor is the glue that holds you people together, this is it,” Rocket commented, hopping off the landing plank and observing the battered and bruised Avengers before him. They were surrounded by Pavelixxian guards from all angles, all of whom were pointing a variety of elaborate and threatening weaponry at them, but of course, that did nothing to stop the ceaseless raccoon. “He leaves you guys alone for a few weeks and look at ya! It’s lucky these lot ain’t in the Federation or you’d be getting sued up to your eyeballs for this. You lot are like animals, I tell you.”

Beside him, Thor’s back straightened proudly. “Thank you Rocket,” he said.

“You’re very welcome.” Rocket clapped Thor on his calf. “See, Thor, I like. A simple guy. Classic man. Nothing like your archer.”

“Aw, fuck off Rocket,” Clint sighed as he gave the raccoon the middle finger. “I already told you I was sorry, you don’t have to–”

“You tried to smother me with your fuckin’ jacket and you think I’m just gonna let that slide?”

“I found you hunting through the garbage at 1 in the morning! How the hell was I supposed to know you were a conscious being!”

“Is this really important right now?” Steve declared loudly, as the hand that was wrapped around Tony’s waist twitched in irritation. “Look around, guys. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

Rocket opened his mouth, but Gamora swiftly cuffed him around the back of the head as she stepped out of the ship and into the vast, partially-destroyed lobby. “Rogers is right,” she snapped at him before he could complain. “Be useful and find Banner some clothes.”

“Sensible clothes,” Bruce added feebly from the corner of the room, where all Pavelixxians were giving him an extremely wide berth. He was grey in the face, and as Rocket saluted at him, he just sighed in defeat. He already knew they were not going to be sensible clothes. 

Tony remained mostly silent while the situation unfolded - too tired and aching to bother greeting the Guardians or attempt any last-ditch diplomacy with the irate aliens. It was as Steve guided them over to the safety of the ship that Tony noticed Sellon watching them from the sidelines. By this point, they’d attracted quite a crowd - not just of armed guards, but also other government officials and civillians who’d been attracted to the commotion. The engineer was one of them. She stood tall, proud, and shared the same look of anger on her face that every other Pavelixxian in the room carried. But it was more than that, too. Something deeper.

Their eyes met across the floor, and Sellon’s mouth ticked. She shook her head imperceptibly. She didn’t understand - that much was obvious. After all, no one on Sintar was supposed to survive Hanahaki. With the societal conditions as they were, it was practically impossible, and so to her, Tony was a freak of nature of the highest calibre. The fact he was up and walking made no sense at all. 

Tony stared back at her for a moment. He considered her rage, her firm conviction as she’d sent Tony to what should’ve been his death, and found himself pitying her. For all her life, she was never going to just let herself feel. He may have had his own issues with denial and repression, but Jesus, these people were something else entirely. To be able to express love for better or for worse, or let a flash of frustration dictate a decision, or care for someone so much that it made you stupid - they were all priceless gifts that Sellon would never, ever know. And so Tony pitied her. 

He turned his gaze back to Steve, dancing onto his tiptoes and pressing a gentle kiss against Steve’s cheek. “I told them I wasn’t sorry you know,” he blurted, watching Steve’s face turn and pay Tony full attention. “They asked me for my last words and I told them I wasn’t sorry, and I really meant it.”

They both stopped moving, Steve looking sideways at him in a moment that stretched and stretched and stretched. Tony hoped Sellon and every other Pavelixxian in that fucking room was watching them just then - committing it to memory in the same way Tony was. Because the way Steve was looking at him was the same way he always looked at Tony, but now, Tony could see the meaning behind it. The tenderness. The passion. All of it had always been there - it’d just taken a near death experience for him to see it. 

Steve loved him. He did. 

“I really am gonna be so fucking mad you didn’t just try and tell me.” Steve had wound a piece of his shirt around his bloody hand, but he used his good one to push the sweat-damp hair off Tony’s filthy face. “I want you to know that. I’m gonna yell at you a lot.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Maybe throw some stuff around. Sulk for a few days.”

“Steve, I know–”

“But when I’m done, I’m gonna knock on your door with a nice little bunch of flowers - you like peonies, right? I’ll buy you some peonies, and I’ll wear a tie and I’ll ask you to dinner, and I’ll do everything right.” The look on Steve’s face was somehow both stubborn and uncertain, as if he still didn’t believe quite where he was stood, but was going to roll with it anyway. “I’m gonna be so goddamn ostentatious that even you will be forced to see how glaringly in love with you I am.”

Tony huffed. “Last I checked, ostentatious was more my style, not yours.”

“For you, I’ll be anything.” Steve gently helped Tony up the ledge onto the Guardians’ ship, pulling them both into the shadows, away from the judgemental eyes of the room. His hands pushed on Tony’s shoulders, turning him gently until they were face to face. It always surprised Tony a little bit, just how soft Steve’s touch could be. Steve could crush someone’s windpipe without even trying. Ten minutes ago, he kicked his way through a good few inches of solid steel like it was nothing. 

Yet when his left hand rose and cupped itself under Tony’s ear, palm lying flat against the side of his neck, it was with a touch that none of Steve’s enemies would ever know. 

“I love you,” Steve told him, and he’d already said it a dozen times now, but this was the first time in which nothing hinged on it. Steve was just saying it because he wanted to. “I love your theatrics and your incoherent 2am rambling sessions. I love the fact that you can drive me absolutely crazy in a way no-one else knows how to. I hate that you’d rather let yourself die painfully than even try to talk to me about it, but it’s so frustratingly you that I guess I have to love that too.” He shook his head and sighed before leaning forward, pressing a long kiss to Tony’s forehead. “You are insane and stupid. And I love you.”

Tony frowned. “Jury’s out on the insane part. But stupid? I think it was actually pretty reasonable to assume–”

“I ran to New Jersey every morning just to get you your favourite smoothie, Tony, don’t even try it.”

“Well that could’ve been for a whole plethora of–”

“Every. Morning.” Steve looked at him blankly. “To New Jersey. ”

Well. When he put it like that, it did sound stupid. Tony folded his arms. “We were just supposed to be fucking,” he snapped, and it came out angrier than it should’ve - proactively defensive about something that Steve hadn’t even said yet, a jugement he’d not even made. “Me falling in love with you - well, that makes sense. But you falling in love with me? Christ alive, Steve, the world thinks you’ve got better judgement than that . I think you’ve got better judgement than that.”

“You really think that what we were doing was just fucking?” Steve asked him, before holding up a hand. “Wait. No. I framed that as a question. It’s not a question. What we were doing wasn’t just fucking , Tony, come on, have you never had no-strings attached sex with people before?”

Tony reeled back, baffled. “Of course I–”

“--Then you know that that’s not what this was.” Steve looked at him and sighed again. “I thought I was the one driving it. The lingering. The… you know. The intimacy. I tried not to, but I just… and then you’d always be the one sending me away, reminding me of the situation. You’d always be the first to let go. You took a date to the Guardiola engagement party.”

It wasn’t an accusation. Steve wasn’t like that. Tony felt shitty anyway. “You weren’t supposed to care,” he said softly.

Tony could see the struggle on Steve’s face. Diplomacy on the battlefield was one thing, but as soon as you took him out of the war room and sat him down in front of someone he cared about, he had a tendency to muddle everything up. Anger came quickly, and often ran away from him before he’d even had a chance to decipher what the true feeling was. But Tony could see he was trying - his jaw twitched, and he shut his eyes as he looked, briefly, out to the exit, where the rest of their team were all coolly informing the Pavelixxians what would happen if they attempted to follow the ship. Tony waited.

“I saw you on that table with that fucking axe hanging over you and I thought I was too late. That I’d lost you without even knowing I’d ever had you in the first place. Then I thought that if anyone could fuck up something as simple as love to that degree, it’s us.” Steve shook his head. Then, surprisingly, he laughed. Just for a moment - short and clipped. “I just can’t believe you didn’t see it. Didn’t see me , Tony, holy shit, I wasn’t subtle.”

“You also didn’t get infected with Hanahaki, and I did,” Tony told him. “In my eyes that was a pretty damning indictment about who was and wasn’t in love–”

“In any other scenario you would immediately have remembered that I can’t get sick. I guarantee it. But you’re so ready to believe you can’t be loved that you just jump on any opportunity you find to affirm it. You were willing to die–”

“Okay, well, there was no willingness about it–”

“You didn’t even try and talk to me! I had to find out from Bruce while the poor man had a panic attack in front of my door at 4 in the goddamn morning!”

“Sorry if this is breaking news, Steve, but if you haven’t heard, I am actually a little bit madly in love with you which means that yes, I’d rather get decapitated than leave you with the burden of knowing you could’ve saved me if your feelings had been different.”

“BUT I COULD’VE SAVED YOU!”

“BUT I DIDN’T FUCKING KNOW THAT!”

Both of them glared at one another for a moment, chests heaving, bodies taut. Tony may have been exhausted, but standing with Steve just then with the tension bouncing between them made his heart thrum, his concentration sharpen. Suddenly, he was alert, and Steve was all his senses could hone in on. He looked grey in the face and smelled like blood and sweat and Steve, his breathing sounded angry and Tony didn’t know what he tasted like just then, but God did he want to. 

It was always like this. And from the way Steve was looking at him, Tony knew the other man felt it too. 

“You know, this is probably going to be a total fucking shambles,” Steve said bluntly. 

Tony nodded. “Oh, absolutely.”

“We’ve only found out we love eachother an hour ago and we’re already arguing.”

“It’s crazy. We’re crazy.”

A moment of silence. Steve swallowed. 

“Wanna try anyway?” He asked, to which Tony sighed in relief and then immediately leaned forward, collapsing into the warm embrace of the other man’s chest like a magnetic north to south. 

“Oh fuck yes,” he breathed, pressing the side of his cheek into Steve’s shoulder and then feeling Steve’s arms as they rose to surround him, one snaking across his shoulders while the other made its home around his lower back. “You thought you were sick of me already, huh? Well you’re about to enter a whole new fuckin world, babycakes.”

Above him, Steve laughed. “I don’t think I could get sick of you if I tried. Infuriated by you, perplexed about you - a lotta other stuff, maybe. But sick of you?” He tilted his head, pressing his mouth against the side of Tony’s hair. “Nah. Never.”

It hit him then, as he stood there, holding onto Steve with all that was left of his might. He was in love. Not only that; Steve was in love with him right back. That was a real, tangible thing that they were going to experience together. Not just fucking. Not just dirty words in dark rooms and quick hands wandering in places they shouldn’t be. This was Steve, giving himself up in his entirety. 

And this was Tony, desperately and joyously taking every last bit of him.

*

Undoubtedly one of the worst parts about being an Avenger was that, unfortunately, it didn’t make you exempt from the politics of the corporate sphere. Paperwork and debriefs still needed to be done, no matter who you were. Not even Tony could find a way to shirk the responsibility of it - and truly, it wasn’t for lack of trying. SHIELD were just sickeningly persistent about that kind of thing. 

This meeting in particular was one that Tony would rather eat dirt than attend. As a matter of fact, he’d coincidentally booked a business trip to Malaysia for that same day, but Steve made him cancel it. He just wanted to get it over with, and Tony hadn’t quite cracked how to say no to the other man just yet. 

So here he was. Sat outside Fury’s office with the rest of the Avengers, twiddling his thumbs like a schoolboy waiting to get his ass handed to him by the principal. 

“You know, I’m sure we deserve a little more respect than this,” he declared to the group, flopping back against the chair until it balanced precariously on two legs. “Haven’t we, you know, saved the fucking world or something? I seem to recall that happening once or twice.”

“Get over it, Tony.” Natasha looked down at her nails and picked a cuticle, bored. “This is just Fury’s game. Same way we play games with him.”

Tony pulled a face and turned to Bruce. “Do you play games with Fury, Bruce?” He asked, pointing a finger to the other man questioningly. He tilted his head back to Natasha before Bruce could even open his mouth. “I don’t think Bruce is a game-player. Why is poor Bruce here? In fact, why are any of us?”

At that, Natasha hummed thoughtfully, and scratched an invisible beard. “Hmm. I have no idea.” She turned to Clint, who was perched beside her with his feet on the seat and his butt on the backrest of his chair. “Hey, Clint, could you think of any possible reason as to why Fury wants us all in his office now that we’re back on Earth and Tony’s out of medical?”

Clint pondered this for a moment. Then he clicked his fingers. “I think I know,” he said. “I think that maybe, maybe , it has something to do with the fact that we crashed a Quinjet onto a foreign planet, blew all the galactic credits that Fury had spent the last year trying to get his hands on, created a new foreign enemy for the human race and, uh… oh yeah. Two of the members of our team broke the fundamental company rule on fraternisation and it almost got everyone killed.”

Okay, well, that didn’t sound too great when it was put like that. Tony folded his arms. “In our defence,” he began, wiggling his hand over to Steve, who was sat quietly beside him reading the newspaper that he’d managed to pick up on the way to SHIELD, “you guys all chose to almost get yourselves killed. That had nothing to do with me or my feelings. I was having a great time relaxing in that lovely basement they provided for me. You were the ones who crashed the party.”

There was a simultaneous eye-roll across the room. Bruce hurled a peanut at his head, and Tony couldn’t help but chuckle, rocking a little further back on his chair and blowing a kiss across to his fellow scientist. Him and Bruce had had a long conversation on the ride home, full of tight hugs and a manly tear or two. But life moved fast for the Avengers. If Tony couldn’t crack jokes about the predicament he’d been in - about every predicament he found himself in, for that matter - he’d probably go insane. 

“Perhaps after this we could all go and get lunch?” Thor asked, tapping his fingers against his splayed knees. For the record, Thor didn’t even need to be there at all. He just enjoyed hanging out with them, so when they’d all packed up and headed over to SHIELD, he’d followed. “Jane introduced me to the wonders of all-you-can-eat Sushi restaurants the other month. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.”

Steve glanced up at that. “I don’t think it’d be fair on the restaurant for us all to pile in there. We’re not exactly normal customers. We’ll eat ‘em out of house and home.”

“That’s the whole point of an all-you-can-eat restaurant,” Tony informed him, rolling his head onto his shoulder and looking up at Steve from beneath his eyelashes. “It’s about the challenge .”

“We’ve got three superhuman metabolisms. And Clint. We’d be cheating.”

“Well, maybe the imaginary owners should’ve thought about that before opening up their imaginary restaurant.” Tony turned back to Thor with a radiant smile. “Of course we can get sushi, big guy.”

“I dunno if I’m feeling Sushi right now,” Clint told the group, to a shocked inhale from Thor. He patted his tummy sorrowfully. “She’s still a bit wary of seafood after that debacle with the takeout last week.”

“To be fair, you left it out on the counter all night and then heated it up the next morning,” Bruce reminded him. “The seafood was fine, initially. It was your shockingly bad decision-making that caused the debacle.”

“It doesn’t cause any problems 99% of the time!” Clint huffed. “I once dropped some caviar off the top floor of the tower and found it on the balcony 14 floors down. I ate that, and nothing bad happened.”

Tony glared at him incredulously, his hands flapping in Clint’s direction as if searching for an answer to the man’s behaviour in the air itself. “Why the fuck were you eating caviar on the… okay, actually, never mind, that’s not important. New plan: we kick Clint out and never speak to him again because he is a disgusting freak of a man, and we all go out and get sushi without him. Deal?”

Most of the team raised their hands immediately. Except Steve, who just folded up his newspaper with a long-suffering sigh and smacked Tony around the back of the head with it.

“Be nice,” he said. “It’s not like you’ve not also put a lot of questionable things in your mouth too.”

Nat arched an eyebrow. “I think that’s the reason why we’re all sat outside Fury’s office, Steve,” she informed him.

Poor Steve. The innuendo wasn’t intentional, but it was utterly unavoidable, and everyone in the room immediately began to snigger and jeer like children, much to Steve’s chagrin. Tony watched the rose-blush spread across his cheeks as he sat straighter in his chair. “That’s not what I meant,” he snapped sulkily.

Tony tilted to the right and patted the other man’s thigh. “It is true though,” he conceded with a wink. “Although I wouldn’t go telling Fury that, sugarplum. His blood pressure’s already high enough as it is.”

Steve pulled a face and tucked his paper neatly into the satchel that was lying on the floor to his right. Then, he stood up promptly. “Fury might want to play games, but I find this boring.” He turned to Tony, a hand extending across the space between them. “Come on. We’re going in.”

Tony looked at the hand, and then at Steve. He reached up and slid his fingers between Steve’s, letting the man tug him into standing position. “Oh, I love it when you get bossy.”

“Then you’re really gonna enjoy these next few minutes,” Steve told him wryly, while everyone else around them emitted their next wave of judgemental noise.

“Gotta say, while I love the love - but I’m not such a fan of all the sexual innuendos that’ve been flung around this last week or so,” Bruce told the two of them, standing up from his chair with a dramatic heave. 

“Yeah,” Clint added, “at least when this was a secret I didn’t have to hear thinly-veiled metaphors about Captain America’s sexual prowess. Gross.”

“You live rent free in the most expensive piece of real estate in New York city, Barton, so you’re damn well going to sit tight and listen attentively when I talk about Captain America’s sexual prowess.” Tony wagged his finger toward the archer as Steve pulled them both toward Fury’s office. “Got a problem? Start paying board.”

Immediately, Clint imitated zipping his mouth shut and threw the imaginary key to Natasha, who pretended to swallow it without hesitation. Tony wondered what it felt like to be the only person in the world with the power to make Natasha Romanov engage in mime. Without hesitation, either. But he didn’t dwell for too long on Clint and Nat’s strange bond - he was too busy thinking about his own problems, as Steve knocked sharply on Fury’s door and then let himself, and Tony, inside.

Fury’s office was a large, brutalist space. The dark concrete walls were somewhat oppressive - it would’ve been too much, if not for the one wall on the far side made entirely of glass, blanketing the light of day across every corner of the room. It lifted the room from prison-like to… well, an avant-garde kind of prison-like. The contents were sparse, with only a desk, an armchair in the corner of the room next to a long, thin bookshelf, and a deep green rug. There was one single picture on the wall. It was Fury, stood solemnly next to Elton John in a nondescript building. Neither of them were smiling. 

Tony decided not to ask. 

Fury was sat behind the desk with his feet up, idly flicking through a manila folder. He didn’t look up at the two of them as they strode into the room, but he did stop spinning his pen. 

“I told you to wait,” were the first words out of his mouth.

“No. You told us to arrive at 10am, which we did, and then you told us to wait. Which we have. For fifteen minutes.” Steve’s voice was curt, unimpressed. “I’m not a big fan of tardiness, Director.”

Oh, Tony was already swooning.

Fury barked out a laugh at that, shaking his head as he snapped the folder shut. “He’s not a big fan of tardiness, huh?” He muttered, seemingly to himself. The black boots slid off the top of the desk, planted themselves onto the floor, and then pulled Fury upright. From over the desk, his good eye moved between the two of them. “I find that interesting, considering who you’ve chosen to climb into bed with. I can’t recall a single goddamn occasion in which Mr Stark over there has showed up to anything on time. Ever.”

On each of their flanks, the rest of the team slowly entered the office. Tony scoffed indignantly.  “I think you’ll find I arrived bang on the hour this morning.” 

“I imagine this morning, you may have had some outside motivation,” Fury responded, glancing back over to Steve and then raising an eyebrow. 

He wasn’t wrong. Tony had been all for keeping Fury waiting - and he’d very nearly convinced Steve, using a plethora of promises about sexual gratification and brunch - but in the end, Steve’s insistence on getting this over with had won out. 

“Hey,” on Tony’s left, Clint’s voice piped up as he wobbled a shoulder and then raised a hand tentatively. “Just to throw my two cents in here and potentially cut this incredibly awkward meeting short - if outside forces can successfully wrangle Tony into behaving in a way that makes your blood pressure drop a bit, maybe, you know, it isn’t such a bad idea to let those outside forces be?” 

It was a statement full of hope, and was immediately dashed by a single shake of Fury’s head. Clint lowered his hand and glanced at Tony. 

“Worth a shot,” he mumbled.

By this point, Tony knew Fury well enough to know that he was a man who wielded silence just as powerfully as he wielded words or weapons. He used it now, looking at all 6 Avengers with a cold, unwavering glare, and letting the gentle ticking of the clock on the wall turn itself into the most obnoxiously loud sound in the room. Tony stared back impassively, making sure not to move, to shuffle. He wasn’t going to let Fury see the anxiety that was churning uncomfortably under the surface.

He spared a brief glance over to Steve, trying desperately to parse what the other man was thinking. They’d talked about this, in the brief period of respite between Tony being discharged from hospital and this meeting, when everything had been all wonderful dinners and public displays of affection and holding hands at the dinner table. They were both prepared, both in agreement on what angle they wanted to work. They were going to fight for this, because it was worth fighting for. Steve had made no indication that their fledgling relationship was in any danger based upon the outcome of this meeting.

But Tony knew how much the Captain America mantle meant to him. And despite all their reassurances, despite Steve’s calm conviction - if Fury gave him an ultimatum now, in this office, a small part of Tony wasn’t quite sure what the outcome would be. Hell, would there even be a winning scenario? If Tony got to keep Steve, but Steve lost everything in return, then that wasn’t a triumph. Even Tony wasn’t selfish enough to accept those terms. 

Still, though. The thought of seeing Steve turn to him with those sad, resigned eyes - whisper a quiet ‘I’m sorry’ as Fury declared it was The Avengers or Tony… fuck, he wasn’t sure how he was going to handle that. Not after everything it’d almost cost Tony to get to this fragile point with Steve in the first place. 

He still had his eyes on the side of Steve’s face when Fury spoke.

“Let’s cut the shit,” he began, raising a finger and pointing it between Tony and Steve. “ You two have violated one of SHIELD’s most fundamental house rules. And you guys -” the finger moved, roving across the rest of the line of Avengers, “helped cover for them.”

“No they didn’t,” Tony said immediately.

Fury looked at him, an utterly sardonic expression on his face, as if Tony had just said he was giving up his life to pursue monkhood. “You expect me to believe two of my greatest agents were totally unaware of the fact that two of the members of their own team were sleeping together?”

Tony shrugged. “Clint and Natasha are good. But so are me and Steve. Who’d have thought, huh?” 

“He’s not wrong,” Natasha said quietly, and if Tony heard it right, she sounded almost annoyed. Her hands were clasped behind her back in parade rest, but she rolled her shoulders and flicked her hair out of her face like she was giving a speech. “They didn’t tell anyone. Their behaviour didn’t change, on or off the field. The only reason they managed to hide it from us was because they gave us no reason to believe that anything was going on.”

At that, Clint raised a hand again. “I’d like it on record that I suspected Steve had feelings for someone. I just didn’t know who.”

“Well I knew that ,” Natasha muttered snippily, “I thought it was the barista at that little coffee shop.”

“I thought it was the teacher he met while we were doing the PR tours.”

“She would never have been his type.”

“And Tony is?”

Natasha paused for a moment. “Touche.”

“Let’s try and stay focused, shall we?” Fury heaved a sigh and walked around to the other side of his desk. His ankles crossed together as he leaned back and folded his arms, once more letting a blanket of quiet fill the room briefly. 

“So the rest of you had no idea what was going on?” He confirmed.

Everyone shook their heads slowly. 

“It would have made no difference if we had,” Thor added on, his voice unimpressed. “We still wouldn’t have told you anything. It would make us a shamefully useless band of warriors if we were willing to sell each other out like that so quickly, do you not think?”

Fury’s mouth pursed. “That’s the problem, Mr. Odinson.”

That morning, over their morning omelettes and green smoothies, Steve had asked Tony to try not to push it. To be polite, respectful. Where possible, let Steve do the explaining. And Tony, being aware of his own track record when it came to these kinds of dull bureaucratic intricacies, had agreed. Now though, he couldn’t help but scoff - it came out of him in a surprised, irritated burst, with a mind of its own, and before he could think twice about it he found his mouth moving. 

“There is no problem ,” he snapped. “You wanted a team that would be capable of saving the goddamn world, and we gave you that. Loyalty kind of comes with the gig. Like Thor said - if we were anything else, we wouldn’t be half as effective. You don’t get to pick and choose what traits we have dependent on what your stupid fucking terms and conditions are.”

“I think you’ll find that according to the contracts you all signed, I can,” Fury bit back, every line of his body an unwavering force, an immovable object. “The mission reports I read of your most recent intergalactic incident show me very clearly what kind of bullshit happens when people let their feelings get the better of them. It nearly killed you.” He jabbed an accusing finger in Tony’s direction, and it’d been weeks now, yet Tony still felt the ghost of a prickle in his throat. He swallowed it down and refused to clear his throat. 

“You’re wrong,” Steve said quietly, shaking his head. A thin strand of blonde hair slipped out from behind his ear at the movement, swayed this way and that by the motion of Steve’s disagreement.

Fury scoffed. “Captain, that report came from your own–”

“Tony’s feelings for me didn’t nearly kill him. My feelings for Tony were what saved him.” Steve’s back straightened, ever-defiant, willing to do battle with Fury over little more than a technicality. “We aren’t just sleeping together. As I explained in that report - we love each other, and it’s not going to just go away because you order it to. In the same way I love every single one of the people on my team. Maybe it’s not in the same way I love Tony, but it’s no less real.”

Tony didn’t think he would ever get over how easily those words came out of Steve’s mouth. Love . I love Tony.

“You and I both know that’s a very different thing,” Fury said drily, but Steve shook his head again. 

“You think it makes us a liability to each other - impacts our thinking on the field? Maybe it does. But if it were Clint’s life on the line, or Bruce’s, or Thor’s, or Nat’s, my judgement would be just as skewed in favour of trying everything possible to get them out safely.”

“Seconded,” Bruce said softly - and coming from a man who could punch a decently-sized hole into a city if he was so inclined, that small affirmation held a sizeable amount of weight. 

Steve waved a hand. “See? This is what it is. We live together, Fury. Laugh and fight and hurt and heal together - and yeah,  do everything in our power to ensure the prolonged safety of one another. But I think it’s worked out pretty well so far. We don’t put eachother above civilian lives, we make the calls that need to be made. Hell, I ordered Tony into a collapsing building two weeks ago, and I did that knowing what danger I was putting him in.”

“And how long did you hesitate before giving that order?” Fury pressed. “Two seconds? Three? That’s life-changing in this business–”

“No more time than I would take if I asked anyone else on the team to do that,” Steve responded firmly.

“Would you be able to order him to die?” Fury spoke the words straight at Steve - ignoring Tony’s incredulous expression, ignoring the universal intake of surprised breath which spread across the room. 

Just for a moment, Steve cracked - his calm demeanour breaking as he blinked, scowled, flinched as if Fury had raised a hand at him. “That’s a stupid thing to ask,” he snapped, “you can’t–”

“Would you be able to eat breakfast with him, hold his hand and do all your sappy romantic shit - would you be able to move into his room, get a little fuckin’ dog and name it somethin’ dumb like Frodo, propose to him in a respectable amount of time and then turn around the next day and order him to do something that would kill him? If you had to?” 

Fury took a step forward, booted feet thumping against the thin carpet. His gaze turned to Tony. “What about you, huh, Stark? The man who gets everything he wants. Would you be able to sit back and watch Captain Rogers die if it came down to it? Would you be able to turn away and focus on the mission, even if you heard him screaming for you, begging for help over the comm?”

Under Tony’s ribcage, his heart spasmed, twisted, lurched at the very thought. Fury wasn’t special - he’d had this thought many times himself. It kept him up at night, it played a part in some of his most horrific nightmares. It was a black dog that followed him around quietly, every single time they were called out on a mission. And Tony wished that the concept of it alone didn’t grind his whole system to a halt, but it did. 

He thought about telling Fury to go to hell, but there was a lump forming in his throat; one that he knew would give him away. Beside him, Steve was deathly still, glaring at Fury with hard eyes. 

The silence was growing again. They were playing right into Fury’s hands, 

And then-

“I’ve slept with Clint 6 times since we first met,” Natasha declared. It came out of seemingly nowhere, and Fury’s gaze snapped back to her, an eyebrow rising in surprise as the bombshell dropped. Natasha, on the other hand, was impassive as ever - aside from a slight sharpness to her eyes. When she spoke, it felt as if every word was picked carefully. “He’s seen me at my strongest, my weakest. He knows my soul. I know his. Ask me the same question, Fury, if you really want to go there - but I don’t think you’re going to like the answer much.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Natasha - the woman who played every card she owned so close to her chest that people often didn’t know she’d joined the game, the spy whose nature it was to not give an answer she couldn’t take back - baring it all in a conference room. Tony could hardly believe it. He just looked at her, stunned.

She caught his eye for a moment, and her face didn’t change. But she nodded, before looking back to Fury. “You bench them from the team, and you’ll have to bench me too.”

“Same,” Clint said, throwing himself into the mix with his typical nonchalance. “I mean, it takes two to tango. And like she said, we’re kinda soulmates. I guess that makes me a liability.” He paused for a second, before adding. “Oh, and if we’re going there, I’ve also slept with Marlene from logistics and Tennison from Black Ops.”

“I’ve also slept with Tennison,” Natasha admitted with a small shrug. 

Bruce cleared his throat. “I’ve also slept with Tennison. Kind of.”

Tony blinked rapidly. “Okay. Wow. Anyone else? Does this guy have a hit list or something?”

Thor hummed. “It seems like it. If I’m thinking of the right man, he attempted to make a pass at me while we were sparring. A lovely individual, however I am happily devoted to my Jane, so I turned him down.”

Tony was so stumped by this surprising nugget of information that he almost forgot where he was. But as Fury released a string of obscene phrases, he was brought swiftly back to reality. 

He tried to regain some control of the situation. “See?” He said, waving a hand at Fury to catch his attention. “Everyone’s doing it with everyone while your beady little eye is closed. We’re not special. But you can’t fire your entire workforce.”

“I can sure as shit fire Tennison,” Fury snapped mutinously.

“Yeah, but then you’d be letting go of the one man who’s single-handedly providing stress relief for half the Avengers and thirty percent of SHIELD, apparently,” Tony raised his eyebrows. “I mean, personally, I think he should be commended for his service to this country.”

“Why am I not surprised that you think that,” Fury said, his tone dripping with acidity.

“Look- are you going to suspend all of us?” Steve asked, cocking his head. Triumph was starting to leak into his expression, and when Tony shifted left to let their shoulders brush, Steve met the motion. “Because that’s what this is looking like, and if you want to do that, then I won’t try and stop you. I’ve got more important things to think about.” 

Slowly, Tony felt the gentle slip of Steve’s fingers as they wrapped around his own. He looked sideways, but Steve didn’t take his eyes away from Fury. He just squeezed his grip. Tony squeezed back.

Fury’s face was blank as he stared Steve down - but Tony saw the twitch of his jaw. The minute shake of his head. He had no real ground to stand on. He couldn’t afford to lose the Avengers and everyone knew it, even him. He’d done some poking around to see if there was any weakness, any hesitation he could exploit, but there wasn’t. 

Tony had nothing to worry about. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing, for both your sakes,” Fury said eventually, looking down the line of Avengers. He lingered on Steve and Tony, an imperceptible expression settling over the hard lines and worn features of his face. “Be discreet. None of that goddamn canoodling in SHIELD’s quarters - I don’t want my agents thinking it’s one rule for them and another for you.”

Tony resisted the urge to pump his fist in glee. Fury was letting them off the hook. Tamping down on a grin, he wisely chose not to inform the Director of the fact that his ‘no canoodling within SHIELD walls’ request had already been well and truly flung out of the window a good long while ago - instead, he just stepped forward and patted the Director’s shoulder fondly. 

“Aw, see, I knew you’d come around,” he said cheerfully. “I mean, if you hadn’t, I obviously would’ve just taken the entire Avengers Initiative private and withdrawn all Stark Industries funding - but I’m glad you saw the light organically.”

“One day I am gonna kill your annoying ass,” Fury told him, straight to his face. 

Tony laughed. “Good luck with that.”

“Okay, now that’s out of the way, can we get sushi?” Thor’s hopeful voice diverted Tony’s attention away from their fuming overlord, and he spun on his heel, newly invigorated with energy as he clapped his hands together and nodded.

“We’ll get whatever you want, buddy.” Walking past the line of Avengers, he made the first move toward the door, closing off this ridiculous meeting once and for all. He caught Steve’s eye along the way and couldn’t help but grin at him, unrestrained and childish and relieved all at once. Steve smiled back- a softer, quieter thing, but filled with that same warm love that seemed to have a permanent home within him these days. 

“Does our Captain have a preference on where to take his lunch?” Tony asked.

Steve shrugged, and as Tony passed by him, he felt the aborted movement Steve made to slide his hand around Tony’s waist. It was crazy, how the little gestures like that had become so automatic in such a short space of time. Although Steve wasn’t quite foolhardy enough to see the gesture through - not with Fury still glaring at them as if he was ready to start a new argument any moment. Instead, he just let his palm sit on Tony’s lower back while he passed by.

 “I’ll go wherever you do,” he said simply.

Christ, Tony was so gone on him. If nearly dying was all it took to get here, Tony would’ve done it months ago. 

As they trailed out of the office and headed in the direction of the all-you-can-eat Sushi bar as guided by an enthusiastic Thor, Tony dropped off a little, letting Steve and Bruce continue their conversation up at the front of the group. A few paces backward, Natasha walked quietly. She wasn’t upset - although admittedly, Tony wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell even if she was - but her mind was clearly occupied. Her focus was distant, brows ever so slightly drawn. But when she clocked Tony arriving in her vicinity, she still smiled at him. 

“Hey loverboy,” she said softly.

He nudged her shoulder, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he braced against the sharp wind that met them once they were out in the street. “Hey,” he responded. 

They walked together, wordless for a few seconds. Natasha looked out onto the road, watching the cars as they raced past. Up ahead, Clint was pacing around Thor like an overexcited dog, trying to convince him that some brunch spot on the other side of town was a better place to go than the sushi bar. Tony observed him for a few moments. 

“So Clint, huh?” he declared, not turning to look at her when he spoke. 

She hummed. 

“Why don’t you just bite the bullet and try dating him? If he’s your soulmate and all.”

She pulled a disdainful face and then glanced sideways at Tony, raising an eyebrow. “Oh God, no. Not in a million years.”

“Right. Okay.” Tony scrunched his nose. “I do not understand your relationship with him. Like at all.”

“Good.” At that, she grinned wryly, nudging him back and then sliding her hand between the crook of Tony’s arm, linking them up as they ambled down the sidewalk. “I think it does you good to not know stuff sometimes.”

He chuckled, turning his attention to Steve, who was busy constantly pushing his hair back as the wind whipped it across his forehead. It always baffled Tony a little, to see Steve out in the open. He had a body that could’ve been carved into marble and worshipped, and yet he walked like he was still a 5’6 rake of a man - slightly hunched away from the rest of the world, steps quick and short, like he was hoping not to be seen. Everything about him was so honest and humble and indiscreet. When Tony walked alongside him, he felt like a glaring contradiction just by existing. 

He’d used to worry that was a sign they were mismatched. These days, though, he looked at it more like a finely balanced set of weighing scales. They levelled out. Created a zero sum. Not too much, but not too little either. 

“Thank you,” he told Natasha, turning back to her. “You stuck your neck out for us back there.”

I know how hard that must have been, he didn’t say.

Her weight shifted a little beside him, pressing further against his shoulder as she squeezed their arms. She looked up at him, and he looked back. 

“You are the best liar I’ve ever met, you know,” she told him. “It’s why I managed to read you so wrong the first time I met you. I wasn’t on your side back then. But I wanted to be on your side now.”

Sometimes, Tony thought about the fact that 5 of the most powerful, dangerous, influential people on planet Earth lived under his roof - and how, bizarrely, they’d managed to get on well enough and for a long enough period of time that they actually ended up caring about one another. A lot. Enough, even, for SHIELD’s best agent to put her position on the line in order to defend a relationship that she objectively knew nothing about.

It was a bit of a mind-fuck, to be honest. Especially seeing as these were some of the only people in Tony’s life who he didn’t pay to be around him. They seemed to just do it for the hell of it.

At that moment, Steve turned around and looked at the two of them, cocking his head curiously. “What are you guys gossiping about back there?” He asked. 

Tony wiggled his eyebrows, extending his free hand out until Steve obligingly tangled their fingers together. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Steve grinned, beautiful and relaxed and loving , God, that feeling wasn’t wearing off - and then stopped moving, waiting until Tony walked right up to him before leaning down and pressing a soft kiss against Tony’s mouth. His hand was warm against the side of Tony’s face. His body shielded Tony from the oncoming wind. Everything zeroed down to that moment, right there, on the street with Steve, where anyone could see and nothing mattered. 

Natasha had fluidly slipped her arm out of Tony’s as he’d become preoccupied with Steve, but she walked backward on the sidewalk, a mildly amused expression on her face as she watched the two of them. “You gotta do me one favour guys, seeing as I just vouched for you.”

Tony broke away, leaning sideways and arching an eyebrow in her direction. “Go on.”

“Please try not to let this thing get anyone killed, or any economies crashed, or any important buildings blown up.” She paused for a moment, trying to think of anything else. “And try not to kill eachother too early on. It’s a bad look.”

Steve pulled a face. Tony just laughed.

“No promises,” he said.

Notes:

And SCENE

Notes:

Next chapter will be where all the good stuff starts going down, so stay tuned.
Also I wasn't wearing my glasses when I posted this so um. If there's any spelling errors or structuring weirdness... no there isn't <3

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