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He's never seen Tony like this.
Tony's alone on the top floor of a glorious penthouse on what used to be Alcatraz. It had still been a prison when he'd gone into the ice, Steve knows, and he feels old. He feels older than he used to. Being ninety-five and serum-free will do that to you.
Tony's walking toward him. He's barefoot, wearing a very tiny pair of shorts and an unbuttoned shirt. His bare torso is muscular, taut, unscarred -- everything Steve isn't, these days. The RT glows in his chest, matching the alien, electric blue shine of his eyes. There's a half-full tumbler sloshing in his hand.
Everything about this is wrong.
Tony is practically slinking toward him, a calculated sensual slide, a languid ease. He's seen Tony flirt -- of course he's seen Tony flirt, Tony flirts like he breathes, but Tony doesn't flirt like this. Tony flirts cheerfully, happily. Consensually. And never with him.
Tony's walking toward him like his sexuality is a goddamned weapon.
A loaded gun. Aimed at him.
"Well," Tony drawls, and he stops, leans indolently against the dividing wall halfway across the room, and licks his lips. "When I invited all of San Francisco over for an orgy I didn't dare think I'd get my favorite captain. I do love a man in a SHIELD uniform."
"Stop that," Steve snaps.
He'd meant to talk to Tony about things that mattered. The hard questions. The incursions. The fate of the multiverse. All the lies. That was why he had come here. But now that he's here, he can't. While Tony in his right mind may have done more than a few things Steve disagrees with, this isn't Tony. This isn't the man who wiped his mind. This is a monster wearing his best friend's skin.
Tony pouts, a simpering moue. "Aww, Cap. Don't be like that. Stay. Have a drink."
"No," Steve says tightly. "No, thank you."
Tony gives him another smile, the sort of look precisely meant to inflame passions. Someone's passions. Anyone's passions. Steve doesn't think this Tony is particularly discriminating.
Tony's going to be sorry about that when he wakes up. If he wakes up.
He wishes he could deny that it's having any effect on him, because, God, he's always wanted Tony to look at him like this--
But this isn't real.
He watches in mute horror as Tony takes another sip of his drink, ice clinking in the glass. He watches Tony's eyes. Steve's waiting for a sign, he thinks. Some sign that the real Tony is in there somewhere, some evidence that some part of him is trying to fight this. Tony's eyes are the bright blue of glowing repulsors, unchanging, perfectly content. Unworried.
Tony's happy. He doesn't remember the last time he saw Tony happy like this.
Maybe that's the worst part.
Tony's throat works as he swallows, and then he licks his lips slowly, deliberately, pink tongue darting out. His gaze is locked on Steve's, to be sure Steve is watching. Steve's heart is thundering in his chest.
"Are you sure?" Tony murmurs. His voice has gone low, dark, gravelly. "It's good stuff."
He sets the glass down on a little table, and then he's padding closer, a predator on the prowl. Before Steve has realized what Tony's doing, Tony's closed with him, bodies inches apart, and he's got his arms over Steve's shoulders, his fingers interlaced somewhere behind Steve's head. His mouth is parted in a smile, and he's so close that Steve can smell the scotch on his breath.
"Or," Tony breathes, "maybe you're here for the orgy after all?"
He leans in. Their lips are so close that Steve is breathing Tony's air. Tony's eyes are blackened in desire, ringed with a terrifyingly wrong shade of blue.
"No," Steve says, and -- to his credit -- Tony checks his progress immediately, pulling his head back just enough to look at him. "Tony. This isn't you. This isn't what you want."
One of Tony's hands has worked free and is sliding along Steve's cheek. His spine prickles in flame and for the life of him Steve can't tell if it's crawling unease or roaring desire.
"On the contrary," Tony says, "this is me. I am more myself than I've ever been. Can't you see that? I've been holding myself back all these years. This is who I am, who I really am, underneath."
And he smiles. It's an awful smile. A villain's hideous smile, glorying in hatred and destruction.
Steve's hand locks around Tony's wrist.
"This isn't you," he repeats. "That's what it wants you to think, but it's wrong. Tony, it screwed with your mind. You're not-- you're not in a state to make reliable judgments about yourself. Your brain's been compromised, and that means it's never going to give you the right answer about itself." He reaches for an analogy. "It's like-- it's like when you're running a diagnostic. If the whole system's broken, you can't trust the results."
For a moment he thinks something like understanding flares in Tony's eyes and he thinks oh God, yes, I've found you, I've found you, but then Tony smirks.
"How do you know?"
"What?"
Tony's voice is an odd combination of didactic and cruel, a genius humiliating lesser mortals. "Just how do you know it isn't me? What's your proof, Rogers?"
Steve swallows hard. "This is. You don't-- you don't really want me. You never wanted me. Red Onslaught is making you think you feel this way. It's not true. I know you can remember what we were like. You know we were never like this. You know you never wanted this. Think back."
It's harder than it should be to turn Tony down.
This isn't Tony, he thinks. This isn't him.
Repeating it doesn't help.
Tony smiles, sharp and dark. "What the hell do you know," he asks, and the husky sound of his voice ripples across Steve's skin, leaving fire in its wake, "about what I felt for you?"
And then Tony leans in and kisses him.
For an instant Steve lets himself melt into the kiss, and it is all too easy to give in. Tony's arms pull him close; his fingers run light feathery strokes along Steve's spine. His mouth is hot, his tongue is knowing, and Steve feels half-drunk on the taste of him in a way entirely separate from the part where Tony actually does taste like straight whiskey. Tony kisses him hard and rough, kisses him like he's got an agenda here, like he wants to strip him and take him apart and own him and nothing about it is nice at all.
The awful thing is, Steve would take it. He wants this. He's wanted this for years, but he's never wanted this. This isn't Tony, but it's terrifying how much of him doesn't care.
They break apart.
"Come to bed with me, Winghead," Tony murmurs, and hearing the old nickname is an awful lot like being punched in the gut. The world rights itself but it's still wrong. Everything is wrong. "It'll be like old times."
Tony's thumb smooths over the nape of his neck.
"Those were never our old times," Steve says.
He plucks Tony's hand away and it really shouldn't hurt as much as it does.
Tony smiles that awful dark smile again. "They should have been."
"No," Steve says, like the denial is a mantra, a talisman, like if he just keeps saying it he won't have to think about any of this. "No. I can't."
Tony takes a few steps back, a little unbalanced, the first hint of something beyond the seduction routine. Then he smirks again, hard and cruel. "No need to be like that, Steve. Got plenty of little blue pills on hand. Chemicals of all varieties. It's not a problem."
Steve flushes, somewhere between humiliation and anger. "That's got nothing to do with it," he says, and even as he says it he is exquisitely aware that he is ninety-five years old and, yes, that certainly would have been a factor. If he did this. Which he won't.
"All sorts of chemicals." Tony stresses the first word and raises his eyebrows. "I've got a lovely little vial of super-soldier serum. Made it up for you. Special."
Steve catches his breath.
It's so very like what Tony would have done, what Tony has always done -- extravagant gifts, handed over as if they're nothing.
He remembers Tony, wild-eyed from sleepless nights in the workshop, pressing new gear into his hands like every day was his birthday, smiling like he just wanted to make him happy--
He remembers Tony, arms wide, showing him around the mansion, the day after he woke up in the future--
He remembers how Tony always used to look at him, when he thought Steve wasn't looking, quiet and dark-eyed and unreadable--
Maybe Tony's right about how he felt.
But Tony's gifts now come with strings.
The machine. Avengers World. Tony's gifts are all lies.
"No," Steve says. "This isn't you. Don't do this to me."
Tony shrugs and steps back. He picks up his glass again, takes another sip. "You know you'll regret this."
"I already regret this," Steve says, bitterly, and the words fall from his lips with hideous clarity. It's the sense you get when you know you're crossing the line, that you're uttering something unforgivable. He exhales. "I can't talk to you. You're a monster. And if by some miracle you come back out of this, then you're still a monster. I don't trust you. I'll never be able to trust you again. I don't know how much of you is left--"
"Steve--" Tony says, and that one syllable sounds so bleak and awful that it could be Tony, it could be, because only the real Tony hates himself--
"I don't ever want to see you again in my life," Steve says, very quietly, and then he turns and walks out the door, leaving Tony alone.
There's the sound of a glass cracking, thrown against a wall.
Steve doesn't look back.