Chapter Text
Okay. Before anyone said anything, Tony wanted it on record that he was well aware this was a very bad idea.
Steve’s back hit the wall with a dull thud and Tony was on him like a rash, hands grappling with that obnoxious brown jacket until it was unzipped and hanging off the other man’s equally-obnoxiously large shoulders. Steve’s hands, meanwhile, settled - firm, assured, downright possessive - on Tony’s ass. Their mouths crashed together, slightly uncoordinated, and it tasted familiar, which in itself was a huge red flag, but you know what, considering their current predicament, Tony was going to file it away as a huge red flag for another day.
“You looked good today,” Steve’s words were muttered against Tony’s teeth, and his tongue brushed gently against the seam of his lips. “New suit?”
“Oh, you noticed.” Tony let Steve tug at said nice suit until it was a rumpled mess, shirt untucked, jacket tumbling somewhere to the floor beside them. “You know, not that I - mmf, fuck , Steve – not that I didn’t appreciate it, but I only mentioned the symposium this morning because I like talking about myself. You really didn’t have to come all the way over here.”
Steve grinned as deft fingers undid the tie around Tony’s throat. He leaned in, mouth brushing Tony’s ear. “I wanted to. Seeing you up on those stages turns me on. Plus, it gives me the excuse to whisk you away to fancy hotels and have my way with you afterward.”
That made Tony laugh. He glanced around the room. They were barely even two steps away from the door - it’d taken all their self control not to outright run through the corridors after they’d made it past the lobby. The place was nice enough - fancy decor, fluffy pillows, a TV - but Tony couldn’t say he’d even noticed any of it. No, as soon as Steve had started grabbing at him, it was pretty much lights out in the brain department. Nothing else was worth observing except the man in front of him, currently in the process of unbuckling Tony’s trousers.
“What did you tell the team?” Tony asked breathily.
“Staying at my Brooklyn apartment for the night.”
“Ah. Solid alibi, can’t go wrong.”
“I am known for my tactical skills.” Steve nodded demurely, and it made Tony giggle, which was red flag number two really, because people he was sleeping with did not make him fucking giggle. They made him grin or scream or groan - at most, perhaps a manly chuckle - but not giggle . And yet -
In one fluid motion, Steve dropped to his knees while his eyes stayed fixed on Tony, and, obviously, every other thought once again careened straight out of the window.
*
There were a lot of reasons why having sex with Steve was a bad idea.
Tony could remember the briefing that Fury had given them all, just days after the invasion of New York. It was practically seared into his fucking brain, simply because of the pure discomfort that’d been so hilariously evident on the director’s face. Clearly he was not the one who usually had these types of conversations with people. But The Avengers weren’t just regular people, and they warranted special measures.
These measures had, amongst other things, involved a sex talk from Nick Fury.
“When you decide to be in a team that fights together, risks everything for one another, goes through hell with one another -” Fury had looked as if he’d been chewing nails, his hands curled into fists on each side. “You will inevitably end up with a lot of pent-up adrenaline, emotion, feeling… for one another too.”
“Oh Lord,” Bruised had muttered quietly, while Clint audibly snorted and wiggled his eyebrows at Natasha. They’d probably had this conversation before, which made it even funnier to hear coming from Fury’s mouth.
“But I am going to tell you right here, right now, that no matter what - so long as you are a serving member of the Avengers Initiative, you cannot engage in any kind of physical or emotional relationship with any of your team or affiliates.” Fury pursed his lips and nodded once - and then when Tony had looked ready to open his mouth, a hand had been raised instantly, silencing him. “While I understand this may be difficult for some of our more sexually liberated members,” and whoah, okay, Tony had seen the side-eye sent his way at that particular comment - “you need to understand that we don’t have this rule for the hell of it. We have it to prevent tragedies.”
“Would it not be a tragedy to prevent two lovers from uniting sexually?” Thor had asked, in his usual Thor manner. Clint snorted even harder, while Natasha had simply stared at the ceiling.
Fury sighed. “Intimate relationships compromise rational thinking. Agents who are asked to choose between saving a coworker they’re in love with and a building full of innocent civilians might not make the right call. Those stakes are exponentially higher for Avengers. And so the same rules apply to you. Intimate relationships are strictly off the table and proof of one will result in immediate dismissal.”
And the thing was, Tony got it. He did.
Any intelligent person knew that emotion made people unintelligent. Especially when in the business of life and death. SHIELD stuck to these rules firmly and unequivocally, because if they didn’t, people could die. And yeah, of course Tony had talked shit about it as soon as he’d left the room - and for a few minutes while Fury had been speaking - but there was a reason he’d broken things off with Pepper. It was because he loved her too much to keep being Iron Man. And he had to be Iron Man. Emotional attachment wasn’t really on the table when you took up a gig like this - and eventually, they’d both made their peace with that.
Despite what people may have thought, Tony had initially been confident that the rule wasn’t going to be a problem. Would he fuck every single person on the team if he hit it off with them on a random night out? Yes. Duh. But contrary to popular belief, he could be professional. He could see past Thor’s magnificent thighs and Natasha’s spectacular rack and Bruce’s sexy, sexy brain.
Honestly, he’d never even considered Steve as an option. Never mind Tony’s downfall.
Goddamn Steve Rogers. The quiet patriot. The man who Tony had initially believed to have a stick stuck so far up his ass he was at risk of choking on it at any second. He’d been the one to crack Tony’s willpower. Some things, you really had to see to believe. Not that Tony would ever show anyone else the sex tapes, thank you very much.
Anyway. Workplace fraternization rules were just one reason as to why having sex with Steve Rogers was a bad idea.
Tony was making a list. He’d sometimes add things to it after Steve had finished fucking him, or whenever he walked into yet another board meeting late thanks to thinking exclusively with his dick in the hours beforehand. But another big reason as to why it was a bad idea was because it was inevitably going to end. And when it ended, things would be terrible.
This shared elements with workplace fraternization rules, he supposed, but was much worse simply because it encapsulated far more than just a professional fallout. It was going to impact Tony’s whole life. He wasn’t sure quite how it’d happened, or why, but somehow he and Steve had ended up becoming good friends. Best friends, even. They balanced each other out, understood one another in a way few others did - which was strange considering how relatively young Steve was (another reason - did this make Tony a cradle robber or Steve? It got confusing) compared to Tony. War did things to a man, Tony assumed. It aged them. Or maybe Tony had just never quite grown up. Whatever the reason, they just connected. Their fights were hideous. Their connection was utterly incomparable. And when Tony inevitably fucked this up, it was going to hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before.
And this, he supposed, also tied into reason three.
Reason three was a whopper. It was a deal-breaker. Anyone with common sense would take a look at Reason Three and write Tony off as an imbecile as opposed to a genius, because no one in their right mind would get into a no-strings-attached sexual relationship with someone if they were working with a Reason Three like Tony’s.
Reason Three involved the fact that one day, on a Sunday morning after a rather long night out wining and dining potential investors, Tony had woken up early to catch Steve before his run. He’d been so hungover he could hardly even communicate with the other man, and yet he’d felt as if it was somehow worthwhile anyway, just to see him.
Reason Three involved the third-drawer down on Tony’s work desk, which was now solely dedicated to storing the haphazard doodles Steve drew for him on a whim. Charcoal on post-it notes or pencil on scraps of SHIELD-issues paper, sometimes of Tony, sometimes of little comic-strips that Steve would slip to him while they were in meetings. The desk was damn near overflowing and Tony wasn’t planning on getting rid of a single one.
Reason Three was Nick Fury’s worst nightmare made reality. It lay dormant, quietly waiting in Tony’s psyche, every time they went on a mission, and concerned the fact that Tony would sooner die than let anything happen to Steve, ever.
For anyone still guessing: Reason Three as to why having no-strings-attached sex with Steve Rogers was a very very bad idea, was because somewhere down the line, in between the sex and the glib remarks and the morning-after coffees, Tony was pretty sure he’d accidentally fallen in love with him.
*
“Next time the Guardians call us for an intergalactic party, tell them to pick us up in their space-van or we’re not fucking going.” Wafting smoke away from his face, Clint hobbled out of the ruined Quinjet, boots splashing into the sodden ground beneath him. “Every time we leave the solar system something bad happens.”
“Not every time,” Natasha corrected, “we managed to get to Asgard once without a hitch. Jane brought those cakes.”
“Okay - well, discarding that one, our track record isn’t great.”
“No, to be honest, it’s not”
“This is fine,” Bruce said, mostly to himself. He looked toward their ship, teeth worrying at his bottom lip as he turned to Tony. “It’s fixable?”
Tony thought very carefully about an answer that the Big Green Guy would find palatable. “It’s fixable,” he agreed - which wasn’t even a total lie. “I just need the right equipment.”
“And it won’t blow, right?” Steve walked a few paces around the perimeter of the ship, brows furrowed, waiting for a risk to jump out at them. Tony shook his head.
“The engine wasn’t that damaged. Mainly the shell - wings, thrusters, that kind of thing.”
Steve hummed. “So everything inside is still accessible?”
“Yep.”
“Great.” Steve gave the team a quick, morale-boosting thumbs up. “Well at least we know we won’t starve for at least two weeks.”
Had things gone to plan, they should’ve been sipping space cocktails with Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy just then, Tony thought glumly. They’d been working together of the last few months, tracking and extraditing an extraterrestrial criminal who’d been hiding out on Earth, and Thor had finally managed to capture her in South Africa a week ago. He’d hauled her off to her home planet to await trial, and it’d gone so smoothly that no-one had suffered a single injury in the process. That was a cause for celebration.
And what could possibly go wrong with a quick fly out to the Hevellian Nebula? Using the modified Quinjet, it’d be a pleasant week-long trip to reach the planet that Thor and the Guardians were currently camped out on. They’d been planning on stopping off at a planet made of gold along the way, you know, for the whole tourist experience.
That is - until they’d hit an asteroid field out of nowhere. The ship had been badly damaged, and Bruce had only just managed to lock the Quinjet onto the nearest civilized planetary signal and send the mayday out to the Guardians’ ship before the system had gone down entirely.
Now, they were here.
Tony pulled a face as he observed the soggy jungle around him. If you wanted to find any carats on this planet, you’d have better luck pulling them out from the ground. Ha.
He turned, ready to relay his excellent joke to Steve, but the other man was preoccupied with hunting for life signs on his scanner. His back was turned away from the rest of the team, searching for the direction they were inevitably going to have to start walking in.
“I did not wear the appropriate footwear for this,” Natasha grumbled, swaying from one foot to another in order to prevent herself from sinking into the thick mud. Their air around them was insufferably humid, and bizarre-looking insects kept flying far too close for Tony’s liking. “Which genius was in charge of navigation?”
Immediately, Bruce pointed a finger at Tony, who flung his hands up in the air.
“I was peeing!” He exclaimed defensively, throwing a middle-finger up at Bruce for his snitching. “I am not going to feel guilty for taking a leak. Clint takes about 7 every hour.”
From behind him, a hand settled firmly on his shoulder, giving a quick squeeze. Tony glanced at it, although it wasn’t as if he didn’t know who it belonged to. Steve’s touch was far from foreign.
“Everyone knows it was an accident,” the man said reassuringly, “the blame game isn’t going to help any of us right now. What we need is a plan of action.”
Tony sulked for another second, then waved a hand over to the scanner. “Found anything?”
“Galactic Council records say the planet’s known as Sintar. This space corridor is pretty frequently used by travelers, so they’re aware of other species existing in the galaxy, which is good, although it doesn’t say much in the file as to how advanced their knowledge is. There’s some kind of city about three hours’ walk away though. Lots of technological signals, so hopefully advanced enough for us to fix up the ship. Or at the very least, hole up safely until help arrives.”
Bruce poked a large, furling plant leaf interestedly. “I mean, at least the biome is relatively familiar. And nothing has tried to kill us.” He quickly tapped on a tree beside him. “Yet.”
Of course Bruce had to say that. Almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth, there was a screeching noise from above, and everyone looked up just in time to see some sort of bird swoop in through the canopy and dive for a creature that was up on a high branch. It squealed, and the ensuing ruckus disturbed the nearby foliage, sending a variety of strange and bizarre insects raining down upon them.
Tony stumbled back just in time to avoid being hit by a huge, purple worm that fell from the treetops. He bumped into Steve, who was also swiftly sidestepping a stick-like, nine-legged creature. It squealed as it hit a tree root, scattering into a dozen pieces, which all then seemingly became autonomous and continued to scuttle in varying directions.
The remaining Avengers all looked at one another, knee-deep in bog water, sweating from the humidity. Natasha looked murderous - she appeared to be covered in mysterious bug slime. They’d only touched down five minutes ago.
“Civilisation is that way.” Steve pointed behind him. “Let’s get a Goddamn move on.”
*
The planet was hell, Tony decided after an hour of walking. It was the only reasonable conclusion. The heat was stifling. The atmosphere was utterly oppressive. Oh, and everything that moved was trying to kill them.
Hell.
“This is the worst intergalactic party ever,” Clint panted, wiping the sweat off his brow and turning to Steve. “This settlement thing you’re leading us to better have showers. I smell like shit.”
“You always smell like shit,” Natasha informed him.
“Shut up. I’m fragrant. I have a manly musk about me - or at least I usually do.”
Steve pulled a face at the choice of words. “I have no idea what kind of hygiene facilities the alien society has. In fact, I’m kind of just hoping that they’re open-minded enough as a species to not kill us on sight.” His lips pursed. “If they’re anything like humans, it might not be good for us.”
“Are we about to get probed?” Tony pondered. He stepped over a large tree root and swiped his finger over a nearby leaf, looking at the moisture on his finger. Looked enough like water. He licked it, and - yep, definitely water. “They’ll probably pick me first. I am the best looking.”
While Natasha snorted, Steve gave Tony a gentle smack. “Stop tasting unknown liquids,” he admonished, before adding, “you’re not getting probed. No-one’s getting probed. Probably.”
“I’d like to see anyone try probing the Other Guy,” Bruce muttered, which was a very good, if slightly traumatising, point. Tony would like to be on the front-row for that particular event.
“Guys.” Natasha’s hand rose, stopping Tony and Steve from advancing. “There’s another one of those flying things.”
Ah, yes. The flying things. Tony looked up, watching the feather-covered creature as it writhed in the air, advancing upon them from out of the canopy. Jesus Christ - it felt like something out of Jurassic Park.
“This one might just pass us by,” Steve tried, voice quiet and adorably hopeful. Tony side-eyed him, but his gaze was fixed up above them, as was everyone else’s.
A second later, and the creature howled - guttural and awful - before baring its terrifyingly-sharp claws and arcing into a dive that set its trajectory straight at them. Steve sighed and lifted his shield.
None of the animals they’d encountered in their journey so far had been particularly hard to kill, but all of them had been violent, and all of them had been very messy once taken down. As Steve flung his shield at the rapidly-descending and malevolent bird, the impact of metal against feather caused what Tony could only describe as an explosion. He winced and looked away.
Clint was right. Worst celebration ever.
A few seconds later and its corpse landed a dozen feet away, smacking into a pond and then immediately being pounced upon by another murderous amphibian which arose from the depths of the swamp. It wrapped a tentacle around the still-warm body and dragged it under the murky green surface, with only a few ripples to show anything had ever been there at all.
The team watched the scene with varying degrees of disgust.
“Let’s hope the shield landed on solid ground,” Steve said. He turned his head, trying to get sight of the familiar red and blue. “Fuck - anyone see where it went?”
“That way.” Natasha pointed left, and Steve swiftly began to head in that direction. Tony kept the other man in his line of sight as they walked on - Steve could look after himself, but it paid to stay vigilant in an environment like this.
The shield, luckily, hadn’t strayed far. Steve located it in the middle of a large thatch of flowers which seemed uncharacteristically delicate for a cutthroat environment such as this. Bright blue trumpet-shaped petals, with dainty green stems. They were beautiful. Just looking at them seemed soothing - in as much as anything could feel soothing in a place like this, that was. Tony watched for a few moments, before snapping out of the temporary reverie. Now was not the time to get distracted by a fucking plant.
“Don’t touch them,” He called out to the other man, just as he was about to reach down. When Steve glanced up at him, Tony shrugged. “Could be poisonous.”
Steve nodded, carefully treading and swiping the flowers away before getting his hands on the shield. Feathers, blood, and now copious amounts of pollen covered his once-pristine weapon, and he pulled a face at the sight of it, wiping away the animal matter on the ground below before jogging back to the main group.
“Everyone okay to keep walking?” He asked.
Nods all around. The sooner they could find reprieve from this jungle, the better.
Things were much the same for the next few hours, as everyone on the team focused on not treading on anything dangerous, or touching anything dangerous, or interacting with anything dangerous. They’d had the good sense to bring rations from the ship before they’d set off, and so stopped halfway for a brief respite. But anxiety over what time sundown would be and whether that would coax some even more dangerous creatures out into the jungle made them hasty, and by the time it’d hit hour five of their journey, Tony was exhausted. Steve was fine, obviously, and Clint and Nat were holding their own too, but Bruce’s steps were as laboured as Tony’s were, and he knew they only had a certain amount of juice left in them before they’d have to sit down for a proper rest.
It wasn’t a fun thought.
As Tony stumbled through the boggy terrain, he felt the gentle presence of Steve’s hand as it grazed the small of his back, just for a moment. They were trailing at the back of the group, and the touch went unnoticed to everyone else.
“You doing okay?” Steve said softly.
Tony looked up over his shoulder, to where Steve’s concerned face watched him. He was close, just a sparse few inches between them.
“I’m fine,” Tony responded- possibly slightly snappily, but could you fucking blame him? He’d sweated more in the last few hours than he had done in the last five years.
“We’re near,” Steve assured him with a nod, before raising an eyebrow and pressing down on a smile. “I can give you a piggy-back the rest of the way if you want?”
Asshole. Tony rolled his eyes and gave him a brusque middle finger, not deigning to respond, while Steve just huffed quietly and gave Tony’s shoulder a playful squeeze. It was one of those moments that could easily have become a fully-fledged argument a few months ago - but now, it was simply Steve being Steve. Tony would take a moment to appreciate that, probably, when he was less exhausted.
A moment later, however, and Steve’s hand returned to Tony’s back. This time, though, he was pulling sharply on his shirt, stopping him in his tracks. What the hell?
Tony turned, ready to snap, but Steve spoke up before Tony could get a word in edgeways. “Everyone stay still,” he barked.
The team did so unquestioningly. When Steve called out an order like that, you listened.
Tony watched the other man carefully - the way his blue eyes tracked the area, his shoulders stiffened. He’d heard something, Tony realised. Or seen something, maybe. And it wasn’t good.
“Situation?” Clint asked. His hand was already reaching for the blade at his side.
Steve didn’t look at him. He turned his head, scanning everywhere. “I think we’re being followed,” he said softly, “I swear I heard–”
It was at that moment that there was the quietest of noises, the sound of something flying through the air. Steve’s eyes widened, and he smacked a hand to the back of his neck. Tony watched in horror as he plucked out a small, thin dart from his nape.
“Fuck,” Steve said, and then collapsed to his knees.
“Steve!” Scrabbling forward, Tony’s hands came out and grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt, tumbling to the ground alongside the man as he battled to keep him upright. Panic exploded under his sternum, and he snatched the dart out of Steve’s fingers, wild eyes attempting to decipher what the hell it was as Steve swayed dangerously under his grip.
So engrossed was Tony in the task, that it took him a moment to even acknowledge the sharp sting of a needle-head as it hit his own shoulder.
When he finally did, he looked down at the slick design in surprise. The effects were instant. Distantly, he heard the rest of the team responding, but it was too late. He had seconds.
The last thing he saw before blacking out was Steve’s body as it too toppled sideways.
*
Tony was embarrassed to admit that this wasn’t the first time someone had hit him with some kind of dart. It came with the territory - which wasn’t something you could say for a lot of jobs, but was nevertheless true. Besides: he way preferred darts to, say, blunt objects against his skull. Those were a nightmare.
As he drifted back into the land of living, one of the first things he noticed that deviated from the traditional path of post-darting-events was that nothing hurt. No headache, no brain-fog, zilch, nada. If anything, he actually felt pretty well-rested.
Blinking slowly, he remembered his situation and took a few moments to stay still and get to grips with his surroundings. Best not to alert his captor that he was conscious until he was good and ready.
He knew that whatever he was laying on was soft and yielding. The temperature was no longer insufferably warm, but pleasantly mild, implying he was probably indoors. He couldn’t feel any restraints that bound him anywhere, which again was unusual for this kind of ambush. It implied a level of trust that he wasn’t sure he deserved. Or, alternately, a level of self-confidence that whatever room he was in was inescapable.
Tony took particular pleasure in humbling anyone who thought like that.
Safe in the knowledge that sitting up was probably not going to get him killed, Tony did so, taking a scan of the room as he went. He was on a bed. There was a dark brown cabinet in the corner of the small room. A bag of fluids was attached to the wall next to him - as Tony looked down at his arms, he saw that there was a small adhesive plaster on the inside of his elbow. Undoubtedly covering the mark from where a tube had once been.
He frowned. How long had he been out?
These days, Tony wasn’t a betting man - but if he was, he’d say that he was in some kind of medical facility. Galactic variations were rarely that different to the hospitals that’d been built on Earth, and Tony found all of them had that same plasticky, sterile scent to them. Plus, the bag of fluids was indicative of some kind of rehydrating procedure - something that would only have been done if A), there were medics who knew that hydration was an issue, and B), they had a similar enough biology to humans that the processes to get the fluids back into the body were, essentially, the same. That being, just stick holes in it.
A moment later, there was a knocking sound from behind him. Tony jerked around, twisting his neck and spotting a glass viewing panel that spanned the entire length of the dark grey walls.
On the other side, a blue woman looked back impassively at him. She was hairless, with eyes as green as emeralds, and a flowing series of what were either tattoos or markings, stemming from the centre of her head and spiralling down her shoulders, chest, stomach. While she wore a flowing skirt that began at her midriff, her breasts hung freely, and only a pair of elbow-length gloves adorned the top part of her body.
Tony didn’t say anything for a moment as he came to terms with all of that. Then he raised a finger.
“I hate to be that guy,” he started, “but I know my galactic rights. I’m pretty sure you’ve just violated a few.”
Her face was expressionless, but she cocked her head slightly while she listened to his voice. Tony swung his body around and got to his feet, muscles stiff. The worry was starting to settle into him. What if they’d had him under for weeks? Months? His voice had been croaky, cracked from disuse. Was Steve okay? Was everyone ?
“Where’s my team?” He tried, keeping his voice low and authoritative, refusing to let the fear leak through. “You took us all, I assume. Where are the others?”
Carefully, the woman held up both of her hands in what looked to be the human signal for surrender.
“Your companions are all accounted for.” She spoke stiffly, robotically. Tony wondered how she knew the language- if perhaps she was using a translator. As far as questions went, however, that one was fairly low down on the list. “My colleagues have awoken them, now that the quarantine period has passed. I understand you may be feeling a lack of autonomy due to our methods of detainment, but under sovereign law we are entitled to defend our land. As you will see, you are not restrained and free to leave. Although I will warn you, any violence will be met with utmost force.”
Quarantine period? Tony’s eyes flicked down to his body, checking for marks, rashes, symptoms. “You infected me?” He blurted, heart ticking up a few notches. Since his heart had been torn to shreds, he could barely handle a fucking sniffle, let alone some alien virus–
“No.” The alien once again raised her hands. Clearly that was the extent of her knowledge in human gestures. “We were making sure you weren’t carrying anything into our city from the swamplands. All international and intergalactic refugees undergo the same testing.”
“And this process involves ambushing anyone who gets close and keeping them against their will in a medical facility?”
“We find it more convenient if the subjects are subdued before going under quarantine. You have only been held for 12 hours- enough time for you to begin displaying symptoms if you had any. Seeing as you aren’t currently in the process of dying slowly, you are free to leave.”
“Free to leave now that I’m conscious,” Tony muttered, thinking of that conversation earlier. About the probing. Yuck.
As if reading his mind, however, the blue woman spoke again. “Upon your exit, you will receive a medical file stating all procedures you may have undergone, as well as a visual record of your stay.” She nodded slowly, glancing down at what Tony couldn’t see, but could assume was a keyboard. Her fingers moved in the same manner as his own did when he typed. A second later, the door to his left slid open with a fluid hissing noise, and Tony’s idea of this strange world opened up a little more before him.
It was a public corridor, with more blue people passing by every so often, not paying any notice to his medical container. Some wore the same elbow-length gloves as this woman he’d been speaking with, and all of them had the same black markings, except for a smaller childlike figure, which was a clean slate of royal blue. Tony methodically filed every piece of visual information away.
Despite the slight trepidation of the situation he’d ended up in, he still had to admit, this was one of the best parts of the job. Seeing other civilisations, other species. It never got any less fascinating.
As he took a step toward the exit, a large figure suddenly took up space at the threshold - a male, going by the distinct lack of boobs. His face was equally as impassive as the woman’s Tony had just been speaking with.
“Greetings,” he told Tony, once again putting up his hands in a show of apparent surrender. “My name is Zandarellemiorvilosekianaminorilious. But I have looked up the file on your species and have understood you prefer abbreviated names, so you may call me Zandar. I will be acting as your diplomatic liaison. Follow me. I will take you to your companions.”
“Right.” Tony nodded jerkily, before glancing back to the woman behind the glass panel. “So I’m definitely not infected with ten different jungle viruses, right?” He asked, just for good measure. He had enough things to be thinking about just then - it’d do for him to be able to well and truly tick that one off the list.
Her nod was reassuring, but for the first time, Tony saw a frown appear on her face. “There is only one sickness worth worrying about in these parts,” she told him, her face dark. “But the statistics that govern this universe have worked in your favour. You do not have it.”
Given the ruthlessness of the quarantine process, Tony had to wonder what the hell might have happened to him if he did . The thought inspired a moment of panic, and he turned back to his liaison.
“What’s the status of the rest of my team,” he demanded, walking forward, “there were four of them, I want to know that every one of them is safe and accounted–”
“They are all clean,” Zandarellemio– Okay, you know what, maybe the guy had a point with the human abbreviation thing, because that was a mouthful Tony was not willing to be constantly chewing on – Zandar , informed him. “Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton and Steve Rogers are all out of medical and waiting for you in the community storage zone. They insisted on remaining here until you were discharged.”
Tony nodded, then winced. “So you woke me up last?”
A nod from Zandar, who then turned and started to walk down the corridor. “Please follow me,” he said. Tony fell into step beside him as he continued. “The staggered approach is better when dealing with groups of refugees. It creates a hierarchy of knowledge as opposed to emotionally-driven groupthink conclusions about your current situations.”
“Right.” Tony struggled to keep up with the giant man’s strides as they walked through the corridor. “I suppose I can understand the logic of that.”
Zandar just nodded again. “I should hope so. Logic is what turns this world into one everyone understands equally. Rest assured, all actions of the Pavelix government are ones that are explainable, reliable, and utterly reasonable.”
As Tony followed the giant blue figure through the corridor, he wondered idly about how many other governments back home insisted on that very same thing. He decided to take Zandar’s assurances with a rather large grain of salt.
*
Once Tony was reunited with the team, and everyone had established that everyone else was okay and unharmed and no human rights violations had otherwise occurred, the situation took about two hours to fully establish.
Thing one: the Avengers had landed on was definitely Sintar, more specifically in the Pavelixxian district of the North Sintarian Zone. They knew what healthcare and electricity and intergalactic relations were, but knew much less about jokes. Or at least, Zandar did. Tony wasn’t sure yet if that was a species-wide thing.
Thing two: Pavelixxians really did not like the jungle that bordered their city. It had taken hours of negotiating just to get them to agree to send a team out to fetch the Quinjet, and it was under stipulation that they pay up on an eye-watering amount of credits, as well as have a government engineering team assist with repairs so as to further their knowledge of space travel technology. No skin off Tony’s back - the engineers, anyway. The credits were a different story, and one he was not looking forward to explaining to Fury, who’d spent about a year just trying to get his hands on the finite amount of space currency. Oopsie.
Thing three: they really, really did not fuck around when it came to disease prevention.
“Your ship’s contents will be destroyed and the metal sterilized before entry into the city in order to prevent any contamination,” Zandar informed them, which immediately invoked a brief uproar.
“All of my shit’s in there!” Clint exclaimed.
Zandar looked perplexed. “Do you have an attachment to your excrement?”
Tony snorted, and Steve jabbed him to be quiet as he leaned forward. “It’s a figure of speech,” he explained, his voice firm, “but there must be another way to go about–”
“We will not be taking any risks on the matter,” Zandar rebutted him swiftly and immovably. It was clear this was their policy. Tony doubted anything they said would change that, and took a moment to mourn for the collection of vinyls he’d been building up in there for journeys such as these. Now he was going to have to start all over.
He leaned sideways, looking at Steve with a raised eyebrow. “Is there anything in there you’re particularly attached to or are we okay to let this one go,” he checked in quietly, while Clint elaborated on all the many uses of the word ‘shit’ to a rather disturbed-looking Zandar.
Steve pursed his lips and shrugged. “It’s the principal,” he said under his breath, “they’re our belongings.”
“Yeah, well, I guess it’s better to have no belongings than to be devoured by some horrific alien illness right?”
To the untrained eye, Steve’s face didn’t change. But Tony saw the shift of his eyebrows, the twitch of his mouth. He was sulking while trying not to sulk, and Tony found himself thinking it was a little bit adorable. “Have they tried a bit of soap? Plenty of diseases can be stopped by a good old bit of soap.”
“This is no human disease, Steve Rogers.”
Zandar was now looking at the two of them with a dark expression on his face, clearly deciding it was time to move on from Clint’s shit-related conversing. He placed one hand on top of the other and leaned forward, his full and unwavering attention falling directly upon Steve and Tony respectively.
“Hanahaki is a scourge upon our community.” His voice was clipped, the very words sounding as if they were covered in filth. “It’s a death sentence to each and every being infected with it. A shameful curse upon the very fabric of our society. I am well aware that other species suffer from a plethora of various illnesses and ailments, but not us. There is only one such killer in our world, and you can rest assured that nothing is going to convince me to bring it any further into our city than it needs to be brought.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce, of course, was unable to help himself as he leaned in closer. “Did you say that your people can only get one singular disease?”
Zandar bristled. “It isn’t a disease, Bruce Banner,” he reiterated, fingers flexing against the table, “It is a living thing that preys upon the weak-willed of our society.”
“A living organism that kills off the weak,” Natasha repeated drily, “respectfully Zandar, that sounds like our idea of a disease.”
“You misunderstand me. I am well aware of what your kind identify as a disease, but Hanahaki is different.” He pursed his lips and shook his head, disgusted by the mere thought of it. “Pavelixxian immunity is some of the best in the galaxy. Our minds are crafted by logic, and our society thrives because of it. There is no war. No injustice. We pride ourselves in our ability to see reason, and it is our reason that makes us some of the most elite members of this galactic system.”
Steve couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that, and Tony didn’t fail to understand what that particular gesture meant. How humble of you.
It seemed, however, that Zandar spotted it too. “This is what I mean,” he said, waving a hand at Steve. “You base your opinions of me on your own emotional ideals. You think my comments are worth less because they speak the truth plainly and you believe that to be antisocial. On Pavelix, we don’t think like that, and because of it, our society does not hurt. It doesn’t wither with illness or tear itself apart. We are perfect.”
“I’m sorry - not to cut into the state propaganda here, but what does any of that have to do with this Hanahaki disease?” Tony waved hand and looked at Zandar with his head cocked to the side. He knew what his face looked like: calm, open, slightly amused. It wasn’t a face you could take offence to, and yet Tony didn’t doubt it would be irksome to see all the same. He meant it to be as much. He’d seen enough government fanboy-types to be able to spot one when he met one, and Zandar felt more and more like a man who would fit the bill with every new word that came out of his mouth. Tony never had much time for people like that to begin with. Even less so now.
Zandar said nothing for a moment. Tony watched his shoulders roll slightly, watched his back straighten. “To merely contract Hanahaki is to inherently undermine all of Pavelix’s greatness. The last outbreak was two years ago… and it wiped out thousands,” the man explained softly. “Some would argue that was for the best, but still - it removes the opportunity for an individual to better themselves, to grow out of their illogical obsession. It strips them of autonomy.”
“But how ?” Clint pressed.
“It blooms within those who devote themselves without reason,” Zandar snapped back, “those who are infatuated without reciprocation. It is the most foolish and illogical trap to possibly allow yourself to fall into. You would call it unrequited love.”
There was a moment of silence as the team all processed that. An illness that struck purely based on emotion. It seemed impossible - and yet, here they were. Talking to a huge blue man who was willing to torch an entire ship rather than risk any of his people becoming infected by it. Tony pondered the strangely specific word choice - blooms within . The phrase made him wince, mildly disgusted by the image it produced. Was it some sort of fungus?
As far as galactic happenings went, an evil fungus that only targeted people with certain emotions wasn’t the craziest thing Tony had seen. But it was fairly high up.
“Right,” Steve’s voice was slow, deep, a touch sardonic. A frown creased his forehead, undoubtedly for a plethora of reasons. Tony could admit, he himself was slightly disturbed by the ‘maybe it had been for the best they’d all died’ comment, but he was choosing not to fight that battle just then. “A disease that can only be contracted by those with certain emotions. Fair enough.” He glanced around the table at the rest of the group, gaze brushing Tony’s for a moment before he turned back to Zandar. “But hey - my team are all too busy to be falling into unrequited love with anyone, so we should be fine while we’re here.”
Tony nodded succinctly, mouth pursed. He wasn’t stupid enough to glance at Steve - not when the spy twins were sat right opposite him. Contrary to popular belief, he was very good at being conspicuous when he wanted to be. Needed to be.
He just wished he was able to control his sinking stomach the same way he was able to control his face.
*
Tony wanted to say that he knew exactly what he’d done to get Steve to fall into bed with him all those months ago. He wanted that very badly, so he could brag about his foolproof methods and his aura of charm so powerful it’d somehow pushed a straight man from the 40’s slap-bang into the middle of the Kinsey Scale.
In reality though, things had been quite different.
“You know, the bag really didn’t mean what it said. It’s very sorry. Will you forgive the bag, Steve? Will you forgive it before you decapitate it from its lovely chain neck?”
On the other side of the gym, Steve had barely even changed a shade, continuing to pummel the reinforced punching bag for all it was worth. His face was set in a series of hard, unforgiving lines, and sweat trickled from his temple, running down the sharp cut of his jaw and dripping onto the wood floor below. Tony watched from the doorway, arms folded, shoulder pressed against the wall. He didn’t know why, and wouldn’t for a good few months at that point, but seeing Steve in this condition always pissed him the hell off.
“Earth to Cap,” he added, louder, when Steve refused to respond.
Again, though, there’d been nothing. Steve had continued his tirade against the leather bag- right hook, left hook, uppercut uppercut uppercut uppercut, teeth bared with frustration, anger, something else that Tony couldn’t work out. It’d been a hard mission for everyone- Clint and Natasha were out drinking beer in some random fucking tree in Central Park, as they always did at times like these, Thor was attempting meditation with Bruce, and Steve and Tony were down here. In the dungeons.
Well, actually, Tony had been very happily sitting in the workshop, making his way through a lovely bottle of 30-year-old Glenfiddich. But when he’d spotted Steve down in said dungeons on the CCTV, he’d decided for some bizarre reason to go flush him out. Or, at the very least, take his mind off things by being as annoying as possible.
But Steve wasn’t even looking at him. Bang bang bang. Punch punch punch. Not even a glance in Tony’s direction - and hell, that just wouldn’t do.
It wasn’t until Tony had grown impatient, marching forward, getting right up in Steve’s space and demanding a response from the other man in a way that few others on Earth would be brave enough to do, that Steve decided to pay him any mind. His fist froze, barely an inch away from the surface of the bag, and he jerked his head sideways, glaring at Tony.
“Why are you bothering me ?” He snapped.
Tony just shrugged, noting the blood on Steve’s hands, the grey of his face. A young agent had died. Her third week on the job. Steve had been the one to find her. And she’d just been the first body of many that day.
“Attention, mostly,” he’d responded easily. “Maybe some conflict, to get the blood pumping.”
Steve shook his head and turned back to the bag. “Just go away, Tony.”
“No.”
When Steve froze in shock, Tony shrugged again. “It’s my tower,” he elaborated, “my rules. And I’ve decided I wanna hang around in the gym and deal with my feelings by using extreme violence on inanimate objects. Maybe I’ll engage in some light self harm while I’m at it, ‘cause the day wasn’t already shitty enough. Remind you of anyone?”
They’d been getting on, sort of. Better than they had been at the start, anyway. But despite their newfound ability to sit in a room together and not bite one another’s heads off, there still remained something about Steve’s existence that seemed to butt up against all Tony’s ragged edges. The tension was an itch that only the sharp barbs of Steve’s anger seemed to be able to relieve. He was a bruise. Tony just kept pressing at him, he couldn’t help it.
Case in point.
“God, you’re such an arrogant fuck,” Steve muttered, breaking the silence and then shouldering his way past Tony as he began to undo the wraps around his hands.
Tony stumbled sideways, knocked slightly off-balance by the nudge. He felt the sticky moisture from the sweat that’d soaked through Steve’s shirt, transferred onto the bare skin of his bicep. Tony’s nose scrunched up as he wiped it off and then turned on his heel, already following the other man.
“I’d rather be arrogant than self-righteous,” he called out, voice acidic. “You can’t bring them back, Steve. No matter how many punching bags you destroy, no matter how long you spend running yourself ragged down here, they’re going to stay fucking dead. We failed them. Get over it.”
The systems Tony oversaw had gone down first. Just for a minute, just for sixty little seconds, and that was all they’d needed to storm the building and kill 49 people.
Every line of Steve’s body was tense, but he kept walking, back turned, while Tony followed behind him. “Only you could look at that many dead victims and say ‘get over it’,” the man said through a derisive snort. He flung the wraps down to the bench and yanked his water bottle from within the depths of his bag, taking a long swig.
Tony watched his side-profile, eyes tracking the quick motions of his Adam’s apple. A droplet of water pooled in the corner of his mouth, before trickling down his chin and then tumbling onto the floor.
Steve glanced at him, then. Tony looked away.
“You need to get out of my face, Stark,” he said, quiet, warningly. “We’re not friends. I don’t want your words of fucking wisdom.”
“I don’t need to do anything. Again, my tower. I do what I want.”
This, for anyone interested, was when everything in Tony’s life changed.
“And what is it you want?” Steve wiped his brow and shoved his hair out of his face, a surprising and wildly different look flashing across his face.
With a suddenness Tony hadn’t expected, he lurched forward, and within three long strides he was in Tony’s space. Tony always ended up closer to Steve than he meant to. This was proof of that.
Steve lowered his head, drew his mouth close to Tony’s ear - far enough away that it could be played off, but not far enough that it was free of implication. “You want me to fucking notice you, huh?” He hissed, every word so full of vitriol that Tony thought for a moment that Steve was going to finish the sentence off with a headbutt. “Is that it?”
Steve drew away then, just a fraction, just enough to clock the expression on Tony’s face. And maybe it’d been building for a while, maybe there’d always been something underneath the jabs, a genuine edge to their goading - or maybe that night, Steve just felt like doing something really, really fucking stupid. Tony wasn’t sure.
But whatever reason Steve had for asking that question, he found the answer without Tony needing to speak a word.
He grinned then, and suddenly his hand was curling around the buckle of Tony’s belt, tugging him as easily as if he were pulling a dog on a leash. Their hips pressed into one another - Tony felt Steve’s cock through the thin fabric of his track pants, and his eyes blew wide in sheer disbelief at Steve’s brazenness while he steadied himself using the other man’s bulging biceps. Constrastingly, Steve looked down at him, chin jutting out, a look of amused, dark conviction on his face.
“Well I’ve noticed,” he bit out, not letting Tony move an inch, “here I am. Now are you gonna do anything about it, or are you gonna sit and let Fury’s little voice in your head tell you it’d be a better idea to run back upstairs, hm?”
It was safe to say that Tony had, in fact, done something about it. He’d done many things, in fact. He and Steve had spent all night and some of the morning doing what was quite frankly a shocking and definitely unholy amount of things.
But, in conclusion, no. Tony had not been the one to make the first move. It had been Steve, right from the get-go. And after Steve had left Tony’s penthouse the following morning, not a word spoken about their situation other than ‘let’s keep this between us’, it’d been him who’d knocked on Tony’s door not even a day later, asking if he wanted to go again.
At first, Tony had been confused as hell. Far, far from unwilling, but confused. Because Steve was a guy who could get anyone in the world, and yet after that, he’d repeatedly sought out Tony of all people. The man he could barely stand. And yeah, there’d been a physical attraction there - Tony could see, logically, how a moment of high tension like that night in the gym could’ve spiralled into something that ended up with Steve coming inside Tony six times over the course of 8 hours - but still.
In the end, however, Tony had figured out that it was probably a question of ease. Tony was near. He was an enthusiastic participant. And he wasn’t a regular civilian at risk of getting caught in the inevitable crossfire that came with affiliating yourself with a superhero. Steve Rogers may have been Captain America, but he was also a hot-blooded man in his mid twenties with what was definitely an enhanced sexual stamina. He needed an outlet, but he didn’t want to risk setting up regular tinder dates.
That was all it’d started out as.
Nonetheless, Tony couldn’t help but feel as if things were different now. As the months had gone on, their relationship had improved significantly. It sort of had to, when your orgasm depended on it. Now, rather than wordlessly hitting and quitting, they hung around. Steve brought him coffee in bed the next morning. Tony would go train with him in the gym - admittedly mostly in a foreplay kind of way, but also just because… well, spending time with Steve turned out not to be the worst thing in the world. It was actually pretty great- to the point where Tony sought him out regularly. And thought about him when he wasn’t around.
And fantasised about taking him out to a restaurant and wearing a pocket-square that matched Steve’s tie and buying him dinner and stroking his hand and playing footsie under the table in front of God and everyone because the whole world- the paps, the press, the friends and the family and the enemies and everyone in between all knew that Steve Rogers was unquestionably his.
Yeah.
It’d all just fucking spiralled out of control from then on, really. And now they were here.
There was a knock on Tony’s quarters, but he was deep in thought as he eyed up the holographic schematics of the damaged Quinjet. The Pavelixxians had put them all in what appeared to be an intergalactic embassy of sorts. The compound was still mostly populated with blue giants, but there were a smattering of other alien races that wandered through the corridors from time to time, or sat in the same mess hall to get their daily ‘nutrition package’, which was about as exciting as the name suggested. It was a slab of goo that contained everything necessary for a human diet. It seemed Pavelixxians stripped back everything to its most primary function. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of fun round these parts, from what Tony could tell.
The quarters themselves were as sparse as everything else. A bed, a dresser, and a small washroom was all that adorned the place. Tony had managed to wrangle in some upgrades, like the holographic screen, but that was as far as it went.
“Not even a TV,” Clint had grumbled over dinner, poking morosely at his goo. “This goes against my sacred tradition of searching for the dirty channels in every hotel I stay at.”
“Reckon they’ve got nightclubs?” Natasha asked, “Maybe they’re all about that face-to-face entertainment.” She leaned sideways, catching the attention of a nearby Pavelixxian, sat a few seats down on the long dining table. “Where do you guys go for a bit of evening fun around here?”
The Pavelixxian looked at her. “We enjoy communal readings of recent publishings from the intellects of our city. And many partake in the physically pleasurable act of Shukkeh. That’s what you’ll find a lot of the adolescents getting up to.”
Natasha’s face remained carefully passive, but Tony was unfortunate to catch Clint’s eye at that very moment, and stifled a laugh. “Is that… is that a euphemism?” She asked.
“Excuse me?”
“A figure of speech. For, uh, procreation. Is that what you mean?”
The Pavelixxian shook their head emphatically and waved a hand. “Oh no, no, of course not. We have a dedicated day of the month for the act of sexual copulation. Shukkeh is a game played with four spheres over a period of 6 hours. The winner is given the honour of trading one year of their life-force to a youngling of the loser’s choice. Would you like me to take you to a nearby court?”
The team had all looked at one another, and unanimously voted to get an early night.
So now Tony was standing around in his private quarters at what felt like a tragically early hour of the evening, looking at the schematics for his poor, beaten Quinjet, and not even noticing the door open until he saw Steve’s reflection in the mirror of the dresser.
It was a testament to the way in which Steve had settled into his life that Tony didn’t jump, nor did he even turn around. He just waved absently and then put his hand back up to his mouth, worrying his fingernails as he tried to figure out where the hell to start with repairs.
“You look pretty deep in thought over there,” Steve informed him with a soft smile. He wandered a little further in, peering around Tony’s room as if expecting it to be any different to his own. It wasn’t.
“Of all the planets to crash land on, and we ended up on planet boring,” Tony responded, absently flicking at one of the engines of the Quinjet and watching the holograph spin. “Just our luck.”
In the reflection, Steve shrugged. “They’re welcoming and peaceful and more than willing to host a handful of alien refugees,” he countered, before sighing shortly and pulling a face. “And yeah - really boring. I feel like there’s something more to it though. I just can’t put my finger on it.”
Tony hummed. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. We’re only going to be here for a few days, hopefully. Either I fix this ship, or Thor and the Guardians come fetch us. Whichever comes first.”
Steve said nothing, but Tony watched out of the corner of his eye as the man continued to amble further forward, getting closer and closer into Tony’s bubble. It didn’t take long to catch on, and Tony found himself tamping down on a grin as Steve eventually reached out to touch him, one hand snaking around the back of his waist, then another.
Steve pressed himself up against Tony’s back, and soft, plump lips brushed against Tony’s earlobe.
“Hi,” he murmured, his voice a low, pleasant rumble. Against his ass, Steve’s cock was already half hard, and his hips pushed questioningly.
But Tony wasn’t going to give in that easily. He grinned and shook his head, not looking behind him as he pulled up another system view. “I am busy ,” he declared.
Steve made a displeased noise, fingers wandering comfortably across Tony’s body, skirting his hips, moving down toward the inside of his thighs. There wasn’t any hesitation between them these days. Steve knew he could touch as much as he liked - Tony would let him.
“Come onnn,” he goaded playfully, teeth scraping at his ear, biting down a little. “Let me fuck you. It’s been ages.”
“Steve. It’s been 3 days.”
“Feels like 30 years.” Steve leaned down further, kissed his neck, knowing how much Tony liked it. “Please.”
God, Steve’s mouth felt good, and his hands… Tony shut his eyes briefly, letting the sensation of Steve draped against his back take over. When Steve’s tongue laved gently against the sensitive skin under Tony’s ear, he heard himself make a noise of pleasure.
But he really was busy. Forcing his eyes open, he laughed and shook his head again, stopping Steve’s hands before they traveled any further. “I want to get a head start on these repairs!” He attempted, while Steve continued to kiss his neck as if he hadn’t heard a damn thing. “We can’t, Steve. This planet’s crazy. They only have sex once a month, you heard the guy earlier, what if they think this is heresy or something?”
“They’re not gonna find out. We’ll be quiet.”
“What if they’re monitoring our rooms?”
Steve pulled back just for a moment, and when Tony turned his head to look at the other man, there was a downright devilish look on his face. “Then they can watch a good show,” he said, while his hands slipped Tony’s belt buckle undone. “I already swept my room. It’s clean, so there’d be no reason for yours not to be.”
“We don’t have any lube.”
In answer to that particular question, Steve shifted his hand into his pocket and then waved a little packet of the stuff in Tony’s eyeline, before rolling his hips up against Tony’s ass again. Tony should’ve known better than to think Steve would go anywhere unprepared - even to an alien planet.
“Please, Tony,” he whispered, fingers skirting underneath his shirt, running up his side and brushing across his nipples. “You look beautiful, all lit up like this. I gotta fuck you. Just gotta - nothin’ I can do about that.”
Tony laughed again, because if someone had told him a year ago that this was how Captain America spoke to people, he would’ve told them to pop an Ambien and come back in the morning. “Nothing you can do, huh?” He whispered, his own hand sliding behind him against his better judgment, finding Steve’s cock and palming it through the man’s trousers. Steve grunted.
“Nothin’ I can do,” he agreed, his tone vehement.
If it’d been anyone else, Tony would’ve held his resolve. Honestly. He really had been wanting to spend the evening getting ahead of schematics, and while he had spent quite a lot of his misguided youth thinking with his dick as opposed to his brain, he could quite firmly say he was past that point now. Hell, before they’d started this thing up, it’d been months since Tony had gotten laid. Too damn busy. Too damn injured. Too much of whatever it’d been at the time.
Unfortunately though, it wasn’t someone else. So no matter how irresponsible it was - no matter how dumb it was to prioritize sex over building an escape out of the foreign, potentially dangerous planet they’d landed themselves in - Tony wasn’t going to say no. He’d never actually been going to say no, not from the moment Steve reached out for him.
He tilted his head back, catching Steve’s mouth in a kiss. “Well you’re just gonna have to do it then, aren’t you soldier?”
Goddamn it.
Steve did not need to be told twice. With a sharp grin, he spun Tony around so they were facing one another and then pushed him back, one, two, three steps, until he felt his butt hit the edge of the dark oak dresser. Bending down swiftly, Steve got two strong hands around the back of Tony’s legs and hoisted, sitting him up on the top counter. God, he was strong.
While Steve leaned in to kiss him, Tony made light work of the man’s shirt, unbuttoning it hurriedly and yanking it away from his chest for better access. Tony wished he could say he was a good enough man to be turned on by someone irregardless of their appearance, but Jesus Christ, he wasn’t sure anyone was ever going to come close to looking as good as Steve did without clothes on. Tony was going to be chasing this standard for the rest of his life - all that beautiful muscle, the pale perfection of his complexion, the faint blush that started on his cheeks and went all the way down to his pert nipples. Every movement brought about a fresh flex, a new angle. Tony could spend hours engrossing himself with the minutiae of Steve Rogers’ figure and he would be entertained for every second of it - which said a lot, considering his otherwise-woeful attention span.
He was in the process of becoming engrossed by that very thing, until Steve stuck a hand down his trousers. At that point, Tony had no choice but to focus, making a small noise in the back of his throat as the warmth of the other man’s hand sent a bolt of sharp heat through his cock.
“This is better than shop work, right?” Steve asked as he moved his hand up Tony’s length, slow and well-practised. His thumb stroked over Tony’s hardening cockhead teasingly.
Tony shut his eyes and rolled his head backward, wallowing in the feeling of Steve around him. “Maybe,” he responded.
“ Maybe ?”
“Well, I could be doing this myself, you know.” Tony tipped his head back up and looked at Steve challengingly, a smile playing on his mouth. “I’m gonna need more than a handjob to make up for interrupting my evening plans.”
Steve Rogers was a man who liked to be pushed. It made him better, more productive. It was why Tony and him worked well together on the field - and why not even a second after Tony had said that, he was pulling Tony back off from the top of the dresser, turning him around, and bending him over it instead.
His hands yanked at the waistband of Tony’s trousers, pulling them down carelessly as his feet got in-between the open V of Tony’s legs and pushed them further apart. Tony laughed, elbows settling onto the dresser in front of him. He turned his head and looked back at Steve.
“You’re so easy,” he teased.
Steve looked down at him for a moment, one eyebrow rising on his forehead. His gaze was dark, and he leaned over Tony, taking the back of his head and pushing it down against the counter.
“You talk a lot less when you’ve got my cock in you,” Steve informed him, mouth ghosting Tony’s left ear while his fingers slid down across Tony’s ass. “Less quipping, more begging, you know? Breathe out.”
“Not true.” Tony dutifully breathed out and relaxed as one of Steve’s fingers, slick with lube, pushed into him from behind. Even Steve’s fingers were big, and the intrusion made his body shudder as it adjusted. “I sometimes say your name too.”
That, at least, made Steve chuckle. As he pushed another finger inside, his other hand once more made itself at home around Tony’s cock, tugging slowly, matching the rhythm of the hand that was working Tony open. Thank the fucking stars above for giving Steve such amazing hand-eye coordination - it felt amazing.
Tony sighed in pleasure, forehead dropping against his forearms as he let Steve play with him. The other man always took an obscene amount of time with his fingers, as if he was trying his very hardest to learn all about where he was about to stick his cock. It was something Tony had never thought he really cared about - for most partners, he was more interested in just getting to the main event than messing around with other stuff. But with Steve, for some reason, it drove Tony fucking crazy. This was probably why Steve did it. He just enjoyed watching Tony writhe.
But this wasn’t the time for that. Who knew who was monitoring their comings and goings? At least in Tony’s own tower, they had a better chance of getting away with it. Here, it was too dangerous to be anything except quick.
“Come on, Steve,” Tony moaned when he got just that little bit too impatient. He pushed back, arching his spine until he felt Steve, rock hard and waiting behind him. “You came here to fuck me, didn’t you? So fuck me.”
“Now who’s easy,” Steve muttered, his hand slipping out from between Tony’s legs and then, a second later, grabbing ahold of the top of his ass. Slowly, he spread Tony’s cheeks apart, and Tony didn’t have to turn around to know the man was staring.
“I never tried to pretend I wasn’t,” Tony answered, glib.
“And I did?”
“Comes with the territory. Captain America would never – oh fuck , ugh – use his teammates like this. Without even taking them out to dinner, too. How scandalous .”
Behind him, there was no response- but a moment later, all conversation ceased to matter, because Tony felt the blunt press of Steve’s cockhead up against him, and the rest of the man’s shaft soon followed, filling him completely in one slick, delectable motion.
Tony groaned, feeling as if the air was forced out of his lungs as Steve took up space inside him instead. He felt his eyes flutter shut, mouth dropping open. Oh God, this was always the best part.
“ Steve,” he breathed out, feeling the hard press of the oak in front of him, and Steve’s unshakeable stature behind.
“Christ,” was all Steve answered with, too caught up in his own pleasure to focus on whatever was coming out of Tony’s mouth. He drew out again, so slow, before canting his hips forward again, two firm hands pulling Tony in by the hips while he did. Another noise escaped Tony’s mouth, just from the motion, the sheer depth of the other man inside him. Steve was not a slight man in any sense of the word.
In response to Tony’s noises, Steve leaned forward and wrapped his hand around Tony’s mouth. “You gotta be quiet,” he whispered, his voice a baritone hum, delicious in Tony’s ears. “Wouldn’t want anyone to think we’re doing anything other than discussing schematics, would we?”
Heat burned in Tony’s gut - and maybe this was part of the problem, see, because Tony had never been good at being told no . What he wanted, he got, even if he wasn’t allowed it. The secrecy - fooling about behind closed doors, sharing quick looks across meeting rooms that only the two of them understood the depth to, having this thing that no one else could share, because all hell would break loose if it got out - it brought him such a twisted thrill. The sex had stakes. It wasn’t just mindless fucking, it was a goddamn socio-political tonne of TNT just waiting for a spark.
People knew Steve Rogers. People knew Tony Stark. But no one knew this about them - except one other. It was entirely their own.
With a hand still pressed up against Tony’s mouth, Steve rolled his hips, cock brushing against Tony’s prostate and making him jerk reflexively. A muffled sound escaped his lips and hit Steve’s palm, totally stifled. Behind him, Steve laughed and did it again, steadily racking up the pace with every passing second. Soon, he was fucking Tony over the chest of drawers in earnest, the sounds of skin hitting skin mixed with Tony’s desperate, quiet noises filling the room.
“So good,” Steve bit out through his teeth, speaking into Tony’s hair while his hips hit the back of Tony’s ass, “you feel so good sweetheart, I’ve been thinking about this all fucking day, you have - ugh , God- no idea what you do to me.”
Steve was never shy - that had taken some time to get used to. He laid out every thought on the table, honest and shameless. Implications were irrelevant and overthinking wasn’t even something he considered. Words were just words. Weightless.
Tony, for the record, never called Steve things like that. It was easier that way, he figured. Keep what distance he still had left - a bold statement considering Steve was literally as close to him as he could physically be in that moment, but then again, it wasn’t really his body Tony was trying to protect - Steve could have whatever he wanted of that.
No, it was his heart that Tony was far less keen on letting him see the contents of. That was where the crushing truth was hidden. One utterance of the word ‘sweetheart’ from his mouth and he was sure Steve would realise exactly how much Tony meant it.
They kept up the pace for another minute or so, with Steve fucking into Tony like a damn machine and drawing him out, close to the precipice, his cock seemingly hitting the perfect spot with every stroke. Steve was magic. Tony was a mess, and it’d barely been over five minutes. His head was being held in place by Steve’s hand across his mouth, and his arms lay in front of him, one hand bracing the mirror that the dresser was backed up onto. He could feel the pounding of his heart, the clenching tension in his body. He moved a hand, wrapping it around his cock, and moaned uselessly at the immediate pleasure it brought him. He was close, and Steve knew it.
The other man’s hand shifted. It slipped away from Tony’s mouth, instead tucking under his chin, grabbing his jaw and gently lifting his head upward. In Tony’s eyeline, he saw himself in the reflection of the smudged mirror.
Yeah. He really was a mess.
“Want to come?” Steve asked, hips stilling against Tony’s ass, cock buried deep, but unmoving. Tantalisingly taunting.
Tony nodded emphatically, jerking his hand against his cock. There was something about Steve that just made him totally and utterly forget where he was, who he was. Sex was a power play just as much as conversation was, and Tony slept with people accordingly. And yet it never felt like that with Steve. He could give it up, just for these minutes, hours, whatever. He was allowed not to care.
He looked at himself in the reflection: jaw held by Steve’s hand, mouth slick with spit, cheeks flushed and back arched up against Steve’s powerful thighs. Steve had him, pinned, at his most vulnerable, and all Tony could feel was pleasure.
“Please,” he said softly, “please , Steve, I wanna come. Make me come, fuck me.”
Through the mirror, Tony could see Steve’s gaze shift from his face, move downward to where their bodies met. Steve had a bit of a fascination for it. Tony would often open his eyes while they were fucking and find Steve’s attention firmly on his ass, watching his cock as it pushed in and out.
Case in point. Shifting his tongue around his mouth for a second or two, Steve spat onto his dick, letting it land on the base before pulling out and slamming back in, just as ruthless, just as fast as it had been previously. Tony felt the warmth of Steve’s saliva against his entrance, the wet heat mixing up with the lube, with the sweat that was springing up across Steve’s body. It was fucking addictive. Tony bit his lip and screwed his eyes shut, trying valiantly not to moan now that Steve’s hand was no longer defending the world from his noises.
Tony had realised a long time ago that there was nothing on Earth, at all, that could compare to the way Steve made him feel. And that was okay. For now, anyway, it was okay.
With his fingers wrapped around his cock and Steve methodically fucking the hell out of him, it didn’t take long before Tony was coming, his hand stuttering to a halt as he painted a streak of white against the dresser. He gasped, pleasure exploding through him, head dropping against the wooden surface in order to choke off any sound while his knees lost all strength. Behind him, Steve made sure to keep him upright. When he came a few moments later, it was with a series of choked-off breaths, soundless by sheer force of will.
They stayed there like that, with Steve leaning over him on the dresser and Tony lying bonelessly against the wooden surface, for a few moments. Then Steve gently pulled out, his hands making sure Tony remained steady while he did so.
The other man ducked into the washroom, where he returned a second later clutching a towel. Getting to his knees, he carefully cleaned Tony up, starting with one leg, moving to the other, and wiping the dresser down while he was at it. Tony watched him, a small smile playing on his face.
“You look very focused,” Tony told him, his voice still breathless, panting.
Steve cleared his throat and looked up. “It’s a job that requires focus. I wanna be leaving you in a better state than when I found you, you know.” He discarded the towel and then got back to his feet, cocking his elbow and leaning against the dresser beside Tony. His shoulders were rounded, relaxed, and his movements were fluid. He was happy, and happiness made him even more beautiful, somehow.
Tony couldn’t help it: he lifted his hand and pushed one of the loose strands of Steve’s hair behind his ear. It was growing longer. Steve had missed his last hair appointment saving New York from a horde of vampires, but Tony kind of liked it. It was oldschool. “I think having your come running down my legs is a great state to be in.”
With a gentle groan, Steve leaned forward until his forehead knocked against Tony’s. “You can’t say things like that,” he mumbled, “you’re gonna make me want to fuck you all over again.”
“Not really discouraging me, Captain,” Tony responded with a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes. He got the urge to meet Steve’s mouth, kiss him softly - instead, he forced himself to step away. Out of Steve’s reach. He was well-versed in ignoring that particular desire. “But maybe it’s for the best I keep it hush. You stay in here much longer and the rest of the team are gonna start thinking we’re having a secret meeting or something. You know Clint - he’ll barge in anywhere, even if the door’s locked.”
Steve sighed, but nodded in understanding. He looked across at Tony for a long few moments, head cocking, smile playing on his perfect mouth. There was something else there, but Tony couldn’t quite decipher it.
“You know, I really don’t think any of the team would snitch on us if they found out,” he suggested after a few moments of silence
Picking up his shirt up from the floor, Tony shrugged. “I’d rather not take that risk,” he responded.
One conversation with Natasha about this, and Tony didn’t doubt that she’d cotton on to exactly what his feelings were in this situation. She was annoying like that.
He quickly buttoned up his shirt and ran a hand through his hair, across his face, wiping himself clean of anything that indicated Steve had been near him. He felt a dull ache in his legs - nothing painful, but it’d be a constant reminder for the rest of the night. Not that he would’ve been thinking about anything else anyway. These days, Steve felt like a permanent feature in his head.
Steve stepped into his line of sight as Tony finished the bottom button, and he looked up, noting the other man’s soft eyes. Wordlessly, he fixed Tony’s collar, folding it neatly around his neck. His hand lingered on the flat scape of Tony’s sternum.
“Want me to stay and keep you company for a bit?” He asked.
Tony often wondered what this part of the night would be like if things were different. If they were together - properly together, like instead of being teammates who’d ended up falling into bed, Tony had met him, say, at some ridiculously quaint little coffee shop that Steve always seemed to end up in on his days off.
If they’d met like that, and fallen for one another like that, would Steve even ask to stay? Or would he just move over to the bed and make himself comfortable. Pick up a notebook and doodle idly while Tony puttered around and put the rest of his clothes on. Would he ask if Tony wanted a drink, and then start out making one, only to be distracted by kissing the back of Tony’s neck? Would their presence in one another’s spaces be so natural that the question of sticking around afterward was not one that even needed to be asked, but readily expected?
It felt foolish to hope that one day they might get to that point, but Tony did anyway. He knew how he felt about Steve, and had learned how to deal with it a long time ago. He just had to hope that maybe, someday, Steve could feel something like that too. Tony was willing to wait for it. God knows he’d spent a lifetime holding out on worse odds.
He shook his head. “I’m probably only gonna do another hour’s work,” he said, waving a hand and stifling a yawn. “I’m tired. Don’t sleep too well on that Quinjet, so I’m gonna try catch up on what I lost tonight.”
Steve nodded slowly, and his hand slipped away from Tony’s chest. A chill seeped in to take the place of where his fingers had just been.
“Okay,” he said, unbothered, because of course he was unbothered. It’d probably only been a courtesy question to begin with. “But you gotta actually stick to that. Don’t get carried away on this - it’ll be there in the morning.”
Tony saluted lazily. “Promise, Cap. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Tony.”
Steve gave him another smile - calm, easy, beautiful as everything else he ever did - and then he walked away and slipped out of the door.
Tony watched him go, waiting for a good ten seconds before releasing the sigh he’d been silently holding. Heavy eyes slid shut, and he rubbed his shoulder, letting his fingers linger over the ghost of where Steve’s hand had been just moments ago.
“Jesus,” he muttered to himself, before turning back to the holoscreen.
*
It was mid-afternoon the next day by the time the Quinjet was brought into the city walls. Zandar had allocated a room which looked to be some sort of engineering workshop, littered with the corpses of dozens of other ships, vehicles and various machinery, and it was there that the Avengers all stood, watching quietly as the ship was hauled in by a team of Pavelixxians. The ship’s door had already been opened, and the insides were totally barren, stripped even of their upholstery.
“It’s not gonna be a comfy ride home, is it?” Bruce said, sighing.
Tony only half-caught the fact that his friend was even talking; far too caught up with gawping at all the different kinds of equipment that was available in the room. It was like fucking Christmas.
“Is this your city’s scrapyard?” He leaned sideways, directing the question to Zandar.
“In a sense,” he confirmed. “Being as close to the asteroid belt as we are, we have to pick up many bits of debris before it enters our atmosphere. Some of it can be repurposed, some of it can be recycled. This is where we store it in the interim.”
Oh, definitely Christmas. Tony rubbed his hands together, taking the leap and stepping over the threshold, eyes fixed on a bizarre-looking escape pod thing that’d been dumped in the corner of the room.
“Don’t worry about your memory-foam butt pad, Brucie,” he called out behind him. “I’m gonna find you something way better. I reckon at least one of these former alien ship captains must’ve needed some extra lumbar support on those long galactic journeys.”
While Tony busied himself with inspecting the technological remains of the room, he watched from the corner of his eye as Zandar introduced another group of Pavelixxians to his team. Uncharacteristically for the species, these people wore full uniforms - dark green, all-encompassing suits, similar to what Tony wore under Iron Man. He assumed they must be the engineers, due to the fact that only idiots and maniacs would regularly operate heavy machinery with their tits out. They stood straight, formally, and their faces were equally as humourless as all the other Pavelixxians they’d met so far. They nodded in one synchronized motion, and then moved straight over to the Quinjet.
Tony grimaced. Talk about a good time, huh? These next few days were going to be painful. He just had to hope Bruce was bringing his best personality forward, otherwise Tony was going to go crazy in here with only Planet Boring’s Tinkering Taskforce to entertain him while he worked.
From across the room, Steve caught his eye while Natasha and Zandar continued to discuss something beside him. Tony lifted an eyebrow. Do they seem okay? - His expression indicated.
Steve raised a shoulder and gave a minute jerk of his head. Nothing special, seemed to be his response, before turning back to Zandar and joining in the conversation.
As it turned out, the alien escape pod Tony had gravitated to wasn’t all that interesting - damaged beyond repair, it’d probably make for some handy spare parts, but that was about it. He moved around the room, taking stock of everything as he went. The hall was messy and disorganised, which went against most of the infrastructure he’d seen on the planet thus far, but Tony supposed it was a scrapyard, so there was no real need to care for the stuff. Besides, who the hell was he to judge? Steve was regularly chastising him on the state of his own workshop. Maybe this was a universal engineer thing.
He continued on, mind racing, cataloguing all he saw. In the far corner, he noted a nondescript door that led off into a separate room, and of course, he had his hand around the handle within five seconds of seeing it, because there wasn’t a chance he was spending all his time down here wondering what was on the other side. Best to get it out of the way now.
Bumping it open with his shoulder, Tony squinted in the semi-darkness, allowing his eyes a moment to adjust. The echo of his feet bounced through the room, and Tony was shocked to see that this room was just as big as the hall behind him. The unmarked entrance and general lack of signage had led him to believe it was just some kind of storage room.
Taking a few steps in, he looked down at the floor in confusion. Machine parts didn’t cover the floor around here. Instead, the entire space was sectioned off by a crosshatch of red lines, and neat piles of various items were ensconced within the five-by-five squares.
Tony stared at them silently, an ominous sinking feeling in his stomach at the sight of it all. He got down on his haunches in order to study them a little better.
Pairs of gloves. Books. A lot of stuff Tony couldn’t even identify, and yet still contained a strangely personable air about them - as if they’d been touched, used, valued. Tony brushed his fingertips over a suitcase, flicking the latches open. Reams of papers, written in an unintelligible language, were stored within it.
These were people’s belongings. As Tony straightened back up and adjusted his eyeline, he realised that the whole room was filled with them.
A whole warehouse packed with items, all dumped on the floor, gathering dust.
“I don’t like the look of this one bit.”
Tony jumped at the voice that cut through the dark silence. He spun around and saw Clint, stood just a few paces behind him, arms folded over his chest. He’d not even heard the damn guy coming in, but he must’ve been watching Tony, and followed him when he’d slipped away.
Tony shook his head, unable to stop himself from glancing back at another pile, this one containing an array of brightly-coloured ribbons, threads. Tony had no idea what they were for, but they looked… fun. It was unusual, considering the sober state of nearly everything Tony had seen of this planet so far. “Who do you reckon these belong to?”
Clint stepped forward until they were shoulder to shoulder. His frame was tense as he turned his head to look at Tony. “Historically, piles of personal belongings being left en masse has never indicated good things. Persecuted people, maybe. The Pavelixxians run a tight ship, and we know fuck-all about them, really. We might’ve stumbled slap-bang into the middle of a bloodthirsty regime.”
They looked at one another soberly. “Let’s not jump the gun,” Tony told him, trying not to allow that idea to run away with him. “Like you said, we don’t know anything about them. This is explainable. I hope.”
Wordlessly, both of them turned back to the darkened room, tiptoeing carefully around some of the piles. There must have been hundreds of different people’s things in the warehouse. Tony noted that each square was numbered, probably for easy identification. He opened up a worn, leather-looking book, seeing more Pavelixxian writing within. In the margins, small blood splatters littered one of the pages.
Tony closed the book. “Right. This place is giving me the fucking creeps. We’re going back in there and asking what the fuck this is about,” he said to Clint, who was stood a few paces away from him.
Clint nodded, and the two of them turned on their heels, making their way back to the single doorway which had led them in there. But both of them stopped in their tracks when they saw the hinges move. Not even a second later, one of the engineers stepped through the threshold, blocking off their exit.
She seemed no different to any other Pavelixxian they’d come into contact with before this - same stature, same markings. Her hair was cropped short and her facial features were thin, reedy, but aside from the uniform that covered her, she was fairly innocuous.
And yet, all the same, as soon as he laid eyes on them, Tony could feel himself stiffen. Perhaps it was the eyes, and the way they glared at him and Clint with cold intensity. Perhaps Tony just had a lot of experience reading people. Whatever it was, Tony could sense that Clint was reacting in a similar way. From the corner of his eye, he watched the other man tense and straighten up.
They all looked at one another for a moment.
“You were not given permission to enter this room,” she told them eventually.
“I don’t seem to remember being told not to,” Tony was quick to respond. “I’m not good with inferring. You gotta be specific with me. Hey - what’s your name?”
The woman looked at them for another moment, before stepping forward and shutting the door behind her. “You may call me Sellon.”
“Sellon.” Tony waved, mimicking the same gesture he’d spotted other Pavelixxians greeting one another with earlier. “Wonderful to make your acquaintance. Actually- while we’re here, I’ve got a bit of a touristy question for you.” He gestured around the room. “Why do you have piles and piles of what look like people’s stuff just locked away in a random warehouse on the edge of your city?”
Sellon’s eyes tracked briefly across the warehouse floor, before coming back to Tony and Clint. There was a look of what seemed almost like disgust on her face when she next spoke. It reminded Tony of Zandar.
“These are the items belonging to those who succumbed to Hanahaki,” she informed them, her voice clipped. “We allow the family a grace period of two years to come and collect any items they wish to keep before incineration.”
Tony’s brow furrowed in confusion. So it was about this weird goddamn disease again. It seemed this whole civilisation was built around the sickness. “You take their stuff and then make them ask to have it back? Seems… overly bureaucratic.” He was careful with his words, aware that a wrong move could make this little stay go from mildly boring to potentially dangerous, very quickly.
“They don’t mind,” Sellon responded with a shrug. “The families usually want nothing to do with the deceased anyway. We eradicate all traces of them as part of protocol, but retain a handful of items in every case. Some are more sentimental than others. They may still want a trinket.”
Tony and Clint looked at one another in disbelief. “You don’t mind when your loved ones die?” Clint asked cautiously.
“Under normal circumstances, of course, it is a huge loss to lose any familial or platonic tie.” Moving now, Sellon stepped forward, wandering close to one of the nearest collections. She toed it carelessly with her boot. “But those stupid enough to contract Hanahaki are scum. It is the disease of the uncommitted, the weak-willed. It affects only those who seek to undermine our society, and the very fabric upon which it has thrived.” She looked up at them and cocked her head. “How much do you know of our culture? I am aware you came to our planet only yesterday, but some come with knowledge whereas others come blind.”
“We’re definitely the blind kind,” Clint told her bluntly.
She hummed, looking away once again, over to the far side of the facility. Tony got the impression she considered herself and her time far too valuable for this. It made his hackles rise.
“Perhaps you require some context then. On Pavelix, there are very carefully-thought out systems in place,” she told them eventually, her voice bouncing off the stark walls. “We strive for cohesion and honour the unyielding power of the universe’s predisposed decisions using mathematical algorithms to guide our life choices. One such system to come from that belief is the partnering database. It is a system which assigns you your life mate based on compatibility, performance, and chemical composition. These partnerings are always accurate and create wonderful, functioning relationships in which procreation, community-building and maximum productivity can be reached.”
God, she sounded like a walking advert. Or a propaganda machine. Tony couldn’t decide. “Not to bash your way of life or anything, but that seems a little cold. Don’t you like a touch of spontaneity now and then? A bit of good old fashioned romancing?”
At that, she levelled Tony with a sneer. “Romance is beneath us,” she informed him. “When analytics and data can bring about a much more fruitful union, to disregard it in favour of base instincts and childish fantasy is not just frivolous, but considered a threat to the very state itself.” A thin smile spread across her face. “I understand you may be wondering how this relates to the sight you see before you. But you should know, our way of life is undeniably linked to Hanahaki. Since the dawn of time, they have worked together to ensure that the weak members of our species are culled. It seeks out the defects, the ones who threaten our system, and it removes them from the equation. Some may tell you otherwise, but believe me: most of us in Pavelix see it as a blessing.”
Culled . Tony’s face was impassive, and so was Clint’s, but the weight of the word wasn’t missed on either of them.
The engineer wasn’t even finished with her tirade, either. “Every so often, it will sweep through our gates and lodge in the throats of those who cannot control themselves,” she continued. “Those who lie to their assigned life partners, who love another, who self-harm in the form of pitiful lack of control. The Hanahaki flower grows within them, choking their life-force, reminding them every day leading up to their demise that they were too weak to prevent this. Death is slow and painful. And when it does eventually take someone to the grave… well. It’s not like their family will miss someone like that, is it? Someone who cannot even love the one they’re destined to build a life with?”
Tony stared at her, stunned. “Do you even try and save them?” He asked.
Her face didn’t change a shade. “Anyone found to have contracted Hanahaki is put to death. We do not need them. They will not bring anything of value to our world, and they only risk spreading the disease further. Which, if you ask me, would be a good thing - but our legislators do not agree, so the rules are the rules.”
Silence filled the room as Tony looked down - down at the piles upon piles of stuff, belonging to people whose only crime had been falling in love with the wrong person. The books, the writings, the jewellery, the ribbons. He didn’t know who’d died of the illness and who’d died at the hands of their government, but he supposed it didn’t matter. It all made him feel equally cold.
Turning to look at Clint, he saw that the other man was staring firmly at the engineer up ahead. At his side, his trigger finger tapped against his own thigh - the sporadic, quick rhythm being the only thing to indicate any emotion at all. Clint could be scatterbrained, but when he identified a threat, his focus was poignant.
“Do you wish to know anything else?” Sellon asked, either not noticing the hostility or simply not caring.
Both of them shook their heads slowly, aware that it wouldn’t do for them to run their mouths too much. Sellon nodded, and then opened the door she was standing in front of, making a moving gesture with her hand. “Then I will please ask you to exit this room and not enter it again unless expressly permitted. You will have all the equipment you need in the other room, and my team are on hand to monitor and assist with anything required of us.”
Clint and Tony looked at one another. It wasn’t like there was much else they could do here, so with a nod, both of them followed her out of the room, neither one looking behind them as they left. Some things, you only needed to see once.
*
It was safe to say that the following evening was a slightly tense one.
“Listen. All we need to focus on is getting the hell out of here,” Natasha said, leaning back against the mattress she was sat on. They’d all convened in Steve’s quarters, where the man was now pacing a hole through the floor, looking agitated and angry and generally ready to start some sort of intergalactic incident. “We can’t change their entire society, obviously. This is not our battle to fight.”
“Easy for you to say,” Bruce muttered, “you don’t have to spend the next few days working alongside an alien extremist. Or fix said ship.”
Steve popped briefly back into Tony’s eyeline, still pacing. A few seconds later, he disappeared again.
“I’ll provide moral support and a welcome distraction to you while you do it, then.” Natasha responded. “But there’s really nothing else we can do.”
“Can we, like, blow the whistle on them?” Clint asked, pulling a face. “Is there even an intergalactic whistleblowing process? Would they even care?”
“The file said they weren’t part of any council or federation,” Tony told him dully. “They wouldn’t have any jurisdiction. And I guess in the grand scheme of things, they’re not that bad.”
“Don’t fucking say that, Tony,” Steve’s voice cut through the room then, cold and angry. “They operate on a state policy of murdering the people they deem sick and unproductive. They’re eugenicists. That ain’t what I’d call ‘not that bad’.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Tony snapped, “what I am saying is that we’re currently in a galaxy chock-full of supervillains who jump from planet to planet incinerating everyone on them , plus a few imperialist armies determined to subjugate as many solar systems as they find, so in the grand scheme of things, the Galactic Council aren’t gonna decide this weird little fascist state is something they should focus on.” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. A headache was coming on, and he felt exhausted already, even though he’d only spent a few hours working. “Natasha’s right,” he muttered. “We just have to concentrate on getting the fuck outta here.”
“Innocent people are dying in droves.” Steve finally stopped pacing, looking at Tony with a cold glare. “If we leave them to suffer when we know it’s abhorrent, how the fuck do we call ourselves heroes?”
“And what do you suggest we do, Cap?” Tony asked, slicing a hand through the air. “Colonise the place and instil our wisdom on them? Singlehandedly deprogramme every last citizen so they stop believing that being horny deserves capital punishment? Not that easy, actually- just ask an Ex-Catholic.”
“The disease isn’t spreading right now anyway, right?” Bruce added, before the two of them could devolve into further arguing. He looked at Steve apologetically. “Zandar was saying that since their epidemic a few years ago, there’s only been a handful of isolated cases. I’m not saying it’s acceptable, but…”
“But we should just turn a blind eye,” Steve finished, voice dull. He sagged against the wall, knocking his head against the wood and staring up at the ceiling.
Tony watched him, only realising he was grinding his teeth when he felt a sharp spark of pain ignite in his molar at the overload of pressure. He hated when Steve got like this - so convinced that everyone could be saved by nothing more than good will and conviction. Life so rarely worked that way, and yet Steve never stopped trying to live as if it did. And more often than not, he was willing to risk his safety, his life , on losing games like these.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Steve ground out without even turning his gaze back to the room. He didn't have to to know Tony was glaring.
“Then don’t act like that,” Tony snapped back, “you’re not God, Steve. You’re one man stranded on a hostile planet. There’s nothing you can do.”
“What can I say, Tony? I like to try and prevent government-mandated mass murder when I can - call it a fucking character flaw–”
“Oh, and you’re saying I don’t?”
“ Look ,” Clint stepped into the centre of the room, holding up his hands and looking at each of them individually. “We all know this is a bad place. But we have been in way, way worse places, and we have no power to change the levels of bad here anyway. So I say we keep our heads down, we try not to piss off the crazy eugenics aliens, and we get the fuck out of here ASAP before one of us inevitably does something that gets us killed. Sound good?”
The team all nodded - except Steve, who just looked out of the window, stewing in his silent, self-righteous anger. Tony watched him, mouth pursed. At least he seemed to have taken Clint’s words on board. Hopefully.
While Steve slunk off to go and get some air outside, the rest of them made their way down to the mess hall to fill up on yet another delightful pile of nutrient goo. But Tony could only pick at it half-heartedly, and was unable to make himself eat the full thing. The events of the day had stripped him of his appetite, and the image of those hundreds of piles of belongings, sitting there in that lonely warehouse, waiting for someone to collect them, played over and over in his mind.
It felt hard to believe that a disease could be so stigmatised, so utterly abhorred, that even to accidentally contract it meant becoming a total social pariah. Unloved even by one’s own family.
There was something symbolic in that, but Tony was too tired to find it.
“I’ll tell you who would be a total goner if they came on this planet and got infected,” Natasha said, waving a pile of goo around before putting it in her mouth. “Tennison.”
Clint looked at her. “From Black Ops?” She nodded, and he scoffed. “No fucking way. That man is a rock, he loves nothing. I don’t ever think I’ve seen him smile.”
But Natasha wasn’t convinced. “You’ve not seen the way he is around that woman. You know - the sharpshooter one. I think she’s called Serena? Not only does he smile around her, but he actually went out and bought her a coffee once, too. They talk all the time. I’m pretty sure that rose she got on Valentine’s was from him - although that information didn’t come from me.”
“Coffee and a rose? Why don’t they just get married already?” Bruce muttered.
“How do you know it’s unrequited anyway?” Tony asked. “They could be doing it in the broom cupboard when everyone’s backs are turned, for all you know.”
The statement definitely wasn’t one that came from lived experience. It was simply an observation.
But Natasha raised her ring finger. “Girl’s spoken for,” she told him.
“Aw,” Clint said, “poor Tennison. I’ll remember that next time he tries to knock me out in the training ring. I’d take a black eye over loving someone who doesn’t love me back any day.”
Everyone nodded in agreement, and Tony copied the motion, carefully holding onto any uncomfortable shuffling, any tells. You got used to living a certain way when you were around two of the best spies in the world.
Despite this, he couldn’t stop his mind from drifting, even if his body remained motionless. He wondered where Steve was. If he was okay. Tony really hoped he hadn’t done something stupid, like go to the Senate and demand they change their entire constitution immediately or something. But no - Steve wouldn’t do that. He was angry, but he was still sensible. He knew this was a losing battle.
Tony wondered if Steve would knock on his door again tonight. God, he hoped so.
As he sat amongst his friends in the mess hall, poking at his goo with a level of lackluster he usually saved for board meetings and SHIELD briefings, he realised that his current train of thought was probably one that’d get him executed for treason in the city of Pavelix. It made him chuckle. Here he was - Iron Man, protector of Earth and occasionally the universe - and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about a man who was probably only interested in fucking him. Christ. They’d string him up by his ankles for that one.
“Do you reckon the great and mighty Pavelixxian algorithm would assign me someone hot?” Tony asked the group, suddenly remembering that he was supposed to be doing anything except think about that particular subject.
Bruce turned to him and gave him a slight pat on the shoulder. “Buddy, them being hot is the least of your worries,” he said. “If they’re willing to put up with you on your bad days, I can only imagine they’re going to be just as much of a handful as you are.”
“God help us all,” Clint said, his head dropping into his hands. “I don’t think I could cope.”
Tony grinned, and did not think of blond hair or blue eyes or a temper hot enough to melt the goddamn sun.
*
He didn’t sleep well.
This wasn’t a huge surprise and caused no concern. The last time Tony could confidently say he’d had a great night’s sleep was probably about fifteen years ago, so when he awoke at dawn the following morning, sweating and sore and generally feeling like shit, he didn’t think much of it.
He got dressed, made himself look presentable, and then wandered down the hall to knock on Steve’s door. He’d not seen the guy since he’d wandered off before dinner last night, and it would probably do for someone to check that he hadn’t been thrown in jail for treason.
A few seconds later, and there was a quick sound of scrabbling, followed by the yanking of a chain. Steve opened the door in all of his sleep-mussed, early-hours glory.
“Hey,” he said, rubbing a hand over his eye. “Everything ok?”
Tony let himself in. Of course he did - he’d finished his own disgusting caffeine drink that’d been supplied to his room, and he knew Steve wouldn’t care if he helped himself to the one in his quarters. It wasn’t like it affected him anyway. “Dandy,” he responded. “Ready to face the day?”
The other man snorted. “I guess.”
“Are you at least ready to sit quietly and not start any international incidents?” Tony twisted his head backward to look at the other man while he pilfered the caffeine. Steve looked sullen. “I’m being serious, by the way. I know you’re pissed - “
“Sorry,” Steve blurted before Tony had even finished his sentence. When he cocked an eyebrow, Steve just shrugged. “For last night,” he elaborated, “I implied you were alright with what was going on. I shouldn’t have. I know you didn’t think that.”
Tony looked at him properly, then. “I know you didn’t think I thought that,” he said softly. He’d still not quite learned how to deal with Steve’s earnestness. His utmost insistence on clearing the air of all possible wrongs.
Steve nodded and scratched his nose, stepping further forward. He made it to the table where Tony was stationed and leaned against it, looking at him earnestly.
“You know,” he began, “I’m glad you don’t think the worst of me these days. It’s nice. Thank you.”
“I never thought the worst of you,” Tony corrected him. “Realism never hurts though.”
“Oh, shut up,” Steve said simply, to which Tony turned his head right and shot him a challenging glare. Steve waved a hand. “You think it’s realistic for people to think the worst of you ? Well I think that’s fuckin’ stupid. Deal with it.”
So contrary. Tony snorted and rolled his eyes while he stirred his drink, but he didn’t fail to notice the way Steve watched him the whole time, shameless. He wondered what the hell was going on in the other man’s head. Probably thinking about sex. Tony had to admit, he can’t have looked that great just then: dark rings under his eyes, hair an ungroomed mess - but as he’d said earlier, he was pretty sure Steve had the equivalent libido of one of those protagonists in the fantasy eroticas Pepper always kept stacked on her shelves, so he may not even have noticed Tony’s dishevelment.
Tony nudged him with his shoulder. “It’s rude to stare,” he informed the other man.
But Steve just laughed quietly. “You’re worth staring at,” was all he said, before wordlessly moving off to the bathroom.
Tony watched him go, his heart twisting further with every step Steve took away from him. The words were undoubtedly meaningless, and yet for all their simplicity, they struck a deep chord in Tony’s chest. He bit down on a smile, valiantly trying not to get carried away with himself.
It was then that he noticed the first discomfort. A pain, blooming in his throat. He coughed, trying to alleviate the sudden tickle in his chest, the scratch that’d erupted in his mouth.
He winced once it was over, sniffling and rubbing his nose. Probably Rhodey. The man had come over a few days ago absolutely riddled with a cold and blowing his way through an entire box of tissues. Just Tony’s luck that he will have caught it when he was in the middle of a situation like this.
By the time Steve came back out of the bathroom, Tony had already finished his drink, and the two of them headed down to the mess hall together. Apparently Bruce was already down by the Quinjet getting everything ready for the day, but Tony used the extra time in order to properly wake up. His head felt cottony; his limbs lacked the energy they usually had. Sleeping on another planetary schedule was apparently proving difficult for him.
Rubbing his eyes, he yawned and then grabbed Natasha’s own cup of coffee-adjacent liquid, downing it before she could stop it. Her eyes narrowed.
“You’ll pay for that, just so you know,” she told him idly.
He probably would. But like most things, that was a bridge he could cross later.
Down in the scrapyard, Bruce and the Pavelixxian engineering team were already well underway with the logistical elements of the repairs. Tony wandered in while Bruce was directing various people to collect various things, and briefly contemplated sneaking away before he was noticed in order to grab another hour of shut-eye. Unfortunately, Bruce happened to look up and spot him at that moment, which put an end to that train of thought immediately. Tony struggled to shirk responsibility under direct eye contact from the man. His disappointed face was not to be trifled with.
“Morning,” Tony said instead, “I think, anyway. How’s it looking down here?”
Bruce shrugged. “Alright. I’ve identified most of the sections that need fixing. But I’m not the engineer who was supposed to be down here an hour ago, so I can’t be sure.”
Tony pulled a face. The passive aggression wasn’t missed. “Sorry pumpkin,” he said, “whatever morning drink sachets they’re supplying us in our rooms, they’re not enough. I needed a bit more oomf. But I’m here now!” Clapping his hands, he did the rounds of introductions with the team he was going to be working with for the next few days. There was Sellon, who obviously needed no introduction. The others were all fairly standard - none of them gave him the heebie jeebies in the way Sellon had upon first sight, anyway, so Tony would take that as a win.
Organising a team of new colleagues always took time, especially when most of them came from another planet. Most of the day was spent allocating roles, sorting materials and walking them through the various processes that’d need to be followed. The Pavelixxians were by no means stupid, but there were strange gaps in their knowledge. Mathematical concepts and basic principles they hadn’t come to terms with in their society yet. It made Tony wonder how old this race of beings was - or whether some sort of ecological disaster had been slowing them down, erasing swathes of learning and understanding with each person lost.
It checked out.
Tony stood in the cockpit of the Quinjet, watching through the cracked glass as Sellon and Vrishi talked animatedly to one another, long fingers stabbing at various writings in their notebooks. Sellon caught his eye, and he gave her a cheerful wave, which was duly ignored as she turned her back on him. He then turned it into a single middle finger.
“Asshole,” he mumbled, before moving his gaze to the lifeless control board.
There’d been a photo tucked into the dash when they’d set off - a beat up polaroid of all six Avengers, crammed into one photobooth that they’d found on a night out. Thor had managed to balance three people on him as he’d sat on the stool, while Tony had sat between his legs and Steve had leaned in self-consciously from the side, giving an awkward grin. It was nice. Corny, but nice. It was now also incinerated.
He sighed and then cleared his throat for the dozenth time that day, trying in vain to budge the steadfast tickle that’d made its home in his respiratory system. Then he wandered back out of the ship, and straight into Bruce. The man blinked in surprise.
“What were you doing in there?” He asked.
“Jerking off.” Tony waved a dismissive hand, which then patted Bruce’s shoulder when the other man sighed at him. “You doing okay, Green Giant?”
The man pushed his glasses further up his nose. “I think I made a bad impression with Kellick,” he muttered.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Bruce’s cheeks went pink. “We were working together and I, uh, mentioned offhandedly that I was relieved the engineering team wore. You know. Clothes.”
Tony chuckled. He’d been quietly observing Bruce’s constant underlying panic over the last few days, as the man had desperately attempted to find a place to put his eyes if ever a female Pavelixxian was in the room. It seemed he hadn’t managed to shake his Earthly sensibilities as well as everyone else. “Oh Brucie, I didn’t realise you were so traditional.”
“I’m not!” Bruce waved a hand emphatically, sighing. “Obviously - you know I’m not, it’s perfectly understandable, I just… well, I feel like I should be normal and just look at them as if they were any other body part, but then I feel like maybe I’m looking at them for
too
long and it’s weird, so I look away, but then I look antisocial just staring at my shoes so I have to look back and - it’s a whole thing, okay, so I just said to her that it’s nice to not have that personal issue to deal with.” Bruce’s eyes darted to the left, where Kellick was in the process of packing up her things into a kitbag. “I think she thought I was insulting her culture.”
Tony never tired of Bruce’s awkward social interactions. No matter the planet, no matter the people, you could count on him to be at least a little weird about it. “Should’ve just kept your mouth shut, Banner.”
“That’s rich.” Bruce shot him a withering glare - a wholly unnecessary one at that. “How many situations could we have avoided as a team if you’d just shut up and done what you were told?”
Tony placed his hand against his chest, offended. “I’m offended.”
“Good. It was intended to offend.”
“Wow. For that, I’m gonna tell Kellick you want to see her boobs.”
“Tony!” Bruce punched him hurriedly, cheeks once again going bright pink as he herded Tony toward the exit. “Fuck off and keep your goddamn voice down!”
Tony laughed all the way to the mess hall.
Later that evening, however, the laughter had well and truly stopped. Laughter, in fact, had become a distant memory in Tony’s mind. Because he couldn’t sleep - again. But this time, he felt like he couldn’t breathe all that well either.
He tossed and turned in bed, trying to find a position that’d settle his irritated airways, but nothing would relieve the sensation. It was proving a total pain in the ass - made worse by the fact that all cold and flu medication had been on the Quinjet and subsequently eradicated.
Sitting up in bed after a few hopeless hours, Tony wiped the sheen of sweat off his brow and looked out of the window at the double-moon system. Both satellites were dim; further away than the moon at home by a long stretch, but their dance across the sky was a beautiful one. Tony had spent a good portion of last night observing it, after Steve had gone and all the work was complete.
He swung his legs out of bed, hauling himself upright and heading over to the window. From this vantage point, he was able to see the long, unending city wall, and the dense knots of towering trees that lay on the other side of it. They swayed peacefully in the breeze, innocuous and magnificent all at once. If Tony hadn’t spent hours trekking through them, witnessing the disgusting horrors they contained firsthand, he’d think that the Pavelixxians were overreacting with all the border security. As it stood, he could only be impressed they’d managed to thrive despite being surrounded on all sides by a jungle that wanted to kill them.
He looked at the view for a few minutes more, silent in the darkness of his room. Briefly, he contemplated knocking on Steve’s door and seeing if the man was still awake. In the end though, he decided against it. Steve had his own struggles with sleep - Tony could testify to that. Sometimes the man could only manage a sparse few hours before slipping away to the gym. If he wasn’t woken by nightmares, it’d be the shivers that seemed to plague him - although admittedly, that one hadn’t happened in a while now.
Not since Tony had begun sleeping with him regularly, anyway.
The thought made him smile, as images popped into his mind of an unconscious Steve, laden with bedhead and creases on his face from the pillow case. He was a hugger. Tony would often drift off on the other side of the bed, and yet end up with the burning heat of a supersoldier pressing up against his back. If Tony was being honest, the heat drove him a little nuts. It made him sweat, and it certainly made him unable to fall back to sleep. But that by no means meant that he’d move a muscle, if ever he awoke to it. He could always shower. And coffee was there to make up for any lost hours.
Steve was worth that and then some.
Suddenly, Tony was pulled away from his thoughts of Steve by the arrival of another wave of coughs. More intense than the others, Tony found himself bent double, hands on his knees as his lungs spasmed uncontrollably for a moment.
This time, however, it felt… Wrong.
Tony frowned, a shot of panic moving through him as he acknowledged the sensation he was feeling. It was as if something was lodged in his throat. A physical thing.
Stumbling to the bathroom, Tony continued to hack, fingers fumbling clumsily for the faucet and turning it on. Before he could force some water down him, however, his chest gave one final heave, and then, bizarrely, he felt something working its way up his throat, spewing into his mouth. The choking subsided, and Tony wobbled unsteadily.
Parting his lips, he spat the object into the sink. It was a deep blue - small, satiny. Tony looked at it in confusion, prodding it with a finger, unfurling it.
He stared.
It was a petal.
“What the fuck,” he whispered to himself, seeing his own expression of incredulousness in the reflection of the bathroom mirror as he picked the delicate petal up and held it to the light. A teardrop shape, dark blue at the edges, met in the middle by a sharp turquoise.
“What the fuck.”
He tried to wrack his brains, think of any possible reason he could’ve inhaled a goddamn flower petal. But to his knowledge, he’d not even come close to one. They didn’t keep floral arrangements in the city - everything was sleek, cool, inanimate. And he would’ve noticed - surely, surely he would have noticed this. It was bizarre.
Looking down at the petal in his hand, he found himself needing to cough again. He was coming down with something, for sure. Goddamn Rhodey–
Wait.
Tony blinked for a moment, piecing together a collection of information that’d been collated over the last few days. Sellon’s words drifted through his mind.
The Hanahaki flower grows within them, choking their life force.
He looked down at the perfect petal - it’s vivid colour, it’s healthy shape - as if being stuck in Tony’s fucking insides for God knows how long had no impact on it. As if it’d only just been plucked from whatever stem it’d grown on.
As if it was alive, somewhere inside him.
But that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
Jerkily, he threw the petal down into the sink and rammed the faucet on again, staring intently as it slid past the plug. His throat itched. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead. Tony was sick, and there was no denying it. But it couldn’t possibly be the Pavelixxian disease. He’d been tested - they’d put him under and goddamn tested him for it, so how the hell could he have contracted Hanahaki? It didn’t make sense.
It was then that another realisation crashed into him, full force, like a wave. His next breath failed him as he looked up at himself in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, face draining of any colour that had initially stuck around. He was suddenly nauseous, and it had nothing to do with the coughing fits. There was a rock in him. It sunk and it sunk and it sunk.
Steve didn’t love him back.
Tony laughed - sudden and grating in the otherwise silent bathroom. Oh, God. Steve didn’t love him back. Of course he fucking didn’t.
Tony had known, obviously, how stupid it was to love someone who had only ever wanted you for sex and made as much perfectly clear. But somewhere, deep and dark and shamefully, Tony had thought that maybe it could change - was changing , present-fucking-tense. That maybe if Steve slept in his bed enough, if he brought Tony enough coffees and Tony gave him enough great orgasms, it’d just sort of happen, the same way it’d happened for Tony.
He’d been willing to wait. Willing to shove down the greediness and the hunger and the dull, constant pain that came with wanting someone who didn’t feel the same way. Loving Steve despite all that hadn’t been difficult. And recently, Tony had started to wonder if maybe Steve was coming around to the idea himself. They’d been… intimate. In ways that went deeper than just sex. They borrowed eachother’s clothes. Steve let him peer over his shoulder when he was drawing. They cooked together. Tony had thought that maybe…
Well. Tony supposed it didn’t matter what he’d thought. This was the truth of the matter. Here, in physical form, working its way through the Pavelixxian drainpipes.
He stared blankly at the mirror, watching his own eyes stare back at him. His chest ached - ached like it had done the first time he’d woken up in that cave, ached in the way it had when the palladium had been running its course through his bloodstream. He’d clawed his way out of both of those rock bottoms. Changed the odds, rigged the game, come out victorious through sheer force of will and determination.
This was different though. Because there really wasn’t jack shit Tony could do to fix this. Steve didn’t love him back.
If he did, Tony wouldn’t have just contracted a death sentence.
*
Sleep was hopeless. Peace was a pipe dream. Tony sat and watched the double-moon skim the horizon until the sun began to shroud its dim light. He coughed up another petal as the creatures in the jungle began their morning chorus.
Then he found himself knocking on Steve’s door.
It took a few moments for the other man to answer, but Tony didn’t doubt that Steve was awake by now. The dawn always stirred him, no matter what planet. Tony figured he was probably getting ready to go on an early-morning run, as he always did - he’d have done a lap of the city by the time everyone else was ready for breakfast, undoubtedly. The communal corridor they were staying on was completely silent, save for Tony’s fingers tapping against Steve’s doorframe. No one was going to hear him.
The door slid open, and Steve looked at him in surprise. “Oh,” he said, “hey Tony, are you–”
Tony moved forward. His hands rose, pressed up against Steve’s chest and pushed him further back into his room as he drew their mouths together. Tony kissed the last part of the sentence out of Steve’s mouth, and the back of his heel kicked the door shut.
Steve seemed surprised; Tony could feel it in the way his mouth moved around a half syllable, a question-word that never quite made it to full formation, as he gave up halfway through it in order to pull Tony in and kiss back almost immediately. There was nothing but a slightly questioning hum that remained of it.
That was good. Brevity suited Tony just fine.
Tony let himself kiss and be kissed for a few perfect moments. Then he pulled his mouth away.
“Blow me,” he said quietly, looking up at Steve through his eyelashes.
Steve looked back, eyebrows rising. His hands were wrapped firmly around Tony’s waist, cupping each side of his back in a way that felt painfully tender. Tony knew it wasn’t. He knew now, so he shoved them further down until they were gripping his ass.
“Well good morning to you too–”
“Please, Steve?” Tony added.
Steve already had a pair of shorts on, his hair was damp from his morning shower, and he looked at Tony with eyes that tried to find context, tried to find a reason. But how the fuck was Steve going to figure it out? He’d not for the last six months. He wasn’t going to stumble upon the answer here, now, while Tony was pressed up against him.
It was just sex. That was the conclusion Steve came to, every time.
With a small huff of laughter, Steve brushed a kiss against his mouth and his fingers flexed against Tony’s ass, grabbing greedily. “Well, when you ask so nicely,” he crooned, moving his hands until one was settled at the ridge of his belt buckle and the other was cupping his crotch. “How could a fella say no?”
Tony looked at him, feeling the burn of desire. The gaping void that stood between everything Tony wished he had, but didn’t. He felt like he was bursting and Steve was just fucking stood there, empty. He wondered what the other man would say if Tony told him he was pretty certain Steve was starting to kill him.
He leaned forward, kissing Steve’s plump mouth, taking his bottom lip between his teeth, tugging, perhaps a touch on the sharp side. Steve breathed in sharply. He liked it. He liked most of the things Tony did to him.
When Steve got on his knees and started to suck Tony’s cock, it was with the same energy in which he did everything else in life. Total and utter devotion to the cause. Tony watched intently, his hands carding through Steve’s damp hair, his body shaking against the urge to buck forward, fuck the other man’s face. Steve’s lips were like satin, hot and needy, sucking in anything it was given. Tony’s hand moved again - cradled the sharp curve of the other man’s jaw. He let his thumb sweep inward, brush delicately across the wet pink stretch of bottom lip. It came back damp. Tony ran that against Steve’s cheekbone, and his eyes fluttered shut, he hummed, the thrum of it zipping right up Tony’s cock. Back and forth, back and forth, his head moved - it sounded sloppy, wet, fucking beautiful.
“It’s like you were born for it, Steve,” he said through a sigh, tilting his head up briefly and screwing his eyes shut.
Steve hadn’t known a lot about how to give head, when they’d first started this. Tony felt selfish for teaching him - like he’d carefully curated Steve’s mouth to only know how to work for him. But those thoughts were always fleeting, transient, immediately overpowered by how gorgeous Steve felt. There was little else to think about when someone this beautiful was circling their tongue around the tip of your cock, after all.
Tony tamped down on the sudden spasm in his chest. Below him, Steve’s head bobbed, he looked up at Tony through his ridiculously long lashes, cheeks pink, eyes watering. Tony was well, well aware of the fact that Steve was no blushing virgin - and yet there was this look about him, this pristine demeanour he seemed to carry, of which all Tony ever wanted to do was ruin. Maybe it was a lifetime of mythologising the guy. The mix of teenage hormones and dedicated hero worship, all coalescing into this twisted monster that was obsessed with putting Steve Rogers on his knees, getting him to suck cock, seeing him look debauched in the best possible way.
Steve caught Tony’s eye, then. He moaned, low and urgent, pushing Tony’s cock further into the back of his mouth. The vibrations of the sound lit Tony up like a livewire. It was only in that moment that he realised Steve’s own hand was shoved down his shorts, the thick muscles in his thighs straining as he kneeled. Watching Tony get off got him off.
“Fuck, fuck, Steve .”
It hit him, sudden and fast. Tony came with a lurch, his hand on the back of Steve’s head, body folding inward. He burned, a euphoric tidal wave that was so very hot, so overwhelming, flooding across him. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough to nearly send him toppling sideways. He leaned sideways, fingers flailing for nothingness.
Steve’s hands, firm at his waist, steadied him. His spit-slick lips were still spread around Tony’s cock, and he looked up at Tony with a razor-focused stare while he jerked himself off with a desperate speed that Tony couldn’t replicate if he tried. He moaned again, and the noise thrummed up Tony’s sensitive body. A moment later and Steve was coming too, spending himself in his shorts.
Christ. How could Tony ever not have fallen in love with him? It felt like an inevitability.
Death is slow and painful. Sellon’s words reverberated around his skull - the phrase as icy and heartless as it had been the first time around.
He gazed down at Steve as the other man pulled away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked down at his lap; the damp patch that was spreading on his crotch, the smears of come grazing the top of his thigh. Tony watched the back of his neck turn pink.
“Whoops,” Steve muttered embarrassedly.
Silently, he slipped into the bathroom, dampened a towel under the sink, and brought it back for Steve, who took it gratefully and with a soft, shy smile.
Tony wondered if he was in shock. He wondered if Steve even noticed.
“Sorry for bursting in on you like that,” Tony blurted, the first real sentence he’d strung together since walking through the door. “I just…”
Needed to confirm my own beliefs. Needed to hurt. Needed to know you’d sooner get down on your knees for me than let me take you to dinner . Fucking hell, how pathetic he felt in that moment.
Steve looked up at him, and his face was so soft, so fond, that Tony wanted to cry. “I liked it,” he said simply. “You should come seek me out more often. Not like I’m ever gonna say no.”
In response, Tony coughed. Slamming a hand against his mouth, he screwed his eyes shut and willed the feeling to go away - just for a moment, a second. Eventually, through sheer force of will, it subsided, and he waved a hand as Steve got to his feet in concern.
“Sorry,” he croaked, “caught Rhodey’s sniffle. Bastard’s wandering around spreading his germs to the whole tower.”
Steve’s hand settled under his elbow, and Tony was fucking pathetic, because he leaned right into the touch as if he’d not learned a single lesson from this whole ordeal. “You seem tired.” His words were softly spoken. “How much sleep did you get?”
“Enough.” Tony forced himself to take a step away. “I should… sorry, I should go. Busy day ahead. The pick-me-up was a great way to start it.” He winked and grinned at Steve, who looked slightly crestfallen for a moment, before just shrugging and giving a quick nod.
“Happy to help,” he responded curtly.
Tony nodded. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said, before stumbling back out through the door he’d made his way through not ten minutes previously.
That morning, after he’d cleaned himself up and headed back out into the world, the first thing Tony did was go straight to the library. The Pavelixxian version of a library, anyway. Zandar had informed him that one existed in the East wing of the building while he’d been giving them all a brief tour, and now more than ever, Tony needed cold hard facts on his side. He needed to know what the fuck he was dealing with so that he could respond accordingly. If he was infected, that was.
It could still just be some sort of bizarre fluke. He’d only coughed up two petals, after all. There could be a multitude of things that explained that - perhaps some strange medical procedure they’d done to him while he’d been under. If he didn’t get his answer from the library, he’d check the tape that the woman had given him when he’d first left the medical unit.
The library of Pavelix was a strange one, in that there were absolutely zero books. Instead, the room was filled with small podiums, each of which held a small screen. About half a dozen other people were in the room with him, all pondering over various podiums, bodies tilted inward, hands tapping idly at the screen every few minutes. Tony glanced around the room, wondering if anyone was watching. Almost certainly. But Tony could always put his search history down to scientific interest.
He approached a podium in one of the far corners, stepping up to it and looking down. Immediately, the screen flared to life, and from the centre, a small microphone was pushed through a circular opening. Tony looked at it in confusion for a moment, before the meaning clicked. It needed to know his language.
He leaned down. “Hi. Uh. English?”
Amazingly, it understood - the previously unintelligble scripture shifted, flicked into the alphabet. Tony sighed in relief as he saw the word ‘hello’ flash onto the screen, and then spent a few moments coming to terms with the unusual interface. Eventually, however, he got to grips with what was going on. Trying not to look too outwardly suspicious, he pressed his fingers against the keyboard and typed out ‘Hanahaki’.
Results were immediate. Pages upon pages, books upon books of information. Tony checked the clock in the room. It was still early - Bruce and the engineers wouldn’t expect him down at the workshop for at least a few more hours. He had time.
Without further ado, he got to work.
*
“Tony? Tony - Tony!”
There was a sudden presence beside him as Bruce flew into his bubble, hands grappling for the torch before it could melt straight through the wing of the ship. He yanked it away from Tony’s deadlocked fingers and switched it off, before flinging it to the side and spinning around to grab Tony’s shoulders.
Bruce’s face was intense, matching his grip. “What the hell are you doing?” The man asked incredulously. “You almost burned a hole straight through the frame!”
Honestly, as he pondered the question Bruce was throwing his way, Tony realised he didn’t know. He didn’t know what he was doing in the same way he didn’t know how many hours had passed since opening that first page of the medical textbook stored in the Pavelixxian database. Everything had blurred, become vague. He’d managed to get back to the workshop, to put on his safety gear and find a welding tool and do the things he knew how to do in his sleep, but that was as far as it extended. Other than that, he was lost.
He was dying, too. Definitely. The books had all been very clear.
“Tony!” Bruce’s voice cut through the fog, and he blinked, focusing in on his friend. Bruce’s hands on his shoulders jerked, shaking him a little. His face was a storm of concern, and he pulled Tony away into a more private corner to stop the prying eyes of Rutho and Enitton, the two engineers working starboard alongside them. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
An excerpt from the medical research paper on Hanahaki:
The flower, once taken root within the lungs of its victim, is terminal, and no known cases of survivors have ever been recorded. The roots grow within the respiratory system of the subject in a manner so inextricable that surgery is impossible.
Caused from skin to skin contact, the flower’s seeds may lodge under a carrier’s fingernails, in their nose, or under their tongue.
An opinion piece in a Pavelixxian newspaper:
‘-And why should the Senate enforce prevention? Would any moral, common-sense individual not agree that it is better to let nature do what it has done for millenia, helping our species thrive by eradicating the weak? Full-scale prevention is not only unnecessary, but a cowardly way to protect those who don’t deserve to be protected. I know if I were to find that my life partner had contracted Hanahaki, I wouldn’t hesitate to inform the state and see him put to the axe. For the betterment of our society as a whole, we must be firm with these weak players. If we claim to live by the order of the universe, then it is time we stop holding it up at the city gates. Hanahaki is as much a universal choice as the Partnering Database, and for the Senate to stipulate anything else is nothing but a lie.”
From a botanical index:
HANAHAKI
Type: Angiosperm
Germination: Spore-bearing
Location: Mainly present in swampland. May take root in any fertile, moist area.
Appearance: Vertical blossom. Teardrop/ globular. Dark blue, with inner turquoise ring. Often found in patches.
Tony remembered why the petal had looked so familiar, the first time he’d spat one up. Steve had been wading around in them when he’d gone to pick up his shield from the jungle floor a few days ago. Tony had been so far away that it seemed almost impossible to have caught anything from them - and yet here he was.
An hour ago, he’d excused himself to the toilet and spat up another handful of petals into his hands.
Hanahaki’s incubation period is around 5-12 hours. Death occurs in approximately 2 to 3 weeks (excluding medical outlier Brilliontiximitorious Setinnillion, who survived 12 weeks post-diagnosis. The current practise of Hanahaki-related execution keeps our knowledge limited and thus more leniency for research-based purposes is suggested.)
“Tony, hey. Hey. Still with me?!”
Oh. Bruce.
Tony forced himself to focus, trying to think about what the hell he was going to do. He looked over to his best friend, who was now gripping the back of his neck tightly, grounding him to the reality of his situation,
“I’m okay,” Tony croaked on autopilot. “Haven’t been sleeping a lot since we got here, is all.”
“How much is not a lot?”
This was the line Tony was going to have to go with, if he wanted to keep this secret. It wasn’t an unlikely story, at least. The whole team were acutely aware of how much of a bitch Tony could get when the insomnia struck.
“Not at all,” he clarified, giving a weak shrug. “My body isn’t used to the new climate, maybe.”
Bruce was looking at him in shock. “You haven’t slept at all in two days?” He asked.
Tony shook his head. “Sorry poo-bear,” he muttered, rubbing at his chest. He coughed, and felt the beginnings of a few more petals lodge in his throat. He wouldn’t be able to keep them down for long. “I’m handling it–”
“Go to bed,” Bruce commanded, his voice utterly devoid of hesitation. “Now.”
“No.”
“I won’t let you work like this–”
“I’m fine.” Tony snapped his head up and glared at him, smacking the other man’s hand away from him. Bruce’s eyes were narrow, and he stared unabashedly. He was suspicious, Tony could feel it. They’d spent too long in one another’s company to not be intimately aware of one another’s tells, their behaviours. Bruce knew what Tony was normally like when he was sleep deprived, and he could imagine it probably didn’t look like this. Tony was being too quiet.
“I’m fine,” he said again, knowing that despite Bruce’s hunch, he had little room to argue. “Do you know how to rebuild the backup generator? Do you know how to re-align the entire ship’s centre-grav? I don’t think so.”
“I know how to do it,” Bruce informed him, “I may take a little longer to figure it out and I may go about it slower, but I know how to do it. And I won’t be hallucinating the whole time either.”
“I’m not fucking hallucinating.”
“You know what happens when people don’t sleep, Tony.” Bruce gritted his teeth and for a moment, a flash of green crossed his eyes as he jabbed a finger into Tony’s chest. He was genuinely angry. “Their memory goes to shit, they can’t think clearly. It’s like driving drunk and I will not let you put the entire team in danger because you do not know when to quit.” He snatched the goggles from the top of Tony’s head, chucking them uncaringly to the side. “Go. To. Bed.”
Tony realised, as he stood there and glared at Bruce, that he had no choice. He couldn’t tell the other man- not yet, anyway. As things stood, the disease wasn’t noticeable. And if he wanted to carry on with the insomnia line, he needed it to be believable. Two days of sleeplessness was too far, he’d made a mistake by saying that - but if he left now, he could pretend he’d gotten a few more hours. Pretend to toe the line between functioning and falling apart. Suffering from insomnia was better than suffering from a disease that got you hunted down and executed.
So Tony left. Without another word, he left, and walked, and kept walking until he made it to his room, then to his bathroom, then to the toilet.
He threw up, and the bile was littered with blue.
*
Tony was pretty sure that the first time he’d realised he was in love with Steve had been when they were arguing. Typical, really.
“You are just
so
fucking stupid sometimes.” Steve marched across the room, his finger jabbing into Tony’s chest as he glared down at him with icy eyes, a gaze so hard it hurt. “If I had any sense I would kick you straight off this team.”
“What, so that you can be the one to go and throw yourself into certain-death situations instead of letting me take a bit of a hit?” Tony shoved him away, turning his back on the other man with a shake of his head. It hurt his neck and made his bandaged arm scream, which made sense considering the fact that two hours ago he’d been thrown into the concrete so aggressively it’d created a sonic boom. He didn’t show it. “Yeah, good luck pitching that one to Fury.”
“Why do you not ever just listen?” Even though Tony’s back was turned, he could tell that Steve was throwing his hands up in the air. “Clint had a viable distraction. Your lack of trust in your own teammates put you in an unnecessarily life-threatening situation,
again
, and I am fucking sick of your attitude! You are
NOT
the leading authority in what the right call is.”
“And you are?” Tony turned back around just in time to see Steve bristle.
“I’m the leader of this team,” he snapped, “if anyone has got the authority, it’s me.”
Tony just sneered. “Yeah, well, sorry Captain, but everyone knows your happy-go-lucky attitude only gets us so far. Someone has to be a fucking realist, and we were all well aware that Clint’s option was sloppy at best. We needed to get in front of the guy, physically halt him, and I was the best –”
“STOP TALKING like you know what the FUCK was going on, the comms went down, YOU DIDN’T! You didn’t and you just threw yourself in there blindly, despite the fact that if you’d died down there on the asphalt, no one would’ve been able to fly the toxin back to the ship in time to contain it!” Steve was up in his space again, they were almost nose to nose, and the way he was shouting made Tony’s head pound, but damn if he was going to show Steve that. Give that overbearing bastard an inch and he’d string it out for a hundred miles.
Instead, he looked up at Steve and smiled. “Oh, don’t you wish you could put hands on me right now,” he hissed through his split lip, stepping even closer as he pushed his chin forward in a way he knew would agitate the other man. “Wanna bend me over and put me in my place, huh, Captain? Or do you wanna just go the traditional route - the one we took before that night in the gym, where you just punched something really close to me and then pretended you weren’t imagining my face?”
Steve’s face was a stone wall, and his eyes looked so derisively at Tony that he wondered if Steve had ever possibly hated anyone more in that moment.
That, of course, was before Agent Reynolds walked into the room.
“Break it up ladies,” he commented, slapping the folders down onto the desk and walking over to them. He’d been overseeing Coulson’s work for the last month while the other man was on leave, and had been grating on every last one of the Avengers’ nerves from the moment he’d introduced himself. “Listen, Captain, you did a good job today, but I need to have words with Mr. shit-for-brains stood next to you.” His eyes narrowed as he glared at Tony. “You got us into a hell of a lot of logistical trouble today–”
“What the fuck did you just say to him?” Steve’s voice cut through the conversation before Tony even had the opportunity to open his mouth - and somehow, the look on Steve’s face reached levels of unprecedented hatred. He stared at Reynolds as if he was literal shit on Steve’s otherwise-impeccable shoes.
Reynolds, bless him, actually looked somewhat taken aback. “Are you not berating him for the exact same–”
Steve began walking over to him. He moved slowly, and yet in such a way that whatever Reynolds had been intending to say just died like roadkill in his mouth.
“Say that again,” Steve told him softly, coming to a halt barely a foot away from Reynolds. He towered over the short, balding man. Tony watched the Agent’s face turn.
Reynolds glanced at Tony, who just shrugged with his good arm.
“Sorry,” he muttered quickly, “I overstepped.”
Steve said nothing for a moment. He glanced sideways, catching Tony’s eye briefly as he did so, before the weight of his gaze settled back on Reynolds. This was a man who had lost all patience, and that much was abundantly clear.
“Speak about him like that again and I’ll put your head through that fucking table.” Steve pointed sharply to the thick oak desk laid out in front of them, and then without another word, he strode toward the door and yanked it back open. “Get out,” he snapped at Reynolds, his hand waving across the threshold. “We’re not done talking.”
“But I need to–”
“Get. Out.” Steve’s voice was cold. Coulson would never in a million years have accepted that - which is why Steve would probably not ever have spoken to him like that in the first place. But substitutes always had a bit of a difficult job, and Reynolds, unfortunately, hadn’t made a good enough impression to warrant Steve’s niceties.
It only took a second of hesitation before the other man hurried quietly out of the door.
Silence coated the room upon his exit, save for Steve slamming the door behind him. Tony, suddenly, didn’t quite know how to feel - but with Steve, the biggest emotion was always the most destructive one, so he leaned into the anger, for lack of anything better to hold onto.
“I don’t need my honour defending, you know,” he snapped. “I’m a big boy.”
Steve’s eyes rolled. “You think that was for your benefit? Get the fuck over yourself. It was for mine.”
“You have the most insufferable hero complex I’ve ever come across,” Tony told him, shaking his head. “The man wasn’t even wrong, Steve. You were also calling me stupid not even a minute ago”
“I’m allowed to call you stupid when you’re bein’ fuckin’ stupid,” Steve muttered, jaw twitching. His thumb flew out and indicated toward the door. He looked away. “ That asshole isn’t.”
Tony raised an eyebrow, watching Steve’s sullen face burn a hole into the opposing wall. It was a totally illogical thing to think - childish, even. And it wasn’t like Steve’s actions were going to curry favour with Tony either - he wasn’t suddenly going to admit to his wrongs and crawl back with his tail between his legs, all sorry Steve, thank you for defending me Steve, I’ll do whatever you want Steve. And Steve knew that, because he knew Tony. But he’d said it anyway.
It hit him suddenly. A thought, hidden amongst all the others, swinging through his consciousness so fast that Tony almost missed it. He’s such a dick, insufferable when he’s like this, why the fuck does he think he has the right to act like that, what a child, I think I love him, he walks around like his authority is unquestionable and everyone else’s is up for debate –
Tony only picked up on it long after he’d left the room and gone to lick his wounds in private. It stopped him dead as he was halfway through taping up the wound in his hip, mind tearing apart the day’s events, relaying all the information from the mission, from the debrief, from the argument. I think I love him.
The gash began to sting. Tony had frozen up, pressing his fingers into the open cut so hard it was beginning to ooze blood. I think I love him.
He swore. Tried to go back on it - convince himself it’d been a misplaced little throwaway feeling, that there was no weight, that he’d just been spending too much time stewing over Steve fucking Rogers and it was messing with his head. But he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t true. And as the days had turned to weeks, months, he’d also realised the thought was there to stay.
Tony had known from the beginning it was stupid. He just hadn’t thought that one day it might actually kill him.
A knock on his door woke him from his fevered nap, and Tony jerked upright in bed, blinking blearily as he glanced out of the window and saw the sun setting in the foreign sky. He must’ve passed out a few hours ago. Looking down at the sheets, he spotted a smattering of petals and angrily shoved them off the bed, crumpling them into a ball in his hand before tossing them into the trash.
He needed to look presentable. He needed to look put together. Glancing at himself in the mirror on his dresser, he pushed his hair out of his face and adjusted the collar of his shirt. Fuck , his head hurt.
With a lurch, he pulled the door open. Of course it was Steve. Who else?
“Hi,” Steve said, concern instantly visible on his face. He’d always been a terrible poker player. “Just wanted to check in. You weren’t down by the Quinjet today.”
Tony bit down on a sigh. The last time he’d seen the other man, he’d been on his knees, jerking off into his running shorts. Now he stood, proud, taking the lead, looking at Tony like he was owed an answer. Tony supposed that was true - even if it wasn’t Tony would give it to him anyway.
He shrugged. “Bruce sent me to my room. I assume he filled you in on why.”
Steve was quiet for a moment, just looking at Tony with those sharp, intelligent eyes of his. Then he pursed his lips. “You’re not sleep deprived,” he declared, shockingly confident.
Tony stiffened. “I am,” he doubled down, “I hate to break it to you, but insomnia doesn’t just stop when you hop planets–”
“You’re not sleep deprived,” Steve said again. “I know what you look like when you’re sleep deprived, and so does Bruce. We both agree. What are you hiding?”
Shit. Tony’s face didn’t change a shade, but in his head, the alarm bells started ringing. If there was one thing he knew without a doubt, it was that Steve could not find out. Ever.
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Tony bit out at him. He was an angry dog. He was a cornered animal, and the only way out was to fight. “If you came here for a fuck, I’m not interested. Go find something else to stick your dick in.” With that, he swung the door shut, ignoring the way Steve’s shocked expression made his heart burn with self-loathing. Sometimes pain was good. It was the one of the only things that guaranteed people kept away.
Except for Steve. Steve, whose hand snapped forward and blocked the door from closing before it could lock in front of him. Who swung it right back open again, face hard and determined as he stepped into Tony’s room.
“Don’t do that,” he said angrily.
“Get out of my room.”
“No. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“
Nothing’s–”
“You say I don’t know you Tony, but I do. I know you’re gonna try and say a bunch of mean, childish shit to force me to storm off. I know you’re gonna push as hard as you can because you’re obsessed with dealing with everything all on your own. But I’m not going to let you. So let’s just cut out the fucking middleman, shall we?” Steve stepped forward with an exasperated roll of his eyes, while his hands fell on each of Tony’s shoulders. His touch was surprisingly gentle. When he looked at Tony, it was with a gaze that didn’t waver, not for a moment.
“Tell me what is wrong,” he said again.
Tony glared back. Debated a few options in his head. But Steve seemed to have him all figured out, and Tony wasn’t quite so desperate as to say the things to Steve that he really couldn’t take back. Nor was he going to tell him the truth of the matter. God, Fury was right, SHIELD was right, this had compromised Tony in ways that he wasn’t even ready to fully admit to himself yet, and the worst part was that he knew it. He knew it and he wasn’t going to change anything despite that. He couldn’t.
He wanted to laugh. Why did it have to be Steve who knocked on his goddamn door?
“I’m sick,” he responded tightly, shutting his eyes. “I’m just sick, Steve.”
Steve looked at him for a moment. “That’s all?” He asked.
Tony waved a hand. “Well, it’s a bit of a bigger issue when you consider that I appear to have caught the flu in a society that’s real fucking trigger-happy when it comes to their treatment of sick people.” Yeah - he could work with this angle. “If they find out, they might assume it’s Hanahaki, and you know what they’ll do to me then. So as you can imagine, yes, I am a little fucking stressed out.”
Steve processed that for a moment, looking deeply concerned. He’d bought it.
“Shit,” he murmured. His hands, Tony noted, were still pressing into his shoulders. “Well why didn’t you just say that?”
“I’m trying to keep it on the hush, Steve. It’s kind of counterintuitive to go telling everyone.”
“Yes, but we’re your team .” That strained, frustrated look was back on his face again. He was still holding Tony’s shoulders. “How badly do you think you’re coming down with it?” Without even asking, Steve pressed the back of his hand to Tony’s forehead, a move so intimate, so loaded with care that it made Tony feel sick. “You’ve definitely got a temperature.”
The urge to cough hit him fast and hard. Burying his mouth into the crook of his elbow and stumbling away from Steve’s hands, he wheezed for a few moments, feeling a bloom of petals regurgitate their way up his trachea. His eyes burned, and he made a vague ‘wait there’ gesture to Steve as he once again stumbled to the toilet, slamming the door shut behind him. Not even a second later, he was leaning over the sink and spitting them out in a near-uncontrollable, disgusting wave.
Above him, the lights buzzed. He stared at the petals in the sink, breathing hard, and wondered how something so beautiful and delicate could produce such misery.
It was only a minute or so before he stepped back out into the room. Steve was waiting at the door for him, concern evident on his face. He cared so much. Just not in the way Tony needed him to.
“I’m fine,” Tony began.
“You’re very obviously not fine.”
“Okay. I’m sick, but fine. I get sick all the time. I just need to rest, and the worst will probably pass soon.” Tony cleared his throat and rubbed his aching neck, looking down at his feet so as to avoid the look Steve was giving him.
Everything felt different now that he knew the truth. Steve’s niceness, his care, his gentle touches and deep concern- it was just that. There was no deeper reason behind it. Tony was his teammate and his friend and the guy he slept with when he needed to take the edge off, and that was it.
Any hope Tony had previously had now just clung to him like a dead weight. A carcass. And maybe under normal circumstances, he could shake it off - find a way to ignore it, drink it quiet, run to the West Coast or Singapore or some other city that had an abundance of pretty faces and a distinct lack of Steve Rogers. He could sleep with a dozen other people and lie so hard to himself about the reason for it that he eventually ended up falling for his own facade.
But there was absolutely no way to escape here. There was no Singapore. There wasn’t even any fucking booze. Steve was here, in his room, while Tony’s erroneous judgement killed him from the inside out. Literally.
God had a sick sense of humour.
“Hey,” Steve’s voice was gentle, and he ducked his head lower, searching for Tony’s attention until he conceded and looked up at the other man. There was something determined in his eyes. “I bet your neck’s killing you, huh? Used to happen to me too. All that coughing and wheezing would make my whole damn body seize up.”
Tony wondered where he was going with this. “It’s definitely been better,” he agreed.
Steve smiled at him, and then walked over to Tony’s bed and picked up a pillow. He threw it down on the floor, before turning his head back to Tony. “Lucky for you, I give a mean massage.”
Oh no. No, no, absolutely not. Tony shook his head and stepped away, because there was no way in hell he could take that. “I’m good,” he said hurriedly, “trust me, I’m good.”
“Tony.” Steve’s voice was firm. “Come on. Just let someone help you for once in your life. I promise it’ll make you feel better.”
It would make him feel so much better, Tony thought miserably. That was the whole problem.
But Steve’s face was so earnest, and he held out a hand across the room, silently asking Tony to take it, to trust him, to let him in. Why couldn’t he have just taken the goddamn bait, huh? Why couldn’t he have just been like everyone else who Tony snapped at? Why did he have to be so stubborn and self-assured and impervious to all the usual barbs that’d once worked so effectively? Tony hated that. Life was a poker game and it felt like Steve had caught onto all his tells. He was like a declawed cat. It was humiliating.
He stepped forward.
With a smile of relief, Steve’s fingers curled around Tony’s shoulder, gently pulling him forward. He sat on the bed, knees spread, and gestured to the pillow laid out between his legs. “Sit,” he told Tony.
Christ.
There was little choice in the matter - Tony didn’t want to start an argument with the other man by fighting it. So, shutting his eyes and briefly contemplating why he did this to himself, Tony turned and sank to the floor, settling between Steve’s thighs. He watched Steve’s hands delve into his left pocket, pulling out a tube of hand cream. Tony’s eyebrow arched. “Your cargo trousers are like Mary Poppins’ bag. What else you got in there, huh? A Benadryl? A teleporter? I could use either.”
Above him, Steve huffed, leaning down to unbutton the first few buttons of Tony’s shirt. “I like to be prepared,” he stated as he poured a liberal amount of the hand cream onto his palms, making sure they were slick with moisturising oil. “And my hands get dry.”
“Hm. I’d ask what your explanation was for the lube, but that kinda speaks for itself.”
“Sticking my dick in things,” Steve completed the unspoken, voice dry. He sighed as his hands settled delicately against each side of Tony’s neck, beginning to smooth gently up and down the hot skin there. Tony swallowed. “I wish you didn’t do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
Steve’s thumbs pressed down, rubbed gentle circles into the part where neck met scalp. God, it was nice. “Every time we argue, you bring up the fact that we - you know. Sleep together.”
Tony said nothing for a moment, trying not to make a pleased noise when Steve’s walm palms slid under the loose collar of his shirt, across the top of his shoulders. “Not every time,” he mumbled.
“Pretty much.” Steve was working at the tension around Tony’s neck - but his fingers stilled for a moment as he took a small breath in. “I don’t want you to think that’s all I think of you as,” he declared, pushing his voice out more confidently than Tony knew it really was. “You’re not… you’re more than that. To me.”
Tony screwed his eyes shut, glad that Steve couldn’t see the expression marring his face. “I know,” he said, finding himself sliding sideways against the pressure of Steve’s fingers as they worked at the knot on the right side of his shoulder. He made a low noise in the back of his throat, the tension leaching out of him. “You’re my friend first and foremost, right?”
There was a soft sigh above him. Steve’s thumb stroked, just once, across the line of Tony’s jaw, the motion almost absent. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly, “exactly.”
Exactly.
“I don’t mean to throw it back in your face,” Tony told him, running a hand across his face. “It’s… I dunno. Bad habit. Sorry.”
“I know you don’t mean it.”
“You do? I must be losing my touch.”
Steve laughed gently. “Going soft in your old age, I think.”
Asshole. Tony clicked his tongue and punched down at Steve’s shoe. “Oh, can it, you were born in the Great Depression.”
“We’ve been over this. Doesn’t count, I didn’t age in the ice - I’m not a day over 25.”
“Historical records say otherwise, Captain.”
“Historical records can be misleading.” Steve pinched his thumb and forefinger together, catching some strands of Tony’s hair and giving him a gentle tug of admonishment. Tony grinned, tilting his head upward until he was looking at Steve.
“What other inaccurate lies have historical records been claiming about you then, babyface?” He asked.
Steve didn’t even miss a beat. “They always fucking say I was 5’4. I was actually 5’6, which isn’t even that short. They just like to pretend I could’a been knocked over by small gusts of wind.”
“Of course,” Tony hummed, “everyone knows it was the moderate gusts that were the real danger. And God forbid you got caught in a gale.”
Steve flicked him on the ear. “I don’t know why I talk to you, you know.”
“It’s a puzzle that Rhodey could talk to you about for hours. I think it’s got something to do with my disarmingly radiant smile and alluring air of mystery.”
“And what does Rhodey say?”
“Stockholm Syndrome.”
Steve laughed, and it made Tony’s heart flutter. His forehead was now resting against the inseam of Steve’s trousers, pushing into him with every motion of Steve’s hands. He should stop. He should say he’d had enough. Already, his chest was starting to tighten, his throat was getting irritated. He could feel it now - the petals had a very specific kind of pain to them, and Tony had no doubt that sitting here and letting Steve do this to him was just making everything worse.
And yet he didn’t move, except to sink further into the bliss of Steve’s hands against him. Steve was right, he really did give a mean massage. Everything combined - the gentle tingle that came from Steve’s hands against his skin, the relief of his muscles unwinding, the very presence and touch and smell of Steve around him - and Tony felt like he was floating. He groaned as Steve kneaded the heel of his palm into one of his traps, and then heard Steve’s melodic laughter sound out once again.
“Shut up.” Tony tried to be sharp, but his voice just came out as a slurred mutter. God, he felt fucking drunk.
“Sorry,” Steve told him, “you’re just… it’s nice seeing you like this. Relaxed for once. I feel kinda powerful now. Like I’ve unlocked some big secret.”
Tony’s mouth creased into a smile, and he hid it against the inside of Steve’s thigh. “Don’t tell anyone,” he muttered, “S’my achilles heel. All the stockholders’ll start trying to give me a shoulder rub every time I tell ‘em no.”
“I’ll take it to the grave,” Steve promised solemnly. His thumb brushed across the side of Tony’s face again. Tony felt his fingertip as it slid past the outer corner of his mouth, and he sighed, head jolting for a second as he instinctively tried to chase it. He barely kept himself from whining when the warmth disappeared from his cheek.
Perhaps the Pavelixxians were right. Perhaps people like him really were weak, pathetic. But Tony was an addict and he always would be. This was just one of the many other vices that he was never going to be able to kick. C’est la vie.
They must’ve stayed like that forever. It sure felt like it: with Steve’s hands kneading into his body, drawing out every ache and pain that Tony hadn’t even realised he was carrying with him until he was free of it. It was blissful and beautiful, and of course, that meant it came at a cost.
Tony had felt it building for a while, and when he finally coughed, it was with the hope that it would just clear his throat. But he couldn’t prevent the inevitable. Curling up into himself and burying his mouth into his elbow, Tony’s chest convulsed and he felt the petals as they forced their way up into his mouth. There was nothing he could do to stop it.
“It’s alright.” Tony hadn’t even been aware that Steve’s hands were still on him until he felt them pat his back, rub a circle around his spine. “S’okay, it’ll pass. You’re alright.”
Tony winced. His mouth was now full of sickly sweet flowers - a punishment for the liberties he’d let himself take.
Getting to his feet silently, he reached for the glass on his dresser with the intention of slipping off to the bathroom. But Steve jumped into action as soon as he saw Tony’s fingers stretch for it. Beating him to it, he snapped up the glass and jumped to his feet. “I’ll do it,” he said, pressing a hand against Tony’s chest until he fell back onto the bed.
While Steve’s back was turned, Tony hastily pulled the petals from his mouth and dropped them into the bin next to the bed.
“I think you should go,” Tony told the other man as he came back into the room with the water in hand. He looked up at Steve and gave him a small smile. “I won’t be good company tonight.”
Steve handed him the glass. “I didn’t come here for good company. I came here to make sure you were alright. Let me stay and distract you - I always found that helped–”
Tony shook his head. “Please. I just… I want to be alone. Maybe sleep for a million years, if I’ve got time.”
Steve stood in front of him and frowned a little. It wasn’t in his nature to leave people, Tony knew that, but he couldn’t keep Steve around. He just couldn’t - he’d end up choking to death.
“Let me stay,” Steve said again, soft, and with a look in his eyes that made Tony feel as if he’d be the one doing Steve a favour by agreeing, not the other way around. He hesitated for a moment, but then went all in, settling his hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I can’t… you’re sick–”
“Steve.” Tony knew he had to be firm - he wanted Steve to look after him, but he wanted a lot of fucking things, and all of them had screwed him over in one way or another. “Please just go. You don’t need to stay and fuss over me all night. That’s not what we are.”
Steve winced, visibly. Tony pursed his mouth and balled his hands into fists and didn’t apologise.
“Right,” he responded, clipped. “Sorry. I’ll… yeah.” He stepped
Tony nodded. “Thank you for the massage.”
“Thor and the Guardians will be here soon,” Steve assured Tony. “You can just hole up in here, get some rest. None of the Pavelixxians need to know, and Bruce can keep working on the–”
“I’ll be fine to work,” Tony interrupted. Spending any more time on this planet than was strictly necessary just wasn’t an option - Tony needed to get out so that he could find something that could cure him. It wouldn’t be found here, that was for sure. Tony had looked into it. They didn’t want to make a vaccine- anyone who took it would be only admitting to their own susceptibility. And they didn’t want a cure for those who already had it either.
If Tony had any chance of getting out of this alive, he was going to need to find the answer in another place. If, of course, he lasted that long.
Steve was quiet for a moment, before a small sigh escaped through his lips. He stood in front of Tony by the bed, all worry and care and concern - and he only thought it was a bit of flu, too. It almost made Tony want to laugh. If Steve really knew the severity of this, he’d be out of his mind, frantic. And still, despite all that, it wasn’t enough. Not for Hanahaki.
Briefly, in the midst of their quiet moment, Steve raised his hand and settled it against the side of Tony’s face. It lasted only a second - was only the smallest point of contact. Steve’s hand was warm. He looked at Tony with soft eyes.
“Drink lots of water,” Steve told him, “sleep. If you need anything, just come get me–”
“Alright,
alright
, mother hen.” Tony laughed and pulled away from Steve’s hand with a shake of his head. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a bug. I’ve dealt with plenty.”
“Not on the planet built from a eugenicist’s wet dream you’ve not.” Steve’s face tightened just at the word, and Tony knew he was thinking of himself. Disability had been Steve’s entire life until five years ago, and the 1940’s hadn’t exactly been a utopia - a fascist empire had been built on the idea that there was a perfect kind of human, and everything else was dirt. For Steve, this was personal. It was painful. “Keep your head down. We’ll cover for you. Natasha’s good at lying - we’ll just let her loose on ‘em, she can explain your absence.”
Tony nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
Steve seemed satisfied. Not happy, per se- if he were to be happy, then he’d still be staying in Tony’s room, fussing over him - but satisfied. He left the room and Tony shut the door behind him with a gentle clack, before twisting around and letting his back drag against the solid oak, down and down, until he hit the floor. He shut his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face.
He could do this, he thought to himself adamantly. Avoid detection. Fix the ship. Get the hell out. Somehow synthesise or find a cure somewhere. Easy.
“Easy,” he reiterated, before spitting up a petal again. This one came up tinted red, and it left a metallic aftertaste on Tony’s tongue.