Chapter Text
Tony was sure his hands were shaking. JARVIS was probably the only reason he was able to fly straight, and he spared a moment to be thankful his creation was staying silent and looking out for him.
It was nice to know someone cared.
He called up Pepper, because he didn’t want to do it later, when he was black-out drunk.
*Tony? What’s up?*
“I’m headed back to Malibu, Pep. Thought I should give you a heads up on that.” She was still in New York, but she did stay in his house when she had to swing by the LA plant. They had broken up, but it had been as amiable as those things ever were and they were still friends. Besides, he’d had a blonde distraction when she hooked up with Happy…
No, those were thoughts to keep away from. He didn’t need to be thinking about that right now.
*Back to Malibu?* Her voice was bewildered, and he winced at the reminder that he hadn’t made her roll with the punches for the last six months, had in fact been behaving himself admirably… *Why? What’s in LA, Tony?*
“More like what’s not in LA.”
He heard her suck in a breath. She was never stupid, his Pepper. She already knew. *Steve?* Her voice was clipped, asking for a reason instead of confirmation.
“A SHIELD plant. He was after my designs.”
The silence was heavy for a moment, but Pepper’s voice was full of steel when she spoke. “I’ll call Rhodey, he has some leave coming up. I’ve got a grocery service on speed dial, so I’ll have them stock the place before you get there, too. I’ve got meetings all week, but I’ll be there by five your time on Friday. Okay?*
Tony let out a ragged laugh. Pepper was always looking out for him. She loved him, even if not quite in the way they’d hoped at the beginning of their ill-fated relationship. “It sounds like you think you’re my mother, Pep, that’s what it sounds like.”
She was smiling, he could tell. “Please. Destruction and beer are a man’s chocolate and ice cream. What else do people do in these situations? I’m just making sure you can get it all in your house and don’t take the suit out again like you did on that one donut run.”
*
“So how likely am I to break my hand if I punch him in the face?” Rhodey’s voice broke into Tony’s reverie, and he turned to give his oldest friend a grin.
“Feeling protective, gumdrop?” He got up to accept Rhodey’s hug before pouring the other man a drink. “Far too likely for my piece of mind. Unless you took War Machine, that is.” He saluted the taller man with his own drink before knocking it back. “What do you think, will Mommy and Daddy let you borrow the car to go beat up an American icon?”
“I’ll just tell them I’m bringing it here for repairs and stress testing.” Rhodey replied, knocking his own drink back. “Right now I’m very interested in how the gauntlets will hold up against super-soldier jaw. It’ll have to be rigorous scientific testing, though, with repeat trials, and maybe using Hammer as a control.”
Tony was laughing by the end of Rhodey’s impassioned little rant, much to the annoyance of his friend if the look on his face was anything to go by. “How much have you had to drink, anyway?”
Tony turned serious in a heartbeat. “Not enough.” He ran his hand through his hair, tugging at it in frustration. “I really thought this was real, you know? And then I learn it was all Nick Fucking Fury fucking with me again.” He gave Rhodey a wry grin. “I should be glad he didn’t stab me in the neck, shouldn’t I? It’d follow the pattern…”
Rhodey sighed and pulled his friend down onto the couch. Despite his vocal protests, Tony was more than drunk enough to cuddle up under his friend’s arm, both ignoring the growing damp patch on the pilot’s uniform shirt.
Rhodey was just about drifting off himself when Tony spoke again, his voice soft and vulnerable in a way he wished he’d never had to hear. “Rhodey? Do you think anyone will ever actually be able to love me?”
He sighed as he ran a hand through his best friend’s hair, momentarily distracted by the subtle differences between his dark skin and Tony’s dark hair that was brought into sharp contrast by the soft light of the reactor. “Yeah, Tony, I do.” He said, cursing his orientation once again for keeping him from being able to be with Tony like they both had hoped so many years ago. They were always going to be almost painfully platonic on his side, and he hated having to friend-zone such an amazing person.
How could that dick have had a chance at Tony and thrown it away for something as unimportant as schematics? He thought, not for the first time. Tony started snoring next to him, and he shifted into a more comfortable position. His best friend needed him, and he wasn’t going to let him down.
Tony didn’t deserve to be let down, though it happened far too often. Rhodey would be here, though, as he always was, ready and willing to help pick up the pieces and protect the human under the steel mask he wore for the public.
It was all he could do, and he cursed Rogers even more for making him do this again.
*
“Looking pathetic isn’t going to get you back into anyone’s good graces, you know. We’ve all seen better actors before.” Pepper didn’t even try to hide her smirk as her voice made a buck-naked Steve Rogers jolt and fall over.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… What?” He looked bewildered for a moment before his expression darkened. He’d jumped to his feet at the beginning of his apology, obviously searching for his pants. “Oh. No, no, I’m not fishing for anything. I just… I’m sorry, I wasn’t planning on still being here when you came over. We weren’t expecting you till evening is all. Did Tony send you? I’ll leave, obviously, it’s not like I could really stay after this, even if I thought there might be something to be salvaged…”
“It is evening.” She said, cutting off the ramble coming from the obviously frazzled man before her. “Seven oh nine, to be precise.” She popped the ‘oh’ in emphasis, noting the suppressed flinch at the sharp sound. Interesting.
“Oh.” He replied, staring down at the shirt in his hands with a furrow digging in between his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize it was that late. I’m very sorry. I… I should have been gone by now, shouldn’t I?”
Pepper crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb, menace in every line of her body despite her casual pose. “You should have been gone the first time you used his childhood hero worship to rat him out to Fury.” She pointed out, just to watch him flinch again. “You should have been gone before you got a chance to learn his blackmail and emotional manipulation points.” She pushed off and stalked towards him, regretting for a moment the carpet on Tony’s floor. The sharp rapping of her heels would have been overkill on any other day, but she didn’t think she was capable of considering anything overkill at the moment. “You should have been gone before you convinced him you could be happy together.”
Ste-Rogers looked at the shirt still twisted in his hands with an expression so woebegone she almost believed it was real. She stopped right in front of him, and waited till he raised his eyes before continuing. “Did he ever tell you about Yinsen? Gulmira? Did you text SHIELD the details he gasps when coming up from a nightmare so they’d know where to lean when they put pressure on him? Did you drop him on the couch like a sack of potatoes and take advantage of JARVIS’s lessened monitoring to rifle through the workshop after fucking him? Did you whisper to him as he was drifting off that just one more weapon, and only for SHIELD, wouldn’t hurt? Did you hint that he wasn’t worthy of his father’s legacy, since he was being selfish and keeping Fury’s hands off the Iron Man suit? That would have made your day, wouldn’t it? Then you could have one of their perfect little toy soldiers as backup instead of someone as unreliable as Tony watching your back, hmm?”
She was just about to continue when the sound of cloth tearing brought her to a startled halt. “Stop it!” Rogers hissed, his face close to hers and absolutely livid. “Don’t you dare say things like that about Tony! He’s selfless and loving and brilliant and perfect, as you damn well know! There is no one I’d ever want to see in that armour except him! He gives so much to make sure that the important things are done right, and he pours his whole being, his heart and soul, into what he does out there! He’s worthy of everything and is more, so much more, than even his father could ever have been! Tony is the best, most amazing person I’ve ever had the honour to meet, and I will not listen to you cheapening him like this!”
She met his eyes impassively, her anger not even letting her be worried about enraging a super soldier.
“You’re the one cheapening him, daring to play with his heart like you did. You turned something he cherished into a fuck with a whore, regardless of it being Fury that paid you, not him.” He flinched again, a full body thing that would have aroused sympathy in any other situation, his eyes dropping to the ruined shirt he was clenching hard enough that his knuckles were white. “Get your jacket and your bike and go. I’ll have your stuff returned to SHIELD in the morning, minus anything that even tangentially touches on his work. That’s being torched so it can’t ever be used against him. I’d better not ever see your face again, Captain Rogers. Secret identity or no, I will slap a restraining order on you so fast your head will spin.”
She shooed him towards the door, almost pushing when he halted just within the room he’d shared with Tony almost every night for the past few weeks. “I know you don’t believe me, but I do love him. Not because SHIELD ordered me to pretend, but because he’s amazing.” His fingers trailed over a silk tie, one of Tony’s favourite ones, resting haphazardly on the table where it had likely landed after being tossed off rather enthusiastically the night before. “Can I… Would it be too much…” He trailed off, his voice forlorn, and Pepper bit her lip worriedly.
Should she let him? Tony loved the tie because it was the colour of Rogers’ eyes, and likely wouldn’t want to see it again. There was no harm in what he asked, regardless of her not believing his confession. She didn’t think he was the type to keep trophies, but she hadn’t thought he’d been the type to play games like he did either… “Fine.” She gritted out, despite being sure she’d regret it in the morning. “But only because that particular article was bound for the incinerator anyway.”
He picked it up tenderly, and she felt her hackles rising and a growl forming in her throat despite having given permission. He didn’t seem to notice, just resumed his journey out of the tower as if he hadn’t stopped to grab a memento.
He didn’t look back, and Pepper wasn’t sure if she preferred it that way or not.
*
He’d clenched his fists hard enough during Pepper’s little speech to leave blood all over his jeans. He stared at the faint proof that he’d bled over the breakup with his stomach roiling in disgust. He’d never felt as low, as worthless, as he did now. Even before the serum he’d known who he was and what he stood for, something he didn’t know anymore.
“For the good of the nation.” He remembered the senator all but purring in his ear as the man grasped his shoulder and showed Steve a video of Tony Stark blatantly disrespecting a Senatorial hearing. “Surely you can see why something so powerful in the hands of someone so wild is dangerous. What happens when he gets bored of playing hero? This is only for his amusement, after all.”
Steve had listened, and Steve had rationalized, and now Steve was paying the price for that. Tony was nothing like what he’d been lead to believe. Agent Romanov, who had been the one to write the file on the man, had warned him of that. “Stark’s a lot of things, and capable of being explained on paper is not one of them. Tread carefully.” At the time he’d thought she’d been warning him about Tony, but now he wasn’t so sure. She’d been friendly, in the way only someone who knew what it was like to be unique and worshipped for a mask could be, before he’d taken the assignment, but distant after. He hadn’t even noticed, to wrapped up in his own head, and then with Tony.
Coulson, too, had been distant since he’d spoken with the Senator. The man had been all but bubbly before, so nervous and worshipful that Steve had often blushed. After… Steve wondered briefly if he’d broken the man’s trust in heroes. Captain America shouldn’t have done what Steve had done. Steve knew that, had always known that, but he’d done it anyways. For the first time, he was glad the people closest to him hadn’t survived to see the man he’d become. His mother, who taught him about God and forgiveness, Bucky, who defended him and believed in Steve’s worth, Erskine, who thought he was a good man, and Peggy, who hated those games with a passion and refused to play them herself. They wouldn’t have believed he could sink so far, become so awful…
“Captain?” Steve jerked his head up, coming face-to-face with one of the last people he wanted to see right now. Coulson was staring quizzically at him, an odd expression for such a highly trained man. “I wasn’t expecting you at base today. Your itinerary says you were planning on spending it with your…” The hesitation was only a second, and Steve wondered how long it had been there, “Mark.”
Steve laughed, a hollow sound that made Coulson’s eyes widen in shock. His hands clenched again, no doubt gouging crescents of flesh out around the nails and adding further blood to the stains on his pants. “Don’t call me that.” He grated out. “I am not Captain America. Not anymore. Captain America obviously stayed buried in the ice, and Steve Rogers doesn’t deserve that sort of respect.” Coulson was moving towards him slowly and carefully, like Steve was a wild animal he was trying not to spook. “You’ve known that since I took that mission on Tony. I’ve seen you.”
“I did have serious reservations about that mission, but it was not my call to make.” Coulson responded, his voice as controlled as ever. “Did something happen today? Agent Sanderson has been running around and causing more trouble than usual. It almost seemed like he was trying to get the paperwork to just haul Stark in and hide him here.”
“Sanderson fucked everything up, if that’s what you’re asking.” Steve replied, disgust heavy in his voice. “He called to bitch at me for my ‘lack of progress’ when Tony was in the room. He overheard.”
Coulson sucked in a startled breath at that. “You need to see Director Fury.” His voice was flat. “He needs to know about this development, and he needs to know of it yesterday.”
“I don’t give a fuck what Director Fury needs!” Steve yelled, tears blurring his vision. “It’s his fault, his and this damnable mission’s, that Tony left! I hate this! These missions where people are used and thrown away, this secrecy, the lies… I’m not suited for intelligence gathering, I’m not allowed to protect people, or even be a dancing monkey, I don’t have the training for your special ops, and I hate how you do things. I quit.”
“What?” He took a moment of vindictive pleasure in the way the unflappable Phil Coulson gaped at him.
“I quit.” He repeated, rolling the words around in his head and discovering he’d been thinking about it for a while now. Of course, he’d been planning on going straight to Tony afterwards, explaining, and throwing himself on the man’s mercy as far as living arrangements went. Steve had his SHIELD pay from the last six months, but wasn’t foolish enough to think he could live on that for long, especially since he had no government ID besides his doctored drivers licence and appeared in no databanks.
Getting a new job would be tough.
He could see these thoughts chase each other over Coulson’s face. “Captain, are you aware…”
“I know.” He cut the man off with a handwave. “I don’t care. This has been a long time coming. I quit.”
Coulson was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was quite a bit softer, almost hesitant. “Captain, you are aware that quitting won’t convince Stark to take you back, right? He probably won’t believe you when you say it.”
“I know.” His eyes were blurry with tears again, but he didn’t care. “It’s not about Tony. Well, it is, but it’s more about how you treat him. That’s not something I can stomach doing to anyone else ever again, and it’s not something I can stand by and watch, working with people who think it’s okay.”
Coulson pursed his lips. “Stark is a special case.” He said finally, the words heavy with what they didn’t say.
Steve had already figured it out, though. He was out of his time, but he wasn’t stupid. “Senator Brandt has too much military funding sway to ignore, and he hates Tony.” Was his blunt reply. “SHIELD still gave me the impression things were different. I didn’t think it was as big a deal nowadays when I started. I’m not changing my mind.”
“You do realize everything down to the clothes you’re wearing belongs to SHIELD, right?”
Steve got off his bike (he was still straddling the bike? Odd) and handed the keys over without a word. He loved the bike, but not that much. Then he dug his cell phone, music player, and ID card out too. “I’m afraid you’re SOL on the clothing, though, since I’m not streaking. There are children out.” He turned to go.
“Steve, wait!” It was the first time Coulson had used his first name, though he’d told the man to do so in that first week when everything was new and Coulson was helping him through it. He turned back, one eyebrow raised quizzically.
“Here.” Coulson held out a card. “It’s my SHIELD number, but I always answer it. Just… If you need anything…”
He smiled as he took it, though he promised himself to never call. He was done with SHIELD. Tony was done with him, he was done with SHIELD, and it was about time he figured out Steve Rogers’ place in the 21st century.