fossilised | Birthday fun

Birthday fun

It all started with a cake. Not enough stories these days did anymore, especially not in the lives of the Avengers. This wasn't just any cake either. It wasn't store-bought, picked up from the grocery with a hope that the teenager doing the lettering spelled a name correctly. It wasn't from a fancy bakery, though the person who had taken it upon himself to do the baking could have afforded something outlandish. No, this cake came from various boxes and cartons, the contents of which were painstakingly mixed together in more or less the way the recipe card was read off.

There may have been some corners cut, the eggs might not have been carefully folded (mostly because how do you fold eggs when they're goopy), the buttercream might be too runny, but the result was still fairly remarkable.

Even more remarkable was how intact it arrived, in a box in the back of an Audi, to all the usual fanfare Tony himself enjoyed when speeding through the security gates that those working at the Compound feverishly rushes to open for him. One scratch on that car would mean less of a Christmas bonus for everyone.

The cake was transported carefully from the back of the car towards one of the living quarters, a building shared by most of the non-retired Avengers. It did not need to be announced, so the man carrying it didn't bother to knock. Not at the front door and not at the recipient's bedroom. There was no need. No one would be awake anyway.

The time on his watch read 11:58 and so the cake was forced to wait a full two minutes until the day rolled over to be dramatically presented.

Tony Stark burst through the door and JARVIS started the Star-Spangled Banner on his cue, red and blue lights flashing. It was all beautifully patriotic, much like the cake itself, decorated to resemble Captain America's shield. "Happy Birthday, Grandpa!"

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“Who me?” That seemed like a dumb question so Tony decided it was all right to issue a dumb response. “Who do you think I am?” He already knew what Pepper thought he was, and it wasn’t good. At all. The problem was that she knew him better than himself, and evidently she’s been talking to Natasha on the phone because the redheads had conspired against him.

That was his fault for dating a strawberry blonde instead of a blond-blond. His bad.

Tony had driven onto the lawn, behind where the garage used to be, snow crunched under his tires. He was sitting on the hood of his sports car, engine still running. It was cold, he could see his breath, which might have quickened a bit when Steve showed up. Why Steve was shirtless in the dead of winter, he’d never know, but he could be extremely appreciative. His eyes moved slowly up and down over the sweat glistened skin behind transparent red glasses. Noticeable.

“I’m not not drunk,” he said, tottering off of the hood of the car to open the door and pull out a shoe box lined in waxed paper. “I made cookies. They’re all burnt.”

"You know that there are laws about drinking and driving."

Steve looked utterly unimpressed and folded his arms, not interested in the cookies at the moment. This is one of the things that infuriated him about Tony, the way he seemed to pick and choose which rules should apply to him, and yet hold other people to his standards without leeway.

"You could've really hurt someone, killed them even, and yourself. Give me your keys, I'm not letting you drive again while you're inebriated."

He unfolded his arms long enough to hold one hand out, waiting for the keys to be given to him.

“JARVIS drove,” Tony snorted, opening the box and taking out a black as sin cookie that looked more like a poker chip. He tried to eat it, though his teeth weren’t really cooperating.

As crumbs tumbled down his chin, JARVIS spoke up from the dashboard of the car. “Most of the way, sir, though I did not park you on the grass.”

“Okay, right, but you did cut the ignition—“

“Which is why you aren’t parked half up a tree,” the AI said, somehow sounding judgmental in his neutrality.

Huffing, Tony attacked the cookie again and when Steve still held his hand out, Tony stuck the half chewed cookie into his palm. “I wanted to see you. Maybe not this much if you right this second... I don’t need the keys anyway.”

Steve arched a brow at the cookie and then carefully put it into his pocket, wrapped in a proper cloth handkerchief. Not that he was planning on eating it, but he wasn't about to litter by just throwing it on the ground either.

"Fine. JARVIS, can you please lock the car up and only open it if Tony scores an acceptable level on a breathaliser test?"

"Yes, Captain Rogers."

Steve wasn't sure if the AI would obey him, so it was a pleasant surprise when the car doors all suddenly shut and sealed themselves off.

"Good, thanks. Right-- so, Tony, why did you want to see me?"

“Can’t someone just want to see someone else?” It wasn’t a great answer. No answer Tony could give would be right now. He shouldn’t have said anything but the half bottle of Jack rolling around in his system wasn’t really being polite. He should have gone for the higher end scotch. Shit. “I mean, I actually wanted to check up on everything here. Ready for me yet? Done clearing rubble?”

Tony put his hands in his pockets. It was cold, standing here. He still had cuts and bruises all over his face and despite the three piece suit he was sporting, he looked pretty terrible.

“I need to get some surveys done. I have a few dozen sets of armor needing to be dragged out of the water and drained. Industrial fans aren’t gonna cut it for these ones. Don’t you feel the cold at all? Jesus.” Usually he refrained from taking the Lord’s name in vain so that Steve didn’t give him a look, but there was no look that could stop him right now. “Can you put a shirt on? You’re distracting.”

Steve hadn't known what to do with these sorts of comments in the past, but he had decided that they all fell under the umbrella of Tony making snide remarks about how all of his muscles and things were from the serum. Distracting because he was making Tony look smaller, perhaps? Sometimes he saw how Natasha looked at the pair of them, like Steve was missing something obvious, but he had no idea what it was.

He sighed and started to head back in towards where the building materials were, because that's where he'd left his shirt.

"I don't understand why you come out here so much if you're so sure that you don't want to live out here and be a part of the team." He wanted Tony to reconsider, they had almost been a family that brief time they had managed to live in the Tower together. "Why don't you change your mind?"

“If you had a house like I did in California and a load of baggage living anywhere your dad might consider his roof, you might only come out for sporadic visits too,” Tony replied, following Steve a little like a duckling for the way he was waddling, box of hockey puck baked goods under one arm. He was thinking that a good over night soak in milk might do the trick. Or cause an eruption. Whatever cane first. “Plus, big Tower in the city. I used to like it there too.”

But twelve and a half percent that represented of his girlfriend no longer wanted to live there. The whole thing was supposed to be for... what? A base of operations? As status symbol? The Avengers had chosen the Compound over the Tower. So be it.

“You could see everything. And off of my cool stuff was there. Oh well. House is gone. Pepper’s got the Tower. I’m taking the garage. As soon as it’s done being rebuilt. Do you paint walls? Last set of painters I had in we’re suspect. You can leave your shirt off for that too.”

Steve had got a lot better at following along with Tony's erratic speech patterns, but sometimes he still got left in the dust. Like now. Was Tony saying that he wanted to move into the garage here, or just that he was claiming it for all of his suits and still intended to live elsewhere? What did he mean that Pepper had the Tower? Weren't they living together any more?

He rubbed at his forehead, blue eyes earnestly baffled, and went with the easiest one of those to decode. "I thought my being shirtless was distracting, now it's mandatory?"

Honestly, Tony.

"But I can paint, though I haven't done any flat washes in a long time."

“I’m still confused myself,” Tony muttered, fixated on Steve’s shoulder muscles before the blond turned slightly and he could see the curve of his profile. There went his heart rate again and he hated it. “You are distracting. It’s not mandatory, just appreciated.”

Fuck his damned mouth.

“I have some of the rescue squad bringing my things. JARVIS is piloting them too, even if I’m perfectly capable. He locked me out. I have a few hours until they start parachuting my stuff on the lawn. Any of the warehouses still standing?”

Okay, so that sounded more like he actually intended to move in here with the rest of them, and that made Steve flash him a genuine smile. Though it faded only a second or two later as he took in the implications of that.

"Tony-- has something happened with you and Pepper?"

He could answer questions about the warehouses later, but right now he was concerned about his friend. Maybe this was why he had got so drunk, he always did seem to have self destructive tendencies when he was sad.

Steve was talking to him. It seemed important, Tony could see his lips form ‘Pepper’ and that just made his head blank. At least it still worked, though, and he could shake it slightly. It didn’t appreciate being jostled though. A little smirk curled at the edges of his lips, but there was nothing mirthful about it. The shine of his eyes behind the lenses were dim at best.

Maybe that was just the alcohol though?

When Steve got to his shirt, Tony made a sad little huff and then stopped to sit on a pile of beams or flooring or whatever it used to be.

His breath was becoming almost painful in his throat, but he liked it.

“Can we go inside? I’m not in the Polar Bear Club.”

Steve grabbed his shirt and tugged it over his head, wriggling his shoulders a little to ease the sticky sensation of having put on a shirt over sweaty skin, and rolled his eyes as Tony complained a little more. Especially since he was doing it to keep from answering Steve's question.

"Yeah, we can go inside, but I'm still gonna want to hear about you and Pepper when we're in there."

He's worried, and not just about Tony. Maybe something had gone wrong with Extremis and now Pepper was gravely hurt, or ill, or-- all sorts of bad situations. Any one of which could have sent Tony here in the depths of drink.

“Can you let it go?” Tony knew the answer already. Steve didn’t let things go. His tenacity was literally legendary. He could almost feel, along his palms, the way that shirt might feel, slicking down against wet skin. Pepper’s confrontation, the way she had spelled it out to him, the accusations she leveled at him, had stripped Tony of his look-don’t-touch center of wellness.

There was no current center at all. It had been balled up and thrown in the trash along with his relationship.

Tony led the way inside, managing a more or less straight line through the snow to the main building. At least it was only partially destroyed, and the two back rooms had been closed off to await roof and wall repair. Tony moved right to the conference room and had JARVIS brew him some coffee as Steve followed. If he didn’t shut the door on his own, Tony would tell him to.

“Pepper and I broke up. That’s all. Nothing happened, really. I can’t stop being me. I put her in too much danger. She wants and deserves a lot better.”

It was hard to dismiss the guilty memory of how many times Steve had privately wondered why Pepper had put up with Tony for as long as she did. Because while he could be kind and selfless, he was far more often selfish and thoughtless and rude. She was a very intelligent woman who deserved to be treated well.

Still, it made his heart sink a bit, because he knew that Tony had really loved her, and had tried to do best for her in his own way. So he closed the distance between them and put a hand on his friend's shoulder, squeezing gently.

"I'm sorry, Tony."

And he was. Genuinely.

"We're all here for you, but you can't drink yourself to death over it."

“I’m not drinking myself to death over it.” But he let the touch linger and that made him want to drink himself to death. The alcohol wasn’t helping. He had honestly not been sure that it would, but a guy can hope, right? The tingle in his belly just seemed worse than normal and eventually, Tony did slide out from under Steve’s well intentioned hand. “I’m fine. Everyone is fine. Or will be, once I get started.

But first, coffee. Thankfully Steve was called away not too long after by a traitorous redhead who supposedly was trained to keep her mouth shut and couldn’t.

It was a relief to be alone. For the moment.

Over the next few days, Tony was taken to staring at Steve whenever they were together. He made comments like always, but they were sharp and often directed at himself, muttered and maybe a little more broody than Tony usually let himself be around other people.

Watching Steve paint, watching him put up dry wall, watching him eat— Tony knew obsession when he was experiencing it and this was absolutely obsession. He had to get it out of his system.

The Compound was quiet when a very sober Tony Stark knocked on Steve’s door. He could hear music playing, but he didn’t worry about interrupting anything. This had to end.

Steve was beginning to get annoyed with Natasha whenever they sparred or worked together now; oh, he was fond of her in the way that he loved all of his close friends, but that didn't stop it being incredibly frustrating to be on the end of those knowing half smiles. Like she was privy to a secret that concerned him, and if he'd just stop being blind then he'd know what she meant.

It had him retreating more and more to himself over the next few days. He spent hours rebuilding and painting the sections of the compound that needed it, and then holed up in his room sketching. He doesn't do as much drawing as he used to back before the war, but there seems to be less for him to draw now. Less that speaks to him personally, rather than the mission as Captain America.

Polite as always, he turned off the music before he answered the door, and gave Tony a welcoming smile as he stepped to one side.

"Oh-- hey, I wasn't expecting company, but won't you come in? I think I have some coffee somewhere that I can make."

“No coffee for me.” But leave it to Steve to always be a good host. Tony only appeared to be, but he usually had people doing it for him. Hands in the pockets of black jeans, the three piece suit replaced with a black graphic t-shirt, Tony brushed an inch from Steve’s chest with his elbow and took a good look at a room he hadn’t been in since Steve’s birthday.

He didn’t know what he was even looking for, honestly. It wasn’t like answers would appear in mid-air.

There was a casual tension in his shoulders as he turned, his easy smile painted on. “Can we talk? Actually, can I handcuff you to a chair and drop your shield in one of the retention ponds first before we talk? It’ll be safer, physically, for me.”

"Uh, sure."

Tony didn't often look this serious, he generally tended to couch serious discussions amongst inappropriate jokes and the kind of flippant tone that said he didn't care about the outcome. It was all baloney, of course, Steve knew that Tony cared a lot more than he said he did.

But this? The absolute seriousness and almost nerves, despite the smile that was so fake even Steve could see through it, it was unnerving.

"You can talk to me about anything, Tony. Have seat, take your time."

Tony didn’t have a lot of time. He was frustrated by that, and angry too, at himself more than at Steve. He had been through a great deal, tried his best to see that the outcome would be good for those around him, and ended up losing.

Pepper asked him to get rid of the reactor. He didn’t need it, she said. Helen Cho worked miracles for her and had been messing around with the idea of creating a device to rapidly stimulate cell growth. All Tony needed to do was contact her. They could collaborate—

And that had spiraled then down to Pepper finally asking Tony, point blank, if he was in love with Steve Rogers or if it was just lust. How they got from medical technology to Steve was a journey he couldn’t replicate if he tried.

Tell this to Steve wouldn’t be quite so circuitous, however. Tony didn’t need to take a seat. He didn’t need to take his time.

“I have a massive problem with you,” Tony said, glum but intense. “And everyone knows about it too. You probably do too but you’re that stand up guy that would never say a word to me.”

It wasn’t fair, the hostility, but Tony worked better under his own imposed duress.

“I’m in love with you. I’m not blaming you for that. It’s my own fault.”

Oh.

Oh.

For a wild moment, Steve thinks that Tony is making another inappropriate joke, or even a reference to something that he hasn't seen yet. But it's obvious that he's not. The look on his face is that of a man awaiting the executioner to swing the axe, like he thinks that Steve is going to vilify him for an emotion that he can't help feeling. And that makes him a little mad.

He's never ever held what someone feels against them, not unless it actively hurts someone else, and he wouldn't do it in this regard. Though he does have to admit that the confession is a total shock to him and he has no idea how he feels about it in return, because he's not been looking.

"Is-- is that what happened between you and Pepper?"

The question is quietly neutral, just to give him some breathing room to try and process this before he needs to give an answer.

“Probably. Mostly. Also my ego and my work ethic and my inability to remember her birthday and make you a home made cake so wait. Yeah. That last one is still you. Ah shit. I’m such a shit.” Only drunk Tony would say that about himself and he decided to take Steve up on the initial sit offer, sighing softly as he did so. His head hurt, but not in the pleasant way that signaled new ideas and work to keep his hands and brain busy.

He slumped into Steve’s couch as if he had been poured onto the cushions, knees apart and t-shirt scrunched up over his belt buckle. He looked older, lines more defined. He looked guilty, awaiting a sentence.

“Romanoff and Barton warned me. Told me. She’s right. I need to start listening to people,” he grumbled, the she being Pepper but it could easily apply to Natasha too.

Does he like Tony too?

Honestly, he has no idea. He just has never thought about him that way, and he never thought that he'd be in this situation with someone that he actually cared about telling him that they were in love with him. He's dealt with it from fans, an infatuation with Captain America rather than Steve Rogers, and that's always been easy to deflect. This... not so much. He doesn't even know if he wants to deflect.

"Thanks... for telling me, that was really brave."

He means that. Even if the times have changed now to be more accepting of different lifestyles, it was still a terrifying thing to put feelings out there for someone else to see and judge.

"I don't know what I feel. But maybe, if it's not too difficult, I could take you out to dinner sometime and start figuring out if I could feel the same way?"

“You’re messing with me.”

Tony dropped the hand from his face long enough to look up at Steve. The blond looked idyllic, like he was a part of the scenery that really should always be wherever Tony looked and he couldn’t help but be annoyed by feeling that way. No one should have that sort of power over anyone. Steve had no idea how crushing this all was. He just played up the nice guy role he’d always had and decided to…what?

Pity him?

How far had he sunken that he needed Steve to take him out on a pity date? The guy just called him brave for it. Tony had never felt more dumb than he did right now. Not even when he blew himself up or accidentally exploded his workshop.

"What?"

Steve's forehead crinkled in confusion and then slight anger. He always meant everything he said, he would never lie about something as important as someone else's feelings, and he wouldn't use them to make a joke. Not ever. And he didn't do pity. He knew what it was like to be pitied, he spent most of his life being the subject of pity, and he hated it with a fiery passion.

"...is that you saying no? Because I've gotta say, Tony, that's giving me mixed signals."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair.

"I'm asking you out because I can't say what I think you want me to say, I don't know how I feel, I've never looked at you that way. But maybe I can figure out what I do feel if we go on a few dates."

Dropping a few fingers so he can look at Steve between them, Tony arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect you to say anything,” he muttered. “I thought you were going to drop kick me to the moon.” That was a little dramatic, even for him. He sighed, flamboyant flip of his wrist trying to play Steve off. “I don’t— I don’t want to date you. Not once. Not a couple of times. I just wanted you to stop being so easy to look at and be around.”

It made sense to an engineer with a mind addled full of uncomfortable conversation talking points and alcohol.

“I liked our under cover hostility. And your abs. And those boots.”

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