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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Okay, so apparently Tony didn't have anything to say to him once sober. Steve had been dumb for thinking that maybe, just maybe, he'd have thought about the way he'd been treating a supposed friend and apologise. But that was dumb, because Tony Stark only ever thought about himself, and if something went wrong then clearly it was other people out to get him.

When Steve showed up to the training room in the morning, dressed in loose sweats and a t-shirt, he looked disappointed. But there was nothing else to say, he wasn't about to keep fighting someone to be respected just to be yelled at some more.

"--okay, I guess we're picking up where we left off with defensive blocks."

It was just easier to ignore that yesterday even happened, though Tony was well aware that most people couldn’t function like that. He was still half drooping, eyelids lowered, lips pressed together in a thin line as he nodded at Steve. Defensive blocks sounded right up his alley at the moment and he was in no position to argue right now anyway.

“Show me,” the older man grumbled, though that would require actually looking at Steve.

Sitting on the trilevel benches that made an L shape around the north and west wall, Natasha whispered something to Clint and money exchanged hands. They were being quiet and out of site in a shadow cast by one of Steve’s punching bags. They’d been there since the blond started warming up, though it was doubtful he’d noticed them. Tony certainly did not.

When Steve changed his position, Tony tried to mirror him before his arms went limp again.

“I’m not sober yet. Don’t look so disapproving.”

Tony didn't even look like he cared about what they had talked about last night, maybe he had been so drunk that he didn't even remember. And then there it was, that mention that he still wasn't sober, and Steve stood back from the mat and started to unwrap the bindings on his hands right away.

"I don't even want to see you again until you're sober. I'm done with this, Tony."

He didn't see the two hiding in the shadows, or he might have been more private with what he said, less open.

"People aren't just toys to be played with, and I've had enough. You tell me you hate me, you tell me you like me, you tell me you're in love with me; but no matter which one it is, somehow you're still mad at me for it. I'm not going to be your punching bag for issues that aren't my fault, and I'm not working with you when you're drunk."

With an immediate eyeroll, Nat handed back the wad of bills to Clint and leaned back on her elbows. She hated losing to her smug best friend and though she didn’t look at him, she could tell he was smirking. It would demand a foot to his face, to be paid back later. For now, she just turned deceptively disinterested eyes on the pair, especially when Tony grabbed for Steve’s arm.

Bold move.

Perhaps more so than Steve actually stating his frustrations out loud like that. In a way, she was proud that he opened his mouth at all and didn’t just internalize it.

“Of course I hated you, growing up. You can’t be angry at me for that,” Tony said, with a better handle on his drunkenness than he had last night. “And maybe I hated you a little bit on the hellicarrier too, but you hated me a little bit too. That was the scepter, stringing out our emotions.” Why did everything with Steve have to be a battle? Tony usually was all up for a fight, but he was just so tired. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not even mad at myself. You can’t just ask people out like that, Rogers.” If asked why, he wouldn’t have a good reason.

He hadn’t been prepared for it? Yeah, that sucked.

It always had to be a battle because Tony made it a battle. Steve liked to get along with people, he generally tried to be pleasant, but Tony seemed to go out of his way to irritate and wound, like it was his sole goal in life to have everyone around him driven away.

"You had just told me that you loved me, if I was gonna ask you out why not then?"

Surely that's the point when it made the most sense?

"Let go, because I just told you that I'm not talking to you when you're drunk any more. You're a grown man, Tony, learn to act like one."

“I didn’t expect you to ask me out at all so you can’t blame me for being unprepared.” Technically, Tony was rarely prepared. He just made it up as he went along. Like now. His grip tightened after Steve told him to let go. “Make me.”

This was not the way to prove that you’re a grown up, but Tony could feel himself getting worked up, feel himself starting to itch. Maybe he was just addicted to Steve. Maybe that was why he kept coming back. Or maybe this all just stemmed from his father.

Any attention was at least attention. And Tony craved attention, no matter what sort of toll it took.

Tony was going to get attention, but it was in the form of Steve's patented big blue eyes full of disappointment. He set his hand on where Tony's fingers were gripping on and pried him loose, gently but firmly.

"Nobody can make you be an adult, Tony. Nobody can make you treat other people with respect. You have issues, we all have issues, learn to deal with it and grow up."

He had lost everyone he had ever loved and came from a background of poverty and sickness, Natasha and Clint had skeletons in their closets that would never go away, Bruce had killed hundreds and feared intimacy, Thor had family issues a mile wide. They all had problems. Tony was the only one who still behaved like a child, kicking and screaming and demanding that his issues be front and centre.

"I told you, I'm not talking to you again until you're sober, and I'm not being the crutch for your problems any more. You're my friend, I was willing to see if there could be something more, but I'm not your Pops and I'm not your therapist."

Natasha might be rolling her eyes at the top of the bleachers, but Tony actually looked hurt. That seemed counter intuitive. Nothing ever seemed to phase him. He wore his masks well, maybe a little too well, but he certainly wasn’t the emotional type. Right?

Rather than get angry, or have a snappy comment, Tony simply nodded and left, a little like his head was mounted on a hinge and all he could do was nod up and down again.

Knowing he’d messed up and acknowledging that mess up were two different things. Last night fixed him in the off position, though, and now he was paying for it.

The thing with Steve, he was a simple guy to get along with. He usually meant exactly what he said, he liked to treat people with respect, and he didn't play games with people's emotions. Which is why he'd got tired of being used as the metaphorical punching bag for Tony's issues.

It didn't mean that everything had to be ruined between them forever, just that Tony had to take a look at himself and figure out where his priorities were.

Natasha was smart enough to see that neither one of them would come out of this good, and she wanted her money back from Barton, so she slid down after both of them had left and followed Stark to wherever he'd disappeared to, falling into step beside him.

"So, he asked you out?"

“Can’t anyone have secrets around here?” Tony snapped, but with much less venom than usual. Steve had finally put the great genius in his place, which was an important first step.

“Really?” Natasha asked, dark red bob bouncing just over her shoulders.

It made Tony sigh. He wasn’t exactly grateful for her company but he wasn’t feeling like his best self at the moment and could use someone to talk to. “Yeah. He asked me out. To see how he would feel about me. A date isn’t going to help him hate me less.”

"Let me stop you right there," Natasha said, stepping around the front of Tony so that she could stop him in his path, dropping any faux amusement so that he would know she was being serious about this.

"Steve doesn't hate you. If he did, he wouldn't be cut up so much every time you lace into him, and he wouldn't have asked you out. In case you haven't noticed, he's the most annoyingly honest guy in the world. If he hated you, he'd tell you."

She hated being this honest about feelings, it gave her hives. Urgh. "Maybe think about that for a while before you get the pity party into full swing, okay?"

“You’re sort of annoying,” Tony just wanted to say here, eyes glazing over ever so slightly. He really was still drunk, maybe helped along by a little alcohol in this morning’s Irished up coffee. He couldn’t help himself.

It had so much less to do with withdraw and more to do with dampening the damned thoughts in his head. He needed to stop focusing on Steve, but that wasn’t happening.

Once upon a time, he’d given Steve accidental overtures. Why not now? He glanced at Natasha once more and then thanked her for her advice before dragging himself to the car to demand JARVIS take him to a store to buy a card. And a pen. No one used pens these days!

Natasha sighed as she watched him go, and then sighed some more when Clint told her that Steve had retreated to his room all slump-shouldered and sad. Honestly, things weren't good when she was the most emotionally smart person in the building. She was going to have to knock some heads together, wasn't she?

Steve didn't regret saying those things to Tony because they were true, what he regretted was that Tony would almost certainly just go and drink some more and mope about how Steve hated him, and never actually think beyond the surface because that would mean facing up to his own faults.

Maybe he should get away for a while.

By the time morning came again, he found himself in the gym once more, this time working his aggression out alone on the reinforced punching bags that at least stood up a little better to his strength.

Steve tended to underestimate Tony. He’d done so on the hellicarrier, and again when Tony willingly carried that missile into space on his back. He was going to underestimate him this time too, when he showed up ready to train as was usual each morning. He didn’t smell of alcohol. Steve would have just turned him away again and Tony was tired of being dismissed.

He could take rejection, but after awhile it really got to him, made him almost reckless. And wasn’t he reckless enough already?

“Want me to pass a breathalyzer or will you take my word for it,” Tony asked, arms crossed over his chest as he watched Steve’s back.

Steve gave the bag one last punch that had it groaning ominously on the chain that held it up, before turning to look at Tony. He was very carefully neutral today. He wasn't about to get into another useless argument, and he wasn't going to discuss the emotions that had been laid out before.

So he just gave a half shrug and headed on over to the ring. Tony had made it clear that he didn't want anything from Steve, and Steve was tired of taking those first steps, so he had decided that the relationship between them could be strictly professional. He could cope with it that way.

"We can work on breaking holds today," was all he said as he waited for Tony to join him.

Rollling his shoulders back and then forward, and then tilting his head to either side, Tony climbed into the ring behind Steve, more graceful than he had been in the last few days. Alcohol might slow the nagging sense of genius and stop his emotional brick wall from being overwhelming, but it also made him clumsy.

He stood opposite the blond, and then approached, dark eyes sharp and focused. “If I don’t want to break a hold?” he asked, almost like it was a hypothetical. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if Steve laid hands on him, but fight back wasn’t on the list.

At least Tony seemed to be sober now, he was moving like a man who was actually steady on his feet for once, and that loosened a bit of tension in Steve's shoulders. He was prepared to try and pretend nothing had happened, as that's what Tony seemed to want before.

"If you're in a fight, you should always try and break the hold. You want the fight to progress on your terms, not theirs. Why would you not want to break a hold?"

It's not an aggressive question, just asking in case Tony does have a good reason for it.

Steve was impossibly lovely. Even when he was all business and gruff assuredness, no one could deny that the tone of his voice and the seriousness in those cornflower blue eyes was unattractive. They might be discussing the way paint dries and Tony was sure he could find something beautiful in Steve’s end of the conversation. One corner of his mouth dipped up in a soft smirk, lopsided and almost boyish for a man pushing fifty.

“I don’t want to win this fight. And your terms were better anyway,” he said, arms still hanging by his side as he watched Steve for that first hint of realization as to what he was talking about.

Sometimes Steve could be a bit obtuse, but he wasn't an idiot, he had never been an idiot even before the serum. Besides which, Tony was hardly the most subtle human being on earth. He didn't leap right into it, though, he just folded his arms and rested his weight on his back foot, subconsciously defensive.

"I don't know, Tony."

He was wary now.

"Is this all gonna change again overnight?"

“I don’t go back on my word. I might be a lot of things but I’m not a liar.” He didn’t have to lie, after all. His business didn’t rely on it, his personality was annoying enough. He put out his hand as if sealing a deal, or at least ready to agree on some terms. “You can lead and I won’t even purposefully step on your toes.”

Maybe there had been more eloquent ways to try and get a date after outright refusing one, but Tony was only human and irrevocably flawed.

“What do you have to lose, Rogers?”

Steve gave Tony a slightly incredulous look when he said he didn't go back on his word. Wasn't the fact that he was here trying to take back what he said the previous night literally going back on his word of not wanting anything else from Steve? He was the master of going back on his word.

But he didn't want to argue any more. However, he had been hurt a lot by what Tony kept doing and saying, and so he wasn't sure he wanted to make himself vulnerable to more hurt if Tony span on a dime again the next time he decided to get drunk.

"--okay, I guess we can get coffee sometime, maybe see where things go."

It wasn't an eloquent acceptance either, but it was the best he could offer.

Semantics, Steve. Tony might argue that but he was doing his best just to hold his damned tongue. It moved around his mouth like it was alive and that posed quite the problem when he needed it to behave and not talk back. Coffee wasn’t exactly ideal, after all. It wasn’t a date. It was a necessity for long missions and early mornings.

The worst part, however, was the word ‘sometime.’ That sounded more like a never-ever to him but he tried to keep that to himself as he exhaled slowly through his nose and nodded.

“Sure.” He let that be hopeful. “You have my number.”

Steve thawed enough to let a little smile touch his lips, but then he went right back to professional mode and actually drilled Tony in fighting. He focused on blocking holds, as he said he would, but he also threw in some new punches for Tony to practise as well. He was pleasant, efficient, and he never once mentioned the coffee again.

He didn't actually call Tony for three days after that.

He needed some time to figure out if he was willing to go down this road and see if it led anywhere, even if it might mean being hurt by Tony and his apparent inability to grow up. Because if he committed to something, then he committed whole-heartedly, he just didn't know another way. But he eventually decided that to not see if it led somewhere would be a shame, a what-if, and he had enough of those since he woke up with everyone he'd ever known dead.

So it would be breakfast time on a Thursday when JARVIS would either interrupt whatever Tony was doing, or wake him up.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is on the line for you."

“Uh huh,” came a mutter, not because Tony was disinterested, but because he was working. That was his usual state of being so each and every call tended to be an interruption. He didn’t mind. The people that wanted his full attention tended to, however.

Tony continued to solder a piece of metal when Steve’s voice came through and he nearly slipped with the wand and reworked the prototype for a new reactor into his hand.

It’d been awhile, long enough that Tony hadn’t expected anything.

“Am I late for something, Cap? Let me find my book of excuses and get right back to you.”

"What? No, you're not late for anything."

Steve sounded wrong footed, mostly because he didn't remember ever actually asking anyone out before and it was kind of scary from this side. Bucky used to just get him dates to go along with the gal he was already dancing with, Peggy managed to ask him out in a weird way, and the few kisses he had shared with Buck had been mutual and born of fear after the fight.

So this was new. But Steve Rogers had never backed down from a fight, so--

"I was calling to ask you out. Remember? On a date?"

Birthday fun

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