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!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"

Pushing back from the work station to avoid any further injury, Tony crossed his arms over his chest and glanced upward, as if that’s where Steve’s voice was coming from. He couldn’t help but narrow his eyes skeptically. “Getting coffee sometime is what people say when they have no desire or intention to see you again,” he said, unable to help himself. It wasn’t self-sabotage, just genuine inability to keep his mouth shut. He followed it up quickly with a: “Let me check my schedule… I can move some things around. When were you thinking?”

This was surreal. Steve Rogers had called to ask him out. Many a teenager would be salivating over the thought, he mused, before tapping a few commands into virtual keyboard to double check that Romanoff and Barton weren’t lurking in the halls between himself and Rogers.

Or holding him at gun point forcing him to call. He’d put neither passed them.

"Tony."

The way that Steve was rubbing his forehead was probably audible just from the slight exasperation in his voice already. "I'm only gonna say this once, so please try and listen to me. I don't play those sorts of stupid games. If I say I'm gonna do something, then I do it. If I don't want to do something, then I say it, I'm not interested in lying or petty manipulations, okay?"

So if he says he's going to call sometime for coffee, that's exactly what he means. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Now if you've got that through your thick head, how about tomorrow evening? We can go to dinner, if coffee isn't enough."

“Coffee isn’t enough,” Tony says almost immediately, latching onto the option that will allow them a little more time together. “And we’ll be swarmed at a Starbucks even if you wear a beanie and a scowl.” Steve would stand out, more than Tony did. Everyone’s sporting Stark facial hair these days after all, and everyone tried to dress like him too. Ironically or otherwise. “Surprise me on the restaurant.”

He didn’t even put restrictions on that. He’d be as amused at Chuck-E Cheez as he would be at something fancy and hard to get a table for.

The point was not to take over here. Not to drown Steve in his own muchness.

"Okay, I'll pick you up around eight."

The tentative smile was audible in Steve's voice before he hung up. He spent much of the rest of the next day with a very smug Natasha (and for the good of his own mental health he didn't ask her why she was suddenly so smug) who coached him on what to wear. Apparently slacks and a nice button down with a tie were no longer acceptable casual date wear, and she picked out clothes that, in her words, would 'knock 'em dead'.

He wasn't sure.

He felt kind of uncomfortable in the jeans, they were so tight that it felt like they'd been painted on, but at least the soft leather jacket over a light blue shirt looked nice enough. When he showed up at the Tower he had flowers, because his Ma raised him right, a bouquet of mixed colours and types.

"Sir," JARVIS said, "Captain Rogers has arrived and is waiting in the atrium."

Technically, Steve only had to cross the Compound to pick him up, but Tony had decided to send him to the city where he was overseeing the construction of the damaged Tower. It would give them some space, after all, and there would be no damned assassins bothering them.

Tony dressed well, as he always did, in a three piece suit minus the tie. He’d made fun of Steve on his birthday for wearing a tie to a jazz club, and he didn’t want to be a hypocrite.

Besides. It might not be that kind of date.

He wasn’t expecting Steve to arrive looking so good, though. Both eyebrows lifted as he strode into the main room of what used to be his penthouse.

“Natasha?”

"Hey! You're not supposed to call me out like that, it's not nice."

But he was smiling all the same as he held out the flowers towards Tony and even bent down to offer a peck on the cheek. If he were about to do a date, then he was going to do it properly.

"You look real smart, Tony, I'll have a good looking guy on my arm. Are you ready to get going?"

This just sounded so... weird. It was almost worse that he was getting flowers too. Tony didn’t even give flowers so he had no idea what he was supposed to do with them. He’d been baffled enough not even to notice that Steve was going in for a kiss to his cheek, and that just floored him too.

This wasn’t 1940 but Steve evidently was still stuck there despite having immersed himself in modern day culture for the last year and a half. Still, he was trying to do things right and Tony felt both charmed and somewhat horrified.

“Uh. So thanks. And I mean that. But you can’t treat me like a girl. Except holding doors. You can hold doors for me.”

"If you took me out, I'd expect flowers, and I'm not a girl."

Steve wasn't the sort of guy to be threatened by something traditionally feminine. Hell, he had grown up into art as a skinny asthmatic during a time when men should be boxing and joining the military. And he knew he was no less of a man for it. Flowers were nice, they said you cared, guy or girl.

"How about you hold off on complaining until the date is done, deal? Then you can tell me all the things I did that were uncool or not modern enough. But for now, let yourself enjoy it, okay?"

What Steve probably meant was that he wanted to enjoy it (so said Tony’s brain) and given his feelings towards the blond, he saw no reason why he couldn’t let him, or them both, have that. Maybe something more traditional, despite the players, could do him some good. Tony wasn’t going to speculate on that, so he wrinkled his nose just a little and shrugged.

“I did say it could be your way,” Tony said, though he wasn’t sure if that had been a thought or said outloud. Either way, he was sticking by his promise and so he laid the flowers down and reached for Steve’s arm.

“What did you have planned?”

Steve was really willing to put in the effort here to see if anything would come of it, to see whether they might click as something potentially more than friends. He just hoped that Tony was willing to come into it with the same open mind and determination, or else they'd just end up back where they started. Or worse.

"Well, first I'm gonna take you out to dinner, and then maybe we'll go for a walk downtown depending on how we feel."

Not the most original date, but Steve felt that stepping out with someone should be about getting to know them, not about showing off or loud music. He led Tony around to his car and opened the passenger side door for him, before getting in and heading off towards a little Italian place on the outskirts of Manhattan.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Birthday fun

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject