we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain

Community Fic: Advanced Ambulatory Ichthyology [Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir, R]

2012-07-18T01:56:15Z

Title: Advanced Ambulatory Ichthyology
Pairing: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Wordcount: 48,844
Notes: This story picks up a few months after Season 3 of Community; if you are not caught up, it may not make sense. Please see the work on Ao3 for more notes!
Summary: Course provides advanced instruction in avoidance of the phenomenon commonly known as "jumping the shark." Prerequisites for this course include Introduction to Friendship, Contemporary Best Friendship, The Politics of Emotional Baggage and Cohabitation 207. Students may wish to simultaneously enroll in our sister course, Introduction to Non-Traditional Romance, but said enrollment is optional.

avengers fic - we were emergencies [clint barton/natasha romanov, nc-17]

2012-05-16T02:16:16Z

Title: we were emergencies
Pairing: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: ~37,000
Notes: The title of this has been culled from the Buddy Wakefield poem of the same name, and this story could not have been produced without: fuck-it-fire-everything, who handily provided me with the soundtrack that got me through; sirona_gs, who checked my Clint characterization with her expert eye; postcardmystery, who is, as ever, my better half in all things fiction and...nope, in all things period, actually; and, of course, Marie, who created the gorgeous piece of art that inspired half of this tale and THEN the un-be-fucking-lievable illustration for the story itself. You guys are the best people on earth, and I seriously would not have gotten through this without you.
Summary: It's not about being unmade; it's about remaking, one aching step at a time.

I grappled, in writing this story, with how on earth I was going to manage the trigger warnings I know it requires. In the end, I've decided to do it this way, since I think those warnings merit some explanation, both of where they're coming from and why I decided to write this in the first place. This explanation contains spoilers for the story, and thus can be found in the endnotes on Ao3, and, additionally, under this cut.

This is a story about the aftermath of brainwashing and memory wiping; to put it another way, it is a story about recovery, a story about losing control. As such, though there is absolutely no non-consensual sex taking place in this tale, there are clear and inherent parallels to a rape narrative. As someone who is herself struggling toward the word survivor, I recognize those parallels intimately, and have dealt with them with as much honesty and respect as I know how. There are, in this story, unstated but clearly apparent manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder; there is a very vivid nightmare sequence; there are any number of moments that deal with the ever-shifting landscape of what "I'm okay," can mean, or come to mean. Because some of the memory loss dealt with herein revolves around a sexual relationship, there is also a scene where a sexual advance is stopped due to fear of lack of consent from both parties, and the physical relationship between the protagonists is very much hinged on making sure that consent is there for the rest of the story.

Of course, this is still a story about codependent assassins in love, hard-edged people who make their living on death. As such, there are additional things I must warn for--there are brief mentions of Clint's canonically abusive childhood, there is the use of ableist language both in dialogue and internal narrative, there are descriptions of the violence that is part and parcel of these character's lives. There is also the affectionate use of the word "bitch" from a male character to a female character who would self-identify as the same, and the use of the word "cunt" in the internal narration of a pornographic scene, because while I object to that word as a gendered insult, I refuse to ignore it's blunt beauty when it's used in context. And, of course, there is tenuous dance of affection between two deeply dangerous and fucked up people, though I'd make the argument that that's true of any love story, one way or another.

I knew I was going to have to write this from the moment I heard Natasha say, "You have to level out," in my first viewing of The Avengers. The first and most obvious of reason for that is simply that I needed to; writing this allowed me to explore and confront things I've long been dodging, and however it's received, I will always be grateful for having had the chance to have put it down on paper. The second, and really more important, reason is that I think there are stories that don't get told, concepts that feel too dangerous to acknowledge, parallels that hurt to draw and realities that we'd rather sweep under the rug. But I know that I yearn for these stories, hunger for them in a way I can't make clear--I know I find myself desperate to see people claw their way to steady ground, whatever might have thrown them off-course in the first place, whichever path they take to get there. If there are those of you out there who feel the same, I can only hope I have done this justice, and wish you all the safety, strength, and solidity in the world, wherever you may be in your struggle, and however long it might take you to level out. <3

avengers fic - the new victories of old brooklyn [steve/bucky]

2012-04-10T01:33:40Z

This was supposed to be a quick little tumblr fic, and then it just...got away from me. I BLAME BUCKY BARNES. And also postcardmystery, but I assume that goes without saying at this point.

Title: The New Victories of Old Brooklyn
Pairing: Steve/Bucky
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~3.5K
Summary: In which boys are stupid, strawberries are eaten, and the 21st century is exactly what it was cracked up to be.

The New Victories of Old Brooklyn

Somewhere outside of Avignon, Steve directs the set-up of a haphazard campsite and Bucky fucks off for six hours, comes back grinning with his pack slung over one shoulder. It's a smile Steve's been looking for since the last time he laid eyes on McGuinness Boulevard, since well before that, since back when he'd never thought Bucky was dead and Bucky'd never thought he was smaller, so he doesn't say anything. Dum Dum's off somewhere burying his frustration by throwing rocks at trees, and Monty's cleaning knives on his spare pair of pants, and when Bucky pulls out a passel of strawberries like they're spoils of war, Steve's keenly aware that they are.

"Where'd you get those?" Steve asks, and Bucky shrugs one shoulder, the way he used to do when Steve said "I didn't need you to do that," or "I could've had him, I swear," or "It was just a little fight, Bucky, Jesus." There are languages learned and languages taught, so Bucky and Steve built one out of Brooklyn accents and shared histories. This is a protection thing, but isn't everything, these days? This is a white flag, but it's just possible that it's a red one, too. Bucky's always been good at dichotomy.

The berries taste like home, even though they don't. Home tastes like stale bread and staler air, like cabbies shouting each other down in the street, but Bucky's lips are stained red and the sun's drifting lower on the horizon. Steve lets his lately-broad shoulders slump from attention, lets himself lean his head back against a rock and stare up at the sky. Dear Peggy, he thinks, despite everything, this is a beautiful country, but he doesn't write it down. Like everything else, it would too much and not enough, and anyway Bucky's still smiling.

"You didn't have to," Steve says eventually, and Bucky shakes his head, says, "I know that, genius. Take a little victory, will you," so Steve does.

--

Friends are honest with each other; best friends read the silences, know which truths will and won't be worth acknowledging, have charted the waters of vague and specific hurts until travel is second nature. Friends are honest with each other, and best friends are true to each other. There's a difference there, no matter how subtle.

Steve freezes, but Bucky is frozen. There's a difference there, too. When you think about it, it's not so subtle after all.

--

For the first month, Bucky only speaks Russian and bleeds from the fingernails of his good hand, won't eat anything unless someone else tastes it first. So Steve learns Russian, and watches Bucky until he realizes he's scratching the metal arm in his sleep, and eats the first bite of every hot dog; it's not like Bucky wouldn't do it for him.

"Steve," Bucky says one night, and Steve says, "Da?" and Bucky shakes his head like he's trying to clear the cotton from it, like he's reaching for words that aren't there, like he's trying to surface from an ocean that's really only fog. There's at least one whole reality he doesn't recall, and probably two, and possibly more--he knows Steve, but that's only because Steve has made it a point to make himself known. SHIELD's afraid Bucky will murder him in here, this tiny sub-basement apartment with cameras in the steel-reinforced walls. Steve figures they can worry all they like; if Bucky doesn't come back one of these days, it'll kill him one way or another.

"Strawberries," Bucky says, clearly, and in English. Steve is so surprised he falls off his chair, tips the whole thing over backwards, flails and snaps the flimsy wood in half in the process. He hits the ground with a huge, hideous thwack and Bucky laughs so hard tears stream from his eyes, so hard he has to double over to keep from falling down himself. Steve laughs too, even though he's more shell-shocked than amused. He laughs because he wants Bucky to keep laughing, and is certain that it's a damn good reason.

"You remember that?" Steve says, in Russian, when he's calmed down. Bucky's eyes narrow contemplatively, but then he lifts one shoulder, drops it again. For a second, his eyes are familiar. It's only a second, but Steve knows how to take a little victory, so he smiles, means it, takes the first bite of Bucky's dinner and doesn't let himself fall.

--

Someone comes back, and it's Bucky, except that it's not. He remembers everything and trusts nothing, and Steve doesn't really blame him. Aside from everything else (assassinations and brainwashing, bits of him cut loose and never returned, seventy years in the darkness and his face still yesterday-fresh), Steve knows that he's not quite the person Bucky's remembering either. Loss'll do that to you.

"I used to beat up people who beat you up," Bucky says slowly, a question, one night in July. SHIELD has, hesitantly, let them out of the sub-basement; they suggested Steve take him to Brooklyn, and Steve bit the inside of his cheek and didn't punch anyone, drove him an hour outside the city instead. He's certain that the town of Bayville, NY, looks markedly different than it did seventy years ago, but since neither of them has ever been there before, that doesn't much matter. There are ducks here, and trees, and chipmunks, and Bucky's been talking longingly of open air for weeks.

"Yeah, you did," Steve says. "Never could get you to stop."

"You didn't want me to stop," Bucky says, sounding more sure of himself now. "You wanted to think that you wanted me to stop, but you didn't really. I always wondered, though."

"About what?"

"About how you turned out…" Bucky says, and waves a hand in absent frustration. "You know. You. Instead of getting bitter, I mean. People get good beaten out of them, not into them. Most of the time, anyway. That's how it's supposed to work."

"There's not much about either of us that works the way it's supposed to, though," Steve says. He says it kindly, and Bucky frowns, more contemplative than upset. "And, anyway, I had this friend who kept sticking by me even when he shouldn't've. Hard to be bitter in the face of that, y'know?"

Bucky snorts. "D'you know, I know how that is?"

"Nah," Steve says, and fists a hand in the cool grass, then gives up and lays back all the way. The clouds above him are half-assing it, not shapes so much as wisps of smoke, and he thinks Dear Peggy, despite everything, this is a beautiful country, is surprised to find it doesn't hurt as much as he's grown accustomed to. "Never doubted that you could hold your own; I couldn't. I just, I don't know, wanted to try."

"Rogers, that is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard you say," Bucky says, "and that's a high bar, believe me."

"Yeah, well, you're not short on stupid yourself," Steve says easily, and Bucky actually smiles, the wide, crooked one that used to mean you asshole.

"I know," he says. "But you told me to take it with me, remember? So I did. Put it down somewhere at some point. Guess someone shipped it back to you, huh? Thanks for keeping it warm and everything, you can hold onto it, can't say I missed it much."

Steve props himself up on an elbow, because there are a hundred things there and none of them are the ones Bucky is saying, because language is taught and found and they're still rebuilding, and sometimes you chance across a pylon half-buried in the rubble. "I missed you like crazy, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," Bucky says, and he lays back too, lets some of the tension slip from his shoulders. "Yeah, Steve, I know."

--

They get an apartment in Brooklyn, which makes Steve's chest hurt and Bucky's head spin, until it doesn't anymore. Tony builds a special exit route into the core of the building with no zoning permits at all, and Brooklyn's different but New Yorkers are always the same. Bucky makes friends with the neighbors and learns his way around the local bars, flirts indiscriminately with everyone who crosses his path, tells Steve that "Maybe it's been seventy years, but at least the accent hasn't changed much." He starts a bizarre and disorganized dog-walking operation for something to do, and Steve figures out eventually that it's because he likes having something to chase through the streets, a fixed excuse to surround himself with noise.

Both of them end up reading a lot of books, because Steve is morally opposed to getting a television and Bucky's unsettlingly thrilled to realize he's now got access to nearly a century's worth of as-yet-unread pulp fiction. Steve gets used to finding Bucky in strange positions all over the apartment, or, more often than not once summer sets in, on the roof; Dr. Banner buddies up with him, offering Steve a nervous grin when he asks about it, and starts teaching him yoga. Even though Steve's pretty sure Bucky's only doing it to enjoy the benefits of his new arm strength, it's kind of endearing to come home from a long day of crime fighting and discover Bucky stretched across the floor, impossibly contorted, with a copy of Beyond Desire balanced on his thighs.

"Do you get bored?" Steve asks, once. "When I'm not around, I mean."

"Of course I get bored," Bucky says. "I love being bored. Do you know how much of a luxury it is to be bored? And, anyway, it's not like I need you around to find ways to entertain myself."

"Yeah," Steve says, and swallows. Bucky will be Bucky, after all; there's no reason it should bother him, the things implied there, the very real possibility that Bucky wiles away his free hours in the company of someone else. No reason at all.

"You jealous, Steve?" Bucky says, and there's something strange in his voice, just for a second. It's lower than it should be, a rasp that scrapes up out of the back of his throat, and his eyes are hooded. There are things Steve's afraid to hope for, and things Steve trained himself out of wanting when wanting them would've been suicide; he blinks, forces a smile, looks away.

"You've been reading too many pulp novels," he says, voice carefully light, and Bucky doesn't argue.

--

Some nights, Steve wakes up because Bucky's screaming; some nights, Steve wakes up because he's not. Once, Steve goes to bed early to weather the aftereffects of a poisonous gas attack, and wakes up to the sound of a crash. Bewildered, finds himself in his kitchen, the porcelain breadbox shattered on the floor. He blinks and blinks again, presses his tongue to the roof of his currently foul-tasting mouth, and focuses on Bucky in the doorway.

"Huh?" he manages.

Bucky's eyes are half-lidded, heavy circles beneath them, and he's wearing boxer shorts, nothing else. He looks half-awake with his arms folded across his chest, which is twice as awake as Steve feels, just now.

"Guess the whole superhero thing didn't cure you of sleepwalking," Bucky rasps across a yawn. When Steve just stares at him, he shakes his head and moves, makes a barefoot traverse around the shards of glass to put his hands on Steve's shoulders and steer him out of the room. "C'mon, Rip Van Poisoned. Coulson called, said this might happen--apparently it's not supposed to be as bad for you as it is for the others, if that helps. Told me to tell you to sleep it off, and, y'know what, here's the thing about sleep: a bed usually helps. Forward march, yeah? Yeah, there you go, one foot in front of the other, can you believe someone made you a captain one time?"

Steve's not exactly sure what's happening, but he lets Bucky steer him into his own bedroom, shove him gently onto the mattress, climb in next to him and pull the covers up. Some forgotten corner of his brain posits a question, but all that makes its way out of his mouth is a fuzzy "Muh?"

"I see you have noticed this is not my bed," Bucky says cheerfully, sounding even more awake now. Distantly, Steve remembers this voice, remembers that once, some lifetimes ago, Bucky was the only person Steve ever let patch him up. It was a thankless task, he's sure--Steve was a proud kid for all he didn't have much to be proud of, and he needed patching on a regular basis, always did his best to avoid admitting it. Bucky took care of him because he was the only person who never got fed up with it, the way Steve snapped and dodged and tried to lie his way to better health; Bucky took care of him because he'd bully Steve into letting him do it if he had to, which makes him, Steve realizes distantly, the only bully he's ever been particularly fond of.

It's been a long, long time since Steve Rogers needed patching up. Outwardly, anyway. Inwardly, the reverse is probably true, but it's one of those things he tries not to dwell on too much.

"Mm," Steve says, which he's sure was meant to be a word at some point. In the darkness, Bucky's grin flashes white.

"I'm gonna just generously assume that was 'Yes, I did indeed notice that, Bucky, would you care to explain yourself?' Out of the kindness of my heart, Rogers, and not pity, so don't get how you get--honestly, it is a goddamn relief to find myself on this side of things again, I was starting to think you were Captain America all the time. Don't frown at me while you're doped up, you look constipated. And I am in your bed because, if I was in my bed, I wouldn't know if you went on another little stroll until you broke something else, and then you'd be mad in the morning. And frankly? There is not enough coffee in this apartment for that."

Steve makes some kind of noise--he's not sure what kind, but some kind, definitely--and Bucky laughs at him, ruffles his hair. He doesn't move his hand away, after, and Steve's glad. He likes Bucky's hands. He's never quite gotten around to mentioning that, though.

"You know," Bucky says after awhile, quiet now, contemplative, "it's still the weirdest thing, you being bigger. Which, I mean, it shouldn't be, right? After everything else--and it's definitely not the worst thing or anything, god knows it's not the worst thing. It's not even bad, really. Just. Sometimes I still turn around expecting you, and you're….you, instead. Which, don't make faces, Steve, you're supposed to be sleeping. It's just weird, that's all."

Steve nods against the pillow, and then, with Herculean effort, pushes through the fog enough to say, "Arm." Bucky looks badly startled for a second, and then he frowns, and then, to Steve's surprise, he laughs, tipping his head back against the wall and sighing when he's done. His whole body goes lax with it, like he'd breathed out something along with the air, and Steve makes a half-hearted attempt to search the room for it. He doesn't want to move, though, and anyway, it's probably already gone.

"Yeah," Bucky says, "I guess so, huh. Everybody changes somehow. Go to sleep, Rogers. You'll feel better in the morning."

--

In September, after careful thought and against Tony's oddly urgent advice ("Never declare love with strawberries, Cap, even if it seems like a good idea, especially if it seems like a good idea"), Steve stops at the market and goes home. The apartment is empty, but filled with the accumulated detritus of their combined lives; there's Bucky's growing collection of leashes and his smaller collection of firearms, Steve's sketchbooks and charcoals, the mismatched bookshelves that hold their ever-expanding library. He grins, just a little, and then takes his bag up to the roof, where he finds Bucky leaning his elbows on the wide railing and looking out at the skyline.

He drops the strawberries between them like spoils of war, and is aware that they are, in their way. Not everything operates in straight lines, after all, and the truth of it is that he and Bucky have both been fighting for years.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "Are we doing re-enactments now? Hi, by the way."

"Hi," Steve says. "No. I was jealous."

"Of…France?"

"No, when you asked," Steve says, copying Bucky's shrug without even meaning to, trying to force himself away from the chance to stumble over this. "And I told you you'd been reading too many pulp novels? I lied. I was jealous."

The expression that passes over Bucky's face is too fast and too complicated for Steve to even try to decipher; something like confusion, and something like hope, and something else, too, almost hungry, before his features go carefully blank. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Steve says, shifting. "Uh. Sorry, you know I'm not…I'm not sure how I'm supposed to say this, exactly. Or what I'm supposed to say. Or if you even want me to say anything."

"Hmm," Bucky says, and pops one of the berries into his mouth. It's fresh enough that Steve thinks he can hear it crunch, just slightly, when Bucky bites down; after a second, he throws the leafy top over the edge of the roof with a cavalier disregard for public safety and cocks his head. "Well, I guess you could start with why you'd be saying it now, instead of then. If you were saying something, I mean."

"Because you're my best friend," Steve says desperately, "and then you were gone and…and do you remember when we were kids? And you, god, I don't even remember how old we were, but they'd just started making those…those slide viewer things, right, and you talked about them all the time and I knew you wanted one, but you said you didn't, because--"

"Because it would be worse to want one and not have one then to just not have one, yeah," Bucky says, his expression cracking just a little. "I can't believe you remember that."

"I remember it because this is…like that. For me. And it always was, but it's not then anymore, and I thought maybe--oh, I don't know. I'm trying not to be a coward here, Buck, or to stop being one, I guess, but it's a long time coming and it's not, I'm not really sure what I'm doing."

"I thought Captain America wasn't afraid of anything," Bucky says, his voice strangled.

"I'm just a dumb kid from Brooklyn," Steve says, "remember?"

"You are," Bucky agrees, and then he's smiling, a sunset in Avignon and a game of stickball played across McGuinness Boulevard, a history brighter than the one neither of them quite managed to live caught in his eyes. "You are so, so dumb, Steve, Jesus, I might as well have stamped it on my damn forehead," and then he closes the distance between them, a familiar laugh on his breath and the taste of strawberries on his tongue.

Steve's lived a lot of years and slept a lot more, fought one big war and so many little ones, lost and lost and lost, done less finding than being found. But Bucky always shows up, doesn't he, when things look desperate, when Steve can't hold his own, when neither one of them wants to go it alone; Bucky speaks a language they built and has lived at least part of someone else's life and he's here, changed and unchanging, following the kid who never knew when to back down from a fight.

"So," Steve says, when they break apart, and he's going to say something about lost time or stuff he never said or friends that got him through, but Bucky kisses him silent before he can, a quick, determined sort of thing.

"Quit while you're ahead," he advises, flashing a quicksilver grin and taking Steve's bigger hand with his metal one. "C'mon. Let's go inside."

harry potter fic: living on land mines [marauder era, r]

2012-04-05T02:43:07Z

Behold! The promised sequel to Living on Wildfires, which you will certainly need to read for this story to make any sense at all. If all goes according to plan, there will be one more story in this arc, to appear in the near future.

Once again and for the record: like Harry Potter, this is a war story. Unlike Harry Potter, it is very up-front about that fact. I'm calling this a choose-not-to-warn experience, because there are things I am dealing with within for the sole reason that the books set them up and didn't deal with them; please proceed with due caution.

Title: Living on Land Mines
Rating: R
Summary: It is the most important lesson you will ever learn, and the one no one particularly wishes to teach you, so I will say it again: magic is intent.

Living on Land Mines

one

Gryffindor's 1971 class is small, which is only to be expected. Gryffindor has been small for years now. In times of peace, bravery is easy to come by; children who are raised on war are less inclined towards bouts of courage, are drawn instead to caution and care. Slytherin fairs about the same as it's always done, and Ravenclaw, too, only grows a little--intelligence and ambition are born, not bred. Bravery and loyalty, on the other hand, are learned, and Hufflepuff has expanded to such a degree that they need a second table.

"Helga always did say you could mark the climate by the Sortings," the Hat muses, afterwards. "Godric thought it was a load of rot, but then, he would've done."

You're worried you should've sent Evans to Ravenclaw, Ariana thinks, and she is right. She usually is. You needn't worry. History wants her for Gryffindor.

"And I suppose you think it's your place to tell me such things," says the Hat. Ariana's thoughts go dark for a moment, and then shift, again, to light.

History does not want me at all, she thinks, quiet, quiet. And yet, here I am. I'd imagine that makes me the authority.

--

Sirius Black gets Gryffindor because he asks for it. Narcissa is in Ravenclaw, so that's right out, and the Blacks have slanted snake for as long as anyone can remember, so that, too, is not an option. Sirius loves his family, for a given definition of love; they do what they can, for a given definition of can. Orion, Sirius knows, has opened his doors to the Order of the Oak and its refugees--that would be enough to earn his son's respect, except.

("Filthy blood-traitors," Walburga hissed, the first time. A boy called James waited downstairs, and Sirius meant to pass his parents' room for his own, for the books and toys within that might stop the new kid crying, but listening at keyholes was practically a Black family tradition.

"Yes, darling," Orion agreed. "But if the rumors are right--"

"Rumors are only rumors."

"So you have said for all these years," Orion said, "and yet. Should the Hallows really be at play, we cannot afford to allow them to go to these men."

"Surely you don't think they're unfit," Walburga said, startled. "Why, I agree with nearly all of their arguments--"

"As do I, as do I. My fear is not that they are incapable of wielding such power." Orion sighed, put down his glass, and Sirius moved a careful inch away from the door. "In fact, it is rather the opposite.")

"Didn't you want to be with your cousins?" Lupin asks, voice hushed, as they follow their prefect up to the tower. He's small, Lupin, but there's no question he's earned Gryffindor; Sirius has been watching him since dinner, because he makes it his business to watch anyone who watches James. Lupin's shoulders have not been brought low even once, and Lupin has not winced at all, and when a mad beast in one of the paintings snarled a warning, Lupin snarled one right back.

"No," Sirius says. "Why? Would you want to be with yours?"

Lupin shudders, very slightly. He keeps his eyes fixed on James and doesn't answer, but Sirius knows fear when he sees it, knows deserved fear even better, and knows the curse of family best of all. He doesn't push, and when they get into the Common Room, Lupin turns to him and smiles very slightly.

"I think you can call me Remus," he says, and Sirius says, "Thanks, mate. Think I will."

--

Severus does not want Ravenclaw, but it was an order. Albus had been very strict about it, even as Gellert rolled his eyes: "You will request Ravenclaw, no matter where that old ragpile attempts to send you. Do you understand?"

"That old ragpile would be extremely helpful to our cause, Albus," Gellert said, his voice rocking with barely-hid fury, and Albus smiled at him over Severus's head.

"Would you like to break in and steal it, then?" he inquired, silky-sweet. "By all means, be my guest."

"Why Ravenclaw?" said Severus, both to avert a minor crisis--that look in Gellert's eyes always spelled disaster--and because he honestly wanted to know. Albus favored him with one of the more honest smiles.

"Ravenclaws are trusted, easy to overlook but rarely out-and-out dismissed; it is a good place for a spy, and so few know you can ask the Hat for the placement of your choice."

"Am I a spy, then?"

"Of course not," Albus said easily, "you are just a boy, and, of course, we love you," and Severus faked a smile. He knew a lie when he heard one.

"You are meant for great things," the Hat says sternly, now. Severus does not shift on the stool, but only from long practice. "And you do not want Ravenclaw, however much you might ask for. Do you imagine I cannot tell?" Severus does not speak, because the crowd would hear him. The Hat snorts. "Ah, and here's a very familiar voice--you're not the first of his, child, and you won't be the last. I shall sent you were you're meant to go; perhaps, in the company you were meant to keep, you will learn something about choosing your friends."

"What," Severus says, the word slipping out despite himself, and the Hat's brim opens wide, barks out "Slytherin," for the whole Hall to mark down.

--

Lily is the only girl in the first year dormitory, which won't do at all. On the one hand, she hasn't any need for company; on the other hand, she's had an exceptionally long day, and the castle isn't short on terrifying noises. She's not easily frightened, Lily, but magic's only ever been a tertiary part of her life, a flower blooming in soil that wouldn't dream of letting it grow--here, the paintings live and the staircases move, and she is alone.

Hello, someone doesn't say, and when Lily turns there is a woman standing in the doorway. She is not-quite-there, but she is not a ghost; though she's been at the castle only a few hours, Lily's a quick study, and anyway Nearly Headless Nick hadn't hesitated to introduce himself. This is something else, and the back of Lily's mind tosses up spectre. It's the kind of word that she might find in one of Petunia's horror novels, read under the covers where no one could see--the word doesn't fit, but nothing else even comes close.

"Hello," Lily says, and the apparition laughs, says, Ah, I see. She is prone to bravery after all.

"Course I'm brave," Lily snaps, and doesn't let herself cry. "I'm in Gryffindor, aren't I? They said this is the brave house, so I'm brave! And I was brave anyway, because-- "

Calm yourself, the spectre advises her. Of everyone you'll meet, Lily Evans, I am the least likely to doubt you.

"Who are you, then?"

I am, the figure starts, and pauses. Well. I am what would have been, you could say. Or what is, given the chance to roam free. I can only speak to those who are ready to listen; elsewhere, I am bound to my body, which listens least of all.

"Do you have a name?" Lily says, and is embarrassed to find that she's crying anyway. The spectre sighs and moves, sits down on the empty bed across from her, puts a hand on her shoulder. For a moment, Lily can feel pressure; then there is nothing, but she is not frightened anymore.

My friends call me Ariana, the apparition says, but, as you're young, you might as well call me Professor. You will wipe your face, and take your pillow. You will go up the stairs that are not meant to allow you, and you will sleep with the boys.

--

It is very late when the door opens. Sirius is asleep, because Sirius is that kind of boy, who flips out like a light at the slightest opportunity; Lupin is asleep, because Lupin is that kind of boy, who hoards the chance for uninterrupted slumber like he won't see it again for years. James is still up, and there are a lot of reasons for that, but the most pressing one is the meeting he can't quite remember having with Professor Dumbledore.

He thinks it went like this:

"I'm supposed to give you something," said James.

"You already gave it to me," said Professor Dumbledore.

"Did I?" said James, and Professor Dumbledore said, "Yes."

That certainly feels like the way it went, but then again…well. James has lived the kind of life that leads him to think of things as home, instead of places. James has lived the kind of life that taught him to put weight in that which could be carried with you, and James has lived the kind of life that trained him to look for magic in dark corners, and James has lived the kind of life that schooled him in the sound of large men crying. James has seen things no child should see and pressed on, and James has developed instincts no child should have, and trusts them.

Those instincts say: that package in your trunk was not meant for you. Those instincts say: that package in your trunk was not meant for anyone else.

So he is awake when the door opens, awake when Lily Evans steps out of the shadows, red hair catching the light. He is awake when Lily Evans sees him looking and raises an eyebrow, a fist, hisses, "I dare you."

"You dare me to what?" James says, and Lily's mouth opens, shuts. Her fist falls, and James almost laughs, stops himself in time. "It's alright. Bed over there is free. Don't mind Sirius; he snores."

--

"Once," says Professor Tom Riddle, "this class was called Defense Against The Dark Arts. Can anyone tell me why?"

A hand raises towards the back of the classroom; Riddle turns, and sighs. It's the Pettigrew boy, who is--based on Tom's initial impression of him--going to be a discredit to Slytherin House. Minerva insists that it is unseemly for him to pick favorites (and unfavorites) the way he does, that it is the duty of a teacher and a Head of House to view all students equally. Tom allows that she is quite correct in principle, and bites his tongue against pointing out that she, too, goes against it in practice, if not so noticeably as he does. In any case, it's hardly fair of her to judge him--it's not as though she has Godric Gryffindor's blood working under her skin. An embarrassment to Slytherin means something rather different, to Tom.

"Yes, Mr. Pettigrew?" he says, his driest, deadliest drawl, and gets a little bit of pleasure at the way he can feel the boy's palms start to sweat.

Minerva says the purpose of teaching is passing on an education. Tom thinks the purpose of teaching is drumming as much stupidity out of humanity as possible and then hoping for the best, but it's not the sort of thing he'd say out loud.

"It was called Defense Against the Dark Arts because it taught you to defend yourself against the Dark Arts, sir!" Ah, a literalist. How refreshingly predictable.

"Two points to Slytherin for being able to follow a basic logical construct," Tom says, "and two points from for calling me sir. In this classroom, you may feel free to address me as Professor, as Mr. Riddle, as God," (the standard laugh here, a few mooning sighs from the more advanced of the girls and at least one of the boys, it gets easier every year) "but I do not answer to sir. Authority is what got us into this mess, after all, and I daresay it won't get us out again--and by this mess, students, I am referring to the war currently raging across the Wizarding world. Don't look so shocked, Pettigrew--you either, Rookwood, get your jaw up off the floor. Learn something from your Gryffindor classmates, and expect nothing but honesty from me. Now! Who can tell me why this class is simply called Defense?"

A boy in the back of the room raises his hand. He has shaggy black hair and the look of someone who'd rather be anywhere else; Black, then. Has to be. Tom raises an eyebrow and nods at him, watches as the three around him--a girl with red hair, a boy with round glasses, and the one whose very walk screams werewolf--settle back to watch.

It will be Evans, Potter, Lupin and the Black boy. Well, you can say this for Ariana; she may be mad, but she's nearly always right.

"It's not just the Dark Arts we have to worry about, Professor," says Sirius Black, and Tom Riddle quirks a smile, says, "Five points."

--

"This is the Shack," Aberforth says, a calm hand on Lupin's shoulder. "Don't look so nervous, boy; we know you're likely as not to tear it to ribbons. Nothing of value in here, and we've got folks out in the village spreading rumors that it's haunted."

"But you built it for me, sir. You told me as much, sir."

"Yes," says Aberforth, "but the village doesn't have to know that," and he feels the boy shudder.

--

Dear Albus,

I apologize for my Sorting. I did like you said and asked for Ravenclaw, but the Hat sorted me Slytherin anyway. It said I wasn't the first of yours, and I wouldn't be the last, thought you'd want to know about that….

Dear Albus,

As requested, here is the list of coursework Professor Riddle has given us for the month. Professor McGonagall's coursework is attached as well, but only because I was hoping you could help me with Problem 6b. I'm doing well in Potions…

Dear Albus,

You were right! I can't believe there's a door to the kitchens hidden in a painting of fruit, you'd think everyone would figure it out, but the house elves are as helpful as you thought they'd be…

Dear Gellert,

I miss you. Don't tell Albus I sent this, alright? I'm making friends like you told me to, and you're right, it's easier when I follow your rules instead of his, but sometimes I wish I could come home. Tell the Mandrakes hello for me.

-Severus

--

Lily takes to haunting the Astronomy Tower, and then the dungeons, and then the Quidditch pitch. Lily takes to wandering the grounds, and then the library, and then the kitchens. Lily takes to playing with swords, but only because the armor hands them to her. Lily takes to talking to shadows, but only because the shadows talk back.

"You're going a bit mad, Lils, you know that, don't you?" Sirius asks her one night in November. Remus is off ill again, and James has fallen in love with his broomstick, and is intolerable. Sirius thinks everyone is mad, which is, according to Lily's slapdash education in wizarding politics, a case of the pot calling the kettle Black.

"Maybe I'm going sane, and you can't tell," she says. "Anyway, hurry up, we'll be late for supper at this rate."

"Sirius!" comes a voice from the shadows, and Sirius's wince is less a wince and more a muttered curse. Lily turns, and a girl with long, blond hair is frowning down at her. "And…friend."

"Narcissa," Sirius spits, which explains a lot. Lily had assumed, based on his reaction to the voice, that this was one of Sirius's much-mentioned Cousins; Lily knows Narcissa's name, but little else, since Sirius doesn't like to talk about his family. Or, at least, he doesn't like to talk about them with her; James and Remus both say he Talks About Them quite a bit, but there's a certain amount of political implication involved.

It has dawned on Lily, more than once, that quite a bit of Sirius's worldview involves the use of Inappropriate Capital Letters. She'd tried to ask James about that once, but he hadn't understood her. Remus had understood her, and his answer had more or less boiled down to "Old money."

"I'm Lily, actually," says Lily, because she might as well, even as Sirius says, "Don't tell her your name, that's how she'll get you--wait, maybe I've got that wrong. Tell me again, Cissy, how do succubi work?"

"Rather differently than hellspawn, or so I'm told," Narcissa says, with a smile that's not sweet at all. "Tell me, dear Sirius, how is your mother?"

"Mad as a bloody hatter, unless she's died," Sirius says, and no one so young, Lily thinks, should be able to say that about their mum with a straight face. "How's your sister, Cissy? Not Bella, I know how Bella is, everyone knows how Bella is, not quiet about it, is she? But 'Dromeda, I hear she's dating a Muggle-born."

"Oh, say Mudblood like the rest of us, Sirius," Narcissa says, and then turns her not-sweet smile on Lily. "Apologies, of course. I'm sure you're very…capable."

"And I'm sure you're much more pleasant company when you're at home," Lily says, matching that smile with one of her own. Sirius whoops, and Narcissa's eyes narrow. Then she turns back to Sirius as though Lily isn't there; old money, Lily thinks in Remus's voice, and grits her teeth. It is not the first time she's been called a Mudblood, and it won't be the last, and if she's learned anything from being friends with Sirius Black, it's that there's always a time and a place to use your anger.

Granted, she'd learned that indirectly, but the point stands all the same. Sirius is an education in how not to behave, whether he knows it or not.

"You know 'Dromeda has always followed her own path," Narcissa says. "As, I'm sure, will Mr. Theodore Tonks. Where that path may lead…well, I'm only a girl, I'd hardly know, would I?"

"You can't," Sirius says, his face gone suddenly white. "Cissy, you're not thinking of--"

"I'm not thinking of anything."

"Your mum, then!" Sirius snaps. "He's a student, he's not even a seventh-year, you have to know better than to think this does any good--"

"I think it does plenty of Good," Narcissa says, and there's a capital letter Lily recognizes. "As should you, cousin. You won't be a firstie forever."

"There won't be any more firsties if you keep on like this," Sirius says, voice rising. People are peeking out from around corridors, and Lily feels a nervousness that is not her own settle over her like a torn cloak. "There'll just be you and your lot and--"

Silence him, Ariana says, right next to her suddenly, her grip on Lily's arms deathly cold. Silence him, or I shall, and he does not want that at all.

"Sirius!" Lily says, crying it out to be heard over the sudden crackle of Narcissa's magic. She knows she's the only one hearing it, just as she knows the sound will fade when the Professor lets her go. Ariana is only seen by those she wants to see her, and the world is only seen through her eyes when she grants her friends the privilege. "She's not worth it!"

"And how would you know, you filthy little mongrel," Narcissa snarls, at the end of her rope, and Lily…well. Not to put too fine a point on it, Lily punches her.

"That was brilliant," Sirius says afterwards, when Lily has been given four detentions and lost 50 points for Gryffindor, when Professors Riddle and McGonagall have both slipped her a piece of chocolate while they thought the other wasn't looking, when they've all of them skipped their suppers. "That was absolutely bloody brilliant, that was--"

"You've been lying to me," Lily says, "all of you. Haven't you?" She looks around the dormitory, at James' nervous fingers, at Remus's too-pale face, at Sirius's scuffed shoes. "Well?"

"It's only," Sirius says, uncomfortable. "There's certain things we thought you might not…understand."

"I never thought that," Remus mutters, very quietly. "For the record."

"Shut it, Lupin," Sirius snaps, and Remus lifts his head, opens his mouth around something that looks to be vicious, and then…stops himself. Retreats back into his body, looking almost shamed. Lily's going to have to think about that later, when Sirius isn't being a tosser. "The point is, there are just, y'know, bits of it that might not…make sense to you."

"What," Lily says, appalled, "because I'm a girl?"

"Because you're Muggleborn," James says, so quiet and so embarrassed that Lily almost doesn't hear it. She wishes she hadn't heard it, honestly; it cuts deeper that Mudblood did in Narcissa Black's mouth, because this is James, this is Sirius and Remus and the boy who'd said 'You dare me to what,' and she'd honestly thought they were better than this. She really had.

They are, Ariana tells her, and some days--not most days, but some days--Lily really, really hates her. Let them explain.

They do explain. They explain about a history Professor Binns isn't teaching, about blood politics that haven't much to do with blood, about power that grows old and power that blooms young. They explain about the war, about the truths even Professor Riddle doesn't dare do more than mention, about Professor Dumbledore's brother and his hunger, about Gellert Grindlewald and the madness in his eyes. They explain about a resistance that they've been raised around, that's kept them all in hiding, and Lily listens, because she knows that these are truths she must know. Sirius, whose whole existence has been centered around the who's-who of any conflict, pulls out a piece of parchment and sorts the students by houses, writing "Good," "Order," or "?" under each surname, and Lily's anger fades to fear and then grows into something else entirely.

"They thought it would frighten you," Remus says, when they've done. "Well, we all did, but I thought you'd rather be frightened than blind."

Lily spreads herself across the floor, staring at the map as she tries to commit each allegiance to memory. Absently, she says, "For future reference, boys, please do listen to Remus more."

--

"Did you know," Albus says, calm at the eye of his very own storm, "that after all these years, I still love you? Damnable thing, love. Gets you into all sorts of trouble."

Gellert's fingers twirl the Elder Wand round and round; overtop the sparks it casts, he smiles. It is a smile devoid of warmth, but then again, it would be. "Oh, Albus. Do you imagine there is anything about us, anymore, that isn't damnable?"

"Regrets, darling?"

"Innumerable," Gellert says. "And the Old magic would have me believe that my soul is in pieces. All for you. I hope you are proud."

"As ever, as ever," Albus says. The earth splits in front of him, and he sighs, frowns. At this rate, they'll never take Moscow. "Could you take care of this, please? We haven't got all day."

The noise Gellert makes is worn and ancient, but he raises the wand anyway, cries "Expecto Patronum!" like it's the Killing Curse. And, on that front, perhaps it is; the wolverine that tumbles out glows white, and then red, before it snarls.

two

Remus's teeth hurt, and his feet hurt, and his hands throb, even covered thick with Madame Pomfrey's numbing cream. There is grit in his eyes, although, of course, there isn't. There is cotton in his nose, although, again, there's not. The worst thing about the wolf isn't the pain it leaves in its wake, isn't the yawning absence of memory, isn't the sick churn of fear he's always laid flat by until Garnet comes, licks him clean, tells him without telling him that he hasn't hurt anyone this time.

No, the worst thing about the wolf is that Remus knows, afterwards, that he's less. The worst thing about the wolf is that, against his better instincts, Remus is bloody jealous of it.

"Hello, Remus," Lily says, when he gets back to the dormitory. It is the third week of second year, and over the summer she has grown keener. Also, she has grown breasts; of the four of them, only James seems particularly concerned about this development.

"Hello, Lily," Remus says, and collapses back on his bed. "Did I miss anything exciting while I was out?"

"Nothing in particular," Lily says calmly. "Bellatrix tried to stab Sirius over dinner night before last, and James thinks one of the third floor corridors is haunted."

"The usual, then."

"Exactly," Lily says, and then she smiles, lifts an eyebrow. "Oh, and also, I worked out that you're a werewolf."

--

"Who can tell me what this is?" Professor McGonagall asks her fifth years; not a one of them raises a hand, and she sighs. "Is there perhaps someone among you who could tell me what it was, then?"

They are, as a group, saved by the bell--Minerva resists the urge to yell the answer after them in frustration, but it's a close thing. She's glad to have denied herself the pleasure afterward, though, because Tom slips into the room when they've left and closes the door behind him. He does like his little victories, and she does so hate to give them to him.

"Long day, Minnie?"

"I will turn you into a toad," Minerva warns, biting the inside of her cheek. "In fact, I think you're rather better suited to toadhood than humanity; certainly your manners will make the transition nicely."

"Ever the charmer."

"I do try."

"And here I thought it was an inborn talent," Tom says lightly. He sits down on the edge of her desk, proprietary bastard, and beckons; when she folds her arms over her chest, he laughs. "Oh, Merlin. What've I done now?"

"It's not what you've done so much as how you've done it," Minerva says, but she sighs and crosses to him after a moment. "Your vanity, contrary to what you seem to believe, is not actually attractive."

"I merely sat down."

"You sat down with intent," Minerva corrects. "You sat down with…airs. I'd say I could hear you thinking, but it's not as though that's hard, what with the running litany of I am Tom Riddle and there is no man above me bouncing off the walls whenever you've entered a room--"

"Are you quite finished?"

"No," Minerva says, grinning, "but I'll call a brief détente, if you like."

Tom sighs and reaches out; his thumb swipes over the knob of Minerva's left wrist, and she lets it, because, well. Playing at cross is all well and good, and playing at erudite isn't even hard anymore, but underneath that, she knows Tom rather better than she ought. There's the rooms they share and they nights they spend, yes, but there's the…other things, too. Tom's taken her into the Pensive and showed her his childhood (or lack thereof), and Tom's put a locking spell on the door and flipped the Resurrection Stone, and Tom's whispered to her in the language of snakes. Tom's broken down sobbing in her arms and told her of the reality that almost was, the one Ariana had spun out for him one night through the Sorting Hat's wide brim, and made her promise to kill him if madness ever came for him.

She can tell when something's wrong, when it's Tom. She's always been able to tell.

"What is it?" she says, in the voice she never lets her students hear, in the voice that's only for him. "What's happened?"

"Don't get that way, it's nothing as bad as all that," Tom says quickly. "It's just…well. Potter's got the you-know-what, hasn't he?"

"Of course he does. Aberforth made sure of it."

"Then where," Tom says, "is the evidence? Why hasn't there been an upswing in unexplainable mischief? Why isn't Filch barging into the lounge demanding to know what's irritating that blasted cat?"

"I hope you're not maligning the feline species in general," Minerva says, and Tom grins at her, the unexpectedly honest one.

"I am, in fact, merely maligning those felines who give the rest of you a bad name, Minerva," he says with gravitas. "I set great store by your reputation."

"Snake."

"Yesssss," Tom hisses, still grinning. Then his smile slips, and he runs a hand over his face. "Still, my point stands. There's not enough trouble, and boys that age are nothing without trouble. I'm beginning to think it's possible that someone overdid it with the memory charms."

"Certainly not Aberforth--"

"Diadora, then," Tom says. "Or his father, or someone. If he doesn't know what he's got, how are we to expect him to learn to use it?"

"That..." Minerva says, and sighs. "Oh, Merlin, that's a good point, for all it's a terrible one. Sometimes I wonder if we can count it as winning, if we win by using the children."

"That's how everyone wins, eventually. Children grow up to be adults, after all."

"And kittens grow up to be cats, yes, we've had this conversation. Next you'll say snakes are always snakes--"

"Well, we are."

"--and then I'll be forced to turn you into a toad after all," Minerva finishes sternly. "Which, for the record, I am only forgoing because I think the question of the Clo--of the item in question requires some thought. What do you suppose we do? We can't very well tell him what it is; if the Brother should ever manage to breach the castle, or catch him over a holiday, the results would be…"

"…disastrous, yes, I quite agree."

"Then what do you suggest? Tell one of the others, and hope they aren't child enough to tell him the truth? That's rather dreadful, even for you."

"I don't suggest anything," Tom says, bringing her wrist to his mouth and kissing it, just the once. "You're his Head of House; I was merely bringing it to your attention."

"Yes, well, consider it brought," Minerva says, and glances to the clock. "And now, regrettably, I must send you off, unless you're inclined towards giving my third years a show."

"They might enjoy it," Tom says, eyebrows up, and if Minerva smacks him somewhere delicate as he walks towards the door, it's not the sort of thing that needs to be public knowledge.

"Oh, and Minerva?" Tom says, leaning in from the hall.

"Yes?"

"Not that I'm telling you what to do, but I'd go with Lupin if I'd go with anyone," he says, and grins rakishly when the doorknob next to him ribbits loudly and hops away. "See you at dinner."

--

"You want me to do what," says Remus, and tries not to shift under Professor McGonagall's stare. It's not quite a question, because Remus did hear her, and he knows his Head of House suffers no fools. Still, there's a difference between hearing and understanding, and the Professor's request had made approximately no sense at all.

"There is something in Mr. Potter's possession," McGonagall says patiently, "that will allow you to cause quite a bit of trouble, not that I am advocating your causing that trouble, or your use of that object, and I want it to be quite clear, Mr. Lupin, that I am especially most emphatically not encouraging Mr. Black's use of the item in any way. Nevertheless, the item exists, and Potter should learn to use it, as should the rest of you. Which I certainly did not say, and which I will not admit to having said under any circumstances, and which you must not tell the others I've said. Are you following, Mr. Lupin?"

"Can you…tell me what this item is?"

"I cannot."

"Can I ask James what--"

"You most certainly cannot," McGonagall says, her stare very severe. "In fact, if you ask Mr. Potter any leading questions whatsoever about the item, I will hear about it, and it will go very hard for you."

Remus thinks about this. "How can I ask him leading questions if I don't know what I'm leading him to?"

"Tell me, Mr. Lupin," McGonagall says, her lips thinning, "have you gotten the impression, at any point in the last year and a half, that I am the sort of woman who enjoys impertinence from her students?"

"No, Professor. Sorry, Professor."

"That is what I thought."

"Right," Remus says, edging unconsciously toward the door. He thinks he sees McGonagall's lips twitch, which is its own special kind of terrifying. He is a werewolf; he's pretty sure, somewhere deep in his soul, that this should mean he's above being afraid human beings are going to eat him. "Is that…all, then? Or did you need something else?"

"That is all, Mr. Lupin. You may go now."

Remus more or less bolts out of the room; he runs directly into Sirius, who overbalances and topples backwards, dragging Remus with him. He's laughing as he hits the ground, because that's just what Sirius is like--he'll fly into a furious rage over mashed potatoes or an ink splotch or a letter from home, but knock him down across the floor and he thinks it's a laugh riot. He'll sulk for days over a bad mark on an exam he didn't study for, but if you spell the pages of his textbooks together, he'll choke on his hysteria. He'll punch a fifth year over nothing at all, but tell him you're a werewolf and he'll look at you very seriously, crack a demented smile, and start calling you Moony.

He's a very strange boy, Sirius, even for a Black. Remus probably shouldn't like him as much as he does.

"And a good afternoon to you, sir," Sirius says, attempting to do a flourishing little bow--on the ground--and succeeding only in knocking his head against Remus's. "Ow! Sorry, mate, comedy is pain."

"That's beauty," Remus says, standing up and hauling Sirius back to his feet, "not that you'd know that, you look like some kind of lagoon monster. Did you try to sneak into the Forest again?"

"Uh, the Forest tried to sneak into me, more like," Sirius says. "And then the lake, but that was really more of an impact-at-speed kind of interaction."

Remus sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, even though, of course, it will do no good at all. "Stop taunting the Willow, Sirius."

"Stop refusing to teach me to open it! Anyway, what'd Old Snakecharmer want that scared you so bad?"

"One of these days," Remus says, in the tones of someone who has had this argument many times and is aware that it is not actually working, "she's going to hear you say that, and she's going to make an example of you. By killing you, probably. By killing you slowly."

"She wouldn't be the first to try," Sirius says brightly, and oh, right. That's why Remus likes him so much--because underneath the surface of Sirius there is the decidedly more frightening History Of Sirius, and the fact that he continues to manage irreverent when even James looks at him with pity sometimes is a testament to…something.

"Still, I'd like you to live to see third year."

"Aw, Moony," Sirius says, slinging an arm over Remus's shoulders. "So, what'd she want, then?"

"Oh, nothing," Remus says, and then--compelled by an order from a teacher, a sense of mischief he's never quite been able to shake, and something he'd call instinct, if he dared call anything that--"Y'know, I think we should break into James' trunk."

The great thing about Sirius is that he never needs reasons. He just says "Brilliant! I'd be wondering what to do until dinner," and follows Remus cheerfully upstairs, where they do, indeed, break into James' trunk.

Remus finds what he's looking for in short order. He's not surprised McGonagall didn't explain, once he realizes what it does--why on earth would she need to?

--

Some things James Potter is aware of, in no particular order:

1. Lily Evans Has Breasts.
2. Lily Evans, as far as James can tell, will likely as not thump him if he ever mentions that she Has Breasts.
3. Nevertheless, those are Breasts, and she does Have Them.
4. There is a war on, and there are things more important than The Breasts.
5. Even when they are sleeping in the bed right next to yours and better than you at Charms and teaching you to spit across long distances--
6. --which The Breasts are not doing, that is Lily, James is going to get himself killed.

"Potter?" says a vaguely familiar voice, and James turns in his seat. He's watching the Ravenclaw Quidditch practice for reasons of tactics, and definitely not for reasons of their extremely attractive Chasers; he wasn't expecting to see anyone else in the stands, but he's not averse to the company. It makes him feel a little less…creepy about the whole thing, although he's not sure if it's creepy to watch people practice Quidditch or not. He's tried to ask Sirius, but Sirius ignores him, and he's tried to ask Remus, but Remus refuses to talk about it. Lily is obviously right out, and since James' brain has been largely occupied with nothing but this burgeoning awareness for the last few…months…he could probably do with one or two new friends.

"Hey," he says, sliding over a little on the bleacher and patting the spot next to him. "It's Snape, right? You're in my Defense section."

"I, yeah," Snape says, and sits. "What're you doing out here?"

"What're you doing out here?" James asks, eyebrows going up, and Snape meets him stare for stare for a minute. Then James lets out a snort of laughter and Snape follows suit, blushing a little bit, which answers that question well enough.

"D'you want some, uh," Snape says, and reaches into his robe. "Lemon drops? My…guardian keeps sending them to me, and none of my housemates want them."

"That's because they're rubbish," James declares cheerfully, "but sure. Sirius'll eat 'em."

"Sirius Black?" Severus says, wrinkling his nose, and James frowns.

"Hey," he says, "that's my best mate you're making faces about."

"Well, his cousin Bellatrix says--"

"Bellatrix is a bitch," James says firmly.

"A bitch?"

"Muggle swear word," James says, around one of the lemon drops he's eating anyway. "Lily taught it to me. She said I could only use it about Bellatrix 'an Mrs. Norris, though, and then Remus said something about cross-species insults and I forgot to ask her what it meant."

"Something bad though, probably," Snape ventures, and James nods his agreement, chewing thoughtfully.

"You'd imagine," he says. "Anyway, she's awful--you're in a House with her, you probably know she's awful, unless she's only awful to Sirius."

"No, she's awful to everyone," says Snape, in the tones of a man brooding on his wrongs. "Calls me Snivellus to the others."

"Why?"

"Because my first name is Severus, probably."

"Bad luck there," James says, and takes pity when Snape sighs his agreement. "You want some Fizzing Whizbees? As a trade for the lemon drops. They're kind of good, actually, and my mum keeps sending me sweets like it's not costing her money. Makes me feel bad when I eat 'em."

"Sure," Snape says. "Y'know--"

"Severus!" someone calls, and James and Snape both turn to see Peter Pettigrew pounding his way up the stairs. James' nose wrinkles; he doesn't like Pettigrew, though he's not sure why. There's something…oily about him, although, again, James would be hard-pressed to say what. Certainly Snape's the oilier of the two of them objectively speaking, what with the acne problem, but Lily's got spots too and James knows Sirius hexes his away, so that's fine. And, anyway, Snape speaks up in Riddle's class and has never once laughed when James' bag ripped open, or when he had to spell his glasses back together for the hundredth time, or that one night when he must've overheard James begging Professor Slughorn for a spare Potions textbook, since his had fallen to bits and he couldn't afford another. Snape's alright, as far as James is concerned.

"What're you doing up here with Potter," Pettigrew says, and oh, oh, that's what it is James doesn't like. Pettigrew says Potter, but he means poor; means blood-traitor; means dissenter, not that anyone speaks the Good's language within the castle walls. Pettigrew looks at James and makes him smaller than he is automatically, which is really not on, since James is more talented than Pettigrew and taller than Pettigrew and could ride circles around Pettigrew on a broomstick. But the point stands that if the world doesn't change in the next six years--which, James is gloomily aware, is unlikely--Pettigrew will go on to have a cushy, well-paid Ministry job, and James will go on starving like his parents have done and shunting around in the network for reasons no one ever explains to him.

"I like Potter," Snape says, snapping James out his reverie. When he looks up, he's not sure who's more surprised--him, Pettigrew, or Snape himself. "Or, uh. We were just--what're you asking me questions for, anyway? You know better than that. What do you want, Peter?"

"Just thought you might want to know Malfoy's looking for you," Peter says, cowed. "Sorry, Severus."

"Don't call me by my first name, you are unworthy," Snape says automatically, and then makes a complicated face when James raises an eyebrow at him. He looks like he's trying not to laugh, and then, abruptly, like he's terrified--he follows Peter down the stairs, not even bothering to say goodbye.

James shrugs, and pops another lemon drop in his mouth. They're really not bad, and the Ravenclaw Quidditch team is definitely worth watching.

--

There are certain days in any teaching career that matter more than all the others combined. Sometimes, these days come by accident, a twist of circumstance leading to a necessary object lesson, an unlikely crescendo of questions drawing the room to a fixed point--a good teacher knows how to work with the accidents of fate, and a great teacher learns to plan for them. Anything can be a lesson, if you know how to look for it, and anything can be a valuable lesson, provided you're good with your spin.

Some days, however, are important by design. Tom has been a professor for the better part of two decades, and each new class of students is his for seven years. Most of his valuable lessons are planned to the hilt, and this lesson--the one he insists upon teaching in second year, when he will have six years to carefully observe the effect--is the most valuable of them all.

"Today," Tom says, looking out at his classroom, "we are going to talk about the Unforgivables."

There are a few soft gasps from the students, and Tom looks around the room with sharp eyes and takes note of who uttered those breaths. He touches the basilisk fang at his throat and counts them off--six gaspers, two from Hufflepuff and four from Slytherin, and an uncomfortable squirmer from Ravenclaw to boot. Those will be the children whose families have never warned them, then; always good to know.

Three other Slytherins, six more Hufflepuffs, two additional Ravenclaws and the werewolf from Gryffindor stare back at him with hard, inquisitive eyes--those'll be the ones that've seen them, then. Of the room, only Sirius Black looks genuinely frightened, and that's a pity; Tom would've asked him if he wanted to be excused from the all-House class if he'd known, would've offered private lessons instead. Now, he cocks his head at the boy, and Black looks right back at him, shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and, well.

There's a reason Tom teaches them early, after all, and isn't a twelve year old boy who has known Cruciatus that reason? There are monsters born, certainly, but there are more of them forged from ignorance. Tom clears his throat, and begins.

"Now," he says, "the brightest and best informed among you will know the names of these curses already. For those of you fortunate enough to delay this lesson this long, allow us to enlighten you--there are three curses classified as 'Unforgivable' by the Ministry of Magic. Who can name one of them?"

Remus Lupin's hand goes up so quickly Tom can almost hear the air hiss around it. He does not look at Black, does not so much as twitch as he says, "The Cruciatus Curse, Professor Riddle," but Tom knows a favor when he sees one.

"Ten points to Gryffindor," he says, and does not add for kindness. "We, as a classroom, will deal with Cruciatus--the pain curse--last, for reasons I'll make clear to you as we go along. Can someone name me another?"

"The Imperius curse, Professor," Severus Snape says, when Tom's favored him with a nod. He is a very calm boy, Snape, almost distressingly so; he is certainly not fazed by the words he's speaking now, and Tom moves to the edge of the desk, watching him. "It gives the caster control of whoever has been cursed--physical, verbal, total control."

"Very good," Tom says, and flags Snape in the back of his mind for further study. "And the last of them? Anyone? Anyone?" There is a long pause, and then Lily Evans raises her hand. Tom raises an eyebrow at her--typically the Muggleborn don't know these curses, though, of course, that's hardly their fault--but she doesn't back down, doesn't even blink, and Tom thinks suddenly of the prophecy, of Ariana's insistence that it's Evans it speaks of.

She who was named for the flowers of death will rise to be its Master. Well, well. Perhaps Ariana is right.

"Yes, Ms. Evans?" says Tom Riddle, and Lily Evans says, "Avada Kedavra, Professor. The killing curse."

"Excellent," Tom says, "that's all three of them. Now, you in the back there, and you too, and all of you in the third row--put the quills down, this isn't that kind of lesson. We're just talking, and here's what I want to talk about: why, students, are these curses deemed Unforgiveable?"

Pettigrew's hand goes up, and Riddle knows what he's going to say even before he spews out, "Because once you use them, you cannot be forgiven!" The poor little sod barely has two braincells to put together; Tom has expressed to Minerva more than once that he wishes the child had turned out a Squib, and since she's never argued, he imagines that she agrees with him deep down.

"Yes, Mr. Pettigrew," Tom sighs, "your grasp of the obvious is, as ever, impeccable. Would someone perhaps care to share a less literal view of the matter with the class?

"Because they do something to you," Sirius Black says, without raising his hand. He's staring down at his desk like if he really concentrates, he'll vanish; Tom really does feel rather guilty about keeping him in the classroom, but certainly not guilty enough to stop him while he's getting the answer right. "Because once you've done them you can't ever not have done them. There's nobody in charge of forgiving you, but some say your own magic won't, not with the Unforgivables. That they leave cracks, after."

"Entirely correct," says Tom, "and then again, not correct at all--no, no, Black, don't look at me like that. You're right, or at least you're mostly right. That was the answer I wanted, in any case. Tell me, class, do these curses fall under the heading of 'Light' magic or 'Dark'?"

"Dark, Professor," James Potter says, sounding a little confused. "They're usually considered the epitome of Dark magic, aren't they?"

"They are indeed," says Tom, "but let's talk about that for a minute, shall we? We'll start with Imperius, since that one's the easiest. Now, certainly it is wrong to take control of another human being, yes? To force them to do things they would not otherwise do? To compel them into action that is not their own--we can agree that this is not an acceptable way to treat another human being, correct?"

The classroom nods, and Tom smiles, but not kindly. "Of course, this is a classroom. Discussions of right and wrong are simply discussions, here. Imagine for a moment, children, that this isn't a classroom--suppose this is a battlefront, and there is a man in front of you, and that man's gestures are law. Suppose if he points left, thousands of innocent people will die, and if he points right, thousands of innocent people will live. And supposing you know he intends to point left…is the use of Imperius wrong, then?"

"And what of the killing curse," Tom continues, aware of the silence that has fallen over the room and fiercely proud of it, "that has been used with such constancy throughout our history that even the Muggles have a bastardized word for it? Don't look so surprised, Pettigrew--just because you have grown up ignorant of them does not mean they have been raised ignorant of you. The Ministry is careful, of course, to maintain a divide, but there is no secret that keeps forever. In Muggle culture, they say 'abra kadabra' when they mean magic at large--how Unforgivable can something be, when it is our largest bleed?"

"But perhaps that is too broad a concept for some of you to grasp; I do not blame you. There are much older wizards with much smaller minds, so let us take a breath, look at it another way. Picture the person you love most in the world, students, the parent or sibling or friend whose very existence means the betterment of your own--picture them at the mercy of someone whose sole purpose is their destruction. You have time to utter one spell, and if that spell fails to deter their assailant, you will never speak to your loved one again. Can any among you say you would not use the killing curse, then? Can any among you say that, and be certain? Can anyone know what can or cannot be Forgiven, if the circumstance has not arisen to put them to that test?"

"Mr. Black was quite correct. The Unforgiveables are so named because of internal forgiveness, not external. Those who have killed--by any means, in any circumstance, regardless of what curse they have or have not used to achieve their ends--live the rest of their lives with that blood on their hands. That is a fact of human existence; that is a simple reality. There are those that say the use of the killing curse splits the soul, and perhaps that is true. Certainly it changes the soul, using Avada Kedavra with success--but then, I would imagine stabbing someone with a kitchen knife would achieve that same change, whether the stabber was possessed of magic or not."

Lupin's hand goes up, and Tom tilts his head, nods his permission. "What about Cruciatus, si--Professor?"

"Good catch, Lupin," Tom says, winking, "and we'll get there in a moment. Before we do, can anyone name for me the spell considered the epitome of Light magic?"

It's Snape whose hand goes up, still so calm. "The Patronus spell, Professor."

"Five points to Slytherin!" Tom says, wheeling around so his robes billow around him and stalking to the center of the room. "The Patronus, formed from a core of warm thoughts and happy memories, which manifests itself as an animalistic projection of the caster's own soul, spun of pure light. Could there be a more Light spell that than one? Could magic create anything that would fall more stridently on the side of Good?"

The students shift in the chairs at that word, and Tom grins, raises his wand, and casts. "Expecto Patronum," had given him no end of trouble in school, had required a level of soul-searching that had been genuinely distressing at the time; for a while, he'd thought he had no memories happy enough to produce one of the wispy creatures his classmates were creating. He'd managed it eventually, though, and like all who have to work through pain to get to joy, his Patronus was stronger for it. Now, all he has to do is think of Minerva's fingers brushing against his throat, and a thick silver snake slips free of his wandtip and curls around his shoulders.

"Last year," Tom says, as the snake hisses a cheerful hello to the room, "Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindlewald destroyed a capital city with two of these. Just two--Dumbledore's phoenix, of course, you will remember from his time as Minister, and Grindlewald's wolverine has, I would imagine, already begun to appear in Muggle urban legends. The rose up and slew anyone who walked in their path, growing as they consumed the happiness of those that fell. And they did that, students, they did that because that is what their masters wanted them to do."

Snape does not look calm anymore--looks, in fact, anything but calm--and Tom adjusts the mental flag he's already put up in the back of his mind, makes sure to mark it as urgent. The rest of the students are paying him rapt, if nervous, attention, and even Black has looked up from his desk. Lupin's hand is on his shoulder, and Potter's pencil is jabbing him in the back, and Evans' eyes are flicking to him whenever she can pull them away from Tom, but at least he's looking up.

"Magic. Is. Intent," Tom says into the silence. "It is the most important lesson you will ever learn, and the one no one particularly wishes to teach you, so I will say it again: magic is intent. Your wand is an amplifier, a conductor, if you will; spells are merely focal points, a way to direct your power. The Founders raised this school from the ground with their bare hands, built it full of tricks because they, themselves, were inclined towards trickery. To cast Imperius, you must want to control your target. To cast Avada Kedavra, you must desire nothing more than the death of another living soul. Those who named them Unforgivables meant, I would guess, unfathomable, but were too proud to say it aloud."

"And this, students, is why we discuss the Cruciatus last. The Cruciatus curse is a torture curse; you must not only want to cause pain, but to cause unendurable pain, to cast it with any effect. There are those who have suffered under that curse whose minds never recover, because the agony they experienced left them too shredded to go on. There are those who have suffered under that curse whose bodies have chosen to die, rather than suffer it further. There is no such thing as Dark magic, only Dark souls, and the Cruciatus is simply human hate with a name attached for ease. If you are going to draw a line of demarkation between the forgivable and the unforgivable, you do not draw it at Imperius, and you do not draw it at Avada Kedavra. You draw it at torture, at pain for pain's sake, at the physical manifestation of those parts of you that must remain in check. You draw it at Cruciatus, children, every single time."

He waits, as he does every year. This is the most important lesson he teaches, the single greatest truth he can pass on to his students, but that's not all it is. Their reactions are telling, and will continue to be telling as they grow older. The best students learn from their teachers, and the best teachers learn from their students. With the right eye, it is possible to see the adults these children might grow to be, who will be soldiers and who will be threats, who will rise up and who will be brought low. Who will be drawn to fight, and who to flight. People are simple. Snakes taught him that.

It is Evans who raises her hand first, because of course it is; Tom has never doubted Ariana much, but after today, he does not doubt her at all. "Yes, Ms. Evans?"

"I was just…wondering," Evans says slowly, like she's weighing out each word, "if magic is intent, then the Unforgivable curses can have their place, can't they? Not Cruciatus, of course, but the…other two. Is that why you told us about them?"

"Yes and no, Ms. Evans, yes and no," Tom says, pleased. "I told you about them because you need to know, and I told you about them because there's a lesson in them, and I told you about them because you are far from done with them, at least in this classroom."

"How so?" Snape asks, looking badly shaken, and Tom smiles.

"You will learn the theory," he says, "and then you will learn the history, and then you will learn the side effects, and then you will learn the theory again, and then, dear boy, when I have decided you are ready…well. Then you will learn to use them."

--

Lily waits at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and listens. Ariana had told her to come here, after all, and Lily has learned to pay attention to her. She always has her reasons, even if they don't make sense most of the time.

Hello, Lily, Ariana says, and Lily feels herself relax.

"Hello, Professor. What are we doing here?"

It is time I showed you something, Lily. You are thirteen now--in some cultures, that is considered adulthood..

Lily wrinkles her nose. "Begging your pardon, but that sounds a bit mad to me. I'm not an adult! I spat in James' dinner tonight, that's not adult behavior."

This seems to momentarily distract Ariana. Did he deserve it?

"'Course he deserved it," Lily says. "Even when he's not done something awful he deserves it. I see how he looks at me."

But you don't mind it enough to sleep in the girl's dormitory again..

"Well, I figure it's not his fault he's an idiot," Lily says. "You said you wanted to show me something? I wouldn't push, only it's cold and James gets kind of…weird, about the cloak."

Yes, I imagine he does. Instinct, in these cases, is often stronger than intellect.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Never mind. Follow me.

Lily does, even though there's not much to follow tonight. Ariana's stopped bothering with the spectre most of the time, just fills the air around Lily with her inarguable presence--and, alright, if push must come to shove, Lily's aware that there's something more than a bit odd about that, about all of it. But then, that's true of Hogwarts at large, isn't it? Big magical school hidden in the middle of Scotland, can't be found on maps, paintings as chatty as ever and full up with magical children; Lily's grown comfortable with odd.

This will be painful for you, Ariana says, when they're a few yards past the tree line. I apologize, but it is necessary, and it will only be worse the longer I wait. You will not remember all of it when it is over; this, too, is necessary. But it will instill in you the things you must know. Are you ready?

"Yes," Lily says, steeling herself, and Ariana murmurs Brave girl, before it begins.

The world is--everywhere, happening all at once. Lily is eight years old and sitting on a hill with James' friend Snape; Lily is fifteen and telling someone off for calling her a Mudblood; Lily is twenty-one and a man with slits for nostrils is advancing on her, wand outstretched, a baby's wail high in her ears--

No, Lily, Ariana says gently. Your curiosity must not get the better of you. Yours is not that history; you must find the thread that feels familiar, and follow it. I am sorry, but you must.

"But I have to save him," Lily whispers, and Ariana says, Not in this lifetime, you don't.

Lily grits her teeth and tries again; the tide shifts, though she could not say how. A map unfurls before her, that parchment Sirius had sketched allegiances across, with the ink sunk deep into the page; a white-tailed doe licks the palm of Remus's hand before a huge black dog tackles him; James' cloak swirls around her, a wand in her hand, a stone in her pocket. Lily feels inevitability well up within her, and the pressure is unbearable; she says, "I can't," and Ariana says You must, and Lily hates, hates, hates her as she watches a man who looks like Headmaster Dumbledore cast the killing curse, watches Sirius tip his head back and laugh rage with his brother at his left hand, watches James running for her, mouth open, words lost to the wind--

"Oh," Lily says, "it's me."

Yes, says Ariana. And now, you forget.

discworld fic: a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat [vimes/sybil/vetinari, pg]

2012-04-01T02:51:41Z

And then I went crazy and wrote 5.5K of Discworld fic. This is because of, and very much for, postcardmystery, who is the root of all my madness and the cure for all my evil.

Title: a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sam Vimes/Lady Sybil/Lord Vetinari
Summary: In which Vimes is Vetinari's bulldog, Vetinari is Vimes' headache, and they're both of them Lady Sybil's boys.

a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat

There is a little game Lord Vetinari plays with himself…ah, well. There are many little games Lord Vetinari plays with himself, because reality would be summarily boring otherwise; this particular game is simply one he plays more often than not, if only because it comes up so often. There is much to be learned, Vetinari has discovered, by the typical Ankh-Morporkian's view of Ankh-Morpork. It's not as though it matters--Vetinari is The Man, and, as such, has The Vote--but, if nothing else, it passes the time.

Lord Selachii, for example, persists in comparing the city to clockwork. Vetinari is well aware that this is so he might have an excuse to use phrases like "well-oiled machine," and "keeping ahead of the times," and other such nonsense; it is the great tragedy of Lord Selachii's life that he tries so hard for ingratiatingly sycophantic, especially as he persists in being unaware that there is no such thing. He is incorrect in his assessment, of course, but Vetinari allows him the error. Lord Selachii likes to look at Ankh-Morpork as something that runs according to a preconceived set of rules, which means Lord Selachii doesn't actually like to look at Ankh-Morpork at all. This, like anything else, is worth noting.

Moist von Lipwig, on the other hand, views the city of Ankh-Morpork as a candy dish. He would never say as much out loud, but Vetinari has long since been the foremost scholar in the field of telling silence, in the study of what, exactly, it is telling. Moist von Lipwig is the sort of man that might say, "Ask not what Ankh-Morpork can do for you, but what Ankh-Morpork can do for me," which is a useful viewpoint, if necessary to keep on-task. Moist milks the city for all she is worth, and, much as every war needs its butchers, every hard sell needs its pusher.

Sam Vimes (not, of course, that Vetinari will ever admit to thinking of him as anything but His Grace, His Excellency, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, if only because it is so difficult to pass up a chance to see the man break out in hives) sees the city as…a sort of ancient, lovable manure pile, Vetinari imagines, if he's to be honest about it. The smell is atrocious, but nothing could grow without it. The whole mess of it is filthy, but it's Vimes' mess, gods damn it, and why are you asking about it, and get off his lawn.

It's rather endearing, as viewpoints go. Not accurate, but endearing all the same.

Sybil, once, had compared the city to a dragon. She would, but she's also more correct than most. Ankh-Morpork, if it's anything, is a dog--docile with proper training, not quite stupid but not quite intelligent either, hesitant to bite the hand that feeds it, likely as not to bark at inanimate objects. Give it a good collar, a strong leash, a firm hand and a quiet place that no one will notice to shit in, and things proceed relatively smoothly. There are always a few people who get bitten, of course, but Sir Samuel isn't wrong about the lawn.

Every dog has its day, Vetinari muses, and he is a good man with a calendar. The clock strikes eleven, the door opens and shuts, and the faint aroma of cheap cigars filters into the room; Vetinari turns from the window, raises his eyebrows, lowers his pen. "Ah, Vimes."

--

Lady Sybil Ramkin is seventeen and unmarried the day she meets Havelock Vetinari. This is, unfortunately, the way Sybil is defined by most of the people she knows and wishes she didn't; it's always Lady Ramkin: unmarried, as opposed to Lady Ramkin: friendly or Lady Ramkin: kind to animals or Lady Ramkin: actually considerably more intelligent than you, Lord Rust, but thank you for your attention. It, like many of the less savory details of Sybil's existence, is one of those things that Comes Along with her ancestry.

Sybil would quite like to have a little chat with her ancestry, actually, should the opportunity arise. She's very fond of what her father insists on referring to as her child-bearing hips, but she could've done without the excessive gilt in the third floor toilets. Or the genetic propensity for migraine headaches. Or the frankly unsettling portrait hall full of Lord Ramkins past; she is at least 75% certain that her grandfather's eyes had been decidedly less severe, for one thing. And, of course, there is the company she is forced to keep--she could do without that. She could do without that very much indeed.

She is hiding in the kitchens--no, no, that won't do. She is, after all, a Lady now; as such, she is Fashionably Lingering in the kitchens of the Assassin's Guild, for the purpose of Diplomatically Avoiding Further Interaction With People Who Might Provoke Her Into Discourtesy. Thinking in capital letters is not an easy business, but Sybil is a product of Excellent Breeding, and has been trained since birth. It is this same training that allows her to think of this evening as a Gathering of Interested Parties, as opposed to the evening of gentile gossip about mad old Lord Snapcase that it actually is; for Sybil, it's mostly a chance to attempt to convince the head chef, once again, to give her his profiterole recipe.

A man tumbles through the window. Normally, Sybil thinks distantly, that's the sort of phrase you'd use when you meant crash; she can see now that such a usage would, in fact, be in error. This man tucks around himself and rolls gracefully through the air, going from outside to inside with the minimum of fuss. The window does, of course, break, but it does so quietly, and sounds quite sorry about it.

"Oh!" Sybil says, and then, when the man looks up, "oh dear, you're bleeding. Here."

She glances around for a towel, remembers that this is the ornamental kitchen, and scowls. After a moment's thought--her dress is silk, and, while she doesn't care about ripping it, there is the distinct chance it might take a while--she reaches up under the hem of her skirts and tears off two large pieces from her petticoat. The man has blood running from his nose and a wide cut spanning the length of his left forearm, leaving a gash in his dark grey turtleneck; she hands him the smaller piece of her petticoat, wets the other one, and presses it lightly to the wound.

"Ah," the man says, sounding equal parts confused, amused, and like he's speaking through a bloody nose, "hello, then."

"Hello yourself," Sybil says calmly. "Had a bit of a rough night?"

"You're not going to ask me if I'm an Assassin?"

"Well, I could," Sybil says, "but I rather think that you would've used the door, if that was the case."

"But you're not frightened of me," the man says, eyes narrowing now, more curious than hostile. The image is rather ruined by the fact that that he's holding a piece of her petticoat to his face, and she chokes back a laugh, looks back to the wound on his arm.

"I apologize," she says, "you're terrifying, I'm quite sure. Now tip your head back and stop talking; you can explain when it's not likely to bleed you to death. Whatever it is, it's bound to be more interesting than what's going on out there."

It's the stranger's turn to choke down laughter, but he does as she tells him to, and after a few minutes she's gotten him mostly sorted out. She rips a third piece of her petticoat free--her mother would've had fits, but Sybil is the Lady Ramkin now, and she's going to choose to think of this as Desecration of Undergarments For A Worthy Cause--and uses it to tie the first piece to the man's arm. "That should hold you for an hour or two, but I'd recommend you go to someone who can see to it properly. I'm Sybil, by the by."

"Lady Ramkin," the man corrects, "yes?" Without the blood thickening his vowels, Sybil can place his accent--or, at least, she can place that she can't place his accent. Wealth, certainly, and hints of…Genua, maybe?…but that's the Ankh-Morporkian street accent he's trying for and not quite hitting. Sybil smiles; she's always liked mysteries.

"The very same," she says, "but I'm Sybil to my friends. I'd quite like us to be friends, Mr…?"

"Vetinari," the stranger says, and then he smiles. "But if we're to be friends, I suppose it's Havelock."

--

In his continuing efforts to delegate to his staff, Vimes has more or less abandoned patrolling. Or, well…he's not abandoned it, exactly, because Vimes is an addictive personality at heart, and Ankh-Morpork is the kind of drug that won't quit you, even if you make the foolish attempt to quit it. He can't abandon patrolling, because it would be like abandoning breathing, or abandoning the tendency to assume that the worst in people is actually only a veneer over the even worse, and anyway he'll have to teach young Sam to walk one of these days. It's more that he's abandoned patrolling in the official sense of the word, and taken to lurking in dark corners as a semi-private citizen instead.

There are certain spots that have a little gold star next to them in his mind, whether for nostalgia value, coverage from the occasional shower of fish, or proximity to the sort of food Sybil doesn't really let him eat anymore. The alley behind Gimlet's Delicatessen has plenty to recommend to it, as does the corner just past Unseen University, in the long shadow of Old Tom. Just now, he's leaned up against a brick wall near the end of Treacle Mine Road, because the answer to the question of who watches the watchmen is, inevitably, Sam Vimes.

And also…

"Hello, Sir Samuel," says Lord Vetinari, directly to his left, and Vimes nearly jumps out of his skin.

"Good god, man, are you trying to scare me to death?" Vimes demands, which is…unwise, on any number of levels. His Lordship, Vimes knows, has thrown people in the scorpion pit for less than that, though to be fair most of them were street entertainers. Vimes has come to terms with the fact that a good portion of the city sees him as a street entertainer these days, but it's not as though he does it on purpose.

Vetinari grins at him. There is a word for that kind of grin, and the word is rakish; Vimes tries to apply it to the Patrician, and discovers that even his innermost thoughts shy away from the combination. He's wearing some sort of paint on his face, clothes far grayer and more nondescript than his typical attire, and if it weren't for the flash of his teeth in the darkness, Vimes would not be able to see him at all.

"Not to death, Sir Samuel, I assure you," Vetinari says, and it's a lucky thing for him that he's the ruler of the city, because Vimes would really, really like to hit him.

"You know, there's a word for people like you."

"Is it, perhaps, sir?"

"That's the one," Vimes sighs, giving up. He relaxes back against the wall, lights a cigar. "What're you doing out here, if I can be so bold as to question His Lordship?"

"And here I thought boldness came naturally to you," Vetinari says. "I am, as they say, out on the town."

Vimes snorts before he can help himself. "Mingle with the lower classes sort of thing? I hate to break it to you, sir, but you've missed a couple memos on city fashion."

"Ah," Vetinari says. "Perhaps that was the wrong phrase, especially in your case, Sir Samuel. You'd be more likely to see it as being on patrol, I imagine, though I can't imagine why."

"On patrol…" Vimes stops, thinks, and looks Vetinari over again. "Oh, come on. You've got spies for this sort of thing, haven't you? What am I saying, of course you do, I've met them--"

"Have you?"

"Well, I've sensed them, anyway," Vimes finishes weakly. "Very acute sense for being watched, I've got. It's a copper thing."

"As opposed to a paranoia thing? You shock me, Sir Samuel."

Vimes coughs, because it's cough or say something awful. Of course, there's something to be said for coughing and saying something awful, so he sighs and says, "Speaking of paranoia, we were talking about what you're doing out here looking like you got in a fight with a paint factory?"

"Surely not a fight," Vetinari says. "A courteous disagreement, at the very least."

"Sir."

Vetinari grins again, a sliver of white in the darkness. "Ah, Vimes. The same thing you're doing, I imagine. I've noticed my spies are much more…productive, shall we say…if they are aware that they, too, are occasionally under supervision."

"Who watches the watchmen?"

"Just so."

"Huh," Vimes says slowly, taking a long pull from his cigar, "so that means you've got spies in the Treacle Mine house, then."

"Don't be obvious, Sir Samuel. You knew that."

"And, seeing as right now the focus of your attention is me--"

"Not all of my attention, of course. You might crumble under the pressure."

"Thank you so much," Vimes snarls, before he can help himself. He coughs again, ignores the third flash of teeth in as many minutes. "My point being, you are, right now, watching the watchman who's watching the watchmen, under the guise of watching the watchmen who watches the watchman who's watching the watchmen?"

Vetinari's voice is serene. "You'll give yourself a nasty headache that way, Your Grace."

"As though you're not one of those personified," Vimes mutters, very far under his breath indeed.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, sir."

There is silence for a few minutes, just the faint sound of Vetinari's breathing, which Vimes is aware that he's only hearing because Vetinari's letting him hear it. He sinks into his thoughts for a few minutes, comes up with one that rings of truth, and winces, trying to avoid it. It's a bit loud, though, and Vetinari even breathes intrigue, and, well. Vimes has a couple of really solid positive qualities, but he's never been particularly skilled at letting sleeping dogs lie.

"So I'm guessing this won't be the last time I see you out here, then," he says, eventually.

"I'd imagine not, Your Grace."

"That, in fact, this was your way of introducing yourself as a semi-permanent fixture of my little nightly outings."

"That is certainly not unlikely, Your Grace."

"And do I have a choice in this?"

"Sir Samuel," Vetinari says, sounding almost fond, "do you ever?"

Vimes lets that one percolate for a few minutes. He's not as irritated as he should be, which is irritating. Vetinari can probably tell, which is more irritating still; Vimes isn't sure, but he wouldn't be surprised if the mad bastard was laughing, in that silent, private way he has. Still, it's nice to know he doesn't spend his free hours researching new and exciting ways to bring men to tears without moving a single muscle. All of his free hours, anyway.

"You want a cigar?" he says at last, and Vetinari smiles.

--

The first state dinner following Lord Vetinari's appointment to (or hostile takeover of, depending on how much you know) the Patricianship is a particularly uncivilized affair. Vetinari is deeply and inexorably aware of the fact that civilized is one of those words that doesn't actually carry any meaning, but its opposite speaks volumes. The chair that he sits in still bears the impression of Lord Snapcase's rather generous backside, and Vetinari makes a mental note to have it replaced over the sound of civic leaders going for one another's throats.

One of the advantages--or, as it happens currently, disadvantages--of taking over the position at this moment in history is that he is not the only man settling into a new role. Many of the guilds have recently gone through similar changes, some of which took several months to engineer; the freshly minted Mrs. Rosemary Palm, for example, will do well as the head of the Guild of Seamstresses, est. two weeks ago, and Lord Downey of the Assassin's Guild is, while regrettably still capable of fogging mirrors, at least predictable enough. Any table ringed with the who's who of Ankh-Morpork is bound to be a power struggle, and Vetinari had expected that this affair would cause a certain amount of…unpleasantness. If he were a butcher, he would call it a precursor to trimming the fat; it's an apt metaphor, especially when one considers the fact that fat rarely anticipates being trimmed.

Still, it's all a bit loud. Vetinari is young yet, and he had not expected that the assorted players would linger past dessert. He knows what he needs to know, and, while he is aware that his power is absolute, it would appear that the assembled has yet to get the memo. He's puzzling over the correct way to send it (he's rather tired, and a number of his now-unwanted guests are rather drunk, and it really is tempting to make an example of Downey, tempting enough that he mustn't allow himself to do it without cause) when Lady Ramkin catches his eye.

Vetinari almost smiles. Sybil is, in many ways, his best friend; she is certainly his only friend, having ascended to the position through sheer force of will. She is a beguiling combination of good breeding and goodheartedness that said breeding somehow failed to drum out of her, and if Vetinari were the marrying kind, he would've asked for her hand some years ago. It is unfortunate for Sybil that he sees the human body as means to an end, and decidedly more unfortunate for him that she is aware of that fact, and refuses to allow him to fake the interest for her sake. They've developed their own sort of middle ground, of course, because breeding will out, but humanity will linger. Vetinari had never imagined himself as capable of love, but Sybil is capable enough for both of them.

He had her seated next to the Downeys, because she asked him to. To be more accurate, she said, "You will not inflict that horrible man upon anyone else, and if you seat him next to Rust no one will ever go home." She was right; she usually is. Just now, however, there is something to the set of her jaw that puts Vetinari on edge, and it is not as though he needs to use his imagination to guess what Lord Downey may be not-so-subtly implying. That is the blessing and the curse of cruel men--they are, unerringly, the same every time.

He tilts his head. She tightens her jaw. He narrows his eyes; she widens hers. He doesn't quite smile, and she executed a muted little gesture that would be a vigorous shake of her head if they weren't in company. He grins outright, and can almost hear her groan.

The fork embeds itself in the back of the chair just behind Lord Downey's head with an audible twang. The silence that falls is instant and absolute.

"Ah," says Vetinari, entirely impassive, "my hand must have slipped. And now, good citizens, if I might suggest we finish up for the evening…"

"You are a terror," Sybil says afterward, following him up to his office for a nightcap. "Honestly, that wasn't necessary at all."

"It was obvious he'd said something to upset you," Vetinari argues, "and I was looking for an excuse to dismiss them in any case. And, of course, there is the fact that Downey is a scag."

"You know I think it's unhealthy that you have in-jokes with yourself, Havelock."

"Who else would I have them with?" Vetinari says innocently, and opens the door of his office before she can threaten to make him come work with the dragons again.

"Dear god," Sybil says, peering into the wreckage. "Did you do this all yourself?"

"The remains of the late, great Lord Nutcase, I am sorry to say."

"Snapcase."

"Slip of the tongue."

"Don't you have a…" Sybil says, and pokes at sticky mound of paperwork with an indelicate little shudder. "….a man for this? A cleaner? Something? This is positively unsanity."

"I am in the process of replacing the entire staff," Vetinari says, leading her through the outer room of the office to the rather more private--and decidedly less dirty--inner sanctum. "You can never know where an old servant's loyalties lie, after all. Snapcase's assistant I might have kept on, but the poor man seems to have worked himself to death."

"Oh, that is a shame. Retirement, then?"

"I'm afraid I meant that quite literally," Vetinari says, and sighs. That had been an unpleasant start his first day in office, though, of course, possibly he should have asked after any heart conditions before he requested the man organize the purchase of a passel of scorpions.

"I think I'm going to choose not to ask," Sybil says, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Probably wise."

They drift into their typical positions for nights like these; Sybil settles herself into one of the armchairs, and Vetinari tucks himself up next to her on the floor, knees folded underneath him. There is exactly one person on earth he allows to see him like this, but the truth is there are, very occasionally, moments when Vetinari likes to imagine he is not in complete control of his reality. It is, of course, folly--Vetinari has yet to meet a situation he is not in complete control of--but, as fantasies go, it's not a terrible one. Sybil is good for things like this, because in addition to an aversion to spreading gossip and a tendency to allow for even the most unusual of quirks, she has never seemed to mind that Vetinari enjoys spending these sorts of evenings with her.

Her fingers settle into his hair. After a moment, sounding less stern that he's sure she means to, Sybil says, "You could've had his eye out, you know."

"Yes," Vetinari agrees. "I misjudged the angle a bit; pity," and the sound of her quiet, unwilling laughter fills the room as he closes his eyes.

--

"D'you know," Sam says, over dinner, "His Lordship's taken to following me around when I'm on patrol. You would've have any idea why, would you?"

Sam's using his copper voice, and Sybil has to hide a smile behind a bite of her roast, because she knows he doesn't know it. There are days when it bothers her that Sam can't quite take off his job at the door, but it's not most days. Most days that's just a Sam Thing, like the obsession with those terrible cigars and his insistence on buying hideous, worn-through boots that'll have him coming home with a chill one of these days, like the way he insists on telling their son historically accurate bedtime stories. He's just Sam, for better or worse. He has been all along.

"I can't think of why Havelock would want to wander the streets in the rain, dear," Sybil says, too innocently. She does, of course, know exactly what's going on, but she and Havelock have long since agreed it's better to let Sam draw conclusions on his own. It makes him so happy to have something to do, for one thing. It satisfies Havelock's upsetting little masochist streak, for another.

"Funny thing, that," Sam says, slow now, the almost-there voice, Sybil really has found the funniest men in all Ankh-Morpork to run rings around. "Never do spot him when there's inclement weather. You'd think, him being who he is, that a little rain wouldn't put him off, if he was spying on me for a reason."

"Perhaps he isn't spying on you, then." That's probably too much of a clue, but then again, it is sometimes necessary to beat Sam's paranoia about the head a couple of times if anything else is to get past it. "Not that I'd know, of course."

"Of course," Sam agrees, distant. There is a long pause, and then his whole body stiffens up with realization. After a moment, he relaxes very carefully, takes a long, measured sip of his fruit juice, and clear his throat.

Sybil wipes her mouth with her napkin and waits. Being married to Sam is, in many ways, a waiting game. The fact that what she's waiting for is, more often than not, some kind of explosion isn't really a problem--she works with dragons, after all.

"Sybil?" he says eventually.

"Yes, dear?"

"In the future," Sam says evenly, "if His Lordship expresses interest in spending more time with me, please feel free to just invite him for dinner."

Sybil doesn't bother hiding her smile; after a moment, Sam grins back at her, a little exasperated, but mostly fond. She does so enjoy it, when things work out according to plan.

--

Some days--some weeks, to be more accurate--Vimes hates his job.

It's not anything inherently wrong with job, really. Coppering itself is a noble and ancient art and is also, generally speaking, not even all that hard. He certainly likes it better than being His Grace, His Excellency, Duke of Vetinari Just Won't Quit, Commander of Diplomacy Via Utter Lack of Diplomacy Sir Samuel Vimes; he refuses to consider that his job, because that way madness lies. But even coppering has its terrible moments, or its more-terrible moments, anyway. Even coppering, some days, makes Vimes want to blow up the damned city and have done with it.

It's just…vampires. There's something down-and-out unsettling about them, isn't there--Vimes knows it's not their general undead-ness, because, well, Angua, not to mention Reg, who's less undead and more dead-man-walking. But vampires make Vimes nervous. They always seem to be planning something, and they've had plenty of time to plan. In this case, it's less that they seem to be planning something and more than six different buildings in range of the palace have mysteriously changed hands, Angua insists that all signs smell of fear of garlic, and, if Vimes isn't much mistaken, some particularly batty nutter is planning to murder his Lordship. Again.

It really gets old, this assassination business. Vimes is pretty sure that when even the Assassins have given up on someone, everyone else should bloody well just fall in line.

"Take care of it, Your Grace," Vetinari said, when Vimes went to warn him. He hadn't even sounded fazed, which--for whatever reason--just got right under Vimes' typically thick skin. If the stubborn bastard would just…but no. No, that way madness lies, and Vimes knows it well.

If he's noticed that the thoughts that he avoids for the sake of avoiding madness are typically tied up, one way or another, with the Patrician, he isn't going to worry about it. Sybil certainly doesn't seem to mind; if anything, she encourages it. Vimes is going to put some time aside to prod at that little problem, as soon as some time makes itself available.

In any case, the attempt is going to be today. Is it not written that I can feel it in my water? he thinks, and then promptly checks his pockets, his location, and the date on the nearest newspaper; when he's satisfied himself that Lu-Tze hasn't shown up to merrily usher him through time and space again, he sets off for the only building he doesn't have men covering. Carrot and Angua are stationed, respectively, at the two most likely vantage points, and he's got Detritus covering the only street entrance for three other possible locations. Colon and Nobby are on traffic, where, hopefully, they've inadvertently put a wheel-clamp on the murderer-to-be.

Vimes, because he is, if nothing else, a suspicious bastard, is headed for the last building. It's the least likely danger spot; it's not really its fault that Vimes is sure it's also the one that's going to get used.

It's an old warehouse, too low to the ground to be any use if you're trying to shoot someone through a window--unless you're not trying to shoot someone through a window, but shoot yourself towards that window in the straightest line possible, Vimes thinks grimly. He's got a pretty good idea of the way this is going to go down; the way he figures it, if you're a vampire, you don't need a long-range crossbow to kill someone. You just need an entrance point, a path to it that doesn't go through much direct sunlight, and a quiet place to get your bat on.

"A vampire would never try to kill someone during the day," Carrot said, and Vimes said, "Yes, exactly, which is why I think it's going to be a daylight attack. Try to keep up."

He climbs the stairs slowly, a long, pointed stake in one hand and a cosh in the other. It never pays to be unprepared for any eventuality, especially the kind of eventually that involved hitting some poor bastard over the head as quietly as possible. He is met with that eventuality three times as he ascends, and he should probably stop and signal to someone to join him at what is obviously the prize-winner in this multiple-location game, but he's not sure he's got the time.

It's Dragon, King of Arms waiting for him, because of course it is. You can say this for Ankh-Morpork; it does have its permanent fixtures.

"Commander, ah-ha, Vimes," Dragon says. "I must confess, I am not surprised. You are notoriously tenacious, aren't you. Like a dog, ah-ha, with a bone."

"Ooh, yes, tell it again," Vimes growls, stepping closer. "Go ahead and say the implied bits out loud, while you're at it--I know what they call me."

"You are Vetinari's….terrier."

"Partial to bulldog, myself," Vimes says, and circles. Dragon watches him with sharp eyes, and ugh, ugh, Vimes really does hate vampires. "If you're gonna tell a story, you might as well tell it right."

Dragon moves, but Vimes is expecting it; there's the cosh in one hand, and the stake in the other, but there's the wooden crossbow bolt wired up his sleeve, too. Vimes makes it a point to learn from criminals, and Carcer, in particular, had been an education. Always have another knife, even if it's not knives you're playing. You never know when you might need to serve up some nice, cold-blooded justice.

"If I'm a dog," Vimes says to the pile of ashes at his feet, "I'm a damn good one, thanks. Somebody clean this up."

The realization that he's alone puts a damper on things, but only a slight one.

Later--when he's signaled for Carrot and Angua and Detritus, when Cheery's calmly orchestrated the removal of all dust from the tower, when it's occurred to Vimes that he can, actually, stop taking every breath through the latest haze of concern for his Lordship's continued existence, a pigeon comes. Vimes swears, because everyone uses the sephamore these days, and he knows Vetinari only keeps pigeons because he enjoys the way they tend to shit on Vimes' shoulder. This one, true to form, manages to both relieve itself and communicate an immediate summons to the Palace, and Vimes swears under his breath but goes.

It's just past dark when he arrives, and Drumknott leads him quietly up to the Patrician's suite of private rooms, leaves him at the door without a word. Vimes wait precisely half a second before a voice calls out, "Come," and he walks in and then…stops.

His wife is seated in an armchair. The Patrician is sitting on the floor, with his head more or less in his lap. Her fingers are stroking his hair. Vimes…Vimes isn't even surprised.

"Hello, dear," Sybil says, smiling.

"A very good dog, indeed," says Vetinari, without even opening his eyes. "Come in. Have a cigar."

--

Every dog has its day, Vetinari muses, and he is a good man with a calendar. The clock strikes eleven, the door opens and shuts, and the faint aroma of cheap cigars filters into the room; Vetinari turns from the window, raises his eyebrows, lowers his pen. "Ah, Vimes."

"Hello, Uncle," says young Sam, with the kind of careful weight to the words that means his father is lingering just outside the almost closed door. Vetinari would've known that anyway--Sam himself rarely smells of cigar smoke, though occasionally his father's cloud of bad taste does follow him around--but it's nice to have the confirmation.

"That will be all, Sir Samuel," he calls. Sam grins, and Vetinari can hear Vimes swear.

"Just don't show him the scorpions again, alright?" he calls back, and then, begrudgingly, adds, "Sir."

The door shuts again, and Vetinari smiles at the boy in front him. "Well then, young Samuel. The scorpions it is."

harry potter fic: living on wildfires [marauder era, r]

2012-03-27T01:50:56Z

So, there was a prompt at the Could Have Beens AU Comment Ficathon (which is great fun, you guys should check it out) that read as follows: "Dumbledore/Grindelwald; Ariana doesn't die, Dumbledore sticks with Grindelwald." And what I intended to do was...look at it and then look away, honestly. What I'm actually doing is more or less a re-envisioning of the entire HP canon, set in the Marauder era, that works around this concept and what such a change might have wrought. This is the first part, and if things go according to plan, there will be two more.

Like Harry Potter, this is a war story; unlike Harry Potter, it is very up-front about that fact. I'm going to call this one a choose-not-to-warn experience, because there are things I am dealing with within for the sole reason that the books set them up and didn't deal with them; please proceed with due caution.

Title: Living on Wildfires
Rating: R
Summary: In a house in Godric's Hollow, three boys toss their magic around and a little girl dies…unless.

Living on Wildfires

In a house in Godric's Hollow, three boys toss their magic around and a little girl dies…unless. Unless, just before the last moment, the blond boy throws a shield; unless, just before the last moment, the angry boy drops his wand; unless, just before the last moment, the tall boy casts a different curse.

In a house in Godric's Hollow, three boys toss their magic around and a little girl lives. Albus's curse is caught in Gellert's net, and only he knows what almost was, what could have been; only he knows, until that night, when he pants the truth of it into Gellert's neck, a trap of his own making.

"You saved her life," says Albus.

"Of course I did," says Gellert.

"Why?" says Albus.

"You love her," says Gellert, and history…shifts.

♛

"James," says Diadora Potter, "do you know what this is?"

"Yeah," James says, forehead knitting together. He is eleven years old, and tomorrow he will be going to Hogwarts. "It's Dad's invisibility cloak."

Diadora sighs. "Oblivate."

--

"James," says Diadora Potter, "do you know what this is?"

"Sure," James says, forehead knitting together. He is eleven years old, and tomorrow he will be going to Hogwarts. "It's a cloak; Dad's old one, innit?"

Diadora sighs. "Oblivate."

--

"James," says Diadora Potter, "do you know what this is?"

"Um," James says, forehead knitting together. He is eleven years old, and tomorrow he will be going to Hogwarts. "No?"

Diadora smiles. "I'm sorry, Jamie," she says, "but you must take this to school with you. You must give it to Headmaster Dumbledore, but you must be very sure it is Headmaster Dumbledore, and not his brother in disguise."

"How will I know?" James asks, and Diadora sighs. The sound is immediately familiar; James would call it deja vu, if he were old enough to know what that was.

"Think of a thunderstorm," says Diadora. "Or your father during the raid last month, or your friend Sirius' mum when she's in a temper. You can feel it in the air, can't you, Jamie? The magic?"

"Yeah," says James, "'course I can, but--"

"When it hurts," Diadora says, flat. "When it hurts somewhere too deep to feel it properly--that's the brother."

♛

"We could do anything we wanted to," says Gellert, a boy still around the eyes but a man everywhere else, when they are two days clear of the Hollow. Albus hoards his freedom, carries it warm like a cloak around his shoulders; like a cloak that will be around his shoulders, when they've found what it is they're looking for. His brother has taken charge of Ariana, and if Albus does his best, he can barely hear her parting wails.

You love her, Gellert had said, and since Gellert had said it, it must be true.

"What do you mean, could?" Albus says, his smile slow and sick, dangerous on purpose, as Gellert's eyebrows go up.

♛

"Tomorrow, dear boy," says The Brother to Severus Snape. He is not The Brother when he is at home, of course; it is simply the title the resistance has given him, uncreative as they are, tied, as ever, to Aberforth. Before he was The Brother, Albus was Minister for Magic; before he was Minister for Magic, he was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot; before he was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, he was the editor of the Daily Prophet, and so on, and so on.

All those positions have, of course, been happily filled in his absence. Imperius is useful, but it's hardly necessary when you've controlled of the board. Inferi, on the other hand, have long been Gellert's pet project, and they do sit so well for photos.

"Tomorrow, sir," Severus agrees, and Albus smiles. Before he was The Brother, before he was quietly feared in houses the world over, before he was anyone, Albus Dumbledore was stupid. It still rankles, though, of course, he suspects it happens to everyone once.

Gellert, whose talent for brutal honesty is only exceeded by his truly exceptional prowess as a liar, always feels it necessary to remind Albus that his one moment of stupidity has cost them nearly thirty years. In return, Albus tends to lock him in the Mandrake garden. Theirs is a battle of wills, but it's not like there's anyone else worth fighting.

Tomorrow, Severus Snape will go to Hogwarts. He has been raised under Albus Dumbledore's exceptional hand, not like that Riddle boy with his dark eyes and his contrary impulses and his be-damned authority issues; if only Albus had been able to turn him to their side, Salazar Slytherin's blood in his veins and the language of snakes in his mouth...ah, well.

"You will do me proud," says Albus Dumbledore, and Severus Snape says, "Yes."

♛

For The Greater Good, it says, in the Ministry lobby, on the header of the Daily Prophet, carved into the metal of every galleon, sickle and knut. For The Greater Good, on the gates above Diagon Alley and echoing out from the Floo; For The Greater Good written into Olivander's wands, arching over the entrance to Platform 9 3/4. For The Greater Good bellowed at every World Cup, For The Greater Good pressed into every cobblestone, For The Greater Good hissed from neighbor to neighbor, their nervous eyes fixed on the streets.

For The Greater Good on the sides of the town cars, the ones wizards get into and never get out of again. For The Greater Good on the sides of the trains, the ones that go somewhere no one can name. For The Greater Good, because anything else is suicide. For The Greater Good, because there are no other options.

♛

In an office whose door is guarded by a gargoyle, a man with piercing blue eyes reclines behind a desk meant for someone else. A tabby cat with strange markings 'round the eyes sits to his left; on his right, a chimera curls around itself, bleating quietly to deaf ears. In front of him, sharp eyes flash green from under a shock of black hair; behind him, his sister leans against the window, humming a tune no one can follow with the Sorting Hat high on her head.

"It is tomorrow, Headmaster," says Riddle. Around his neck, the basilisk fang he has worn for nearly twenty years glints a dull, dangerous yellow; he insists that it's penance for slaughtering an ancient creature, but it makes Aberforth nervous all the same. "The prophecy says--"

"Damn the prophecy," snaps Aberforth. "Damn it straight to hell, you always did set too much store by those things."

"Be that as it may," says Riddle, heat in his voice, and Minerva hisses a warning. His hand moves to rest on her back, and she bites him, but gently; Riddle smiles, placated, and Aberforth rolls his eyes in exasperation.

"Your point, Riddle?"

"My point," says Riddle, "is that, prophecy or no, the cloak comes to roost here tomorrow morning. Believe what you will about the rest of it, but there is no arguing that fact."

Ariana's humming changes pitch, and a tear opens wider on the Sorting Hat's brim. "She says it will be Evans, Potter, Lupin, and the Black boy. She says you must help Lupin, regardless of your superstitions. She says Garnet will agree."

Aberforth looks to the chimera, who lifts his head and bleats again, plaintive, insistent. He nods, drops his head to his desk, and waves a hand. "Clear out, then. The Stone is safe?"

"As safe as we can make it, Headmaster," says Minerva, shedding the cat at last. "Which, if I do say so myself, is rather safe indeed."

They go, and Ariana sings again. When Aberforth turns to look, she has pulled her gaze to the window, is watching him with warm, wet eyes.

"She says," starts the Sorting Hat, and Aberforth snarls, "I know what she said."

♛

"My name is Lily Evans," says Lily, on a train that travels at the speed of secrecy, huddled at the back of an empty car and thinking of home. She is a witch, and has known as much for six hours. The woman who came for her, stern of voice but kind about the eyes, apologized for not telling her sooner; Lily brushed it away and followed her out the door.

She had not known there was was a word for what she did, for the flowers that bloomed in a garden long since dead, for the little oddities she could force Petunia to look past if she tried hard enough, for the food that turned up in their cupboards when her father spoke, once again, of them starving. She had not known she was a witch, but she is not surprised.

"Sirius Black," says the boy at the door of her compartment, casting a long look over his shoulder before he drags someone inside. "This is James--can you keep an eye on him for a bit? I'm supposed to go find my cousins, only he's not supposed to talk to anybody he doesn't know."

"He doesn't know me," Lily points out, and Sirius's small, shadow-thin friend laughs. He's got glasses that are cracked in the center, taped together over and over again, and he moves like someone who knows from hunger.

"Of course I do," he says, "you introduced yourself."

♛

"You're Lupin," says Aberforth Dumbledore, riding the train with his students because he must, because it's the only way to ensure it doesn't turn into one of the other trains. His brother is many things, but above all, thank Merlin, he's sentimental.

"Yes," says the boy. He does not look like a terrifying hellbeast; Aberforth will have to hope.

"You have been accepted to this school on the condition that you will never work for the Good, that right?" The boy nods, and Aberforth sighs. "And you're, what, eleven? We're supposed to just trust you to keep that promise?"

"To be entirely fair, sir, I'm not certain I trust myself," Lupin says quietly. "But not…not about that. About everything else, but not about that."

"And why should I believe you?"

"Because it was the Good that bit me, sir," Lupin says. His voice doesn't change, but Aberforth's too quick to miss the way his hands curl to fists in his pockets. "When I was five, sir. Came right out of the woods and tried to drag me off; they've been trying to find me ever since. My family's been passing through the network--"

"The Order," Aberforth corrects, not really thinking about it. "You can use the name in here, boy. Any spies on my trains are long since dealt with, believe me." To underscore this point, Garnet lets out a long, low belch. Lupin glances to the chimera, widens his eyes, and then pointedly doesn't stare; Aberforth decides, against his will, to like him.

"The Order, then," Lupin agrees readily enough. "We couldn't stay anywhere longer than a few weeks, and at the moons it was…it's been…I'll never work for the Good, not even if they take me alive. I'd die first."

"My god, boy, you're only a child!"

Lupin glances to the window, and his eyes go distant as he watches the world stream by. When he speaks, his voice is soft and flat. "My mum says it's not about how old you are, it's about how much you've lived. Begging your pardon, sir, but I don't think there's many left on our side who are children for long."

Aberforth's gut twists, but when he meets Lupin's eyes, they're calm. It's almost shaming, how unaffected (how deeply affected) this boy is; Garnet bleats, low and careful, and Aberforth sighs. "Very well. The arrangement as it was set stands; upon your graduation, we will expect your services as a spy. No point lying to you about it, is there?"

"I'd imagine not, sir."

"Alright, then," Aberforth says, and waves Lupin towards the door. At the last second, he thinks of something; it's cruel to use the child this way, of course, but then again, perhaps it's not. The boy's been used already, one way or another--maybe giving him something to do is a kindness, a salve to the long, slow wound that is to be his life. "One thing more, Lupin."

"Yes, sir?"

"There's a child," Aberforth says. "Your year. James Potter; he'll be about somewhere, probably with that terror of a Black heir, god only knows whose blood's done him wrong. Potter's an Order boy, like you. I'd wager you've met him before--not under his real name, 'course, the Potters' travel is very hush-hush."

"But Potter's a pureblood surname," Lupin says, confused. "Surely--"

"C'mon, boy," Aberforth growls. "You've seen what there is to see; you think that matters anymore? Do you really?"

Lupin shifts on his feet, clears his throat. His face falls. "No, sir. Sorry, sir."

"James Potter has something I can't take from him," Aberforth says. "Because if I do, my brother will take it from me, and then we're all done for. He can't know that--even his parents don't know that. He's got to keep it, and he can't know what it's worth. I'll take care of that, but you--you will go and find him."

"What should I do once I've found him?" Lupin says, and his face scrunches up when he asks it. He looks his age for the first time since he entered the room, and Aberforth is so, so sorry.

He lifts his glass anyway, his eyebrow, swallows down the voice in his head that whispers You know, you look just like your brother. He says, "Guard."

♛

The stranger is small and blond and nervous; Severus has learned to work with that. Severus has been trained to work with that.

"Hello," he says. "Firstie, am I right?"

"I expect everyone can tell," says the stranger, scuffing his shoes against the floor. He's pudgy, which is telling--there's no one in the wizarding world carrying weight without status, not anymore. "What're you, then? A second year? You can't be any older than that, no offense--you're not tall enough."

"Perhaps I am an exceptionally short seventh year, and you have bought yourself a heap of trouble," Severus suggests, his voice silky-smooth over the clatter of the train. It's a trick he learned from Gellert--if their first impression is one that leaves them feeling inferior, they'll never forget it, whether it's based on truth or not. Power's about how you wield it. The boy cowers.

"O-oh," he stammers, "oh, no, I didn't mean--I just thought, I wasn't going to--sorry, if you're. If I was. Um."

Severus tilts his head, narrows his eyes, uses this new terror to observe. Pureblooded, and not in opposition to the Good; his weight says that, but the terror says it more, learned from birth without hiding any anger. His parents are probably huddled together in their house right now, wondering if Hogwarts was the right choice, rumors being what they are, retribution being what it is. Severus smiles. He will do.

"I'm only joking," Severus says, but there is no humor in his voice as he holds out his hand. "Snape."

"Pettigrew," the boy returns, shaking, and follows Severus to his compartment.

♛

"Do you know," says Albus, red-haired still, young as young gets (but not quite young enough), "they'd stone us, probably, if they knew."

"About the Hallows?" says Gellert, and Albus snorts.

"About the sex," he corrects. "The Hallows hardly count; we haven't got them yet."

"But we will."

"We will indeed," says Albus, and Gellert's hair is a tangle of gold and green, and let this be said for Albus Dumbledore: when he deigns to love, whether it be man or idea or long-dead story, he deigns to love entire.

♛

September 1, 1971, and the students do not take boats across the water, but there's not a one who's blind to the thestrals. September 1, 1971, and the ground has been smoldering just past the gates for thirty years, a testament to the slogan a young man had once tried to carve above the doors. September 1, 1971, and the borders of the grounds are ringed by suits of armor, by centaurs armed for battle, by a tabby cat with marks around her eyes, waiting, waiting, still.

September 1, 1971, and Peter Pettigrew follows Severus Snape like a shadow. September 1, 1971, and Lily Evans reaches for James Potter's hand, lets him pretend that she's the one who's frightened. September 1, 1971, and Sirius Black trips over Remus Lupin in his attempt to escape his cousin Bellatrix; September 1, 1971, and Tom Riddle turns a black stone over and over in his palms, speaks to voices that warn him of what could have been.

"Help will always be given at Hogwarts," says Headmaster Dumbledore, "to those who ask for it." It is either a curse or a blessing. Only time will tell.

inception fic: all i want of the world, coming down

2012-03-24T23:43:59Z

Title: all i want of the world, coming down
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~2K
Author's Note: Every now and again, an old itch crops up. Unending thanks to postcardmystery, for encouraging this itch, reading the result, and helping me title and summarize the damn thing.
Summary: Dreaming, driving, dying; this is a story about how things don't change.

all i want of the world, coming down

Inception runs like a fault line through Arthur's life, the gap between the shuddering plates of now and then, the vestiges of an earthquake sketched in blood and shadow and the last good years of a long-dead empire. Reality shatters under his shaking palms, yellows like the pages of forgotten history books; he could rewrite it, but he figures that's getting old.

He'll never have to work again, so he rents a car, rents another, shakes off the Cobbs like a dog after a rainstorm and sings along with the radio. He learns again to dress for occasion, instead of for the person he wishes he could be--he learns again to enter a room without checking the exits first, to listen for listening's sake instead of for whatever it is he's not being told. He opens his mouth in Freeport in January, lets snow gather against his tongue until his lips are numb, and reads John Irving novels by the handful. He's not his own person, but he's not anyone else's.

The words point man lose their bitterness, and then their meaning, and then wind around again until they're almost funny. Arthur learns to be a pointless man, writes not all who wander are lost on the back of a postcard and sends it to an address he hasn't quite forgotten, eats corn dogs at a county fair and dreams of aimless vines curling up an old oak tree. His fingers get sticky, so he buries them in the sand just past a rest stop on the Georgia coast, lets a summer peach drip juice down his chin, believes in nothing but the rising dawn.

Eames finds him in Little Rock, looking worse for the wear but better for the sunshine. He's leaning against a gas pump and smoking a cigarette, courting danger with sparks instead of Somnacin, too thin and not ashamed of it. He shows teeth when he grins, and Arthur doesn't bother asking the hows or whys of what he's doing here; it's obvious he's waiting, and Arthur remembers the life he once led, where all information was a commodity, where everything was just a question of trading costs.

"Where're you headed?" says Arthur.

"You tell me," says Eames, and Arthur lets him in the car.

--

The road with two is better than the road with one, for all Eames rips off bandages Arthur'd meant to leave alone. He was a sleeping dog, and should have known better than to think Eames would let him lie; he'd be bitter, weary of it, but that's not the kind of person he is anymore. If Arthur learned anything from slipping in and out of consciousness, from traipsing about in stranger's minds like he belonged there, it was this--you can be anything you want to be, provided a certain ruthlessness, provided you're willing to let parts of yourself go.

The parts of Arthur that killed for sport are roosting in a birch tree, keeping company with old owls who know better than to trust them. The parts of Arthur that kept faith with madmen drowned over the Pacific, shed during a long flight that felt longer. The parts of Arthur that looked at Eames and wanted were, once, locked up where even extractors couldn't find them. They're not anymore. Arthur is too old for tricks.

"You're different," Eames says, the shadow of a thunderstorm tailing them down an Ohio highway, his eyebrows up. "You've…shifted, I s'pose, not that I could tell you how. I didn't think that happened to people."

"Shifting?" says Arthur, and Eames shakes his head, bites the end of a toothpick, tosses his cigarette out the window. It sparks behind them, catching Arthur's eye in the rearview mirror, before the sky lets out a bellow and releases its bounty at last. The cigarette drowns. Eames' eyes are warm.

"Change," he says. "I think people are who they are, no matter what they're playing at. Have to be, don't they? Couldn't fake them properly, otherwise."

Arthur slants him a smile and pulls off at the nearest exit, winds the car down and away from I-75 until there's no remnants of civilization in sight. At the far edge of his vision, an old grain silo has gone to rust; in front of him, Eames is looking at him like he's a safe he can't quite manage to crack.

Arthur climbs out of the car, takes off his shoes, sinks his feet into the mud. He shuts the door when Eames starts asking question and climbs, staining the windshield brown as as he goes, stands with his head tipped back and his arms outstretched as the dampened air whips around him. This is a stupid, silly thing to do, but Arthur is no longer afraid of being a stupid, silly man. That part of him was born in a classroom in Long Island, stoked in the fires of his parents' art-deco living room, brought to keening, unrelenting fruition at the hands of a man who'd once lived for someone else. That part of Arthur was Arthur's last kill.

"You're mad, you know," Eames calls up to him, his door cracked open just enough to let the words carry. "Completely mental. That last job did something to you, I swear it."

"Change, Mr. Eames," Arthur yells back, working to be heard over the thunder shouting him down, and Eames' laughter carries over the sound of the squall.

--

Eames stays too thin through the summer, stays too thin for long enough that Arthur realizes he isn't, not really; this is what Eames looks like when he's at home, sharp planes and sharper eyes, a diet of cigarettes and coffee and dog-eared Vonnegut novels that he never really reads. Arthur leaves him be and wanders on, lets him sleep off long benders in the backseat, leaves him in Santa Fe one night just for the fun of it. When he comes back, Eames is spitting mad and pretending not to be, swallowing it down for an unlocked door, the passenger seat of a busted-up old Chevy, and Arthur thinks about loneliness for nearly a hundred miles.

"Where are we going?" Eames asks, once.

"Wherever we feel like," Arthur says. "Somewhere else. The next stop. The world's largest ball of yarn--I don't care. We're being untethered."

"I knew you hadn't changed," Eames says, but it's soft, so Arthur doesn't get angry, doesn't even try.

--

They kiss for the first time (this time) on the first real day of fall, autumn sweeping across the horizon, Colorado's mountains singing them home. Eames' knuckles skate across Arthur's jawline and Arthur's palm slides up along Eames' ribcage, because he took off his shirt in Utah and hasn't put it on since. There are little cigarette burns pockmarking his chest, ash flown back at him and leaving him swearing, and Arthur would've tried to find them, once. Now he leaves it easy, pushes nothing, abandons the car by the side of the road and drags Eames out into the tall grasses and blushing trees.

"I loved you, you know," Eames says. "Before, when we--"

"Of course I know that," Arthur says. "I loved you too; I just couldn't sort it out. Reality got too hard."

"I suppose we'd know from reality."

"I suppose we would," Arthur says, and thinks of something. "Is that why you think people don't change? Because that was easier than optimism, in the long run?"

"No," Eames says. "I think people don't change because I never did."

"Egotistical of you," Arthur says. "False, too. You're not the man you used to be."

"Am I not?" Eames asks, and when his mouth comes for Arthur's again, it's hungry. "I could've sworn."

--

They drive slow through the fall, into winter, stay longer when the stop, learn towns the way they've been learning roads. Arthur knows Eames' body already, once spent hours mapping it out because he couldn't be sure it was really there; he learns it again, the doubt stripped away, and finds things he'd missed the first time.

Arthur's totem lives in the glove compartment instead of his pocket. Eames' totem finds its way out from between his twitching fingers eventually, but it's a long fight.

"We could stop running," Eames says to Arthur in February. It's cold like the end of the world outside, cold like an ice age is creeping on silent feet towards the room of the Super 8 they're lately calling home. Arthur wouldn't mind, really, if an ice age came. He'd be frozen like this for future generations to find, twined up in something he never wanted to escape to begin with, a borrowed smoke hanging between his lips like all the things he's never learned to say. It wouldn't be so bad, as eternities go.

"We're not running," he says, instead. "I'm not running. Are you running?"

"Depends," Eames says. "Do you mean towards something, or away from it?"

--

"I would've killed Cobb to save myself," Arthur admits in March. "Or to save you, or just…just to kill him, honestly. I was so angry I went blind. It stopped being about the job; that's when I knew I couldn't do it again."

"I can't forge anymore," Eames confesses, the dead of night in April, like it hurts him to say the words aloud. "Being someone else felt like cheating, afterwards. There's only so much the body can do, if the spirit's not willing at all."

"I started driving because it was easier," says Arthur, on an overpass in Montana in May. "And because I didn't know who I was anymore. And I guess I thought you wouldn't follow me, if I didn't give you something to chase."

"Well, what do you think I was doing at that gas station," Eames demands, and something Arthur's chest sparks, shudders, blooms like the forest that cuts up around them, going steadily greener in the mid-morning light.

--

In June, Arthur retires the Chevy and Eames signs his real name--well, his realest name, anyway--on the lease for a house in Michigan. There's cherry trees in walking distance and a historical society marker on the door, no neighbors for two miles on either side; Eames fills one room with books, and Arthur fills another with movies, and the rest of them they fill with each other, one way or another. Shipments come from their various hidey-holes, marked with postage from the world over, and Arthur peels off the stamps and sticks them to walls in testament.

"People don't change," Eames says one night, his head dangling off the back edge of the porch swing, his feet kicking aimlessly up the chains holding it aloft. "But maybe lives do. I'd be willing to concede the point."

Arthur could answer a hundred ways, but he's still too old for tricks. He's driven the country and danced in the rain, eaten a summer peach in Georgia and swallowed snow in Maine, tasted autumn on someone else's tongue. He's right; nothing's ever constant. Eames is right; he will always be himself.

"You should put that on a plaque," Arthur says, very dry, and Eames' laughter carries across the yard. That night, Arthur dreams of old empires, of abandoned shackles; of people falling in love.

avengers fic - the only john wayne left in this town [clint/darcy, PG-13]

2012-03-19T00:04:29Z

Title: The Only John Wayne Left in This Town
Pairing: Clint/Darcy
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Okay, first of all, this story comes with a mix; that file contains every song mentioned in this story, plus a bonus Luke Bryan song, because this fic was called "Gonna Watch You Make Me Fall In Love" until the last minute. Secondly, ridiculous thanks to fuck-it-fire-everything, marielikestodraw, siriaeve and postcardmystery for reading this and reassuring me I was not completely out of my mind, and of course to angelgazing, for whom I wrote it in the first place. You guys are the best ♥
Summary: Clint's got a secret love, and it's spelled b-a-n-j-o.

sherlock fic: an avalanche of detour signs [molly hooper/greg lestrade, r]

2012-02-16T02:41:09Z

Uh, right. So, I was going to put something all eloquent about my process here, but honestly, I accidentally wrote a Molly Hooper novel and I'm REALLY tired, so <3 Fic is posted exclusively at Ao3, because it's 56,000 words long and I just couldn't bear to make six LJ posts.

All my love and thanks to Marie, who drew the EXTRAORDINARY art that goes along with this story and cheered me along through the frankly insane process of writing it; to leupagus, who told me to go for it when I said "So I'm thinking about writing a massive Molly Hooper story,"; and, of course, to postcardmystery, who not only kept me going as always, but tirelessly corrected all my terrible Americanisms, did like 99% of my research for me and explained to me the--as it turns out, significant--differences between grilled cheese, cheese toasties, and cheese on toast. This was a labor of love, and it wouldn't have happened without you guys <3

Title: An Avalanche of Detour Signs
Pairing: Molly Hooper/Greg Lestrade [Molly Hooper/Jim Moriarty, unrequited Molly Hooper/Sherlock Holmes]
Rating: R
Wordcount: 56,053
Warnings: This fic covers the entirety of Molly's experience for both seasons of Sherlock, and thus deals with the aftermath of her relationship with Jim Moriarty. As such, there are some sexual trauma themes in this story; if, for your own self-care, that is not the kind of thing you should be reading, please give this story a pass.
Summary: In which Molly Hooper gets a job, gets a degree, breaks a heart, has her heart broken, falls in love, keeps a secret, saves a life, runs a morgue, falls apart, pulls it together, and finds exactly what she didn't know she was looking for--not necessarily in that order.

Read it here, folks.

glee fic: rumor has it [santana/brittany, santana/ofc, nc-17]

2012-01-23T01:11:27Z

Right, so. This fic requires me to talk a little bit about why I wrote it; that, as it happens, is just the nature of this particular beast. My apologies--I generally attempt to avoid doing this sort of thing, but in this case, it’s kind of important to me, so:

I am not, in any noticeable way, in the Glee fandom. I watch the show, largely because I marathoned the first two seasons last spring in a drugged, post-surgical haze and could not quit it; I pop up every once with an opinion or a feel on tumblr, but by and large I’m not all that invested. However! This season, Glee bungled a lesbian storyline so fucking badly that it still boggles my mind, and I just. There’s bad storytelling, and then there’s irresponsible storytelling, and then there’s setting up easily one of the most horrifying concepts I can imagine and not doing any proper follow through, and...rrrgh.

I started writing this story the night “Mash-Off” aired, and then I stopped, halfway through, and didn’t touch it again until today. I, myself, went through the experience of being a queer teenage girl in Ohio, and large swathes of this story are based on my own experience, and the experiences of my peers; I worried that I’d be cutting too close to home, that I’d be crossing the dangerous line into the territory of self-insert, that my visceral emotional reaction to this storyline would prevent me from writing anything about it in a readable way. But the thing is, there are stories that aren’t being told, stories about girls and women who are trying to figure it out like anyone else, and if us queer girls from swing states aren’t going to tell them ourselves, no one is going to tell them for us.

So this is the story of how it could have gone for Santana, of how I think it would have gone for Santana, in the aftermath of what happened in “Mash-Off.” This is the story of high school and what happened after; this is the story of a girl growing up and figuring it out. And, yeah, you know what, a little bit it’s my story, and a little bit it’s the story of every brilliant, beautiful queer girl I’ve met who’s called this state home, and mostly it’s just one of a hundred thousand stories I wish the media was telling, because they are so worth hearing, every last one of them. ♥

Title: Rumor Has It
Pairing: Santana/Brittany, Santana/OFC [background Kurt/Blaine]
Rating: NC-17
Warning: This story contains the use of several slurs for the word "lesbian," a few depictions of aggressive, unwelcome male attention, one of which contains a nasty spot of racism. Please read, or not, accordingly. ♥
Notes: This story picks up from the end of "Mash-Off," and runs along an alternate timeline from there.
Summary: In which Santana Lopez learns the hard way that a life can never be ruined, only lived, and lived, and lived.

It’s her father who cries.

Santana’s not sure why she’s surprised--she is, after all, her mother’s daughter, and her tendency to jump to anger is certainly inherited. In the terrified montage of possibilities that flickered through her mind in the passenger seat of Coach Sylvester’s car, she’d imagined the weeping as her mother’s job, stoic silence for her father; she can see, now, how stupid that was. Her father watches the tape with his eyes wide and over-bright, and her mother snarls at the screen, fingers clenching to fists against her thighs.

“We’ll sue,” she says, “libel, of course, and--”

“It’s not libel,” Santana says, whispers, curled as tight as she can around herself, knees held to her chest, and no one looks at her; no one even tries. She doesn’t realize til later what a luxury that is--the absence of the eyes of others, weighing her out, sizing her up. In that moment it’s just rejection, sharp and cold, and she trains her own eyes to the floor, doesn’t say anything else.

(Her mother does cry, eventually, after the ad airs, after the phone starts ringing and doesn’t stop, after Burt Hummel’s paused on his way out the door and put a hand on her shoulder, said, “Don’t let anyone else tell you who to be,” like that’s so easy, like she’s got any choice. Santana hides in her room and can hear the sobs cut into her mother’s voice, mixed with the rapid-fire Spanish she suddenly wishes she herself didn’t speak; it might be better, she thinks, if she’d been spared understanding the words that mean guilt and blame and fault.)

--

The worst part, as it turns out, isn’t the fact that everyone knows; the worst part is the fact that everyone cares. The Columbus Dispatch runs an op-ed piece on dirty campaign tactics, Santana’s photo front and center; a columnist for the Plain Dealer picks up the story and runs with it, talks about the violation and the invasion of privacy in the same breath that it mentions her name. It’s a human interest angle, a story with legs, and even the voices of support are deafening, demanding, want her front and center, and it rages like a wildfire, sparks a debate on campaign tactics, on how far is too far, shows up briefly on the national news. Santana’s three weeks past eighteen, no longer a minor, so she’s got no way to stop them running with it, no legal recourse to turn to for some form of anonymity.

She fingers the newspaper clippings with shaking fingers, locked in her bedroom for the third night running, and thinks about fierce pride she’d felt at being old enough to buy her own cigars. It, too, feels like betrayal.

--

“Santana,” Finn says, a week afterwards, slack-jawed and shell-shocked in the middle of the hallway, and Santana hates him, she hates him, she hates him. “I’m so--”

“Let me break this down for you,” Santana says, aware that the whole school has stopped to stare, beginning to recognize that from now on, someone will always be staring. “Since I know your higher brain functions aren’t always good at engaging, I’m gonna talk slow, make it real clear: speak to me again, ever, and I will sew your mouth shut.”

Finn blinks, takes a step back, and Santana would wish harm on him, would burn to see him suffer as she’s suffering, but she can’t. She can’t, because Finn Hudson will always be the stupid straight boy who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, but she will always be the lesbian cheerleader from Lima Heights; there’s not comparable punishment, nothing she can do or say to make him go through it, too.

“Good boy,” she sneers, when he doesn’t speak. She relishes the victory as she turns, feels it go cold and hollow when the crowd around them hastily attempts to disperse.

She stalks away and her back’s as straight as it’s ever been, head held high, and she hears the whispers but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t turn around. There’s a sad, dilapidated news van sitting out in front of the school, just the one, hoping to get a spot of her to fill in the gaps between Sue’s Corner and whatever else is passing for news in this town this week; she goes up to the roof instead of dealing with it, pulls a pack of Black & Milds out of her backpack, lights up.

It’s Blaine Anderson who finds her, buttoned up and groomed to the nines, an expression on his face that’s too familiar for comfort. He doesn’t say a word, just sits down next to her and bows his head, and when Santana’s eyes start to sting, she knows it’s not from the smoke.

--

Three weeks later, she gets off the bus on the way back from an away game, slips into the bathroom of a Speedway in Galion to wash her face. When she comes out, Brittany’s in the candy aisle, trying to decide between a Twix bar and a bag of Skittles; Santana lets herself smile, encourages her to pick Junior Mints instead. They’re both still in uniform, since they never bother to change after their games, and, for a second, things feel normal.

They’re in line to check out when another customer--white guy, maybe 35, Bengal’s t-shirt, a six-pack in his hand--looks her up and down and grins.

“You’re her,” he says, “aren’t you? That dyke cheerleader, oh, man, you’re even hotter in person--hey, is this your little lesbo friend? C’mon, give us a show.”

And Santana’s traded on viciousness her whole life, knows it inside and out, has built a good half of herself on it, if she’s honest; there are a thousand things she could say here, and not one of them would erase the uncomprehending shock on Brittany’s face, the fear and shame burning in her own stomach. There’s nothing she can do to erase the reality of this, and this is her reality now: an hour’s drive west of Lima and she’s still the dyke at the top of the pyramid. She runs for the bus, Brittany’s hand in hers, candy abandoned on the counter.

She drops her uniform on Coach Sylvester’s desk the next morning, tries to pretend it’s a choice.

--

Brittany comes with her to the salon, holds her hand as the hairdresser, a short, tattooed woman with closely cropped curls, shears the ponytail from the back of her head. Santana knows it’s stupid, the way her mouth quivers when the woman hands her the hair she’s been growing out since she was twelve, but she can’t help it; she doesn’t want to do this, but she can’t think of a more effective way to hide. She looks at Brittany’s face instead of the mirror as she’s given a choppy sort of bob, granted heavy bangs that cover her eyes.

“Oh, honey, it’s not always like this,” the hairdresser says, when Santana breaks and makes a humiliating little sound under her breath. There’s pity in the woman’s voice, but something else, too, a solidarity that smarts and stings.

Santana wants to believe her, but can’t; the way she lowers her voice, looks over her shoulder as she says it, is more telling than words could ever be.

--

She sits for the SATs a second time, wearing a heavy sweatshirt that conceals the shape of her body, hopes the combination of the haircut and the fabric will save her from recognition. It almost works; the other students ignore her, but the proctor who hands over her scantron looks shocked, just for a second, before he schools his expression into something more neutral.

“The testing period is three hours,” he says, and Santana nods at him and finds an empty desk.

Her scores had been fine the first time, good enough that she hadn’t worried about it; she’d figured she’d go to whichever school accepted her, or not, whatever. It hadn’t been at the front of her mind--worst case scenario, it wasn’t like she couldn’t work for a year and then figure it out. She’s never shared Quinn’s desperate need for escape or Rachel Berry’s blind ambition; Santana has always operated as best she could in the moment presented to her, figured out her next move on the fly.

But now...now she needs to leave this town like she needs to breathe, can’t imagine a minute longer in this godforsaken place, where everyone knows her name, her face, who and what she likes. She needs scholarships and acceptance letters, the kind of scores that will make her a wanted commodity--because, as it turns out, everything’s a commodity, and Santana needs something to trade on.

She takes the full three hours, agonizes over each question, tries like she’s never tried in her life. When the proctor comes to collect her work, she doesn’t meet his eyes.

--

She gets offered a full ride to Ohio University, the same full ride they offer every in-state resident with a high enough test score. NYU offers her room and board, and UCLA doesn’t offer her shit, puts her on the waiting list and tells her they’ll let her know. She argues about it with her parents over leftovers, the same dark tone hanging over the discussion that hangs over everything, now; Santana has an earlier curfew than she did freshman year, can’t have friends over without leaving her door open, has screaming fights with her mother over things that don’t matter at all. Her father won’t speak to Brittany when she comes by, jaw tightening when she says hello, and Santana burns with humiliation every time at the hurt on her face.

“Well, obviously you’ll go to OU,” her father says, like it’s a foregone conclusion. “You can’t turn down that kind of money.”

“I want to get out of the state,” Santana says, and her mother sighs.

“Yes, we know,” she says, “but it’s not practical, so that’s the end of it. We can’t afford the tuition at NYU, you know that.”

“I could get loans,” Santana says, and her mother narrows her eyes, stabs at her pasta salad a little too hard.

“If you think I’m going to co-sign a loan for you to move to New York City,” she says, “and do god knows what with god knows who--”

“Theresa,” her father says, and her mother visibly bites back the rest of that sentence, takes a pointed sip of her water. It doesn’t matter, not really; Santana knows what she would have said, the same way she knows the discussion is over.

--

She and Brittany find Kurt and Blaine at senior prom, sit awkwardly around one of the empty tables together, all of them staring at their hands. Santana remembers what happened to Kurt last year, remembers herself weeping for her own loss in an abandoned classroom; she wonders, now, if she wasn’t crying at the violence of it, a premonition or something like it.

“You guys wanna get out of here?” Brittany says, and they all agree so readily that they drown one another out.

They go to Blaine’s house, because Blaine’s parents are oddly checked out in regards to what goes on behind closed adolescent doors. Santana makes Kurt pull off at the seedy Shell station on Washington Street, where the guy behind the counter never cards. She buys Colonial Club vodka and a four dollar bottle of white zin, and she, Brittany and Blaine get quietly trashed in Blaine’s bedroom while Kurt sips at a glass of Coke.

“Why don’t you drink, Kurt?” Brittany says, a couple shots in. The vodka tastes like nail polish remover, but it’s doing the job; Santana’s world is already going fuzzy around the edges. “It’s, like, the most fun ever.”

Kurt shrugs and rolls his eyes a little, offers her a sliver of a grin. “I’m a control freak?”

“No you’re not,” Blaine says, head in Kurt’s lap, grinning up at him like the sun shines out of his painfully sober ass, and yeah, maybe Santana’s a little drunk. “You’re just, uh--”

“Neurotic?”

“I was gonna say ‘particular,’” Blaine says. “Neurotic sounds all mean and bad and...stuff.”

“Maybe I’ve just got an appalling lightweight for a boyfriend,” Kurt says, teasing, hand skittering up to stroke through Blaine’s hair. “Did you consider that?”

“Yes,” Blaine says happily. “Yes I did.”

And Santana wants to cry, suddenly, because Brittany’s head is warm on her shoulder and she’s always been a weepy drunk, because everything’s going to change and nothing is, because it’s her prom night and she’s hiding from it and yet, somehow, she feels more like herself than she has in months. She runs a hand over Brittany’s thigh and thinks about sweet lady kisses, the way they haven’t been sweet this year but stolen, and doesn’t know what to do or say at all.

It’s another few minutes or so before Kurt and Blaine go downstairs to get something, before Brittany sits up and runs her fingers through Santana’s shorter hair, presses their mouths together like she’s looking for something. And Santana doesn’t know how to give it to her, but she kisses back with a desperation the burns in her chest, cups one of Brittany’s impossible, perfect breasts with one hand and doesn’t, doesn’t fall apart.

--

They break up in August, because Britt’s going to Arizona and Santana’s going to Athens, because they can’t go out and they can’t stay in, because it’s not fair and it’s never been fair, because there aren’t really other options. They both cry--Brittany during, Santana after--and it feels like the end of the world, even though, of course, it’s not.

Santana’s been to the end of the world, after all. She knows it when she sees it, black and white on the op-ed pages of the newspaper, still sitting caught on tape in her parent’s living room, a beacon of everything that’s happened that no one can bear to touch.

--

Santana’s housing assignment is based entirely on her scholarship; in a stroke of luck, her randomly assigned roommate is from Baltimore, has never heard of her before. Her name is Judy and she’s here for the Scripps School, consented to Ohio in exchange for one of the best journalism programs in the country. Santana comes out to her on the third day, because she might as well get it over with--she’s surprised at how powerful she feels, doing it on her own terms.

She’s even more surprised when Judy says, “Yeah, okay, that’s cool. You want to watch Law and Order?”

She’s not so lucky elsewhere. There’s a boy in her freshman comp class who leers at her, throws her the shocker, a girl who stops dead in her tracks in the middle of Court Street and stares. Santana has long since learned to duck her head and ignore it; in a new city, brick roads rough under the soles of her shoes, she relearns to narrow her eyes and stare back. She tells the boy in her comp class to grow a pair or die trying, flips the girl on Court her middle finger and walks on.

It’s the middle of fall quarter when she’s approached by a boy in her Statistics course, broad shoulders and a bar piercing in his left ear, a little bit of a belly protruding from the front of his sweatshirt. She’s caught him looking at her a couple of times, hasn’t ever been able to tell the intent behind it; she squares herself for a fight when he stops her outside Ellis Hall and offers her a smile.

“What do you want?” she says, and his smile doesn’t flicker at all.

“I’m Terry,” he says, “and I, uh, I’m from Westerville? And, well, I know what happened last year, and I just wanted to...there’s a group that meets on Wednesdays, sort of an gay straight alliance type thing, only a little heavier on the gay.”

“Do you want a medal or what?” Santana says, and Terry’s smile’s still there, just a little sadder, more knowing.

“I wanted to invite you,” he says. “To come, if you want to.”

“Is this what you do, then?” Santana says, raising her eyebrows. “Stop people on the street and try to recruit them? Who says I even want to join your little club?”

“Uh,” Terry says, looking a little taken aback, “no one, I just thought--”

“Well, think again,” Santana snarls, and she walks away from him, doesn’t feel safe until she’s in her dorm room, door shut behind her.

She tells Judy about it, later; they’re friends now, bound by the kind of closeness that springs up when you’ve spent a month and a half sharing a mini-fridge and fighting over the thermostat. Judy cocks her head, considering, before she puts down the textbook she’s reading and sighs.

“Yeah, well, that was kind of a dick thing of him to do out of nowhere like that, no question,” she says, “but, I mean, maybe you go and check it out? Worst case scenario, you don’t like it, you leave.”

“Or someone tars and feathers me,” Santana says, a joke that comes out a little too harsh. “Or, look, I’m not saying the idea of meeting some girls doesn’t appeal, but--”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Judy says. “As like, I don’t know, the token straight friend or whatever? Someone to shout ‘No, wait, I totally suck dick’ in the event of a structural collapse? Because I’m not doing anything Wednesday night.”

“Except stealing my Sun Chips,” Santana says, and Judy rolls her eyes.

“I can steal your Sun Chips whenever. It’s not like you hide them or anything. Seriously, I think you should do this! If it sucks, we’ll go scare the stoners behind the art building again, that was fun last time.”

“I do like the way they cough,” Santana agrees, and somehow that becomes her and Judy on a street corner Wednesday night, staring at the crowd of smokers hanging around a small, unassuming building that’s lit up from the inside out. Santana’s palms are sweating, which is ridiculous; it’s not like this is anything to be nervous about, not compared to some of the shit she’s weathered.

“It’ll be fine,” Judy says, soothing. “Seriously. And if it’s not, we’ve got a foolproof plan.”

“Shouting out the rules from the ALA Handbook and running isn’t a foolproof plan, Judes,” Santana says. “It’s not even really a plan.”

“Yeah, but it might get me extra credit,” Judy says. “A for effort or whatever, now come on.”

She grabs Santana’s arm and tugs a little, just enough to pull her out into the road; then she lets go, lets Santana set the pace. It’s maybe the hardest walk of her life, across the street that switches from asphalt to brick as she jaywalks, through the crowd of smokers and up the stairs; she steels herself for...for something, some reaction, but there’s nothing. No one even gives her a second glance, and when she gets inside there are people standing in clusters, sprawled across the armchairs and couches and pillows that fill the room. She’s surprised, a little, by how...balanced, she guesses, a crowd it is. There are a few guys who remind her of Kurt, fashion-wise, a few girls that look like Shane from that show Blaine told her to watch, but everyone else looks like--well, like anyone else, really. It occurs to her, camped out on the couch next to Judy, that this one room contains ten times as many queer people as she’s met in her whole life.

She feels herself relax a little, and then a little more; by the time introductions are done she’s smiling, laughing. She goes every Wednesday, after that.

--

Her mother sets her up on a date over winter break, and she goes to avoid the fight; the guy winces when he picks her up, is silent on the drive to Breadstix.

“So you know, then,” she says, when they pull into the parking lot.

“Yeah,” he says. “Uh, sorry.”

“Oh, save it,” Santana says. “It’s not like it’s your fault.”

They eat dinner together anyway, because they might as well. When she gets home, Santana marches up to her parent’s bedroom, flings the door open, and snaps, “You can’t fucking cure me, how long is it going to take you to get that?”

She spends the rest of the break sleeping on the Hummel’s couch, utterly without options. Finn’s only home for three of the days she’s staying there, and he looks horrified when they cross paths; she smiles at him, sharp-edged, and bats her eyelashes.

“Are you proud of yourself?” she says. “Are you, Finn?”

“No,” he says, and he sounds wrecked by it. “Of course not.”

“Good,” she snarls, and if she takes a little pleasure in the way he winces away from her, well, so what. She’s earned it.

--

Santana...well. Santana lives her life.

She takes the first film class by accident, a humanities credit more appealing than creative writing or the sociology class her advisor suggested absently. She takes the second film class to see if it was a fluke, the white-hot spark of passion in her chest; when she discovers it wasn’t, she declares it as major, signs up for everything she can, sucks up to the right professors and talks down to anyone who gets in her way. She falls in with a group of kids whose commitment reminds her of her own, starts working with them in her spare time; the first time she sees the words “Director of Photography: Santana Lopez,” scrawled into the credits at the end of a four minute film, she feels something slot into place in her chest, solid and more real than anything she’s experienced in years.

“You’re great,” Judy says, in their sophomore year dorm room, bigger and better located than the closet they’d lived in as freshmen. “Seriously, you’re really talented.”

“I know,” Santana says, and finds it’s not an empty boast. She is, in fact, good at this--startling good, even. She’s got an eye for aesthetics, always has; she’s got a flair for the dramatic, even if she’d rather be behind the scenes, now. There’s something peaceful and perfect and...not easy, exactly, but certainly instinctive, in shooting a scene exactly as it wants to be shot, and Santana’s addicted, doesn’t ever intend to stop.

She dates, on and off, tumbles in and out of relationships, of friendships, of confusing combinations of the two that she can’t quite follow. She falls in love once, her junior year, a funny, blond girl who leaves her for Stanford Law; she almost falls in love twice more, once as a sophomore and once as a senior, with wildly different women whose only common trait is their lack of interest in commitment. Santana, as it turns out, doesn’t really like casual sex after all--it doesn’t stop her from having it, of course, but it leaves her unfulfilled, aching, every time.

She and Judy live together for two years, bound, in the end, by far more than just a random housing assignment. When junior year rolls around and they’re allowed to move off-campus, Santana rents a house with half of her film group, and Judy moves in with her boyfriend and two of their friends. It becomes increasingly clear, over coffee and late-night movie marathons, over split bottles of wine and their respective 21st birthday parties, that Judy and Jeff are the real thing, will probably be married within the next few years. It becomes impossibly clear when Jeff comes to her senior year and asks her help with his proposal, says that Santana’s the best friend Judy’s ever had and he wouldn’t dream of planning this without her.

It’s strange, watching it happen, the surprise on Judy’s face melting away to honest, genuine joy. Santana is...happy for her, startlingly so, full-up with it, hugs her with tears in her eyes when Judy whoops out the words “Maid of Honor.” She’s happy for her, but there’s something else, too; not quite jealously, but resignation, maybe, or something like it.

“Well, yeah, duh,” Luce, a dark-eyed, punk-rock sophomore, tells her that Wednesday night. “Wedding shit’s kind of a drag if you can’t, like, have your own or whatever.”

“Shut up and smoke, Luce, god,” Santana says, rolling here eyes, but she knows there’s truth in that, buried somewhere deep down.

--

They graduate; Santana’s father cries, pride this time, and her mother parades her around Athens like she’s some kind of celebrity. Her grandmother, as expected, doesn’t come down, doesn’t even call, and for all Santana knew that would happen, it still smarts. She swallows it, lets herself enjoy the day, the night, a barcrawl with Judy and Jeff and her film crew, the Wednesday night gang, these people who have become family in their own right. Always a weepy drunk, she hangs over Judy’s shoulder and promises, tearfully, that they’ll be friends forever, and Judy laughs, rolls her eyes, says Of course we will like it’s a foregone conclusion.

The weight of it all doesn’t hit her until a week later, in her old bedroom in Lima Heights, packing boxes with a glass of wine at two in the morning. She’s moving to Los Angeles in three days, an internship she clawed and scratched her way into getting, and she feels the finality of it all crashing over her, sick-sharp and breathtaking. There’s dust everywhere in this room, crusting over the pieces of her life that had seemed so important to her at eighteen; at the back of a drawer, she finds a photograph of the New Directions before everything went wrong, and surprises herself by sobbing over it, choking on air.

She calls Brittany that night, the first time in months, dials the number without even thinking about it. Britt answers, sounding sleep-mussed but concerned, and there’s a man’s voice in the background; Santana grits her teeth at that, closes her eyes, takes a breath.

“I just,” she says, “I was cleaning out my old bedroom, and I wanted to...say hi.”

“Hi,” Brittany says, her voice soft and sad, because Brittany’s never been brilliant, but she’s never been stupid, either. She knows a goodbye when she stumbles on one.

--

Los Angeles is incredible and awful and terrifying by turns; Santana lives in a shitty apartment with three absolute strangers, one of whom is, very clearly, trying to sleep with her. Santana tells him no once, twice, three times before she snaps and snarls at him--“I’m a lesbian, you fuckhead, how much clearer do I have to make it? You want me to tattoo it on your forehead or what?”

“Just trying to have a little fun, Jesus,” he says, rolling his eyes, still standing too close, “you don’t have to be such a bitch about it,” and Santana knees him in the balls, moves out the next week.

She’s good at her job, gets better with every week, impresses her superiors, gets hired on properly when her internship is over. It’s not Director of Photography, but Santana knows it will be, eventually, if she’s willing to put in the effort; she minds the cues and the lighting, does her job and thinks about how she’d do everyone else’s besides, throws herself into it with the same vivacious viciousness she’s always traded on. She calls home once a week, gossiping with her mother in rapid-fire Spanish and rolling her eyes at her father’s lame jokes; six months in, Theresa takes a deep breath and says, “So, have you met any nice girls, corazon?”

“I almost cried, how fucking stupid is that,” Santana tells Mercedes over lunch the next day. It’s nice, getting to spend time with her again; Mercedes has been in LA three years, transferred to UCLA from the Conservatory of Music at UC when she was offered a record deal. She’s not huge, yet, the kind of underground name that keeps getting bigger, and Santana knows that one of these days, she’ll be too big a deal for this sort of thing.

Not yet, though; now, she spears a chunk of apple on her fork and brandishes it at Santana, rolls her eyes. “How long have I known you? Don’t play that shit with me--you know it’s not stupid, I know it’s not stupid. If we’re here to talk about your feelings, you’d better get on with it, I don’t have all day.”

“Jeez, once a diva, always a diva,” Santana says, a deflection as much as anything else, and Mercedes glares at her for a second before she gives in and laughs.

“At least I own it,” she says. “Did you hear Rachel Berry’s going to be in an off-Broadway show?”

“You mean, did I get the Facebook invite, the Twitter message, and the embossed printed invite with her face plastered all over it, yeah, I heard,” Santana says, rolling her eyes. “Do you think she even knows she’s ridiculous?”

“Hey, power to her,” Mercedes says, shrugging a shoulder. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, girl is crazy, but she owns who she is, you know? I can get behind that.”

“Is that like your message today or something?” Santana says. “Lunch, brought to you by the letter A and the number ‘Own it’?”

Mercedes laughs, even as she raises her hand in the air and snaps her fingers for the check. At a table a few rows over, people are whispering, casting furtive glances in their direction, and Santana knows Mercedes knows; she seems pleased with the attention, for all it makes Santana herself a little uncomfortable, even now. She’s long since fallen out of the public’s memory, has ceased, through the aid of time and age and distance, to be the dyke at the top of the pyramid, but some days she can’t help but get nervous, skittish, all too aware that the world can fall in without any warning at all.

“So,” Mercedes says, “have you met any nice girls?” and Santana pulls herself out of it, shakes her head, smiles.

--

Santana meets her nice girl three years later, entirely by mistake. She’s on location for a shoot in New York, her first time DPing for a big budget film, and it’s exhausting and exhilarating and utterly, incandescently brilliant. She knows she’s ridiculously lucky, that no one her age is getting these kinds of opportunities, that the stars have aligned or some shit like that; she doesn’t intend to let it go to waste. She works her ass off, tries like she’s never tried in her life, and when the producer sidles up to her and says, “I want to work with you again, Lopez; if you’re willing to talk moving to the east coast, I’m willing to talk some big numbers,” she has to lock herself in a bathroom stall and breathe through the ecstasy until it’s manageable.

She lets Kurt and Blaine--still together despite ridiculous odds, living in a refurbished firehouse in Brooklyn, kept in touch with her mostly out of a fierce, unwavering determination on Blaine’s part--drag her out to a karaoke bar in celebration. She swears that she isn’t going to sing, and Kurt rolls his eyes and orders her another martini; three drinks later she’s onstage, belting out “Material Girl,” like she’s seventeen all over again. It’s a rush, getting attention she actually wants, the hoots and hollers, the way Blaine screams out “Encore!” with all the drunken grace he can muster.

At least, it’s a rush until she steps off of the stage, and is met with a guy who reminds her far too much of high school.

“Pretty good song,” he says, eyeing her up and down. “You wanna get out of here?”

“Seriously,” Santana says, eyebrows going up, “that’s the best you can do? Really? Honey, that is just sad, I mean, I know it’s not your fault that you look like you were dropped on your nose as a baby, but you’d think you’d’ve at least learned to compensate a little with basic manners--hey, jackass, my face is up here.”

“Spicy, aren’t you?” the guy says, and Santana narrows her eyes, feels her blood boil, says, “Gay, actually, thanks, but I could see how you’d think a little racism would seal the deal for you, you brain-dead ignorant shit stain,” and turns to walk away.

When he grabs her by the arm...well. That’s where it all goes a little wrong. Santana is, as an adult, far more in control of her tendency towards rage than she had been as a teenager; she’d tried to walk away because she’d known the alternative would be unpleasant. But this asshole is sneering at her like he owns her, and his grip on her arm makes her skin crawl, and she’s never been stupid--she’s been fighting since she was old enough to walk, taking self-defense classes since she was old enough to watch the world fall apart, and this fuckwit is asking for it.

She elbows him twice, once in the solar plexus and once in tender spot above his ribcage, wrenches her arm from his grip and punches him in the nose for good measure. She knows she’s saying something, is pretty sure it’s Spanish, which--she thinks distantly--is probably for the best; god only knows how much whatever it is would egg him on, assuming he could understand it.

“You fucking cunt,” he snarls, blood on his lip, and Santana smiles prettily at him, spreads her arms in a wordless What are you going to do?

Which is stupid, she knows. She knows it’s stupid. He’s got ten inches and a hundred pounds on her, and one of these days, she’s going to get angry enough to get herself killed, or worse.

“Is there a problem here?” someone says; Santana turns and there’s a woman standing next to her, arms crossed, with a huge bouncer at her shoulder. “Because if there is, my friend here is going to make it worse very quickly. Move along, asshole.”

The man’s eyes flick from Santana to the stranger and then land, nervously, on the bouncer; after a second he swallows and swears under his breath, grabs his coat and heads for the door. Santana lets out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, becomes suddenly, sharply aware of all the eyes on her. It’s not a comfortable feeling--it’s a feeling she knows all too well--and she waves a dismissal to Kurt and Blaine’s horrified expressions, wanting nothing more than to avoid talking about it.

“Thank you,” she says, voice low, sincere, to the woman who’d interrupted. “I’d like to say I could’ve handled that, but....”

“You looked like you were handling it pretty well, actually,” the woman says; she’s got dark hair, glossy and cut short, one huge bang sweeping over the left side of her face. Her skin is a few shades darker than Santana’s own, a warm, rich tone that pulls the breath from her lungs, and when she smiles Santana’s almost bowled over by the urge to lean over and taste the curve of her lips, see if they feel as strikingly gorgeous as the expression. “Sounded like it, too--haven’t heard anyone work that kind of abuse in my native tongue in years, very impressive. You want a drink? You look like you could use one.”

“I,” Santana says, and then, “right, uh. A drink. Yeah, that’d be...perfect. Thank you.”

Her name is Tai and she’s an artist, points ruefully to the charcoal stains on her palms as she explains; it’s her sister’s bar, but she works here sometimes when they’re short a shift, says “The things you do for family,” but her tone is warm. Her mother’s Colombian--the Spanish explained--and her father was born and raised in Brooklyn, though they’re both professors at the University of Michigan, now, teaching Statistics and African-American literature, respectively. This prompts a two minute Ohio State/Michigan argument without any heat behind it, which slides into how Santana ended up in New York via Lima Heights and Los Angeles, and the conversation flows so naturally that Santana doesn’t realize an hour’s passed until Blaine taps her on the shoulder.

“Hi!” he says brightly, and Santana bites down on a smile at the clear He’s trashed, I’m sorry, written on Kurt’s face. “We’re going to another bar! Because bars are awesome, and I just want to see all the bars, you know, like, I want to know all the best places, because it’s New York City, and so we should like. Live it! Kurt says living here is living it but I think he’s wrong because you have to like. Effort! Oh, you made a friend, hello! We’re going to a new place, you should come.”

“Oh my god, honey, stop,” Kurt says, mortified. “Hello, I’m Kurt, this is Blaine, we’re both very sorry.”

“I’m not sorry!” Blaine says, croons, really, leaning back against Kurt. “I sang a song, so not sorry.”

“Oh my god, Blaine, shut up,” Santana says, laughing on it; she casts a glance at Tai, whose eyebrows are up in amusement, whose hand is still tracing absent patterns on the bar, and feels herself blush. “This, um. This is Tai.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tai says, smiling, holding out a hand; Kurt takes it, levels a loaded glance between her and Santana, and then makes an upsettingly knowing face.

“Riiiiight,” he says, “okay, well, then, great to meet you, we’re just going to go now--”

“But Santana should come with us to everywhere!” Blaine says, even as Kurt starts to drag him away. “Santana is awesome, hey, Tai, you should come too, because Santana is. Is. Um. Awesome, she’s awesome and you’re awesome, everything is so awesome--”

“You two have fun, now,” Kurt says, winking over his shoulder, and Santana feels her blush deepen, which is so fucking childish, really, and actually kind of embarrassing, but also, as it happens, entirely out of her control.

“I swear to god I’m sometimes smooth,” she says, wincing, and Tai grins at her, big and warm and honest, runs two fingers along the surface of Santana’s upturned palm.

“You wanna get out of here?” she says, and from her it’s not an affront, not a presumptuous, bitterly aggressive demand; from her it’s an invitation, and Santana smiles at her, takes her hand, follows her outside.

--

That first night they don’t do much, just grab a late dinner and make out on the cab ride to Santana’s hotel; Santana’s a little drunker than she’d like to be and Tai’s a lady about it, scrawls her number in lilting script across Santana’s hand, kisses her goodbye with regret and promise both. Santana calls her the next night, can’t help it, and they go for an early dinner, and then a drink, and then back to Tai’s apartment. Santana’s not paying attention to much other than the curve of Tai’s hips under her hands, Tai’s breath coming sharp and sweet in her mouth, but she’s with it enough to recognize that this is not the apartment of a starving artist by any stretch of the imagination; she files that away, is led into the bedroom, finds better things to focus on.

Tai’s hands slide up under Santana’s shirt, palms flat against her stomach, her ribcage, callouses on her fingers, and it’s not like Santana’s been celibate since college, just too busy to hunt for something that feels right; she licks an invective into Tai’s mouth, and then another along her jawline, gets both of their shirts off and rubs the pad of one finger against the soft skin under Tai’s left breast. Tai shudders and Santana moves, lowers her mouth over the nipple, pulls it up between her teeth as gently as she can and flicks it, once, twice, with her tongue, and then Tai’s gasping and bucking and rolling them both over, the kind of breathless race to undress that Santana hasn’t engaged in since...god, since she was a teenager, probably.

Tai’s fingers are inside her two minutes later, her nipples rock-hard as she presses their bodies together, and she pants open-mouthed into Santana’s neck when Santana snakes a hand up between them and catches that left one again, rolls it between her fingers even as Tai brushes a thumb against her clit. She makes a noise she’s never heard herself make before, something low and gutteral, something that pours out of her mouth without her even thinking about it, and Tai groans, says, “Oh, fuck, yeah, god, that’s--Jesus, you’re beautiful,” and slips a third finger in, fans them out.

Santana comes, hard, fucking hard, three times before she slides clear, slides down, spreads Tai’s legs and licks her way inside. She leaves kisses along the inside of her thighs, first, wet and messy, and when she flicks her tongue against Tai’s clit Tai’s whole body jerks up, up. She tastes incredible, tastes like something Santana’s been craving for years, and she fists her hands in Santana’s longer hair and doesn’t quite scream as she comes, and fuck, fuck if this isn’t the best sex Santana’s ever had.

“You’re getting breakfast,” Tai says, pants, a moment later, when Santana’s collapsed onto the pillow next to her. “For that, I mean. In the morning.”

“Mmm,” Santana says, pressing a kiss to the expanse of shoulder available to her, and falls asleep before she can think of a proper reply.

When she wakes up, she’s alone; she can hear movement outside the bedroom, so she doesn’t worry about it, just stretches out and yawns herself awake. When she’s blinked a few times, she can take in the room around her--exposed brick, prints on the walls, high ceilings, a clear eye for aesthetics. They’re in New York City, and Santana has no illusions about the pricetag for an apartment like this; she smiles, gets out of bed, goes to get a closer look at the artwork.

“So you’re a famous artist, then,” Santana says, when she walks into the kitchen stark-naked, because she’s more than aware that her milkshake brings all the girls to the yard and has no intention of pretending otherwise. “Talented, too. I think I could get used to finding charcoal stains a turn-on.”

Tai--in boxers and a threadbare t-shirt that’s tugged tight across her breasts, standing over a pan of eggs--has huffed out half a laugh before she’s turned around. Then she sees Santana and her eyes widen, flick up and down her body as the spatula falls from her hand; Santana smirks, spreads her hands, cocks a hip.

“Like what you see?” she says, and then Tai’s got her pressed up against the counter, kissing her like she’s air, hands skating over her hips with a frenetic sort of hunger.

“Where did you come from, fucking hell,” Tai breathes, and there are so many answers to that question that Santana doesn’t know where to start, so she just smiles, bites down, kisses back until the eggs are burnt black, forgotten.

--

Things fall into place, because that, as it turns out, is what things do. Santana wishes, sometimes--as she moves from one coast to the other, falls in and out of restaurants, film sets, bed--that she could go back in time and tell herself that, that she could sit down with the terrified girl she once was and advise her that it does, in fact, get better. Other time, she’s glad of the restriction of reality, because god forbid she change anything; god forbid she make a mistake and grow up to be anywhere, anyone, else.

Tai’s perfect, except when she isn’t, and Santana’s perfect, except when she isn’t, and they’re perfect, except when they’re not. They fight, not often but enough, and it’s wrenching and horrible every time, and then, every time, it’s over; Santana’s not sure what she’s done right, but it must be something, because this feels unbroken, unbreakable, as solid as the ground beneath her feet. She meets Tai’s family and Tai meets hers, and their friends mingle until it’s impossible to tell who’s closer to whom, and one day Santana wakes up in an apartment that’s been theirs for a year and knows that she’s home.

They end up in a coffeeshop that morning, a lazy sort of Saturday, and Santana takes a work call that she just can’t ignore, drifts on the details for a minute or two. When she focuses again, Tai’s grinning down at a napkin, a felt-tip pen in her hand; she’s sketched Santana in sharp relief, easy lines knitting together, the curve of her neck accented by a faintly defined shadow. Santana smiles, and then she laughs, and then she holds her phone away from her ear and leans across the table, pressing their mouths together. There was a time, not even that long ago, where she would have been doing this to remind herself that she didn’t care who was looking; today, she knows she’s in love in the adult way, in the way that sings without being deafening.

She kisses Tai because she loves her, because she wants to and she can. It feels, she realizes distantly, like freedom.

--

They’re in Ohio for Christmas--it’s the Lopez’s year for them, which is fine, which is good. Santana’s thirty, getting closer to thirty-one with every passing day, and being in Lima no longer feels like a death sentence. Tai, of course, loathes Ohio, far too used to city life to find a small town like this comfortable, but Santana gets a little bit of pleasure out of these trips, can’t help it. It’s nice, really, to be here on her own terms; it’s a nice place to visit, for all she never wants to live here again.

They’re in the mall, killing time before they meet up with Puckerman, of all people, for dinner, and Santana leaves Tai in a half-assed mall art gallery, muttering under her breath about the quality of the prints of her work they’re selling. She wanders for a minute, thinking vaguely about taking a picture of the GAP store and sending it to Kurt and Blaine--everyone knows that story--and so it’s own fault that she almost walks directly into Finn Hudson.

“Oh, crap, sorry,” he says, and then his eyes widen when he realizes who it is he’s speaking to. Santana imagines she’s probably making the same face at him, but for different reasons; there’s a wedding band on his hand, a toddler sitting high on his hip. The little boy has dark hair and bright eyes, Finn’s weird chin-cleft, and Santana knew from Facebook and Kurt that Finn was married and spawing, but it’s a little weird to see it in person. In her mind, he’s been eighteen and an asshole for over a decade, and switching gears is kind of confusing.

Well, Santana comforts herself, he’s probably still an asshole, and that helps a little.

“Uh, Santana,” he says, “I...hi, you’re. Here! In...Ohio! Uh. Welcome!”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Tubs, there’s a kid here,” Santana says, and proceeds to ignore Finn entirely, crouching down to wave hello to the boy. She and Tai have been...dancing around the kid thing for a couple of months, are only going to get closer to it, so she might as well. It’s easier, smiling at this child, then it would be to smile at his father; there are things flaring to life in her chest, in the pit of her stomach, that she’d thought she’d learned to bury.

And then the kid smiles and reaches out, grabs her finger, and just like that it’s...not gone, exactly, but quieted, settled like everything else. Finn Hudson will always have done a terrible thing, but Santana’s long past eighteen, long past hating him; it’s not worth the effort, it’s energy she’s not bothered with expending, and anyway, this is adulthood. Quinn Fabray had told her, once, that growing up was about losing things, and she’d meant it, but she’d been young and fucked up and misinformed. Growing up is about finding things, about letting go of things to make room.

“Right,” Santana says, straightening up, biting down on a laugh when she sees the expression on Finn’s face. He’s terrified, and that’s...gratifying, honestly, for all it’s unnecessary. She doesn’t smile at him, because letting go and forgiving are not the same, but she doesn’t snarl either. “Kid’s cute. You’re doing well?”

“I, uh, yeah,” Finn starts, “yeah, I took over Burt’s shop and we’re--”

“That was courtesy, Hudson, I don’t actually want to know,” Santana says. “But, uh, good for you or whatever. Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” Finn says, and Santana’s turned to go when he clears his throat and adds, “And...and you? You’re doing well?”

Santana stops; Finn’s asking her because he feels guilty, because he’s selfish, and she knows that. Finn Hudson, she reflects, will never stop being the stupid straight boy who ruined her life, and she doesn’t owe him shit, and she never did, either.

On the other hand...on the other hand, Tai’s walking towards her from the other side of the mall, her hand raised in greeting. Her hair’s getting long again, and in a minute she’ll walk up and kiss Santana hello because she just does things like that, affection for affection’s sake, and, well. Santana’s got a life now that’s got nothing to do with Lima, Ohio, and nothing to do with Finn Hudson, a job she loves, a woman she loves, a home she built for herself.

“Yeah,” she hears herself say, already walking away, “and you know what, I always was.”

bbc sherlock fic: relentless unheroic necessary [jim moriarty/seb moran, r]

2012-01-12T02:57:33Z

Filed under: for Postcard like everything is, Postcard's fault like everything is, decidedly the most viciously screwed up thing I've ever written, structure for structure's sake, these nasty fucks are fucking nasty, and, of course, WHOOPS THIS IS SO MUCH FUCKING LONGER THAN I MEANT IT TO BE.

Title: relentless unheroic necessary
Pairing: Jim Moriarty/Seb Moran
Rating: R (and it's a hard fucking R)
Warnings: Jesus, where do I start. Uh. Graphic violence, murder, internal narration of psychopaths, loss of a parent, loss of grip on reality, power play, pain play, elements of D/s play, discussions of bullying, discussions of torture.
Summary: A swimming pool, a desert, two, the ends of sentences, guns, a future in the cards and a tiger in the brush and no one ever tells you: antiheroes have more fun.

He's born James Sebastian Moriarty, eight pounds two ounces, unremarkable except for his eyes, newborn and not blue; he's Jimmy before his first birthday, Jimmy for years, Jimmy till the day his father dies.

"People die, Jim," his mother says, cigarette dangling from the edge of her mouth, a balancing act, the only one she's ever been good at it. "That's just what people do."

He's five, Jimmy Moriarty, Jim, because the name you're called in the wake of a landslide, that's your name, that's the truth, he'll never be Jimmy again. He's five and he's Jim and he's smart enough to know that people die, that everyone dies, but usually they're not cut to ribbons while their son watches from the crack in the closet door; he's smart enough to know that his father--caramels in his pockets and callouses on his hands, shoulders bent in submission--counts now as a debt collected, nothing more.

He nicks the cigarettes from his mother's pocket, sits on the floor that night, eyes on the stars, smokes in his mouth. He doesn't light them, just works his lips around the filters until they're too soggy to hold up, mimes the way his mother breathes, in and out again.

When he's managed it, mastered it, a game of balance, a trick of the light, he throws them all out, smiles.

--

The air's not right in London; Seb's known from the moment he stepped out at Heathrow, discharge papers creased unevenly in his pocket, £300 in Afghani stuffed in the lining of his coat. It's not the filth--filth he's used to--but there's a taste on the wind, blowing through the streets like smoke, flicking through the too-thin air, the air that should be thick and isn't; maybe he's just unhappy to be home.

He gets an apartment in Brixton, cheap and dirty, so small it's barely an apartment at all. The air's wrong in there too, but better, somehow, for being worse. He buys foul tobacco and rolls his own cigarettes, spends little, hoards what money he was able to scrounge from his family before they cut him off; he jumps at the sound of gunfire and then aches with the trigger-itch in his fingers, looks out at the world through a scope he's absorbed.

He killed a man in the desert, one of his own, a tap on the shoulder after one IED too many, the soft, sickening sound of a knife through a throat. It's not lost on him, not then and not now, not ever, that he would've gotten a medal if the poor sod had been from the other side.

--

Jim's mother gambles, and it's not a habit, it's a compulsion, there's a difference; there's power in the words you assign to things, Jim knows, power in names like there's power in everything, assuming you know where to look. She's not great at it, Siobhan, but she's not great at motherhood either, never was--it's love that's the difference, a tenderness in the way she holds a hand to her chest that she's never once offered to her son.

She has good times and bad ones, is drawn to the drink and away from it, takes some of the phone calls and dodges others. Some weeks it's steak dinner every night, and some weeks they've lost the house; Jim learns to put a value on hands, on people, learns to read cards, then faces, then extortion demands badly hidden amongst the papers in the nightstand.

By the time he's six, Jim's lived in three houses, four apartments, and the back of a flatbed pickup truck. Siobhan's never sorry, just resigned; "Worse luck, Jimmy," she says, "better pack your things," even though that's not what Jim's called anymore.

--

Seb's in Hackney, wearing an ill-fitting suit and a scowl, toothpick balanced between his lips, hands in his pockets. He's been blacklisted, his family or his discharge or both, turned down at every job he tries for; it's getting old, the interviewer expecting an arse-kiss when it's obvious he's not going to get hired. He's been back in London six months, and the air still tastes wrong, and he's still out of money, still dreaming of tigers.

A man crosses the street, big, burly, looks Seb up and down; Seb notes him, dismisses him, looks away.

He stops in front of a shopfront--Taylor's Tailoring, the sign says, paint chipping at the edges, dust caked on the window, and Seb snorts, rolls his eyes. Times change, but people never do; circumstances change, but London doesn't.

There's a hand in Seb's back pocket, not invited, not his own; he smiles, spits the toothpick out, and turns around.

"Thought you were admiring my haircut," he says, face to chest with the man who'd eyed him up, fingers circling around his thick, hairy wrist. "Would've gone better for you, really."

"What're you gonna do?" says the man, and he's sneering until Seb tightens, shifts, his grip, pushes his thumb up and his fingers back. It's not enough to break any bones (yet, Seb thinks, a distant sort of pleasure in it), but tears spring to the man's eyes anyway, hang unshed, threatening to spill.

"Guessed I'd be an easy mark, right," Seb says, conversational, blood simmering, vision clouded with a hundred, a thousand men this guy isn't, but he's here, a decent stand-in, and he's opened Pandora's box, so it's his own damn fault. "Smaller than you, bad posture, you think I don't get it? Bad call, though, bet you see that now."

"Please," says the man, and hell, he means it, tears spilling over, genuine fear, and that's all the fun gone; Seb could break his wrist, could kill him six ways right here in the street, but he doesn't, because it's too easy. He's never been one for borrowing trouble, not when he could steal it outright, and this pathetic bastard, regrettably, isn't worth his time.

"Run along, then," Seb says, releasing him, and there's a little satisfaction in the fact that he actually does run, but not quite enough. Seb ducks into the alley behind the shop, kicks his feet up against a wheelie bin and rolls a cigarette; the tobacco tastes like losing, like poverty, but at least it stops his trigger finger twitching.

"My, my," says a shadow, a strangely…lilting…shadow, "we are hungry today, aren't we?"

Seb turns his head, left, right, looks forward again; the man who steps out of the gloom is too small to be dangerous, too mad around the eyes to be anything else. There's blood on the sleeve of his shirt--baby-blue, rolled up, and it's old blood but not that old, brown but not stiff, which is about enough to be getting on with.

"Who're you, then?" Seb says, taking another drag. "If you're going to try and kill me, you might as well let me finish my smoke."

"Try and kill you," the man says, eyes gone wide, and then he tips his head back and laughs like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. "Well, yes, if I were going to try--"

"I'm armed," Seb says, out of curiosity more than fear, and the man's eyes narrow.

"You're not armed," he says, "but you wish you were, oh, how sweet, you've been dismissed, six years, wasn't it? Ooh, that's interesting, old money, not too old, old enough that it was that much worse, wasn't it, dignity is so funny. The suit's yours, god knows why, it's tragic, but the shoes--oh, dear, Brixton, really--you stole the shoes, could've done better, if you're going to go to the effort--"

It's a clean punch, smoothly delivered, pulled a little but not much; the man reels, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, and straightens up. His eyes light on the cigarette balanced between Seb's lips, and he smiles.

It's the worst smile Seb's ever seen, and that's a hell of fight. He grins back, because he might as well, and takes another drag. "You weren't wrong about the hunger."

"Well, you're just the most fun I've had all day," the man says, holding out his hand, and he's lilting again, sing-song, Seb can't place his accent, it's nowhere and everywhere. He takes the card that's being offered to him, thick card stock, white lettering on matte black--Jim Moriarty and an address, neatly typed, in the bottom right corner. "And of course I wasn't wrong; I never am."

"Everyone's wrong sometimes, Mr. Moriarty."

"It's Jim," says Jim, "and in this case, no, they're not."

"That so?"

"Here is what's so," Jim says, sliding on a pair of sunglasses, snapping his fingers, and a car pulls up to the mouth of the alley, which is insane, which is impossible. "You, my little starving artist, are going to go inside now. There's a man behind the counter, grey sport coat, terrified, smells like piss, that's my fault, so sorry. You're going to get my £30,000 from him by any means necessary--hungry boy, I know, time for dinner now, won't that be nice--and then he's going to take your," and Jim stops here, reaches out, touches the lapels of Seb's suit and shudders, disgusted, "measurements, ugh. You'll bring all that back to the address on the card, yes? Yes, that should do nicely."

"He doesn't need to take my measurements," Seb says, knowing even as he says it that it's the wrong objection, the least sane objection, but a point's a point. "I know them."

"Clearly not," says Jim, pulling that face again, that comically horrified face, and it's almost funny, really. "If I see you again in those clothes I will be sick, and if you don't deliver by six p.m. you will be a throw rug, the sitting room, I think, and that would be a waste."

"You don't even know my name," says Seb, which, again, not the objection he means to raise, but his fingers are itching again, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't hungry still, always, since the desert and long before. "You're just going to trust me with your money?"

"Well, as I've made it quite clear that the consequences for disappointment will be severe," says Jim, "yes, I rather think so. And your name is simple, darling, a phone call away, not even a challenge, and I do hate to be bored--"

"Sebastian," Seb says, automatic, like it's been drawn out of him. "Sebastian Moran."

Jim freezes, a half-second thing, twitches all over, tilts the sunglasses down. He smiles again, and it's more horrible but less too, makes Seb feel picked apart.

"Oh, Sebastian," he says, "yes, I think you'll do quite nicely."

--

Jim gets sick of packing, gets sick of the taste in his mouth after too long between meals, the dry, flat echo of his teeth grinding together for lack of anything to put between them. He doesn't learn to count cards because he already knows, because it's sickeningly simple, obvious, and they're stupid, all of them, Siobhan and her friends and her not-friends, the brutes with the broad shoulders, where's your mother, where's your mother.

He doesn't learn to count cards, but he does have to teach Siobhan, not to count, never to count, there are tasks beyond any eight year old and he's not much for teaching anyway, Jim, never was, never will be. He shows her tricks instead, signals, the hands of the table concealed in the whine of a child, excuses for him, too--No one to watch him, Siobhan says; No one but us, Siobhan says; Cries if I leave him, Siobhan says, take pity. Because that's the thing, pity, not as useful as fear but he's young yet, knows how to play what he's been dealt, and people are so easy, really, when you know what buttons to push.

"Mammy, I'm hungry," Jim whines, and means Fold; "Mammy, I'm tired," Jim mumbles, and means Bet already, we haven't got all night.

She gets cocky, doesn't take long, only to be expected; she thinks it's all her not long after that, and that's intolerable, itches under Jim's collar, in the soles of his shoes. "Thank your mother for that food in your mouth," she says, and Jim scowls at his plate, makes her take him to the racetrack; three weeks and he's got a feel for it and a runner to boot, a pock-marked, thick teenager named Owen who knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Are you sure you want me to bet against," Owen starts, once, only once, and Jim bursts into tears for effect. He doesn't mention how easy it was to poison the frontrunner's food; he's just old enough to have developed a distaste for loose ends, and it's not like anyone ever questions the extra stableboy.

--

Jim works out of an abandoned tower block, a bustling warehouse, an office he's commandeered, the back of a stolen yacht; Jim works over dead bodies and dying ones, never flinches, but only because he never quite stops. Seb gets used to it after awhile, the cell phone that's been purchased for him, the new wardrobe that showed up overnight, the gift-wrapped sniper rifle tucked under his duvet, red bow glittering against his pillow. Jim's the weirdest job Seb's ever had--because Jim is the job, from the first, the rest of it's just semantics, killshots--but he can't say he isn't enjoying himself.

"I thought Prague," Jim says over dinner--he's not eating, because he doesn't some days, seems to get a sort of perverse pleasure out of watching Seb do it instead. Other days he gorges himself, orders more food than anyone needs and won't share; Seb's given up trying to figure it out. "In, let's say, twenty minutes, I wouldn't want you to choke on your pasta."

"Yes you would," Seb says, mouth full just to watch his eye twitch, because he's having the kind of day when he cares about that sort of thing. "But as no one's choked on pasta in the history of time--"

"You could be the first," Jim says. "Maybe I poisoned it."

"Not excited enough for poison," Seb says, snorts--takes a sip of water anyway, because he's not nervous, not exactly, but instinct is instinct and all that. "Prague in twenty minutes, then. If you broke into my flat to pack for me again--"

"It's not breaking in when you've got a key," Jim says, and Seb rolls his eyes.

"And who made that key, hmm?"

"Would you lock me out, then?" Jim says, serious now in that sick, deadly way, leaning across the table too far, fingers edging unconsciously towards his knife. "Answer me."

"Only if you asked me too," says Seb, and Jim relaxes, sits back, smiles in a way that's almost (not quite) winsome.

"Good, good," he says, "that's what I thought."

--

Carl Powers is older, bigger, and Jim's got money now, not a lot, enough to be getting on with, played on the cards, earned at the track, stolen when he can manage it, which is usually. Jim's got money, enough to buy a new coat, new shoes, to keep food on the table, to keep them in rent; he's eleven, feels eleven hundred, except.

Except he's still a child, somewhere, underneath, buried deep, and he's got money but not enough to lie on, not enough to look like he's got money--someday, surely, not yet. He's got a new coat but it's only new to him, and his shoes don't have holes but they don't have new laces, either, and that's what Carl Powers starts on first, the shoes, the fucking shoes, it's not like Jim can help it.

It doesn't matter what he says; this is what Jim tells himself, later, when he realizes he doesn't remember, a lifetime of perfect recall stunted, because he can count cards but he can't count humiliation, there's no numbers, there's no pot. He can read faces and they were all laughing, Carl Powers at the front of them, and Jim doesn't remember what they said but he remembers the blood in his cheeks, the twitch in his hands, the burning need to do something, to make it stop.

It's almost a relief, the first time Carl Powers--older, bigger, stronger too--throws a punch at him just because he can. It's almost a relief when he spits, near his head, missing, laughs like he's hilarious, like he's so funny, because, well. It's a game now, isn't it, a clear winner, a clear loser--Jim, oh, yes, Jim knows what to do with that.

--

Seb gets home from the grocery to find a pair of £1500 sunglasses sitting on the second shelf of his fridge; he's not surprised, not even resigned, just tosses them aside and gropes around for his phone.

"You fucking lunatic," Seb says, "I live in Brixton," and Jim giggles, dangerous, sings out, "No you don't."

Seb doesn't figure out his meaning till the next morning, when he wakes up to an empty flat, his clothes gone, his furniture gone, nothing left but his bed and the sunglasses that have been slid over his face in his sleep. There's a man at his front door, sharp suit, dark glasses, holding a sign that says "Whiny, Party Of One" ; Seb flips him the finger and gets a cab, takes it to Jim's latest hidey-hole.

"You could have just asked me," he says, when Jim opens the door wearing nothing but a smirk and, hideously, a second pair of the sunglasses.

"Where's the fun in that," he says, and turns away, walks off, knows without looking that Seb will follow him inside.

--

Jim doesn't bide his time, because he doesn't have time to bide, there's things to do, calls to make, accents and voices to borrow, steal, six hours to spend sitting in the back of a supermarket listening to people talk, mimicking it under his breath. He starts going to hospitals, because those are people to know, plays someone's son, someone's nephew, a nurse's kid; he starts going to school, because there's only so many lies you can tell the truant officer and he'll need the records to forge, someday, eventually.

Carl Powers beats him up once a week, outside the park where they met, and Jim lets him, likes it more than he lets on, knows he'll cherish it later, these little moments. He starts thinking of it as anatomy lessons, because it's easier, because it's funny; which punches leave which bruises, how far the human arm can be bent behind the human head, what sweat smells like when it's pooling in victory instead of fear. Carl's got swimmer's muscles, coiled in his shoulders, in his thighs, and Jim gets to know them, sobs crocodile tears because it makes him hit harder, because if he's learning he'd going to learn, damn it, and there's nothing this brute can do to him that he couldn't do to himself, only better, worse, so he might as well pick something up.

"Fights again, then," Siobhan says, once, only once, and Jim shrugs, takes a pointed bite of her sandwich, rolls his blackened eyes.

--

They go to Detroit, a long flight, a private jet, and Jim's still weird like he gets when they fly commercial, eyes flicking to the windows, to the exits, back to Seb, and usually he wants to play cards but not today, today he snarls when Seb pulls out the deck, so Seb shrugs, looks back to his book, waits.

It doesn't come, the payoff, and there's no silence from Jim that comes without a payoff, even in sleep. When Jim sleeps quietly he wakes up violent, or crazed, or both; when he sleeps normally he talks, half-verbalized thoughts that mean nothing, everything, borrowed names and fingers fisted in the shirts Seb's started sleeping in to keep him from tearing at flesh. Jim's never silent unless there's something coming, and so Seb bides his time, cleans his rifle, rents the cheap American car Jim tells him to when they disembark, drives them to the address Jim's punched into the GPS.

"There'll be a man, fourth floor window, three from the right," Jim says, idly, when they've pulled into a parking spot on an otherwise abandoned street. "Three minutes and counting."

"You want me to sight him?" Seb says, for fun, really, and the smile that flickers to life in the creases around Jim's eyes is worth it.

"Of course not," he says, "I want you to kill him."

Three minutes isn't enough time, not to set up the sniper rifle, not to figure out the windspeed, not to check their surroundings, not to get the right angle from the driver's seat; Seb grins and moves, sight to barrel, area scan, licked finger out the crack in the window, it's enough to make an educated guess. He throws himself across the gearshift, elbow digging into Jim's stomach, hard, unnecessary but not without merit, says, "Don't breathe, you fuck."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jim murmurs, an exhale, and then their mark's in sight and it's the simplest thing in the world, one breath, two, finger tightening on the trigger, a clean hit, right through the forehead, and Jim laughs, chokes on it, hisses, "Good boy."

"Get fucked, boss," Seb says, still grinning, and Jim tangles his fingers in Seb's hair, pulls, just the once, before he sighs and shoves him away.

"Door," he says, in the bored voice, the one he uses just before they do something far worse than just killing someone, and Seb shakes his head, gets out of the car.

They do…nothing, to the flat. Seb's expecting arson, another explosion like the week before last, a ransack at the very least; Jim just walks around, back straight, heel to toe, before he bends down over the corpse and pulls on a latex glove.

"Should let me do that," Seb says, unnerved, as Jim divests the man's left hand of a heavy signet ring. "Better my prints than yours, if there're gonna be prints."

"Ah, yes, because I am so typically unprofessional," Jim says. Then he adds, "Burn it, will you? I'll be in the car," which is, at least, almost normal.

Seb rigs it, all of it, just to be sure, C4 he keeps parceled away for away jobs like this; you never know when you're going to need it. When he gets back to the car Jim's got the passenger seat reclined, is holding the ring above his head, twisting it side to side, mapping the way it catches a light.

"Tell me, Sebastian Moran," he says, a giggle on his voice, one of the madder ones, this is weird, the whole thing, even for Jim, "do you suppose an eye for an eye really does make the whole world blind?"

"Why stop at one?" Seb says, and triggers the explosion.

--

It's not getting the poison hard, it's picking it; Jim's got four doctors in his pocket and a nurse to boot, three different hospitals and they all think he's some poor bereaved sap, it's so easy, all of it, everyone, the older Jim gets the stupider people are, and he's thirteen now, which makes Carl Powers fifteen, which means Jim's got to go ahead with things so it doesn't get old, stale, so the punch isn't stripped from it, because if there's one thing this job needs, it's punch.

But picking's hard, because Jim understands the need for a clean exit, for a smooth delivery, because Jim hates loose ends but he'd really, this first time, he'd like to see some suffering, and he weighs it out, the possibilities, the pros and cons, arsenic'd be more painful but the botchulinum means he can sit, watch, so.

It's so easy it's almost anti-climactic, a seat in the bleachers at that swim meet, a borrowed school uniform, hands hidden in his pockets so no one will see them shake, "Who're you here for," someone's mother says, and Jim smiles, ducks his head, "The team, really, wanted to try out, too shy," and they all cluck, all of them, the crowd around him, call him adorable, which is so funny, really, people are so funny.

Carl Powers dies right on schedule, and Jim plays horrified, plays shocked, and when that mother from before puts a steadying hand on his shoulder, says, "Oh, sweetheart, thank god you didn't try out after all, can you imagine, those poor boys," he has to bite the inside of his cheek, hold the laugh in until hours later, until he's locking in the bedroom of the flat he's paying for, Carl's perfect shoes wrapped up in plastic and his mother yells, "Keep it down, Jimmy, Jesus," but he's earned this, hasn't he, so he doesn't.

--

Back on the jet, Vegas this time, and Jim's strange, stranger, not silent now, on the phone from takeoff to landing, a knife balanced between his thumbnails, scowling, scowling.

"Sell it," he says; "Buy it," he says; "Lose it and I'll braid that pretty hair of yourself and choke you with it," he says, "see if I don't."

Seb waits; Jim's not twitching now, stopped somewhere over the Rockies, it's just him and the knife, not balanced anymore, blade dug a quarter-centimeter in to the pad of his thumb, and Seb would worry except that there's already a scar there, except that it's an old habit Seb just happens not to have seen before, so he waits, still, always.

"This is a funny one," Jim says, phone abandoned, right before they land, and that's a dangerous accent, the one that runs closest to the place where he grew up; Seb lifts his head, watches. "Not my favorite, but then again, so my favorite, isn't that interesting? Not boring, certainly, I'll give it that. I'd rather not, though, I think--no, well. Not quite sure, am I? A funny one. I said that."

"Am I supposed to be following this?" Seb says, and a half-second later the knife's buried in the seat next to his head and Jim's in his lap, bloodied thumb painting a streak down the bridge of Seb's nose, eyes so mad it's hardly fair.

"You'll do what you're told," Jim hisses, grinding forward, "won't you," and Seb bites down at the joint of his neck, just hard enough to make his point.

They get another car, another cheap rental stand, another clerk whose eyes don't quite focus on Jim, because no one's eyes like to focus on Jim when he's like this, scary-silent, shoulders rolling, and Seb's wiped the blood from his nose but that doesn't make him clean, so he just thanks her, takes the keys, drives them to the Bellagio. Jim pokes at the GPS, pulls that signet ring from his pocket and puts it on his left hand, shudders hard enough that Seb feels it from the driver's seat, says, "Don't drive the wrong side of the road, now," and Seb doesn't hit him, could, doesn't.

When the GPS says they're three minutes out, Jim pulls a jewel case from a pocket he must've had custom-made, which makes all the sense in the world and none at all. There's a CD inside, and Seb doesn't know what their play is here, doesn't know what they're doing, just knows he's supposed to do what he's told; he assumes it's code, a detonator sequence, a hack baseline, something, until Jim pops it out of the case and into the mess of buttons and dials that claims to be a sound system.

"Orders?" Seb says, because he might as well, now, and Jim raises a finger in the air.

"Don't speak," he says, "and shoot if you have to. Do shut up now, I'm busy."

Twat, Seb thinks, doesn't say because he was told not to, because he's got his orders and he'll stick to them, because his orders are his job and he knows when to leave well enough alone. Jim takes a deep breath and then exhales, long and low, as the stereo starts to play Staying Alive; he tips his head back, closes his eyes, and then he's moving, his whole body writhing against the shoddy plastic seat, almost dancing, not quite.

"What--" Seb says, forgetting himself, and two of Jim's fingers brush against the pressure point in his neck in time with the music, so he shuts up.

They pull into the Bellagio and the song's still playing; Jim snaps his fingers and Seb goes around to open his door, waits while he slides on sunglasses he wasn't wearing before. When he gets out of the car he shuffles his feet, does a little spin before he cracks his neck and strides forward, looking for all the world like the highest roller in town. He snaps his fingers again when they pass the valet, and Seb tosses him the keys and one of the fifties Jim handed him on the flight, mid-phone call, before taking up his typical position--just behind Jim's right shoulder, because they're clearly playing this game, because Seb's a man-for-hire today, is meant to look the part.

"Drink," Jim says when they're inside, doesn't look back as Seb peels away from him, heads for the bar. He orders a gin and tonic for Jim, a shot of whiskey for himself, tosses the one back and heads for the blackjack table with the other. Jim's got himself a seat at what is, quite clearly, the hottest game in the room, and though there are open chairs on either side of him, Seb stands, right shoulder still, keeps his eyes peeled.

"You'll need chips," the bartender says, looking at Jim like he's in the wrong place, and Jim graces him with his third most horrible smile, snaps his fingers under Seb's nose.

That's the hundred grand American he'd left in Seb's wallet explained; Seb doesn't snort, because it'd kill the effect Jim's obviously going for, just heads for the counter and trades it all in. When he slides the rack onto the table next to Jim's elbow, the dealer's eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and Seb doesn't smile as he settles in behind Jim's shoulder again, sets to waiting for…whatever it is they're waiting for.

Jim's eyes, Seb realizes after a minute, aren't on the cards. They're fixed on a point just over the dealer's head, and he's not speaking, beckoning when he wants to hit, tapping the table when he wants to stay; his head's moving, just slightly, still in time with that fucking song, and oh, Seb gets it now. He'd wanted a minute to watch the game, and Seb had bought it for him--he'd wanted a chance to get a base line, and Seb'd handed it over.

He doesn't speak, doesn't look away from that point on the wall, doesn't stop moving his head, and wins every hand.

It takes twenty minutes for the dealer to start shifting on his feet; forty minutes and there's a shift change, obviously orchestrated, guards starting to gather around the nearest door, cameras turning towards them. Seb stays at Jim's shoulder, doesn't bother telling him, because Jim, for his sins, always knows what he's doing. He wouldn't be so obvious about it if he didn't intend it to be obvious, and Seb thinks Shoot if you have to, shut up if you don't, says nothing, flexes his fingers in his pocket.

An hour twenty and Jim's hundred grand tripled, there's a man walking toward them, older, suit too sharp to be anything but management, maybe owner, and Jim's face flickers, there's rage for just a second, rage beyond what Seb's ever seen, but he keeps playing, a Jack of spades showing, gestures for a hit, and Seb knows before the guy reaches their table that this is what they've come for, this man, this moment.

"Excuse me," the stranger says, and then Jim turns in his chair, his first most horrible smile painted across his face, and the man gasps, reaches for a chair to steady himself, color draining even before the dealer places the ten of spades on top of Jim's Jack, a perfect twenty-one, even before Jim drains the rest of his drink and lays the signet ring on top of the cards, raises his eyebrows, his glass.

"Done now," Jim sings out, as the man's eyes flick from the ring to Jim's face, fill with tears, and Jim's singing it under his breath now, ah ah ah ah, staying alive, and whoever it was Seb killed in Detroit, this was the goal, this was the killshot, so Seb raises his eyebrows, his finger, mimes a trigger-pull, and Jim laughs as the man starts crying, as Seb collects their chips and goes to cash them out.

They fuck in the bathroom of a gas station ten minutes outside of the city, desert all around them, and Seb likes the desert, likes running with Jim, because it never feels like running even when it obviously, obviously is. He's still not sure what's going on, doesn't quite have Jim's number, but he knows enough; knows Jim had them pull over so they could change clothes, hot-wire some poor sod's car, knows when Jim follows him into the bathroom and snaps his fingers he means check the stalls, lock the door.

One of these days, Jim's going to kill him like this, the bathroom of a gas station he made Seb check first, but today isn't that day, and hell, Seb wouldn't mind if it was. He's got three hundred thousand American in his pocket and Jim pacing in front of him, eyes wide and wild, body still twitching with that same damn song; he can afford to see how this plays out.

They've been fucking for months, since that first day, since Seb followed the address on the card with £30,000 and his measurements, written out in the shaking hand of someone whose kneecaps have been wrenched from their sockets. It'd been an empty warehouse, empty but for the guns, the hundreds on hundreds of guns, serial numbers filed down, and Seb'd been wide-eyed with want even before Jim leaned out from behind a column, bare-footed in £4,000 trousers and that same blood-stained shirt.

"Hi," he'd said, voice lilting again, strange, stretching the word to two syllables, and Seb'd find out later that it happens a lot after he's been dealing in Mandarin, in Swedish, that once he goes tonal he finds it hard to step out again, but he didn't know that then, just knew that this man was dangerous and crazy and impossible, that this man looked like the tigers he'd been dreaming, and, well.

"Brought your money," he'd said, "and the measurements, too. You were right, I didn't know them."

"Told you so," Jim said, sung, and then he stepped forward, narrowed his eyes, leaned in and taken a breath, laughed delightedly, said, "really, just like that, well, Sebastian, you are an unexpected little bonus."

Jim'd wrecked him then, bent over a table with his face hovering over an M-16, bruises on his hips that'd lasted weeks, fingernails digging in; he beckons now, two fingers, hit me, so Seb does, slams him up against the filthy, tiled wall, growls low in his ear. Jim bucks, legs twisting up, bites at Seb's lips, drawing blood, and Seb lets him, again, always, because this is what they do now, what they've always done, and it doesn't matter who's on top because Jim always is, waving his upper hand like a white flag, a red one, and Seb's half-hard every time he flutters his eyelashes, because there's no one else in London, in Vegas, in Prague, no one else anywhere whose word he'd rise and fall to, but Jim, Jim's different, Jim'll have the whole world and nothing less, which makes Seb the whole world, most days, isn't that nice.

"Eight minutes," Jim hisses, the Dublin accent, eyes far away, "make 'em count," and Seb lifts him, drops him hard on the counter, in the sink, and there's his focus back, sharp and almost-angry but he's smiling, Seb's blood on his lips, says, "Look who came to play, oh, fine, we'll call it ten," so Seb gets him off in six, cock buried in him too-deep because he's been wearing a plug since Detroit, the dirty little fuck, and Seb's known the whole time but it's nice to tear it out of him, to wave it in front of him, to watch the way his eyes roll back in his head when Seb picks him up just to slam him back down again, and, and.

He makes Seb shave their heads, afterwards, a straight razor he's had folded in his trouser pocket, face a rictus of surprise in the mirror, "Just practicing for when you scalp me, darling, don't scowl like that you, you know I'm funny," ditches Seb's jacket, tears the sleeves off his own, strips Seb down to his undershirt and takes his button-down, and it's too big on him so the effect is psychotic, really, makes him look like a frat boy after too much to drink. They keep the sunglasses and hot-wire the nicest car in the lot, a convertible parked around back, sirens already on the horizon ("Let's call it ten, we'd be mincemeat, Jesus Christ.").

"There's a plane waiting for us in Phoenix," Jim says, and then, casually, like it's nothing, "oh, and he killed my father, so I killed his son. Simple trade, really. You can stop wondering, it doesn't do much for your driving."

"Mmm," Seb says. "Well, you know what they say. One-eyed man in the land of the blind and all that."

Jim chuckles, low, throaty, tips his head back, kicks his feet up against the dashboard. "Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker," he says, and it's sing-song still but the accent's pitch perfect; Seb doesn't stop laughing till they hit the state line.

--

He keeps an ear to the ground, Jim does, after Carl, because it's the right thing, the smart thing, because his mother says, "No more fights, Jimmy?" but it's careful, almost frightened, and it's not like she's any great shakes of brilliance, better to keep his eyes peeled. He buys a Walkman, breaks it open, it's twenty seconds to work it out, to tap into the channel for the police scanner. He listens all day, every day, skips school, collects bits of blackmail along the way, and eventually, eventually--

"The Holmes kid again? No, don't give him anything, send 'im home, he's crazy, keeps coming 'round the station, something about the shoes--well I don't know, do I, just get him out before I get back, Christ."

Jim's eyes light on the pair of trainers, plastic-wrapped, on his dresser, twists his mouth, smiles. Holmes, then. Isn't that nice.

--

They play this game, Jim and Seb--just Jim, at first, because it takes Seb awhile to catch on, to see the burn of an overpriced cigarette from the corner of his eye, the flash of a trench coat, Jim thinks he's so funny. He figures it out eventually, though, probably because Jim intended him to, one pointed cough too many, one strange coincidence too few, the reflection in the rounded mirror at the corner of the car park; Jim's following him more days then he isn't, lurking in the shadows, keeping a tail.

Seb knows it should bother him, logically, the same way he knows that most things about Jim should bother him; he's aware that it's not normal to be fucking a man who smears pomegranate seeds on his hands to see how long the stain lasts, who carves estuaries into human flesh because he wants to and he can. Jim's a psychopath and Seb's not stupid; not as quick as Jim, of course, because no one is, but quick enough to see the obvious.

But then again, it's not like Seb's sane himself, not like he ever was, not like the desert did anything to him that wasn't already done. There's no song in his heart, because he's not a sentimental man (not like Jim, the mad bastard, always keeping mementos, always redesigning his calling cards) but oh, oh, there are choruses wailing elsewhere, music in his fists, his fingers. There's a soft, soothing hum in the sound of a man's last breath, and if Jim's following him around London, then Seb's following him around everywhere, because there's nothing else like him, because there's no one else singing loud enough, because Jim's the flame and Seb's the moth.

So they play this game, this cat-and-mouse that isn't, not really, it's more like cat-and-considerably-less-intelligent-cat, but Seb does what he can, ducks his head, hides his eyes, makes Jim track him through Oxford Street at half-three one Saturday and gets it taken out of his hide later, though of course neither one of them's admitting it, yet, what they're doing here, what they're playing at.

"You look atrocious in tweed," Jim says, casually, off-hand, the middle of a melee one Tuesday in June, and he's grinning, grinning because this is an admission, of sorts, a nod to the jacket Seb'd stolen to try and throw him the day before. "Honestly, if this is the price I have to pay to hold your interest-- "

"Thought I was holding yours," Seb says, "and if it's holding things we're worrying about, you could get me another magazine."

"Must you just spray bullets like that, a little grace, please, this is a four star establishment," Jim says, but he's laughing on it, cold fingers sliding up the back of Seb's jacket, steering him like he's a marionette.

The game changes after that; Jim stops tailing him and starts falling into step with him instead, out of nowhere, far more often than Seb'd given him credit for, before--which is saying something, really, all things considered.

--

Jim gets older, watches his fourteenth, fifteenth birthdays pass, uneventful to the extent that anything is, that everything is, because it's all so dull, isn't it, people and the way they move, the way they wind and unwind, they're so simple it's almost not worth trying, except. Except Jim's still got things to pull together, connections to build, and he'll only be so young for so long, is already losing the baby fat that makes him invisible, excusable, he's just a boy, he couldn't possibly, so.

He sends out feelers, one, two, picks up on the drug rackets at school and takes a cut, then two, then three, there's a teacher sleeping with a student, another, a councillor taking bribes, it's all so obvious, spelled out across their faces, the treads on their shoes, the curves of their smiles, nicotine stains and old mud saying more than words could, so Jim sticks his fingers in, once, twice, a thousand times, twists, finds the strings and pulls them, just enough, a puppeteer in another life, something else in this one, but it's not so different, really, is it, after all.

--

The first time Seb hears the name Holmes--outside of certain circles, of course, when he was a little younger, always whispered, always with the word Mycroft in front of it, he'd never bothered to push--they're in Dubai. It's a hide-away, of sorts, the aftermath of a job gone wrong, because, hell, some of them do; every now and again there's a shot even Seb can't make, a twist even Jim didn't see coming, that's what you get for dealing in criminals. Seb's wrist is splinted and Jim's leg's broken in three places, a fall from the top of a moving car, because he always thinks he's invincible, invulnerable, always thinks Seb will catch him--

--and, to be fair, he'd tried. It's not like his damn wrist broke itself.

So they're in Dubai, a house that Jim doesn't own, doesn't even rent, but he acts like it's his, because that's just Jim, an empire of blackmail and confidence and wadded up chewing gum, half the time, if Seb's honest about it. They're in Dubai and Jim's on painkillers that aren't legal anywhere, watching with hooded eyes as Seb smokes the Afghani weed he'd ordered in special, and it's a holiday to the extent that they do those, so there are silences broken, breaches in the code of behavior they might, casually, consider law, because it's not like either one of them gets off particularly on following rules.

"There are these brothers," Jim says, out of absolutely nowhere. His voice is flat for once, the simmering roll of his original accent--Irish, working class, vowels bleeding together, shades of the parts of Dublin he won't talk about, won't visit, sends Seb to instead, eyes dark, laugh not-quite-right, even for Jim. "Fucks, both of them--I ever tell you that?"

"Dunno, do I," Seb says, smoke on his exhale, blowing rings because he might as well. "Which brothers are we talking about?"

"Hate them," Jim says, "both of 'em."

"You want me to guess brothers?" Seb says. "Because hell, mate, you're gonna have to give me a little more than that--the Mendez brothers? The Brothers Grimm? The Doobie Brothers?"

"Shut your fucking mouth," Jim snarls, and then he hums the opening bars of Black Water; Seb gives him up as a lost, overly-drugged cause, leans back against the chair, closes his eyes.

"Holmes," Jim shouts, twenty minutes later; Seb starts awake so violently he nearly falls out of his chair, catches himself on his bad wrist, winces, doesn't swear.

"Jesus, what?"

"The Holmes brothers," Jim drawls, accent fading in and out now, and he's flat on his back on the king-sized bed, limbs sprawled everywhere, eyes fixed on the ceiling, hands tracing patterns in the air. "Big, bad Mycroft and poor little Sherlock, so clever, so dogged, Queen and country, the both of them, quite the little pair. I send them things, sometimes. Birds, once, that was brilliant, made this little sound--"

"Which one?"

"Doesn't matter," Jim says, "same thing, really, the Holmes boys."

"You're not making any sense," Seb says. "Case you were worried about that or anything."

"Sebastian," Jim says, and then, "Sebastian," a few more times, changing voices, because he gets stuck, sometimes, ruts out in all the people he is, and Seb doesn't have the heart to stop him, doesn't have the heart to tell him to shut up and sleep it off already, because he had, really, he'd tried to catch the bastard but he'd not quite managed it, so this is his penance, watching it, letting Jim endure it, untangling the threads of bitten-raw consonants, Jim will be Jim will be Jim.

"You want me to kill them, then?" Seb says, when it's been long enough, when he can't take it anymore, and Jim rolls on the bed, eyes hard, furious, hands clenched in the sheets, but when he speaks it's the hideous, aching calm, the kind of calm that sets Seb's teeth on edge, because he's still not stupid, even now.

"Not," Jim says, "until I've had my fun," and Seb sighs, laughs, relief washing over him, says, "Yeah, yeah, alright."

--

He's sixteen the day his mother goes out, doesn't come home, a night passes, a week, and he could figure it out, could track her down, wouldn't be hard, but he knows she knows, knows she looks at him and sees it, a face anyone could love, a heart only a mother could, and even that, even that's not right, because she's never quite loved him and he's never quite loved her, but it's not anything else, is it, because if it were anything else he'd find her, take it out of her, left and leaving, all these shreds of person, her face after he'd crept out of his closet, his father's body strewn across the floor, people die, Jim, well, people leave, don't they, and he can afford it, the house, his life, she never paid for it anyway, so fine, she ran, he doesn't follow, just carves her name into the mirror in the bathroom, letters deep, scarred into the woodflesh, S-I-O-B-H-A-N.

--

Jim vanishes, sometimes, goes out and doesn't come back, disappears for days on end only to materialize as if from nowhere, climbing through the kitchen window, hanging by his knees from the fire escape, sprawled louche across the couch with a man who'd kill him as soon as look at him, so. Seb doesn't worry because he doesn't have to; Jim can handle himself, can more-than-handle other people, and he knows where his back-up lives, knows Seb will come when he calls.

Still, the first time Seb gets a text that just says WHERE ARE YOU?!?!, no follow up, no explanation…well, it's cause for consternation, at the very least.

"Why are you bothering me," Jim answers, when Seb calls, demands an explanation, "I'm very busy," and someone screams in the background, high-pitched, desperate, so that's probably not a lie.

Still: "If this is a code you didn't teach me, you wanker, I swear to god I will--"

"You'll what," Jim says, silkily, half-mad but pleased, too, underneath, there's a smile in that, the kind of smile that bares teeth, so Seb swears, hangs up, throws the phone against the wall because fuck it, fuck it, honestly.

The second time--WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?, like the punctuation's even necessary, like he's not already made his fucking point--Seb's spread-eagle, rifle in hand, the roof of the British Museum, crowd-hunting, because it's just the one tourist they need, but several will do in a pinch. Jim knows damn well where he is, sent him there via three encrypted emails and a note folded up in the bloody toaster, Seb'd nearly burned the flat down; he doesn't answer, because he's got a job to do and it's Jim's fucking job, isn't it, so he'd do well to get it right.

"Don't ignore me," Jim hisses, later, his whole fist buried in Seb, wrist working, voice crazed and it hurts, and it's supposed to hurt, and Seb throws his head back, bares his throat, comes like a shot, groans, "Fuck, fuck, what is wrong with you, what makes you think I even could."

The third time, the third message, WHERE ARE YOU, SEBASTIAN, that's when Seb realizes; Jim Moriarty always, always knows where he is, has from the first. This is Jim's world and Seb is just living in it; these are Jim's killshots, Seb's just making them for him. So it's not a warning, can't be, he'd send a car--not a worry, wouldn't be, because Jim doesn't.

Home, Seb sends back, after a minute's thought. Jim doesn't answer him, but when he turns up three days later there's blood on his teeth; Seb cleans him up and doesn't ask, because it's not like it's the first time he's been in the dark.

It keeps happening, the text messages--they get less sinister, over time, lose the capital letters and the crazed exclamation points--and Seb's lost count by the time he really figures it out, by the time the signal comes in clear. Even tornadoes touch down somewhere; even Jim's got quirks that are just, in the end, quirks, weird little tics with nothing behind them, touchstones that are nothing but touchstones.

where, the messages say, eventually, nothing else, at two in the afternoon, at four in the morning, from across a room they're both sitting in, sometimes, just because. Seb smiles, every time, wherever he is--the bar watching the match, the middle of a crowded supermarket, alone on the street, sprawled over their bed--raises his hand in a wave to the nearest security camera, because Jim's always watching, because that's just the way Jim works.

Right where you left me, he sends back, take a breather, and Jim does, must, because nothing blows up, nothing falls down.

--

Eighteen and Jim's graduated, A-levels aced but not taken, money in the right pockets, photos in the right hands, but it's good press, and good press is invaluable, and Jim packs up his other press, Carl's shoes, his mother's last pack of cigarettes, left unsmoked on the counter, packs it all and sells the house to himself, another name, a paper trail he's been building for years, finalizes it, takes the insurance out, torches the whole place, cashes his damn check.

A month and a half and he's in London, in Westwood, Dublin left only in the heels of his vowels when he forgets himself, and he never does.

He gets a flat, and it's nice, quiet, rat infested, he sets up experiments for them, chemical trails, builds bombs for no one, calls up an old contact, a new one, kills them both and spreads it around, different names and faces, sliding accents, the right clubs, the right bars, smoke and mirrors, rumors milled like anything else, don't fuck with me, don't fuck with me. The commissions aren't hard to come by, fear and curiosity, it's all the same, isn't it, all boils down to I don't know you, and nobody knows Jim, and nobody's going to, because that's whole bloody point.

But he tracks Sherlock Holmes down, eventually, has to, can't help it, the little boy who guessed about the shoes, a bigger boy, now, but still a boy, a little younger than Jim and maybe, maybe he didn't guess, maybe there are two of them, and Jim's not hoped in years but he does wonder, think about it, toss it around, what it could be, the two of them, if it wasn't a guess, if it wasn't a guess, and so he leans against the Abbey, grins at the way his skin doesn't itch and waits for school to let out, at Westminster in Westwood, and it all feels fated, scripted, just a little, because there's never been anything wrong with a little sentiment, has there, so long as you know how to use it right.

He's not hard to pick out of a crowd, Sherlock, so tall, so pale, dark shock of hair, shoulders back like he's proved something, proving something, fingers twitching, Jim knows the signs, knows himself when he sees him, and Sherlock's eyes are fixed forward, he speaks to no one, he's looking at the car, black, tinted windows, probably that brother, Jim's done his research, and he waits, waits for Sherlock to look, to see him, to use that brain he must have, he has to have, and the car door opens and there's a flash of red, definitely the brother, and Jim holds his breath, one second, two--

--and the car pulls away and pulls away and Sherlock didn't see him and it was just a guess and Jim kills all the rats in the whole flat one by one tears them to bits like he's so good at takes out a personal ad in the paper and watches someone cry and tracks her home and doesn't kill her but oh oh oh oh it's all potential bright sharp vicious brutal he's the only one.

--

Three weeks gone and Jim comes home worked up, worked over, blood at the edge of his lip that Seb knows he put there himself. He lowers the paper and watches Jim pace, in the door and out of it again, watches him check the flat number like he's not sure this is where he lives, but of course he's sure, Jim's always sure, and when Seb finally sighs and says, "What?" Jim's whole body snarls.

"Little Sherlock Holmes has a little friend," he says, twitching everywhere, everywhere twitching and Seb's never been frightened of him (his own strain of crazy, isn't it, that), but he's frightened now, not of him, just frightened, because Jim's a bomb waiting to go off, because his words are more hiss than anything else, because a solider's instincts are a soldier's instincts, even now.

"That so," he says, because that's always what he says when he's got nothing else, when Jim's gone off the rails towards somewhere Seb can't follow, and Jim smiles, frowns, a full-body shudder and his hand on the gun tucked down the back of his trousers, yeah, this could be a long night.

"He's not allowed," Jim says, spits, and Seb raises his eyebrows, his fists, levers himself up out of the chair.

"And who makes those rules?"

"I do," Jim says, and his eyes are still distant, unfocused in fury, so Seb pins him to the wall, wrists against the doorframe, bites a bruise into his neck.

"And who said you could make the rules?"

"I did," Jim says, less distant, not quite--

"And why's that, James?"

Jim's whole body snaps to attention, lightning fast, and he's so small, really, except that he's not, except that he never has been, because no one that fast can be small, not in the long run, not in the big picture, and Jim's got a hand under his thigh, a thumb pressed to his Adam's apple, and Seb chokes on air as Jim pushes, all but flips him, throws him callously across the couch and then spoils it by crawling over him, leaning too close, everything about him present, accounted for.

"Because I'm in charge," he snarls, and it's a test, an order, so Seb smiles, drags him down for a kiss, laughs into his mouth, says, "Fucking right, you are."

--

Jim lives alone works alone network of people one two three like dominos like carrier pigeons like a bigger apartment in a better part of town because it's enough with the rats already and he's the best and he's the strongest and there's no one better except when there is but even then it's just his face his hands a punch to the gut a split lip his kidney bleeding the hospital knows him by a false name.

He needs a second writes it on the walls holds auditions gets a driver and another and a third because they keep dying because it does turn out to be poisonous over and over isn't that funny and it's an empire he's building out of matchsticks and dried spit and the blood he keeps dripping on sidewalks and he'll die like this but that's okay that's good that's great so long as he dies last and best and without the strains of Dublin he's still dreaming in and, and, and--

--

They go to the pool with a team, lackeys they don't need, and Seb points them about, directs them casually, has them set up mirrors, because he's only ever needed the one gun, the one shot, but this is for show, this is Jim's game. He sets them up with mirrors and Jim takes off his shoes, his socks, rolls up his hideously expensive trousers and dips his feet in the water, laughs like he's been laughing all day.

"It was right here, this pool, prettier then, of course," Jim says, shouts up to him in the rafters, cadence all over the place, but, well, "all those people, and none of them guessed--my first time, unless, of course, you count the horses."

"No one's counting the horses, Jim," Seb shouts back. "Little busy here, do you mind?"

"Do I mind," Jim purrs, and then, violent, furious, "yes, I fucking mind," and Seb rolls his eyes, sends the crew away, fucks Jim up against the locker of the first boy he'd ever killed, sentiment'll be the death of them both.

("Burn the heart out of you," Jim says an hour later, and Seb's got laser pointers, smoke and mirrors the way Jim likes to do, and a gun, because he's still himself, always has been, never bothered trying to be anyone else, and that gun is trained on John Watson, because Seb knows the truth of it, because Jim's the weirdest job's Seb's ever had but he knows why he keeps coming back, same as he knows the sort of man who's looking for the storm instead of the port, and Jim could burn the heart out of anyone, but Seb, Seb's always been the one with the lighter fluid, with the match ready and waiting, with the trigger finger, and he knows where his heart's at, knows just what Jim's done to it, keeps his eyes on John Watson's forehead and doesn't blink at all.)

--

Taylor's Tailoring, not a tailor shop, the first in a chain, it's an experiment, money laundered in and out, Jim's eyes on the prize and Edmund late on his payments, on the floor, a gun to his head, piss-stain pooling around his crotch and the smell rents the air, taints it, Jim wrinkles his nose, sighs, rolls his eyes because this is going to be fun but not the fun kind of fun, and he looks out the window and--

--oh. Oh.

"Be a moment," Jim says, "don't go anywhere, hmmm, oh, right, I suppose I did forget about your foot," and he goes to meet the hungry man, because oh, yes, yes.

He muddles his accent, a second of Jim and a second of James Sebastian Moriarty, aged four and a half, aged a thousand and two, pulls a hundred strings, people are easy but this isn't easy that way, this isn't like people, the hungry man isn't hungry, he's starving, murder in his eyes, in the nicotine stains on his fingers and Jim could make a noise or two and test a few things, but he knows them anyway, could slide into a persona and have this man for dinner, or over for dinner, or to bed, and he wants that, doesn't he, wants to make him writhe and scream, wants to fuck the hungry out of him, wants to try and fail, gives him a job because he'll have his cake and eat it too and set it on fire, casts bait for a name because it's funny to watch them dance and--

"Sebastian," he says, "Sebastian Moran," and oh, oh, it's fate after all.

good omens fic: build me a city, call it jerusalem [aziraphale/crowley, r]

2012-01-02T01:51:30Z

Happy New Year, everybody! To start off 2012, I thought I'd, er, randomly pound out a fic for a pairing I love but don't normally write; I straight-up failed to sign up for Yuletide this year (last year, technically?), by mistake as opposed to by design, so this is my outside-my-normal-bounds offering.

The title here is pulled from Richard Siken's "a litany in which certain things are crossed out," and, as ever (but especially this time) this is both for and because of postcardmystery, who makes all my words possible. ♥

Title: build me a city, call it jerusalem
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: R
Warning: This story contains, as a necessity to the plot device, a number of retellings/reinterpretations of Judeo-Christian stories and themes. If that sort of thing is likely to upset you one way or the other, you should probably consider giving this tale a pass. ♥
Summary: Man begets man begets The Tales of Men, and there's nothing godly in that, because Those Above and Them Below haven't any real need for the stories humans have been hungry for since the snake and the Angel with the flaming sword.

The waiter at the Ritz trips, stumbles, upends a tray of canapes, and it's 1982 or 1831, it's hard to know, it doesn't matter, because when Aziraphale snaps his fingers once the mess is gone and when he snaps them twice it never was at all.

"Mensch tracht, Gott lacht," Aziraphale says, smiling, over his shoulder, halfway to the bathroom already, because he's always doing this, cleaning up messes and leaving Crowley to do the dirty work, to burn clean the speck of crème fraiche on the tablecloth he didn't quite manage to miracle away. That was probably on purpose; it usually is.

"Uh," says the waiter, smooth accent slipping, two miracles over-quota, shell-shocked and not sure why, "what's that mean, then?"

Crowley sighs, scowls, takes a sip of his wine, trades it for brandy with a flick of his wrist.

"Ineffability," he says, "in Yiddish."

--

It's funny, later, what turns up. Crowley gets in a shoving match with one of the Angel's people; it's early yet, pre-Arrangement, a those-in-glass-houses situation, so to speak. Crowley doesn't touch the Angel's people and in return the Angel doesn't touch Crowley, doesn't lay hands on him and watch the burn--it'll be funny how that turns up later, too.

In any case: it's one of the Angel's people, and Crowley doesn't know his name, his face, just knows the look, the spring in his step, the trust the way his hands move. The Angel's people always know they're protected, are always shrouded thick around with their own security, and if Crowley had more of a spine he'd point it out, how close it slides to pride.

But he's not long on spine, is he, not long on much except self-preservation instincts and a tendency to follow the curve of a slope, and he wouldn't have bothered the stranger if the stranger hadn't bothered him first. But bother he did, and Crowley fights back because his alternative is cowardice, small and shameful; lets him win, because he really is a coward, when push comes to shove comes to the threat of an Angel's wrath.

"Let me go, you lunatic, it's morning," Crowley says, panting, eventually, "what're you trying to do here, do you have any idea how bright it gets--yeah, yeah, get off, you've won, get off me. What's your name?"

"I am Jacob, son of Isaac," says…well, Jacob, son of Isaac, apparently. Crowley narrows his eyes.

"Okay, Jacob, son of Isaac--that's kind of a mouthful, you might want to work on that--that was fun and all, but if you ever touch me again, it's going to go a lot harder for you, d'you understand me?"

"I fail to see any credibility behind your threat, given the result of our recent combat," says Jacob, son of Cocky Little Bastard, and, well. Self-preservation instincts are all well and good, but Crowley's had a long night.

"I do believe that business at the end was a bit overdone," the Angel says, when Jacob, son of Isaac has vanished screaming into the horizon, when Crowley has reassembled all of his own scattered pieces-parts. "But the rest will suffice quite nicely, I imagine."

Jacob Wrestling the Angel, the story is called, later; even Aziraphale can see the humor in that.

--

She's smaller that Crowley would have thought, dark eyes, too-thin, a creature borne of absence, of struggle, red hair on her head and red hair in her hand, shorn free, tied up, her grasp white-knuckled and she's crying and she's been crying, been crying since the temple fell, has maybe always been crying, and Crowley wonders what it must be, to be human, to feel with the sharp-sung cadence of a hundred thousand lifetimes, to love and lose, to love and take, and the Angel's been Aziraphale for years now but he's the Angel today, cold eyes, cold wings, judgement at the tips of his fingers, burning white-blue like that sword he once gave away, and Crowley always wondered, wondered for ages, until he saw it for the judgement that it was, in its way, not so clear as this time, not so clear as the darkness wrapped up in all that light, and it's Crowley who pulls her in, who carries her away, who strikes the name Delilah from every book but that of Judges, for there are those territories that belong only to Angels, and, well, it's been awhile.

--

On the eighth day, God wept. They don't really tell you that part.

--

Aziraphale writhes beneath him, skin flushing in a way that's not-quite-human, never quite human, wings just an echo now, more gossamer than feathers, skittering over Crowley's well-kept sheets, and he looks like he did at the edge of a garden in the rain, the hollow of his throat the open pit of a thousand choices that weren't, not really, not in the end, because the Angel might say ineffable but Crowley says unfathomable, because free will is a nice place to visit but he wouldn't want to live there, because Aziraphale's hands work patterns on Crowley's back that could raze this city to the ground, could take them all Below, and when he hisses through his teeth Crowley moves, once, twice, pins him down, covers his mouth, swallows and swallows, because he knows what that means, always has, yea, verily, better than anyone.

--

Her name is Bathsheba and she is beautiful; Crowley learns this much later, the first in a long line of commendations he doesn't deserve--or, at least, didn't quite earn. He accepts it, lies his way through it, because he did not fall so much as saunter vaguely downward and it's not a lie so much as a vaguely inconsistent truth; there are those things that are nurture and those things that are nature and Crowley is something in between, always has been, so.

"Angel," he says, weeks later, stone smooth underneath thighs still running scaled, the remains of a castle in ruins, still good enough for a makeshift throne. "I don't suppose you'd care to explain?"

"I don't have to explain myself to you," says Aziraphale; pride, Crowley thinks, because it's a running tally now, his little pleasure, and that's gluttony on his side, but on his side that's not what you'd call a problem.

"Maybe I'm curious."

"You serpents always are."

He figures it out in the end anyway; David and Jonathan skate across word of mouth, sing up out of the ruins they've left, and if it's a young song that'll be Solomon's one day that doesn't leave it unrecognizable. The Angel, Crowley remembers, hadn't been a soft touch for anything, but Aziraphale's wings shriek loneliness across the wind when he flies. It's not hard to put together, and Crowley doesn't let himself pick it apart; he's learned that lesson, hasn't he, once or twice.

--

"You tore down their tower," says Crowley.

"I'm not sure I take your meaning," says the Angel, and that's on purpose, that's deliberate; hell, that's almost funny.

--

He hangs on the sidelines, Crowley does, for Esther and Ahasuerus, switches to snake and curls himself around Mordechai's favorite chair, keeps his eyes open. This is Aziraphale's show, and he could interfere, doesn't have to; it's getting easier to spot, the stories that'll be stories, the strings Aziraphale plays like they're one of those blessed harps, and it's not like Haman needs any help.

"Nicely done, that," Aziraphale says at the hanging. "Gave me no end of trouble."

Crowley snorts, reaches out, and it's a three-cornered hat that's drifting on the breeze, a hat marred with everything it wanted to be and didn't become, with a legacy of blood it didn't quite spill. He turns it over in his hands, rounds those corners, makes it blacker, puts it on; he pulls it low over his eyes, the best he can do against the sunlight, and smirks.

"Don't understand a bloody thing about humans, do you," he says, watching for the twitch of Aziraphale's fingers; wrath, then, that's refreshing. "No, he did that all himself."

--

It's false idols, Crowley know, that get to Aziraphale, always has been; Crowley hasn't forgotten Abraham and his madness, hasn't forgotten who caused it, what caused it. But human beings are simple in their complication, drawn to the easiest mistakes, and Crowley doesn't have to do anything; he just watches, perched amongst the mountains, and hopes none of the bushes catch fire.

It's a golden calf, because of course it is; some days, Crowley isn't sure why he bothers at all.

Aziraphale shows up later, mid-revelry, and none of the bushes have caught fire but his eyes, his eyes, there's fire enough there to burn a hundred years, and Crowley knows what that means, knows how it goes, remembers Falling away from a certain brand of viciousness, from retribution, and he slithers forward, coils himself around Aziraphale's wrist, before he can think better of it (before he can think at all).

It doesn't burn, because nothing does, not really, not anymore, it's the wrong word, or the right one. It doesn't burn, but it eats, because Aziraphale is still mostly Holy and Crowley mostly holes, holes that fill, now, with everything Aziraphale is and isn't, and it doesn't burn but it does hurt, worse than the Fall, worse than a hundred Falls, and Crowley's long since hissed when he meant to scream but he doesn't, doesn't, tightens himself around Aziraphale's wrist and rides it through, because his flesh is impermanent and this matters, doesn't it, somehow.

Three days, Crowley spends coiled 'round Aziraphale's wrist, ducking his head when Metatron speaks, pushing his own agenda when the Levites rise against the dissenters. He watches with a cold sort of distance when Pestilence sweeps into town, touching man, woman and child with his tapered grey fingers, and when Aziraphale shudders with intent, Crowley tightens his grip.

Angels can still fall, after all. The worst that can be done to Crowley has long since been over with.

It's the last time it hurts, Aziraphale's touch. Crowley's not sure if that means he's become more holy or less; he's not sure he wants to know.

--

They say Man was made in God's image, and that's not wrong, exactly, except for how it's all wrong, except for how it's always been wrong, because Man was made in God's image, that first time, but man, lowercase, widespread, always evolving into something worse, man was made in the image of man, who was made in the image of Man, who spent too much time gorging himself on apples to remember much about whose image it was he was made in. Man begets man begets The Tales of Men, and there's nothing godly in that, because Those Above and Them Below haven't any real need for the stories humans have been hungry for since the snake and the Angel with the flaming sword.

But if they were going to tell stories, if there was any truth to be mined from the silence, it would be that they were friends once, Lucifer and God. It would be that they traveled together, the smooth-talking flash bastard still on high tangled up with the overly literal moralizer-that-could, in the early days when all the universe was young. It would be that the saying the humans have picked up, the idea that it's pride that cometh before a fall, was more about external pride than internal; it would be the image of The King of Darkness on his knees, the edge of the River Styx, begging forgiveness that would never be granted to him.

Crowley's not stupid, not blind, not insane; Crowley knows what the word cyclical means, knows ineffability's no joke. He'd just...well. He'd just rather not think on it.

--

"And for you, sir?" says the waiter, same one, different day, canape-guy, Crowley calls him, and it's still 1831 or 1982, still hard to tell, it always is, days like this, faces like this, Aziraphale smiling so sweetly it's almost a smirk over the edge of a newspaper whose date Crowley could check, if he felt like it.

"He'll have tea," says Aziraphale, "milk and honey should do it, don't you think?"

"Oh, ha ha," says Crowely, "you're very funny--"

--

Crowley visits the Dead Sea, just the once, an afternoon spent skirting the edges, skipping stones, watching the tourists drift by, buoyed, buoying. War's been here, set up camp, dug her heels in, scratched up the walls, a vacation home if ever there was one; Crowley catches sight of her once in his own reflection, again just outside Tel Aviv, and scowls.

He sticks one finger into the water, just to test it, just the once, and it burns the whole way back to London, flesh peeling away to reveal the mottled truth underneath, scaled and scalding. Aziraphale takes one look at him, sighs, takes the whole mess of it in his mouth; swallows hard at the expession on Crowley's face when his finger comes out healed.

"What, praytell, were you expecting?" he says, and Crowley winces, looks away; one more unanswered question for the history books.

--

They are collectors of things now, of flash cars and old scrolls, of decent wine they'll improve upon, of cell phones and old memories, of land deeds, just because. They are collectors of things, because they have learned better than to be collectors of people, know now that it will only speed it, the way they aggregate, the way they steal, are stolen, a thousand shades of piety in the weave of Aziraphale's tweeds, a watercolor in petty sins in the folds of Crowley's leathers.

It doesn't help, not really, not at all, does the opposite, until eventually Aziraphale closes his eyes and tilts back his head, rapturous, and it's Mahler, 9th symphony, D Major; it's lust and gluttony and acedia; it's funny, really, to think of how he once was when it came to false idols.

--

It's a dark and stormy night, again, always, it always is when there's something to be done, something Crowley would call dreadful if that wasn't such a human word, if that didn't mean inspiring dread for dread's sake. He squelches through, mud on his boots, his ankles, splattered along the length of a tail that's never really been there, and there's the Angel, again, always, above it all, floating, and he's smiling like he would have done a thousand years ago, like he would have done in his bookshop this afternoon if he'd thought Crowley could take it, because Crowley sheds skins, has from the start, but Aziraphale wears them.

"What do you want from me here, Angel?" Crowley says, screams, and Aziraphale smiles.

--

Job's tricky, a study in good fences, for all he comes along a few millennia too early for that reference to make any sense at all. God and Lucifer use him, abuse him, as bad as each other, worse; Crowley and Aziraphale remain on hand, trusted lieutenants in their way, keep their comments to themselves.

Except: "Do you imagine he knows?" Aziraphale says, after, the kind of question he shouldn't be asking, a hint of weakness in a battle of wills. "How petty it is, really? How little he matters, in the long run?"

"I think he's a human being," says Crowley.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning," Crowley drawls, plucking a stalk of wheat that dries, dies, against his fingertips, "it doesn't matter what the truth is. As far as he's concerned, he's the most important thing in the world."

--

They end up in London, or maybe London ends up in them; Babylon topples and Rome burns but London stands, a little worse for the wear, a lot worse for the two of them. Aziraphale buys a bookstore and Crowley knows it's to temper the urge to rewrite history; Crowley buys a Bentley and Aziraphale must guess it's to dampen the urge to run.

The apocalypse doesn't come, not that first time, not the handful of attempts that crop up later, chemical agents and bloodless wars, nuclear blasts that Crowley swallows, meteor strikes that Aziraphale waves away. It doesn't come, except for how it does, a little; Crowley and Aziraphale are an apocalypse in and of themselves, London in their exhales and borrowed vitality in their eyes, whispering come on, come on.

It takes Crowley longer to see it, because that's usually how it goes; he's long been the more susceptible to blindness, to dodging the truth, a dirty, human trick. When he opens his eyes a hundred years hence to the way the street edges away from him, like they know, like they can tell, he goes home and sets his flat on fire, sits on the floor and sucks in the smoke.

"You don't think this is a little unnecessary, my dear?" Aziraphale says, his steps near-silent as he slips in through the front door, quirking a soft, sad smile as the flames slide away from him intrinsically. "A bit overdone, wouldn't you say?"

"I wouldn't say anything," says Crowley. "You're always the one that's bloody talking these days, isn't that right?"

Aziraphale just shudders, sinks to the floor, wraps Crowley up in wings that are looking more defined every day, and there's sadness in his eyes, in his hands, in the way he whispers Let there be light and the whole damn flat goes still and silent.

--

Crowley gets on Noah's ark because he can't see any reason not to; Crowley gets on Noah's ark because it was a raft the last time he checked in; Crowley gets on Noah's ark because he's told to, but that's more a formality than anything else. He stirs fights between the varying members of the animal kingdom, enjoys their lack of complication, the predator-or-prey mentality; he slithers the whole length of the boat, maps the blueprints with his soft underbelly, and knows it's not large enough to contain all that it holds.

The Angel's on the roof, because of course he is.

"So, mass drowning, huh?" says Crowley, flicking out of the snake because he might as well. "Seems a little harsh, from my end."

"Your end would have the whole planet in ruins," says the Angel, a stiffness in his voice that'll be written out of their memories eventually, and Crowley snorts.

"Sorry," he says, "must've missed something, is this not a planet in ruins?"

The Angel shifts guiltily, eyes flicking from the sickly sky to the filthy, stagnant water, thirty-three days still and overrun with insects. "It is not our place to question the ineffable plan, Crowley."

"Don't be ridiculous, Angel," Crowley says, stretching out, catching the sun, "that's pretty much my whole job."

--

Yom Kippur a year after the eighteenth failed apocalypse, and Crowley finds Aziraphale in the last temple, head bowed, wings folded. The building would be beautiful, if Crowley were the type to appreciate such things; as it is, it reminds him of nothing and everything, of Freddie Mercury and a life he's been borrowing so long it might just be his, except, except.

"Ah, there you are," Aziraphale says, without looking up. "You got through the threshold without any of the typical unpleasantness; I'm surprised."

"Are you?" says Crowley, "are you really?" and Aziraphale sighs.

"Sit with me," he says and it's not a request, not anymore; maybe it never was, in the beginning, end, whatever, wherever they are. Crowley does it anyway, because, well. Tradition for tradition's sake, and all that, and the humans still say all's fair in love and war.

It's silent, still, like Crowley's flat after a spot of arson, like the back room of Aziraphale's bookshop. This is the last temple, the last one in London, the last one anywhere; he knows it's not empty, just feels that way, a moment drawn out for their benefit, the cigarette before the firing squad. Dust mites catch and keep on the beams of light filtering through the windows, and Crowley's eyes burn behind his sunglasses, as human as they've ever been, which is to say, not at all.

"Be funny, wouldn't it," Aziraphale says eventually, his hand tangled suddenly with Crowley's, a touch that burns again, but differently that it once had done, "if I did the wrong thing and you did the right one?"

Crowley thinks back: a garden and a flaming sword, a woman weeping over her ruins, a waiter with a tray of canapes, a tower falling and falling and falling. He traces the paths of the history they've woven, unwoven, sold and stolen and stumbled over; his teeth sink in around the world they've written in blood and smoke and holy water.

"Angel," he says, "which time?"

avengers fic - momentum [steve/tony, r, 1/2]

2011-12-13T05:12:35Z

Right, so, I am behind on any number of things, there are many posts I need to make, but first, we have this story. What happened here, in a nutshell, is as follows: the incredibly, amazingly, impossibly generous esteefee approached me about doing a commissioned-for-charity story. In exchange for a donation to the Cleveland City Mission, an org that does an INCREDIBLE amount of good for my city, she wanted a story from Steve's point of view that dealt with Tony's assorted and sundry daddy issues--I think you guys can imagine why this was a winning proposition to me.

And then she was kind and supportive and the best cheerleader ever when, in a turn of events that will probably surprise no one, this turned into 15,000 words of Steve's point of view on Ready, Fire, Aim. Because she's awesome.

A few quick things before we start--the Cleveland City Mission's webpage can be found here, and there's also a charity mentioned in this story called Project Reach Youth, which is a very real organization that I absolutely, entirely fictionalized for the purposes of this story. However! The reason I did not just invent a random charity for use in this tale is that Project Reach Youth, like the Cleveland City Mission, like all the nonprofit orgs out there doing so much good for so many people, is always in need of donations from those who are able to give, and I figured a shout-out couldn't hurt. I MAKE NO CLAIMS OF REPRESENTING ANY OF THE VIEWPOINTS OF ANYONE BUT MYSELF ETC, but if you're interested in learning more about, or donating to, either org, you may do so through the websites linked above.

Title: Momentum
Rating: R
Pairing: Steve/Tony
Wordcount: 15,300
Author's Note: This is Steve's side of the story Ready, Fire, Aim; you should probably read that before you read this. All of my thanks to postcardmystery, sheafrotherdon, siriaeve, and, of course, esteefee, without whom this story would never have been written at all.
Summary: It doesn't matter who you are; eventually, everyone's past catches up to them.

The first time Steve notices it is long before anything happens between them, friendship or…otherwise. He's still stumbling half-blind through a century he never expected to see, and Tony Stark is just the brash man in the metal suit who looks too much like Howard in the right light. The idea of depth there is nearly impossible to fathom; in the three weeks since they met, Steve's seen Tony do a hundred unspeakably rude things, and that's not counting the video footage one of the SHIELD agents showed him.

"I just thought it was better that you know what you're dealing with," the woman said, eyes flat. Steve stared in horror as Tony referred to a panel of United States senators as assclowns and couldn't help but agree.

But then there's a mission, a second one, a third, tumbling into each other like dominos; the team's exhausted and doing a poor job of hiding it, not comfortable enough working together yet to take each others' slack. Reaction times slow and injuries increase, and Friday night finds them all in a little bar in Yonkers, nursing their wounds and their pride.

"Thought you couldn't get drunk, " Tony says, three Dewers in, as he signals to the barkeep for a fourth. "Part of your whole thing, right? There's a note in your file, it's an interesting read; wouldn't've thought you'd need to strip the fun out of a guy to make him a hero, but hey, I'd be the wrong person to ask."

There are ten things Steve could take offense to there, eleven if he counts the way Tony's standing, pressed up against the bar like he owns it, hip jutting out just so. But then again, there's hint of a burn on the side of his face, leftover from an explosion that'd hit when his mask was up; Steve's still feeling guilty for calling the scene clear too early, so he doesn't bite.

"It was an accident, I think," he says, rolling his beer bottle between his palms. "Or, uh, side effect is probably a better phrase. Still tastes good, though."

"Yeah?" Tony says, eyebrows up. "Sierra Nevada, really? I would've figured you for a Budwiser guy."

"I just told him to give me the best stout he had," Steve admits. "I would've asked for a Guinness, but I realized I don't even know if they still make it."

Tony laughs, half surprise, half honest amusement; it's the first time Steve's felt like he was being laughed with, not at, and he smiles a little despite himself.

"Another Dewer's for me, and a Guinness for Cap here," he says to the bartender, and winks when the glass slides along the bar. "Some things never go out of style, you know?"

There's a full head on the beer, frothy, and Steve relishes the first sip more than he really should. It tastes…god, it tastes exactly like it did the first time Bucky passed him a glass of it, and he closes his eyes, rolls it around on his tongue a little before he swallows.

There's a strange expression on Tony's face when Steve opens his eyes. "Good?"

"Yeah," Steve says, with real feeling behind it. "Thank you."

Tony smiles at him instead of saying anything, raises his own glass in a toast before knocking half of it back, and it's the longest pleasant interaction they've had since they met.

Or, at least, it's the longest pleasant interaction they've had since they met until Bruce, drunker than he should be by a fair margin, bumps into Tony on his way to the bathroom. Things get a lot less pleasant after that.

"Christ, Banner, can't you watch where you're going?" Tony snaps, snatching for a napkin to try to mop up the whiskey he's spilled all over himself. "I don't exactly buy my clothes at the Salvation Army, fuck, like it wasn't enough that Barton shot up the Armani the other day--"

"Well, I wouldn't have if you'd been on your mark," Clint says from the next stool, bristling. "Or suited, like you were supposed to be."

"Sorry, can't hear you over the sound of how badly Bruce ruined this shirt. For god's sake, walk much?"

"I…sorry," Bruce says, reaching for the napkins himself, "I didn't mean to, I really am sorry, sometimes it's a little hard after I've been all--"

"Giant green rage monster, yeah, excuses, excuses," Tony mutters, and Clint narrows his eyes.

"Do you have to be such a dick all the time?" he says, while Bruce does an awkward little attempt at patting Tony dry. "I mean, shit, the guy said he was sorry. Were you not hugged enough as a child or what?"

Steve only sees it--the twist to Tony's mouth, the way he freezes up--because he's looking for something else. He's looking for Tony's next vicious retort, for the way his eyes go dark and hard before he moves in for the kill; usually Steve's the person on the receiving end of that, because no one else really tends to bother taking the bait when Tony throws it. But that's…hurt, isn't it, achingly obvious for the second it takes him to cover it, and even the cover's not great. Steve can still see something rough and raw in the way Tony shoves his hands in his pockets, in the way he cracks his neck like he's trying to shake something loose.

"C'mon, Barton," Tony says, his mouth twitching up in a lopsided smile, "think we all know how much I've been hugged--god, Bruce, quit it already, it's fine. It's just a shirt."

Steve watches for another minute, but Tony doesn't say anything else; he just waves Bruce away and grabs his drink, saunters off to the pool table in the far corner. Clint mutters something under his breath but lets it go, and Steve takes another long pull from his beer, turning more than just the flavor over in his mind.

--

They do a photo shoot for Time Magazine, Steve and Tony, fully costumed, a month after the night at the bar. Steve wants it to be the whole team, argues with Fury about it when he brings it up in a meeting--it's only fair that they be depicted together, share the credit, and admittedly he doesn't relish the idea of being anyone's publicity stunt. Fury stands firm, though, pushes that he and Tony are the most identifiable, the ones that'll really sell, and when he reminds Steve that SHIELD owes the city several hundred thousand dollars in damages already, Steve caves.

He doesn't realize his argument--which really had been about camaraderie, nothing more--must have offended Tony until the day of the shoot. They're in one of the Stark Industries limos Tony seems to have lined up and waiting for him wherever he goes, awkward silence rife between them; Tony's poking at one of the various pieces of glass he insists is a computer, nodding dismissively when Steve tries to engage him, not even bothering with an attempt at conversation.

Admittedly, this is how a lot of their conversations go, outside of the field. When they're fighting together, Tony's a different guy; pulled together and competent, Iron Man doesn't resort to argument for argument's sake, the way Tony so often seems to. Steve's not entirely sure what to make of it, but he remembers the way Monty was, those first couple of months--he'd drawn a very serious line between the business of destroying Hydra and what passed, in those days, for his personal life. Steve had known better than to push it, and he knows better than to push Tony now, lets the silence hang heavy until they've reached the warehouse where the shoot's being held.

Sure enough, the moment they're costumed, Tony gets looser. He throws an armor-clad arm over Steve's shoulder for the camera, cracks a couple of ill-advised but fairly amusing jokes; he's old hand at this kind of thing and it shows in the way he moves around the set, the way he greets the photographer like an old friend. It makes Steve feel a little less like he's going hear the strains of Star-Spangled Man filtering in through the window, and the two hours pass quicker than he'd expected them to, although not quite quickly enough.

It's only when they leave--out through the front entrance this time, since the loading dock they came in through is already occupied with a crew unloading the next shoot's equipment--that Steve realizes where they are. He hadn't placed it coming in, because everything looks so different, but this is--

"What's up?" Tony says, stopping in his tracks. "We got trouble?"

"Uh," Steve says, and blinks, trying to clear his head. "Oh! Oh, no, it's fine, I just. Uh. I…once tracked down a Hydra spy around here. Over there, actually, there was a…submarine, it's kind of a long story…"

"Oh," Tony says. His mouth quirks up in a strange little smile; Steve tries to focus on that instead of the incredibly unsettling moment of cognitive dissonance, that this place is still here, but nearly unrecognizable, too. "Yeah, huh, the time with the taxi cab door, right?"

"Yes," Steve says, surprised. "There was--how did you know about that?"

"My old man had a whole," Tony says, waving his hand. "Collection, I guess you could call it. I never got to see most of it, kept it in his study--but there was an article about you and the cab. Kept it framed in the living room, must've read it a hundred times when I was a kid, waiting for him to--anyway, I'd forgotten that was here."

"Howard kept a collection?" Steve says. "A collection of…newspaper articles about me?"

"Yeah, sure," Tony says. "Articles, memorabilia, whatever. There were comic books and stuff, I always wanted to read them--well, and I mean, the expedition that found you was ours, as it turns out. Always thought that billing code was for a secret kid he was putting through college or something, kind of a surprise when Fury told me. You wanna grab a burger?"

"Uh," Steve says, because that's a lot of information to take in at once. He's gotten about as far as Howard Stark never stopped looking for me when something shifts subtly in Tony's face, stutters back towards the distance he usually keeps.

"Check that," he says, "got a two o'clock, completely forget about it--I'm gonna take the suit, actually, since it's right here and all. Happy'll take you for lunch if you're hungry, though, he's good with burgers, you'll see."

He's engaged the suitcase armor--how he fits all that armor in a suitcase is honestly beyond Steve--and taken off a second later, before Steve gets the chance to press the point. Steve stays for a minute, hands brushing against the worn brick of the warehouse, before he sighs and goes to find the car.

--

The "philanthropist" part of Tony's "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist" comment turns out to be no joke. Steve doesn't realize it until a few weeks after that photo shoot, when he shows up for his weekly visit to Project Reach Youth to find a party going on in the administration offices. It's something he's been doing lately, volunteering the time he's not spending with the team--it had been Fury's suggestion, when Steve mentioned that he was a little at odds as to what do when they weren't working. He'd probably been thinking of the publicity, has been less than pleased with the fact that Steve flat-out refuses to draw any attention to it, and PRY itself had actually been Pepper Potts' tip.

"They focus specifically on disenfranchised youths in the Brooklyn area," she'd said, when Steve asked her for suggestions. "The head of development there is an old friend--do you have email set up yet? I'll have someone send along some information."

Steve had fallen in love at once--with the information he'd been sent and then with the organization itself, the dedication of the staff, the bright, brilliant kids he meets with every week. What they have him do changes whenever he drops in; sometimes it's tutoring and sometimes it's talking, and some days it's pickup games of basketball, painting, cleanup. He's got a standing time to come in that he never, barring urgent crime, misses, and he shows up unscheduled whenever he's got a free hour.

He's never seen the offices in this state, though, music blasting loud, volunteers drinking cheap champagne and fruit punch from the big jugs they keep in the fridge. Steve stands in the doorway, bemused but pleased--it's rare to see the staff here so relaxed, and he doesn't know what's caused it, but he's hesitant to interrupt. He just watches, a small smile quirking at his mouth, until Marie, the volunteer coordinator, spots him and hurries over.

"Did you," she says, with tears in her eyes, "did you do this, Steve?"

"Did I do what?" Steve says, mystified, and Marie shakes her head.

"We…we got a call," she says, "this afternoon, from the Maria Stark Foundation. And they're…Steve, we've been trying to get the funding to build the new facility for years. I don't know what you did, but I can't thank you enough."

"Wait," Steve says, "the Maria Stark Foundation?"

"Yes, they're, they're, it's more than we'd ever have dreamed of asking for," Marie says, shaking her head. "I don't know what you said to Mr. Stark, but just, thank you, and please thank him for us? We'll, we're trying to pull together an appropriate gesture but it's, you understand, we're a little overwhelmed."

"Of…course," Steve says, a little overwhelmed himself. "But I, you shouldn't thank me, I didn't have anything to do with--"

"The Foundation looks at hundreds of proposals every year," Marie says, shaking her head. "It's, really, there's so much need, and it's so hard to--you must have done something, Steve, to put us at the top of the heap. And, in any case, the good you do in coming at all--"

"Don't," Steve says, for the hundredth time, holding up a hand. "Being here does more for me than I could ever do for you, you know that," and Marie smiles, shakes her head.

"Have some champagne," she says. "The kids are already gone for the day, and we've put a temporary hold on everything to celebrate."

Steve looks around the room, something swelling in his chest that he doesn't know how to name, and shakes his head. "Sorry," he says, "but there's, uh. There's someone I need to talk to."

Tony's at Stark Tower--Steve knows, because he was downtown to begin with for a meeting there, only popped into PRY on a whim--and he walks the whole way there, trying to sort out his thoughts. He doesn't manage it, and he must make a strange picture when he throws open the doors of Tony's office, because Tony looks up from the designs he's got spread out across his desk and furrows his brow.

"Uh," he says, "I thought you…left?"

"Did you," Steve says, "my god, did you offer to build Project Reach Youth a new facility?"

"Now, see, that was supposed to be an anonymous donation," Tony says, rubbing the heel of his hand against his forehead. "It defeats the whole purpose when they stamp my name all over everything, seen enough of these things get overrun with greedy little shits covered in political aspirations, I'll have to make sure the Foundation follows up on that--"

"I, you," Steve says, "how can you just--how can you be blase about this, Jesus, that's so much money--"

"It's a tax write-off," Tony says, grinning slightly, his eyes far away. "C'mon, I needed that--look, seriously, don't get weird about it. The Foundation gives a ton of money each year, it's not even really me, it's not like I'm hurting for cash or anything."

"But you," Steve says, "but it's the--I'm there every week--"

"Well, yeah, obviously when I know someone," Tony says, waving a hand. "I mean, look, you talk about it enough, you keep trying to get us to go, maybe I felt a little bad that I didn't have time to stop in--"

"So you decided to build them a new facility?"

"No, the Foundation did that," Tony says, shrugging. "They must've had a hell of a proposal--I just told them to make sure they looked into it, that's all. I try not to meddle too much there, because, I mean, it's not like I know what I'm doing or anything--and, plus, that's the kind of thing my mother would've liked, probably, and it's all her, really. That's the whole point--she didn't like much, I don't think, but she really didn't like it when people weren't heard, or at least people that weren't--uh, anyway. I didn't really do anything, I just pointed them in the right direction or whatever, it's not a thing, don't worry about it."

And…and he's lying, Steve realizes after a second. He has to be lying, because that's the nervous babble he slips into when he's avoiding the truth, and he's twitching and god, maybe he didn't even want Steve to know he'd done it. He's--this is a version of Tony Stark Steve's never seen, someone shying away from the credit and trying to downplay his own involvement, and it's hard to match up with the guy who'd gloated when Steve mentioned the "assclowns" video to him.

Except maybe it's not, not really, and that's horrible and heartbreaking and Steve doesn't know him well enough to know how to say that, to even be sure if it's true. He just says, "Thank you," and Tony shrugs again, looks back down at his work.

"Seriously, it's nothing," he says. "Thank Pepper, if you want, she liaises with the Foundation more than me these days."

"I," Steve says, "I…will?" and Tony nods, waves a hand, dismissive.

"See you at the thing tonight, yeah?" he says, and Steve nods, slips out the door.

--

He starts paying attention, after that.

Which…it's not like he hadn't paid attention to Tony before. Tony is not someone who allows attention to be paid to anyone else; when he's in a room, he's the only person in that room, and he makes damn sure everyone knows it. It had struck Steve from the first as the kind of ostentatious posturing that's usually masking incompetence, and even once he'd discovered that that wasn't the case--Iron Man, for all his obnoxiousness, was a hell of an ally--it had still stuck in his craw.

But it's hard to dismiss Tony's antics as the fruit of too much money and not enough discipline in the wake of the work Project Reach Youth is doing, even harder when they're saving lives together nine days out of ten. Steve stops rising to his bait in meetings and starts listening to what he has to say; he doesn't always agree, but they're rarely unfounded arguments, regardless of how they're presented. He maintains the distance Tony seems to prefer, using his last name instead of his first and trying to avoid getting too familiar, but he allows himself to get a little more comfortable with the man, a little less armed for battle.

He's still not expecting it when Tony stops him in the hall, waves his hands around for a second, and then thrusts a piece of paper at him like it'll burn him if he holds onto it for too long.

Steve looks down at it, bemused, and then…oh. Oh, he remembers when this was taken, in that thrown-together base in London after the fourth Hydra raid; that cut running down Bucky's cheek was fresh off of a Tesseract-enforced knife, and he himself has a hand wrapped around one of Howard's failed attempts to sell him on new weaponry. Peggy had taken this photo, laughing at all of them from behind the camera, raising her eyebrows and the very corner of her mouth just for Steve, and he feels tears prick at his eyes, can't help it.

Tony's babbling something--"oh, god, just don't, don't cry, okay, because then I'll have made Captain America cry and I do not want Coulson to watch Supernanny while I drool, don't, please don't"--and Steve barely hears it, awash with a hundred, a thousand memories he's been trying to keep buried, that he's been too much a coward to touch.

After a second, enough filters through that he blinks and says, "I'm not crying."

Tony doesn't say anything; Steve thinks it's a kindness, perhaps, not calling him out on that obvious lie, until he glances up and sees the naked panic written on Tony's face. He can't quite bring himself to invest much focus on it, eyes drawn back to the photo; god, Howard mugging for the camera, Bucky's fist halfway to Dum Dum's bicep, it could be yesterday except for how it couldn't be at all. "Where did you get this?"

"You know the guy in the middle who looks like me was my father, right?" Tony says, voice still riding that manic edge. "That's registered for you, hasn't it?"

Steve looks up at him to nod and has to blink back tears again, because--because this is Howard's son, fifteen years older than Howard was the last time Steve saw him, and the terrible truth of his reality can be summed up with that fact, can't it, that Tony's here and Howard's not.

"I'm just…cleaning house," Tony says finally, like it's costing him money. "Trying to get rid of his shit, donating it, burning it, whatever, and I just thought--"

"You're burning Howard's things?" Steve says, horrified, before he remembers himself.

"Burning then," Tony says, nonchalant, waving a hand like it doesn't matter at all, "throwing them in the ocean, bathing them in acid, whichever you like. Getting rid of them, that's the point. The last thing I need is more memories of my old man, I'm full up, thanks."

And Steve would say something to that, he really would, because the idea of what remains of Howard falling into some uncrossable abyss is terrible, leaves something in him aching. But it's not his place, is it--because this is Howard's son, so those things belong to him, now. That which was Howard's is now, by any scale of measurement, Tony's to do with what he likes, and the fact that he'd been willing to give up this much is more than Steve has any right to ask for.

"I…thank you," he says, finally, clearing his throat around it. "He was my friend."

"Well, lucky you," Tony snaps, anger wiping across his face so quickly that Steve can't make sense of it at all. "He was my father; I didn't get that luxury."

He stalks away, down the hall, and Steve knows that there's something he's supposed to do here, but he's to wrapped up in the past to wrangle the present. He says, "Tony?" before he can think better of it, before he can remember to maintain distance, but Tony turns anyway, nearly at the door.

"Yeah?"

"What was he like?" Steve says, staring down at Howard in yellowed black and white, too hungry for the knowledge to worry about the consequences. "I mean…later. After I knew him. As a…well, as a father, I guess."

There's a long pause; Steve looks up, wondering if Tony's gone, only to see him standing stock-still, like he's being hunted. Steve feels his brow furrow, feels his mouth open and close again. His fingers flex against his thigh, unsure, the slip of paper heavy, suddenly, in his hand, before Tony finally speaks.

"Disappointed," he says, like it's being dragged wild out of his mouth, like he's uttering a confession, and he's gone before Steve can think of anything to say to that.

--

Steve can't help but feel a little overwhelmed at the size of the mansion when he shows up on move-in day. He's seen the place before, of course; there was that first time, when he'd come to apologize to Tony only to find him stubborn and impossible, and a few times since, when Happy dropped Tony off first before taking the rest of the team back to HQ. He's never been inside of it before, though, and he trails behind the rest of the team as Tony gives them a halfhearted tour, sounding like he doesn't know how he ended up in this position.

"So, right, uh, all the guest rooms have bathrooms, so that's not a thing," Tony says, waving a hand down an ominously long hallway. "Just pick one, I guess--except you, Cap, yours is over by the first floor living room, 'cause it's got the French doors and I know how you are about clear exits--"

"Thank you," says Steve, surprised by the thought there, at the same time Clint says, "Sorry, man, the first floor living room?"

"Well, one of 'em, anyway," Tony says, absent. "The other one's still under construction, the whole south wing's kind of shot. You can just ignore the work crews, Jarvis does security checks on everyone who comes in here--oh, right, I should probably--Jarvis, say hi--"

"Good afternoon, Avengers," says the crisp, British voice that Steve recognizes from their comm-link; everyone but Tony and Natasha jumps, looking around. "My apologies; I suspect Mr. Stark has not explained the full extent of my functionality and purpose. He tends to forget these things."

"Oh, good, that's good, slip a little lecture in, why don't you," Tony mutters, rolling his eyes. "Jarvis runs the house."

"I am, in fact, Mr. Stark's artificial intelligence," Jarvis corrects, in the tones of someone who has had this conversation several times before. "I run the house, as well as his assorted technological creations, up to and including his suit and your communications devices. Should you have any need of anything during your stay, please do not hesitate to ask; simply address me by name, and I shall do my best to assist you."

Steve would be taken aback by that, but many things about the future have turned out to be far and away beyond what he would've imagined, and, in any case, that's a Picasso on the far wall. The only person who looks rattled by the whole thing is Clint, and, considering his fondness for lines of sight, Steve's not particularly surprised.

"Right, yeah, that's better than what I'd've said," Tony says, covering a yawn with one hand. Steve narrows his eyes, noticing the dark circles he's sporting even though the criminal element has been quiet this week, narrows them further when Tony adds, "Actually, Jarvis, finish the tour, would you? I've got a thing running downstairs."

"Certainly, sir," says Jarvis. "How would you prefer me to manage it? Shall I use the LED systems, or would it be more to your liking that I advise them to follow the bouncing ball?"

"Ha-fucking-ha," Tony says, and that--the fact that Tony appears to have some sort of rapport with what he's just explained is a machine--well, that Steve finds a little disconcerting. "Just--I don't know, look around, and Jarvis'll tell you where you're going, or where you shouldn't go. You can pick your bedrooms, the ones you can't have are locked."

"Except for Cap," Bruce says, something strange in his tone, and Tony nods.

"Right, except for Cap," Tony says. "Or, look, uh, Cap too, you can pick a different one if you want--"

"No," Steve says, "the one with the doors will be perfect, thank you."

Tony gives him a strange little smile before his face hardens again. "Right," he says, "well, welcome home or whatever," and he disappears down the hall.

Steve's not sure why he follows him. Maybe he's just riding a long-honed instinct for trouble or maybe it's because he's noticed, since Tony originally offered to take them in, a certain hesitance about actually doing so. He feels vaguely guilty about that, honestly; when Tony made the offer, Steve had jumped to thank him for it, trying to maintain the good humor that seemed to be growing between them. He'd only realized on thinking about it later that Tony might not have meant to offer at all, that he might have unwittingly pushed him into doing so, though he finds that thought fairly incongruous; Tony's not the type to agree to anything he doesn't want to do, regardless of outside pressure.

Still, there's something itching at the back of his mind, so he slips out of the room after Tony. He catches up to him a few minutes later, leaning against the doorframe of a room he'd hurried them past, his back to Steve. Steve folds his arms over his chest, watches.

"Are you alright?" he says after a minute, and Tony yelps, spins around with his fists half-raised. Steve puts both hands up, calming.

"Sorry," he says at once, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"Uh," says Tony. "No, it's…it's fine. You're fine. Sorry, just not used to…. yeah, uh, I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

"You seem a little," Steve says, waving a hand instead of finishing his sentence, and Tony laughs.

"I'm always a little," he says, mimicking Steve's gesture. "You'll get used to it, living here, I guess."

"Ah," Steve says. "Well, if you're sure."

Tony cocks his head. After a second, like it's a test, he says, "This was my dad's study."

"Yeah?" Steve says, trying not to sound too eager. Tony nods, distant.

"I kept it," he says. "The, uh, the stuff about you. I wasn't sure if you'd want it or not."

"I'm…honestly not sure about that myself," Steve admits. "I would like to see it, though, if you don't mind."

"Knock yourself out," Tony says, gesturing towards the room. "There's a cleaning crew coming tomorrow; I though, you know, people moving in, I should probably bite the bullet on getting stuff out. The stuff about you's in that box in the corner, but you can look through the rest, if you want, I pulled all the financial shit."

"Thank you," Steve says, and Tony smiles at him, a lopsided little quirk to his mouth.

"Yeah, well," he says, clapping Steve on the shoulder as he turns to go, "I think he probably liked you a lot better than he ever liked me. Figured I probably owed at least one of you this much, right?"

"Tony, I'm sure that's not true."

"Huh," says Tony. "Well, you'd know better than I would."

Steve has no idea what to say to that; Tony goes, and Steve doesn't follow him this time, knows a dismissal when he sees one. He settles himself down on the floor, starts flipping through the box of Captain America memorabilia. It's…strange, not in the least because of some of the dates on these things. There are comic books from as late as 1979; one of them features an illustration of a man who looks nothing like him, in a colorful shirt and strangely cut jeans, who answers to the name Stan Rogers. He smiles a little despite himself; he can imagine Howard's bark of laughter on finding this.

In fact, a number of the things he seems to have kept are things that got some essential fact wrong. That, too, is very Howard; he always was one for his own superiority, and it probably did something for him, knowing he was right, even if history wasn't. Steve plucks one or two things from the pile--the ridiculous comic, a plastic yo-yo with lights studding the side that looks a bit like his shield--and leaves the rest, figuring it would be a little self-congratulatory to hold onto all of it.

He's packing it up, getting ready to go, when a hint of white catches at the corner of his eye. It's poking out from behind the desk, and Steve narrows his eyes, leans over to pull it all the way out. It's a…photograph, of sorts, inside of a sort of thick, white cardboard frame, and there are marks on it where the desk had it pressed to the wall. The ink in this photo seems to have shifted slightly, dripped, almost; it must have been back there for years, and Steve holds it up to the light to see it more clearly.

It's Howard, older than Steve's ever seen him, hair gone white around the temples. He's got an arm around a man Steve doesn't recognize, a big guy, mostly bald; they're standing under a sign that reads "New York State Science Fair, 1976," and they're both smiling.

And, really, it would be a throwaway photograph, wouldn't hold Steve's attention at all, except for the boy in the far corner of the shot. He's got dark, messy hair and knobby knees, a frown on his face even though he's holding a trophy nearly as large as he is, and no one's standing with him; it's Tony, Steve realizes, couldn't really be anyone else.

He's crumpled it before he means to, without even realizing it, regrets it and smooths it out the moment he realizes what he's done. He hasn't done any permanent damage, but the act of getting it flat again doesn't do much to soothe his own sudden flare of anger, almost--but not quite--inexplicable.

He tucks the photograph in between the pages of the rescued comic book and goes upstairs, pushing at questions he's not sure he wants to answer. When he sees Tony that night at dinner, he makes sure to smile.

--

He gets a text message a month or so after he moves into the mansion, sitting in a meeting with Director Fury; it takes him a few minutes to remember how to open it, since the phone Tony'd given him pulls up new screens every time his fingers graze the surface. He gets there eventually, though, only to find the words "party @ the house, start time right now, consider this an fyi & an invite."

Steve sighs. On the one hand, it's Tony's house; if he wants to throw a party, Steve certainly doesn't have any grounds to stop him. On the other hand, he's been to two of Tony's charity events now, and he knows that Tony's idea of a good time doesn't line up, at all, with his own. He agonizes for a few minutes over his reply, settles on "DEAR TONY, I AM IN A MEETING WITH DIRECTOR FURY. I WILL ATTEND, BUT MAY BE QUITE LATE. SINCERELY, STEVE ROGERS," all in capitals because he can't actually figure out how to turn them off.

"Sure, whenever," he gets back a few minutes later, and a few minutes after that Fury adjourns their meeting, leaving Steve to his own devices.

And, well. The right thing to do, the polite thing to do, would be to go home and face the music--probably literally, given the volume that Tony tends to think is normal. He's not quite sure he's prepared, though, and ends up wandering the streets, enjoying the twilight quiet and trying to psych himself up. He buys a hot dog from a vendor on the corner, which is disgusting, but not as disgusting as it could be, and he finds himself on a bench in Central Park, his sketchbook balanced on his knees.

He draws what he sees, without any coherent plan behind it; a young boy laughing on his father's shoulders, a squirrel intent on rescuing some sort of wrapper from the garbage. There's an oak tree that's probably--not definitely, but probably--older than Steve, and he devotes a whole page to sketching it out, the lines thick with fellow-feeling.

It's been a few hours when he notices that he's doing it again. He's got this bad habit of imagining conversations with Peggy, what he'd tell her about this strange new world he keeps realizing he lives in, and it tends to crop up when he's drawing. He knows all too well that it's unhealthy, and, worse, that it's nonsensical; Peggy'd lived the years he'd slept, almost certainly knew everything Steve could think to tell her. But he can't quite help it, imagining the way her accent would roll across her vowels, how she'd snort at what passes for politics these days.

He misses her; not in the dark, crippling way he did at first, like it was going to eat him alive in that dank room at HQ, where everyone looked at him like an experiment or a ghost--but still, he does, more and less every day. She fades in and out of focus, leaving him panicked that he'll forget what she looked like until he remembers he has photographs, and when he looks down he sees he's sketched her next to the oak tree, eyebrows up, like she's scolding him.

He decides it's probably time to go home after that, music or no.

There is, sure enough, an audible aura around the house, something with heavy bass booming out from a few open windows, but there's only one car in the drive, and it's one of Tony's. Steve's confused until he goes inside, sees his team (and Pepper) in various states of intoxication, and realizes that "party" had simply meant "Avengers, getting drunk." He feels a little silly; he hadn't been prepared for one of Tony's lavish affairs, but he certainly could have handled this.

Then again, it's hard to feel silly when face with the image of Thor picking Tony up by the ankle and waving him in the air. Steve tries, and fails, to bite back a smile when Tony flails his arms, says, "Steve!" in tones of great surprise.

"Hi, Tony," Steve says, and he keeps most of the laugh out of his voice. "You guys look like you're having fun."

Then Thor lets out some kind of warrior cry and hurls Tony to the floor, at which point things become a lot less fun for everyone involved.

Steve doesn't know all that much about medicine; he has a soldier's grip on trauma, an understanding of the frailty of the human body that comes from being a nurse's son. It's enough to calculate that an impact with the floor at that force, from that distance, could've been enough to cause serious damage, and he's crouching down with panic flaring in his chest even as he hears Tony moan "Shut up, god, fuck," into the carpet.

He puts careful hands on Tony's shoulders--no response of pain, nothing shifting that shouldn't be--and waits a moment, until he sees Tony move his head, before he rolls him over. He half-expects to see blood and snow, just for a second, before he remembers that he's checking for injury, not battle wounds.

"Oh my god, Tony," he hears himself say, more frantic than he means to be, than he'd have expected himself to be, and tries to resist the urge to pat him down on the off-chance something's actually broken. "Are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Uh," says Tony, squinting up at him. "Is this a trick question?"

Steve thinks concussion for half a second, out-and-out winded at the idea of Tony suffering brain damage, before he realizes that both of his hands are still on Tony's shoulders. Embarrassed at himself, he waves two fingers in front of Tony's face; Tony's answering babble is normal enough that he lets himself relax a little. He helps Tony up, then helps him stay up when Thor slaps him on the back; he glares, a little, over Tony's head, and Thor looks appropriately ashamed of himself, so Steve doesn't push it.

It's not until he realizes that Tony's not really capable of stringing a sentence together that he caves and says, "I think you've probably had enough to drink." He's careful to keep his voice warm, free of judgement--he's not sure how much of it is the alcohol and how much is a head injury he's not qualified to diagnose--but Tony narrows his eyes anyway, stiffens so instantly Steve winces in sympathy, and mutters something Steve can't quite make out.

He's weaving his way through the room a second later, favoring his right side so visibly that everyone stops and stares at him. Steve's pretty sure Tony doesn't even notice it, and he sighs when Tony snatches a decanter of what looks like whiskey from the bar and wanders out the back doors.

"That is an interesting look on your face, Captain Rogers," Pepper says, a little unsteadily, at his elbow out of nowhere. "Would you like to be the one to chase him down, or shall I do it myself?"

"So this isn't the first time he's done this, then," Steve says, not really a question, eyes fixed on the door Tony just walked out of.

Pepper sighs. "No, it's not. First time in quite awhile, though, if that helps."

"Is he always so," Steve says, and waves a hand. "Oh, I don't know--"

"Maudlin," Pepper provides handily, and then makes a face like that was, perhaps, more than she meant to say. "No, sometimes he's quite a cheerful drunk. Depends on the day."

"Fantastic," Steve says, under his breath. "Right, well, I'll get him a….glass of water or something…"

"Advil," Pepper says. "Cabinet over the sink, in the back, the white and green bottle. He'll thank you later."

Armed with water and the bottle, Steve goes outside; Tony's drunker than Steve's seen anyone since that time with Monty and the absinthe, and even that had been less…upsetting, Steve guesses, is the right word. Tony slips in and out of consciousness a couple times, clearly isn't aware he's doing it--he tells Steve he thought he was a dick the first time they met and then backpedals by offering up the fact that he doesn't think Steve would try to kill him. Steve's not sure what the worst part about that is--whether it's how readily this idea comes to Tony, how clearly he sees it as a forgone conclusion, or how little sense he's making.

Steve ends up talking about Bucky. He's not sure why, exactly; he hasn't mentioned Bucky's name since he woke up, because even after 70 years asleep it's too raw. He's still waking up from nightmares where Bucky's falling and Steve's reaching--but he's had one foot in the past all night anyway, and Tony's drunk and visibly heartbroken, even if Steve's not quite sure why. He talks about Bucky, just for a minute, and nothing terrible happens, the world doesn't fall apart, and he feels almost giddy until he notices Tony trying to fall asleep against the brick.

"Alright, up, up," he says, dragging Tony to his feet. Tony can barely walk, turns his face into Steve's shoulder and lets himself be dragged through the house, and Steve waves off the offers of help their teammates throw his way. If he knows Tony at all--and he does, he thinks, at least a little--it'll be easier for him to deal with the fact that this happened if he's given as little assistance as possible.

But Steve can't quite stop himself from stepping in when Tony collapses down across his bed, missing the pillows by a good half a foot, still fully dressed and clearly intending to sleep that way. He pulls Tony's suit jacket off first, as gently as he can, mindful of the fact that Tony's probably more injured from the incident with Thor than he's willing to let on; he gets his button-down next, then each of Tony's shoes, before he eases him up towards the pillow and pulls the blanket over him.

He's turning to leave, having already pushed things well beyond what's really acceptable here, when Tony makes a soft, strange little noise. Steve's eyes narrow, but Tony's just as asleep as he was a moment ago, sprawled out across the sheets. A nightmare, then, based on the way his face is twisted up; he mumbles something into the pillow, "Sorry," and then a word Steve doesn't understand, "owe me" or "obie" or something.

He's got a hand in Tony's hair before he can stop himself, stroking lightly, because just this minute he can't bear it, this loop they seem so stuck in. Steve knows there's something not quite right about what's going on between them, about the distance they keep pushing towards and then away from again; Tony's his best friend except on days when he isn't, and Steve's got feelings he doesn't know how to deal with on top of that, attraction or something like it burning hot at the pit of his stomach. It's not fair--Steve wants to be a good friend but he doesn't know how, not when it's all so tangled up in things Tony won't tell him and people he once knew, but maybe didn't know at all.

He runs his fingers through Tony's hair once, twice, doesn't stop even after the wrinkles in Tony's forehead have smoothed out and he's stopped with the pained, half-coherent mumbling. It's easier, isn't it, soft and so simple, a few swipes of his fingers saying things Steve isn't sure how he'd put into words.

"I don't know what I'm doing here," he says, and doesn't know how he means it--if here is 2012, or this bedroom, or the no-man's land he and Tony keep winding up in, where there aren't any rules, where there are no clear borders.

Part Two

avengers fic - indecent proposal [steve/tony, cowritten with siriaeve!]

2011-12-05T04:50:51Z

Right, so, here's what happened: siriaeve and I decided to co-write a little ficlet for sheafrotherdon, who had a long day. And we drafted it all out in chat, as you do, and then Siria took it and DID ALL THE HARD WORK WHILST I GAPED IN DELIGHT AND GLEE, because she is the objective best, and I love her. Anything that is awesome in this story is her, and anything that is less than awesome was my totally my fault, the end.

Indecent Proposal | Steve/Tony | 2600 words | co-written by siriaeve and gyzym
On the plus side, marriage is bound to be easier than proposing.
Here, on Ao3.

avengers fic - situation normal: all fucked up (steve/tony, nc-17) [1/3]

2011-10-31T00:01:27Z

Filed under: that awkward moment when you blink and you're 27,000 words into the sequel of Ready, Fire, Aim and you have the sudden, terrible realization that the remaining plot you've got left to write is actually going to have to be a third story, because the whole thing turns out to be a trilogy, who knew? Oh, god, I have nothing to say for myself.

My endless thanks to sheafrotherdon, whose continued willingness to police my increasingly terrible stylistic choices is mindblowing, and postcardmystery, who, in the liner notes of my life, is probably best described as either "arbiter of sanity" or "most beloved." ♥

Title: Situation Normal: All Fucked Up
Pairing: Steve/Tony [Pepper/Natasha, Rhodey/Bucky, past Tony/Pepper]
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 27,000
Author's Notes: Again, this is the sequel to Ready, Fire, Aim; it'll probably make more sense if you read that first.
Summary: As it turns out, fighting crime is the easy part.

Tony's on the kitchen counter, spread out on his back across the stovetop, when he hears Steve come through the door. The microwave's gone wrong again; Tony has the sneaking suspicion this is because the Hulk keeps trying to make ramen noodles in the dead of night, though when he tries to get confirmation on this, he's always met with slightly shamed silence. It doesn't really matter anyway--Tony doesn't mind fixing it. It's something to do with his hands that doesn't involve any conscious thought, and after a long day there's nothing quite like mindless mechanics to calm him down.

Pepper tells him some people knit. Tony can't imagine why.

In any case, he's got a screwdriver between his teeth, nuts and bolts scattered in a haphazard pattern that makes complete sense to him, when the sound of the door opening and Steve's heavy sigh filters down the hall. He doesn't stop working--Steve's been around long enough that it won't faze him to see Tony sprawled over the stove--but he does spit the screwdriver out when Steve comes in and starts laughing at him.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey, yourself,” Steve says, sounding tired. “Hulk try to make ramen again?"

"He will neither confirm nor deny," Tony says, which is mostly true; his awkward shuffle and hasty retreat had kind of been answer enough. "How'd it go?"

"Next time you're coming," Steve says. He leans back against the counter, rolling his shoulders. "I don't care where it is, I don't care what you've peed on--"

"Whom," Tony corrects, and gives Steve an apologetic little smile when he winces. "Sorry. It was a really long time ago, if that helps, and it was a really bad night, and, uh, you know what, I'm just gonna quit while I'm ahead. But hey, I've only been banned for life at four--well, six--well, eight places in New York, so the chances of this happening again are slim, that's good news, right?"

"Great news," Steve says. It's only a little dry, so Tony's going to go ahead and count it as a win.

Steve's in uniform; his gloves are off and his hood is down, but the blue fabric's still stretched tight across his chest, white star shining bright in the middle. Tony is used to this by now--Captain America lives with him and sleeps with him, the uniform should probably be old news--but it still makes his mouth go a little dry. He swallows past that, recognizing for once the need for a time and a place, and focuses on Steve's face. It's drawn; he’s pinched around his eyes, his mouth, his shoulders are slumped, and he's frowning in that way he does when he's trying and failing for a neutral expression.

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah," Steve says, and sighs, running a hand over his face. "Or, no, not really. I just hate these things, you know? I always feel like I'm a cue away from 'every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy's gun!' I'd just…rather not."

"Hey, I would've bought those bonds," Tony says, wriggling his eyebrows halfheartedly, and Steve shakes his head, rolls his eyes.

"Flattering," he says. "Especially since I know how cautious you are with your money."

There's no sting in it, just a little bit of exhaustion seeping through; when Tony reaches out an arm and beckons, Steve comes, lets Tony run a hand along his thigh. He ducks his head down under the microwave and Tony leans in, presses warmth into his mouth because he wants to and he can. He lingers for a minute, right at the corner, until he feels Steve's lips curve up.

"Next time I'll be there," he says, and, shit, it sounds like a promise, he didn't mean that to happen at all. "And I can do all the pandering while you, I don't know, form meaningful connections with nasty old bitches who haven't smiled at anyone in forty years, you've got a knack for that."

"Language," Steve says, but he kisses Tony again, brief but fond, before he straightens up. "God, my head is killing me."

"I thought that was like," Tony waves a hand, sending a few screws flying, "you know, super-solidered out of you. You should've been able to check some kind of opt-out on that--what's the point in being super-human if you've gotta suffer headaches like the rest of us?"

"High society can give anyone a headache, Tony."

"Truer words," Tony sighs, and frowns up at the bottom of the microwave. "Pretty sure I turned this into an explosive by mistake. You wanna watch a movie?"

"Yeah," Steve says at once; then he blinks and the frown's back, damn it, Tony'd been ahead of the game for a second there. "Wait, explosive? Shouldn't you, uh, fix that first?"

"Nah," Tony says, already mapping out in his head which wires he’ll have to rip loose. "I'll just disable it, tell Jarvis to program a warning if anyone gets close. I can mess around with it in the morning; I probably shouldn't have tried doing it now anyway, I always forget I end up in bang mode when I'm not paying attention. On the plus side, if anyone tries to kill us tonight, just shoot at that and--"

"No," Steve groans, "oh my god, don't even talk about that, I don't even want to think about that. If murderers come for us in the night, it's your turn to deal with it."

"Can't even muster the energy to defend the homestead, you must have a headache," Tony says, teasing. Steve just gives him a flat look, and Tony can't help it; he sits up, sending screws everywhere, and touches the side of Steve's face. Steve leans into the contact before Tony has the chance to be embarrassed at his own ridiculous sentimentality, closing his eyes, and then…well, if Tony rubs his thumb against Steve's temple a little bit, it's not like Steve's judging him for it.

"Shit, you really do, don't you?" he hears himself say. For a second, he doesn't recognize that it's his voice; Tony doesn't let himself talk like that--quiet, gentle--because Steve would probably ditch him for someone less horrifying if he did. But he doesn't seem to be minding it now, just murmurs a soft, agreeable sort of sound into Tony's wrist, and Tony presses a kiss against his forehead, but only because it's right there.

"Mm," Steve says, and blinks his eyes open, smiling a little. "You've got motor oil on your face, just so you know."

"Think there's a pretty decent chance that that's just my face, at this point," Tony says, if only to see Steve's smile deepen a little. "Occupational hazard, you know how it is--sort of like 'if you make that face enough it'll stick that way,' only more, uh, toxic. Hope it's not too much of a turn-off."

"Nah," Steve says, "think I'll keep you around," and Tony's got an arc reactor embedded in his chest, so his heart definitely doesn't skip a beat.

He runs his knuckles lightly along Steve's cheek without even meaning to, does it once more before he gets control of himself and lets his hand drop. "You wanna put on something a little more loungewear appropriate? I'm gonna be a minute with this, I'm trying to beat my no-in-house-carnage record."

"Which is what, thirty-six hours?"

"Forty-eight," Tony says, grinning, "but I was out of town."

Steve shakes his head, head ducked to hide his smile. "Menace."

"Never claimed to be anything else," Tony says, and then Steve's kissing him again, slow and sweet. Tony never knows what to do when Steve does things like this, warm and so easy, a hand resting on Tony's knee with a soft sort of propriety; he just kisses back, resists the urge to take the whole thing deeper, knows without thinking too hard about why that Steve's not up for that tonight.

"Living room?" Steve says when he pulls back, and Tony nods, swallows.

"Five minutes," he says, and Steve squeezes his knee, just the once, before he wanders towards the door.

Tony stares at the microwave for a second; his face is reflected in the tinted glass, and even he can see he's blushing.

"Liar," he tells it, and it beeps ominously at him, which is when he realizes he should probably have unplugged it.

--

Tony beats Steve to the living room, which is probably a good thing considering what he finds there. Clint and Thor are positioned on opposite ends of the couch, a Connect Four board balanced between them. There are several empty beer bottles on the table, and the board seems to be populated with a combination of actual game pieces, quarters, and what Tony suspects are impossibly priceless Asgardian coins.

"Um," says Tony, "what?"

Thor grins at him. "Tony, my friend! Clint has been teaching me to play this game of Midgardian strategy, but I suspect he has been inventing the rules for the last several rounds. He is a terrible cheat."

Clint doesn't even bother arguing that, just shrugs around a loud belch. "Gotta keep it interesting, right? We were gonna play poker, but Thor turns out to be a card sharp. Who knew?"

"I did," Bruce says, irritated, from the corner. Tony jumps; he hadn't seen him there.

"Jesus," he says, "is everyone in here? Is Natasha hanging from the ceiling, because if she is please do me a favor and warn me this time, unsettling doesn't even begin to cover it--"

"Natasha left to telephone her flame-haired love companion some hours ago," Thor says calmly, and then, with considerably more enthusiasm, "Check-king! Crown me with the glory of the empire, for I claim victory in this mortal contest."

Tony…doesn't even know where to begin with that sentence. Clint, for his part, just blinks, mouth open.

"You beat me," he says, in tones of great astonishment. "How could you beat me? I made up all the rules! I didn't even tell you most of them!"

Thor claps a massive, conciliatory hand on his shoulder. "It was a valiant effort, well fought on all sides. Alas, you are not so adept at trickery as my brother Loki has always been; the art of beating one at one's own game is but one of the many things he has taught me."

"Really unsettling to hear you sound so fond of a guy who keeps trying to kill us," Bruce mutters. He still sounds irritated, and Tony glares at him, pointing.

"You," he says, "had better calm it down right now. I want to see some tranquility up in here and I want to see it fast, because if you Hulk out and try to make ramen tonight you're going to blow us all up. I…may have made a couple of tactical microwave errors."

It's probably some kind of terrible sign that no one even bats an eyelash at this. Tony will worry about it later.

Bruce says, “I really don't know what it is with him and the noodles," and then, noticing Tony has not stopped glaring, sighs. "No, no, don't look at me like that, I'm fine. It's just been a long week."

Tony opens his mouth to argue and finds he can’t. It has been a long week; a long month, actually, come to that. There was that thing with Ultron, and then the fucking Circus of Crime had come to town, and every time there’s a disaster, they’re forced to do press-friendly follow-up, if only to keep from engendering a public outcry. The Fantastic Four have been hounding them about cooperation, and the X-Men never really stop calling, and on top of that Tony’s been tangled up in meetings with the Stark legal teams, trying to secure licensing rights that his people should have gotten weeks ago.

It’s fallen to Steve to keep everyone in step, to make sure everyone’s eating and sleeping, to go over their battle strategies and field their calls. And Tony’s been keeping him up nights on top of that, tracing his tongue over the muscles in Steve’s thighs, charting new territory with his fingertips; not that they haven’t both enjoyed it, but it hasn’t left a lot of time for decompression. Tony’s used to being busy when he’s busy, to focusing all his energy without really noticing the consequences, but he’s aware that he’s not exactly wired like everyone else. No wonder Steve’s exhausted; he’s probably been exhausted for days, kept it quiet out of some stoic, duty-bound, nonsensical leadership ideal.

It occurs to Tony, all at once, to wonder who the hell’s been looking after Steve all this time.

“Right,” he says, shaking his head, “everybody out, this room has been re-purposed, you’re all done for the night.”

“Says who?” Clint says. He glares at Tony without all that much malice behind it. “We live here too! We have--”

“If you say the words squatter’s rights,” Tony says, raising an eyebrow, “I will make you actually go out and squat somewhere. You do know that this is technically my house, right? That I let you live here out of the kindness of my heart?”

“The kindness of your dick, maybe,” Clint mutters, and Tony grins at him.

“Nah,” he says, “that’s just Steve. And really it’s not my heart for you, either. Only Thor gets my heart--you’re only here because if you weren’t, Fury would never quit calling me.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Thor says, while Clint, mildly drunk and not hiding it well, visibly grapples for a comeback. “Your esteem warms me in the cockles of my soul.”

“Your soul doesn’t have cockles--and, actually, you know what, just scrap that word from your dictionary, it’s really not something you should ever say again,” Tony says, “but hey, if you’re really warmed, you could clear out. Not that this hasn’t been really heartfelt and everything, but this is my living room and I want it back.”

“You’re in a mood,” Bruce observes--which, really, it’s Bruce, he should not be allowed to say things like that. “Did the licensing thing blow up in your face again?”

“No,” Tony snaps, and then...stops. He is, he realizes, in kind of a mood; he’s shifting on his feet, casting nervous glances over his shoulder in the direction of Steve’s room, and there’s this squirming sensation in the pit of his stomach, something that isn’t guilt or arousal or even panic, just--concern, maybe, and affection.

And then Steve comes around the corner.

He’s fresh out of the shower, rubbing a towel absently against his hair, wearing sweats and a t-shirt that stretches tight over his chest. He looks even worse than before, heavy circles under his eyes, all too human; Tony can’t breathe for a second, though he’s not sure why.

“Oh,” Steve says, stopping. He smiles hesitantly at the room, lets the towel drop. “Hey, everybody. I didn’t realize you were all going to be in here.”

“They were just leaving,” Tony says, glaring. Clint glares back, but Bruce glances from Steve to Tony and leaves without a word; Thor, for his part, just smiles like he knows the secrets of the universe. Which, okay, he probably does, Tony can admit that, he gets it, the whole god thing, but he doesn’t have to go and flaunt it all the time.

“What?” he snaps, and Thor just laughs, putting a hand under Clint’s arm and hauling him upright over his protests.

“Sometimes, my friend, you are very...mortal,” Thor says, shaking his head. “It is endearing, but rather strange, as the rest of the time your behavior is largely predictable. Clint, we shall now retire to the roof, whereupon you shall teach me to shoot the leaves off of the maple tree in the yard, for it offends me in both color and purpose.”

“Uh,” Clint says, blinking, “well, I mean, I guess if I get to shoot stuff,” and he lets Thor haul him away.

Tony stands in place for a minute, staring after them. Eventually, he says, “Wait, I’m sorry, did he just call me predictable?”

Steve laughs around a yawn. “If I say you’re not, can we skip the necessary ego-trip?”

“Now, see, that was mean,” Tony says, throwing himself across the nearest end of the couch. “Affirming the predicable thing and a swipe at my ego, that’s too mean, put the claws up, you’ve been spending too much time with Wolverine--”

“No,” Steve says, “Wolverine has been spending too much time with me. Can we give them a fake number, do you think?”

“Hard to lie to Xavier,” Tony says. Steve sighs and sits down next to him, kicks his feet up on the coffee table, and Tony casts a long look at the line of his body. The strange, warm feeling in his gut has only intensified, and he reaches out and flicks at a lock of Steve’s hair, damp still, before he can help himself. “You showered.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Didn’t really feel like spending all night smelling like expensive champagne and perfume. Some of the people at these things don’t have much of a personal space barometer, you know?”

“That’s because they’re hitting on you,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. Steve gives him a look that’s somewhere between doubting and intrigued; Tony would be exasperated if it this particular blind spot of Steve’s wasn’t, horrifically, kind of adorable. “You do know that you’re a superhero, right? An American legend with abs of steel--are you the only person on earth who didn’t get that memo? You must be, that’s gotta be it--here, look, here it is, hand-delivered: you are attractive to others. There, I’ve said it, try not to let it go to your head.”

“Jealous?” Steve says, and it’s light, teasing. Tony scowls at him.

“I’ll take ‘not dignifying that with an answer’ for two hundred, Alex,” he says, and Steve actually laughs; he’s apparently taken in something from the Jeopardy tournaments Bruce keeps insisting on. “Hey, Jarvis, pick a movie, something I’ll like, Cap’ll probably sleep through most of it.”

“So noted, Mr. Stark,” says Jarvis, even as Steve says, “No I won’t.” It’s not very convincing; it’s even less convincing when he reaches up and rubs at the side of his head, wincing.

“It’s probably some kind of safety hazard, you being such a bad liar,” Tony says. He reaches out and tugs at Steve’s sleeve a little, and Steve sighs out a breath and follows the motion, lets his head land on Tony’s shoulder. “What if it’s the end of the world and everything depends on Captain America convincingly bullshitting? I mean, come on, at least put a little bit of effort into it, this is just sad--”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up,” Steve says. Tony would take offense, but he can feel Steve smiling against his shoulder, and the movie’s starting anyway.

“Oh, fine,” he mutters, for pretense’s sake, and Steve’s back shifts a little with laughter before it stills.

Jarvis, because he is programmed to understand Tony’s truest and most important needs, has put on Godfather II. Tony may or may not let out a sigh of deep satisfaction; he reaches out with the arm that Steve isn’t pressed up against, pulls up a few schematics on the surface of the side table. For a minute, all is right with the world.

Then Steve says, “Wait, didn’t I see this already?” which, actually, is kind of a problem.

“Right,” Tony says, “okay, so here’s how this is going to work--because I am a good person, and this is for the sake of the team and our, uh--you know what? I’m just going to forget you said that, out of the kindness of my heart, because no, you have not seen this already, you saw the first one, this is the second one, there’s also a third one, they are very different films.”

“Okay,” Steve says, shrugging a shoulder, and Tony sighs.

“Okay,” he says, and his hand is in Steve’s hair now, tugging a little to emphasize his points, “okay, he says, do you want me to--no, you said you had a headache, I will spare you for today, but tomorrow--and this is non-negotiable, I want you to understand that--tomorrow I am explaining the Corleones to you. There will be a test.”

“I’ll take copious notes,” Steve says. The words are slurred together a little bit, so Tony takes pity on him and doesn’t press; he twitches his fingers absently against Steve’s scalp, and Steve sighs, relaxing. “Feels good.”

“Yeah?”

Steve doesn’t answer, just moves his head a little bit in what Tony assumes is a nod, so Tony doesn’t stop. It’s not like he’s really paying much attention to it anyway--the movie’s a dull roar of white noise, familiar and easy, and Tony pulls up the file he’s tentatively labeled “Quinjet” on the coffee table and loses himself in the schematics.

It’s been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes when Steve starts shifting around; his head bumps against Tony’s neck once, twice, rubs against his shoulder. Tony registers the motion but doesn’t think about it, scrolling down through his notes, flagging the things he’ll need to go back to. When Steve sighs, Tony thinks he should probably engage--then he finds an inconsistency in the math and promptly forgets about everything else, angling himself towards the table a little.

“What’re you working on?” Steve says eventually, and that jerks Tony back to reality enough that he can assess the positions they’re in. His hand is still in Steve’s hair, but he’s twisted his body around, left Steve with an elbow pressed awkwardly between himself and the back of the couch.

“Uh,” Tony says, blinking, “it’s a--you can’t actually be comfortable like that, you should have said something, here,” and he grabs a pillow from the end of the couch, drops it in his lap, and pats it. “That’ll be easier, I think.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and Tony freezes, because he’s just asked Steve to lay down in his lap, and that’s probably really very...much, it’s too much, he didn’t even mean it to be, it just made sense, didn’t it, but Steve probably thinks he’s--

--and then Steve says, “Yeah, actually, thanks,” and drops bonelessly across his lap, so that’s all right.

“Better?” Tony says, trying for nonchalant, and Steve chuckles, twists his head up enough to give Tony a tired sort of smile.

“Much,” he says. “So, what’re you doing?”

Tony had kind of figured, the first time Steve asked the question, that he’d been doing it to alert Tony to the fact that he needed to move. He’d forgotten, of course, that Steve always means what he says, and he smiles back before he can think of a reason not to.

“We need a jet, I realized--because, I mean, the Stark jet’s fine but it’s slow and Pepper needs it, and I can’t exactly carry everyone in the armor.”

“Makes sense,” Steve says. He turns his face back into the pillow, eyes closed, voice cracking on a yawn, and Tony’s heart tightens in his chest. He runs a finger over Steve’s jawline, compelled to touch, and Steve doesn’t grab his hand or bat him away; he just sighs and turns into Tony’s hand a little bit, like he’s being drawn up into it unconsciously. “Explain it to me?”

“It won’t make sense,” Tony warns, and Steve’s smile is back, a small, slight thing against the edge of the pillow.

“I know,” he says, “but it’ll put me to sleep.”

“Aww, you say the sweetest things,” Tony mutters, but he’s not really annoyed, and he knows Steve knows. Steve just laughs, a ghosted-out little noise, and Tony switches the exploded view of the schematic to project up off the coffee table, even though he can tell Steve’s not actually looking.

“So that part--no, not that part, Jarvis, rotate it a little, there you go, was that so hard?--that’ll be where you put the people, obviously, as it turns out you need a space to put the people, which is inconvenient, but whatever. Originally I was just going to work it all through with the repulsor technology, like the suit--because the suit can go supersonic, which--I guess you know that, I’ve carried you doing that, which, hey, can we just talk about how much I still think the g-force from that probably turned your brain into scrambled eggs--”

“‘m brains aren’t eggs,” Steve says, half-asleep already, and Tony sighs, ruffles his hair.

“Convincing argument,” he says, “I’m totally sold,” and he moves his hand to Steve’s back, absently tracing the patterns of the engines as he talks. “Because, okay, see, the repulsor tech isn’t going to work at that scale without a massive kick-back, and the amount of reinforcement I’d have to put in the walls to compensate--I mean, the goal is speed, right? So I can’t let it be too weighed down--but then I realized, one repulsor engine, that’s idiotic, it’s too big, and obviously it’ll all be reactor powered but I wouldn’t want it to burn a crater into the ground at take-off, so I thought I’d maybe split it. Five engines, small ones, right, so Quinjet, because, you know, quintet--you get it. And then the feedback from each engine will be routed through the internal power grid, so that’ll actually keep the lights and the nav systems from failing and--did you just snore at me?”

“No,” Steve says, but it’s more an exhale of breath than anything else.

“You did,” Tony says, and he’s not looking at the schematics anymore. He’s looking at Steve, sprawled out over him, breathing gone slow and shallow; Tony pitches his voice low, smooth, tries to ignore the tightness in his chest. “You did, you terrible, terrible liar. What did I say about you and the lies? No, don’t open your mouth, you’re asleep, I can tell you’re asleep, you just don’t know it yet--your brains are already eggs, Steve, it’s too late.”

Steve shifts again, does something that’s almost a nod, and Tony would laugh at him if he felt capable of it. Instead, because he knows Steve won’t remember, he says: “Sorry, I guess. About the thing tonight. I should’ve done it instead--I know you hate shit like that, but it’s really good press, which is awful. Is that awful? It’s awful, but I didn’t--I won’t make you do it again, not by yourself, anyway. Not that I made you--if you were awake you’d tell me you volunteered, which, yeah, you did, it’s your team, so really it’s your fault, and wow, okay, I’m officially having a two-sided conversation by myself. Wow. Wow. This is sad, isn’t it?”

Steve does actually snore at him this time, a loud, full-bodied thing, because, as it turns out, Captain America snores. He snores, and he never puts his toothbrush back in the same place twice, and he sings strange, old songs in the shower; he makes awful coffee and forces the team to watch marathons of Golden Girls, laughing too hard at the funny parts. He spends his 70 years of back-pay sparingly, on weird things like art supplies he’s hesitant about using, looks at Tony’s excessive habits askance, and he insists on eating all the leftovers when they order take-out. He’s kind of a dork, actually, when you get past the uniform and the leadership and the way he can take a man’s head off with his shield, and Tony brushes his a lock of blond hair out of his eyes and sighs.

“This is normal, right?” he says, and he lives in a house of microphones and cameras but at least they’re his; he can delete the evidence later. “Because I'm not…I’m not good at this, and I don't…god, Steve, you know I'm trying, don't you?"

Steve, naturally, doesn’t say anything. On screen, Michael Corleone says, “I’ll change, I’ll change, I’ve learned that I have the strength to change,” and Tony scowls at nothing, doesn’t take his hand out of Steve’s hair.

“Who asked you?” he says, and then he sighs and mutes the thing, and the room goes blissfully quiet.

--

Tony wakes up in Steve’s bed, heavy and loose, and sighs at the ceiling. He vaguely remembers falling asleep on the couch, the half-awake shuffle down the hall; he prefers his own bed, usually, but Steve’s had been closer, so that’s all right.

It’s not every night, this thing they’ve got between them, just most nights, drifting into one room or the other and waking up like this. A week ago, Tony fell asleep in Steve’s bed alone, waiting for him to wrap up in the gym; when he woke up, sleep-heavy at four a.m., he found Steve in his room, sprawled across the sheets. That had been kind of terrifying, actually, at least until Steve woke up enough to say, “Quit looming and come to bed, Tony, my god.” Then it had been annoying, or possibly warm and fuzzy; Tony isn’t the type to bother himself with labels.

But then, okay, that’s not entirely true, sometimes he is, and they’re dating, probably. That’s probably the best word for whatever it is, this thing they’ve got going, with so many rules and no guidelines at all. It’s not like they’ve put any particular effort into defining it--Steve’s still telling Tony that he likes him, all the time, dropping it casually into otherwise normal conversations, but Tony’s pretty sure that’s just because Steve’s stubborn. It’s nice hearing it, though, makes it easier for Tony to stay calm, to avoid wondering what the hell they think they’re doing, what happens if it ends, when it ends, and what is he supposed to do if it doesn’t?

The team knows, because the team has to know. Steve has a policy about keeping secrets that basically summarizes to, “No, don’t,” and Tony hadn’t argued, hadn’t even really wanted to. And Pepper knows, obviously, because Pepper is all-knowing and always has been, and Nick Fury knows because Clint had lasted two whole days before he made a joke about it in a meeting, and it’s not like Fury’s the kind of man who ever needs more than a hint.

That’d been a weird day, the day with Fury. He’d called them both into his office, given them the evil eye--which, as it turned out, was so much worse when it was just the one eye--and started in about “fraternization” and “professionalism” and “Stark, what did I say--”

--and then Steve cleared his throat, put up a hand, and said, “Sir.”

It was probably the sincerity in his voice that did Fury in. It was so respectful, so completely and entirely without any sort of guile, that it was actually a little underhanded. Fury narrowed his eye, leaned over the top of his desk, and just stared at them for a second.

Which, okay, Tony never, ever wanted him to do that again, that was the worst, Tony talked a big game and everything but no human being could resist the urge to fidget under that stare, it was impossible. He certainly wasn’t up to the task, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, waiting.

“Really, Captain?” Fury said finally, and hey, Tony wasn’t even on his radar anymore, that was actually an upgrade. “You really want to fight me on this?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said. Then, not really sounding it: “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s your fuckin’ funeral,” Fury said after a minute, throwing his hands in the air. “Just try to make sure it’s not anyone else’s. Jesus, they don’t pay me enough for this shit,” and that had pretty much been the end of that.

So, dating, right, probably. That’s what it’s called, that’s what they’re doing, and--

“Ugh, Tony,” Steve says, a tired groan into the pillow, jerking Tony out of his train of thought, “go back to sleep or stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Just,” Steve says, and sighs without opening his eyes. “When you wake up you move, and you make sounds, you get all twitchy. I can hear you thinking, and if you’re going to draw on the sheets again, you can go do it on your own sheets, okay?”

“I only did that once,” Tony says, “and anyway, my sheets are sub-par, they do not come with gift-wrapped superheros, it’s a design flaw.”

“Jesus,” Steve groans, “what time is it, how can you want to--do that this early, it’s, what, six a.m.--”

“Nine, actually,” Tony says, gleeful. “You overslept. You, Captain America, God of All--well, okay, not of Thor, Thor is definitely the god of you, we’ll go with god-of-all-except-Thor, you should work on that title--anyway, you overslept. And hey, no, I wasn’t thinking, this is a no-think zone, I was just sitting here, gloating to myself, remembering all the times you’d given me shit about morning jogs because, hi, hello, it’s 9 AM, these are normal people hours here, Cap, and now you’re awake so I can gloat at you--”

“Wait,” Steve says, and yawns. He cracks an eye open and fixes Tony with a look, exasperated, familiar, and Tony grins at him. “So what you’re telling me is that you’ve been sitting here watching me sleep. Like a lunatic.”

“Uh,” says Tony.

“For how long, exactly?”

“...uh,” says Tony. “Well. Uh. Now, see, when you put it like that...”

“When you defect to super-villainy I’ll get to say I knew you when,” Steve says, and he’s smiling now, just enough for Tony to know he’s kidding. “Did you already have coffee? You’re really awake.”

“No coffee,” Tony says. “This is why I don’t sleep most of the time. It’s gross to be this cheerful in the morning, I refuse to be a morning person--’s wrong, it’s evil, it goes against everything I stand for, and also--”

“Stop,” Steve says, “just stop, stop talking, oh my god,” and when he kisses Tony he’s laughing, a little noise just under his breath. Tony hums into his mouth, because he can, and when he pulls away Steve rolls his eyes at him, shakes his head.

“Morning,” he says, “I still like you, by the way. Now please go take a shower or something, I’m not ready to be up yet.”

“Lazy,” Tony notes, climbing out of bed anyway. “So lazy, the laziest, I mean honestly--hey, what?”

Steve’s looking at Tony with his brow furrowed, the way he does when he’s worried, or confused, or...actually about half the time, really, but Tony usually knows what he means. He glances down to confirm he’s not naked--Steve’s a little weird about nakedness sometimes, mutters things about “decency” and “inappropriate” and “not in the kitchen, Tony, people eat here,”--but no, he’s fully clothed, he’s good.

Puzzled, he tries again: “What? Is there something on my face? Is this some kind of horrible, I don’t know, gas...face...thing, oh come on, don’t look at me like that, how am I supposed to--”

“Are you okay?” Steve says, still staring at him. “You’re acting kind of weird.”

“I’m not acting weird,” says Tony, because for once in his life, he legitimately isn’t. “At least, not on purpose. Am I acting weird? I told you, sleeping too much isn’t good for me, I’m fine--no, really, I actually mean that, stop it.”

“Okay,” Steve says, but he still looks doubtful. “You’d tell me, right?”

“Uh,” says Tony, “yeah?” and then has to grab a towel and flee the room, because wow, he actually would, he didn’t really see that one coming.

The shower helps. Or, well, Tony says it’s the shower, but really it’s the music blasting out of the speaker lodged in the ceiling and the fact that the glass walls become computer screens with a flick of his fingers. It gives him somewhere to put the strange energy he’d woken with, rolling in his stomach, itching under his fingers, and he goes through his emails as he soaps himself up, checks the morning’s stock figures as he washes his hair. There’s an auto-update running on his armor, and there’s a bug, just a little one, two, three minutes to recode with the shampoo bottle clutched between his thighs, and then he kind of forgets what he’s doing and starts manually running the upgrades, because he’s right here, isn’t he, he might as well, and then suddenly the shower is cold.

“Shit,” he says, cheerfully enough, and grins down at his pruned-up fingers. “Jarvis, how long have I--”

“Forty-five minutes, sir,” Jarvis says. “I would like to make the suggestion again that you allow me to set up a timed reminder system.”

“Yeah, no, maybe later, probably not, thanks, though,” Tony says, and climbs out of the shower, grabs the towel off the counter. “At least Steve got the chance to sleep. If you could double check that last code run, though, because Jarvis, buddy, if another idiot from R&D catches an error--which wasn’t even an error, just so we’re clear, he just didn’t understand the code because I invented it, that’s different--but if it happens again, I’ll make you...I don’t know, catalog 4chan or something, you got that?”

“I quake in terror, sir,” Jarvis says.

Tony snorts out a laugh and shakes his head, walks out of the bathroom with his towel cinched around his waist. He goes back to Steve’s room on autopilot, expecting to find Steve still in bed, maybe reading the newspaper on the tablet Tony gave him; he’s getting good with that, even if it has led to a dark, dangerous obsession with The Huffington Post. Instead, Steve’s up and dressed, shoes on, sitting on the edge of the bed with his cell phone in his hand.

“Oh, come on,” says Tony, “that’s not fair, I was only joking about the laziness thing, is this a punishment?” but then he notices the way Steve’s shoulders are slumped, the way he’s staring, eyes fixed, at his hands.

“We’ve got trouble?” he says, regrouping at once. “Alright, give me half a second to--”

“No,” Steve says, and then, quieter, “I...Bucky.”

Tony knows from conversations they’ve had, but more from the nightmares Steve wakes up from sometimes, who Bucky is. He was important to Steve, no question, but he’s been dead since the 40s, since before Steve was iced, so it’s not likely he could have done something particularly new, and Steve isn’t really the type to have emotional breakdowns out of nowhere. Tony thinks back to the mind control thing last week, to the most recent crazed “I will dump amnesia drugs in your water supply and make you forget everything you love!” plot, and raises his hands in the air.

“Okay,” he says carefully, “right, uh, no sudden movements, it’s all okay, Steve, I’m Tony--”

“What?” Steve says. He looks up and his eyes are rimmed with red, but they widen, and he must connect the same dots Tony had, because he says, “No, no, it’s me. I just. Bucky.”

“What about Bucky?”

“He’s,” Steve says, and swallows. “They--found him. And I’m supposed to go...”

Identify the body, Tony thinks, a swooping crash in his stomach. He’d had to do that, once, for a third cousin he’d barely known, and it had still been awful; he can’t imagine doing it for Rhodey, for Pepper, for someone he really cared about. He also can’t imagine that a 70-years-dead body is something SHIELD’s going to make Steve look at, but then again, they’ve surprised him before.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sitting down next to Steve, “god, Steve, I’m really--do you want me to--”

“He’s alive,” Steve says, which, yeah, okay, that shuts Tony up.

--

Steve is silent the whole ride over to SHIELD headquarters, his grip on Tony’s hand bordering on painful, and he’s pulled away and led down the hall the minute they walk inside. Tony hadn’t intended on going with him for this part, only came along for the ride to keep Steve from completely losing his shit--he might not be good with people, but he’s not blind--but he still had to quell the strange urge to run after him. Steve squares his shoulders as he walks away, doesn’t look around; Tony watches the flex of his fingers, the sharp edge to his steps, and acts.

After all, there’s no point in being Tony Stark if you don’t abuse it once in awhile.

The path to the security office is a familiar one, since Tony had upgraded the entire system himself, painstakingly slowly, in the week Fury’d kept him under supervision after Pepper. He knows every guard on every rotation, and no one even looks twice at him when he walks in, stalks around, and finds the monitor he’s looking for.

Steve’s standing over a bed, head bowed; below him, a dark-haired man that Tony recognizes from an old, old photograph stirs under the blanket. He opens his eyes and Steve’s body tenses up and Tony’s got his phone out, has hacked into the system and killed the feed before anyone can see anything else.

“Stark!” one of the guards snaps, “What the hell did you just--”

“That’s not for you,” Tony says. “Sorry, but them’s the breaks, and you’re not going to get it back up again, so don’t bother trying. It’s really, seriously, entirely not your business, and if you’ve got a problem with that, you can feel free to send Director Fury after me, I’m sure he’d like the excuse. Bye bye now.”

He leaves, walks past the dumbfounded guard, past the hallway he could’ve probably followed Steve down, past an oddly non-threatening houseplant and out into the parking lot. He sends Steve a text message--Call if you need anything, I’ll be around--and goes home.

--

Steve doesn’t come home for the rest of the day, which is okay--Tony would worry about it, but he doesn’t have time. There’s an infestation of massive, alien-looking cockroach things terrorizing the Lower East Side before noon, climbing up out of the sewer with pincers snapping viciously, and the Avengers are, naturally, called in. It’s not dangerous, not really, just time consuming and tedious; an hour or so in, Clint swings down next to him on one of his rappelling ropes, shoots a cockroach casually in the side of the head.

“Where’s Cap?” he says.

“Busy,” Tony says, “got a 20 on a big one, by the hydrant, think it’s the leader, Widow, can you grab it?” and Clint shrugs, moves away.

Steve doesn’t come home that night, either. That’s a little more disconcerting, honestly, but Tony’s not going to push him, he’s not, he’s not. He leaves his phone in his back pocket and watches reality TV with Thor for three hours, laughing at the degree to which he’s invested in the lives of the cast of Survivor.

Thor’s completely unfazed by Tony’s mockery, because that’s just what he’s like.

“When I return to Asgard,” he says, “I shall start this tradition of island horrors amongst my people. I have tried to apply for the show myself, but Director Fury seems quite certain that I will not be chosen. He says that I do not have a face for television, and also that if I try again he will stab me somewhere vital to my continued existence.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Tony says, because, well, he can’t help it. “I think you’d be great, man. I mean, I’d watch that.”

“Thank you, my friend!” Thor says, sounding honestly gratified. “You do my a true honor with your company, and I am, as ever, deeply thankful for the circumstances that brought us together.”

“You’re still my favorite,” Tony says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Just so you know. That’s a permanent title, I should get you a plaque or something.”

“Plaque,” Thor says slowly, “Clint has attempted to explain this to me, often in conjunction with the brandishing of a small, bristled device. Is this what you mean? I confess, it has long mystified me.”

Then Tony spends an hour teaching Thor about Midgardian dental hygiene, because, well, these are the kinds of things you do for your friends.

By the time Thor goes to bed--after leaving the bathroom covered in ridiculous amounts of toothpaste, because while he was utterly horrified by the taste, he was willing to concede that it made excellent paint--it’s nearly two in the morning. Tony thinks about trying to sleep, thinks again, and is halfway down the workshop stairs when his phone rings.

Unlisted number--Fury, then. Shit.

“Director,” he says, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice, “look, whatever it is, can’t you call Xavier or something, we spent eight hours with those roaches today--”

“Uh, no, it’s me,” Steve says, and then, unnecessarily, adds, “Steve. Steve Rogers.”

“Oh, Steve Rogers,” Tony says, rolling his eyes, “and here I thought you were a different Steve, good thing you set my mind at ease, hi. Sorry, I wouldn’t have snapped at you if--”

“Hey, did you say roaches?”

“Long story--wait, why are you calling on a SHIELD phone?”

“Oh,” Steve says, sounding sheepish. “I kind of...need a new cell phone. Sorry, I was trying to teach Bucky about the future, and it...didn’t go well.”

“New cell’s not a problem, we mass-produce them, I’ll have one for you in the morning.” Tony pauses, not sure how to do the next part, and settles on: “So, he’s awake, then?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and sounds...exhausted. “Or, well, no, not right this--look, I don’t really--I’m sorry, but I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. He’s sleeping and--.”

“Not a problem,” Tony says. He’s still on the workshop stairs; after a moment’s thought he reroutes, turns around to go into the living room and throw himself across the couch. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything,” Steve says. “Anything but this.”

Tony starts at the sound of his voice; it’s a low, tired rasp, aches a little. Steve sounds old, the way he only does when something’s eating at him, and Tony bites back a hundred probing questions, using some reserve of strength he didn’t know he had.

“Sure,” he says lightly, “anything, that’s a bill I can fit, I can do that. You wanna hear about the roach battle you missed? Because, let me tell you what, lucky fucking you--”

He talks, nearly non-stop, for an hour, until Steve says, “Okay, I have to go. Thank you for, uh, answering.”

“No problem,” Tony says. This whole thing has been kind of mystifying, but Steve at least sounds less wretched now. “Have a...good night, then?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “yeah, Tony, you too,” and then he hangs up.

Tony goes to bed after all.

When Steve still isn’t home the next morning--yeah, okay, that’s when Tony would like to panic in earnest, it really is, except that he’s woken up by a call from Director Fury.

“‘lo?” Tony slurs, not quite awake yet, and then snaps into action when he realizes it’s not Steve this time, alerted by the sound of intense, scary breathing. Fury even breathes scary; Tony wants to learn to do that before he dies. “I mean, uh, Director--”

“Stark,” he says, “for the record, when you say my name on a call from a SHIELD line, I hear that shit. So to respond to what you said last night: no, I cannot call Xavier, and if you talk to me like that again you will feel it, do you hear me?”

“But I wasn’t talking to you,” Tony says. “Wait, I’m in trouble because of your wiretapping, I mean, come on, what--”

“You thought you were talking to me,” Fury says sternly. “Intent is all I need, Stark, remember that.”

“You and Coulson, it’s like a circus act of terror,” Tony mutters, and then jumps so much he nearly rolls off the bed when Coulson says, “My name gets an alert too, and just so you know, there are...hmm, eighteen items in your kitchen alone I could easily kill you with.”

“Christ,” says Tony, getting out of bed because he might as well, now. “Great, okay, thank you, I’ve had my morning panic attack now, much appreciated, owe you a drink, did you need something?”

“No, we called to hear your dulcet fuckin’ tones,” Fury says. “Yeah, Stark, we need something, don’t ask stupid questions. You awake enough to take in details, or do I need to hang up and call back after your morning coffee?”

“I...” Tony stops, thinks about that. He warms. “Hey, that was almost considerate.”

“No it wasn’t,” Coulson says grimly. “No one wants a repeat of the last time you took coordinates straight out of bed; Mt. Rushmore will never be the same.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Tony lies, “there was an equipment thing, uh, look, what’s up, I can assemble the team, except Steve, I assume you know that he’s still with you guys--”

“That’s why we’re calling,” Fury says, and Tony is so surprised by the sudden rush of panic that he has to sit back down on the bed.

“Is he all right?” he demands. “Was he hurt, what did you do to him, what--”

“See,” says Coulson, “this is why there should be a no fraternization policy.”

“There is,” says Fury. “They just don’t fuckin’ listen.”

“Can we get back to what happened to Steve, please?” Tony says. He doesn’t yelp it; he says it. He definitely says it. “Sooner rather than later, thanks?”

“Nothing,” Fury sighs, “that’s my fuckin’ point. You morons have been busy lately--god knows why, as I am frankly goddamn surprised any one of you can manage to tie your shoes, let alone fight crime--but with Cap occupied, I thought you might need some help.”

“Help,” Tony snaps, “hey, no, who are you to decide that, this is Steve’s team, our team, we can handle ourselves, we don’t need any--”

“So I called in War Machine,” Fury says, sounding like Tony is his least favorite person on the planet.

Tony brightens at this. “Oh! Rhodey, that’s different, that’s awesome, when’s he getting here, you didn’t let him book a hotel, did you? I hate when he does that. I thought he was in Afghanistan, you called Rhodey, oh, man, it’s not even my birthday--”

“Agent Coulson,” Fury says, “please give him the fuckin’ flight information so I can go slam my head into the wall.”

“Aww,” says Tony, “you love me really.”

“Believe me,” says Coulson, “he really doesn’t.”

--

Tony drives the Gallardo to the airfield himself, just tells Happy to be on standby, because he knows Rhodey not-so-secretly gets off on driving cars from Tony’s more choice collection. He beats the plane by fifteen minutes, and he’s leaning against the hood, sunglasses in place, when Rhodey comes down the stairs.

He’s in his dress blues, bless his heart, and Tony grins. “Awww, honeybear,” he says, “you don’t have to dress up nice for me.”

“Damn right I don’t,” Rhodey says, “you never write, you never call, you never tell me you’re dating legendary American war heroes--”

“Oh, did Pepper mention that?” Tony says, too casual. Rhodey levels him with a glare, and Tony puts his hands in the air, warning him away. “Hey, hey, don’t be like that, you were busy, I didn’t want a be a distraction, don’t make that face. Come on, sourpatch, golden graham, apple jack--”

“You’re just naming cereal brands now,” Rhodey says. “Can’t even put a little effort into it, has it been that long?”

Tony laughs because he can’t help it, because he’s missed this, because Rhodey’s as grumpy and hysterical as ever. “For you, cookie crisp, anything,” he says, and Rhodey finally cracks, rolls his eyes to cover his smile, and pulls Tony in for a hug.

“You’re gonna have to tell me about Rogers, you know,” he says against Tony’s ear.

“Yeah, well, you’re gonna have to tell me why there’s a suit-sized crate being unloaded,” Tony says, looking over his shoulder and pulling away. “All that Hammer tech finally bite you in the ass, that why you flew here civilian-style?”

“Don’t call me a civilian,” Rhodey says, “and yeah, actually, now that you mention it, your suit does need some work.”

“My suit,” Tony says. “My suit, why is it that when it needs work it’s my suit but when I want it back it’s your suit, huh? You wanna clue me in on the rules there--”

“The rules are, I make the rules,” Rhodey says. Then he eyes the Gallardo and grins. “Rule number one: I’m driving.”

--

They get breakfast, which turns into brunch, which turns into lunch, which turns into six hours in the workshop, and then dinner, and then drinks. Tony introduces Rhodey to the team--minus Steve, of course, who still hasn’t surfaced, Tony’s not worried, he’s not--and watches for their reactions. Natasha, who knows him already, greets him with a warmer smile than most people get from her in a lifetime; Bruce spends ten minutes peppering him with questions about the floral life in the Middle East, much to everyone’s bemusement, and then hurries off to...well, not get angry about anything, hopefully. Rhodey and Clint have a frankly terrifying discussion about the firing pressure of Clint’s crossbow, with Tony occasionally contributing helpful statistics and less-than-helpful comments about Clint’s tendency to hide in the ceiling, and Thor, of course, is his usual charming self.

“Any friend of Tony’s is welcome both in my living quarters and in the bosom of my heart,” he booms, clapping Rhodey on the back. Rhodey doesn’t wince, but Tony can tell that he wants to. “And, of course, in my bath--Tony assures me that I may consider the swimming pool my personal bathing area, as repayment for the fact that I have always been his favorite.”

“Replaced me while I was gone, huh?” says Rhodey, and Tony slants him a smile.

“Jealous? Don’t be like that, you know you’re always gonna be my--”

“Don’t.”

“Just one--”

“Don’t.”

Tony laughs--laughs because he can’t help it, because Pepper’s still here and Steve’s not but he will be, and he’s got a team and now he has a Rhodey. He laughs and Rhodey gives him that look, the one that means God, you are seriously a pain in my ass, but also, somehow, I genuinely enjoy your company for reasons that are beyond me, and Tony takes him to a very, very expensive dinner, just for the sake of it.

The bar next door is a total dive; they wander into it, overly-full and pleased about it, and Tony doesn’t miss Rhodey’s surprised look of approval when Tony just orders himself a beer. He smiles, lopsided, over the top of the bottle, and Rhodey doesn’t say, The last time I saw you, you were a trainwreck because there’s nearly a year’s distance there; a battle together; a team on Tony’s end and military responsibilities on Rhodey’s, and it’s not like he doesn’t know that Tony knows.

“So,” Rhodey says, “you’re caught up on my life--”

“So not true,” Tony protests, “half of what you said there was ‘Sorry, that’s classified.’ And hey, I know you’ve gotten laid in the last year, buddy, I know it, I don’t care how busy you’ve been as the military’s golden boy--well, silver boy--well, silver man--”

“You’re dodging,” Rhodey says, because he always knows. “What, are you afraid I won't approve? It's not like you went out and bagged yourself a super villain, Tony, we're talking about Captain America here--"

"Steve," Tony corrects absently, and then coughs when Rhodey raises his eyebrows. "And hey, don't give me that, you know you've given Doc Oc a couple of lingering looks."

"He photographs well, there's no shame in that," Rhodey says easily. "Which, for the record, is more than I can say for Iron Man; you've gotta get the pouting under control, it's getting embarrassing. I don't want to have to pretend I don't know you, but I will if it comes down to it, I need you to know that."

“Honeybear,” Tony says, put a hand to his chest, “that hurts, it really does, I thought we had something special--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rhodey says, laughing, and signals for another round. “You ready to tell me about your love life now? C’mon, spill, I don’t have all night.”

Tony doesn’t really see the point in putting it off any longer, isn't quite sure why he's been putting it off at all. It's just that he keeps saying Captain America, and that's…Tony doesn't even measure up to Steve, does he, let alone to Steve's legendary alter ego, and he can't quite shake the niggling fear that Rhodey's going to tell him to end it before someone gets hurt.

But that's ridiculous, isn't it, because it's Rhodey smiling at him over the table, Rhodey who really shouldn't like him and somehow seems to anyway, so Tony gives in. He tells Rhodey about Steve, about how they met and it was awful, about how they worked together and it was still awful, and then less awful, and then not awful at all. He tells him about late night sparring sessions and making out during Ghostbusters (”Spare me the details, I don’t need to know that about Captain America,” Rhodey says at one point, and Tony can't help it, says, “No, seriously, don’t, he's not Captain America out of costume, that shit bums me out,”), and then about the last month or so of whatever it is, this warm thing between them that Tony’s kind of afraid to quantify.

Rhodey listens to all of it, the look on his face going from interested to surprised to outright shocked, until Tony finally stops talking and says, “Okay, seriously, what, what’re you looking at?”

“I’m looking at you,” Rhodey says. It’s as weighted as the last time he said that to Tony, but on the other end of the spectrum. He sounds happy--hell, almost proud. “And you know what, it’s a good look on you.”

“What is?”

“All of it,” Rhodey says, waving a hand at Tony. “The Avengers, Steve, New York, all of it. Nice to see you, man. Knew you were in there somewhere.”

“Oh, god,” Tony says, flipping his phone out--no calls, okay, good, that's fine--and shaking his head. "If we’re going to do this kind of thing I’m gonna have to call it a night, I want you to know that right now, I will leave you here, Rhodes, see if I don’t.”

“Now, see, there's that again,” Rhodey says.

"There's what?"

"What's up with you tonight? You’re all jumpy, you keep checking your phone--did I show up in the middle of a fight or something?”

“No, it’s,” Tony says, and sighs.”Right, okay, I can’t believe I’m asking you this, please don’t take offense, I just, really, there's this footage of Coulson at a gas station with a bag of flour and I value my limbs, so, uh. Did Fury mention what level of security clearance they’re giving you when he briefed you?”

Rhodey stares at him for a second. Then he bursts out laughing, loud enough and hard enough that some of the other bar patrons turn to look. Tony shrinks down in the booth a little, because he’s on Rhodey time, doesn’t want to be recognized; that just makes Rhodey laugh harder, and he doesn’t stop for nearly a minute.

“Look at you being all responsible,” he chokes out finally, wiping his eyes. “Never thought I’d see the day when Tony Stark asked after my security clearance.”

“Oh, come on--”

“No, no, it’s a good thing,” Rhodey says. "I mean, unless it's mind control--"

"Rhodey."

“Fury said, and I quote, ‘standard Avengers clearance, with delta-five discretion.' I’m hoping you know what that means, since the SHIELD lingo is so off-book that’s it’s nearly unintelligible. I think they do it just to piss us off.”

“Sounds like them,” Tony says, and then he leans over the table and lowers his voice. “So, uh, you’re fine to hear this, then. They...well, they found this guy, this old friend of Steve’s. Bucky Barnes--”

“Bucky Barnes,” Rhodey repeats, incredulous, “as in Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th and the Howling Commandos, Bucky Barnes?”

“Guess you’ve heard of him,” Tony says, blinking.

“Heard of him,” Rhodey says, “heard of him, I wrote my thesis on him, he’s a hero, he--Jesus, where did they find the body? They combed those mountains for years!”

“Uh,” says Tony, because he was not expecting this. “It’s not a body. He’s alive, apparently, only--”

“He’s alive?!”

“Keep your voice down!” Tony hisses, “Fuck, tell the whole bar why don’t you, c’mon, man, what’d I tell you about Coulson--”

“Why do you keep saying--”

“Never mind!” Tony snaps, because this conversation is out of control enough already. “Yeah, okay, Barnes is alive, and now you know as much as I do. They called yesterday and Steve vanished into the bowels of HQ and I haven’t--well, I mean, I talked to him last night, but he didn’t say much about it. Didn’t say much of anything, really, he kept telling me to talk and he sounded awful and--”

“Jesus Christ," Rhodey interrupts, shocked, "Tony, you’re worried about him.”

“Of course I’m worried about him!” Tony says, throwing his hands in the air, and there it is, right there, on the line. “How could I not be worried about him, he was spread too thin as it was and this is a whole other ball game of screwed up and it’s not like I know what to do!”

Rhodey is making a face Tony has never seen him make before; it’s something between a grimace and a smile. It’s not quite judgmental--Tony’s seen all those faces--but it’s not quite not judgmental, either. Evaluative, Tony decides, and then Rhodey sighs and shakes his head.

"Well, that settles it," he says, "never taking another mission that long again. Apparently you went and grew up while I was gone, man, what gives?"

"You know what, just for that, I want my suit back," says Tony, and Rhodey laughs at him until their next round shows up.

Part Two

avengers fic - situation normal: all fucked up (steve/tony, nc-17) [2/3]

2011-10-30T23:13:01Z

For summary, author's notes, etc, please see Part One.

Tony gets home later than he means to, mostly because Rhodey’s got this impossible tendency to stay in hotels when he visits, and Tony spends too long trying to talk him out of it. He fails, because Rhodey never gives in on anything unless he’s secretly wanted to the whole time, and when he gets inside the house is quiet, deserted, except for a pajama-clad Pepper working on a laptop at the kitchen table.

“Uh, hi,” Tony says, surprised. “I thought you were in--no, I know you were in California, why are you not in California? It’s hard enough adjusting to the fact that I’m not the only jet-setter around anymore, the least you could do is be in L.A. when I think you’re there. I mean seriously, just as a courtesy, that seems fair, right?”

“I was in L.A.,” Pepper says. “Now I’m not. Please consider yourself all caught up.”

“Jesus,” says Tony. “That’s a scary voice, what happened? Did the fucking licensing thing not go through again because I tried, okay, I really did, they swore to me that it was handled, and the whole thing is ridiculous anyway, that’s been patented Stark tech since, what, the late 90s? So--”

“It’s not a licensing problem,” Pepper says, and gives him a little bit of a smile. “I would’ve told you; thank you, as it happens, for taking the time to deal with that. It’s nice when you listen.”

“You keep saying that word, ‘listen,’” Tony says, waving a hand, and kicks a chair around to sit on backwards. “What’re you doing here, then? Is it my fault, because it’d definitely be better if it wasn’t my fault--”

“No, no, nothing like that. I’d just--I suppose you could say I’m beginning to understand your tendency to take unscheduled vacations. Not that I forgive you for making me deal with that all those times.”

“And thank god, because the surprise would probably--”

“Tony, don’t start. I just wanted a break, that’s all. But don’t you dare repeat that, because if I see one more article that says I look tired--”

“Ugh, yeah, sorry, I saw that thing in the Times.”

“L.A. or New York?” Pepper says, and sighs. “You’d think it wouldn’t get to me, after all the years I spent fielding your bad press, but that, and the sales figures--well, you know. And everything always takes a hit one way or the other whenever there’s an Avengers mess--no, Tony, don’t, it’s not you, it’s just...been a long couple of weeks, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, scrubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. “There’s a lot of that going around. You could’ve told me you were in town, you know, come out with me and Rhodey. You should’ve said, or texted, you didn’t have to go waiting up for--”

“Oh, I wasn’t,” Pepper says, and her smile is real now for all she’s rolling her eyes. “You do know you’re not the only person who lives in this house, don’t you?”

“I--you--oh,” says Tony. He blinks, and Pepper flushes a little bit under his scrutiny. “Pepper, is this--oh my god, this is a cross-country booty call, I am appalled. No, wait, I take it back, I’m proud, I’m appalled and proud, I’m proud-palled--”

“Shut it, Stark,” Natasha says, coming in from the hallway. She’s wearing--holy shit, that’s a ratty old bathrobe, Natasha owns something that isn’t form-fitting or flattering, will wonders never cease--and her hair is kind of mussed, like she was sleeping. She walks right past him, puts her hands on Pepper’s shoulders. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Just trying to finish this up,” Pepper says, sounding guilty, and if Tony’s eyes widen, soften a little, at the way Natasha snatches the laptop out of her reach, at least neither one of them is looking at him.

“This is your vacation,” Natasha says, calm. “Va-ca-tion, and before you say it’s only for a couple days, I’d like to argue that it’s only for a couple days, so you might as well take advantage of it. Come back to bed. Work’ll still be here in the morning.”

“I know,” Pepper says, pulling a face, “that’s the whole problem.”

Natasha laughs, and her hands are threaded through Pepper’s hair, and Tony’s never thought about it before--how it must get to Pepper, the job, in ways it never got to him. It’s his name on the doors, on the building, on each and every product, on the stockticker, and he never once felt like he owed it anything. But Pepper doesn’t have that kind of fallback, and she also cares more, always has, about the actual business of it.

“Listen to the lady,” Tony says, smiling at her. “I’m still technically kind of your boss, right? So--”

They groan in unison, and Natasha flicks a piece of lint off Pepper’s shoulder; since it’s Natasha, it somehow manages to land right in Tony’s eye. He glares around his forced wink, but then Pepper laughs and leans forward to kiss him on the cheek, and it’s okay, it’s good, as she stands up to follow Nat back to her room.

“Oh, wait,” Natasha says at the door. “Tony, speaking of people who aren’t sleeping, I saw Cap in the gym on the way down here. Is he--”

“Steve’s here?” Tony demands, scrambling out of his chair so fast that he actually knocks it over. Then, backpedaling, he tries for nonchalant. “I mean--oh. Since when? I thought he was at HQ, huh, guess not, okay, I’ll just be going now.”

He doesn’t miss the knowing look Natasha gives him, or the one Pepper follows it up with, less knowing and more known, as fond an expression as he’s ever seen, tinged, just slightly, with sadness. He doesn’t stop, because they’ve got their thing and this is his, even if he’s got no idea what he’s going to say to Steve when he sees him. These are dangerous, uncharted waters for Tony--well, for anyone, probably--and he sticks his hands in his pockets as he slips into the gym to survey the damage.

It’s wrecked, the whole place. There’s a dent in one of the walls and a pile of free weights stacked on top of each other, like Steve had lifted them without a bar; his punching bag is slumped in the corner, beeping a sad little battery-death alert, and one of the chin-up bars is dangling, half-ripped from the wall. Steve’s hanging from the other one, hauling himself up and over it, and his shirt’s soaked through with sweat.

Tony sighs, because his alternative here is saying something he probably shouldn’t. “Hey.”

“Hi, Tony,” Steve says, not even looking around. “Sorry. I’ll put it all back when I’m done.”

“Not worried about that.” Tony leans against the wall, lets the door snick shut behind him. “You wanna maybe try out the whole ‘at ease, soldier,’ thing? I’m getting muscle cramps just looking at you.”

Steve huffs out something that’s less a sigh, more darkly irritated protest, but he drops down from the bar, raises his hands in the air. “There, okay? I’m fine.”

“I can see that,” Tony says. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Steve says immediately. Then he winces, probably at the harshness of his tone, and adds, “I--sorry, thank you for asking, but no, I really don’t.”

“Okay,” says Tony, “you wanna fuck?”

It is, of course, the wrong thing to say. Tony knows this at once, even before it comes out of his mouth; he wants desperately to backpedal, wants it so desperately that he can’t figure out how. He’s left waiting for Steve to turn on him, to snap at him about a time and a place and god, how is it that he never quite manages to--

--and then Steve lifts his head, eyes dark, hungry, and breathes, “Yeah, actually, that’s exactly what I want.”

Tony opens his mouth and closes it again, completely still in the face of that admission. He looks at Steve, the honest want in his face, and is suddenly hyper-aware of his hands; he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say here, what he’s supposed to do. Normally this kind of thing is easy for him--the mathematics of human attraction aren’t any harder to work through than any other kind, provided enough background information--but this doesn’t fit any pattern, offers up a variable he isn’t sure how to parse.

“Did you want me to come over there, or do you want to come over here, or--” he says finally, and then Steve grabs him by the shoulders and all but throws him back against the wall, lifting him off the ground a little, tongue desperate and fast in his mouth.

The soles of Tony's sneakers skate against the floor, barely brushing it, and he's halfway hard already just from that; Steve's grip on his arms is tight, maybe even bruising, and it makes something twist hot in Tony's gut. For all they've fucked around--and god, they have, Steve's refractory period is wickedly short and Tony wants to show him everything, wants to have him every way he can--they haven't done this, not yet. Steve's all coiled strength, all the time, visible even when he's fully clothed; it's in the way he walks, the way he stretches, the way his shoulders roll when he tenses. It leaves Tony's mouth dry, the idea of what he can do, the fact that the hands on him can dent steel and smash brick, but Steve's always so careful, so restrained, no matter how much Tony tells him not to be.

This, though, this is new, the way Steve growls into his mouth and holds him like he's afraid Tony's going to go somewhere, like Tony even could, and Tony pushes off the ground as much as he can to grind his mouth into Steve's. He nips, hard, at Steve's lower lip and Steve pushes him into the wall with his whole body, presses them together so Tony can feel those abs through his t-shirt, and fuck, fuck, he can barely remember to breathe.

Steve pulls back, just with his mouth, just for a second, and Tony chases after his lips with a desperation that surprises even him. Steve kisses him again and again, swift and sharp, and Tony fists his hands in Steve's shirt just to get a little leverage.

"I want," he pants, between kisses, "I want you to, oh, fuck, I want you to fuck me, I want you to fuck me just like this, like you've never, like you can't stop, Steve, fuck--"

"Yeah," Steve says, "yeah, Tony, god, just," and he grinds forward, hips stutter-smooth, pressing Tony even further into the wall. He's hard against Tony's dick, through both their pants, and Tony thinks dizzily that he's had that inside him, that he's going to again--

"I gotta," he says, rolling a shoulder to get his arm free, slipping a little lower as Steve lets go, "I just, I have to," and he slides his hand into Steve's pants, wraps his fist around Steve's cock.

"Tony," Steve groans. His head dips forward, lands with a low thud against the wall. Tony tightens his fingers and Steve spasms, chokes, presses a sloppy open mouthed kiss into Tony's neck; he's panting for it already, blushing all the way down his neck, fingertips trembling where they're pressed into Tony's arm. Tony smiles and swallows a moan all at once.

"Gonna make you," he says, "you first, before you fuck me, wanna watch, I ever tell you that you come so gorgeous for me, Steve, Steve, yeah, that's it, c'mon, make that noise again, you want to, don't you?"

"I should," Steve says, and he stutters it, it trips out his mouth, syllables catching; Tony can't help the way he grinds forward on that, the way he soothes his whole hand down Steve's cock. "Should--wait--I want to--"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know you do, you can, you're gonna, all the way inside me, gonna be so good, I'll beg for it, I'll scream for it, you've got no idea, want you to--but this first, gimme this first, just a little more, c'mon, c'mon--"

"Goddamn it," Steve chokes out, and comes hard into Tony's hand, his whole body jerking.

"That's it," Tony says--gasps, really, because he's so hard he can't see straight, Steve's come dripping down his hand. "Yeah, that's it, there you go, breathe, it's okay, fuck, so good, I can't even--"

"Tony, you have to--to stop," Steve says, "stop talking, I can't," and he shudders again, arches his back, fingers flexing.

"Okay," Tony whispers, and adds, "stopping, no more talking, just breathe, there you go," because he can't actually help himself.

Steve slumps after that, lets go of Tony like he can't help it, like he doesn't even mean to. Tony's feet land on the ground and his arms go up of their own accord, pulling Steve in, because Steve's always like this when he comes harder than he means to--Tony knows that, knows him, now. He soothes a hand down Steve's back and Steve's breath comes fast and hard against his ear, little choking noises like he's forcing it out, and Tony doesn't say anything, wants to but doesn't, waits him out.

"Wanted to do that," Steve says eventually, sounding frustrated, "in you," and god, Tony would laugh, he really would, if it wasn't so stupidly fucking hot.

"I know," he says, "I know, what'd I say about that, was I not clear--you know the science behind your dick is kind of miraculous, I'd say it should be studied but no, just by me, I don’t share well, you know that, but I've done extensive research and I know if I give you fifteen minutes--"

"Tony," Steve says, and he pulls back enough that Tony can see his face, his eyes, wide and wild. "Tony, I can't--"

"Yeah, you can," Tony says, even though he's pretty sure Steve's not talking about his recovery time anymore. He kisses him to cover that, kisses him because he doesn't know what else to do, and Steve sighs into his mouth, hands crawling up underneath his shirt to settle against his back, points of warmth, of want.

"Bedroom?" Tony says, dark, hungry, after a few minutes, and Steve says, "God, what are you trying to do to me?" like he honestly doesn't know the answer.

"Whatever you want," Tony says. It's so not what he means to say--the honesty in it cracks and shatters in the air, and he can't look at Steve's face, can't stop talking, either. "I mean, you know what I--don't you? It's, I, you're...you're gonna fuck me, right? Aren't you? Because god, I just, I want you to touch me everywhere, wanna feel you in me, but I just had to, okay, I had to, because the way you look when you--fuck, Steve, I don't, just, please--"

"Oh," Steve says, and when Tony risks looking at him he's…smiling, almost, this quiet, secret curve to his mouth. Tony goes to kiss him because--well, because that's what he does, isn't it, in this moment, that's the next step here, but Steve dodges him, trails his mouth down Tony's jawline, up to his ear.

"Bedroom sounds good," he says, warm, a hint of embarrassment lurking underneath, and Tony swallows, nods, takes a deep breath as Steve steps away.

"Your room," he says, "because, uh, closer? And I'm kind of--I mean stairs right now would be. Uh."

Steve's brow furrows for a second. Then he looks down when Tony gestures, sees the tent of Tony's trousers and the come all over his hand, and groans from the back of his throat.

"Yeah," he says, "yeah, okay, definitely bedroom now," and puts a hand on Tony's back and steers him out into the hall.

"Worried I'm gonna get lost?" Tony says, because it's easier to joke right now than it is to…to breathe, or to walk, and Steve's hand is radiating heat across his shoulder blades. "Because I, y’know, I live here and stuff, I think that's unlikely."

"Don't want to stop touching you," Steve admits quietly, and Tony swallows, can't turn around, can't even look at him until they're behind the closed door of Steve’s room.

"Right," Tony says then, "good, okay, that's great news because I don't want, I definitely don't want you to stop touching me, god, Steve, fuck," and he throws himself forward, trusting that Steve will grab him like he always does. Steve makes that noise again, the choked-raw growling one, and he's stripping off Tony's t-shirt, his own, walking them back to the bed with hands skating along Tony's ribcage.

"Yeah," Tony says, falling backwards on purpose, reaching back to the drawer where he knows Steve keeps the lube while Steve fumbles with his belt, "yeah, see, what'd I tell you, you'll be ready to go again in no time and I, I'm just gonna get ready too, faster, because I don't--no waiting, not longer than I have to, Jesus, look at your cock, look at it, fuck, that never gets old."

And see, this is--this is a selfish thing Tony's doing, a little bit, except for how it isn't, not really, not at all. He strips himself out of his pants and slicks two fingers up because…because well, okay, he gets sex, doesn't he, how it works, the things it's good for, and Steve's learning still, for all he's learning fast. And Tony knows Steve's not managing it well, whatever it is, this thing that's eating at him that Tony doesn't know how to approach, and this will help, won't it, this is one of the things sex is for--

--and then Steve grabs his wrist, stills him, says, "Let me," so quietly Tony almost doesn't hear it.

"I," Tony says, "I mean, you, yeah, if you want to? Be faster if I did it but hey, this is your show--"

"No it's not," Steve says, confused, "Tony, what does that even mean," and he plucks the tub of lube up off the bed, slides three fingers into it.

"It means," Tony says, "that…uh, fuck, could you not…not do that with your fingers when I'm trying to think?"

Steve grins, fans them out in front of him; it's just lube they're slick with, Tony knows that, he knows, but it makes his dick twitch anyway. Steve huffs out a faint little laugh, warm and fond, and says, "You know, maybe Thor was right the other day. You are a little predictable sometimes."

"Could we not," Tony says, "Jesus, Steve, could we not be talking about Thor right now," and that, for whatever reason, wipes the humor off Steve's face, leaves a sort of breathlessness there instead.

"Good point," he says, and reaches down to press one lube-slick finger against Tony's opening. "I'm, uh, going to--"

"Yeah, I know, I know," Tony gasps, "god, you don't have to narrate, if you narrate it I'm definitely not going to make it--"

"I said that too," Steve says, sliding one finger in, working it slow and careful. "Didn't really stop you, did it?"

"I'm not superpowered," Tony says, and oh, hell, it's more of whine that he means it to be. "If I go early that's, that's it, whole shebang, all she wrote, fuck c'mon already I can take more--"

"Yeah, I know," Steve says. "Kind of enjoying myself, though."

Tony doesn't have anything to say to that; he screws his eyes shut, tries to resist the urge to grind down onto Steve's finger. He feels the second one entering, the third, doesn't see it because he can't look, knows from experience that the sight of Steve's hand slowly but surely slipping into him is more than he can handle right now. His hands are still shaking a little--Steve shakes when he comes, shakes after, has every time, just a little bit--and he’s slow, painstaking, achingly careful. Tony has done this so many times with so many people, knows the low burn of it, the pleasant, uncoiling warmth, but he can’t get over Steve’s hand on his stomach, rubbing slow, soothing circles.

It’s--they’ve only been doing this a month, really, when it comes down to it, and Steve’s only topped twice. It drives Tony crazy, because he knows how much Steve likes doing it, can see it, but he’s worried, Tony guesses--afraid he doesn’t know his own strength, that’ll he’ll do it wrong and Tony will get hurt. Which, god, even that makes Tony want it more, makes Tony want to spread his knees the way he had the first time, Steve holding him up, angling him, Tony’s whole weight held easily in one hand, and a few strokes had been enough, he’d come before he even knew what was happening.

Tony opens his mouth, means to say something, anything, to tell Steve how much he wants it, to egg him on a little, because he knows Steve needs this, needs to let loose, let go. But he opens his eyes, too, can’t help it, and everything he could say catches in his throat; Steve’s face is an open book like this, and it’s saying...god. He’s hard again but his face is saying lost, he’s looking at Tony like he doesn’t know what to do at all, and Tony stops thinking, or, just maybe, starts.

“Hey,” he says, fingertips grazing Steve’s jaw, his cheek, “hey, hey, okay. Okay, I’ve got you, I get it.”

He doesn’t, not really, but he rides some instinct, pushes a hand against Steve’s shoulder. Steve lets out a long breath, pulls his fingers out and lays back, and Tony straddles him, smiles down at him, lopsided.

“So this is,” he says, “uh, you’re just--I mean, it’s, obviously, you’ll follow, I don’t mean to--but if it’s too much, or anything, you can--”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, “yeah, okay,” and Tony swallows, angles himself, presses himself down around Steve’s cock.

Steve gasps, a sudden, huge noise like all the breath’s been punched out of him, and Tony doesn’t clench around him through force of will. He inches himself down, as slow and careful as Steve had been with his fingers; Steve’s hands drift to Tony’s hips, stuttering, unsure. Tony nods at him, not trusting his voice, and lets go, Steve’s cock buried entirely inside him.

“Tony,” Steve says, half-sob, and there’s something in his eyes that Tony doesn't know how to read or understand or, hell, even avoid. He can’t look away, and god only knows what his own eyes must be saying--he’d been careful to hide them, before, with Pepper, because he knows how he is, no matter how much he pretends not to.

But this is Steve, who’s always so honest, who never quite manages to let Tony get away with anything, even when he’s doing Tony the kindness of trying. This is Steve and Tony can’t stop looking at him, doesn’t want to, can’t fathom gathering the strength, and he rocks his hips forward, just a little, just enough. Steve’s eyes slip shut and he opens his mouth, but no sound comes out; Tony doesn’t know how a moan can be mute but it is, it is, and he doesn’t, he can’t--

“Steve, I,” he says, and he’s not sure how that sentence is going to end, doesn’t have to figure it out because Steve smiles at him, eyes closed, just a little thing. And Tony’s--Tony’s done in, isn’t he, he has to be, because he’s never done this before, never been this far inside of someone before, for all it’s Steve who’s inside of him.

Steve’s hands aren’t on his hips anymore; they’ve moved down, slipped low, sliding along Tony’s thighs like there’s a map on his palm. Tony braces his hands on the headboard because he has to, can’t hold himself up anymore, tightens himself around Steve’s cock and rolls his hips, once, twice. He bows his head and sees a drop of sweat, his own, fall to Steve’s chest, and when Steve opens his eyes again he can’t do anything but shudder, breath ragged, mouth parted around something he isn’t sure how to say.

He just hangs there, over Steve and around him, too, his whole body thrumming with tension. He hangs there and Steve’s still smiling when he moves, reaches out with his whole body, arching up to pull Tony into a kiss. It changes the angle, not much but enough, and when their mouths meet he can feel Steve’s dick twitch inside of him; he doesn’t mean to, shouldn’t, but he groans into Steve’s mouth and comes, shock-hard, all over both of their stomachs. And maybe it’s just that, the sticky spill of it between them, or maybe it’s the fact that Tony’s body always tenses, wracked, when he comes before he’s ready to, but Steve shakes all over and Tony can feel it, can feel Steve spilling out inside of him. He bites down on the trembling plane of Steve’s shoulder to keep from screaming out loud and Steve’s hands are on his back, his ass, and Tony’s whole world goes white with overload, because it’s the only choice he’s really got.

When he blinks out of it--and it can’t be long, can it, not more than a second or two, because they’re both still gasping for breath, haven’t moved--he can feel Steve slipping out of him, inching loose, anatomical gravity. And that’s...Tony doesn’t want him to go, which doesn’t even make sense, which isn’t rational at all. He pulls himself free despite this, tries to ignore the aching absence there, focuses instead on the come dripping down his leg as he rolls, indelicately, to one side.

“God, Tony,” Steve says, wrecked, a hand reaching out to--fuck, Steve’s tracing the lines of his own come on Tony’s thighs, and Tony has to muffle his moan against the pillow, because Christ, that would be telling. “That was--god.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and he’s shaking, can feel himself shaking, as Steve gets up on unsteady legs and walks to the bathroom. He’d raise a protest but he kind of...can’t, right now, maybe in a minute...but Steve’s back before he can worry about it, a washcloth in his hand. “What--”

“You’re not going to,” Steve pauses, swallows, actually licks his lips and fuck, Tony hasn’t had an aftershock like this in years, “you’re not going to sleep like, uh. Like that.”

“I can,” Tony starts, and Steve says, “No, I, uh. I want to, if that’s...okay?” and Tony really, really can’t bring himself to argue.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, yeah, of course it’s--what am I going to do, really, that’s, uh--”

“Stop talking,” Steve says easily, like he’s giving Tony a gift, and he is, really, so Tony does.

The washcloth’s damp, warm water mostly wrung out, and if Steve notices that Tony groans into the pillow every time it touches him, he’s kind enough not to mention it. He wipes Tony clean and then, apparently out of energy entirely, throws the cloth over the edge of the bed and collapses back against the pillows.

He’s going to say something, Tony knows he is, can feel it in the way his breathing changes, in the patterns his fingertips are tracing on Tony’s ribcage. He’s going to say something and Tony is too...too something, right now, for that, so he pushes himself on one unsteady arm and kisses Steve, fast, breathless, instead.

And then Steve...god, Steve, he’s always Steve, isn’t he, even in bed, especially in bed; he rolls with it, kisses back, and then takes Tony’s face in both of his hands and slows it down. He sucks lightly at Tony’s lower lip and soothes his thumb along Tony’s cheek and Tony gasps and doesn’t, drifts in the familiarity of it until he feels like himself again.

When they finally, finally break apart, he grins at Steve, and the smile Steve answers with is strange, like he can’t quite remember how the muscles in his face work. “We’re, uh. We’re definitely going to have to try it that way again sometime.”

“Mmm,” Tony says, “you like that? Remind me later, I’ll put it on the list--”

“The list?”

“Of things you’ll like,” Tony says around a yawn. “Like, uh, the other day, the shower got cold and you...so ice cubes, maybe, except, you know, it’s messy, gets shit all wet, and I know ice isn’t good for you sometimes, because of. Uh. The thing. But you definitely reacted to the temperature shift, and that one time when we started and I still, with the armor, that was just for a second and you liked that too, I’m sure I can find a way around it, what’s the point of being me if you can’t screw around with that kind of thing, right?”

“You keep track of what I like?” Steve says, because of course that’s what he took away from that. “In...in bed?”

“Well, yeah,” says Tony, “why wouldn’t I? The whole point is for you to like it, and it’s all, I mean, if you have the opportunity for trial and error it’d be stupid not to pay attention.”

“I,” Steve says, and blinks, “that’s actually...really sweet.”

“You wouldn’t think that if you’d seen the folder on my server where I keep the--”

“Oh, god, no, don’t,” Steve says, laughing, slinging an arm over Tony’s waist. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

“Find out eventually,” Tony says, eyelids drooping already, lulled into a sense of security that maybe isn’t even false by the proximity of Steve’s chest. “‘S gonna be a fun day.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Steve says, “go to sleep, Tony,” and hey, what the hell, Tony does.

--

Tony’s not sure what time it is--darkness time, definitely, no-sunlight time, wow, he’s tired--when he wakes to the sensation of being jabbed in the shoulder. It takes him a second to get his bearings (not drunk not in the suit this is his bed hey that’s Steve full compliment of limbs no villains heart working okay) and then he rallies immediately to action.

Well. For a given value of “action,” anyway.

“Whuzzit, ‘s night, are we ‘ssmebling?” he slurs, trying and failing to sit up. “‘Cause… suit... Jarvis...”

“No,” Steve says, and there are hands on Tony’s shoulders, and oh, hey, it’s a face, it’s Steve’s face! Tony’s totally awake, he can be awake, yes he can. “No, hey, no, it’s not a mission, nothing like that, god. Sorry.”

“Um,” says Tony, “no, I mean, ‘s fine, hello, ‘m I in...trouble or, uh, dreaming, right, was I dreaming?”

“How would I know if you were dreaming?”

“Pepper,” Tony says, yawning around it, rubbing one eye with the palm of his hand. “Said I’d, uh. In my sleep, sometimes. Er. Screaming an’ stuff, woke her up.”

“Oh,” Steve says, very quiet. “No, Tony, you weren’t screaming.”

“Awesome,” Tony says. There’s a relief. “What’s...up, then?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, and Tony’s just awake enough now to hear how sharply it comes out of his mouth. He peers at Steve in the darkness--sitting up, knees pulled to his chest--and frowns. “I don’t even know why I woke you, honestly. Call it an...impulse, I guess. Go back to sleep.”

“But I’m up now,” Tony says.

This, at least, earns him half a smile; Tony only catches it because he’s looking for it, but it’s there for a second. Steve’s hands ghosts over his arm a moment later.

“Sorry,” he says.

“If you woke me up to apologize for waking me that’d be--” he pauses, yawns hugely, continues, “I mean, if you see logic in that then, uh, share with the class or whatever--”

“No, I meant,” and now his hand’s not ghosting, it’s rubbing, knuckles against Tony’s skin, a light, careful sort of touch. “I...I left this. Bruised you. I didn’t mean to.”

“Huh?” Then Tony follows Steve’s gaze down, down, and--”Oh, shit, look at that. Wow. Uh. That’s...kind of hot, actually.”

“Tony.”

“It is!” Tony says, still not with it enough to filter himself. “It’s Cap-shaped, I’ll probably get hard in a meeting because of that now, thanks for that, hey, you’re still frowning. Stop it, seriously, it's fine, I like it.”

“You shouldn’t,” Steve says, and Tony laughs.

“There are a lot of things I shouldn’t like,” he says, “but I do anyway, and this is only a little bruise and you’re, I mean, come on, you’re you. Were you really expecting to never ever leave a little mark? And anyway--oh. This isn’t about this, is it?”

“Not really,” Steve says, and worries the edge of his lip between his teeth. “Kind of? I don’t know, I shouldn’t have woken you--”

“But it’s too late, I’m awake, so now you’re stuck with me.”

Steve sighs. “I’m just not...I don’t know how to. To do this, I guess and--oh, no, not us, Tony, don’t look at me like that. You and me is kind of the only thing I do know how to do right now, or, I mean, where I at least have a...oh, god, don’t make me--”

“I wasn’t,” Tony says, “actually. Sometimes I’m not, you know, and mostly I’m just, look, I’m not really good at problem solving but on the other hand I’m great at it, but I’m sort of going to need you to explain. A little. Because if you don’t I’m probably going to say something awful. Not on purpose. But, a guideline is all, a boundary or something, because I’ve got a big picture but I need you to, uh, scale it down a little so I can get it. Or try to get it. Or whatever.”

Steve rakes a hand through his hair, takes a deep breath, and looks out the window. “Not sure what I’d even say, really.”

“Okay,” Tony says, flopping back against the sheets, “tell you what, I can wait.”

“Yes, because that’s normally such a skill of yours,” Steve says. “Patience, that’s your watchword, right after--”

“Play nice,” Tony says, “I’m trying a new thing here, it’s very difficult to focus on it,” and Steve shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything else.

And then...well, then Tony does wait, because this is a thing about Steve he thinks he might just have figured out. Steve likes to talk it out when he’s upset, but he won’t be rushed for anyone; he’s stubborn, and Tony gets stubborn, knows stubborn inside and out. He’d let it go, actually, because for all Tony can’t really pick his own battles, he can sometimes pick other people’s, but Steve had woken him. That’s what Pepper would call a context clue and what Tony would probably call...well, a coding blip, honestly, but either way it’s worth his attention, and so he stares up at the ceiling and doesn’t twitch, doesn’t hum, doesn’t explain to Steve how the backup generator in the Quinjet’s going to work...

...and eventually, Steve opens his mouth.

“He doesn’t remember,” he says slowly. “Bucky, I mean. Anything after--nothing about how I...I mean, I might as well have dropped him and he doesn’t remember, the last thing he has is me making some joke about Coney Island and I don’t know how to tell him it was my fault--”

“Was it your fault?”

“Of course it was,” Steve says, “it--all of it, it was all my fault--”

“Because I don’t actually know the whole story there,” Tony continues, “which, I mean, not that you have to tell me the story, but unless you actually, uh, shot him--”

“No! Of course I didn’t--”

“Well then,” Tony says, “I’m guessing it’s not entirely your fault, right? I mean, coming from a guy who knows from self-blame, I feel that, I get it, but I don’t have all the data, so, y’know. You could tell me, though, if you wanted. No blame here, either way.”

Steve gives him a long, open-mouthed look, and then drops his gaze and stares down at his hands. When he speaks, his voice is small.

“Do you think we could maybe, uh. Make some coffee or something? It’s...kind of a long story.”

“Sure,” says Tony, “why not? Never met a pot of coffee I didn’t like. C’mon.”

--

An hour later, Tony knows...well. He knows everything, really.

He knows why Steve was so intense about making Tony build that safety harness for Hawkeye; he knows why Steve always winces when trains fly past them in the subway. He knows why Steve still hasn’t gone to see his old neighborhood in Brooklyn, and why he shudders sometimes when they cut through certain alleyways in battle, and why he always watches the fight surveillance footage until he knows the timestamp on every single punch, kick, or explosion. He knows why he occasionally catches Steve saying Bucky’s name is his sleep, sounding tortured by it, and he thinks he might even know why Steve gets so weird and intense when Tony’s injured--he’s not sure about that last one, but hey, a guy can hope.

“...and I didn’t even look for him,” Steve finishes, finally. He’s been talking so long that his voice is a little hoarse--or, at least, Tony is going to do him the kindness of pretending to believe that’s what it is. “I mean, my best friend, my best friend, he showed up for me so many times, he never let me down and he was alive and I didn’t even think to--”

“Well, yeah, no, of course you didn’t,” says Tony, who can’t keep quiet anymore. “Steve, come on, listen to yourself--the guy fell off the side of a mountain, anyone would assume he was dead--”

“But I shouldn’t have, I should have known better, I should have tried harder--”

“How do you know you wouldn’t have?” Tony says, and takes a pointed sip of his coffee. It’s cold, awful, and he pulls a face. “Ugh, that’s gotten gross--but, no, okay, it was what, a day? Two? Between when he fell and when you did, so it’s not like you had a lot of time on your hands to go searching. And before you start, of course you didn’t go looking when you woke up, it’d been 70 years, even if he’d survived the fall he wouldn’t have survived 70 years in the mountains, that doesn’t even make sense.”

“I know!” Steve snaps. He lets his head drop into his hands. “I know, but it shouldn’t have happened at all and--and I don’t know if I want him to, to remember and forgive me, or remember and hate me, or just not remember. And that’s...it’s selfish, I think, any one of those options is selfish, but I can’t help it.”

Sometimes--not so often anymore, because he’s gotten used to it, but sometimes--Steve is such a good person that Tony kind of wants to poke him and make sure he’s real.

“Huh,” he says, instead of doing that. “What was it you said Peggy told you?”

Steve sighs. “‘Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice.’ And I understand, you don’t have to--”

“No, I’m not going to. Because, look, actually, I would have given you totally different advice, and it would’ve been the wrong advice, obviously, but the way I see it? Once someone’s dead you don’t really owe them anything. I mean, it’s not like they’re gonna know, either way, so I probably wouldn’t have told you to allow him the dignity of shit. Who needs dignity once they’re dead? They’re dead, that’s not really their problem anymore. But,” he continues, when Steve opens his mouth to--Tony doesn’t know, argue with him, maybe, or something, “Bucky’s not dead, as it turns out. So now you do owe him shit, and--I mean, look at it this way. If it were me, if we were on a train and you were falling and I couldn’t--not didn’t, couldn’t--grab you in time, would you want me to beat myself up about for the rest of my life?”

“You would,” Steve says.

“Of course I would,” says Tony, “obviously I would, I beat myself up over way less than that, let’s not lie, but you wouldn’t want me to, right?”

“Well, of course not--”

“And I wouldn’t care, because you’d be...” Oh. Tony can’t actually say the word ‘dead’ in the context of Steve; that’s interesting. Unexpected. He’ll come back to it later. “You wouldn’t be around, so it wouldn’t matter, I could do what I wanted to. But Bucky’s alive! So, I mean, doing shit you know he wouldn’t want you to be doing, that’s kind of a dick move, right?”

Steve stares at him like he’s crazy; Tony doesn’t really blame him. After a minute he says, “I feel like that shouldn’t make sense.”

“I feel that way a lot,” Tony says, “like, whenever Thor says anything, and every time Natasha turns out to have another secret pocket in her jumpsuit--but it does, right?”

“I,” Steve says, and then sighs, nearly smiles. “Yeah, it kind of does.”

“Well, there you go,” Tony says. He gets up to pour himself another cup of coffee, takes Steve’s mug wordlessly when he hands it back. “Is that all of it?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and then, “well, I mean, no, not really, he’s--nobody knows what they’ve done to him. He shouldn’t be alive, and he is, and I think everyone’s afraid that he’s going to, I don’t know, go crazy from over-chemicalization or something. I don’t know the science behind it. Mostly I’ve just been trying to keep him from breaking out of the building to go look at the future.”

“Not one for forced confinement?”

“You’ve got no idea,” Steve says, and that’s a real smile, a full one, when Tony hands him his freshly refilled cup. “When we were kids he used to skip detention by jumping out of windows; yesterday he was so out of it he could barely walk, and he still asked me to take him to dinner, because he was ‘sick of the walls in this joint.’”

“Sounds like my kind of guy,” Tony says absently, and sits back down. “Well, hey, look, that’s an easy fix--if he needs supervision, just bring him here. We’re crawling with superheroes and Coulson’s on the speed-dial, there’s a lab right in the basement if we have to run any kind of emergency testing, there’s no reason he has to stay on-base.”

“I--what?” Steve says. “Tony, I can’t ask you to do that--”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because this is your house,” Steve says. “I’m not going to, I mean, and I’m sure Bucky wouldn’t want me to, the imposition--”

“Have you missed the square footage on this place?” Tony demands. “Seriously, there are more bedrooms here than even I know what to do with and I am, as you may have noticed, good at excess. Hell, he could sleep in your room, it’s not like you really use it anymore.”

Oh, crap, he probably shouldn’t have said that. He regrets it, yes he does, that’s some serious regret there, he shouldn’t have drawn Steve’s attention to that fact, but he doesn’t really get a chance to panic about it properly, because a loud crash interrupts them.

The ceiling in the front hallway has fallen in, right before their eyes. There’s a cloud of plaster in the air, obscuring the intruder, but that doesn’t stop them from jumping into action; Steve rips a cabinet door off its hinges to use as a shield, tosses Tony a kitchen knife. Natasha comes running out from her bedroom, daggers in her hands, Pepper behind her and armed with what Tony thinks is Natasha’s favorite pistol, and Clint stumbles out of his bedroom a moment later, his crossbow on his hip, the strap of one of his sniper rifles caught between his teeth.

“Who dares intrude upon the home of Thor, god of thunder?” Thor cries, flying into the room with Mjölnir in his hand. He is completely and utterly naked, but that doesn’t stop him from adding, “Show yourself, villain, that you might rue the day upon which you upset my slumber!”

“Jarvis, fans,” Tony snaps, because it’s high time they got a twenty on whoever managed to get in here without raising the alarms. The cloud of dust clears nearly instantaneously, revealing...

...the Hulk, looking equal parts confused and shamefaced, lying prone across the floor.

“Hulk is sorry,” he says. “Hulk had bad dream. Hulk will stop watching Hitchcock movies before bed.”

“Jesus,” Tony, Steve, Natasha, Pepper and Clint say together.

Thor, never one to follow the crowd, mutters something in old Norse under his breath. Then he glances around the kitchen--still naked, so naked, the nakedest--and brightens considerably. “My friends! You have prepared coffee in anticipation of this meeting! My irritation is soothed entirely, for nothing can deter me from the enjoyment of a fine Italian roast.”

Tony picks up his own coffee cup, takes a long sip, and raises an eyebrow at Steve. Perfectly deadpan, he says, “You know what, buddy, you’re right. Another house guest would be an imposition. Really disturb the tranquility of the place. I just don’t think I can manage it.”

Steve looks around the room, at the plaster dust and drywall chunks, Thor’s dick swinging free as he pours himself a cup of coffee, Clint’s Kermit the Frog boxers. He puts down the cabinet door, drops his head to Tony’s shoulder, and laughs, shaking with it, so hard he nearly cries.

--

As it turns out, it’s kind of hard to go back to sleep after the ceiling falls in at half past four in the morning. After a few minutes of chaotic argument (“HITCHCOCK MOVIES?!” “Hulk did not know he was afraid of birds!”), the team drifts into the living room, clutching mugs of coffee, all in mostly silent agreement that the best thing to do is cut their losses and watch a movie.

They’re a lot less silent about their agreement that Thor should put some pants on, but, to be fair, sometimes he needs to hear that a couple of times before it really makes an impact.

It’s five when Steve starts yawning; at five fifteen his head lands on Tony’s shoulder, heavy, his body gone lax. Tony shifts without really thinking about it, curling an arm around him without taking his eyes off of Sex and The City, which they’re watching mostly because they needed something to be annoyed at that wasn’t, well, the Hulk.

“If I hunt down the people who made this movie and kill them,” Natasha says, “it’s justifiable homicide, right?”

“No court would convict you,” Clint says. “That’s a mercy killing if ever there--oh my fucking god, if you’re going to beat someone in the face with flowers the least you could do is get your form right--”

“Hulk likes pretty dresses,” says the Hulk, who is eating ramen that Tony went ahead and made for him for the good of the team.

“Good for you, Hulk,” Pepper says diplomatically; Steve snores, loud and obnoxious, and Tony smiles, tries to play it off when Pepper gives him a knowing look. “This movie is horrific, but I am willing to concede--”

“Don’t,” says Natasha, “just, just don’t, Pepper, I swear to god, murder--”

“I can appreciate a good pair of Manolo’s and support your vicious habits at the same time,” Pepper says loftily, and Natasha rolls her eyes, visibly bites back a smile.

“Hey,” says Tony, “that building wouldn’t be there without us, everybody drink.”

Everyone takes a long pull from their coffee mugs, except for the Hulk, who slurps loudly at his ramen.

“I must admit,” Thor says, tilting his head in confusion, “while I normally find Midgardian entertainment both deeply fulfilling and worthy of my attention, this storyline is neither compelling nor short on emotional manipulation. In addition, what they have done to the character development of Miranda in particular appalls me to the bowels of my soul; for what purpose have they stripped her of her sass?”

There is a long moment of silence.

“Thor watches the series,” Tony says finally, “everybody drink.”

There is a round of muttered agreement, and then the chatter drops off. Clint’s the next one to fall asleep, eyes wide open like always, but they’re all used to it by now; Natasha goes next, like a switch has been flipped, her head in Pepper’s lap. Hulk’s snoring by the time the credits roll, and Thor, who can sleep at will and anywhere, shrugs and closes his eyes when Tony puts on Fight Club to try and bleach his brain.

And then...well, it’s only him and Pepper awake anymore, isn’t it, and they’ve both got work pulled up on the glass end tables, and she knows what he’s like. He moves again, careful, guides Steve into a slightly more comfortable position, and when he looks up, she’s smiling at him.

“Don’t, Pep.”

“And why shouldn’t I?” Pepper says. “Do you think I don’t know what it is to worry about someone?”

“Ouch,” Tony says, and Pepper rolls her eyes.

“I didn’t mean it like that, Tony, and you know it.”

“Yeah,” says Tony. “I just...it was never like this with you, I guess. Uh, no offense, please don’t think I mean that in a--”

“No, I know,” Pepper says, and whatever her smile is communicating now, it’s outside the range of what Tony can translate. “You know that we weren’t...normal, don’t you? That’s probably part of what went wrong, really; we knew each other too well in other ways, I think.”

“If I nod and smile, will you pretend to believe I understood that?”

“Don’t I always?” Pepper says, and her face goes soft when Tony laughs. “You’re good together, I think. You don’t need to drive yourself crazy about it; you’re crazy enough already.”

“Thanks,” Tony says, and then--because it’s too late, too early, and it’s Pepper--he adds, “I just...I know I tend to, uh, fuck things up. I don’t mean to, but I mean--well, you know.”

“Is that what you think happened between us?” Pepper says. Tony’s eyes must say something he doesn’t mean them to say, he must not drop them fast enough, because she sighs, sounding sad. “Oh, Tony.”

“No, look, you don’t have to, it’s good, I’m--”

“Sometimes people just don’t fit together,” Pepper says, and it’s her kind voice, the one she only uses when he’s sick or injured, when she’s trying to talk him out of something emotional and stupid. “Or don’t fit together in certain ways, or have fit together too long one way to...we didn’t work, but it’s not because you didn’t.”

“Yes it is,” Tony says wretchedly, “you know it is, you don’t have to--”

“I know I don’t have to,” Pepper says. “If you really think, after all this time, that I’d tell you things because I thought you wanted to hear them, I clearly haven’t been doing my job right. Well, jobs, I suppose, but that’s neither here nor--Tony. Relationships take two people, and so do breakups.”

“Right, but--”

“No,” she says, not kind anymore, that’s the business voice. “Oh, no you don’t, I avoided you just as much as you avoided me--”

“But I pushed too much and--”

“I pushed right back. Do you know I actually find it offensive that you could--”

“Offensive, you’re offended by my--”

“--and now you’re entirely railroading the discussion, yes, of course I am, do you have any idea how much--”

“--yeah, Pep, I’ve got an idea, you’re not listening to me--”

“No, you’re not listening to me!” Pepper says, and it’s just loud enough that Natasha stirs a little in her lap. She freezes, shamefaced, and then sighs and offers Tony a smile. “This is why, Tony. We work like this, as us; we probably shouldn’t have tried it the other way, but, well.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, “well.”

“I’m glad we did, though,” Pepper says, and it doesn’t sound like charity. “Because I would’ve held a candle, I imagine, and now I don’t have to, and who knows what that would have done to us?”

“Theoreticals,” Tony says. “Dangerous game, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” Pepper says, “not this time.”

Tony offers her a lopsided little grin and looks back at the screen. He doesn’t look at the circles under Steve’s eyes, because he knows they’re there; after a minute, he rubs the flat of his palm down Steve’s arm. Steve moves a little, a tiny muscle spasm that probably has nothing to do with Tony’s hand, but he smiles anyway. “So you think you’re,” he says, without glancing away from the movie, “I mean, you and Natasha. Feels like a fit?”

“I don’t like to count my chickens,” Pepper says slowly. “But, yes. Yes, I think so.”

“Good,” says Tony, and hey, look at that, he even means it. “That’s...that’s good, Pep, I’m glad. Can’t promise I won’t make an embarrassing toast at the wedding, though--hey, you think the Hong Kong story is appropriate for company, because you know what, I don’t, so it’s definitely on the docket--”

“Don’t you dare,” Pepper says. Then she laughs, ducking her head. “And you? Fitting?”

“Tell you what,” Tony says, looking down at Steve’s big, broad hand settled across his thigh, “I’ll let you know.”

Part Three

avengers fic - situation normal: all fucked up (steve/tony, nc-17) [3/3]

2011-10-30T22:26:20Z

For summary, author's notes, etc, please see Part One.

Everyone wakes up--or, in Tony’s case, goes from sitting down half-asleep to standing up half-asleep--around eight. They all shuffle into the kitchen, not quite listening to Bruce’s apologies, and settle around the table, silent.

It’s maybe ten minutes after that when they all realize that food isn’t just going to magically appear. Tony sighs and goes to the coffeemaker; Thor, the most chipper of the lot of them by a fair margin, decides to take stock of the fridge.

“Perhaps I shall endeavor to produce a meal,” he says happily. “Tell me, would this purple gelatinous substance combine well with eggs?”

“Fine with me,” says Bruce.

“Remember to take the shells off,” says Natasha.

“We order too much fucking take-out,” says Clint, “but hey, so long as there’s coffee, what do I care? I’ve probably eaten worse.”

“Coffee’s happening,” Tony mumbles. “Five minutes.”

He’s hit his least favorite phase of exhaustion: the one where he doesn’t have enough to do or enough caffeine in his system to ignore it, the one where he remembers why normal people sleep. When he sits back down in his chair, Steve smiles, puts a hand on his back, and Tony slumps, lets him.

“Tired?” says Steve, because even in the midst of what is undoubtedly one of the more stressful weeks of his life, he has the wherewithal to be a dry bastard.

“Ha ha,” says Tony, “really, you’re hysterical, you’re so funny, you crack me up, remind me of how funny you are the next time I’m, say, reinforcing your costume’s armor--”

“Mmm,” says Steve, moving his hand to rub the back of Tony’s neck, “and here I thought this was the kind of thing we’d be able to settle with frogs in my bed.”

“What are you, twelve?”

“Haven’t been for, oh, eighty years or so,” Steve says, and it’s so nice to hear him joking about it that Tony gives in and smiles. Steve smiles back, warm and open, and Tony feels his cheeks heating, and--

“Oho!” says Thor, startling them both. “This powder is a most intriguing color; truly, it shall add a layer of depth to this great feast of the day!”

There is a pause, the kind of pause that means no one knows what the right response is, and Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me.”

“Cayenne pepper,” Steve admits, and laughs when Tony groans and drops his head onto the table. “Hey, cheer up. It can’t be that bad, right?”

“That’s the worst thing you could have said,” Tony says, indistinctly, into the tabletop. “The worst one, the worst one, it’ll be poison now, you watch.”

It’s not actually that bad; Tony has no idea what’s in the casserole thing he’s served, but it doesn’t taste like it’s going to kill him, so that’s a plus. Thor’s beaming, proud of himself, and the combination of food and caffeine wakes everyone else up; soon Natasha’s teasing Clint about the Kermit boxers while Pepper asks if anyone wants orange juice. Bruce goes to get the paper, because he hasn’t seen the damage he did to the front hallway yet--his groan is horrified enough that everyone forgives him, mostly, for making the mistake of watching Hitchcock before bed--and Steve, who’s gotten Tony back in the habit of reading print news through force of will, hands over the business section and keeps the front page for himself.

“Arts & Life, right here,” says Clint, and then glares when they all look at him askance. “What? I’m a man of culture and--Natasha don’t throw that at me--”

“No projectiles before ten,” says Pepper.

“Unless it’s in the name of justice,” Steve adds, without looking away from the front page. “Tony, what on earth is a stem cell?”

“Bruce, buddy, that’s all you,” Tony says, and goes to rescue the rest of the coffee from the pot.

They fall into--well, it’s not silence, is it, not really. Tony’s alternating between reading the newspaper and his morning emails, shooting questions back and forth at Pepper when he thinks of them, and Bruce doesn’t wind down the stem cell spiel for nearly 15 minutes. Clint, true to his word, reads Arts & Life cover to cover, and Natasha gets into a friendly enough argument with Thor about whether or not his hammer-throwing technique extends to knives. It’s not silent at all, if Tony’s honest, but it’s...comfortable.

“This is nice,” Steve says quietly, just for Tony, when Bruce finally winds down and grabs the Education pages. “We should do this more often.”

And Tony wants to laugh, he really does, because that’s just so Steve, that’s Steve all over, and it’s hysterical, worth mocking. But when he lifts his head Steve’s still smiling at him and there’s plaster dust on the side of his shoulder, and his hair’s mussed and slept on, a mostly-faded crease from Tony’s jeans on the side of his face, and Tony...god, Tony thinks home before he can stop himself.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, sure, if you want.”

--

At ten, Steve says, “Oh, twelve hours, thank god,” which is when Tony finally, finally puts the pieces together.

“You were banned,” he says, brandishing the object in his hand in Steve’s general direction. Steve makes a face and takes a hasty step back--probably because it’s a blowtorch--and Tony winces, turns it off, and then points his finger at Steve instead. “From SHIELD! Banned! That’s why you’ve been here all this time, oh my god, Fury banned Captain America--”

“Bucky did, actually,” Steve admits, putting a hand to the back of his neck. “He gets--overprotective, I guess, even though it’s kind of silly now. He said that if he saw my ugly mug before ten o’clock tomorrow he’d personally make sure he never saw it again.”

“Your mug’s not ugly,” Tony says, automatic, and then: “Wait, and you listened?”

“Not at first,” Steve says. “But he’s got his mom’s lungs, always did, and I was kind of afraid he was going to pull a muscle if he didn’t stop yelling.”

“Hey, is coming back from the dead the secret trick to getting you to listen to things?” Tony says. “Because, look, I could totally engineer a--”

“Don’t,” Steve snaps, all the humor draining out of his face, and oh, shit, Tony’s an asshole.

“Whoa,” he says, “fuck, sorry, sorry, that was a bad joke, I shouldn’t have said that, Steve, c’mon, I was kidding.”

“I know,” Steve says, “just--”

“Don’t,” Tony supplies, maneuvering himself around a workshop table so he can put a hand on Steve’s arm. “Yeah, definitely getting that memo, I’ll make a note--Jarvis, make a note--no more of that, not again, seriously, I’m really--”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and his smile’s coming back a little bit, “okay, it’s okay, I get it. Don’t hurt yourself.”

“I’m not going to hurt myself,” Tony says, “apologizing only eats away at my soul a little bit, no big deal, look, maybe I can even do it again. I’m...I’m...nope, shit, fresh out.”

“You sure about that? Because I’m still kind of waiting for you admit that you ate--”

“I didn’t, that was totally Thor--”

“And that the thing with the hose was on purpose--”

“Of course it wasn’t, it’s December, there’s perverted and then there’s actually insane--”

“And that you bought the rights to ‘Star Spangled Man’--”

“Well, yeah, that’s totally true, I’m not going to apologize for that, you’re the one who broke the radio in my Beemer,” Tony says. “That’s definitely your thing to apologize for, I was just looking out for the safety of my car radios.”

“The safety of the car radios, huh?”

Steve’s grinning at him now, doing the whole my-superpower-is-actually-dry-wit-didn’t-you-read-my-file thing, and Tony rolls his eyes, lets go of his arm, and goes back to the control panel he’s soldering.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that about it, you can just go slink back to SHIELD. Maybe Fury’ll apologize to you, I know how that gets you all--”

“God, Tony, come here,” Steve says, laughing, and leans across the workshop table to kiss him. Tony--well, Tony’s definitely not going to ask him to apologize for that.

“Jesus,” Tony says, pulling back, “first breakfast, now this, you wanna tell me to keep an eye on the Beav while you’re gone, really round out the morning?”

Steve gives him a blank look, which is when Tony realizes that Leave it to Beaver was the fifties. He groans.

“Fuck, that was funny, too--well, sort of--actually maybe it’s kind of better that you don’t get it, whatever, I’ll catch you up on culture later, go break your buddy out of prison.”

“I’m not breaking anyone out of anywhere,” Steve says, straight-faced. “I’m merely going to have a measured conversation with Bucky about his options, and then discuss them with Director Fury accordingly.”

“Helps to practice in front of the mirror,” Tony says. “The lying thing, I mean, you might want to try it, works wonders--”

“You’re a terrible liar, Tony,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. “Maybe you should try some new tricks.”

“Maybe you should get out of my workshop.”

“I’m trying,” Steve says, and, hmmm, interesting, that’s the laughing-at-you-on-the-inside face. “You’re probably going to need to let go of my wrist first.”

“Huh?” Tony says. Then he looks down, frowns. “Shit, you’re not my blowtorch.”

“You should try to get some sleep,” Steve says, shaking his head as Tony releases him. “Or at least stop using things that could actually burn the whole place down, does that seem fair? I don’t really want to bring Bucky back to a disaster zone.”

“It’s already--oh, fuck, I forgot to call the contractors for the front hall, Jarvis, do that, will you?” Tony says, and then blinks, focuses on Steve. “Right, totally, no more fire, you got it, now get out of here so you can pretend I listened to you, that’ll be good for everyone--”

“Bye, Tony,” Steve says, leaning forward and kissing him again, a quick thing. “And, uh, thank you. For last night, and the house, and--all of it. Just--thanks, okay?”

“What I’m here for,” Tony says absently, pulling his goggles back down, and doesn’t realize what he’s said, what it means, until Steve’s already gone.

--

“You have got to be kidding me,” Rhodey says. “Seriously, I refuse to believe this is happening, I am going back to bed, no.”

Under normal circumstances, Tony would probably give him shit about commitment to justice and work ethic, just to watch him get mad; Rhodey’s easy to wind up if you know the right buttons to press. It would be hugely worth it to watch him pitch a shit-fit in the suit, to see the exasperated hand gestures with an added layer of Armed and Dangerous, but...

...well, but giant fluffy bunnies are trying to take Manhattan. Tony doesn’t really have the heart make Rhodey’s day any worse.

“If it helps, Clint’s gonna make a really terrible Easter joke in about half a second,” he offers. “Seriously, if tries to make it a whole minute his insides might explode, it’s like a science, just wait for it.”

A moment later Clint whoops and yells, “Cadbury this, asshole!” over the sound of his crossbow firing.

“Ugh,” says Natasha, “Hawkeye, you can do so much better.”

“Eat chocolate?” Clint suggests. “Eggs-ellent try? I can go all day.”

“Told you,” says Tony. “He’s got a condition, there’s no helping it.”

Rhodey sighs. “Is it always like this?”

“Course not,” Tony says, grinning behind his mask, “sometimes, it’s much worse.”

“Hulk wants pet,” the Hulk says despondently; he’s got a murder rabbit gripped in one massive hand, staring at it sadly while it flails and snaps its saber teeth. “This pet right size, but still wrong! Why world not fair to Hulk?”

“Hulk, don’t form emotional attachments to the enemy,” Natasha says, because as much as they don’t like him when he’s angry, it’s worse when he’s sad. For one thing, even his tears are green--it’s a real bitch to get out of the carpet.

“Seriously, buddy,” Tony says, “that thing is foe, not friend, you want a pet, I can build you a pet--”

“Yeah, he’s good at that,” says Clint, and Tony has just enough time to wince before Jarvis, who is a computer and should know better, takes over the comms and says, “If you refer to me in that manner again, Mr. Barton, I will personally see to it that your credit score does not survive the day.”

“Whooooa,” says Tony, “easy there, he was kidding, that was a joke, calm down, Jarvis, seriously, how many times do I have to warn you about 4chan?”

“My apologies, sir,” Jarvis says, managing to sound snippy about it, and goes silent.

“Iron Man,” Natasha says slowly, “did your AI just take offense to something?”

“He’s a little sensitive,” Tony says, realizes how that sounds, and sighs. “Look, just, don’t worry about it, watch your back, though, Flopsy’s gunning for you.”

“This is already the weirdest day of my life,” says Rhodey, “I’ve only been awake for four hours, I did the smart thing and stayed at a hotel, you haven’t been drinking and it’s already the weirdest day of my life.”

“I missed you too, sweetheart,” Tony says, and does something to one of the bunnies that is going to have a much cooler name than tazing as soon as he thinks of it.

“Be still, large rabbits,” booms Thor, who is--well, the accurate way of describing what he’s doing involves the words “skipping” and “tops of their heads” but Tony’s pretty sure there’s a children’s song like that. He’s trying not to think about it. “We shall let you go in peace, but you must first show us a sign of your good faith. Please release the vendor of dogs that are hot, for he is only doing his job!”

“Hot dogs,” Tony corrects, for the hundred thousandth time, “hot dogs, Thor, I know you can get this,” but a call comes through to the suit before he can really break it down.

Unlisted number; SHIELD, then. Tony sighs, and takes it.

“Little busy here, guys! Is this about before, because look, it’s fine, we know we’re only supposed to stun them, it’s not actually beyond us that ‘Avengers Viciously Murder Hoard of Oversized Fluff Balls’ is a bad headline--”

“No,” Steve says, “just me,” and Tony grins.

“Oh, hey! Forgot to give you a new cell, didn’t I, my bad. Tell me you’re watching this, this is the most hilarious thing since--well, okay, the Hello Kitty thing was probably funnier--”

“Yeah, we’ve got it up on one of the monitors,” Steve says. “Is Thor trying to ride that one?”

“Trying implies a lack of success,” Tony says, “so no. Where do you think you’d put a saddle on one of these things, d’you think? Back of the neck?”

“He’s not going to keep it.”

“Do you think we have much choice, if he decides he wants to?” Tony says, and then switches back into the comm long enough to say, “Widow, what’d Coulson say about the press coverage, you can’t stab them.”

“Whoops,” Natasha says, completely without emotion.

“You know, I had a nightmare like this once,” Clint says contemplatively. “Maybe I’m not even awake right now--War Machine, you wanna maybe come and pinch me, think you’re closest--”

“Shoot another arrow that close to me and I’ll do more than pinch you,” Rhodey warns, and Tony laughs, switches back to Steve.

“So, yeah, that’s pretty much what’s going on here,” he says. “Did you need something specific, or is this a social call? Hey, you know what, if I put the suit on autopilot I can probably manage phone sex--”

“Tony, you’re on speaker,” Steve groans, mortified.

“Oh,” says Tony, “well, yeah, that complicates things a little bit, that’s a lot of mouths to feed if you know what I mean and I think that you do--”

“Jesus Christ, Rogers, blush any harder and your head’ll fall off,” says an unfamiliar voice, deep and a little raspy. “Stark--you are Stark, right, you sound like a Stark--don’t break him, I only just woke up.”

“Oh, hey, uh--Bucky Barnes, I presume?” Tony says, and blasts the repulsors until he’s hovering over one of the bunnies. He thumps it, hard, on the top of the head, and it crashes to the ground with a satisfying thud. “I’ll tell you what, I wish this wasn’t representative of what our lives are like but, uh, welcome to the future--”

“Yeah, getting a lot of that,” Bucky says. “Rogers tells me you’ve got a bedroom for me?”

“With a view and everything,” Tony says, “even a shower in it for you if you play your cards right, oh my god, that one’s got a pouch, it’s a kanga-bunny, are these live-action stuffed animals or something?”

“Hulk, stop trying to pet them,” Steve says, and then seems to remember he’s neither on the scene or patched through to the comm link. “Tony, tell the Hulk to stop trying to pet them.”

“Hulk, seriously, enough with the petting already,” Tony says into the comm, and forcibly ignores Clint’s snicker. “And Thor, Thor, buddy, come on, do us all a favor here and let go of that one’s ears, it’s just making him angrier--”

“But the Allspeak shall win the day!” says Thor. “Surely we can resolve this peacefully, and then I shall build him a magnificent stable, suited for a--”

“You are not going to ride a giant rabbit around New York,” Natasha says, “we have a reputation to maintain, Thor, honestly.”

“Uh,” says the voice that apparently belongs to Bucky Barnes, “the fuck if I know how this thing works, maybe it’s just the, uh, screen, but from where I’m sitting it looks like they’re--getting a little bigger...”

“Jarvis, patch me into the comm link,” Steve snaps, and then, “Avengers, be advised that the enemy is growing. Hawkeye, if you don’t stop favoring your left side I will make you run laps every morning for the next week. Widow, put the dagger down, Thor, that is an enemy, not a stallion, and Hulk, we will buy you a canary or something, can you please all focus up?”

“Ah,” says Thor.

“Wow,” says Natasha.

“I’m not,” Clint starts, and then pauses. “...oh. Hi, Cap.”

“Hi, yourself,” Steve sighs. “See if I ever miss a mission again--War Machine, I’m sorry we haven’t met properly yet, but nice job on the one with the notch in its ear.”

“Uh,” says Rhodey, “thank you?”

“I could’ve handled that,” Tony says, but cheerfully enough. “Your control issues are showing, by the way, have I ever told you that you have control issues, because, I’m just saying--”

“Iron Man, shut up,” Steve says, but it’s fond. “I only called to tell you that this morning’s plan is a go--can you brief the team when you’re done here? We’ll be at the house in 45 minutes or so.”

“If this is an orgy I call dibs on the chocolate sauce,” Clint says. Everyone stops moving and stares at him, and he shrugs. “What? Early bird gets the Hershey’s, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Jesus,” says Rhodey, “can we establish some chatter protocol before the next time I come out here with you lunatics, please and thank you. How do you function like this?”

“Advil, mostly,” Tony says, and then one of the rabbits shoots up by about two stories and everything is suddenly a lot less funny. “Shit, okay, Cap, that’s a go, 45 minutes, ending the call unless you want to--”

“No, go, go,” Steve says, and Tony cuts the line, turns to his latest task, and pretends not to hear Clint say the words “Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog” on principle .

--

An hour later, in the middle of cleanup--which, hey, great, it’s mostly poop, as it turns out giant rabbits leave giant shits all over the street, how awesome is Tony’s life?--Tony grabs Rhodey by the arm. “Hey, buddy, how much do you love me?”

“Loaded question,” Rhodey says. “Enough to talk you out of whatever it is; not enough to help.”

“Now, see, that’s not nice--”

“Tony--”

“So Bucky Barnes is coming to live in my house,” Tony says breezily, enjoying the way Rhodey’s mask flips up to reveal his incredulous stare. “You want to cancel that hotel reservation, or...”

“Tony,” Rhodey says, jabbing him in the chest with one armor-clad finger, “I swear to you, if you are fucking with me right now--”

“We just fought a battalion of gigantic alien rabbits with indigestion,” Tony says, because that, as it turns out, is what they were--the Fantastic Four had shown up after two hours, waved some colored flags around, and then smirked when the rabbits vanished into thin air. Superhero politics are the worst. “You really think I could make shit up at this point?”

“Yes,” Rhodey says, without removing his finger, “yes, I do.”

“You know what, keep your hotel room, you can’t stay at my house after all,” Tony says, and then cracks and laughs when Rhodey opens his mouth to argue. “No, no, I’m not fucking with you, I’m totally serious. He’s Steve’s closest friend, where else would he stay?”

“But he’s Bucky Barnes,” Rhodey says. “They should--they should build him his own house for his contributions to modern attack strategy alone--”

“Wow, you have some feelings here, buddy, don’t you?” Tony says, enjoying this more than he should be. “That’s kind of a scary look on your face, isn’t it, do I have to worry that you’re gonna steal his boxers and sniff them?”

“No, Tony, that’s something you would do,” Rhodey says. “You, and not me, and it’s not a scary look, this is what respect looks like, do you understand? This is esteem and, and admiration for sacrifice for one’s country and--”

“Hero-worship,” Tony finishes, “this is hero-worship, hey, what gives? You weren’t like this when I told you they’d found Cap.”

“Yeah, well, you were on that enough for the both of us,” Rhodey says, and then, before Tony can argue that in what would probably be a very unconvincing manner, says, “Don’t worry, our secret or whatever. But, uh, it’s just--not that Steve isn’t great, he is, but Bucky Barnes--Bucky Barnes is a soldier’s soldier. It’s different.”

“I think I’m offended on Steve’s behalf,” says Tony, “but I’m not entirely sure why.”

“Think on it,” says Rhodey, “and hey, can you maybe mention my Medal for Valor when you introduce me? It’d seem weird if I did it myself, and I’ll forgive you for Cuba ‘94.”

“Oh, right, it’s only weird if you do it--wait, not ‘96?”

“No one’s ever going to forgive you for ‘96, Tony,” Rhodey says.“Cuba hasn’t forgiven you for ‘96.”

“I sent a fruit basket,” says Tony.

“You are a fruit basket,” says Rhodey.

“Awww, baby,” says Tony, and goes to brief the rest of the team before Rhodey can reply.

--

They go in through the back door of the mansion, because Rhodey got all weird and intense about how they couldn’t meet an American hero for the first time smelling like alien rabbit shit. Tony tried to disabuse him of this notion, going to far as to call Steve to confirm that yes, the second World War had indeed desensitized them both to assorted terrible smells, but since Steve still didn’t have a cell phone and had to take calls through Jarvis, it had kind of backfired on him.

“This is the future, pal,” Bucky said, “and in the future, I don’t have to smell that kind of thing if I don’t want to, which I don’t. Everybody showers.”

“Thor’s going to be kind of hard for you to get used to, with that attitude,” Steve said, and Thor, flying next to Tony and not in any way privy to the call, somehow managed to look offended anyway. God powers, probably; Tony wasn’t going to worry about it too much.

“I still like you, buddy,” Tony said. “Your, uh, musk or whatever, it’s Asguardian-chic, I dig it. You’re fine.”

“You confuse me,” Thor said, “I was only thinking of what noble deeds I might have accomplished on the back of He Who Eats Carrots Boldly In The Night,” and it took Tony longer than it probably should have to realize he meant the rabbit.

Point being, by the time they’ve all gathered in the living room--the kitchen and the front hall are both still out of commission, though according to Jarvis the contractors are on their way--Tony has showered, shaved, and put on clothing that hasn’t been crushed inside the Iron Man suit. He’s looking good, definitely, feeling good, too; he’s not nervous about meeting Steve’s best friend, because that would be crazy. Unnecessary. Unlike him.

Well, not necessarily unlike him, but whatever, it’s fine, he’s fine, it’s gonna be great.

Steve’s standing next to a dark-haired guy, about Tony’s height, and he’s smiling. Which, that’s pretty normal, Steve smiles a lot, but this is--Tony hadn’t realized until right now that this is what he’s been looking for the past few days, this ease in Steve’s shoulders, this lack of haunted, worried darkness in his eyes. Relief breaks over him in a sharp, startling kind of wave, and this is probably why it takes him a full forty-five seconds to notice the elephant in the room.

“Right, so, everyone, this is Sergeant James Barnes,” Steve says, “and Bucky, this is--”

“Arm,” says Tony.

“Oh, god,” Steve says, while Bucky, presumably, gives Tony a strange look--Tony’s not really sure, he’s a little busy, “Tony, come on, can we at least get through the introductions first?”

“What? Oh, yeah, sure, right, Tony Stark, you probably knew my dad, bet that’s a little weird, talk about it later, there, we’re done, Steve didn’t tell me you’ve got a giant metal arm--”

“Really, Rogers?” Bucky says, over Tony’s head, as Tony reaches out gleefully to start prodding at the mechanics.

“I can’t help it,” Steve says, and hey, that’s a tone Tony likes; he’ll figure out why later.

“You’re a punk,” Bucky says, and when Steve laughs he says, “No, Rogers, not you--well, yeah, you, but not right this second. Stark, give a guy a little breathing room, would you? Is personal space not a thing they have in the future? I mean, he said you’d probably do this, but I didn’t really believe him.”

“Sad for you,” Tony says absently, “hey, can you move your fingers? No, I mean--there they go, oh my god is that a delay, who did the neural receptors on this thing, monkeys? I can do so much better than this, I could do better than this in my sleep, someone should’ve called me, you got any favorite colors or, uh, metals--whoa, what the hell, these connecting cables are shit--”

“Okay, Tony, that’s enough,” Steve says, and a second later he’s actually being dragged away by the collar, that’s a little embarrassing.

“But--”

“You do know I’m stronger than you, right?” Steve says. His hand is warm on the back of Tony’s neck, and so is his voice, a little, under the exasperation; Tony sighs and straightens up, lets himself take a couple steps back.

“I’m gonna build you a new arm,” he says to Bucky, “and, I mean, hello, obviously, but I think we can all agree that the arm’s the important thing here--does it come off or do you have to stay attached--well, no, I guess that doesn’t matter--”

“Right,” says Steve, whipping out the field commander voice, “so that’s Tony, he’s sorry, I’d say he’d stop but he won’t, moving on--this is Natasha--”

“Nice to meet you,” Natasha says, favoring Bucky with a rare smile.

Bucky, who’d been occupied with staring at Tony like he was a crazy person, turns. Then he makes the shell-shocked, good god you’re hot face most people make upon meeting Natasha, which, hey, Tony has totally been to that movie, can’t really blame him at all.

“Hi,” Bucky says, “I met your, uh, girl? Can I say girl now, is that right, Steve says there are rules, which is great, better, probably, weren’t really rules back when--well there were, but I broke them--but, uh, Pepper, she left, said she didn’t wanna see the fireworks when Stark met me--oh, god. Rogers, listen to me, this is terrible, I’m you.

“It’s not your fault,” Natasha says, completely calm, while Steve does a terrible job of covering a laugh. “I have this effect on everyone. However, if you ever ogle me without my permission again, I will not hesitate to harm you bodily.”

“My god,” Bucky says, blinking, “I’m embarrassed and I don’t even care--”

“And this is Thor,” Steve says, apparently in mercy.

“Greetings!” Thor booms. “May we both look back upon this moment as one upon which a glorious friendship was founded!”

“Uh,” says Bucky, “yeah, pal, okay.”

“And I’m Clint,” says Clint, before Steve can get around to it. “And that’s Bruce--sometimes he’s not Bruce, you’ll know because he gets all giant and green, try not to piss him off if you can help it, can we wrap this up? I TiVo’d Criminal Minds.”

“Okay,” says Bucky, “didn’t understand half that sentence but I’m getting the impression that you’re kind of a--Stark, touch my arm again and I will drop you.”

“Sorry,” Tony says, “it’s just right there--oh, hey, neither one of you has met Rhodey yet, so, right, uh, this is--”

“Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, sir,” Rhodey says, reaching out, and then actually salutes with the hand that isn’t shaking Bucky’s. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” Bucky says, “but hey, unless the ranking system’s changed a helluva lot since my day, pretty sure I’m the one who should be saluting you, Colonel.”

Rhodey looks--well, shit, if he didn’t know better, Tony would use the word starstruck. “Don’t you dare. I wrote my thesis on you at Academy; I’d sooner let you salute me than--or, well, not to suggest that you couldn’t, if you wanted to--”

“You know what,” Bucky says, smiling warm and slow at Rhodey, still clasping his hand, “I think I do. Want to, that is.”

“Is this how people flirt in the army?” Tony demands, because, well, Christ, really?

“Tony,” Steve and Rhodey say in unison; Bucky just grins, rubs his thumb over the back of Rhodey’s hand.

“Sure is, pal,” he says, and okay, it’s kind of worth it, isn’t it, for the way Rhodey smiles and chokes on his own breath all at once.

--

“Sir,” Jarvis says, “both Ms. Potts and Captain Rogers have requested that I pass along the suggestion that you eat. Would you like me to order something for delivery?”

Tony blinks; then he finds he has to do it again, keeps his eyes screwed shut for several seconds to try to will away the dryness. It doesn’t really work, and he looks down at the wiring of his second model of Bucky’s new arm and sighs.

“Uh,” he says, wincing at the sound of his own voice, “no, thanks, I’m good. What time is it, exactly?”

“Eight thirty p.m., sir,” Jarvis says smoothly. “Captain Rogers, in particular, was quite insistent that you break for food. Are you certain you wouldn’t like me to order something in?”

“Nah,” Tony says, and then, rubbing at the back of his neck, “yeah, actually, maybe a pizza or something? Pepperoni and, uh, you know what, I don’t care, really, so long as I don’t have to go get it.”

“Ordering now, sir,” Jarvis says. Tony nods, rubs the heel of his hand against his eyes, and tries to remember how long he’s been down here. At least--ugh, at least twelve hours, maybe longer; he vaguely remembers Steve coming in at one point, trying to get a word in edgewise over the music, and then rolling his eyes and going upstairs again.

At least the new arm will be ready soon, Tony thinks ruefully. The temporary upgrades he’s installed in the old one are patching the gaps a little, but it’s still complete shit. He really shouldn’t have let Barnes talk him into handing over a first prototype; that never ends well for anyone. Granted, Bucky’s been pretty pleased with it, and it’s definitely better than the pile of junk SHIELD gave him originally, and technically it’s only been a week since he met the guy, but still. Tony’s not ones to let details stop him; exhaustion, maybe, just this once, but definitely not details.

“Hmm,” he says, “think I’m gonna...call it quits, for a bit. Could you, uh, just freeze everything that isn’t running automatically? And hold this process, and this one, they’re both gonna need my help--no, Jarvis, not that one, that one’s done, just leave it--and backup copies, probably, because I’ve got no idea where I am in this string, or these two. There you go. Oh, and kill power to anything with heat, and render another paint job mock-up, will you? Barnes says he wants a big red star on it, and I really want him to get up close and personal with how that’s gonna look before I go ahead with it.”

“So noted, Mr. Stark,” Jarvis says. “Will there be anything else?”

“No,” Tony says, and then he sighs, thinks again. “Or, yeah, you know what, lock me out ‘til tomorrow, I guess. Just from the room, not the code, obviously, but I probably shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery anymore. Steve upstairs?”

“Captain Rogers is on the roof, sir.”

“Oh good,” says Tony, “because that’s such a normal thing to do at the end of December, I’m sure he’s in a great mood,” but he heads up there anyway, grabbing a hoodie off the back of the sofa as he passes it.

“Hey,” he says, when he’s pulled the sweatshirt over his head, climbed up the little back stairway to find Steve exactly where Jarvis said he’d be. “What’re you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Steve says, sounding surprised. “I’d kind of bargained on having to come down to the workshop and drag you out myself.”

“Like you could,” Tony says dismissively. Steve doesn’t dignify that with a response, just gives Tony a look that means no one’s buying it, but nice try; he’s got a point, so Tony sits down next to him, tucks his knees up to his chest. “Seriously, it’s freezing out here, what’s up? Is this a sulking thing?”

“I don’t sulk.”

“Yeah, you do,” Tony says. “We can call it something else if you want--manly brooding or whatever--but this is totally your sulking spot, don’t lie.”

“It’s not--” Steve starts. Then he stops, shakes his head, huffs out a laugh; Tony can see his breath hanging in the air. “I’m not sulking. Just trying to keep an eye on things.”

“Huh?” says Tony. Steve gestures out to the yard, and...oh.

The team’s out in full form, in various states of dress and gear--Tony can’t believe he hadn’t seen them, heard them, immediately. Clint’s in the maple tree, perched with his crossbow over his lap, entirely blind to the fact that Natasha is silently climbing up behind him; Thor’s hurtling Mjölnir up into the air, laughing as Clint tries to shoot it and misses. Rhodey’s suited up, and he and Bucky seem to be involved in some kind of mechanical arm-wrestling competition, using one of Hulk’s massive hands as their platform. It looks like Bucky’s winning, and Tony’s not sure if he should be embarrassed for the suit or proud about the arm--he’s never been a bystander to his tech battling itself before.

“You break it, you buy it, Rhodes!” he yells.

“My suit, my rules, Tony!” Rhodey yells back; Tony rolls his eyes, pulls the hoodie a little tighter around himself.

“What are they doing?” he says to Steve, and Steve shrugs.

“I think they’re bored,” he admits. “It’s been kind of quiet the last couple days.”

“So this is what we’re like in our downtime?” Tony says, and shudders. He’s not sure if it’s from the cold or from what a terrifying thought that is, but Steve puts an arm around him anyway. “Ugh, I just had a terrible insight into what Nick Fury’s life must be like, I’d really love to unthink that.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” Steve sighs.

Below them, Natasha successfully manages to surprise Clint, as evidenced by the way he shrieks at the top of his lungs and falls out of the tree. Thor catches him before he actually hits the ground, depositing him back in his perch with a grin and a hearty slap on the back; Clint makes a little squeaking noise at the impact, and then promptly looks horrified with himself.

“Manly, Barton,” Tony calls.

Clint gives him the finger. “Come down here and say that to my face, asshole! You can’t mock from the peanut gallery, that’s not cool.”

“He’s got a point,” Steve says.

“Yeah, probably,” Tony says, and then: “Wait, you’re not expecting me to go put on the suit, right? Because, uh, I don’t know about you but I’m kind of enjoying the lack of crazy.”

“No, of course not,” Steve says. “They’re out of their minds; Thor tried to convince me to throw the shield with him sitting on it, for ‘the great glory of our legacy as men,’ whatever that means.”

“That sounds kind of awesome, actually,” Tony says. “What? You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about, I don’t know, using it as a sled or something--”

“You’re not serious.”

“Nah, not really,” Tony admits. “Be funny to watch, though.”

“Hilarious,” Steve says, dry, but he pulls Tony in a little closer anyway. Tony’s glad of it; Steve’s wearing a thick wool peacoat, vintage-y, very dapper-gentleman-from-1945, and he’s all but radiating heat. Tony sighs and puts his head down on Steve’s shoulder, hides a yawn in the fold of the fabric.

“You wanna tell me where Bruce Hulked this time,” he says, “or should I just wander around the house ‘til I find the mess? It’s like Where’s Waldo, right, only instead of Waldo it’s holes in the drywall--”

“Waldo?” Steve says.

“Oh,” says Tony. “Guess that was the ‘80s--it was just, uh, this guy, and he had a shirt and--you know what, never mind, it’s not important. Just tell it to me straight, anywhere but the garage, please tell me he didn’t hurt the Rolls.”

“No, front hall,” Steve sighs.

“What, again? They just finished fixing that!”

“Apparently Bruce got a phone call and just lost it,” Steve says. “Natasha’s the only one who saw it, but we’ll have to wait until he’s back to get the whole story.”

“Aw, hell, I hope his grant funding didn’t get denied again--I keep trying to tell him Stark can just put him on payroll, but he’s weird about it.”

“Are you honestly telling me you don’t understand pride? You, of all people?”

“Be nice, I’m tired.”

“And whose fault is that?” Steve says, but it’s warm, and he rubs a hand down Tony’s arm with absent affection. “Anyway, it’s not as bad as last time, just a little bit of broken glass, and one of the support beams is cracked again.”

“Great,” Tony says. He yawns again, not even bothering to hide this one. “Remind me to call the contractors--or have Jarvis call ‘em, whichever.”

“God,” Steve says, shaking his head, “they must love us, they’re here nearly as much as we are. Maybe you should just give them a bedroom.”

Tony looks out at the yard. There are arrows sticking up out of the grounds, chunks of dirt pulled loose by Thor’s hammer and Rhodey’s repulsors; Hulk’s giant footprints are everywhere, and Natasha’ daggers have left a series of ragged scars in the bark of the old maple, right next to the dent where Bucky actually punched it. It’s just starting to snow, the faint dusting of white serving only to highlight the chaos, and to anyone else, it would look like a disaster area.

And that’s true of a lot of things in Tony’s life, isn’t it--the inside of his workshop and the bottom of his microwave; hell, Tony himself, nine times out of ten. It’s all a mess, the yard and the missions, everything, really, but then again...well. There’s Steve to keep an eye on the team, and Tony to keep an eye on Steve, and maybe the rest of it will work itself out.

Tony takes a deep breath, watches his exhale, and smiles. “Think we’ve got enough people living here, don’t you?”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a long time; after a minute, Tony figures that he missed the question entirely. He closes his eyes, not particularly bothered about it, and so he’s surprised by the emotion in Steve’s voice when it comes.

“Yeah,” Steve says, arm around Tony tightening just slightly, “yeah, this feels about right.”

avengers fic: it should follow, you know this (like the panels of a comic strip) [steve/tony, pg-13]

2011-10-25T00:29:24Z

Filed under: things I wrote at work because I was bored and GDocs wouldn't open; things that aren't in my usual style; things that are really mostly Tony Stark genfic; things that have Richard Siken meta titles because I'm an asshole; things that are entirely postcardmystery's fault.

Title: it should follow, you know this (like the panels of a comic strip)
Pairing: Steve/Tony
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Four, eleven, fifteen, twenty-one, thirty-six, forty, as old as he's always been, too young, and everyone knows Tony Stark.

it should follow, you know this (like the panels of a comic strip)

Four, and he builds a circuit board while no one’s looking, bounces off the walls and hangs from the chandelier, clings to his mother’s leg, steals Obie’s watch. He doesn’t look too hard at his father and his father doesn’t look too hard at him, but everyone knows Tony Stark, Howard’s boy, a terror on two legs and a toy car he built himself. He learns the word prodigy too soon, the way it sits on his tongue, the way it beats out a pattern against the thin-dry lips of every nanny that slips in and out of the mansion and Tony can take care of himself, can’t he, can work the stove and rewire the thermostat before he learns to read.

He’s adorable except for how he isn’t, except for how he tries for cute and pushes past it to exhausting (his mother’s hands, his father’s eyes, and Obie sighs and looks away--)

Eleven, and he moves too loud or talks too much, there’s math he shouldn’t know scrawled on the cover of his spiral notebook, twined in the scrape of his fork on the dinner plate. Everyone knows Tony Stark, lunatic, shithead, baby, and someone should’ve known better than to send a kid his age to high school. But no one ever looks too hard, do they, and Tony’s small and fast and smart and everyone says it’s better in college so he hides in places no one looks, folds his body into the scaffolding of the bleachers, tells the maid he blacked his own stupid eye.

No one ever teaches him the rules, never even tries, he’s always above them or under them or beyond them (and he wouldn’t have listened anyway, so why should anybody bother--)

Fifteen, and he learns to drink too much, sick over a railing of a dorm room that isn’t his, and someone must take him home, must put him to bed, because everyone knows Tony Stark, golden boy, golden ticket. He wakes up reeking of beer and stale cigarettes, pressed against his own walls, covered with design sketches and proof sets like always, one busted-old poster of Black Sabbath in the back corner, and goes to breakfast with his hair flat and wilting, sunglasses over his eyes. He feels like parts of him have been left unrendered, loose ends brushing together and it’s awful, it throbs up in his chest and Tony is a lot of things but he’s not good at being less, but when he catches his reflection against the glass of the nearest window, he looks like someone else.

His father dies and Obie’s hand tightens on his shoulder and he should feel something (he’s sure he will, he just can’t yet, not yet, almost—)

Twenty one, and everybody knows Tony Stark, inheritor, billionaire, falling into his lap like he’s Midas by mistake and he’s got so much to prove that he can’t prove anything, smiles on the magazine covers and builds what Obie tells him to, mostly. It’s all warmth that’s cold in the right light and Tony’s not built himself enough sharp edges yet, burns his lips on a joint and his fingers on a carburetor and his heart’s been flaming out for years already, sparking strange colors like he’s doused it in something, and maybe he has, he probably has, that sure sounds like him.

He builds himself machines to talk to, and that’s the truth (no, really, that’s the truth).

Thirty, and Pepper’s so young, so eager, it’s all “Yes, Mr. Stark,” and “No, Mr. Stark” and “Will that be all, Mr. Stark,” and it’d be easy, a hand on her back, a compliment or four, a wine and dine that’s mostly wine, it’s not like he ever holds onto assistants anyway. Wouldn’t even ping the radar, because everyone knows Tony Stark, party boy, playboy, only she’s not like that, doesn’t push for pieces of him, picks them up instead and leaves them strewn across his worktable with little post-it notes, instructions. A week turns into three turns into six turns into twelve and he doesn’t fuck her, forgets he ever wanted to, because she’s just Pepper and she’s better to talk to then a machine and she keeps trying to teach him the rules, not succeeding but trying, at least, and he can appreciate the effort.

“You always like this?” says James Rhodes, and Tony smiles over his sunglasses, doesn’t answer (and if a little it’s because he doesn’t understand the question, well, okay, fine, these things happen--)

Thirty-six, and really there’ve only ever been three people—Rhodey by accident, Pepper by necessity, and Obie, bigger than his father, warmer, standing so close that there’s never really any air. Everybody knows Tony Stark, genius, inventor, and somehow they’re always photographed together, the two of them, Tony and Obie, and there’s something not-quite-right but it’s not quite wrong either, needs better lighting, or worse. He shifts on the balls of his feet when Obie smiles, doesn’t know why, can’t put a finger on it, but then again he’s drunk and he’s never got the hang of people anyway, and he trusts his father’s judgment, whatever it might say about him.

If he’s honest, he’d trade it, do the cave a second time (but he’s not honest, is he, just brilliant, always, and he can’t help that it’s not lost on him, the literal heart from his literal chest--)

Forty, and he loves too much, not enough, everything and nothing, courts death with the slowing breath in his lungs, with the poisoned blood in his ears and everyone, everyone knows Tony Stark, but no one does, and he likes it that way, that’s what he wants, he’s always wanted it, of course he has, and if no one taps on Iron Man’s mask and says, come on out, Tony, we miss you, we need you, that’s good, that’s perfect, why would they, they’re right.

He has one shot, doesn’t he, to be someone else (and he says, “genius billionaire playboy philanthropist” because of course he does, what choice does he have—)

Forty-one and he wants, desperately, achingly, in the suit and out of it, saves lives and days and stops breaking hearts because he can’t help it, because he’s been there, now, because everybody knows Tony Stark, difficult, asshole, except maybe Tony Stark himself. He’s two people, three on days when it suits him, pours eccentricity into coffee cups and spins it all out across his workshop table and Steve, light hair catching sunlight and little wings on the side of his head and yeah, Tony’s brilliant, he’s always been brilliant and it’s useless, isn’t it, always.

“I trust you,” Steve says, and Tony’s not sure if it’s to him or Iron Man (but that’s hope tightening in his chest, feather soft, wings on the side of a helmet, and isn’t that just—)

Forty-two and he’s tired, bone-deep, skin-thick, and everything works and nothing does and who cares if everyone knows Tony Stark or not, because everyone knows Iron Man, knows the Avengers, and half the time it’s clean-up and no dares be a critic, so everyone is. His workshop’s cut raw, strangled, too much time and too little space and Tony builds circuit boards in his dreams, runs for the bleachers, four years old and fifteen and standing at his father’s funeral in the tattered rags of someone else’s expectations and he wakes up gasping, sweatsoaked, to Jarvis letting the light in through the windows, Steve’s hands on his shoulders and he breathes in once, twice, three times—

“Morning,” Steve says, and Tony doesn’t speak, shouldn’t, can’t, but Steve hears him, doesn’t he, somehow (and Tony doesn't know the rules, still, not ever, but hey, as it turns out, he can build them).

avengers fic: variable skill sets [steve/tony, pg]

2011-10-20T02:21:03Z

Oh, god. So, uh, I've actually been working on the fics I'm supposed to be working on like a good girl, and then today was crap and I asked folks for Steve/Tony prompts on my tumblr, because I'm nuts and that's how I blow off steam. And this was supposed to be a DRABBLE, guys, okay, I don't know what HAPPENED, I really...don't even know what else to say. I have a sickness; I am beyond help.

Title: Variable Skill Sets
Pairing: Steve/Tony [hinted Pepper/Natasha]
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 4,000
Author's Note: Y'all can read this as being in the same 'verse as Ready, Fire, Aim, or not; to be honest, I haven't decided myself if it is or isn't.
Summary: In which Captain America can do (almost) anything, and Tonk Stark has daddy issues--who's surprised?

When it happens, they're in Macy's.

Well…Tony calls it Macy's, anyway. Steve's not so sure that's really where they are; he'd been to Macy's once, as a kid, snuck around the place with Bucky at his heels. It hadn't been logical--it wasn't like the two of them, flat broke and ten years old, were going to find anything to take home--but Bucky tended to get antsy and Steve tended to get defensive, and both of them, left to their own devices, tended to get in trouble. The chance to ride the subway somewhere (so new, then; it's strange for Steve to ride the trains now, crusted over and often smelling faintly of urine, so much faster than they once were) was a novelty in and of itself, one their mothers encouraged them to save up for, if only to keep them from coming home with bruised faces and bloody knuckles.

The train fare alone cleaned them out, Steve remembers, and Bucky'd stolen a tin of pomade before they left. They'd gotten into a huge fight about it afterwards--Steve, even at ten, had Not Approved of stealing--but he'd found the tin, long since empty, in Bucky's camp pack after he died. Other than his shield, it's the only personal effect that survived the crash and subsequent deep freeze. Tony keeps offering to try to track down legitimate memorabilia, relics scavenged from his old apartment, but Steve figures he's got the important things.

The point being, they're at a store, and Tony says it's Macy's, and the signs say it's Macy's, and the televisions say it's Macy's, and the employee aprons say it's Macy's, and the building's in the right place, but…but…

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't always this," Steve pauses, looking for the right word, "…much."

"Are you having a culture shock moment here?" Tony says, flicking his sunglasses down to peer at him in what he'd certainly deny is worry. "Is that what's happening? Because, look, do I want to find Pepper a birthday present, yes, yes I do, I definitely do, it'll be the first time in ten years I've remembered--hey, hey, don't look at me like that, I get busy, she gets busy, we have an understanding! Only Natasha said she'd pull my spleen out through my ear if I made her buy a present for herself from me again, Steve I said stop looking at me like that--"

"Looking at you like what?"

"Like you're judging me," Tony says, and flicks his sunglasses back up. "I can tell, you know, you have a whole look you get when--oh, wait, sorry, point was, I want to buy Pepper a present, but I've got a whole staff for that, so if you want to go-- "

"I don't want to go," Steve says, and, after a second, takes mercy and gives Tony a smile. "And I'm not judging you, except maybe about the spleen thing."

Tony grins back, enthusiasm and relief and something Steve can't put his finger on tangled up in the expression, and, god, that's so like Tony; he talks enough for six people, and half of it doesn't make sense, but his face always tells the truth.

"Not all of us are genetically enhanced super soldiers," Tony says, and grabs Steve's arm to steer him. "I bet you don't even have a spleen--you probably don't have an appendix either, or you shouldn't, they're both useless--well, the spleen's less useless than the appendix, you know if you just repositioned a few organs and scrapped the ones that don't matter you'd have room for the kind of nonsense Wolverine has going on? I mean, assuming it wouldn't kill you, you'd have to be…well, Wolverine, I guess. I should point out that I mean the general you, not you personally."

"Are you expecting me to follow this?" Steve says, grinning at the back of Tony's head. "Or are you just talking to hear your own voice?"

"Little of both," Tony admits. "Hey, while we're on the topic of you, personally: are you, personally, going to have some kind of modesty induced seizure if I take you into the lingerie section?"

"You're going to buy Pepper lingerie?" Steve says, feeling himself blush on the word, and Tony stops and looks at him like he's crazy.

"Hello," he says, "Natasha, spleen, did you miss that, not to mention Pepper herself, not to mention you, don't think I don't know that you get jealous, I totally know that. No, of course not, I'm going to buy her a pair of very expensive shoes, she already sent me the details on the ones she wants, they're very nice, I've got great taste. There's just, uh, some things I'd like to…look at."

"Is this going to be like the time," Steve says, and can't finish that sentence. The time he's recalling had involved both garters and orgasms; he'd enjoyed it a lot more than he'd wanted to, but it's not exactly something to bring up in public.

"Yes," Tony says firmly, "exactly like that."

"Maybe I'll just…meet you," Steve says faintly, "in, uh. Another place. That isn't where you're going. Not that I don't, um, approve of where you're going. Oh, god, Tony, please don't make me talk about this."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Tony says, with a wicked grin that means he is, indeed, going to make Steve talk about it. Probably on the drive home. Steve is glad they opted out of having Happy drive them; he wouldn't want to subject the poor man to that.

Well. He wouldn't want to subject the poor man to that again.

"Right," Steve says, and shifts a little. People are starting to stare at them; that's been happening a lot more, lately, when they're together. He figures it's got something to do with the gossip columns, all of which are determined to get the scoop on their hot gay romance. "People are looking, you know."

"Let 'em look," Tony says, and leans up to kiss the side of Steve's cheek. "Page six thinks we're getting married next week, and Us Weekly thinks I'm using you as a cover while I hit on Billy Zane--which doesn't make sense on a lot of levels, but whatever--and I think People's just really confused. Or thinks I'm a flirt. Or something."

"You are a flirt," Steve says, but fondly.

"You won't be saying that after you see what I'm buying," Tony says. He wiggles his eyebrows, and Steve takes a clear step away from him, because the alternative is giving the people a show. "Aww. Killjoy. But fine, you can be that way, I see how it is, you've maybe got a point, I'll be over on this side. You should try that way, I think there's menswear and maybe a bookstore? God, I haven't been here in years, call me if you need anything."

And then he's gone, weaving through the crowd that's forming in that way he has, all smiles and genuine-looking interest until you blink and he's vanished entirely.

Steve grins after him until he realizes it looks dopey. Then he ducks around a corner, pulls out the baseball cap he always keeps tucked up next to his shield, and slips back out into the store in relative anonymity.

He's not entirely sure how he ends up in kitchen appliances, except that it's the least crowded and everything is kind of fascinating in its uselessness. He's looking askance at a sandwich crust remover--which, just, why, what is this obsession with creating things that serve only one purpose, why can't people just use a knife--when he feels a tug on his pantleg.

Horrifyingly, he only just manages to keep himself from kicking out; he's been to enough fights where the enemy comes up out of the sewers, thanks. When he looks down, though, there's a little boy, maybe four or five, staring up at him with wide eyes.

"Are you Captain 'merica?" the child asks, and Steve smiles.

"Uh. Well, yes. Yes I am."

He's not sure what he's expecting, really--usually when people ask that question, they follow it up with "Can I have your autograph?" or "Did you really punch Hitler in the face?" or, lately, "Are you really dating Tony Stark?"

What he's not expecting, at all, is for the child to throw himself on the floor and burst into tears, screaming, "I want my MOMMY!"

"Oh my god," says Steve, staring. The noise is terrible, scrapes every nerve in his body the wrong way--he wants to make it stop at once, feels awful that it's still happening, but has no idea how. He remembers holding babies in Brooklyn as a teenager, mostly in an oh-Steve-look-you-are-breathing-and-over-the-age-of-seven-and-have-hands kind of way. Bucky was always better at it, knew how to bounce them and rock them to keep them happy; Steve tended to end up with spit-up down his shirt.

But this isn't even a baby, it's a…toddler, or whatever the stage is between toddler and, and, and human, and oh, dear, that's not a charitable thought.

"Um," says Steve, "can I…help you? Uh. Maybe your Mommy is…here somewhere…although I guess she'd probably have heard you. Um."

"She lost me," the kid wails, "I was s'pposed to stay close and I didn' an' she lost me!"

On second thought, this kid kind of reminds him of Tony.

"You should always stay with a grownup," Steve says, which is very wise advice. The kid stops crying long enough to look up at him with doubting eyes.

"You're mean," he decides. "I hate you."

And then he bursts into tears again.

This is…oh, god. This is really beyond Steve's ability to process, and that in and of itself is horrifying. He is Captain America; he should not be reduced to helplessness by a child's tears. He has fought Nazis and invading alien armies and the Norse god of mischief; he has outsmarted Tony Stark in the bedroom; he could probably bench press a Mac truck if he ever felt the inclination and oh god he's still crying, maybe Steve can offer him an autograph or, or an ice cream or--

"Steven," comes a familiar voice, and oh, Jesus, there's Tony, looking at him like he's Christmas come early. "Is it too much to ask that you stay out of trouble? God, I've always wanted to say that to you."

"Iron Man!" the kid says, "you're Iron Man and I want my mommy--"

"Uh-huh," says Tony, raising his eyebrows. He crouches down, takes off his sunglasses and looks the kid in the eye. "Between you and me--and you're gonna wanna take this from someone who knows spoiled brat inside and out, believe me, every last trick in the book, I invented them--those crocodile tears could use some serious work."

"He's…he's lost," Steve says, feeling fairly lost himself. "What are you--"

"Yeah, that's a good one," Tony says fondly. The kid has stopped crying and is looking at him warily; Tony gives him a grin. "Milk a stranger for all they're worth to shut you up, plus the guilt from whoever you ditched when they find you--they catch on eventually, though, buddy, can't really pull that trick more than once or twice without ending up on a leash--not that that ever happened to me, Steve, not a word, not even a guess, don't even think about it."

"I'm not," Steve says at once, and then narrows his eyes. "Wait. Wait. Do you mean that--"

"Played you," Tony says, nodding, "like a sad, sad guitar." The kid is scowling next to him, lower lip stuck out, hands crossed over his chest; he looks older, now that he's not screaming. "Not bad, either--what were you trying to get, an autograph or what?"

The kid mumbles something under his breath; Tony's face freezes for a second, and then he laughs so loud he nearly falls over.

"His shield," he chokes, "oh, man, tell you what, you're a crazy little brat, but you've got ambition. You want a job in--you're, what, six, seven? So ten years or so, give Stark Industries a call, tell whoever you get this story. They always patch the crazies up to me anyway, they think it's a riot, I'll give you an internship for your trouble."

"Rather have the shield," the kid mutters--no lisp this time, Jesus, Steve's been taken by a child, this is humiliating--and Tony grins.

"Yeah, wouldn't we all," he says. "Cap kinda needs it to fight crime, though, and also seriously he never puts it down, I've got a lot more chances at it than you do and I've never even come close, do you know how much vibranium that is, one chunk--"

"Drop it, Tony," Steve warns, and Tony just grins at him.

"Don't think I will," he says. "Maybe I'll just cry, who knew that was the key to turning you into a giant sap--"

"Tony."

"Oh, fine," Tony says, and rolls his eyes. "You got a name, kid?"

"Malcolm," the kid admits at length, and Tony nods, sticks out his hand. The kid reaches out to shake it at once, and something shifts in Tony's face; for a second he looks sad, but it's gone again before Steve can figure out why.

"Well, Malcolm," he says, "I'm Tony, and Cap over there goes by Steve when he's not in costume. I'm gonna go ahead and hazard a guess that you're not really lost; think we can maybe give you an escort to whoever it is you left in the lurch? They're probably worried sick."

"Doubt it," Malcolm mutters, and there's that look on Tony's face again; Steve hates it.

"Well," Tony starts, but he doesn't have the chance to finish; a man rounds the corner just then, wearing what looks to be a half-finished suit. His eyes focus on Malcolm, and he barrels forward, waving his hands.

"There you are," he snaps, "how hard is it to stay out of trouble for ten minutes, I swear to god, do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to have to tell a goddamn shopclerk that you've lost your kid--"

"Sorry," Malcolm says, not sounding it. Tony's eyes are narrowed so far they're practically slits; his hands are shaking a little, but they do that a lot anyway, he really needs to sleep more.

"Yeah, well," the man starts, and then he seems to realize who he's standing next to. His eyes widen, and he straightens up so fast Steve wants to wince for his spine. "Oh. Oh. My wife said she'd heard you were here, but I thought--but clearly you are here, Christ, where are my manners, I'm Tom and this is--"

"Malcolm," Tony says, cold. "Yeah, we've met."

"Right," Tom says, "right, of course you have, of course, you're--well, thank you so much for keeping an eye on him, I'm so sorry about him, he's just a little wild man, aren't you, buddy?"

"Whatever," says Malcolm, at the same time Tony says, "He wasn't any trouble."

"He was a little bit of trouble," Steve mutters, low enough that only Tony can hear him, and Tony makes a soft snorting noise before elbowing him in the side.

"I really can't thank you enough," Tom says, and he's babbling now; Steve normally feels awkward when people get starstruck around him, like he's done something wrong, but he's not a huge fan of this guy. "Really, anything I can do to repay you--"

"How 'bout taking your kid for an ice cream and asking him why he runs away from you in stores?" Tony snaps, eyes flashing. "Do a lot more good, wouldn't it? Maybe it's escaped your attention, you seem like a busy guy, I could see how that would happen, but I'm not exactly a man who needs repaying. Now, you want to go into what kind of man you are--"

"Tony," Steve says, quiet. Tony's mouth snaps shut at once, and he looks away, swallows visibly. Tom looks…well, like Steve would expect anyone to look after a dressing down from a celebrity.

He's not really feeling a lot of pity.

"Right," Tony says, "well, we've got things to do, places to be, crimes to fight--no, wait." He pulls the sunglasses off his head, hands them out to Malcolm. "It's not Cap's shield, but I think you could rock 'em--or sell them on eBay, what do I care, I've got others. And try to keep out of trouble, okay? Stark Industries isn't big on criminal records."

"And…always stay with a grownup," Steve adds. It's just as lame the second time, but it at least wipes the sour expression off Tony's face; he rolls his eyes at Steve, warm and exasperated.

"Yeah, that too, what the hell," he says. "Nice meeting you, kid."

"Bye, Tony!" Malcolm calls as they walk away, sounding much more enthusiastic than he had when talking to his father. "Bye, Cap-I-mean-Steve!"

"Bye," Steve says, waving over his shoulder. Tony flashes a peace sign and then books it around the corner, fast enough that it takes Steve a second to catch up with him. "Hey, slow down--you're not trying to ditch me, are you?"

"That was an excellent use of a 21st century word right there," Tony says, giving him an incredibly fake smile. "Seriously, you deserve a reward or something, and actually I got you a reward, all of my business here is done, I got Pepper's shoes and, uh, the other thing, should probably stop and buy another pair of sunglasses, they've got a decent selection here, maybe you should buy them, that seems fair--"

"Sometimes I wonder how you breathe when you talk," Steve says, light, and Tony's smile firms up a little bit.

"Circular breathing," he says, winking. "Comes in handy other times too, in case you haven't noticed."

Steve feels himself blush, but only a little; he's used to this side of Tony by now, for all it threw him at first. "Yeah, maybe once or twice. You okay?"

"Fine," Tony says. He waves a hand, doesn't meet Steve's eyes. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Steve decides to try a different tack. "You're good with kids."

"Yeah, well, someone has to be, you're bad enough with them for both of us, who knew?" He glances sidelong at Steve, and then sighs and tucks his hands in his pockets. "It's not exactly a skill, you know. They're just, you know, smallish people; pay some attention, talk to them like adults, and they love you. It's not rocket science--which, incidentally, is a skill that I actually have, if we're talking skills I can go all day--"

"Yeah, Tony, I know," Steve says. He lets enough warmth slip into his voice that Tony trips a little bit on his next step; no one but Steve would've noticed it, but Steve's learned to look by now. His left hand slips out of his pocket and Steve steps close, threads his fingers through Tony's. People are already talking; there's not any real harm in giving them something to talk about.

"I used to play that game with my nannies," Tony says after awhile. They're at the door--he's apparently decided to forgo the sunglasses--but he hasn't let go of Steve's hand. "Used to freak them right out--which, I mean, of course it did, they were probably afraid they were gonna get fired, god, I was a little asshole--but then I tried it with my dad one time. Spent an hour wandering around, he didn't even notice I was gone."

This is one of the strangest things about dating Tony; it's hard for Steve, sometimes, to reconcile the Howard Stark he knew and liked with this jackass Tony remembers. It's not that he can't see how Howard would have grown up into the person Tony's occasionally sketched out for him, cold and unfeeling--hell, that part of it is all too easy, he was always a little on the chilly side--but…well. Steve kind of wishes he'd hated Howard when he knew him, or at least disliked him. His memories of the man are all fond, and that feels wrong, since most of Tony's aren't.

Plus, there's the fact that he'd apparently ignored Tony most of his life. Steve can't even fathom how that would be possible; Tony is, if nothing else, very hard to ignore.

"I'd miss you if you abandoned me to the wildness of modern shopping," Steve says, because he's got to say something. "And then sign over my life's savings to a six year old, apparently. It's probably for the best you got over the habit."

"Yeah," Tony says, distant. After a minute his eyes refocus, and he squeezes Steve's hand, favors him with a real smile. "Yeah, man, you wanna talk about how Captain America got taken by a kid, because you're supposed to make people feel safe on the streets and stuff, but you know what? I'm on the street with you right now, and after that, I'm not sure I feel safe--"

"You're Iron Man," Steve says, "I think you can probably protect yourself, in the event of a crisis."

Tony makes the little motion that means preening, but there's gratitude on his face; Steve sighs, because he's in love with a basket case and there's no clear end in sight.

"You know me," Tony says, "'Crisis Management' is my middle name."

"Thought it was 'Trouble,'" says Steve, as Tony presses the button to unlock the doors of the sleek silver convertible he parked illegally. There's a ticket on the windshield; Steve looks away so he won't actually see Tony shred it. "Or 'Going To Get Towed By New York's Finest One of These Days.'"

"The cops in this city love me," Tony says, releasing a handful of ticket confetti--littering, says the voice in Steve's head that keeps a running tally of Tony's crimes against society--"and, anyway, I've got other cars."

"I changed my mind," Steve says, "your middle name is obviously 'Gross Excess.'"

Tony just laughs, turning the music up too loud as he pulls them out into traffic. Steve doesn't know the song--he almost never does, except when Tony makes a specific effort to accommodate him--but it's not the hair-raising, earsplitting stuff he plays when he's in a bad way. Steve figures they're probably out of the woods on that front, and settles back against the seat to feel the whip of wind against his face.

Just in case, though, he turns his head towards Tony after a minute. "Edward."

"What?"

"Anthony Edward Stark," Steve clarifies. "That's your full name, in case you forgot--Pepper says you think your social security number is five, so I thought maybe you'd want the reminder."

Tony stares at him, long enough and hard enough that he nearly rear-ends the taxi in front of them. He swears and stops the car with a loud screech of breaks, and before Steve knows what's happening, Tony's mouth is on his, soft, open. Steve kisses back, because he can't help it, sometimes, with Tony; for all his neuroses, he makes himself easy to indulge. He threads his hand into Tony's hair and drags him down, traffic be damned, and focuses on Tony's breath in his mouth until a horn distracts them.

"Yeah, fuck you too, hotshot," Tony yells, gasping a little, but he puts his foot on the gas all the same. To Steve, he says, "By the way, my social security number is five; try not to steal my identity or anything."

"Better keep an eye on me, then," Steve says. He closes his eyes against the wind to the sound of Tony's laughter, warm and close.

avengers fic: ready, fire, aim (steve/tony, nc-17) [1/3]

2011-10-17T02:34:47Z

Right, so, I'm sorry this isn't Brewski, here's what happened: I saw the Avengers trailer (which you might want to watch before you read this, because, um). And then I, uh, more or less blacked out and wrote 21,000 words in five days? I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO TELL YOU GUYS, this was a complete accident.

Massive, impossible, mind-numbing amounts of thanks to: wheres_walnut for tolerating me, foxxcub for letting me spam her inbox, sheafrotherdon for waging the good war against my fascination with italics, and, of course, postcardmystery, who literally read every word of this story as it was written and coaxed me through to the end. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST. ♥

Title: Ready, Fire, Aim
Pairing: Steve/Tony [Pepper/Natasha, past Tony/Pepper]
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 21,000 (WEEPING FOR MY SANITY, WHAT)
Summary: There's no "I" in "Avenger."

Tony leaves the meeting before he’s supposed to—because he is a busy man and he has things to do and anyone who has a problem with that can just shut their mouths, can’t they—without saying goodbye to anyone. He stalks down the hall and into the elevator and out of the lobby and up to the car (where Happy is courteous enough to let him slam his own door) and fumes the whole ride over to Stark Tower. He sketches out schematics for two new models of repulsor boots and a pocket water filtration system on the back of a napkin—he’s nothing outside of the suit, is he, well fine, he’ll show that frosted-over Americana has-been douchebag--and gets out of the car in a whirlwind of irritation and almost-but-not-quite falling on his face.

“Those curbs’ll sneak up on you, boss,” Happy says, a hand on Tony’s elbow to steady him, his face perfectly straight.

Tony doesn’t pitch a fit in the middle of the street, but only because Happy keeps a chart for that kind of shit and Tony’s over his quota for the month. He turns on his heel and marches inside instead, eyes narrowed, and rides the elevator 40 floors up.

“Where’s Pepper?” he demands, when he gets to her office to find it empty. Her secretary—small and competent and utterly unimpressed by him, why is everyone so unimpressed with Tony today, Tony is a very impressive person—sighs.

“She’s in the conference room, Mr. Stark,” she says, “but you can’t—”

“Nope, nope, I can, my building, it’s fine,” says Tony, and he dodges the woman, strides down the hall, throws open the conference room doors, and clears his throat.

“Captain America," he says, "is a dick.”

Then he notices the table full of investors.

“Uh,” says Tony, “wow, okay. Uh. Well then. Good morning--is it morning? It's hard to tell in the whole, you know, basement of doom they've got going on at--uh, nevermind. Right, so, great to see everyone, any chance I can convince you this was a training exercise?"

Pepper sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose, and waves a hand in Tony’s general direction.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “Tony Stark.”

--

Tony goes home—well, no. It’s not home, is it, it’s just a mansion that he happens to own and have spent significant portions of his childhood in. It’s his father’s house, looks and feels and, impossibly, even kind of smells like him, and Tony wishes again that he’d had the place renovated years ago, instead of waiting until it looked like he’d be spending a fair amount of time in New York. As it is, the workshop and his bedroom are safe, and the rest of the place is either under construction or far too full of memories to set foot in.

So: pissed off investors, residence in the House of Insecurities Past, and Pepper on the warpath, all for a team of superheroes led by a guy who doesn’t even like him. Great. Fantastic. Tony’s life is so awesome.

“Jarvis,” he says, “the playlist from last week, you know the one, crank it,” and goes downstairs to be a brilliant innovative billionaire genius prodigy amazing human being where no one can bother him.

Which works, until someone decides to bother him.

“Sir,” comes Jarvis’s voice, crisp over the sound of Highway to Hell blasting from every speaker in the house, “there is a Captain Rogers is at the front door. I believe he would like to see you, though he reacted rather badly when I asked him to state the purpose for his knocking.”

Tony grins, getting a little bit of perverse pleasure out of that fact; he laughs outright when Jarvis pulls up the security footage of Steve jumping about a foot in the air and whipping around, looking for the source of the voice.

“Dick,” says Tony vindictively, and Jarvis makes a noise that, if he wasn’t an AI, would be a sigh.

“Yes, sir,” he says, “so you’ve said. Several times, in fact. Would you like me to send him away?”

Tony opens his mouth to say “Yes,” and, surprisingly, what comes out is, “No.” Puzzled, he tries again, and produces, “Yeah, no, don’t, I’ll get it, it’s fine, thanks—the Armanis are in the closet in the far wing, right? Wait, where did I put those sunglasses, I need the sunglasses, don’t let him leave.”

Ten minutes later, he opens the door in a pair of Armani trousers, a hand-tailored button down left open over this morning’s Black Sabbath tee, no shoes, and mirrored sunglasses. Even to himself, he has no explanation for this behavior.

Steve focuses on the lack of shoes, because of course he does.

“You rang?” says Tony, ignoring the furrow-browed look of confusion Steve is giving his feet. “Did you want something, or is this some kind of weird 40s hazing thing? You stand on my porch looking confused until I, what, try to fight you for dominance or something, and then there’s like, uh, brass bands and shit, that was the 40s, right—“

“Stark,” says Steve, and Tony hates that, hates it, “What are you talking about?”

“I live here,” Tony snaps, “and I’m busy, I’m allowed to not make sense if I want to. What do you want?”

“Oh,” Steve says. He winces, and then actually flushes a little, puts a hand to the back of his neck. Tony would be endeared despite himself, except that this guy is a tool. “I, uh. Well, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. And since we are going to be…well, teammates, I guess, I thought maybe we should…work on it.”

“You came all the way out here to apologize?” Tony says. “Have they not taught you to use the phone, like normal people?”

“I’m not apologizing!” Steve snaps, and then visibly reigns himself in. “No, you know what, I am apologizing. I’m sorry. I’m just…not adjusting all that well, I guess, and then there’s you, and you look a lot like--”

“Get out of my house,” Tony says, instinctive, automatic, before he can finish that comparison.

Steve jerks back, stunned, and then narrows his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Tony says. “Look, Rogers, you want teammates or whatever, fine, great, you’ve got a whole gaggle of SHIELD cronies waiting to bust out their guitars and sing Kumbaya with you, have fun, but I told you, I don’t play well with others, okay? So you and your…apology or whatever, you can just go, I don’t need you to do me any fucking favors.”

Steve stares at him with his mouth open for a long minute. Then he says, “What’re you—no, you know what, I don’t care. Fine. If that’s the way you want this to be, that’s just fine with me. Have a lovely evening, Mr. Stark.”

“Fine!” says Tony. “Good! Great! I will!”

“And turn down that racket,” Steve yells over his shoulder, storming down the stairs, “I can hear it from all the way up the street!”

“AC/DC IS NOT RACKET,” Tony…well, yeah, okay, he screams it, before slamming the door on Steve’s rapidly retreating back.

“I believe that could have gone better, sir,” says Jarvis.

“Captain America is a dick,” says Tony, “and I want that written on my fucking tombstone.”

--

Of course, Murphy’s law being what it is, the next thing Tony does is save the stupid bastard’s life.

It’s not even supposed to be a mission, not really. Tony knows from the encrypted emails he certainly hasn’t been hacking that it’s a more of a training thing, meant to see how well the Avengers function as a team. They’re just supposed to be doing recon, but trouble follows Tony everywhere, so it’s a full-scale melee within fifteen minutes, bullets ricocheting wildly. Tony isn’t really fighting, just snatching civilians from the street and depositing them on nearby rooftops—Clint’s firing a crossbow with terrifying accuracy, Hulk’s all Hulked out, Natasha is doing her circus acrobat of death thing, and Steve’s more or less playing human bowling with his shield as the ball.

Thor, being Thor, is smashing people in the face with the hammer and laughing about it. He’s Tony’s favorite, really.

Anyway, the point is, Tony shouldn’t even be in any position to save Steve’s life; he should be punching someone in the face, or blasting someone with the repulsors, or doing something useful. But, as it happens, he’s on a rooftop, so he sees the grenade being thrown behind Steve’s back that no one else notices, sees the gasoline leaking out from a shot-through Toyota, puts one and two together to makes explosion with the ease of long practice.

Tony would like to think that, while he doesn’t like Captain America, he’s above wanting to see him blown up, and that’s why he does it. He’d like to think that, but the truth is much less flattering—he just sees the eventuality of it all and acts without thinking about it. He's as surprised to find himself with an armful of all-American hero as, presumably, Steve is to find himself in the air.

“What the hell is your problem,” Steve yells, struggling until Tony drops him unceremoniously on a balcony, “you can’t just—”

The explosion cuts him off, rocks the whole street, and Steve looks down, blinks, and visibly puts the dots together. “Oh,” he says, “I…oh. Uh. Thank you.”

Tony sneers, remembers he’s got the mask down, and settles for waving a hand instead. “Just a guy in a suit, remember?” he says, and doesn’t wait around for Steve’s scowl.

--

He takes Pepper to an expensive dinner, a seven course dinner, with the wine and the little fork and the works, and she doesn’t even have the decency to wait for the cheese plate before she says, “Tony, just tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Oh no,” Pepper says, pointing her fork at him, “don’t you try that with me, either you’ve wrecked the company—“

“Why is it always that? Why do you always think I’m going to wreck the company, you run the company and anyway I’ve only done that, what, two, three, four times—“

“Six times, you’ve nearly wrecked the company six times that I know about, and if it’s not that then you’ve murdered someone—“

“Pepper--“

“Or you’ve developed some kind of emotional attachment—“

“Don’t say emotional attachment, god, now I’ve said it, I'm going to break out in hives—“

“Or you’re trying to get us started again,” Pepper finishes, taking a sip of her wine, “which, as we both know, would be a terrible idea.”

“But not worse than if I murdered someone, right?” Tony says, and is a little horrified to discover it comes out as an honest question. “I mean, obviously the murder would be worse, which I didn’t, you know, do, nobody’s been murdered and I’m not trying to sleep with you again, you can rest easy and stop looking at me like that—Pepper. Can’t I just, you know, take a friend out for a meal?”

Something soften almost imperceptibly in Pepper’s face; Tony only recognizes it from years of watching her, trying to figure her out. He smiles, grateful for it, and she smiles back, and Tony loves her for liking him still, even after he turned out to be a predictable train wreck of a boyfriend.

“You don’t have to try so hard, you know,” she says.

“You say that,” Tony says, “I hear the words coming out of your mouth, I do, I hear them, there they went, but if I showed up at your office with a pizza you’d CEO me right on out of there.”

Pepper laughs. “CEO isn’t a verb, Tony.”

“Then you’re not doing it right.”

“Is that so?”

“Am I awful to work with?” says Tony, which isn’t what he means to say at all. For a long moment he seriously considers covering his mouth with his hand, like that’ll force the words back inside of it; then he winces, over-exaggerated, trying to play it off.

Pepper lowers her fork, raises her eyebrows.

“Oh, Tony,” she says, which, really, is answer enough.

--

It turns out that, while Steve doesn't like Tony, Captain America gets on great with Iron Man. Tony should probably have seen that one coming; one of the problems with having a second identity, regardless of said identity's utter lack of secrecy, is that it makes it easy for people to draw a dividing line. Nick Fury had done it--"Iron Man yes, Tony Stark not recommended," god, that was never going to stop rubbing him the wrong way--and Steve is clearly, visibly, doing it too. Never mind that all the good Iron Man does is because Tony is, you know, running the show; Iron Man gets smiles and camaraderie and "Nice work, buddy," and Tony gets flat looks and carefully maintained distance.

Which is fine, really. Two can absolutely play at that game.

Iron Man and Captain America save the day in Bloomington, then Queens, then Spokane; Tony and Steve snipe across the table and avoid each other's eyes. Iron Man and Captain America grace the cover of Time Magazine, arms over each other's shoulders; Tony and Steve sit in the car together in stony, frozen silence. Iron Man and Captain America fight together, fly together, banter easily over criminal's heads together; Tony and Steve, if at all possible, don't even breathe the same air.

"You're being ridiculous," Pepper tells him from LA, her voice fond and exasperated. Tony misses her; the house is echoing, empty, and he hasn't slept in a couple of days. In his exhaustion he's taken to cleaning out the place himself, separating items into "keep," "donate somewhere," and "burn, for they reek too much of my father," and it would be nice to have Pepper bursting in and out, yelling at him to sign things, to eat.

"I'm always ridiculous," Tony says, digging through a box in his father's study. "That's like the whole point of me, Pep, where you been?"

"Running your company, maybe?" Pepper says. Tony can hear the smile. "Honestly, Tony, you could just talk to him."

"And say what? 'Sorry you only like me when I'm encased in metal, I'll try to work on being encased in metal more?' I'd like to think I'm above groveling."

Pepper snorts, and Tony scowls.

"I said I'd like to think that, you could let me think that, that would be a…kindness…"

He stops talking, because the piece of paper in his hands--yellowed, curling at the edges--demands all of his attention. He stares at it, mouth open, until Pepper says, "Tony? Tony, are you there?"

"No," says Tony, "I mean, yeah. I, uh, something came up, I'll call you back, okay?"

"Tony," Pepper starts, but Tony reaches out and pushes the button on his tablet to end the call, then holds the worn paper up to the light.

It's a photograph, which is strange in and of itself. Howard Stark was not a sentimental man by any estimation, rarely kept mementos. What's stopped Tony in his tracks, though, is the content of the picture--it's Steve, looking exactly as he did three hours ago, with an arm around Howard's shoulders. There's a man on Steve's left, shorter, with dark hair, leaning into him and laughing, and behind them a motley crew of guys in Army greens.

"Me and the HC, '43," is scrawled across the back in Howard's familiar handwriting, and Tony knows, knows in his bones, that he can't just burn this.

He doesn't sleep again, but it's not like that's anything to worry about.

--

Tony waits for Steve outside the meeting, trying not to look like he's loitering suspiciously. He fails; Natasha gives him the evil eye, Clint circles him warily before walking away, and Coulson sends him a text message that says, "Still looking for an excuse to taze you and watch Supernanny; think twice, Stark."

Thor claps him on the shoulder, leans down, peers at him, and grins. "You look tired, my friend. Were we in Asgard, I would invite you to my bath; I believe you would find it most relaxing."

"This is why you're my favorite," Tony sighs, because yeah, okay, you know what, Tony mostly doesn't think of Thor like that, but the mental image of him in the bath is definitely going to help him through the day.

"Truly, your kindness knows no bounds," Thor says, and Tony laughs.

"Oh, no, believe me, it knows bounds. Intimately, even--look, buddy, I've gotta talk to Steve real quick and I think he's coming, do you mind--"

"Oh!" says Thor, and then, in a complete departure from sanity, actually winks at Tony. "I will leave you to your task, my friend. May luck be with you this day!"

"…Um," says Tony. "Right. Thanks?"

Thor nods cheerfully and ambles away, which turns out to be perfect timing; Tony has half a second to recover from that little display of before Steve rounds the corner.

"Hey," Tony says, "hey, Rogers, wait up."

Steve turns, stops, flushes faintly and frowns at Tony. Typical.

"Stark. Did you need something? I thought we'd settled the strategy for the next mission, but if you'd rather--"

"No," Tony says, waving a hand, "no, no, we're good, covered that and recovered it and covered it again, I'm all set. I just. Uh. Here."

He shoves the photograph at Steve with absolutely no grace, and winces internally. He's got more poise than this normally, he knows it, he's witnessed himself in action first-hand and he's downright charming, but for whatever reason Steve seems to shut down the normal interaction part of his brain.

Of course, then Steve looks down at the photograph and back up at Tony, and there are actual fucking tears in his eyes. Tony is more than sure that, even at his best, he wouldn't know how to deal with this; thus, he resorts to an old, faithful strategy, and panics.

"Oh, Jesus," he says, "look, I know I'm not your…favorite person or whatever, you don't like me, I get it, fine, but please don't--oh, god, just don't, don't cry, okay, because then I'll have made Captain America cry and I do not want Coulson to watch Supernanny while I drool, don't, please don't, I just figured you might want it, I swear I didn't do it on purpose would you stop that--"

"I'm not crying," Steve says, blinking hastily. Then, softer, "Where did you get this?"

"You know the guy in the middle who looks like me was my father, right?" says Tony, who is really going to have to work on his filtering skills. "That's registered for you, hasn't it?"

Steve doesn't take the bait. He just nods, still blinking, and Tony sighs.

"I'm just…cleaning house. Trying to get rid of his shit, donating it, burning it, whatever, and I just thought--"

"You're burning Howard's things?"

"Burning them," Tony says, waving a hand, "throwing them in the ocean, bathing them in acid, whichever you like. Getting rid of them, that's the point. The last thing I need is more memories of my old man, I'm full up, thanks."

Steve looks back down at the photo and doesn't say anything for a long time. Tony's bracing himself for a punch in the face or something--it'd be about part for the course, given their history--when Steve clears his throat and says, "I…thank you. He was my friend."

"Well, lucky you," Tony snaps, furious suddenly. "He was my father; I didn't get that luxury."

He turns to go, so fucking done with good deeds for today that he could kill something, and he's almost made it to the door at the end of the hall when Steve says, "Hey, Tony?"

And really it's probably just that it's the first time Steve has called him anything but "Stark," or maybe the tone in his voice--wondering and unsure, less hostile than it always is--but Tony feels something warm unfurl in the pit of his stomach as he turns.

"Yeah?"

"What was he like?" Steve's still looking down at the photo, but his voice carries. "I mean…later. After I knew him. As a…well, as a father, I guess."

Tony stands very, very still, swallows against the sudden constriction is his throat. It shouldn't sideswipe him, that question; he's answered it in interviews enough times, has practiced his smooth delivery in the mirror, never stumbles over it in public. Steve looks up at him, though, eyes still wet despite his efforts, piercing blue even at this distance, and honesty wells up in Tony like a floodgate is breaking.

"Disappointed," he says finally, and runs.

--

Moving the Avengers into Tony's mansion is a complete accident, and, like most things currently going wrong in Tony's life, is also completely Steve's fault.

It starts with a dressing down for the rest of the team that is, if Tony might says so himself, hilarious. It turns out Fury's been keeping all of them housed in SHIELD headquarters, which, hey, Tony could have told him that was a bad idea, but whatever, the explosion is worth watching. Clint has apparently been camping out in the drop ceilings, waiting for people to scare--"It's practice," he protests, hands in the air, when Fury turns a vengeful eye on him--and Bruce has broken six doors, a three beds, and a fridge. Thor’s taken to walking around the place naked, and seems entirely confused as to why Fury would have a problem with this; Cap, looking shamefaced about it, nods and looks away when Fury says the words “punching bags.”

When he gets to Natasha, Fury just sighs and shakes his head, a hint of a smile playing around his mouth. She raises one eyebrow—which, for Natasha, is practically a peal of hysterical laughter—and says, “It’s not my fault I make everyone nervous.”

“Be that as it may,” Fury says, “either you guys are going to have to shape up or we’re going to have to find you other accommodations, and let me tell you what, the budget we have for housing you all? It’s not large. So, hey, you wanna live in the kind of boarded up rat traps we can find for you, that’s great, but—for fuck’s sake, Stark, what are you smirking about?”

Tony grins beatifically, fanning his fingers out and locking them together to place behind his head. “Don’t mind me, I’m just really enjoying this. There’s a problem and I didn’t cause it!”

“Oh, good,” says Fury, rolling his eyes, “so glad I interrupted this meeting for your smugness—”

“I’m not even involved,” Tony continues gleefully, clinically incapable of passing up an opportunity to gloat. “While you all have been here terrorizing SHIELD’s best and brightest, I have been living quietly in my mansion, causing no problems, with enough bedrooms for all of you—“

“That’ll solve the problem nicely, Stark, thanks,” Fury says, and flips his portfolio shut. “Meeting adjourned.”

“You’re welcome,” says Tony, and then what Fury’s said actually processes. “Wait, wait, hold on, what--no, come back here, I didn’t mean, what did you think I—“

And then Steve, fucking Steve, with his big stupid eyes and his sculpted goddamn cheekbones, Steve who doesn’t like Tony at all, looks up at him with surprise on his face and says, “That’s really big of you, Tony.”

Three days later, Tony’s got two SHIELD agents, a Norse god, the Hulk, and Captain goddamn America living in his house. Some days—most days, lately—he really hates his life.

--

The worst part about shacking up with a team of lunatic superheroes, Tony realizes quickly, is how much he doesn’t actually mind it. They drive him crazy, of course—how could they not drive him crazy, Clint alone is enough of an asshole for six people and having Natasha around makes Tony jumpy, like she’s going to stab him in the neck with lithium dioxide again—but it’s kind of nice, actually, not being alone. The house still feels too much like Howard, but some of the renovation is done, and having more people around keeps the sickening empty feeling at bay.

Also, Thor decides he wants to help with the renovation, which turns out to go a lot faster with Mjolnir involved. He’s definitely Tony’s favorite; accept no substitutions.

Anyway, it’s awful because it’s not awful, because Tony wants it to be awful and finds himself enjoying it instead. He’s not sure what that says about him—some sad combination of “doesn’t play well with others” and “secretly desperately lonely,” probably, which is not something Tony wants to spend any time considering—but he knows that any therapist worth their salt would have a field day. He spends even more time than usual in his workshop or at Stark Tower, trying to avoid thinking about it, and finally gives it up and heads to his gym for a 3 AM workout session.

Where he finds Captain America, beating the living shit out of his punching bag.

Tony stands in the doorway, mouth open, transfixed, because yeah, alright, this is a pretty nice view. Steve may be a lot of things, but there’s no arguing the fact that he’s gorgeous; sweat-slicked and breathing hard, almost blurred with speed, he looks like something that walked directly out of Tony’s reptilian hindbrain. His face is screwed up, clouded over with some emotion Tony can’t read from this distance and probably wouldn’t be able to read up close, either, and he’s taking swings like he’s fighting for something.

Which, okay, that’s Tony’s punching bag; that thing is designed to withstand in-suit practice sessions, and Tony would know, because he’s the one who designed it. There’s no way Steve, powerful as he is, should be able to move it that much, let alone rip it in half. But that’s what he does—three more punches and a roundhouse kick and it’s flying backwards, spilling sand everywhere, leaving Steve cursing bitterly under his breath.

“Uh, think you won that round, champ,” says Tony, and Steve jumps.

“Oh! Tony, I didn’t. Um. I didn’t know you were there.”

“I wasn’t,” Tony says, slipping into the room and crouching over the mutilated remains of the bag. “Just got here. You know this was enhanced with Kevlar, right?”

“I didn’t,” Steve admits. “Sorry.”

He’s still breathing hard, and Tony hands over the water bottle he’d brought in with him absent-mindedly, running his fingers over the torn fabric of the punching bag. If Steve has this kind of capability normally, Tony’s going to have to design something considerably stronger to keep up with him—not to mention something that moves, probably, since his agility is where he really needs the work.

“I do not,” Steve says, capping the water bottle and alerting Tony to the fact that he’s been speaking out loud.

“You do,” Tony says, because he might as well, now. “I watch you. Or, okay, that’s not as creepy as it sounds, I mean, the suit tracks that kind of data anyway, but you’re the one I keep an eye on, mostly, because—well, no, I do it for everyone, I guess. Clint’s a little weaker on his left side—“

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” Steve says, sounding surprised. “I’ve been running him through drills when we get the chance, but he’s not great about, you know, listening.”

Tony nods. “It’s all the crouching, I think. He puts his weight on his right when he’s in sniper position, so those muscles get worked more; I was thinking about doing the redesign on his bow with that in mind, adjust the specs a little, so he’s got to distribute more, but I don’t want to over-balance him.”

“If I can get him to run the drills, you won’t,” Steve says speculatively, taking another swig of Tony’s water. “And a bow redesign’s a hell of a carrot, he’s been pestering you about that for ages.”

“I’m a busy man,” Tony says, which, really, he intends to delivery with a tone of derision and superiority. Instead he just sounds like he’s joking, and Steve grins at him, easy and relaxed.

Tony is warm suddenly, the tension he came down here to relieve draining out of him only to be replaced with a headier, buzzier variety. He smiles back, because he’s helpless not to, because he wants Steve to keep looking at him like that, like it’s good, like they’re friends.

“I guess so,” Steve says, mock-serious, “but then again, you found time to decide I’m not agile enough—“

“You’re not,” Tony says, and Steve scowls, but it’s a good-natured sort of scowl. “Seriously, you’re not, I can pull up the footage from our last fight and show you—“

“Or you could just spar with me,” Steve says, shrugging.

Tony raises an eyebrow and gestures to the mutilated remains of the punching bag. “Really? You think that’s the best sell for a little play fighting? I don’t know about you, Cap, but I am deeply and sincerely attached to each and every one of my limbs, and, as I believe you know, I do most of my fighting in a big metal suit.”

Steve’s smile slips a little, but doesn’t vanish entirely, and he doesn’t take the obvious bait. “I promise not to treat you like a punching bag, if it helps. I could use the practice, and so could you—suit or no, there’s always the question of form, right?”

“You just want to try to prove that I’m wrong about the agility thing,” Tony says, sighing and stepping up onto the practice mats. “Which, for the record, I’m not.”

“We’ll see,” Steve says, and Tony has just long enough to relish his smile—to think, oh, fuck, I like him, don’t I, how could I like him--before he’s being thrown.

--

They save the world together, once, twice, six times, argue bitterly over what music to play, drive one another up the wall. Clint takes showers that go on for far too long, and half the time Thor doesn’t shower at all; Natasha vanishes for days on end and comes back looking smug, satisfied, and though they all tease her mercilessly about it, she won’t crack and tell them where she’s been. Bruce takes a dry erase marker and writes all over the windows, equations Tony finds fascinating until he smashes through them as the Hulk, and they all casually try to catch Steve up on pop culture. Twice a week, Tony and Steve toss each other around in the practice room, sometimes with the suit, sometimes without, and it’s…okay. It’s good.

It’s not quite home, but it’s not quite anything else.

--

In August, about a month into the whole communal living experiment, Tony finds Thor sulking in the living room. Thor is not normally one for sulking; he'd pouted for about six minutes when Tony had told him "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," was not allowed under his roof, but he'd gotten over it quickly enough. Tony eyes the long line of his frown, the way his shoulders are slumped, and considers sneaking away before he can be dragged into whatever it is.

Teamwork, a voice in the back of his head reminds him. It sounds a lot like Steve, because that's just what Tony's life is like.

"Oh, fine," he mutters, and Thor looks up. "What's eating you, buddy?"

"I do not know," Thor says, mystified, lifting an arm and looking around. "What does the creature look like? Where on my body do you see it? Are you sure it is really there and not an illusion, for my brother--"

"Uh," says Tony, holding up a hand. "No, it's not--it's a figure of speech, what's eating you, it's like--it means what's wrong, okay, stop looking around, there's nothing actually eating you, you're fine."

"Oh," Thor says. He actually looks kind of disappointed, and slumps back against the couch in defeat. "Well, then. It is nothing, my friend. Do not trouble yourself."

Okay, awesome, I'll just be going now, things to do, people to see, great talk, thinks Tony.

"Doesn't look like nothing," says Tony, and curses the fact that Steve Rogers apparently freelances at night as Jiminy goddamn Cricket.

Thor sighs, deep and long. "It is only…at home, in Asgard, it is a day of great celebration, wherein, with respect to Yggdresil, the world tree--"

"Whoa," says Tony, holding up a hand, "Reader's Digest version, please."

Thor scrunches up his nose--between him and Steve, Tony is starting to wonder if he shouldn't just program Jarvis to produce some sort of voice-activated dictionary--but he seems to get the message.

"It is a day for me," he confesses. "To celebrate my existence, what I have learned, and what more I have to learn. I fear I have rather more in the latter category than the former, and it would be incomplete without my brother; nonetheless, I would have liked to be there. It is impossible with the current state of the Bifrost, however, so I shall have to weather it with solemnity, as befits a warrior."

Tony takes that sentence, strips it of its inherent Thor-ness, parses it, and grins.

"Thor," he says, "is it your birthday?"

"No," Thor says, frowning. "Although I suppose that would be the closest Midgardian equivalent..."

"It's your birthday!" Tony crows, because this? This is a problem he can deal with. "You should've said, I throw a great party, everyone knows that, even Pepper knows that--hey, you know what, I'll call Pepper, I'll call everybody, and you, you stay there, try to just, you know…frown…less, and I'll be back. Whiskey, maybe, you like whiskey, right? Or mead, I can get mead, I know a guy with mead, Jarvis, get me the mead guy--"

"I would not want you to go to any trouble," Thor starts hesitantly, and Tony grins wildly at him. A party is good news. A party is great news; Tony's been behaving lately, intends to behave still, but it'll be nice to cut loose a little.

Just in case, though, he walks to the bar, pushes the little red button under the sink. There's a faint whirring noise, and then Jarvis's quiet, "Duly noted, Mr. Stark," which Tony knows means his suit security measures have been activated. He won't be able to operate any of them if his BAC goes above .08; he'd repurposed his morbid little blood toxicity death scanner to test for it, made the whole thing impossible to override.

It's probably paranoid, but it had just seemed like a good idea, after the…last time.

"Trouble?" he says to Thor, running his hands over the assortment of liquor choices. "Trouble, buddy, believe me, a party is not trouble when you're me--hey, you know what, let's just ease you into it, get you in the party mood. Highlander or Highlander? I think, you being who you are, we should go with Highlander."

"I do not understand your reference," Thor says, but some of his good humor is starting to come back.

"That's great," Tony says, "it'd only offend you anyway," and pours three fingers each into two glasses, passes one back to Thor. "Right, uh, toast, happy returns and all that--"

"To the great dignity and triumph of all those who stand with me this day!" Thor booms. Tony looks around, mostly just to confirm the room is empty except for them, and then shrugs.

"Right," he says, "okay, what the hell, I’ll drink to that. Cheers!"

--

Five hours later, Tony is much, much more drunk than he intended to become.

It was just…whiskey, right, all that whiskey, and then Clint and Natasha showed up, and Pepper, and Bruce. Cap sent him a text message--he isn't good with those yet, but has at least figured out enough to be functional--that said “DEAR TONY, I AM IN A MEETING WITH DIRECTOR FURY. THANK YOU FOR INVITING ME! I WILL ATTEND, BUT MAY BE QUITE LATE. SINCERELY, STEVE ROGERS.”

And, well, anyone would need a drink after that. Several drinks, even, and Thor'd never had a sake bomb before; that obviously had to be rectified. Tony forgot, in pouring them, what sake bombs tended to do to Pepper--after three she said, "Tony, I've been meaning to tell you…" and then promptly listed all the way over into Natasha's lap.

Natasha stroked her hair, a fond smile on her face, and then gave Tony a look that dared him to say something. Tony remembered her stabbing him in the neck with a needle like a kidney thief, saw the honest warmth in Pepper's eyes, and bit his tongue. At least it explained where Natasha'd been slipping off to lately. Tony felt pretty good about figuring that out; at least, he felt pretty good until he examined that thought, pushed it to its inevitable conclusion, and felt more to drink was definitely required.

Then the guy with the mead showed up. Thor, as it turned out, was not kidding about that stuff.

Point being, by the time Steve gets to the house, things have gotten…fairly out of control. Clint is perched on top of the entertainment set, painfully still, with a mostly-empty bottle of vodka next to him; Bruce is sitting in front of the television, entirely captivated by Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, because everyone agreed that the best thing to do with a trashed Bruce Banner was to leave him in plain sight with something to keep him very happy. Pepper and Natasha are making out in the corner, which Tony is fine with, really, he's great, he's so fine, and Tony himself is teaching Thor the bump and grind.

Well. Tony is trying to teach Thor the bump and grind. Unfortunately, Thor choses the exact moment that Steve enters the room to say, "My friend Sif has taught me many exotic dance moves; I shall demonstrate!"

This is why Tony is hovering three feet off the ground, upside-down and being held by one ankle, when he is confronted with the face of Steve Rogers.

"Hmm," says Thor, "I believe I am doing it incorrectly."

"Steve," Tony says, scrabbling for purchase and then remembering he's dangling in the air. He settles for crossing his arms over his chest instead, tries to decipher the expression on Steve's face. His mouth is curved, but Tony is upside-down; he can't actually gather his wits or spacial reasoning enough to figure out if it's a smile or a frown.

"Hi, Tony," Steve says, and he doesn't sound like he thinks Tony is the worst person in the world or anything, so that's something. "You guys look like you're having fun."

"Yes, yes, another!" Thor cries, and throws Tony violently at the ground. Tony flails, yelps, and manages not to land on his face by the skin of his teeth; he rolls, aching, and groans into the carpet.

"My friend," Thor says frantically, "I apologize, I intended to throw the bottle, only--"

"I know," Tony moans, "I know, I get it, shut up, god, fuck," and then he's being rolled back over.

"Oh my god, Tony," Steve says, and he's definitely frowning now, "are you okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Tony squints at him. "Uh. Is this a trick question?"

Steve looks terrified for a second, and then seems to realize that both his hands are on Tony's shoulders. He shakes his head, rueful, and waves two fingers in Tony's face.

"Peace!" Tony says cheerfully. "That's like my whole thing now, peace and love and…and…Intellicrops…oh, two."

"Okay," Steve says, and releases a breath. Then he releases Tony's shoulder, which is a tragedy. "Okay, good, sorry, I should've caught you--"

"Agility," Tony says, tapping his face where he thinks the side of his nose might be, and Steve laughs.

"Yeah, so you keep telling me. Think you can get up?"

"Can," says Tony, "maybe…shouldn't."

"You're not going to lie on the floor all night," Steve says seriously. Tony is not sure what to do with this information; he is quite certain he has spent many nights in exactly this condition, and the floor is a better place for him to be than, say, in the Iron Man suit inside of a giant doughnut.

The truth is, Tony is drunk enough to know he's too drunk; the truth is, Tony hates being in this place, feels like a failure, doesn't want to remember his last several trips down this road. He wants to crawl inside something and die, wants to be miserable about Pepper and his assorted bad habits and Steve, who is just being nice because Tony is a trainwreck. Even though Tony's not a trainwreck, not always, just sometimes, and a couple times a year he's actually a decent human being, things just got out of control and he's probably, he should probably stop drinking entirely, he mostly has, he was responsible about the suits but this is still…not good. It's not good, and he should stay on the floor.

He would explain this to Steve, but Steve's already grabbing his shoulder again, his hand, hauling him to his feet with the ease of someone with ridiculous super strength.

"It's Thor's birthday," Tony says, as though this explains everything.

"Incorrect but well-meant, my friend!" Thor bellows, and slaps him on the back. Normally this would fine, but it's Thor; the force behind the slap shoves Tony forward again, directly into Steve's chest.

It's a nice chest. Tony likes it here. Maybe he should stay.

"Ow," he says plaintively, as Steve curls an arm around his back to steady him, "hey. If you're gonna go slapping people slap, uh, Captain Muscles here, because, you know, with the serum, and the…muscles."

"Captain Muscles?" Steve says over his head. He sounds amused, which means he's probably just humoring Tony.

Given the fact that he hasn't shoved Tony away from him yet, Tony's gonna go ahead and take it.

"Captain Muscles," Tony confirms. "'s better than Captain America, because of--the French thing. I know French! What's the thing--PEPPER!"

In the corner, Pepper breaks away from Natasha and looks around. Drunk as she is, she manages to lift an eyebrow that speaks entire paragraphs; Tony stands his ground, mostly because Steve is still holding him up.

"Yes, Mr. Stark?"

Oooh, the burn of bitter sarcasm. Tony grins, because he really has no other option.

"What's the thing," he says, "you know, the thing, the French one, the words. That I mean."

Pepper purses her lips, tilts her head, sighs and says, "Je ne sais quoi, Tony. I'm busy."

"That's totally it," Tony crows, "the thing Pepper said, that's what…uh…I meant about…whatever we were talking about. You're tall. I'm gonna go now."

Steve is laughing at him. Tony can tell, because his big stupid soft comfortable chest is moving. He steps back, because he totally should have done that awhile ago, and Steve says, "You okay to be walking?"

"I'm not that drunk," Tony protests, and then winces at the implication that he knows what being that drunk is like, and then laughs--he's not sure why.

"I meant because Thor threw you at the ground," Steve says, slow and concerned, giving him a strange look. “You don’t feel concussed, do you?”

This, Tony feels quite sure, is the kind of question people who aren't superheroes don't ever have to ask each other.

“No,” he mutters, “’m good, ‘s a thing—Thor, buddy, hey, hey, Thor, Thor--“

“Thor,” Steve says, calmer and, naturally, much less whiny than Tony, and Thor turns his head away from the silent communication he’d apparently been exchanging with Clint.

“Steven! Tony says that on a birthday it is customary to exchange greetings in kind. Happy birthday, my friend!”

“That’s not,” Tony says, while Steve visibly bites back a laugh, “that’s just, that’s so not, I bet I could figure out dictionary into a Jarvis for the—wait. Hold on. Wrong order. Has anyone ever told you about your hair, man, because you, I mean, just, that’s a lot of hair, I need you to…uh. Uh. Shit.”

“I think you’ve probably had enough to drink,” Steve says. His voice is as warm as his chest was; Tony wants to wrap it around him like a blanket, which doesn’t make sense.

“Mmm,” he agrees, “Captain America, oracle of truth, I’m just gonna...” and he stumbles away, past Thor and Bruce and Clint and Pepper and Natasha, to snatch a bottle of whiskey from the bar and sulk by himself on the back porch.

Or, at least, he means to go sulk on the back porch. He overshoots a little bit, and is leaning up against the side of the house, the bottle tucked between his thighs, when Steve finds him.

“Are you always such a,” Tony says, and waves a hand, looking for the right word. “Boy Scout, I guess, did they have those in the 40s? I should probably know, I was one, hilarious, right? Three whole weeks and then they kicked me out because I, uh, you know what, you probably don’t want to know that story--”

“The Boy Scouts were founded in 1910, and I brought you some water,” Steve says, sitting down next to Tony and deftly removing the whiskey bottle from between his legs. “And some, uh, Advil? Pepper said you might want it.”

“Thought Pepper’s mouth was occupied,” Tony says, and snorts. “Ooh, sorry, sounded a little bitter, didn’t it, maybe I should build like...voice modulation, right, wouldn’t even be hard, I never sound how I mean to sound. I think that’s a good plan.”

“I think you should drink the water.”

“You would,” says Tony, and takes a pointed sip of it. He’s not sure what point he’s trying to prove, but he’s proved it, goddamn it. “I’m good now, thanks, you can go, there’s a party. Go enjoy the, uh, Thor, Thor’s very enjoyable, you know it’s his birthday?”

“I’m good where I am,” Steve says, and shrugs when Tony gives him what he hopes is a questioning look. “Not much for parties, never have been.”

“I can turn the music down--from right here, I totally can, hey Jarvis--”

“It’s not the music,” Steve says, “it’s just...I like people one on one better. I always feel like I’m breaking some sort of social rule at parties, like there’s some code everyone else has read. Bucky used to say I was allergic to fun.”

“Who’s Bucky?”

Steve’s face goes dark and closed off for a second, but then he smiles. “He’s...he was a friend of mine. My best friend. We grew up together, fought together during the war. He knew me better than anyone, I think.”

“Then maybe you are allergic to fun.”

“Definitely to Bucky’s idea of fun,” Steve agrees readily. “He liked things fast; I was always a slower kinda guy. I don’t know why he liked me, really.”

“Everyone likes you,” Tony slurs, because it’s the truth. “Like...like, everyone, you’re just. Uh. Very.”

“Very,” Steve repeats, dry like the Sahara. “Drink your water, Tony.”

“Maybe I will,” Tony says, pointing a finger in Steve’s direction. He takes another long swing, swirls it contemplatively in his mouth. “Y’know, you’re a good person.”

“Uh,” Steve says, blushing bright red, “thank...you?”

Tony should leave it there; he should definitely leave it there. So, naturally, he adds, “Sorry I thought you were a dick, before.”

“What?”

“Bad judge,” Tony says, gesturing at himself and spilling water all down his shirt, “of character. Like. Always. Thought Rhodey was a dick too, felt like an ass later--liked Pepper from the beginning, she was always good, she’s like. The exception. And fucking Obie, I always get it wrong. People’re hard.”

“So I should...take it as a compliment?” Steve says, sounding completely at sea. “That you thought I was a dick?”

“Smarter,” Tony says. “If I’d thought you were good you’d probably be like. Uh. Plotting...things, are you plotting things, no one has tried to kill me in awhile, but I don’t think you would. That’s a compliment, sorry I called you a dick. You’re not. A dick, I mean.”

Steve stares at him for a second, then sighs and shakes his head. “You’re a complicated guy, Tony, has anyone ever told you that?”

“No ’m not,” Tony says, “just...tired. Yeah. That’s...yup.”

“Hey, you can’t sleep out here,” Steve says, apparently correctly interpreting Tony’s closed eyes and slumped posture.

“Wanna put money on that?”

“Come on,” Steve says, and then there’s an arm under Tony’s, lifting him to his feet. Tony’s too drunk and shameless to help himself; he tucks his face into Steve’s shoulder, shuffles his feet in a sad approximation of walking, and lets Steve more-or-less haul him through the house and up the stairs.

“Gonna be sorry,” Tony manages, when he’s collapsed face-fist onto his bed, “in the morning.”

Steve says something, but Tony can’t really understand it, and forgets it at once. He registers being rolled over, the soft brush of fabric against his arms, a brief pressure on each of his feet, and then warmth slides over him and he abandons consciousness entirely.

He dreams of Steve’s hand in his hair, stroking lightly, for what feels like a long time.

Part Two

avengers fic: ready, fire, aim (steve/tony, nc-17) [2/3]

2011-10-17T01:49:28Z

For summary, notes, etc, please see Part One.

Tony wakes up to a headache that is dwarfed only by the ache in the rest of his body. He mashes his face into the pillow, tries to will himself back to sleep, and fails. After a moment, Jarvis says, “Good morning, Mr. Stark,” in a voice that would be hesitant if he wasn’t, you know, a computer.

“Fuck you,” Tony mumbles into the pillow.

“What was that?” says Jarvis, in sunny, bordering-on-homicidal tones, and really, one of these days Tony is going to get around to giving him a little less personality.

Eventually. Probably. At some point.

“Fuck,” Tony groans, “fuck, fucking motherfucking fuck.” He rolls over as gingerly as possible, but apparently not gingerly enough. Even the smallest motion sets off a world of hurt, creeping up his arm, his ribcage, his left thigh, and that’s when Tony hazily remembers being thrown to the ground by Thor.

“Oh, hell,” he mumbles, and pushes back the comforter to reveal the mottled canvas of bruises that is currently his body. “That’s gonna be a bitch to spar with, fucking Thor, I swear to god. Maybe…padding, Jarvis, could you…padding. Uh. After coffee.”

“Of course, sir,” Jarvis says, apparently over the “fuck you” business. “I’ll begin rendering some theoretical schematics for your approval. Shall I schedule an appointment with a doctor to see to your bruising?”

“No,” Tony says, “no, it’s just, uh, hangover and, and, divine battery, no doctors, I’m good. If you could maybe just kill me, though? That’d probably be for the best.”

Jarvis doesn’t even dignify that with a response, which is fine. Tony was sick of talking anyway.

It takes him another few minutes—long, dizzy minutes, in which he can’t help but poke at his bruises, regret it, and then stubbornly do it again—to realize that he’s in bed. His own bed, in his own bedroom, on the second floor, which…Tony is pretty sure he was too drunk last night to pick his bed out of a lineup, let alone climb the stairs and get under the covers.

Now that he’s thinking about it, he’s not wearing shoes, either. Or most of the suit he’d had on last night, just the undershirt and the pants.

Huh. Maybe coffee, Tony thinks, and forces himself out of bed over the strenuous protest of his entire body. He walks down the stairs feeling older than he’s ever felt in his life, creaking and aching with every step, and when he reaches the landing he peers into the living room and sighs.

Bruce is Hulked. Tony’s not sure when or how that happened, or where he’s going to find the latest round of consequential structural damage, but at least he seems to be sleeping peacefully. Granted, Tony’s going to have to replace the couch, but he’s sleeping peacefully. Thor’s sprawled out on top of the bar, grinning in his sleep, and Clint—wow, Clint’s still on top of the entertainment set, looking right at Tony.

“Morning,” Tony says, “you’re not planning on moving in up there, are you? Because I don’t think you really match.”

Clint says nothing. After a minute, he snores, which is when Tony realizes that he’s asleep with his eyes open.

“Well that’s not terrifying at all,” he mutters to himself. He looks around for Pepper and Natasha, doesn’t see them, and, riding a hunch, says, “Jarvis, call Pepper, will you?”

“Certainly,” says Jarvis. A second later, the Jaws theme starts playing from the direction of Natasha’s bedroom.

“That’s not nice, Pepper!” Tony yells, and winces at how much it hurts to draw the breath to raise his voice. “I told you to change that!”

“Not now,” comes Pepper’s voice, followed immediately by Natasha’s more insistent, “Fuck off, Tony."

Tony scowls and walks into the kitchen.

“The world better hope it doesn’t need saving today,” he mutters, and then Steve says, “My thoughts exactly,” and Tony jumps about a foot in the air.

"Jesus," he says, "give a guy a little warning, fuck, is super sneaking one of your powers, oh my god, you know I have a heart condition, right? Or, well, not a condition but a…er…."

He stops, because Steve has one eyebrow up, and his mouth is quirked at the corners; this is his I'm laughing at you but too decent to do it out loud expression, and Tony knows it well. He narrows his eyes and turns to the coffeemaker.

"Fine," he says, "be that way."

"I already started a--," Steve starts, and then he makes a strangled, choking sort of sound. "Tony, your arm."

"Huh?" Tony says. He's trying to piece together what he remembers about last night into a picture that makes sense; he's pretty sure he should be mortified right now, he just can't remember why. "Oh, yeah, that. As it turns out, playing hacky-sack for a Norse god is a bad idea, who knew?"

"Me?" says Steve, and before Tony can stop him, he's reaching out to lift Tony's arm with gentle hands. They're warm against the surface of his skin, warm like Tony is under Steve's sudden, careful scrutiny, and Tony doesn't shiver, but it's a close thing. "This looks really bad--god, you hit on your side, is it like this all the way down?"

"Kind of," Tony admits, because it's hard to lie to Captain America. "I've had worse, though, it's not a big deal."

"Your ribs could be bruised," Steve says, brow furrowed. He reaches for the hem of Tony's shirt, and that's about the extent of what Tony can handle this morning; he twists away, trying not to wince too obviously at the movement.

"I'm fine, Cap. Coffee and some Advil, maybe lay off the sparing for a couple of days--"

"A couple of days?" Steve repeats, raising his voice, and then lowering it back to a furious whisper when Tony groans and makes a shushing noise. "A couple of--Tony, your arm is blue. For all I know you've cracked a rib, you need to see a doctor."

"But I hate doctors, so, uh, no, I'm thinking it's a no, definitely a no," Tony says, and pours himself a cup of coffee. Something is itching at the back of his mind; hopefully the caffeine will help. "Seriously. It's fine, I'm fine, everybody's fine, forget about it."

Tony's not fine, actually; he feels like he's going to keel over or throw up, like his head is going to fall off his neck, like half of his body is on fire. He wants to curl up somewhere and lick his wounds, and--oh, oh, there it is, last night's memories in stunning technicolor, the mortification he's been waiting for. Steve saw Tony drunk, drunker than he's been in months; Steve listened to Tony whine, pathetic and maudlin. Steve, shit, Steve carried him to bed, and now he's standing in front of Tony with his arms crossed, concern on his face.

And the thing is, Tony knows it's just that he's part of a team now, part of Cap's team, for all he doesn't play well with others. He's part of the team and that should be enough, but it's not, only makes everything else worse by comparison. He wants to misinterpret what's happening here, wants to read Steve's concern as interest in Tony instead of the Avengers, wants to walk forward into Steve's arms, the warmth there, and let the tension drain out of his own shoulders. Hell, he even wants to talk about what happened last night, wants to believe that Steve's inherent impossible decency would overcome the judgement Tony knows he deserves, but Steve is his coworker, not even his friend, and he can't.

"Let it go," Tony says, and looks away. "It's really not your problem, anyway."

"You're so goddamn frustrating sometimes," Steve snaps, "would it kill you to just swallow your pride a little and-- "

"Yes, yes, okay, it would, it would kill me, because I have so much pride to swallow, don't tell me you haven't noticed--"

"You know you're not the only person who--"

"Is affected by my injuries? I think I am, actually, and save me the 'There's no I in team,' speech, because really, you know what, I get it, I've heard it, but I fight in a giant metal suit, so a couple of bruises aren't going to--"

"You think this is about-- "

"Yeah, I fucking do."

Steve glares at him, and Tony glares back; Steve breaks first, huffing out a long sigh and looking away. "Okay, fine. If you want to be a stubborn ass, I guess it isn't my lookout."

"Cheers," Tony says, raising his coffee mug.

Steve throws his hands in the air and walks away, and Tony's chest feels tight, heavy, until he's gone.

--

Tony Stark has been in love twice in his life, and the first time was with a circuit board. He never got over that one, never even tried; it’s still there, humming under his fingers while he works, the heady stream of how things fit together. Tony has never been able to fathom reality without the picking it apart and building it a different way, and he sees no reason to start now. For all he pits himself against commitment, the steady rush of home has always been clouded thick around his work, and he’s long since resigned himself to the fact that he’s better with machines than people.

The second time, with Pepper, was less about stability, more about surprise. Tony hadn’t known it was possible to fall headlong into something he’d been feeling for years; he scrambled and scrabbled to catch up, to touch every loose end, to figure it out. And Pepper...god, those first few weeks, tangled up with each other and their own mortality, Pepper was a dream Tony’d been having for years. She splayed herself across his sheets, thighs cream-pale and bruised with kisses, red hair spilled along the pillow, and quirked her eyebrows at him like nothing had changed at all.

“Will that be all, Mr. Stark,” she panted one night, wicked as Tony shook against her. She smiled during sex, slept the night next to him, laughed at him over morning coffee; Tony traced the curve of her spine with his eyes when she moved, woke up curled around her, a hand in her hair. She was just Pepper, warm even when she was cold, hands soft where her voice wasn’t, and he loved her, he loved her, he’d always loved her.

But Tony would be Tony, had always been Tony, couldn’t ever seem to manage being anyone else. Tony was himself in love or out of it, and Pepper knew him better than anyone; he’d thought he could be better for her, and she must have done too, and they were both wrong. Scrambling and scrabbling were all well and good, but Tony fucked up more than he did anything else--too little time or too much affection, absent and smothering by turns.

She’d changed her mind about quitting as CEO; he’d agreed to the Avengers Initiative. Half the time they were on opposite sides of the country, Tony knee-deep in some consulting project while Pepper put out his fires, and when they did see each other Tony couldn’t control himself at all. He bought her diamonds and hung up on her; he missed board meetings and hid his eyes when he fucked her; he said “I love you” once, twice, a hundred times, but kissed her silent before she could say it back.

One month became two, became four, and they fought whenever they weren’t fucking. Pepper tried for maturity and Tony tried to bait her, hoping she’d reveal in anger what it was he was doing wrong. She never did, just looked at him with eyes that spoke volumes in a language Tony didn’t speak, and he sent flowers, cards, suggested Venice for the second time. He tried so hard it seemed like he wasn’t trying at all.

They were on the way to the airfield--Venice after all, and Tony knew he was being humored, but at least it was something--when the truth of it stumbled out of his mouth.

“This isn’t working, is it?”

“Of course it’s working,” Pepper cried, exasperated, “you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you, we don’t have military funding anymore, it’s natural that the numbers don’t meet what was projected a year ago--”

“No,” Tony said, “not that, I, uh. Us. You and me. It’s a no-go, isn’t it?”

Pepper’s eyes widened and her mouth snapped shut, and god, even that was enough; Tony swallowed against the swooping crash in his stomach, took her hand.

“C’mon, Pep,” he said, “how long have we known each other? I mean, god, remember when I made you replace the arc--”

“I am not doing that again,” Pepper said, and her eyes were wet, and really it was wrong that Tony had to go through having this conversation; it’s not like they didn’t both know where it was going.

“I know,” he said. “I know you aren’t. But I...look, I meant what I said, okay? About it being, uh, you. Pretty much...only you, and if this isn’t for us, then you know what, I can deal. Right? I mean, I can totally deal, of course I can deal, but if it flames and burns and you hate me--”

“I don’t hate you, Tony,” Pepper said, and there it was, the fond exasperation, the fact that she found the idea ridiculous, and what the fuck was Tony supposed to do without that, go live alone in a treehouse in the woods?

“Yeah, now,” Tony said, rolling his eyes, trying for flippant, “but in three weeks I’ll have burned down Stark Tower or knocked all the walls out of the mansion--I’m remodeling the mansion, by the way, the New York one, not the one here, the one here is yours, I mean, it’s mine but it can be yours, if you want it I can sign the whole thing over to you, no problem, I’m good at that--”

“Tony--”

“Fuck, fuck,” and that was all Tony was going to let his composure slip, it really was. He took a deep breath, faked a smile, and Pepper smiled back. She wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t quite...not crying, either. Tony thought it must be nice. “See? I can’t even do a breakup right.”

“Is that what this is,” Pepper said, but there was no question in her voice. She reached up, touched the side of Tony’s face--probably right where a bruise once was, Pepper’s funny that way--and sighed. “I do love you, you know.”

“But it’s too much,” Tony said, “right? It’s too much, isn’t it, I know, it’s okay, I’m sorry, let’s just quit while we’re ahead, right? That’s the right call, I think that’s the right call.”

“Tony, I--”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Tony said, and meant it for the first time in his life. He wanted her to tell him he was wrong, that they were fine, that she was happy; it was selfish, but he wanted it anyway, tried to keep it out of his voice. “Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll drop it right now, see if I don’t, go on, tell me.”

Pepper sighed and shook her head and it was over, over even before she said, “You’re all I have too, you know that, don’t you? I’ve told you enough times that it’s processed? If there was any way to make it work--”

“You would’ve found it already,” Tony said, and ran a hand through his hair. “Forget about me, you’re the genius in this car--no offense to Happy--and I know you tried, okay, I’m a hard problem to solve--hey, hey, you wanna give me a smile? Please?”

She gave him a scowl instead, and when Tony laughed, it only sounded a little hysterical.

“You know what,” he said, “tell you what, you should go to Venice anyway--no, no, don’t start--”

“I haven’t even said--”

“You were going to, I just mean for the weekend, blow of some steam, enjoy yourself--”

“I know this escapes your attention constantly, but as CEO--”

“I was never this responsible as CEO, there’s already a precedent and you’re just--”

“Yes, I know exactly how irresponsible you were, that’s not exactly a selling point and--”

“--making it more difficult this way, Pepper, c’mon, just for the weekend and then you’ll come back and--

“Find the entire company in complete-”

“--things’ll be normal,” Tony finished. That shut Pepper up; she gave him a horribly doubting look, and Tony was scrambling again, would maybe always be scrambling for her. “Or as normal as things ever get for us, come on, let me have this, let me think that we can--”

“We can,” Pepper said, and her voice was firm, no-nonsense. “We can, stop looking at me like that, of course we can. It just...it might take more than a weekend, Tony. You have to be prepared for that.”

“When am I not prepared?” Tony said, “Tell me one time I wasn’t prepared,” and that, at least, got Pepper to laugh. Tony grinned at her, dug his fingernails into his thighs, and hoped. “See, there it is, that’s a smile, we’re going to be fine.”

The car drew to a stop; Tony could see his plane through the tinted windows, fueled up and ready to go, and as endings went, this wasn’t a terrible one. He climbed out of the car before Happy could come around to open the door, offered Pepper a hand out.

“So...that’s it, then,” Pepper said, and the tears were back, unshed but still visible. In ten years, Tony had never once seen her cry.

“That’s it,” he said, and hugged her, pretended not to see the terrible relief in her eyes.

It took him three hours to get home, get the suit, and get to New York; he stormed through the SHIELD hallways in full gear, ignoring the panicked glances from various agents. When he got to Nick Fury’s office, he flipped up his mask, slammed the door, and said, “I want in.”

“You are in, Stark,” Fury said, without looking up from the folder he had spread open across his desk. “Made it down the hallway without getting shot, didn’t you? That’s more in than most people ever get, you got a reason for bothering me today?”

“No,” Tony said, “no, not in the building, not in as a consultant, I want in on the Avengers.”

Fury did look up at that, one visible eye narrowed. “And when did I give you the impression that that was up to you?”

“Would you just listen,” Tony said, and slammed an armor-clad fist into the desk. It left a two-inch dent in the metal, and Fury just raised an eyebrow.

“I’m listening.”

“I will do anything, okay? Anything, is that what you want to hear? When I first started with this shit there was the next mission and nothing else, and I know I’m a pain in your ass, and I know you and your goons got up close and personal with me during a really bad week, but for the record? The time before that? The last time I thought it was the end of the line? I built a fucking arc reactor in a cave with a box of scraps and a goddamn car battery hooked to my chest, so I think it’s safe to say I’m normally good under pressure!”

“Look, Tony-- “

“No, you look.” Some part of Tony’s brain--probably the small, scared, undeveloped corner that handled his self-preservation instinct--wailed in terror at that, but he ignored it. “I don’t know what you want from me here, I don’t know if there’s some kind of psych eval I’m supposed to pass or an obstacle course I’m supposed to run, maybe you want me to flick out one of my eyes so we can match, whatever. I know I’m not a team player, okay, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do my goddamn job, and if you keep me locked up in here running tests on god knows what I am going to lose my mind. I will do the job, you know I will, you have to know that, I will do anything, you just have to give me a fucking chance. “

He was breathing hard when he stopped talking; Fury gave him a long, measured look, then sighed. He looked back down at the folder open on his desk, made a check mark, and flipped it closed again.

“Fine,” he said.

“I knew you were going to say that, and I have prepared a--” Tony paused, let that process. “Wait--wait, fine? Did you say fine?”

“I was gonna call you in anyway,” Fury said, shrugging, “figured I’d let you say your piece first. Turns out we’ve, ah, unearthed someone, and I’m pretty sure he can keep you in line.”

“Oh,” Tony said, and tried not to feel too ridiculous about the fact that his entire set of dramatics had apparently been unnecessary. “Uh, okay. So I guess you’ll just...let me know when I’m needed, then?”

“Mmhmm,” Fury said, and Tony had turned to go when he added, “Oh, and Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“Gonna need you on premises,” Fury said, voice perfectly flat, eyes on his work. “Right here in this building for the next...week, let’s say, though I reserve the right to need you for longer. Shit for you to get done, it’s non-negotiable, you got that?”

Tony thought of the empty house in Malibu, of Pepper’s face in sharp relief, of the Scotch sitting on the bar in his living room.

“Yes, sir,” he said, because ‘thank you’ would have been pathetic, and slipped into the hall.

(Five weeks later, the big blond hero in the armor Tony made him hates him on sight. Tony...well, shit, Tony doesn’t blame him at all.)

--

If Tony's honest with himself--which he rarely is, actually, but whatever--he's missed New York. There was a certain appeal to Malibu, sure, the beaches and the sunshine; there'd been panache in the seedy, smoggy roil of Los Angeles after midnight, and Tony had been looking for panache. The East Coast had felt thick and smothering at 21, at 31, haunted with echoes of his father's Brooklyn accent, always hard with disappointment. Now, a few months shy of 41, he watches the end of a thunderstorm out the window of what was once his father's study and very nearly smiles.

He's healed, mostly, from the whole tossed-around-like-a-drunken-ragdoll episode. One of his ribs had been cracked after all, a fact which he wasn't ever planning on mentioning to Steve; still, time and carefully hidden bandages have done their work. All that remains of the incident is a faint yellow tint to Tony's arm, and even that’s mostly faded.

Well, that and the fact that he and Steve have been circling each other like wounded dogs for two weeks, avoiding eye contact and exchanging as few words as possible. At least it's familiar, Tony thinks ruefully, for all it's harder to weather now.

Tony is, maybe, kind of, sort of, in what he would call a "mood." Pepper would call it a sulking fit, but Pepper's in LA right now, so Tony is free to define things however he likes.

The rain stops abruptly, a shuddering sort of stillness settling over the house; in the absence of the pounding beat of the downpour, Tony can hear Clint trying to teach Thor to work the Wii. It's a losing battle--Tony knows from long experience--but it's not like he's getting any work done anyway. He slips out into the living room, his tablet tucked under one arm, and leans in the doorway to watch.

"You just wave it," Clint says, exasperated, "don't they wave things in Asgard? Is there a no-waving policy? Is it too ungodly or something--hey, don't you dare throw it--"

"But why should I wave it?" Thor says, dangling the WiiMote in front of his face by the strap. "Is it not a weak man's task, mimicry and imitation of a real fight? This is a plaything for children! For cowards!"

"Thor, it's bowling," Clint says. "Hey, Tony, make Thor understand the Wii, give him an upgrade or something."

"Tony has abandoned attempting to school me in this folly," Thor says cheerfully. "He insists I am a hopeless case, and should remain restricted to swinging the mighty weight of Mjolnir."

"Fat lot of help that is," Clint mutters, "I want someone to bowl with."

"You could ask Bruce," Tony says.

Clint, without looking away from the screen, just sighs and beats at his chest like Tarzan. "He's a sore loser, it's bad for the walls."

"Hey," Bruce says mildly, looking up from the textbook he's reading, and sighs when they all tense up. "Oh, honestly--I'm not feeling green, you guys can relax, I was just registering my offense."

"Your offense ended in a viewing of your giant green dong last week," Natasha says, looking extremely bored. "Which, for the record, offended me."

"You could bowl with Clint," says Tony; Natasha gives him a flat look that speaks volumes as to how much that is not an option. "Or you could try Steve, he's getting better at it."

"Can't find him," Clint says. "He's been kinda scarce since you two went all cage-match on each other the other day."

"We didn't--wait, you--I--you know about that?"

"It is not so large a house as you perhaps imagine, my friend," says Thor. He's got the WiiMote balanced on his head now, and is moving his body to control it; surprisingly, it seems to be working for him. "Also, you and Steven have not been particularly subtle about your discomfort with one another of late."

"Oh, right, because they're normally so discreet," Natasha says, her mouth quirking up, and Clint snickers as Thor lets out a guffaw.

"Hey," Tony snaps, and Bruce glances up again to give him a long-suffering look.

"See?" he says. "Not nice when they're all talking about you, is it?"

"I'm going upstairs," Tony says loftily, "because I am--"

"A busy guy, yeah, Tony, we know," Clint says. He does a controlled little fist-pump as he lands a strike. "Maybe say it a little less, whaddya think? Be more convincing if it wasn't like your catchphrase."

"Agreed," says Natasha.

"Here too," says Bruce, already looking back to his book.

"Tony may speak to his work level if he so chooses," says Thor, securing his place as Tony's favorite once again. Then he ruins it by adding, "Though I will concede that he chooses to do so perhaps more than is required for the understanding of others."

"Yeah, well," Tony says, which is…really, really lame. He's saved from having to elaborate when Clint lets out a whoop of satisfaction and yells, "Eat it, bitch!" in a Norse god's face.

"You insult my people and my kingdom," says Thor, laughing on it, and reaches out to give Clint what's probably the worst noogie of his life.

Tony's life has gotten very strange.

He watches them for another minute, the easy camaraderie that's flowing between them, and then sighs and takes his tablet up to the roof. It's slanted and tiled over, not really designed for sitting on, but Tony had spent hours up here as a kid, staring out at the distant glow of the city's lights. He'd had a stairway built when he took over the mansion, a little door, because he felt like 40 was probably a little old to be crawling out the window, but he hasn't had the chance to take advantage of it until now.

For a moment, it's as good as he'd thought it would be. The air is cool, damp still, heralding fall; Tony takes a deep breath, enjoying the taste of it, and then chokes on it a little when he notices that he's not alone.

"Steve?" he says to the silhouette, really hoping it's Steve and not some supervillain with a lurking fetish.

Then Steve turns around, bites his lip, and says, "Tony, hi," with no inflection in his voice at all. Tony takes it back--he'd take the supervillain any day of the week. At least the megalomaniacs they normally deal with would have the decency to actually stab him in the heart, instead of making him feel like they had.

"Sorry," Tony says, putting up a hand. "I didn't mean to, to, intrude, fortress of solitude, probably, right? That's a thing that people do, I get that, so I'll just, you know--"

"Tony, it's your house," Steve says, furrowing his brow. "You don't have to go just because I'm here."

"Not interested in crashing your party," Tony says warily, and Steve sighs, shakes his head.

"Party is definitely the wrong word. I'd like the company, actually. Stay?"

Tony tilts his head, and then shrugs and shuffles over to sit next to Steve. Apparently they're done not talking; that's fine. That's good. Better for the team and everything. Tony will just let Steve call the shots, and--

"Hey, is that a sketchbook?" Damn his fucking mouth.

"What?" Steve says, and then glances down at his lap. "Oh, this? It's nothing, it's just…I used to do this kind of thing, back before the war. Didn't really have time for it once things got heavy, though, and now I just do it to…unwind, I guess. Helps me think."

"Can I see?" says Tony, which is a stupid question, since he's already snatched it out of Steve's hands. For a second, he thinks he can see Steve blushing, and finds it endearing--well, more endearing than usual, which is actually getting kind of difficult to imagine, that’s probably not good--despite himself.

Then Steve says, "I guess my answer's irrelevant, huh?" in his driest, most deadpan voice, so, hey, maybe not.

Tony looks down at the notebook rather than replying, angles it towards the house for better light. A bustling street spills out across the page in charcoal; shopfronts fit together seamlessly, and there are rough outlines of people leaning out of upper windows, gossiping in the street. The detail is uneven--the drawing is obviously unfinished, a work in progress--but the skill in it is almost breathtaking.

"Is there anything you're not good at?" Tony says, and then, when Steve's face twists a little, backpedals. "Uh, sorry, I just--this is really good. Is it based on somewhere specific, or--"

"It's my neighborhood in Brooklyn," Steve says. He sounds wistful as he takes the notebook back, sad, old. "Or, I mean--was, I guess. I'm sure it's different now. I keep meaning to go see, but it's. I don't know."

"Yeah," Tony says. He waits for Steve to elaborate; when nothing else comes, Tony turns his head, really looks at the guy. He's staring down at the sketchbook, his thumb stroking lightly over one corner, and his shoulders are slumped in on each other.

Tony's mind, never good with staying still, flits from scoliosis to lumbar support to charcoal quality to the fact that he probably needs to get the roof re-tiled before it settles, strangely, on the word Atlas. He frowns.

"Hey," he says, "you okay?"

“Sure,” Steve says, shrugging a shoulder. It’s about the least convincing play-off Tony’s ever seen, and he’s watched himself in the mirror. “I...yes. Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Uh-huh,” says Tony, unconvinced.

He doesn’t push for once in his life, though, not sure it’s his place, and they fall into an easy enough silence. Tony’s got his tablet out again, balanced on his knees, projecting a combination of stock figures and a blown out view of R&D’s latest tragic attempt at creativity; he’s absorbed enough in his work that he almost doesn’t register the sound of Steve clearing his throat.

Almost, but not quite. His fingers still, and he slants a sidelong glance to his left. Steve’s not looking at him, but his face is twisted up like he’s steeling himself for something.

“Everyone I know is dead,” Steve says finally. It’s flat, monotone, none of the visibly held-back emotion Tony remembers from the day with the photograph. “Or, uh, knew, I guess, would be more appropriate. Even--I had neighbors, there was a girl who lived in the apartment across the hall from me, she was pregnant when I left, and her son’s dead--Vietnam, I guess. You know how weird that is?”

“I...don’t,” Tony admits, blinking. Honestly, it hadn’t even occurred to him, and isn’t that a bitch--Tony’s never felt like more of an asshole in his life, and that bar is pretty damn high. But here’s Steve, quiet, steady Steve, Steve who genuinely likes people, who’ll give (almost) anyone a chance; Tony tugs a hand through his hair and can’t fathom how many people he must have loved, how many must have loved him, how many lives he must be mourning.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, and he’s selfish, he’s always been selfish, so he doesn’t mean I’m sorry for your loss. He means I’m sorry I was such a dick to you and I’m sorry I didn’t see you and I’m sorry, I should have done better. He means I’m sorry you don’t like me, but god, I don’t blame you at all.

Steve sighs and shrugs, catches the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other and rubs a steady beat into his skin. “I’m not. Or, I mean, I am, of course I am, but it’s...I don’t know. They all lived such full lives, had families and...and...and lives, I know I said that already, but that’s, really, that’s it. They lived. How could I begrudge them that just because I missed it?”

Tony doesn’t know what to do or say here, has never had any skill at navigating these kinds of waters. The last time anyone trusted him in a conversation with this much emotional depth, he’d ended up getting (deservedly) punched in the face. On the one hand, there’s probably not anything Tony could say that would lower him in Steve’s esteem at this point; on the other, more important hand, he wants to help.

“I don’t think it’s begrudging them their lives to miss them,” he tries finally, hoping it’s the right thing. “Because that’s not, I mean, if you want to look at the logic of the thing--which maybe you don’t, that’d be okay, I could work with that, we could try philosophy or, uh, math, I’d probably be great at this if it was math--but, my point being. You can be sorry you missed it without being sorry they had it, right? Those are two separate things, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes they are,” Steve agrees, sounding thoughtful. “Sometimes...geez, I don’t know. I woke up and it was the future and everyone expected me to just...be glad we won the war, I guess, and get back to work. And some days that’s great, because god knows what I’d be doing without it, and some days...I guess some days I wish they’d just leave me alone.”

Tony, wondering if that was a hint, makes a vague gesture towards the house. “I can, I mean, if you want alone time, I can provide, it’s a big house--”

Steve actually laughs, a low, honest chuckle, there and gone again. The expression on his face is exasperated, maybe a little fond, too; that’s probably wishful thinking, the fond thing, but Tony’s not going to kick it out of bed. “I didn’t mean you, Tony.”

“Just checking.”

“Mmm,” Steve says, taking a breath. “Least the air’s the same, right? I always did love New York after a storm.”

“Me too,” Tony says, smiling down at his knees. “I used to come out here as a kid when it rained, just to watch. Or, well, I did, until my dad caught me building that lightning-powered bottle rocket--”

“Bet he loved that.”

“You can still see the scorch marks, if you know the flight pattern to look for,” Tony says. He’s a little proud despite himself, and he grins at Steve’s raised eyebrows. “What? It worked; they don’t just throw the words ‘child prodigy’ around, you know.”

“You must have been a terror,” Steve says, and Tony laughs.

“I’m still a terror.”

Steve opens his mouth, and Tony suddenly, definitively does not want to know what’s going to come out of it. Always good in times of stress, his brain connects a few threads it’s been working out and Tony leans forward, intent.

“Hey, can I see that drawing again?”

“I--what? Oh. Uh, sure, why--”

“I want to try something,” Tony says. He lays the drawing flat against his tablet, raises a hand when Steve makes a noise of protest. “I’m not going to hurt it, I’m just...trying something. I’ll be done in a minute, I promise. Jarvis, you up?”

“For you, sir, always,” Jarvis says, voice echoing into the darkness, and Tony quirks a smile.

“Aww, baby, you don’t have to wait up like that--no, I’m just kidding, you totally do, do me a favor and scan this in, would you? To my personal server, not the Stark ones, and don’t auto-edit, I know how you get--it’s charcoal, it should feel like charcoal, yeah?”

“Absolutely, sir,” says Jarvis. “Did you want me to simply store it, or...”

“No, no,” Tony says, flicking through a couple of screens and absently handing Steve’s notebook back. “Manipulatable file, maybe 75% just so I can work with it, and then axe the bells and whistles--don’t need the spiral imprints, don’t need the bent corner--actually, you know what, could you just clear the paper and leave the lines, the whole thing should be--yeah, like that, that’s good.”

“Tony, what are you doing?”

“Working,” says Tony, “give me a second. Jarvis, do you recognize the location on the--oh, hey, look at that, ten seconds or less, Steve, check it out, your artwork translates into the Matrix! Definitely don’t ask me what that means, you won’t like it--okay, right, good, can you take the lines, there, that's it, make the concentration a little darker--okay, that’s great. And now just--yeah, Google Earth would work but I'd rather you use the stuff from our satellites, I hate giving those Silicon Valley nerds the traffic--let's say 33% opacity to start with, just ease it in--”

“Seriously, Tony, what--”

“Trust me,” Tony says, which isn’t something he’d ever ask Steve to do if he was really paying attention. Steve goes quiet, though, so that’s something. “Jarvis, darken the line art, a little lighter on the--yeah, that's good, okay, can you render that so it's a little smoother--perfect. Right. Project it up for me, bigger, brighter too, Jarvis, it’s night, I want him to be able to see--good, good, okay, aaaand...there. Right there. Done.”

He leans back to display his handiwork, trying not to be too obvious in watching Steve’s face for a reaction. It’s not like it’s any big deal, not really; Steve’s sketch is laid on top of a photo composite of the same area of modern-day Brooklyn, charcoal meeting with faded-out color. The sketch is darker and in the forefront, the buildings behind it are more of a haze--Tony had left them nearly see-through on purpose, making them the ghost. The storefronts have changed, of course, but a number of the buildings are the same; looking at it, it’s easy to see how it fits together, past and present.

Steve stares at it, mouth parted slightly, and says nothing. He’s quiet for long enough that Tony has to resist the urge to fidget and drop the tablet entirely; he sits on his hands to quell the urge and waits.

Finally, Steve says, “You know, it’s not so bad, when you look at it like that.”

“Of course it is,” says Tony. He’s surprised by the harshness in his own voice, the honesty threaded underneath it, but he’s gotten on this train now, so he might as well ride it to the end of the line. “You know the thing in my chest, glows blue, looks real pretty--it’s there because if you took it out for ten minutes, the shrapnel hanging around in there would lodge in my heart and kill me.”

“Wait, what? I didn’t--” Steve starts, and Tony waves a hand.

“No, don’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s not the point, and it’s fine anyway, so long as I’ve got the thing in my ticker’s fine and dandy, and look, the point is, it never gets boring, and it never gets better, either. But if it hadn’t happened, I’d be...war profiteering, probably, or dead. And instead I’m Iron Man. And you know what, sometimes that doesn’t fucking help at all, but it’s another angle, isn’t it? And this, uh, whatever you wanna call this little Photoshop experiment, or hell, just look out there, you can see the lights. That’s New York, and it wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t done what you did back then, and it definitely wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t punched Doom out last week, I was there, I can personally attest to that fact. So maybe that’s your angle, or maybe it’s just knowing that the team wouldn’t work without you--because we wouldn’t, you know--or maybe it’s something smaller, but it’s...you’re...fuck, I don’t know, please say something so I’ll stop talking, I told you I’d be better if it was math, you want me to do some math?”

“No,” Steve says, quiet, “no math.”

Tony clamps his mouth shut, because it’s really high time he did, and swallows hard. He looks anywhere but at Steve for a few agonizingly long moments, and then his resolve breaks; when he glances to his left, Steve’s got his head cocked slightly to the side. He’s looking at Tony with sharp, appraising eyes, like he’s a puzzle Steve’s trying to figure out, and Tony has to look away again.

“Seriously, you’re starting to freak me out a little, even just a little nod or something, you’re--”

“Thank you,” Steve says. The sincerity in his voice--how do people even sound that sincere, how can human vocal chords even do that--makes something in Tony crack open, leaves him tingling all over, unsure.

He’s wanted to do unspeakable things to Steve for some time now, has recently become acquainted with the fact that he wants to do much less vulgar, but decidedly more terrifying, things with him as well. Just now, Tony looks at him and aches, for him and over him. He wants to know everything and nothing, wants to stay right here and spend the rest of his life running, and Steve...Jesus, given a choice, Steve probably would have chosen anyone else for company.

“No problem,” Tony says, clapping Steve on the shoulder and clambering to his feet. His voice is even, because he’s always been a good actor when he sets his mind to it; he feels splayed open, wrecked. “You should come inside--Clint’s killing Thor on the Wii, or maybe killing him over the Wii, hard to be sure. He could use a new partner.”

“Think I’ll stay out here a minute,” Steve says, smiling up at him. “Do you mind leaving the, uh...what is that, a computer glass?”

“Something like that,” Tony says, feeling his own smile go lopsided. “Tell you what, you keep it, god knows I’ve got more of them. I’ll show you how to work it properly later; for now, just tell Jarvis what you want it to do, he’ll figure it out for you.”

“Tony, you don’t have to--”

“Least I can do, really,” Tony says, which probably doesn’t make sense to Steve, but is true all the same. “I’ll see you in there, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says, and Tony makes it into the house, down the hall, and into the bathroom before he collapses against a wall and closes his eyes.

Part Three

x-men first class fic: carpe brewski, chapter ten [erik/charles, R]

2011-10-02T22:37:13Z

Right, so, if I was going to apologize for everything I want to apologize for here, I would have to start with HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO WRITE THIS DAMN CHAPTER JESUS and then, uh, the list would go on for awhile. Suffice to say that I'm sorry. I really, really am.

As ever, this is for postcardmystery, who, guys, I cannot explain the degree to which this story would not exist without Postcard. In fact, I'm 85% sure that I would not exist without Postcard, since I would've vanished into the ether of my own insanity long ago.

Title: Carpe Brewski
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Rating: R
Warnings: Interactions with/depictions of an alcoholic parent.
Author's Notes: This is a WIP, folks. You're going to want to start with Chapter One (where disclaimers, summary, etc. can be found), Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight and Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten: War's Over, Man

The next morning dawns bright and clear, with the sound of birds singing overhead.

Or, at least, that is what Charles imagines the next morning dawns like; that is what mornings tend to do. He wakes up at 11:15, hangover leeching violently down from his brain to infect every part of his body, to the sound of Scott banging open the door.

"Dude," he says, "the landlord--" and then there is a long pause.

It's a long enough pause that Charles can take in the fact that yes, he is very naked and yes, his mouth tastes like old socks and yes, Erik is still next to him, the covers kicked down somewhere around their feet. Charles has a vague memory of what he believes was four in the morning, of Erik shifting, bare skin on bare skin, long enough to say, "Fuck, 's hot," and throw the comforter away from them.

He knows how he ended up in this position, but it doesn't really help as Scott makes a terrible face and says, "Oh, dude."

"Um," says Charles.

"Dude," Scott repeats, his tones scandalized, "oh my god, I just--I--put a sock on the fucking door or something, Jesus, there are rules, there is a system--oh, god, that is so much more of either one of you than I ever wanted to see."

"Um," says Charles.

Next to him, Erik yawns and stirs, and there is a soft, tender part of Charles that wants to ignore Scott making gagging motions in his peripheral vision. He yearns to focus entirely on Erik's bedhead and the pillow crease on his cheek, on the fact that he has yet to shriek, fall out of bed, and smack him in the face while saying something like "Egads, man penis, man penis!!!" and running from the room.

Charles is aware that this is not entirely logical; for one thing, it's not like he's ever heard Erik say the word "egads." It's early; these things can't be helped.

"The fuck is he yelling about?" Erik mutters, voice rasping with exhaustion. "'S like…hours. Early. So loud, aw, fuck, my head."

"I know," Charles says, "me too, 'm sorry--"

"Oh my god," says Scott, "can you seriously, I mean, Jesus Christ is this really the time for sweet fucking nothings and shit--why am I still in this room. Why am I still in this room with your dicks--"

"Aren't you, like," Erik makes a smacking noise with his mouth, scrubs at the side of his face, "I mean, like, I think I should be embarrassed and shit, but 'm pretty sure you're fucking Logan, so…"

"I am not," Scott starts hotly, and then…stops.

"Riiiiight," says Erik, "uh-huh, that's good, can you like--not be here anymore?"

"Socks," says Scott, backing away, "socks, on the--on the door, okay, I'ma take this one right here and I'm, I'm gonna hang it for you because that's the kind of--that's the kind of citizen that I am. Oh, Jesus, my fucking eyes--"

He shuts the door behind him--loudly, Charles thinks, wincing--and vanishes, leaving only an air of horrified shock in his wake.

"Shit," says Erik, after a minute.

"Quite," says Charles.

"So you think everybody…heard that?"

"Well," says Charles, "on the one hand, it was deafening, but on the other hand I think everything seems louder to--I mean maybe he'll be, uh, discreet--"

From the next room, there is a sharp, sudden barking sound that is unmistakably Logan's laugh. It goes on for far longer than necessary, and Erik groans into Charles' shoulder, whole body angling towards him.

"Can we," he says, "I mean...later?"

"Later would be better," Charles agrees, putting a tentative hand on Erik's back. "While we're here, though...this isn't. Ah. This isn't going to be…"

"This isn't gonna be what," Erik mutters around another yawn. "Is it gonna be coffee? It's awesome if it's gonna be coffee, otherwise it's gonna be sleep."

"I just meant," says Charles, "you're not--I mean a big, y'know…heterosexual…thing?"

"Uh," says Erik, "…no?"

"Because I mean," says Charles hastily, "I mean, if it's not good for you to be--here--I'm very, I mean, but you could, if you wanted, you could--I mean I don't want you to go, but if you wanted to go you could…you could….go."

"I'm gonna pretend," Erik says, "that I even like, a little bit understood that, and just like. Uh. Tell you to shut up? Because dude, seriously, being awake is not in the game plan and also what the fuck, go where?"

"Oh," says Charles. He smiles up at the ceiling, hard enough that he feels the edges of his lips crack--and really that's the hangover, dehydration being what it is, Charles is pretty sure that if he wasn't so fucking happy he'd be violently sick all over the floor--and lets himself curl in a little closer to Erik. "Okay, then."

"Seriously," says Erik, "later, sleep now, thoughts hurt."

"Alright," says Charles, "that's--yeah, okay," and doesn't have time to think anything else before he falls asleep.

--

The second time Charles wakes up, the clock on the nightstands glows the warning that it's ten minutes past two. He still feels as though he's spent the night in the boot of a car, but slightly less like he's going to die over him.

This time when he looks to his right, Erik is awake. His eyes are bloodshot, but they are, at least, open, and when Charles says, "Hello," there's response in his face, so Charles can be sure that there are one or two synapses actually firing in his brain.

"Hi," Erik says.

"How long have you been up?"

"That's the kind of question that would involve actually paying attention. Long enough to fucking regret it, I'll tell you that much."

"Mmm," says Charles. "So did I…dream…Scott and Logan…."

"No," says Erik, "no, no, definitely no, there's a text on my phone that just says DUDE--"

"From which one of them?"

"Hard to tell," Erik says, shrugging, "half the time they send shit from each other's phones anyway, it's not signed."

"Really?" says Charles. "I thought they only did that with me."

"Egomaniac," Erik says, but fondly. "No, that's to everyone, you are not the special snowflake you so often imagine."

"Fuck you too," says Charles easily. "So, do you think it's too much to hope that…everyone doesn't know, then?"

"Would it be a disaster," says Erik, his voice changing pitch, going serious all at once, "if they did?"

"Well, not for me, I'm not the one who--you're the one who's all, you know, girls and things."

Erik gives him a long, strange look. "Is this gonna be a thing? The fact that up until now--"

"It's not a thing for me if it's not a thing for you," Charles says, scrambling suddenly, desperate at once to have this conversation and never, ever have this conversation. "I mean, you're, it's, I wouldn't want to--"

"Hold that thought," Erik says, and leans over him. This in and of itself would be enough to derail Charles' train of though--they're both still naked and Erik's bare chest is pressed against his, a canvas of easy heat, and Charles was looking for distraction anyway. Then Erik rights himself, holding last night's empty bottle of Absolut in his left hand.

"Jesus fuck," he says, "we drank all of this? No wonder I feel like ass."

"I think you spilled some," says Charles, "if that helps any."

"It really doesn't," Erik says, flopping back on the bed. He rolls the bottle between his palms, wincing up at the ceiling. "Ugh, Jesus, I'd say I'm never drinking again but I feel like I say that a lot."

"You really do," Charles says, "it's a terrible habit. We should probably get up."

"Why?" says Erik. He yawns hugely around the word, cracking it in the middle. "So we can deal with the shitshow downstairs? Not tempting, dude."

"It's possible that it isn't a shitshow," Charles says, not convincing anyone. "Maybe the windows were boarded up correctly, Scott certainly seemed to have a handle on--"

"Sock-hanging?"

"Oh, god, I really thought I'd imagined that bit."

"Nope," Erik says, "that happened, lecture about his citizenship and everything, burned into my brain for all eternity, just like I imagine a mental picture of our--"

"Stop now," Charles says hastily, "please stop," and they both laugh, tired and a little hysterical, for a minute.

Then--and it's a slow, quiet thing that nonetheless manages to cause a spike of sharp relief in Charles' gut, to soothe the ache he hadn't even known was building there--Erik drops the bottle and rolls over so their faces are close.

"Hey," he says, "uh, morning."

"Afternoon," says Charles. It's a question more than a correction, a question about anything but the time of day, but Erik grins and then they're kissing, too wrung dry to put any real feeling behind it. It's just an easy press of tongue and teeth, soft like the sheets under their fingers. Charles makes a soft noise into Erik's mouth, a hum of pleasure that would be embarrassing if he didn't mean it so much, and Erik nips lightly at his bottom lip before he pulls away.

"Your mouth," he says, staring at it, "tastes like socks."

"Oh my god," says Charles. "Oh, god, fuck Scott so much, the word 'socks' should not be such a complete mood killer--and, if I recall correctly, I am not the only one who felt it necessary to drink all the vodka last night."

"Hey, you're the enabler here," says Erik, "I was already drunk before we did that, you're the one who came up here and put the bottle in my hand--"

"For the good of mankind and you not ending up in prison--"

"Yeah, yeah, it was very noble and everything and we got laid out of it, fine, great, I'm not saying it was a bad thing, I'm just saying, blaming me for the fact that your breath tastes like ass? Not cool, man. Not cool."

Charles isn't sure what makes him say it--the euphoria managing to bloom around his headache or the fact that he could very easily make a considerably worse joke, one he's not sure Erik is prepared to handle--but he opens and mouth and mutters, "I see how it is. You suck one little cock and--"

Erik laughs delightedly and socks him in the shoulder. "God, you are such an asshole," and really, he's asking for that joke Charles can't quite bring himself to crack, "have I ever told you that?"

"Once or twice," Charles says, and kisses him again, bad breath and all, for the simple pleasure of knowing he can. Erik's dick twitches--Charles can feel it getting hard against his thigh--and he gasps into the kiss, because of all the ways he thought this morning would go--

"--oh my god seriously I can't," Erik says, pulling back, and then winces at the expression on Charles' face. "Oh, come on, no, I mean I can't while--like--look, this is awesome and everything but I smell and you're like, ugh, I can't even tell if it's your breath or my breath but either way that is not. Uh. I need a shower."

"Alright," Charles says, very slow, and Erik laughs, leaning down to kiss him briefly again.

"Seriously," he says, "stop freaking out. I swear to god I'm not losing my shit because you don't have boobs, okay? Gimme like twenty minutes, I'll shower, then you can shower, and then I'll show you how down I am with the whole cock thing."

"And here I thought you didn't speak Advanced Gay," Charles says, relaxing enough to let himself grin. Erik ruffles his hair, sliding over him to climb out of the bed.

"I'm totally enrolling for the class. Sign me up and shit, I'll be reporting back for lecture as soon as I feel less like dying."

"I wasn't really thinking of teaching it lecture style," Charles says, solely for the simple pleasure of watching Erik laugh. He keeps watching as Erik bends over to pick up a towel--the view is seriously excellent, Charles can't complain at all--and he doesn't break his gaze until Erik gets to the door, gives him a smile that's almost shy, and slips out into the hall. A moment later Charles hears the shower running and he yawns, once, twice, doesn't even mean to close his eyes--

--

Charles blinks awake for the third time with the exhausted, natural push of someone whose body has been asleep too long. There's no noise that draws him out of slumber, but the clock on the nightstand reads 3:15; he narrows his eyes at it, confused, wondering how he lost an hour. When he focuses on the rest of the room, Erik's sitting at his desk, back hunched. His hair is dry, and he's dressed.

"Hey," Charles says, rasping on it a little, throat a bit raw still from the beating it took the night before, "you're late for, uh, 'class.'"

Erik doesn't say anything, and Charles wonders if maybe he's dreaming, or if he was dreaming before. Erik doesn't say anything and he doesn't move and Charles isn't quite awake enough yet to process the feeling of dread pooling in his gut--

--and then Erik turn in the chair and there's a piece of paper in his hand and it all becomes hideously, agonizingly clear.

"Charles," Erik says, brandishing the Oxford letter, "what the fuck is this?"

His voice is calm, so calm it stings in Charles' ears. His voice is calm and his hands are steady but his eyes are red rimmed and his mouth is a flat, thin line; Charles wonders how long it's been since he found it, how long he's just been sitting and stewing, and finds he doesn't want to know.

"I," says Charles, scrambling to sit up, "I, Erik, please, let me explain, I was going to--"

"I was looking for the lease," Erik says, still so, so calm, calm like he can't afford to be anything else. "I ran into Scott again and he talked to the landlord and he wanted to see the lease, and I didn't want to wake you."

"Erik, really," Charles says, "Erik, please," but Erik doesn't even acknowledge that he's heard him.

"You know, it even kind of makes sense," he says. "I mean, when I first saw it it didn't, right, because how could you possibly have gotten into Oxford, you never said--but no, of course you didn't. Of course you didn't, Charles, why would you need to tell me that?"

"Erik," Charles pleads. He's out of bed now, scrambling into his jeans because it suddenly feels deeply wrong to be naked, and he's grasping at straws, he knows he is, anything to keep this from happening, not now. "Just, look, look at the date on the letter, it only came yesterday, I swear I was going to--"

"It only came yesterday," Erik roars, grinning suddenly, up and out of his chair in a smooth, furious motion. "God, Charles, you're right, would you look at that, I feel so much fucking better now--because that's totally how Oxford works, that's how all grad schools work, they've just got everyone in the whole fucking world in some kind of goddamn lottery draw! It's not like you had to apply or interview, no, of course not, it only came yesterday, it's not like you've known about this for fucking months--"

"I couldn't," Charles says, "I couldn't, okay, I'm sorry, I fucked up, but I didn't know how to, what the fuck was I supposed to--"

"You were supposed to be fucking honest with me!" Erik yells, slamming the letter down on the desk. "You were supposed to treat me like your best fucking friend, Jesus Christ, what possible argument could you fucking have--"

"I didn't think you would react well!" Charles snaps, starting to get angry despite himself, bubbling with emotion he can't help, can't control. "Which, given how you're acting right now, I don't think you can really blame me for."

"You didn't think I would," Erik starts, and then shakes his head, visibly stung. "You know what, Charles, seriously, fuck you, what the fuck do you think--what, were you just going to pack up and move to England and send me a fucking postcard, you think I would've reacted better to that?"

"And when would you have liked me to tell you? It's not like you ever made it easy, Erik, you never want to have a conversation about the future, you're always shying away from--"

"Oh, right, you're right, this is all me, this is my fuck-up, can't be you, how could it be you--"

"Christ, I don't even know if I'm going! I haven't made any decisions yet, and last time I checked there isn't any mandate saying that I have to apprise you of--"

"Don't treat me like I'm stupid," Erik says, low, dangerous. "I'm not fucking stupid, Charles, you're going, and you're going for the same reason I didn't want to fucking talk about it, god, Oxford, the fucking prestige alone."

"And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it always fucking means!" Erik cries. "Jesus, do you know how sick I get of having to spell it out for you, the fact that you have money and I don't--"

"This isn't about that!"

"Of course it's about that, it's always about that, fucking hell, it's like talking to a brick fucking wall."

"I don't know what you're--" Charles starts, but then he stops, because Erik's voice has changed, is doing a sharp, cruel imitation of Charles.

"Oh, Erik," Erik says, and god, his voice is breaking on his badly-done British accent and Charles is humiliated anyway, has never felt smaller in his life, "I bought you health insurance while you weren't paying attention, I do hope you won't mind too terribly! Oh, Erik, don't worry, I've already bailed you out of jail, you do get yourself into these little scrapes, don't you--no, no, of course I didn't listen when you told me not to, why would I bother? Oh, Erik, I've gotten into Oxford, but that's not pertinent information, don't worry your little head about it, that's for the adults--"

"Stop," Charles yells, "Jesus, Erik, please--"

"You don't think I wish I could stop?" Erik says, and if his voice was breaking before it's broken now, quiet and so pained that it breaks Charles' heart. "You don't think I wish you didn't treat me like your, your--like I'm some kind of fucking pet or something, god, you selfish asshole, you think this about you? You think I haven't tried to pretend you don't--but fuck, fuck, I'm so fucking stupid--"

"You're not--"

"SHUT UP," Erik says, screams it, and Charles winces away from the noise. "God, fuck you, fuck you, all I wanted--and then what, was last night just some kind of--you know what, no, don't tell me, don't fucking talk to me because every time you do I just let myself believe all over again that you're not just like--but you are, Charles, you fucking are."

"Erik," Charles says, urgent and furious and terrified all at once, "Erik, you can't think that, you're my best friend and maybe I've--I'm not saying I didn't make a mistake but you, you can't think that I, that last night, that I didn't--I'm your best friend, you don't really--"

"You know what, Charles, I don't know what the fuck you are right now," Erik snaps, and he's out the door, slamming it behind him, before Charles can reply.

--

It takes Charles an embarrassingly long time to come out of his room.

He sits on the bed for half an hour, in jeans with no underwear beneath them, shirtless and unable to do anything about it. He tries to think, but draws blank after blank; his mind is a cacophony of white noise, thoughts firing and missing, lost to the void. There's a sensation in the back of his throat, under his eyelids, a thick, raw burning that itches for release, but he doesn't cry. His fingers flex, twist in the sheets that he'd been kissing Erik on a few hours before, and every part of his body feels like it belongs to someone else.

When the clock blinks four--when it's been an age since Charles heard the distant echo of the front door slamming--he realizes that the jeans he is wearing are, in fact, Erik's. He stands and strips, re-dresses himself methodically: shirt-pants-sweater-socks-shoes. He doesn't look at any of it, and he's exhausted when he's done, has to sit back down on the edge of the bed and catch his breath.

And there are those sheets again, feeling the same way they always have under his hands and that's wrong, it's wrong, this is all wrong and he stands, tears them off, the comforter and the pillowcases and the mattress pad and this room isn't small enough to hide any of it and he can't burn it and--

--he has to get out of here. He's got to be somewhere else, anywhere else, he's got to run from this like he runs from everything, because that's what he's good at, isn't it, because that's just what he does.

He's already most of the way down the stairs when he freezes, when it occurs to him that it's possible everyone knows. Scott, certainly, and Logan, and maybe they told everyone, and he and Erik hadn't exactly been quiet about--and, oh god, the thought on the heels of that one is even worse. Maybe Scott talked or maybe Logan did and maybe they all know about the sex, but not what came after; Charles doesn't think he can bear it, having to explain. The thoughts are coming thick and fast now, tumbling over each other, and he longs for the white noise that seems to have slipped away from him like so much smoke.

He takes another tentative step, makes it to the landing, and peers out at the room. Darwin is asleep with his head on Alex's lap and Pyro's smoking another bowl--Does he never go home, Charles thinks, and wants to fucking sob about it, because it's such a normal thought when everything else is wrong. Scott and Logan are sitting at the kitchen table, a copy of the Sunday paper between them because neither one of them ever really got the hang of the internet, and Scott's got a bowl of cereal in front of him.

While Charles watches, Logan calmly, casually sticks his hand in it, brings it out a second later full of cereal and dripping with milk.

"What the fuck," Scott says, appalled.

"Hungry," Logan says, muffled around a mouthful of cereal.

"Hungry," Scott repeats, "okay seriously what, are you actually a fucking caveman now, that is so disgusting I can't even--"

"Prissy bitch," says Logan, still garbled. "'S just my hand, ain't like my hand's never--"

"Shut up," Scott hisses, and Logan grins, milk dripping down his chin.

"Make me," he says, and this, of course, is when Scott catches sight of Charles.

"Shut up," Scott repeats, but more shocked then annoyed this time.

Logan, still chewing with his eyes trained on the paper, says, "Aww, Summers, ain't you gonna--" before Scott elbows him hard in the side. Logan looks up and his mouth falls open, a fleck of half-chewed cereal slipping free, and Scott spares a moment from staring at Charles to let his gaze flick to that in unabashed horror.

It's only a moment, though, and Logan's still blinking at him, and it occurs to Charles that he has not yet glanced in a mirror; he probably doesn't want to know what he looks like right now. He's sure, with that deep, primal echo that always comes when you've stumbled upon an essential truth, that when your appearance elicits concern from Scott Summer and James Logan, it's pretty much the end of the world.

"Uh," says Scott, and he knows, they both do, Charles can see it, "hey, Charles."

"Prof!" Pyro says cheerfully, "what up, if you're looking for Erik, he already--"

"Can it, kid," Logan says quietly, eyes still on Charles, and Charles makes a beeline for his car, doesn't speak to any of them, can't muster the ability to so much as say goodbye.

He stops at the gas station just outside of town, slips in through the gritty glass doors and asks the bored attendant for a pack of Marlboro Reds. He grabs a lighter from the case sitting by the register--black or blue, he doesn't look long enough to be sure--and feels sick when he reaches into his wallet. He hands over his credit card, thinks of Erik saying, "The fact that you have money and I don't," and can't look the cashier in the eye.

It's worth it, though, the humiliating difficulty of such a basic purchase, when he rips the plastic off of the pack and pulls out a cigarette. He lights it and it's too harsh, tastes awful, acrid smoke burning its way down his throat, and Charles thinks good as he puts the car into gear and heads out of town.

He's been driving for fifteen minutes when he realizes he's got no idea where he's going; it's been twenty minutes when he realizes he doesn't care. After forty-five minutes he pulls into a parking lot and cuts the engine, blinks past his highway blindness to realize he's at the beach, at his and Erik's beach, as cold and desolate as it was a few days ago.

Charles stares out at the ocean through his windshield and feels crazed, crazy. Charles stares out at the ocean through his windshield and feels unmoored, so, naturally, he does the unhealthiest thing he can think of; he lights another cigarette, and calls his mother.

"Hello, Charles," she says, sounding unusually sober, "I must say, this is a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Charles leans back against the seat and closes his eyes, breathing in the stench of smoke already seeping into the car. "Hello, Mother," he says, "I was just calling to tell you that I go into Oxford."

There is a pause, in which Charles can hear nothing but the sound of his own breathing. It's a kindness, in a way; the rotgut of disappointment has already started to settle in his stomach when his mother says, "Oh, that's lovely," in the tones of someone who really couldn't be bothered about it either way. She says it like Charles has told her the score of a hockey game or the middle name of one of his pledges or (he thinks bitterly, eleven and furious all over again) that he has won the state science fair, despite being two years below than the allowed entrance age.

"You don't care at all, do you?" he says, realizing the truth of it as it comes out of his mouth, and Sharon makes a small tutting noise.

"That's hardly any way to speak to your mother."

"You've never cared," says Charles, voice picking up speed as reality unfolds before him, "have you? All this time I've been doing all this shit because I thought that if I was better it would be better, and you never noticed at all, did you?"

"I don't think it's fair," Sharon says, her voice gone hard, "to blame me for the way that you are. That stepsister of yours, maybe, or your father--"

"My father," Charles snaps, "has been dead since I was five years old, so no, I don't think it's his fault, and Raven is my sister--"

"Not by blood."

"There are things more important than blood!" Charles has never once spoken to his mother this way, has never even let himself consider it--the things he's saying are nearly as new to him as they must be to her, and he's not sure if it's the hangover or the despair, if it's possible that he's still a little drunk from last night. "God, look at you, when did you ever once support me, when did you ever once tell me I was fine just being who I was?"

"Really," his mother starts, but Charles is on a roll now.

"You know what you said to me when I didn't get into Harvard?" he demands. "You said I did tell you boarding school would have been a better decision. Oh, well, I suppose somewhere will have you. Do you have any idea--god, all that effort, I barely even had friends in high school and it killed me and you knew it and you couldn't even throw me a fucking bone--"

"Well I wasn't wrong," his mother sniffs. "Boarding school--"

"Wouldn't have mattered!" Charles snaps. "Or it would have, you can't know that, it's a crapshoot, it's all a crapshoot and I didn't know, not the way I should have, and frankly Oxford was probably--and I couldn't have gone to boarding school, Raven--"

"An attachment that you overdeveloped--"

"She never made me feel like I wasn't good enough!" Charles yells. The sound bounces around in his car, huddles up against the echo of his misery, and when he speaks again, it's quieter. "She never made me feel like I was always, always coming up short, and she never drank herself into a stupor instead of going to my parent teacher conferences, or forgot my best friend's name--"

"Aaron, isn't it?"

"Erik," Charles says, and it's like sandpaper scraping up his throat. "His name is Erik. Christ, even that, can't you just--I just wanted you to be my mother, and maybe you couldn't, maybe that's not how you're, how you're wired, but you could have tried."

"You don't understand," Sharon says, and at least there's some emotion in her voice now, for all it's dismissive. "You can't possibly understand, Charles. When you're older, you'll see."

"I'm twenty-two," Charles says. He's not angry anymore, just exhausted, heavy with the weight of all the things he doesn't have the faintest idea how to say. "Thanks for the birthday present, by the way."

"I didn't," says his mother, and then there is a pause. "Ah."

"I'm sorry," Charles says, reflexive. He doesn't mean it, not really, except that for all the ways he does--except for all the pockets of himself wrapped up in being better, in fixing it, in just figuring out that missing piece and setting it to rights. Charles is a genius, even if he doesn't feel like it most days; he's not good with problems he can't solve.

"Yes, well," his mother says, and this conversation has probably driven her directly to the bottom drawer of the desk in her study, and Charles closes his eyes against the resurgence of hot shame, of myfaultmyfault. "I have to go now."

"Yeah," says Charles, defeated, and hangs up the phone.

--

The first time Charles met Erik, he was drunk beyond the telling of it. The second time, a week later, was stranger, easier and harder too. He'd come out of his dorm with his laptop bag slung over his shoulder, exhausted from the all-nighter he'd pulled to catch up and the quick nap that had seemed like a good idea at the time, only to find Erik leaning up against a battered black motorcycle.

It's hard, now, for Charles to remember Erik the way he was freshman year; hair greasy and too long, hands almost preternaturally still, careful with his words, his actions, in a way that would seem foreign to Charles later. It's strange to think of a time when Erik was just an acquaintance, when everything they said to each other was couched in layers of the people they hadn't quite yet become.

"You like it?" Erik said that afternoon, running his fingers over the handlebars of the bike. "The police station does auctions, sometimes. It was probably stupid--I need a car, but this was so much cheaper."

"It's," Charles said, blinking against the sunlight. "Uh. Great, but what are you--"

"Figured I owed you a pair of shoes," Erik said, shrugging. "But you're not gonna get them, so I thought maybe a cup of coffee instead."

"You," Charles started, and rubbed a hand over his forehead. "You came to buy me a cup of coffee? How did you even know where I lived?"

"Broke into Dean Stark's office and looking up your housing information," Erik said, his calm absolute. When Charles stared at him like he was crazy, his face broke into a grin, and he tipped his head back in laughter.

(God, and even then--even then, back before Erik had fully grown into his shoulders, back before Charles had known him at all, he should have recognized it, he should have seen the truth in the way his heart jumped in his chest--)

"God, gullible much?" Erik said, still laughing, "no, you idiot, I asked McCone, we're brothers now or whatever the shit, and also I think he was blazed. You coming or what?"

Charles didn't know what to do with him, this strange guy with a sharp edge to his laugh, standing outside waiting for him like he was a foregone conclusion. Later, Erik would admit that he really had felt guilty about the puke thing; it made a little sense after that, a lot of sense after Erik's drunken confession of loneliness. At the time, though, Erik was an enigma in dark jeans and well-worn fleece, and all Charles really knew was that he was a sad drunk, and that he could do with a cup of coffee.

"I suppose so," he said, and Erik smiled.

--

Charles received the first F of his life during fall semester sophomore year, on a quiz for a graduate level physics class he shouldn't have been taking at all. He hid the evidence in his desk drawer, and then underneath his mattress, and then behind his dresser; finally he gave up and pinned it to the wall to stare at it, morose. Hot failure swelled in his chest, a caterwaul of voices that all sounded like tutors and teachers and his mother, all the people he was disappointing, all the reasons he wasn't good enough--

--and then Erik came and found him, fingers curled around his doorframe, mouth turned down.

"Are you sitting in here wallowing, dude?" he said. "Because wallowing is totally not on today's agenda, it sucks."

"It sucks," Charles said, waving a hand, "I suck, close enough, yes?"

"Oh my god," Erik said. He came and sat down on the bed, snatching the quiz off the wall before Charles could stop him. "Jesus, you get so fucking melodramatic sometimes, it's just a--wait, hold up. Dude. Dude. This is the number for Tony's graduate physics class, what the fuck are you doing in this class?"

"Oh, god, every time you call him Tony I have heart palpitations," Charles said, burying his face in a pillow. "You know he didn't even come the first day? The first day and he sent a TA, and--"

"Yeah, he doesn't really teach," Erik said absently, looking over the paper. "I mean, he does sometimes, he likes to swing by and scare everyone shitless about halfway through a semester--Charles, seriously, how the fuck did you get into this class?"

Charles waved a hand, miserable. "Tested out of all the prerequisites," he muttered into the pillow. "And my advisor told me I was crazy but I can't not take every advantage available to me, and--"

"You don't even like physics," Erik said, bemused, letting a hand settle lightly on Charles' back.

"I might," Charles said, "you don't know."

Erik laughed at him, the sound mixing with the faint rustle of the test paper crinkling. "You like chemistry and biology and weird articles about genetics, dude, I do listen when you talk to yourself at the library."

"Said like a man who refuses to use the library for its intended purpose--"

"Bugging the shit out of you is totally the intended purpose of the library," Erik said, "you just do libraries wrong. So, wait, how many classes are you taking this semester?"

"Seven," Charles said, after a pause.

"Seven?!"

"I had to get a special permission thing," Charles said, "but we're sophomores, this is the last chance to hone in on a speciality if I don't want to end up here an extra year, and I can't do that because that looks terrible on admissions forms for grad schools unless you've picked up a master's too--and don't think I haven't thought about that, but I really dropped the ball last year, and now certain doors are closed and I've got a finite amount of time and I can manage three majors, I think, but if I want the physics minor--"

"Oh my god," Erik said again, and pushed on Charles' shoulder until he rolled over. "Are you even listening to yourself right now? Seriously? Because you sound fucking crazy, I need you to know that."

"Oh, yes," Charles spat bitterly, "it's easy for you, isn't it, a mentorship with Dean Stark himself, you're hardly going to have to scramble to get into a grad program."

A strange look flitted across Erik's face, but it was gone again before Charles could put a finger on what it meant.

"Tony's not really the point here, dude," he said, lightly enough. "The point is, killing yourself over this shit isn't really going to get you anywhere, because you'll be dead by the time it pays off. You should drop the class."

"Well, yes, now that I've proved myself a failure--"

"You're not a failure," Erik said, his eyes gone sharp and angry. "Don't fucking say that shit, dude, one bad grade on a test for a class you should drop doesn't make you a failure, Jesus. Calm your fucking tits, alright?"

Charles narrowed his eyes at him, and Erik narrowed his eyes back, then reached out and opened the drawer in Charles' nightstand. Charles kept a bowl and a stash of weed in there, a small collection of the lighters that got left around the house, and Erik pulled one out and promptly set the paper on fire.

"Erik!"

"You know what, fuck 'em," Erik said, grinning behind the flames. Something eased in Charles' chest, a tightness that had been threatening to cut off his air supply; he didn't mean to laugh, but he couldn't help it. Erik laughed too, long and low, until he'd singed his fingers and set off the fire alarm.

--

Raven visited junior year while Erik's wrist was still encased in plaster. Her presence eased a tension that had roiled between them, a strange silence from Erik and Charles' bitter refusal to confront everything his breakup with Steve represented; she was Charles' sister and Erik's too, by that point. She laughed and cajoled and sprawled out on their couch over the long weekend, and with her around it was easier for Charles to draw breath.

"You're hopeless," she sighed, when Charles told her the whole story over calzones on the front porch.

"You knew that," he said, and she raised her eyebrows at him, the unsaid Does you good to hear it, though, hanging warm between them.

Scott was taking a photography class that semester, hauling around an oversized camera that presumably heightened his hipster cred. Logan gave him shit for it all the time, a sharp, needling, ever-present kind of grief that Charles was only beginning to recognize for what it was. It was annoying at first, the way Scott would set up a tripod in the corner and bitch incessantly about people being careful, but not annoying enough that anyone really bothered telling him to stop.

Charles, in retrospect, is glad that they hadn't managed to dissuade him. There's a picture tucked in his wallet that he never intends to remove, no matter how much it hurts looking at it now, with his feet buried in the sand on the nearly-frozen beach. The camera must have been on some kind of timer, because Scott's in the shot, rolling his eyes at Logan's upraised fist; Raven's caught mid-laugh, Charles' finger in her face, and Erik's arm is slung easily around around Charles' shoulders, cast knocking against his chest.

They look…happy, easy, as comfortable with each other as people can be, and Charles' eyes prick and burn, staring at it. He's been sitting out on the beach long enough that his extremities have gone nearly numb--it's been minutes or hours or, hell, maybe weeks, he can't really be sure. He's smoked through nearly all of his cigarettes and he knows, he knows he's being maudlin and ridiculous, but the hysterical grief at the thought of having Erik and losing him is impossible to shake.

But then again, that's the thing about Erik; Charles can't shake him, has never even been able to bring himself to try. Even Oxford, wrapped up in dreams he had at fifteen, at eighteen, had been the easiest way out--the idea of flight rather than fight, the chance to slip away from it all without doing the work involved.

Maybe Erik was right. Maybe Charles would have moved to England without telling him, sent him a postcard that he agonized over in the emptiness of his new flat. He doesn't like to think it, but if he's proved himself anything, it's a coward; he thinks of Erik's hands on his skin, the crumpled hurt in his face this morning, and burns with something that's never going to be courage but is, at least, regret.

I should have, Charles thinks, and I shouldn't have, and then, clear and bright, it doesn't matter. Because, honestly, it doesn't--what he should or shouldn't have done is immaterial now. It's already too late.

Charles tightens his fists around the cigarette pack in his hand, crushing the last three. Before he can think about it he stands and hurtles the whole mess towards the sea--the lighter, the crushed cardboard biting into his palm, his memories and his hurt and his fuck-up and his mother's voice, all the ways in which he'll never be the person he's supposed to be. It's a stupid thing to do, but Charles has done a lot of stupid things today; he figures one more, for the greater good, won't hurt him.

He'll just have to go home. He'll just have to explain, and apologize, and hope.

--

--

The first thing Charles notices is that his yard is full of people dressed in black; the second thing he notices is that they're all carrying fucking weapons. He throws himself out of his car with a level of reckless stupidity that will shock him later, and it's only as he's storming up to them--to the unknown people with the guns, what the fuck is he thinking--that he recognizes the outline of one of those bodies.

"What the fuck," he demands, grabbing Erik by the shoulder and wheeling him around, "do you think you're doing?"

"And here I thought you'd run away from home," Erik says, sneering, as one by one the rest of the figures turn to look at them. Logan's by the door; Scott's got a hand on his arm, speaking in low, urgent tones, barely even sparing Charles a glance. The pledges are lined up by the driveway, each of them with what looks like a sniper rifle in their hands.

To a man, they look uncomfortable and terrified. Charles feels sick.

"You. Have. A. Gun." Charles says, as carefully as he can manage. "You gave the pledges guns, what the fuck are you thinking, what are you planning--"

"Tell you what, Charles," Erik says, narrowing his eyes. "Why don't you tell me what you think I'm gonna do with these?"

"I don't fucking know!" Charles yells, "But whatever it is it's a bad fucking--"

"What," Erik says, "you think I'm gonna go shoot up the Zeta house, is that what you think?"

He steps forward and jabs Charles in the chest with the barrel of the gun; Charles doesn't flinch, because he's too angry, because he can't. All thoughts of apology are gone now, faded in a red-hot haze, and he glares at Erik with as much fire as he's ever been able to muster.

"I don't know what the fuck to think right now," he spits, and Erik smiles, cruel victory written in the curve of his lips.

"Welcome," he says, stepping back and taking aim, "to the fucking club."

Charles' fingers tighten with hurt, not fear, but he doesn't have time to say anything more before Erik pulls the trigger. There is a loud crack, and Charles closes his eyes; when the pain he expects to feel blooming in his chest doesn't come, he blinks and glances over his shoulder.

There's a bright blue paint splotch marring the front of the house, directly over where Charles' shoulder just was.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Charles says, "they're fucking paintball guns?"

"What'd you think they were, Charles?" Erik says, strangled suddenly. His face is clouded over with some emotion Charles is too furious to decode. "Did you think I was going to shoot you?"

"You can't go paintball the Zeta house," Charles snaps, because he can't go down any other road right now. "Jesus, did you not hear Captain Fury last night, you're going to land yourself in jail, you're going to land us all in jail--"

"Oh, don't worry," Erik says, "you don't have to be involved. I was paying attention this morning; conditional acceptance, I get it. Wouldn't want to hurt your credibility at Oxford."

"This is not about that," Charles growls, aware that everyone is staring at them in open confusion, "and, anyway, it's not like you've given the impression that you care about my--"

"Of course I care, Charles," Erik says. "In fact, I can't think of anything I want more right now than for you to be on the other side of an ocean."

"Fuck you."

He says it so fast, so instinctively, that he's surprised to hear it himself. He doesn't regret it, though, and holds his ground, not moving an inch. Erik leans close, too close, close enough that Charles has to resist the urge to grab him around the neck and bite into his mouth, hard enough to bruise and bleed, just to shut up him.

"Yeah," he hisses, "already got that memo, thanks."

Charles blinks, and his whole body is shaking; he's not even sure, now, if it's rage or exhaustion or the howling loss belaying both, how obviously beyond repair this all is. He can't think of a single thing to say, just stands there with his mouth opening and shutting, until Pyro says, "Magneto? Pr…Prof? What's going on?"

"What's going on," Erik says, pulling away from Charles and turning his back on him, "is that Charles here is going to shut the fuck up, and we're going to go ahead with our plan."

"This is a terrible fucking idea," Scott snaps, in the tones of someone who's said it a number of times. "Just so we're on the record about it."

"I'm, uh," Logan says, "I'm thinking he's right, Erik."

Erik shrugs one shoulder, eyes glittering with manic energy. "Fury's not gonna think we did this to our own fucking house," he says. "Boys, open fire."

--

Alone on his paint-splattered front porch, staring up at the stars to avoid looking at the ruined siding, Charles wonders if it's he's having some kind of nervous breakdown. It just doesn't seem possible, that he'd started the day curled up in bed with his…whatever Erik is to him now….and ended up here. He watched Erik load the pledges into Logan's truck, paintball guns in hand; he watched Scott pleading with them but kept his own mouth shut, all too aware that adding his voice to the argument would do more harm than good.

Logan, eyes tight, said something to Scott before he slid into the driver's seat; Charles was too far away to hear, but it looked like an apology. Scott socked him in the shoulder and rolled his eyes, and Charles' fingers beat a harsh staccato of jealousy into his own thighs at the ease there. He hated them, just for that moment, for all the ways in which they weren't ruined, for the conversations they could have without everything unraveling for it.

He is aware that that doesn't make him a particularly good person, but Charles is beginning to think he's never been much of a person to begin with, so.

He closes his eyes against the headache building and tries to think logically. The frat war, such as it is, has clearly gotten out of hand; however, it's equally clear that Erik won't listen to him, not now, possibly not ever. Charles could call their landlord now, throw some money at the problem, but that thought just makes him think of Erik's sharp, mocking imitation--he could call the police and tell them he'd come home to find the house like this, but he's got a vague idea that that could be perjury or something like it.

The worst thing to do is, undoubtedly, to stay here, to wait for the police to appear and force him into that position. Scott vanished ten seconds after Logan's truck pulled away, gave Charles a speaking look that said something about idiocy, but something about pity too. Charles ignored him, watched as his car pulled out of the drive.

He should leave. He really should. It's just that he's not entirely sure any of this is really happening; it's just that he's not entirely sure where he'd even go.

Maybe it's the surreality of the whole thing; maybe it's just the fact that Charles has associated the purr of a motorbike engine with Erik's stupid impossible perfect brand of insanity since they were freshman. But when the Shadow pulls into the driveway--for all it's the wrong bike, the wrong body on top of it, for all Erik left in a car not ten minutes ago--Charles is crippled by blinding, wild relief, just for a second. Erik's come back to talk this through; Erik's come back to hit him or kiss him or kill him, but at least engage. Erik has come back and maybe now Charles can wake up, still curled up in bed with him--hell, maybe Charles can wake up alone, in the same place they were a week ago, best friends with something between them they were both afraid to touch. It seems so stupid, so selfish now, all the time Charles spent seeing their friendship as not enough--he would kill, right at this moment, just to have Erik look at him and act anything other than disgusted.

But then the bike's engine cuts off, and it's Angel walking up the driveway towards him, hair slipping loose in a long, graceful wave as she pulls the helmet off her head. She looks--angry, Charles realizes, angrier than he's ever seen her, and before he can begin to process that she's whipping her helmet at him, hard. He catches it--instinct alone--and blinks as she puts her hands on her hips.

"So," she snaps, her eyes narrowing, "you are alive."

ETA, 4/14/12: Hi hi! If you are here to ask where the next update is, or leave me an angry message, please do me a favor and read this first, okay? Thanks, guys. -Jizz

fic dump!

2011-09-06T03:50:28Z

HI GUYS.

So, today for Labor Day I gave myself the gift of, uh, doing a bunch of random nonsense connected to exactly nothing. I wrote some fic for some pairings! I did a canon Erik/Charles fanmix, which you can find at my tumblr! And, also, the other day I played a fun "Give me the most random pairing you can think of," kind of meme, which was a blast. But, since I can't manage to create a useful tagging system on any platform, I figured it might be good to go ahead and archive all that nonsense here. So! This is a bunch of ficlets for a bunch of fandoms, slightly edited in some cases, grouped by pairing, fandom(s) and (if included) prompt! Hooray, or something.

So, starting with the completely random pairing meme:

Ariadne/Raven [Inception/XMFC]

Ariadne drifts in Paris, flitting from place to place, never setting down roots. She'd been warned, of course, that this would happen; she’s got all this new life under her belt, knowledge and money and pieces of Cobb's subconscious still sticking out from her at odd angles, leaving her unsure who or where she is. But here she is back in her old world, and the streets are all familiar but her fingers itch to turn them in on themselves, to stack and build them differently, to take them apart and stitch them up sideways.

Circumstance being what it is, chance being what it is, she happens down a side alley at the same time that Raven’s ducked into it to switch forms. Ariadne only sees the flicker of it out of the corner of her eye, but it’s enough, enough for someone who’s been trained to locate the strangeness of the dream—she reaches into her pocket and catches her totem between two fingers, and it feels the same as it always has, but that’s hardly enough to go by, nowhere near enough to trust. She can’t help but approach the blonde woman eyeing her with something like appraisal, and when she says, “If you’re a projection, you’re the best I’ve ever seen,” Raven just tilts her head, almost smiles.

(Four hours later, tongue slick-sliding along the deep-blue surface of Raven’s truest thighs, Ariadne still isn’t sure if she’s awake. She can’t decide if she really wants to know.)

Rory Williams/Eric Northman [Doctor Who/True Blood]

Rome falls, and Rory the toy soldier is left alone with a big black box and a heart large enough to make up for the fact that he doesn’t actually have one, these days. Eric, opportunistic at the best of times, is in town for the spectacle of human vs. human, and Rory smells strange, off, cold.

“I’m married,” says Rory, when Eric pushes him up against a building falling to disrepair. “Or, I should be. Will be. Might be. Was supposed to be, I’m off a couple thousand years but that’s not the point—”

“You are not human,” Eric says, fingers skating over cold skin, more curious than anything else.

“Well, you’re probably a giant fish,” says Rory. “D'you think you could maybe try to put the fangs up?”

Lord Vetinari/Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson [Discworld]

Vetinari has never been attracted to Carrot’s peculiar brand of….wholesomeness. If anything he finds it unsettling; he would happily take Vimes’ surly disrespect or Drumknott’s very subtle mockery, even da Quirm’s wide-eyed world wonder, over Captain Ironfoundersson’s perpetual smile. But it’s clear enough who he is, even clearer that he won’t admit it, and there’s a certain brand of restrained power in that that gets under Vetinari’s skin.

He’s a determined man, Havelock is. Anything he allows underneath his skin is bound to stick and stay.

He could never act on it, of course. He’s certainly intelligent enough to recognize the fine line between objectification and obsession, and the frisson of tension he feels when he looks at Carrot is some unquantifiable third thing. It eats at him every now and again, leaves him sharper than usual in meetings, setting the whole of Ankh-Morpork on edge; he grits his teeth, subtly enough to go unnoticed, as he pens his signature furiously across page after page of documents he’s skimmed instead of read.

Sometimes he catches Carrot’s eye, in the city’s darker moments, and thinks he sees a something there. It’s always fleeting, there-and-gone-again, replaced at once with that genial smile, but Vetinari’s too quick to miss it. We could raise cities together, he thinks, we could raze worlds, but he has a job to do. He is the man, and he has the vote, so he looks away and swallows.

War/Raven [Good Omens/XMFC]

Three weeks after her life falls apart at the edge of an ocean, Raven goes into town and casually, calmly steals a motorcycle. It’s probably a silly thing to do, all things considered—it’s not like she needs a motorcycle, not like she’s ever even wanted one—but it feels right where everything else feels wrong. She’s less a brother and a permanent address these days; there are moments where she feels as if she’s less a soul, though she tries not to dwell on that too much. Guilt flares wild within her, warring with a sense of purpose, a sense of self she doesn’t know how to shift around. The motorcycle is a deep, dark red, and the keys are in the ignition; she’s off before she knows what she’s doing, the asphalt singing under her, bike purring between her thighs.

Red Zubinger is a little miffed to find it missing, of course, but it’s worth it in the end. That’s the thing about War—she’s always liked a good fight.

Esme 'Granny' Weatherwax/Lord Vetinari [Discworld]

Esme Weatherwax comes into town shortly after the Glorious 25th of May—not that she’ll ever do it again, filthy places, cities, always so full of people and not a one of them knows what’s good for them, good country living, that’s what folks need. She meets Havelock, too young and too bright and too full of revolution, a baby Assassin with nothing better to do, in a bar that Ogg told her was worth a stop.

Ogg’s a liar, but Havelock isn’t. He’s got too much guile to lie.

There are moments, later—when Esme’s long since been Granny, when anyone who dares use Havelock’s first name is more likely than not to be met with the scorpions—where she wonders what would’ve happened if she’d stayed. “I’m too old for you,” she’d said then, and he’d met this with calm, flint-hard eyes.

“Ah,” he’d said. “I think you’ll find that’s not a problem, for me.”

She still gets a letter from him a few times a month, his typical nonsense—always did think too highly of himself, that boy. She tells him at least twice a year that she’ll not think twice about cursing him if he tries that kind of language with her again, and some nights she can hear him laughing all the way from that blasted city, carried to her on the wind. She remembers his hands, small, nimble, cold, the way it felt like he was weighing her worth with every touch, and doesn’t regret any of it (except, perhaps, the small sprig of lilac she’d fingered on the way out, the one she’s sure is still very much in bloom).

Crowley/Azazel [Good Omens/XMFC]

Crowley has a moment of temporary panic when the man walks into the bookshop, which, really, is only to be expected. The look is dead-on, and that’s really all it takes; there’s a second where his whole body freezes up in anticipation, waiting for the blow. Then he remembers that he’s done nothing worth of commendation lately, even less worthy of punishment, and there’s been nothing but Freddie Mercury coming through the Bentley’s speakers. He sticks his tongue out experimentally, and the air doesn’t taste like it would if this were…something to worry about.

“Angel?” he calls. “Your boys trying out a new uniform?”

“Really, my dear, I’m in the middle of—” Aziraphale starts, bustling out from the back, but he stops dead in his tracks when he hits the door. “Oh. Oh, I see. No, definitely not…one of mine.”

“Huh,” says Crowley. “Well, there you go.”

“Hello,” the newcomer says. He’s red as the day Crowley was born—well, reborn—well, semantics—and he’s definitely not human, not exactly. The more reptilian part of Crowley’s hindbrain jumps to attention; it’s all he can do not to slide into a form that would undoubtedly cause a few riots, just to see what this guy can do. ”I’m here to see a man about a book.”

“I think you’ll find that you’re not,” says Crowley, and smiles.

(Aziraphale doesn’t speak to him for a week, afterwards—“I’m not acting human,” he says, affronted, “jealously isn’t a human thing, did you never meet Hera? And in any case I’m certainly not jealous, when did I—why would you—oh, bugger.” Still, Crowley can’t bring himself to regret it. There’s something downright nostalgic about it, coming short of breath with a tail wrapped ‘round your throat.)

And now for something completely different: today's prompt responses (considerably more serious than those above, I assure you), as well as a little canon Raven ficlet, just because.

you know (the way you look makes everyone hungry), Raven [XMFC]

Raven still steals food, after.

She knows she doesn't have to; Charles does something, something that's just a little bit terrible in the right light, and no one ever questions her presence in the big empty house. She wanders freely, wide eyes taking in the views from the third floor windows, small hands catching on the thick, plush fabric of the heavy armchairs Charles curls up in to read, and eats when she feels like it.

But old habits are old habits, and sometimes she can't help herself. It's a can of green beans slipped from the kitchens; it's a box of thin, crisp wafer crackers, snatched off the table when no one is looking. Faith is all well and good, but Raven's old enough to know the darker intricacies of trust--there's a loose floorboard in her bedroom, and she keeps it stocked, just in case.

"I love you, you know," Charles says one night, eyes trained on the exact spot under which her backup plan is hidden, and Raven knows he knows. His eyes are sad and his voice is heavy, and not for the the first time she wonders what it must be like, to know everyone's darkest secrets, to be so old and so young at once.

"I'm sorry," she says, and she's not sure what she means, exactly--if it's I'm sorry I can't trust you or I'm sorry you feel that way or I'm sorry, but I've heard that before. He sighs and turns away, and Raven creeps downstairs in the dead of night, sneaks a chocolate bar up under her shirt in preparation for a future that may never come.

(When she's thirteen, she starts stealing glances; when she's eighteen, a loose end in a country she's never seen before, she steals a shop-clerk's virginity under the cover of a darkened bar. He calls her beautiful, the word thick on his tongue, hands sliding over the body she's borrowed for the evening. She takes that too, for all it isn't really hers; locks it up under the loose floorboards always creaking in her heart, tucked away as insurance, as comfort, as something else to fill her up should everything fall apart.)

John/Sherlock [BBC Sherlock], 'I couldn't get the boy to kill me'

five

—says “and you have to let go,” at the edge of the world, his feet scraping loose a cascade of pebbles that fall and fall towards the water and he should have told John, the callouses on his hand slick with sweat and he won’t do it, he won’t let go, Sherlock planned for every eventuality except this one, the flickering history of all that war on John’s face. “You have to let go,” and John’s grip goes tighter still and they’ve got seconds until Moriarty rouses himself and shoots John in the back and it’ll all be for naught, the parachute under his jacket and the months of careful construction and the way John is looking at him, eyes wide and mouth round around the words “I can’t, I can’t—”

four

Six people deep in line at the Tesco and Sherlock’s got the milk in his left hand, condensation cold and clear under his thumb and John smiling like he knows something, shifting on his feet. It’s too early and too late and Sherlock doesn’t imagine; imagination is for those who can’t chart reality in facts and the woman three spots in front of them has just left her husband and there’s a child two rows over considering the theft of a chocolate and John’s mouth will be on his in the alley two blocks up in seven minutes.

“What, then,” he says, and John ducks his head, shakes it, says “Nothing,” like it’s funny.

three

“Burn the heart out of you,” and it’s never been possible, Sherlock’s never had a heart, only a knot of muscle circulating blood through his chest but John blinks once, twice, and what was it that Mycroft always said—

two

There’s a line of thread loose on John’s black pajama bottoms and Sherlock isn’t sleeping, couldn’t ever catch the rhythm of it. John snores and Sherlock pulls, long fingers working the soft edge until half his hemline’s unraveled, kinked strangely along the stark white of the sheet, and they don’t mix, they never have, Sherlock’s never been a straight line and John’s corners will always be pulled military tight, and Sherlock splays his hands across John’s bared stomach and oh, oh, John’s breath stutters half-awake into his open hungry mouth—

one

Three hours clear of Semtex and laser-sights John says, “Well, let’s never do that again,” and Sherlock laughs, thick and childish, helpless against the living room wall. Their flat still smells faintly of burn marks and bad choices and Sherlock is glad to be alive for the first time he can remember, giddy with what he knows is just adrenaline and maybe something more—

—and John’s arms are close and his eyes are soft and hard at once and his hands are shaking (but never around a gun) as they tighten around Sherlock’s biceps and he says, “I suppose you could call this taking initiative,” and Sherlock says “Or the art of deduction,” and John says, “I’ll show you art—”

zero

“You know,” says Mycroft, when Sherlock is eleven and smarter than everyone, burning ants with a magnifying glass in the back garden just to watch them die.

“Probably,” says Sherlock, not looking up, and Mycroft sighs. Always too old for his years he clears his throat once, twice, and Sherlock doesn’t pity their parents—the two of them run rings around the neighborhood but never quite each other, and these days Sherlock can taste Mycroft’s impending absence (surely what he has come out here to discuss) floating through the air like smoke.

“I’ll visit,” says Mycroft, and Sherlock smiles at the ground.

“Liar.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” says Mycroft (and his tone is so unusual that it will come back to Sherlock years later, burn the heart out of you like it’s so violent a thought, as though Sherlock hasn’t already cauterized his wounds but not quite carefully enough), “truly deceitful men never need to lie.”

Crowley/Aziraphale [Good Omens], 'the entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell'

Aziraphale goes romantic on him in the strangest moments, eyes watering and flicking quickly away over dinner at the Ritz, hand going cold in his while they throw breadcrumbs to the ducks. They’re too human, these days, to be anyone but themselves—Crowley has seen Aziraphale’s eyes go black and his knuckles go white, knows about the shorn lock of Samson’s hair he keeps tucked away in the bookshop’s back room. They are in and of themselves a city in ruins and a future carved in alabaster, and Crowley’s tongue snakes across Aziraphale’s wrist in the darkness to tastes a hundred, a thousand lifetimes.

It’s unnecessary, of course—of course it’s unnecessary. Between the two of them there is more than enough climax to go around, the troughs and crests of humanity’s every desire at their fingertips; Crowley was there when the Song of Solomon was drawn haphazard across the page, knows that Aziraphale watched with tears in his eyes as Sarah laughed for Isaac. The air between them at any given moment holds multitudes, draws sparks across their borrowed skins, and Crowley may be more man than demon, but he’s certainly more demonic than man.

Still, there is the intake of Aziraphale’s breath against his collarbone, the soft scrape of nails against skin. It’s such a hideously human thing they’ve caught between them, affection bleeding furious into the air, writ like history across the sheets.

“My dear,” says Aziraphale, and every plant in Crowley’s apartment bursts recklessly into bloom. He once slept a whole century, dreamt wildly of this and only this, and he is damned already, for he knows Aziraphale knows.

“Angel,” says Crowley, “don’t,” and Aziraphale doesn’t, he doesn’t, except for the way he always does.

Sirius/Remus [Harry Potter], 'there are many names in history but none of them are ours'

Sirius goes to war the way Remus goes to the moon; with his entire self and entirely against his will. He fights like he fucks, focused and driven and laughing on it a little—Remus watches him because he’s helpless not to, risks his own neck for the line of Sirius’, blood-streaked. It is the first time in his life he’s thought to howl while human, hands dirty with clean magic, and when the higher-ups throw around words like “curse” and “unforgivable,” Remus wonders if they know what they mean.

“Moony,” Sirius says, on the train to the grocery. His voice is rough with sleeplessness, and Remus’s shirt conceals a cacophony of bandages, and the hell if he’ll spend another day in bed. There’s the war out there and the war in here, and Sirius’ hands are so familiar that it hurts to look at them, crossed across his lap.

“Yeah?” says Remus.

“You remember when we were eleven,” says Sirius, “and it seemed like—you know, I guess I always thought I’d die before I had to be. Fuck, I don’t know.”

“Don’t say things like that,” says Remus, and Sirius’ eyes are as ancient as his face isn’t, still rounded out and
devastatingly handsome if you don’t look too hard.

“Someone has to,” he says, and it’ll be years before Remus understands the tight, furious curve to his mouth, the way his hands clench against his thighs, the way he buys canned food and dry crackers like he’s steeling himself for something.

Erik/Charles [XMFC], 'a change in the weather'

Fresh out of the water, Charles and Erik sit across from each other wrapped in identical, worn blankets and don’t speak. Charles is cold from his toes up, but his mind is white-hot, churning with everything it touched (not his, not his, and years from now he’ll remember the callous abandon with which he stumbled around and wince, too late).

“Are you alright?” he says, finally, and Erik does look at him then. The boat rocks over the ocean and a cold wind blows wild, biting feral over their knuckles, leaving Charles shivering. Erik reaches out, pulls the blanket tighter around Charles’ shoulders, and betrays nothing.

“Hardly,” he says, mouth twisted sideways, “but then, I suppose you already knew that.”

—

For weeks after the beach Charles lays in bed and watches the rain streak across the window, and he thinks pathetic fallacy until the words become meaningless, until they twist and settle in the back of his mind and linger, and it’s only when he meets Ororo that the possibility occurs to him that it’s only the first of them that really applies—

—

Erik kisses him when they haven’t time for it, breath coming fast and rough in the back garden, and isn’t that just like Erik, stealing things he doesn’t have to take. Charles curls close to him, training be damned, and tastes sweat and summer air; the world may be coming to an end but not like this, not today, with the hydrangeas in bloom and Erik’s fingers tracing his jawline.

“You’re doing it again,” Erik murmurs, and Charles says, “What,” and Erik says, “You know what.”

Charles steps back and blinks, sunlight bouncing off the nearest window to riot across his irises, and Erik’s right; he does.

—

“We are old men,” Erik says, at forty, at fifty, at seventy-five over a chessboard in Central Park. Autumn has drawn the leaves on the trees to war again, displaying their colors with vicious abandon, and Charles is well-acquainted with the beauty humanity tends to see in death.

“We’ve always been that,” Charles says, at forty, at fifty, at seventy-five, hands steady in the fading light. When Erik smiles, he looks young.

x-men first class fic: carpe brewski, chapter nine [erik/charles, NC-17]

2011-08-29T00:33:41Z

Quickly, quickly, an official note: the art in this chapter (which, I apologize that I left it so large but I could not actually bear to make it smaller) is once again by the miraculous Fish, who is now officially the artist for this story, because, uh. Because I am the luckiest person ever and she agreed to be such for reasons that are entirely beyond me? SHE IS THE BEST AND YOU SHOULD ALL LOVE HER DOWN, THE END.

And, as ever, this is for postcardmystery; this story really and truly is hinged upon her existence, as without her it would be a mad, sniveling mess, and so would I.

Title: Carpe Brewski
Pairing: Erik/Charles
Rating: R (overall)/NC-17 (this chapter)
Warnings: There is a...hmm, I suppose it's primarily a socioeconomic slur...in this chapter. If that is something that might be triggering for you, please proceed with due caution or do not proceed at all. Additionally, this chapter does feature sex between two intoxicated characters--though both of them are enthusiastic participants, this is dub-con.
Author's Notes: This is a WIP, folks. You're going to want to start with Chapter One (where disclaimers, summary, etc. can be found), Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine: The Time Has Come For Someone To Put His Foot Down (And That Foot Is Me)

The thing about the sound of glass shattering is that it's one of those noises that reroutes into some dark, primal part of you; the thing about the sound of glass shattering is that once you hear it, you can't hear anything else. Charles' body goes taut the moment the first trash can hits, the thought of danger, danger thrumming through him, and won't end up relaxing for hours.

It can't take long, Charles knows this. The time between the first can and the second can't be more than a moment; the other three cans, which neatly complete the systematic destruction of every window on the first floor, slam through one right after the other. It's a nearly instantaneous thing--for god's sake, no one even has time to scream--but time seems to slow down for Charles. From where he's standing, it takes years.

Well, he thinks, watching shards of glass inch past him through the air, so much for everything turning out alright.

The world picks up speed again, jerking back into place, as the room falls to chaos around him. People are screaming and running for the doors, and Erik has already vanished from Charles' side, his shout of shock and fury still hanging in the air. Charles catches a few quick glimpses of the rest of the room--Eyebrows and Darwin, who'd both been up on top of the table, are reaching towards each other on the floor, and Beast is dripping with beer from an unfinished bonging attempt--but he doesn't find what he's looking for, which is--

"Raven!" Charles yells, frantic, pushing people out of the way as he searches for her. "Raven, where the fuck did you--Jesus, Raven, Raven, where the fuck--"

"Here," Raven says, putting a hand on his shoulder. He turns and there she is, looking a little rattled but no worse for the wear. He pulls her into a fierce hug, gasping his relief. "I'm okay, it's--Angel and I went upstairs to, uh….well, we heard the noise and--hey, calm down, it's okay, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Raven says, "really, I wasn't even in the room, it's okay, really. Are you okay? Where's Erik?"

"He," Charles says, and pulls back, glancing around. "Oh, shit, he's probably gone out to--are you sure you're alright?"

"Yes," Raven says, "go before he does something stupid. Charles, it's okay, really, you can go."

Charles takes off running towards the door; he ends up nearly knocking over Scott, who is presumably chasing after Logan. "Get the kids out of here," he yells, and, even mid-run, Scott manages to give him an unimpressed look.

"The kids?" he yells back. "We're all kids, dude, don't act like you're forty!"

"The kids who are under 21--"

"I'm under 21--"

"But you live here, it's different, we're going to have to call the--Erik!"

He screams that last word, lets it tear out of his throat with honest, furious fear, because Erik is chasing a masked figure across the frat house lawn. The guy he's pursuing is dressed entirely in black--Prats, Charles has time to think, did you honestly imagine that was going to do anything to conceal you?--and Charles doesn't much care what happens to him, actually. He made his bed and he can damn well lie in it. The trouble is that If Erik catches him, he'll kill him, and while Charles is not at this moment all that concerned for the little bastard's life, the idea of what it will do to Erik's life--

"Get back here and taking your beating like a man, you fucking coward," Erik yells, not breaking stride, and Charles picks up speed. The masked figure reaches the car already idling down the street, flings himself into the open backseat door and lifts his middle finger at Erik; he slams the door behind him and the car peels away, tires screeching on the asphalt.

Charles doesn't slow down; he knows Erik well enough to know he won't stop running.

Sure enough--"Motherfucker," Erik cries, and he's running across the lawn of the next house, taking a garden gnome like a hurdle to try and keep pace. "Get the fuck out of that car--"

"Erik!" Charles yells, almost close enough now, "Erik, please--"

"Fuck you and your fucking Zeta bullshit," Erik screams, and Charles is finally, finally a pace behind him. He launches himself forward, meaning to wrap his arms around Erik from behind and draw him up short; instead he throws them both off-balance, ends up tackling Erik gracelessly to the ground.

"Oh, fuck you, you can just get the fuck off," Erik snaps, thrashing; then Charles manages to straddle him and pin his arms down, effectively stopping him from going anyway. Erik glares up at him, struggling--but, Charles notes, not all that hard. Erik is quite a bit bigger than he is; if he was willing to hurt Charles, he could get himself free in a heartbeat. "This isn't fucking funny, Charles, let me the fuck up--"

"You think I think this is funny?" Charles snaps back, pushing down hard on Erik's arms. "My fucking sister was in the house, you can bloody well believe I'm not laughing."

"Then let me up!"

"So you can what, exactly? Chase down a car? Go break in some of the windows at the Zeta house and call it even? What?"

"So I can fucking do something," Erik yells, straining up against his grip. Charles almost falls, but doesn't quite--he digs his nails into Erik's forearms and glares down at him.

"I'll tell you what you're going to do," he says, "you're going to take a deep breath and calm the bloody fuck down, that's what you're going to do. You're going to let them go, Erik, because you have to let them go, there isn't another option here!"

"This is our house," Erik yells, "we fucking live here, they can't just--we can't just fucking let this shit stand--"

"You're right," Charles says, "you're exactly right, this is our house and we do fucking live here, which means that when someone knocks our windows in, there are people we have to call. People like our landlord and the police, Erik, this isn't some stupid prank war anymore, people could have been seriously hurt--hell, for all I know people are seriously hurt, and right now that needs to matter more to you than this bloody fucking feud!"

"You don't understand," Erik says, and his voice almost breaks on it. Charles starts, confused at the sound, and is stunned into stillness at the depth of emotion that's suddenly visible--Erik's eyes are bright with more than just anger, now.

"Erik," he says, softer, "Jesus, please, I'm sorry, would you just--"

"Get the fuck off me," Erik snaps, and this time when he shoves, Charles goes. Erik stands and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and Charles looks up at him from the ground because he doesn't know how not to. His mouth is twisted in on itself and there's a thin cut high on his cheek and he's holding himself like a taut wire, all furious, violent energy with nowhere to go. His hands are shaking like they're never going to stop.

Charles has never felt less brave, not once, not in his whole life.

After a minute, Erik lets out a feral sort of growling noise and leans down, offering Charles his hand. Charles takes it, lets himself get hauled to his feet, and tries not to look at the way Erik is visibly losing control.

"What the fuck are you all looking at?" Erik snaps, and Charles turns around to see the whole house on the lawn, staring at them. Scott's got his hand on Logan's arm; his grip is loose, presumably because Logan had been trying to do the same thing Erik was attempting, but resisted less to the concept of being stopped. They look--god, Scott and Logan, the pledges, even Raven--Charles isn't sure if he's seeing fear or pity on their faces, and if he can see it, god knows Erik can.

And then it's there, curling from the embers always burning in the pit of his stomach, singing its way up and out of his mouth. It swells within him, the sharp-stark need to step up and assemble some sort of fucking order to things, if only to stop everyone looking at Erik like that.

"Right," he says, "Logan, you're the closest thing we've got to someone with medical training, so you take a quick look at everybody, make sure there's no one who needs an actual doctor. If there is, we'll deal with it then."

Logan nods, a muscle in his throat twitching, and shakes Scott's arm off. He stalks towards the house without saying anything, but at least he seems to understand that there are more important things right now than revenge.

"Is anyone here sober enough to drive?" Charles asks, not exactly hopeful.

Angel raises her hand. "I had a beer, but it was a while ago. I got, uh, distracted."

"Um, me too," Raven says, making an apologetic sort of face at Charles. Charles can't quite bear to look at her, because the combination of the glass through the windows and the thought that he couldn't find her because she'd…she could have…it's eating at his gut, and he can't right now, he doesn't have time.

"Great," he says, "hold that thought for one second. Is anyone here sober enough to pass for sober?"

Banshee, Darwin and Eyebrows all raise their hands; Darwin makes a horrified face at Eyebrows and forcibly yanks his hand down a second later, ignoring his yowl of protest.

"Alright," Charles says, "good, then. Angel, Raven, you guys rode the bike here, yes?"

"Yeah," Raven says, "but if you need it I can go get my car--"

"No," Charles says, "I think--well, the thing is, if there's any chance you'd be willing to do us a rather large favor--and I'll owe you a beer or several for it, believe me--but, look, if I give you my car keys do you mind running Darwin and Banshee into town? The SuperMart's open 24 hours, and we just need some…oh, Christ, I don't know, some plastic or plywood or something, so that we can at least cover up the windows enough to sleep here."

"Fine with me," Raven says. "Babe?"

"Are you kidding?" Angel says. "You know I've always dreamed about plywood shopping after dark."

Charles doesn't miss the way Raven smiles at her, or the way Angel's arm tightens around her waist, just for a second. It softens some of the fury inside of him, but not much.

"I'm taking you up on those beers, by the way," Angel says, as Raven catches the keys Charles lobs at her. "Just so we're clear."

"I honestly had no intention of letting you get out of it," Charles says, and Angel grins at him, gives him a half-assed little salute before she grabs Darwin and Banshee and drags the toward the driveway.

"Now!" Charles says, looking over everyone else. He takes a moment to glance back at Erik, who's still vibrating with ill-contained anger, shoulders hunched. "The rest of you! If you are under 21--which, tragically, I believe most of you are, not that I will ever admit to having said that under any circumstances--you have five minutes before we call the police. It would be best for everyone if you were not here when they arrive, so go talk to Logan if you're afraid you've got internal bleeding and then go…I don't know. Home, I suppose, except for the pledges--and actually, you know, all the pledges should just talk to Logan as well, he'll tell you lot what to do."

Everyone nods and then looks at him expectantly; Charles stares back at them, at a loss as to what else he's supposed to say. His moment of decisive leadership has passed--now he mostly wants to get Erik away from the outside world as soon as humanly possible.

"Prof," says Beast.

"Yes?"

"Was that," Beast says, "was that…did Zeta do that?"

Charles sighs, but before he gets a chance to answer, Erik leans forward with narrowed eyes.

"Yes," he snaps, "and you wait and see, we're going to fucking prove it."

--

"Is that everything?" Nick Fury says an hour later.

He'd answered their call quickly enough--it helped that Charles had his cell phone number, the spoils of an accidental run-in at one of the local bars that none of them were ever going to talk about again--taken one look at their house, sighed, and asked where the kitchen was. Charles pointed him in the right direction, bemused, and then watched as Fury made himself a pot of coffee. He brought the whole thing with him into the living room--he didn't even asked for a mug, though Charles found him one anyway--and then told them to start at the beginning.

Now he sips his--third? fifth?--cup of coffee, and waits.

"I think so," Charles says, when nothing else seems to be forthcoming. "That's everything that happened tonight, anyway."

Erik shoots him a furious look (they'd had a whole conversation before Fury showed up about frat business and prank wars are prank wars and this is different because it's dangerous, we can't tell him about the other stuff) but Fury just raises an eyebrow and says nothing. It is, oddly, a lot more frightening than hearing him talk.

"It was the fucking Zetas," Erik bursts out finally, "I know it was, it can't have been anyone else--"

"Son, do you have any proof?"

"I don't need proof," Erik snaps, "I know it was them, it had to be them--"

"Look," Fury says, "believe me, you've got no idea how much I wish I could just arrest people because I don't like them. Do you know how much easier my life would be if I could just arrest people because I didn't like them? I have Tony's jail cell picked out, it's the one on the end so I won't be able to hear him run his mouth, I have very involved daydreams about abusing the law like that. I really, really do.

"But, unless you've got something for me--" and Fury pauses here, holds up a hand to stop Erik interrupting, "something solid, kid, like motive or a plate number, you are just gonna have to do what I do and have yourself a few happy fuckin' thoughts about it, you understand? Because I took an oath, I can't go around slapping cuffs on people just because some drunk-ass frat boy told me it was a good idea."

There is a long moment where silence hangs in the air. In the kitchen, where they've been doing a very bad job of pretending they're not eavesdropping, Scott and Logan have gone entirely still; Charles watches with bated breath as Erik glares at Fury, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Fury meets him stare for stare, eyes calm, and eventually Erik drops his gaze and slumps his shoulders.

"Whatever," he mutters.

"That's what I thought," Fury says. He turns to Charles and raises his eyebrows. "It might help if we had some credible witnesses. This place is pretty empty for a party, isn't it?"

"The violent projectiles put a bit of a damper on things," Charles says, as carefully as he can. "Most people went home."

"Mmhmm," Fury says. "You wouldn't happen to have hosted some underage drinking here tonight, then?"

"Of course not," Charles says.

Behind them, the front door bangs open; Charles turns in his chair and groans aloud. Every last one of the pledges--well, less Banshee and Darwin, but still more than enough--are standing behind it.

"Hey, Prof!" Pyro says, "Logan said we should get lost for an hour, but the coffeeshop kicked us out when Beast went and puked everywhere. Are the cops gone yet?"

"Get the fuck out of here," Logan roars, bursting in front the kitchen, "Jesus, you little shits, when I say get lost I mean get lost--"

He herds them back out the door, and Charles drops his head down to rest on the table and makes a defeated little noise. "Oh, god, Captain Fury, I'm really very sorry, if you could just spare us the fuss and take us to jail now, I'd appreciate it, it's been kind of a long night."

Fury sighs. "You know what, no. I'm gonna leave now, that's what's gonna happen here. Do you know why? I'll tell you why--it's because I am one merciful motherfucker, that's why. And in exchange for all of this mercy I am showing you right now, you're gonna do me a favor, aren't you?"

"Yes," Charles says, lifting his head, "yes, yes we are, name it and we'll--"

"You are going to stay the fuck here," Fury says. "I had better not hear about any kind of shit going down at the Zeta house tonight, you hear me? You kids get it into your fool heads to go out and get yourselves some revenge, you better stick it in your back pocket and sleep on it. You better sleep on it real fucking hard, because it is Saturday and I was on a goddamn date, Xavier, and if I have to come back out here and throw your asses in jail over this fraternity cocksize bullshit, not even one of your fancy monogrammed checks is gonna be enough to save your asses, we clear on that?"

"Crystal," Charles says.

"You bet your ass we are," Fury says. "And you, Lehnsherr?"

Erik doesn't answer, doesn't even look up, just mutters something unintelligible under his breath. Fury stands, stance shifting to highlight the gun at his hip, and braces his hands on the table, leaning forward until his face is about an inch from Erik's.

"You think I don't see that you're angry?" he says, voice quiet enough to be terrifying. "You think I don't get that? You think I haven't seen the kind of shit people do when they're as angry as you are right now? Because believe me, I have seen more stupid fucks waste their lives on being pissed off that you will ever even imagine, and I know that you're just waiting for me to clear out so you can get out there and join them. But you, Lehnsherr, you are going to do the smart thing and leave it. You're going to trust me to do my goddamn job and you are going to stay put, and if the only reason you're doing it is because I told you to, well, shit, that's a pretty damn good reason, isn't it? You are going to sit and stay, do you understand?"

"Yeah," Erik mutters after a tense pause. "Yeah, I understand."

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Fury says, and straightens up. "Alright, boys. I've got your official statements, and we'll keep you apprised. Try not to be more stupid than you can help and we'll get this sorted out when we can. Have a good one."

He picks up his coffee mug--which is, in actual fact, Charles' favorite mug, but he's sure as hell not going to say anything about it--and saunters out through the front door. He hasn't been gone a minute when Logan comes in through the back, the pledges at his heels.

"He gone?" Logan says.

"Yeah," Erik says, "fat lot of fucking good he was--"

"Erik, I think you should go upstairs," Charles says.

"Fuck that, we've got--"

"I said go upstairs," Charles snaps, at the end of his rope. Erik meets his eyes, furious and more than a little feral, but Charles doesn't care--he has had enough of this shit tonight, and he's not going to watch Erik dig himself further into this hole.

"What the fuck, man?" Erik growls. "What are you, sending me to my fucking room, are you my fucking father now--"

"No," Charles says, "I am your best friend and your vice president, and I am not sending you to your room, I am sending you to mine. You are obviously not in any condition to be--"

"Who the fuck are you to determine my--"

"This is not a fucking debate!" Charles yells. "You've scared the pledges enough as it is, I'm not going to stand here and watch you freak the fuck out, we have shit we have to get done."

"Fuck you," Erik says, and Charles breathes out hard through his nose, says, "Erik, please, do us both a favor. I will be up in two minutes, give me two minutes and then you can say whatever the bloody fuck you want to me, just please go upstairs."

They stare each other down for a second, and then Erik slams his chair back from the table and storms off. Charles turns to face the assembled crowd--all of whom are looking at him like he has some kind of death wish, and hey, they're not exactly wrong--and scrubs his face with the palm of his hand.

"Okay," he says, "first of all, do any of you want to go home? Because if you do, you can go right now, no one's going blame you or think less of you for it. Hands up, come on, who wants to leave?"

No one raises their hand. After a moment, Azazel clears his throat, his face set and cold with anger.

"We talked about it at the coffee place, Prof," he says quietly. "Nobody's…nobody's going anywhere."

One by one, the rest of them nod, resolve firming up in their faces. Charles takes a second, just the one, to be sharply, fiercely proud of them; then he gets himself under control and takes a deep breath.

"Alright, then," he says, "Logan, you're in charge of the pledges, Scott, you're in charge of Logan. Darwin and Banshee should be back with the shit for the windows soon--tell my sister I'll pay her back tomorrow, and then make sure she and Angel get out of here, they've done enough for us tonight.

"The rest of you…look, I can't say this officially, it's obviously Erik's call as much as it's mine, more than it's mine, but as far as I'm concerned you're brothers now. You can't live this kind of thing with one another and not come out of it stronger, and after tonight, no matter what we call you, none of us are going to think of you as just pledges, alright?"

Everyone--even Logan--nods, and Charles nods back at them, slides his hands into his pockets. "Okay. Logan and Scott are going to help you guys figure out how to get this all cleaned up a little, and I'm gonna go try to keep Erik from killing anyone--"

"Good fucking luck," Scott mutters, to general agreement.

"--and I'd really rather everyone slept here tonight," Charles continues, ignoring this, "for my own peace of mind and so we have alibis if anything unfortunate should befall the Zetas this evening. Sleep on the couches, sleep on the porch, kill off the keg and sleep outside, I don't care, just don't go off on your own. Can you guys do that?"

"No problem," Iceman says, "my roommate's an asshole anyway, I'd just as soon crash here."

"Yeah," Prodigy says, "I don't really want to go through building security with glass all over me, so."

"Uh, actually, can I borrow a shirt from someone?" Beast says, looking down at himself and wincing. "It's only that I kind of, uh, puked on this one a little."

"I'll give you one of mine, kid," Logan says. "You puke on that, I'll puke on you, yeah?"

"Alright," Charles says, as Beast commences promising Logan he'll leave the shirt unscathed, "I'm going upstairs now. Anyone know what happened to the bottle of Absolut I bought last week?"

"In the freezer," Scott says. "We were gonna do shots, but we never quite got around to it. You're gonna get him drunk?"

"Do you have a better plan?" Charles says. Scott shakes his head, and Charles sighs, moving to grab the bottle out of the freezer. "Right. We'll be in my room, yell if you need anything."

He takes the stairs two at a time, steeling himself for a fight. But when he opens the door to his room, Erik's sitting on his bed, legs folded up, head resting on his knees.

Charles was expecting fury, was expecting broken lamps and holes in the wall. But Erik just looks…tired.

"Aren't you gonna ask me what's going on?" he says. His voice is bitter, but his hands are still shaking, and the set of his shoulder is just...wrong. "Isn't that what you do?"

Charles sits down next to him and sighs. "Do you want me to ask?"

"Nope," says Erik.

"Okay, then," says Charles, and hands him the bottle.

--

"'S the worst thing," Erik says, some time later. "The worst part."

He's drunk enough now that his whole face is drooping, just a little; Charles is drunk enough that he's having to manfully resist the urge to reach out and poke it. They're sitting on the floor, leaning up against Charles' bed, though Charles can't remember why that seemed like a good idea.

"What's the worst part?"

"The trash," Erik says. "Because. Trash."

"Since it smells?" Charles guesses, and Erik sighs through his nose.

"No," he says, "or, I mean, yeah, it does, that too, but like--it's what they. There were like. When I wasn't listening. Called me."

"I don't--"

"White trash," Erik bites out. "When I wasn't around to hear it. That was my like…nickname. 'S why they threw it. Brick's're easier, they wanted to like. Shaw wanted to remind me."

Charles blinks in surprise. "They called you--wait, the Zetas had a nickname for you? And it was--Christ, that's, I--what the hell?"

"I never told you," Erik says, "because I'm, I mean, I can't fucking believe I did it, I want to puke just thinking about it, because now it's like--I mean, how could I ever--"

"Wait," Charles says, "wait, Erik, slow down, I'm not--"

"Freshman year," Erik says, and suddenly he's looking at Charles, right at Charles, with a question in his eyes and a pleading sort of set to his mouth. When he starts talking again, he sounds less drunk than he did before. "You gotta understand, dude, okay, I didn't--you remember what I was like freshman year, but that was when I met you, right, it was like…it was later, and I mean I was still, in some ways I was probably even worse but like--my mom died and then I was living with my aunt and then I got here and I was like, it had been a long since I…since I…"

"Since you what?"

"Since I had time to have like," Erik stops and makes a face, twisted and bitter, like he'd rather die than keep talking. It makes something ache in Charles' chest, turns something over in his stomach. "Since I'd really had friends, okay? And so, I mean, look, I'd never thought about--I mean I thought fraternities were really fucking, like I would never have--and I was so broke, Charles, which you can't even…it's not like you get broke, which is fine, whatever, it's not your fault but like. Just. I mean, I wouldn't be here at all without scholarships anyway, but that was before I had a job and everything my mom had went into the medical bills and shit, back before she…she…so it's not like I could have afforded the dues, that's what I'm saying."

"Erik," Charles says as carefully as he can, "I'm not sure I'm following."

"I don't want you to follow!" Erik snaps. "I don't want to tell you this at all except that it's obviously--they're breaking our shit now and this is where you live too and you should, you should probably know--"

"You don't have to--"

"Yes I do," Erik yells. They both freeze, surprised at the volume; then Erik tucks his legs up to his chest, wraps his arms around them, glares down at his knees. He's folding in on himself, and Charles doesn't know what to say, what to do except sit here and watch him fall apart.

"Alright," he says, uncomfortable and terrified and--always--so hideously stupidly in love with the bastard that it's hard to even function. "I can--you can talk. I'll just, I'll listen, alright?"

Erik nods without looking up, and his voice is soft when he speaks again. "I'm not proud of it, okay, but he--they, they, we all, I mean, it was all the shit I talk about now, the brotherhood crap, only I actually mean it and they…it doesn't matter, it really doesn't, except for the part that. Like. Does."

"Erik--"

"I pledged Zeta," Erik says, spitting it out like it's costing him vital organs to do so. "Okay? I fucking pledged Zeta, I was young and stupid and you can judge me if you want to, I know I'm fucking judging me, Jesus."

"What?" Charles yelps. It's the wrong thing to say--he knows before he's even finished saying it, can see it in the expression on Erik's face--but he can't help himself. "I--I'm sorry, I don't, I'm not judging you, of course I'm not judging you, but…but what?"

"It wasn't," Erik says, and takes a long, shaky breath. "It sucked, okay? It's not like I'm fucking proud of it or anything."

"Yes, I can see that," Charles says, too boggled to keep control of his stupid mouth, too drunk to do the smart thing and shut the fuck up. "That's made itself quite apparent, I mean, you hate them, I hate them, we all--god, I knew there had to be some kind of…but I never thought…"

"Could you just fucking stop it," Erik snaps, "fuck, dude, it's bad enough without you like--shit, you think I like telling you this? You think I want to think about how fucking…ugh."

"I'm sorry," Charles says, "it's just--I'm just surprised, that's all. I can't even--I mean, I went to a Zeta rush party freshman year, I certainly can't--"

"You went to a Zeta party?" Erik says, eyes focusing suddenly. "Which one?"

"Dunno," Charles says, "long time ago, wasn't it? Probably…I'm sure it was first semester, at their house. There was some kind of pong tournament going on, I think, but that doesn't really narrow it down."

Erik tips his head back against the bed and laughs a little. "Yeah, it does--shit, I was there. You probably walked right past me, I was--that was when I, you probably wouldn't have--you know what, nevermind."

"Shit, that's weird," Charles says. He's sure he's missing something here, some vital piece of what Erik's telling him, some clue, but he can't--maybe if he'd met Erik there, that night, things would have-- "That we were both…before we knew each other, I mean."

"You've got no idea," Erik says. "I mean, really, you've just got--not at all. Not even a little. Where'd the vodka go?"

"Here," Charles says, fishing it out from under his thigh. He uncaps the bottle and passes it over, and Erik takes a swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "What happened, then? If you pledged, you must have--you can't have hated them then, and you're--you ended up here, so--"

Erik shrugs and curls forward again, casts his eyes down. "Yeah, there's that. They turned out to be--I don't want to talk about it, and it doesn't really matter, except that that's why he won't. Shaw, I mean, he won't stop, I know he won't, I only ended up meeting you that night with the, uh, puking or whatever because I was leaving the--that was the night that they--it's stupid, doesn't matter. But I know it just fucking kills him, that I turned out to be…and he's such a bastard, he can't just let me have it, he has to fucking prove that he, I don't know. That he won, or whatever. He's not going to quit, and I can't, and I guess I just…thought you should know."

"Fuck him," Charles says, tone conversational, surprising himself. Erik shrugs again, a slight shift of his shoulders, and doesn't look up.

"Those shoes I ruined," he says, "you should send him a bill or something. His fault I was so drunk, anyway."

"Or a thank-you note," Charles says, before he can think better of it. Erik's gaze snaps up at once, too sharp for how much he's had to drink.

"The fuck do you mean, a thank-you note?"

Charles…god, Charles wants to lie to him, feels the desire to cover himself up itching in his fingers, in his bones. Charles wants to tell him anything except the truth, but he figures he probably owes Erik at least that much, in the face of all the honesty he's been given tonight.

"Well," he says, "I mean, it turned out…pretty well for me, didn't it? A pair of shoes for a best friend, I'd make that trade again."

"Yeah?" Erik says, and he sounds so unsure, looks so utterly hopeful, so honestly surprised, that the part of Charles that's been buckling all this time finally splinters and snaps.

He's known for years, of course--known since that night watching Cash Cab, nineteen and stupid with it, that this would happen someday. He's known for years that he'd eventually reach the tipping point, that his supply of self control would run out, that he'd no longer be able to contain himself. He'd just hoped he'd be able to hide from it, or, alternately, to delay it until he and Erik were feeble octogenarians with failing memories, at which point it would be less likely to ruin his life.

But it's here, it's right now, there's no helping it, and Charles leans in and presses his mouth to Erik's before he can get up and run from the room. It's a chaste, quick kiss, barely more than a brush of lips against lips, or at least it would be, if Charles could find it in him to pull back. He's surprised to find that he can't--he's long since past worrying that Erik will haul off and punch him for this, knows that for all his faults Erik isn't the kind of guy to have some sort of big heterosexual freak-out and refuse to speak to him for the rest of their lives. It's just…the minute Charles moves, Erik will be free to open his mouth, and then they'll have to have the conversation Charles has been dreading for the better part of three years. He'll have to listen as Erik says all the right things, as he explains as gently as he can that he loves Charles, but not like that, that he wishes it were different but he can't help who he is, that Charles is a great guy but they're bros and that's all they'll ever be. He'll have to smile and nod as Erik tells him a hundred things he already knows, have to pretend his heart isn't torn ragged and raw like a flag in the wind, have to live with the memory of it, the weight of a hopelessness he's finally, finally confirmed.

So he sits there, mouth against Erik's, face screwed up and frozen and probably speaking volumes as to his desperate, pathetic need to hold off the inevitable for as long as he can--

--and then Erik makes a noise, this shocked, hungry sort of sound, and pushes forward.

Charles gasps into the kiss, helpless to do anything else, and Erik opens his mouth against Charles', reeling him in. A hand sinks into Charles' hair and drags him closer, and the panic-borne paralysis that had been gripping Charles dissipates; he shifts up and over, flicks his tongue against Erik's lower lip. He grabs Erik's arm, more to assure himself of the reality of this than anything else, and groans from the back of his throat, and Erik works his lips with frantic, desperate abandon, like he's trying to devour Charles from the outside in. It's wet and messy and perfect, and Charles is floating, drowning in it before his thoughts jerk and stutter back to life, and he pushes Erik away.

"But you're," he says, finding it hard to maintain focus when Erik is staring at his mouth like that, "you're--I--toast! You're toast!"

"Yeah-huh," Erik says, and then he blinks, furrows his brow, and pulls his gaze from Charles' lips. "Wait, what?"

"Straight," Charles corrects, "I'm sorry, it's just--drunk or…or surprised but you're definitely, I mean, and I have a, a have a--"

"A what?" Erik says. He's grinning now, a wild, uninhibited thing, the kind of grin that makes Charles' heartbeat pick up in his chest.

"A penis!" Charles says, waving his hands.

Erik groans. "Oh, fuck, I just thought it would be hilarious to hear you actually say--I didn't expect it to--aw, fuck, say it again."

"Penis?" Charles says; Erik shudders and drags him forward into another kiss, and Charles can't actually muster any objection to that. He puts a hand on the back of Erik's neck and kisses him like's trying to win something, dropping his head to the side, and he's running his tongue against the chapped expanse of Erik's lip before he remembers himself.

"No," he says, pulling back again,"no, no, wait, you don't--you don't like penis, that is my whole point, you are--I don't have any--you're straight, aren't you?"

"Later, totally a good conversation for--for later, put a pin right in it or whatever, c'mere," Erik says, and Charles is lost in a third kiss for a long moment before he finally gains the mental prowess to yank himself away and put a few feet of space between them.

"No," he says, putting up a hand to stop Erik following him. "No, not for later, we have to--we have to, to right now, okay, because you are, you are drunk and I am drunk and I can't, alright, Erik, I'm sorry but I can't be--if this is just you being drunk it will…it will…"

"It'll what?" Erik says, eyes wide, and Charles digs his nails into his palms and takes a deep, shuddering breath, finds a kernel of courage somewhere deep within him and rides it forward.

"It will kill me," he says. "Is that what you--it would, I'd never be able to--it's been too long, I've wanted it too long, I can't just--it's not just right now for me, and I need to know if you're, if this is just--because I, me and you, it's. You're. If we're going to do this then you should know that I…I mean it. And if you don't then we can, we can stop and you can go and we can pretend that we this didn't, that it never…but if we do then, uh. I. I need you to. To mean it."

Erik doesn't say anything, just stares at him, mouth slightly parted and spit-slick still, already slightly swollen with exertion. There's a long, terrible second where Charles thinks it's all over, where he braces himself for the hideous impact of Erik's disinterest, where the loss rushes over his skin like a flash flood, leaving him soaked with humiliation and shaking, world-weary.

But then Erik smiles, smiles like the whole world's opened up for him, and just like that, Charles can breathe again.

"I mean it," he says. "I, uh. I've meant it for awhile."

"Oh," says Charles. Then, because he can't actually help himself: "Really?"

Erik puts a hand on the back of his neck, and there's something almost shy about it, something young and stunned and so, so honest. "Yeah, really. I just didn't think you'd ever, uh. Mean it back?"

"That," Charles says faintly, "that's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard," and then they're both moving again, mouths crashing together.

It's far and away not the first time Charles has kissed someone. There was Steve, of course, but there were others too, little blips of action in a long, lonely landscape of pining. It's not even the first time Charles has kissed someone with the clear intent of going much, much further--he'd thought he knew, having been around the block more than a few times, what this felt like, what it was. But Charles has never kissed anyone the way he's kissing Erik now, sharp and soft at once, so desperately urgent that he can barely breathe. His hands are fisted in Erik's t-shirt and Erik's hand is tangled in his hair and Charles wants to touch, wants to bring every inch of him so close that he burns to nothing from the heat of it.

He moves his head, slides his mouth over to trace the line of Erik's jaw, to suck at the hollow of his throat, and Erik slides a hand up under Charles' button down in response. Calloused fingers skate over the skin of Charles' stomach and he bites down, almost-gently, on Erik's collarbone--Erik growls and yanks him back up by the hair, sinks his tongue into Charles' mouth with a fierce, breathless sort of focus. Charles scrambles closer, balancing himself with a knee between Erik's thighs, and Erik shifts too; a moment later he's fumbling at Charles' buttons, one hand sliding down to cup his ass.

"Jesus fuck you fucking asshole," he gasps, all in one breath, "do you have to dress like you're Fort fucking Knox--"

"Tower of London," Charles manages, mostly because he can't help himself, and Erik huffs out a choked, exasperated laugh.

"You motherfucker," he says, "I'm trashed and there are buttons and you're, you stupid--fucking--I mean seriously do you know how many times I've like, but I never thought, I mean, buttons."

"You make no sense," Charles says, "just, no sense, I don't--"

"I want under here," Erik says, and tugs on the shirt for good measure. This succeeds only in bringing Charles close enough to kiss him again; he grinds forward, just a little, just enough to make Erik groan and tighten the grip on his ass.

Then he attempts to pull Erik's t-shirt off. This succeeds in trapping one of Erik's arms in folds on folds of fabric, which sets them both off laughing hard enough that they fall away from each other; Charles' whole body is shaking with it, and Erik's hand is flapping out uselessly from the vice-grip of his sleeve, which doesn't exactly help either of them calm down.

"Okay," Charles says, when he can breathe again, "okay, so maybe we should--"

"Free me?" Erik says, still laughing.

Charles nods and leans over, tugs Erik's shirt over his head; he reaches down for the buttons of his own shirt then, and hesitates, overcome suddenly with how--with how this is actually happening, right here, right now, Jesus Christ. When he looks up, Erik's not laughing anymore; he's staring at Charles with rapt, shocked attention, like it's just hit him, too.

"You should," Erik says, nodding at the place where Charles' fingers are hovering over the buttons. "I mean, I. I want you to."

"Alright," Charles says. He doesn't break their gaze, just works his way down his shirtfront, one by one until they're all undone. "Should we, uh. I mean. Would you like to…maybe the bed?"

"Yeah," Erik says. They both clamber unsteadily to their feet and move to sit down at the edge of the bed, and somehow--Charles is really, really unsure how--everything is quiet and too heavy to bear, now. Erik is looking down at the ground, is looking away from him, and Charles feels like he's moving through water, every twitch of a muscle reverberating out through the room. What if he's gotten it wrong, what if he manages to cock it up, what if it's weird, what if--

"Uh," Erik says, still staring at the ground, "dude, sorry, I think I kinda knocked the vodka over."

"Christ," Charles says, overcome with a very familiar wash of exasperation and affection, "get over here already, will you?"

Erik tilts his head, grins at Charles with a lazy sort of mischief in his eyes.

"Make me," he says.

Charles grabs Erik by both wrists, pinning them lightly down against the sheets, and leans forward until Erik has to lean back. He smiles a hair's breadth from Erik's mouth, shifts into a straddle as Erik swings his long legs up and under his own, and presses down a little just for the sake of it.

"You're impossible," he murmurs, and Erik says, "Least I'm not a tease," and Charles is laughing as he closes the distance, chests meeting when their mouths do.

It doesn't take him long to release Erik's wrists, not with all this new skin suddenly available for the touch. Charles runs his palms along the lines of Erik's pectorals, traces his hipbones, lingers over the knot of tissue that he knows marks the spot where Erik's appendix came out in middle school. It's strange, knowing someone's body this well and not knowing it at all--Charles has been casting covert looks for years, has been listening for even longer. He could tell the story behind every scar, is intimately acquainted with the workout that wrought each muscle, and still his fingertips stutter over Erik's ribcage, eager to chart and remember.

Erik's own hands settle low on Charles' hips, pushing down just enough to keep them grinding, easy, together. Charles (miraculously, as drunk as he is) could almost come just from that, the friction there and the stunning knowledge of what's behind it. The sticky trail of kisses Erik's leaving along his jawline, the not-quite-gentle way he nips at Charles' ear, isn't helping matters much; Charles gasps and mouths frantically at the nearest part of Erik, which turns out to be--

"Dude, please tell me you did not bite my hair," Erik says, but his voice is so rough that Charles is going to count it as a win. "There's probably glass and shit in there, and also, seriously, what?"

"Tactical misfire," Charles gasps, "you're not exactly making it easy to focus here."

"Shit, look at you with the military strategy," Erik says, and then, with a sort of experimental curiosity, scrapes his teeth lightly across one of Charles' nipples. Charles groans with his entire body, shuddering and clenching his legs around Erik, and Erik huffs out something that's half-laugh, half-gasp.

"Fuck, Charles," he says, and does it again and again, until Charles is so hard he can't think, he can't breathe, he can't--

"I want to," he says, reaching down to fumble at Erik's fly, "like, right now, I've had--I mean, oh, god, Erik, I've wanted to for--"

"Yeah?" Erik says.

It sounds…surprised. Erik goes still as he says it, and Charles blinks and peers down at him. It takes a second to locate it--it's hard not to fixate on the bruised lips, the reddened skin on his throat that'll be a hickey in the morning--but Charles focuses his mind, and it's there. Erik's mouth is turned down at the corner and his eyes are wide and unsure and Christ, he's just as nervous as Charles is. Probably more nervous, really; Charles isn't sure he's even been with a guy before, is almost positive he hasn't, and he thinks of that moment on the beach, of tonight on the lawn, of all those times he's had the rare privilege of seeing Erik with his guard down.

"Erik," Charles says, finally free to let everything he means slip into his voice, "just so we're clear, the amount of time I've spent imagining sucking you off…really doesn't bear thinking about."

Erik makes a choked, raw noise, and Charles half-smiles at him, undoes his flies, tugs gracelessly at his boxers until they slide down. The line of Erik's cock--thick and cut, slightly shorter than Charles had imagined in his wilder fantasies and that much hotter for it--is unbearably tempting, and Charles doesn't waste any time in sliding low and pulling it into his mouth.

It's--Charles has a bit thing about sucking cock, has always enjoyed it a little more than he's maybe supposed to. And this is Erik, the same Erik who's been dominating Charles' dirtier thoughts for years now--this is Erik whose thighs are parted under Charles' fingers, Erik who's making low, helpless noises. Charles feels a little thrill run down the back of his spine just at the taste of him, at the feel of his size and shape under Charles' tongue, and then another when Erik curls a hand loosely into Charles' hair.

He sucks hard, once, twice, pulls back enough to flick his tongue against Erik's head and moves down again, and the noises Erik's making are like nothing Charles has ever heard before. He slides a hand forward, curls a loose fist around the base of Erik's cock, and Erik's whole body jerks; he bucks up without warning, cock scraping the back of Charles' throat. Charles breathes hard and takes it greedily, widening his jaw to accommodate it, but Erik stills at once.

"S-sorry," he gasps, "sorry, sorry, I didn't mean--I just kinda, just, it's really good, I couldn't stop, fuck, sorry, that had to--"

Charles could, in theory, explain to Erik that he doesn't need to apologize, that Charles can take it--hell, would actually love to take it--considerably harder and faster than that. He could explain, but that would involve freeing up his mouth, and he's rather loathe to do that at the moment.

He pushes himself down low instead, pulling Erik in until his cock is in the same position it was a moment ago, and rubs a thumb soothingly across Erik's thigh.

"Ohfuck," Erik hisses, and Charles would smile if he wasn't otherwise occupied. "Okay, you have to--stop me if I, I mean, you--okay."

Charles nods, just slightly, not enough to upset the delicate balance of things. He pulls back a little bit to give Erik room to move, and then--Erik bucks up and up into him, gasping invectives and fisting both hands in his hair.

It's not the roughest blowjob Charles has even given, but it's not gentle either, not by a long shot. Erik's whole body moves with every thrust, and his thighs are trembling under Charles' hands, and Charles pulls him in as deep as he can, contact-high at the fullness of it. He's so hard he doesn't know what to do with himself, finds himself rutting against the mattress without meaning to, and Erik's sweating and swearing and oh, god, Charles never wants it to stop.

"Fuck," Erik gasps, thready, too soon, "ohfuck I'm really--dude, I'm sorry but I, I, Charles, I'm drunk and I can't, I'm gonna, you should…you should like, like, god, unless you want to--"

Charles, distantly, thinks it's a good thing he knows Erik so well, or that would have been entirely unintelligible. He also thinks, considerably less distantly, that he has no intention of being deprived of the opportunity to swallow, so he just moves one hand free of Erik's thighs and makes an easy, beckoning gesture.

"Motherfuck," Erik hisses, "oh, fuck, does that mean what--I don't like, speak Advanced Gay yet, okay, I can't--your secret fucking signals or whatever, you better mean what I think you mean, Charles, fuck."

Rather than responding, Charles lifts his gaze to meet Erik's. He raises an eyebrow, just the one, and sucks so hard his cheeks hollow; Erik gasps, chokes, and comes like a shot, his whole body spasming with it. Charles waits him out, swallowing it down with easy grace, running his fingers over Erik's thighs and stomach until he calms a little; then he pulls off, wiping the edge of his mouth with his thumb. He stares at Erik's crotch for a second, eyes lidded, trying to decide if he should button him up or take his pants off the rest of the way. He decides he's too drunk to decide, in the end, and crawls up to the top of the bed instead.

"God," Erik says on a shaky exhale, "Jesus fuck, Charles." He's flushed, almost blushing, which is so weird and incredible that Charles kind of wants to stare at it and maybe--maybe--take a picture.

He doesn't get the chance, because Erik moves, mashing his face into Charles' shoulder. "Okay," he says, "okay, I'm gonna--I mean, you and me, we're totally gonna, I'm not just going to like blue ball you or anything I just, fucking hell, just, a minute, okay, Charles, Jesus."

"Take as long as you like," Charles says easily, so ridiculously proud of himself he's almost bursting with it. "In all honesty, you could blue ball me--I mean, I'd prefer if you didn't, of course, all things considered, but, Christ, Erik, you can't possibly…the amount of time I've spent thinking of it and then to have you just…and even now, really, I'm, you're quite. Ah. I should probably stop talking, yes?"

"No," Erik says, so quietly that Charles almost misses it. He leans back and looks at Charles like he's never seen him before, face still soft and slack with orgasm. When he presses in, catches Charles' mouth in his, it's strange--it's like a question, almost, so hesitant that it's barely there are all.

Charles bites at his lower lip, drawing it in smooth and easy, and puts a hand to the back of Erik's neck. And Erik--it's like Charles breaks some kind of floodgate, because Erik pushes up into the kiss, flips them so Charles is flat on his back, grinds down against his crotch with blind, furious passion.

"You have to tell me," he says, when Charles is breathing too hard just from that to hold a kiss, "you have to tell me if this--I don't know what you want, I just want it to be, I want you to like it--"

"Of course--I fucking--like it," Charles manages, catching his breath. "Really, you could--anything, Erik, please--"

"Okay," Erik says, almost whispers, "okay."

He slides a hand into Charles' pants, tightens his fingers into a loose fist around Charles' cock.

"Yeah?" he says.

Charles considers responding, but he's not actually sure he can form sentences right now, so he just tips his head back against the pillow and groans. Erik leans down and sucks lightly at the curve of Charles' neck; when Charles grinds up into his hand, rakes his fingers down Erik's back, he can feel Erik smiling.

"Bloody fuck," he manages, and closes his eyes. The world narrows down to a pinpoint, the friction of Erik's hand on his dick, the warm heat of his fingers. It chafes a little, the pressure of it, bare skin on bare skin, but Charles is--shit, Charles likes it, wants to come just like this, in his pants from a hand-job like a teenager, Erik's breath in his ear.

"Oh," Erik says, sounding suddenly like the cocky bastard he's always been, "oh, yeah, you like this, don't you? I'm good at this, fuck, listen to you, look at you, Charles, god, your face, you should make that face all the fucking time, you know that? That's an awesome fucking face for me, I swear to god I'm the fastest fucking learner you'll ever meet if it means you make that face again, I'm gonna--oh, yeah, c'mon, fuck, I can feel you getting closer, I never thought this would--fuck, Charles, open your eyes, I wanna see your face when come, c'mon."

"Savoring--it," Charles chokes out, twisting his hips a little and driving himself up.

"Selfish," Erik murmurs, teasing now. "You wanna be a bastard about it, hey, I can be a bastard too, I can stop right now, open your eyes."

"Erik," Charles whines, desperate and breathless and so close it hurts, and Erik leans down, his lips ghosting over Charles' for a half second before he pulls away again.

"Do me a favor," he whispers, and Charles gives in and opens his eyes, wide, wide.

Erik's hovering over him, sweat glistening on his forehead, eyes dark with purpose. His hair is everywhere, hanging down over his eyes, his cheeks are covered in a high, dark blush, and his smile would be a smirk if it weren't for the warmth behind it. It's--Jesus, it's nothing like Charles pictured it and so much better, like every dream he's ever had rolled together and cut with reality, and he tries and fails to catch his breath, can't imagine ever looking away.

"Knew that'd be worth it," Erik says, and Charles comes with no warning at all, so hard and so fast it surprises even him. It's just--it's just Erik, isn't it, with his pants half-open and his cock hanging loose, his hand on Charles' dick, smiling at him with swollen lips and telling him it was--Charles can't help it, has never once been able to help it, and he bites down on Erik's shoulder and rides it through, choking out nonsense syllables that mean nothing at all.

For a long second, the world goes white and impossible, too bright and visceral for Charles to bear. Then he blinks back to himself and Erik's sitting up, laughing softly to himself.

"Look what you did to my hand," he says, waving it in Charles' face, and Charles has a long, shaky aftershock moment at the sight of it, his come streaked across Erik's fingers. When his body has come to the inevitable conclusion that no, actually, he cannot physically come again, he takes a deep breath and half-smiles.

"Think you did that, actually," he says, voice hoarse, and Erik grins.

"Fuck yes I did," he says, "and look at you, that totally did something for you or something. Kinky little fuck."

"Mmm," Charles says, and it's all calm and perfect for a second. Then--because these things never last--Erik wipes his hand on the side of Charles' bed.

"Oi!" says Charles, "Erik, oh my god, I just washed these, that's disgusting--"

"See, I totally thought that's what you were going to do when it was on my hand," Erik says, "but no, that was hot but this is gross, you are so weird."

"In the morning you're doing my laundry," Charles says weakly, and Erik laughs, flops down next to him, and traces his finger in a long line down Charles' stomach.

"Think I might be able to get out of it," he says, voice all suggestion, and Charles groans.

"Oh, god, what have I done?"

"Created a monster," Erik says cheerfully, putting his hands behind his head.

"You were already a monster, I can list at least ten monstrous things you've done this week--"

"Flatterer."

"Bastard."

"Mmm," Erik says, "least I pull my weight."

Charles can't think of a single argument to that, so he just focuses on catching his breath, on the sound of Erik doing the same thing next to him. There's a moment where they're not touching and Charles is suddenly, hideously afraid that's it's going to get awkward, but then his fingers find Erik's hipbone, and any tension that might have been there breaks easily around them. They shift, both kicking out of their pants, and curl towards one another without saying a word; Charles tucks an arm across Erik's stomach, presses his cheek to Erik's chest, and Erik yawns and lets a hand rest almost tentatively on Charles' thigh.

"Any of the guys catch us like this--" he starts, and Charles laughs.

"It's a small bed," he says. "That's my story, and I intend to stick to it."

"Totally small," Erik agrees, yawning. "Smallest bed ever, that's--that's a good cover, we're totally the like. Manliest dudes ever or some shit, fuck, I'm tired."

"Mmm," Charles agrees. "In the morning we gotta--the landlord, right, and like--"

"Potatoes," Erik says, "and coffee. We should…I mean, water now, probably, except I don't--"

"Yeah, no moving."

"No moving," Erik repeats. "Hangover's gonna be a bitch, though."

"Worth it," Charles says, before he can help himself, muffled into the curve of Erik's neck.

"Yeah," Erik agrees, quiet, and Charles feels warmth swell uncontrollably in his chest as he closes his eyes.

x-men first class fic: carpe brewski, chapter eight [erik/charles, R]

2011-08-17T01:51:35Z

Oh, god, so. First of all: GUYS, THIS IS CHAPTER EIGHT OF THIS STORY. CHAPTER EIGHT. Chapter Seven was posted to my Dreamwidth while LJ was down, and then I...er...kind of forgot to repost it here/link to it from Chapter Six I AM VERY SORRY I'VE FIXED IT NOW. But, uh, if for whatever reason you missed Chapter Seven, you should probably...go ahead and read that before you read....this...yeah okay.

Secondly: oh my god, I am seriously so overwhelmed with the response this story has gotten that I don't even know what to do. I'm blown away, guys, and I can't thank you enough. For those of you who are interested, there's a--oh my god I cannot actually believe I'm typing this--a Carpe Brewski LJ community that you guys can play around with if you want? (Incidentally, if you are one of the people who has messaged me about its existence: yes I know it's there, no I'm not running it, yes I am totally okay with it! Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know, but don't worry, it's all Kosher :D) It's, just, it's amazing, you guys, that anyone finds something I've written compelling enough to, I just, djkshfkjdsfh.

There's also, for those interested, my Carpe Brewski Extras tumblr, where I'm posting, er, little random side-snippets I write sometimes. Mostly they're about Alex and Armando in the future, not even gonna lie, but once the story is actually done I'll be doing more developed shit.

AND FINALLY, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY: the beautiful art in this chapter is, once again, by the truly exceptional Fish, who continues to give me more than I deserve by drawing for this story. And, of course, this story would not exist at all without postcardmystery, who talks me down from my various neuroses, explains everything to me, and actually wrote the Oxford email in this chapter because I am fail at all things British. Please feel free to give them both all of the love; they deserve it &hearts

Title: Carpe Brewski
Pairing: Erik/Charles [past Charles/Steve Rogers]
Rating: R
Glossary: Toilet papering a house is when you take it and do this to it; "40-Hands" is a reference to the drinking game Edward 40-Hands, in which you...er...duct tape a 40 oz. bottle of malt liquor to each hand and can't remove either one until you've finished it. Beer-vodka-lemonade is, tragically, a real thing I've really gotten drunk on. Even more tragically, it's delicious.
Author's Notes: This is a WIP, folks. You're going to want to start with Chapter One (where disclaimers, summary, etc, can be found), Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, and Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight: Every Spring, The Toilets Explode

Charles beats Erik to Steve's office on purpose.

It's just…the right thing to do, isn't it, given the circumstances; Charles knows about Erik's inability to control himself, and about Steve's tendency to run five minutes early. It only makes sense to try to head it all off at the pass, even if he's sure that it won't matter in the long run.

There's a blonde woman at the front desk of the Alumni Association offices when he walks in. She's on the phone, and holds up a finger when she sees him.

"Thing is, when I say no one's available to speak to you, I mean no one's available to speak to you. I am perfectly capable of taking a message, but if you'd like anyone to get it, you might consider changing your--yes, thank you, I am very well aware of who you--sir, you have four seconds to stop speaking to me that way or I am--okay, well, then, have a lovely day."

She drops the handset onto the receiver and shakes her head at it. "Asshole," she mutters, and then glances up at Charles. "Sorry, sugar. Can I help you?"

"Yes, actually," Charles says, "it's just, I'm here to see Steve, but I'm a little early, I think."

"Oh," the woman says, raising an eyebrow. "You must be Charles, then. God, you really are exactly his type, how interesting."

"Um," says Charles. The woman waves a hand.

"Go on, then, have a seat, he should be out in a minute--"

"Dude, I thought you were going to meet me outside," Erik says, breezing in through the doors. "For like, strategy or whatever, aren't you…"

He trails off, eyes trained on the receptionist's desk, and goes…well. Charles wouldn't say he goes white, exactly, because he's seen that happen and it's usually right before his blood alcohol content knocks him out, but he definitely pales. Charles flicks his eyes back to the girl he'd been speaking to, who looks equally shocked; when he looks back at Erik, it's to find that Erik's reaching out a hand to steady himself on Charles' shoulder.

"Erik?" says the woman.

"Emma," says Erik, blinking. Charles imagines he'd sound normal to anyone else--to anyone who didn't know him--but having been Erik's closest friend for most of their college careers, he knows freaked the fuck out when he hears it.

"Are you alright?" he says, voice low, just for Erik. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Erik shakes his head almost imperceptibly and tightens his grip on Charles' shoulder for a half-second before letting go.

"Sorry, but I--I mean, I heard you left. Uh. Transferred. Like…a while ago, actually."

"I did," Emma says. "I'm back for grad school, I took this job for the cash."

"And him?"

"I haven't seen him," Emma says. She looks more composed than she had a minute ago, but her voice is hard, cracked just at the very edges. "I don't plan to, either, for what it's worth."

"I've heard that somewhere before," Erik says, and she sighs.

"Good to know you haven't changed."

"Good to know you have," Erik says, "if you really have, I mean."

"Not really your business, is it?"

"Never was," Erik says, grinning. There's a sharp, pained edge to his smile, and Charles digs his nails into his palms to keep from interrupting; it's not like he even knows what he'd say. "Then again, I can think of a lot of things that weren't your business, Em, and it never stopped you, did it?"

"It did sometimes," Emma says. Something like regret flashes briefly across her face, but it's gone by the time Charles really tries to look for it. "So you're…alright, then?"

"Oh, suddenly you're so interested?"

"I was interested then," Emma says, "but I didn't know how to--"

"Whatever," Erik says, "it was a long time ago, anyway. And I'm fine. I'm good. You?"

"Fine," Emma says, "good."

"Great," Erik says. "Good to see you, I guess. Charles, let's go."

"We can't," Charles says, and winces when Erik looks at him like he's committed some kind of terrible betrayal. "I mean, you can, if you like, but we're here for a meeting, remember?"

"Oh," Erik says. "Yeah. Right. Totally."

"Although, again, if you want to go--"

"So you can meet with the jackass alone, yeah, not happening," Erik says, sounding a little more normal now. "I am parking my ass on a chair and waiting with you, don't think you can get rid of me that easy."

"Wait, you're here to see Steve as well?" Emma says, eyes flicking from Erik to Charles and back again. A smile curves at the edge of her mouth. "Oh. Well. I suppose that makes sense."

"What makes sense?" says Charles, as Erik flushes and narrows his eyes.

"Aren't you going to introduce me, Erik?" Emma says.

"Nope," Erik says, and grabs Charles' arm to drag him off towards the waiting area. Emma laughs behind them, light and only a little bit forced.

"You want to tell me what that was about?" Charles says, when they're both folded into the uncomfortable plastic chairs.

"There's nothing to tell," Erik says.

Charles glances down; Erik's hands are folded across his lap, and they're shaking, just barely enough to be perceptible. Erik must notice it the same time Charles does, because he shoves them under his thighs a second later, but by that point it's too late.

"Nothing?" Charles says, and Erik sighs.

"Fine. She was--I used to know her, okay?"

"Did you guys," Charles said, and makes a complicated hand gesture that hopefully conveys I am far too proper a person to utter the words 'fuck like rabbits,' but really means Oh, god, the idea of talking out loud about you having sex with someone else causes me actual physical pain.

Luckily, Erik makes a face that's something between disbelief and horror. "With Emma? Dude, no, definitely no. She was--is, maybe, the hell if I know, it's hard to know with her, she's never exactly been--she was dating Shaw, is my point. And she was a junior when I was a freshman, she was way out of my league anyway."

"I didn't think it was possible for someone to be out of your league," Charles says, not quite sarcastic enough. Erik's gaze flicks up at once, eyes wide and probing, and Charles swallows hard and tries to think about anything, anything except how much he wants to close the distance between them and--

--a loud bark interrupts them.

"Captain!" Charles says, as much in excitement as in mind-numbing relief, and slides off his chair to crouch down and meet the dog running toward him. Captain licks his whole face, wriggling with joy from head to toe, and Charles is maybe a little bit gratified that he's clearly been missed; he scratches behind the dog's ears, says, "Oh, Cap, hello, yes, it's good to see you too--oh, god, you're a love, aren't you, not the face, yes, hello."

Erik makes a disgruntled kind of sound. "Jesus, do you have to be so buddy-buddy?"

"This is a golden retriever, Erik," Charles says, not bothering to look back at him. "You cannot possibly be irritated that I am being kind to the dog--yes, yes, Captain, I know you're excited but please not the face."

"He can't understand you, you know."

"Are you twelve?" Charles asks. "You're acting twelve."

"I'm just saying," Erik says, "there's no need to get all bitchy about it. But, I mean, while we're on the topic, who keeps a dog in an office anyway? That's not like--professional and shit. It's totally unprofessional. I mean, he's obviously not the kind of dog who can just be left alone to chill, he's all over you, dude."

"Well, to be fair," a familiar voice says, "my visitors aren't normally old friends of his."

Charles glances up, and the bottom drops out of his stomach a little--not much, not as much as it does when he looks at Erik, but enough. Steve looks good, broad and blond as ever, and it's not like Charles had ever found him anything but attractive; the fact that they'd turned out to be wrong for each other doesn't make that any less true.

"Hello, Steve," he says.

"Charles," Steve says quietly. "It's good to see you."

"You too," Charles says, equally soft. Their eyes meet over the top of Captain's head, and Charles suddenly, viscerally remembers how much time he's spent in bed with this man. He flushes. Steve grins.

"Hi," Erik snaps, breaking the moment. "If you guys are done--"

"Erik," Steve says, rolling his eyes, "I see time has yet to improve your personality."

"Yeah, well," Erik says. He's clearly about to add something that will undoubtedly be horrifying, but Charles gives him a pointed look and he clears his throat. "It's, uh. Not that terrible to see you, I guess."

Steve sighs, but doesn't bite. "Why don't you two come into my office, then. Whatever this is about, I'm sure we can get it sorted out."

Charles and Erik trail after him, having a conversation about proper decorum (Charles) and what a douchebag this guy is (Erik) without bothering to speak. Charles pulls the letter from National out of his computer bag when they're settled and hands it over to Steve without a word.

"Wow," Steve says, staring at it, "you guys must have had some semester."

"That's the thing," Charles says, "we didn't, not really. Not any worse than usual, anyway. We've thought about it, and, I mean, of course, the noise violation thing is true enough, and Erik did get arrested--"

"I wasn't charged with anything," Erik says.

"I didn't say you were charged with anything," Charles says, "I said you got arrested, which you did. But still, even with that, this doesn't necessarily…I mean, if that was really the problem, why on earth wouldn't they just kick Erik out?"

"Hey!" Erik says.

"You asked me the same question not an hour ago," Charles says. "I don't see why it's bothering you now."

"Well, it's--different, okay, when it's just you!" Erik shifts in his chair, scratches at the back of his neck, yanks at a piece of his hair. He's fidgeting, Charles realizes, which is so unlike him that he stops paying attention to Steve entirely.

"Hey, I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't--I don't want them to kick you out, of course, I only meant--"

"Ugh, dude, I know, nevermind," Erik says, scowling. "It was just--I'm not talking. Forget it. It's not a thing."

"For what it's worth, Charles has a point," Steve says, glancing back down at the letter. "I mean, it's just a suspension, but this is--bizarrely aggressive, given the circumstances. Did you guys not get a warning?"

"No," Erik says.

"Not as far as we know of," Charles corrects. "It is…possible that a warning came and we missed it; there are a lot of people in and out of the house on any given day."

"I did tell you that so much partying would--"

"Yes," Charles says, irritated for the first time, "you did. Do we really have to go down that road again?

"No," Steve sighs, "of course not. I can make a couple of calls, if you want, see what this is all about--"

"You think we didn't already make calls?" Erik snaps. "Because we did, okay, we're not stupid, we called people--"

"I'm sure you did," Steve says, "but they're more likely to be willing to give me an honest answer."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean that I am the assistant director of Alumni Affairs," Steve snaps, apparently at the end of his rope, "and you're a college student with a drinking problem and a criminal record."

"Oh, that is it," Erik says, and is actually halfway out of his chair before Charles gets the chance to grab his arm and yank him back.

"Steve, for Christ's sake, can you just--" Charles says, and stops, because Steve's got the determined face on and he's not likely to let go. "Fine, then. Erik, I think you should leave."

"But he--"

"Is going to be less likely to help us if you two end up having an all out brawl in his office, bloody hell," Charles says, pushing him up and towards the door. "I've got this under control, go--I don't know, just go somewhere, talk to Emma or something, I won't be long."

Erik opens his mouth like he's thinking about arguing, and actually Charles is expecting argument; the fact that Erik goes still at the mention of Emma's name surprises him, makes him all the more sure that something about that girl has him seriously off his game. "Uh," he says, "fine. I'll go, uh…coffee, or something."

"Yes," Charles says, "yes, coffee, fantastic, that's great, I'll call you when we're done here."

"Bye, Erik," Steve says, the picture of composure unless you look at his eyes, and Erik actually bares his teeth like a hyena before slamming the office door behind him.

"I never said anything when we were dating," Steve says conversationally, "but, for the record, it does kind of sticks in my craw that that is what I couldn't compete with."

"Fuck you," Charles snaps without meaning to; the venom in his voice is a surprise, even to himself. He's horrified enough that he actually tries to cover his mouth, as though that will undo what just came out of it. "Christ, I'm sorry, that was--I shouldn't have--I didn't mean--it's just, he's really a much better person than he lets on when you're around."

"Guess I'll have to take your word for it," Steve says. "Even if the reverse is kind of true about you."

"Okay," Charles says, standing up, "you know what, fine. I honestly thought this was a business meeting, but if I'm here to play this particular game with you, I'd just as soon--"

"No," Steve says, "no, no, sit down. I'm sorry; this is a business meeting. I just--I'm maybe a little bitter, that's all."

"We would never have worked," Charles says, easing back into his chair warily. "Surely you know that? Quite aside from the whole Erik…issue…there were a number of things about us as people that didn't mesh."

"Of course I know that. I'm actually seeing someone else, not that it--but that's not the point, is it? It's not that I want you back, Charles, not at all. It's just…weird, to see your ex with the guy he left you for."

"You left me," Charles reminds him. "If we're going to get technical about it."

Steve smiles.

"If that's what you have to tell yourself to sleep at night," he says, and there's an itch at the back of Charles' throat, something between annoyance and guilt. "Now, let's talk about this letter."

--

Erik is sitting on the hood of Charles' car when he exits the building, a cup of coffee in each hand. Charles' car keys are dangling from his left thumb.

"You brought your bike here," Charles sighs, sliding up onto the hood to sit next to him anyway. He takes the coffee cup on the right--it doesn't matter whose is whose, since they both drink it black--and takes a long, bracing sip. "You didn't need to steal my car."

"It's not stealing if you have the keys."

"That is so wrongheaded," Charles says, "but fine. You didn't need to steal my keys, then."

Erik bumps their shoulders together, warm and friendly, already a different person than he was fifteen minutes ago. Charles doesn't pull away, because he can't.

"Someone's got to keep you on your toes, Xavier," he says. "So, what'd Captain Douchenozzle have to say?"

"Capt--Steve said that he's not going to pull our title or anything, but we have to try to keep our asses out of trouble for the rest of the year so he doesn't have to."

"Okay," Erik says. "I mean, fine, that's what everyone says, we never listen to that shit anyway. What's the rest of it?"

"Can't that be all of it?"

"Not with the look on your face," Erik says, and Charles swears.

"You have to promise me that you're going to handle this like a rational person," he says, "and not like--like you'd normally handle it. Okay? I need your word, Erik, that you will behave like a human being."

"Dude, I always behave like a human being, it's not my fault my liver is just better than normal people's."

Charles gives him a look, and he sighs, leans back against the windshield. "Oh, fine. What, then?"

"Steve thinks," Charles says carefully, "that it's possible that there could be a little more to this than meets the eye."

"More to it than meets the eye how?"

"More to it than meets the eye like…some kind of forgery, maybe. Or maybe…bribing or hacking or something, I don't know, he's not sure, and it's all a little crazy, but--well, he said he'd never seen a national chapter respond to a local branch that way, and the, ah, stationary. Is wrong."

"What do you mean the stationary is wrong?"

"I mean it's wrong," Charles says, pulling out a copy of the letter (he'd left the original with Steve, but he's not about to tell Erik that) and the sheet of paper Steve had given him. "This is the letter we received, and this is the cover letter Steve got with the ABG national chapter information packet they send out every year."

"He kept the cover letter?"

"He keeps everything," Charles says, "he's just like that, that's not the point. Look at the letterhead."

Erik peers down at both pieces of paper for a long time, and then makes a low, irritated noise. "Son of a bitch."

"Yeah," Charles says, "kind of a--"

"And they knew," Erik says, "oh my god, the fucking Zetas knew, they left us that cake, even if they'd been the anonymous tip-off how the fuck would they know when we were going to get the boot--"

"And we called to confirm," Charles says, "but we called--"

"--the number on the letter, Jesus fuck we're morons."

"Well," Charles says carefully, "I wouldn't necessarily say that. Less than brilliant in this particular case, perhaps, but--"

"No, we're fucking morons," Erik groans, scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands. "Or at least, I'm a fucking moron, I don't know about you--you can just be, you know, accessory to the moronic fact, if you want."

"You're so good to me," Charles says, dry, and Erik snorts out a pained laugh.

"Jesus," he says.

"Yeah," Charles agrees. "On the plus side, there's a fairly good chance we haven't actually been suspended, even if we have, ah, actively alerted both of the on-campus organizations that monitor such things to our less-than-stellar record."

"I don't care about that," Erik says, waving a hand. "I mean, Tony is Tony, he already knew what we were like and has yet to give a single fuck, and who cares what Steve thinks?"

"Ignoring the various flaws in that train of thought for a second," Charles says, tilting his head and looking at Erik, "if that's how you really feel about it, then I'd think you'd be…more relieved than you seem."

Erik sighs, shoulders hunching under the black leather of his jacket. Around them, winter is slowly but inexorably giving way to spring; the air's chilled but not quite cold, crisp in Charles' mouth, and the only snow in sight is huddled in abandoned lumps near the edge of the road. In the distance, someone is playing music with a heavy bass backbeat, but over that, Charles thinks he can make out birdsong. There's a flush of high color in Erik's cheeks that can't be from the weather, and the hood of the car is cool and slick under Charles' palm.

"You know what's stupid?" Erik says.

"What's that?"

"I'd actually kind of rather be suspended," Erik says. "I mean, obviously I don't like--I'm not looking to get us in trouble or anything, I'll be glad if we're not, but it's just like. I don't know. The humiliation thing, right? Especially from them. Especially from fucking Shaw, and I want to be angry--no, fuck that, I am angry, I'm totally angry--but there's also this like...it's just…"

He stops, biting his lip and staring out in the middle distance, and Charles waits, expectant; when nothing comes, he prods, "It's just….?"

"Hm?" Erik says, blinking back to himself, and then, "Oh. You know what, fuck it, never mind."

"No, really, I want to--"

"Dude," Erik says, springing off the car with a sudden energy, "we don't have time for this anyway, we've got shit to do."

Charles narrows his eyes. "What kind of shit, exactly?"

"The kind of shit we need your car for," Erik says, waving Charles' keys in his face again. "Hence, you know, the borrowing. C'mon, asshole, what're you gonna do, sit up there all day? Lazy much?"

"Lazy and cautious have entirely different definitions, not that you've ever believed me about that," Charles says, hopping down off the hood anyway. "Why do you need my car?"

"Well," Erik says, "you can't exactly fit eight cases of toilet paper onto my bike. I mean, duh."

"Erik…" Charles starts, but Erik turns to him them, and Charles shuts his mouth. Under his manic energy, there's something too bright in his eyes--the same sheer, unbridled emotion that had shone on his face upon seeing Emma, walking the line between fury and fear. Charles can't recall the last time he saw Erik truly frightened of something, and is surprised to find that it doesn't leave him terror-stricken in turn; instead, he feels something like resolve firm up in his chest, squaring his shoulders for him.

"C'mon," Erik says again, sounding less sure this time. "Defending our honor and all that shit. You in?"

Charles looks at him for a long moment, objections myriad and thick on his tongue, before he drops his gaze.

"Fine," he says, "but I'm driving."

--

Two days go by in relative silence, then three, then a week; Charles begins to allow himself the faint, glimmering hope that Erik has forgotten about the whole toilet papering plan. It's really unlikely, not in the least because Erik doesn't tend to waste money on things like attacks he's not sure he's carrying through, but Charles thinks if he just believes hard enough, maybe it won't happen the way he thinks it's going to.

Then he realizes he is, for all intents and purposes, equating Erik's latest revenge plan to Tinkerbell, and does what he can to stop thinking about it anymore.

It's a week and a half after their meeting with Steve when Charles finds himself shaken awake in the dead of night. He blinks, trying to ground himself--his neck hurts, and his mouth tastes like death, and he'd been dreaming he was doing battle with his latest impossible variable, fighting its amorphous form back into the brambles of a forest with a Bunsen burner as a sword--

Oh. Passed out studying again, then. Charles tries to find the energy to be embarrassed, can't, and doesn't bother lifting his head.

"You drooled on your Chem 580 notes," Erik says, not without glee, and actually cackles when Charles' whole body flies up and away from the paper. "Gotcha. Sorry, dude, couldn't help myself."

"I hate you," Charles says. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes and yawns, cracking his jaw. "You are a terrible, sadistic bastard and I loathe you entirely."

"Gonna stop meaning anything, how much you're saying it lately," Erik says, easy, almost mocking, and hands him a coffee. "Here, I'm not above purchasing your affections."

Charles looks down at the cup, eyes narrowed. "Why are you bringing me coffee at--" he checks his watch "--2:45 in the morning?"

"Because you looked tired," Erik says innocently. "And also because we have a most unholy and sacred mission to carry out, but that can wait until you're caffeinated, because I'm cool like that."

Charles groans. "God, I thought you had forgotten about this."

"Elephants never forget," Erik says, "and they never forgive."

"You're not an elephant," Charles says despairingly, dropping his head to the table. "And stop stealing sayings from the internet, and why are you so cheerful, ugh."

"Um," says a voice; Charles peers behind Erik and is surprised to see Banshee in the doorway. "Sorry, Magneto, it's just that I don't want to, um, interrupt, but the car are loaded and we're all, uh, ready when you are?"

"Awesome," Erik says, still smiling down at Charles and holding out the coffee. "Thanks, Banshee. We'll just be a minute, Prof here's not a morning person."

"No," Charles says, "no, that's not right at all, it is not morning, it is the middle of the bloody night. You could say I wasn't a middle of the bloody night person and that would be entirely accurate, but--"

"Are you trying to argue that you are a morning person?" Erik says, badly-held-back laughter creeping into his voice now. "Is that where this is going? Really?"

Charles eyes him for a moment, trying to figure out if he's got any hope of winning this argument (nope) or any chance of burying his face directly in Erik's shoulder and going back to sleep (definitely not). He sighs in defeat, snatches the coffee, and takes a long sip of it just to clear his head. He doesn't realize why Erik's looking so unnaturally proud of himself until he swallows.

"Jesus Christ," Charles gasps wetly, having forced down the surprising burn of his mouthful by will alone, "sorry, I wanted some coffee with my whiskey, thanks."

Erik throws back his head and laughs, a warm, full-throated sound. Charles doesn't watch the line of his throat bob up and down, because that would be wrong and also he's a stronger person than that. Really. He is.

"Aw, man, that was so worth it," Erik says. "Your face, seriously, I don't even--"

"You are an unmitigated asshole," Charles informs him, "and if I didn't absolutely need to be drunk for what we're about to do, I would kill you."

"You would never," Erik says, too cheerful about it, so sure of himself that it sticks and stings as he throws an arm over Charles' shoulder and leads him out to Logan's truck.

--

"Wow," Banshee says, an hour or so later. "I mean, just, wow."

"I," says Darwin, and shakes his head. "I mean, I've seen people TP a house before, but this is like--"

"Like the TP Olympics," Eyebrows says reverently. "Like what other TP jobs want to be when they grow up."

"I just," says Beast, "I mean, did you like…did you plan for the storm? How do you plan for a storm?"

"All in good time, young Jedi," says Logan, in a startling departure from his normal hostile growling. Charles leans off the back bumper of the pick-up and looks at him askance; he's surprised to find that Logan is actually smiling, hands tucked cheerfully in his back pockets as he surveys their handiwork. Mayhem always did suit him.

"What are you, Obi Won Ken-Asshole now?" Scott says, but even he's laughing on it, arm pressed up against Logan's side. Logan reaches out and socks him in the shoulder, but it's a light, almost affectionate thing. Charles turns away.

Next to him, Erik's smiling vaguely. There's something distant about it, an edge to it that Charles doesn't like. He bumps their shoulders together.

"Did you plan for the storm?" he says in an undertone. "I mean, I'd hate for the pledges to think you're actually some kind of weather god, but it does seem like oddly perfect timing."

"Kind of," Erik says. "There's this girl in my program, Ororo, she's doing her thesis on some kind of like…pressure shift mechanism thing, the fuck if I know, but it's all she talks about lately. I may have…asked her to tip me off to any upcoming thunderstorms."

"I hear they have that kind of thing on the internet now," Charles says, and Erik laughs.

"Yeah, but we're too far in the middle of nowhere for it to be like, accurate and shit. Wanted to make sure we really got the fuckers, y'know? Toilet paper sticks so much better when it gets wet, they'll be cleaning this shit up for days."

"Mm," Charles agrees. He's soaked to the skin, but there's still enough whiskey in him that he doesn't much mind. "You alright?"

"'Course I'm alright," Erik says, after a second. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just…don't seem alright, lately," Charles says. He keeps it as offhand as he can manage, forcing his voice light, but Erik bristles anyway. "Thought I'd check."

"Yeah, well, I'm fine," Erik says, and launches himself off the back of the truck before Charles can say anything else. "Alright, guys, good job, we should get the fuck out of here before one of them wakes up and figures out what happened."

"Aww, but it's so satisfying," Logan says.

"That's what your mother said last night," Erik returns, clearly on autopilot. "Pledges, in the flatbed--you're wet anyway, and if you don't complain maybe I'll give you your toilet papering merit badges when we get back to the house. Charles, you and Scott go up front, I'll stay in back with these guys."

Charles raises his eyebrows--Erik's not normally one to sacrifice shotgun--but goes easily enough. They listen to Queen the whole way back, Logan playing "Another One Bites The Dust" over and over because he thinks he's hilarious and because it drives Scott nuts, and Charles sits on his hands and wills himself warm.

When he glances out the window separating the bed from the cab, he can see Erik hunched around himself, arms locked together across his tucked up knees. Banshee, Beast and Eyebrows are laughing at some story Darwin's telling, but Erik's looking out at the road. There's rainwater dripping down the side of his face that Charles can see, and the tension of his back is so visible that it's painful, even from here.

Charles' hands curl to fists under his thighs, though he's not quite sure why. He doesn't stop looking until Scott nudges him, like he's noticed.

--

Three days later, ABG wakes up to find their house has been egged.

Two days after that, Erik makes a few phone calls and cancels the keg delivery to that night's Zeta party; in response, Charles finds that they've been blacklisted at the local liquor store, has to bribe the guy behind the counter to buy a six-pack.

Five days after that, Erik shows up at the house with a box of fireworks that Charles has to actively wrestle way from him; they settle for rigging the Zeta mailbox with silly-string instead, though Erik is clearly less than pleased about it. Their own mailbox mysteriously vanishes the next day, only to be replaced a day later with a gigantic rubber dildo.

Scott actually laughs at that, loud and ill-timed, for a second before Erik shoots him a quelling glare. "Sorry," he says, "it's funny," and Erik storms off and spends the rest of the day in a huff.

All in all, Charles is pretty fucking glad when spring break rolls around. The house empties out again--Eyebrows and Darwin are staying, crashing on the living room couches, but the rest of the pledges are going home for the week. Raven is, to Charles' surprise, planning to spend her break at Angel's apartment--"Sorry, Charles, I love you to death, but your house smells disgusting and, also, sex,"--and Logan and Scott have planned out a schedule for the week that seems to mostly involve video games, screaming at each other, and drinking (not necessarily in that order).

"Hey," Charles says, sticking his head into Erik's room the second night of break. He raises his eyebrows--usually at least bordering on clean, Erik's room is a mess. Charles hasn't been in here in…a couple of weeks, actually, now that he thinks about it. He's fairly certain Erik is avoiding him, though the reason why is less than clear. Charles has long since given up worrying that Erik will figure out the desire lurking behind his friendship and freak out about it--if he hasn't by now, it's probably unlikely--but it makes him anxious all the same.

"Hi," Erik says. He looks up from the papers spread across his desk--a freshly graded statistics exam and some Stark Industries plans he definitely shouldn't have, by the looks of it--and smiles tiredly. "What's up?"

"Well," Charles says, "I know you've been a bit…ah, caught up with this Zeta thing…"

"I'm just trying to be prepared for all contingencies," Erik says at once. It's clear, from the speed of the answer, that it's not the first time someone has expressed the opinion that he's taking the whole thing oddly seriously; Charles is glad to know he's got at least one ally in that, though he can't know which of his brothers it is.

"Right," Charles says, "I know. It's just--I was wondering if we were going to go up to the coast again this year, is all."

Erik blinks like he's forgotten; Charles' heart tightens in his chest, but it's a small, manageable ache. He and Erik have driven the 45 minutes to the nearest beach every spring break since freshman year, taken a day to fuck around without the constant din of the frat house surrounding them. Charles likes the ocean and Erik likes getting drunk near large bodies of water--"Because you never have to worry about getting fucked over by the urge to skinny dip," he says every year, like that even makes sense--but it's not like it's breaking Charles' heart or anything that Erik hadn't thought of it.

"I…guess I kind of forgot it was break," Erik says finally, his expression gone sheepish. "Sorry, dude, I didn't realize how deep into this thing I'd gotten, and then Tony wants all this stuff and so I haven't really been…whatever, but yeah, I definitely want to go. When were you thinking?"

Charles shrugs. "Whenever's fine. I mean, everybody's back on Saturday, and I figured we were probably gonna do--"

"The welcome back party, yeah," Erik says, pressing the heel of his hand up against his forehead. He looks tired, Charles thinks, like shit is actually sticking to him for once. "Fuck, I forgot about that too, you think we can make Logan and Scott deal with it?"

"No point being in charge if we can't delegate," Charles says, leaning against the doorframe. "And it's not like it's a particularly difficult thing to throw together. I can talk to them about it later, if you want."

"That'd be good," Erik says. He yawns, covering it with the back of his hand, then laughs at himself for it a little. "Jesus, I'm wiped and it's only like 10. You think this is what being an adult is going to be like?"

"Hopefully it'll be a bit less revenge-bent," Charles says carefully, "but it's entirely possible."

"Ew," Erik says, sounding a little less like a zombie, a little more like himself. "That's disgusting, I can taste the future, it sucks, get it off!"

Charles rolls his eyes, doesn't move from the doorframe. "What about Thursday? Is Thursday good for you?"

"I could do Thursday. Can we take the bike?"

No, Charles thinks. That thing is death on two wheels, it almost killed you last year, if I didn't think you'd go mad with despair I'd dismantle it myself.

"Sure," Charles says, "if you like."

"Oh, I like," Erik says, grinning broadly. "I definitely like. You never agree to the bike, oh man, this is gonna be awesome."

"Or deadly," Charles says, "pick your poison, I suppose."

"Downer."

"Madman."

"Am I supposed to be insulted by that?" Erik asks. "Because, dude, seriously, it's not like I don't know."

Charles smiles at him, a full, unhindered thing, his nervousness finally slipping away. Whatever's bothering Erik, it's something extraneous, something not-Charles'-fault--he can deal with that, get to the root of it, suss out the cause and find some way to fix it.

"Thursday, then," he says, and Erik nods his agreement. Charles is still smiling as he slips out the door.

--

--

They get up early on Thursday morning, yawning and grinning at each other when they meet in the kitchen.

"I figured sandwiches and beer?" Charles says, lifting an old, empty backpack over his head. "Not necessarily in that order, though."

"Sounds good to me," Erik says. "I got an eighth from Pyro before he left, so we're good there. You want to make sandwiches or get them on the way?"

Charles makes a great show of opening the refrigerator and peering inside. "Well, that depends. If you want a moldy orange sandwich--or, hey, let's get crazy, we've even got the ingredients for a moldy orange sandwich--"

"You know, I've been craving a moldy orange sandwich," Erik says contemplatively. "Any chance we've got shit in for that?"

"We need to buy food," Charles says.

"No point, the pledges'll just eat it. Sandwiches on the way, then?"

"Sounds good," Charles says, and packs the backpack with ice and beer. He throws it across his back and follows Erik out to the driveway, clambers up onto the bike behind him, and puts on the spare helmet; he wraps his arms around Erik's waist, as platonically as possible, and tries not to think about how they're going to crash and die as they set off.

After that wears off, he mostly tries not to think about how warm Erik's back is against his chest. When he fails at that, he gives in and tightens his arms around Erik's waist, just a little, just enough.

The beach is, as expected, entirely deserted when they arrive. It's too cold for swimming or sunbathing by a fair margin; Charles, in a thick sweater and a coat, still manages to shiver a little when the wind blows in across the water. The Atlantic glimmers in the faint spring sunshine, and without having to talk about it, Erik and Charles both ditch their shoes and socks near the parking lot. They wander for awhile, eventually settling down as close to the water as they can get while remaining on dry sand. Erik grabs them each a beer as Charles pulls the weed and the papers out of the front pouch of the backpack, rolls a joint with easy grace.

"Hey," he says, three hits in, "I need to talk to you about something."

"You gonna come out to me again?" Erik says, laughing on it a little. He sounds almost…bitter, but it might just be that his voice is catching on the crash of the waves.

"No, think we covered that," Charles murmurs. "It's…look, you don't have to tell me something's wrong, Erik, but I do know something's wrong. I'm not blind."

"News to me," Erik mutters, so low that Charles barely catches it. He's turned his face away, gone shuttered and still at once, and Charles wonders what the hell he means by that, but doesn't quite have the balls to ask.

"Sorry, what'd you say?"

"Never mind," Erik says. When he doesn't bother saying anything else, Charles sighs and presses on.

"I just thought you should know," he says. "That I know, I mean. I don't know what it is, but you're clearly…I mean, I haven't seen you this unhappy since…" They both wince, thinking of freshman year. "In any case. I'm…here, is my point, I suppose."

"Huh," Erik says. He takes a long, contemplative pull from the joint, balancing it almost idly between two fingers. "Thing is, man, if I admit that something's wrong--not that I'm doing that, by the way, I totally didn't say that--but if I did say that, you'd just ask what it is, because that's just what you're like."

"What I'm like?"

"You can't ever," Erik says, and waves his hand vaguely towards the sea. "Y'know. Leave shit. Let it alone."

"I do sometimes," Charles says quietly. "You'd be surprised, I think."

Erik takes another hit from the joint and passes it over. He blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth, a long blue-grey stream, and says, "Yeah, maybe."

"No, really," Charles says, because he's feeling dangerous today, just a bit, with the salt air thick on his tongue, his feet half-buried in freezing sand. "I leave shit alone far better than you'd imagine."

"No," says Erik. "I meant, yeah, maybe something's wrong."

"Oh," says Charles.

"But I don't want to talk about it," Erik says, fierce suddenly. "And I don't want you to fucking ask, okay? It's not…there's not anything to like….do about it, or anything. It just is."

"Alright," Charles says quietly. He bites back the urge to press, because Erik asked him not to. "I'm sorry, then."

There is a long pause, in which Charles hits the joint and Erik pointedly doesn't look at him. Then: "Do you think…I mean, like. Do you you think you're always the same person? I mean, deep down, people change, right? That happens?"

Charles is sure--Charles is certain--that he's wandered into dangerous territory. There's an answer he's supposed to give here, but he doesn't for the life of him know what it is, leaving him with the recourse of simple honesty. He thinks of his mother, promising over and over again that this would be the last one, the last time; he thinks of the one Al-Anon meeting he'd gone to at 17, pushed by Raven's insistence that he at least try it.

"I think people can change," he says, and hates the way his voice sounds on it. "But it's better not to count on it, you know? Better not to wait around and see if it happens."

"Huh," Erik says. "Yeah, I guess."

"Is that not what you meant?"

"No, I," Erik waves a hand. "Fucking weed makes it hard to like…I mean, me. Or, I guess people, but like…individual people, right? Like, it's not so much depending on other people to change, but…I don't know, I guess changing yourself? Can people do that? I mean, people do do that, don't they? You're not always the person you once were, are you? Or are you?"

"I," Charles says, blinking at him. "I'm sorry, I'm not really--"

"You know what, forget it," Erik says, turning his face towards the water again. "It's stupid anyway."

Charles takes another drag from the joint, mostly in the hope that it'll get him high enough that Erik will begin to make sense. It doesn't do much except hit harder than expected, leaving him coughing and gasping for air; Erik pounds on his back, rubs a little when Charles quiets.

"I still don't know what you're talking about," Charles says, when he can breathe again. He doesn't mean to say anything else, but something--the weed, the crash of the waves in front of him, the tension in the flex of Erik's hands--opens his mouth for him. "But, for what it's worth…I can't think of a single thing about you I'd change, if I were you."

Erik looks at him then, eyes wide, like he can't tell if Charles is being honest or stupid or what. Charles swallows his pride and closes his eyes, because he can't take it, the weight of the question there, Erik's visible uncertainty and all the things Charles can't do to reassure him.

"I mean, I'd hardly be out here on the beach with you if you were terrible company, would I?"

Erik doesn't say anything; when Charles risks opening his eyes again, he's bent forward, head ducked. He takes a breath, ragged, wrenching, that Charles manages to hear over the roar of the ocean.

"We're going to grow up," Erik says. "I mean, we practically like--we are, almost, and I just wish--I don't know how to--I don't know how to be the next person, right, I'm going to have to--but how am I supposed to when I can't even be this person? Why doesn't anyone fucking warn you, shit just goes and--and changes, doesn't it?"

"Well," Charles says, guilt eating at his stomach, at his heart, as he thinks of the acceptance email sitting in his inbox--the one he can't quite bear to look at, for all he should be proud. "Change isn't always bad, is it?"

"That's not the point," Erik says, "god, you're just--the point is just--don't you ever wish you could turn it off?"

"Turn what off?"

"All of it," Erik says, waving a hand. "Just--everything, the shit that changes, the future, everything. So you could just like--you could stay still, you wouldn't have to think. That's what I want. I want to turn off thinking."

Charles looks at him for a minute and then, just to be contrary, offers up the joint and raises his eyebrows. Their fingers brush for a second as Erik takes it, stares at it like he's never seen it before, and the electricity of the touch is somehow enough to make Charles shudder. He wraps his jacket tighter around himself, knowing despite this that the chill is nothing to do with the wind, with the water.

When Erik starts laughing, it's forced; it hurts, the way it crashes out of his mouth, the way he's clearly pulling it up as a distraction. It's the kind of sound that scrapes along the bottom of barrels, that shrieks out from old tires and rough turns, and Charles doesn't know what the hell is wrong with Erik, but he knows it's worse than he'd thought.

"Hey," Charles says, as Erik's laughter deepens, careens off the tracks into something like hysteria. He's bent at the waist, shoulders shaking, choking on the way it rolls out of his mouth; Charles feels a bit sick, listening to him. He puts a hand on Erik's shoulder, tucked near the curve of his neck. "Hey, what? What's so funny?"

"I can't," Erik says, around peals of laughter that isn't really laughter anymore. "I can't, I can't, you said you wouldn't ask and I can't--"

"Alright," Charles says, "that's true, you're right, I'm sorry. It'll be alright, whatever it is, just--calm down, yes? Can you do that? Calm down and just tell me--Erik, I'm sure whatever it is, we can figure it out if you'd just--"

Erik shifts, and somehow--impossibly--Charles knows what he's going to do before he does it. He's able to brace himself, just barely, for the way Erik crashes into him a second later. It's not quite…Charles wouldn't call it a hug, not exactly. It's more a frantic crush of bodies, Erik's grip on him so tight that it's almost painful, fleeting and agonized for the moment it lasts.

Then Erik's pulling away again, swift and sure, blinking and turning away, stretching with a normalcy that's almost convincing.

"Beer me, dude," he says, staring down at the sand, and if it weren't for the barely-there crack in his voice, Charles would be sure nothing had happened at all.

--

Saturday afternoon, Charles bites the bullet and goes to the post office. Their mailman, a middle-aged, no-nonsense kind of guy who disapproved of the university and all that was associated with it, had assumed the dildo the Zetas had so kindly tacked up in place of their mailbox was a prank on him; Charles couldn't blame him, exactly, but it did make things infinitely more complicated. Instead of just buying a new mailbox and forgetting the whole incident, there'd been forms and phone calls involved, and the post office flatly refused to deliver their mail until the replacement box was brought in for approval.

Charles meant to get around to going in sooner, honestly, but there's no point in dwelling on that now.

"Good afternoon," he says when gets to the counter, new mailbox tucked under one arm. "I'm, ah, Charles Xavier, I live--"

"I know who you are," the woman behind the counter--Betsy, her name-tag reads--tells him, her eyes sparkling. "Not many folks 'round here coming in with a whole mailbox, are there? You're the dildo kid."

"Er," says Charles, wincing, "all things considered, I'd rather not answer to--"

"Nah, you're him," Betsy says. "You boys nearly gave Irv a heart attack, you know that?"

"Oh," says Charles, "well, we didn't mean to, of course, but I'm really terribly sorry--"

"Yeah, well, you should be," Betsy says, taking the mailbox from him and making a show of looking it over. "Try harder next time, will ya? Guy's a pain in my ass."

"Um," says Charles. He swallows hard when Betsy winks at him and puts the box back down on the counter.

"Looks fine to me," she says, shrugging. "I think it's stupid that you had to come in, personally, but I guess it's above my pay-grade. Let me just stamp off on your form--and, hey, while you're here, you mind picking up the mail we've been holding for you boys? Saves Irv carrying it over on Monday, and he just never shuts up when his bag's heavy."

"Sure," Charles says, "not a problem at all."

Betsy winks again and vanishes into the back. A minute later she's returned, a stack of post in one hand, an official-looking form in the other.

"Just need your John Hancock right here," she says, pointing. Charles signs and takes the post, thanking her; she waves him off easily enough.

It's only when he gets out to his car that he glances down and sees it sitting there, at the very top of the stack--the letter, addressed to him, with the Oxford crest in the top right-hand corner.

And really, there's no reason that should set his teeth on edge; there's no reason he should stop dead in the middle of the parking lot, hand braced on the roof of his car, gasping to catch his breath. He'd gotten the email, after all, so he knows what the letter will say--he knows what this is, he knows what it's going to tell him, there's no reason he should be panicking at all.

"You are an absolute imbecile," he tells himself, taking one more deep breath, and gets into the car.

It sits there, the unopened letter on the passenger seat, taunting him the whole way home. It burns a hole in the pocket of his jacket when he goes into the house. There are people everywhere, freshly returned pledges and Logan and Scott and someone who seems to be delivering a keg; Charles bypasses them all with a few muttered excuses, glad for once in his life not to see Erik. He goes up to his room and shuts the door, dropping the letter on his desk, and promptly opens his computer and spends a few hours attempting to study.

It's only when he hears the first strains of music filtering up from downstairs--Eyebrows, no doubt, whose possession of some kind of mixing technology has made him the house DJ by default--that Charles finally lets himself look at it. It's so small, so…so unassuming, a few folds of paper with the rest of his life inside; Charles doesn't know why it's doing this to him, but his hands are shaking as he picks it up and rips into it.

Oh. Oh, god.

Charles takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and opens them again--it's still there, the same as the email was, advising him of his admission and the conditionals associated therewith. It's just the same as the email, but not the same at all, because it's suddenly--it's so much more real on paper, so inescapable, so impossible to deny. It's black and white, the culmination of years of effort, and Charles waits again for a swell of pride that doesn't come.

He mostly feels sick, looking at it. He mostly feels cornered.

"Chaaaarlie," a familiar voice calls; Charles hastily shoves the letter under a notebook, but not hastily enough. Raven catches the end of the motion as she opens the door, and--once a nosy little sister, always a nosy little sister--is pushing his hands away and rifling around for the hidden sheaf a second later.

"Charles," she says, laughing, "come on, get off, what is--oh. Oh my god."

Charles groans and turns away. Raven's got the letter now, is staring down at it with wide eyes. "Charles, oh my god."

"Uh," he says. "Well, yes, I suppose. There's that."

"Oh my god," Raven says for the third time, agog. Then she makes a small, choked noise and throws her arms around Charles, letter still clutched in her hand. "Charles, Jesus, congratulations! This is--I just--wow."

"Thanks," Charles says. It sounds hollow, even to him, which is terrible news--if he can hear the hesitation in his voice, then Raven--

Sure enough, she pulls back and spins his chair so he's facing her. Her eyes are narrowed. "Wait a second. Why were you trying to hide this when I came in?"

"I wasn't trying to hide it, exactly," Charles hedges. "More…you know, put it somewhere where it wouldn't be…seen…"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Raven snaps, "Charles. Charles. Please tell me you've told Erik. Please tell me that."

"Not…exactly," Charles admits. When Raven's expression goes dark and furious, he adds, "wait, no, don't look at me like that, I'm going to tell him, I really am--"

"Somehow I don't think 'I was going to tell you, really I was' is going to go over well with him--"

"You don't know what's been going on," Charles says, feeling miserable and guilty all over again. "You don't know how he's been, I just didn't want to--I don't want to put him under more strain than he's already--"

"Jesus, Charles," Raven says, "do you ever listen to yourself? Because, look, it's your life, but when you do shit like this I just--if you want to keep this from him then it's not really my business, I guess, but don't you dare tell yourself it's about anything but your own stupid fear!"

Charles looks up at her, shocked, and Raven glares at him for half a second. Then the expression fades into something lighter, more apologetic than anything else, and she sighs, reaches out to straighten his collar.

"Sorry," she says, "sorry, I didn't mean to--it's just, you're my big brother, okay? And I worry about you."

"You don't have to," Charles says. Raven smiles at him, but it's a small, sad thing; the same smile she used to wear as a kid, but only when she thought no one was looking.

"Of course I do," she says.

Charles can't think of anything to say to that; he just looks at her, eighteen but so much older, grown in ways he can hardly bring himself to think about sometimes. Running away to England means running away from her, too, a nasty voice in his head tells him, and Charles winces as Raven shakes her head and turns towards the door.

"Party's started, by the way. I just got here, but Erik said to tell you to get your ass downstairs or he'll come get you himself. So I would…put this away, if you're not planning on talking to him now."

"Alright," Charles says. He takes the letter from her outstretched fingers, tucks it more carefully underneath the notebook. "Thank you."

"Congratulations again," she says, and slips back out of the room.

By the time Charles composes himself, changes his shirt and follows her down to the living room, the party's in full swing. There's some kind of frenetic music playing loud; Charles is what Erik likes to call pop-culture illiterate, but even he can recognize strains of…at least two familiar songs, maybe more, all laid over each other. Eyebrows going nuts with the DJ thing again, then--Charles is sure that if he looked around he could spot him, headphones draped over one ear, making some kind of vile hand gesture.

He doesn't have time to look, though, before he hears his name being called. Then Erik's got his arm in a vice-grip, is dragging him down the last two stairs. He crashes forward and nearly falls, but Erik--through some feat of drunken grace--wraps an arm around his shoulders to steady him.

"Thank you for saving me from the untimely death you almost caused," Charles says, "I appreciate that more than you know."

"Dude," Erik says, ignoring him. "Where were you, you missed a whole round of 40-Hands."

"That is tragic," Charles says, eyeing the mostly-empty bottle still taped to Erik's left hand. "You know how it pains me to miss an opportunity to drink malt liquor."

Erik eyes him suspiciously. "You're too sober, I can see the stick up your ass--"

"Oi!"

"--from all the way over here," Erik continues blithely. "Logan!"

Logan materializes from nowhere. He's got--Jesus, he's got four bottles taped to his hands, how is that even possible--and he's grinning like an asshole.

"What's up?"

"Get one of the pledges to get Charles a beer," Erik commands. "Or like, several beers, or maybe a beer and a shot. Some drinks. Charles needs him some drinks."

"I can get my own--" Charles starts, but Erik shushes him.

"You don't understand," he says, "Logan did an awesome thing, you gotta see."

"How drunk are you right now?"

"Hmm," Erik says. "That's a question. I'd say…tipsy-plus."

"Shut up, I'm tryin' to work here," Logan says, and then, at the top of his voice, yells, "SLOOOONG!"

It's…well, it's really kind of miraculous, actually. Across the room, every one of the pledges does something different--Eyebrows is doing a headstand, and Darwin's contorted into what looks like a very complicated yoga position, and Iceman…dear god, Iceman's stuck his entire face into a nearby bucket, which Charles can only imagine is full of actual ice. Banshee, Beast and Pyro appear in front of Logan a moment later; Banshee's got an unopened beer, and Beast has a bottle of vodka, and Pyro's got a packed bowl.

"Reporting for duty, Wolverine, sir!" they say in unison, and Logan smiles like the Chesire cat as Erik cracks up.

"Oh my god," Charles says, staring, "what did you do to them?"

"Trained 'em," Logan says cheerfully. "With words and shit. Like the guy with the dog, y'know."

"…Pavlov?" says Charles, faintly horrified.

Logan shrugs. "Whoever. Point is, it worked, they're like a little army of awesome."

"I can't feel my face," Eyebrows yells. "Or, maybe, uh, maybe I can't feel anything but my--there's a lot of blood in my face! Can I get down?"

"Yeah, sure," Logan calls back. "Rest of you too, I really just wanted these three."

"You gotta call the other word," someone yells piteously; Charles is pretty sure it's Gambit, who is hanging by his knees from the chin-up bar over the kitchen door.

"Right," Logan calls, "just testin' ya, nice job or some shit. FUCKFACE!"

The party reverts to normal speed--Eyebrows flips upright and resumes his position behind the makeshift DJ station, Darwin shakes himself off and taps Iceman on the shoulder, who emerges, gasping, from the bucket. Gambit swings loose of the chin-up pole, and Banshee and Beast and Pyro all seem to relax a little, though they don't vanish into the crowd with their offerings.

"This is so wrong," Charles says, but he can't keep the amusement out of his voice, can't help the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.

"You love it," Erik says, still laughing a little, as he leans close enough for their shoulders to bump. "Now come on, man, let's get our fucking drink on."

--

Two beers and a shot later, Charles is feeling considerably better about the world. He and Erik are leaning against the far wall, nursing their respective beers; every couple of minutes Erik makes a fond little sound and nods at something happening in the room at large. Charles can't really blame him--it is, for all it really shouldn't be, kind of heartwarming to watch.

At the far end of the room, Eyebrows does, as expected, have a large pair of headphones covering only one ear. He's playing…well, some deeply appalling song that seems to be advising Charles not to "trust a ho," but he and Darwin are standing on the DJ table, screaming the words in each others' faces. Nearby, Prodigy is holding up a beer bong for Beast, who seems to be trying to impress a girl with dark hair leaning against the closest wall. She's not a freshman--Moira, Charles thinks, he's had a few classes with her, he knows that much--but from the way she's smiling, indulgent and amused, Beast might just have a shot.

Iceman and Gambit both seem to be on the prowl as well; Iceman's looking at his hands a lot as he talks to a tall blonde girl who doesn't seem all that interested, and Gambit's grinning down at a sharply-dressed brunette with white streaks in her hair. Pyro, on the other hand, has built a smoking circle around the coffee table, and is sitting on the floor passing a bowl between himself, Azazel, and three people Charles doesn't know. Janos and Banshee are in the kitchen, making something that Charles is deeply afraid might be beer-vodka-lemonade under Logan and Scott's dubious, drunken guidance.

"We fucking rock, you know that?" Erik says happily.

"Well, obviously," Charles says, "but why, in particular, do we rock this time?"

"Because of that," Erik says, nodding out at the party. "Look at them, man, they're all brothers and shit, we did that. We did that. That is the coolest fucking thing ever, right there."

"Yeah," Charles says, surprised at the swelling of pride that catches in his chest. "Yeah, I guess we did."

It's a good moment, an untainted moment, surrounded by this bunch of jackasses and misfits that they're always bringing home. Charles is happy in a soft, uncomplicated way, drunk on that and the alcohol both, and he smiles at Erik with his whole heart behind it.

Erik smiles back, looking better than he has in weeks, and Charles thinks, Maybe it's all going to be alright.

Naturally, this is when the first trash can comes crashing through the window.