alexs_storybook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexs_storybook) wrote2018-11-24 08:25 am
alexs_storybook) wrote2018-11-24 08:25 am
FIC: Cap-Iroin Man Big bang: Tie Your Heart to Mine, Part 2
Title: Tie Your Heart to Mine, Part 2
Author: alexcat
Artist: KakushiMiko
Universe: MCU
Rating (both fic and art): Fic - Explicit, Art - General
Word Count: 27804
Warnings: Heart attack, one violent but not too graphic death
Notes: This story began as a short story and bloomed into something else altogether. Like most fans, CW and IW left my heart broken so I decided to fix them. This is my fix (or one of them anyway).
I’d like to thank my hubby for letting me bounce ideas off of him and for putting up my frantic writing in the last days. I also want to thank him for reminding me that it was MY story to tell.
I also want to thank both of my betas. It was such a hot mess, that I needed two: athletiger and [personal profile] nuinzilien. It reads more like a story now, thanks to you two!
My artist is KakushiMiko and you’ll see her great stuff throughout the work and at her link! Thanks so much, Flo!
Fic Summary: Tony wants Steve Rogers and sets out to get him. The relationship they begin is more than either is ready for as the events play out from the aftermath of the attack on New York to the attack by Thanos and its fallout. Can their love survive? Can they survive?
Part Two
Tony had finally gone back to Pepper but his heart really wasn’t in it and she knew it. She was all right with being his public girlfriend. She probably owed him that much. She knew he’d managed somehow to fall in love with Steve Rogers. She knew his heart was broken.
“You could find him and try to make it better, you know,” she told him one evening on their way back from a gala. “Sleeping with young men that look like him is going to backfire sometime.”
He’d been surprised she knew that he’d been doing that and told her so, after trying to deny it at first.
“How long?” Tony asked her.
“How long what? Have I known? Since the battle of New York. You hung on his every word and followed him around like a puppy. When you weren’t with him, you talked about him all the time. And one night, in bed with me, you called me Steve and never realized it.”
“Shit, Pepper, I’m sorry. You are right though. I do love him still. But he would never come back to me. I could never admit that I was wrong. And he made his choice. He chose Barnes. He loves Barnes more than me.”
“Barnes was his past, the one person left from the past. You know as well as I do that a person can love lots of people in a lifetime. Love is not pie, Tony.”
“That’s cute. You should make a meme or card.”
“Things are not always so simple. Find him.”
“Oh, I know where he is. I’ve known from the beginning. Barnes, too. Who do you think finances the raids he, Wilson and Romanov make?”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
“He has his pride and I have mine. I can’t.”
“God, men and their stupid pride. I’ll never understand it,” she said, seemingly exasperated, but she kissed Tony on the cheek. Happy opened the door for her and she stuck her head back in. “Go find him, Tony. Fix this.”
Half a world away, Steve Rogers was asleep in Natasha Romanov’s arms. They’d just finished a mission and he’d been banged up pretty good. Natasha had patched him up, kissed his booboos and then kissed a few more places, and now he was snoring away.
She was thinking about him and Stark. Since their split, Steve had become more cynical, angrier. He’d always carried a little tiny kernel of rage at the fact that he’d been denied a real life, something she knew more than anyone about. She saw the sadness in him, the disappointment in himself. She wished she could get him to contact Stark.
*
One year turned into two years and one day, long after Natasha had given up, his phone rang.
It was Bruce Banner and he explained what he knew. Tony was gone. The same alien who had gotten Loki to attack Earth before was back and he meant to kill half of the population of the galaxy. His name was Thanos and all he needed to complete this mission was the Mind Stone in Vision’s head.
Stark had gone somewhere with Stephen Strange on one of Thanos’ spaceships.
Steve was beside himself with worry. He, Natasha and Sam went to find Wanda and Vision. They found more than they counted on when members of the Dark Order showed up before them to try to take the Mind Stone from Vision. They sent them packing, but he knew they’d be back. And they’d come with reinforcements.
They took off for New York and Avenger headquarters. Rhodey was glad to see them. Ross was there on a video feed, blathering about war crimes and things that Steve didn’t give a tinker’s damn about right now. He needed to find Tony Stark and he needed to save the people of earth from Thanos.
Things were a little weird when Banner came out. Everyone there knew that Steve and Natasha had been together since the big falling out with Stark.
“Well, this is awkward,” Sam murmured, always with the running commentary.
Bruce was no fool and assessed the situation pretty quickly. He had run away because he couldn’t give himself entirely to Natasha and he hoped Steve had, but he suspected from what Stark had said that was not quite the truth of it either.
‘We fell out hard… we’re toast’ Tony had said. There’d been something in his look that seemed a bit odd to Bruce. Hmmm…
Stark and Rogers? Yeah, he could see that in the way Tony acted. He felt a little foolish that he’d not seen it before.
Rhodey, it turned out, wasn’t too worried about Ross either and at Steve’s urging, they set out for Wakanda. While Natasha raked Wanda over the coals a little more for going off the grid, Steve talked to Bruce.
“Tell me more about what happened.”
“I was on the Asgardian refugee ship. Thor and I had gone to Asgard to save it, but that didn’t work out. Thanos killed Loki then Thor. Heimdall sent me through the Bifrost to save me. I landed in the Sanctum. Thanos’ ship arrived here with his evil servants. He calls them children. They took Strange and Tony followed onto the ship and it’s gone.”
“God, Tony.” He just sat there for a moment or two, speechless. “We have to get him back and fix this. We have to.”
Bruce touched his arm. Steve looked at him, surprised for a moment, then nodded.
The war was short and ugly and they lost. They had been joined on the battle field by Thor, who had survived after all, and brought a sentient raccoon named Rocket and a talking tree with him. For a little while, it looked as they would win the day and defeat the evil Titan, but it was not to be yet. The entire galaxy lost to Thanos and his maniacal need to set the universe right by killing half of its population in one horrible blow, using the Infinity Gauntlet with the six Infinity Stones to blink them out of existence.
Steve was devastated. Even in his darkest hour, he had always believed that right would win.
*
When all was done and Stark was left on Titan with Nebula, he fell apart. Losing Peter Parker had shaken him to his core, even more than what he suspected was a mortal wound he’d suffered from Thanos. He was the reason the boy came along in the first place. Nebula looked at him as if he were a bug, then shrugged, lifted him and put him on the small ship she had come in. It had taken a little damage, but it still worked.
“We will go to your Earth, Stark. Maybe they can help you. Or maybe you can at least die among your people. At least you still have people.”
“Gee, thanks.” Even in the face of certain death, Tony could not stop his sarcasm.
Back on earth, Steve Rogers was distraught. No one had ever seen him this way. He didn’t sleep, eat, nor would he talk to anyone. He was drowning in guilt and sorrow, and didn’t know how to handle any of it.
“Talk to him, Natasha,” Bruce implored.
“He’s not talking. I’ve tried. He’s lost so much - Bucky, Tony and the awful defeat.”
She went to Steve anyway. “You need to eat something and get some rest, Rogers.” She sat down beside him. “Shuri says she can give something that will work on you to rest, if you want it.”
He turned slowly and looked at her. “Does she have a drug to fix this mess? Can she offer me hope, Natasha?”
Natasha moved closer and put an arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “You have to find the hope yourself, Steve. It’s there… it’s small but it’s there. I love you and don’t want to lose you, too. Please.” She felt like an idiot for begging, but real friends were hard to come by.
He looked at her and the damn inside him finally broke. He pulled her into his arms and cried. His sobs were heart wrenching for her to see and hear. Natasha held him, running her hands over his strong back and smoothing his tangled hair. He cried wordlessly until he must have cried out, then he went to sleep in her arms on the sofa. She scooted back so he would be more comfortable and held him while he slept.
Hours later, the need to go to the bathroom finally made Natasha get up. She moved slowly and carefully and Steve barely stirred. When she came back, he was sitting up. He looked a little embarrassed when she sat beside him.
“Can I interest you in a shower and some clothes that don’t smell like you died in them?” she asked him.
He almost smiled. “Only if you come with me.”
She laughed. “You made a joke. A bad one but a joke. But if that’s what it takes, yeah.”
“I think I can handle it myself.”
“You’re breaking my heart! I wanted to get naked with the smelliest man on earth!”
He finally grabbed some clothes from his bag, which had been brought in for them from their Quinjet. Natasha stayed in his room and waited while he showered.
Steve was dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt when he came out, toweling his longish hair.
“Hungry?” Natasha asked.
“Not much, but I guess I should eat something.”
“You need to get that place looked at, too.” She pointed to a really nasty weapon burn on his side.
He let her take him to a cafeteria Shuri’s mother had set up for the extra warriors and he ate the first real meal he’d had in days. Nat was hungry and had breakfast with him.
He agreed to go to the infirmary to get patched up after they ate. His injury was ugly and painful but it was not deep. The doctor cleaned it and healed it with the nanotech that they’d saved Agent Ross with when he’d been injured fighting against Killmonger and Klauea when T’Challa had been challenged as king a few months prior.
Steve and Natasha finally went to a room where Thor, Shuri, Rocket, Banner, Rhodey and several Wakandan military officers sat around a table. They were all that remained of the group of heroes and soldiers who’d gathered in Wakanda to protect the earth from Thanos. The rest had either died on the battlefield or been turned to dust.
“Glad you could join us, Rogers,” Thor said. Steve nodded to him and sat down. Thor clapped him on the back.
“We are talking about possible responses on our part,” Bruce said. “So far, we’ve kinda come up with zilch.”
A young Wakandan came into the room and spoke quietly to Shuri. She asked a question or two then nodded. The tech left the room.
“It would seem that our sensors have picked up something, possibly a ship, inbound from outside the solar system. No idea yet what it is. There seems to be only one of them, though. I have given the order to scramble fighters when it gets close enough. And to send out a message to them. Maybe they will answer.”
The message did get to them, to the tiny inbound ship that Nebula was piloting.
“We have a message from Earth,” she called back to Tony, who was drifting in and out of a dazed sleep..
“Send back this: ‘Steve, I’m so sorry. I’m coming home,’” Tony told her.
She nodded and sent it. She had hooked the human up to what little lifesaving equipment she had available on the tiny ship. The life support system was keeping him alive and conscious but only just. If they were lucky, it might keep him alive until they reached Earth. Once there, she didn’t know if they had the technology to save him. It might be a good thing. He never seemed to stop talking. Even noisy Peter Quill didn’t talk that much! All his chattering made her head hurt.
It took several hours for the message to get to Earth and even then, it was not a very clear message, with only a few words coming through: Steve, sorry, and home. Steve, who hadn’t left the communication room since they sent the outgoing message, knew, even from the few words, that it was Tony.
Cleaned up by Wakanda’s very advanced equipment, the message said it was indeed Tony and he was coming home.
Natasha was holding Steve’s hand when the message was read and felt him shaking like a leaf. He was holding his breath. He finally took a breath and said in a low voice, almost a whisper, “Oh god, he’s alive.” Natasha didn’t miss the tear that ran down his face.
It was the next evening before the little ship finally landed in Wakanda, escorted in by several Wakanda interceptors. Nebula carried Stark off the plane.
Steve couldn’t move, couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t until Thor and Banner were each holding an arm that he realized he’d almost fainted. He took a deep breath and felt the feeling come back into his body, felt his strength return with the oxygen in his lungs.
“Steve,” Tony whispered in a very low voice. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. I’m so sorry.”
Steve, no longer faint, stepped out in front of Banner and Thor and walked up to the alien woman.
“Is he yours? He has babbled about a Steve for days. Are you a Steve?” she asked, clearly annoyed with Tony and him, too, by proxy.
“I am indeed a Steve and he is mine,” he told her and took her burden from her.
“Hurry with him if you have good medical technology. He will die soon if repairs are not made,” she urged Steve. “Not that I care,” she added as an afterthought.
Steve took off with him, almost running to the medical wing of Shuri’s lab. Doctors met him at the doors. “We will take him from here, Captain Rogers.”
“I’m not leaving him. You have to take me, too.” He stubbornly held onto his burden.
When one young man started to argue, Shuri herself walked up. “That is all right, Dr. T’momi. Captain Rogers can come along.”
She turned to Steve. “You can place him on the gurney, Captain. We will be very careful with him.”
He laid his burden down carefully. “Please save him. I – I, please, don’t let him die.”
The teenager smiled and patted his hand. “He will be all right, Captain Rogers. We have excellent doctors and medicine.” She paused and he saw the understanding in her eyes. “I know what he means to you.”
Just as she had worked a seeming miracle on Agent Ross, she and her team saved Stark. He had lost a lot of blood and was weaker than Ross had been after his surgery, but he was ‘repaired,’ as Nebula called it.
Shuri wanted to keep him in the medical wing for a few days. He needed blood and fluids, though whatever machine the alien woman had hooked him up to had worked fairly well in keeping him alive for the trip home.
*
Tony woke up. He looked around. He was in some kind of hospital. He looked down and saw someone’s dark head on his bed. At first, he didn’t realize who it was. The man’s hair was long and dark, and he was bearded. Tony knew in a moment that it was Steve, his Steve.
Steve was sleeping with his hand on Tony’s leg and his head on the bed.
“Wake up, Cap.” Tony’s voice was raspy with disuse and his throat hurt a little from being so dry.
Steve sat straight up and looked at Tony. The tears he’d held back so long fell. “Tony, I -”
“Not now. You don’t have to say anything.”
“Shut up a minute and listen to me, Tony Stark. I love you. I loved you even when I hated you and I love you still. No matter what happens after this, I love you. Do you understand me?”
Tony smiled, though it came out more a wince. “Got it. Ditto here. I love you, too. Never stopped. God, I missed you so much.”
The bed was small, as many hospital beds were, but that did not deter Steve. He got up and moved Tony over just enough to get in the bed beside him. He was afraid to hold him until Tony cuddled close. Shuri giggled when she came in to check on Tony to find the two grown men in the bed together.
“I see you are taking good care of him, Captain.”
Steve managed to blush.
“Don’t mind me. I just came to see how Mr. Stark is doing. He looks to be fine.” She looked at a tablet at the foot of the bed. “I want you well, Mr. Stark. I want to talk suits with you. I am Shuri, by the way. Our doctors and my technology fixed you right up.”
She grinned at them and was gone as quickly as she arrived.
“She is T’Challa’s sister. She is acting Queen right now. He turned to – dust.”
“I can’t – right now. Later?” Tony’s face went pale. Parker’s face kept floating in front of him. He couldn’t think about the boy yet.
“Me either. Not yet.” The sight of Bucky turning to dust as he spoke Steve’s name haunted his sleeping and waking.
Steve held Tony through the night. Tony slept fitfully but they both slept.
Tony stayed in the infirmary for two more days. When he was released, Steve took him to his quarters.
“Did you ask me where I wanted to go?” Tony teased.
“Nope. I want you here where I can take care of you.”
“If you think I’m going to let you play nurse, then you’re sadly mistaken.”
“That wasn’t the sort of play I had in mind, but you might need a little more rest first.”
“Hmmph!”
They bantered quite a bit, but both men were nervous, about the things unsaid, and oddly enough, about sex. It had been long time. They both knew that the other had moved on, found other companionship, other lovers. It was the elephant in the room right now.
On the first night, Tony snuggled up to Steve in his sleep. Steve didn’t sleep much at all, just held Tony. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of Bucky, disappearing before his very eyes over and over.
“Hey, Steve, it’s all right.” Tony was smoothing his hair and touching his face as he woke.
“Just a nightmare,” Steve finally said.
“Yeah, I – it’s the same here. When I sleep, I see them.”
There was no need to elaborate. Steve knew what he meant, knew they were dreaming about the same living nightmares. They both decided that sleep was done for the night and got up.
“Do you need help with anything? Like a bath? Or food?” Steve wanted to be close to Tony, to touch him.
Tony sighed and said, “Do we talk now? Or try to ignore it all and go on?”
“I don’t know. What if talking drives us apart again? I am not sure I could bear that again.”
“It’s up to you. I’ve dealt with my demons, I think.”
“What do I say? What do you want me to say?” Steve was haunted by so many things, going all the way back to WWII. His demons might have filled a stadium.
“I need to say something. One thing. As angry as I was over Barnes killing my parents, I was more hurt that you chose him over me.” Tony wanted to look away, to get away from Steve’s hurt and anger, but he needed so badly to ‘clear the red out of his ledger,’ as Natasha would say.
“He – they were going to lock him away, maybe kill him. I couldn’t let them do it. You have tto understand that was why I did it,” Steve told quietly.
“He was ready to pay for his crimes.You know he was tired of running.”
“Tony, if I’d been able to save him on that train, then none of it would have happened. I failed him, the best friend I ever had. I caused him to become a monster. Me. It was all my fault. I had to save him this time. Failing him again was not an option, no matter the consequence for me.” He paused then added, “nor for you.”
Tony closed his eyes and just sat there a few moments after Steve’s rush of words ended.
“You didn’t fail him. Why didn’t they tell you that you couldn’t save the whole world? Erskine and my father were so in love with their science and technology, they didn’t realize what they were doing to a skinny boy from Brooklyn, a boy who needed love, needed friendship. They used you for your goodness.”
“I still can’t see the world in shades of gray, Tony. There is good and bad, and somewhere over time, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which side I’m on.”
Tony shook his head. “No, you haven’t and that’s your problem. You know you are on the side of good. The world has forgotten that sometimes there really is good and evil.”
“I never meant to hurt you. I meant to protect you.” Steve stared into space. “In the end, I couldn’t protect either of you.”
“I know. I knew it then on some level. But I wanted you to choose me without me having to choose you as well.”
“Is this helping?” Steve asked. He felt even more wounded and raw than he had before.
“I don’t know, but it has to be done. If there is anything to forgive, I forgive you. Will you forgive me as well?” Tony moved to look Steve in the eye.
“I forgave you a long time ago.”
Steve nodded. “Now what?”
“I’m going to take a shower, come back out here, and strip your clothes off. I want to touch every inch of your body and you, mine. After we can’t do it any longer, then I’ll take another shower, get dressed and you and I will go out there and figure out how to save the world, if it can be saved.”
“That sounds like a start, Tony. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Steve only allowed Tony a few seconds in the shower alone, then he joined him. Both of them still looked battered and bruised. Steve’s burns were healed but there were scars. Tony had a scar where his chest had been pierced but the wound was gone, repaired by Shuri and her colleagues.
As soon as Steve stepped into the shower, bathing was forgotten as they embraced, kissing under the warm spray. Steve turned the shower spray down to a near trickle.
“There. We don’t have to swallow water when we kiss,” he told Tony as he dipped his head and kissed him again.
They kissed and kissed, as if drawing oxygen from one another until both were quite breathless. Tony reached for the soap and ran it over Steve’s body, leaving a soapy lather on his torso. He made his way lower, but didn’t bother with the soap there. He ran his hands over Steve’s water slicked abdomen and lower still, caressing him even as Steve shivered under his touch.
“Your body is so perfect, but it pales in comparison to your heart, Steve Rogers. I missed your heart when you were gone.” He squeezed him quite gently, looked up into his face and said with a smile, “I missed this, too, I have to admit.”
Steve grabbed him and pulled him close, kissing him hungrily as their wet bodies pressed against one another. He reached down between them, pressing Tony’s cock flat against his own belly, running his hand up and down the underside.
“Mmmm, feels good,” Tony moaned. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
They moved out of the shower eventually and to the bed. It was hours before the two slept, but they finally did, holding one another tight even in a deep sleep.
Author: alexcat
Artist: KakushiMiko
Universe: MCU
Rating (both fic and art): Fic - Explicit, Art - General
Word Count: 27804
Warnings: Heart attack, one violent but not too graphic death
Notes: This story began as a short story and bloomed into something else altogether. Like most fans, CW and IW left my heart broken so I decided to fix them. This is my fix (or one of them anyway).
I’d like to thank my hubby for letting me bounce ideas off of him and for putting up my frantic writing in the last days. I also want to thank him for reminding me that it was MY story to tell.
I also want to thank both of my betas. It was such a hot mess, that I needed two: athletiger and [personal profile] nuinzilien. It reads more like a story now, thanks to you two!
My artist is KakushiMiko and you’ll see her great stuff throughout the work and at her link! Thanks so much, Flo!
Fic Summary: Tony wants Steve Rogers and sets out to get him. The relationship they begin is more than either is ready for as the events play out from the aftermath of the attack on New York to the attack by Thanos and its fallout. Can their love survive? Can they survive?
Part Two
Tony had finally gone back to Pepper but his heart really wasn’t in it and she knew it. She was all right with being his public girlfriend. She probably owed him that much. She knew he’d managed somehow to fall in love with Steve Rogers. She knew his heart was broken.
“You could find him and try to make it better, you know,” she told him one evening on their way back from a gala. “Sleeping with young men that look like him is going to backfire sometime.”
He’d been surprised she knew that he’d been doing that and told her so, after trying to deny it at first.
“How long?” Tony asked her.
“How long what? Have I known? Since the battle of New York. You hung on his every word and followed him around like a puppy. When you weren’t with him, you talked about him all the time. And one night, in bed with me, you called me Steve and never realized it.”
“Shit, Pepper, I’m sorry. You are right though. I do love him still. But he would never come back to me. I could never admit that I was wrong. And he made his choice. He chose Barnes. He loves Barnes more than me.”
“Barnes was his past, the one person left from the past. You know as well as I do that a person can love lots of people in a lifetime. Love is not pie, Tony.”
“That’s cute. You should make a meme or card.”
“Things are not always so simple. Find him.”
“Oh, I know where he is. I’ve known from the beginning. Barnes, too. Who do you think finances the raids he, Wilson and Romanov make?”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
“He has his pride and I have mine. I can’t.”
“God, men and their stupid pride. I’ll never understand it,” she said, seemingly exasperated, but she kissed Tony on the cheek. Happy opened the door for her and she stuck her head back in. “Go find him, Tony. Fix this.”
Half a world away, Steve Rogers was asleep in Natasha Romanov’s arms. They’d just finished a mission and he’d been banged up pretty good. Natasha had patched him up, kissed his booboos and then kissed a few more places, and now he was snoring away.
She was thinking about him and Stark. Since their split, Steve had become more cynical, angrier. He’d always carried a little tiny kernel of rage at the fact that he’d been denied a real life, something she knew more than anyone about. She saw the sadness in him, the disappointment in himself. She wished she could get him to contact Stark.
*
One year turned into two years and one day, long after Natasha had given up, his phone rang.
It was Bruce Banner and he explained what he knew. Tony was gone. The same alien who had gotten Loki to attack Earth before was back and he meant to kill half of the population of the galaxy. His name was Thanos and all he needed to complete this mission was the Mind Stone in Vision’s head.
Stark had gone somewhere with Stephen Strange on one of Thanos’ spaceships.
Steve was beside himself with worry. He, Natasha and Sam went to find Wanda and Vision. They found more than they counted on when members of the Dark Order showed up before them to try to take the Mind Stone from Vision. They sent them packing, but he knew they’d be back. And they’d come with reinforcements.
They took off for New York and Avenger headquarters. Rhodey was glad to see them. Ross was there on a video feed, blathering about war crimes and things that Steve didn’t give a tinker’s damn about right now. He needed to find Tony Stark and he needed to save the people of earth from Thanos.
Things were a little weird when Banner came out. Everyone there knew that Steve and Natasha had been together since the big falling out with Stark.
“Well, this is awkward,” Sam murmured, always with the running commentary.
Bruce was no fool and assessed the situation pretty quickly. He had run away because he couldn’t give himself entirely to Natasha and he hoped Steve had, but he suspected from what Stark had said that was not quite the truth of it either.
‘We fell out hard… we’re toast’ Tony had said. There’d been something in his look that seemed a bit odd to Bruce. Hmmm…
Stark and Rogers? Yeah, he could see that in the way Tony acted. He felt a little foolish that he’d not seen it before.
Rhodey, it turned out, wasn’t too worried about Ross either and at Steve’s urging, they set out for Wakanda. While Natasha raked Wanda over the coals a little more for going off the grid, Steve talked to Bruce.
“Tell me more about what happened.”
“I was on the Asgardian refugee ship. Thor and I had gone to Asgard to save it, but that didn’t work out. Thanos killed Loki then Thor. Heimdall sent me through the Bifrost to save me. I landed in the Sanctum. Thanos’ ship arrived here with his evil servants. He calls them children. They took Strange and Tony followed onto the ship and it’s gone.”
“God, Tony.” He just sat there for a moment or two, speechless. “We have to get him back and fix this. We have to.”
Bruce touched his arm. Steve looked at him, surprised for a moment, then nodded.
The war was short and ugly and they lost. They had been joined on the battle field by Thor, who had survived after all, and brought a sentient raccoon named Rocket and a talking tree with him. For a little while, it looked as they would win the day and defeat the evil Titan, but it was not to be yet. The entire galaxy lost to Thanos and his maniacal need to set the universe right by killing half of its population in one horrible blow, using the Infinity Gauntlet with the six Infinity Stones to blink them out of existence.
Steve was devastated. Even in his darkest hour, he had always believed that right would win.
*
When all was done and Stark was left on Titan with Nebula, he fell apart. Losing Peter Parker had shaken him to his core, even more than what he suspected was a mortal wound he’d suffered from Thanos. He was the reason the boy came along in the first place. Nebula looked at him as if he were a bug, then shrugged, lifted him and put him on the small ship she had come in. It had taken a little damage, but it still worked.
“We will go to your Earth, Stark. Maybe they can help you. Or maybe you can at least die among your people. At least you still have people.”
“Gee, thanks.” Even in the face of certain death, Tony could not stop his sarcasm.
Back on earth, Steve Rogers was distraught. No one had ever seen him this way. He didn’t sleep, eat, nor would he talk to anyone. He was drowning in guilt and sorrow, and didn’t know how to handle any of it.
“Talk to him, Natasha,” Bruce implored.
“He’s not talking. I’ve tried. He’s lost so much - Bucky, Tony and the awful defeat.”
She went to Steve anyway. “You need to eat something and get some rest, Rogers.” She sat down beside him. “Shuri says she can give something that will work on you to rest, if you want it.”
He turned slowly and looked at her. “Does she have a drug to fix this mess? Can she offer me hope, Natasha?”
Natasha moved closer and put an arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “You have to find the hope yourself, Steve. It’s there… it’s small but it’s there. I love you and don’t want to lose you, too. Please.” She felt like an idiot for begging, but real friends were hard to come by.
He looked at her and the damn inside him finally broke. He pulled her into his arms and cried. His sobs were heart wrenching for her to see and hear. Natasha held him, running her hands over his strong back and smoothing his tangled hair. He cried wordlessly until he must have cried out, then he went to sleep in her arms on the sofa. She scooted back so he would be more comfortable and held him while he slept.
Hours later, the need to go to the bathroom finally made Natasha get up. She moved slowly and carefully and Steve barely stirred. When she came back, he was sitting up. He looked a little embarrassed when she sat beside him.
“Can I interest you in a shower and some clothes that don’t smell like you died in them?” she asked him.
He almost smiled. “Only if you come with me.”
She laughed. “You made a joke. A bad one but a joke. But if that’s what it takes, yeah.”
“I think I can handle it myself.”
“You’re breaking my heart! I wanted to get naked with the smelliest man on earth!”
He finally grabbed some clothes from his bag, which had been brought in for them from their Quinjet. Natasha stayed in his room and waited while he showered.
Steve was dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt when he came out, toweling his longish hair.
“Hungry?” Natasha asked.
“Not much, but I guess I should eat something.”
“You need to get that place looked at, too.” She pointed to a really nasty weapon burn on his side.
He let her take him to a cafeteria Shuri’s mother had set up for the extra warriors and he ate the first real meal he’d had in days. Nat was hungry and had breakfast with him.
He agreed to go to the infirmary to get patched up after they ate. His injury was ugly and painful but it was not deep. The doctor cleaned it and healed it with the nanotech that they’d saved Agent Ross with when he’d been injured fighting against Killmonger and Klauea when T’Challa had been challenged as king a few months prior.
Steve and Natasha finally went to a room where Thor, Shuri, Rocket, Banner, Rhodey and several Wakandan military officers sat around a table. They were all that remained of the group of heroes and soldiers who’d gathered in Wakanda to protect the earth from Thanos. The rest had either died on the battlefield or been turned to dust.
“Glad you could join us, Rogers,” Thor said. Steve nodded to him and sat down. Thor clapped him on the back.
“We are talking about possible responses on our part,” Bruce said. “So far, we’ve kinda come up with zilch.”
A young Wakandan came into the room and spoke quietly to Shuri. She asked a question or two then nodded. The tech left the room.
“It would seem that our sensors have picked up something, possibly a ship, inbound from outside the solar system. No idea yet what it is. There seems to be only one of them, though. I have given the order to scramble fighters when it gets close enough. And to send out a message to them. Maybe they will answer.”
The message did get to them, to the tiny inbound ship that Nebula was piloting.
“We have a message from Earth,” she called back to Tony, who was drifting in and out of a dazed sleep..
“Send back this: ‘Steve, I’m so sorry. I’m coming home,’” Tony told her.
She nodded and sent it. She had hooked the human up to what little lifesaving equipment she had available on the tiny ship. The life support system was keeping him alive and conscious but only just. If they were lucky, it might keep him alive until they reached Earth. Once there, she didn’t know if they had the technology to save him. It might be a good thing. He never seemed to stop talking. Even noisy Peter Quill didn’t talk that much! All his chattering made her head hurt.
It took several hours for the message to get to Earth and even then, it was not a very clear message, with only a few words coming through: Steve, sorry, and home. Steve, who hadn’t left the communication room since they sent the outgoing message, knew, even from the few words, that it was Tony.
Cleaned up by Wakanda’s very advanced equipment, the message said it was indeed Tony and he was coming home.
Natasha was holding Steve’s hand when the message was read and felt him shaking like a leaf. He was holding his breath. He finally took a breath and said in a low voice, almost a whisper, “Oh god, he’s alive.” Natasha didn’t miss the tear that ran down his face.
It was the next evening before the little ship finally landed in Wakanda, escorted in by several Wakanda interceptors. Nebula carried Stark off the plane.
Steve couldn’t move, couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t until Thor and Banner were each holding an arm that he realized he’d almost fainted. He took a deep breath and felt the feeling come back into his body, felt his strength return with the oxygen in his lungs.
“Steve,” Tony whispered in a very low voice. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. I’m so sorry.”
Steve, no longer faint, stepped out in front of Banner and Thor and walked up to the alien woman.
“Is he yours? He has babbled about a Steve for days. Are you a Steve?” she asked, clearly annoyed with Tony and him, too, by proxy.
“I am indeed a Steve and he is mine,” he told her and took her burden from her.
“Hurry with him if you have good medical technology. He will die soon if repairs are not made,” she urged Steve. “Not that I care,” she added as an afterthought.
Steve took off with him, almost running to the medical wing of Shuri’s lab. Doctors met him at the doors. “We will take him from here, Captain Rogers.”
“I’m not leaving him. You have to take me, too.” He stubbornly held onto his burden.
When one young man started to argue, Shuri herself walked up. “That is all right, Dr. T’momi. Captain Rogers can come along.”
She turned to Steve. “You can place him on the gurney, Captain. We will be very careful with him.”
He laid his burden down carefully. “Please save him. I – I, please, don’t let him die.”
The teenager smiled and patted his hand. “He will be all right, Captain Rogers. We have excellent doctors and medicine.” She paused and he saw the understanding in her eyes. “I know what he means to you.”
Just as she had worked a seeming miracle on Agent Ross, she and her team saved Stark. He had lost a lot of blood and was weaker than Ross had been after his surgery, but he was ‘repaired,’ as Nebula called it.
Shuri wanted to keep him in the medical wing for a few days. He needed blood and fluids, though whatever machine the alien woman had hooked him up to had worked fairly well in keeping him alive for the trip home.
*
Tony woke up. He looked around. He was in some kind of hospital. He looked down and saw someone’s dark head on his bed. At first, he didn’t realize who it was. The man’s hair was long and dark, and he was bearded. Tony knew in a moment that it was Steve, his Steve.
Steve was sleeping with his hand on Tony’s leg and his head on the bed.
“Wake up, Cap.” Tony’s voice was raspy with disuse and his throat hurt a little from being so dry.
Steve sat straight up and looked at Tony. The tears he’d held back so long fell. “Tony, I -”
“Not now. You don’t have to say anything.”
“Shut up a minute and listen to me, Tony Stark. I love you. I loved you even when I hated you and I love you still. No matter what happens after this, I love you. Do you understand me?”
Tony smiled, though it came out more a wince. “Got it. Ditto here. I love you, too. Never stopped. God, I missed you so much.”
The bed was small, as many hospital beds were, but that did not deter Steve. He got up and moved Tony over just enough to get in the bed beside him. He was afraid to hold him until Tony cuddled close. Shuri giggled when she came in to check on Tony to find the two grown men in the bed together.
“I see you are taking good care of him, Captain.”
Steve managed to blush.
“Don’t mind me. I just came to see how Mr. Stark is doing. He looks to be fine.” She looked at a tablet at the foot of the bed. “I want you well, Mr. Stark. I want to talk suits with you. I am Shuri, by the way. Our doctors and my technology fixed you right up.”
She grinned at them and was gone as quickly as she arrived.
“She is T’Challa’s sister. She is acting Queen right now. He turned to – dust.”
“I can’t – right now. Later?” Tony’s face went pale. Parker’s face kept floating in front of him. He couldn’t think about the boy yet.
“Me either. Not yet.” The sight of Bucky turning to dust as he spoke Steve’s name haunted his sleeping and waking.
Steve held Tony through the night. Tony slept fitfully but they both slept.
Tony stayed in the infirmary for two more days. When he was released, Steve took him to his quarters.
“Did you ask me where I wanted to go?” Tony teased.
“Nope. I want you here where I can take care of you.”
“If you think I’m going to let you play nurse, then you’re sadly mistaken.”
“That wasn’t the sort of play I had in mind, but you might need a little more rest first.”
“Hmmph!”
They bantered quite a bit, but both men were nervous, about the things unsaid, and oddly enough, about sex. It had been long time. They both knew that the other had moved on, found other companionship, other lovers. It was the elephant in the room right now.
On the first night, Tony snuggled up to Steve in his sleep. Steve didn’t sleep much at all, just held Tony. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed of Bucky, disappearing before his very eyes over and over.
“Hey, Steve, it’s all right.” Tony was smoothing his hair and touching his face as he woke.
“Just a nightmare,” Steve finally said.
“Yeah, I – it’s the same here. When I sleep, I see them.”
There was no need to elaborate. Steve knew what he meant, knew they were dreaming about the same living nightmares. They both decided that sleep was done for the night and got up.
“Do you need help with anything? Like a bath? Or food?” Steve wanted to be close to Tony, to touch him.
Tony sighed and said, “Do we talk now? Or try to ignore it all and go on?”
“I don’t know. What if talking drives us apart again? I am not sure I could bear that again.”
“It’s up to you. I’ve dealt with my demons, I think.”
“What do I say? What do you want me to say?” Steve was haunted by so many things, going all the way back to WWII. His demons might have filled a stadium.
“I need to say something. One thing. As angry as I was over Barnes killing my parents, I was more hurt that you chose him over me.” Tony wanted to look away, to get away from Steve’s hurt and anger, but he needed so badly to ‘clear the red out of his ledger,’ as Natasha would say.
“He – they were going to lock him away, maybe kill him. I couldn’t let them do it. You have tto understand that was why I did it,” Steve told quietly.
“He was ready to pay for his crimes.You know he was tired of running.”
“Tony, if I’d been able to save him on that train, then none of it would have happened. I failed him, the best friend I ever had. I caused him to become a monster. Me. It was all my fault. I had to save him this time. Failing him again was not an option, no matter the consequence for me.” He paused then added, “nor for you.”
Tony closed his eyes and just sat there a few moments after Steve’s rush of words ended.
“You didn’t fail him. Why didn’t they tell you that you couldn’t save the whole world? Erskine and my father were so in love with their science and technology, they didn’t realize what they were doing to a skinny boy from Brooklyn, a boy who needed love, needed friendship. They used you for your goodness.”
“I still can’t see the world in shades of gray, Tony. There is good and bad, and somewhere over time, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which side I’m on.”
Tony shook his head. “No, you haven’t and that’s your problem. You know you are on the side of good. The world has forgotten that sometimes there really is good and evil.”
“I never meant to hurt you. I meant to protect you.” Steve stared into space. “In the end, I couldn’t protect either of you.”
“I know. I knew it then on some level. But I wanted you to choose me without me having to choose you as well.”
“Is this helping?” Steve asked. He felt even more wounded and raw than he had before.
“I don’t know, but it has to be done. If there is anything to forgive, I forgive you. Will you forgive me as well?” Tony moved to look Steve in the eye.
“I forgave you a long time ago.”
Steve nodded. “Now what?”
“I’m going to take a shower, come back out here, and strip your clothes off. I want to touch every inch of your body and you, mine. After we can’t do it any longer, then I’ll take another shower, get dressed and you and I will go out there and figure out how to save the world, if it can be saved.”
“That sounds like a start, Tony. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Steve only allowed Tony a few seconds in the shower alone, then he joined him. Both of them still looked battered and bruised. Steve’s burns were healed but there were scars. Tony had a scar where his chest had been pierced but the wound was gone, repaired by Shuri and her colleagues.
As soon as Steve stepped into the shower, bathing was forgotten as they embraced, kissing under the warm spray. Steve turned the shower spray down to a near trickle.
“There. We don’t have to swallow water when we kiss,” he told Tony as he dipped his head and kissed him again.
They kissed and kissed, as if drawing oxygen from one another until both were quite breathless. Tony reached for the soap and ran it over Steve’s body, leaving a soapy lather on his torso. He made his way lower, but didn’t bother with the soap there. He ran his hands over Steve’s water slicked abdomen and lower still, caressing him even as Steve shivered under his touch.
“Your body is so perfect, but it pales in comparison to your heart, Steve Rogers. I missed your heart when you were gone.” He squeezed him quite gently, looked up into his face and said with a smile, “I missed this, too, I have to admit.”
Steve grabbed him and pulled him close, kissing him hungrily as their wet bodies pressed against one another. He reached down between them, pressing Tony’s cock flat against his own belly, running his hand up and down the underside.
“Mmmm, feels good,” Tony moaned. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
They moved out of the shower eventually and to the bed. It was hours before the two slept, but they finally did, holding one another tight even in a deep sleep.