Avengers - Cosmic Realizations

Cosmic Realizations


“Well, this is me,” Steve said unnecessarily as the elevator opened onto the front room of the Avengers suite.  “Thank you for breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Tony corrected.  “It was…enlightening.  See you at seven?”

“Seven,” Steve confirmed with a nod and a bashful little smile, and turned to leave.

Tony caught his hand at the last moment, kissed his knuckles, let him go and waved as the elevator door closed.  “Jarvis?”

~Yes, sir?~

“Where’s Pepper?”

~Miss Potts is waiting in the penthouse, sir.~

“Good.  Let’s go.”

The elevator started moving again, opened after barely five seconds.

Pepper jumped up from the couch and hurried over, hands clenched around his phone.  “So?  How’d it go?  Tony?  Tony, what’s wrong?  Why are you making that face?  What happened?”

He walked around her (pushed the fedora at her on the way), feet dragging, feeling like all the energy had left him, and flopped face-down onto the couch.

“Oh—oh, God, was it that bad?  Oh, Tony…  Happy said that awful Everhart bitch showed up—was she saying horrible things again?”

He laughed a little.  “The day Christine Everhart doesn’t say something horrible to or about me will be the day hell freezes over and the devil puts on a fuzzy red hat and coat.  And it didn’t actually go badly.  That’s the problem.”

“Problem?  Wait, I don’t understand—if it went well, then where’s the problem?”

He closed his eyes with a groan.

“Oh, Tony,” Pepper said again, this time in exasperation.  “You did not molest Captain America in a café bathroom.”

“No, I didn’t!” he yelped, sitting up enough to glare at her.

She held her hands up in self-defense.  “Okay, so the problem with the date going well wasn’t related to doing untoward things to poor Steve.”

He flopped back down.  “No, it wasn’t.  Much bigger problem than that.  Big, big problem.”

Slender calves and tasteful pumps came into view, followed by knees and hands and concerned eyes as Pepper knelt next to him.  “What is it?” she whispered.  “Tony, you know you can tell me anything.  What’s this big, big problem with having a nice breakfast date with a handsome guy you really like?”

It took him a little while to feel like he could make the words come out without bursting into tears (which was a very silly, very stupid, very embarrassing feeling).  He held up a finger and grinned wrily.  “He’s ‘the one,’” he whispered back, and his voice cracked in spite of his best efforts.

She gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.  “Oh, Tony, that’s wonderful!  A little girly…but wonderful.”

He groaned again and hid his face against the couch cushion.  “It’s awful.  Even putting aside the fact that I’m completely wrong for him and the press will lynch me, there’s the fact that I have no idea what to do.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know what to do?” Pepper chuckled, rubbing his back.  “You seemed to do just fine winning the hearts of all those swooning society girls.”

Tony turned abruptly, gripped her hand and stared up at her.  “What do I do, Pep?” he breathed.  “I’ve never done this right before, you know that.  How the hell do I go about wooing Captain America, for God’s sake?”

She sighed.  “Well, you start by deciding whether what you’re after is Captain America or Steve Rogers.  Then you remember that Steve Rogers was a shy, sickly art student from a poor neighborhood, who wasn’t allowed to serve his country until a scientist managed to genetically alter him.  And you go on from there.  Did you at least remember to ask him to dinner tonight?”

“He said yes.  I told him I’d send you to dress him.  Figured you’d end up deciding where we’re going and what we’ll eat anyway.”

“That’s a start,” she said.

“Should I get flowers?  D’you think he’d like flowers?  Too pushy?  Too girly?”

Pepper laughed, covered her mouth with her free hand.  “You sound like a little boy going on his first date.”

He shook his head.  “Pepper, please.  I can’t screw this up.”

She heaved another sigh.  “Then the first thing to do is be yourself.  Neither one of you will be happy if you start a relationship with false impressions and unreasonable expectations.  The second thing to do is tell him that he’s setting the pace.  You are a certifiable disaster in the area of choosing a reasonable pace for a physical relationship.  Third…”

After a few seconds of silence, Tony raised his eyebrows expectantly.  “Third?”

Pepper pursed her lips.  “Third, don’t tell Rhodey until you and Steve have been dating for a while, or Steve will end up scared off by a threat of graphic violence.  I’m thinking ‘break his heart and I’ll break your legs’ would fall short by several degrees.”

He gave a nervous (and slightly soggy) laugh.  “Good ol’ Rhodey…my knight in shining armor since the dreaded reign of Tiberius the Cruel and Unusual.”

She smiled.  “Come on, you can’t spend all day moping on the couch.  You need to call Dr. Richards about repulsor theory.  That should keep you occupied while I make dinner preparations.  Don’t forget to email Marcus about ECM.  I’ll be back with lunch.”  Then she passed him his phone and kissed his forehead (and he really did feel like a little boy fretting over his first date when she did that).

“Mm-kay,” he conceded, and called Reed while she boarded the elevator.

As often happened when Tony and Reed had an excuse to talk about science, they got a little carried away and ended up in a web-conference, batting tweaked schematics back and forth and scribbling out a million calculations on whatever surfaces they could find.  When Pepper brought lunch, he waved her off and kept talking about adaptation of the myriad control surfaces needed for repulsor flight.  In fact, they babbled away about scaling and power sources and optimum materials until Sue literally dragged Reed away from the computer for dinner.

Tony glanced at the clock in sudden panic.  Six thirty.  He jumped up.  “Pepper!”

On cue, she jogged in with his favorite jeans, a well-loved pair of black Converse sneakers, and a navy Stark Industries tee-shirt.  “I’m buying you shirts tomorrow,” she muttered.

“What?  Why?” he asked as he shrugged out of his blazer and worked his tie loose.

“Because the only navy shirts you have that aren’t formal have very juvenile slogans on them.  Or they’re company shirts…at least Steve won’t be ashamed to be seen with you in one of those.”

“Ah, navy.  Because navy is tranquil solidarity.”

“And his favorite color is blue.  Have I ever been wrong about your clothes?”

He grinned and draped his button-down over his desk chair.  “No, my dear Miss Potts, you have not.  Do I smell okay?  Do I have time for a shower?”

Rolling her eyes, she dumped his clothes on his desk and gave him a proprietary sniff.  “You’re fine, and no, you do not have time for a shower.  Happy’s taking you guys to Steve’s favorite pizza place in Brooklyn, where you will be a slightly less perverted version of yourself, you will let Steve know that he’s the one robbing this train, you will not drink anything alcoholic, and you will not scare him off with a confession of undying love on your second date.  Finish getting dressed and calm down while I go keep Steve from hopping into a three piece suit.”

So she left (snatching up his phone on her way), and he pulled on the tee-shirt and changed his pants and shoes.  Then he had to sit down and remind himself (several times) that Steve had said he liked Tony, and that Pepper and Happy would be helping him out.

Pepper returned just before seven by Tony’s watch, and shooed him along into the elevator with a kiss on the cheek and a hurried call of “Good luck!” as the door closed.

~Do remember to breathe, sir.  It’s generally considered beneficial to the success of an outing.~

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Tony muttered.

And then the door opened again, and Steve turned with a nervous grin.

“Wow,” Tony managed.

Steve frowned at him.  “It’s a shirt and some jeans, Tony.  It’s not ‘wow’-worthy.”

In point of fact, it was a snug ‘I ♥ NY’ shirt and a pair of bootcut Levis that pointed out all the best landmarks.

Tony gestured vaguely.  “Stand between two mirrors and you’ll understand.  By the way, could you just turn around again for a few seconds while I commit that to memory?  Pepper confiscated my phone, so I can’t take a picture…”

Steve blushed and stomped into the elevator, pointedly facing Tony and folding his arms over his chest.

“That’s okay, the view from the front ain’t bad, either.”

Steve just blushed and scowled and pretended he wasn’t flattered (but Tony could tell that he was).

Tony grinned and put his hands in his pockets.  “I thought about bringing you roses, but it seemed like it might be a little too much for a casual dinner thing.”

“In my day, we got our dates flowers as often as we could afford it,” Steve said.

“Well, y’know, didn’t wanna seem too eager to please.  You might mistake me for a starry-eyed fanboy and head for the hills.”

“Can’t be any worse than the hordes of fainting dames screaming from the sidewalks on my way to ship out the first time.”

“Ah, you might be surprised by the lengths I’ll go to when it comes to hero worship,” Tony chuckled.  “So, the Great and Powerful Pepper has handed down some commandments to keep me out of trouble.”

“Oh?”

“Mm.  First Commandment:  be myself, after dragging my mind most of the way out of the gutter.”

“So far, so good,” Steve snorted.

“Second Commandment:  let you set the pace, since I’m obviously a miserable judge of how quickly I should hop into bed with someone.”

Steve shifted a little.  “Well, I won’t complain about that.”

“Third Commandment:  no booze for me.  Knowing my luck, getting drunk would lead to me puking on you.”

“To my experience, more than a glass of anything alcoholic leads to problems.  Brava for Miss Potts.  Is that all?”

Tony flinched.  “Eh, there were more, but those are the important ones.”

Steve nodded.  “So where are you taking me?”

Tony winced and stopped himself from automatically replying with, ‘Table, floor, bed, wherever you like.’  “There’s this fantastic little pizzeria in Brooklyn…  I figured it’d be perfect for a casual night out.  A nice, cozy sort of ‘get to know each other’ place.”

“Sounds great,” Steve told him with a smile.  “We can sit down to a pie and you can tell me all about the infamous Tony Stark, merchant of death.”

“You mean, I can make frantic excuses,” scoffed Tony.

“Everybody comes from somewhere, Tony,” Steve pointed out as they crossed the lobby.  “I always knew there had to be a reason that you feel so strongly about weapons and warfare and accountability in science.”

“And what’s your reason?” Tony asked once they were in the car.  “Why did mild-mannered Steve Rogers decide to throw on a flag and bust some skulls?”

Steve raised an eyebrow.  “Bust some…?”

“Beat people up.”

“I love my country,” Steve said simply.  “America is—or was, at least—a great place to be, a symbol of freedom and equality and all the things I know are right.  Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini—aside from helping an alien race trying to take over the planet, they were madmen, and the things carried out in their names were nothing short of atrocity.  Someone had to stop them.  I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”  He looked forward, at the line of tail lights ahead.  “I couldn’t not do something.”

Familiar feelings of shame and self-loathing bubbled up, and Tony couldn’t bear to look at his blond companion anymore.  “It must have been nice,” he said softly, watching the people on the sidewalks outside, “knowing what was and wasn’t right and feeling like you could do something about it.”

A strong hand gripped his.  “Tony?”

Steve’s voice sounded worried, so he looked over and tried to smile.  “Steve?” he replied.

“You don’t have to tell me tonight,” Steve murmured.  “I can wait until you’re ready.”

Tony snorted.  “If we wait until I’m ready to talk about how much of a fool and a fuck-up I was for most of my life, we’ll be old and grey.”

“Don’t say that…”

“It’s true.”

Steve shook his head.  “I meant don’t call yourself a…a…”

“Fuck-up?” Tony offered with a self-deprecating grin.

Steve blushed.  “Good Lord, don’t people in twenty-first century America know any words that wouldn’t get their mouths washed out with soap?”

Tony looked back out the window.  “Hmmm…how about ‘lazy, good-for-nothing wastrel’?  Except that I was still churning out brilliant new ways to kill innocent people, so I suppose I wasn’t technically good for nothing…”

“Tony, look at me.”

Sighing, he hesitantly obeyed.

Steve’s face was set, determined, and a little angry.  “Who you were is just a paving stone on the path to who you are.  You are a good man.  You are my first and best friend in this strange place I used to call home.  And you are…the dumbest genius I’ve ever heard of, if you can’t see just how much good you’ve accomplished.”

He’d heard it before.  Pepper had said it, and Rhodey had said it.  But he had never believed it, coming from them.  When Steve said it, he couldn’t help but believe.

Yes.  Definitely the one.

He closed his eyes and smiled, brought their joined hands up and kissed Steve’s knuckles again.  “Thank you,” he breathed.

The car slid to a stop.  “Here we are, sir,” Happy said from the front seat.

“How about that pizza?” Tony offered, jerking his head toward the restaurant.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Steve replied with a smile (and oh, how those dimples took Tony’s breath away).

“By the way, have I mentioned that Vogue readers voted me Most Eligible Bachelor last year?”


.End.