Archive of Our Own

Steve goes to sleep with Tony's concussed head pillowed on his shoulder, moon dust on both of their boots, exhausted in the empty way. 

"What did you see," Tony says into Steve's bare skin, "On the moon?"

Steve brushes Tony's hair back from his face. "I don't know," he says. "Maybe it will be clearer tomorrow." He kisses Tony on the forehead. Rubs at the stubborn grease around his hairline. 

"Maybe," Tony murmurs, halfway to sleep. 

In the morning, it's clearer. 

Steve goes for a run so he doesn't kill Tony. 

He leaves Tony asleep in his bed and grabs his shittiest pair of New Balance on the way out. He runs himself past piles of trash and piles of huddled people and feels his sweat evaporating into the chill pre-dawn air. He runs past garbage trucks and drunk people and happy people and lonely people and he wishes he was anyone else other than Tony Stark's collection of dirty secrets. 

What is he doing? He's ripping his watch off, he's throwing it, still-vibrating, into the nearest sewer grate. He's endangering international security. He runs himself to Brooklyn, stands in front of the door to his apartment building, thinks about the way Tony looks when he slouches on his stoop, turns around, runs back across the bridge. He runs the path of least resistance, runs around the first risers of the day emerging into the last lonely hours before the moon sets, living their small stupid lives, unaware that they're all pawns to men like Tony Stark and his insanely dangerous little Cabal. 

He runs until his clothes are sweat-soaked and he smells offensive the way he does after five hours of combat. He leans on a railing. Wet grass sticks on his shoes. What park is he in? He's in the middle of a block, he doesn't know how far North he's gone. He's in the Bronx, probably. He wipes his wet face and his eyes burn. It's sweat. No. Yes, it's sweat, he's decided. It's only sweat. Tony doesn't get another second of his fucking time. There's no one around so he rips the divider off the park bench and crumples the steel under his hands. Good. Better this than Tony's bones. 

Someone runs by him, knocks into his shoulder. 

"Watch where the fuck you're going," he yells. 

He sways. Looks to his wrist for his Starkwatch, which is now on its way to the East River. 

"Fuck you, Tony," he says under his breath, panting, and then-

A single blow knocks out a few of his ribs. Who hits like that? The fucking sun's not even up. He's already in a choke and the guy's arms are big. He didn't get his chin down in time, he knows it. He stomps on the guy's foot but gets his ankle kicked out from under him. A bone cracks. Several bones crack. He's losing. 

"Just go down, Cap." 

Tony knelt on the stone floor and held Steve's head and put his hand on Steve's cheek. As if he was sorry.  

His body drags across the sidewalk. He vaguely registers the guy hitting his armored hand on the side of the van before the doors close. White leather and bare forearm. Santa Muerte tattoo snaking up his arm. Tony Masters. 

Tony, he thinks. Tony doesn't know where I am. 

And then, dawning like the most dismal winter sunrise: Tony is done with him.  

Steve's cell is concrete, a drain in the floor, a bucket in the corner. A single camera blinks red over his cell door. 

There are two of them. Neither is Tony Masters, but they're both armed and Steve is mostly naked and whatever sedative they've dosed him with is still slugging through his system. It's been hours of silence, of chilly cold, and his big souped-up body has failed to clear it. It makes him complacent and stupid and easy to handle. 

It's not just that he's weak, it's that the impulse to fight has left him entirely. He struggles, barely, just enough to make the tall one laugh and his entire body feels like a bruise so he stops, watches them take his blood, watches it well up and settle out, vial after vial. 

He gets dizzy, sways where he sits. One of them slaps his face and pries his mouth open. 

Metal in his mouth, against his gums. They're pulling his teeth, he feels it at the root. He tries to bite and his jaw aches and all he manages to do is gurgle around the guy's hand as blood fills his mouth. He tries to swallow, chokes. Tries to spit and just dribbles blood all over his chin. The guy holds up his Leatherman, one of Steve's molars gripped in the pliers. 

Don't cry, Cap, one of them says, and strokes at his face with a calloused thumb. 

He thinks maybe he's fucked. 

He is well-restrained, shackled with metal he has failed to even bend. The drugs. He worries about that, vaguely, that they've been able to get something that sticks to him. 

They give him a bucket and drag in a hose and rinse him off like he’s a rusty tool someone’s kept in a fucking shed for too long. Get the dirt off, see what you see. See what condition it’s in underneath. 

One of them lets his hand linger on Steve’s jaw after posing him for a proof-of-life shot and Steve breaks his nose and then they put more chains on him and add another track mark to his naked thigh. 

This wasn't the job, the shorter one is saying. 

No, says the tall one, throwing the needle into a sharps pouch. But this is a better job. 

The guy built like a linebacker kneels down next to Steve. He's wearing a breastplate that looks remarkably like SHIELD gear. Maybe it's a knockoff, maybe it's another level of betrayal. He sets his M16 against the wall, just out of Steve's reach, even if he could get his feet under him. He thumbs the chinstrap on his helmet. 

"Listen," says the guy. "I respect you." 

The camera above the door blinks off. 

Steve snorts. "Go fuck yourself."

"Okay," the guy says. He pulls out his sidearm.  He presses the muzzle against the meat of Steve's thigh. 

"I don't think your boss is gonna like what happens if you mess up my leg," Steve says. He thinks he sounds cogent and not drugged. He pretends that he has the collective power of a team behind him. He resolves to pretend until he cannot pretend any longer. "You can't take samples if I'm bleeding out." 

"Oh," the guy says. "Taskmaster isn't running this job any more. Finders keepers." 

"I don't really care," Steve says honestly.  

The guy fires twice into Steve's leg. 

The pain is blinding. He jackknifes. He screams his throat raw. Fuck. It feels like his leg is coming off. Like the bone is shattered. He's screaming, still, again. He brings his shackled hands down on the wound, feels around his burning leg. One exit wound. One still inside, he thinks. 

"Listen," the guy says, and he 's putting his gun away. He wipes the hair off of Steve's forehead. His nose is taped, from before and it warms Steve a little. "There's a lotta offers on you," the guy says, and blood is pouring over Steve's trembling fingers. "I thought you do me a favor, I do you a favor."

Steve tries to spit on his face but it lands on his own chest. He's sitting in his own blood. Watches it find a path to the drain in the center of the floor. Feels it pool around his ass. 

Steve aims for his nose and does his very best Colossus impression. 

The guy easily ducks away. Catches Steve's head in his hands like he's that weak fucking man on the floor again. He catches the chain holding Steve's wrists, knocks his body - his head - against the wall. Puts one warm hand on Steve's face. Runs his thumb up Steve's cheek. 

"That was hot," he whispers. And then he bunches his hands in Steve's briefs and he rips. 

Steve loses time. A moment. 

No, he thinks, stupidly, impotent. The guy drags his body out from the wall a little, scrapes him up, lays him down in his own blood. Tony, he thinks, absurdly, as if Tony gives a shit about what happens to him ever again, as if anyone is going to knock down his cell door and pull this jacked-up shit off of Steve's useless, bleeding body, as if he has ever been anything real or valuable or precious to Tony. 

No, he thinks he says, and he hates the way it gets lost beneath the bright agony of his thigh. He sounds weak and pathetic and he feels just as small as that man reeling on the floor in Necropolis.

Maybe he is naïve.

"Tell me if I'm hurting you," the man says, and swings a leg over Steve's rictus-tense body. 

A fuse blows in Steve's brain. Something quiet and dark stills him, attunes him to the dampness of the air and the chill of the draft and the weight of his chains and the guy runs his fingers through the blood on the floor and stuffs them into Steve's body.

And then his fingers are inside, big fingers, swollen from injury or arthritis or too many surgeries to fix his trigger finger, blunt, unhurried, idle and vicious and the door is still shut and the camera is still off and his gun is not new, well-maintained but it’s seen some shit and Steve has seen some shit, too, and Reed Richards is standing over him and their faces seem to hang in the dark like all of the light has been drawn out of this place, this tomb, this is his tomb, and Tony’s face is strangely blank, what’s wrong with him, Tony’s face is the face he wears when he’s pretending and they promised each other they wouldn’t pretend anymore and - 

Fight, he thinks, it's what you're made for, but his limbs are heavy and slow and his chest feels like it's splitting. 

It's sheer force of will , Tony tells him. You cannot make an idea real if you don't believe in it.  

Maybe Tony keeps losing faith in him because he is no longer worth having faith in. 

Steve turns his face away, into his armpit, smells his own rancid sweat because he doesn't want to look at this man's face and his arms are pinned and he has no leverage and he might be bleeding out and that might be okay. Coward, hisses Tony, and maybe he is, maybe it's fine, maybe he is useless and obsolete and his ideas are bad. Maybe he is rusty in all the wrong ways, all the ways that make you look at a car, at a bike, and say, that's rusted through. Can't save that. More work than she's worth - 

"I used to jerk off to you," says the guy, and he's got both of their cocks in one hand and Steve is hopelessly limp, he's not going to cry, he's not going to come, he's going to be nothing, he is so tired of being rendered someone else's tool and why can't he fucking move, why can't he move - 

"No," the guy says. "Shh, none of that. I know," he says. He moves Steve's balls aside, pushes all the way into Steve's body. "Look at me," the guy says, and Steve doesn't, and the guy slaps him hard enough that his ears ring. The incongruity of it is astounding. "Jesus Christ, that’s good," he says, and Steve is so fucking useless and he just lets the guy in, he just receives, he doesn’t let Tony fuck him like this because maybe in the back of his mind he always knew, maybe he didn’t want to open himself to that level of intimacy but he’s letting this happen, he's letting this stranger do him raw and Tony -

Tony does not care about you, you stupid lovesick fuck. 

The guy pulls out to come on his chest. Some of it gets on Steve's face. He shivers violently. The guy runs a hand down Steve’s chest, strokes his nipple. "Shh," he says. "Breathe, Captain," he says, like Steve is his fucking CO and nothing makes sense and it's all Steve can do to hang on to his speech, to let his brain parse his words and he is going to scream and he is going to steal that Glock and put it right against his own brain except he has to stay alive because he needs to ask Tony if any of it was ever real and if he dies and someone absconds with his body for science he’ll never get that closure and he lets out a sound and he is afraid, he is afraid but the guy kisses his forehead, like they’re kneeling in enemy territory and they just went through a fucking minefield and came out alive together and the guy levers him up, tips a water bottle against Steve’s quivering fucking mouth and -

Steve buries himself. 

I’m going to kill you, he thinks. He folds himself into a long-buried vein of bloodlust. I’m going to put a knife in your stomach and leave it there. I’m going to split your skull with my shield. I’m going to be everything I am never allowed to be, everything I am not, and I am going to watch, and I am going to feel empty and alone. And we'll both deserve it. 

No. He is not that kind of man. But right now he cannot remember what kind of man he is. 

“Madame Hydra wants you,” says the guy, and he presses his finger into Steve's wound with the interest of a man who is accustomed to hurting people recreationally. “So does AIM. I'm pretty sure you're gonna spend the rest of your life in a lab either way. Just tryin’ to make it sweet for you while you're here.” 

I’m gonna be fine , Steve thinks, and the guy kneels and wipes his cock off on Steve’s face. Steve is going to let this roll right off of him. Because he is not that kind of man. He is going to be one of those people who shakes it off like an animal shakes off a fight. He will leave this room and he will lie to the people in medical and he will shower and he will look at himself in the mirror with his unbroken skin and his unbruised body and there will be no evidence that this ever happened, that he let this happen. He will be one of those people. It’s what people expect of him. It’s what he expects of himself.

I am not that kind of man, he reminds himself, steadfast and vicious and unrecognizable to himself. 

The guy yanks Steve's leg out straight, and Steve's vision whites out. His body jerks. He hears fabric tearing, feels the guy wrapping a strip of it around his thigh. His briefs. He closes his eyes and shakes and lets it happen. His shackled hands rest on his clammy belly. He presses the heels of his palms into his skin so his trembling is less obvious, feels the guy tying a knot off. Hears him stuffing himself back into his BDUs. The guy bangs his fist on the door, twice.

He rests in the scant peace of a deep, abiding certainty of a promise he makes to himself. That there will be no witnesses, at the end of this. That he is not that kind of man. 

Steve can't tell how close he is to losing consciousness. He knows he feels cold. His wound is weeping steadily; his body wants to push the round out but he knows from experience it's too deep. It grates against his femur when he moves, so he simply doesn't move. He feels every layer of grime sitting on his skin. He doesn't touch it. Sits there and tries to be dead and lets his shame keep him warm. 

He is, unfortunately, not bleeding out.

The light changes, once. The little rectangle of bare sky beyond his tiny barred window is lit up with a fiery cast. His blood looks black, on the floor. 

He turns his left palm over, looks at the brush-thin scar there. Just skin - they've taken it out, he's sure. They took it when they took everything else. 

The base is quiet. The building is quiet. But a coldness settles over him. He recognizes it. Last time this happened he stood on a mountain and did something miraculous, something superhuman, something godlike. 

Then Tony took him home and climbed into bed with him and let him inside his body every night for months and months and - 

And there was not enough room in their bed for more than one god.

His vision is blurring. He stares at the steady trickle of blood running into the grate. No one is coming, he thinks. Tony is busy, and even if he wasn't - Steve has been discarded. He never ranked first, did he. He doesn't know what he was to Tony beyond convenient. Tony is out there dealing with this, somewhere, on the edge of his own mountain, using one of his wondrous and terrible inventions, shaving off another piece of his soul. 

He wonders how many incursions this is. If Tony lies to himself to get through the day. If he loses sleep at night about it. 

No, he decides. 

The light comes back, after a while. Steve hopes he burns next time. He hopes they both burn.

Steve dreams that Tony is with him. He leans over his lap and takes Steve's cock in his mouth. Don't, Steve tells him, because Tony gets a big smear of blood on his shirt. What's wrong, he says, and he picks his head up, his mouth glistening with blood. Brother?

Tony, his nose broken and set, one of his eyeballs bloody around the sclera, wearing sweatpants and socks and a resilient shirt and nothing else, his left hand clamped into a fist. 

No, Steve decides. He's fucking hallucinating. Someone opens his mouth and shoves two pills on his tongue and tells him to swallow and covers his mouth until he does. 

What the fuck did you do to him, the Tony hallucination is yelling. Steve. STEVE, he yells. 

Don't, Steve tells the Tony hallucination. 

"Steve," Tony is saying, over and over, and a slick sort of shame wells up in Steve. 

“Steve,” Tony says, and he has his own chains, and his own bruises, and his face is bleeding, fresh bright red blood that shines in their scant beam of light. “Steve,” he says again, urgently. 

Steve lies where he lies, curled in fetal position except for the shot leg which he is doing his best not to feel at all, the pain an anticipatory echo. He knows if he moves he will make a gruesome noise, and Tony will see, if he hasn't already seen, and Tony will make an agonizing show of caring, of pretending that their hierarchy of needs was ever shared. 

“You’re okay,” Tony says, oddly hushed. “Tell me you’re okay,” he insists, shifting a little, doing a shitty job of orienting his back to the camera, his bare flank, so only Steve can see his lying mouth. 

"Please," Tony says. "Steve." Steve moves his arms a little, so he can see all of him. "Look at me." 

Steve swallows and swallows until he thinks his voice will be steady. His throat is still swollen and rough from screaming. "I'm looking," Steve says hoarsely. 

"Jesus," Tony says. He sounds like he's been crying. "It's been hours." 

"What are you doing here," says Steve. "AIM sign your dance card, too?"  

"Your watch was in the East River," Tony says, weirdly flat. 

"You've been tracking me," Steve says. 

Tony is silent. "No," he says. His breathing sounds labored. It sounds like they beat the shit out of him. 

"Stop lying," Steve says. He sounds vacant to his own ears. 

Tony rolls his eyes. Can you walk, he signs. Steve can't see the camera. He doesn't much care. 

"No," Steve says. 

Do you have a plan? 

"No," Steve says. He closes his eyes, presses his face against the freezing concrete. "Do you?" 

The door slides open. "He needs medical attention," Tony says, immediately, because Tony thinks he is important and Tony is used to the immediacy of respect. The short one, the one that stood just outside while his buddy raped Steve into the fucking floor, pistol-whips him. The chains go taut as Tony rears up, because Tony makes stupid choices when he's cornered. 

Steve's chains won't reach. He doesn't care how it goes. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. 

They're taking Tony's picture, bloody face and all. Steve thinks it's a souvenir, because everyone knows what Tony looks like, everyone knows who he is. 

"Help him or I'll kill you," Tony growls.

The tall one snorts. He kneels down and pokes at Steve's leg while Tony swears. Steve wills his body to unfreeze, barely breathing. He lets him touch. The guy runs his fingers through the mostly congealed mess on his chest. He runs his thumb over Steve's nipple, back, over, back. 

"Hey," Tony says, and he's doing a shitty job of pretending it isn't personal - "take your fucking hands off of him, hey - "

The guy puts two of his fingers in Steve's mouth while his buddy is kicking Tony in the stomach. Runs the stale taste of himself over Steve's tongue. 

"Does it help," the guy says, just loud enough for Steve, and Steve is stiller than stone and Tony is holding his stomach and staring at Steve in horror and Steve - 

Time slides around. 

"- fix your leg," Tony is saying, his voice stilted and darkly professional. "We'll figure it out. It's going to be fine. Cap." 

Cap.

Captain America lies on the floor, dry-heaving on his side, his face searing with bottomless shame. 

"We're gonna be okay," Tony chants, because Tony loves to make empty promises as long as it gets him to the next lie, as long as it's expedient, as long as it looks good. "We've had worse." 

Steve knows what he wants. A little speech. A little willful ignorance. Just enough to get them through the private horror of it all. The indignity of pretending they were less than they were for the optics of it, for the performance of it all, and Steve was even less to Tony. 

Steve covers himself, his face unexpectedly searing with dismal shame. “ Yeah. Brother.” 

Tony’s face twists with shame. 

Tony makes terrible plan after terrible plan. Most of them hinge on a burst of hysterical strength from Steve, who is so depleted he doesn't think he could bench Tony right now, gun to his head. 

Steve moves in excruciating increments until he's propped against the wall with one of his knees pulled up to his chest, his shot leg straight out in front of him. Tony asks Steve how he's doing once an hour until Steve snaps at him to shut the fuck up, Tony, and Tony buries his head in his knees and clenches and unclenches his fist, the one with the little glowing device in it. 

Steve does not ask about the incursion. He doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to open any potential avenues for justification. 

But Tony's voice soothes despite his every furious instinct, and Steve's confidence is brittle and wanting. It is so easy to set himself at ease, to lose himself in Tony's clumsy signing, to tether himself to the sound of his voice. 

Steve has made a life out of homes that are no longer homes. 

"Do you think they're looking for you," Steve grits out. 

Tony meets his eyes and glares. "I doubt it," he says. 

"What could you have possibly done to render yourself disposable," Steve all but spits. "Trampled the party line one too many times? " No wives, no lovers ?"" 

Tony stares at the door. Stares at his palm. Fixes his gaze away from Steve. 

"You must be feeling better," Tony says dully. "Excuse me for caring." 

"Stop," Steve says. "Just stop." 

The silence between them feels sharp. Feels final. 

Tony makes himself a problem, the next time they come in. The tall man is taking his tac gear off and Tony is running his mouth. Big man, Tony is saying, beating someone who can't even stand up, you fucking piece of shit -

Tony is screaming. Steve is getting his daily needle in the thigh and he slides out of himself, a little, drifts backwards as Tony is getting electrocuted just feet from him. Tony’s screams echo off the concrete, raw and aborted and Steve raises his shackled hands to paw at Tall man’s pants because Tony's screaming tears at him, still. 

Stop, he says, to the man. Don’t, Tony, he says to Tony. Fucking leave him alone, please leave him alone, he’s just human, you’re going to kill him - 

I love a deal, Tall man says. Think you can suck my dick, Cap? Think you can make it good?

Yeah, Steve says, shaky, out of himself, Yeah, I can. His legs shake. Adrenaline. Singed meat smell. Can Tony hear? Tony. Tony’s going to have a cardiac event if he doesn’t get it the fuck together. Steve can hear him gasping and he’s glad for it, Tony is too fucked up for his brain to encode a reliable memory about this, probably, and his rapist shuffles up to him with his cock half-hard in his hand and Steve can barely keep himself up on just the one leg and he is going to give the best blowjob he has ever given in his life, he is going to do this and keep living until the Illuminati break down the fucking door looking for their bestest slimiest engineer and is this what he was doing with Tony all this time, was it rancid like this, was it slanted and wrong, is blood loss maybe just the same as clarity - 

His rapist loses patience, and grabs his head, and fucks into his throat.

He gags and the guy stills with some inches of his cock well beyond Steve’s comfortable limit and he’s going to pass out and Tony is going to watch someone jerk off onto his unconscious body and Tony is going to say something fucking stupid and Steve’s entire body goes tense with terror about that, he just has to not pass out he just has to relax, relax, relax, stop fucking crying, Steve, this is not the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, it’s not even the worst thing that’s happened this year, Tony is maybe the worst thing that’s happened to you -  

The guy is twitching in his mouth, it tickles. He pulls back a little so Steve has the pleasure of tasting it, and he's not prepared, a fair amount of it leaks out on his face. His cheeks burn and he makes a bare minimum effort to swallow.  The guy's come keeps coming, floods his mouth, base and salty and it’s just come, you can’t get anything, Rogers, just fucking swallow it , it’s just come, it’s just come - 

He spits, then retches. It shines on the floor. 

Clean it up, the tall man tells him. 

He makes the mistake of glancing over at Tony and Tony is watching with wide, watery eyes and Steve fucking hates that he chose to come here, that he inserted himself into this torrid little perversion, that now Steve has to be doubly humiliated. 

They're never going to recover from this. 

Don’t, Steve, Tony says, crying, hysterical. Gasping. Does Tony grasp the dismal irony of it? Don’t, he says again. Leave him alone, he says to the man. 

You don’t like it, Iron Man? Steve glances over from where he's cowering on all fours and the tall man is holding Tony’s head against his belly, stroking through his hair like he’s a pet, one hand dipping beneath the hem of Tony's t-shirt. Tony is visibly furious and still and bleeding from his mouth. The man tangles his fingers in Tony’s hair and yanks his head to the side. Tony’s chest heaves with the secondhand mortification of it all. 

Don't , he mouths. 

Steve doesn’t like seeing that look on Tony’s face. It twists him up. Maybe he just doesn’t like seeing Tony’s face any more.

He presses his tongue to the floor.

Steve loses hours. 

Tony pleads with him. He thinks Tony has a panic attack at one point, but Steve is unreachable and unwilling. He is incapable of holding a single tactical thought. He thinks he's drooling, breathing through his mouth so he doesn't have to taste. Tony's breath is his only tether to the now. 

Breathe, Steve, Tony says, and cradles his head. I'll take it from here, Stephen -  

"Please let me know you're alive," Tony says in a shaking voice, after an eternity. "Steve. Please -"

"You are the most egregious hypocrite I've ever met," Steve groans. 

Tony takes the hit, nods to himself. “How injured are you,” Tony asks. Like he doesn't really want the answer. 

Steve feels unsteady. “I’m still bleeding from yesterday,” he informs Tony. His throat feels raw.  

“Okay,” Tony says carefully. 

“It would help me,” Steve says slowly, haltingly, “if I knew you had a plan.” He thinks it’s very diplomatic. Extraordinarily measured, given the circumstances. Professional. Convincingly not a thing a lover would say. 

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I’m planning a homicide.” 

"Tony," Steve chides.  

"What happened to you," Tony says. 

Steve tucks his face into his hands, his fetid secret-not-a-secret between them. What does Tony want? Tony can imagine. Extrapolation is his business. Steve keeps pushing it down and ending up in back-alley dead-end memories: a trench, a foxhole, a pile of his best friends' bodies. His face pressed into the soft skin of Tony's body. Tony. The mountain, the endless maw of space. The future.  

Steve and Tony, Tony and Steve. Perpendicular joys. Parallel wounds. 

"You abandoned me for your better, smarter friends," Steve says. 

"What happened before these assholes got you," Tony clarifies. 

Steve stares at his blood on the floor. He has memorized its path. Something to focus on other than his burning leg and his dazzling impotence. 

"Where are we, Tony," Steve counters. "Why don't you have your armor." 

Tony grimaces. "I didn't bring it," he says to his hands. 

"What? Why," Steve says. 

"I thought I was meeting Taskmaster," Tony says, and he keeps his eyes resolutely on the floor. "I hired him. I didn't think I'd be fighting." 

It's never one mess, with Tony, it's always a constellation of debris. It's always an excavation of 10 layers of subterfuge and bullshit and deception. 

"Yeah. That's normal. That's a normal thing to do, hire a supervillain to drag your partner into a van and-"

"I was trying to keep you safe," Tony says. "I know you've already made up your mind about me, but–"

"–you know what, Tony–"

"If I didn't cool you off, someone else would have done it," Tony says, like it's a foregone conclusion, like he's run the numbers on all the outcomes. Steve despises his categorical certainty. "I'd rather put you in a safe house for a few days than find out through the grapevine that Namor sent assassins after you-"

"Outstanding work, Tony," Steve says. " Cool me off . I might never walk again -"

"–Jesus, you'll walk again, Steve. I don't know these assholes, this wasn't the pl–"

"You don't control everything," Steve yells. "You can't. You are so fucking arrogant–"

"You don't control anything !" Tony yells back. "You consistently bet all your chips on faith and goodness and truth. People aren't good, Steve." 

"No shit," Steve says under his breath. 

"You didn't leave a note," Tony bursts, "You threw away your fucking watch, we took the tracker out of your femur, after the builders, you left your shield and your wallet and your phone -"

"Do you even hear yourself? You're not entitled to my location at all times, just because we're sleeping together, that's fucked up even for you, Tony–"

"–I had no idea what happened after the moon, Steve, I thought you were going to expose us, or, or–"

"Or what," Steve says. "Dress you down? Key your fucking car? Tell you all of the shit no one else is willing to tell you, all the things you're not willing to hear?" 

"I could have handled that," Tony says. "But exposing the Illuminati–"

"Oh, I'm going to expose you. If we get out of here I'm telling the whole fucking team–"

"–I don't know if you know this, Steve, but it’s looking grim–"

“What would you like me to do, Tony?” Steve asks, because Tony won’t survive what he’s taking, not for long, not without damage. 

Tony is lost in his own way, his knees drawn up to his chest, his stare vacant and desolate. Steve cannot bring himself to move, but he cannot bring himself not to act. Old habits. Tony is quiet for a long time. He does have some shame, maybe. It just takes a very specific kind of violation to dredge up his humanity, Steve guesses. 

“I want you to fucking fight,” Tony says. “I need you to decide you’re going to live through this. Pick something, I don’t fucking care-“

"Did you love me?" Steve says, and he cannot bring himself to use the present tense because Tony is sharing this wretched space and this humid, foul air and his torment and his shame and he has never been able to fully extinguish the fire they hurl and trade and set for each other. 

"Of course I loved you," Tony says. "How can you ask me that–"

"Why did you lie to me," Steve says to his hands. "For months." 

"I thought we might die," Tony says ruefully. "Any minute, we might be gone. And." 

"And?" 

"And I'd know," Tony says quietly. "At least I'd know." 

“I had something,” Steve says. “We finally had something good.”

Tony is quiet, and sad, and kneels there in his chains with his hands fisted in his lap and tips his head back so his face is drenched in their scant rays of light. 

“You can kill me when we get out of this,” he says quietly. “If that keeps you going–”

“Is that the kind of man you think I am,” Steve asks. “Is that the kind of man you want me to be?”

“You know it’s not,” Tony tells him.

The silence resonates between them. But you tried it once . 

Steve doesn't sleep. Something changes in his leg and he slides into a hot delirium. It is all he can do to count his own breaths. His breath, Tony's breath. The two of them breathing together, waiting for the light to come back. 

How does my leg look, Steve slurs. Tony. 

Tony murmurs sweet little lies to him. It's fine, Steve. Hang on. Just a little longer. Always so certain. 

Maybe if you lie to everyone long enough, it becomes part of your programming. Maybe it starts to look like kindness. 

Someone turns his body over, uncurls him, pries his limbs apart. Kicks his hands away from his crotch. 

Steve is so tired. What else is there, but graceless surrender? He tries to suppress his scream, not for dignity, just so Tony can have a little peace for a little longer. 

Tony is yelling, again. On his feet. "Hey," he says. 

"Tony, don't," Steve mumbles into the floor. "Just turn around." 

"That's adorable," says the tall man. 

"Me," Tony announces. "Leave him alone." 

Steve opens his eyes. Tony is on his feet, one hand splayed against the wall, one hand on his ribs. The shorter guy is tipping Tony's chin up with his deactivated baton. Tony looks furious and brave and stupid. 

"You're not a super soldier, Iron Man," the tall guy says. He drags his baton over Tony's thigh, rests it between Tony's legs. Taps him, once, hard. "And you're not my type." 

Steve clutches at the floor and listens to Tony scream. 

Tall guy climbs onto Steve and sticks his finger into the wound, digs it around. Steve loses the ability to breathe. He is less than even a set piece. "I honestly don't think you'd survive," he's telling Tony. "I have specific tastes, see. There's not a lot of places a man can whet his appetite for the kind of tastes I have-" and he presses his hand to Steve's cheek, "Tony," he finishes with a smirk. 

Tony is saying something about murder, and the short one, the complicit one, is saying that that's bullshit. Everyone knows Avengers don't kill people. 

"I'll make an exception," snarls Tony, panting. 

"Dude," the short one says. "Stay down." 

"Please,” Tony says, and if Steve didn't know better he'd think it was deference.

The baton buzzes to life, inches from Steve's face. The current crackles and breaks. The violence of the waveform is enough to make Steve flinch away. “I’m gonna put this all the way down your throat,” the man says, “if you don’t shut the fuck up.” 

“Yeah,” Tony says. 

Steve grabs the baton. 

Tall guy doesn't expect it, doesn't have the chance to switch it off. They both scream. Steve endures the bright agony of his muscles locking and spasming. His heart skips, races, skips again. He thinks the tall guy pisses himself. 

Steve loses his grip, and they both sag to the floor. 

Worth it. 

"Fuck me," Steve pants, before tall guy has the chance to take it out on Tony. He tries to crawl up on his knees, stumbles. Falls heavy on his side, crushes his elbow. Smears his blood around on the floor. 

Tall guy laughs and gets to his feet, breathing heavy, breathing fast. "Say it louder," he says. 

Steve smashes his eyes closed and then fixes his gaze firmly on the ceiling. "Fuck me," he says. 

"Nicely." 

"Please fuck me." 

"Well," the guy says. "It's not every day you get to fuck a war hero." 

Steve lets himself be arranged. The guy puts him on his back, graciously kneels up on his chest. Steve doesn't have time to be revulsed when he unzips. He smells clean. He's showered. He's trimmed, even, since the last time. 

Steve doesn't get to be an active participant. It's quiet, just flesh on flesh. No running expletives from Tony, no protests. He thinks about biting, and he thinks about sitting in this room with Tony's body, with Tony's brains on the wall, and he feels his air choked off until his vision dims and his heart drums in his ears. 

"–pretty good cocksucker," the guy holding a gun on Tony says. "You owe me money. He's a real fag. Certified fag." 

"Shut up, Jesse," says the man who's raping Steve's throat. "That's offensive."

Steve misses Jesse's response because the man on top of him digs his fingers into Steve's leg again and his whole body jerks and the guy on top of him sighs an obscene moan and whispers yeah, just like that , And he holds Steve's head and presses himself all the way into Steve's filthy face and twitches on Steve's tongue, jerks again and again and Steve won't even taste it, Steve won't even remember this someday, it's just a dick, it's just a transaction, it doesn't matter. 

Tall guy pulls out and a thick strand of come trails from Steve's lip while he gasps for air. 

"Clean me up," he says. 

Steve's tongue is clumsy. He's crying in the furious, open-eyed, stoic kind of way. There are always more pieces to carve away. 

He knows he will keep carving as long as Tony is in the room.  

A few days ago, he did this for Tony. A few days ago, Tony kissed it out of his mouth and told him he loved him. That he had faith in him. That he wanted him more than anything else in the world. 

The guy wipes his slit off on Steve's bottom lip before he goes. Puts two pills on Steve's tongue. Cradles his head. Is patient with him when Steve fumbles the bottle, when water spills over his chin. 

Steve doesn't even feel the needle. 

Tony has enough slack in his chains to crawl through Steve’s blood, pooling around the grate, and sit, lopsided, next to Steve, and draw Steve's head into his lap.

Steve cannot stop crying. He chokes down the noise of it, lets it reverberate back into himself, shakes with the resonance of it. Tony smooths his hair down and bends his head to touch his lips to Steve’s forehead, and Steve fucking hates it and Steve never wants it to stop and Steve hates him and adores him and knows that it doesn't matter because they're never going to make it out of here –

"You don't need to touch me, Tony," Steve hears himself say. 

"It's not a chore, Steve," Tony whispers to him, and Steve thinks it would be fine to die here, as long as he gets to be touching Tony’s skin, as long as Tony never stops talking, as long as there is never enough silence for the truth of things to swallow them both.

"I’m sorry," Tony says. "I’m sorry. You don't have to forgive me. I just." 

Tony's hand rests on Steve's neck. Steve’s breath rattles in and out of him. Hours must pass. His body is a gnawing constellation of pain. 

"I love you," Tony says, and he says it like he always says it, like it's just for Steve. 

Even if it's true, it falls on him and he feels nothing. It's simply not enough. It's an extension of your will, Steve thinks. You have to believe in an idea to make it real.

Steve, Tony says, over and over, and the hope slips out of his voice and he quiets, then begins again, hushed, renewed. Steve, he says, gentle, like a prayer, until his voice is almost nothing. 

Steve drifts while Tony tries to coax Steve out of himself. 

"Please don't leave me here," Tony whispers, just once.

Steve wonders if maybe this wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t spent years ignoring how much they wanted each other. If they hadn’t been so proud of themselves for burying it until they couldn’t bury it any more. If their desperation hadn’t nearly drowned them, first.

Steve nurses another private, heinous thought: he can't do this forever. 

Steve dreams that he is kneeling over Tony's body while Midtown burns around them. Someone's blood is in Steve's mouth and he pulls his gloves off with his teeth just in time to hit Tony again, to stop the faceplate from knitting itself back together. The gold creeps slowly, so slowly, and that means Steve has succeeded in making him broken the way Steve feels broken. Tony says finish it, Steve and the armor falls off around Tony's torso, plate by plate, and Steve is hard, the way his body is uncovered bit by miraculous bit excites him, undo his belt, slip his finger under the catch for the groin plate and the plate looks like onyx in his hand and Tony is laughing against his neck, into his cowl, pulled down because everyone knows who he is here. They're up against a stone wall and it's dark but the seething vibranium veins glow blue enough for Steve to see Tony's sparkling eyes and his grin and Tony says not now, Winghead , but it's soft, it's just for him, and Tony kisses him on the jaw and pushes him away, gently, later, he promises and his eyes dance and Steve is so fond of him and it makes his heart swell three sizes and Steve says okay. You're right. Okay. But later, though? And he presses a hand down on himself, straining in his jock, while Tony pretends that he's adjusting Steve's uniform for him and Tony can't keep the smile off his face even though there are dark bruises under his eyes and Steve says –

Do it, Stephen . 

And Tony looks up at him, betrayal shining in his desperate eyes, and says: what?

"You can't keep doing this," Tony tells him, red-eyed and defeated. 

Steve is curled into the wall, his eyes closed. 

"Why did you give me the time gem," he slurs. 

Tony strokes his hair, his forehead, over and over. A gentle anchor. A kind deception. 

"I've never known you to be seduced by nostalgia," Tony says. "You know when things are over."

"Are you sure it wasn't nepotism," Steve rasps. 

Tony is quiet. 

"The things they said about you," Tony tells him. "They aren't true." 

"I failed, though," Steve says. The enormity of it is crushing, even now, even knowing what he knows. “No one else failed.”

"We all failed, Steve," Tony tells him. 

Steve imagines his concrete is luxurious black stone, that the glimmer of dim light from the window is the last waves of the Wakandan sunset falling in. The place where warriors rest, warriors who were never defeated. Your kind of place, T'Challa says. 

They want to be together. He can almost feel it enclosing his hand - no, start smaller, focus. They want to be together. The brilliance of them, throwing colors Steve doesn't have words for across the drifting snow. The warmth of them. The warmth in Tony's voice.

It's your strategy , Tony says, and it is the last time Steve feels like someone is proud of him. 

Concentrated force of will. Concentrated force of will. The shape of it - so finely polished, the facets so deftly cut that it looks almost perfectly smooth. The pull of it. The longing for elsewhere. For before. He can feel the slight wrongness of its energy field as it hovers above his gloved hand. 

Do it , Tony is screaming over the whirl of snow. Push.  

Something warm falls into his hand. 

"Tony," he says, but Tony is sliding his head gently to the floor, shuffling to stand in front of the window in his chains. 

An eerie red glow floods their cell. Again. 

Red light. Incursion light. 

Tony turns to him, pale, hunching, pressing on his broken ribs with one hand.

The other one he holds out, palm upturned, glowing.  

The building shakes, this time. 

The ceiling is falling. Steve shudders and waits for his next heartbeat and Steve clocks three different alarms, all of them distant, none of them about Captain America and Iron Man in their dingy little cell. 

"It's right there," Tony says, looking out the window. 

Steve sees it. The corner of it. The broad curve of the other earth. 

This one is much closer. Steve senses it, or maybe the gem senses it, its velocity. Something is artificially accelerating the process. He sees the entire harrowing trajectory: mountain ranges crashing into each other. The violence of oceans clashing. The shockwave at the point of impact ringing in his very bones. He tastes the dust, feels the echo of air leaving his lungs. 

The future is imminent, and violent, and this time, he has the means. 

Steve gasps. "We don't have time," he tells Tony. "Help me–"

Tony is frozen, gaping at the gem hovering in Steve's shaking hand. 

He's septic, he knows it. He's not strong enough, not as he is. But the him of yesterday, the day before, the him that woke up ready to throw Tony out of the fucking window - 

The gem warms, ripples . 

Past him held the gauntlet. 

The door bursts open. "Kneel," the tall one says. "Against the wall." 

Steve leans up on his elbow. Drags his limbs off the floor. Leans hard against the wall. Holds out his hand. Lets the gem shudder and vibrate and pulse. 

"No," Steve says. 

The shockwave cracks the wall. Their captors freeze, suspended, mid yell, mid step. The gem is emitting a ringing whine. Steve feels blood trickling out of his ear. It's resonating with something. 

Tony is frozen for a second, then comes back to himself. Rips the M16 out of Jesse's stone-still hands. Lands a violent blow to the tall man's crotch. Bowed over, he lifts the rifle. Jams the butt into his shoulder, swearing. Fires two quick bursts. 

Collapses. 

Steve lets it ebb. Their bodies fall. The proximal calm is over. 

"Hey," Tony says, instantly at his side. He glances at the bodies. "I'm sorry. I had to." 

"I would have done it, too," Steve agrees. 

"A lesser evil that meets with your approval," Tony points out. 

"Don't," Steve says. "That's not the same.” 

His head pounds. He is so unbelievably dizzy. He lets his body weight draw him down into a miserable crouch. He waits for his vision to resolve. 

Oh. It's resonating with him. 

"I don't know how long you have," Steve says. "Less than eight hours. Much less." 

" We don't have eight hours," Tony says, bewildered. 

"You don't," Steve corrects. 

"Up," Tony says. He stands on unsteady feet. Reaches for Steve. "Door's open." 

"Tony," Steve starts. He assesses his body honestly. "I don't think I can stand."

"I'll carry you," Tony snaps. 

Tony believes that they're going to make it. He believes that there won't be more of them. That there will be a vehicle he can operate. That he will be able to make it back to wherever he's making his home, now. That Steve will be his ally, again. That they might once again cultivate trust. 

Steve has an hour, maybe. He can feel himself sinking. He can feel himself getting further away. 

"You can't fix this, Tony," Steve tells him. 

Tony has his own private little reckoning. He stalks over to the window, dragging his chains. Grabs the bars. Tips his head against the concrete lip. Turns back. 

"I'll stay with you," he says. "If that's what you want."

"We have a little time," Steve says. Tony falls back on his heels.  

"I'm not dying," Tony says quietly, after a long moment. "I can erase this. You can give it to me."

It's not a demand. It's not even a request. It's the kind of untested crazy act of hope Steve might offer, once upon a time. 

Steve tips his head back. Looks up at the ceiling. "That's not how it works," he says, because he knows, instinctively: It came back to him . It wants to be used. It wants Steve to use it. 

He opens his palm. The gem lies there, glowing faintly. He gets impressions from it. No pull. 

"Did you fight for me," Steve asks him. "In Wakanda?" 

Tony lies down on the floor. He edges up to Steve, careful of his putrid leg, of his broken ribs. He leans his head on Steve's grimy shoulder. Where that man has been. 

"Is this okay," Tony asks, as if he is fully expecting to be denied. 

Steve aches for it. "It's okay," Steve tells him. 

Tony shudders out a breath. "I told them they were wrong about you," he said. "I told them that we don't have anything without hope. And Reed said that we make our own hope." Tony draws in a deep breath. "I think, for Reed, it may have been that simple. But not for me." 

Steve breathes. He thinks about Tony in his armor, Tony, smiling. "Are you lying again," Steve asks. 

Tony is silent, but Steve's shoulder feels wet. 

"I forgive you," Steve tells him. He thinks he is allowed a lie of his own. He kisses the crown of Tony's head. He says goodbye. 

He thinks about Tony asleep on top of him. The way his eyes move in his sleep. The way peace creeps into his face. 

Tony pushes up, wipes his face. "No, Steve," he says, sniffling. "Don't you fucking dare." He punches Steve in the shoulder. "No," he says again. 

"Love you," Steve tells him. 

No, Tony is saying, Steve! He grabs Steve's bare wrist, but the gem is already floating between them. 

Anger won't do. He pulls from his strongest selves, the ones where he felt loved. The versions of him that are better than the version of him that is dying on this floor. He thinks about the swell of affection in his belly when Tony calls him Winghead. He thinks about when they climbed into the B-52 in the Air and Space Museum and they laid side by side and Steve said are you seducing me, Mr. Stark and Tony said would you like me to be?  

"Be honest with me, this time," Steve says, and Tony leaves him for the last time. 

The time gem shatters in his hand.