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Tony Stark knew he was attractive.
It probably helped that all his life, he’d had people doting on his looks, sometimes so much so that he desperately wanted to weld their mouths shut.
Intellectually, he knew that a lot of women slept with him in hopes of getting free handouts, but they’d never once complained when he’d dragged them into his bed. And they certainly never complained about what followed.
So, the point that Tony was trying to get at is that he had always been good-looking, had certainly known it, and still did. It was just… sometimes he may have had a few issues.
But it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.
It all started about a month after the Avengers moved into his tower (and they really needed to remember that Tony really did own it).
In a manner shockingly like the prelude of the Battle of New York, the Avengers took a while to gain traction when living together too.
Unsurprisingly, the motley crew hadn’t really fit together at all, and they spent the first week and a half dancing around each other in a hilarious and frankly terrifying social ballet. Clint and Natasha stuck close, and Tony could understand that, he really could. After the Battle and the revelation that they were only human, the two of them never left each others’ sights, because maybe they stood a chance of living if they gravitated around each other like electrons around an atom. (Sometimes Tony wished he had someone like that too).
Steve and Thor (once the demi-god had come back, which was actually only a few days later, with a grin and a proclamation of ‘My Friends! My Father has granted me leave, so that I may return to Midgard!’) ate more than a horse each day – in fact, they probably actually ate the horse itself. Tony would complain about empty fridges, but he really didn’t come upstairs that often, too busy trying to ignore the frankly overwhelming display of sociality in his tower.
Of course, Steve and Thor bonded over the last pop tart (or whatever), Bruce spent a week freaking out about the whole other people thing, Clint and Natasha clung like Koalas, and Tony? Tony watched it all from the safely enclosed space of his lab, which maybe was considered voyeuristic and slightly creepy, but it was his tower.
So, after taking a while to settle in (and be comfortable enough for Natasha to stop carrying knives on her person), the Avengers finally started getting along.
It was nice, seeing them all together, finally forfeiting their horrible past experience and forging a new one, reinventing the idea of what family was to each Avenger. And if Tony still felt that he didn’t really fit in, even here, it was his own problem.
Tony put down the wrench and slid out from under the Bugatti, wiping his hands on a rag oh-so-helpfully clutched by DUM-E. ‘What are you doing so close to me?’ he asked the robot, even as he stood and moved away. ‘If you hold the rag that close I’m certain it’ll be more useful as a blindfold.’
DUM-E gave a sad little whine, and Tony reached over and gave him a solid pat, cool metal vibrating under his hand. Instantly the bot perked up, whirring happily, and spun off.
Tony took the elevator upstairs, stepping out onto the Avengers common level. There was no one on the couch, which was strange, but he knew his teammates had been a little busy lately.
Shrugging it off, he made a beeline for the kitchen, and, by proxy, the coffee machine. The smell of freshly ground beans wafted to his nose, and someone must have been psychic after all because that was just what he needed.
Grabbing the largest mug in the kitchen and pouring himself a cup, Tony rested his hip against the counter and curled around the warmth of it, breathing in the smell of the perfection of coffee. It seeped into his hands around the mug, the incremental shift soothing a little of the ache in his chest. Today was one of those days that he couldn’t seem to shake the pain, and it was dominating too much of his thinking for him to get anything useful done. But his hands had been itching, so Tony settled for tweaking his cars, something he could do in his sleep. It had been enough.
Lifting the mug to his lips, he swallowed a mouthful, warm liquid settling in his stomach and leaving a pleasant feeling as it went. More of the tight ache in his chest eased. He sighed in relief.
‘Hey Tony,’ a voice said from the table.
He looked up to see Steve, Bruce, and Clint sitting at the table, mugs in their hands, although Bruce’s looked like tea.
‘Hey,’ he replied, smiling. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘It’s raining,’ Clint explained, just a hint of misery in his tone.
Tony looked out of the window to his left, and – huh. It was actually pissing down outside, the clouds full and angry, water crashing against the window. Tony wondered how he could have missed that, but really? Coffee had always been the priority. At least the rain probably explained the extra pain radiating from the area around the arc reactor.
He looked back to the three of them, faces a little too far to the side of miserable, and took a seat next to Steve, mug still close to his chest, guarding now.
‘What are you working on?’ Bruce asked him, taking in his appearance.
Tony was probably covered in grease, could feel it sitting heavily on his skin, like a layer of security. He could never wear the armor all the time, but for some reason, ever since he’d returned from Afghanistan, Tony felt like he didn’t fit his own skin. Sometimes it felt too tight, pulled taught over muscle and bone, and other times it felt loose, like he was drooping, unable to catch himself. Yet he never felt like that in the armor. When he was Iron Man, he put a layer between himself and the world, an all-encompassing shield that stopped any pain from coming in. But if he couldn’t have that, the heavy sensation of grease on his skin provided a sort of comfort, both a shield and a reminder that he was still a hands-on engineer. He always had been a fan of the heavy lifting.
‘I’m taking apart the Veyron. If I increase fuel efficiency I can easily get another 20 miles per hour onto the top speed.’
Clint snorted at him, rolling his eyes. ‘The fastest car on Earth, and it’s still not good enough.’
‘The best stuff is what you make yourself,’ Steve countered, lips curling as he took a gulp of coffee.
‘Hear, hear,’ Bruce remarked, and they toasted, taking long draughts of their drinks.
Tony laughed at the ridiculousness of it, the domesticity. The rain crashed harder against the window, and he winced as the laughter pulled his chest.
‘Hey, are you alright?’ Steve asked in that Brooklyn accent of his, all nice and proprietary, because that’s who he really was.
‘Yeah,’ Tony replied, pulling the mug closer into his chest. ‘My chest just aches, especially on days like this.’
‘The reactor?’
Tony could hear the trepidation in Steve’s voice, the softer tone. Ever since they’d moved in a month ago, the Avengers hadn’t asked him a single question about the reactor, or the subsequent Afghanistan Incident, not even about the Palladium poisoning. He appreciated it, he really did, but maybe if they talked about it, he could too. Tony was never good at initiating serious discussions of any sort, and he never wanted to feel like an inconvenience, so those sorts of matters tended to stay buried.
‘Yeah,’ he sighed softly, ‘he did good, but there’s only so much you can do in a cave, you know?’
His teammates hmmed thoughtfully, familiar with lasting pain.
Tony had finally received an opening. He seized it before he could stop himself.
‘They had to take out my sternum, take the ends off of my ribs… It’s pretty messed up in there, and that’s not even counting the shrapnel.’ The ache intensified the longer he talked about his reactor; the more he focused on the pain. He curled up tighter, the slump of his shoulders intensifying the pain, but it made him feel a little bit safer for it.
‘Tony?’ Bruce’s voice was soft and careful. ‘Would you like me to have a look?’
Tony’s eyes instantly darted to Steve and Clint, nervous about exposing himself in front of so many people. It would be hard enough to do so in front of Bruce, a surprisingly professional medical doctor, let alone his teammates. He hesitated, mouth open, when Bruce pushed himself out of his chair and placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder, tugging lightly.
Tony went.
Bruce dragged Tony down to the lab and sat him on the medical bed.
Steve and Clint trailed after them, reaching the lab door and leaning against the wall, eyeing him, asking permission. Tony nodded at the two of them. Bruce glared, saying ‘You better not disturb us,’ but letting them in anyway.
Bruce worked quietly, the tinker of medical equipment and the sound of breathing lulling Tony into a stupor. The air in the lab was a little bit warm, pleasantly so, because he was sure the rain, even if they weren’t in it, had given them all a phantom chill.
The doctor approached Tony with a set of heart monitor chords dangling from his hands. ‘I’ll need you to take off your shirt,’ he ordered matter-of-factly.
Tony reached for the hem of his shirt, hesitating. ‘I’ve never shown anyone before,’ he admitted, pretending his voice didn’t cut out mid-sentence.
Clint placed a hand on his shoulder, the warm weight an unfamiliar comfort, something that he found he wouldn’t mind having some more of.
‘It’s okay,’ Clint reassured, stepping back enough to give him room, but keeping close. Tony reached for the hem of his shirt – a singlet, really; it was much easier for being in the workshop – and pulled it over his head, throwing it to the side.
His arms were still streaked with grease and he could feel a thick smudge on the side of his face, but the skin under where the shirt had been was mostly clean. He felt bare, exposed, too vulnerable to be truly comfortable, and he wondered if this was what Bruce meant when he said being exposed was a nightmare. Tony certainly felt raw, twitchy as a nerve.
‘I’m going to attach these to your back so that we don’t aggravate the area around the reactor.’ He felt the press of the electrodes to his back, and with the high-tech equipment he’d bought for Bruce he had no doubt that they would work perfectly.
Steve was staring, but not at his chest – into his eyes, like he was searching Tony’s very soul for something vitally important. The weight of his gaze was heavy, focus intense, and all of a sudden he didn’t really like the silence anymore, didn’t want those eyes on him. He was baring himself, not just his body (as he’d done a million times before, and that had never once bothered him), but everything. Now his body told a story, more than that of just an engineer, with the burns from soldering irons, welder sparks and heat exposure taking a backseat compared to the ugly mess that was his chest. His body told his story, now, and he wasn’t sure how much of it he wanted them to see.
‘Yinsen did a good job, considering,’ his mouth blurted without permission. ‘I mean, we were in a cave, held captive by terrorists, and working with recycled everything. They ordered him to fix me, and he did… sort of.’
Tony kept his eyes down, to the side so he couldn’t see the mess that was his own flesh. Bruce stepped in front of him, taking a close examination of the reactor, and he didn’t flinch, just kept on talking.
‘Did you know I’d met Yinsen before? It was at some conference overseas or something. I was so drunk I can’t remember him. I wish I did. Anyway, he did what he could and I’m still alive, so I guess it worked. They had this car battery, and there were all these wires that kept tangling around my fingers so badly that I thought I’d drop it, the thing that was keeping me alive. So I built the reactor, a circle of blue light, shorted out that damned cave while I was doing it, which probably didn’t help but I needed to rebel somehow…’ He trailed off. His face felt dry but there was nothing he wanted to do more than just curl up into a ball and grieve. He’d never even told Pepper about Yinsen.
Clint rested his hip on Tony’s bed, coming close but not touching. ‘Is that why you don’t want us to see?’
Tony shrugged, pretended it didn’t matter, didn’t cut him to the confused core of him so much. ‘I… women still looked at me, After. I was too busy with the armor, until I needed something else, and I found some girl at a party. She was gorgeous, so willing, and then she took off my shirt, and everything changed. She couldn’t stand to look at me.’
‘You haven’t brought anyone home since?’
‘Nah. I just guess… I wanted someone who saw me. Who could look past the reactor glowing in my chest. I’ve had more important things to do, anyway…. Look, I’m not ashamed of the arc reactor. In fact, it led me to Iron Man, so I can’t be ashamed of any aspect of it. It’s just not something that I can be open about.’
Bruce’s computer called for him, and he went over, looked at the scans. Tony shut up and waited for the conclusion.
‘You were lucky,’ Bruce said cautiously. ‘The reactor housing goes down four inches into your chest. Any person other than you wouldn’t have survived.’ He turned the screen and pointed to the scan, now side-on. ‘If you didn’t have a build like that, if you didn’t have a deep chest, if you hadn’t been a hardware kind of guy, you would have died.’
Clint broke in, ‘even Cap’s chest isn’t deep enough for that. None of us would have survived in that cave, Tony, and you need to acknowledge that what other people think of the reactor doesn’t matter.’
Before Tony could object, Bruce steamrolled over him. ‘The area around the reactor is swollen and a little red. With the scar tissue, it’s going to be much more uncomfortable. I have a very effective anti-inflammatory cream here if you are interested.’
‘Sure.’
Bruce reached around him and handed it to Steve. ‘Gently,’ he ordered. ‘Apply a large amount in the area directly around the reactor.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Steve grinned, twisting the lid off and rubbing some onto his hands. He reached his hands out to Tony’s chest, waiting for a moment, asking permission with his eyes. Tony gave him a little nervous smile.
Steve’s fingers were warm where they touched his chest, just the tips of his fingers on the very outside of the inflamed area. Slowly, he brought his palms flat on his pectoral muscles, and Tony sighed with the sensations. The nerves around the area had been screwed around with, and everything felt different, impulses firing in the wrong directions. It was overwhelming, sensation firing randomly in his chest, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
Steve gently worked his way towards the center, concentration completely focused on Tony, eyes watching every micro reaction, flicking between his face and chest constantly. Tony felt kind of honored by the attention, humbled in a way that he hadn’t been for a long time.
When Steve’s fingers traced the outline of the reactor and explored its shape, he tensed, barely resisting the urge to push Steve’s gentle, wonderful hands away.
‘It’s ugly,’ he said, voice flat.
Steve gave him a soft look, something unidentifiable but vaguely familiar in his eyes. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘It’s beautiful.’ And he bent his golden head and pressed a soft kiss right into the center of the arc reactor.
Warmth spread through Tony like a disease, somehow making him feel so warm he was the sun. When Steve’s head turned up, his breath caught in his chest.
Lips turned into a tiny, private smile, Steve took Tony’s grease-filthy face in his anti-inflammatory gel covered hands, and kissed him.
His lips were soft, gentle, and his jawline was sharp under Tony’s hands as they came up to caress him. The kiss was a chaste thing, like a little bird, so shy and small, but so beautiful. To Tony, the kiss was everything he’d ever wanted.
Their lips clung together as Steve pulled back, their hands on each others’ faces and eyes locked. And Steve whispered what he’d secretly been yearning to hear since the Incident.
‘You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.’