Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Like everyone else, his sig doesn’t appear on his wrist until well after his tenth birthday. But when he wakes up on the morning of his sixth, he finds his mother perched on the side of his bed. Maria Stark’s hair is down around her shoulders, all soft dark curls the way Tony likes them best, and when she sees that he’s awake she smiles. She’s got his wrist in her lap, index finger lazily tracing a line that’s not there yet, and Tony pushes himself up onto one elbow and rubs at his eyes.

“Mommy? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I bought you a present.”

Just like that Tony remembers what day it is. “Will I be allowed to keep it?”

Her smile tightens a bit at the corners. “Yes, little one. This gift is special and your father and I have already talked about it.”

“What is it?”

By way of response she reaches into the pocket of her skirt and pulls out a band. It’s striped red, white and blue and about two inches thick, wide enough to hide even the largest scrawl. She slides it over his fingers and pushes it past the widest part of his hand until it pops down around his wrist, settling easily into place. Tony touches the material curiously, rubbing it between his fingers: not rubber or cloth, but with a peculiar synthetic feel he’s only felt one other time.

“Will I always have to wear it?”

“That’s your choice, Anthony.” And she only calls him that when she needs him to listen, so he does. “Your sig is special and you don’t have to share it with anyone if you don’t want to. It can be a very private thing. Some people even choose to ignore it. They never search for their sig for their own reasons, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” Her lips thin a little more.

Tony considers this seriously. “What if I want to find them?”

“Then by all means, little one, search far and wide until you find them.” She pushes him over a little bit and lays down beside him, their heads tucked together on the pillow. “Your sig is the one person in the world who will understand you at any given time, the best match for you. That kind of closeness can be hard to tolerate, having someone who knows you that well.”

He steals a glance at her band, the slender one of gold that’s a perfect match for his father’s. He’s not seen the sig on her wrist for a long time, not since the last time she rebuked his efforts at removing it, but he can remember seeing it when he was a baby. Howard Stark’s deliberately rough scratch is intimately familiar to him now, the dark letters etched into Maria’s pale skin like a shadow on pavement. It was comforting.

“Can it change?”

Maria stills. “Why would you – yes.” She exhales slowly, her eyes fluttering shut. “Yes, baby, it can change. You see, as you grow up you’re going to change. You won’t be the same person you are now, and things can happen to make you a completely different man. I’m not saying that will happen, but it might. The sig who compliments you when you’re thirteen years old might be different from the sig you find at thirty. Some people refuse to accept that possibility, though, and they cling to their first sig so it won’t change. It’ll only happen if you’re open to it.”

“Mommy?” The bitterness in her voice frightens him.

“The Starks have a history of being their own worst enemies, Anthony,” she says quietly, looking down at her band. “Don’t be like that, alright?”

“Yes, Mommy,” he says, even though he doesn’t really understand. She smiles, though, and kisses his cheek and tells him he’s a good boy anyway. He’s expecting to have to get up after that, even though he can tell that it’s still dark outside, but Maria makes no move to leave the warmth of the bed and he snuggles eagerly beneath her arm when she offers it to him.

Later, when she’s fallen asleep and her breathing is deep, he slides a finger under her band and peeks. He doesn’t recognize the unfamiliar sig written there.

--

His sig appears on a random Tuesday while he’s in a boring as hell class that’s supposed to be challenging, since it’s a fourth year university class. The professor is babbling away and Tony’s scribbling equations of his own making when a sudden burst of white-hot pain on the tender inner flesh of his wrist makes his hand jerk, leaving a thick line right in the middle of his equations. The kid next to him grunts in pain when Tony’s elbow impacts his ribs and rears back, nearly falling out of his chair.

“The fuck?” he says, loud enough to be heard over the professor. “Watch what you’re doing, kid!”

There are worse nicknames but none get to him like that one does, and Tony ignores him with pointed silence as he catches the red, white and blue band with his thumb and hitches it up. The sig on his wrist is delicate, the two words formed with the sort of precision that suggests the writer has practiced their signature multiple times until each letter is one smooth swoop. The ink is lighter, blue, but the name is still clearly legible and he commits it to memory in the span of few seconds it takes for the guy beside him to get annoyed at being ignored.

Pepper Potts.

Pepper is probably a girl’s name, so at least he knows that much. That’s the thing about sigs, they don’t tell you anything else. He’d wondered, though, if his sig would be male or female. Same sex sigs usually turn into a platonic friendship closer than siblings, but he’d have been willing to take it to the next level. Not romantic, since he doesn’t do that shit, but not just friends. Not-platonic.

The guy beside him reaches over and jostles Tony's shoulder hard. “Hey! I said watch what you’re doing!”

“What’s going on back there?” says the professor, turning away from the board and squinting up at them. “Stark, are you causing trouble again?”

Because it’s always Tony’s fault, he just rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother to protest. “I have to go,” he says, and, ignoring the sputtering of the professor, he swings his bag over his shoulder and hurries up the steps to the door. He leaves the classroom behind, already pulling out his Starkphone. His heart is thudding and the band around his wrist, something he’s become so used to he barely notices, feels heavy and cumbersome for the first time in years.

Maria doesn’t answer the call, but that’s not surprising and it doesn’t make him worry either. He goes home, to the small and cramped apartment that Howard refuses to pay for even though his son is only sixteen, and gets back to work in the makeshift lab he created in the tiny bedroom. He’s working on a rough version of artificial intelligence that will laugh in the faces of everyone who told him that the technology wouldn’t be available for years, maybe never, because Tony Stark doesn’t wait, he creates.

The codes expand beneath his fingers, the physical parts combining together seamlessly, and he doesn’t notice that his phone has been ringing repeatedly until the idiot who lives above him starts fighting with his girlfriend again. They do this every night, but the combined sound of their voices and the furniture they’re slamming around is enough to jerk him out of his work. He becomes aware of several things all at once: pangs in his empty belly, cramps in his hands and neck, and his phone.

“About time, Mom,” he mutters, spinning to find his phone in the mess. The ringing helps him track it down and he frowns to see Obie’s name instead of Maria’s, answers it anyway while trying to remember whether or not he was supposed to be somewhere.

“Tony,” Obie says, and the half full cup of cold coffee slips from Tony’s fingers.

He never does get the chance to tell Maria Stark that his sig appeared.

--

Tony thinks about searching for her, for Pepper. Sigs can be born anywhere in the world, distance has nothing to do with it, but he’d be able to find her if he really wanted to. Even just by virtue of making a name for himself with SI, he’s improving the chance that she’ll come to him. Once or twice he nearly begins a search, but he always stops at the last minute. Usually he goes and finds some hot girl or guy or the bottom of a bottle to take his mind off of it.

Right now his sig is just a fantasy, and fantasies don’t leave.

--

Tony’s not actually the one who hires Virginia Potts. She just shows up in his lab one day with Obie, dressed in a moderately expensive suit and wearing a set of heels that makes her tower over him, clutching a tablet to her chest that no doubt contains a long list of places that he is supposed to be. Tony hardly spares her a glance, too preoccupied with ignoring Obie as he gives a long and detailed lecture on how it’s time to start being more responsible and why he can’t just keep living the billionaire-genius-playboy-philanthropist lifestyle no matter how much practice he’s had at it.

“And that is why I have hired Miss Potts,” Obie says, and in spite of himself Tony straightens up to listen. “I’m hoping that she’ll be the driving force you need to get more involved in Stark Industries.”

“Any more involved and you won’t know what to do with me,” says Tony, lobbing a new set of prints in Obie’s direction. Used to this, Obie catches it easily. His eyebrows go up when he realizes what he’s holding. It takes him a full 34 seconds to recover, Tony counts them.

“Be that as it may. I’ll leave you to it,” he says, making a quick retreat with the prints. Tony goes back to work. He gets exactly one minute of silence.

“You have an R&D meeting in exactly 49 minutes that’s important,” Virginia says.

“Don’t care.”

“Mr. Stane asked me to make sure you were there. Apparently he mentioned something about the possibility of the board seeing you as unfit for ever taking over as CEO if you don’t begin showing up for meetings.” She pauses, and when it becomes clear that Tony has not magically become swayed by her comments, she adds, “He also said that the biggest part of my job would be corralling you around, and that if I wasn’t capable of it my presence here at the company would not be necessary.”

“Guess this isn’t going to work out for you then,” Tony mumbles around the screwdriver in his mouth.

Virginia doesn’t say anything for several seconds, though he knows she’s still there. Then – “The lights, please, JARVIS.”

The lights in the workshop go off.

He blinks into complete darkness. “What the –”

“Thank you JARVIS,” she says pleasantly.

“Traitor!” Tony squeaks, wheeling around to point an accusing screwdriver in her direction. “How did you do that?”

“Mr. Stane introduced me to JARVIS when we entered the building. We had a lovely conversation while I was waiting for Mr. Stane to finish a business call.”

Tony stares at her suspiciously. She returns the look with a calm one, as though used to and even expecting the scrutiny. JARVIS doesn’t warm up to anyone that quickly. He’s purposely programmed to be wary of everyone who enters the house, introduced by Obie or not. “JARVIS?”

“It has been 43 hours since you last slept, sir, and longer still since the last time you consumed anything other than coffee or pizza,” says JARVIS. If it’s possible for an A.I. to sound guilty, he definitely does. “Miss Potts agreed that if I helped her to get you to your meeting on time, she would see to it that you had something more substantial to eat and then went to bed afterwards.”

“That’s not… you can’t…” he stutters, outraged.

She ignores him, slinking her way closer until she can reach out and take the screwdriver from his hand. “Your meeting is at noon sharp. That means you have exactly twenty minutes to take a shower and get dressed in a suit. Wear your grey one with the red shirt, it makes you look more alert. I’ll be waiting for you in the car. If you’re prompt, there will also be a box of fresh doughnuts for you to eat while you browse through the files. It’s not much better than coffee, but it will do for the time being.”

Disregarding the majority of her spiel, he focuses on the important part: “… Doughnuts from Antonio’s?”

“Correct.”

For a moment they glare at each other, at an impasse, before Tony’s stomach lets out an embarrassingly loud growl. Virginia cracks a smile, her blue eyes twinkling, and in spite of himself he can’t help thinking that she’s pretty. If she let her hair down a little and smiled more, she might even be beautiful. He looks away fast and gets up, familiar pain throbbing at the movement of stiff muscles.

“Twenty minutes?” he says, because without lights he can’t do the work anyway.

“That’s right. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

“Yes, Miss Potts.”

--

It ends up being a coincidence, Tony finding out about her name. He’s wandering through SI (actually avoiding the woman in question, truth be known), thumbs jabbing at his phone, when he hears a couple of interns chatting. Workplace gossip is nothing new, but the name ‘Potts’ catches his attention. Against all odds Virginia lasted through her first week, then her first month, then her first year. She regularly conspires with JARVIS against him and has Tony wrapped around her little finger (or maybe it’s the other way around, though she’ll never admit it) and the two of them just work.

So to hear that she’s known around the company as Pepper Potts is pretty fucking terrifying.

He leaves the building immediately, retreating home – all the way home, back to cute girls and sun-warmed beaches and the white stripe of flesh that neatly frames his sig, covered now by a plain metal band not unlike the one Maria used to wear. He has never shared the sig with anyone, not even Obie, but now there is someone who knows. She knows.

Why hasn’t she said anything?

He cracks open a bottle of whiskey and takes his problems to the bottom, and that’s where she finds him several days later: sprawled on the couch with a couple of empty liquor bottles and the tablet balanced precariously on his knees. She stands in the doorway for a couple of long minutes, and he blearily wonders if this will be the thing that drives Pepper Potts away.

“So you know,” she says quietly.

Damn his habit of speaking his thoughts out loud for JARVIS to record. Tony scowls at her and sits up, or tries to. The tablet goes flying and she catches it neatly, tucking it under her arm like that’s what she meant to do all along.

“I’m not leaving, Tony. It took me a long time to find a position that I like, one that doesn’t end with me being treated as nothing more than a pretty face.” She steps closer and sits down on the couch beside him, then holds her wrist out. Like him she wears a band, though the one adorning her arm is silver and delicate and feminine. She starts to pull the band up.

“Don’t.” He doesn’t want to see, already knows what he’ll see.

“You need to see.” The band snaps off and there it is.

Anthony Stark.

His stomach flips and nausea tightens his throat, but he swallows hard and manages to keep from throwing up all over her thousand dollar suit. “Why didn’t you mention it?”

“Why should I? I wanted to get this job on my own merit, not because of something that happens to be on my arm instead of someone else’s.” Virginia – Pepper – tips her chin up, determined, as she puts the band back on. “No one knows except for my family, my parents. I haven’t planned on telling anyone, either. I’m not here to – to do anything other than what I’ve been doing, Mr. Stark. I want to be your PA, I want to be good at my job, and that’s all. It just so happens that I work for you instead of someone else.”

Tony eyes her, but there’s nothing in her face to indicate she’s lying. “You can call me Tony.”

She tilts her head. “I like to be called Pepper.”

“Pep,” he decides, christening her and ignoring her frown, because the name Pepper sits heavy on his tongue and refuses to come out properly. She shoots him an exasperated look but doesn’t complain, instead choosing to kick her shoes off and let her hair down from her bun. She curls up beside him and steals his bottle of whiskey.

--

They’re good for a long time, and if he thought they worked before it's nothing compared to now. But then Afghanistan happens, and it seems to be one set of circumstances after another: Obie’s betrayal, the dip in stock when the public finds out about Iron Man, the subsequent fight with the government over his suit, Justin and his idiot friends, the palladium poisoning. Pepper gives him hell about that, as though he’d set out to deliberately poison himself. For once it’s not his fault and she still gets mad; she gets even more pissed when he points that out before covering her face with her hands and bursting into tears. It’s not the first time he’s ever seen Pepper cry and it does not bode well.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, too quickly, fumbling to make her stop. “Should I buy you strawberries? Or no, wait, you can’t –”

Pepper’s shoulders start to shake, and when she drops her hands she’s laughing instead. “You’re crazy,” she says, but she’s looking at him the way she looked at him when they stood on the rooftop and he kissed her for the first time. It’s a look that makes his insides warm and shivery, and this time it has nothing to do with poisons or toxins.

“Crazy in a good way,” Tony says, perhaps not as confidently as he’d like given the way she smiles tearfully.

“In the best way,” she agrees, carefully setting her hand on top of his hair. The feel of her nails scratching lightly at the nape of his neck gives him the chills, but the expression on her face is still too searching for his liking. “Tony, is this going to be a thing now? You scaring me half to death?”

Lying to Pepper never goes over well and Tony knows that, she knows him better than anyone else and that includes Rhodey, but he does it anyway. He looks her in the eyes and tells her that it won't become a thing, and he doesn't think she believes him but she smiles anyway and kisses him again after murmuring something about how relieved she is that he's still in one piece. She tastes like coffee and vanilla and he licks his lips, his hand finding a home on the curve of her behind, and he thinks to himself that maybe this is a promise he might actually manage to keep.

Loki changes that. Well actually Captain America being found and resuscitated changes that, though Tony doesn’t realize it at the time. He won’t put two and two together until much later, when Coulson will make a seemingly casual comment about the actual day and time that Steve woke up and Tony puts it together with that weird burning on his wrist that one afternoon while he’s working at the armor. At the time it doesn’t even merit lifting his head long enough to check and see if he’s burned himself, and soon the pain is swept away in sparks and oil and improvements.

Later, JARVIS will confirm it.

Still, though, Tony likes to put the blame on Loki and the Chitauri and the bomb that he flies through a hole in the sky not expecting to come back. Tony doesn't remember hitting the ground: the last thing he remembers is flying through the portal and then waking up on the ground surrounded by Captain America, Thor and Hulk. His whole body aches fiercely but the light in Cap’s blue eyes when he sees Tony jerk awake makes it all worthwhile.

In the confusion, the utter pandemonium that is New York City trying to recuperate from the invasion, checking his sig doesn't occur to him. He's got better things to do, and anyway he knows what it says.

He thinks he knows what it says, but he's wrong.

--

Pepper corners him about three weeks after the attack. They've both been working overtime trying to fix things, to do whatever they can to help the city recuperate from the seemingly insurmountable damage. She looks tired and worn and she doesn't kiss him the way she usually does, keeping the distance between them small but noticeable. He raises an eyebrow and rubs the towel briskly over his face after what could probably be termed the shortest shower in history, seriously his hair is barely damp.

"What's up, peppy pie," he says lightly.

She rolls her eyes at him. "I think it would be a smart move for Stark Industries to donate some money to the city of New York. Not just you, but the company as well."

"Do whatever you want. I trust your judgment." He grabs the nearest shirt and yanks it on, not caring that the front of it is streaked with grease and splattered with small coffee stains from when Dummy startled him and he dropped his mug. "Sorry, Pep, but I've got to go. There's a construction crew trying to evacuate the remains of the station down on -"

"Tony."

There's a quiet inflection in her voice that makes him wince, and he can see it coming. It's not you, it's me, when really it is you but she's just too nice to admit it. He can admit, if only to himself, that he has wondered when Pepper will throw in the towel. The woman's a fucking saint, a goddess among mere mortals, and she's done an admirable job of putting up with his bullshit on multiple levels over the past several years. She's put up with a lot, too much, and now she's finally reached her limit. He tries, but can't bring himself, to be surprised that she's choosing now to end it when she's got a decent excuse. The truth will sting deep, it always does, that Tony is just too much for one person to handle.

"If you're looking for a heart to heart -"

"I need to tell you this, Tony, it's important -"

"Cap is going to have my ass if I'm late, Pep -"

"Have you checked your sig lately?"

"And Fury said if we started fighting again he was gonna - wait, what?"

Pepper closes her eyes briefly. "Your sig, Tony. Have you looked at it in the past couple of days?"

"No, why would I?" That's been the last thing on his mind. He glances automatically at the metal band. Some people take them off after they meet their sig, bearing their flesh as a badge of pride. Tony thinks that's a monumentally stupid idea. It's bad enough that the whole world is already aware of how much Pepper Potts means to him. Speculation runs wild and everyone wants to know if their sigs match; confirming that is the case means that Pepper will become even more of a target than she already is.

And of course, it would also open Pepper up to being the butt of numerous rumors about how she really earned her job as the CEO of Stark Industries. There's nothing Pepper prides herself more on than the attention and respect she gives her job, and that kind of press would damage her in some way - and then Tony would have to buy some companies and ruin some lives and maybe even get out the repulsors, and in the end it's easier to just keep their sigs covered and let the world wonder.

So no, he hasn't looked at it. Not since the morning after he and Pepper first went to bed together and he woke up first. He glanced at his sig then just to make sure it still said Pepper Potts, that this hadn't been some incredible dream, and he'd only had time for a glimpse before Pepper was laughing and pinning him down and climbing on top of him.

"I think you should."

His heart skips a beat and it has nothing to do with the arc reactor and everything to do with the look on her face, the way she's biting her lip. He remembers, then, that quiet morning in bed with Maria Stark when she told him how sigs could change, and he doesn't want to think about what that means. He can't think about it, not now when the clock is ticking down and he has about five minutes to haul ass downtown or Fury is going to follow through on his threat.

"I have to go," he says, avoiding her eyes, and leaves the room in a hurry.

--

Though Tony does not extend an invitation for them to move in, one by one the other Avengers just sort of appear in the tower following the battle. Well, to be fair he forces Bruce to move in, and Steve asks because he has a condition that keeps him from being anything but excessively polite, but everyone else is just there one morning when he surfaces for coffee. Pepper smirks at him from where she's sitting beside Natasha and Tony blinks at her fuzzily, the edges of his vision gone grey from exhaustion, and decides not to ask.

Captain America's sig was not Peggy Carter, the way most people expect. It was Bucky Barnes, his brother in everything but blood. Tony knows this better than anyone; he'd been subjected to several of Howard's rants growing up that the captain might have had a better chance of survival had his wrist not gone blank after Barnes died. It's rare for there to be no sig, but it does happen particularly after trauma and death. Howard had called it a waste and Tony just remembered all over again about people who weren't willing to accept change and said nothing.

Natasha doesn’t have a sig. She wears a plain metal band around her wrist when she leaves the Tower to keep people from asking question, but sometimes she’ll leave it off when she’s relaxed and the tell-tale ink is missing from her flesh. The first time she catches him looking, Tony decides never to ask. The split second look of sorrow and wistfulness in her eyes speaks volumes.

Bruce’s sig reads Betty Ross in tiny, cramped writing, which surprises no one considering that Bruce is still head over heels for her, but that disappears when he transforms into the Hulk.

Thor is from Asgard and they don’t have this “intriguing Midgardian custom”. He’s fascinated by the concept of sigs and doesn’t seem to mind that Jane’s sig reads Darcy Lewis and vice versa, since apparently sigs don’t include aliens for some odd reason.

Clint has a sig and it says Phillip Coulson, and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind which Phillip Coulson that refers to. That’s actually how they figure out Coulson’s still alive: Tony finds Clint sprawled on the couch one morning, drunk off his ass in a way that the man never is, close to tears and ranting about how his sig keeps giving him false hope. After rounding up Bruce and Natasha to take care of him, Tony starts a thorough search of SHIELD’s surveillance footage. It takes several days of methodical searching by JARVIS, but eventually he finds what he’s looking for.

Coulson’s sig, and Tony has verified this with his own eyes (it was just to make sure the man was really Agent Phillip Coulson, not just for curiosity’s sake thank you very much), does say Clint Barton. And their relationship, as soon as Coulson finishes ripping into Fury and returns to the Tower, is very much not-platonic.

Pepper’s sig does not say Anthony Stark, that’s all he knows. They try to keep it together at first, but she stops sleeping in his bed and kisses become fewer and far between until they’ve fallen into something resembling their old routine, and then finally a couple of months after the invasion Pepper comes to him and confesses that she just can’t do it anymore. The Avengers have only been called to assemble a handful of times, and each time she worries Iron Man won’t be coming back. It’s bittersweet, the realization that Pepper’s acceptance of Iron Man and Tony Stark being one and the same is the thing that ultimately breaks them apart.

Tony doesn’t know what his sig says. What’s the point?

Chapter Text

Living together does not come easily for any of them. Bruce and Tony are used to being alone, Natasha and Clint to only having each other and Coulson as company. Steve is – was – used to the Howling Commandoes, and that kind of rugged camaraderie is a while in coming. Thor is the only one who doesn’t really have any difficulty, and that’s because Tony maintains that Thor could make friends with pretty much anyone if he really wanted to – the only exception being, of course, his little brother.

It doesn’t escape his notice that Pepper stops coming around as much, starts easing distance between them slowly now that the others are there to fill the gap, changing their relationship back to the way it used to be. For a while that’s all he can think about even though he pretends not to notice, pretends it doesn’t hurt, and buries himself even more deeply in work. His productivity shoots through the roof, new items for Stark Industries and SHIELD appearing daily. More important than that is his work for the Avengers, the new weaponry and communication systems that will help to keep them from harm, and if it keeps him from lingering on thoughts of Pepper so much the better.

That’s where he is, what he’s doing, when the doors behind him slide open and tentative footsteps pad over to his workstation. Tony is slumped over, forehead pressed against the counter, trying to find the clarity of mind to keep working on a new set of knives for Natasha. His nose twitches when he catches the scent of fresh coffee and then, miraculously, he finds the strength to sit up and accept the mug that’s being offered to him. He gulps half the mug in one go, letting out a contented moan. This is Bruce’s work, he knows, only Bruce knows how to manipulate the beans into a true work of art.

He doesn’t realize he’s babbling until Steve chuckles. “There’s more where that comes from if you want to come get it.”

“Steve?” Tony says, blinking up at him. It slips out without his permission and he curses his big mouth and tendency to call the man ‘Steve’ in private as opposed to Rogers. Things are still tense between them, still wary, ringing with the echo of cruel words thrown heedlessly around on the carrier.

“Yes… Tony.” The slight hesitation is audible, but Steve still offers a warm smile. “JARVIS contacted me while I was training in the gym and mentioned that you’d been down here for over 30 hours straight. He seemed to think that if a call to assemble went off, you’d be less than optimal. Is that true? Have you been awake for that long?”

“Um,” Tony says, not because he doesn’t want to answer but because it’s a genuine struggle to remember. He vaguely recalls crashing on the couch at some point, but was that before or after he made the modifications to the blueprints of the carrier’s engines? He drinks more of the coffee and finally goes for evasion with, “Thanks for the coffee, Cap, but JARVIS didn’t need to bring you into this.” He shoots a betrayed look at the ceiling in spite of himself, because there is a certain AI who is going to be donated to MIT in the very near future.

“This being what’s happening between you and Miss Potts?” Steve says quietly, and when Tony starts to turn on him he holds his hands up quickly. “I realize it’s not my place, but you seem to be… having a hard time with it, that’s all. I thought you might want to talk.” He’s looking increasingly uncomfortable now, fidgeting like he wants to run away and maybe even regrets coming down in the first place.

Tony stares at him for a few seconds. He might be spending most of his time hiding in the lab, but that doesn’t mean he’s oblivious to what’s going on in the tower. This is probably the first time Steve’s reached out to anyone and it would have to be the fucked up recluse. He sighs. “There’s nothing really to talk about. Pep decided that she couldn’t handle the stress of being left behind. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming ahead of time.”

“But she’s your sig, isn’t she?” And when Tony gives him a look, he adds, “I saw it in your file.”

Great. He makes a mental note to hack into SHIELD soon. Though it does give him a certain amount of pleasure to know they have the wrong information. “Not anymore.”

“I don’t –” Steve pauses, rubbing at the back of his neck, and okay maybe Tony feels a tiny bit sorry for him. Sigs were like sacred back in the 40s, the ultimate fairy tale, and two people who matched breaking up was pretty much unheard of.

“Pep and I don’t match anymore,” he admits. “I mean, I haven’t looked at mine – but she made that pretty clear. I guess it makes sense. I don’t know why someone like her would be a match for someone like me.”

“Tony.”

There’s something in Steve’s expression that gets him flustered and Tony spins away, gulping the last of the coffee in a couple of huge swallows. “Anyway I never put much stock into that,” he says briskly. Not after his parents. “Pep’s better off with someone else, I knew that even before our sigs changed.”

It’s evident from the long silence behind him that Steve doesn’t believe him. But, displaying the excellent sense of tact that most people think that Tony lacks, he drops it in favor of saying, “Why don’t you come upstairs with me? Bruce is cooking supper and has more coffee, and Coulson’s decided to instate a movie night. He says we’re watching something called Mulan.”

Mulan. Tony drops his head, struggling against the urge to laugh. He loses. “JARVIS, save my progress.”

“Yes sir.”

“And don’t think you’re forgiven,” he adds.

“Of course not,” JARVIS intones with a poorly hidden inflection of amusement that indicates he knows all too well that there will be no further retribution for his actions. Tony rolls his eyes as he gets up, because honestly his kids walk all over him sometimes.

“C’mon, Cap,” he says, slapping Steve on the shoulder. “Let’s go defeat some Huns.”

--

Tony falls asleep watching the movie and only wakes up the next morning when Clint, the supposed assassin, trips over his foot trying to sneak out of the room. He sits up from where he’s been slumped against the sofa with every intention of retreating back to the lab, but Bruce is making breakfast with Coulson’s help and there’s pancakes, and then he hears about Darcy threatening to take Steve on an expedition to buy clothing and ends up volunteering for that instead. The look of sheer gratitude Steve shoots him makes it worthwhile.

It takes a while but being around them, the Avengers, his team, starts to feel normal. Coming across Natasha in the kitchen or hearing Clint in the ceiling, finding huge stacks of pop-tarts in the cupboard and eating every day (or as often as Bruce can be coaxed out of his lab to cook): it’s a scary level of domestication Tony’s never expected. The arguments between he and Steve don't stop, but the shots meant to hurt gradually change into affectionate bickering that Tony begins to look forward to.

He has no idea how this came to be and he dreads the day when it might disappear, because if there’s one thing that he’s learned it’s that the good things don’t last. The first time he looks up from a Starkpad, mind hazy with figures and equations, and sees Steve sitting across from him, sketching, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Steve’s face is so serious, so focused, and the warm swell in his chest is… this is how it felt with Pepper, this is how it started.

It’s terrifying.

Almost a year to the day that Pepper breaks it off, Tony takes off his band. The flesh underneath is white compared to the rest of his skin, untouched by the sun. He looks at the name scrawled across his veins for a very long time, not even breathing until JARVIS calls his name and he inhales automatically, so suddenly that it prompts a fit of coughing.

“JARVIS,” he rasps finally, “JARVIS, tell me – what does my sig say?”

In less than a second, the amount of time it takes to scan, JARVIS responds, “It would appear that the name Steve Rogers is on your wrist, sir. Shall I update your records to indicate the change?”

“Fuck no.” His eyes aren’t lying to him, then. Tony twists his arm, pressing his wrist against his muddy pants like that will make the words change. He can’t say that it’s a surprise, but it’s not good either. It’s pretty much the opposite.

Because he already knows that Steve’s wrist will say the same thing, he just doesn’t know how Steve will react to that. How the hell could the two of them be what each other needs? Against a man like Bucky Barnes, there’s no competition. Steve doesn’t talk about Bucky often, but when he does it’s easy to see the affection and longing in his expression. Tony can’t measure up to that, it’s impossible to try even if he weren’t completely shit at any relationship that lasts longer than the sun rising the next morning.

Maybe Steve isn’t aware, he thinks, maybe Steve is like him and never takes his band off, still thinking that the skin underneath is blank after Bucky’s death. Or maybe he does know and he’s ignoring it, the implication that he and Tony right at this moment are connected by something that some people see as divine grace. But then this is Steve, and he’d probably feel like he was obligated to do something about it –

And then it hits him, what’s been going on over the past few months, the time he and Steve are spending together is due to Steve feeling like he has to because he grew up in a time when sigs were everything. Tony drags a hand over his face, pressing his fingers deeply into his closed eyelids like he can bury the image of Steve’s sig on his wrist. It stays, though, burned against the shadows in the corners of his mind and he doesn’t know what to do about it, because this is definitely not-platonic and if he couldn’t make it work with Pepper he sure as hell can’t make it work with Captain fucking America.

He sits there for a long time, until the room has long since faded into darkness and JARVIS has switched on the lamps, and comes to the only possible conclusion. Barring a full on strategic retreat to Malibu, the only thing to do is ignore it. Pretend that he never took the band off and that he has no idea what it says. He could leave, of course, he's a billionaire and if he wanted to go no one would ever be able to catch up to him. But Tony likes being part of the team and he holds no illusions that if he ever fucks up by say, taking off for a few weeks, then Fury's going to take his chance to kick his ass off of said team and not look back. Consultant is like the worst kind of curse word now and Tony can't go back to that.

"J," he says, surprised by how hoarse his voice is, "if anyone asks, you don't know what my sig says. Delete the surveillance footage you have of this, got it?"

"As you wish, sir." There's a pause, lasting less than five seconds, and then JARVIS adds, "Completed."

"Good." He snaps the band back on a little roughly, the weight strangely heavy now that he knows what's hidden underneath, and goes to work in the lab.

--

It's sort of ironic that it's the lab and his obsessive need to work, that leads to his carefully thought-out plan of "ignore everything until it all goes away" unraveling. Pepper's been on his back lately about not attending as many meetings as he's supposed to and Fury's bitching about how he's going to go to Hammer if he doesn't get a new set of shields for the carrier soon, and in between those two he's trying to work on a new set of arrows for Clint that might save his ass the next time he decides to jump off a building when Iron Man and Thor aren't there to catch him. He's got a blowtorch in hand and is working on repairing the suit while the prototype of Clint's arrows goes through simulations when, out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of someone standing close.

Tony doesn't have PTSD, or rather he'll deny it until his dying day, but he hates it when people sneak up on him. It doesn't help that the music is going full blast and some of the lights have been turned off to give him better focus. He jumps and drops the torch and it bounces off of the desk and hits him in the arm. There's a confusing couple of seconds during which he swears a lot and Steve spills apologies all over the place before JARVIS cuts the power to the torch and switches all of the lights on.

"Oh god, Tony, are you okay?" Steve says, examining the damage. A thin red burn curves up his wrist and down his arm, nearly to his elbow. It aches when Steve's fingers graze against it and Tony hisses. Steve looks genuinely freaked out and it's cute enough that Tony manages a smile.

"I'm fine, Cap. No, really, I promise I'm made of sterner stuff than that." He tugs his arm free and hooks his thumb under the band, grimacing. Okay, metal plus heat is never good and even that brief flash was enough to make it sting. Steve must catch on to the problem because before Tony can stop him, he takes hold of Tony's arm and gently strips the band off.

"Sorry," he says again, setting the band down on the table. "I thought you knew I was here - I didn't realize you were so deep into what you were doing, I should've asked before I came in."

"It's fine. I'm fine." He's barely aware of what he's saying, to preoccupied with trying to squirm away before Steve notices. But damn, that grip might be gentle but it's not forgiving and he hates it that he can't tug free. His heart pounds as Steve's gaze falls against to his arm, lifting and tilting in order to better assess the damage in case Bruce needs to be summoned.

And after a long pause, Steve says, "It doesn't look too bad. Does it hurt?"

"What?"

"Does it hurt?"

Tony just stares at him.

"Tony?" Steve wrinkles his forehead. "How long has it been since you slept?"

"12 hours," JARVIS says promptly.

"Traitor," Tony mutters.

"That's pretty good for you," Steve says with a little smile. And god, that smile. He hates the utterly sappy way it makes his stomach twist when combined with the warmth of Steve's fingers, now sliding down to clasp his hand protectively.

“If it’s only been 12 hours, why are you here?” He gives up on trying to get free, even though he could easily pull away now, Steve’s grip having lightened that much. He can’t stop looking at their hands, at how close Steve’s index finger is to brushing across the sig bearing his name. Could smudge it, even, if that were possible.

Amazingly, Steve’s ears start to turn a little pink. “I was bored,” he admits self-consciously. “And I made the mistake of saying as much when Clint was around. Now he wants to show me some things on the internet. Coulson’s not around to keep him occupied, and I figured your lab was one of the few places where he wouldn’t follow me.”

“You could just say no.”

Steve shrugs. “He’s reaching out, Tony,” he says earnestly. “I can’t turn him down.”

“But you can avoid him?” Tony quirks an eyebrow, amused at this little view into the Steve Rogers code of morality and teamwork. He feels like that should be capitalized, even. “Yeah, whatever. I’m busy, though. You’ll probably be just as bored here.”

“No. I like spending time with you.”

Finally, finally, Steve’s blue eyes drop and settle on Tony’s wrist. There’s a long moment when Tony holds his breath, waiting for what comes next, excuses and useless words that won’t really change anything building in his throat. But if the sight of his name surprises Steve, he gives no indication. Tony stands speechless, one of the few times of his life, when Steve lifts his wrist and brushes a kiss right over the sig. He’s pretty sure the sheer sweetness of the simple gesture is enough to make his knees go a little weak, not that he’ll ever be willing to admit it.

And then, because this is Tony Stark’s life, the call for the Avengers blares.

For a few seconds neither of them reacts. Tony can barely hear the alarm over the pounding of his heart. But then Steve sighs and releases his arm, half-turning towards the door. “Suit up and don’t go ahead,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves.

“JARVIS?” Tony says weakly.

“Sir?”

“Did Steve Rogers just kiss me?”

“Yes sir.”

“… Okay. Just checking.”

--

The battle is short for once since the Fantastic Four actually show up and take care of Doctor Doom and his stupid little robots, and after a debrief that feels twice as long as the battle itself they return to the Tower. By now their normal routine after a battle is to collapse in the living room with a good movie and food, but Steve proves to be annoyingly adept at cornering Tony as soon as he steps out of the elevator while the others, totally oblivious to the rising tension, go on ahead of them.

“Did you want something?” Tony says, deliberately not looking at him. “Because I ordered pizza and I’d like to have a piece before Thor eats it all.”

“We need to talk, Tony.”

His stomach tightens up at the sound of those familiar words. “Talk? You want to talk? Sure, let’s talk about the fact that your uniform is in desperate need of an upgrade –”

“Not about that. About this.”

And goddamnit, why the hell do people keep taking their bands off and thrusting their wrists underneath his nose? Tony tries not to look, but he’s never been good at staying away from temptation. It’s there, as he expected, but he immediately notices that it’s not quite the same as Pepper’s.

Tony Stark.

“When I woke up your name was on my wrist,” says Steve quietly. “I didn’t know what to do about it. Bucky’s name was there until he… until he fell.” His jaw tightens a little, old pain flaring around the corners of his eyes. “Then it was blank and suddenly I wake up and there is someone else’s name. I don’t think – no, I know that I didn’t handle it very well. I lashed out at you and that was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”

“It’s forgotten,” he mumbles.

It’s like he didn’t speak. Steve presses on with, “At first I thought you were a real bad apple, but then I got to know you a little better and I realized… you’re not your father, and you’re not Bucky, but that’s okay because I like who you are.” He’s close, suddenly, using the advantage of his height to press Tony against the wall. “I really like you, Tony.”

“That’s not –”

“And it’s not because you’re my sig. Pepper warned me that you would think that way.”

“What? You were talking to Pep about this?” he squeaks, because surely there is a law somewhere that makes this sort of thing illegal.

Steve shrugs. “She was actually the one who approached me. She knows you best, so it seemed to make sense to talk to her.”

“That’s…” There is no way Pepper could’ve known. Unless she guessed. Steve’s right, she does know Tony better than anyone else, so if anyone would be able to figure it out it’d be her.

“She seemed to think that it was a foregone conclusion, that someday we’d be here, but that didn’t stop her from warning me. She told me to think real carefully before I said anything because if I did anything to hurt you she’d make me regret it.” He grins, though judging from his slight grimace Pepper’s threat had left its mark. “And I have, Tony. I’ve been thinking for a long time about this. I know you think I’m pretty old-fashioned and I wanted to make sure that this meant enough to me to be sure. I’m sure.”

That annoyingly warm swell is back in Tony’s chest, eclipsing everything he wants to say and do. He’s torn between pushing Steve away and pulling him closer. “What if it changes?”

“My sig? Tony, that won’t matter to me. I thought you were a jerk when we met and the fact that you were my sig had nothing to do with that. Just like it has nothing to do with this.”

And then they’re kissing, holy fuck he’s kissing Captain America. It takes an embarrassingly long time for Tony’s mind to kick back into gear and respond, too long: Steve’s starting to pull away, obviously thinking he’s misread the situation, and that’s not right. Tony catches his shirt with the trembling fingers and pulls him back down, relieved when Steve comes easy. It’s different from kissing Pepper, still good but just different and maybe that will be what makes it work this time, who knows?

Tony stares up at him when the kiss finally ends, and before he can say anything JARVIS says, “Yes sir, Captain Rogers just kissed you.”

Steve bursts into laughter.

“Shut up,” Tony mutters, mortified.

Steve just shakes his head with a fond look, one that’s directed entirely at Tony. “So? You never answered my question.”

It only takes a few seconds to cast his mind back over their conversation. “You never actually asked.”

Though he rolls his eyes, Steve responds seriously: “Will you go on a date with me, Tony?”

Amidst thoughts that all of this can still go seriously, horribly wrong once Steve finds out what he’s really like, Tony manages to give a tiny nod. In the next breath Steve beams and then he’s being kissed again, deeper this time, and even though a couple of minutes later they’re interrupted by Thor those precious few minutes still number amongst the top five best moments of his life.

--

He checks his sig periodically over the next few days, waiting for the moment when it will change. Pepper catches him at it, fidgeting during a meeting, and her soft look pins him to the seat when everyone else is gone. “It will be fine, Tony,” she says gently, walking over and taking the seat next to him. She swings one leg over the other, expensive heels shining.

“You don’t know that, Pep. Well, actually you do. You’ve seen first-hand how I screw things up.”

“Tony.” Her voice goes even softer. “We didn’t break up because of you.”

The skeptical look he shoots her speaks volumes.

Pepper sighs. “We didn’t. It’s not even about the fact that our sigs changed. I love you and no sig is going to tell me differently. Even if my name was still on your wrist, Tony, I just – I told you, I can’t bear to watch you fight and not know if you’re coming back. It’s different for Steve, he can be there with you to protect you. I don’t have that.”

“I could build you a suit,” he says, the offer automatic, except he wouldn’t and they both know it. It’s bad enough to think about Rhodey out there with a suit and he’s got the training to back it up, never mind Pepper. Tony thinks she could handle it out of anyone, but he couldn't.

“I appreciate the thought, but no.” Pepper leans forward and takes his hand. Her face is very earnest, just like Steve, and he can’t look away as she says, “You’re a good man, Tony, a hero, and as much as I want to be there for you I can’t. It’s too much. I can be your friend, your CEO, even your baby-sitter. But I can’t be your lover. And I would never ask you to change for me. Asking you to stop being Iron Man would be cruel, like asking you to shut JARVIS or one of your bots down." Her eyes are growing damp with tears.

"Pep..."

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, blinking rapidly to get rid of her tears. "I'm fine. My point is, I approached Steve because I saw how he watched you. It was only after I talked to him that I found out about your sigs, though I have to admit it didn't surprise me that you two were matched." She caresses the inside of his wrist, cool fingertips sliding across the ink. "You liked Steve before you found out about this, Tony."

"Steve didn't."

"No, but do you really think that if Steve didn't honestly like you he'd want to take you out on a date?" She raises an eyebrow and okay, yeah, she's got him there. Steve's not the kind of person to play around with someone's heart like that. "Just... give it time. It's hard to say what will happen between you two, but there's no point in working yourself up before anything happens. Go on a date with him. Keep hanging out with him just like you do right now. It doesn't hurt for you two to get to know each other better, even if it's only for the sake of the team."

Tony doesn't look her in the eyes because he knows what she'll see there: he knows that when Steve gets to know him better, gets to know the parts of him that he hides from everyone else, it can only end the same way that he and Pepper did. But he nods, since that's what she wants, and says, "I guess I could. Everyone deserves a chance to get a ride on the Stark train at least once, right?"

"Tony!" Snorting, she gives him a thump one the shoulder. Thank god, the tears have disappeared from her eyes. "You shouldn't say things like that."

He smirks at her. He never could take Pepper crying. "I'm just saying. I'm going to give him a good time while it lasts."

"I have no doubt of that," she says, her lips quirking up into a faint smile. She pats his wrist one more time and then slides the band back down into place. "Even without your sig, I think you two are perfect for each other. This just proves it. Just... give him a chance, okay? Don't push him away."

"Okay," he says reluctantly, but he's not sure whether he means it or whether he's saying it because he hates to deny Pepper anything. Unless it involves board meetings or paperwork, because then he's fine with denial. "I can't believe I'm going out on a date with Captain America."

"You're not," Pepper says very seriously. "You're going on a date with Steve Rogers. Remember that." She kisses him on the top of his head and walks out, leaving him alone in the room. Tony sits where he is for a couple of minutes, drumming his fingers on the armrest of the chair.

He's going on a date with Steve Rogers.

Damn but he is so screwed.

--

It turns out that Steve's idea of a date isn't really all that different than the two of them just hanging out together. They go for pizza at this excellent little Italian restaurant and then take a walk through the middle of Central Park. With all of the trees, it's almost possible to forget about the damage that's been done to the rest of the New York. Steve gets an ice cream cone and then they both sit on a bench and watch a couple of little kids trying to feed the ducks some bread. Tony feels like he should be bored - generally he does not get along well with nature - but he's not.

It's nice being with Steve, just the two of them, not having to worry about anyone else intruding. A few people give them curious looks but no one seems to be willing to be the first one to interrupt, which suits Tony just fine. He ends up learning a lot about Steve on that date, the little details that so rarely get shared: what his mother was like, and growing up in Brooklyn, and how badly he'd wanted to join the army.

Steve finishes off his cone and, rubbing his fingers together, confesses, "Sometimes I wonder what she'd think about everything I've done and where I am now. She always said I'd make my way in the world, and I always thought she was silly. But she was right."

"Women are like that," says Tony, thinking of his mother and Pepper and Natasha. All three of them are scary like that.

Steve smiles. "Yeah, I guess they are. Peggy could be that way too. She used to get on my case all the time about Bucky. He liked to take dames to bed with him," he explains at Tony's questioning look. "Peggy thought it was a selfish thing to do, during war."

There's no way he can resist that kind of opening. "It didn't bother you? Bucky, I mean."

"No. I told you, Tony, there was nothing between me and Bucky. He was like my brother. I guess the two of us were just too close as children for me to think of him in any other way. Besides, Bucky wasn't gay. He had more than enough dames, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been able to keep up with anyone else."

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He can’t help reflecting back on his university days, when sometimes he’d already have two women in his bed and there would still be room for more.

“He wasn’t you,” Steve says, undoubtedly knowing exactly what Tony’s thinking. “And I don’t mean that in a bad way, either. No one is you, Tony. That’s the point.”

It will never cease to amaze him, how Steve can say something like that so simply. Like such intimate words cost him nothing to admit. Putting yourself out there, that’s not what Tony is good at. Not emotionally. It gives the other person too much power. It takes a lot of trust – or the naivety to think the other person won’t hurt you. It bothers him that he can’t figure out which one Steve is, naïve or trusting, but the point is both roads are going to ultimately lead to disaster.

“How do you know?” he says, mouth dry.

“Because you make the world easier for me to be in. It really has nothing to do with your sig. Not unless your sig made you create that map of all the places I used to visit in New York that are still around, or built that amazing art room for me, or helps me to get adjusted to culture in a way that doesn’t make me feel stupid, or bickers with me when I need a distraction. I’m here because of you. I was hoping you were here because of me.” It's all painfully intense, hopeful in a way that tugs at Tony’s heart.

One part of him says walk away, cut your losses now and it won’t hurt as much because not even Pepper could get as close as Steve is going to – already is. But another part, the infinitely selfish part that wants this man for himself, leans forward and kisses Steve. Mouths parting, sweet and soft despite the slow slide of tongues, and one of Steve’s hands rests tentatively on his hip. The touch of a thumb on bare skin, slipped underneath the hem of his shirt, is a pleasant shock that makes him shiver.

“Tony?” Steve whispers against his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah, I am,” he murmurs, ignoring the thump of fear, only knowing that the brilliant smile that lights up Steve’s face is well worth it.

--

It never gets easier, trusting.

There are still days when he wakes up expecting Steve to walk out.

And there are still days when the sheer amount of stubbornness between the two of them is enough to clear out the rest of Avengers Tower, the others afraid to get caught in the middle of the epic battles that are sometimes almost enough to drive Tony to start drinking again.

But his sig never changes, stays the same no matter how many times he checks – and that’s often, during those first days - and Steve’s eyes never stop shining when Tony walks into the room.

It’s still worth it.