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Chapter 3 is here! @tokky231, @catonmylapbutigottapee

Fandom: Marvel, Avengers Chapters: 3/?, Words: 18.998 Characters: Tony Stark/Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff, James Rhodes, Pepper Potts tags: Soulmate AU, Mob AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Violence

Summary: Tony meets his soulmate under the worst possible circumstances. It is not just a kidnapping gone wrong. It turns out Steve and his gang picked him on purpose and they want some personal revenge. If only he had managed to say the words written on his soulmate's arm before they threw him back out into the streets.

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“Now,” Bruce snaps when he joins them outside the warehouse, looking already more agitated then when he arrived, “who wants to tell me why we had Tony Stark in that condition with us, long after the job was supposed to be done?”

His arrival should be a welcome distraction from the tense silence pressing in around them for the past minutes. Clint has been muttering expletives under his breath, throwing glares at Steve, while Bucky got that lost expression that means he is holed up inside his head. And Steve is at a loss what to do against any of that.

He opens his mouth, not yet decided on what is the best explanation to give, when his mind catches on Bruce’s wording.

“What do you mean with had?”

Instant worry shoots through Steve, wondering whether Tony might have been hurt more than he initially thought. Surely, he would have felt it through their bond if something serious had happened. All there is, however, is the same throbbing want that has filled him since he heard his words, the need to not let Tony out of his eyes now that he has found him.

Which means he is immediately irritated when Bruce stops him with raised hands before he has taken even two steps back towards the door.

“You’re not going in there,” Bruce intones firmly, straightening his back as if he is ready to fight this out. And, knowing him for as long as Steve has, there is no question that he would.

“Where’s Tony?” Steve asks again, hearing the slight note of panic in his voice that makes Clint look at him snidely.

“Gone.”

That single word hits Steve like a punch in the stomach. Gone could mean a lot of things. Dead, on the run, locked up somewhere else, safe. All Steve knows for certain, is that he can open that door and not find his soulmate on the other side anymore. “Bruce?”

“I sent him home, Steve,” Bruce answers heatedly, bearing into Steve with an intensity that is usually reserved for the people opposing them. “Where he should be. Well, scratch that,” he corrects himself, his tone biting, “he should be in a hospital, thanks to you.”

Considering how his mind is occupied with the presumed loss of Tony – there is no reason to not believe Bruce but simply accepting it is impossible – he ignores the accusation. “You can’t just –” Steve interrupts himself, then straightens. “We need to go after him.”

He is half-turned around to his team, hoping they will not defy him about this, when Bruce cuts in again.

“If you make one step in the direction of this door,” Bruce says, and there is no mistaking that he is utterly serious about this, “I will make sure that you’ll need a hospital too.”

Caught in indecision, Steve never gets to decide whether he wants to chance that.

“What’s up with you?” Clint exclaims, none of the petulant defiance gone from his tone yet. “You don’t like Stark any more than we do.”

At some point, Steve’s brain has decided to divide between Stark and Tony. That might be a good thing as long as they do not have proof whether or not Tony is guilty of what he has been accused of. At the same time, it irritates him that the others do not seem to follow suit.

“Tell me, Clint,” Bruce says slowly, his gaze resting on Clint’s split knuckles, “do you feel good about beating up a defenceless man?”

Clint snorts in response as if there is anything funny about this situation. They are standing in the middle of the night outside an abandoned warehouse, arguing over the fate of another man.

“He’s hardly defenceless, considering what he’s making his money with,” Clint says, spitting out his words with disdain. “Or have you forgotten –”

“I have not forgotten anything,” Bruce cuts him off, eyes narrowed. With their particular group, it is never a good idea to mention their pasts, much less during an argument. “Especially not that we’re supposed to be the good guys. And criminal or not, we don’t punch things better.”

Feeling an immediate aversion against that word, Steve speaks up, “He’s not a criminal.”

The intensity of the emotion has him wondering whether it is truly his own or whether it is amplified through the bond. He is known to feel protective, sometimes to an unreasonable amount, but his feelings regarding Tony have changed so fast, he cannot be sure.

Irritated at the interruption, Bruce snaps his eyes up at Steve. “What?”

“Tony’s not a criminal,” Steve repeats with as much calm as he can muster. “He told me he didn’t do it.”

Rolling his eyes, Clint throws in, “And Steve actually believes him. Just like that.”

Sometimes, Steve misses the clear hierarchy of the military. Ending an argument was much easier back then.

“Not just like –”

“They’re soulmates,” Natasha cuts in. Despite the rising tension surrounding them, she sounds cool, unflappable. Her stance is vigilant, though, prepared for anything.

For a moment, silence falls as everybody is watching Bruce, who is not exactly known for dealing graciously with upsetting news. When he turns towards Steve, his face is deceptively calm, but his eyes are aflame.

“You did this to your own soulmate?” he asks, voice quiet enough to make it seem impossible that they ever heard him roar in anger. Still, Steve has to fight the urge to back away.

“I didn’t know,” Steve affirms quickly. “When Clint and Bu-”

“When you let them,” Bruce corrects him, his tone precise in its coldness.

Flinching back, Steve swallows. “Yes. When they –” He looks down at his hands. “When we hurt Tony, I did not know.”

He feels Bruce’s eyes on him studying, judging, finding him wanting. It is made worse by the knowledge that he deserves this, that he really messed up.

“So what?” Bruce then snaps. “You beat him up, threw him out, then found out you’re soulmates and that he might not have been the one you were looking for, so you decided to bring him back in, keep him captive for a while longer and play at being a happy couple?”

Put like that, it sounds more horrible than it was. Perhaps Steve is simply deluding himself and it actually was that horrible. He does not know what to think or feel, though, thrown off balance by what he let happen to Tony and what happened to him.

“It’s not that simple,” Steve says tonelessly, not believing himself.

Bruce looks at Natasha, who appears to be the only one he currently trusts to give him a true answer. She nods curtly. “That’s about it.”

When Bruce turns back towards Steve, his expression has turned several degrees colder. “When did he know?”

Everybody is staring at Steve now, and he feels the hot shame in his cheeks. With effort, he manages to keep his head up. Things have not gone the way they should have and that is mostly his fault.

“Right before,” is all he manages to say before his voice gives out.

“Before what?” Bruce questions, but from the way his voice is filled with tightly coiled anger, he already knows.

“Right before we – beat him.”

The stubborn part of Steve’s mind insists that none of that is important now. It might have been unfortunate how they found each other, but what matters most should be that they did. He wants to make sure that Tony is safe from now on. They will not manage that if they linger on whether or not Steve is allowed to see him. He does not want him any harm now.

Bruce takes several deep breaths, making a futile attempt of calming himself down. “I will be going back to our base now,” he then says with strained calm. “I don’t want to see any of you there. I don’t care what you do, but you will stay away from Stark. If you go after him or contact him or even hurt him again in any way, I will not be responsible for what I do. Are we understood?”

It has been a while since they have seen Bruce this angry, and over a man whose weapons have done as much damage in his life as in Bucky’s no less. There is no doubt it is genuine, though. Bruce can easily be considered the best of them. That is not the only reason none of them is willing to cross him when it is not absolutely necessary.

Steve has a decision to make. He can follow his instincts and rush after Tony, he can throw all caution to the wind and offer protection even where it is not wanted. That is the way he wants to go. He trusts Bruce, though. While he has always followed his beliefs, letting his emotions guide him, some of that is not his own in the moment. He feels complete in a way he never has before, but that also means he cannot trust all of his parts right now the way he is used to.

“Yes,” Steve says slowly, wishing fervently that he is not making a mistake.

Bruce keeps looking at him for a long minute, probably gauging how truthful he is being. Then he nods, and turns to the rest of the team.

“I need to hear this from everyone.”

Unsurprisingly, Clint offers immediate protest. “He doesn’t deserve your protection.” He does not even look intimidated by the glare Bruce directs at him.

“Wrong,” Bruce exclaims with a cutting sharpness. “We’re here to stand up for the people who have been wronged. Instead, he’s been wronged by us.”

Before Clint can offer another argument, Natasha takes his arm, dragging him a step back. “We’re not going anywhere.”

They look at each other, communicating silently the way the rest of them has never managed to learn.

“Bucky?” Bruce prompts. Despite Bucky arguably being the reason for this whole, miserable situation, he sounds all the much gentler now.

“I’m –” Clearing his throat, Bucky needs a second to properly focus on them. He might have been following the gist of the argument, but Steve is sure the greater part of his mind was lost in the kind of spiralling thoughts he has been trying to escape for years now. “I’ll be staying too.”

“Good choice,” Bruce says immediately, accepting Bucky’s word like he has none of theirs. With a scowl, he looks at all of them again. “Don’t let me find out you’ve done something stupid.”

This is not all of it. Bruce might withdraw from them until his fury has drained out of him, but he will still stand up for his beliefs. Right now, that means that they have wronged Tony – and that is true – and that he will not let them do that again.

“What about all those dead people in your village?” Clint calls after Bruce, causing everybody to go very still.

“I don’t think blood can pay for blood,” Bruce says in as cold a voice as they have ever heard from him. “All that causes is more grief, and we have enough of that already.”

With that, he turns around and walks back into the warehouse to collect his things, a distinct tension to his shoulders that means nothing good for anyone daring to get in Bruce’s way right now. Steve thinks they have gotten off lightly, although this was certainly not all of it.

Bruce is surely right that they need to give Tony space, but the fact remains that someone hired them to kidnap him, and they did not sound concerned at all about what could happen to Tony. It might be hypocritical of Steve to be concerned about Tony’s well-being now, long after the fact, but that they are soulmates changes everything. That is not an honourable thing to think, probably not even the right one, but it is the best Steve has to offer for now.

By the time Tony gets up, JARVIS has a whole folder filled with information about Steve and his group of vigilantes. It does not even surprise him that JARVIS did not just accept the promise to be filled in later but went digging on his own – and very diligently too. From the looks of it, he must have broken into several confidential archives. All in a night’s work.

Tony breathes in and out, takes a long glance at the still closed trove of information hovering innocently in the air, which he is not sure he actually wants to know, and ignores it.

“Get the coffee machine running,” Tony says as he goes about convincing his body to carry him to the bathroom. “I need a shower first.”

What Tony really needs is a whole lot more complicated than that. He needs a time machine, a better sense of who to trust, better security, more control over his emotions. A shower is a good beginning, though. It might give him a chance to wash off the traces of the night before, to make sense of what is real and what is not. Despite the stiffness and pain clinging to each of his movements, Tony is half-convinced last night did not happen.

His sleep has been fitful, plagued by dreams that started out bright and happy, only to take a bitter turn. Let’s do this was a constant echo, complete with Steve’s face swimming in front of him, either with sweet smiles or hateful grimaces.

Let’s do this, right before Steve kissed him. Let’s do this, accompanying the first sharp kick to his ribs. Let’s do this, in the middle of a shady weapons deal. Let’s do this, during a wedding reception. Let’s do this, in a dark room with dried bloodstains on the ground. Let’s do this, before Steve took him to the dancing floor. Let’s do this. Let’s do this. Let’s do this.

He needs to somehow shake off the wrongness of wanting something capable of so much destruction. The realistic part of his brain is also afraid of the moment his bruises are faded and the fear of being helpless beneath masked strangers’ fists has drained out of him, because he is not sure whether he can fight the undeniable want pooling inside him then, the call of the soul bond.

All of this was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be good and wholesome and sweet. It was supposed to be as it was for Ana and Jarvis. And yet, happiness is the farthest thing from Tony’s mind.

In the bathroom, he pulls off his clothes. They are the same he wore yesterday since he was too tired to change before he fell into bed. Against the white of the tiles, he sees the tears and stains they have gathered but views them with a strange kind of indifference as if he was not wearing them when they were wrecked.

With mechanical movement, Tony makes short work of the bandages Bruce applied so diligently. Only then does he look up. In the mirror, his skin looks like a canvas attacked by an angry pre-schooler. It is all blues and greens and red bleeding into each other, drawing a detailed map of how Tony’s life has gone off the rails. The left side of his face is swollen so badly that it barely looks human, his eye straining against the unyielding cage of the lids.

Tony stares and stares, trying to find himself in the vaguely human shape looking back at him. Ironically, his first thought is that this will be hard to hide with make-up and lead to some seriously hard-to-answer questions from the press. And everybody else he knows.

Sighing, Tony forcefully keeps himself from thinking further about the matter and climbs into his shower. He will not be able to ignore the problem for long as it is.

The water burns. His skin feels like it is on fire but once he has gotten used to the sensation, he feels his muscles slowly relax under the steady stream of warmth. He should probably take a bath, let himself float, but he is afraid of the motionlessness, of letting himself drift.

“Sir?” JARVIS speaks up after an eternity.

They have a security protocol making JARVIS remind him when he spends more than thirty minutes in the shower. That is meant for nights when he stumbles home drunk and is in danger of accidentally drowning himself. Being drunk would be such a nice alternative to this.

“I’m good, J,” Tony promises, even though they both know it is a lie.

“Your coffee is waiting for you.”

Tony’s split lip stings when he smiles. As trivial as coffee is, it a piece of normality easily within reach. Bracing himself, he turns off the water and, without looking at himself again, wraps himself in the softest bathrobe he owns. Then he re-bandages his wrists but lets the rest of the wounds be.

He is tempted to stay like this all day, clad only in his bathrobe and misery. He cannot be just Tony today, though, but needs the trained stoicism of a Stark. His movements are much more fluid now when he goes to his closet and gets out a suit, crisp white shirt, smartly cut blazer. The sleeves cover the bandages on his wrists. There is nothing he can do about the bruises on his face, but he still feels safer already, clad in his very own kind of armour.

The coffee is heavenly, even though it stings where Tony bit the inside of his cheek sometime last night. Despite JARVIS’ unsubtle hints, he does not eat anything. The mere thought of food has his stomach roiling. He feels unmade, stumbling along familiar steps while not actually recognizing them. He is not recognizing himself either.

Clinging to his coffee mug, Tony just sits at his kitchen table for what feels like hours. There is so much to do, and yet he cannot bring himself to take the first step. Steve’s face is constantly filling his mind, the way he first stared at Tony with disgust and later smiled so easily.

“An unknown number is attempting to contact you, sir,” JARVIS says into the silence.

Tony’s first thought is that he lost his phone at some point last night. It is probably still with Steve, but JARVIS must have already taken the appropriate measures. Just like with his USB drive, Tony is sure they will not be able to glean much from his phone, especially not know that JARVIS is on to them.

“Trace it back,” Tony orders, despite knowing who it is, who it has to be.

He doubts life will make it so easy for him that whoever sold him out is calling to apologize and promise to stay on the right side of the law from now on. No, this will be Steve, making everything more complicated.

“The number belongs to Steve Grant Rogers.”

JARVIS helpfully pulls up a picture on a holoscreen in front of Tony. His soulmate’s face stares back at him, wholly innocent.

Tony’s arm tingles and he glares at it. Anger roars in his chest, but it is battling against an instinctive longing spreading through him, warming him from inside out. It is not right to be betrayed by his body like this. It is not right to want a man who is the reason Tony is barely able to move without crying out in pain.

Instead of giving into it, he concentrates on what he knows. Steve has a last name now, and a middle one too. That makes him altogether too real, more so than his face on the screen. It is time to stop denying this ever happened.

Against his better judgement, Tony tells JARVIS to accept the call. Instead of wasting time and energy on common courtesy, Tony barks, “What do you want?”

He sounds in control of his emotions even if he does not feel like it. He perks up instinctively, waiting for Steve’s answer, for the sound of his voice. This soulmate business is seriously messed up.

“Where are you?” Steve asks. He appears impatient, as if he has waited all night to call Tony. “Are you safe?”

Disbelieving, Tony stares at the phone, wishing Steve could feel the intensity of his glare. How dare he pretend to care about Tony’s safety after how they met? How dare he sound concerned?

Without another word, Tony hangs up.

Over the next hour, JARVIS informs him of seven more calls from Steve. Tony ignores all of them.

Instead, he finally finds himself a tablet – the holoscreens are nice but he is sure he will need something palpable to hold on to – and goes through the information JARVIS has prepared for him.

He is not sure what he expected to find, but Steve and his group are both more and less than what he thought they would be.

They call themselves the Avengers, which is dramatic enough to have him roll his eyes despite the situation. In a sense, Steve was right to protest the term mob. They do not control parts of the city or dabble in drugs or human trafficking or protection. They are everywhere at once, not caring for invisible borders. Their presence is also not limited to just New York.

As far as Tony can tell, this started out as some kind of Robin Hood thing. Instead of stealing money, they concentrate on dispensing justice and helping out the wronged. They get back things that were unlawfully taken, bring down drug rings, go for the people who think themselves untouchable. It all looks nice on paper – if Tony had not gotten a taste of their debatable hospitality.

They are an eclectic group, mostly ex-military. Some also have more colourful background; secret agencies, classified research, stints in prison.

Tony is tempted to pull up Steve’s file first but refrains. He needs to know at some point, but he is not sure he will be able to regard any information he gets now with the appropriate apprehension.

Instead, he pulls up the file of one James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes. Born in Brooklyn, veteran, loss of his left arm in the line of duty, prisoner of war. First confirmed contact with Steve Rogers when they were both five years old. Best friends since pre-school.

It is all hard facts, fit for a messed up curriculum vitae. None of it describes the way Barnes had clung to his prosthetic as if it needed protection from Tony instead of the other way around. There is no mention of the smouldering fury in those cold eyes, or of the reluctance when Steve told him to back down. The picture in the file shows a handsome man, smiling. Like this, he seems perfectly incapable of being dangerous.

Tony shudders and moves on quickly.

Clinton Francis Barton. Former foster kid, grew up in the circus, brother in prison, part of a secret government agency. Natasha Romanoff. Ex-KGB, trained spy and assassin, formerly wanted in a multitude of countries until the same government agency snapped her up. Sam Wilson. Scott Lang. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff.

It reads like a bad novel. Or, Tony guesses, a good novel, full of underdgos banding together to do the right thing. Tony really wishes his Narnia would look different.

Feeling sick, Tony closes the folder and sits back, rubbing the closed lids of his eyes as if he could unsee everything he just read.

“Do you want me to notify the police of –” JARVIS speaks up, a distinct edge to his tone.

“No,” Tony exclaims and surprises himself with the vehemence of it.

It would make sense. More so, it would be the right thing to do. They did kidnap and assault him. Letting them get away with that – even aside of all personal reasons – would mean that Tony will be complicit, if not downright responsible, for the next person they decide to harm.

From the looks of it, they only target guilty people, especially those the law enforcement cannot touch. Tony is not guilty, though. Not of what they accused him of.

No matter how much he would perhaps admire their commitment to justice under different circumstances, their morality is faulty, Tony has felt that himself.

JARVIS’ answering silence is very telling.

“I need to think about this, J.”

Thinking will not get him anywhere, not this time. He is already in a dead-end, unable to make a decision, good or bad. He needs help.

Without thinking, he orders JARVIS to call Rhodey. His best friend might not be the best address to find a solution that will not end in Steve’s immediate demise, but there is no one else Tony can be so open with.

The dial tone is grating on Tony’s nerves. It takes Rhodey far too long to pick up, which is due to him working on someone else’s schedule, as he likes to remind Tony. Finally, when he hears the click of someone picking up on the other hand, he does not waste time on niceties.

“Rhodey, I have a problem –” That is how far Tony gets before his throat constricts and he runs out of words. So much for courage and honesty.

“No,” Rhodey answers immediately, in the long-suffering tone of someone who is used to Tony’s shenanigans. “I don’t have time to fly over to play fetch with the bots because you’re too lazy to get up.”

Despite himself, Tony has to smile. He realizes he needs a distraction just as much as a solution.

“That was one time,” he counters but does not let himself be drawn into the familiar banter. “But I’m serious. I need –” He shrugs, helplessly, and gets up to refill his cup. He needs more coffee for this conversation, and perhaps something stronger. “There are people out for my head.”

A short silence falls on the other end. There are some background noises but they cut abruptly right before Rhodey speaks again.

“Tones, there are always people after your head,” he says, but not so dismissively that Tony is discouraged from going on. “Probably since you’ve been born.”

“I know,” Tony says, and he does. “But this time they are real people with actual faces and names that I know. This has nothing to do with jealousy or creative business plays.”

He knows the names and faces of Steve and the Avengers, but he supposes that he also knows the people selling his weapons. Right now, he has to assume he is surrounded by enemies for now.

“Then talk to security,” Rhodey replies dryly. Tony knows him well enough, to be certain that Rhodey is going to talk to the head of Tony’s security department himself to make sure he is protected.

Back in the kitchen, Tony reaches for the coffee machine. “I’m afraid that’s –” A wrong movement has pain shooting down his ribcage, stealing his air. The cup he has been holding falls to the kitchen counter. It does not break, but a fresh crack runs along its side. “Shit.”

“Tony?” Rhodey’s tone turns from lax to concerned immediately, likely due to the slight gasp of pain Tony could not quite swallow.

“Sorry, it’s nothing. Just a broken rib.” Or five. He has already said too much, though.

The atmosphere shifts, becoming tenser in an instant, with Rhodey skipping from good-natured to downright concerned.

“How did you break a rib?” Rhodey asks, at once suspicious and worried. Although that is probably the normal setting for dealing with anything Tony does.

There is no going back now. With a small sigh, Tony gets himself a new cup and leans against the counter while coffee is trickling into it.

“Someone kicked me repeatedly,” he admits like there is nothing to it. Like that is all that happened. “Pretty sure I got away without a concussion.” In his defence, JARVIS said it is a mild concussion, and Tony’s brain never works normally anyway. No one but him will likely notice any difference.

“I’m on my way,” Rhodey decides with a distinct growl to his voice that tells Tony there is a more detailed discussion about this waiting for him. Another lecture about taking better care of himself that Tony will ignore in its entirety.

“No,” Tony tries to protest. “You’ve got to work.”

In the safety of his own mind, Tony can admit that he wants Rhodey here. That he needs someone on his side. He is still reasonably sure that Steve is not going to come after him – not with the intention to harm in any case – and that his goons will listen to this orders. The emotional shock of all that has happened sits deep inside his bones, though. More battles are to come, and Tony does not want to fight them alone.

“You think I care about that?” Rhodey argues immediately, climbing even higher in the hierarchy of Tony’s favourite people. “What happened?”

Tony does not think it is possible for him to put that into words that make sense. He is a mess of conflicting feelings and wants, incapable of deciding which way to go.

“As I said, someone’s got it out for me,” Tony explains simply. Perhaps he will be able to figure this out once Rhodey is here. “They sent the mob after me. And they, as it turns out, have a personal grudge against me too. Although that is a misunderstanding.”

Tony winces when he echoes Steve’s words back at Rhodey, without much sarcasm too. He wonders whether that is the bond speaking, or whether he is truly losing his mind.

“You’re not making any sense, “Rhodey interrupts his slight rambling, and Tony has nothing to counter. It is the truth, after all. “Where are you?”

On my way to hell, Tony things miserably but does not say it. Hell is the one place he has always been headed to. He has just gotten that much closer to it, and quicker than he thought possible

“At home,” Tony answers, wishing he would never have to leave again. “Last time I went out, I got kidnapped, so I’m staying here.”

At least until he feels ready to start going through Stark Industries to kick out the moles and to change how they are doing things. Making the company into something more than just a weapons manufacturer without a moral backbone appears more important than ever.

“There’s got to be somewhere safer,” Rhodey says and trails off as if he expects Tony to boast about a secret bunker he has never mentioned before.

“And where would that be?” Tony asks, deciding to humour Rhodey. His tone ends up less amused than he intended.

“I could call the Pentagon?”

That is just Rhodey’s worry speaking. They both know that Tony is capable of keeping himself safe, and that few people are able to touch him inside the tower with its extensive security measures and an AI that is fiercely protective of its creator. Out of the few people who about JARVIS’ existence, only Rhodey has an inkling what the AI is actually capable of – and that mostly because he witnessed Tony’s early attempts to create a learning program suiting his needs at MIT.

“Honey bear.” Tony sighs, smiling despite his situation. “I hacked the Pentagon for the first time when I was twelve and bored. Made myself one of their nice little lanyards, too, highest security clearance. I could have marched right in there, if only I’d been a little taller.”

Howard had been furious about having to make apologies for his son. Completely unexpectedly, Aunt Peggy had subtly praised him, though, telling him he should be more careful from now on, but that it is a good habit not to completely trust the government nor to expect any security to hold.

“I hope you have at least some bodyguards with you,” Rhodey argues, He does not quite give in, but he knows which battles to fight where Tony is concerned.

“It’s not the mob I’m worried about,” Tony counters with more confidence than he feels. “They’re not coming after me.”

“How can you know?” Rhodey questions immediately, sounding as if he will not believe anything Tony says.

Nothing is certain. From what Tony read, the Avengers have all been following Steve for a while, and while that is not clear marker for loyalty, Tony just has to believe that they are not going to ignore Steve’s orders. Whoever hired them could go to a less morally inclined group next, however, to make sure that Tony is not going to make another miraculous escape.

“I – I just know.” Tony clicks his tongue. “Listen, that’s not a topic for the telephone. The other issue isn’t either.” He does not even want to think about it, much less talk it through with someone. Tony’s plans tend to go more smoothly, however, when Rhodey is involved in making them. “I’ve already sent a plane for you.”

Rhodey sighs. It is such a familiar sound that Tony feels calmer at once. “You can’t just drop a bomb like this and then don’t tell me anything.”

An involuntary shiver runs down Tony’s back. “Please don’t talk about bombs.”

That is such a stupid thing to say, so close to admitting something he does not ever want to say. There is a short hesitation on Rhodey’s end, telling Tony that his best friend definitely noticed his blunder.

“What happened?” Rhodey asks, for once sounding exactly like a member of the Air Force would, expecting every order of his to be followed.

Thankfully, Tony is practiced in ignoring any sort of authority. “I’ll have pizza waiting for when you get here.”

“Don’t you dare hang –”

Tony does hang up on Rhodey. It appears to be a recurring theme this morning. He cannot talk about the finer details of what has happened over the phone, though, cannot allow his mind to delve into this when he will be alone afterwards with no one to pull him out again. He knows Rhodey will worry and a small part of him relishes that fact, even though Rhodey will be unbearably protective once he comes here. Since everything is going wrong at the moment, Tony thinks that might not be such a bad thing.

Before he can do anything more concrete about his situation, he has one more phone call to make. That one will be more difficult. He has never been able to lie well to Pepper.

Taking his coffee, Tony makes his slow way to the living room, where he takes care to find a comfortable position on the couch. There cannot be a repetition of accidentally betraying his being in pain like he did with Rhodey. Pepper is always unreasonably strict when it comes to Tony being hurt. It is not usually anything as sinister as this but simple lab accidents, but she does not approve of his careless approach to his own health.

Once he is settled, coffee in his lap and a blanket pulled up to his chest to stave off the waves of cold coming over him, Tony has JARVIS calling Pepper.

“Where are you?” she asks as soon as the call connects. As usual, she sounds stressed but in control, too used to running his company in his name. Somehow, she still has not given up hope that he will one day show more interest, be of more help. “We had a meeting with the Chinese this morning. I can’t do my job if you –”

“We have a problem,” Tony interrupts her, knowing the only way out of her lectures is to cut them off early.

Also, he only vaguely remembers that meeting. Something about new production sites in China Obie was pushing for. Tony thought he had been very clear about not wanting to move any of the production facilities out of country. He will have to ask Pepper about that later. For now, he does not have any energy to concentrate on trivial matters like that.

“I don’t have time for a Tony Stark-sized problem at the moment,” Pepper says sharply.

Tony knows her well enough to assume that she is already clearing her schedule anyway. How she keeps working for him without losing her mind will forever be a mystery to Tony. He is eternally grateful, though.

“Rhodey is on his way over,” Tony explains shortly, “I need you to be here at seven.”

This, he supposes, is easier than going through the whole thing again. Pepper is much more persistent about getting her answers immediately than Rhodey, so the more information he offers her, the more she wants to know.

“Tony,” Pepper asks. She, too, immediately knows there is something more going on than just Tony being difficult. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to have pizza,” Tony says, evading her question without any subtlety. “If you want something healthier, you have to bring it yourself.”

Tony does not want to hang up on all of his friends this morning, it just so happens that he is better at avoiding conversations than holding them. He still regrets it slightly when he does not even give her the chance to confirm his invitation before he has JARVIS end the call.

At least he has a definite deadline until which he should have an idea how to go about this. Which leaves him now with the seemingly impossible task of accomplishing that.

#protective bruce

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