steadfast_tin_soldiers

It takes all the guts in the world to hit on Captain America. The guy is a legend, he’s got the most well known face in the world, and, given that there are countless of books written about him, documentaries made about him, and college courses centered on his life and even his art, most people feel like they know Captain America. Only the truly fanatic would ever openly flirt with him.

Steve’s admission that the beard caused the flirting and that no one has ever given him their number actually stills Tony, mid laugh. “You’re kidding me.”

He almost feels a little queasy about that. He’s probably spent the last six years (minus the two that they were apart), making fun of someone that probably has never even been on a date. How sad is that? Steve is probably the best guy on the planet and no one’s ever given him a chance? Tony doesn’t know, really, about Peggy. He doesn’t know about Sharon either. He doesn’t know a lot about Steve at all, despite those books and documentaries and the fact that his father was obsessed with him.

He, like everyone else, just knows facts. He knows Steve’s birthday and his eye color. He knows his art (perhaps too intimately since he did go snooping), he knows about the war and Project Rebirth…. And that’s it.

“Before we shave your chin sweater off, maybe you should go grab a beer with him tonight.” Tony’s only half joking. Everyone in the 40s was homophobic. Still, it might be good for the guy to make some connections. Especially with how close to the edge he’s been wandering.

"Well, I set up a Tinder account, but I put in my real age, so I only get messages from people in Assisted Living facilities," he deadpans. Christ, it's like the conversations with Natasha all over again. "'Likes long walks on the beach, watching Lawrence Welk, and punching Nazis...'"

He doesn't actually like Lawrence Welk, though. It's too modern.

He shakes his head. "Anyway, best stick to business. He was kind of pretty, but that's not what we're here for."

Define homophobic. There were things you definitely did not talk about, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen, and they happened around Steve's neighborhood all the time. He never got a second glance from most women, but there was a time he could have taken up sex work for other men, if he'd ever been capable of dropping his guard enough to accept their advances without snarking at them. It's all a little strange to him, even after living in the modern era for years, but the dropping taboos are one of the nicer things about the way the world has changed.

He actually looks a little bit wistful as the elevator lets them out on their floor. He's been in the run a while now. It was nice to not be recognized. He glances at the paper before tucking it in his pocket. He has no intention of using it, but it's a sliver of something approaching normalcy. He's had more kisses than dates in his lifetime (Peggy, Natasha, Sharon), which is probably a weird state of affairs.

“Lawrence Welk.” Tony can’t bring himself to say anything else because he’s pretty sure that he’s just managed to put part of a finger on why Steve is Steve. And, maybe, why Bucky came first. That’s just a little plot hole to query later, though. Maybe what Pepper told him once about what she had learned in one of her art classes in college was true. When a person draws someone they intimately love, it’s visible in their art work. And that Love was something theorized in the pencil sketches found that Rogers had done of Barnes growing up and during their campaign in Europe.

But that’s a thought for another time.

Tony follows Steve and the chocolate and the shaving kit down the hallway to the set of double doors at the end. There’s a beautiful brass plaque that describes the room as the Presidential Suite and potted plants that are either fake or very well taken care of at either side of the archway. Tony taps the keycard on the reader and pushes his way inside. They won’t be here long, but there’s a bed and two couches and a massive bathroom to use. Steve’s grooming might take some time but Tony had been managing his own grooming for his entire life until Pepper made him comfortable enough to allow her to cut his hair for him.

Thinking about her now has him moving towards the well appointed bar to pour himself a drink.

“Got a favor to ask,” he says, looking at Steve’s reflection caught in a highly polished picture frame hung above the bar. “Whatever else that happens, keep me away from Ms. Potts. The one here isn’t mine.” He downs half of his glass before he turns, clearing his throat from the burn. “Okay, Rogers. Let me likely be the first person in your life to tell you take off your clothes. This is going to be messy.”

There are a number of reasons Bucky came first, but Steve isn't in the habit of lying to himself, and--yes, Love, with a capital L, was most certainly one of them. The thing about his choices back then was that almost all of them would have been the same without that emotional impetus behind them. He was never going to sign the Accords, Bucky or no.
He had to bring in the Winter Soldier himself, because he was the most likely to manage it without dying in the process, something he was intimately aware of after almost being beaten to death by him. The idea of other Winter Soldiers, active and ready to take down governments and potentially too lethal even for Bucky to face was too horrifying a prospect to ignore. Everything he did up until the face off with Zemo was in accordance with Steve's values, which is why the sonovabitch was able to predict his moves so flawlessly.

That last conflict was where he went off the rails, started operating as much on hair-trigger and instinct and panic as anything else. Where he started hearing Bucky screaming as he fell from the train decades ago.

It was never going to be the same, after all that. It could have been something, even something beautiful, but the same? That ship sailed in 1942. You can't turn back time.

Or can you? Here they are.

Steve removes his shoes by the door tidily, tucking them under the suitcase-stand, then watches Tony take his drink. Maybe not the healthiest idea, but he's not the man's babysitter.

He worries his lip. "Okay, Tony. I'll do my best, but after the mission's over, when we get back to our time..."

He's not sure how to complete that sentence. 'Invite me to the wedding'? He can't know how this will all work out, only that he wants Tony to get some kind of peace at the end of this. And he's too focused on that thought to react to the goading, so he just pulls off the sweatshirt he's wearing, then the undershirt beneath.

When you see a person in a tight shirt, you get an idea of what they look like beneath that shirt. Tony is aware of Steve’s fitness level, he is prepared in theory for what he sees when he strips, but reality is so very different from actuality. The only thing that pops into his head when he sees those lines and the curve of flesh is that he really wants to lick</> those abs.

And that’s not like him. Being attracted to men is fine, Tony tends to be attracted to leggy blondes, no matter their gender, though he absolutely has a preference for women. He’s just not one to put his mouth on something he doesn’t know the entire history of. Who knows where Cap’s been at the last few years?

The moment of intense desire flushes his cheeks but ebbs away all too quickly. It’s what Steve’s said that withers any fruit Tony might have been cultivating on the vine. It’s simultaneously a blessing and a curse. He takes a moment to finish what’s in his glass before he sighs and places it, empty, behind him.

Trying to tell a soldier that he’s been brought here on what might be seen as a suicide mission isn’t easy. Steve will live through this, but life will never be the same again.

“Our time isn’t going to exist, not even if we fuck something up, so there’s nothing to go back to. If we keep Thanos from ever coming here, what we left disappears. The you and me that belong here are never going to experience the invasion because it’s never going to happen.”

It’s very likely that Loki and the Chitauri will never invade at all. Banner won’t be brought from hiding. Thor won’t leave Asgard....

“We do this and that’s that. We stay here or we go to a future that’s different than the one we left or we go to even farther ahead then that— I can’t even offer you a chance to back out now. I need you for this.”

Edited (Poorly written ) 2018-06-17 00:05 (UTC)

Cap's been a lot of places the last few years. Really, it's a testament to the strength of the serum that he's not vastly more beat up than he is. Oh, he's taken plenty of wounds, but they tend not to leave traces. The only exception is a small scattering of marks across his midsection that are probably too faint for Tony to even notice at a distance. They're from bullet fragments, from that battle with the Winter Soldier on the Helicarriers about Washington DC. He almost died there; the injuries were massive, but now they just look like a few kitten scratches.

Oddly, he also seems to have very little body hair. A light dusting of blonde at the center of his chest, only visible because it catches the light, and then a trail of darker, sandy-brown on his lower stomach, vanishing beneath the waistband of his pants.

Steve watches the flush come and go with no clear idea what's just run in and out of Tony's head. Could just be a blush from the sudden influx of alcohol in his system. And Steve knows Tony self-medicates with booze, thinks he probably shouldn't, but right now he just envies him the ability to get something out of it.

Maybe he's naive. He understands perfectly well that they can't return to where they left off, won't just magically be walking back to the time they left except with all their friends alive and gathered together and innocently wondering where the hell they've been. That's a nice fantasy, but he already knew it wasn't going to happen. He just wanted to believe that Tony could go back and start over with Pepper, even if Steve's hopes for himself are mostly just a sudden stop followed by eternal peace.

Sounds like Tony's already counting that out. If it weren't for the look on his face, Steve would be trying to dredge up a pep talk, because if Ms. Potts loves him in one timeline, surely whatever they change won't fuck that up in any other. It dies before it hits the back of his throat, because Steve's seen that look on his own face. That's the 'there's no way out of this one, men' face. He's been on suicide missions before. He's come out of them intact, brought other people out of them intact, but you still take them seriously every time they pop up.

Tony trying to break this to him gently--or maybe not gently, but fairly and calmly at least--as if Steve has more to lose, more to go back to that he will never see again, than Stark himself? He can't take that. No way.

"Tony, stop. Stop." He comes closer, not quite within arm's reach but wishing they had the kind of relationship where he could hug the man. "C'mon, as if I'd consider backing out even if it were an option. I get it. I figured that out before we left. It's not going to be the same. We might not belong there at all."

He worries his lip, brows knitting in a softer and more uncertain look than he usually shows. "I don't get how it works, exactly, though. Are we going to cease to exist? Do we need to move fast before we vanish? If we did go back to the year we left, would we be just...the extra Tony Stark and the extra Steve Rogers?"

Steve coming at him, shirtless or not, moments after his thoughts about wanting to do terrible things to him or not, still makes him jump. He puts his hands up, non-threateningly, perhaps even to stave off an attack he knows, rationally, isn’t going to come. “Stop!”

It’s been two years since their fight. It’s been two years since Tony laid prone on his back with a shield coming at his face.

He should be over this by now.

“Just stop. And listen to me. There’s two of us. Two of you and two of me. The other two have more of a right to live in the world we’re fixing. We’re just the extras.”

He lets his hands fall, looking pretty damned foolish.

“So it doesn’t matter what happens to us. Pepper will marry the other me. After we destroy the Tesseract, we can bust out Barnes and then the other you will be happy. We can make fairy tales happen. But not for us. We aren’t going to disappear. We just have to find other lives.”

Steve stops where he is, all the tension draining from his body in a split second. And he looks completely and utterly heartbroken.

It's not Tony's fault. You feel what you feel; you can't just wash away trauma, even with the most sincere and desperate apologies. Steve's not going to fight him on that point, and he's not going to try to reassure him. It would be insulting. It would be downplaying the wrong he did him. So. He just takes a couple steps back and sits on the nearest chair, folding his knees up to his chest, and looks exhausted.

"Okay." He says quietly. "That's still better than letting them die."

Which is the bottom line for him and Tony both, he knows. They've long been prepared to die so other people can live. It's just another little step further into the darkness to accept permanent, living isolation so other people can live. "But that means it's just gonna be you and me after we finish this. There won't be anyone else who'll understand, no matter where we go. So...assuming we both make it, where does that leave us?"

God, the last damned thing he wants is to put a strain on something that’s already strained. Watching Steve step back is like watching their progress as friends revert and he can’t have that. Steve will be the only guy that will feel the way he feels, the only guy capable of knowing what it’s like to feel people you love rub through your fingers. He’s got a lung full of them too. He watched them go.

“You’re not getting rid of me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Tony says, leaving alcohol and bar behind to snatch the scissors out of their shopping bag. It takes more effort than he’s got in him to open the plastic shell, so he flicks the package at Steve slightly to do the honors.

It’s nothing he wants to admit, the fear he feels, but they need to work through this stuff. Quickly.

“It’s given me nightmares. More nightmares. On top of space. And Thanos. I get why you did it. You wanted me to lift my hands up to get at the reactor. But I was pretty sure that was it for me. I didn’t want that look in your eyes to be the last thing I saw. I messed up.”

"It's not really the way I thought we'd end up retiring," Steve says vaguely, and he smiles at him. It's not a very happy smile; he's heavy with the events of the last few days. Weeks. Years. But it's meant as a friendly gesture.

He catches the scissors easily, but closes his eyes a moment, relieved. Because he knows he can't go on alone after this, and it's an ugly burden to place on Tony's shoulders, especially when he's still messed up from their fights, but Steve's pretty much at the end of his psychological endurance.

"I'll keep on as long as you want me around," he says quietly, and starts to fumble with the package.

Goddammit. Sheer strength is really not a match for bubble packaging. You can't just rip it open, and his nails are short and blunt and getting them under an edge isn't easy. It's probably hilarious, on some level, watching Captain America wrestle with a package of scissors, if only either of them were in a position to appreciate the ridiculousness.

"I can't undo what I did to you," he says. "And I have no right to ask you to get over it. Whatever you need from me, you have it. I can keep my distance, if it's too much. I just..."

The plastic rips at last, and the scissors fly out of his grip and tumble onto the floor, so Steve sighs and sets the empty package aside and leans down out of the chair to retrieve them. "Fucking childproof bullshit packaging," he mutters, barely audible.

"It's just, remember way back right about now, when we were under the influence of the Mind Stone and I told you you only fight for yourself? I never apologized for that, and I was dead wrong. No one's ever gonna realize how much you're giving up. You really are a hero, Tony."

He takes in air and releases it in a slow, hissing sigh. "And you're gonna a be a man out of time now, too. This isn't what I wanted for you."

“Eight years in my own past is different than a hundred years into the future,” Tony says casually as he takes the scissors from Steve’s hand and crosses the room the drag a sturdier chair into the daylight. He taps the back to indicate that the blond should join him. It’s half to get him to come over and half to prove that Tony is more afraid of situational proximity. A worked up Steve closing the distance between them is different than one being beckoned over.

And Tony has a weapon now anyway. Little good it will actually do him, should Rogers pounce, but he feels better anyway.

“I’m not a hero. And neither are you with a mouth like that. What did you and Wilson do while you were running from the law? Or is that how everyone in Wakanda talks?”

Or had Steve always spoken like this and Tony just thought he was a grandpa in a thirty year old’s body? It kind of disturbs him to know that he doesn’t really know Steve at all. Not remotely.

“Sit still. I’m going to get the fluff off of your face first. I don’t know if you’d nose will grow back if I snip it off.”

Steve eyes him uncertainly from where he sits, trying to judge how easily startled he's likely to be. But Tony's reactions are hard for him to predict at the best of times, and he's feeling a little strung out again. Giving up, he comes over and sits, folding his hands loosely in his lap.

"Most of the people in Wakanda speak in Xhosa. I was in the army, Tony. I can swear in five different languages. It was kind of a game, is the thing, with the Howling Commandos. I was their officer. I was supposed to lead and make sure they put their best face forward, and Bucky--"

Sigh. "Bucky always liked to test me, swearing a blue streak in English and French and German and whatever else he could learn, and I had to tell him to watch his mouth, because we weren't kids any more. You ain't never heard swearing until you've heard Brooklyn swearing."

"Picking up the game again with the Avengers just felt...important. Even though the guys I'd known weren't there." Even though Bucky wasn't there.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head obligingly. "Having you all harass me back was part of the point."

Trimming a few curls from a chiseled cheek is no problem. Tony has a task with his hands and that’s the only thing he cares to focus on. Cutting hair isn’t his line of work and he’s never done it for anyone other than himself, but the repetitive task with the known or desired outcome is good for him.

He runs his fingers through the bulk of the hair, lifts it from Steve’s chin, and runs the blades together. The sound is satisfying. Dropping hair on the floor, despite his OCD is also satisfying.

Hearing all about how Steve Rogers actually has a foul mouth, though, is honestly half distressing. Tony nearly puts down the scissors and takes a seat. Instead, he peers down at Steve, not quite as close as the picture on the HUD, and scoffs. “All this time. We’ve been living a lie. Do you also have ten illegitimate children and an addiction to marijuana?”

It feels...good. To sit passive for a moment, to let himself be touched without worrying about baggage or hidden meanings. His eyes stay closed, because he doesn't want to see anything in Tony's face to make him feel any different about the physical proximity. Doesn't want to see fear or wariness, especially.

If he just lets himself focus on the prosaic nature of the touch, it feels safe.

His lips quirk into a wry smile, though. "Of all the people in the world, I figured you'd be the last to buy into the Captain America persona, Tony. I guess that's my fault for letting it stand."

"For the record, marijuana does nothing for me but I'm in favor of legalization. I don't like it around, though. Reminds me too much of the asthma cigarettes I used to have to smoke as a kid. And if I have any children at all, it's because someone took parts of my DNA when I wasn't looking and grew 'em in a test tube."

Tony looks skeptical but doesn’t further comment. He is curious though, because he’s learned more about Steve in the last ten minutes than he had over their friendship. That his own fault. He tends to forget that people exist when not in his view, or directly on his mind.

Steve certainly has all of his attention right now. It turns out that you can learn more in the time it takes to trim a beard for shaving than you can drunkenly pouring over sketchbooks looking for images of yourself for two years. Who would have thought?

“Pretty sure you’re still body snatched,” Tony says, running short nails across hair left slightly longer than stubble before leaning back towards the bag of drug store finds for the comb. “Maybe you’ll go back to normal when I get your hair to part again. So you’d better tell me all about what other crazy you have to get it out of your system now.”

There's plenty Steve doesn't know about Tony, as well, but he's pretty observant, and as much as he tried not to care at first, he did care. He's not sure how deep Tony's wounds were, before (no doubt deeper now, thanks to their conflict), but he knew they were there and sometimes he had a pretty good guess of when and how they hurt him most. But even that isn't the whole and sum of a man.

The scratch of nails across his skin raises goosebumps on his shoulders for some reason. Steve gives a little shiver, brows knitting, but doesn't open his eyes.

"Pal, I was body-snatched in 1942," he says. "Been like this ever since. What do you want to hear? I could tell you about the time me and Bucky got in trouble for stealing the wheels off his sister's doll carriage, or the time I painted the inside of my ears with my ma's nail varnish, or the first and last time I tried bathtub gin."

He opens one eye at last. "You gotta tell me, though, how'd you like the sketchbooks?"

“Yeah I want to hear about all of it. They make me feel better about everything in life,” Tony comments, trying to tame two years of wild growth on the top of Steve’s head. He’s not as gentle as he was with the beard and he yanks a little bit as he attempts to get the root to cooperate.

Having only cut his own hair, and in a much different style than 1942 Rogers, he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here. There are a few photos on his phone, and he could probably use that phone to look up better ones, but he’s trying not to give SHIELD (or his other self) any reason to wonder and then, likely, to check up on why there’s a duplicated signal.

He leaves the comb in Steve’s hair and flicks through photos from years ago when his thumb sends the photo reel to the beginning. Once again, Steve Rogers is doing to him when he’s used to doing to everyone else.

“I’m not a great reader so I like to look at pictures. You’re okay, I guess. I’ve seen better. Too many dudes in your art.”

Jesus. When did someone like Rogers start to get the jump on him?

The answer arrives quickly: ‘When he stopped having anything to be Steve Rogers for.’

“Stop changing the subject.”

He makes a small sound in his throat when Tony tugs on his hair, neither approval not complaint. He's pretty sure the man is going to absolutely mangle his haircut, when it comes right down to it. Tony Stark is not a barber. But it will grow back, and hats are always an option, and Steve isn't especially vain about his hair, so he's prepared to give Tony free reign.

"Too many--Tony. Really? What, you want me to draw you some pin-up girls?" His lips twitch. "That was my first paid professional artist job; I could do that."

He opens both eyes this time and peers up at Tony. "Am I changing the subject? I'm not sure I get what you're asking me. You wanted to know about my crazy? What does that mean?"

Though he’s not about to say what he actually thinks, Tony does agree that there should be more pin-ups. Steve is from the era of the perfect girl with the fullest of figures and the softest of skin, rosy cheeks and most well kept hair. Tony has had his fun alone with pin-ups, same as any boy stuck in a boarding school. He’s also had his share of fun with those other boys too. There’d been little choice about that, when you’re lonely and that’s all there is. Sexuality needs an outlet. Ask a fair portion of prisoners and they’ll tell you the same.

Tony resumes what he’s been doing, pulling strands of dark hair between his fingers to snip the ends at an angle. He sees the exercise in geometry, measuring angles by sight and determining the best place to make the cut by calculations entering and exiting various parts of his brain at once.

He’s not a barber. But he’s going to do a damned good job. Steve just needs to wait and see.

“The guy I grew up thinking I knew was pious and never did anything wrong other than lie a bunch of times to enlisting officers. The guy I’ve known has always been Captain America and you yourself just said you’ve let us all know you as that. So yeah. I want to know the nail polish in your ear story. Give me some dirt in case I ever have to give a eulogy. You’ve got plenty of stuff on me.”

Steve's sexual history is more sordid and sad than Tony might be expecting. He is not, as is popularly believed, a 99-year-old virgin, but he waited an awfully long time to reach out. There were no trysts before the serum, as much as Bucky encouraged him. Things got complicated after that. There was Peggy, and then there was Bucky, and there were the demands of his new body and the beginnings of the various psychological wounds of war...

It got a little weird. But he knows he doesn't have any children out there.

"There's Captain America," he says, "and there's Steve Rogers. And they overlap in a lot of places, but not perfectly. Steve Rogers is older."

He's quiet for a few seconds, then says: "Raspberry Cutex. That was the color nail varnish ma wore most of the time when I was little. Raspberry, sometimes Chinese Red, and Pink Pearl on holidays. She worked real hard; I always liked it when she dressed up and got fancy because that meant she was taking a break. Anyway, I must have been about four at the time. I don't remember all of it that well, so I don't know what I was thinking, but I got into her makeup. The usual kid stuff; when she caught me I had rouge on my elbows and mascara in my hair, and she cleaned me all up and put me to bed early, but what she didn't realize is that I'd opened up the nail varnish and stuck the brush in both my ears. I guess it tickled or something, I don't know."

"So she comes to wake me up the next day and I didn't really respond to her, and I was sick so often she naturally guessed somethin' was really wrong. Checked my temperature, made me rest and eat a bunch of extra liver for a couple days--that was the pernicious anemia. Raw liver was the only thing we had for it back then. It was the worst."

He starts to shake his head, then thinks better of it. "When I didn't get any better, she took me to the doctor at the Catholic hospital, and he didn't even want to look at me. He told her with all the other problems I was having, I was probably going deaf and she oughtta think about making me a ward of the state. Well, that part I heard because she went off on him. There was yelling."

"And I was upset because my ma was upset, and it could have been a complete disaster, except then one of the other nurses came in to help calm me down and happened to get a glimpse of Raspberry Cutex in my ear canal. It had hardened in there and blocked it up enough that I could hardly hear, and that's the reason I was acting funny. All it took to clear it up was a few drops of acetone. I think the doctor was embarrassed."

"Served him right."

It’s a story that must have been told all the time. Birthday parties and Christmases must have been filled with amusing stories told around the table with family and friends. Tony doesn’t actually have any stories like that, not from when he was that young. Christmases and birthdays had been for appearances, or for business contracting. Nothing more. Sometimes Tony saw video of holidays but he was rarely in them.

As Steve talks, Tony warms up to him. This guy didn’t have a great life and he still turned out pretty great. It’s true that there’s an overlap between Steve Rogers and Captain America but it’s also true that there couldn’t be a Captain America without Steve Rogers. He’s too necessary to the costume and the moniker.

“Think of how different it would be if your mom gave you up,” Tony muses, taking more hair from the sides. “You are who you are because of everything in your life. Even your disastrous drag phase. That’s why changing this is going to make the other you different. Maybe not for the better but different enough. Stop wiggling or I’m cutting your ear off.”

He’s not serious.

“You should have stuck with the drawing,” he says after a moment. “You were good.”

Not nearly so much family as you'd think, coming from Irish Catholic heritage. Some aunts and uncles and cousins, though, and they had plenty of friends. They often had holidays with Bucky's family, for that matter. They bonded young and bonded solid, so their mothers became friends, too.

This particular story, though, was most often recounted to Steve by his mother when he was terribly ill, to remind him that the doctors don't know everything, and that sometimes the solution to recovery is just letting go of your prejudices and taking a closer look at the problem.

"I did end up deaf in the left ear," he says, "before the serum. But that was because of high fevers, not nail polish."

He tilts his head obligingly, then rolls his eyes at the threat. "She would never have given me up. I mean, I had nightmares about it, or about being taken away from her, for years and years, but she'd have blown up Manhattan before she'd have let me go. It was hard, though, being a poor widow with a sickly son."

He chuckles, then. "Excuse you, I could've been adorable in drag before the serum. I...do still draw. When I have the time. Sometimes it's hard to carry the supplies around. I like watercolors, too."

“I take it back. I like this Steve.” Tony’s voice is measured with concentration as he cuts out the other man’s ears and gives the left over shag a good fluffing up, fingers splayed against his scalp, before he goes back to cutting again. The template for each turn of the scissors is overlaid, like he’s building up a chart with transparency paper that only he can see, layers upon layers of angles and calculations sitting on top of reality.

Tony’s unique way of viewing the world is something even Howard didn’t have. The passed Stark had been a genius in his own right, marvelous and ground breaking, and while Tony doesn’t see it, he’s surpassed his old man.

“A deaf drag queen watercolorist would fit into New York a lot better today— I think we’ve found your next mission, after this one,” he decides, though he has already determined that they’re going to work on finding and rehabilitating Barnes before anything else.

He doesn’t know why he wants to give this guy his friend back, but it’s suddenly extremely important to him. There’s too many sketches and details of him in Steve’s books. Same with Peggy, but Peggy is beyond fetching.

Going that far back in time is too unpredictable. Almost a decade had been bad enough.

“Once the younger me figures out I’ve got his accounts and shuts me out—“ Ha, like either Tony would ever notice! “—we’ll need a way to support ourselves, anyway. Chin down. Let me get the back.”

"Mnnf," Steve says as his hair gets fluffed up. He's got goosebumps again. Now he's starting to get convinced Tony genuinely knows what he's doing somehow, with respect to hair styling. He can't imagine how or why, though. Unless it has something to do with some kind of spatial sixth-sense and facility with tools of all kinds.

"I can't be a drag queen now," he protests mildly. "My shoulders are way too broad, and I have no hips."

Okay, so he didn't have hips before the serum, either, but his slight form was better suited to dresses, at least, and--yeah, so he thought about it once or twice, what of it? "You saying I should settle down in Greenwich Village and paint for the rest of my life?"

That's strangely tempting. And then 'we'll need a way to support ourselves' registers, specifically the 'we' part, and Tony will get to see a soft little smile before Steve obediently tilts his head down. "Sorry, you're saying we should settle down in Greenwich Village. For the record, just in case you're serious, I know we haven't always gotten along, and we're probably gonna be screaming at each other again sooner or later, but I'd be okay with that."

“You mostly growl in the Leading Man sort of way. I’m the screamer,” Tony jokes with that same half-paying attention tone he’s had for the last five minutes. He puts pressure on the back of Steve’s head and uses the comb at the name of his neck to lift the hair for trimming. It’s not exact, a good electric razor would be better, but Tony doesn’t have access to one.

The illusion only has to be Good Enough. Steve can sell the rest.

“Greenwich is too hipster... but I can pull off a good pair of skinny jeans. So let’s not knock it off of the list. There’s always Malibu. He’ll still have the house there. Huh. We can stop it from getting blown up this time around. Trying to salvage that dump was a nightmare.”

But he had to do it. For DUM-E.

“All right. Color is still really off. I’ve never done bleach before. Let’s hope you’ll still have hair left.” Tony wanders back to the bag to read the box of bleach they’d bought and that will give Steve enough time to check out his ‘do. Tony’s done a great job. Steve will have to shave the rest of his face but the way Tony’s cut his hair makes him look nearly like he had been all those years ago, fresh from the ice.

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