Work Text:
Steve finds himself hogtied by adamantium-based restraints, gagged with a cheap, velcro-strapped ball gag, and recovering from what feels like a tranquilizer dart.
He registers first that it’s not a SHIELD vehicle, then that it’s a M35 2½-ton cargo truck. The velcro catches in a patch of hair that’s come loose from his uniform helmet.
“He’s awake,” says the person closest to Steve, a bulky white man dressed in a digital camo US Army combat uniform, and an enhanced combat helmet.
Further toward the front of the truck are ten more uniformed men, and the silhouettes of a driver and another man in the front passenger seat. All Steve can see through the windshield is that they’re on a paved road, definitely not in New York City, and the road signs are kelly green with white Helvetica text.
The reply is immediate, audible to Steve through the helmet’s internal communications. “He’ll be someone else’s problem soon enough.” Another voice Steve doesn’t recognize.
Steve can identify over five hundred SHIELD employees solely by voice.
Are they bringing him to a SHIELD base? To an extrajudicial execution site? There’s an entrance to Tony’s Negative Zone prison, “42,” in the city; he’d be waking up there if that were the destination.
There are plenty of villains with the manpower to steal a vehicle like this. The equipment and uniforms could be obtained through any number of means, many even legal. Lately Steve’s been most active against Red Skull, Lukin, AIM, and RAID, all of whom have been collaborating. So far this doesn’t match their style or that of any of Steve’s other longtime enemies, though there’s still time for one to show up and gloat.
The efficiency, secrecy, and possible involvement of the Army do remind Steve of someone, though: Tony Stark.
Is he finally calling in favors from his time as Secretary of Defense?
There’s soundproofing inside the vehicle, covering the walls, doors, and ceiling—or at least what’s visible from the flat area where Steve’s restrained, and evident from the absence of traffic sounds coming from outside. Even Steve’s enhanced hearing can only make out muffled hums and white-noise sibilants.
He’s thoroughly trapped. His memories are blurred, but he has an unshakeable feeling that no one knows where he is.
To think he’d held out hope that he and Tony could have spoken—that some shard of their friendship could lead to a resolution. Steve had even—it’s insane to think it now, he withers with shame at his delusion—harbored the thought that he could convince Tony to join the fight against Registration.
⚮
Fifty-eight minutes pass before the vehicle stops. It’s lead-gray and dim through the windshield. The ball gag tastes sour and plasticky in Steve’s mouth.
He can’t stop what’s about to happen.
Orders and assents pass back and forth through the men’s helmets. As directed, the doors to the truck open, half the men step out, and the other half train their M240s on Steve.
“Isn’t he supposed to be blindfolded?” asks a new voice when the back of the truck opens.
Steve strains his neck to see. No one speaks to him or tries to stop him from looking.
Six soldiers—because whoever they are, they’re trained soldiers—stand in pairs around the open doors. Behind them another two dozen stand in regimented lines, also aiming their weapons at Steve. Still others mill between vehicles; all US Army, some marked, others not. The truck carrying him was part of a convoy of identical vehicles, and they’ve met up with a convoy of mixed vehicles, mostly humvees.
The anti-tank missiles are pointed at Steve, too.
He wants to tell them that they have him sufficiently surrounded; they don’t need to bother with restraints. He gets the idea, though, that even if he could speak, they’d ignore him.
“Who’s he gonna tell?” scoffs someone else.
⚮
Steve’s tranqed again for the transfer. He wakes in a similar position as before, except in the back of a soundproofed hummer. A different group of men in Army uniforms sit toward the front.
From one box, to another.
Any doubts that this is really the US military have died. There are any number of enemies of Steve’s or the Avengers’ who could easily commandeer a military vehicle and acquire Army uniforms and equipment. There are none who could get away with driving two convoys of military vehicles out of New York City without being spotted by the actual government.
He’s been jaded about the United States before, about its elected representatives, its processes, its institutions. He’s quit being Captain America over it, more than once. After Registration, he thought his opinions couldn’t get any lower.
Once again the most likely culprit is Tony goddamn Stark.
Another of Steve’s opinions that, it seems, can sink to new depths.
It’s not bitterness that wells up in Steve’s chest. It’s not enough to nearly make him sick. He doesn’t swallow down bile, struggling against the ball gag.
His naive infatuation, the desire and fondness he treasured, they all blindsided him. Every step that brought them here, from Extremis to Samford to the SHRA, Steve expected more from Tony. His infantile celebrity crush, who only cares about Steve as far as he can manipulate him.
And now that Steve’s proved he won’t be manipulated any further—what? Another box? What will they do there? Attempt to brainwash him? Try to extract the serum? Or will the next box be his coffin?
There’s still a chance, he tells himself, that Tony isn’t responsible. The Army, or whoever’s commanding them, could be acting on their own. Red Skull was Secretary of Defense, once, he reminds himself. Someone like Faustus could pull off something like this too, with the right connections.
It’s not true that Tony’s the only one who could do this. It only—feels true. Like something he ought to have known all along, or at least since Tony publicly supported the Registration Act.
This set of guards is chattier than the first. They have opinions about everything from the Playstation 3 versus the Wii, to Srebrenica and North Korea’s nuclear program.
Only the pair with their rifles pointed at Steve bother to look at him. Occasionally, the whole group will complain about the detail they’ve pulled; they’ve caught on to the fact that if Steve attempts to escape, an anti-tank missile will take them out, too. “Fucking supers,” more than one mutters. No one addresses him directly.
⚮
Almost two hours pass, long enough for Steve’s short-term memory to return.
The last thing he remembers before the truck is jumping the wall at the old Mansion, removing his trench coat and heading through the grounds.
He’d been on his way to meet Tony.
No one else knew where he’d be. Not even what part of Manhattan he’d be visiting.
That’s it. He can’t hide it from himself any more. Only Tony could’ve orchestrated this.
It’s not a surprise. It’s not a disappointment.
It doesn’t feel like the weight of a skyscraper on his chest. There are no tears forming in his eyes, just sweat. The hummer is overcrowded and hot, that’s all.
He’d already given up on Tony. How could he not have? After the Thor clone, after Bill’s death, after Cloak and Wiccan, after the goddamn Negative Zone prison—how could he not have? It would be insane to have any faith left in the man.
Tony set up an ambush in the wreckage of the home they shared together, and of course Steve should’ve seen it coming, of course Tony would use their history like that, of course he’d exploit every one of Steve’s weaknesses.
Of course he knew about Steve’s pathetic passion for the place. For all that Steve tried to keep his distance, to stay away—when it came down to it, Tony knew all along, and used it, just like he does everything else.
⚮
Steve shakes his head when a soldier pulls out the third injection. “I’ll walk,” Steve tries to say through the gag, but nothing intelligible comes out.
⚮
Steve’s groggy. He expects to be in a moving vehicle; he’s disoriented to find himself on a gurney, instead. He's surrounded by guards, to the point that their black-clad, black-masked bodies are all that’s in view. No one stops him from twisting his spine and craning his legs and elbows until he lies on his side, allowing him to see the concrete ceiling and caged lamps above.
A hallway: another box, with four of the sides longer than the others.
The gurney stops three minutes later, during which none of the men speak. Outside of Steve's view, heavy padlocks click open, followed by the digital beeps of a keypad, then the hunt-and-peck clack of a keyboard. At last, a door opens.
With effort, a group of guards tips the gurney to one side and drops Steve on the concrete floor. The door shuts heavily behind him.
Steve’s eyes adjust to the light long before he can contort his body into a better vantage point. Finally, he’s flat on his belly, his head craning up to take in the room—the cell.
There’s not much to see. It’s a six-foot concrete cube.
Another caged light on the ceiling, dimmer than the ones in the hall.
A bucket in one corner.
Two pairs of shackles installed in one wall.
On the other, a bloodstain, four feet across at its widest point.
A thin mat in the middle—and, lying unconscious on it in a heap, Tony Stark.
⚮
Tony’s barefoot, and, other than a pair of boxers patterned with medieval knights and heraldic shields, naked.
His wrists and ankles are bound, separately, with what look like standard-issue handcuffs. A single wide, gold-tinted cuff is around his left ankle.
There are no blankets. The hairs on Tony’s skin stand on end, and he shudders with every breath.
All the fear and shame and disappointment spill out of Steve as rage. Why are they sharing a cell? What’s expected of them?
He rolls on his stomach, ramming his boots against the confines of this latest set of six walls, hits three of them at once, making as loud a commotion as his bound, gagged body can.
Tony convulses awake, jerkily sitting up, raising his cuffed hands out and opening a single palm like a repulsor blast toward the sound. Eyes wide, he drops his arms to his lap the moment he focuses on Steve.
“Fuck,” he says, voice hoarse. He looks startled, and scared, and the part of Steve that blames Tony for this—for everything—soars with joy. “What—shit. Shit, shit.” He takes a battered breath. “I’m going to come toward you and take off the gag, okay?”
He doesn’t wait for a reply, not even for Steve to nod or shake his head before he shambles, awkward in the restraints, toward Steve. He uses his left hand to undo the velcro, the right dangling from the other cuff, brushing against Steve’s throat.
Steve doesn’t shiver. He doesn’t react at all. Tony isn’t going out of his way to touch him. Tony’s just removing the gag, so they can share intel, or scream at each other or—Steve can’t think. What is Tony doing here? What does it mean that Tony’s here?
Steve’s heartbeat doesn’t speed up. He doesn’t miss Tony’s nearness when Tony leans back on his heels, the gag tossed to the floor.
“What happened to your face, Stark?” Steve asks, then grimaces. He moves his jaw back and forth, up and down, stretching it to relieve the tightness there.
Tony looks confused, then says, “Oh. Uh, tranq dart, I think?”
It must have hit him in the eyebrow; the bruise it left is massive, mottled wine-red, and tinged with sickly chartreuse.
“Why did they grab you?” Tony asks.
“What the hell do you mean,” Steve growls.
Tony frowns. He’s disgustingly composed. If Steve could, he’d slam a fist in Tony’s face.
“Well,” Tony says slowly, carrying on in press-conference syllables like his throat isn’t shredded, “it doesn’t come as a surprise to me that there are large factions in the military, or the government, for that matter, who are tired of Registration. Or just want me out of the way. But you’re Army—”
“I’m a traitor,” Steve says, and Tony flinches—why does he flinch?
Steve doesn’t care. He. Doesn’t. Care. He’s done giving a shit about Tony Stark.
“You’re—okay.” Tony’s expression ticks from faux-concerned to businesslike. Like it’s that easy. “Can I take a look at what they rigged you up with?”
“I can’t break it.”
“Humor me?” Tony says, then hurries to add, “It’s possible I can find a weak point, but even if I can’t, it won’t hurt to get more information about this situation.”
Steve approximates a shrug, his movement limited by the way his arms are locked behind his back. “Knock yourself out.”
He doesn’t examine why he gives Tony permission. He’s not planning to shove Tony with his shoulders, or try to damage him by—what, wriggling against him? He doesn’t care what Tony does. He doesn’t care about Tony’s proximity. So why bother arguing when he can’t stop Tony from looking at the restraints anyway?
Tony scoots close to Steve again. Steve jolts when he feels Tony’s hand on his wrist.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tony says quickly. “You’re right, there’s no weak points. But these are digital, did you know that?”
“Well, I can’t exactly see them.”
“If Extremis were working—”
“What?” Steve snaps. “Are you implying there’s a bug in the thing that runs your brain?”
“No,” Tony says, sour. “It was working great. This thing” —he gestures with his bound hands toward the large gold cuff on his left ankle— “is suppressing it.”
A thoughtful expression passes over Tony’s face. “Did they leave anything in your belt pouches?”
“It feels like there’s something,” Steve says. “Betting they took my multitool and mini screwdriver set, though.”
“You still carry the screwdriver set?” Tony asks. Steve first started packing one in case he needed to help Iron Man with field repairs.
Steve doesn’t reply.
Tony moves on with the same brisk efficiency as before. Why would he care whether Steve carries the screwdrivers or not? They’re useful, so Steve carries them. That’s it. “Well, can I take a peek?”
“If we’re lucky, there’s a few power bars in there,” Steve says at last, by way of agreement. His practicality outweighs his fury, and his stupid, naive mind is tired of being angry.
Then Tony’s clumsy, restrained hands fumble along Steve’s waist. The room is cold, Steve realizes, as Tony’s warmth reaches him through the leather of his uniform.
Tony makes a pile of the contents. They took his lockpicks, screwdriver set, power bars, even his compass. What’s left is mainly a first aid kit, a lighter, a little water, and some survival basics. The rest is random detritus: a wad of cash; a keychain from the Air and Space museum with keys to the Mansion; an outdated keycard from the Tower.
Tony takes the cable saw out of the survival kit. He cocks his head, passing it from one hand to another.
Steve doesn’t miss watching Tony at work on solving an engineering problem. He closes his eyes, but not to stave off tears. He doesn’t—he can’t. Tony’s presence isn’t evidence that he’s not behind their capture.
Tony gathers the bandages from the first aid kit, along with the cable saw, and settles himself on the cold floor near the bloodstain.
“What’re you doing?” Steve asks. Not that he’s curious. Not that he cares.
“I have an idea,” Tony says.
Tony wraps a bandage around his calf, just above the gold anklet. It’s time-consuming, having to pass the bandage from hand to hand, not being able to dip one end of the length under his leg since those are cuffed, too. When he’s finished, he ties another bandage around that, holding it in place with a half knot.
With trepidation, it dawns on Steve what Tony’s doing.
“Tony,” Steve says, a warning. His urgency, his futility, is building in his shoulderblades and guts, all the places where his bounds strain his body.
Ignoring Steve, Tony takes the Air and Space Museum keychain—a cheap nickel carabiner and a 3-inch solid model of a rocket—and ties a full knot around that.
“Why are you tying a tourniquet,” Steve says. It’s not really a question, because he doesn’t want to know.
He also can’t look away.
Sure enough, Tony twists the rocket end of the keychain, tightening the binding. “I’m getting you out of those cuffs,” he says. “Whoever did this to you should be ashamed of themselves. You’re—you’re a national hero. I hope whoever ordered this is court martialed to hell and back.”
“Being untied won’t help,” Steve says. “We’ll still be in this box.” Trapped in another set of six walls, worse than alone.
“Come over here and stop me,” Tony challenges, leaning over his legs so that one elbow traps the tourniquet in place and his cuffed hands can take hold of the cable saw’s handles.
Steve, unable to ignore Tony’s dare, makes his way across the cell in an undignified inchworm motion. Not that he’ll be able to do anything about it once he gets there. At least moving across the cell will be an accomplishment, something he’ll feel in his muscles.
At first Tony positions the saw over his heel, but Steve can already tell that won’t work; the angle is bad. He’d need to be able to get his hands behind his foot to do that, or angle up from the sole of the foot to the heel, and with his limbs cuffed it’s just not feasible.
Tony, resigned, lays the cable saw at the front of his ankle, takes up the handles, and begins sawing across the skin.
“If you pass out, I won’t be able to untie that,” Steve tells him.
“It’s already numb,” Tony says. “I’ll barely feel it.”
“You could bleed out!”
Tony flashes his teeth. “They’ll remove my body before it starts to smell too bad.”
The worst part is that that probably isn’t even true.
Steve reaches Tony, but he can only watch, helpless, as the cable forms a furrow in Tony’s flesh. The handcuffs on Tony’s ankle, lower than the gold Extremis anklet, jostle against his hand and the saw as he works. Occasionally, blood will seep out of the growing wound, and Tony will grimace, turn the tourniquet, and shove it back into place with a forearm.
It’s gruesome. Tony’s foot turns pale and clammy, like it’s already severed—like it’s already dead.
Tony’s lashes flutter. His shuttered face gives way, starting to show the discomfort of the angle and the pain that must be coming through even the numbness of the tourniquet.
The saw makes a grinding sound against Tony’s flesh, nothing like the noises Steve associates with medical procedures. This is no sterile, sharp scalpel. This is a length of cable and one of Tony’s limbs, and the most Steve can do is lean against Tony and slow him down—which would help no one. He can’t stop him.
A sound wrenches from Tony, a rough, agonized noise. It startles Steve, and for a moment there’s an expression of surprise and pain on Tony’s face, too. He’s pale, covered in a sheen of sweat. There’s a tinge of blue to his foot. In the dim light it looks carved from stone.
“Hit the bone,” Tony croaks. “Gonna—ah.” He cuts himself off as his words give way to a swallowed groan. He falters, but continues sawing at his ankle.
The severed muscle is visible from where Steve lies: vividly rosy and ruby, incongruously meaty against the sallow skin above and below it.
The rasping of the cable on bone is even worse than the noise of it cutting muscle. Steve shudders, even as a thought occurs to him.
“Did you orchestrate this,” Steve asks.
Tony’s eyes land on Steve’s for a splitsecond, then back on the fold of flesh he’s uncovered. He swallows, presses his arm tighter against the tourniquet, and continues sawing. “No.” His voice is taut, shuttered.
“It occurred to me that if you had, you might’ve left a knife in one of my pouches,” Steve continues. “Unless you think this will endear you to me.” It’s not working. It would be hard seeing anyone do this to themselves. It’s not about Tony.
Tony shakes his head—tosses it, really, like an unruly horse—and responds only with a clipped, “Ha.”
The saw scrapes against bone. If Steve cared, he’d worry about Tony inhaling the powder.
Steve clocks the moment the sound changes again. “What’s that? Marrow?”
“Gold.” Tony’s voice is still tighter. “Undersuit.”
“At least gold is softer than bone.”
“Compressed,” is all Tony says.
The metal of the saw scrapes against the metal of the undersuit. Steve wonders if it would be faster for Tony to twist the foot and pull it off, but he probably lacks the strength, not to mention the reach or the proper angle for it.
Steve’s seen plenty of dismemberment, but that’s been in the alacrity of battle. This is tedious in comparison. This is Tony—no, that’s not it, it doesn’t matter that it’s Tony. Steve would be nauseated watching anyone do this.
And this could still be all Tony’s doing. He can’t eliminate the possibility yet. Even if Tony didn’t plan this capture specifically—the war, Registration, that’s still on Tony’s shoulders. He escalated their disagreement to the point where the Army, or someone in control of it, intervened.
“The thing is,” Steve continues, rage boiling up in his gullet, “I didn’t tell anyone where I was going or who I was meeting today. If you didn’t either—”
“No.”
The vehemence and agony in Tony’s voice alarms Steve despite himself.
“No,” Tony says again, the word mangled by pain. “Spy. Mole. Avengers—frequency. Listening.” A tear ekes out of the corner of one eye, glistening over his vivid bruise. “Wouldn’t.”
Steve’s sick with how much he wants to believe Tony.
The sawing sound changes again, back to metal against bone. Tony makes a sound that’s something between a sob and a sigh. His arms shake with exertion.
Steve watches as, over many prolonged minutes, with agonizing slowness, Tony grinds through the rest of his ankle bone and then the rest of his flesh.
He finishes with a cry, relieved and broken and pained, as the handcuff and anklet tumble off his severed limb.
The single light in the room flashes. Steve’s cuffs open—then, the second he pulls his limbs free, close themselves again—and by the time he reaches Tony’s side, the light blares steadily and Tony slumps, unconscious.
⚮
Steve tightens the tourniquet first, securing it in place. Unthinkingly, he carries Tony to the mat, leaving the severed foot where it fell. The mat is near the pile of supplies, anyway.
He expects the stub of Tony’s leg to be a cross-section of wires, like the inside of an underwater cable. He expects them to spark and burn him as he examines it. Instead it’s veins and muscle and gold-infused bone.
He uses the lighter to cauterize the wound. Secures a bandage by rote. Takes Tony’s cuffs in hand and snaps the chains connecting them, just to feel something break.
Tony comes to in moments. Steve’s breath swells out of him in relief; much longer and it wouldn’t bode well.
“Gimme a minute,” Tony says, “and I can work on the digital door locks.” He’s still pale, clammy, and shivering, but his eyes focus properly and his speech, though slurred, is less pained than before.
“What about your foot?”
“I think it’ll grow back.”
Steve grinds his teeth. “You think?” He’d assumed Tony had a plan to get them out of here in time to have the foot reattached. But then, if Tony didn’t orchestrate this, he was still unconscious when he was brought here, and knows even less of the layout than Steve.
“Can we fight after I nap,” Tony says, not asking, sounding bone-weary.
“I have no reason to believe we’re not exactly where you want us,” Steve says, seething.
“I think the state of here is a good indication that anyone with sense would rather be anywhere else,” Tony replies. “So, what, you tried interrogating me while I tortured myself, and now you don’t even believe my answers?”
“Whether you leaked the meeting or someone else did, it’s your fault we’re here.”
Tony’s eyes unfocus. “Yeah. That’s true enough.” He hangs his head.
Steve doesn’t want to reach out. He doesn’t hate how easily Tony takes the blame. He agrees! It is Tony’s fault! He just said so. He—fuck. How is he supposed to take this, any of this? Whatever else, the Army has dropped them both in a blacksite, left them to rot together in a tiny cell. How is he supposed to take Tony’s betrayal, and the SHRA, and now this?
Steve looks away, massaging his wrists and ankles. He’s bruised where he was restrained, but those will fade soon. The aches will take longer.
“I’m tired,” Tony says, and he sounds it. He sounds exhausted. “Extremis is still scanning and adjusting. It’s focused on healing my foot, or at least my stump. We’re not going anywhere until then, and maybe not even then. We have plenty of time to fight each other.”
Steve looks up. Tony is staring at him. His bruise is livid. His eyes are blue as lapis, making the bruise look redder. Tears and dust coat his long eyelashes. His expression is shuttered, mostly, except his eyes. Steve’s dreamed about those eyes.
“Okay, Stark. Sleep.”
Tony uses his one good leg and his elbows to drag himself off the mat. “You should rest, too. Recover. If we get out—”
“You take the mat. I have my uniform.”
“I’m fine, I have Extremis, you—”
“Have the serum. I’m not tired, I can—”
“Just take the mat, Steve.”
Steve glares. Already sitting on his knees, he crawls over to the mat, then grabs Tony by the waist and hauls him over to it. “Plenty of room,” he says, easing Tony and himself onto their sides.
He turns over so they lay back-to-back. “Go to sleep already.”
⚮
Steve wakes, six or so hours of sleep later, to the sound of Tony crying. He can tell Tony’s trying to be quiet, sobbing into his fist. Tony has turned around, facing the same direction as Steve, so he’s curled up against Steve’s back.
He ignores it. He doesn’t care why Tony’s crying. There’s plenty for Tony to feel guilty about, if he’s sincere. There’s the fact that they’re trapped in a cell in a blacksite, too.
Is Tony even capable of fear any more, of despair? Of guilt?
He’s a liar and a manipulator, and Steve won’t play into his game.
Tony throws an arm over Steve’s shoulder. Steve elbows him in the gut, knocking him off.
“Don’t,” Steve barks. He pushes himself up by the elbows, not willing to stay lying down when Tony’s like this.
Tony takes a steadying breath. He sniffs, wiping his eyes and nose on his bare arm. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Go back to sleep.”
“You going to grab me again?”
“No,” Tony says. “I promise.” He swipes one eye with the back of his cleaner hand. “I think I know why they locked us in here together.”
It’s a toss-up between rising to Tony’s bait and letting him talk himself out. Knowing Tony, he’ll probably take Steve’s silence as encouragement to keep babbling. “Yeah?”
“They want us to finish each other off.”
Steve’s perfidious imagination leaps to imagine their hands on one another’s cocks, stroking each other to completion. No. He doesn’t want that. Not any more.
He forces himself to confront what Tony actually meant.
If that’s the intent, why were they both cuffed? The Extremis cuff is obvious: Tony’s too powerful with the enhancile. With Steve, they’d have reason to worry a tranq would wear off before they could uncuff him and get him in the cell. But why the cuffs on Tony?
Tony could garrote Steve with the cuffs, for one. If Steve were still hogtied, he’d be pressed to stop him. Still, he suspects the plan was for them both to starve to death and save on cell space, prisoner rations, and the expense of executions in the meantime.
“There’s no point any more,” Steve says. “What can you do for Registration from here?”
Tony’s quiet long enough that Steve hopes he’s fallen asleep again. Then he says, “Is that the only reason we fought?”
“What, it’s not enough that you’ve locked up and killed our friends?”
“It seems,” Tony audibly licks his lips, “more personal than that.”
“So what?”
“What?” Tony’s sodden face is a mask of confusion. “So, I want to make it stop. I want all the fighting to stop, Steve.”
Steve punches the floor next to Tony’s head, shattering a hole in the shape of his fist. Tony opens his eyes, breathing heavily.
Steve shakes out his wrist. He’s given himself a number of hairline fractures. That’s what he gets for punching concrete. They’ll heal quickly, he just needs to try not to move the wrist much or it won’t heal right.
“You expect me to believe,” Steve growls, “that you care about anything other than winning?”
“Why did you even agree to meet with me?” Tony asks, misery in his voice, a bleak expression in his eyes. “If that’s what you think of me.”
“I thought I’d give you the chance to surprise me,” Steve says, but is that the truth?
“You should’ve stayed in your secret base,” Tony says. His eyes have gone distant. “Then it’d be just me here.”
Ignoring that, Steve says, “Why did you want to meet me today?”
“Is it still today?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
At first Steve thinks Tony won’t answer. Then, softly, Tony says, “Have you heard of Project Wideawake?”
Steve shakes his head. “No,” he says aloud.
“It’s what was planned instead of the Registration Act,” Tony goes on. “I saw it when I was Secretary. If you think Registration is bad, imagine millions of Sentinels, filling the sky. Forcibly implanted inhibitor circuits in our brains, taking away our powers. Genetic testing of the entire population so all superhumans end up under government control before we’re even born.”
Steve finds himself matching Tony’s quiet tone. “It couldn’t happen,” he says. “We’d stop it.”
Tony swallows, his shoulders wracked by another half-repressed sob. “I thought that’s what I was doing.”
“What?” What the hell does he mean by that?
“I don’t know what to do,” Tony says. Steve can’t remember the last time he heard Tony so uncertain.
“Join me,” Steve says before he means to. “Denounce the Act and help me fight it.”
“What if we fail,” Tony whispers. “Reed or someone else will just take my place.”
“We won’t.” They can’t. Not with what’s at stake.
Tony already has Steve saying we . He really has Steve wrapped around his finger.
This doesn’t mean he forgives Tony. This is practical.
“I thought I could make it better. Hold it off. But if they did this to you—”
“To both of us,” Steve corrects.
“And shit, I thought they believed I was working for them.”
“Who? Who’s this ‘they’, Tony?”
Tony pushes up on his hands, so he’s sitting up too, nearly at eye level with Steve. “I could name some Senators, some Congressmen. There are some military elements, though apparently more than I realized. I don’t know who else, not in any specificity.”
“The Resistance—”
“Steve.” Tony infuses Steve’s name with meaning, more than Steve can take in at once. “Your side was losing.”
“Cloak, Dagger, and Daredevil were strategic—”
“You didn’t stop us from making 42.” The bruise spreading from Tony’s brow is shading to mauve. His eyes are blotchy from crying, and there are still tears in his eyelashes. “The 50-State Initiative is on track. And we already know about Castle’s break-in at the Baxter Building.”
“We’re proving that we can operate and help people without government oversight. And you—SHIELD hasn’t caught up to us yet.”
Tony closes his eyes. His breath is shaky. “I haven’t been trying to capture you, Steve.”
Steve lurches away. “You had orders to kill?”
“No!” Tony says, reaching for Steve, then seeming to think better of it and pulling back. “If I brought you in against your will, I’d always be the bad guy. Only villains go after Captain America.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got news for you: not only is someone else after Captain America, but they’ve captured him.”
Tony’s eyes flicker across Steve’s face. “That’s true,” he says slowly. “Maybe—maybe we can do this.”
Steve ignores the way that makes him feel. He frowns. “If the plan wasn’t to arrest me, what was it?”
Tony rolls his head back. Stares at the ceiling. “To keep Registration as it was. To keep it popular.”
“How?”
Tony shakes his head.
Steve raises his voice. His hands clench into fists. “How, Tony?”
“We know about your plan to break into 42,” Tony whispers, still not looking at Steve. “I thought—it was the perfect time.”
“The perfect time,” Steve says slowly, his chest heaving, “for what.”
“For me to fall in battle.”
“That’s your genius plan?” Steve roars. “To fucking die?”
“I wasn’t happy about it—”
Steve laughs, dark and overloud. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’d bet you were looking forward to it.”
Tony stares at him.
“You think I don’t know you, Stark? You think I don’t know how desperate you are for oblivion?”
“I want to live,” Tony says, like he thinks he means it. “I do. There’s still so much to do.”
“Liar,” Steve says. “God, do you ever stop lying?”
“I mean it,” Tony insists.
“You just cut off your own foot with a cable saw and a length of bandage. You’ve probably got a countdown in that computer you call a brain, and every time it ticks down, you feel a little closer to whole.”
Tony throws up his hands. “What’s so great about living, anyway?” he yells. “Happy’s dead, Pepper hates me, you want to kill me yourself. I have nothing to look forward to but another job I’ve been blackmailed into, another day of wishing I were drunk and armoring up and—”
“So stop!” Steve screams.
“That’s the plan!” Tony screams back. His eyes are wide, wild. “I’ll declaim Registration, and when the Sentinels come, I’ll be there to draw their fire. How’s that for hopes for the future, huh?”
“You know what?” Steve snaps. “I’ll take it for now. Now go the fuck back to sleep. We’ve got a blacksite to break out of before we get to that.”
Tony glares at him but lays down again on the mat.
Steve settles himself down, too, his back facing Tony.
⚮
Steve wakes first. He’s not sure how long he slept this time. His wrist has healed.
Tony has rolled over in his sleep so he’s spooning Steve, his outer hand proprietarily resting on Steve’s ass.
He wants it as much as he hates it. Maybe more.
It won’t fix anything between them. It may make it worse—if anything can.
It’s that thought that spurs Steve on.
“Tony,” he says. “Tony,” he repeats, at full volume.
Tony makes a groggy noise, then starts to withdraw his hand. Steve slams his own hand on top of it, pinning it in place.
“I think I know what’ll make you feel alive,” Steve says, not bothering to try to sound coy or seductive. He pulls himself up to sitting, taking Tony with him.
“You—”
“Fuck me,” Steve says, and watches Tony’s pupils dilate in response.
This past day—or year—has been one friendship-destroying event after another. What’s one more?
At least if they do this, Steve can enjoy being fucked over. “I want you to take me,” he says. “Don’t hold back.” Tony’s had him dancing to his tune throughout their entire fight over Registration—since they met, really. And he wants to feel that, to know it, in his body. On his own terms.
Tony stares, then says, “Bring me the cuffs they had you in.”
⚮
Steve brings Tony the heavy digital cuffs.
Tony has Steve undress, then lie on his stomach, arms and knees bent against his back—and hogties him again.
Tony opts not to reintroduce the ball gag. Instead, he pulls down his boxers and smears his soft cock over Steve’s face.
It overwhelms him with musk and sweat, a heady, not unpleasant scent that he can’t escape; Tony holds his head in place as he grinds against it. Steve opens his mouth, mouths the wet of his lips and tongue over it. He tries to get the tip of Tony’s cock into his mouth, wants to lick up the precome there and feel it hit the back of his throat, but Tony’s hold stops him from doing anything more than lap at it. Tony rubs off on him until he’s hard and leaking, then draws away.
Tony fingers Steve, hogtied and panting, using half the tiny tube of lube from Steve’s first aid kit. Steve writhes. He breathes in the grime of the cell and the stench of blood that still reeks from the corner of the cell with Tony’s amputated foot.
It’s shameful, the way Steve gave it up for Tony. The way Tony tried to talk about the government setting them up to kill each other, and Steve tried turn it into a come-on.
“You’re gorgeous,” Tony tells him. “You’re so beautiful like this—”
That’s over the line. “Shut up,” Steve snaps. “Make me feel it.”
Tony removes his fingers. Unbinds Steve with a thought, then rearranges the cuffs and binds him again so he’s flat on his stomach, his hands stretched in front of him and legs straight out behind him. He turns to Steve’s uniform. Threads the belt and pouches out of the leather. When he returns, he dangles the belt over Steve’s back, letting the cold metal of the buckle drag along his skin.
A hand fists in Steve’s hair, dragging his head back. “You asked for it,” he says, dropping Steve’s head all at once, pushing himself to his knees.
Steve cranes his neck to see Tony lifting the belt and whipping it over Steve’s back. The first blow is hard, over his shoulderblades, enough to knock the wind out of him. The second lands with the thin side of the belt, a thin stripe of fiery pain that makes Steve groan aloud.
Tony kneels over Steve, working over Steve’s ass cheeks, upper thighs, and upper back. Steve can feel the bruises in his muscles, the welts in his skin.
It doesn't mean Tony loves him.
“You’re such a slut for this,” Tony says, which in another context could be praising or playful but now, from Tony’s mouth, is pure pride.
It’s disgusting, how much Steve wants this, how much he needs Tony, needs his outsides to match his mangled insides. He’s twisted himself in knots to defend this man, to worship him—from up close or a distance, neither is safe, nothing is safe when it comes to Tony, not pining from afar, not loving someone else, not being on separate teams or coasts or sides of a war, for Steve it’s always Tony, Tony, Tony.
“This is what you do to me,” Tony says, slamming the belt over Steve’s ass again. “God, that perfect ass—it looks good in red.” He smacks it with his hand, a satisfying thudding feeling against the hot, concentrated lines of the belt.
No, this is what Tony does to him. It’s Steve who lies there and takes it, who goes back for more, no matter how Tony lies and manipulates him. How dare Tony say that to Steve? He can't stand Tony doing anything tender or kind. Not if he doesn't mean it.
Steve doesn’t protest aloud. It’s too shameful, how obsessed he is, how real this is to him.
Steve wants Tony, but not like this—no, exactly this. He wants a version of Tony that doesn’t exist, a version that loves him and tells him the truth and holds him gently, but then he wouldn’t get this, the real Tony, tearstained and bloodstained and brutally giving Steve everything he needs.
“I’m everything they say,” Tony goes on. “I have Captain America tied up, and now I’ll have my way with him.” With that, he cracks the belt across Steve’s cheeks, again and again in quick succession, drawing Steve’s moans into a low scream.
⚮
Twenty minutes later, Steve is face-down on the mat, each ankle cuffed to a matching wrist, his legs spread wide, Tony fucking into his gaping hole. Everything is sweat and the smell of salt and blood and hormones.
“You’re mine,” Tony says, speaking hot and wet against Steve’s ear.
The confidence in Tony’s voice goes straight to Steve’s erection. He ruts uselessly against the mat.
“You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you?”
Steve groans in reply, lost in sensation: the mess of his back and ass; the delicious friction of Tony rutting against him; the depth and breadth of Tony’s cock deep inside him.
“I can open these cuffs any time I like,” Tony continues, unrelenting in his fucking. “All I have to do is think it. And it’s the same with you, huh? I ask: you spread your legs.”
Tony doesn’t have to ask, Steve thinks but doesn’t say. Steve’s the one who had to ask for it. At least Tony didn’t make him beg; this is humiliating enough.
Humiliating, and freeing: to feel it, to be soaked in the filthy sweaty mess of it, to be panting and drooling and dumb under Tony’s wide, hard cock.
“That’s right,” Tony says, gleeful. “Mine to do what I want with.”
What Tony wants now, it seems, is to fuck Steve with his huge cock. It’s maybe a couple inches above average length, and much thicker, filling Steve just right. It feels molten hot inside him, flooding him with incandescence every time Tony pulls back even a fraction of an inch.
He holds up his weight on Steve’s spread cheeks. Steve can’t move, can’t even see what Tony’s doing to him, and with anyone else he’d hate it, abhor being made an object of, unable to respond or look. It’s not that he likes it just because it’s Tony—it’s worse, demeaning, really, the mockery it makes of their friendship, their so-called partnership, revealing the truth of Tony’s power and Steve’s desperation. Tony hurts him, and Steve asks for more just to keep Tony’s attention that much longer. Tony hits him, and Steve nearly comes untouched on the dirty floor of their prison cell.
Steve’s back is lit up where Tony hit him. The welts are bunched up with his bent pose, a welcome burn that floods him with sensation. He’s warm all over, brimming with pleasure-pain that multiplies with every stroke of Tony’s cock.
Tony’s thrusts are firm and deep, his cock dragging out and slamming back into Steve’s hole with the added force of gravity. Steve tugs against the restraints, feeling the bruises there re-form, crying out every time Tony hits that perfect place inside him.
“Yeah, let it out,” Tony says.
Tony has him, Tony will take care of him. It’s Tony’s fault he’s like this, that he’s this desperate mess. Tony did this to him, Tony with his movie star smile and romance novel eyes and woman’s eyelashes, his luxe body and narrow waist and pert little ass and heavy, muscular thighs. He did this to Steve with his sultry gaze and lying mouth and manipulative computer brain.
Steve doesn’t need to fight it any more, can’t fight it any more—he doesn’t have to think or move—can’t hardly move at all, restrained as he is.
“Let it out,” Tony says again.
“No.”
Tony laughs, making his pace judder. He returns to his previous rhythm right away, then speeds up, pushing in harder and harder.
Every part of Steve is touching something, even if it’s the rough, thin mat or the cold metal of the digital cuffs. The best parts are where he’s touching Tony, their skin pressed together, covered in the grime of the cell and military transports, greasy with sweat and the entirety of the lube. After this they’ll separate, and Steve will never feel Tony like this again—never have his attention like this again.
As Tony’s pace increases, Steve’s moans increase in volume. Tony’s thick cock spreads Steve wider and wider with each thrust. He wonders if he’ll ever close up properly again. He’s completely naked, utterly open, splayed wide just for Tony. Tony’s made this bloodstained cell their own.
Steve loses himself in the rhythm of Tony’s movement. Tony’s here, Tony’s got him—he belongs to Tony, Tony said so. Here in the cuffs, in the cell, all Steve can do is take it. He can rage against it, futilely throw himself against adamantium. And rage he does—he twists in his bindings, flings himself back against Tony.
Tony slams into him in reply, letting Steve feel the full force of him.
Steve’s head snaps back, his mouth opening wide in an exultant scream. Tony’s cock pistons inside him, still faster and harder and hotter. He grinds Steve into the mat, pins him with his weight.
There’s an edge of shame to it, of humiliation, the flames of his anger over how Tony betrayed him and spearheaded Registration. He’s gaping open, Tony digging his fingers into Steve’s cheeks and holding him wide, his balls slapping at Steve’s entrance. He’s taking it all, here in the holding cell where they’re imprisoned. He’s that far gone, that deranged about Tony Stark.
“You like that?” Tony asks, his voice a heady rumble. “You like being mine?”
“No,” Steve says before he can think about it. He doesn’t want to think, he just wants to take it.
“Tell me,” Tony orders.
“No.”
“Are you mine or not? Tell me.” The command in his rich, mahogany voice is liquid pleasure in Steve’s veins. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“You’re—” Steve swallows a moan. “You’re behind every tank. Every missile. Every cape-killer.”
“I could be,” Tony says, pressing his front against the welts on Steve’s back to croon into his ear. Steve shudders in pain and delight. “With Extremis, I can take control of any vehicle, any computer.”
Steve hates that, hates that for anyone but especially for Tony, Tony who burdens himself with the guilt of every wrong in the world. But the hate fuels his pleasure, makes him rut back against Tony’s groin, makes him say, “I thought I’d be” —he pauses to groan as Tony presses into him— “be alone forever. Worse, worse than the ice, awake, in this box, until I died.”
“Never,” Tony tells him. “I’d find you. I’d be with you.”
“No. Yes. No, no,” Steve says, both to Tony’s words and Tony’s cock, driving deep inside him, supplanting his rage with precome and the dampness of their sweat and humid breath. “No,” he cries, shivery and moaning.
Tony’s cock withdraws and Steve, Steve’s hole, sucks it back in, coaxing it inside him where it belongs. “Take it,” Tony tells him. “This is what you need.”
It’s what Steve deserves. “No, no,” he babbles, wanting it more than ever, needing Tony inside him for the rest of his life.
Tony makes Steve talk through his orgasm, becoming increasingly hazy and incoherent. Steve loses himself to the overwhelm of Tony’s cock, slick and slippery and sultry. At last, Tony reaches down and takes hold of Steve’s cock, making him shudder and tense and come.
Tony undoes the cuffs. Steve’s arms and legs fall, exhausted, flat on the mat. His forehead and toes reach past the edges, onto the cold concrete.
Still inside Steve, Tony says, “Would it have worked?”
“Would what have worked?” Steve says, still gasping through the aftershocks.
“My plan. To keep up support for Registration.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Would it have worked,” Tony says slowly, enunciating each word. “On you.”
“How can you ask me that,” Steve says, finding his voice hoarse. Rage builds in him. “After Bill. After Peter.” After what they’ve just done. “After that copy of Thor—”
“It’s hard to make you look bad in the press. But that would’ve done it.”
Steve chokes on blind fury. Tony’s dick is still inside him, and he’s saying this. “Your plan,” he seethes, “was to make me look bad. By you dying. And me continuing to fight the rogue government forces that captured and killed our friends.”
“It would’ve worked,” Tony snaps. “But it’s moot, anyway. Because apparently I’m joining the side of the angels. Up until we get blasted away by Sentinels, that is.”
“You fucking idiot. You’re a goddamn fool,” Steve says. “If you died, I’d stop fighting. I’d surrender. I’d let them fucking execute me!”
That shocks Tony into silence.
Which is just as well; Steve didn’t mean to say that out loud. He barely knew it about himself in the first place.
He shoves Tony off him, hating how he mourns the weight and heft of Tony’s cock as it drags out of him. He draws up, sitting on his knees opposite Tony, staring him down.
Of course, the silence doesn’t last long. “So,” Tony says, “my plan would’ve worked.”
Steve slaps him in the face. On the side with the bruise.
Tony curses. But when he looks up at Steve again he’s smiling. “Gimme a break. Five minutes ago I thought you wanted me dead. Hell, I thought you were hoping to do the honors yourself.”
“I was.”
“Then which of us is a fucking idiot?” Tony smirks.
“I can hit you again,” Steve warns. “Did you think about that when you cut off your own goddamn foot to untie me?”
The smile is gone like it was never there. “Yeah. It’s practically all I thought about.”
“Why’s it matter to you, anyway?”
“Why does what matter?” Tony asks. “You hitting me? Well, the fact is that supersoldiers—”
“Whether I care if you live or die.”
Tony frowns. “I thought it was obvious. Especially—” he cuts himself off.
Steve can’t wait to find out what’s so obvious to the famed super-genius brain that came up with the winning idea to die in order to win the war over the SHRA.
“Steve, I’m still in love with you.”
Steve feels like he’s the one that’s been slapped—the one with a malfunctioning computer for a brain. “‘Still?’” he repeats.
“I knew how you’d feel about Registration. I knew there’d be a fight like this, I just didn’t know when. And,” he adds, thoughtful, like any of what he’s saying makes sense, “I hoped it wouldn’t be us. I was frustrated, angry that you wouldn’t listen to me. But I never stopped loving you.”
Steve blinks, finds there are tears in his eyes. “When—when did you start?”
Tony cocks his head. “Wh—pretty much since the day I met you?”
“And you thought it was obvious?” Steve asks, his voice tiny.
“Yeah?”
“It wasn’t.”
Tony stares. “Oh,” he says after a moment. “Um, then I’m sorry you had to, uh. Find out. Like this. I hope it won’t—I still don’t think the Resistance can—”
“Kiss me.”
Tony swallows, then leans in toward Steve. Steve moves to meet him, taking one of Tony’s hands. Half of a broken handcuff dips, cold, against Steve’s skin.
Tony kisses him, delicate and pliable.
Steve draws back. “Kiss me like you mean it,” he says. “Kiss me like you own me.”
“Steve,” Tony whispers against his lips. He takes Steve’s mouth with force and fervor. He shoves his tongue between Steve’s lips, wraps a hand behind Steve’s head and holds him there while he works their mouths together.
Steve loses himself in Tony’s taste, in the sensation of Tony’s slick mouth and sliding tongue, the tug of Tony’s teeth. Yes, this is what he wanted. Tony’s always had him, could always move him like no one else.
It occurs to Steve that a room is a box, but it has only four walls. Not six. Four walls, a floor, and a ceiling. It’s a grade school mistake, and he only made it because he was so distracted, panicked, and locked in with his thinking. He’s been locked into the same type of thinking about Tony. Blaming him, hating him. Denying his own love for and obsession with him.
How had Steve convinced himself he wanted Tony hurt? How had he thought he could survive Tony’s death? And, god, at his own hands?
Tony pulls away this time, panting. “That what you had in mind?”
“I want to forgive you,” Steve says.
“Steve.” Tony cradles Steve’s face in his hands. “You don’t have to.”
“Can you. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Tony says. And what can Steve do, in the face of love like that? What is his affection for Tony compared to that, if he can’t overcome their differences too?
“Are you only saying that because you think we won’t make it through this?” Steve pushes. “Because you think even if we get out of here, even if you join the Resistance, we’ll end up gunned down by Sentinels?”
“I think it’ll be hard,” Tony replies. “I think I’ll be scared. We’ll still be fighting friends. Reed, Carol, Hank—and god, Rhodey—I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to speak to them again. I don’t know if I’d deserve it if they did. And maybe someday, when all this is over, I’ll burn the coffee and you’ll call me a fascist and I’ll scream at you about the time you handed me an electron scrambler. But I think—I think as long as you’re mine, I’ll be okay.”
He pins Steve with his gaze. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m yours,” Steve says, honestly. It’s true, whatever else is. “How’s your foot?”
Tony shows him. There’s a stubby growth forming at the end of the stump, pushing through the bandages Steve wrapped there.
“Can you walk on that?”
Tony shakes his head. “With the undersuit on, I’ll be able to limp along pretty fast, though.”
“Could that interfere with the healing?”
Tony shrugs. “Your guess is only slightly worse than mine. This is uncharted territory.”
Steve considers. “The longer we wait, the hungrier and weaker we’re going to get. We won’t get very good sleep here, either, your, ah, hard work aside.”
Tony preens, then sobers. “Then let’s not wait. Let’s do it.”
“On a count of three?” Steve asks.
Tony nods in confirmation. The plan is for Tony to undo the digital locks and Steve to slam his body against the door at the same time. Between the two of them, they’ll get it open.
“Three,” Steve says, “Two, one—”
⚮
The facility is a maze of corridors. After Steve and Tony clear the first hallway—pursued by three guards and approaching five more from the other direction—an alarm wails through the entire building. Bullets clang against Steve’s shield. He has to cover them both until Tony can track Extremis’s signal to his full armor. It’s close, but not so close he’s sure it’s in the same building.
Tony weaves and ducks around Steve and his shield. Steve isolates a single guard and pummels him with fist and shield. The man gets several shots off—Steve blocks them effortlessly at such close range, but the sound is deafening. Steve’s ears ring as Tony kicks the man in the groin and lifts a glock off his belt. Steve wishes he could grab a helmet and bullet-proof vest too, but there’s no time—there are eight guards firing at them now, and even with Tony firing back, Steve won’t be comfortable until Tony is better protected and Steve can throw his shield.
Still, Tony moves like an extension of Steve’s body, always behind where Steve puts the shield, catching guards in the leg or shooting out the lights behind them.
Steve seldom worked so physically close to Tony—Iron Man’s role was air support, Steve’s to protect vulnerable ground Avengers or get close for hand-to-hand. He always loved the seamlessness with which he and Tony fought together. It carried over to fighting each other, too, an equality to it despite the power of Extremis and the armor.
This is all of that and more. Tony slides under Steve’s legs—Steve somersault kicks a nearby guard in the head, rattling his skull against his helmet—Tony shoots the guard behind him in the leg and snags an M240. They twist, synchronized, as Steve raises his shield against a new onslaught of bullets.
It’s thrilling. Steve feels electrified. Eight guards drop to four, then up to six as a pair of reinforcements arrive. The blaring of the alarm blends with half-healed tinnitus from the close quarters gunfire. Even with his injured foot, every move Tony makes is so harmonious with Steve’s, their feet moving like dancers’ as they spin and weave through the mass of guards, that Steve risks tossing his shield.
It’s a perfect throw, bouncing from wall to helmet to ceiling to guts to wall to chest and back to Steve’s hands just in time to block fire from the three guards who remain standing. Tony grins, exhilarated, and Steve grins back.
Black-clad guards rush in, a dozen from each end of the hall. Tony taps a proprietary slap on Steve’s ass, and they dive in.