Work Text:
But it was never personal.
He wakes up with the words on his left wrist and he might only be five but he knows this is a bad thing. One of dad’s friends has a daughter with writing up and down her entire forearm. She wears a heavy black armband, and everyone treats her like she’s sick. They look at her, whisper about her, but no one talks to her.
He tries to hide them, wears a long sleeve shirt that day even though it’s the hottest day of the summer so far. He goes to a garden party with his parents and dutifully shows off his new robot and drinks an unreasonable amount of cordial and gets into a fight with Ty. No one notices anything out of the ordinary and he thinks he might be able to get away with it. Except, that night, Jarvis catches him when he’s changing into his pajamas.
"Oh, Master Tony," Jarvis says, sounding impossibly sad.
Dad yells when he finds out, about lawyers and changing the will and keeping SI safe, and mum cries and cries. Tony doesn’t know what to do except stand there, holding his arm behind his back because maybe if no one can see it, it won’t exist.
+ + +
He is fourteen when he understands what the Words mean. Jarvis and mum tried to explain at the time but, hey, he was five and distracted by all the tears.
He is fourteen, and about to leave for MIT, when Jennifer Mims, twenty-three and daughter to the CEO of MimsTech kills her best friend, Anita Saunders, because the Words on her wrists had been part of Anita’s speech to her at her twenty-first birthday party. The court case turns ugly and it’s all anyone can talk about for ages.
Tony watches the news from start to end, tracing the Words on his wrist until he starts to think he can differentiate between skin and ink. He learns a lot in those few weeks. He learns that not everyone has words on their wrists, but those that do die violent deaths and they die before their time. He learn that there's no rhyme or reason for why the Words appear where they do. Most important of all, he learns that the Words belong to their killers and sometimes you can escape your death if you get to them before they get to you.
Tony doesn't think he can blame Jennifer at all.
One night, while his parents argue about his Words again, Tony tries his hand at covering them up with his mum's make up. A few dabs of foundation and it's almost like he doesn't have them at all. He stares at his empty wrist, his normal wrist, and wants to throw up. The Words may be trouble but they're his.
Tony scratches the graft off his wrist, leaving behind red gouges that threaten to bleed.
+ + +
When his parents die Tony creates a synthetic skin mesh that goes over his Words. It's thinner than paper and lasts longer than make up. Unless someone is really looking for it they wouldn't be able to tell he has anything there. He's been lucky so far, being in boarding school and then at college, has kept him out of the media's eyes, but some lucky asshole is going to get a photo of his wrist sooner or later and the company can't afford that kind of publicity.
There's no law saying that you have to let everyone know about your Words, but there's an "understanding". Tony, being of the school of thought that 'understandings' could go suck a donkey's dick, slaps on the graft the morning of the will's reading and isn't remotely surprised that Howard Stark hadn't mention the Words once while handing everything over to him. Stark company, Stark blood and Stark iron, that's how it goes.
With the graft and the pressure of trying to run a company while finishing a doctorate, Tony almost forgets about the Words.
+ + +
If he’s going to die young he might as well make the most of it, he figures, and boy does he ever. He parties, he drinks, he sleeps with anyone willing. He records everything everyone says to him and at the end of the day he listens to it looking for those five little words. After a few days of that, he gets sick of the monotony and builds an AI to do it for him. He adds and modifies that AI until one day, it's fully sentient and snarking at him. He calls it JARVIS.
Sunset is the only one to come close. She pats him on the shoulder on her way out of his dorm room with his final year project tucked under her arm and says, “oh, darling, it was never personal.”
Once he's clawed his way out of the vicious cycle of depression and anger, he thinks to himself, thank fuck, because he's Tony Goddamn Stark and no backstabbing ex girlfriend is going to be the cause of his death.
The years between that and Afghanistan are a bit of a blur if he's going to be honest. Booze, more booze. Sometimes the harder stuff. Sometimes vomiting until it feels like his entire stomach lining has come up. He gets Pepper and Rhodey out of the deal though, so it's not all bad.
Pepper is ruthlessly efficient once she gets over the Stark part of his name and Rhodey is the best prank war buddy a man can ask for. And that's it. That's Tony's quota for meaningful relationships all done and dusted. So what if he's thirty something and not living in a white picket fence with two point five children. Less people to leave behind when he dies.
+ + +
Then Afghanistan happens and he spends those months wondering if maybe someone says those words in another language.
There should be research into that.
Well, there probably is and Tony is never going to find out because he'll be dead. Yinsen, who doesn't have Words but looks ready to die anyway, tells Tony that he is a lucky man. Knowing that he will die one day, he can make the most of his life while he has it.
Yinsen is a very optimistic man. Tony finds out just how optimistic when Yinsen dies for him.
+ + +
Obie is a surprise. A bad surprise. Like razors in apples kind of surprise.
Still, as Tony is falling a few thousand feet to the unforgiving ground, a part of him is thinking, he never said it though.
When he survives Obie, survives the arc reactor blowing up and the shitshow of a press release afterwards, the way he views the Words changes. Yes, they mean he's not going to live to be old and grey, but they also mean until the day someone says those words to him, he's invincible.
Okay, practically invincible. There is a bit of a scare when the whole palladium and Whiplash thing goes down but he bounces back in record time. Pepper and he almost share a kiss but Tony remembers in time why that would be a bad idea--violent death on the horizon is a very effective cockblock it turns out. He can't do that to Pepper, not when she's already given him so much and anyway, he'd rather have Pepper the friend, not Pepper the ex.
The only part of that clusterfuck he regrets is that two weeks after the fact, Pepper and Rhodey find out about his Words.
It's not like he meant to keep it a secret for so long. He just kind of forgot he had them. Covering up his Words become part of his daily routine between coffee and brushing his teeth so he never sees them for more than a few seconds and it's easy enough to shove the knowledge aside when he's focusing on changing the world. Imminent death or jetpack with wings, he knows which one he'd rather think about.
Unfortunately, his very close brush with death reminds him of Afghanistan, of Obie and he sleeps less and less to avoid the nightmares. So there he is on hour fifty-two of hardcore engineering when Pepper and Rhodey come down to the lab. They speak and he makes acknowledging noises as he tries to figure out how much weight the falcon wings need to carry and just as he's on the edge of an answer, Rhodey drags him away from the table by his hand.
"Hey, watch the money maker," Tony protests as he's pulled into Rhodey's precious personal space. "What--oh."
Rhodey's glaring down at his wrist, at where his Words are visible for everyone to see. Tony had forgotten that the mesh doesn't react well to engine grease. The grease interrupts the matrix and the whole thing goes liquid--it's something he was going to get around to fixing later.
"Awkward," Tony volunteers when the silence stretches beyond uncomfortable.
"Oh my God, Tony," Pepper says, exactly like the time she walked in on him with dangerously purple dick and a cock ring that's been on him for hours. That was a fun visit to the emergency department. Not.
"What the hell is this?" Rhodey demands, his hand tightening to the point Tony can feel his wrist bones grinding.
Tony snatches his hand back with a hard tug, knowing full well he was only able to do it because Rhodey was in shock, and folds his arm across his chest. "You know what it is," he says. "It's not a big deal."
"They're--of course it's a big deal," Rhodey yells. Tony has never seen him so angry before. "You should've told us!"
Big mistake. Nothing gets Tony's back up like being yelled at. He's had enough of that as a child, he's not going to put up with that as an adult. "Excuse me? I didn't realise friendship came with a price tag," Tony says, almost snarling the words. "Didn't think I had to tell you every little secret about myself."
"What Rhodey means is--" Pepper begins.
"Yeah, I know exactly what Rhodey means," Tony interrupts.
Pepper's eyes flash and oh shit, Tony just woke the dragon. "Do not interrupt me. Of course you have a right to your privacy and we would never demand that you tell us everything. But we are your friends and we've just found out that you're going to die, Tony."
The truly awful thing about Pepper is that everything she says always comes out sounding perfectly reasonable. "Technically we're all going to die and thirty percent of the time it's all accidents anyway," Tony mutters.
"Not the point," Pepper says.
"Is it one of us?" demands Rhodey, right on her heel.
The question throws Tony for a loop and he scrambles for an answer. "Oh, for--c'mon, Rhodes. No, it's not. I wouldn't have--I'd have told you if it was, okay?"
Rhodey doesn't look happy, per se, but he does visibly unclenched. It's probably inappropriate how warm and fuzzy it makes Tony feel to see that Rhodey was that worried about causing his death.
"Do you know who it is?" Pepper asks, not looking nearly as relaxed as Rhodey. She does have SI to worry about in addition to just Tony, he supposes.
"Not yet." Tony looks from Pepper to Rhodey then sighs. "Guys, stop looking like that. I'm the one with the Words and I'm fine. I will tell you when I find out who it is, okay? Now, what'd you want me for anyway?"
Pepper and Rhodey share a look that all but screams they're going to talk about this later whether or not Tony wants to. "Fine, if that's how you want it, Tony. The air force wants your input on a new jet," Pepper says.
Rhodey shakes a suitcase at Tony. "I'm paper monkey."
And that's kind of that.
+ + +
He honestly, truly thinks he's going to die in the Battle of New York.
Words or not, he flies through a wormhole to a whole nother part of the universe and decides this is it. This is where he dies because if a battle with a god doesn't change the course of destiny then what will?
Tony closes his eyes against the sight of Chitauri motherships blowing up and is at peace with his choice. Death sucks but he's glad he got to choose how he did it. He's ready.
So of fucking course he survives.
"Oh God, tell me no one kissed me," he groans, mostly joking.
Captain America huffs out a laugh and holds out a hand to help him up.
+ + +
So he joins the Avengers and makes, well, a family, he supposes. It's just the six of them at first, kicking butt, taking down HYDRA. Then a couple of years--and one Extremis injection later--they're joined by Wilson, Jan and Hank. There's also Barnes, after he's brought in from the cold and is no longer a brainwashed assassin-soldier. The Avengers line-up grow and change, and somehow it's Tony and Steve who become the stable elements.
Steve, Tony gets. The guy's been thrown seventy years into the future, he probably needs a bit of stability. Needs something that'll keep him in the here and now, so it's no surprise he's latched onto the Avengers. Tony can do pop psychology as well as the next guy, okay? But Tony never thought he'd stick around the Avengers this long. Hell, he's made it loud and clear that he's a one man kind of show. Not a team player, just ask Pepper, she'll tell you in great details all the ways Tony can't depend on anyone because he has trust issues a mile wide.
Those trust issues seem a lot less important when he's around those losers he call his teammates, though. When Natasha shares some of her tea with him or when Jan drags him off to try a new tux or when Wilson smacks his shoulder after trying out the new EXO-12, Tony just--something settles inside his head. He's not happy exactly but, content. Yeah, that's a good word for it.
It's all Steve's fault, Tony decides one day, covered in alien slime and watching Captain America walk off to talk to the press. Every time he considers going off to do his own thing, Cap turns up all smiles and hat in hand and asks Tony if maybe now would be a good time to talk about the team. Inevitably, it'll turn out that Tony has a lot to say about the team and how they can be better. He and Steve will come up with training ideas and new maneuvers to try out, or who else they could invite to the roster, and Tony always ends up making promises. Promises that he needs to stick around to keep, so he just--he stays.
+ + +
The less said about the Armor War disaster, the better.
It's the first time Tony thinks Steve might actually hate him. Not just contempt for all the ways he isn't Howard Stark but real visceral hate, the kind that burns cold. Tony almost decides to abandon his plan but before he was Steve's friend, before he was an Avenger, he was Tony Goddamn Stark and he never asked anyone to clean up his mess for him.
He touches his wrist, right where the Words lie under his armor, before he fights Firepower one last time.
He doesn't regret his choices, and if he had to he'd do it all over again he would, but it still takes months before he can look Steve in the face. It takes even longer before they are friends again.
+ + +
"You realise you have a crush him, right? Tell me you do."
Tony stops playing around with the prints for the Mark Who-Even-Knows-Anymore and spins around to look at Rhodey. He doesn't even pretend not know what Rhodey's talking about. Disassembling in front of someone who's known you for almost thirty years never works. Never.
"I do not have a crush on Captain America," Tony says.
"Right," Rhodey says, rolling his eyes.
"Seriously," he insists.
"Whatever you tell yourself to sleep at night, Tones," Rhodey says, holding up his hands.
Tony turns back to the table, muttering, "Anyway, even if I did I won't live long enough for it to matter."
By the uncomfortable silence behind him, Rhodey gets what he means.
What Tony manages to avoid saying is this: his feelings for Steve go well beyond crush and he's known that for a while. Steve is important to Tony in too many ways to count. He's Tony's friend--not best friend because Pepper and Rhodey will revolt if he replaces them--and confidant and battle partner. They know each other to a far more intimate degree than Tony has ever achieved with his lovers, and they've seen each other at their worst and at their best. When he's with Steve, he's happy in a way that he can't define but knows is as close to perfect as he's going to get.
It's such a goddamn shame it's never going to be anything more. If Steve were anyone else and if Tony felt even a smidgen less for him, he might have gone for it. But every time he thinks about it, his eyes drift to his wrist and his fingertips tingle with phantom recollection of the way his Words felt. Then he thinks, better not.
What he hadn't counted on was Steve, which was all kinds of stupid of him because if there's anyone capable of throwing a skyscraper sized spanner into well thought out plans, it was Captain Steve Fucking Rogers.
Approximately five years and two months after that fateful meeting on the Helicarrier, Steve says, "I think it's about time we stopped tiptoeing around each other, Tony."
"Uuhhh," Tony says with his panic level rising about as quickly as the blush on Steve's neck. He has no idea what just happened, one moment they're talking about this whole Superhero Registration Act the government is trying to shove down their throat, the next there's this.
Steve, the bravest and stubbornest man Tony knows, keeps looking at him with those all earnest cornflower blue eyes and continues, "I--you're one of the most important people in my life, Tony, you have to know that. Without you I'd be--I'd be less. You push me to be a better person."
Oh God. This is like one of Tony's worst nightmares and best dreams rolled into one. He rushes to control the situation before it gets worse. Make a joke. Jokes are great. "Hey, sure, Cap. What're friends for right? Don't tell Rhodey that though he'll probably wonder where he went wrong."
Steve frowns. "Tony. I'm being serious. Don't try to brush me off, please."
There went that plan. The day Tony can refuse one of Steve's 'please' is the day he dies. His hand goes automatically to his wrist. "Course, Cap, go on," Tony says, smiling through the nervous roiling of his stomach.
"I like you, Tony," Steve says so earnestly Tony's teeth ache. "And I think we can be great together. No, I know we would be great together."
"Steve, we argue all the time," Tony points out. "We were arguing just now, remember? And what about what happened during the Armor War? Did you forget the things we said to each other? You can't promise something like that won't happen again and it would be a thousand times worse if we were, y'know."
"Yes but--" Steve stops and makes a face. "It's true we don't always see eye-to-eye and, yes, that time with the Armor War was...bad. But it was never personal.”
It feels like the arc reactor has been ripped out of him again. Like he’s the one frozen under the arctic. He can’t breathe. He can’t move. He doesn’t hear what Steve is saying, just those five words, each one like a ten-ton weight on his chest.
Oh, of course, he thinks.
"...good at keeping our professional and personal lives separate. So I don't see why that can't be true now," Steve is saying. "I just want a chance, Tony. Just one, please."
What exactly is the appropriate response, Tony wonders, almost hysterically. Is he supposed to laugh, because fuck this is a bad, bad joke by the universe. This is everything he wants giftwrapped in poison and fucking fuck. Is he supposed to cry? Scream? Tell Steve--sweet, brave Steve who likes him--that one day he's going to kill Tony.
Tony swallows hard, takes a shaky breath and somehow--God, somehow finds a way to smile. "Okay," he croaks.
Steve brightens. "Okay?"
"Yeah," Tony says, then he almost does burst out laughing when Steve reaches out and his hand wraps around Tony's left wrist, fingers right over the Words.
Maybe if Tony were a better man, he'd tell Steve the truth. Maybe if he were smarter he'd make sure there's a whole galaxy between him and Steve. Hell, if he were less selfish he'd drive Steve away now, make him hate Tony, make it hurt less when the inevitable happens. As it is, Tony is not a good man, he's stupid and he's selfish, and he wants this.
"Thank you," Steve says and kisses him.
Tony twists his hand until he's the one holding onto Steve and kisses back.