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Call it whatever it wanted to be.
Collision, destiny, the red string of fate.
Whatever it was, it started with a river. The sole, striking piece of discord in a desert landscape. Tony followed it, because it alleviated some itching, buzzing, soul deep anxiety inside him. Although the desert around him was painfully familiar, there were no rivers in Kunar. The whole Province, on a map, had been dry as a bone.
His march led him westward, following a slow-moving sun on its gradual descent. He neared a town hunched against the backdrop of a flat stack of tan mountains. That town had an hourglass arc of just three calendar years, July 1869-September 1872. It was fitting that those years began on the same month as its Sheriff’s birthday, for it would collapse shortly after the death of its Sheriff, descending first into violence and then into smoldering ruin. Ultimately, it would be abandoned and forgotten.
Its name was Timely.
Unto this land, Tony Stark, a man out of time, ventured.
He wore only his working jeans, a basic white shirt, working boots. He had not even assembled the suit before his arrival. Sitting in his chair musing over the idea, he had been shocked to suddenly land on his ass in the middle of Nowhere, New Mexico.
He supposed he was lucky: he could have dropped in the middle of an uninhabitable world. Instead, he had touched down not far from his Malibu starting point, only one-hundred-and-forty-two years off his 2014 starting date. All things considered, it could have gone worse.
And the world was inhabited.
Not for much longer—at least, not this one small part of it. Neither intrepid interloper nor natives knew that the whole town would soon fall into disrepair. As the sun set towards the west on Timely, Steve Rogers had just four days to live, and the whole town, just three months and eight days until the final inhabitant gave way.
Every painstakingly crafted inn, cellar, tavern, barn, bank, hovel, shed, and basic four-walled structure would soon come down or be left for dead. First fires would break out; then maintenance would fall to the wayside; eventually, even the most determined shop keepers would eventually move on. The once-promising town would soon crumble.
It didn’t look like it yet, but the town was in its twilight, gasping for breath in the line of infinity.
As oblivious as its inhabitants, Tony Stark approached the oasis, thinking only of his own thirst, his own immediate needs. Although it appeared as pristine as any river, Tony dared not drink from the Kirby. He had heard enough horror stories of dysentery to add his name to the future list.
So long as he avoided detection, mucking up history—
Clopping hoofbeats made his heart still. For a moment, he considered turning tail, perhaps even taking a plunge into the river, but—
The gray stallion drew up beside him, startlingly close. He breathed fire against Tony’s belly, warning him that he would be glad to stomp if he gave a reason. The horse’s aggressive front perfectly juxtaposed its rider’s cool tone: “Hey, stranger.” With a neat flick of the reins, he backed his horse a step and added frankly, “You ain’t from around here.”
Tony looked up. Beach-blond hair fanned in every direction, boyishly unkempt. But those icy-blue eyes were so timelessly familiar that he instantly pinned them: Steve?
His gaze drifted, following the open collar, the fuzz of matching chest hair underneath a loose white shirt, all strapped in with a tight blue vest. The bronze medallion on the rider’s left breast pocket declared him the Sheriff. Around his waist was a leather belt that had the same effect as the metal girdle on a barrel: it emphasized his core strength. He looked like he could just as easily ride as bully a horse, if need be.
Tony stayed very still. One wrong move, and a swift kick to the chest from the gray stallion would ensure he slept in a permanent bed of green under a pile of crossed twigs. That shiny Colt revolver also had a very well-worn sheath.
“I’m from—Dodge,” Tony said. The stranger watched him closely as Tony explained, “Dodge City—Kansas?”
“State your name and business,” the rider said, perfectly unreadable.
“You some kinda—Sheriff?” Tony retorted dryly.
Some Kinda Sheriff sat his horse, waiting. With a shrug, Tony said, “Anthony. I’m—lookin’ for a job.”
That got a blustery, air-only laugh from the Sheriff. With a final once-over, he shook his head and turned his horse, starting to head back towards the main street.
Tony dared to pursue.
He jolted hard, landing flat on his back in the dirt, when the stallion suddenly wheeled on him. The Sheriff let out the same raucous, air-only laugh, containing it to say tamely, “You squiffed or somethin’?”
“Am I—what?” Tony grunted, planting his hands in the dirt, squinting up at him.
“Squiffed,” the Sheriff said bluntly. Before Tony made it more than a halfway upright position, a rope landed over his shoulders. He frowned down at it stupidly. What in the world. “Somethin’s wrong with you, I’mma take you in,” the Sheriff explained, voice oddly benign for his actions.
“You’re not seri—” Tony yelped as, with an incredible amount of force, the Sheriff suddenly yanked the rope, tightening it.
Confident his lasso would hold, the Sheriff hopped down to finish the job, grabbing a handful of Tony’s shirt in a strangely confident palm and unraveling more rope around him. “I do think you’re funny, Stark,” the Sheriff said in the same benign tone. Tony’s surprise stilled him; the Sheriff never stopped, methodically securing his arms to his chest as he finished, “But you ain’t funny like this.”
Growling loudly, Tony attempted to wiggle loose, but he had waited far too long. He was trapped, arms glued to his sides by three layers of rope. Ignoring his protests, the Sheriff slung him over a shoulder and said, “Lucky it’s me, y’know. Could’a been somebody else. They’d put a bullet in you.”
He stood up, surprisingly easily, then whistled to his horse, setting the gray stallion in motion at a walk, head tossing a little, irate. “Kingpin,” the Sheriff warned. “Hush, now.”
Wriggling desperately, Tony fumed, “You put me down right now.”
“So you can get lost in the desert? Sleep that on my conscience?”
Incandescently unhappy, Tony kicked at him. The Sheriff warned in a low voice, “All right, now, you knock that off, or I’ll drop you in a trough.”
Terrified of the thought, Tony forced himself to cool off a little as he seethed, “I am not—going—along—with this.”
The Sheriff elected to ignore that. Probably because it was stupid—like he had a choice in going along with being tied up and carted back into a town he did not belong in.
Reluctantly, he had to concede it was a good way of not getting shot in the Wild Wild West: everyone had something to say to the Sheriff, but nobody paid any mind to his kill. “How-de-doo, Sheriff!” and “Caught one, did yeh!” were popular, as well as a jeering crowd of laughs from the bar. It was like a miniature parade: everyone in town wanted to see the fun, and from the giggling to the outright raucous, everybody had something to say about the latest lawbreaker brought to order.
“Hush now,” he told them. And: “Get on, get on.” Tony wasn’t sure if he was serious or if it was just the expected greeting, along the lines of How are you? and the knee-jerk, Fine; how are you?
They actually passed the communal jail, where: “How-de-doo Sheriff,” greeted a silver-eyed, brown-haired, spitting-image of a long, lean, mean Barton, rocking on his chair on the porch. He looked like the kind of man that whipped bark off trees. There was a glint of steel in those eyes; a hard tack that transcended his environment. He did not blink as he examined them. “You catch one for me?”
“Not now, Charles,” said the Sheriff, still walking, never pausing. Charles’ gaze flicked to Tony, and Tony thought of Clint’s words to describe him: Hero, inspiration, hell-raiser.
“Jus’ lemme know,” Charles Bernard “Barney” Barton crooned. “Happy to change your mind.” Rocking on his chair again, he blinked once, a flash of silver eyes in the sun, before saying simply, “How-de-doo, Stark.”
Tony was almost used to being carted along, a permanent installation on the Sheriff’s shoulder, that it was a surprise when they entered a simple shed. “What’s this?” he asked. He grunted hard as he was thrown unceremoniously to the ground, white stars bursting from the back of his head. “Ow.”
“New home,” the Sheriff said gruffly. “You want some water?”
Growling, Tony said, “You let me out.”
“Sober up. Then we’ll talk.” He started to walk away.
Incredulous, Tony squawked, “You’re just gonna leave me?”
Pausing at the door, the Sheriff turned back to him, all the weight of Steve Rogers’ disappointment in his stance as he said, “What in hell else you want me to do?”
Oddly wounded by his disapproval, Tony raged, “Let me go.”
Utterly dismissive, the Sheriff turned and shut the door behind him.
. o .
Took a damn long while, but Tony did manage to finally work a tiny bit of the rope loose.
The shed was completely dark, of course, and he was sweat-drenched and exhausted, but he felt good about progress made.
It was rendered moot as the door finally creaked open. He rallied to spit venom at Steve Rogers’ alter ego when: “Oh, and look’ee what the cat dragged in,” purred the last voice he wanted to hear. Rarely had he ever experienced such dread as he did when Charles Bernard Barton eased around the door like a mongoose sneaking into a chicken coop. “You’re not in your cell, Jail Bird.”
Snarling, Tony told Charles, “Fuck off.”
“Don’t wanna know what happens to birds that fly the coop,” Charles told him, pulling a knife off his belt. Tony’s heart sank. “Course, I can always let up that sentence of yours if you—” He let the door shut loosely behind him. “Pay a little upfront.”
Wriggling in his bonds, Tony seethed again, “Fuck off.”
“You just don’t learn, do you? Can’t cut those losses.” He jerked, inhaling sharply as Charles crouched, grabbed him by the ropes, and pressed the knife to his cheek. “Don’t worry,” Charles said. “I’ll cut your tab for you, I’ll cut your—” He dragged it towards an ear.
The door slammed open. Right off its hinges. Tony shut his eyes quickly as the knife swept a line of stinging red across his cheek and eyelid, while Charles barked: “Oh, Sheriff, oh, Sheriff,” in a laughing, hyena sort of way, like he wanted to fight, ached for the bone full of blood to fall on his doorstep.
He brought a knife to a brawl, after all. The Sheriff reached for them and Charles swung ‘round, pointy-end first. Before Tony could do more than bark a consonant warning, the Sheriff had dragged Charles away, and they were on each other, ravenous, snarling syllables, heedless of what damage was earned in the ensuing close quarters attack. The knife clattered away, blood-red, and Charles crowed, “No one gets away with murder, Sheriff! No one!”
He squealed, more gleeful than frightened, as the Sheriff dragged him out into the street, hand on arm and throat. Tony watched them through the moonlit portal of the empty doorway, along with probably half the town, some parked at wooden posts, others merely passing by, still a few glancing out windows. Ignoring them all, Sheriff Rogers threw Charles to the ground. The wet red patch on his side was disconcertingly plain, even as he stood unflappably, unassailably steady, before Charles’ undiminished anger. “Take this like men, Sheriff!”
“Get lost, Charles.”
Somehow, the pronouncement seemed heavier, spoken by that gruff tongue.
Charles pulled himself to his feet and launched himself at Rogers. Even with a bleeding wound, Rogers was clearly more powerful—there was a reason, Tony realized, in a town of maybe three or four hundred, Rogers was Sheriff. In a land where money talked, fists spoke just as loudly. He commanded as much by his word as the way he launched Charles over his shoulder, an impressively agile movement that seemed almost timeless, like he was born to dance, to fight.
When Charles landed a second time, he hit the wrong spot and got winded for his trouble. Yet, despite his horrible breathing, he got up again. The town watched with mild interest, the same way they might watch the stage show, as Sheriff Rogers finally dragged him over to a horse trough and dunked him once. Tony shuddered in dread.
Face molten red, Charles popped up ready to take a swing at him. Rogers avoided the blow, chucking him back at the road. “Get lost, Charles.”
Still dripping, Charles dragged himself to his feet. He spat at Rogers’ feet. Then he stalked off towards the mountains.
Feeling like he might be sick, Tony breathed through his nose and thought, I want to go home. I want to go home. He jolted as he suddenly found himself in the same room as a fuming Sheriff Rogers.
“I know who you are,” he burst out, as Rogers sat him up, gruffly sawed off the ropes. Aware that he was breathing fast, too fast, panicking, revealing himself in the face of Rogers’ own indifference, he said again, “I know who you are.”
“Shuddup,” Rogers muttered, apparently lost in his own thoughts, or simply beyond caring about what he thought, as Tony said:
“You’re goddamn—sick, that’s what you are.”
Rogers finished getting the ropes off him, not even paying attention, then said gruffly, “You’re free to go.”
“You even listening to me?”
“I said you’re free!”
Tony shoved at his shoulders. Rogers stared at him, expression almost blank. For a moment, Tony saw the bloody knife sliding neatly between his ribs, a problem solved. Then Rogers frowned at him, cupped his face in a surprisingly presumptuous paw, making Tony jolt, and said, “You’re bleedin’,” in such a low, compassionate tone it almost made up for the fact that there was still moisture on his fingers.
And blood on his jacket. What kind of snake venom did they drink, to ignore such terrible wounds?
Adrenaline’s a hell of a thing. “Stop—I’m fine,” Tony dismissed, brushing off his hand—trying to; it was persistent. The genuinely shocked look on Rogers’ face, like the discovery that he could bleed, was almost enough to wash away the fear of watching him drown another man.
You’d’ve done that to me, too, wouldn’t you? That’s just how you roll. You’re a monster.
“I’m fine,” he said stiffly, because he wished he’d walked the other way, followed the river to Nowhere, instead.
But Rogers said, “I need to—” and started to stand, then let out a jerky breath as he discovered the wound in his own side, before finishing the movement anyway, exhibiting a familiar stubbornness. “I need to—patch you up. Can’t let—”
“I’m fine,” Tony insisted. “You’re not.” He rose, despite his crawling trepidation, and put himself under Rogers’ arm to prevent him from falling as he started to go over. He didn’t need the whole town coming out with pitchforks because he had killed their beloved Sheriff. “Come on. Is there a—doctor—”
“Banner,” Rogers agreed. “Banner’ll—fix’ya—”
“Okay,” Tony said neutrally, more unsettled by the presence of so many faces than the fact that Rogers was fading, fast. “Okay. Hey,” he insisted, as Rogers leaned more against him. “Help me. I can’t carry you.”
Planting his feet, Rogers said, “I’ve got you.”
“How noble,” Tony huffed, grimacing as the Sheriff squeezed his shoulders. “Don’t touch me,” he added, even though he slung his arm around Rogers’ waist, put his arm over his own shoulders.
“Sorry fer . . . fer leavin’ you . . . ‘lone . . . so long . . . Shouldn’t’ve. . . .”
“Just shut up already,” Tony grunted.
. o .
Dr. Banner was not in house.
“Great,” Tony grunted as he kicked the door a few more times. The small house was dark and quiet, and Rogers was nearly as cold as a corpse against him. “C’mon, c’mon. C’mon!” His heart was beginning to beat at an uncomfortable rate. The mob would not be happy if their Sheriff died on him.
“S’sweet of you,” the Sheriff murmured. “S’sweet of you . . . humble man.”
Tony kicked the door again. A voice from within said, “Go away.”
“Open this door right now or I will—”
“Leave.”
Tony snapped, “The Sheriff’s dying, do you want that on your—”
The door swung open. “Oh, Sheriff?” whispered Bruce Banner. He looked thin, eyes wide in a pale face.
“How-de-doo, Doctor,” said Rogers. “Charles is gone. Charles left—” And then his eyes rolled back.
The two of them caught him, dragged him inside the house. At a wordless gesture from Bruce, they put him on a hard couch.
Without so much as a word to Tony, Bruce started unbuttoning Rogers’ vest, then his shirt. Tony watched, sucking in a breath when he saw the deep bruising. With a shaky inhale, Bruce rose, fetched something from another room, and returned with a bag and a beer bottle.
“That’s medicine,” Tony surmised. The Doctor did not look at him, dragging a wooden chair close before taking a deep drink from the bottle. “That’s medicine,” he repeated.
“Stop talking,” Bruce whispered.
Firming up his jaw, Tony leaned against the wall, folding arms across his chest, even though a part of him still felt ill—almost that Rogers’ expiration would be sickly deserved.
He didn’t do anything to you. He is not one of them.
But he was like them—those foes in the desert who had made his life hell for three months. He was like them, he was like them, he was just like them.
They were all monsters.
“What is that?” Tony asked, nodding as Bruce poured a smaller bottle onto a cloth.
“Disinfectant,” Bruce murmured, swiping it over the wound.
“Germ theory?” Tony asked, surprised. Bruce looked at him with doleful eyes, cloth in hand. Given that President Garfield would die in 1881 from a preventable infection, the boldness of a small town doctor to take such a simple yet drastic step was remarkable.
It was quickly becoming clear why the little town was doing so well for itself. It had one hell of a Sheriff and Doctor on staff.
But it also had people like Charles.
“What happened to Clint?” Tony blurted out.
Sweeping the cloth over the wound, Bruce ignored him for so long that Tony thought the question might lie unanswered forever. Perhaps there was no Clint Barton; or perhaps Bruce would not indulge him. But then:
“Drink got him,” Bruce murmured. He never took his eyes off his work, measuring, stitching, quietly toiling, but he did add with a prim little sniff, “Nine months ago. In case you’ve already—forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Tony said automatically. Bruce lifted his gaze, his expression bleak, tired. Tony made his own firm, confrontational.
Bruce sighed, then kept working, even though his hands were shaking, and the stitches wouldn’t be very good. Tony offered, “I can do it,” then, at Bruce’s incredulous look, “I’ve done—stitches.”
Bruce scoffed heavily, an uncharacteristically open gesture, before containing himself to his humble speech. “You must be truly off your head.”
They didn’t talk again for a good while.
When Rogers roused, Bruce encouraged, “Drink this,” and offered a tincture that had Morphine on the label. Rogers wordlessly swiped it from his hand and gulped it down.
Tony said, “I wish I had a bottle of that.” He meant for the cave.
Bruce said primly, “Don’t you.”
Rogers growled with droplets of morphine on his lips, “You watch yourself. You don’t talk to him like that.”
Quailing just a little, Banner said, “Preserve your strength.” He rose and retreated to another room, leaving them be.
For a long moment, they were alone. Rogers subsided back down, dropping the glass to the floor.
Breathing heavily through his mouth, he said, “I done wrong this time, Stark.”
“It’s okay,” Tony told him blankly. It felt better than the alternative, It’s not okay. Cutting the only rope left to them, the lifeline Rogers was perhaps literally clinging to life to, felt wrong.
He wasn’t even in the right world. It wasn’t his consequences to bear.
Rogers groaned, “I done wrong by you. I should’a. . . .” Head lolling, gaze glassy, he said, “I should’a left this town.”
Heart oddly twisted, Tony said firmly, “Rest, Captain.”
The blip was ignored. “You got . . . all scratched. Tell Bruce—”
With a sigh, Tony pushed away from his perch, approaching the figure on the couch, one arm outstretched towards him to point at his face. Although a part of him was like, Do not let him near, he will hurt you; another part of him trusted that reaching hand.
It cupped his face again. It was whiskey-warm. “I just want you to know,” the Sheriff whispered. “I done the best by you.”
Squeezing his wrist, aware that the words could not be for him, Tony said anyway, “Yes.”
Some great burden lifted from Rogers’ face. For a moment, Tony experienced a terrible dread, as Rogers’ entire body went limp, his eyes shutting. But he was still breathing. Even the hand he held involuntarily to his face was still warm.
Not dead. Just resting.
The first, quick knocks on the door did not rouse him. But they kicked Tony’s heart into higher gear.
He rose, carefully replacing Rogers’ palm on his chest. Bruce cast him a wary glance from the kitchen area. Tony approached the door fearlessly.
His own altered visage looked back at him.
For a moment, the rictus of pure shock overtook it: eyes widening, mouth dropping a little, expression going utterly blank. Then, electing to ignore the shock of a lifetime in favor of what mattered, the doppelganger reached out, pushed him aside, and strode past him, locking on target. Bruce made a choked sound. Tony carefully shut the door.
Behind him, the real Tony Stark collapsed beside his Sheriff. One hand tangled in golden hair, a desperate sort of sadness in the way he shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against Steve Rogers’ temple.
Docilely, eyes still closed, Steve pawed around, and the real Tony caught it, squeezed it so tightly it shook, and the intruder standing at the door understood exactly what they were to each other.
Lovers.
Bruce just stayed in his side room. Not, Tony thought, out of disgust—how easy would it be to ruin them if he was, bring out the whole town, make it a show?—but out of true camaraderie. He understood exactly what world they lived in; he was simply a friend.
Almost stricken by it all, Tony let himself out. He was careful about it, grateful for cover of darkness.
He slipped down the main street, lost in space, lost in time.
. o .
Without meaning to, he found Kingpin. The gray stallion was wandering loose, tail flicking in an antsy sort of way. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Tony dared to whistle quietly. The horse turned and snorted loudly, then trampled over to him, ducking its head. Tony thought, This is it, this is how I go, right up until Kingpin stopped, snorting a huge hot breath over him that said, You won’t believe the day I’ve had.
“Hi,” Tony eked out. “Where’s your—okay,” he grunted, as Kingpin knocked his head, hard, against Tony’s chest, in a way that said, You know where he is and Why are you even talking to me? I’m a horse.
Far enough.
He was terrified of losing a hand, but the horse somehow let him grab the rope—all but encouraged it, swinging his head around in a weirdly purposeful movement that allowed it to flick down to him. “You’re very strange,” Tony said, but quietly.
He walked the horse for a bit, not sure what else to do. Kingpin snuffled, whuffed, and even whinnied, which Tony had to shush, because it was late enough he desperately did not want to draw a scene.
His legs were about to give way when somebody bodily jostled him out of the way, grabbing the ropes from him. Before he could square up for a real fight, he heard a very dry version of his own voice said, “Have you no idea how to handle a horse?”
Opening and closing his mouth twice to protest, Tony finally settled for glaring as his doppelganger primly wrapped the rope around his wrist twist, then patted Kingpin firmly on the side. He swore the horse nuzzled his doppelganger. Scowling, Tony said, “Of course I know how to—”
“Don’t talk,” interrupted his doppelganger. “If you talk, we’re both dead. Walk.”
They passed the edge of town, nearing the river before his doppelganger finally said, “Although choosing to believe this is fanciful is far preferable to accepting it as real—I will allow myself the risk. Who in the devilish blue blazes are you?”
Tony said simply, “I’m you.”
And then he popped back into his lab.
Clint fell off a chair; Bruce startled badly, dropping at least three hundred papers’ worth of material; and J.A.R.V.I.S. greeted simultaneously, “Welcome home, sir.”
“Oh my God, Tony,” said Steve—Steve, of all people, who swept him up into a hug he was not emotionally ready for, feet leaving the floor as Natasha said dryly:
“I told you, he’s fine, I’m leaving,” and promptly did so.
“Oh my God, Tony,” Steve said against his hair, hugging him so tightly he could just eke out a breath, wheezing a little as he said:
“Put me down.”
“God dammit, it’s been seventy-one hours,” Clint grunted. “Stark, piss off.” Gathering what appeared to be an unhealthy number of chips wrappers, he added fiercely, “One hour, you couldn’t have stayed lost for one Godfucking hour—”
“You scared the fucking shit out of us,” Steve said firmly, setting him down, both hands on his shoulders like he was afraid if he let go for a second, Tony would disappear. “What were you goddamn thinking? Were you even thinking? Don’t ever do that again. Don’t even think about it. J.A.R.V.I.S.? We put that in writing, didn’t we?”
“You did enter a rather large number of mandates, sir,” agreed J.A.R.V.I.S. neutrally. “Mr. Stark will have to review them, of course.”
“Oh, thank God, you’re okay,” Steve breathed, hugging him tight before Tony could do more than squeak on a syllable that wanted to be what, holding him tightly against his shoulder.
“I’m not dead,” Tony managed, even though most of the vowels were lost. “You can let go now.”
“I want pizza,” Clint said. “Can we get pizza?”
Tony managed to pry himself loose long enough to behold Clint, blinking several times as he finished dumping a huge number of chips’ wrappers into the trash. “It’s the least you can do, you owe me big,” Clint pointed out, pointing to him.
“I’m—no, I’m not that happy,” Tony decided, putting up a hand to stop Steve from hugging him a third time. “Hug quota. Hug quota.”
“What happened to your face? Banner, get over here,” Steve ordered, as Bruce meekly arrived, looking bleak and like he had not slept a wink in three days, at Steve’s discretion.
“Steve, honey,” Tony began, because Bruce needed to rest, not Hulk out from stress, but also, ow—“Those are sharp. Do not touch those.”
“Yeah, you should put something on those, Tony, you don’t wanna get gangrene—”
“Gangrene!” Steve trumpeted.
“Steve,” Tony said, putting both hands on his chest. “Down a notch. I’m fine. How the hell did you all get in here?”
“I alerted them,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said cheerfully. “When you disappeared, I felt it would be appropriate to assemble a rescue party as soon as—”
“I’m just so glad you’re okay,” Steve said, crushing him in another hug. “Makes me sick to think about, you not being okay, Tony.”
“I think I get that, now,” Tony wheezed. “I’m safe. I’m safe now.”
Steve finally, finally released him, letting him step back, even, a red flush tinting his neck. “I—look, can we get on that—antibiotics?”
“Nope, pizza time,” Clint said, spinning around in Tony’s preferred chair, already typing on his phone.
“Honestly, starting to prefer the universe where you were dead,” Tony said, pointing at him. “Just a tiny bit.”
“Pizza time on your tab,” Clint confirmed.
Tony flipped him off, then grunted as Steve pushed a first aid kit against his chest. “Steve—I’m okay.”
“You are not okay,” Steve blustered. “You disappeared for three days!”
“Minus one hour,” Clint grunted.
“You shut your mouth!” Steve snapped.
With a sigh, Tony grabbed him by the shirt and tugged him firmly into the hall outside the lab. “I am okay,” he said.
“Tony, you could’a died,” Steve said, his voice surprisingly neutral.
“I am okay,” Tony repeated.
“Tony—”
“I am okay,” Tony insisted.
Steve looked him over, zeroing in immediately on the mark on his face, and insisted, “No—”
“Yes,” Tony said.
They stared each other down for a long moment.
Finally, Steve said, “You are okay.”
Patting his chest twice, Tony said, “Pizza—” and blinked in surprise when Steve pushed back his hair and kissed his forehead.
“Okay,” Steve said.
“Okay,” Tony repeated, eyeing him. “You do that again, I will punch you in the gut.”
Looking at a bit more kicked puppy, Steve said, “How else do you check for a fever, Tony?”
Pinching his brow, Tony said, “Oh my God.” Putting a hand on Steve’s chest preemptively to stop his concern, he added, “Steve.” Then, looking at him, in all his genuine, flustered worry, he noted, “I could’a died.”
“Please don’t remind me. I still feel like I’m gonna vomit.”
Scrunching up his nose, Tony said, “Well, don’t do that,” and before Steve’s furrowed brow could transform into an actual question, he leaned up daringly and popped a quick kiss on Steve’s cheek. “Thanks.”
Steve raked both hands up and down his back, which was a far better reaction to a testing-the-waters kiss than Tony was expecting, all things considered—a reciprocal punch in the gut was not off the table, despite the outsized reaction—and the sigh of, “You don’t get it, you don’t get it,” was met with Tony kissing him on the corner of his mouth, silencing him.
“I think I do,” Tony dared.
Cupping his face in both hands, Steve kissed him firmly.
If Tony squeaked at the sharp ping from the cut on his face, it was worth it for scaring three to five years off Steve’s life.
He had a long, long life to spare, after all.
. o .
Back in a small town in New Mexico many worlds but only one dimension apart, a man sat on a gray horse, overlooking a river at dawn.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I am resting,” said the rider. Gripping Kingpin’s reins loosely, he said, “I’m restin’ my eyes.”
Sidling closer, Stark hummed and said, “You know, some people might think their Sheriff sets a poor example.”
“Oh?”
“A man who cannot rest on his laurels. Perhaps no leader worth following.”
“Are you always poetic?”
“Only for you, dearest.”
They stood side-by-side, one astride, the other on the soles of his own feet, watching the red sun peek over the horizon.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Stark said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Everything that happens is my fault,” Sheriff Rogers replied.
“Giving yourself an awful lot of credit for the weather,” Stark pointed out.
“I’m their protector.”
“You do a fine job.”
Rogers sighed. Stark stepped closer, gripped his leg. Rogers looked determinedly at the horizon line, then down at him. Holding each other’s gazes for a moment, they said nothing.
“I done wrong by Charles,” Rogers told him.
“No,” Stark said. He had heard all about Charles. He had heard all about Clinton. It had hit them all hard, but as a man with more problems with the bottle than most, it had hurt. They said he just got a bad bottle. Rogers would blame himself forever for not being more careful, somehow. “You did everything you could by them,” Stark insisted, squeezing Rogers’ leg.
Looking at the horizon, Rogers said, “I done everything I could by you.”
With one last firm squeeze to his leg, Stark released him, stepping away.
They watched the sunrise together, carefully apart. When Rogers said, “Wish we could run away, sometimes.”
“Where to?” Stark mused.
“Somewhere nice.”
Lump in his throat, Stark said, “It’s nice wherever I’m with you, darling.”
However long it lasted—hours, minutes, a few more grains of sand that it ever was supposed to, thanks to a bit of interdimensional loping, and one man striking off into the desert, taking a bit of his trouble with him.
Maybe Timely wouldn’t last at all, and maybe it would last for eons to come.
Only time would tell.