Apartment Above Stark Industries

[heroic_jawline]

Steve was back from his normal run and enjoying the air conditioning of their apartment (which he'd turned up a little bit to make himself feel less guilty about being engaged to an engineering genius while everyone else was melting in the heat) and had showered and changed and was now sprawled out on the sofa with his Stark tablet, going through more of the exposed SHIELD files that Natasha had flagged for him in an email titled "Tugging on that Thread."

It was probably a bad idea to be reading the information, but Steve couldn't help himself. He'd been chasing Bucky for years and had gotten exactly nowhere. Maybe what SHIELD, well, Hydra, had on his past would give him some more leads to follow.

[OOC: For that guy! Let's detonate MCU canon today, shall we?]

Comments

[imafuturist]

Tony winced. "I can only imagine. I can't believe they just kept all this information, you know?"

[heroic_jawline]

"They really didn't think Nat would just chuck it out there for everyone to get to, either," Steve said. "Tony--the other Tony--had JARVIS scrambling to pull down all the Stark proprietary stuff. Not the suit, but helicarrier upgrades, that kind of stuff."

He shrugged. "He was yelling loud enough that I could hear him over Natasha's phone when I pretended to be passed out in the hospital bed."

That was honest.

[imafuturist]

Tony snorted, resting his cheek on Steve's shoulder. "Steve

[heroic_jawline]

Steve kissed his head, then kept reading. "Let's go back further into the 90's, hmm?" he said.

[imafuturist]

"How often did they have him active anyway?" Tony asked.

[heroic_jawline]

"Judging by the number of files Nat sent me, maybe a couple times a decade?" Steve said. "No idea how complete these are, either. But from what Zola inferred, Bucky was the heavy hitter and he came out when they really needed history changed."

[imafuturist]

"Alright," Tony said, going through this logically. "What in the 90s changed history? Other than hair metal."

[heroic_jawline]

"Which could explain Bucky's haircut," Steve said, "but that's probably more Hydra not giving a damn. You were there. The Cold War ending probably wasn't great for Hydra, right?"

[imafuturist]

Tony sighed, thinking back on it. "Maybe something to do with the nuclear program? I think Howard might have had his fingers in that. My Howard, at least."

[heroic_jawline]

"Not sure my Howard was around for much of the 90s," Steve said, idly reading the report he'd opened. "Think he died in a car crash in the late 80s, maybe? Tony doesn't really talk about it."

The next report was going to change that real fast.

[imafuturist]

"Early 90s for me," Tony murmured, looking away. Then just to to horrify himself by adding, "Drunk bastard took mom with him."

[heroic_jawline]

Steve set his tablet aside to curl himself around Tony more effectively. "I'm sorry."

[imafuturist]

Tony swallowed back weird, terrible emotions at saying that out loud. "Me too. I didn't, uh. I didn't mean to say that. He was your friend."

[heroic_jawline]

Steve's hold on him tightly. "He was your father," he said, "and then man I knew in the war seems to have changed a lot after I crashed." He kissed Tony between the eyes. "Don't hold back because you think you'll hurt my feelings, I'm on your side. Tell me how it really was."

[imafuturist]

"It feels like I'm tearing down what little of your past that's still here," Tony said, frowning at how baldly honest that was. "Steve. I think something is going on."

[heroic_jawline]

"How so?" Steve asked.

[imafuturist]

"I haven't talked about that to anyone," Tony said, making a face. "Unless I was drunk."

Poor Rhodey got the brunt of it.

[heroic_jawline]

Steve pulled Tony's legs into his lap, half to stop him from trying to flee the conversation. (He knew them both a little too well.) "I've noticed," he said. "I didn't know you were avoiding talking about Howard to protect me, though."

[imafuturist]

Yeah, but fleeing would make this easier to handle! Maybe. Kinda. Sort of.

"You feel the loss so deeply," Tony was helpless but to say. "I don't want to hurt you with more."

[heroic_jawline]

Steve started giving Tony a foot massage to give his hands something to do. "But then my brain just fills in with what-ifs," he said. "I lived in a poor neighborhood during the Depression. There's not a lot of dysfunction I haven't at least heard whispers about."

[imafuturist]

"I kind of hate this," Tony muttered against his shoulder. "I'm too used to diplomatic responses to this."

[heroic_jawline]

"You don't have tell me," Steve said, kissing his hair. "You might feel better if you do, though."

[imafuturist]

"That I only ever knew the bitter man who would only show affection to me when there was a camera pointed at the family?" Did his desperate need for approval make sense now?

[heroic_jawline]

Steve's expression kind of collapsed for a second--he had a terrible poker face even on the best day--and he hugged Tony tighter. "You didn't deserve any of that," he said firmly.

[imafuturist]

"I don't want that to happen to me," Tony said, sounding maybe a little desperate.