Archive of Our Own ^beta

Steve knows that Tony Stark is going to be a problem from the first line in his file.

Designation: Alpha

Dr. Banner is an omega, Agents Barton and Romanoff are betas, and Thor doesn’t have a designation, on account of being an alien. Or a god. An alien that’s known as a god.

Fuck, but the future is weird.

After he meets him, Steve thinks that Stark’s going to prove him wrong.

Stark interacts easily and earnestly with Coulson, not at all bothered by the other alpha or in being in what is certainly more his territory than Stark’s. He doesn’t rise to Hill’s irritation, but some alphas are like that, so secure in their place in the hierarchy that they don’t bother to get into dominance disputes. They’re the worst sort of alphas to try and command, however.

He greets Dr. Banner respectfully, although the jab about the Hulk makes Steve’s shoulders tense. Dr. Banner seems thrown, but not upset, and Stark gestures for him to walk ahead of him rather than leading the way and expecting Dr. Banner to trail behind.

But he enters the lab to find that Stark is placing himself between Dr. Banner and everyone else, offers him food when he says something Stark approves of and Dr. Banner seems quietly bewildered even as he takes it, sees him poke and prod in a way that would be inappropriate even without Dr. Banner’s temper problem, and Steve can’t help the way irritation and anger rush through him.

Stark just met the man and he’s already acting like his alpha, like the omega belongs to him.

Some alphas are like that too, thinking any packless omega is available for claiming, to be picked up and discarded at their leisure. Picking up and discarding people was something else his file said he had a history of being good at.

~

Tony takes a one way trip to save them all and Steve doesn’t know how to fit all his very justified irritation against this, against watching him disappear and the bone deep relief when he fell back, when Hulk caught him and roared him back to consciousness.

He suggests shawarma and Steve doesn’t want to let an alpha feed him but can’t think of a way to refuse that doesn’t make him look like an ass so he nods with the rest of them. They’re too tired to make much conversation, although he can’t help but notice how Bruce sits himself at the end of the table next to Tony, with Tony between him and everyone else.

Halfway through there’s the click of heels against linoleum and Tony perks up.

A beautiful red headed omega in a business suit walks carefully over the rubble of the shawarma shop and says, “You’re in so much trouble.”

Tony’s pack status had been listed as classified, which simply meant that he had one, but the warmth that fills Tony’s face makes this woman’s connection obvious even without her name in his file. “Hey, Pepper, I made some friends.”

Natasha snorts.

“Ignore her,” Clint says. “If I hadn’t liked you before, I would now. Those arrows were awesome.”

Clint’s arrows had been of Tony’s making? Steve hadn’t known that.

Pepper places a hand on the back of Tony’s neck, possessive and dominant, and she must have been in Tony’s pack a long time for the alpha to allow that, to sink into her grip the way he seems to be. Her eyes settle on Bruce, who hunches his shoulders under the other omega’s gaze.

“Be nice,” Tony murmurs. He holds up his basket of half eaten shawarma. “Hungry?”

Pepper ignores him. Steve finds himself pinned under her stare and understands why Bruce had seemed unsettled. It’s hard and angry, her lips twisted in a way that would be a snarl if she parted them even slightly.

He leans back in his chair, keeping his body language open and easy. It’s been a long time since an omega reacted to him like this. Ever since the serum, they don’t seem him as competition, not like they did before.

It’s been a long time since another omega looked at him and got territorial. But that’s exactly what Pepper seems to be doing, finding her alpha with two omegas she doesn’t know and clearly not liking it at all. It makes him wonder at what he read in Tony’s file. This can’t be a new experience for her.

Thor shakes off his exhaustion and sends her a winning smile. “Are you Friend Stark’s companion? Sit and feast with us!”

She raises an eyebrow then looks down at Tony.

“Yeah, we’ll work on it,” he says. Steve feels a pang of jealousy that he shoots down. He used to be able to do that, to have a conversation without saying anything at all, with the Commandos, with Bucky. Sometimes even with Peggy, although they hadn’t known each other long enough for it to be habit. “Are you here to yell at me or check up on me?”

“It’s always both, with you,” she says then shoves at his shoulder.

There are plenty of empty chairs, but after blinking in surprise Tony scoots back a couple inches and Pepper drops into his lap, in case her glares hadn’t gotten her point across. Tony winces, his entire body likely bruised, but he settles an arm around her waist and doesn’t complain.

She finishes Tony’s shawarma, making polite conversation in between bites, although Steve notices that she doesn’t address him once.

Natasha receives the same treatment, but if she’s surprised by it, she doesn’t show it.

~

Pepper is Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries.

It’s not like there aren’t omega CEOs, or women CEOs, although the combination isn’t exactly common. It’s that Tony, an alpha, appointed her himself. To loud protest, apparently, although the news articles don’t make it clear if that’s because of her age, her gender, her designation, or just outcry at Tony stepping down regardless of who was replacing him.

He’s still the majority stakeholder, still the head of Research and Development, could probably shove Pepper back out of the position with little trouble if he wanted, but still. It’s not a choice that Steve expects, although maybe it’s just a matter of time. According to Wikipedia, Pepper was his assistant for over ten years before he made her CEO.

Thor returns Loki to Asgard and their first mission was so successful that Steve is unsurprised when Fury keeps them together for more than world ending emergencies.

Or tries to.

“I don’t work for you,” Tony says, their first meeting after Thor returns. “You made that more than clear.”

For no reason that Steve understands, Natasha flinches, the movement so small that he almost misses it.

The air is thick with pheromones, two alphas pissed at each other and doing nothing to hide it. It’s mostly Fury’s, Tony’s own scent light and almost easy to miss if Steve’s not right next to him, and he has a better sense of smell than most. Fury is standing, shoulders back and a scowl on his face. Tony is seated, slumped into his chair and clothing rumpled, and the hard tone of his voice matches what Steve would expect from an angry alpha who’s spent his whole life getting his way, but the body language doesn’t. Then again, it’s not like Tony would have the advantage of height even if he was standing, and his irreverence seems to make Fury even angrier.

Apparently anything can be a dominance display as long as it works.

“I don’t want to work for you,” Bruce says, sitting in the corner of the room and his stance almost relaxed except for the way he keeps looking towards the door. “You said that after I helped you find the tesseract, you’d leave me alone. I more than helped.”

Tony grins, twisting in his seat to catch Bruce’s eye and putting his back to Fury. “Come work for me. My toys are a lot better than theirs.”

“Tony,” Bruce sighs, but it’s more affectionate than exasperated.

Steve is keeping silent because he’s hoping that Tony gets his way, but he doesn’t want to say that. It’s uncharitable of him, at best, to still not want the man on his team after everything. But Tony’s an alpha who doesn’t have any problem ignoring and dismissing Fury, an older alpha that’s the head of this whole organization.

They’d worked well together facing the Chitauri, but that’s because everything was such a mess that there were no real orders to either follow or disobey. There were alphas in the Commandos, Bucky and Peggy among them, but there had been plenty of people who’d had no interest in taking orders from an omega, even an enhanced one. Or especially an enhanced one.  

Trying to wrangle this team into something functional is going to be hard enough without adding an alpha with authority issues to the mix.

“Stark,” Fury sighs.

“I had to convince Pepper not to bill you, you know,” he says. “I pointed out that considering we’re fronting a good chunk of the clean up costs anyway, it would just be petty. You’ve pushed Pepper to pettiness. Is that really what you want?”

Is he … threatening Fury with his omega?

Not that omegas can’t be threatening, Steve is obviously aware of that, but as far as he knows Pepper is just a normal human, and Tony is Iron Man.

Oddly, it seems to work. Fury switches tracts. “Things are different now. We have to be ready to face global threats.”

Some of Tony’s humor drains away, leaving a steely stare that makes even Steve want to duck. “Fine. If it’s a global threat, you know where to find me. Otherwise, my standard rate applies.”

He gets to his feet and Fury lets out a growl that has the hair of Steve’s arms standing upright and Bruce to shuffle even further to the back of the room. Natasha and Clint keep their faces blank, but they’re pressed together shoulder to wrist. Thor just seems confused. Despite how similar he looks to a human, this is an aspect of their biology that they don’t share.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Really? I’m forty goddamn years old, Nick. You going to huff and puff and blow my house down for your next trick?”

Angry, older alpha in his own territory who’s growling at him and Tony doesn’t so much as blink. Steve doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting him to listen.

Tony pauses on his way out the door, catching Bruce’s eye and tilting his head in question.

Bruce sweeps his gaze over the rest of them then nods, walking over to Tony’s side, placing him in between the rest of them.

“Dr. Banner,” Fury barks.

Bruce tenses and Tony places a friendly hand on his back, steering him towards the exit. “Bye Nick! Send Maria my love!”

They’re gone and Fury is fuming and Steve lets out a slow breath. If Fury had kept ahold of his temper, they might have been able to keep Bruce. But he had a terrible history with the military and Tony was a lot of things, but he wasn’t that. If they force him to go to an alpha for protection, he’s going to pick the one he thinks is the least likely to attempt to dissect or use him. Additionally, from what Steve knows, Tony’s never lied to Bruce, and Fury has. He was on thin enough ice as it was, no matter Tony’s reputation.

Keeping quiet was probably a mistake.

“Fuck,” Fury sighs, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Not your best work, sir,” Clint says, because he apparently has no sense of self preservation. Then again, considering how many buildings Steve saw him jump off of, he doesn’t know why he should be surprised by that.

“Shut up, Barton,” Fury snaps. “You could have helped. He likes you.”

Clint stretches his legs and leans back in his seat. “I’m not in recruitment, sir. He likes me because I haven’t given him a reason not to, and I don’t plan to. If you really do plan to use him to save the world in the future, there’s got to be someone left who’s calls he will still take. Or, well, that Pepper will take.” He pauses, then gestures to Thor. “Do you know how to use a phone? You’re not a persona non grata yet either.”

“The are quite small and delicate contraptions,” Thor says sadly, which Steve takes to mean he’s crushed one or two before giving up. Steve can sympathize. He hadn’t realized how flimsy the devices were himself until he’d shattered the screen by pressing too hard.

Clint’s lips twitch up. “See, sir? I’m the last one standing, so to speak.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything. Steve doesn’t remember any hint of antagonism or dislike between them. She seems like the type that could compartmentalize that, but Tony certainly doesn’t.

                                                                             ~

They start up team drills without Bruce or Tony. Hill says they’re looking at possible other team members and Fury scowls and says nothing at all. Thor, despite being a prince, takes orders easily enough, and Clint and Natasha are of course professionals.

Steve can’t stop turning Clint’s words over in his mind.

If you really do plan to use him to save the world in the future.

When Fury realized a nuclear bomb was heading for New York City, he hadn’t told Steve, the supposed team leader. He hadn’t opened a line to all of them, to warn them all and hope one of them could do something.

He’d called Tony.

Neither he nor Thor would have known exactly what a nuclear bomb was, although Steve understands the concept of big bomb easily enough and Thor’s Allspeak likely would have bridged the gap. Clint and Natasha would have understood, but perhaps the issue was air support. Through a charitable lens, Tony was the only one of them with the intelligence and means to do something about it, and so the only one who needed to be informed.

If he’d had the energy to wonder about it before, Steve would have thought it was designation bullshit, Fury giving lip service about not thinking anything about an omega leading the team, but when push comes to shove, he goes to the only alpha in the field, and damn the rest of them.

The least charitable option is that Fury doesn’t believe a word of the personality assessment in Tony’s file. That he knew a narcissist and a playboy, a self centered alpha who was playing at a soldier wasn’t the man in the suit, but instead it held someone who was willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good without question or hesitation.

That would mean that Fury was planning to reel him in by putting him down, to make him feel like had to earn his place on a team that he belonged on. But the council’s decision to nuke Manhattan meant that Fury had been forced to show his hand to save New York and he’d lost the leverage he thought he’d have over Tony Stark.

Tony and Bruce had told him not to trust Fury. Steve had proven to himself that Fury wasn’t telling them everything when he’d found those weapons. But that was – awful, perhaps, but an expected part of an intelligence organization. This sort of mental manipulation of a man that Fury trusted enough to save them all turns his stomach.

Worse than that, he can easily see the part he played in all of it.

He hates when people focus on his designation, when they think being an omega makes him any less a capable leader or soldier, makes him in any way incapable to do his damn job. He’d hated it even before the serum, the way people had smelled him and looked at him and thought they knew everything about him. Proving them wrong had gotten him more bruises, bloody noses, and skinned knuckles than he could count, had sent Bucky spare when Steve wouldn’t just listen to him like he was supposed to, but Steve had never been able to regret it.

Then he’d turned around and done the exact same thing to Tony.

He’d seen he was rich, and a genius, and handsome, and powerful, and an alpha, and Steve thought he knew exactly who he was dealing with.

It’s his own fault. Their argument over the scepter should have clued him in even if nothing else had – no matter the hurtful, angry words they spat at each other, Tony hadn’t once brought up his status as an omega, the obvious cheap shot that everyone always went for. Even goaded into his worst self by the tesseract’s magic, he hadn’t gone there.

Steve knows he’s fucked up and now that he knows, he can’t let it lie.

At least he already knows where Tony lives.

He’s expecting not to be let up, to be honest, but the receptionist blinks at his ID then directs him to a private elevator. He steps inside, but there are no buttons. He’s just started to frown when a cool, British voice says, “Hello, Captain,” and the elevator moves smoothly upward.

“Hello,” he says and doesn’t bother looking for cameras. Tony built the Iron Man armor, he’s not going to have any cameras Steve can pick up on. He wonders who’s manning the elevators. Perhaps someone in security? The receptionist had been a woman and not British.

The elevator doors slide open to reveal a minimalist living room, an open kitchen, and a perfect view of New York.

There’s a thick man in a suit sitting on the couch, scrolling through a tablet. He looks up as Steve enters and says, “I thought Jarvis was messing with me.”

“I would never, Mr. Hogan,” the same British voice says smoothly. It sounds like the speakers are embedded in the ceiling.

“Of course not,” he agrees, tossing the tablet aside and getting to his feet. He offers Steve his hand and Steve takes care to make sure his grip isn’t too firm, care that the other man doesn’t seem inclined to take. “It’s Happy, not Mr. Hogan, Tony will bust a lung if he hears you call me that. Is there something I can help you with? He’s busy with Pepper right now.”

He’s a beta, that Steve can tell easily, but even though they’re in man’s home there’s the scent of Tony that clings a little too closely to him to just be because of his surroundings. It’s faint enough that Steve doubts anyone else would be able to pick up on it without serum enhanced senses. He assumes he’d have been able to smell the same on Pepper if she’d ever peeled herself off from Tony’s side.

“Call me Steve,” he says firmly, because he’s already made a terrible enough impression on Tony and his omega, there’s no reason to do the same to the rest of his pack. “I don’t mind waiting.”

There’s something measuring in Happy’s gaze and whatever he finds must be to his liking because he grins and offers, “Dr. Banner’s puttering around downstairs if you want to go say hello while you wait?”

“That’d be great,” he says honestly. He thinks he owes Bruce an apology too, although he hasn’t decided what exactly for. Not taking his warnings seriously, perhaps.

Happy leads him back into the elevator and doesn’t say anything, but it immediately descends. It’s only a couple of floors this time and they end up at a hallway that leads to a large, sterile lab that reminds Steve a little too much of all the doctors that had poked and prodded at him at SHIELD, but the bright sunlight coming through the window helps.

Bruce looks up at his entrance and his smile instantly drops. “Did something happen?”

“No, no,” he reassures. “Nothing like that. I just wanted to speak to Tony and Happy thought I might wanted to say hello while I waited for him to finish up with Miss Potts? But if you’re busy-” 

He waves a dismissive hand, smile back in place now that he’s not worried about him asking for the Hulk. “Nothing that can’t wait. How are things over at SHIELD?”

Steve shrugs, not having much to compare it to since he’s only been in this century a few months. He steps closer, trying to take a deep breath without being obvious about it, because Bruce has been living and working in the tower with Tony for weeks.

After sheltering and taking care of an omega, claiming them would just be expected.

The look Bruce sends him tells him he hasn’t been subtle enough, but before Steve can apologize he lifts up his wrist to right under his nose. “He’s really not like that you know.”

There’s Bruce’s own scent mixed with omega and something sour that’s the Hulk, although it’s barely noticeable when Bruce is in his own body. Nothing of Tony. He hasn’t scent marked him.

“I know,” he sighs and Bruce lets his arm drop. “That’s why I’m here. Sorry.”

He shrugs, drumming his fingers against his forearm. “I get it. You’re just looking out for a fellow omega. But I don’t need to be protected from Tony Stark.”

This really isn’t why he came here, and Bruce easily has a decade on him so it’s not like he’s young or naïve, but, “You barely know him, and he’s not just an alpha, I understand that, but he is an alpha, and you’re in his house.”

Bruce’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t look angry, which is good for several reasons. “I know you read my file. I’m thirty eight and I haven’t gotten a heat in years, not since the gamma radiation. He’s Tony Stark, Captain. If he wanted another omega, you really think he’d have to settle for me?”

“I think there’s more to us than our heat cycles and he decided he wanted you the moment he set eyes on you,” he answers then barely keeps from wincing.

This is not going how he planned.

Bruce snorts and just looks amused. “Well, that’s true. Pepper had employment paperwork in my hands pretty much the second I stepped into the tower and a list of projects she wanted my expertise on the day I gave in and signed. If I’m anyone’s conquest, then it’s definitely hers.”

Steve really has no idea how to respond to that.

“If Tony agrees to join the team, I’ll go too,” he says. “You don’t have to try and recruit me separately.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” he says, and it’s true, which is why he doesn’t understand why it feels like a lie. “I just wanted to apologize. About not listening to you, and not speaking up against Fury. I didn’t have all the information, but it wasn’t right of me, and it wasn’t how a leader should act.”

This is what he came here to say to Tony, but it’s equally true for Bruce, and it at least gives him some practice in getting the words out.

Bruce stares at him for long enough that Steve’s eyes start to burn keeping his gaze. Finally he says, “If you say that to Tony, he’ll have a heart attack and die on the spot, and then you’ll have one very angry pack who will do their best to put Hydra to shame.”

“He doesn’t want an apology?” he asks, bewildered. “Why not?”

Bruce opens his mouth, but they’re interrupted by Jarvis saying, “Miss Potts and Sir are finishing up their discussion if you would still like to speak to him, Captain Rogers.”

He pales and hisses, “Is he always listening?”

“Jarvis?” Bruce blinks, “Yeah, always.”

Steve is appalled. They’d been discussing all that while someone was just listening to them?

“Captain Rogers, there is no need to be concerned. I am artificial intelligence built by Sir to handle the maintenance of the tower as well as several other operating systems.”

He’s moved from appalled to incredulous. “Tony made a person?”

“I have no physical form and the concept of personhood is perhaps more appropriate to the musings of Asimov, but each line of my base code and subroutines was implemented by Sir,” Jarvis answers.

“You’d think he’d leave the making people bit up to his omegas, but Tony’s the impatient sort,” Bruce says, and his face isn’t moving but he’s definitely laughing at him. “You probably shouldn’t keep him waiting, Steve.”

“Uh, right,” he says, clapping Bruce on the shoulder like he’s one of his Commandos. “It was good to see you, Bruce.”

Bruce inclines his head, watching him walk out with that same amusement and smile that he’d maintained almost their entire conversation and Steve hadn’t seen a hint of before now. Being in the tower with Tony is definitely doing him some sort of good, and Steve should probably just accept that and stop putting his foot in his mouth.

Not exactly his strength, but it’s a brave new world, so to speak.

Jarvis directs him down a hallway that’s all frosted glass and a door that he hadn’t realized was there swings open helpfully. He steps through and instantly regrets it.

“-going to work, stop being such a pessimist,” Pepper snaps, red suit and towering heels and her hair twisted up the back of her head. Her lipstick matches her suit and her pheromones have filled the room that he assumes must be some sort of workshop, considering the various tools and half dozen Iron Man suits on display.

He wonders if Bruce isn’t quite as sanguine as he appears of if perhaps Happy thought he needed some sort of punishment beyond a very firm handshake. That’s the only reason he can think of they would have sent him into an alpha’s home while his omega, who already has shown she doesn’t like him, is right there and just on the cusp of her heat.

“It’s a terrible idea and our stocks are going to tank,” Tony argues, in battered jeans and a greasy t shirt and hair that could use a wash.

Pepper scowls. “Well, how about this Tony? I’m CEO so it doesn’t matter what you think. If you want to be helpful, get those designs done that were due to the development team last week.”

“Sorry I got a little distracted with rebuilding the tower,” he says sarcastically. “You’re going to need me to design something brilliant to get stock back up after this goes live.”

“Okay, so stop whining and do it,” she suggests with a faux sort of sweetness he’d heard Peggy use once before she killed a man.

Tony rolls his eyes and Pepper turns to storm out, but unfortunately he’s right in the doorway and therefore very obviously in her line of sight and if he wasn’t an idiot he would have backed away slowly the moment he stepped inside, but it’s too late for that.

This time, he gets an actual snarl instead of just the suggestion of one. “What are you doing here?”

Normally he wouldn’t back down from another omega’s jealously, but she’s about to go into heat and he’s a packless omega in her territory with her alpha, so he tries to make himself look smaller for once. Judging by the way Tony bites the inside of his cheek, he assumes he isn’t very successful.

“He’s here to see me, stop scaring him. You have a board to go intimidate, you don’t have the time to beat up Captain America,” he says.

“I could make time,” she says darkly. “Keep me posted, Jarvis.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Jarvis says, smoothly opening the doors so she can march out of them without pause. Steve resists the urge to salute.

It’s just him and Tony and he’d rehearsed what he’d wanted to say and instead he opens his mouth and blurts out, “She’s going to a board meeting now?”

Tony raises an eyebrow, leaning against his desk with his arms crossed. “Well, it is in her calendar.”

“But, she’s,” he starts, and then remembers that bringing up other people’s cycles is extremely rude and he and Tony aren’t even friends and wow, okay, his plan to not put his foot in his mouth is going just perfectly. What if he doesn’t know? What if she doesn’t know? No, it smelled so close, she at least has to know.

The eyebrow climbs higher. “You can smell that?”

Oh, good, he does know. That’s one less social blunder, at least. “Um, the serum, it really – yeah. So. I mean, I came to talk to you, but I didn’t know that you were – that she was – I can come back,” he finishes desperately.

“Cap, relax, it’s fine,” he says. “She scheduled this meeting for today the same reason she came down to pick a fight with me, and the same reason Jarvis let you in before she’d left. The board isn’t going to like what she has to say and they’re less likely to give her shit when she’s on the warpath. She gets feisty right before her heat.”

That’s a polite way of putting it. Bucky had straight up told him that he was a bitch before his. “You had me come down here knowing that she doesn’t like me because seeing me would piss her off even more?”

Tony frowns. “It’s not that she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t know you. She’s just mad at you, she’ll get over it. Probably.” Pepper doesn’t seem like the type of person to get over anything, but he’s only met her twice. Perhaps she’s far more forgiving and cordial outside of alien invasions and arguments before her heat.

“I can come back next week,” he offers. Heats shared with a pack’s alpha should only last a day, maybe less, but he really doesn’t want to risk it, besides he’s not sure if he’s supposed to be pretending that he doesn’t know Pepper’s his omega. Surely not, considering her display at the shawarma place, but things are very different in the future.

“Really, you can calm down, it’s fine,” Tony says, and if nothing else Steve’s nerves seemed to have relaxed Tony even more. “If she wants to spend her heat with me, it won’t really kick in until tomorrow.”

This is not his business, it’s none of his business, he should keep his mouth shut. “If?”

Steve had spent miserable heats on his own when Bucky went off to war but they’d dragged on and been unsatisfying and awful and boring, stuck inside and forced to wait it out. If his alpha had been there, it wouldn’t be a matter of if.

Tony shrugs. “She wants me to get the coding done for the next phone launch, she might have me work on that instead. Plus sometimes she likes the excuse for a vacation and she just steals my dirty laundry to hurry it up and spends the whole time in a penthouse suite drinking from the jacuzzi and getting room service. If she wants me, she’ll let me know. What did you want to talk about?”

The scent of an alpha, especially her own, does take the edge off and speed up the process. He still can’t imagine choosing that over his actual alpha.

But this is not his pack and not his business and frankly he’s shocked Tony’s indulged him this far. If someone had asked questions about his heat arrangements, then someone would have ended up in medical, and it wouldn’t be him.

“Right,” he takes a deep breath, regrets it when the combined scent of Pepper and Tony, almost in heat omega and her alpha, nearly overwhelms him. “Yes. I just – I wanted to apologize. I made assumptions about you and I shouldn’t have and I let a file have more influence over me than what I was witnessing with my own eyes, and that was wrong of me. I should have known better.”

Tony stares at him, eyes so wide that for a moment he worries that Bruce was right and he shouldn’t have tried to apologize. “Are team dynamics really that bad without me there? Clint can crack a joke with the best of them. I suspect Thor also has a great sense of humor and the punchlines are just going over our heads due to cultural differences.”

“This isn’t about the team,” he says, frustrated, then amends, “I mean, not that it isn’t, that was why I – and I really shouldn’t have, I’ve served with plenty of alphas, and you never made an issue over my designation, I was being shortsighted-”

“Wait,” Tony says slowly. “You thought I would have an issue taking orders from you. Because you’re an omega.”

“Yes,” he says, “obviously that was wrong-”

“You met my father right?” he interrupts. “Listen, I know I gave you shit about it, but you do understand that I’m Howard Stark’s son, right? That I was raised by him? That he founded and ran the company that I inherited for fifty years? And you thought I’d have trouble taking orders from an omega? From the day I was born to the day he died, all I did was take orders from an omega.” He pauses and purses his lips. “Okay, well, actually I rebelled like hell because we were at each other’s throats more often than not, but that wasn’t a designation thing, that was my dad being an ass thing.”

Right. He’d known that, obviously. Well, he’d known that Howard was an omega, the only other one in the room with him when Erskine injected him with the serum, and he’d known Howard was Tony’s father, of course. But lots of people have omega fathers, and however he’d been during the war, that had been before he met Tony’s mother. All it had taken was a suggestion from Peggy to get Howard flying over occupied airspace, and that was just an alpha he knew.

His expressions must be extremely transparent, because Tony rubs a hand over his face and says, “Steve, come on, use that brain I really hope you have in there. My last name is Stark, not Carbonell. My alpha mother took his name and joined his pack and didn’t touch the company and carried me!”

Okay, the rest he’s heard of happening, although not all at once, but that last one really does throw him. Female alphas and male omegas have the same equipment, so technically either could carry, but it’s always the omega. When he’d let himself daydream about a future with Peggy, and the hazy notion of children, he’d never assumed she’d be the one to have them. That’s just not how people do things.

“It’s just hormones, Steve,” Tony says gently.

Easy for an alpha to say, he thinks, and then feels bad for thinking it, so he says, “Ah.”

“I probably wouldn’t listen to you in the field if I thought you were wrong, but not because I’m an alpha and you’re an omega, but because I’m an arrogant dick,” Tony says.

“So you’re personality profile wasn’t totally incorrect,” he says and wonders if he could hit himself hard enough to knock himself out. He’s usually much better at keeping his mouth shut than this, but something about Tony just keeps him constantly out of sorts. “Sorry. That was a joke.”

“I know,” Tony says, lips twitching up at the corners. Steve gets the impression that Tony’s laughing at him more than anything else, but he’s so relieved that he’s chosen that over getting pissed at him that he can’t even mind. “I realize you’ve chosen to ignore my very good advice, but you really can relax.”

“Whoever wrote it was wrong and I was wrong for believing it,” he insists, because they keep getting derailed and Tony can’t just accept a damn apology.

That gets him a frown for the first time. “Whoever wrote it,” he repeats. Steve finally manages to keep his mouth shut and just nods. “Cap. Natasha wrote it.”

What?

“Is that why Pepper,” he starts, then bites his bottom lip to keep from talking.

Tony winces. “Sort of. It’s complicated.”

That’s why Clint had said he and Thor were the last people whose call Pepper would take, and why Natasha had twitched at Tony’s jab to Fury about making his stance more than clear, and why Pepper hadn’t so much as looked at Natasha.

“Why?” he demands, feeling the tenuous firm footing he’d gained in the future starting to slip from underneath him. That doesn’t match anything he knows about Natasha, not how he saw her fight to how she handled Bruce to how desperately she tried to help Clint to how easily she trusted him from the beginning. Maybe it’s all a lie and if it is then he has no idea how he’s going to work with her. “Why would she do that?”

“Aw, Steve, don’t be like that,” Tony says, soothing and cajoling both. He’s mortified, thinking his distress is showing in his pheromones, but a quick breath confirms that he’s projecting nothing but his base scent. He doesn’t know how Tony’s reading him. “It’s not her fault. She’s Russian.”

“What,” he says. That hadn’t been what he’d been expecting.

Tony taps his fingers against his desk, an absent staccato beat. He’s getting motor oil all over it, but from the guts of some sort of machine spilled across it, that might just be a lost cause. “Didn’t anyone cover major events with you yet? Tell me you know about the Cold War.”

“Yes,” he says. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“She’s Russian,” Tony repeats and Steve just raises an eyebrow. “Come on, don’t make me spell it out. Really? Okay. She’s not American. Well, she is now, because there’s nothing like a shadowy government organization to speed through citizenship paperwork, but she was very much batting for the other team when she first came onto SHIELD’s radar.”

It had happened a couple times during the war, people that had been itching for an excuse and others who’d been backed into it. He’d always thought the latter shouldn’t have been given the choice, but those kinds of decisions had been above his pay grade. “We flipped her?”

“Clint did,” Tony confirms.

I’m not in recruitment, he’d said. Next training session, Steve’s going to kick his ass.

He continues, “Look, she was known as the Black Widow before she was one of SHIELD’s. Which means she has a lot of American blood on her hands, and even more from any enemy of Russia’s that they aimed her towards. Until Clint brought her in. I think she’s one of the good guys now, and hey, I’ve got plenty of American blood on my hands myself,” that’s such a bad faith description about Tony’s history with weapon manufacturing said so lightly that Steve can’t stop himself from flinching, “but SHIELD could bury her, legally and easily. So if Fury says jump, she has to say how high. I don’t blame her for that.”

“Pepper does,” he replies.

Tony grimaces. “It’s complicated. That’s personal, sort of. She was undercover as my assistant for a bit and, well, anyway. That’s not the point. Just be careful, Cap. Fury holds Natasha’s leash, and through her, Clint’s. Don’t let him hold yours too.”

Plenty of people think that’s the only way he should be allowed to continue doing his job, is if it’s at an alpha’s discretion and under their supervision. He’s not a normal omega, a science experiment gone wrong given too much strength and too much skill for someone of his designation, and there had been people who was waiting for him to snap, waiting for his hormones to get the better of him and get his whole team killed.

Normal omegas may be able to be worked into the chain of command, but the serum turned him into a novelty, and so it made him dangerous.

He sees himself in Bruce in more than just their designation.

But Tony is standing there, another alpha with more power and influence than any normal man would have, and he’s telling Steve to watch out, to make sure he remains entirely within his own control.

“Is that why you don’t want to be on the team?” Steve asks. “Because you think Fury will try and leash you?”

“He nearly did,” Tony says, lips twisting.

Steve had meant what he’d said to Bruce, except here he is, and maybe this is what he wanted from the beginning. “Well, if neither of us want Fury pulling one over on us, it might be easier to do that if we’re dealing with him together.”

Tony’s mouth actually drops open before he manages to close it. “What?”

“If we need you, you’ll come,” Steve says confidently, because the man who flew a bomb into a wormhole wouldn’t do anything less. “Train with us. Fight with us. So when the next disaster happens, we’re all better and more prepared to face it. Together.”

Tony blinks several times then shakes his head. “Are you asking me to be on your team?”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

It’s not about having an alpha on the team. It’s not even about having Iron Man. It’s about having Tony, who’d done his best for all of them even when they were working against him. Even when Steve was working against him. The man inside the suit is the part that’s missing from the team now. Fury got the lineup write, but his interpersonal management skills are shit.

Steve isn’t so sure about his own, but maybe that’s something else they all figure out together.

“Wow, fourteen year old me is losing his mind. Present me is pretty thrilled too,” Tony grins. “Okay, Cap. You’ve got me. Damn. Now I owe Bruce a Titan Krios.”

“Sorry,” he says, even though he isn’t.

“No, you’re not,” Tony returns and now he can’t help but mirror Tony’s smile with one of his own.

~

Tony and Bruce show up to practice to booming enthusiasm from Thor, high fives from Clint, and a smile from Natasha that she lets all of them see.

Bruce makes noise about not needing to be here, since he’s not going to Hulk out in the middle of SHIELD, but Steve counters by saying they can use Bruce’s brain when they’re not in need of Hulk’s skills. Having someone to coordinate from off the battlefield has plenty of its own advantages but Bruce isn’t going to be able to do that effectively without being familiar with all their fighting styles.

All of which is true, but he just wants Bruce to be a part of this team as much as Hulk, since their time off the battlefield will be far more numerous than their time on it. He knows Bruce is smart enough to figure that out, but he only sighs and cleans his glasses and doesn’t argue.

“Wow, Tony, all it took was Captain America showing up to get you here? You told Fury to fuck off to his face the first time he asked,” Clint jokes, midway through the stretches he insists he needs to keep from pulling something, but Steve’s pretty sure it’s just some sort of inside joke with Natasha.

“Well, how could I say no?” Tony drawls. “If Fury was serious then he should have adopted the captain’s strategy and sent a pretty omega to bat some baby blues at me. I might have been more amenable to that.”

Steve shoots him a sharp look, but Tony catches his eye and winks. For a beat, Steve can only stare. His designation has been a source of derision and mocking by those who’d looked down at him or politely ignored by the Commandos and the officers that liked him, but this is the first time it’s been a joke that he’s been included on.

The moment passes and he raises an eyebrow. “If you’re that easily distracted, we’ll have to work that into our battle plans.”

“Ha!” he grins. “People wish I was that easily distracted. Do you have any idea how many people have tried throwing omegas at me like I’m never smelled something nice before? If I can walk by Dolci di Nonna Vincenza without buying anything, then they really have no chance.”

“I don’t think it counts if Pepper was threatening you at the time, otherwise you would have walked in,” Natasha says, then is perfectly still for half a second before continuing her warm up. It’s some sort of tell, but he doesn’t know for what.

Tony huffs. “The guy was already in jail, there was really no reason why we couldn’t make a little pit stop. You could have at least gone back and got a pick up order.”

Natasha lips twitch into something that could be a smirk or a smile and Clint is grinning at them all, so if there’s some sort of real jibe buried in there, it’s one he’s not picking up on.

Steve keeps an eye Tony and Natasha during practice and the minutes they end up spending together outside of it, but if there are negative feelings between them, neither of them show it. If anything, they’re the most in tune with one another from the beginning, besides the obvious exception of her and Clint. Their files had listed them as packless, but it’s immediately clear that’s due to a lack of alpha rather than anything else.

Steve thinks of Coulson and wonders and says nothing. If he was their alpha, or acting like it, there’s no point in bringing it up.

He’s packless for the first time and tries not to think about it. His mother had been his alpha, then he’d had Bucky, and even for that short, miserable period between Bucky dying and him falling into the ice, he’d had Peggy, not technically his alpha but she would have been if he’d needed her.

The team helps. It’s not pack. But it’s something. Like the Commandos had been, alphas and betas he could trust and depend on, a family born of desperation and circumstance but a family all the same.

The avengers aren’t quite there. But he thinks maybe one day they will be.

~

Their first mission out, Steve holds his breath, wondering if everything they’ve tentatively built over the past few weeks will come tumbling down.

“That looked like it hurt,” Bruce says, voice calm and even over the comms. “Do you need medical, Hawkeye?”

“Fuck you,” Clint groans. “Ow, Jesus, just let me die next time.”

Steve would roll his eyes but he’s preoccupied with hitting as many as these small, annoying robots as he can with a single throw of his shield. It’s sort of like a large version of pinball, if pinball involved lasers trying to kill him.

It might, these days. Thor is very enthusiastic about something called laser tag that Steve really hopes isn’t what it sounds like. 

“If you’d given me more of a heads up, I could have caught you sooner,” Tony says. “What is it with you people and jumping off buildings?”

“Incoming multiples, brick building to Iron Man’s left,” Bruce says. “Drop Hawkeye.”

“Gently!” Clint yelps. Steve glances behind him to see Tony break Clint’s fall with Natasha and then a groan and a Russian curse respectively.

They’re all going to hear about that in training later.

“I need a distraction, I’ve almost got the signal locked down,” Tony says even as he barrel rolls through the next wave of robots, taking out half of them with repulsor blasts from his hands and feet. “Can I get like five minutes? Please?”

“You can have three,” Steve answers. “Thor, cover Iron Man. Widow, cover me. Hawkeye, find someplace high and start hitting things.”

He gets affirmations down the line and Clint hums, “You give the best orders, Cap.”

“And stop jumping off buildings without give your teammates a heads up,” he adds.

“Hypocrite,” four voices chime in at once.

He grins even as he doesn’t quite manage to dodge the next attack.

With Iron Man out, even for three minutes, the battle gets significantly more difficult. Given his abilities, he’s best suited to take these things down, and the rest of them have to work a lot harder. Natasha is doing a decent job keeping him from being hit and keeping herself safe with her bites, and then the gun that he hadn’t even known she had. But a minute and another too slow dodge later, Bruce says, “Widow and Captain are getting overwhelmed.”

He and Natasha both grimace, but he’s not wrong.

“Switching focus,” Clint announces. “Thor, you’re on your own buddy.”

“I am resistant to their attacks,” he says confidently, then, “Ow.”

“Almost there,” Tony says, “just, oh shit, more are – Cap!”

“I recommend retreating now,” Bruce says urgently.

Twice as many as those little robots are coming towards them. This is going to hurt. “Widow, fall back.”

“Captain,” she says crisply, ducking around the corner. Then, moments later, “Captain?”

“Cap’s not falling back!” Clint shouts.

“Widow can’t take as many hits as I can and Iron Man needs another minute,” he says, eyes narrowed as he grabs his shield out of the air and flings it with enough force that it slices through a whole row of robots. The problem is the time between the shield taking them out and swinging back into his hands leaves him with nothing but his fists to defend himself. Good enough if he can get close, but fairly inadequate otherwise. “Hold positions.”

“Fuck that,” Tony says then he’s hovering in front of him, repulsors lighting up the sky and pushing the robots back before they can reach him.

Steve scowls. “I said hold positions!”

“Hey, I didn’t move,” Tony says and then Steve notices that the Iron Man armor in front of him is missing its helmet and there’s no head. Tony’s not inside.

“One hit and you’re dead, or at least going into cardiac arrest,” Bruce says and there’s no question about who he’s talking about.

Steve throws his shield back into the mess, taking care to make sure he won’t hit the armor accidentally. He’s not sure how aware it is of its surroundings without its pilot. He turns, desperately searching, and it’s depressingly easy to find him.

Tony standing on a roof of the building Natasha is using for cover, Iron Man helmet on and in his grey suit and red tie, and no armor, not even the uniforms that Clint and Natasha have for protection, no weapon on hand, just completely vulnerable in a wide open area.

Steve’s going to kill him.

“IRON MAN!” he roars, vaguely aware of the armor keeping the robots at bay as he tosses the shield once more.

“I’m almost there,” Tony says, “J and I are just about-”

“Tony!” Bruce snaps, the first time during the battle he’s sounding anything but perfectly calm, and the only time he’s forgotten to use someone’s codename.

Steve’s head jerks behind him and he throws blindly, hoping for the best. There are about a half dozen of the robots heading for Tony, absolutely nothing if he’d been in the armor and more than enough to do serious to permanent damage without it.

“That’s not good,” Tony says, not sounding nearly concerned enough.

“Thor, to Iron Man,” Steve orders the only member of the team who has a hope of getting to him in time.

“Thor, hold, I’m fine,” Tony says and then throws himself off the building.

Bucky used to tell him that he hoped Steve had a bunch of kids who were just like him and then maybe he’d understand the stress he was always putting him through. This, he thinks, is worse.

For one wild, irrational moment he wishes Hulk was here, property damage be damned, because he’d plucked Tony out of the air and saved him from certain death before, so surely he’d be able to do the same now.

Then the armor zips into place, opening and forming around Tony seconds before the robots hit, bouncing off the sides of the armor while he cackles down the comms.

“Three, two, one!” he counts down, throwing up both gauntlets in a victory sign.

All the robots freeze in place, then drop to the ground, buzzing ominously.

“Should we be worried about that?” Natasha asks, sticking her head out of a window about halfway up the building he’d thought she was hiding behind. She must have been on her way to Tony. “What did you do?”

“Disabled their flight and shooting dangerous lasers capabilities,” Tony says. “It’s probably only good for fifteen minutes, but I doubt we’ll need that. Thor, time to play Whack-a-Mole.”

“I am familiar with this earthly pastime,” he says cheerfully, dropping to the ground and lifting his hammer to demonstrate.

Bruce sighs down the line. “Well, okay, that works. Save one of them for me, will you? We’re not going to be able to reverse engineer anything from pieces.”

Tony hums, “Well, we probably could, but yeah I’ll see what I can do. I don’t suppose anyone has a screwdriver?”

“Incoming,” Clint says and then an arrow goes straight for Tony.

He plucks it out of the air, staring at the screwdriver tied onto the shaft. “Huh. Okay, cool.”

Steve rolls out his shoulders, checks his breathing, and figures he can speak now without absolutely losing his shit. “Iron Man, see if you can get a couple shut down for us to look into, then you’re on clean up duty. Thor, do a sweep once you’re done on the ground to make sure you got them all. Everyone else report to headquarters.”

“Hey, why am I on clean up duty alone?” Tony whines.

Steve doesn’t answer that because he thinks the answer is obvious and also because he’s trying very hard not to yell right now.

“Captain and Hawkeye to report to medical,” Bruce says pointedly.

“What? No, I’m fine, don’t make me,” Clint says, sounding dangerously close to whining himself.

Steve feels similarly, because the places he got hit hurt like hell but the serum will take care of that in a couple hours, but he has to lead by example. Unfortunately. “Hawkeye and I will report to medical.”

That gets him a sigh and snort from Clint and Natasha respectively but no more arguments. They return to SHIELD and he submits to the poking and prodding so that Clint will do the same, although they simply pronounce nothing broken and send Clint away with orders to rest that the doctor doesn’t seem to think he’ll listen to. Steve’s burns and bruises are more severe, but there’s nothing to do but disinfect them and slap on a bandage and wait. Even that’s unnecessary, and there’s an awkward moment when the alpha nurse hesitates to touch him, looking around like there’s someone she should be checking with, and if he had an alpha he might appreciate the gesture but as is it just pisses him off. He’s about to tell her not to bother when Natasha is there, eyes narrowed, and the nurse steps back with her hands up, leaving the disinfectant and bandages behind.

Natasha picks up where the nurse left off, movements sure and steady. He watches her, debates saying nothing, but silence isn’t exactly his strong suit. “You’re good at this.”

“Lot of experience,” she says, smoothing the bandage down the line of his waist.

“Not this,” he says, “or, this too, thanks. I meant being on a team. You’re good at it.”

He’d known that before with everything she’d done while they were dealing with the tesseract, from bringing in Bruce to easily adapting her fighting style to work with theirs. This mission just reinforced it. Following orders but still calling him out, running up to Tony the moment she saw that the suit was empty, keeping an eye on him and budging in the moment his temper frayed. Everyone is doing their best and they’re doing it well, but she does it seemingly easily. It makes him wonder why she was a solo agent before this.

“Ah,” she says, lips twitching into a smile that he can tell she doesn’t mean. “I have less experience with that.”

“You’re a natural,” he says, nudging her in the side, and the smile looks little more real. He hopes that means it is and he’s not someone she’s decided she has to lie to.

The doors open and Steve hears Tony say, “Wow, Clint is really in medical, someone should mark this on a calendar or something.”

“Fuck you, Tony,” he says but he’s grinning. “You’re not allowed to make fun of me stuff that you only know because you hacked my file.”

“That’s not in your file, it’s,” he starts then shifts tracks, coming into Steve’s line of sight with Bruce not quite pressed up against his side but standing very close. Considering some of the nightmares Bruce must have had about SHIELD medical, Steve’s impressed he’s here at all. “Well, if it isn’t tall, blond, and bruised.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to be on clean up duty?”

Tony waves a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah, all done, Bruce helped me jury rig a magnet and it’s all headed back to the tower. I also got like twenty bucks in loose change, three different earrings, and a surprising number of keys.”

Steve considers making a comment about him helping, but Bruce is so clearly on edge right now that he doesn’t want to do anything that has the potential to shift into an argument. Natasha finishes taping him together and he grimaces as he pulls his uniform back into place, the motion pulling on all the wounds Natasha had just patched up.

Warm, calloused fingers brush up against his shoulder and then Tony is standing where Natasha was, carefully tugging his suit back into place. He doesn’t hesitate like the nurse did, instead touching him exactly as much as necessary and no more, being careful not to brush up against his neck even as he keeps a hand pressed against the center of his chest and then reaches behind him to pull the clasps into place. This close he can smell Tony properly, just as well as he can smell most other people when they’re a dozen feet away. Bucky and Peggy’s scent had been comforting, other alphas’ had been neutral to irritating, but right then Steve can’t figure out what he’s feeling beyond surprised.

“Debrief?” Tony asks, stepping back and giving Steve room to breathe. Which is a thought that doesn’t make sense, because he could breathe just fine when Tony was standing right next to him too. “Fair warning I have a stockholders meeting in forty minutes that I at least have to call in on or Pepper will be pissed.”

“Your fair lady is in possession of a most warrior like temper,” Thor says.

Several people around them stiffen and shoot Tony nervous glances.

Your omega’s got an attitude. It’s not what Thor means, he’s not like them, and he wouldn’t say something like that even if he was. It’s something Steve got used to hearing, snarled or sneered at Bucky every time he intervened in a fight Steve started or had to scrape him off the sidewalk after he lost.

He’d started another fight still bleeding over those words more than once.

Except Tony grins, practically preening at Thor’s comment where another alpha would either defend against the aspersion or add their own criticism to it. “She sure does. Chop chop, let’s get this show on the road so she doesn’t take it out on me.”

The debrief moves quickly, Hill sitting quietly in the corner and taking notes while Tony shoots him increasingly confused looks that Steve refuses to meet. Tony ducks out thirty minutes in, and sends them all a text twenty minutes later saying he has to head back to the tower.

Steve almost makes himself sleep on it. It’s a luxury he hadn’t had during wartime and it seems foolish not to take advantage of the opportunity while he has it.

Then again, foolish is the least of the things he’d been called before the serum.

It’s almost one in the morning when he steps through the lobby of Stark Tower. The receptionist glances at his ID and waves him towards the private elevator which opens smoothly at his approach. He waits until the doors have closed behind him to ask, “Jarvis?”

“Yes, Captain Rogers?” the artificial intelligence responds.

“Um, is Tony awake?” Bruce had said he was always listening, so surely he knows if his creator is awake. Maybe he should have checked before making his way over, but if nothing else the walk at night helps him clear his mind and gives him something to do besides stare at the ceiling and break gym equipment.

“Sir is currently in his workshop,” Jarvis replies. “Would you like to go there?”

“Yes, please,” he answers and elevator starts moving.

He sees sparks and hovers in the doorway, not wanting distract Tony while he’s holding a blowtorch, but Tony shuts it off, tossing it to the side with a clang that makes Steve wince and yanks his goggles off, leaving his hair going every which way. He’s in a black tank top that the arc reactor shows through and another pair of battered jeans. “Okay, Stars and Stripes, let’s hear it.”

Steve enters the rest of the way, keeping his thumbs in his back pockets to keep from crossing his arms. “Hear what?”

“I really expected you to rip me a new one, if not in the middle of a fight then definitely during the debrief,” Tony says, eyes narrowed. “But you didn’t. I could practically hear your teeth griding over the comms, I know you’re pissed.”

“I am pissed,” he agrees, because pretending otherwise is both pointless and not anything he’s good at.

“You should have said it during the debrief,” Tony says, rocking on the balls of his feet.

He frowns, tries to find an explanation, then asks, “Why?”

“Maria was there,” he says, “and she and Fury listen in on the mission communications, of course. This is going to go down in your file somewhere.”

“That I didn’t yell at you?” he asks incredulously.

“That you didn’t yell at the alpha,” Tony says seriously. “Save whatever you’ve got to say and I’ll head to SHIELD tomorrow, okay? We’ll find some well populated hallway to fight in the middle of.”

Steve gives in and crosses his arms. “I didn’t not yell at you because you’re an alpha.”

“I know that, you know that, but Maria and definitely Fury? Are going to draw their own conclusions and use it against you later,” he says seriously. “Also, I don’t know why you didn’t yell at me, to be clear, I just know you haven’t given any alpha you’ve come across so much as a lowered head and I figure you’re not going to start with me.”

Yeah, that’s something that used to get him into a lot of trouble before too. At least now he has the excuse of rank and being an actual superhero for why doesn’t even go through the polite motions of acknowledging alphas as an omega. He works in military intelligence, there are alphas everywhere, he wouldn’t have the time for that even if he cared to do shit like demurely lower his eyes and bare his neck.

He's a solider, not a debutante.

“I don’t make decisions on how I lead my team based on what other people think of me,” he says firmly. “We agreed that we were going to work on staying out from under Fury’s thumb together. That means I’m not giving them any ammunition to use against you if I don’t have to. This is an us issue, not a team issue, so they don’t need to be party to it. They’ve already shown they’ll put anything you do in the worst light possible.”

Tony stares at him, arms slowly lowering back to his sides. “That’s – but you said. That you’re mad at me.”

He is. That’s why he came here. Tony just keeps distracting him. “Tell me what you’re doing before you do it, or at least as you do it. I don’t want us shouting opposing orders because I’m not working with all the information. Seconds matter, and in the future those seconds of confusion or wasted time can mean something terrible happens.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I can do that. But aren’t you going to – this does seem like a team issue, actually, I directly disobeyed you, like I realize I was very clever with sending the suit without me in it, but that’s pretty obviously not what you meant.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. Here’s the complicated part. Here’s the bit that he didn’t want SHIELD overhearing and overanalyzing. “I made the decision to take the bigger hits because I could handle it and you needed time. If you say you need time and that it’s worth it for you take that time, I’m going to believe you, because you have a very good track record on that front. I made a tactical decision to put myself in danger because I wanted the team protected and the battle finished and I was fairly certain I’d be fine at the end.”

Tony opens his moth and Steve raises a hand. He’s scowling, but he doesn’t interrupt.

He wets his lips before continuing, “You made that same decision. You sent the suit out to cover me because I’d sent Natasha back and even though that exposed you to more potential danger, you understand exactly how long it takes the suit to return to you and you made every decision with not only your own safety in mind, but mine. No matter how I felt seeing you standing there weaponless in your civilian clothes, no matter the way it damn near gave me a heart attack to see you leaping off that building, I know you weren’t being reckless about it.”

His eyes are very wide and brown and Steve meets them and hopes Tony isn’t about to shove this all back in his face. Finally he just asks, “How?”

“Well,” he says, “I’ve been accused of recklessness a time or two myself. Reckless means acting without thinking things through and weighing the consequences to choose the best option. Not being reckless doesn’t mean that your actions won’t look pretty fucking stupid to everyone else.”

Tony barks out a laugh, leaning against his desk and the last edges of his defensiveness bleeding away. “You know, that’s so funny, I completely agree with you.”

Steve relaxes into that ease and almost doesn’t feel like he’s throwing a gauntlet when he says, “If you are going to shed the suit in the middle of battle, I want you in uniform, something to give you some sort of protection like the SHIELD uniforms.”

Tony’s eyes go distant, but he doesn’t immediately shoot him down. “I’ll lose time if I have to suit up twice.”

“If something’s really that dire of an emergency that a couple extra minutes will make a difference, I’ll trust your judgement on that and if that judgement differs from mine, we’ll talk about it,” he says. Tony hasn’t given him a reason to doubt him and until he does Steve can’t really justify it. “But the safer my team is, the more effectively I can lead. You even scared Bruce, Tony.”

“Yeah, he gave me a huge lecture when he got home,” he grins. “I’ll work on it. Give me two weeks to design something I won’t hate. Is that that all? Really? Communicate better and wear more armor?”

Steve shrugs. “We’re still figuring all this out. The first time something doesn’t work, or doesn’t work the way I want it to, I’m not going to fly off the handle. How would we get anywhere like that?”

He can’t quite read the look on Tony’s face, but it’s good, he thinks. “You’re something else, Cap. No wonder they thought the initiative was doomed before you got defrosted.” Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, but Tony’s moving close enough to clap hm on the shoulder and look up at him with those big, brown eyes. “Hungry? I haven’t had dinner yet and Bruce made this spicy rice thing yesterday, it’s pretty good. He apparently learned to cook exclusively from grandmothers because he never cooks anything less than enough to feed a small village.”

It's been drilled into him to never accept food from an alpha, that it can give them the wrong idea, and this time there’s not even the rest of the team around to act as a buffer. But it doesn’t seem likely that Tony’s going to start acting like the worst alphas he knew growing up just because of some food, and Bruce is the one that made it anyway. Besides, he is hungry. He’s always hungry these days. “Sure, I could eat.”

The smile Tony sends him is just like the one Steve got when he asked Tony to be on his team, so he can’t bring himself to mind, even if part of it is due to his alpha hindbrain being satisfied about feeding an omega in his house.

If alphas had been pleased rather than propriety about feeding him, maybe he wouldn’t have rejected so much food growing up, even when times were leanest.

It’s not until they’re halfway up the stairs that an alternate problem occurs to him. “Ah. So, is Pepper still up, because I wouldn’t want to intrude-”

“She’s in Beijing until Thursday,” Tony says, shooting him an amused look. “She’s not going to attack you, you know.”

She might. He’s seen omegas do a lot more than growl for alphas that were significantly less impressive than Tony Stark. Her right hook might not do much, but her shoes are very pointy. She could probably do some damage with those.

“Steve,” Tony says, and now he’s definitely laughing at him.

“How’s she with Bruce?” he asks. “Maybe if I – you know, traditionally, I’m really supposed to talk to her first, to show I’m acknowledging her claim, and I never did that–”

The kitchen lights up as they walk in, although it’s suitably dimmed for the time of night. Tony rolls his eyes as he yanks open the fridge. “We run a multi-billion dollar company and I’m a superhero. Who has the time for that kind of Victorian garden party grandstanding? Also, I used to have her throw out my dates in the morning, so.”

Okay, so the file really hadn’t been all lies. “You did what?”

“I didn’t know your voice went that high.” Steve’s going to hit him. “She thought it was funny, unless I was making us late for something, especially when it was an alpha. It was a power play for her, you’re leaving, I’m staying, ha ha. She only asked me to crash a date she was on once, which was great fun, usually she just has Happy pick her up in my limo. Once she arranged for one of the company helicopters to pick her up from a date she was having on a rooftop bar which was actually hilarious.”

Okay, well. It’s not like Bucky hadn’t brough him along on half his dates, which is usually how he ended up getting growled at, even when he was very obviously there as the date to whatever alpha friend of the omega who had seen his picture and hadn’t heard anything about his medical history. Man, that had been a mess. Eventually Bucky had started dating other alphas because the omegas were weird over Steve, but then the alphas had been weird over Steve for different reasons, and that’s how it had ended up with Bucky picking up beta women for the both of them which had been another form of disaster. Before the serum he might have aesthetically fit the bill of what the alphas were told they were supposed to like in omegas – small and pale and blonde with tiny wrists and his bright blue eyes too big in his thin face – but he did not at all fit the bill for betas, especially the girls.

He would have gotten a kick out of running out other omegas from Bucky’s bed, but if he’d seen a string of omegas in Peggy’s he would have been significantly less amused, and he’d assumed Pepper felt about Tony what he’d felt for Peggy.

Omegas as territorial as Pepper tend to have very strong opinions on who their alphas spend their time with. Hence the territorialness.

“It’s not the omega thing,” Tony says, taking pity on him as he scoops something that smells delicious into two bowls and sticks both of them in the microwave. “She’s just mad at you because you closed the portal. Or, well, you called it and Natasha did it, which let me tell you has not helped that relationship at-”

Tony is staring down at Steve’s hand gripping his forearm, eyebrows pushed together. Steve doesn’t even remember moving and he has to consciously loosen his grip enough not to bruise him, although he can’t bring himself to remove it. “I hadn’t wanted, I mean, I wasn’t trying to – I know we’d fought, but I tried to give you time to get back–”

“You did, Steve,” he says, visibly hesitating before slowly placing his hand on top of his and squeezing. It’s not his wrists or his neck, not anything close to scent marking him, but it’s the first touch between them that’s lingered. “If it’d been open three more seconds then we’d have gotten radiation and fire and who knows what else dropping on top of New York City, which was sort of what we were trying to avoid.”

“Then I should have waited two more seconds,” he says firmly.

Tony’s smiling at him again. He keeps doing that.

The microwave beeps obnoxiously and they step apart, Tony grabbing both bowls even as he hisses at the porcelain burning his fingers. Steve moves to help, but Tony places them down on the kitchen island and grabs a couple forks. “Sit, sit. How are, uh, other things? All we ever talk about is work.”

Steve wonders if he should push it, but Tony is offering him a fork and smiling and so Steve sits and returns it and says, “That’s because I’m pretty sure all we do is work. Clint’s put himself in charge of my workout playlists.”

“God,” Tony wrinkles his nose. “I’m so sorry.”

He snorts then haltingly starts talking about his continuing education, as Natasha calls it. He doesn’t think it’s all that interesting, but Tony listens and asks questions and laughs and by the time he heads back to SHIELD the sun is just starting to rise.

~

They go on another mission, one where he doesn’t have to swallow the urge to scream at anyone, and several more training sessions and another team dinner when Clint whines about wanting good Greek food and Tony and Bruce get in an argument about where that is. It’s nice. It’s comfortable. It’s good.

Which of course means Steve wakes up feeling hot and itchy and considers attempting to just sleep through the next few days. He hasn’t been this apprehensive about a heat since his first one, seventeen, no clue what he was doing, and half convinced that the rush of hormones and adrenaline would kill him. At least after the serum he hadn’t needed to worry about getting an asthma attack in the middle of it.

It's his first heat since waking up in the future. Not his first alone, thanks to the war, hell he’d even fought through his heat before, and got it in worst places. But the idea of sitting in his SHIELD issued room while he ran too hot and miserable and waited out the burning, uncomfortable urge to get fucked sounds like actual hell. Maybe someone down in the science division could make a tranquilizer strong enough to knock him out of it, except he really doesn’t trust SHIELD enough to let them drug him unconscious.

He groans, rubbing his hand over his face, and shoves himself out of bed. It’ll be another day until it really hits, and he has at least until tonight before anyone can smell it on him, which gives him at least that long to ignore it and pretend this isn’t happening.

Except he walks into the training room after trying to work up an appetite for lunch after failing to do the same this morning and Tony cuts himself off mid-word, neck snapping in his direction and his nostrils flaring.

Steve freezes and Tony’s eyes meet his, eyes wide and pupils huge, and he feels heat crawl up his neck and spread across his cheeks. He’d walked past dozens of alphas today, in the halls and in the mess, and none of them had seemed to notice a thing.

“Uh,” Clint glances between them and takes a sniff himself, but he still looks confused. “Something wrong, fellas?”

Clint can’t smell him, and neither can Bruce or Natasha based on how they look suspicious and not – he doesn’t even know. But Tony definitely can. Thor’s expression doesn’t give anything away, but it’s possible he’s just used to not knowing what’s going on.

Steve had thought that Tony had been able to smell Pepper because she was his omega, but apparently he just has a sensitive nose. He tries to look at that clinically but mostly he’s mortified, far more than he can ever remember being about this. He’s an omega, he gets heats, it happens.

He resists the urge to cross his arms and echo Tony’s words back at him now. It’s just hormones.

He’s waiting for Tony to tell everyone what he can so obviously smell, for him to get puffed up and agitated over Steve walking around, for him to try and tell Steve to go to his room like he’s a child.

“Nope,” Tony says, deliberately turning away from him. “Where was I? Oh, yeah, your bow is shit and if you’ll just let me-”

“I like my bow, leave my bow alone, I’ve told you this before,” Clint complains. “Can I get more exploding arrows? Those are fun.”

He waves a hand. “Yes, yes, sure, but you’re not listening. Those are easy. A bow would be harder, especially for someone like you. Come on, it’ll be fun, you love showing off custom Stark tech that no one else gets.”

“I do love that,” Clint admits. “Fine, but I’m keeping my old one if and until I decide I like yours better. Don’t get too fancy. If I wanted fancy I wouldn’t be using a bow to begin with.”

Tony claps him on the arm, grinning. “That’s the spirit.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Bruce says tentatively. “If I can get some full body scans and some tests. Painless ones, I promise.”

“Team project!” Tony shouts when Clint nods. Natasha rubs her mouth and Steve is certain that it’s to hide a smile.

They chat and plan and eventually get around to actually practicing. Tony doesn’t react any differently, doesn’t suddenly get protective over him and still cheerfully throws him into the wall when he manages to get a grip on his elbow. Steve would think he imagined the whole thing, except he definitely didn’t.

They say their goodbyes and he goes back to his rooms, stripping and heading straight for the shower. Normally he can’t stand the water to be anything less than boiling, cold water reminding him a little too much of what he thought were his last moments, but he feels so warm that he turns it to something close to cool.

He’s trying to focus on one of the many history texts SHIELD had recommended to him, since the highlight reel he’d gotten of the past seventy years when he first woke up had just left him with more questions than anything else. It’s not that successful, the heat unfurling down his spine and settling somewhere lower, and he’s just about decided to take it out on a couple punching bags when there’s a knock on his door.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised to see Tony standing there, in dark blue SHIELD sweats and damp hair, but he is. Maybe it’s that last part, actually, rather than that he’s there. “You used the communal shower?”

Tony wrinkles his nose. “God, no, can you imagine? I used Nat’s.”

That causes irritation to spike through him for absolutely no reason, so he ignores it. He steps back, gesturing for Tony to come inside, but instead of barging in and throwing himself down on Steve’s sad excuse for a kitchen table like the few times he’s come here before, he hesitates.

There’s that irritation again. This is why Bucky had called him a bitch. “You can come in, Tony. I think I can take you.”

That was definitely a poor choice of words. Before he can correct himself, Tony glares. “Give me some credit, Rogers, I’m not going to jump you. I just don’t want to, you know, invade your space.”

“You’re not,” he says and knows he’s said too much. But it’s true. Everything is neat and orderly and put away and it looks basically the same as it did the day Steve moved in. This small set of rooms is so far from home that he can’t even pretend to feel territorial over it. It doesn’t even have windows. He hates how he never knows what time it is when he wakes up, if it’s night or day. “Are you coming inside or not?”

Fuck. Another poor choice or words. Or not, because he’s not speaking any differently than he would normally, but he is thinking differently.

Tony’s lips twitch up, like knows exactly what’s going through Steve’s mind, and he feels that blush crawling up his neck again. But he does step inside, closing the door behind him. “I just wanted to check in. Do you, uh, have someone?”

It’s not funny but he laughs anyway. Tony tenses. “Who? Fury? Hill? I’d rather not, thanks.” Fury would be terrible and Hill might be tolerable except she’d be cold and professional and he’d have to submit to her when she’s one of the people he’s trying not to let control him and actually she’s really not an option at all. The rest of the alphas at SHIELD aren’t even worth thinking about. He barely knows their names.

“Yeah, can’t blame you there,” Tony says, lips twisting in sympathy. “I wouldn’t ask, really, but before, you seemed to really not like the idea of Pepper not having an alpha during hers, which made me think you didn’t want to go through yours without one either.”

He doesn’t. It’s uncomfortable and awful and more than ever it reminds him that he’s alone, that everyone he knew and everyone he depended on is gone, and it’s just one more thing he has to do on his own. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well, I’d really like it if you were better than fine,” he says.

Steve scowls. “What, you offering?”

Tony winces.

He blinks. “Tony. Are you offering?”

“I want you taken care of,” he says, sounding faintly embarrassed. “If that’s someone else, great. If that’s you getting a couple days to yourself, also great. I just know that – well, you don’t exactly seem to like a lot of other alphas,” that’s a nice way to put that Steve is often outright hostile to them, but that’s what they get for being assholes, “and you at least tolerate me, so. If I can make this easier for you, then I want to. And if I can’t, or you don’t want me to do, that’s okay too.” His lips flick up into a smile. “I promise I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

Spending his heat with the alpha on his team is a recipe for disaster. There are articles and soundbites out there about how he’s not qualified to lead the Avengers because of his designation, who are wondering how an alpha like Tony Stark can stand being on a team he’s not in charge of and how long it is before he jockeys for the leadership position and one of them is forced off the team.

Except Tony’s never treated him differently because he’s an omega. Even today, when he smells sweetest and all of Tony’s instincts have to be telling him to either protect or mate him, he hadn’t done anything but treat Steve how he always has. Even the alphas in the Commandos had gotten protective to the point of uselessness around his heats.

An alpha like Tony Stark is the only one that he thinks really would still respect him in the morning.

“Okay,” he says, eyes dropping to Tony’s mouth.

He frowns. “Okay?”

Steve nods, almost takes a step closer, but manages to keep his feet on the floor. “When did you want to – tomorrow night is when it’ll start, probably, or we could just burn through it, maybe,” he says, trying to sound casual. If he’s got an alpha around him and in him then it’ll speed up, then he might done by tomorrow night instead of just starting.

Tony’s eyes darken and he takes that step forward that Steve had wanted, breathing deeply. “Tomorrow morning, maybe. I’m pretty sure other people could smell it on you now.”

“What?” he’s momentarily distracted, but it does feel like he’s burning up, and that’s a little concerning. “It never comes on this fast.”

There’s a look on Tony’s face that he can’t decipher and then his hand is on his chest, light and tentative. “Come on, then. If you’re sure.”

Steve snaps. Maybe being under the ice for seventy years did mess something up, or it’s just that he’s never had an alpha waiting and offering and he feels like he’s losing his mind. He presses Tony against the back of the door, ducking down to kiss him, and he’s so warm that Tony’s lips feel like a relief against his, cool and smooth. He starts to move back, because he didn’t ask, what the hell is he doing, he’d barely even kissed Bucky and now he’s just shoving himself at Tony –

Then Tony’s mouth opens and he kisses back, languid and wet and good and Steve moans into him. He wonders if he should switch them, remembering that alphas don’t like to be shoved around and boxed in, if he should try and make himself smaller, but Tony doesn’t seem to mind. His hands are on Steve’s hips and he’s kissing him and fuck it feels good but he needs more. What’s happening? It doesn’t come on this fast and it doesn’t feel this good except right now it does and he’ll worry about that when he can think straight again.

“Easy,” Tony mutters against his lips and he thinks he actually whines in response, which is new. Tony presses his hand against the front of his pants and Steve’s hard, so hard, something he wasn’t a couple minutes ago.

He bucks against his hand, needing something besides Tony pressing his dick into his stomach.

“Okay, okay, I got you.” He slips his hand into Steve’s pants and briefly runs his calloused thumb down his shaft, which causes him to jerk his hips forward again. But then Tony’s going lower, slipping a finger inside his cunt and Steve stops breathing. Then it’s two, and he’s so wet that he can hear it as Tony fingers him, each thrust sending a spark of pleasure up his spine. He pulls his fingers out and Steve abruptly remembers that he needs air, sucking in deep breaths that get cut off when Tony grasps his dick, using Steve’s own wetness to work his hand up and down.

Steve bites his bottom lip hard enough to bleed when he comes. Tony licks the blood from his mouth.

They still have their clothes on, for fuck’s sake.

“This is going to be fun,” Tony says brightly.

“I’m going to die,” he croaks.

Tony is laughing, but it’s warm and he’s still letting Steve hold him in place and he can’t bring himself to mind.

“Sorry,” he says, reluctantly pulling back. “I’m not normally, um, I wasn’t expecting,” Tony kisses him again. He thinks they’ve kissed more already than he normally does for his whole heat, but he doesn’t mind. He started it and Tony’s really good with his mouth.

“Bed?” Tony asks.

Steve nods and stumbles back, grabbing the front of Tony’s sweatshirt and dragging him backwards until Steve hits his bed with the back of his knees and falls back, taking Tony with him. Tony tries to keep his elbows to himself but that just means he falls face first into Steve’s chest which he doesn’t mind.

Tony pushes himself upright, straddling Steve’s hips. He leans down to kiss him, pushing up his shirt to drag his fingers along stomach. Steve shoves himself to sitting, pulling off his shirt and then yanking at Tony’s sweater.

“Okay, okay,” he laughs, tugging it off and tossing it aside. Steve is momentarily distracted by the arc reactor, by the way the light plays off his chest and skin transitions to smooth metal, of pale scar tissue spiraling out from tan skin. “I can put it back on?”

He jerks his eyes up to see Tony looking uncertain, and he realizes he’s just spent several seconds gawking at him like an idiot, so he shakes his head and grabs his hips, pulling him forward until they’re grinding against one another.

Tony grabs his shoulders and tightens his thighs around him. “Want to fuck me first?”

That permeates through the haze of pleasure. “What?”

“You don’t like being on the bottom unless you’re in control,” he says, briefly glancing at Steve’s hands that are holding him in place. “Want to fuck me first? I think you’ll like it.” 

Steve wonders if he’s that transparent or Tony’s that observant. His insistence on being on top and being in control had been quirky and endearing when he was five foot nothing and small enough that it was an indulgence. Now it’s just another thing that makes him an omega that no alpha would want. “Sorry.”

“For what?” Tony asks, tilting his head to the side. “You’re gorgeous, I’m gorgeous, and this is supposed to be fun. If we’re both having fun, there’s no wrong way to go about it.”

Steve can’t help but once again think back to being in Tony’s workshop while he looked at him and said, It’s just hormones.

“I’ve never done that before,” he says. In any capacity. Bucky had just done what was easiest and quickest, which was obviously using his cunt. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

An omega saying that to an alpha should be a joke, but Steve’s bigger and stronger and he really could hurt Tony if he’s not careful, and he doesn’t have any practice in being careful with this.

Tony shrugs. “I trust you. Do you want to try?”

He moves so fast that Tony’s just left blinking in surprise, flat on his back with Steve on top of him.

“Damn, soldier,” Tony mutters, eyes shining, and something he usually tries to ignore fizzes happily at pleasing his – at pleasing an alpha. Probably because dominance displays don’t tend to leave alphas pleased, and instead gets them pissed. “Come on, I’ll talk you through it.”

They both finally get naked and Tony is actually so beautiful that it feels a little unfair. He wonders if after this is over, he’ll let Steve draw him.

Getting inside Tony is a much longer process than it had ever taken Bucky to get inside of him, but it’s a different hole and he’s always so wet and open in heat. He doesn’t have lube, but Tony drags the wetness pooling between Steve’s thighs to slick him up to go inside him, which feels like the filthiest thing he’s ever done and makes his cheeks burn. Tony’s ass is tight and hot as Steve slowly pushes inside, only half paying attention to the pleasure so he can focus on Tony’s face, to see if he’s going too fast or doing anything wrong. He really doesn’t want to do anything wrong.

“Oh, fuck,” Tony groans, when Steve’s all the way inside and shaking, and holy shit, this feels amazing. “Come on, baby, you can move, it’s all right. I’ll tell you if it’s not.”

His hips jump forward before he can stop them, and that was too much too fast, shit, but Tony just moans and encourages him along. He has an alpha spread out beneath him, moaning for him as he fucks into him.

Steve keeps going, encouraged by how much Tony seems to like it, and he can feel his next orgasm building, but not yet, he doesn’t want it yet. He holds himself up with one arm and reaches down to jerk Tony off in time with his thrusts, and he doesn’t know which of those things turns Tony on more, but soon he’s cursing and coming all over Steve’s hand. Then he’s snapping himself into Tony once, twice, and then he’s over the edge, spilling inside him and collapsing on top of him until he has the presence of mind to pull out and roll onto his back, breathing harder than he usually is after several hours in the gym.

“See?” Tony says, panting and satisfied. “That was fun.”

“Shut up,” he groans, but he’s smiling.

Tony rolls over so that his head is on Steve’s chest. “How’re you feeling? Enough like yourself that you could eat something?”

His stomach growls, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten anything today, and that his appetite which had been missing has returned.

Tony snorts and then rolls off the bed onto his feet, only grabbing the nightstand for balance for a moment, then he’s walking to the fridge. “Do you even have food here?”

“Depends on how you define food,” he answers, then notices his come trailing down Tony’s thighs and his brain short circuits.

“Cereal and protein bars,” Tony sighs after rifling through his cabinets and fridge. “Could be worse.”

Steve hums, eyes still focused on Tony’s ass.

The view is obscured although no less pleasant when he turns around and returns to the bed and holds out two protein bars in one hand and has a glass of water in the other. His voice is definitely amused when he says, “Here, eat these and then you can go to sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” he says, then yawns. Damnit. Heats turn him into such a mess.

But Tony doesn’t call him on it, just says, “Humor me,” and so Steve eats the protein bars and drinks from the glass of water between bites. He falls asleep with his head against Tony’s thigh and a soothing hand in his hair.

~

He wakes up and his body is on fire.

Tony’s scent is in his room and his bed and on his skin and he reaches out a hand, letting out a distressed sound that he hates he’s capable of when there’s nothing there.

“Hey.” He opens his eyes to see Tony scrambling up from his seat at the kitchen table, dropping his phone and rushing over to him. “Are you-”

Steve grabs Tony as soon as he’s close enough, yanking him onto the bed and rutting against him. He can feel the wet spot on the bed that he’d leaked onto and if he was wet yesterday, it’s nothing to right now.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Tony says, wriggling out of his clothes once more so Steve can run his hands over Tony’s skin and then dragging himself on top of him. He just barely keeps himself from shoving his face into Tony’s neck, wanting more of his scent, wanting alpha and here and safe.

Sharing a heat makes him stupid. He can keep his head when he’s alone, but there’s an alpha in his bed who he trusts and who trusts him and who laughs at him and smiles at him and doesn’t lie to him and Steve is aching between his legs.

He grinds down on Tony’s cock until it hardens, shifting so the head drags over his folds and nudges at his entrance. He wants to be full, he wants it in him so badly, but he forces himself to ask, “You – condoms?”

He can’t give or get anything so he hadn’t worried about it before, but he can get knocked up.

“I’m an alpha with a pack,” Tony says gently, running soothing hands up and down Steve’s arms. “I’ve got the arm implant. It’s safe.”

Steve doesn’t really know what that means, but he’s burning up and Tony says it’s safe and he trusts Tony, so he reaches down and holds Tony’s cock steady while he sinks down on it, feeling it fill his cunt and soothe some of the fire under his skin.

Tony gasps as Steve sits up, loving being close to Tony but needing the leverage. He starts slowly, barely using his thigh muscles to bounce on his cock. Tony hisses and grabs onto Steve’s waist, not trying to slow him down or speed him up, just holding on and letting Steve set the space.

He likes that. He puts his hands over Tony’s, careful not to grab his wrists, but wanting more, wanting to ride him and for Tony to be surrounding him all at once, which isn’t possible or logical but it’s heat and heat isn’t logical.

He orgasms twice before Tony does. The second time all it takes is the drag of Tony’s fingernails over his ribs for him to tip over the edge, and that’s what finally pulls Tony over. He’s not in rut, so he can’t knot him, but the feel of him spilling inside of him is almost as good.

Steve catches his breath and reluctantly moves to get off of him, but then Tony’s hands are on his hips and carefully guiding him to turn on his side and then tugging Steve down, so they’re both lying on their sides facing each other and Tony is still inside him.

The relief at not having him pull out yet, of having Tony inside of him for a few minutes more even as he softens, makes up for the embarrassment of Tony knowing that he wanted it. It shouldn’t be surprising. He’s an alpha with a pack, like he said, and Steve isn’t the first omega he’s helped through a heat.

Thinking of all the other omegas that Tony has been with like this is going to ruin his mood if he lets it, so instead he lays there and breathes and tilts his head for a kiss.

To Steve’s surprise and pleasure, Tony doesn’t go all the way soft before he’s hardening again, filling him without moving and without ever having pulled out of him. He didn’t know alphas could do that out of rut.

Steve shifts forward to bite Tony’s shoulder because it keeps him from going for his neck and Tony rocks them together until Steve’s coming again, shuddering against Tony and clenching down on him.

“You feel good,” he whispers.

It’s a ridiculous, stupid thing to say. He hates heats.

“You feel good too,” Tony murmurs, his hand on the small of Steve’s back. “One more, yeah? Then you need to drink something.”

He rebels at the idea of either of them getting up long enough for that, but then Tony’s moving again, keeping Steve close as their bodies shift together, and it feels so easy and soft and good that he doesn’t realize he’s came until he’s shaking and falling apart.

Tony waits until he’s settled and almost asleep to get out of the bed, which he has to bite his cheek to keep from complaining about. But then he’s back, parting Steve’s thighs and slipping back inside him before lifting the straw to his lips. It’s more soothing than arousing and he finishes the whole cup of water and lets Tony place it on the nightstand before he starts squirming.

“One more,” Tony says, fond and Steve’s tired enough that he doesn’t mind that Tony’s on his knees, thrusting into him while he’s on his back. Tony grips Steve’s dick, which is sensitive enough that he hisses at the contact, and then Tony’s coming, squeezing Steve’s dick in time with him fucking his come deeper into Steve’s cunt.

It’s so good that he’s moaning and seeing stars when he comes, his whole body feeling spent. Tony manages a controlled fall on top of him, snuggling into his chest and Steve’s chin is against the top of his head. He’s heavy, but it feels good, like Tony’s pinning him in place, like he wants to keep him.

He thinks so many stupid things when he’s in heat.

Next time he wakes up rubbing his dick against Tony’s stomach and Tony blearily jerks him off and then Steve rolls on top of him and rides him again. It’s that off and on for some period of time that he can’t track, sex and sleep and water and all over again.

The last time, they’re on their sides and Tony’s behind him, thrusting into his cunt with an arm around Steve’s waist and his hand resting on lower stomach, right against his womb, and when Tony comes he digs his fingers into Steve’s skin. It such a silly thing for him to be find arousing, but this time he doesn’t even need Tony’s hand on his dick for him to finish.

He falls asleep like that, with Tony pressed all up against his back and his arm curled possessively around him.

~

Steve wakes up and is instantly aware his heat is over because he feels disgusting and also starving.

He must make some sort of sound because Tony shifts next to him, sounding very awake when he asks, “How are you feeling?”

“Hungry,” he says, because it’s true and the other true answers are embarrassing. Sated. Well fucked. Relaxed.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Tony says. “Eat or shower first?”

“Shower,” he says, turning around to face Tony. Even outside of heat, he’s striking. Steve had known that before, obviously, but now he’s aware of it. He’s been trying really hard to not to be aware of it. “Also, I’m throwing out these sheets.”

They’re even grosser than he is.

Tony’s lips twitch up in the corners. “You should probably burn them if you don’t want SHIELD digging them out of your garbage and sending it to their scientists to try and analyze your genetic material.”

God. The worst part is he’s right.

Tony pushes himself out of bed, wincing as he straightens and stretching with his arms above his head. They’ve been inside each other but his heat’s over so Steve shouldn’t be ogling him. “Come on, shower, then you can eat.”

Cereal doesn’t sound that appealing either, but when he sits up, he sees several take-out boxes from the mess stacked on his table. “You left?”

Fuck, he shouldn’t sound upset about that. So what if he left? He’s not Steve’s alpha. He didn’t even have to stick around after he’d smelled his heat was over, really.

“What? No. Are you crazy?” he demands. “I texted Clint and he dropped them off outside your door.”

“Oh,” he answers. God, he needs a shower and some food and a really good workout and then he’ll be normal again. “Okay. Be right back.”

He makes the water boiling, scrubbing himself down and very grateful for detachable shower heads when it comes to taking care of his mess of a cunt. Brushing his teeth is more of a relief than he’d anticipated. They’d really made do doing the war, but Steve loves feeling clean.

He steps out and Tony grins at him and ducks into the bathroom, which causes his shoulders to lower. He hadn’t been certain that Tony wasn’t just going to throw his sweats back on and shower at home, but he’s glad that he’s showering here first. He’s even grateful that Tony had Clint leave the food outside rather than just grabbing it from him, which is a ridiculous thought, but heats are ridiculous. Everyone probably already knows who he shared his heat with, but he doesn’t want them to see it, doesn’t want Tony leaving this room with his come and wetness and saliva on his skin. That’s for him, not for others to gawk at.

Well, it’s not for him anymore, because his heat is over. But there’s still no reason for other people to be in his business more than they already are.

Tony’s reheated eggs and bacon and there’s another box of fruit and a glass of water and bottle of orange juice. Part of him rebels at taking food from an alpha, even from the mess, but they just shared his heat, for fuck’s sake. Besides, it’s not like Tony hasn’t fed him before.

Tony steps back out toweling his hair dry and Steve keeps his eyes averted, focusing on his half eaten breakfast until Tony’s back in his SHIELD borrowed sweatpants. He holds up the sweatshirt and wrinkles his nose, because it hadn’t escaped their activities unscathed.

“You can borrow a shirt,” he says, flushing.

He drops it gratefully and goes over to his dresser, opening the second drawer to pull out a white short sleeve. “You wear them so tight that it’s practically my size anyway.” Steve rolls his eyes. Tony slips it on and this is another very not omega-like feeling for him to have, the way seeing Tony in his shirt makes the back of his neck warm. It’s just a plain t-shirt. Tony jerks his thumb to the bed. “Want me to the clean that up?”

Yes, but also no. Setting things back to rights is something that alphas do for their omegas and Steve has been imposing too much already. Tony has been sort of perfect but it’s not fair for him to take advantage, and he’s team leader. If he doesn’t want this to change anything, he has to act accordingly. “No, it’s okay. I know this probably wasn’t how you were planning to spend your day yesterday.” A day and a half, closer to a day really, with an alpha that hasn’t scent marked him. That’s fast, but maybe he shouldn’t be surprised. Tony’s good at this. “I don’t want to keep you. I know you’re busy.”

Plus he has another omega to get home to. Fuck, he hadn’t been thinking of Pepper when he’d kissed Tony. She’s mad at him because he let her alpha fly though a wormhole and then closed the portal behind him and now he’s gone in shared his heat with him.

Forget attacking him with the pointy end of her shoe. She’s going to actually murder him and he can’t even say he blames her.   

“Ah, right,” Tony’s smile doesn’t look quite as natural as it had before, but he puts on his shoes and grabs his phone, everything else likely in his locker. Or Natasha’s room. “I’ll see you at training?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says, and Tony turns away, hand on the doorknob, and he should let this lie, let them hopefully settle back into teammates and sort of friends. But surely they can be that and he can still say, “Thank you, Tony. Really.”

He’d resigned himself for a long, miserable heat. This is better.

Tony turns back to look at him, and whatever he reads off Steve’s face causes his lips to pull back into something that looks real and warm. “Anytime.”

~

Steve waits, bracing himself for his heat to have unsettled something, for it to have reminded his teammates of his designation in a way that pushes them all off course, for Tony to give in to the more irritating instincts an alpha would have towards a packless omega he shared a heat with.

Nothing.

Things continue on easily, the team continuing to work and come together just like they had been before. Tony is friendly and sometimes infuriating and still with his razor sharp grin and warm brown eyes, exactly like he had been before.

The only one who says anything at all about it is Bruce. Which, Steve concedes, is only fair.

“Oh, Steve,” he says, voice low enough that hopefully no one will overhear him. “You barely know him, and he’s not just an alpha, I understand that, but he is an alpha, and you shared your heat with him.” He pauses, then adds, “Which I would argue is slightly riskier than sharing a building.”

He’s a little embarrassed about this, but mostly he’s just happy that Bruce feels comfortable enough with him to joke and tease. So he ducks his head and says the same thing Bruce said to him. “I don’t need to be protected from Tony Stark.”

Bruce shakes his head and laughs, winking at him before going over to join their teammates in whatever ridiculous argument Thor has pulled them into this time. Steve is pretty sure he does it on purpose because he likes the shouting, but so does everyone else, so he doesn’t mind. There are stranger forms of team bonding.

~

The next time he goes to Tony’s, Pepper and Happy are sitting in the living room out of their typical suits and in sweatpants, some movie playing.

They both look over at him as he enters and he hesitates, but he’d texted Tony that he was coming over and Jarvis had let him up.

“Happy,” he says, nodding in greeting, then swallows. “Miss Potts. Do you have a moment? I’d like to explain something to you. If that’s alright.”

“Oh, just sit down, Steve,” she says, and her whole face is different when she’s smiling.

That completely throws him. “No, thank you, I really want us to be one the same page. I really value Tony and I would never-”

“Steve,” she interrupts and his jaw snaps shut. “It’s alright. I know that you’re counting the seconds.”

It’s an obvious reference to his conversation with Tony about the portal and he wonders if she heard about it from Tony or Jarvis and decides he doesn’t care because he’s just relieved that she doesn’t seem to hate him anymore, or plan on killing him for sleeping with her alpha. Tony’s more than able to think for himself, but having his pack at odds with his team would eventually put a strain on anyone. “Thank you, Miss Potts. I’ll do better.”

“God, you’re adorable, it’s really no wonder. Call me Pepper,” she says.

He doesn’t really understand the first part – no one’s called him adorable since the serum – but Happy is nodding at him encouragingly and he says, “Yes, Pepper.”

The elevator doors open and Tony is there, his hand firm around Bruce’s upper arm as he drags him into the room. “Steve! Great, great, here, take Bruce, I’ll be right back.”

Tony practically shoves Bruce at him, and Steve catches him by the elbows, blinking down at him. “Um. Hi?”

“Hi Steve,” he sighs, leaning back and adjusting his glasses. “I have experiments running.”

“I am always pleased to keep an eye on your laboratory, Dr. Banner,” Jarvis says. “I will of course alert you should there be any change worth noting.”

“I’m being ganged up on,” Bruce tells him, but his eyes are crinkled in the corners with a grin he won’t let his mouth make.

“Stop complaining and sit down,” Pepper orders and Bruce sighs dramatically before dropping into the extra seat next to her.

Steve cautiously lowers himself into the loveseat. He hadn’t really had a plan when he’d asked if Tony was free, but he hadn’t been expecting this. “What’s Tony doing?”

“He likes to make the popcorn,” Happy says. Pepper and Bruce roll their eyes and Steve ducks his head in an attempt to hide his own amusement.

He’d seen Natasha force protein bars and disgusting smoothies onto Tony post battle like an aggressive alpha trying to court an omega with terrible taste and hadn’t really understood it. After a couple more visits to the tower, he gets it.

Tony can’t cook and forgets to eat with alarming frequency. Getting to one in the morning without dinner hadn’t been an exception, but the norm, and he probably would have kept going without if Steve hadn’t been there. Bruce and Pepper are far more likely to be the ones pushing food onto him than the other way around. When he does remember to eat, it’s almost always so he can feed someone else.

Tony likes making the popcorn because it’s something he can actually make and he can be responsible for feeding others for once.

 Five minutes later, he comes back in from the kitchen, four bowls stacked precariously. Steve’s ready for him to trip and for it all to go flying, but he manages to hand off a bowl to Pepper, Bruce, and Happy without any major disaster.

Then he sits down on the empty space on the loveseat, plops the last bowl into Steve’s lap, and curls up in the corner. The only bit of them touching is Tony’s feet against his thigh.

Tony falls asleep a half hour in and his legs stretch out over Steve’s. He balances the popcorn on Tony’s calves and tries not to think about how nice it feels, to sit here with Tony’s weight keeping him in place.

~

Several more fights against Doom, an evacuation from a wildfire, and a fight against a new villain that was sort of embarrassing for all involved later, Steve finds out why Tony’s pack status is listed as classified even though the whole world knows that Pepper and Happy are his.

The team is gathered in Tony’s workshop, seated around while he and Bruce demonstrate the new material that they’ve developed for everyone’s uniforms, and what will probably end up being used by SHIELD, the military, and then commercially if Tony can figure out how to get the price down. Tony may not be designing bombs for the military anymore, but there are lots of things that aren’t bombs. Apparently they’d elected not renew their contracts for non-weapon materials in retaliation and that had lasted about as long as people started dying, things started breaking, and the budget for each affected department nearly doubled.

Steve had saved that article. He’d liked it, even if Tony shied away from people bringing up and comparing what he used to do to what he does now. It’s not all bad. It’s not even mostly bad, although any attempt to bring that up gets the subject changed rather quickly.

Natasha is set up with a variety of weapons to test against the material stretched out while the rest of them watch. Steve is going to go up against it with his shield, Clint his arrows, and Thor his lightening after. They have a lot of the material, because it’s not going to withstand all of that, but the readings will help Bruce and Tony improve it.

And it’s fun, and something for them to do together, and Steve is glad Tony and Bruce are trying to include the team in things that they really don’t have to.

She’s bouncing lightly on her feet, eyes bright with excitement, waiting for Bruce to finish setting up the monitors so she can start.

“Well, this looks like trouble.”

Steve’s watching Natasha, so he sees how she stills, how her face smooths and she plants her feet firmly on the floor.

“Honeybear!” Tony crows, everything about him lighting up. “J, you traitor, you could have told me he was here!”

“Surprise, Sir,” Jarvis answers dryly.

There’s a tall, broad black man with a posture that Steve instantly clocks as military standing there in slacks and a white button up. Tony crosses the room and launches himself at the other man, locking his arms his waist and downright snuggling into his sternum.

He laughs and returns the embrace, arms going around his shoulders as he buries his face in Tony’s neck, a move that leaves Steve gaping. He assumes alpha or beta and Tony drags him closer and says, “Everyone, meet Rhodey. Rhodey, meet everyone!”

“Colonel Rhodes,” Clint greets and Natasha gives a short nod, still holding herself carefully.

He snaps to attention, wondering if he should salute, but they’re out of uniform and it looks like he’s here as Tony’s friend and not a colonel, and technically Steve isn’t army anymore anyway.

Rhodes smiles at Clint and doesn’t look at Natasha. Steve is getting flashbacks to when Pepper had joined them for shawarma. He meets Steve’s eyes and his smile looks a little more amused when he says, “At ease, Captain. Tony’s told me a lot about you.”

He opens his mouth to respond and then gets his first solid hit of Rhodes’s scent and just ends up standing there like an idiot as he blinks.

Rhodes is an omega.

“Rhodey,” Tony hisses, attempting and failing to step on his feet.

“Good things, I hope,” Steve answers. He can’t really tell with Tony standing so close to him, but he is standing so close, and the first thing Rhodes had done was press his face into Tony’s neck, and he’s an omega.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Rhodes says and Tony looks mortified. “Dr. Banner and Thor, it’s a pleasure to meet you both.”

“It is always a pleasure to meet a companion of Friend Tony!” Thor booms, which to be fair seems to be his only setting.

Bruce seems shy as steps forward to shake Rhodes’s hand, something that would make sense if he’s thinking the same thing Steve is. Or maybe he’s just nervous about meeting Tony’s friend who’s military and Steve’s projecting.

All those meetings with a psychiatrist had to be good for something.

“I’ve heard more about you from Pepper than I have Tony, and that’s saying something,” Rhodes says.

Bruce grins as Tony scowls, crossing his arms. “Thank you, Colonel.”

“Did you come here for a reason or is it just to make fun of me?” Tony demands, then his expression morphs into concern. “Nothing’s wrong, right? You look okay, are you early?” He rocks forward to sniff at Rhodes’s neck and he doesn’t so much as flinch. “You don’t smell early. Is it the suit? Is something wrong with the suit? You’re not hurt and hiding it, are you?”

“Relax, Tones,” he says, tilting his head to the side to give Tony easier access to his neck. “Some things got moved and now I have three free days. Figured I was due a weekend at home.”

Tony positively glows for a moment, then says, “And Carol was busy.”

“Carol’s not my alpha, you are,” Rhodes says, answering the question that Steve had been determined not to ask. “What, you haven’t you missed me?”

Tony softens. “Always. You know that.” Then he reaches forward, deliberately dragging his wrist against the pulse points in Rhodes’s neck, scent marking him in front of everyone.

Incidental touches can leave people’s scent lingering on one another, but scent marking is something alphas do that’s deliberate and potent and it sticks around, hormones reacting and mixing, a signal to their baser instincts that someone belongs to something more than themselves.

A tension Steve hadn’t even realized Rhodes was carrying drains out of his body, and then they’re both standing there staring at each other, completely relaxed. Steve remembers having that. When he’d woken up and hadn’t smelled like Bucky anymore, that had been almost as devastating as waking up in the future.

“So, what are we doing?” Rhodes asks.

Tony leaps into an explanation of the material and Rhodes sits on the edge of Tony’s worktable and cracks jokes and teases and makes several suggestions for improvements using precise, scientific terms. Steve wonders if Rhodes is a scientist himself or if it’s something he’s picked up on being around Tony.

They’re on their way back to SHIELD, and Steve is actually terrible at keeping his mouth shut, so he shifts and says, “So. Rhodes.”

“A most enjoyable man,” Thor says, then thoughtfully adds, “Good stance,” because he’s always evaluating people on their basis of a warrior first.

Clint glances at Natasha, but she’s looking out the window and ignoring the conversation. “He and Tony went to MIT together. I’m not sure exactly when they became pack, but it was early. It wasn’t really an issue, because most people Rhodes was around didn’t know what Tony smelled like, and then he started climbing the ranks and Tony was rubbing elbows with the brass, and someone was bound to notice. It made Rhodes a target, and could have affected his career if people thought he had more of an in with Tony than they already did, so it became classified. When Rhodes was appointed the liaison for Stark Industries, it was by a general that didn’t even know he was Tony’s omega, just that he was the only person of suitable rank who could manage to get along with him.”

Steve nods, grateful that Clint is a gossip because it makes him feel better about asking. “Being classified just meant it wasn’t listed in his file. People could still smell him.”

“There are ways to shift or mask scents, and most people haven’t even met Tony,” Clint shrugs. “Plus, you know how subtle Tony’s scent is, and that was definitely not the case when he was younger. He got pretty good on controlling his pheromones specifically so that it would be harder for people to recognize when others smelled like him. People didn’t notice Pepper and Happy for a long time. It’s not that big of deal these days, now that Tony’s Iron Man and Rhodes is War Machine, but it gives people one less thing to use against them.”

An alpha who’s a powerful business man and works with the military making his scent less overpowering on purpose, even with the ideas people have about scent and dominance displays, because it made life easier and safer for his pack.

“Thanks, Clint,” he says and tells himself that he’s not feeling longing, or jealousy, or any sort of emotion that it’s not appropriate for him to have.

Tony’s his friend and his teammate and he’s beautiful and Steve tries very hard to focus on the first two things and ignore the third. It’s just sometimes he learns something new about Tony, or catches him in a certain light, and it gets a little harder.

They don’t see Tony for the next three days, but Steve had expected that.

~

Thor moves into Stark Tower because his girlfriend and her alpha are lured there from New Mexico with lucrative job offers. Jane is excitable and sweet and so perfectly fits the conventions of a desirable omega that Steve almost feels wistful, but it’s a ridiculous emotion. Even when he looked like a desirable omega, he never acted like one.

Jane gets a lab of her own right below Bruce’s. Her alpha has accepted the dubious honor of being Tony Stark’s assistant, a position he’s apparently been filing with a rotating selection of bedraggled R&D techs since Pepper was promoted, or whoever had the misfortune of ticking Pepper off.

Two alphas working together can be difficult, but Clint’s the one who recommended her for the position, and it’s not like Tony’s one to back away from a challenge. Steve remembers how easily he’d interacted in Coulson, a stark contrast to how he is with Fury, and thinks that it probably won’t be a complete disaster.

Anyone who’d spent time worrying about it, himself included, could have saved themselves the trouble. Darcy and Tony instantly fall into the sort of rapport that has everyone around them edging away carefully and Pepper looking pleased to resigned.

Now with half the team living in Stark Tower, they end up spending whole days there before going back to SHIELD, taking advantage of the empty suites and still somehow ending up spending most of their time in Tony’s living room. Darcy is usually there in pajama bottoms and ridiculous Hulk slippers with several StarkPads around her as she attempts to manage Tony’s whole life.

She and Clint are actually friends, not just people that happened to cross one another’s path in New Mexico. They hang out together and text and shout at the television during Survivor. It’s weirdly sweet. He hadn’t seen Clint really be friends with anyone besides Natasha.

Natasha, who never spends the night or arrives in anything less than her own version of armor, makeup and clingy jeans and a smile that he doesn’t believe.

Now that he knows how Pepper is like normally, it makes her dislike of Natasha even more glaring. She’s warm and tolerant of everyone else, not blinking an eye at Thor half naked and eating pop tarts in her kitchen or Jane and Bruce stumbling through the tower in the middle of the night in search of coffee and somehow ending up in Tony’s lab with all three of them arguing about things the rest of them don’t understand.

She’s not outright rude or hostile to her, instead ignoring her presence in her home entirely. Happy will at least greet her, but not much more than that. Rhodes stops by once more, although it’s only for a day this time, and Steve has yet to see him so much as look at her.

He brings a sandwich down to Tony just before midnight after another night where Natasha ducks out after a couple hours and Clint sighs, puts Darcy in a headlock, then goes after her. He doesn’t want to stop spending time at the tower, especially when Thor and Bruce obviously aren’t going anywhere, but this is untenable.

This is definitely playing dirty, since Tony’s been down here for something edging past twenty hours, but all’s fair in love and war, and this sort of feels like both. Besides, he loves going to the workshop. It’s so very now, the future he’d imagined from sci-fi novels brought to life rather than the mixed bag that the rest of the world is these days. Plus, it’s Tony’s favorite place, and he likes that too.  

Tony smells him first, nostrils flaring before he looks up from his schematics, eyes glazed when he flickers them in his direction. “Steve.”

“That’s my name,” he says mildly, placing the plate next to Tony’s elbow. “Here.”

“Mm.” He picks up half the sandwich with one hand and takes a bite, making a small sound of pleasure as he chews and swallows. He blinks several times and this time when he turns to look at him, there’s a new awareness in his eyes. “Steve. When’d you get here?” He looks down to the sandwich in his hands and then holds it out to him. “Hungry?”

His lips twitch. “I brought that for you.”

“Oh.” Tony’s shoulders drop. “Right.”

Steve is turning into such a soft touch. If Bucky could see him now, he’d laugh for days. He leans forward, taking a bite right over where Tony had, then leans back. He’d made it more to Tony’s taste than his, but that’s not the point. “Thanks for sharing, Tony. You have the rest.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says happily, eyes already straying back to his screen.

He waits until Tony’s got his mouth full to say, “So. Natasha and your pack.”

Tony shoots him a look, suddenly very aware of his surroundings, and swallows. “It’s personal.”

Steve just raises an eyebrow. It’s affecting the team, and Tony knows that it’s affecting the team, so there’s no point in him saying it.

He sighs, slumping onto his stool. “I’ve tried to talking to Pepper about it, but she’s stubborn. They’re both stubborn. Nat’s not like you, you know? She’s never said sorry, and Pepper isn’t really interested in being big picture about this.”

He waits, because none of that makes any sense to him. He’s in desperate need of some context here.

Tony taps his fingers against his arc reactor. “I was dying. I’m better now,” he adds hastily when Steve stands straight enough to snap something, suddenly able to hear his blood rushing in his ears. “I was trying to – take care of things. My company to Pepper, my suits to Rhodey. Natasha came in from SHIELD to evaluate me. She was my assistant for a bit, you know that.”

“They sent someone in to evaluate you while you were dying,” he says flatly.

Tony shrugs. “I got better. There were some issues with the previous arc reactor, but I figured it out, it’s fine. Anyway, she, you know. She’s a spy and she’s very good at undercover work. Technology really has come a long way.”

“Tony, just spit it out,” he says.

He grimaces, then shrugs. “She went in undercover as an alpha.”

Steve blinks. She’s pretty obviously a beta, and missing an important piece of anatomy to be a female alpha.

“Artificially induced hormones and a packer,” Tony says, amusement briefly shining through. “She spent a lot of time flirting with me, but I guess she was counting on the whole dying thing to keep me from taking her up on it. Which worked.”

“I don’t understand what her pretending to be an alpha has to do with this,” he says.

Tony goes back to tapping his arc reactor and repeats, “I was trying to take care of things.” Steve still doesn’t get it. “I wanted – obviously they don’t need an alpha, but they’ve had one, I’ve had my own pack since I was seventeen, and I just didn’t want them to want for anything.”

As if losing Tony could leave anyone something so simple as wanting. “You wanted her in your pack?”

He laughs, but not like anything’s funny. “I got her in my pack, Steve. They probably had her benched for the next two months until my scent faded.”

Oh, fuck. “You scent marked her?”

Peggy hadn’t even scent marked him. Pack dynamics had seemed like something for them to figure out after the war, but they’d never gotten an after.

Tony nods. “I was a mess, a little bit just because dying sucks, and a lot because it was the most efficient way to get people where I needed them. I was spiraling and Nat was there and Pepper had just been thrown into being CEO while I was being no help at all. So she leaned on Natasha, because even if she was wary of her, she was pack now and an alpha and a good assistant and Pepper thought that she was there to help.”

“And instead she was a beta who’d been sent in to watch her alpha die,” Steve says, heart sinking. If only it was something as simple as nearly trapping Tony in a wormhole.

“She was actually helpful with the not dying bit,” Tony says, rubbing at his neck. “With Vanko too, big help there. Except, you know, Pepper might have been mad at me for not telling her that I was dying, and the perhaps not best way I was dealing with it, but that has nothing on how she felt about Natasha. Here she is, not an alpha, but smelling like one and smelling like pack and everything about her a lie and put in place to be used against me.”

“The personality profile,” Steve says.

“That’s not her fault,” Tony says, but inclines his head. “Plus closing the portal. And Pepper and Happy got caught in the crossfire. Rhodey mostly escaped that, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled with her either, but he and Happy are mostly taking their cues from Pepper here, and she’s still pissed. Look, I stand by what I said before. She didn’t really have a choice, and she did try and help. She did help. I’m not holding it against her. I like Natasha, she knows that.”

She does know that. All this between them, and she and Tony had been so comfortable with one another from the beginning. Extenuating circumstances, sure, but Tony had made her pack once. That’s a hard thing for either of them to forget.

A very hard thing for Pepper to forget too, considering it nearly cost her her alpha. “Damn. I guess a simple apology isn’t going to do it.”

Tony laughs again, except this time he sounds like he means it. “It probably would actually. Pepper’s a smart girl and she does have a forgiving side, she wouldn’t have survived being my omega for so long if she didn’t. It’s that Natasha will never say she’s sorry.”

He frowns. “I’m sure she is-”

“I am too,” Tony says. “But think about it, Cap. If she starts apologizing now, how will she ever stop? She’s done a lot of things that I bet she feels sorry for, and the situation with me probably isn’t anywhere near the top of the list. She’s going to do things she feels sorry for again. She can’t live if she’s bleeding out over everything, y’know? You have to understand that.”

He understands. This is why Natasha and Tony get along so well. They understand each other because they think of themselves the same way.

“Whether she admits it or not, she’s still bleeding,” he says quietly.

“Yeah, well.” Tony won’t look at him. “I guess she’s just hoping that no one else notices.”

~

Steve is still wearing his pajamas and is mid-yawn when he steps into Tony’s living room to see Darcy face down on the couch and screaming into a throw pillow.

He pauses. “Things going well?”

She lifts up her head to glare at him. “You know, J takes care of Tony’s schedule, mostly, so I thought that this part would be pretty easy. Except it turns out I have to spend a lot of time on the phone and sending mean emails saying, no, really, he doesn’t have the time or inclination to deal with your bullshit and you should really be going to either this department head or Pepper with this. And they argue! I fucking hate alphas.”

Steve raises an eyebrow.

She rolls her eyes, shifting so she’s sitting cross legged. “Obviously I’m not including myself, I’m wonderful. But the pushiest ones are always alphas who think they should get to speak to another alpha instead of the people actually qualified to handle them who happen to have a different designation. I think it’s sort of tacky to mention your designation, but I’ve literally been reduced to shouting that I’m an alpha too and I think they should fuck off. It’s a wonder Pepper hasn’t hired a hitman at this point.”

“Why bother? Pretty sure Tony would do it for free, or at least a steep discount,” he says. It’s refreshing to hear some of his pettiest thoughts coming out of Darcy’s mouth. He’s pretty sure he already knows the answer to this, but he still asks, “How’s working with him going? He’s an alpha too.”

“Tony?” she blinks. “Oh, no, he’s great. Hearding scientists around is kind of my thing, even though the technically my degree is in political science.” She goes quiet, absently fiddling with the end of her braid. “Can you keep a secret?”

She’s only a few years younger than him, but just then she seems a lot younger. “Yeah, I can probably manage that.”

That gets him a smile, then she says, “It’s actually sort of a relief. Being around Tony. I love Jane, of course, but I hadn’t really planned – I was her intern, it was actually super against the rules for any sort if scenting to go on, but she was alone and I was alone, and she became my best friend and,” she shrugs. “It just sort of happened? But I don’t really know what I’m doing, I didn’t grow up with an alpha, my grandmother and both my parents were betas, and it’s not like I have anyone I can ask. I’m always sort of worried I’m fucking it up. But now there’s Tony, and I can ask him, and if I do fuck something up, then he’s here. I mean, he’s had a pack for over twenty years, you know? It’s nice not to have to do this on my own anymore.”

Steve’s throat gets tight and he has to swallow before he can say anything. He hopes she doesn’t notice. “Yeah. Of course.”

The future had seemed big and hard and desperately lonely. Then he got his team, but it hadn’t worked at first, not without Tony. Then he got Tony, and suddenly the future wasn’t so big and empty.

~

They have more missions and they get better at this, at knowing each other and anticipating each other and working together, and honestly he thought they were pretty good at it from the beginning. He lives at SHIELD still more on a technicality than anything else, considering most of his things have migrated to Stark Tower and he sleeps there more often than not.

He’d give in and just move in officially, but Natasha still hasn’t spent the night even once, and he doesn’t want to leave her and Clint behind. Clint will sleep there sometimes, usually after staying up late and playing videogames with Darcy, but Steve knows that he won’t leave Natasha behind.

That’s a good thing and he’s not complaining, he was just sort of hoping he’d drag her along instead of hanging back with her. Still, he gets it. Tony may be welcoming enough of Natasha in his space, but Pepper and therefore Happy and Rhodes aren’t, and maybe in another pack with a different alpha what omegas and betas wanted wouldn’t matter, but this isn’t another pack. It’s Tony’s.

Hulk makes several appearances. He takes Steve’s orders about as well as can be expected, but he doesn’t actually sit down and try not to smash anything for anyone but Tony. Steve tries to summon sort of indignation over it, considering packless omegas tend to seek out other omegas to calm themselves them down, and instinct should drive them to avoid alphas, but he's mostly just unsurprised. Bruce doesn’t smell like Tony any more than he would anyone else he spends that much time with, but regardless of whatever decision Bruce has made about remaining packless, Hulk has made his preferences more than known.

Although it’s possible that Hulk just thinks that since he saved Tony’s life, the alpha belongs to him now. Either way, Tony doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, although Bruce is horribly embarrassed after.

Steve is helping cut the vegetables for dinner while Bruce scowls at their fridge, as if he’d somehow expected the samosas to last more than a night in the tower, when the smell of something warm and spicy enters his nose. He automatically looks towards the stove, but nothing’s cooking quite yet, meat and spices laid out but nothing simmering. His breathes in deeply and his eyes catch on Bruce’s back, a thought right at the back of his mind. He wipes his hands on a towel and causally looks in the trash can, thinking he just might be smelling something someone threw out. Maybe a samosa.

Except there are pop tart wrappers and burned rice and the remnants of Darcy’s mostly edible breakfast casserole from this morning. Damn.

He walks up behind Bruce, leaning over him to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. With his nose this close to his neck, it’s really unmistakable.

Bruce turns his head to stare at him and raise an eyebrow. He really has to work on his subtlety. He’s just happy they’re alone in the kitchen, although that’s mostly because Bruce has been downright irritated the past couple days and no one else is willing to risk his glower. The only people Bruce hasn’t snapped at recently are Darcy and Tony.

Perhaps he and his team of super spies and enhanced beings and Tony are sort of stupid.

“Uh.” He wishes there was a non terrible way to say this, but none are coming to mind. “Um. Not to alarm you.”

Bruce’s other eyebrow rises.                               

“You smell different,” he says finally.

He raises his arm to give his armpit a sniff. In other circumstances, Steve might laugh. “Not like that.”

Now he looks alarmed. “The Hulk?”

“No,” he says reassuringly, then pauses and repeats, “No.”

Bruce frowns and brings his wrists to his nose, inhaling deeply. Steve knows the exact moment that he smells what Steve had, because he goes completely still and says, “No.”

“This is a good thing, right?” he asks nervously. “Sort of. Maybe not convenient, but you thought this was something you’d lost in the accident, and you haven’t.”

Bruce looks horrified and it’s breaking Steve’s heart. “This can’t be – I can’t be – I have to go,” he says, bolting for the elevator.

Aware he’s really risking the property damage of the tower, and himself, he grabs Bruce’s wrist. “Hey, relax, it’s okay. There are three other omegas in the tower, it’s not like this is any different.”

Pepper spent her last heat in Tony’s rooms, muttering something about an emergency international meeting that she refused to miss as she dragged Tony behind her by his shirt collar. Twelve hours later she’d emerged heat free and had gone directly onto a helicopter that had been waiting on the tower’s roof. He supposes there’s something to be said about familiarity breeding efficiency.

Darcy is Jane’s alpha, but Jane spends her heats with Thor, with not even a hint of Darcy’s scent to speed the process up. What could be exhausting for a beta or another omega to deal with was apparently great fun for a god with nearly unlimited stamina. Jane was especially prone to walking into doorways the day after.  

He’s due for another heat sometime soon himself, something he’s been dreading because Tony will offer and he’ll accept and it will make all his complicated feelings for Tony even worse, but he knows he doesn’t have the necessary willpower to refuse. Or maybe he does, if Tony doesn’t mind him spending it in the tower, in the room he always uses with his art supplies and books strewn about and the bedding that smells just right. That doesn’t sound too bad, in fact, and it does sort of sounds nice to maybe spend a couple days sleeping in and drawing in the sunlight. He’d thought Pepper spending her heat getting room service was insane when he’s first heard it, but he thinks he’s starting to get the appeal.

Bruce twists in his hand. “It’s different! I don’t have – it’s different.”

Steve slowly loosens his grip and Bruce doesn’t go running again, so that’s something. “Hey. You have to know, I mean. Tony helped me with my heat, right? He’s your friend and he cares about you.”

“I can’t,” he snaps. “You don’t get it, I’m not like you, refusing to be pack for kicks. If I have an alpha and I lose control, I’ll run towards them rather than away. I nearly killed Betty! I’m not doing that to Tony. I’m not stupid enough to spend my heat with him if I can’t make good on it. I’ll just make us both miserable, as you’ve proven. Although, maybe you’re right. It wouldn’t be as bad with me, probably, because I’m not in love with him.”

He feels himself flinch. “I’m not-”

“Look at you,” Bruce scoffs. “You’re in his house and eating food he bought when you’d rather lose a limb than show another alpha an ounce of submissiveness, and the way you look at him sometimes. Give me a break, Steve. Lie to Tony, lie to yourself, but don’t think that you can get away with lying to me.”

This time when Bruce jerks his hand back and storms away, Steve lets him, which is probably why Bruce had said all that to begin with.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that he didn’t mean it.

Steve looks around at the mess of the kitchen and wants to go and hide in his room and try to calm his racing heart, to convince himself that Bruce was wrong even if he wasn’t lying, but that just seems to prove his point. He’d go to the gym, his usual retreat when he needs to not think for a little bit, but Tony knows that and he’ll notice that something is wrong and he’ll come looking for him, which is normally a relief but is actually the last thing he can handle right now.

He goes to SHIELD, trying to remember when he did more than spend the night here so he could ride back with Natasha, and comes back blank. Their punching bags aren’t as resilient as the ones in Stark Tower, but he makes do. He loses track of time, focusing on his breathing and his movements, trying to keep his mind blank.

He’s not that successful. He feels like he’s replayed every interaction he and Tony have ever had by the time he hears a wolf whistle and he looks over to see Clint standing in the doorway. “Something wrong?” he asks and doesn’t realize how thirsty he is until he hears hour rough his voice sounds.

“Uh, yeah?” Clint says, coming forward to grab Steve’s water bottle and toss it towards him. His hands are so sweat soaked he nearly fumbles it, but the relief when he finally gets it open down his parched his throat makes up for that. “Bruce has locked himself in his lab and isn’t answering anyone, you’re here, and Jarvis isn’t saying anything besides you two had a disagreement, citing privacy protocols, but Tony was reaching the end of his rope when I left and if someone doesn’t tell him what’s going on soon he’s going to demand specifics, protocols be damned.”

Well, fuck.

“Am I being an idiot about Tony?” he asks.

Clint lets out a breath between his teeth. “Oh boy. So Jarvis was being very British when he said you guys just had a disagreement, huh?”

“Clint,” he says wearily.

“About him as an alpha or about the way you two are always giving each other heart eyes?” he asks.

He grimaces.

“Both? Okay, wow, some disagreement.” He shrugs. “Well. No more than the rest of us?” He pauses, considering, then says, “Well, maybe more than rest of us, but only because you have a little less baggage.” Steve shoots him an incredulous look. “I said a little!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks tiredly.

Clint rocks back on his heels. “Tony thinks of himself as our alpha.”

Steve frowns, but keep silent.

“He’s not an asshole about it,” Clint continues, “but he does. I know that this is a little newer for you and Bruce, but he’s been doing it to me and Nat for years.” Steve blinks. “Come on, Cap. Tony shut down his weapons manufacturing but me and Natasha have been walking around with custom Stark Tech weaponry since way before the Avengers. He was a consultant, but not on weapons, he made his stance perfectly clear on that. Except when it came to us.”

“Why?” he asks.

“You don’t really think that Tony was the first time Natasha let herself be scent marked and joined a pack while she was undercover, do you?” he asks. “Hell, I’ve done it. It’s unpleasant, but we’ve done worse. The difference with Tony was that she wanted it, for herself, outside of the mission. She saw Tony at his worst, at his most desperate, and regardless of his method all he wanted was his people taken care of and the world as safe as he could make it, no matter what it cost him. Natasha’s been looking to belong somewhere for a long time. She felt like she belonged with him, with Pepper and Happy and Rhodes. He saw her at her worst too, in some ways, and he still liked her. That hasn’t happened to her in a long time.”

Steve thinks of that damned personality profile that Tony had always been so sure Natasha had no hand in writing. He wonders what her actual report said about him. “Since you.”

Clint shrugs. “Nat’s my person, now and always, and I’m hers. She followed me to SHIELD, I’ll follow her anywhere. Including into Tony Stark’s pack. But she won’t ask for it and Tony can’t bring himself to offer again and Pepper is furious at her for lying even though Natasha never lied about wanting it. So now we’re just where we’ve been ever since, with Tony and her circling each other and each wanting and acting like pack and me just waiting for one of them to make up their damn minds. It’s a such a weird dynamic that I really thought I’d never see it again, and then you and Bruce rolled up and just proved me wrong. The only one who sort of escapes that is Thor, because he’s Jane’s, which means he’s Darcy’s if he’s anybody’s, and Darcy isn’t quite treating Tony like her alpha, but she’s relying on him like one. Which is great, I love Darce, and Tony’s been good for her, she’s finally calmed the fuck down now that she doesn’t feel like she’s on her own. But it does mean we’re all just existing around each other, acting like pack, and for some reason not being pack.”

“We’re a mess,” he agrees.

“Yeah, sure, but outside all of that? Tony’s been checking out your ass since day one and you two are like a sock hop and a varsity jacket away from going steady, so if you’re not ready to be pack you can probably safely ask the guy out or whatever.”

Well. That’s a little comforting, at least. Tony has two omegas and Bruce, and Steve isn’t exactly what alphas usually look for. Besides, Tony can have anyone. Why would he want an omega who’s bigger and stronger than him and who’s literally the boss of him?

Then again. CEO Pepper Potts and Colonel James Rhodes. Happy, who beats him up in the boxing ring, and then Natasha, who could kill him easily. Bruce, who’s another brilliant scientist and the Hulk. If that’s the type of people Tony wants in his pack, maybe Steve’s the type of person he might want to date.

Joining Tony’s pack when he was in love with him seems like the easiest way to get his heart broken and he can’t handle more heartbreak just yet. But if Clint and Bruce are right, maybe he won’t have to.

“You don’t think that will cause problems with the team?” he asks.

Clint raises an eyebrow. “What, less sexual tension? I think it’d be a relief, personally.” He glares. “Cap, come on, it’s Tony. He wants his people taken care of and damn the rest. If he was going to be asshole about this, it would have already happened. He saves his assholishness for shit he actually cares about, and traditional designation roles really doesn’t make the list.”

“So,” he sighs, “what you’re saying is I have been an idiot about Tony.”

“Little bit,” he agrees. “Please come back and talk to Bruce. The whole tower is in an uproar.”

He winces. “Um, sure, yes, but I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”

Clint blinks. “Cap, what did you say?”

If only this was about something he said.

~

Clint insists he showers before they leave, claiming his delicate nose won’t make it, and Steve is faced once again with how right Bruce was when he realizes how little of his clothes he still has in his room.

When they step onto Bruce’s floor, it’s to Tony pacing outside while Jane attempts to coax him out and Thor and Natasha stand with their arms crossed. Clint breathes in and his eyes go huge. “Oh, shit.”

What had been a subtle scent a few hours ago can now be smelled easily, even from this far away and with a door between them.

“Eloquent, Clint,” Tony says then catches sight of him and his face slackens in relief. “Steve! Help us out here.”

“I think I made it worse, actually,” he admits, but crosses the room to knock on the door to his lab.

Clint goes over to Natasha and hisses, “I thought he didn’t get heats.”

She shrugs. “He thought the radiation messed something up, but it could have just been stress. This is the first time in years that he hasn’t been on the run and his body could relax.”

Steve ignores them. “Bruce, it’s Steve. I know you’re panicking right now, but we’re all just worried here. If you want to ride it out alone in your room, that’s okay, but we just want to make sure that you’re okay. Your lab probably isn’t the best place for this.” He glances at Jane and adds, “Jane and I can walk you there if you want.”

Bruce hasn’t shown an inclination to lean on other omegas before, but everyone’s a little different in heat.

Tony’s face falls. “Oh, damn, should I go? I wasn’t thinking-”

The door slides open and Bruce is huddled there, looking miserable, and the heat scent gets stronger. “Hi.” He looks to Steve and his shoulders hunch. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s okay,” he says gently. “I probably deserved that, and it’s not like you were wrong.”

“Still,” Bruce says. “I’m sorry.”

Tony looks between them in curiosity, but thankfully doesn’t ask.

The elevator door pings open and Darcy is there, darting forward with a purple comforter bunched up in her arms. “Bruce! Good, I was worried we were going to be reduced to dramatic monologuing. I just did laundry, but I brought my blanket, in case you don’t want me or Tony to help you.”

He blinks several times. “What?”

She frowns at him over the mass of purple fabric. “You seem sort of freaked out about your heat, so I figured you’d want it over as soon as possible. Which is spending it with an alpha, but if you don’t want to do that, our scent should help. So I brought my blanket.”

“It’s dangerous,” he says.

Darcy makes a face. “Really? Because from what I’ve heard the only time you’ve hulked out on accident is when the helicarrier was literally falling apart around you. And I don’t know about Tony, but when I say I’m going to rock your world I’m speaking metaphorically.”

Clint coughs to hide a laugh and doesn’t do a very good job of it. It’s no wonder he and Darcy get along so well. Natasha elbows him hard enough in the side that he starts wheezing instead.

Bruce gapes and looks to Tony, who just shrugs. “I’m game if you are.”  

Several emotions cross over his face. “Tony, I – I can’t, I’m already – and if you’re that close I won’t be able to–”

“Hey,” Tony says gently. “Whatever you want. Don’t worry about it.”

Bruce nods, but he still looks miserable.

“Okay, so no to Tony,” Darcy says. “What about me?”

He instantly turns a bright red, eyes flickering up and down over Darcy in a way he never would out of heat. Thor shifts, but Jane shakes her head and he subsides. “I can’t ask you for that. I’m – it could be dangerous and I’m older than you and-”

Darcy rolls her eyes. “You’re not asking, I’m offering, and I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it. Don’t worry, cute omega scientists are sort of my specialty.”

Jane huffs.

“I,” he hesitates, then says, “If you change your mind at any point-”

“I’ll let you know,” she agrees, then shifts the blanket to fit under one arm so she can lean forward to grab his hand, yanking him more fully into the hallway and towards the elevator. Bruce’s entire face is bright red. “Bye guys! See you in a couple days!”

Clint says, “That a’ girl,” then has to duck both Thor and Natasha’s attempt to hit him.

“Well,” Tony says in the silence, rocking back on his heels. “I guess we’re ordering in for dinner.”

“Darcy certainly is,” Clint says and doesn’t see Jane coming until she’s pinching his arm. “Ow! Hey!”

“You deserved that,” she says primly. “Italian? I want a meatball sub.”

“Pretty sure we can manage that,” Tony says, and they’re all discussing what they’re going to order as they make their way upstairs.

Steve watches Tony without trying to be too obvious and tries to convince himself that telling Tony how he feels is for the best and won’t end in disaster. Then his stomach grumbles, embarrassingly loud, and he decides it’s nothing that he has to worry about before dinner.

~

Steve wakes up to a painfully loud sound and his first thought is air raid sirens, then he remembers the war is long over and he’s wondering why the hell he changed his alarms and it’s only after another groggy three seconds that he realizes it’s the Avengers alarm and he should really be getting up out of bed now.

Uhg.

“Please tell me we don’t need Bruce,” he groans, grasping for his suit.

“There are several unidentified fire starters in Bushwick. The fire department is en route but requesting backup,” Jarvis says. “I would perhaps advise against including Dr. Banner, especially seeing as he’s currently indisposed. I have disengaged the alarm system in his rooms but can reengage it if necessary.”

“No, good call thanks,” he says, grabbing his shield and heading for roof. “Clint and Natasha?”

“Alerted and suiting up,” Jarvis responds. “Miss Romanoff has conveyed that they’ll meet you there.”

“Tell Thor not to wait for us,” he orders.

“Yes, Captain,” Jarvis says.

He bursts onto the roof and finds it empty. He starts counting back from twenty and gets to three when Tony, clad in Iron Man armor comes swooping down to grab Steve’s outstretched hand without pause. Steve swings onto Tony’s back, gripping his shoulder and locking his knees around his waist. “Lazy.”

“It’s like getting into a damn wetsuit that’s two sizes too small,” Tony complains. “If La Isla takes damage because of this, I’m blaming you.”

“Fair enough,” he says and engages comms. “Status.”

“Two minutes,” Clint answers from what sounds like a chopper. “I can see the smoke from here though. That’s not good.”

Steve squints. One of these days he’s going to get goggles put into the cowl. “We can too.”

“I have arrived,” Thor announces. “The good people of the city have wisely taken cover, but the sorcerers are cleverly using their environment to their advantage. The smoke makes things difficult.”

“Sorcerers?” Tony groans. “Are they actually using magic or is fire just coming from their hands or something?”

There’s a beat of silence. “I do not know,” Thor answers, sounding mystified. “I did not know that fire could come from your people’s hands without the aid of magic.”

“Depends on the person,” Tony answers. “Could be mutants. We’re approaching.”

“Swing Cap into us. His lungs aren’t as resistant as Thor’s,” Natasha says.

Tony adjusts his flight to bring him parallel to the SHIELD helicopter and Steve stands flat on his back, bending to leap across, landing with both feet inside and causing the whole thing to rock dangerously as the pilot curses up a storm.

“Mask,” Natasha says, shoving something at him. It covers her and Clint’s whole face, but it’s transparent. He supposes smoke in his eyes would be equally problematic. He puts it on, leaning forward to let Natasha flick whatever button activates this thing.

“Iron Man, pick up for me and Widow,” he says. “Hawkeye, pick a rooftop and start shooting.”

“Cap,” Clint answers, going up front to direct whatever poor pilot picked the short straw when the alarm went off.

Tony hovers next to them, arms wide. They’ve practiced this move a lot and they’re quite good at it. Steve picks Natasha up by the waist and throws her out of the helicopter. She grabs onto Tony’s outstretched arm and clings to his back like a backpack. Steve follows, his arm going around Tony’s neck and landing with both of his feet on top of his.

“We look ridiculous,” Tony sighs, rapidly descending into the chaos.

“Efficient, though,” Steve returns. “First priority is protecting the firefighters and other civilians. Second priority is knocking these guys out and bagging them up.”

“Sir yes sir,” Natasha says then lets go of Tony so she can fall directly on top of one of the fire starters, chocking him out with her thighs and pinning his hands to the ground.

Steve rolls his eyes and jumps off in a slightly more controlled manner.

There’s about a dozen of them and they’re going straight for the firefighters, trying to stop them putting out all their hard work, which means the team is forced to be defensive rather than offensive, which is unfortunate. The smoke is really not helping matters.

Still they’re making progress, mostly thanks to Clint who’s picking them off whenever he can get a clear shot while the rest of them play guard dog. There making slow and steady progress until Clint says, “Uh, little problem here guys.”

“Be more specific Hawkeye,” Steve says.

“Three of these guys are on the roof with me and – hey! – they’re not too happy with me. I could use some air support.”

“I am unfortunately unable to leave my current area at the risk of casualties,” Thor says.

“Same,” Tony says. “Can’t you just kill them with your thighs or something?”

“No killing,” Steve sighs.

“You make things so complicated,” Natasha says.

Clint yelps. “Dude! Ow!”

“Okay, don’t love the sound of that,” Tony says. “You should really consider adding sleeves to your uniform.”

“You should really consider helping me,” Clint snarls.

“Relax, Hawkeye, Iron Man is messing with you,” Natasha answers. “His suit is on its way. Give it another five seconds then jump.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Clint says then whoops as Steve assumes he does just that. “Wait does this mean Iron Man’s fighting barehanded down there? Not exactly his strength.”

“Fuck you Hawkeye,” Tony laughs. “I kept the gauntlets. Not as powerful detached from the suit but good enough. Now pick another rooftop so I can suit back up.”

“If you can talk this much then I don’t think you’re fighting hard enough,” Steve grunts, finally managing to knock one unconscious with his shield. These guys aren’t just using fire, they’re also a lot more resistant than the average person.

Thor chimes in, “To effectively multitask is a sign of a great warrior.”

“Yeah, what Thor said,” Tony says, sounding distracted. “Uh, Hawkeye, can I get an ETA on the suit?”

“On its way,” Clint answers.

Steve frowns. “Everything okay?”

“Define okay,” Tony responds, then, “Uh, no, shit.” Then it’s just heavy breathing and the faint sound of repulsors and something being hit. He hopes it’s not Tony, but being realistic, it’s probably Tony.

“Iron Man,” he snaps. “Status.”

Tony doesn’t answer and there are three fire starters waiting to attack the truck and firefighters the second Steve gives them an opening.

“NAT!” Tony yells. “Shit, fuck, what the hell!”

“You’re welcome,” she wheezes. “That hurt.”

“Status!” he shouts.

Tony sounds furious, in a way he never does during battle. “Widow is down. She needs to get out of here.”

“I’m fine,” Natasha says, the strain in her voice barely detectable, which doesn’t mean jack shit when it comes to her. “Just a little singed. I can fight.”

“You probably broke a rib and you’ll be fine right up until it punctures a lung,” he snaps.

Steve tosses his shield with more force than is strictly advisable if he’s trying not to do permanent damage, but his team is hurt and he’s pissed. “Iron Man, quiet. Widow, evacuate. Go to the helicopter.”

“Captain,” she protests.

“I’m sending her back to the helicopter,” Tony says.

“Because you did so well without your suit just now,” Natasha snaps.

“Debrief later,” Steve says firmly. “Widow, let the armor get you out of here.”

She practically growls, but doesn’t say anything else. Moments later Clint says, clearly relieved, “Visual on Widow, she’s in the helicopter and the armor is on it’s way back to Iron Man.”

Steve cracks his neck from side to side. “Try and avoid anything deadly. I want this fight over now.”

He gets affirmatives from the rest of the team and the fire starters seem to notice the shift because they start to retreat. Which lets the team finally go on the offensive, not locked into place at the risk of civilians getting hurt, and then the fight really is quick after that.  

Thor volunteers to stay behind and keep an eye on their captives until SHIELD can send a pick up. Tony flies Clint then Steve up to the helicopter, which has stayed looping around them during the fight, then follows alongside.

Natasha is sitting straight, breathing carefully and face pale with pain. Clint is already sitting next to her, pressed against her from ankle to hip. She catches sight of his face says, “You said the helicopter, not medical.”

“I did,” Steve agrees. “We’re going there now, though.”

She grimaces, but doesn’t argue, which is something.

Clint nudges his foot against hers. “What is it with this team and going to medical, right? I’ve been there more times in the past six months than the past six years.”

He doesn’t even end up medical that often, so that’s very concerning if it’s true, which Steve assumes it is. Natasha’s mouth pulls back into an almost smile before she’s grimacing again, and none of them say anything more until they’re back in SHIELD. Tony is waiting for them on the roof, sans the suit, but still in the clinging black under armor. If Natasha wasn’t hurt, Steve would find that distracting.

Tony’s looking Natasha up and down nervously, almost reaches out to her but holds back at the last second. He hovers anxiously around them the entire trip down to medical, which Natasha insists on making on her own two feet. Since she’s going down there almost willingly, Steve allows it.

“What happened?” the doctor asks as she undoes Natasha’s uniform. She then looks around the rest of them and scowls. “It’s really not necessary-”

“It’s fine,” Natasha interrupts. “They’ve all seen breasts before.”

Steve twitches. The Rockettes probably count.

Clint and Tony crack up, which seems to irritate the doctor even more, but Natasha is smiling so she doesn’t saying anything as she eases her uniform off her shoulders. She’s wearing a black sports bra underneath and the developing bruises are all along her left side, which sobers them all up. Steve repeats the doctor’s question, “What happened?”

“Natasha jumped in front of me like an idiot for no reason,” Tony says.

“I could hear you but I couldn’t see you,” she says, irritated. “Too much smoke. You didn’t have the suit.”

“So?” Tony demands. “I had the under armor, which is fireproof! You know it’s fireproof, because your uniform is made of the same material!”

The doctor is prodding along Natasha’s side ignoring the argument happening around her. Steve supposes this isn’t exactly out of the ordinary at SHIELD.

“I couldn’t see you,” she says again, irritated. “I didn’t know if you were wearing it, or what part of you they were aiming for. I knew where I would get hit and I knew I’d be fine, because I was wearing the uniform you designed. I made the right call.”

“If I’d taken the hit I could have gone right in the suit and Jarvis could have run a diagnostic,” Tony argues.

They scowl at each other and then turn their angry eyes onto him. He rubs the back of his neck and admits, “I don’t know if I would have made a different call in your situation, Natasha.” Tony opens his mouth, outraged, but Steve says, “I know you wouldn’t have made a different choice, Tony, so you’re just being a hypocrite for criticizing Natasha for doing what you would have in her place.”

He crosses his arms but closes his mouth.

“Being hypocritical is sort of our thing,” Clint says. It sounds bad when he says it like that. “Is she going to make it, doc?”

“Nothing broken, I don’t think,” she says and Natasha sends a smug look towards Tony. “Likely just a couple bruised ribs. Possibly some hairline fractures, but we’ll have to do some x-rays to be sure.”

Natasha grimaces and Tony says, “We can do it at the tower if you prefer.”

The doctor frowns but then Steve picks up on a sound he’s not used to hearing in the halls of SHIELD. Stilettos against linoleum.

A moment later everyone else hears it too, Tony brightening and Natasha’s face losing what little color it had regained. “You told her?” she hisses. The doctor glances between all of them and makes a hasty retreat.

“You’re welcome,” Tony answers with the exact same inflection Natasha had used over the comms.

The doors open and Pepper is standing there, very tall heels and fitted dark blue suit. She walks over to them and stops at the edge of Natasha’s bed, eyes narrowed. Steve feels like he probably shouldn’t be here, but leaving feels too much like abandoning a team member, so he just stays very still instead.

Pepper crosses her arms and taps her nails against her elbow. “Why did you do it?”

It’s the first words Steve has heard her say to Natasha.

She swallows, uniform half off and pale and bruised and smudged with ash and smelling of smoke. “I made you a promise.”

“No, you didn’t, Natasha,” Pepper returns, putting an extra emphasis on her name.

“Yes,” Natasha says simply, “I did.”

Pepper’s lips press together in a thin line. The silence stretches out, all of them saying nothing and not moving. Finally Pepper snaps, “Well? Aren’t you going to ask?”

Natasha’s eyes are wide and she doesn’t move. Steve isn’t even sure that she’s breathing.

Pepper softens just slightly, just enough so she looks like she’s not a moment away from snarling. “You can’t have what you don’t ask for.”

Steve is so glad that no one is looking at him right now.

Natasha swallows, glancing briefly at Tony who gives her a lopsided grin that does nothing to hide his nerves. She holds out her hands, palms up and wrists together.

Tony lets out a deep breath and reaches for her, rubbing his wrists over hers until his scent lingers among hers then reaching up to do the same to her neck. “Told you that you were a good fit.”

Natasha’s eyes flutter open. Steve hadn’t noticed her closing them. “Well, you’re right about some things.”

Clint shoves his wrist in Tony’s direction. “Come on, chop chop, you know that me and her are a BOGO special.”

“Should have led with that,” he says, but he reaches out, scent marking Clint the same way. “Okay, now you really do have to get scanned at the tower because I’ll feel all out of sorts if I have to leave you guys behind now.” He looks to Natasha. “Does this mean you’ll move back into your room?”

Natasha has a room?

“You kept my room?” she asks, looking startled and carefully pleased.

Pepper scoffs, reaching down to squeeze her shoulder. “Of course we did. We knew you’d come home eventually.”

Steve’s never seen Natasha smile quite like this before. It’s a good look.

~

Bruce emerges from his heat the next day with a near permanent blush while Darcy seems supremely satisfied with herself. He congratulates both Natasha and Clint without a hint of resentment. They’re both in the process of permanently relocating to the tower, made somewhat slower by Natasha’s bruised ribs and her refusal to let anyone outside of the team touch her stuff.

Bruce also sends him a significant look that he pretends not to see. Natasha’s taken the plunge, Bruce and Tony understand each other, which means he’s the last holdout. He has to talk to Tony. He should talk to Tony. Even if it goes terribly, it won’t be that terrible, they’ll still be friends and teammates. He shared his heat with Tony and he didn’t skip a beat, they can handle one potentially awkward conversation.

It’s just that life is good right now, with the team, with Tony, and while there’s the potential for it to be better there’s also the potential for it to be so much worse.

God, he threw himself on a grenade and out of a plane into the arctic with easier than this. Then again, he’d assumed he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences after.

His instinct is to talk to him in the workshop, because it’s someplace they’re both comfortable, but that means it’s also a place he doesn’t want to ruin, just in case. Everywhere else in the tower runs the risk of someone walking in on them, except their rooms, which seems too intimate if things go south. He considers just asking Tony out for a meal outside of the tower, like they do sometimes, but doing this in public is such a horrible idea that he immediately discards it.

He talks to Tony all the time, but talking to him about this feels like the hardest thing he’s ever done. He’d give anything to just be able to jump out of a plane instead.

He’s sitting on the roof, having come out with his new paints to try and get the colors of the sunset, which was a mixed success, and now it’s night and he’s staring up at the sky at nothing at all.

“Hey.” He looks over and Tony’s walking over, hair damp from the shower he must have just taken and in sweatpants and a white t-shirt that’s – oh fuck, that’s his shirt, the one he lent to Tony after his heat. Or maybe it isn’t, and he owns another slightly too big white shirt that’s not designer, which is possible. Unlikely, but possible. “Are you trying to see the stars? We’d have to leave the city. Too much light pollution. Sorry, Cap.”

Steve guiltily forces his eyes up to Tony’s face. “What? Oh, no, it’s okay. The air’s actually a lot cleaner now, even if it is brighter. I was just thinking.”

Tony glances at the canvas, the colors different in the wash of light of the arc reactor. “Nice. What were you thinking about?”

They’re alone. It’s not the workshop. They’re unlikely to be interrupted. It’s not public. “You.”

“Uh oh,” Tony grins, tilting his head to the side. “Am I in trouble?”

Steve shakes his head. If anyone’s in trouble, it’s him. “I. No pressure, of course. But, I just.”

Tony’s eyebrows dip together. “I’m going to need some more words here.”

“I don’t want to ruin this,” he admits, rubbing a hand over his face. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Tony says instantly, “I’m not really sure what you’re worried about ruining, but you shouldn’t be. You’re not going to ruin anything. What’s bothering you?”

“You,” he says again.

He frowns, shifting his weight. “You said I wasn’t in trouble.”

“You’re not,” he says, standing so he’s not looking up at Tony, but now Tony’s the one looking up at him. Shit. Should he have stayed seated? He always forgets how big he is. But it’s not like Tony doesn’t already know. “Tony. I probably should have said this sooner, but I just, you’re really important. To me.”

Tony blinks at him. “You’re important to me too, Steve.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

He shifts closer, moving slowly enough that Tony has plenty of time to stop him. He doesn’t, doing nothing as Steve gets closer and tilts his head down to his catch his lips in a kiss. It’s just as good as it was when he was in heat, warm and slick and Tony’s hands are gripping his upper arms as he pushes himself up to press his mouth even more firmly against Steve’s. Relief sweeps through Steve and he tentatively curls an arm around Tony’s waist.

They part eventually and Tony’s lips are red and wet and Steve swallows. “Wait,” Tony says, “you’re not just – you don’t smell like heat, I’m not just missing it, right? You’re saying you-”

“I like you,” he says, and then because that sounds juvenile adds, “I have feelings for you. Really serious ones. You’re so beautiful, Tony, and you’re,” every adjective feels silly and too small for how Tony makes him feel, so he says, “you’re my favorite person. You make everything better.”

“Steve,” Tony says, sounding wrecked, fingers digging into his hips. “What are you – what do you want?”

“You,” he says, because that’s the answer, Tony’s always the answer. “I want to date you and kiss you and I want to be in your pack and I want you to be my alpha and my boyfriend and my partner. That’s what I want.” He forces a trembling smile. “Please don’t break my heart.”

Tony kisses him again, deep and warm and good. He lifts his arms, looping them around Steve’s neck so his wrists are pressed right against his pulse points, scent marking him and holding on to him and so perfectly close. “I’ll try not to,” he says, his eyes bright and soft. “Don’t break mine, yeah? It’s already taken some damage.”

“I’ll try not to,” he returns, hands pressed against Tony’s back, holding everything he wants in his arms.

There are lots of things that are different from the world he grew up in, but the present is pretty great.