Chapter Text
Steve knows that four o'clock in the morning is not necessarily a reasonable time to make house calls. He's usually up and about at this time every morning – a habit that has made him the target of endless ribbing by his teammates – but he’s also perfectly aware that not everyone had an Army schedule drilled into their muscle memory. Still, some sacrifices have to be made if one doesn’t want the New York tabloids covering the mysterious Wakanda jet that had just touched down on the landing pad at Stark Tower. (Even if said jet was equipped with a cloaking device, it just wasn’t worth the risk.) Four o'clock on a Monday morning is usually a sweet spot for Manhattan. It's mostly quiet – few people are up this early, and the ones that are, are either way too drunk or way too busy to pay attention.
Tony meets them in the hangar. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week – eyes dark and bloodshot behind his tinted sunglasses – and Steve winces when he sees the physical toll that this Accords mess has had on his friend. His shoulders are stiff, his chin jutted up in a performative sort of confidence, like he doesn’t quite believe it. He can’t meet Steve’s eye and resorts to talking to Steve’s forehead instead.
It’s not as though Steve completely regrets everything about the “Civil War”, as the media has dubbed it. He did what he thought he had to do in order to protect the integrity of the Avengers, and then to protect Bucky. He’s not going to apologize for keeping his best friend of nearly a century out of The Raft or saving him from a death sentence. He’s not going to retract his belief that enhanced people shouldn’t implicitly trust the government, especially where Secretary Thaddeus Ross is concerned. Though, he does regret how out of hand things ended up getting. He wishes he could go back and tell Tony the truth about his parents. He’d give anything for the opportunity to afford his friends patience instead of shutting down and resorting to aggression the moment his beliefs were challenged. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
He’d been surprised when he saw Tony’s phone number flash across the screen of his burner phone after almost a year of being on the run. He was even more surprised to hear Rhodey's voice on the other line instead of Tony’s. It hadn’t been a pleasant conversation at first. Rhodey read him a mile long riot act about how impulsive Steve had been – told him all about how he and Tony had managed to negotiate a version of the Accords that accommodated both sides, and how that had been the plan all along but Steve was too stubborn to see it. Told him how wrecked Tony had been in the months after Steve had left, along with half of Tony’s family. But after Steve said his piece, making sure to apologize for the ways he’d hurt both Tony and Rhodey – knowing full-well he’d have to do it again and again for the foreseeable future – they both ended up making peace with each other enough to confess how much they’d missed one another.
At some point during the conversation, the Colonel had mentioned that a lot had changed since he’d been gone – he wouldn’t say any more than that, though. Steve had to admit that he was curious. As long as he’d known the man, Tony was never one to change much – he was predictably unpredictable. You’d never know what words were going to fall out of his mouth, but they would almost always include some sort of deadpanned quip. He was notorious for his numerous trips to the coffee maker, and his sleep schedule was all over the place – you’d never know where or when you’d find him awake and working on some new project, but it was always a new project. You could expect him to be impulsive and stubborn. But everyone was continuously surprised by his sharp memory and attention to detail – which made him the best gift-giver on the team. Tony has always been the kind of guy who liked to hide his humanity behind overworked-rich-people eccentricities, but if you looked hard enough, you’d see behavior patterns emerge. It really just came down to this: when living with Tony Stark, one quickly gets accustomed to the man doing, saying, or just generally being associated with weird shit. Eventually one learns to just roll their eyes and say, "well that’s Tony for you". Steve liked to think he knew Tony well enough to not be surprised by the changes Rhodey had spoken of; but the last time he’d bet someone that nothing would surprise him, he’d lost ten dollars and spent the afternoon fighting aliens that spilled out of a wormhole over Manhattan by the hundreds, so he’d kept his mouth shut on that front.
An hour later, they’re standing in the kitchen of the common room – a room that instantly brings back soft, bittersweet memories of sloppily digging into Chinese takeout after a mission, of sitting at the counter with the morning paper while Nat silently scribbled in the answers to the daily crosswords, or of that one time that he managed to get tomato sauce on the ceiling after failing miserably at an attempt to make a lasagna.
Everyone is slowly sipping coffee and going over schedules when Steve hears a pair of footsteps behind him. He stiffens, readying himself to fight whoever it is that’s infiltrated the Tower, but instantly deflates in confusion when he turns toward the noise.
A half-asleep teenage boy shuffles into the kitchen, bleary eyes squinting at the overhead lighting. He can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen, judging by his round cheeks and the mop of curly brown hair on top of his head that stuck up in odd angles at the back. He's wearing a bright blue NASA t-shirt which was dotted with several small brown stains – coffee? Maybe motor oil? – and the hems of his bright pink Hello Kitty pajama pants drag on the floor. He pauses for a moment and stands blinking in the mouth of the room as if trying to absorb the curious crowd in front of him.
Stark does not seem surprised to see him. In fact, he looks almost amused, smirking into his coffee cup as he watches the boy sniff and blink.
“Uh, who the hell is this?” Sam questions.
The kid wordlessly points to Tony as if that answers everything, and shuffles towards the coffee maker.
“Uh-uh,” Tony begins to scold, swatting at the boy’s hands, “coffee is an adult beverage, and, last time I checked, you did not fit into that category.”
He grunts and dodges Tony’s attack – surprisingly gracefully for someone who’s still working with only the most basic of their lower brain functions – as he reaches into the cabinet above the coffee maker for a mug. The one he retrieves is Hot Rod red and on the side, in gold, is the periodic element square for iron and the word ‘man’ underneath it in bold, capital letters. A science pun.
“Stark,” Steve huffed, his 'Captain America Is Asking You A Question' voice on full display.
The mechanic abandons his attempts to intercept the kid’s coffee thievery and shrugs. “This is Peter. He’ll be around.”
The boy, Peter, waves lazily in the direction of the guests and returns his attention to the coffee maker in front of him, which has finished its cycle and filled the mug three-quarters of the way to the top with steaming dark roast. He proceeds to dump at least eight spoonfuls of sugar into the cup, which elicits a disgusted grimace from Sam.
Natasha narrows her eyes and looks between Peter and Tony as if she’s trying to solve a difficult mathematical equation in her head.
Steve is glaring at Tony, clearly unsatisfied with the information, or lack thereof, he’d been given.
Tony disregards the looks he's getting from the team and instead addresses Peter – who has his face stuffed into the coffee mug like it contains the last bits of oxygen left on Earth – and speaks with a softness that none of the Avengers expected him to be capable of. “What’s got you up this early, kiddo?”
Peter speaks for the first time this morning and his voice is scratchy and high-pitched. “Bad dream.” He takes a large gulp of his over-sweetened coffee and sniffs.
Tony nods as if there’s a deeper meaning to those words. “You didn’t want to try and go back to sleep?”
Peter shakes his head and lifts the mug to his lips again, draining another abnormally large portion of the coffee. “I’ve gotta study for my English final anyway.”
Tony points at him with his own coffee mug, an old MIT alumni mug with a small chip at the base of the handle. “If I get a call from your school telling me you’ve fallen asleep in class again, I’m throwing you under the bus,” he threatens.
Peter lifts the cup, which is clasped in both his hands, and nods at it. “That’s what this is for,” he deadpans.
“You’re a pain in my ass, you know that right?”
Peter shrugs and flashes a shit-eating grin at Tony and it’s the most his face has moved since he stumbled into the kitchen. “You love me,” he insists.
“Get out.” Tony points to the dark hallway Peter had emerged from earlier. There’s a small smile on the older man’s face and a glint in his eye that completely negates the stern tone he'd used.
Peter rolls his eyes and begins to shuffle back the way he came, now with coffee mug in hand. “Nice to meet you guys,” he nods at the collection of Avengers who are still visibly in various stages of confusion and suspicion, and then disappears as quickly as he came.
“The fuck was that?” Sam asks, still staring bewilderedly after the kid.
“I never thought you’d be the fathering type.” Natasha’s smirk is wicked and amusing. Steve probably would have laughed if he weren’t so disoriented right now.
Tony shrugged, lifting his coffee cup up like a toast. “Yeah, well, I never thought we’d ever be able to sit in the same room without trying to kill each other again. Things change, Nat.”
All of Steve’s thoughts come squealing to a record-scratch stop as Natasha’s words catch up to him. The fathering type, she’d said. Fathering? And Tony hadn’t denied it. Not even a little bit. “Wait a minute. Was that… your… son?”
“That’s none of your business, Cap.”
___________________
It’s another two weeks before any of them see Peter again.
Peter’s already in the elevator when Steve calls it to where he’s waiting in the private parking garage.
At first, the kid looks confused, like he didn’t expect the elevator to open for another passenger, and then he realizes who it is who’s standing in front of him and his shoulders stiffen and his hands retreat into the pockets of his jeans. He looks undeniably uncomfortable, but not so much so that Steve would consider waiting for the kid to get where he needs to go before trying the elevator again in a minute or two when it’s empty.
Peter steps to the side to make room for Steve’s wide shoulders, but he doesn’t retreat all the way into the corner like a frightened animal, so Steve considers that a win in his book.
“I, uh, I wanted to apologize,” Steve says as the doors slide closed.
“To me?” Peter asks. He’s studying Steve's face, looking for something in his expression. Steve isn’t entirely comfortable with the undivided attention, especially considering the position he’s in with the kid's father and all, but he’s definitely faced worse things than a distraught teenager and a massive guilt complex. “Why?”
Steve can tell that Peter is nervous. The super soldier makes note of the rapid pulse he sees pounding in the boy's neck and the way he shuffles his weight from one foot to the other. Steve turns to fully face him, hoping that the sincerity in his eyes will help relieve some of Peter’s tension.
“I don’t know how much your dad told you about what happened last year, and it’s not my place to talk about it with you if he doesn’t want me to. But I’m sure the outcome wasn’t easy for you to watch. And I wanted to apologize,” he nods at Peter, who has gone wide-eyed and slightly dazed, “to you,” Steve emphasizes, “for hurting your family the way I did. I’m trying to make it right. We all are.”
Peter just stands there and blinks and Steve is half worried he gave the kid an aneurysm or something.
“Son? Are you okay?”
“What?” Peter croaks. It’s breathless and hesitant.
And suddenly Steve isn’t so sure blindsiding this kid with an apology while they’re both inside a small, enclosed space was his best idea ever. He almost wants to backtrack. He opens his mouth even though he doesn’t really know what to say now. It’s been a long time since he’s tried to comfort a teenager. (He’s pretty sure it was back in '43 when some new recruit – a seventeen year old boy – cried after shooting a gun for the first time. But that was a different time and this, apparently, required much more than a pat on the back and reassurance that 'this is for a good cause’ which is what he’d done for the gun-shy army boy.)
The elevator takes mercy on him and opens up to the penthouse floor just before Steve says anything to make it worse. Peter scurries out without another word.
Tony turns his head away from the conversation he’s having with Natasha – who arrived a few hours earlier with the hopes that she could snag some time in the gun range before their meeting – and looks between Steve and Peter, frowning at the obvious look of fear and discontent on kid’s face.
“What the hell did you do to him, Steve?” Tony snaps.
“I just wanted to apologize to him.” Steve glances at Peter who is standing as close as he can get to Tony without touching him. He's not looking at Tony, though. In fact, he seems to be actively avoiding do so, and instead stares intently at his own shoes. “I didn’t mean for it to be taken the wrong way.”
Tony turns to Peter and looks him up and down as if he’s assessing him for possible wounds, which Steve tries not to be offended about. “You okay, kid?” His voice takes on the same softness as it did in the kitchen two weeks ago when Peter made his first sleepy appearance.
Peter nods his head but doesn’t look away from his feet.
“Steve.” Nat says. It’s both a warning and a question. He notices that she’s subtly placed herself between him and Tony.
Steve holds his hands up as a show of nonviolence. “I swear I didn’t touch him. I would never,” he insists. “I just thought – if my dad was hurt the way I hurt you, I’d want an apology from the guy who did it. I thought it would help. I’m sorry.”
Surprise flickers across Tony’s face and then quickly morphs into an expression of understanding, and that confuses Steve even more because he has no idea which part of what he’d said was the crux of the change.
Tony turns back to Peter, whose cheeks are now tinged a deep shade of pink. “Pete?”
Peter still refuses to look up.
“Go ahead and get started on your homework for me. I’ll come find you in a minute, okay?”
Without another word, Peter retreats to his room like he’s got fire licking at his heals.
“Jesus, Cap,” Tony says once Peter is out of earshot, no evidence of his protective anger from a second ago. “Nearly gave me a heart attack.”
Steve is completely and utterly out of his depth. “I gotta be honest, I don’t know what just happened. What did I say?”
Tony ignores the question and instead puts his arm around Nat’s shoulders. “Nat’s gonna take you through the reintegration plan. Then, when everyone else is here, we’ll go through the final draft of the accords.” He jerks his head in the direction Peter disappeared and shrugs. “Teenage hormones, you know.” And then he trails after the kid without another word.
Later that evening, as Steve is leaving, (he still has to pack his duffel bag and check out of the motel he’s been staying in before he can settle back in to the tower) he catches a glimpse of Peter and Tony on the couch in the common room. Tony’s arm is draped lazily around Peter’s shoulders, and the kid is curled into Tony’s side, his head tucked into his father’s neck. They’re having a quiet conversation which Steve happens to overhear as he’s making his way to the elevators. He’s hoping his exit is going unnoticed because, after what happened between him and the kid earlier today, he doesn’t want to make things even more awkward.
“Thanks for not freaking out today,” Peter says. From where Steve is standing, he can only see the backs of their heads and the tops of their shoulders. But based on the tone of Peter’s voice, Steve is guessing that the kid is probably blushing a brilliant shade of pink right about now.
Steve watches at Tony leans away just enough to catch Peter’s gaze. “Kid. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I always freak out when you’re involved.”
Peter huffs. His jaw and cheek contract into what Steve assumes is a cheeky smile, because the next words out of the kid’s mouth are, “So, that’s why you have all those gray hairs?”
“Oh, you are such a little shit,” Tony says through his laughter as he playfully nudges the boy at his side.
The last thing Steve sees before the elevators close to take him back down to the parking lot, is Tony pressing a gentle kiss to the top of Peter’s head.