I WALKED A THOUSAND MILES JUST TO SLIP THIS SKIN (R) - 1/2 BY IAMSHADOW
Title: I Walked A Thousand Miles Just To Slip This Skin
Author: iamshadow
Fandom: The Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Pairings: Gen, Pre-slash Steve/Tony
Rating: R
Word Count: 18,679
Summary: He's become so used to being Iron Man and an Avenger, to battling Doombots and aliens and evil scientists trying to take over the world, that he'd forgotten that sometimes people want to do harm to you, personally, when you've just snuck out of the Tower to get mid-afternoon doughnuts.
Content: Genderswap, gender dysphoria, body issues, self esteem issues, non-consensual drugging, references to rape, references to hate crime, references to transphobia, references to war crimes, trope subversion.
A/N: Written for my Free Square of Round One of trope-bingo.
This story was partly born out of frustration at depictions of genderswap in fic as being cracky, sexy funtimes, or as a vehicle to slash. I wanted to write Tony struggling with gender dysphoria, with the journey his character takes being the prime focus, rather than a vehicle to a ship. So, this story has subtle hints of changing feelings, but that's not the point of it.
This is also the longest one shot I've ever written. \o/
Enormous thank yous to my gender betas, nathaniel_hp and kazaera, and my story betas, 51stcenturyfox and tree00faery. You're all awesome, and this story is a hundred times better because of you.
I've gotten too complacent, is what Tony thinks when he's bailed up in a side street. He's become so used to being Iron Man and an Avenger, to battling Doombots and aliens and evil scientists trying to take over the world, that he'd forgotten that sometimes people want to do harm to you, personally, when you've just snuck out of the Tower to get mid-afternoon doughnuts.
But it's not even some big tough guy, it's some little punk with acne and awkward, gangly limbs, and Tony can't resist the reflex to laugh and mock.
“You and whose army?” he asks, before he thinks.
The kid gets mad, and Tony is suddenly very aware of the gun the kid is now holding, especially when it glows a weird purple colour and there's a strong smell of ozone.
“Fucking magic,” Tony says vehemently, and legs it. He doesn't get far.
*
When he first wakes, he's only aware of how much he aches. Not that he ever gets out of a battle in the suit without bruises, but this is an all-over, pervasive hurt, like he's gone on a three day endurance hike then had a bout of the flu on top of that. He's groggy and weak, and it's a struggle to get his eyes pointed in the right direction, let alone focussed.
Pepper's smiling down at him like she's trying not to cry. That can only mean badness.
“'m I dying?” he asks, and his voice sounds all weird. Maybe he is ill.
Pepper shakes her head slowly and smiles a little wider. “No,” she says.
“Good,” he says. “Dying sucks. You get really mad at me when I do that.”
“You're fine. I'm not mad at you,” she reassures him, petting his hand gently.
“Well, now I know you're lying to make me feel better,” he argues. “You're always mad at me for something.”
He drifts back to sleep before he hears her reply.
*
The second time he wakes, he's alone. He's alert enough to sit up a bit, and to check under the blanket for signs of major injury, because his body feels weirdly misshapen, like sneaky SHIELD doctors rummaged around and put everything back slightly out-of-place.
“Um,” he hears himself say aloud, because really, screaming isn't his style, and he's a bit too shocked to think to do it.
“Ah,” Pepper says. She's standing in the doorway with some kind of soy chai thing in her hand; he can smell the spice. “About that.”
“You said I was fine,” he accuses.
“Well, they've run a bunch of tests and you're healthy, physically, and-”
“Fine implies situation normal, Pepper. Nothing about this is normal-”
“- apart from sleeping for about thirty hours, and a slightly elevated heart-rate for a little while -”
“Breasts, Pepper. I have a rack that did not come as standard, and though I haven't checked yet, I can tell that there have been some modifications down in the plumbing department that I really did not ask for-”
“-you're a perfectly healthy woman,” Pepper finishes.
Silence falls, and Pepper hovers, like she's not sure she'd be welcomed closer. Tony heaves a heavy, frustrated sigh, and sees his breasts rise and fall on the edge of his peripheral vision.
“This is bullshit,” he pronounces.
*
He checks himself out, though he's sure that SHIELD's doctors would love to have him around longer to poke and prod at. When he's convincing them to let him go, he's careful to be loud and obnoxious with a heavy side of charming, because he wants to go home, but he doesn't want to antagonise them enough to hate him, just in case he starts growing horns or something and has to come back.
After he has his release papers in hand, he focuses his skills of persuasion on convincing Pepper that as much as she'd like for him to drive home with Happy in the limo, the suit is the best option.
“Sure, by all means, I'll walk out right into the arms of the paps and get labelled as 'mystery woman in Tony Stark's life', and they can all speculate about how knocked up I am. Feel free to spend the next however long putting out the fires from that.”
It's far from subtle, but the frown line between Pepper's brow deepens, and the next time she appears, she's got his suitcase armour. He's already shrugged out of the hospital gown and into the street clothes he'd been wearing before his unpleasant journey into the world of non-consensual body modification. They don't feel as comfortable as he remembered. His t-shirt is tight across his chest, and his boxer briefs in particular are a bit saggy and empty in the front in a way he doesn't care to dwell on.
“We'll have to talk to your stylist,” she says.
“No,” he says.
“We could just-”
“No.”
“But it could be-”
“Not interested.”
“You can't keep wearing those,” she says, and she's sort of right; he at least needs to get a belt or something.
“Just get my new measurements from JARVIS when he bioscans me,” Tony says, and then he's running through a checklist of Things To Do in his mind. Getting JARVIS to recognise him is going to be a number one priority, primarily because everything sensitive is biometrically locked to him, and man, that is going to be a pain in the ass to circumvent.
“If we spin this right, it could be really good PR,” Pepper says.
“This is temporary,” he says firmly, though he doesn't know that, and knows that she knows he doesn't know that. “I don't want to look cute, I don't want to rock a pantsuit or a power jacket, and I don't want to learn to walk in heels. Just get me what I like to wear, in the right sizes.”
“Fine. I'll order you some new clothes and talk to your tailor about alterations. Will you at least shave-”
“What are you, the lady-shaver crusader?” he snaps.
“-the goatee, Tony. You should probably think about getting rid of the beard.”
There's a joke somewhere in the back of his brain that fails to form enough to say aloud. He rubs at the bristle on his chin. It's comfortingly familiar, but Pepper's right, it probably looks weird on him right now.
“Right, yeah. I'll do that.”
*
He takes off from the roof of the hospital after having gone through half a dozen code verifications and explanations and a DNA swab to prove he's himself to the HUD and JARVIS. Ten minutes later, he's staring at his face in his bathroom mirror. It's the same, but somehow different, like someone's taken his features and tweaked them in Photoshop. He doesn't look below the shoulders. He saw plenty when he was changing in the hospital room, and right now he's got enough to process.
He cuts himself twice before switching to the electric shaver he hardly ever uses. It's a lot more forgiving when he forgets and slips into muscle memory, trying to shave a jawline that's subtly different from the one he's been grooming since he was fourteen.
It's not a pretty face, he decides. His chin and brow and nose are still too strong, his hair too short, his skin not fine enough. His jaw is clenched tight; he looks stubborn and pissed off and punchy. Feisty, he would have drawled before, if met with such a face, which just sort of makes him want to punch himself, and that really isn't helping with the level of confusion he's feeling.
“Man up,” he murmurs to himself, and though his voice is a deep alto, it's not deep enough, and the joke falls flat.
*
He decides to avoid the communal areas and goes straight down to the workshop. JARVIS is his usual competent self, but the bots are in a bit of a tizzy. Dummy, in particular, seems perplexed by his new Sir-But-Not-Sir designation.
“I swear to God, if you poke me one more time, I'm giving you to Clint to use for target practice,” Tony says, when he sees Dummy's arm creeping up slowly, out of the corner of his eye. “Just go make a smoothie or something.”
“He's just worried about you,” Steve says, and Tony jumps, because someone should teach that man how to make more noise when he walks.
He must have said some of that aloud, because Steve frowns and even glances down at his feet.
“He's not worried, he hasn't got the programming to worry,” Tony says, because sure, he talks to his bots, but he never makes the mistake of assuming they think and emote the same way he does. “He is curious. He's a learning bot, he learns, it's what he's made for. This,” he gestures down at his body without looking, “is outside of his experience. So he wants to learn all about it. I give him an inch and he'll be goosing me every time I bend over.” He almost says and who could blame him out of habit, but bites his tongue.
“We're worried about you,” Steve counters, and it's earnest enough to make Tony throw on his widest, most camera-friendly smile.
“I've been told by a variety of reliable medical professionals that I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine,” Steve replies, then obviously realises what he just said, and flushes a deep pink. “I didn't... I mean, you do, obviously, very... You just don't seem-”
Tony raises a sarcastic eyebrow. Steve's blush spreads down his throat and across the tips of his ears. It's kind of mesmerising.
“You can talk to me, you know. About anything. I'll be a gent... I mean, I'll be professional,” Steve doggedly continues.
“Oh, my God, you're hopeless. Adorable, but really, seriously, terrible. Is it the girl thing, or the emotions thing? Or do I just represent some perfect storm of both?”
“I mean it. You're one of my men... um? Team. You're part of my team.”
“Rogers, you do know that underneath this... temporary packaging,” he waves his hand over his chest; Steve very obviously concentrates on not looking below Tony's eyes, “I'm still the same guy you regularly want to punch in the face, right?”
“I'm getting that,” Steve says, tensely.
*
Late in the evening, Pepper sweeps into the workshop like a very organised tornado.
“Okay, your new wardrobe's been delivered, only casual clothing so far. I brought a change down with me, just in case.” She hands him a garment bag. “The new measurements have been sent to Andre for your emergency suit, fitting on Friday, that's the soonest he can get it ready, but there aren't any events that you can't politely decline happening in the next few days anyway, so that should be fine.
“Shoes, we should probably handle in person,” she says next, and he can't help rolling his eyes. “I know, but your size has changed enough that you need new shoes. All the measurements in the world won't tell you if they're comfortable, and my time is too valuable to waste ordering half a dozen pairs in different sizes and widths hoping that one of them will fit and that you'll actually deign to wear them. A pair of Converse, a pair of running shoes, black and brown dress shoes and maybe a pair of slippers and I promise that will be all.”
“My slippers still fit; they're lambswool boots,” he says as he divests the garment bag of its contents.
Pepper fiddles with her phone, obviously ticking 'slippers' off the list, but then she murmurs maybe some loafers, too, under her breath.
“That's... a lot of underwear,” says Tony, having gotten deep enough into the bag to see them.
“The lower half; there's a pair of your regular boxer briefs, if they're comfortable enough, but there are a couple of other options just in case they're not. The upper half...there are a few different styles of bra because I didn't know what would work with the arc reactor.”
“...right. Thanks. I'll just- ”
“Okay, if you need anything-”
“- I'll call you,” he says, then darts into the bathroom to spend twenty awkward minutes wrestling with tiny hooks and eyelets.
Tony's pretty good at compartmentalisation, never mind what a mental health professional might say. He's faced down terrorists, his board of directors, the United States government, and his psychopathic father-figure, all without showing fear. He just has to get this done, as fast as he possibly can, so he breathes deep and builds a careful, emotional barricade between himself and the body he's wrangling into submission. It's not mine, they're not real, he tells himself on a loop, pushing down the feelings of alienness and repulsion, even. He flew a nuke into an alien wormhole; if he talks himself up enough, he can do anything.
He very quickly ends up tossing aside everything but the sports bra. All of the others are uncomfortable in some way or another, most of which have nothing to do with unexpectedly itchy lace or startling (unwanted) cleavage, but everything to do with the night light in his chest. The sports bra is made of elastic, is easily pulled on over his head, and has no boning to scratch unpleasantly on the reactor or rub on the scar tissue around the housing.
It also flattens his bust out to a degree that he can finally look himself in the mirror without flinching.
Pepper is gone when he emerges, but there's a small white box of pills on his desk and an explanatory note as to why. Because of course, right now, he's a perfectly healthy woman. Apparently if he takes them, one white pill per day, and ignores the red pills, he won't have to deal with it, which is just fine by him, but at the end, there's a just in case postscript telling him that there's Kotex and a heat pack in his medicine cabinet and a box of chocolate truffles in his snack cupboard.
Tony takes his first pill with a slug of scotch, which he's certain is against the advice of doctors and pharmacists everywhere, but he's had a day, and he's got to the point where the glass in his hand is the only thing stopping him putting his fist through a wall.
*
Day two, and Tony peels himself off the workshop sofa and stumbles towards the coffee machine. His mouth tastes like alcoholic regret and old socks. The lingering hangover is slightly more substantial than he would have expected, given the amount he drank, so he drowns his traitorous liver in blessed java until his eyes focus properly.
He may be upright, but he doesn't have the brain for invention and innovation yet, so he turns to his comfort engineering of choice - tinkering with the hot rod.
After the fourth nut that he has to gasp and struggle to undo, he calls Dummy over and spends the afternoon souping up his servos instead, improving his grip strength, precision, and overall lifting and pulling power.
“Pinch my ass, or any other part of me, now, and I really will break you down and make you into a windmill for the miniature golf course,” Tony warns when he reboots him, shaking a socket wrench in front of Dummy's viewing lens. “You've got some serious juice, buddy, and you'll hurt me.”
He throws together a quick drill and simulation program for Dummy to run to get him acquainted with his new upgrades, and puts a series of strength and dexterity tasks on a few different surfaces for him to play with when he's up to speed.
“JARVIS?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Record how Dummy does, make a list of weak spots and possible improvements. I'll watch the playback later. I'm going to the gym.”
Because although he's in a share-house with an Asgardian god and a super soldier, he'll be damned if he's going to be calling on them to loosen things for him.
*
By the time he's worked out for about two hours, he feels almost human. He's sweaty and hot and aching. He's also determined that the sports bra is hideously misnamed. Sure, it keeps them from bouncing as much as they would if untethered, but even just while he was warming up he lost count of the amount of times he elbowed them or knocked them, or that they just plain got in the damn way. They move, all the time, and if he's not concentrating on not letting them interfere, they're enough of an unpleasant, disorienting distraction that he's almost a danger to himself. He lasts all of thirty seconds on the treadmill before he nearly falls on his face. He'd been so abruptly aware of the sensation of his new (wrong) flesh in motion, that he'd stopped in shock, and forgotten to grab the rail to steady himself. This happens about four times in a row, before he gives it up as a loss. The weights, he dismisses without even trying them. He eventually settles on the exercise bike because he can keep his body leaning forward, his arms braced on the crossbar, and his upper body barely moves at all.
He's stretching, cooling down, when Coulson walks in, so Tony takes a break and chugs water while Coulson talks. Two bottles later, he's rehydrated enough to cut in.
“How hard can it be to find a kid running around mugging people with magical weaponry in New York?”
“Hard,” answers Coulson.
“There's CCTV in every shop and on every fucking corner. You can't tell me you've got nothing,” Tony says, and hates how much it sounds like he's whining.
“He used some kind of electrical field generator to distort the input. We're working on it, but right now all we've got is snow. It's possible there's something to find; if that's the case, we'll find it, but if the device was magical...” he shrugs slightly, his meaning clear.
There might be nothing to find. Fucking magic.
“Right now, we're monitoring emergency services for reports of similar incidents.”
“What, no nice, shiny, magic-detecting toys? What are you, the NYPD, now? That must bite.”
Coulson just smiles his placid little smile. “Flag your credit cards. You never know, he might get greedy and buy a flatscreen.”
*
I'm cooking dinner. Be there or answer to The Other Guy.
After Steve's awkward attempt at caring and sharing the night before, the team had very pointedly given him some space, probably on Cap's orders. Barring Avenging or hospital stays, he couldn't remember such a prolonged period of time without social interaction since they'd all moved in. There was always someone turning up with something for repair, an ongoing text conversation on his phone, or, at the very least, an email full of cat gifs from Thor in his inbox.
Bruce is clearly less inclined to let him hide away in his Science Cave, which smacks of hypocrisy, or possibly treason. Surely there's some kind of Anti-Social Science-Bros Code that applies here.
Tony is tempted to message back, Can't make it, still have boobs, but he has the feeling that the reply would be something along the lines of Cry harder, come back when you've trashed multiple cities on four different continents. I'm plating up in 20 mins.
He debates showering but doesn't think he can take that in addition to socialisation, so he just deodorises profusely and layers on an under-shirt, a t-shirt and an enormous, long-sleeved, quilted plaid thing that wound up in his laundry bag by accident. He's pretty sure it belongs to Thor. He folds the cuffs up about three times before his hands are visible, pulls on his (red exterior, bright yellow interior) lambswool slippers and mashes the elevator button for the communal living space.
Tony's timed it perfectly; he's arrived after the food has finished cooking but before the dinner's started, so there's no awkward waiting around and he's not barging in to find everyone sitting down. He grabs a plate and loads it up with curry, daal, and naan, then scoots off to the closest thing to a corner the open living area has, where he can be as far from the focal point of the gathering as possible but still see the TV. The menu screen for Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey is looping, which is just adorable because it means that someone actually bought a physical copy, and it looks like DVD quality, not even Blu-ray. He didn't realise he even had a DVD player still hooked up to the home theatre system.
“Whose night is it?” he mumbles through a mouthful.
“Mine,” says Clint, from his perch on the back of the frankly enormous sofa.
Tony supposes he should be grateful Clint didn't choose Mulan, or something. That's just the kind of smart-ass thing Clint would do.
Actually, come to think of it, Tony might have been more comfortable if he had. The ongoing trolling war is something he's come to rely on as a constant. If Clint, of all people, is going to try and be nice to him, he'll be tempted to lock himself in the workshop permanently, even at the sacrifice of really good Indian food.
“I'm sure I can dig up Pretty In Pink, though, if this is too butch for you,” Clint cracks, and Tony can't help but smile. He's certain that somewhere behind them Steve is on the verge of losing his shit. It's perfect.
“I'm more a Sixteen Candles kinda guy,” he replies, and hears Steve make a tiny choked sound right on cue. Everyone's got their food and wandered in, now, so he leans forward, snags a giant bottle of Mountain Dew from Thor, and tells JARVIS to roll it.
*
Days three, four and five pass in a kind of blur. There are no more magical muggings and there's no movement on his stolen cards, so law enforcement, and SHIELD, by extension, are utterly useless. On the plus side, there's nothing to Avenge, so he doesn't have to have the 'you're not fucking benching me' argument with Steve that he fears will be inevitable should anything actually arise. He's had the fight so many times in his head now that he's actually designed a points system for it.
Tony gives himself points every time he gets Steve to euphemistically refer to the boobs.
He gives Steve points every time Steve retains his dignity and Tony gives in to the urge to pull out the 'you're just threatened by me because your penis is tiny' argument. It's a cheap and nasty shot, and he knows from JARVIS's bioscans of the team that it's patently untrue.
The hypothetical arguing is also channelling some of the anger and frustration he's very legitimately feeling into non-workshop-smashing avenues, which he thinks means he's being particularly mature and sensible (for him), even while he's mentally losing points for deciding to get JARVIS to prank Steve as petty revenge for losing the latest round. Using JARVIS always counts as a forfeit, but there's something immensely satisfying in imagining using him for evil. Maybe that makes his morality a few shades darker than is strictly appropriate for a superhero, but Tony figures that so long as he doesn't actually follow through, he's not in grave danger of slipping over to the Dark Side.
The part of his brain that isn't waging war on Steve is inventing stuff, because that's what Tony does when he's running away from things he'd rather not deal with and Pepper's not there to redirect him into being social. (She's off doing mystical CEO things that he probably should have been doing when he was CEO, but didn't.) There are five new patent applications ready to go, including one for awesome, self-maintaining water pumps for developing countries, and one for a kind of super elastic fabric. He hasn't got a catchy name for it yet, but he hopes Bruce will consent to wear the next time he Hulks out to test its stretchiness. Anything that keeps The Other Guy's little guy under wraps is a good thing for public decency and Bruce's self-esteem, and while Tony generally doesn't give a shit about public decency, Bruce's self-esteem is a fragile flower that he's been nurturing in his own dysfunctional way. If the fabric works, it'll make the folks on the fyeahhulkpeen Tumblr sad, but Tony figures they'll find something new to be pervy about pretty quickly.
The armour doesn't need any changes, because if it was too rigid to accommodate fluctuations in body mass, he'd have to mod it every time he ate a whole pizza by himself or went without eating solid food for a week while hyper-focusing on coding or design. He ends up playing with it anyway, because the armour is never finished, and there's always a new model with better everything to be made and used and probably trashed and then replaced with another, newer, shinier model. He puts the latest design on, and from the outside, reflected in the glass of the wall, he looks just the same as he always does. There are no unexpected curves that still shock him every fucking morning, and it's an almost dizzying relief.
Maybe I should just stay like this, stay in the armour, he thinks, and it's tempting, it's so tempting, like that one more drink, just one, that he works on resisting every day with mixed success, and he has to take the suit off, right then, or he won't have the strength to keep walking around without it.
Dummy rolls up with a smoothie, and it's a distraction - not a big one, but enough that he's grateful - so he stands there petting that stupid robot arm for ages, his own arm straight out to the side so that he doesn't brush the side of his breast with his inner arm with every movement.
*
Natasha is perched on Tony’s workbench when he stumbles out of the elevator, half-awake, hoping JARVIS has set the coffee to percolate.
“No,” he says, even though she hasn't said a word.
There's a tiny, steaming cup of espresso waiting for him. He downs it like a shot, then pushes the button for another.
Two shots later, when he feels more human, he turns back around, his fourth cup cradled in his slightly-too-small hand.
“You're still here,” he says. “Why are you still here?”
“Your body,” she begins, and he flinches, he can't help it.
His desk is still the right height for him, but his favourite jeans which he pulled on this morning out of habit don't fit him like a denim hug like they used to. He's pretty much given up on footwear altogether for the time being, since he's been dodging Pepper's shoe shopping appointments, and she hasn't been on the east coast to reprimand him. Last night he showered only because he'd left it long enough that he smelled unwashed to his own nose. He spent ten minutes standing nude in front of the mirror, staring at his new shape, trying (failing) to accept it as his, no matter how temporarily. He's curious about his body (he can't help it, he's a scientist), but every time he gets up the balls to look at it head on, his brain just shies away.
“It's a weapon,” she continues. “I can show you how to use it.”
She's a carefully-crafted sculpture, from the loose curls spilling over her shoulder to the Prada heels on her feet. She's come dressed as Natalie for this conversation, and he understands the point she's trying to make.
He tentatively speculates, just teases out the idea in his mind, thinks about what saying yes would mean. About making this alien form into a doll, to be dressed up and primped and curled and painted into something he could wield against others. It's enough to make him feel ill, like the blood has blanched from his cheeks just from the very thought.
“I- I can't - no,” he stammers, turning away again.
There's a reflection in the chrome of the coffee maker, and he can see her nod, like she's confirming something she already knew.
“I can teach you how to fight,” she offers.
Steve's been avoiding sparring with him, even when Tony's wearing the suit. Happy's developed a condescending habit of going easy (easier) on him, and Clint, who used to fight Tony with the right combination of good-natured competition and nasty underhanded tactics just seems to be able to brush all of Tony's attacks aside now while barely breaking a sweat. Natasha, naturally, would have noticed all of this.
“Think about it,” Natasha says, before sashaying out to the elevator.
*
The first time they spar together, Natasha deliberately elbows him right in the boob. It's not the same flavour of pain as being kicked in the balls, but it's a special kind of hell, all the same.
When he gets his breath back, Natasha's just watching him with an impassive expression.
“Right, I get it, 'The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.' No?”
Natasha just shakes her head slightly, before taking a swallow of water.
“Lawrence of Arabia. Going on the list,” Tony says. “Top of the list, next time it's my turn to pick the movie. Thor'll love it.”
In the Avengers, they have an alien god, a super soldier who took an ice nap for the better part of a century, an incredibly gifted scientist who was indifferent to social trends and memes even before becoming a part-time rage monster and going on the lam, and an ex-Russian superspy who spent her formative years in some kind of diabolical blend of experimental testing lab and The Hunger Games. The considerable length of the list reflects this. Even Tony knows it's a sad state of affairs when the former carny, the paper-pusher (and not-so-secret comics nerd), and the billionaire boy genius are the resident fonts of knowledge for all things pop culture.
The sharp pain has levelled out to a dull thudding ache that's probably colouring into a bruise already. Tony brings his hands back up, and this time he's almost ready for the attack when it comes.
*
He hurts a lot, that evening, but it's in a sort-of-good way. He'd always been a scrappy, mouthy kid that was way smaller and younger than his academic peers, so he'd taken his fair share of beatings, but Natasha is some kind of master in using an opponent's momentum and force against them. She slaps him down on the canvas more times than he can count, but then she shows him how she did it, walks him through slowly, like they're rehearsing for a dance, then at half-speed, and then at full.
“Good,” she says finally, when Tony's winded. “Better.”
Tony downs a couple of Advil, then surprises himself by voluntarily going to the communal living area and curling up in his usual place on the sofa to nurse his hurt. It's not a movie night, but most of the team drifts in and out over the next couple of hours, mainly to snark at Coulson's taste in reality shows, since he'd called the remote. Tony could override him with JARVIS, but doesn't. Instead he sticks around, mostly because the banter is soothing, and Steve's increasingly horrified expression at what constitutes twenty-first century entertainment is priceless, as always.
He switches out his ice packs now and again for fresh ones, and he's sure he'll be one big, barely-moving pile of stiff muscles in the morning, but Natasha has a bruise on the edge of one cheekbone that he'll claim he put there deliberately, if asked, and that makes it worth it.
*
It's been ten days, and finally, SHIELD's big-shot magic expert flies in from parts unknown and looks Tony over, hemming and hawing and every now and again prodding him with a crystal that looks like it's come straight from from a New Age shop. The only comment the guy makes is 'very interesting', with no forthcoming information about how, and, more importantly, no details, or plan of attack, or projected time frame for turning Tony back, if such a thing is even possible.
So Tony's given himself a pass to be maudlin this evening. He's stayed down in his workshop, only emerging for the pizza delivery guy with his large pepperoni, and to retrieve the chocolate Pepper had left him in case the anti-menstruation plan failed. Now he's very full, feeling greasy and a little sick and more than a little drunk. He's chewing on yet another truffle when he types I wish I didn't have boobs into Google, which nets him thousands of hits, pretty much none of which are helpful and most of which are some kind of horrific insight into the false standards of female beauty in Western society, and man, he does not have the energy to deal with that right now.
Hiding my breasts is the next thing he tries. It's more calculated and less emo, and the results are more the kind of thing he's looking for. There are bunch of forum posts about being trans or a tomboy or nonbinary gender. He follows user recommendations from there to websites for binders, and after looking at catalogues and sizing charts for an hour or so, he orders half a dozen in a couple of different styles and colours.
When the order verification turn up in his inbox, Tony looks down at his chest directly for the first time and pokes at one of his boobs with a finger. “If I'm stuck with you for the foreseeable future, it's gonna be on my terms,” he says, then takes his woe chocolate with him up to bed.
*
“My brother has changed gender and form many times,” Thor announces, though it's not at his usual level of volume, so it probably counts as a discreet whisper.
They've been watching the Dodgers playing... some other team, but it's an ad break. Tony doesn't care about baseball. Thor is fascinated by it, but hasn't quite got a grasp of the rules yet. Steve watches baseball like he loves it, but with a kind of wince that suggests that in its modern form it regularly causes him great pain. Tony thinks that is fascinatingly masochistic behaviour from a national icon of purity and patriotism, and wonders if Steve's hiding some kind of kinky centre under all that red, white and blue bunting.
“I'm guessing that in his case it was voluntary,” Tony replies. It's not that he thinks that there's anything wrong with changing gender if you want to; he just thinks that if Loki did it, there'd be some sneaky, devious reason for it.
“Most times,” Thor agrees. “Such things seem to be much more inflexible, here in Midgard.”
“Yeah, usually, that kind of change requires a lifetime of hormone treatments and invasive surgery,” Tony says. He only did a cursory amount of Googling on transitioning, and promptly decided that he was really not ready emotionally to connect that with himself, no matter how alien he feels in his skin right now. Maybe he'll feel differently if this stretches out for months or years without a solution, but at this moment all he can bring himself think is that they're going to find the kid; they have to.
Thor nods, though Tony's not sure how much of that makes sense to a god. “Those who embark on such a voyage must consider the labours worth the final reward,” he remarks, and wow, that's much more profound and insightful than Tony had expected.
“You're right, they really must,” Tony agrees.
The game's back on again, so Thor subsides back into enthusiastic cheering on of both sides. Tony lets out a little sigh of relief, pushing all thoughts of an indefinite future stuck like this into a steel box in his head and very firmly welding it shut. He can have a proportionally appropriate (very large) drink later, when he doesn't have an audience to witness how very not okay he is with even the vaguest concept of that potential existence.
Instead of openly freaking out, he follows the plays on the screen, idly eating popcorn because it's there in front of him. He can't swear to it, because he never catches him out, but he thinks he feels Steve's eyes on him several times during the rest of the game. Not glaring, but thoughtful, like Tony's shifted his world view in some small but significant way.
*
“Thought you'd curled up in one of your cars and died of self-pity,” Bruce says, without looking up from the samples he's running.
“Don't sound so upset, Bruce. I'll start thinking you don't care,” Tony replies automatically, hopping up on a stool next to an empty bench.
“Well, I have to say, there's been a distinct lack of explosions in my life since you started being even more of a diva than usual,” Bruce says, pushing a sequence of buttons and watching the machine come to life with a whirr.
“What, even with Thor and Clint around?”
Bruce points to a little sign at the door: No weaponry past this point. “I'm house-training them,” he says.
“Harsh. And can't superspy assassins make weapons from anything? There's this rumour about Coulson and a paperclip that's either a lie or an epically terrifying truth, and Natasha won't tell me which.”
“Also, every day without something going boom, I bake cookies.”
“Congratulations, you've become a parent to an alien god and a circus performer. Also, you're like the opposite of fun.”
“Things that startle me are bad for the architecture,” Bruce says, though it's not like Tony's forgotten.
“And how is your rage-ier self?” Tony asks, leaning in to peer at a holoscreen, trying to make sense of the results without any context. He knows Bruce will explain it if he asks, but he kind of likes the challenge.
Bruce's tone, when he replies, is suspiciously light and casual. “I think he's sulking. He ran out of things to smash in his playroom last week, and there haven't been any missions, so he's not had much front time.”
There's a fairly long, pregnant pause while Tony digests that information.
“I am an asshole,” he states, slowly and precisely.
“The first step is admitting it,” Bruce says, and Tony abruptly realises that the whole time he's been here, Bruce hasn't looked at him properly once. Bruce isn't the most comfortable guy, socially, but even for him, that's unusual.
“You're mad at me.”
“Trust me, if I was mad, you'd know about it.”
“No, you're hurt. Shit.”
Tony scrubs his (too smooth, God, he hates shaving) face with his hands, tugs on his hair. Pulls out his phone and orders a whole bunch of junk for the playroom; car and truck bodies, tyres, recycled masonry, rebar and girders, and a dozen or so ethically farmed plantation pine trees in varying sizes. Schedules the cleaning crew to come in right now to sweep out the detritus of the last load of Hulk toys, and Christ, that stuff must be sawdust, powder and shrapnel by now. Bruce likely hasn't had a pressure release in days, and if the Hulk's been unhappy for longer than that, then he's got to be wired. Living in Manhattan, in a share-house with a bunch of other intense personalities, the playroom isn't a novelty, it's a necessity.
“Should have made all this automatic from the start, damn it, you shouldn't have to be relying on me to be here and be aware, I'm terrible at that, just ask Rhodey, I'm completely unreliable and an utterly unworthy friend,” Tony murmurs in a rush, under his breath.
It's not just empty words; he genuinely feels terrible. Bruce is dreadful at asking for what he needs; doesn't feel he has a right to, even when it's something critical to his well-being. Tony wonders how close Bruce had come this week to just quietly packing a bag and slipping out, vanishing for parts unknown.
He wonders how long it would have taken any of the rest of them to notice.
The playroom will take at least half a day to get ready; there's no way to physically clean it out and set it up any faster. Too many workers, and they all just get in each other's way in the fixed, subterranean space. And the trees can't be rushed; even if they're being lopped right this second, they've got to be loaded onto a truck and driven down from up-state.
“Right, okay, it's on its way, it's sorted, but now, right now, are you busy?” Tony asks.
“I'm always busy.”
“Think you can handle a flight?”
Bruce snorts. “Are you serious?”
“Not a plane, on the suit. We'll strap you in a harness on my back, so you don't have to stress about falling,” Tony says, then waggles his phone. “I shoot a message to a buddy of mine, we can get access to a proving ground not far from here.”
Bruce has actually turned to look at Tony, and underneath the tension, Tony can see the angle of his shoulders has loosened a little.
“How green you feeling?”
Bruce tilts his hand from side to side. “I've held him back in worse places,” he says.
“Afraid of heights? We could take one of the cars.”
Bruce actually cracks a smile. “I've seen you drive. And I once stepped out of a helicopter without a chute.”
“I'm sure I should be horrified right now, but I have a similar track record for personal health and safety,” Tony says.
*
Tony turns up for breakfast because he's got a craving for pancakes. Though it's technically almost time for lunch, Clint can be easily blackmailed to make pancakes and waffles at any hour. He sings a constant stream of country and western while he's doing it, but Tony's not one to criticise another's methods, especially not when they result in a stack of syrup-drenched goodness.
Tony's demolished about half of his frankly enormous serving by the time Steve wanders in. For a moment, he just stands and watches; Clint is flipping pancakes just using the pan because he's a tremendous show-off. Clint breaks off from his whistled harmonica solo to tell Steve to sit your ass down, you're always hungry, so Steve does, and that's when he looks at Tony properly for the first time.
“Your... um... have they... changed?” Steve asks. He's impressively red, but he's holding Tony's gaze.
Tony awards himself a point.
“No, they're still there. It's a binder. Like a girdle, but for the upper half,” Tony says, not mocking, because he honestly didn't think Steve would be this straightforward about it, and he respects bluntness. “You've got questions, Cap, I can see it. You're practically vibrating in your seat. Consider this your free pass; ask away.”
“Isn't it uncomfortable?”
Clint shoves a stack of pancakes in front of Steve, nudges the condiments closer, and shuffles back to make more. Steve snags two bananas and starts slicing them neatly with the edge of his spoon onto his plate.
“Depends what kind of comfort you're talking about. It's a little warmer than just wearing a regular undershirt, but the fabric breathes enough that I'm not sweating too badly. It's tight, so it restricts my breathing a little. My lung capacity is decreased anyway because the reactor takes up room in my chest cavity, so I can't wear it if I'm going to be exerting myself, unless I want to faint like a tight-laced Victorian maiden. I've got a couple of handkerchiefs down the front to stop the edges of the reactor housing digging in me, but I think I'm going to have to try medical tape or something, because they keep shifting when I move. I can only have it on for a few hours at a time without it getting seriously painful, so I can't go out anywhere with it on unless I'm going to be back home fairly soon or I take something less restrictive to change into with me. So, physically, it's going to take some getting used to.”
“Then, why? If it hurts you, why not just, um, leave it the way it is?” Steve's finished cutting his bananas, but he hasn't started eating, even though he burns through calories at a ridiculous rate that puts teenagers the world over to shame.
“Emotionally and psychologically, it's a godsend.” Tony cuts off another mouthful, chews it, swallows. “I can move my arms pretty much the way I used to, so I'm not knocking them against my chest all the time, which really hurts, by the way. I can fit into most of my shirts again. I still don't look like me, but I'm not flinching every time I see my chest out of the corner of my eye like I was. I don't hate myself as much.”
Tony abruptly shuts up, then, because he's veering close to issues he'd really rather not talk about with Captain America, over pancakes, while Clint wails Jolene in the background. He's still angry, of course he's angry, but for once, he's not angry at himself. He's angry at that kid, at SHIELD for being useless, at magic itself for existing in the face of science, and if he starts venting his spleen about that, he might never stop. He can't fix any of that, but engineering a solution to a problem is something he's been doing since he could walk, and that's precisely why the binder appeals to him.
Steve doesn't push him for more, just reaches over to grab the syrup.
*
Tony has three pairs of shoes in carry-bags. They're not the half-dozen or so pairs that Pepper was nudging him to buy, but he now has Converse and trainers and a pair of black Italian leather dress shoes that will match the suit he finally went to get measured for. With the addition of the binder, his upper measurements aren't hugely different, so it's just minor adjustments to the trousers and around the waist and hips of the jacket, and he'll look as close to himself as he can get without a system restore to his previous version.
The Converse are Iron Man branded; he couldn't help himself.
He parks and gets out, claps for the big lights and his music to come on, high-fives Dummy when he walks past just because he's feeling okay with the world right now, and stops, abruptly, when he sees the super soldier sitting on his couch.
“JARVIS said you were almost home, that I could wait,” Steve explains, and he sounds... odd.
“Yeah, you're fine, what's up?” Tony dumps the bags, pokes a little at the coding he'd left running, then grabs a bottle of water from the mini-fridge.
“I'm not a bigot,” Steve says, suddenly.
“I never said you were,” Tony immediately replies, because it's true. Backwards, and full of antiquated morality, yes, bigoted, no.
“I went on Google?” Steve says, like it's a question. “I wanted to understand better. And there was this picture people said was really good, and I found it on Netflix. About this guy called Brandon.”
Suddenly, the frayed-around-the-edges look makes a hell of a lot of sense.
“Jesus, Cap,” Tony says. “You really went and jumped in the deep end, there, buddy.” Because, of course, Steve just goes looking for the basics on gender and identity in the twenty-first century on the internet and ends up watching Boys Don't Cry by accident.
Tony grabs another bottle of water, then digs in the cupboard next to it for the box of chocolate truffles he bought when he ate his way through the one Pepper gave him. They're French, delicious, surprisingly cheap, and come in a convenient one kilogram box, which Tony thinks is probably going to be needed right now. “Here.”
Steve takes them, digs into the box and comes out with a few that he eats, neatly, one at a time, licking the cocoa powder from his fingertips.
Tony slouches down on the sofa next to him and sighs. “I can't claim to be an expert, this isn't something I've had to live with my whole life or anything, but there are people out there that just want to hurt people who are different, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seriously thought about that over the last few weeks.” He snags a handful of truffles, pops a few in his mouth, talks while he's chewing even though he knows it drives Steve crazy. Maybe because it does. “There's a reason I've stayed in here, up till now, stuck around you guys. You're a known quantity.”
“I went to war,” Steve says, finally. “I saw things, heard about things, later. Men didn't tend to tell me, but I'd hear anyway, I've got ears. There was this village in France, we went through a day after another Allied troop. I saw the face of this girl, when we arrived...” Steve stops, swallows water. “War makes some men into animals. Changes them in ways you can't expect. This... this wasn't like that.”
“No.” Tony eats another truffle, dips his hand into the box for more. “But it's just as ugly, just as horrific. You look at the worst sins of humanity, and it's like holding up a dark mirror, showing you the potential for evil in yourself. I used to make weapons,” Tony says, and for a moment he's back in the desert, bleeding out through an armoured vest into the dust, “and I didn't know what that meant until I saw it in person, until I met people who were killed by them in front of me. I've got things I can't atone for, no matter how hard I try. But this isn't your sin, Cap, no matter what you saw in the war. It isn't your burden to take.”
“I had to stop, a few times,” Steve admits, “but I watched it all.”
“You didn't have to do that,” Tony says.
Steve shakes his head a little, still staring straight forward. “I felt like I had to. It wasn't about me. It's bigger than that. I knew that, long before the end; that I had to witness it.” His voice is shaky, like he's just holding on to his composure.
“Punishing yourself doesn't make you a better person. Believe me, I've tried,” Tony says.
“But how can I say I fight for every American, if I don't even know what that means?” Steve asks, and Tony really doesn't have an answer for that. He steals a truffle or two, then slips the hand closest to Steve into one of Steve's own, and squeezes gently.
“I'm not saying you should shut your eyes to bad things that happen in this world. But you're allowed to protect yourself,” Tony says.
Steve lets his eyes slide closed and exhales deeply, like he's bone tired.
They sit there for the better part of an hour. They don't talk much, but Steve's head ends up on Tony's shoulder, and he doesn't let go of Tony's hand.
*
“I want a party,” Tony begins, without so much as a hello. He's not even really looking at the video call - he's twiddling with design for Hulk's panties instead. The test run on the proving ground had been a roaring success; the fabric had held up beautifully, and shrunk back down without visible tensile exhaustion when Hulk had smashed enough to satisfy himself. What had given in places were the seams, so Tony's designing a circular loom that can work the fibre in the round rather than flat. When it's built, Bruce will have the smoothest and stretchiest seamless modesty garment ever created, based on his own exact measurements.
“It's not your birthday for another five months,” Pepper says.
“In just under a week it'll have been a month since this happened,” Tony says, gesturing at himself. “I deserve a party.”
“We literally just finished the restoration work on the Tower-”
“I know, it looks great in here. You can barely see where all the holes in the floor were.”
“- and I'm not sure that that kind of expense is the right sort of message to be sending out when the city is still rebuilding-”
“Not that kind of party, Jesus, Pep. Just some food, some booze, maybe karaoke-”
“- plus, we haven't really gone public on your current condition, and that's going to make the invite list difficult-”
“No list, Pepper. Just you, and me, and Rhodey, and the team, and maybe a handful of the Men in Black. I promise. Just a small private party so we can let our hair down. No invite list, no press, no dress code. Oooh, unless we make it a slumber party. Everyone in pyjamas. Though that'll be awkward for Coulson, because I'm pretty sure all his pyjamas have Captain America on them. And I think Thor sleeps in the buff, so we might have to at least make him put on a robe.”
“No pyjamas.”
“Wow, ever better,” Tony smirks. “Good thing it's summer, or we might get cold on the balcony. It's breezy out there.”
“No slumber party,” Pepper says firmly, but he can see the smile dancing around the edges of her mouth.
“I know you're just saying that to dash my hopes of seeing you and Natasha having a pillow fight. I will pay you both money to see that.”
“Maybe I should ask her what she thinks about that,” Pepper says, like she's pondering it.
“Please don't. In fact, forget I ever said that. I value my limbs,” Tony says quickly. “You should value my limbs, too, I'm technically your employer. Do you think Fury has pyjamas? I think they're leather.”
“I think you're thinking too much about it. What's this about a new charity?” Pepper holds up a print-out in front of the camera.
“It's Steve's idea. Well, I say that, I mentioned the possibility of it, and his face lit up like I'd offered him a puppy of his very own. Could you say no to that face? I couldn't. You dash Captain America's hopes and dreams, and the terrorists have already won.”
“I don't know that the Board-”
“Screw the Board. This is a personal thing, not a Stark Industries thing. I'm a billionaire, and Steve's got seventy years worth of back pay, and he doesn't want to spend it on caviar and fast cars like a normal person. There are whole trading communities that have evolved online for guys to pass on their old binders to other guys that need them, because they can't afford to buy them, and that pisses me off. They're a fucking necessity.
“And Steve, he had a rude introduction to transgender issues the other day, blame Netflix, not me, I had nothing to do with it.” Tony waggles a finger in the direction of the feed, to emphasise his innocence, though he probably doesn't so much as dent Pepper's suspicion that he's traumatising a national icon. “He did some poking around online after and got het up and annoyed about the red tape and expenses for gender affirmation surgery. He's been Captain Bitchy ever since; all 'this is an injustice' and 'we have a duty to do something'. It's beautiful. The GOP should totally get him on board promoting health care reform; all those entitled assholes would end up opening their wallets to pay for it themselves. So, do I get my party?”
“Fine, yes. You can have a party.”
“Yes,” Tony says, reaching out a fist for Dummy to bump.
“No suits; I remember That Birthday Party-”
“I thought we agreed never to bring that up again. I was dying, I was distraught.”
“No strippers-”
“Spoilsport.”
“No nudity whatsoever.”
“Fine. Are you going to come?”
“Yes, I'll come. Will that be all, Mr Stark?” she asks, but it's teasing, rather than strictly formal.
“That will be all, Miss Potts. Go run my company so I don't have to,” Tony says with a smile and a little wave.
“I always do,” Pepper says, and closes the link.
*
Part Two ->
Author: iamshadow
Fandom: The Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Pairings: Gen, Pre-slash Steve/Tony
Rating: R
Word Count: 18,679
Summary: He's become so used to being Iron Man and an Avenger, to battling Doombots and aliens and evil scientists trying to take over the world, that he'd forgotten that sometimes people want to do harm to you, personally, when you've just snuck out of the Tower to get mid-afternoon doughnuts.
Content: Genderswap, gender dysphoria, body issues, self esteem issues, non-consensual drugging, references to rape, references to hate crime, references to transphobia, references to war crimes, trope subversion.
A/N: Written for my Free Square of Round One of trope-bingo.
This story was partly born out of frustration at depictions of genderswap in fic as being cracky, sexy funtimes, or as a vehicle to slash. I wanted to write Tony struggling with gender dysphoria, with the journey his character takes being the prime focus, rather than a vehicle to a ship. So, this story has subtle hints of changing feelings, but that's not the point of it.
This is also the longest one shot I've ever written. \o/
Enormous thank yous to my gender betas, nathaniel_hp and kazaera, and my story betas, 51stcenturyfox and tree00faery. You're all awesome, and this story is a hundred times better because of you.
I've gotten too complacent, is what Tony thinks when he's bailed up in a side street. He's become so used to being Iron Man and an Avenger, to battling Doombots and aliens and evil scientists trying to take over the world, that he'd forgotten that sometimes people want to do harm to you, personally, when you've just snuck out of the Tower to get mid-afternoon doughnuts.
But it's not even some big tough guy, it's some little punk with acne and awkward, gangly limbs, and Tony can't resist the reflex to laugh and mock.
“You and whose army?” he asks, before he thinks.
The kid gets mad, and Tony is suddenly very aware of the gun the kid is now holding, especially when it glows a weird purple colour and there's a strong smell of ozone.
“Fucking magic,” Tony says vehemently, and legs it. He doesn't get far.
*
When he first wakes, he's only aware of how much he aches. Not that he ever gets out of a battle in the suit without bruises, but this is an all-over, pervasive hurt, like he's gone on a three day endurance hike then had a bout of the flu on top of that. He's groggy and weak, and it's a struggle to get his eyes pointed in the right direction, let alone focussed.
Pepper's smiling down at him like she's trying not to cry. That can only mean badness.
“'m I dying?” he asks, and his voice sounds all weird. Maybe he is ill.
Pepper shakes her head slowly and smiles a little wider. “No,” she says.
“Good,” he says. “Dying sucks. You get really mad at me when I do that.”
“You're fine. I'm not mad at you,” she reassures him, petting his hand gently.
“Well, now I know you're lying to make me feel better,” he argues. “You're always mad at me for something.”
He drifts back to sleep before he hears her reply.
*
The second time he wakes, he's alone. He's alert enough to sit up a bit, and to check under the blanket for signs of major injury, because his body feels weirdly misshapen, like sneaky SHIELD doctors rummaged around and put everything back slightly out-of-place.
“Um,” he hears himself say aloud, because really, screaming isn't his style, and he's a bit too shocked to think to do it.
“Ah,” Pepper says. She's standing in the doorway with some kind of soy chai thing in her hand; he can smell the spice. “About that.”
“You said I was fine,” he accuses.
“Well, they've run a bunch of tests and you're healthy, physically, and-”
“Fine implies situation normal, Pepper. Nothing about this is normal-”
“- apart from sleeping for about thirty hours, and a slightly elevated heart-rate for a little while -”
“Breasts, Pepper. I have a rack that did not come as standard, and though I haven't checked yet, I can tell that there have been some modifications down in the plumbing department that I really did not ask for-”
“-you're a perfectly healthy woman,” Pepper finishes.
Silence falls, and Pepper hovers, like she's not sure she'd be welcomed closer. Tony heaves a heavy, frustrated sigh, and sees his breasts rise and fall on the edge of his peripheral vision.
“This is bullshit,” he pronounces.
*
He checks himself out, though he's sure that SHIELD's doctors would love to have him around longer to poke and prod at. When he's convincing them to let him go, he's careful to be loud and obnoxious with a heavy side of charming, because he wants to go home, but he doesn't want to antagonise them enough to hate him, just in case he starts growing horns or something and has to come back.
After he has his release papers in hand, he focuses his skills of persuasion on convincing Pepper that as much as she'd like for him to drive home with Happy in the limo, the suit is the best option.
“Sure, by all means, I'll walk out right into the arms of the paps and get labelled as 'mystery woman in Tony Stark's life', and they can all speculate about how knocked up I am. Feel free to spend the next however long putting out the fires from that.”
It's far from subtle, but the frown line between Pepper's brow deepens, and the next time she appears, she's got his suitcase armour. He's already shrugged out of the hospital gown and into the street clothes he'd been wearing before his unpleasant journey into the world of non-consensual body modification. They don't feel as comfortable as he remembered. His t-shirt is tight across his chest, and his boxer briefs in particular are a bit saggy and empty in the front in a way he doesn't care to dwell on.
“We'll have to talk to your stylist,” she says.
“No,” he says.
“We could just-”
“No.”
“But it could be-”
“Not interested.”
“You can't keep wearing those,” she says, and she's sort of right; he at least needs to get a belt or something.
“Just get my new measurements from JARVIS when he bioscans me,” Tony says, and then he's running through a checklist of Things To Do in his mind. Getting JARVIS to recognise him is going to be a number one priority, primarily because everything sensitive is biometrically locked to him, and man, that is going to be a pain in the ass to circumvent.
“If we spin this right, it could be really good PR,” Pepper says.
“This is temporary,” he says firmly, though he doesn't know that, and knows that she knows he doesn't know that. “I don't want to look cute, I don't want to rock a pantsuit or a power jacket, and I don't want to learn to walk in heels. Just get me what I like to wear, in the right sizes.”
“Fine. I'll order you some new clothes and talk to your tailor about alterations. Will you at least shave-”
“What are you, the lady-shaver crusader?” he snaps.
“-the goatee, Tony. You should probably think about getting rid of the beard.”
There's a joke somewhere in the back of his brain that fails to form enough to say aloud. He rubs at the bristle on his chin. It's comfortingly familiar, but Pepper's right, it probably looks weird on him right now.
“Right, yeah. I'll do that.”
*
He takes off from the roof of the hospital after having gone through half a dozen code verifications and explanations and a DNA swab to prove he's himself to the HUD and JARVIS. Ten minutes later, he's staring at his face in his bathroom mirror. It's the same, but somehow different, like someone's taken his features and tweaked them in Photoshop. He doesn't look below the shoulders. He saw plenty when he was changing in the hospital room, and right now he's got enough to process.
He cuts himself twice before switching to the electric shaver he hardly ever uses. It's a lot more forgiving when he forgets and slips into muscle memory, trying to shave a jawline that's subtly different from the one he's been grooming since he was fourteen.
It's not a pretty face, he decides. His chin and brow and nose are still too strong, his hair too short, his skin not fine enough. His jaw is clenched tight; he looks stubborn and pissed off and punchy. Feisty, he would have drawled before, if met with such a face, which just sort of makes him want to punch himself, and that really isn't helping with the level of confusion he's feeling.
“Man up,” he murmurs to himself, and though his voice is a deep alto, it's not deep enough, and the joke falls flat.
*
He decides to avoid the communal areas and goes straight down to the workshop. JARVIS is his usual competent self, but the bots are in a bit of a tizzy. Dummy, in particular, seems perplexed by his new Sir-But-Not-Sir designation.
“I swear to God, if you poke me one more time, I'm giving you to Clint to use for target practice,” Tony says, when he sees Dummy's arm creeping up slowly, out of the corner of his eye. “Just go make a smoothie or something.”
“He's just worried about you,” Steve says, and Tony jumps, because someone should teach that man how to make more noise when he walks.
He must have said some of that aloud, because Steve frowns and even glances down at his feet.
“He's not worried, he hasn't got the programming to worry,” Tony says, because sure, he talks to his bots, but he never makes the mistake of assuming they think and emote the same way he does. “He is curious. He's a learning bot, he learns, it's what he's made for. This,” he gestures down at his body without looking, “is outside of his experience. So he wants to learn all about it. I give him an inch and he'll be goosing me every time I bend over.” He almost says and who could blame him out of habit, but bites his tongue.
“We're worried about you,” Steve counters, and it's earnest enough to make Tony throw on his widest, most camera-friendly smile.
“I've been told by a variety of reliable medical professionals that I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine,” Steve replies, then obviously realises what he just said, and flushes a deep pink. “I didn't... I mean, you do, obviously, very... You just don't seem-”
Tony raises a sarcastic eyebrow. Steve's blush spreads down his throat and across the tips of his ears. It's kind of mesmerising.
“You can talk to me, you know. About anything. I'll be a gent... I mean, I'll be professional,” Steve doggedly continues.
“Oh, my God, you're hopeless. Adorable, but really, seriously, terrible. Is it the girl thing, or the emotions thing? Or do I just represent some perfect storm of both?”
“I mean it. You're one of my men... um? Team. You're part of my team.”
“Rogers, you do know that underneath this... temporary packaging,” he waves his hand over his chest; Steve very obviously concentrates on not looking below Tony's eyes, “I'm still the same guy you regularly want to punch in the face, right?”
“I'm getting that,” Steve says, tensely.
*
Late in the evening, Pepper sweeps into the workshop like a very organised tornado.
“Okay, your new wardrobe's been delivered, only casual clothing so far. I brought a change down with me, just in case.” She hands him a garment bag. “The new measurements have been sent to Andre for your emergency suit, fitting on Friday, that's the soonest he can get it ready, but there aren't any events that you can't politely decline happening in the next few days anyway, so that should be fine.
“Shoes, we should probably handle in person,” she says next, and he can't help rolling his eyes. “I know, but your size has changed enough that you need new shoes. All the measurements in the world won't tell you if they're comfortable, and my time is too valuable to waste ordering half a dozen pairs in different sizes and widths hoping that one of them will fit and that you'll actually deign to wear them. A pair of Converse, a pair of running shoes, black and brown dress shoes and maybe a pair of slippers and I promise that will be all.”
“My slippers still fit; they're lambswool boots,” he says as he divests the garment bag of its contents.
Pepper fiddles with her phone, obviously ticking 'slippers' off the list, but then she murmurs maybe some loafers, too, under her breath.
“That's... a lot of underwear,” says Tony, having gotten deep enough into the bag to see them.
“The lower half; there's a pair of your regular boxer briefs, if they're comfortable enough, but there are a couple of other options just in case they're not. The upper half...there are a few different styles of bra because I didn't know what would work with the arc reactor.”
“...right. Thanks. I'll just- ”
“Okay, if you need anything-”
“- I'll call you,” he says, then darts into the bathroom to spend twenty awkward minutes wrestling with tiny hooks and eyelets.
Tony's pretty good at compartmentalisation, never mind what a mental health professional might say. He's faced down terrorists, his board of directors, the United States government, and his psychopathic father-figure, all without showing fear. He just has to get this done, as fast as he possibly can, so he breathes deep and builds a careful, emotional barricade between himself and the body he's wrangling into submission. It's not mine, they're not real, he tells himself on a loop, pushing down the feelings of alienness and repulsion, even. He flew a nuke into an alien wormhole; if he talks himself up enough, he can do anything.
He very quickly ends up tossing aside everything but the sports bra. All of the others are uncomfortable in some way or another, most of which have nothing to do with unexpectedly itchy lace or startling (unwanted) cleavage, but everything to do with the night light in his chest. The sports bra is made of elastic, is easily pulled on over his head, and has no boning to scratch unpleasantly on the reactor or rub on the scar tissue around the housing.
It also flattens his bust out to a degree that he can finally look himself in the mirror without flinching.
Pepper is gone when he emerges, but there's a small white box of pills on his desk and an explanatory note as to why. Because of course, right now, he's a perfectly healthy woman. Apparently if he takes them, one white pill per day, and ignores the red pills, he won't have to deal with it, which is just fine by him, but at the end, there's a just in case postscript telling him that there's Kotex and a heat pack in his medicine cabinet and a box of chocolate truffles in his snack cupboard.
Tony takes his first pill with a slug of scotch, which he's certain is against the advice of doctors and pharmacists everywhere, but he's had a day, and he's got to the point where the glass in his hand is the only thing stopping him putting his fist through a wall.
*
Day two, and Tony peels himself off the workshop sofa and stumbles towards the coffee machine. His mouth tastes like alcoholic regret and old socks. The lingering hangover is slightly more substantial than he would have expected, given the amount he drank, so he drowns his traitorous liver in blessed java until his eyes focus properly.
He may be upright, but he doesn't have the brain for invention and innovation yet, so he turns to his comfort engineering of choice - tinkering with the hot rod.
After the fourth nut that he has to gasp and struggle to undo, he calls Dummy over and spends the afternoon souping up his servos instead, improving his grip strength, precision, and overall lifting and pulling power.
“Pinch my ass, or any other part of me, now, and I really will break you down and make you into a windmill for the miniature golf course,” Tony warns when he reboots him, shaking a socket wrench in front of Dummy's viewing lens. “You've got some serious juice, buddy, and you'll hurt me.”
He throws together a quick drill and simulation program for Dummy to run to get him acquainted with his new upgrades, and puts a series of strength and dexterity tasks on a few different surfaces for him to play with when he's up to speed.
“JARVIS?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Record how Dummy does, make a list of weak spots and possible improvements. I'll watch the playback later. I'm going to the gym.”
Because although he's in a share-house with an Asgardian god and a super soldier, he'll be damned if he's going to be calling on them to loosen things for him.
*
By the time he's worked out for about two hours, he feels almost human. He's sweaty and hot and aching. He's also determined that the sports bra is hideously misnamed. Sure, it keeps them from bouncing as much as they would if untethered, but even just while he was warming up he lost count of the amount of times he elbowed them or knocked them, or that they just plain got in the damn way. They move, all the time, and if he's not concentrating on not letting them interfere, they're enough of an unpleasant, disorienting distraction that he's almost a danger to himself. He lasts all of thirty seconds on the treadmill before he nearly falls on his face. He'd been so abruptly aware of the sensation of his new (wrong) flesh in motion, that he'd stopped in shock, and forgotten to grab the rail to steady himself. This happens about four times in a row, before he gives it up as a loss. The weights, he dismisses without even trying them. He eventually settles on the exercise bike because he can keep his body leaning forward, his arms braced on the crossbar, and his upper body barely moves at all.
He's stretching, cooling down, when Coulson walks in, so Tony takes a break and chugs water while Coulson talks. Two bottles later, he's rehydrated enough to cut in.
“How hard can it be to find a kid running around mugging people with magical weaponry in New York?”
“Hard,” answers Coulson.
“There's CCTV in every shop and on every fucking corner. You can't tell me you've got nothing,” Tony says, and hates how much it sounds like he's whining.
“He used some kind of electrical field generator to distort the input. We're working on it, but right now all we've got is snow. It's possible there's something to find; if that's the case, we'll find it, but if the device was magical...” he shrugs slightly, his meaning clear.
There might be nothing to find. Fucking magic.
“Right now, we're monitoring emergency services for reports of similar incidents.”
“What, no nice, shiny, magic-detecting toys? What are you, the NYPD, now? That must bite.”
Coulson just smiles his placid little smile. “Flag your credit cards. You never know, he might get greedy and buy a flatscreen.”
*
I'm cooking dinner. Be there or answer to The Other Guy.
After Steve's awkward attempt at caring and sharing the night before, the team had very pointedly given him some space, probably on Cap's orders. Barring Avenging or hospital stays, he couldn't remember such a prolonged period of time without social interaction since they'd all moved in. There was always someone turning up with something for repair, an ongoing text conversation on his phone, or, at the very least, an email full of cat gifs from Thor in his inbox.
Bruce is clearly less inclined to let him hide away in his Science Cave, which smacks of hypocrisy, or possibly treason. Surely there's some kind of Anti-Social Science-Bros Code that applies here.
Tony is tempted to message back, Can't make it, still have boobs, but he has the feeling that the reply would be something along the lines of Cry harder, come back when you've trashed multiple cities on four different continents. I'm plating up in 20 mins.
He debates showering but doesn't think he can take that in addition to socialisation, so he just deodorises profusely and layers on an under-shirt, a t-shirt and an enormous, long-sleeved, quilted plaid thing that wound up in his laundry bag by accident. He's pretty sure it belongs to Thor. He folds the cuffs up about three times before his hands are visible, pulls on his (red exterior, bright yellow interior) lambswool slippers and mashes the elevator button for the communal living space.
Tony's timed it perfectly; he's arrived after the food has finished cooking but before the dinner's started, so there's no awkward waiting around and he's not barging in to find everyone sitting down. He grabs a plate and loads it up with curry, daal, and naan, then scoots off to the closest thing to a corner the open living area has, where he can be as far from the focal point of the gathering as possible but still see the TV. The menu screen for Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey is looping, which is just adorable because it means that someone actually bought a physical copy, and it looks like DVD quality, not even Blu-ray. He didn't realise he even had a DVD player still hooked up to the home theatre system.
“Whose night is it?” he mumbles through a mouthful.
“Mine,” says Clint, from his perch on the back of the frankly enormous sofa.
Tony supposes he should be grateful Clint didn't choose Mulan, or something. That's just the kind of smart-ass thing Clint would do.
Actually, come to think of it, Tony might have been more comfortable if he had. The ongoing trolling war is something he's come to rely on as a constant. If Clint, of all people, is going to try and be nice to him, he'll be tempted to lock himself in the workshop permanently, even at the sacrifice of really good Indian food.
“I'm sure I can dig up Pretty In Pink, though, if this is too butch for you,” Clint cracks, and Tony can't help but smile. He's certain that somewhere behind them Steve is on the verge of losing his shit. It's perfect.
“I'm more a Sixteen Candles kinda guy,” he replies, and hears Steve make a tiny choked sound right on cue. Everyone's got their food and wandered in, now, so he leans forward, snags a giant bottle of Mountain Dew from Thor, and tells JARVIS to roll it.
*
Days three, four and five pass in a kind of blur. There are no more magical muggings and there's no movement on his stolen cards, so law enforcement, and SHIELD, by extension, are utterly useless. On the plus side, there's nothing to Avenge, so he doesn't have to have the 'you're not fucking benching me' argument with Steve that he fears will be inevitable should anything actually arise. He's had the fight so many times in his head now that he's actually designed a points system for it.
Tony gives himself points every time he gets Steve to euphemistically refer to the boobs.
He gives Steve points every time Steve retains his dignity and Tony gives in to the urge to pull out the 'you're just threatened by me because your penis is tiny' argument. It's a cheap and nasty shot, and he knows from JARVIS's bioscans of the team that it's patently untrue.
The hypothetical arguing is also channelling some of the anger and frustration he's very legitimately feeling into non-workshop-smashing avenues, which he thinks means he's being particularly mature and sensible (for him), even while he's mentally losing points for deciding to get JARVIS to prank Steve as petty revenge for losing the latest round. Using JARVIS always counts as a forfeit, but there's something immensely satisfying in imagining using him for evil. Maybe that makes his morality a few shades darker than is strictly appropriate for a superhero, but Tony figures that so long as he doesn't actually follow through, he's not in grave danger of slipping over to the Dark Side.
The part of his brain that isn't waging war on Steve is inventing stuff, because that's what Tony does when he's running away from things he'd rather not deal with and Pepper's not there to redirect him into being social. (She's off doing mystical CEO things that he probably should have been doing when he was CEO, but didn't.) There are five new patent applications ready to go, including one for awesome, self-maintaining water pumps for developing countries, and one for a kind of super elastic fabric. He hasn't got a catchy name for it yet, but he hopes Bruce will consent to wear the next time he Hulks out to test its stretchiness. Anything that keeps The Other Guy's little guy under wraps is a good thing for public decency and Bruce's self-esteem, and while Tony generally doesn't give a shit about public decency, Bruce's self-esteem is a fragile flower that he's been nurturing in his own dysfunctional way. If the fabric works, it'll make the folks on the fyeahhulkpeen Tumblr sad, but Tony figures they'll find something new to be pervy about pretty quickly.
The armour doesn't need any changes, because if it was too rigid to accommodate fluctuations in body mass, he'd have to mod it every time he ate a whole pizza by himself or went without eating solid food for a week while hyper-focusing on coding or design. He ends up playing with it anyway, because the armour is never finished, and there's always a new model with better everything to be made and used and probably trashed and then replaced with another, newer, shinier model. He puts the latest design on, and from the outside, reflected in the glass of the wall, he looks just the same as he always does. There are no unexpected curves that still shock him every fucking morning, and it's an almost dizzying relief.
Maybe I should just stay like this, stay in the armour, he thinks, and it's tempting, it's so tempting, like that one more drink, just one, that he works on resisting every day with mixed success, and he has to take the suit off, right then, or he won't have the strength to keep walking around without it.
Dummy rolls up with a smoothie, and it's a distraction - not a big one, but enough that he's grateful - so he stands there petting that stupid robot arm for ages, his own arm straight out to the side so that he doesn't brush the side of his breast with his inner arm with every movement.
*
Natasha is perched on Tony’s workbench when he stumbles out of the elevator, half-awake, hoping JARVIS has set the coffee to percolate.
“No,” he says, even though she hasn't said a word.
There's a tiny, steaming cup of espresso waiting for him. He downs it like a shot, then pushes the button for another.
Two shots later, when he feels more human, he turns back around, his fourth cup cradled in his slightly-too-small hand.
“You're still here,” he says. “Why are you still here?”
“Your body,” she begins, and he flinches, he can't help it.
His desk is still the right height for him, but his favourite jeans which he pulled on this morning out of habit don't fit him like a denim hug like they used to. He's pretty much given up on footwear altogether for the time being, since he's been dodging Pepper's shoe shopping appointments, and she hasn't been on the east coast to reprimand him. Last night he showered only because he'd left it long enough that he smelled unwashed to his own nose. He spent ten minutes standing nude in front of the mirror, staring at his new shape, trying (failing) to accept it as his, no matter how temporarily. He's curious about his body (he can't help it, he's a scientist), but every time he gets up the balls to look at it head on, his brain just shies away.
“It's a weapon,” she continues. “I can show you how to use it.”
She's a carefully-crafted sculpture, from the loose curls spilling over her shoulder to the Prada heels on her feet. She's come dressed as Natalie for this conversation, and he understands the point she's trying to make.
He tentatively speculates, just teases out the idea in his mind, thinks about what saying yes would mean. About making this alien form into a doll, to be dressed up and primped and curled and painted into something he could wield against others. It's enough to make him feel ill, like the blood has blanched from his cheeks just from the very thought.
“I- I can't - no,” he stammers, turning away again.
There's a reflection in the chrome of the coffee maker, and he can see her nod, like she's confirming something she already knew.
“I can teach you how to fight,” she offers.
Steve's been avoiding sparring with him, even when Tony's wearing the suit. Happy's developed a condescending habit of going easy (easier) on him, and Clint, who used to fight Tony with the right combination of good-natured competition and nasty underhanded tactics just seems to be able to brush all of Tony's attacks aside now while barely breaking a sweat. Natasha, naturally, would have noticed all of this.
“Think about it,” Natasha says, before sashaying out to the elevator.
*
The first time they spar together, Natasha deliberately elbows him right in the boob. It's not the same flavour of pain as being kicked in the balls, but it's a special kind of hell, all the same.
When he gets his breath back, Natasha's just watching him with an impassive expression.
“Right, I get it, 'The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.' No?”
Natasha just shakes her head slightly, before taking a swallow of water.
“Lawrence of Arabia. Going on the list,” Tony says. “Top of the list, next time it's my turn to pick the movie. Thor'll love it.”
In the Avengers, they have an alien god, a super soldier who took an ice nap for the better part of a century, an incredibly gifted scientist who was indifferent to social trends and memes even before becoming a part-time rage monster and going on the lam, and an ex-Russian superspy who spent her formative years in some kind of diabolical blend of experimental testing lab and The Hunger Games. The considerable length of the list reflects this. Even Tony knows it's a sad state of affairs when the former carny, the paper-pusher (and not-so-secret comics nerd), and the billionaire boy genius are the resident fonts of knowledge for all things pop culture.
The sharp pain has levelled out to a dull thudding ache that's probably colouring into a bruise already. Tony brings his hands back up, and this time he's almost ready for the attack when it comes.
*
He hurts a lot, that evening, but it's in a sort-of-good way. He'd always been a scrappy, mouthy kid that was way smaller and younger than his academic peers, so he'd taken his fair share of beatings, but Natasha is some kind of master in using an opponent's momentum and force against them. She slaps him down on the canvas more times than he can count, but then she shows him how she did it, walks him through slowly, like they're rehearsing for a dance, then at half-speed, and then at full.
“Good,” she says finally, when Tony's winded. “Better.”
Tony downs a couple of Advil, then surprises himself by voluntarily going to the communal living area and curling up in his usual place on the sofa to nurse his hurt. It's not a movie night, but most of the team drifts in and out over the next couple of hours, mainly to snark at Coulson's taste in reality shows, since he'd called the remote. Tony could override him with JARVIS, but doesn't. Instead he sticks around, mostly because the banter is soothing, and Steve's increasingly horrified expression at what constitutes twenty-first century entertainment is priceless, as always.
He switches out his ice packs now and again for fresh ones, and he's sure he'll be one big, barely-moving pile of stiff muscles in the morning, but Natasha has a bruise on the edge of one cheekbone that he'll claim he put there deliberately, if asked, and that makes it worth it.
*
It's been ten days, and finally, SHIELD's big-shot magic expert flies in from parts unknown and looks Tony over, hemming and hawing and every now and again prodding him with a crystal that looks like it's come straight from from a New Age shop. The only comment the guy makes is 'very interesting', with no forthcoming information about how, and, more importantly, no details, or plan of attack, or projected time frame for turning Tony back, if such a thing is even possible.
So Tony's given himself a pass to be maudlin this evening. He's stayed down in his workshop, only emerging for the pizza delivery guy with his large pepperoni, and to retrieve the chocolate Pepper had left him in case the anti-menstruation plan failed. Now he's very full, feeling greasy and a little sick and more than a little drunk. He's chewing on yet another truffle when he types I wish I didn't have boobs into Google, which nets him thousands of hits, pretty much none of which are helpful and most of which are some kind of horrific insight into the false standards of female beauty in Western society, and man, he does not have the energy to deal with that right now.
Hiding my breasts is the next thing he tries. It's more calculated and less emo, and the results are more the kind of thing he's looking for. There are bunch of forum posts about being trans or a tomboy or nonbinary gender. He follows user recommendations from there to websites for binders, and after looking at catalogues and sizing charts for an hour or so, he orders half a dozen in a couple of different styles and colours.
When the order verification turn up in his inbox, Tony looks down at his chest directly for the first time and pokes at one of his boobs with a finger. “If I'm stuck with you for the foreseeable future, it's gonna be on my terms,” he says, then takes his woe chocolate with him up to bed.
*
“My brother has changed gender and form many times,” Thor announces, though it's not at his usual level of volume, so it probably counts as a discreet whisper.
They've been watching the Dodgers playing... some other team, but it's an ad break. Tony doesn't care about baseball. Thor is fascinated by it, but hasn't quite got a grasp of the rules yet. Steve watches baseball like he loves it, but with a kind of wince that suggests that in its modern form it regularly causes him great pain. Tony thinks that is fascinatingly masochistic behaviour from a national icon of purity and patriotism, and wonders if Steve's hiding some kind of kinky centre under all that red, white and blue bunting.
“I'm guessing that in his case it was voluntary,” Tony replies. It's not that he thinks that there's anything wrong with changing gender if you want to; he just thinks that if Loki did it, there'd be some sneaky, devious reason for it.
“Most times,” Thor agrees. “Such things seem to be much more inflexible, here in Midgard.”
“Yeah, usually, that kind of change requires a lifetime of hormone treatments and invasive surgery,” Tony says. He only did a cursory amount of Googling on transitioning, and promptly decided that he was really not ready emotionally to connect that with himself, no matter how alien he feels in his skin right now. Maybe he'll feel differently if this stretches out for months or years without a solution, but at this moment all he can bring himself think is that they're going to find the kid; they have to.
Thor nods, though Tony's not sure how much of that makes sense to a god. “Those who embark on such a voyage must consider the labours worth the final reward,” he remarks, and wow, that's much more profound and insightful than Tony had expected.
“You're right, they really must,” Tony agrees.
The game's back on again, so Thor subsides back into enthusiastic cheering on of both sides. Tony lets out a little sigh of relief, pushing all thoughts of an indefinite future stuck like this into a steel box in his head and very firmly welding it shut. He can have a proportionally appropriate (very large) drink later, when he doesn't have an audience to witness how very not okay he is with even the vaguest concept of that potential existence.
Instead of openly freaking out, he follows the plays on the screen, idly eating popcorn because it's there in front of him. He can't swear to it, because he never catches him out, but he thinks he feels Steve's eyes on him several times during the rest of the game. Not glaring, but thoughtful, like Tony's shifted his world view in some small but significant way.
*
“Thought you'd curled up in one of your cars and died of self-pity,” Bruce says, without looking up from the samples he's running.
“Don't sound so upset, Bruce. I'll start thinking you don't care,” Tony replies automatically, hopping up on a stool next to an empty bench.
“Well, I have to say, there's been a distinct lack of explosions in my life since you started being even more of a diva than usual,” Bruce says, pushing a sequence of buttons and watching the machine come to life with a whirr.
“What, even with Thor and Clint around?”
Bruce points to a little sign at the door: No weaponry past this point. “I'm house-training them,” he says.
“Harsh. And can't superspy assassins make weapons from anything? There's this rumour about Coulson and a paperclip that's either a lie or an epically terrifying truth, and Natasha won't tell me which.”
“Also, every day without something going boom, I bake cookies.”
“Congratulations, you've become a parent to an alien god and a circus performer. Also, you're like the opposite of fun.”
“Things that startle me are bad for the architecture,” Bruce says, though it's not like Tony's forgotten.
“And how is your rage-ier self?” Tony asks, leaning in to peer at a holoscreen, trying to make sense of the results without any context. He knows Bruce will explain it if he asks, but he kind of likes the challenge.
Bruce's tone, when he replies, is suspiciously light and casual. “I think he's sulking. He ran out of things to smash in his playroom last week, and there haven't been any missions, so he's not had much front time.”
There's a fairly long, pregnant pause while Tony digests that information.
“I am an asshole,” he states, slowly and precisely.
“The first step is admitting it,” Bruce says, and Tony abruptly realises that the whole time he's been here, Bruce hasn't looked at him properly once. Bruce isn't the most comfortable guy, socially, but even for him, that's unusual.
“You're mad at me.”
“Trust me, if I was mad, you'd know about it.”
“No, you're hurt. Shit.”
Tony scrubs his (too smooth, God, he hates shaving) face with his hands, tugs on his hair. Pulls out his phone and orders a whole bunch of junk for the playroom; car and truck bodies, tyres, recycled masonry, rebar and girders, and a dozen or so ethically farmed plantation pine trees in varying sizes. Schedules the cleaning crew to come in right now to sweep out the detritus of the last load of Hulk toys, and Christ, that stuff must be sawdust, powder and shrapnel by now. Bruce likely hasn't had a pressure release in days, and if the Hulk's been unhappy for longer than that, then he's got to be wired. Living in Manhattan, in a share-house with a bunch of other intense personalities, the playroom isn't a novelty, it's a necessity.
“Should have made all this automatic from the start, damn it, you shouldn't have to be relying on me to be here and be aware, I'm terrible at that, just ask Rhodey, I'm completely unreliable and an utterly unworthy friend,” Tony murmurs in a rush, under his breath.
It's not just empty words; he genuinely feels terrible. Bruce is dreadful at asking for what he needs; doesn't feel he has a right to, even when it's something critical to his well-being. Tony wonders how close Bruce had come this week to just quietly packing a bag and slipping out, vanishing for parts unknown.
He wonders how long it would have taken any of the rest of them to notice.
The playroom will take at least half a day to get ready; there's no way to physically clean it out and set it up any faster. Too many workers, and they all just get in each other's way in the fixed, subterranean space. And the trees can't be rushed; even if they're being lopped right this second, they've got to be loaded onto a truck and driven down from up-state.
“Right, okay, it's on its way, it's sorted, but now, right now, are you busy?” Tony asks.
“I'm always busy.”
“Think you can handle a flight?”
Bruce snorts. “Are you serious?”
“Not a plane, on the suit. We'll strap you in a harness on my back, so you don't have to stress about falling,” Tony says, then waggles his phone. “I shoot a message to a buddy of mine, we can get access to a proving ground not far from here.”
Bruce has actually turned to look at Tony, and underneath the tension, Tony can see the angle of his shoulders has loosened a little.
“How green you feeling?”
Bruce tilts his hand from side to side. “I've held him back in worse places,” he says.
“Afraid of heights? We could take one of the cars.”
Bruce actually cracks a smile. “I've seen you drive. And I once stepped out of a helicopter without a chute.”
“I'm sure I should be horrified right now, but I have a similar track record for personal health and safety,” Tony says.
*
Tony turns up for breakfast because he's got a craving for pancakes. Though it's technically almost time for lunch, Clint can be easily blackmailed to make pancakes and waffles at any hour. He sings a constant stream of country and western while he's doing it, but Tony's not one to criticise another's methods, especially not when they result in a stack of syrup-drenched goodness.
Tony's demolished about half of his frankly enormous serving by the time Steve wanders in. For a moment, he just stands and watches; Clint is flipping pancakes just using the pan because he's a tremendous show-off. Clint breaks off from his whistled harmonica solo to tell Steve to sit your ass down, you're always hungry, so Steve does, and that's when he looks at Tony properly for the first time.
“Your... um... have they... changed?” Steve asks. He's impressively red, but he's holding Tony's gaze.
Tony awards himself a point.
“No, they're still there. It's a binder. Like a girdle, but for the upper half,” Tony says, not mocking, because he honestly didn't think Steve would be this straightforward about it, and he respects bluntness. “You've got questions, Cap, I can see it. You're practically vibrating in your seat. Consider this your free pass; ask away.”
“Isn't it uncomfortable?”
Clint shoves a stack of pancakes in front of Steve, nudges the condiments closer, and shuffles back to make more. Steve snags two bananas and starts slicing them neatly with the edge of his spoon onto his plate.
“Depends what kind of comfort you're talking about. It's a little warmer than just wearing a regular undershirt, but the fabric breathes enough that I'm not sweating too badly. It's tight, so it restricts my breathing a little. My lung capacity is decreased anyway because the reactor takes up room in my chest cavity, so I can't wear it if I'm going to be exerting myself, unless I want to faint like a tight-laced Victorian maiden. I've got a couple of handkerchiefs down the front to stop the edges of the reactor housing digging in me, but I think I'm going to have to try medical tape or something, because they keep shifting when I move. I can only have it on for a few hours at a time without it getting seriously painful, so I can't go out anywhere with it on unless I'm going to be back home fairly soon or I take something less restrictive to change into with me. So, physically, it's going to take some getting used to.”
“Then, why? If it hurts you, why not just, um, leave it the way it is?” Steve's finished cutting his bananas, but he hasn't started eating, even though he burns through calories at a ridiculous rate that puts teenagers the world over to shame.
“Emotionally and psychologically, it's a godsend.” Tony cuts off another mouthful, chews it, swallows. “I can move my arms pretty much the way I used to, so I'm not knocking them against my chest all the time, which really hurts, by the way. I can fit into most of my shirts again. I still don't look like me, but I'm not flinching every time I see my chest out of the corner of my eye like I was. I don't hate myself as much.”
Tony abruptly shuts up, then, because he's veering close to issues he'd really rather not talk about with Captain America, over pancakes, while Clint wails Jolene in the background. He's still angry, of course he's angry, but for once, he's not angry at himself. He's angry at that kid, at SHIELD for being useless, at magic itself for existing in the face of science, and if he starts venting his spleen about that, he might never stop. He can't fix any of that, but engineering a solution to a problem is something he's been doing since he could walk, and that's precisely why the binder appeals to him.
Steve doesn't push him for more, just reaches over to grab the syrup.
*
Tony has three pairs of shoes in carry-bags. They're not the half-dozen or so pairs that Pepper was nudging him to buy, but he now has Converse and trainers and a pair of black Italian leather dress shoes that will match the suit he finally went to get measured for. With the addition of the binder, his upper measurements aren't hugely different, so it's just minor adjustments to the trousers and around the waist and hips of the jacket, and he'll look as close to himself as he can get without a system restore to his previous version.
The Converse are Iron Man branded; he couldn't help himself.
He parks and gets out, claps for the big lights and his music to come on, high-fives Dummy when he walks past just because he's feeling okay with the world right now, and stops, abruptly, when he sees the super soldier sitting on his couch.
“JARVIS said you were almost home, that I could wait,” Steve explains, and he sounds... odd.
“Yeah, you're fine, what's up?” Tony dumps the bags, pokes a little at the coding he'd left running, then grabs a bottle of water from the mini-fridge.
“I'm not a bigot,” Steve says, suddenly.
“I never said you were,” Tony immediately replies, because it's true. Backwards, and full of antiquated morality, yes, bigoted, no.
“I went on Google?” Steve says, like it's a question. “I wanted to understand better. And there was this picture people said was really good, and I found it on Netflix. About this guy called Brandon.”
Suddenly, the frayed-around-the-edges look makes a hell of a lot of sense.
“Jesus, Cap,” Tony says. “You really went and jumped in the deep end, there, buddy.” Because, of course, Steve just goes looking for the basics on gender and identity in the twenty-first century on the internet and ends up watching Boys Don't Cry by accident.
Tony grabs another bottle of water, then digs in the cupboard next to it for the box of chocolate truffles he bought when he ate his way through the one Pepper gave him. They're French, delicious, surprisingly cheap, and come in a convenient one kilogram box, which Tony thinks is probably going to be needed right now. “Here.”
Steve takes them, digs into the box and comes out with a few that he eats, neatly, one at a time, licking the cocoa powder from his fingertips.
Tony slouches down on the sofa next to him and sighs. “I can't claim to be an expert, this isn't something I've had to live with my whole life or anything, but there are people out there that just want to hurt people who are different, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seriously thought about that over the last few weeks.” He snags a handful of truffles, pops a few in his mouth, talks while he's chewing even though he knows it drives Steve crazy. Maybe because it does. “There's a reason I've stayed in here, up till now, stuck around you guys. You're a known quantity.”
“I went to war,” Steve says, finally. “I saw things, heard about things, later. Men didn't tend to tell me, but I'd hear anyway, I've got ears. There was this village in France, we went through a day after another Allied troop. I saw the face of this girl, when we arrived...” Steve stops, swallows water. “War makes some men into animals. Changes them in ways you can't expect. This... this wasn't like that.”
“No.” Tony eats another truffle, dips his hand into the box for more. “But it's just as ugly, just as horrific. You look at the worst sins of humanity, and it's like holding up a dark mirror, showing you the potential for evil in yourself. I used to make weapons,” Tony says, and for a moment he's back in the desert, bleeding out through an armoured vest into the dust, “and I didn't know what that meant until I saw it in person, until I met people who were killed by them in front of me. I've got things I can't atone for, no matter how hard I try. But this isn't your sin, Cap, no matter what you saw in the war. It isn't your burden to take.”
“I had to stop, a few times,” Steve admits, “but I watched it all.”
“You didn't have to do that,” Tony says.
Steve shakes his head a little, still staring straight forward. “I felt like I had to. It wasn't about me. It's bigger than that. I knew that, long before the end; that I had to witness it.” His voice is shaky, like he's just holding on to his composure.
“Punishing yourself doesn't make you a better person. Believe me, I've tried,” Tony says.
“But how can I say I fight for every American, if I don't even know what that means?” Steve asks, and Tony really doesn't have an answer for that. He steals a truffle or two, then slips the hand closest to Steve into one of Steve's own, and squeezes gently.
“I'm not saying you should shut your eyes to bad things that happen in this world. But you're allowed to protect yourself,” Tony says.
Steve lets his eyes slide closed and exhales deeply, like he's bone tired.
They sit there for the better part of an hour. They don't talk much, but Steve's head ends up on Tony's shoulder, and he doesn't let go of Tony's hand.
*
“I want a party,” Tony begins, without so much as a hello. He's not even really looking at the video call - he's twiddling with design for Hulk's panties instead. The test run on the proving ground had been a roaring success; the fabric had held up beautifully, and shrunk back down without visible tensile exhaustion when Hulk had smashed enough to satisfy himself. What had given in places were the seams, so Tony's designing a circular loom that can work the fibre in the round rather than flat. When it's built, Bruce will have the smoothest and stretchiest seamless modesty garment ever created, based on his own exact measurements.
“It's not your birthday for another five months,” Pepper says.
“In just under a week it'll have been a month since this happened,” Tony says, gesturing at himself. “I deserve a party.”
“We literally just finished the restoration work on the Tower-”
“I know, it looks great in here. You can barely see where all the holes in the floor were.”
“- and I'm not sure that that kind of expense is the right sort of message to be sending out when the city is still rebuilding-”
“Not that kind of party, Jesus, Pep. Just some food, some booze, maybe karaoke-”
“- plus, we haven't really gone public on your current condition, and that's going to make the invite list difficult-”
“No list, Pepper. Just you, and me, and Rhodey, and the team, and maybe a handful of the Men in Black. I promise. Just a small private party so we can let our hair down. No invite list, no press, no dress code. Oooh, unless we make it a slumber party. Everyone in pyjamas. Though that'll be awkward for Coulson, because I'm pretty sure all his pyjamas have Captain America on them. And I think Thor sleeps in the buff, so we might have to at least make him put on a robe.”
“No pyjamas.”
“Wow, ever better,” Tony smirks. “Good thing it's summer, or we might get cold on the balcony. It's breezy out there.”
“No slumber party,” Pepper says firmly, but he can see the smile dancing around the edges of her mouth.
“I know you're just saying that to dash my hopes of seeing you and Natasha having a pillow fight. I will pay you both money to see that.”
“Maybe I should ask her what she thinks about that,” Pepper says, like she's pondering it.
“Please don't. In fact, forget I ever said that. I value my limbs,” Tony says quickly. “You should value my limbs, too, I'm technically your employer. Do you think Fury has pyjamas? I think they're leather.”
“I think you're thinking too much about it. What's this about a new charity?” Pepper holds up a print-out in front of the camera.
“It's Steve's idea. Well, I say that, I mentioned the possibility of it, and his face lit up like I'd offered him a puppy of his very own. Could you say no to that face? I couldn't. You dash Captain America's hopes and dreams, and the terrorists have already won.”
“I don't know that the Board-”
“Screw the Board. This is a personal thing, not a Stark Industries thing. I'm a billionaire, and Steve's got seventy years worth of back pay, and he doesn't want to spend it on caviar and fast cars like a normal person. There are whole trading communities that have evolved online for guys to pass on their old binders to other guys that need them, because they can't afford to buy them, and that pisses me off. They're a fucking necessity.
“And Steve, he had a rude introduction to transgender issues the other day, blame Netflix, not me, I had nothing to do with it.” Tony waggles a finger in the direction of the feed, to emphasise his innocence, though he probably doesn't so much as dent Pepper's suspicion that he's traumatising a national icon. “He did some poking around online after and got het up and annoyed about the red tape and expenses for gender affirmation surgery. He's been Captain Bitchy ever since; all 'this is an injustice' and 'we have a duty to do something'. It's beautiful. The GOP should totally get him on board promoting health care reform; all those entitled assholes would end up opening their wallets to pay for it themselves. So, do I get my party?”
“Fine, yes. You can have a party.”
“Yes,” Tony says, reaching out a fist for Dummy to bump.
“No suits; I remember That Birthday Party-”
“I thought we agreed never to bring that up again. I was dying, I was distraught.”
“No strippers-”
“Spoilsport.”
“No nudity whatsoever.”
“Fine. Are you going to come?”
“Yes, I'll come. Will that be all, Mr Stark?” she asks, but it's teasing, rather than strictly formal.
“That will be all, Miss Potts. Go run my company so I don't have to,” Tony says with a smile and a little wave.
“I always do,” Pepper says, and closes the link.
*
Part Two ->