The problem is it's very hard to tell when a superhero is recklessly endangering himself versus when he's accepting the very real dangers of the job. Tony, who is the embodiment of reckless on a good day, doesn't know if Captain America is throwing himself into his work because it's his work, or because secretly he wishes he were dead.

It scares him. And the fact that it scares him also scares him. Tony is used to being a shallow jerk; he's very good at it. Caring about Steve to the point that he worries if the guy goes off his own personal radar for more than an hour is seriously fucking with him.

The subject just says "Re: Today" and Steve clicks on it even before the little preview sentence is there.

"He doesn't know what to do about you. You might just have to let him buy you things for a while before he figures out that he doesn't have to try to buy your affections."

There's a brief "P." above a formal signature reading "Virginia Potts, CEO Stark Industries" above lines of incomprehensible ways to contact her.

"What are we supposed to do? Put out an Amber Alert for Captain America?" Coulson demanded.

He can see the line of Steve's bare back, the breath that pushes into his body, too fast, uneven, and he wonders what Steve sees when he looks at the wall.

"What year is it?" Steve asks.

"Twenty-twelve," Tony replies, and he sits up slowly, lets the sheets slide loose, doesn't touch. He remembers this – how he felt sure he would shatter. There are grey spaces, empty time where he thinks perhaps he did.

More than anything else, he just wanted Tony’s company. It was part of being together to share the same bed, or he’d always thought so, and, well, it was lonely and oddly disorienting, lying in Tony’s big bed by himself while Tony was working down here. Steve didn’t mind—well, not much—but he would have preferred Tony there with him. And it couldn’t be good for Tony to keep the hours he did, anyway.

From Steve’s perspective, a little more than a year ago, he lost one of the people he loved best in the world. Then, a little less than a year ago, he woke up and found that he had lost the other one in his sleep. But Tony wants him to celebrate.

Steve’s half frozen and the leather of his costume is warped and peeling away. “I found you,” he says, “I found you.” He bows his head over Steve’s, his breath coming in harsh, agonizing sobs. It’s a long time before he can pull himself together. “I’ll take you home.” [AU sequel to blakefancier's Wanting Series]

Steve nods, looks away from Tony to the big windows that show a sweeping view of New York. “Well, if you don’t mind,” he says firmly, “I would like to continue. I know it’s not the way things are done anymore, but I enjoy doing it.” He looks back to Tony and adds a stammering, “If—if you don’t mind, of course. I just think its right and proper, considering we’re dating.”

“You found it!” Tony said, he turned, and threw his arms around Steve. “Thank you.” He said, grinning up at Steve. And that was sort of an unexpected benefit to finding something. Steve blinked at him.

Tony Stark lives a double life; he's secretly the supervillain known as Iron Man. But his loving husband Steve has a few secrets of his own, as Tony is about to discover.

“See,” Steve tells him, “there are still some things you don’t know about Steve Rogers.” A lot of things. Like how Steve can't help but feel faintly sick with himself, because he believes to some degree he has tainted something precious with this emotion he can’t stifle welling up within him.

She found Steve with Noser, who was saying, "Benny Goodman, huh? Hey, Wendy Watson, I might have found someone here who can actually stump the band."

Steve got into Tony’s space, putting one hand on Tony’s shoulder, feeling the muscles flex and tense underneath the fine fabric of his dress shirt. “I’m not some kid. I fought in a kind of war that you can only imagine. I watched my best friend die. I led a mission behind enemy lines and I killed the Red Skull. I lost everyone I ever loved. I’m not a hick; I’m from Brooklyn. And I’m not ninety-five. I’m twenty-five.” He smiled, because he could see and hear Tony’s breathing getting faster as he went on. “And I’m tired of being some icon.”

“Move fast, Tony,” he feels compelled to add. “I think there’s something wrong.” Tony snorts. “Obviously. Loki’s using a phone. Hold onto your balls if that bastard figures out the internet.”

Steve is an ex-gladiator. Tony wears a toga. Together, they litigate civil cases.

He quietly resolved to get up right then and leave. That way there would be no awkwardness in the morning. That was how they worked it, the agreement unspoken between them that there were no goodbyes. When Bucky had left for basic training eight weeks ago, he’d done the same thing: he’d left quietly in the morning before Steve woke up. That was the plan. No goodbyes. Just get up and leave. But as he lay there in his bed, with one hand on Steve’s back, he found it impossible to move. Just get up and leave. Then Steve shifted against him again and started lightly snoring. Bucky had fallen asleep to those soft snores for years now.

Back when he first came to England, before he ever saw a bullet fired from a Nazi gun, he’d do calisthenics when he got that itch beneath his skin, or start letters to Steve that always trailed off into inadequacy and never got finished. Neither of those are really options and the only other thing Bucky really wants to do is take Steve back to one of their rooms and break a mattress. And he’s not fool enough to think that’s a good idea, not when there’s every chance in the world the Colonel or someone higher up in brass will suddenly need Steve for a meeting and come busting in, because there isn’t privacy in the United States Army.

This was the artist's dilemma; you needed to fall a little bit in love to bring your subject to justice, because if you didn't, the viewer just couldn't. That was it: he was just carried away by the rediscovery of drawing, and at finding such a vital subject. He was just lost in the grey-scale, where feelings got tangled in actual art endeavours.

Summary: Romancing Steve Rogers is hard enough. The last thing Tony Stark needs is a rival. In the shape of Iron Man.

We’re both so out of place. I’m out of time and he’s, well, he’s just out of this world, Steve thought, and though Thor was decidedly cautious about how people approached him, he was friendly, good-natured, and he readily accepted Steve’s offer for a drink after a few training sessions together.

"It's simple," Bucky said. "You walk up to the girl, say, 'Do you want to dance?' and off you go."

Steve shrugs. “I know you don’t like me much. Or at least that’s what you said. But I think we’re friends anyway.” He gets up and leaves, before Tony can puncture the moment with a joke.

"We have a situation that is somewhat delicate," says Storm's voicemail. "Captain America was – affected – by Nightwitch." "Cap somehow got selective amnesia and doesn't remember you," says Spiderman's, which is even worse. "It would be kind of funny, if it weren't so weird."

"So, your night's shot." Tony gestures at the bag. "I'm bored, so come drink with me." "I can't get drunk," says Steve, standing up to follow Tony out anyway. "Didn't I say I like a challenge?"

Summary: The reasons not to join the Avengers were many and varied. The problem was that when Captain America smiled at him, Tony had trouble remembering what they were.

Tony is the WWII hero waking up in the future.

His hand went automatically to check the infusion line, and he followed it coiling around a battered old canteen and then into Stark's arm. Surely that meant this was real? There couldn't be a dream within a dream? Except that if Stark were a projection, he would just be pretending to dream. But why would the prime mover in the dreamworld be a projection? Was this all simply a phantasm of his mind, with no enemy agents trapped in here with him? If this were a dream, then this must be a trap; he should investigate, even if it meant risking it being sprung.

Tony's hands left his tie, and he took a step toward the screen as Captain America appeared, three microphones shoved up under his nose. He looked exhausted, deep shadows under his eyes, a very slight slump to his shoulders. Tony made a noise of exasperation and reached for his phone. "Pepper, I need to go be at the Mansion all this evening - yes, it's urgent. Yes, cancel it."

The first time Tony noted Steve's sensitivity was, predictably, one when he was preoccupied. People to seduce, worlds to save, quite the usual set of events, really. Discovering how Steve had been able to discern the difference between copper and steel in a pitch-black containment cell had been far from his first concern. After they'd freed themselves and subsequently exploded the base, it had been nearly forgotten.

Here's the thing about Steve Rogers. He hates Tony. Tony can tell. Every time Steve looks at him, he sees Howard Stark, who personally tested the guns he built to kill Nazis—on Nazis. Whereas Tony's social conscience was more comfortable at the level of strapping into a robot suit and punching other robot suits. And Steve reminded him of that every time he did that little double-take of seeing Tony and reminding himself it wasn't his father and he wasn't in the 20th century. It was enough to make Tony want to shave his goatee. And he had an awesome goatee.

The similarity to his own thoughts just moments earlier made Steve twitch, but Tony continued on. "I'd guess that Pepper ordered you in here, since I ignored her, and that makes your Pepper about as happy as it does mine." Steve saw the corners of Tony's mouth curl up, but the man continued, "And honestly, what I'm really wondering about right this moment is why you've been avoiding me. I know it must be hard, since I look like your Tony and I'm not him, but that can't be the only reason. I know you've experienced alternate universes before."

"So let me get this straight," Stark asked, as he held the punching bag, "You live in Williamsburg?"

Tony Stark is trying to set up a new superhero team when he's given a sex change, courtesy of Victor von Doom. He copes with that about as well as you'd expect.

"Right," he says, and moves to the refrigerator. He seems to be a considerate man, then, along with all the other qualities. A war hero, a costumed superhero, a national icon. A leader of men, Thor had told him. A good friend, Hank had said. They'd all looked at him with worry and kindness, and he'd felt a fool, sitting there in a body some eighty pounds too heavy and several inches taller, trying to remember anything past the day he'd stepped into the laboratory at Dr Erskine's side.

Thunderstorms bothered Steve. Tony had guessed at that fact before they'd been lovers. The way he always seemed to roam the halls of the mansion on nights major thunderstorms rolled through.

He might not remember anything, but that didn't mean he didn't *know* anything.

Steve’s been thawed for six months, and he can honestly say he’s adjusting pretty well for someone who was last aware of the world in 1945.

“You.” Tony pokes Steve in the chest. “Wanda brought you back because you went out there, you walked around, and you wondered how it couldn’t be better.”

The cluttered antique shop, a renovated barn in this small Berkshires town in Western Massachusetts, was just what Steve liked. He enjoyed modern life, but in his heart he would always be a guy who listened to old radio programs and paid twenty-five cents for a cartoon, a Three Stooges short, Movietone news, and a double feature while picking up goodies on Free Dish Night.

He couldn't, really, pretend it was a girl - Tony had a beard, after all - but he could pretend it didn't matter. This was the future, and no one cared if Captain America kissed guys. Maybe he wasn't even Captain America anymore; he could kiss anyone he liked.

Tony scanned the building; Bruce scanned Steve. Neither of them came up with anything out of the ordinary, or at least out of the ordinary for the Avengers' HQ and Captain America. Steve was definitely Steve and it was definitely Halloween and yet Steve could tell them all exactly what was going to happen; Tony had to admit that yes, he'd been thinking of using his laser cutter to carve his blessed pumpkin and when MJ got home she'd gotten the part, not to mention the fact that while the party went ahead because hell if anyone could find anything wrong aside from the obvious fact that Steve was reliving a day, Steve was on hand ready with the fire extinguisher when, with the aid of Tony's best vodka, Johnny Storm set the rug on fire. They all sat around in the lounge afterwards, debating the feasibility of a time loop versus Steve suddenly being precognizant or deciding that April Fools' Day now somehow fell in late October. Steve wasn't sure he could've planned all this if he'd tried.