Can't See the Truth

Tony was lying in bed with Steve, listening to his breathing as he slept. The super soldier’s arms were wrapped around Tony’s frame, an unspoken promise to never let go of him.

Tony spun his wedding band around his fingers, doing little mindless tricks with it. Although his body was pressed against Steve’s, his mind was elsewhere. His thoughts wandered to the stasis chamber down in the lab, to the little quarantined room back at SHIELD, and finally to the phone on his bedside table. The phone call that he received was unusual, to say the least. But what bothered him more was the lie he told his husband. Would that come back to haunt him? Tony didn’t doubt it.

A moan coming from Steve made Tony freeze, ring mid-flip on his fingers. Steve pressed himself even closer to Tony, making his unconscious desire so much more prominent. As much as Tony liked it when Steve was riled up in his sleep, he couldn’t even think about it. The thought, for some reason, made his stomach churn. Maybe it was because of the lies he had been telling? Who knows.

Tony managed to wiggle his way out from underneath Steve and threw on jeans and a t-shirt before writing a lovely little note to his husband saying that he was going to be down in the lab to do some work.

****

Toni wadded through large groups of people. The overall feel of the place made Toni feel so uncomfortable. She tried to turn around only to find a wall where the door was supposed to be. She stared at the brick wall, more puzzled than she had ever been before.

“Hey! Watch yourself, bitch,” a random brit exclaimed.

“Sorry,” Toni mumbled, starting to get a pain in her chest. She was backing away from the wall when she smacked right into another body. “Sorry!” she shouted as she covered her ears and locked her eyes shut.

“It’s alright, darling,” a wonderfully familiar voice cooed. “Really, Toni, it’s fine.”

Toni let her eyes slip open. The sight in front of her was incredible, to say the least. There was Loki, clad in a baby-blue v-neck t-shirt and dark washed jeans, holding a drink in his hand with his black hair pulled back into kind of a pony-tail. It was safe to say that the teen was at a loss for words at the sight of her gorgeous boyfriend.

“Loki,” she managed to say with a sigh. “You look...I mean...where are we?” she stammered.

Loki chuckled, wrapping an arm around Toni and pulling her close. “We’re at a club, darling. Your father and the captain went in the back together, Bruce is on the dancefloor with a tall blonde bombshell, Hetalia is out there too, and the archer is doing shots off his bow at the bar.”

“Where’s Thor, Brooke, Pamplemousse, and Schaefer?”

“Thor is with his Jane and the others stayed behind to take care of the young one.”

Toni nodded, feeling like she should’ve known that. “This doesn’t really seem like your scene.”

The god of mischief just shrugged, his smile still not leaving his face. “I’m enjoying myself, actually. Your father has decent taste in nightlife.”

Toni giggled as the music drowned out the sounds of their conversation. “I never thought I’d hear you say anything about nightlife in my existence.”

Loki nodded as he took a sip from his glass. “You look worried about something, love. What’s wrong?”

It was then that it dawned on her. “Loki, someone here is trying to kill me and I don’t know what to do.”

Loki quickly pulled Toni as close as possible in a defensive stance. As she half-hid behind him, she could see a light forming in his hand.

“Loki, stop, please. I don’t even know if he managed to follow me in here.”

“I won’t risk you getting hurt.”

“Let’s just find the others and stick together, yeah?”

Loki reluctantly nodded and led her to the bar. “We’ll find the archer first. He’ll be the easiest to track down.”

****

Bruce and Tony were reading some of the results from their tests on Toni, getting a bit more irritated as they went on. “This thing is fucking unstoppable,” Tony muttered.

“Maybe that’s why SHIELD doesn’t want us to know about it. Maybe it was designed that way.”

“Daddy?” Pamplemousse said as she walked into the lab. “Is Other Tony down here? Steve wants to talk to him.”

“Just tell Uncle Steve that Uncle Tony is a bit busy, okay, sweetie?” Tony said as he poured some chemicals into a flask.

Pamplemousse nodded and skipped up the stairs, humming as she went.

“You can’t avoid Steve forever,” Bruce said as he checked the teen’s vitals.

“Who says I’m avoiding him?”

“I do. Come on, Tony, I’ve worked with you for a while now, so I know when you’re troubled. You’re not even wearing your wedding band.”

Tony shrugged. “I just want to make sure I don’t contaminate any of the samples.”

“Since when has that stopped you? Tony, you’ve got to talk to somebody.”

“I’ll be fine, Banner, I promise.”

“Tony, I mean it. Don’t make me full name you.”

“You’ve been spending way too much time with Brooke,” Tony replied snidely. “That may work on your daughter, but it won’t work on me. Speaking of your daughter, Bruce, when were you planning on telling her about her real life?”

Bruce shrugged. “I don’t know yet, Tony. I was going to talk to Clint about it.”

“Where did all these feelings for Clint come from all of a sudden?”

“I...don’t know what you mean,” he said uneasily.

“Don’t try that with me, big man. I know what you do at night when Pamplemousse is in her own bedroom.”

“Shh!” Bruce exclaimed, leaning over the counter to cover Tony’s mouth. “Don’t be so loud! What if someone hears you?”

Tony just shrugged out of Bruce’s grasp. “I feel like you’d like it if you could actually have Clint, though.”

Bruce just sighed. “You’re probably right, as always.”

****

Steve was trying so hard not to be suspicious. He knew that Tony was under a lot of stress, but hearing Bruce from the stairs leading down to the lab made it more difficult to trust his spouse. Just remembering the multiple jabs the entire team about how loud Tony was when he had sex was enough to make him cringe.

No, he thought to himself. Tony loves me. He’s not doing anything behind my back, I know it.

Notes