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He's spent his entire life walking around in shoes too big for his feet, with too much money in his pockets and too much alcohol in his bloodstream, too much fuck you bravado to be taken seriously.

He's spent his entire life being Tony Stark.

He does not let people take him seriously because the world laid siege to him since the first time paparazzi lights flashed in his scrunched up baby-face as Maria Stark left the hospital. His father is in Berlin at the time and that's exactly the kind of opening a story like this deserves. They have laid siege and he will not give them the satisfaction of letting them know how hungry he is. How starved he is for a little taste of genuine human interaction.

So. He spends his entire life like it's another credit card that'll never max out.

He keeps spending it and spending it and when he comes back from Afghanistan, he looks at the aftermath of the person he ceased being and thinks, I just woke up and good morning. It hits him like a piano or the butt end of a pistol to the head. It hits in his knees and the bones that go from his wrists to his elbows. It aches like growing pains and sometimes he is just so disgustingly grateful.

The realization hollows out his teeth like hard liquor, which makes sense because most truths are 80% hard liquor in Tony's experience.

Mostly though, he thinks things like, I wish somebody would wake me up when I have nightmares and the world is a pretty stupid place. Gratitude doesn't chase away the grind of sand against his teeth when he spits in the sink, because his anger is just as genuine and hard to swallow. His mouth is dry from swallowing.

That's not sexual. Tony mostly stops being sexual when he comes back from Afghanistan.

He showers until the top layer of his skin erodes and tries to fuck the smell of blood out of his system but instead the back of his neck gets damp with sweat and when he says yeah baby, right there what he means is I was so scared of dying.

All of his stories start like this: before I came back from Afghanistan, or, after I came back from Afghanistan.

It's like he's still got grit crusted into the creases of his body and most days he's afraid of slowing down, afraid that if he does people will the notice him shaking to pieces, leaking from all the gaping holes in his emotional psyche. His ligaments creak in the morning when he uncurls into daylight and Tony wishes he were just a goddamn machine already so that he can fix himself.

The cheeseburger is not cutting it.

There's a moral here though. He's spent his entire life wasting it.

This was the warning shot. Tony is luckier than most people; he's realized what he owes the world and has the resources to follow through. Not sleeping much helps; it's productive. There's a little word called redemption that's stuck in his head.

Because Tony doesn't know how to fix himself—and will somebody just tell him that It Gets Better already, please?—but suspects he's been broken for years now and this, this, he can do like the blueprints are sketched in the veins of his eyelids, simply waiting for him to bring them to life. Make me a real boy, he thinks and this is a very serious request.

The world takes Ironman very seriously but see, Tony can still make them laugh when he wants to.

He is in his element; he loves the way titanium alloy melts and fills up room with heat and welding fumes, loves the copper zing pressed against his tongue when he bites down on whatever essential piece of machinery his hands are too full to hold, loves the way his blueprints take on a tangible third dimension and, more and more, he loves the way metal doesn't remind him of sand.

It's one of the few things that doesn't.

So he drinks coffee until his eyes start focusing and welds metal onto metal onto metal until there are no chinks in his armour and the blue sparks blur in his vision to become blue sky and, fuck, sometimes he cannot breathe.

He presses a hand to his arc reactor and wonders if CPR can be performed on his body.

He wakes up in complete darkness with terror stuffed in the back of his throat like a gag because nobody is going to save them. He chokes on his own fear like an animal, clawing the cave wall with blunt fingers that are made of flesh and bleed and break and have you ever had all the joints in your pinky broken? The pain settles into the curves of his body like sediments, like an avalanche, clogging his lungs and the pathways leading to his frontal lobe and he is so fucking scared.

Tony wakes up in complete darkness and he came back from Afghanistan, he came back from Afghanistan, he came back from Afghanistan, he—is broken, if you know what strings to pull.

He feels like a puppet, the tremors in his hands out of his control.

Tony sleeps without a shirt on after that, if he sleeps, and the light of his arc reactor on the ceiling is the only thing keeping him sane sometimes. It's always cold when he places a hand to it and it helps, helps him to separate the memories of heatsweatsand into heat and sweat and sand. It's less potent that way.

It hits him one night, stumbling up from his workshop into the kitchen after not eating for a few days, his body on the verge of passing out. He should probably stop doing this.

Starvation smells like dried fruits and alcohol. This is a scientific fact. The body breaks down proteins in a last greedy effort to live, molecules simplified into ketones. He thinks that might be irony right there, that the body is reduced to eating itself while you smell like raspberry parfait.

Pepper smells like raspberries sometimes when he lets her come close enough.

Still, the moral of this story is that Tony needed a wake-up call, needed a warning shot to get him running in the right direction. He likes to think he's doing okay, the transition out of weaponry going well. He's doing okay.

Occasionally, if he's tired enough, he can sleep the whole night through. He stops feeling sand between his toes and his showers don't raise red welts on his back and upper arms. Pepper is laughing at his jokes again and Tony can look at her and think amazing instead of if you had been sitting across from me signing autographs the explosion would have sent shrapnel through your neck right into your voice box and the combination of shock and pain would have made you pass out before the blood loss killed you and I would never hear your voice again.

He can think amazing most days now. Sometimes, he even thinks about saying it out loud.

Then Stane kind of literally rips his heart out of his chest and leaves with his arc reactor tucked under one arm like a shopping bag. How long has that one been on the grocery list?

It all gets a little fucked up after that. There's a lot of booze involved.

Give me a scotch. I'm starving—he says, and it's the closest he's come to confession in a long time. See, Tony is not a nice person. This is just a fact and he has never been good at saying the things he means to.

His body feels violated, aching from the shots he keeps forcing through his liver. It makes no sense that he keeps coming back to the word rape, but he can't help it. It wasn't sexual, it was predatory and he tries to fuck it out of his system but instead the back of his neck gets damp with sweat and when he says yeah baby, right there what he means is I want to throw up on your naked body.

It doesn't stop him though, working through sex with the slow burn of alcohol in his system and he feels sick, slick with nausea and self-pity and dissipating ethanol. He might be punishing himself. He might be trying to prove something. He might be in mourning.

For who he thought Stane was or who he thought he could be, who knows.

The word redemption still rattles around his head sometimes, but it mostly just hurts. He's got a new one though: vengeance.

You put your hand in my chest, Tony thinks with his dick inside of somebody and her hands clawing at his shoulders, and I killed you. Mazeltov.

He learns this about life too—it's harder to die when you can feel the expiration date.

He thinks of Yinsen bent over his body, playing Operator with tools that he sharpened on a rock before disinfecting with flame and gin. He thinks of Yinsen bleeding out between his fingers, catching bullets for him. Thinks of Yinsen's village and how burning flesh isn't a smell he can febreeze out of his clothes. Ironman has a death toll, now, to match the one of Tony Stark.

Vengeance is a hard liquor word, burning his throat on the way up. He came back from Afghanistan, damn it. He comes back every morning.

Tony sleeps less then did he before and at this rate, they're gonna need to start adding hours to the day.

He pictures Yinsen at his birthday party, the dusty lines of his face thick with disappointment. Tony closes his faceplate until he can fake a smile at the bartender and drinks until he forgets what the hell the Middle East is anyway. Things don't make a lot of sense after that, except for the parts where people try to kill him.

Somehow he saves himself and then Pepper and then the world. He should probably see a therapist, at some point.

Actually, he's not feeling too bad about himself when he sits down across from Nick Fury and gets his heart broken like a teenage girl. It wouldn't be so bad if they had some other codeword. At least that's how Tony comforts himself. But the name Avengers sets his lungs on fire, burning his tongue. You know, by now he'd have thought someone would figure out that I don't work well with others is just another way of saying I've been failing to get people to love me for years. It's something of a lifestyle, at this point.

It's a hard-liquor moment, and who is he to deny a little drink? Let's propose a toast to Ironman, who could've been a hero if it weren't for the person inside him.

Things still don't make a lot of sense, but Pepper lets him kiss her so Tony decides to roll with it. It might be a pity-fuck, but when the back of his neck gets damp with sweat he says yeah baby, right there and what he means is I've been wanting you for years. With her tangled into his sheets, feet wrapped around his ankles and the light of the arc reactor on the ceiling, Tony sleeps for hours at a time. But.

Shit continues to hit the fan. Someone should really consider turning the damn thing off.

Big man in a suit of armour, Rogers says, mouth twisting like a cork out of a bottle and he is unbraced for the reek of truth in the words that hit his unmasked face. Not unmasked exactly, he is being Tony Stark. Take that away and what are you?

Tony has zero answers but his mouth takes care of it for him—genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, you want his resume, just ask—and it feels like he's been training for this moment since he first looked up 'sarcasm'. His body lets him down anyway, shuddering in anger, put in tailspin from the way he crashes into his childhood idol. His fingernails are too short to cause his palm serious damage but not for lack of trying.

This fight has been a long time coming, he's not gonna side-step it now just because it's Steve-fucking-Rogers telling him he's a little boy playing dress up instead of Fury or Coulson or even Pepper.

He's been waiting for this fight since the very moment he stood up at that press conference and said, I am Ironman. He's been waiting for somebody to tell him he's not the good guy.

It's all in his resume, go ahead. Take a look.

I know guys with none of that worth ten of you, Tony is told and thinks, get in line Captain, you're hardly the only one. He could list a half-dozen people who should be standing here poised on the threshold of saving the world again, shoulder to shoulder with the icon of Everything Nice And Swell America Should Stand For. A list that starts with all the soldiers in the truck with him the day that Everything Went To Shit.

Funny, how he still isn't over this. Every time he signs his name. Jesus fuck, do you even know how often that it?

Tony opens his mouth to call him out on sexism. He knows women worth hundreds of him. Pepper has been more or less running his company since he hired her, has been running him since he Came Back From Afghanistan.

The only thing you really fight for is yourself, says Rogers, like he's looking through his two-way mirror and seeing an empty room on the other side. And that. That hurts, whites out his brain like an electrical failure. Tony wants to spit back in his face, tell him, nobody has given me anything else to fight for. Or, I thought you loved lost causes.

It pools low in his stomach like the urge to vomit; he rides out a wave of visceral, animal instinct to lash out at those high and mighty cheekbones.

You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, Rogers says, looking him in the eyes, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you. And fuck you, Captain America, he's got blood on his hands and a hole in his chest plugged up with grief and machine wires that unravel over time. The closest thing he had to a father stuck his hands inside his open wounds like a cookie jar and tried to flick the switch to corpse.

He hasn't got a lot of people who stick around for him to lay the wire down.

There's a moment where he breathes after the sentence impacts and nobody jumps to his defense, which is exactly why he has built his walls so high and thick in the first place.

He can tell you the names of all the people who have died for him and he needs more than the fingers on both hands. The knowledge makes his joints ache and pop. I'm sorry, he tells Yinsen's dead face in his head, that my life couldn't be a little more worth it. He's working on it, honest-to-god trying to restructure his legacy and his life.

It's the wires in his head he can't reroute as easily and he feels this close to short-circuiting most of the time.

He is human in the worst possible way and the truth is that Tony is not very good with humans. He can't just overwrite the old programming, can't just update update update until the bugs in the system are worked out. It's too vulnerable like this, with skin and sweat and adrenalin flooding his frontal lobe.

I think I would just cut the wire, Tony answers because what else is there to say?

Always a way out, he sneers and really, Tony should be proud that he was able to put such an ugly look on Rogers' face. The intensity of his anger is unavoidable, entire body dedicated to the emotion and it ripples through him like lightening. He stands there in the spotlight of derision and feels oddly unsurprised with the way the argument unfolds like origami paper. The conversation was shaped like a middle finger from the start.

For the sake of emotional stability, he should probably stop trying to connect with the people he looks up to.

They dislike him and/or end up dying.

You know, you may not be a threat, Rogers takes a step closer, projecting like radio waves and there's no ignoring the message—but you better stop pretending to be a hero.

And there, finally somebody's said it.

Stop pretending to be a hero, Stark.