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Into Each Life: Chapter 8

Summary:

“Tiberius is there?”

Tony shivers, mind drifting involuntarily to his father’s protégé. “He’s dad’s shadow, Jarvis. He’s politicking with every rich geriatric in New York but somehow manages to keep eyes on me like a fucking sleeper agent.” Tony’s eyes dart to Patrick, braced dutifully in the doorway with his sight trained on the outside hallway. He drops his own voice to a whisper. "I only managed to slip away because I announced to half the ballroom that I had to use the little Omega’s room.”

“How did you manage to find a telephone? Ana told you to befriend waitstaff. Are you in the kitchens?”

Tony shuffles awkwardly from a crouch into a sitting position. He chances another glance at Patrick.

“I may have seduced a waiter.”

Jarvis doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response.

Words: 6,790

Two minutes into Tony Stark’s eighteenth birthday, he was swapping spit with a handsome, smooth-talking Alpha.

Twenty-two hours into Tony Stark’s birthday, he’s mere moments away from threatening a young Beta waiter with a champagne glass to the jugular.

“I don’t give a fuck what ‘society protocol’ is, and I don’t require a fucking chaperone to make a call. Lead me to the nearest telephone now, or I swear to god I will take this cup and shove it so far up your—”

The Beta waiter interrupts him with a squeak, a bead of sweat dripping from his temple as he casts a desperate glance in either direction. There’s no one around, of course. Tony had easily cornered the boy into a private hallway after downing two consecutive glasses of champagne from his tray and casting him a glance that was, perhaps, a bit more than suggestive.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, after all.

The Beta, no more than nineteen, had gulped audibly, nearly dropped his tray, and stumbled after Tony with the discretion of a newborn baby deer. Consequently, Tony only had minutes to threaten the location of the nearest parlor room out of this bumbling idiot before they were inevitably interrupted by a nosy gala chairman and dubbed the latest scandal of the season.

“S-sir, I’m sorry, but I really think that you should allow me to escort you back to the ballroom.”

Tony closes his eyes and takes a deep, calculated breath.

He is on a mission. He doesn’t have time for reckless homicide.

“Not really an option, Paul.”

“Patrick.”

“Whatever. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really have all day here, Patrick,” Tony hisses, and he knows his distress spikes the air when the waiter lets out a wince.

Tony takes a step back, doing his best impression of a man collected as he straightens his back and tilts up his chin. “Enough with the grandstanding. What’s your price, pal?”

It’s a cheap, last-ditch tactic, and Tony almost laughs sardonically when Patrick-Not-Paul’s bushy eyebrows shoot up to his sweaty hairline.

Momentarily, he almost feels like his father. Charming unassuming men into sleazy, back-alley deals under poorly disguised desperation.

“… I b-beg your pardon, sir?”

Tony rolls his eyes up to an dark, ornate wooden ceiling. He wants to unbutton his shirt collar. He wants to climb out the nearest window and sprint down Fifth Avenue.

He wants to be in Brooklyn. Preferably yesterday.

Sucking on his teeth, Tony digs into the pants pocket of his rich Italian suit and pulls out a wallet. He has one bill.

He curses his father, a few foreign deities, and Ulysses Simpson Grant.

Patrick-Not-Paul makes a choking sound when Tony dangles the crisp fifty in his face.

“Do you have a problem for our esteemed eighteenth president, Peter?”

“…Patrick.”

“Are you fucking with me right now, Patrick?”

Patrick’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates. “No! No sir. That is awfully generous, sir.”

Tony smiles wryly, and tucks the money into Patrick’s uniform lapel. Patrick’s cheeks tinge pink. He smells faint, like most Betas do, but underneath the unobtrusive pheromones lies undertones of damp sweat and cheap cologne.

Omegas and Betas aren’t common pairings. Catching a trace of Patrick’s underwhelming aroma, Tony wonders if his mother ever finds herself yearning for compatibility that Tony’s father is biologically incapable of providing.

Tony’s only been separated from Bucky for a few short hours, and he already finds that there’s an itch to his skin that he knows won’t subside until he’s back in the presence of the Alpha. It probably doesn’t help that Bucky pushed Tony against the side of a building last night and sucked a faint bruise into the sensitive, pulsing scent gland at the base of his neck.

It’s been throbbing all day, a hot and constant reminder.

Tony takes a step back and adjusts his own tie. It scratches at tender skin.

“To the telephone, Patrick?”

“R-right this way, Mr. Stark.”

Tony gave Patrick more money than he’ll make in a month serving champagne at events for Manhattan’s high society, so he makes the Beta keep watch at the parlor door while he instructs the operator to connect him to the Jarvis’s private line.

He has to be quick. Howard will notice his absence, sooner than later.

Or someone else will. Tony shudders.

The telephone rings. And rings. Tony winds and the cord arounds his finger, and then unwinds it. Winds it again.

Finally, the receiver clicks. And then:

“Stark residence. Edwin Jarvis speaking.”

Tony could sing. He wants to kiss his faithful, dependable butler on the mouth.

“Jarvis.”

“Anthony.” Jarvis sounds alarmed. With sudden urgency, his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “You were supposed to call hours ago.”

Tony chokes down a desperate wail, his heart ricocheting off his ribcage. He clutches the telephone in both hands, voice thready as he crouches behind a gaudy velvet chaise.“God, Jarvis. I couldn’t get away from Howard. Or Stone.” He swallows audibly, and runs a hand through his hair. It was stiff with pomade when Tony left the house earlier in the evening, but after hours of nervous fidgeting, the strands are beginning to soften back into their natural curl.

His thoughts travel to Bucky’s hands weaving through his hair. Tugging. Running his fingers through his locks and angling Tony’s head to kiss him deeper.

He shakes the image away wildly.

Not the time.

“Tiberius is there?”

“How did you manage to find a telephone? Ana told you to befriend waitstaff. Are you in the kitchens?”

Tony shuffles awkwardly from a crouch into a sitting position. He chances another glance at Patrick.

“I may have seduced a waiter.”

Jarvis doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response.

Tony sighs.

“Keep your pants on, J, it was only to get the poor guy alone. I actually threatened him with bodily harm.” Another pause. “And then bribed him. Y’know, financially.”

Jarvis lets out a long, deep sigh over the receiver. Tony grimaces. “Oh, Anthony.”

“Jarvis,” Tony’s voice cracks in desperation, and he squeezes his eyes shut at the impending migraine threatening to explode behind his eyelids. “Jarvis, I need you and Ana to get me out of here.”

A glance at the ornate, gold-plated grandfather clock in Tony’s peripheral tells him that he’s already been missing for close to fifteen minutes. Any second now, and Howard’s goon squad will come bursting through the door to deliver Tony’s pomade-slicked head on a silver platter to a ninety-seven year old railroad tycoon.

It’s already been four hours, give or take, of Tony being shuffled around a garish, elaborate banquet hall by the scruff of his neck. Four hours of senators, oil barrens, and New York’s wealthiest (and sleaziest) moguls ogling Tony like he’s nothing more than a slab of meat, entertaining surface-level conversations with Tony’s father while they gawk openly at Tony’s flushed cheeks and red-bitten lips (a nervous, untimely habit), and make mental assessments of Tony’s fuckability under the guise of shoptalk.

“He’s gorgeous,” Representative Richard… Something? had husked out a mere twenty minutes ago, chairman of the United States Committee on Armed Forces and Howard’s latest pit stop on their torturous merry-go-round of corporate ass-kissing.

Tony - who had tuned out most of the evening, and had just started contemplating stealing a bottle opener off of a nearby serving platter to skewer between his ears - went rigid in his father’s grasp.

Howard’s hand tightened its grip on his shoulder.

A warning.

Representative Richard-Something was already several glasses of bubbly on his way to a slurred, public spectacle, and he had clearly gotten sick of Howard’s cordial attempt at negotiating private (and discrete) contracts for Stark weapons to be distributed at the front lines of Western Europe. His red, watery gaze was firmly on Tony, whose own eyes were burning holes into the marble floor. Waiting for it to swallow him whole.

“Happy birthday, gorgeous,” Bucky has murmured before he had taken Tony’s face in his hands like he was a fragile thing and kissed him like he was a man starved.

Tony ached.

“Eighteen yet?” The Representative grunted. He assessed Tony head-to-toe like one would evaluate a prized thoroughbred, and Tony wondered if he was going to be sick on his shoes. If his father would leave him as an unconscious, undignified heap on the floor, were he to pass out from mere mortification.

Howard, to his credit, and a testimony to the ease in which he navigated these sort of dirtbags on a daily basis, let out a good-natured chuckle.

“You always were the man willing to get straight to the point, Rich,” Howard grinned with an edge, teeth sharp and eyes calculating. “And here I thought we were having a nice conversation. My contractors are willing to negotiate - ”

“The longer you go without bonding them, the more trouble they are,” Richard interrupted, unfazed. Howard’s jaw snapped shut. “They become harder to tame. A slave to their burgeoning hormones and wiles, that’s what the experts are saying these days.”

Tony didn’t think he has ever seen his father stunned speechless.

Meanwhile, somewhere over his shoulder, Tiberius Stone loomed like a phantom. All night, Tony could sense his father’s trusted business partner’s presence like a distant apparition, something akin to cold water trickling down the length of his spine whenever he sensed ice blue irises boring into the back of his head.

Tony suppressed a tremor.

“You think I can’t handle my son, Rich?” Howard let out another laugh, this one purely forced and leeched of humor. “He’ll bond when I tell him to bond, obviously. He knows this.”

“And is he pure?”

Tony’s face blanched.

Jesus fucking christ.

Howard’s eyes narrowed to slits and his jaw clicked, his resolve finally slipping.

“What kind of Omega do you think I am raising?” Howard’s voice dropped to a whisper, his words dripping with venom. “He is untouched, and will remain so until he is bonded with his Alpha. I am not raising my son to be some sort of common tramp, Representative. He knows his place in society, as do I.”

Bucky’s thigh slanted between Tony’s. The outline of Bucky’s cock digging into Tony’s hip. Tony’s slick dampening his underwear, permeating the air, Bucky’s pupils dilating…

Tony bit his cheek hard enough to draw blood.

Under different circumstances, Tony might had enjoyed witnessing someone crack his father’s exterior facade; reducing the carefully composed Beta into the bitter, vitriolic fear monger Tony knew better than most.

But at this present moment, all Tony wanted to do was escape the drunk, fascinated leer of an aging congressman. He had been waiting all night for an opportunity to slip away, and he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“I can assure you, Representative, that my hormonal temptations are fully dormant,” Tony piped up, ignoring his father’s murder-stare. “No wiles to worry about here. Burgeoning or otherwise.”

Representative Richard-Something blinked at him.

“Now, look here, Omega -”

“ - If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m afraid I must seek out the washroom. Too much champagne; I’m sure you understand, sir.”

Tony slithered out of Howard’s grasp before the Beta could throttle his neck with his bare hands, air trapped in his lungs and heart galloping in his ribs as he slipped into a crowd full of ball gowns and tuxedos.

Find a friend. Find a friend. Find a friend.

Across the ballroom and blessedly alone… Peter.

No.

Patrick?

Whatever.

Of course, Tony found that mindless charm and simple seduction came to him easier around just about anyone who wasn’t a particular stormy-eyed, pine-scented Alpha. Go figure.

“I’m just around the block, Tony. I’ve been circling the car for hours,” says Jarvis, yanking Tony back into the present. ”Did you really think I was going to leave you there, given everything?” He has the gall to sound offended.

Not for the first time, Tony is stunned into silence by his loyal companion.

"Give me, oh, ten minutes to meet you out front? Perhaps twelve. Midtown traffic is always a nightmare at this time. So many… ugh.” A car horn screams in the distance. “Taxis.”

Jarvis’s tinny voice reverberates from the brass receiver, but Tony’s overworked and overstimulated brain is too busy trying to calculate his next move.

Ten minutes. Only six hundred seconds. He can find a hiding spot and map out something resembling an escape route in ten minutes, he’s sure of it…

“Wait, Jarvis, is this not your private line? I don’t understand - ”

“Yes, well,” Jarvis clears his throat, and Tony realizes that if he listens closely, he can hear the faint sounds of city traffic travel through his end of the receiver. “Ana and I decided that it could be most beneficial to have our personal calls transferred to the company vehicle, in the case of such emergencies.”

Tony processes this for exactly six seconds.

“Edwin Jarvis, you fucking scoundrel, you jerry-rigged an operating telephone to dad’s car?” Tony can’t help as his tone quickly changes from a concealed whisper to a delighted cackle, and his voice carries to Patrick. The young waiter briefly perks his head up from the doorway in intrigue until Tony shoots his a scathing look that sends him withering back to his post.

And in the midst of everything, Tony can’t help but be momentarily, sickly envious of accomplishing a technological feat of any capacity.

He misses his father’s lab. He misses applying his brain to something other than Omega homework, or the daily navigations of his own complex emotions.

Tony knows that Jarvis spent time in the British Armed Forces. He knows that’s where Jarvis met Ana. He doesn’t know much else; he doesn’t ask, and Jarvis doesn’t divulge.

(Tony has always suspected espionage, of sorts. His butler is not to be reckoned with.)

“I will not confirm or deny any sort of accusations or speculation about such an invention existing within the confines of a proprietary vehicle.”

“Wicked.”

“I have also,” Jarvis is momentarily interrupted by another blaring car horn, and a string of curses that would send Mrs. Harrell into a coma. “Apologies. I have also, within a framework of primarily legal resources, managed to track down the address of a certain Brooklyn apartment.”

Tony freezes, his breath hitching in his chest.

“Do you - ” Tony shudders, sparing one last glance at Patrick. The Beta has his head poked out into the hallway, posture rigid, and something uneasy swirls in Tony’s gut.

He’s running out of time.

“You found them.” Tony whispers. He feels faint.

“Keep your trousers on, young sir. One of your friends is an enrolled student at a public Brooklyn art university. One simply needed to find his legal name, and search for a fitting description in the yellow pages. It was hardly a task respectable of espionage.” Jarvis’s posh tongue sounds uncharacteristically smug.

“You found them,” Tony repeats, stunned.

“Ten minutes, Anthony. I will meet you out front. Scale a balcony if you must, I know you are so fond of doing so.” Click.

Ten minutes.

Tony doesn’t make it one full step out of the parlor room doorway before his nose nearly smacks into the chest of an imposing obstacle.

To be fair, Patrick might have attempted to warn him. But Patrick was gone by the time Tony hung the telephone back onto the cradle, put his head between his knees, and gave himself the grace to take exactly three deep breaths to get his act together.

His idealistic, impractical plan to escape out of the grand foyer unnoticed explodes to dust in the form of Tiberius Stone - tall, present, and very, very close.

Also, alone.

Tony is never alone with Alphas.

Well.

Alright. Tony is usually never alone with Alphas.

It’s been a very complicated twenty-four hours.

Tony doesn’t yelp as his face comes in close contact with Tiberius Stone’s upper body, but it’s a close thing. The Alpha reaches out in the knick of time, bracing Tony by the biceps and saving the both of them from a collision.

His grip is too tight. It lingers too long.

“I dismissed your partner-in-crime. Perry, was it?” Tiberius asks lightly, taking a step back from the younger boy. He reaches into the breast pocket of his waistcoat and pulls out a pack of Luckies.

“Patrick,” Tony replies dumbly.

“Ah. Yes, Patrick.” Tiberius nods, a gesture of exaggerated interest. His long, slender fingers pluck out a lone cigarette.

Tony doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. He’s not even sure that he blinks.

“Did the two of you get lost, navigating the washroom together?” Tiberius returns the pack to his pocket and twirls the cigarette delicately between his fingers. His eyes are ice blue, full of mirth, and Tony feels like a caged animal. “Scandalous, the kind of talk that would follow two young boys tumbling out of a private room together.”

He peers over Tony suddenly, towering almost a full head the Omega’s own stature. The Alpha’s nostrils flare, an almost imperceptible thing, except Tony is so close that he also notices Tiberius’s pupils double in size.

He’s scenting him.

“Funny, you don’t smell like Beta cum,” Tiberius says, casual as anything. He sighs, a deep, full-bodied movement, and his gaze trails lazily towards Tony’s neck.

Tony’s scent gland is concealed under his suit collar, but the existing bruise throbs unpleasantly under the curious leer of another Alpha.

“I needed to borrow a telephone. After the washroom,” Tony says, willing his voice not to waver. He clears his throat, dropping Tiberius’s gaze and taking a small step back. He tilts his head, just barely, but enough to pull attention away from his gland. “I, uh. I needed to call a classmate. She had a question about a homework assignment.”

Tiberius quirks a blonde brow.

“On a Friday evening?"

Tony doesn’t rise to the bait.

“I’m a good student.”

Tiberius’s calculating eyes travel slowly from Tony’s face to his throat. Expression vacant, movements bored. Unabashed.

“I bet.”

Tony flushes.

He’s cornered, and he knows it. For as long as Tiberius has been in Howard’s life - flying under the radar in contrast to Howard’s widely public persona, signing contracts in hushed whispers behind closed doors, floating money for his father under crooked tables - Tony has never once felt at ease in the presence of the enigmatic Alpha.

Howard, never being one to enjoy a challenge - personal or professional - surrounded himself with fellow Beta employers at Stark Industries.

Alpha interactions were limited to external negotiations. Contractors, investors, lobbyists and the like; inevitable dealings within the world that Howard Stark operated in. Howard never liked feeling like the smallest man in the room, so he doled out his authority toward the things that he could control within the confines of his own empire.

Stark Industries: A kingdom of Betas, with Howard Stark as their fragile monarch.

Tony doesn’t know when, or how, Tiberius was able to worm his way under his father’s thumb. How an Alpha was able to earn the trust of the most insecure Beta in Manhattan, and prove himself a worthy underling.

Tony thinks that Tiberius is the son he always wished he had.

Or the man Howard himself always believed he was cheated out of becoming.

Growing up, Tiberius’s presence in the mansion was a constant thing. He attached himself to Howard like a silhouette, and for half of Tony’s life, Tiberius Stone has existed as an extension of his father.

It wasn’t until Tony presented that he started feeling the searing penetration of the Alpha’s gaze following him around every shared room, every joined dinner, every brief moment Howard required their simultaneous presence.

It wasn’t often. Howard has limited use for Tony these days, and Tony doesn’t live at home most of the time anyway.

He forgets, mostly. He goes months without encountering Tiberius.

He forgets, of course, until he doesn’t.

“I needed a bit of fresh air. One can only discuss the upcoming state election for so long before they require a cigarette break, I suppose,” Tiberius says, redirecting the conversation.

Tony is pretty much certain that none of the whispering Tiberius has done into the ears of New York’s most rich and influential tonight has anything to do with the gubernatorial race.

But, alas.

Tiberius pivots on his heel and turns back down the hall. He doesn’t break his stride or turn back towards Tony as he calls out, “Join me for a smoke, Omega?”

It’s not a suggestion.

Ten minutes.

Tony fidgets. His feet stay stuck in place.

“I should find my dad, before he comes looking for me,” Tony suggests, even though he knows it’s a lost cause. His heart is hammering, and he wonders if Tiberius can hear it.

“Five minutes,” Tiberius lobbies back. “Come, I’m sure you’ll want to discuss the logistics of your inevitable bonding.”

In the end, they find a balcony.

Propped up against the railing, perched on his forearms to draw his mouth near his lighter, the cuff of Tiberius’s right sleeve edges past his wrist. A bite mark peeks out. Black. Twisted. Rotted.

A prematurely broken bond.

Dread twists in Tony’s gut, acrid and pungent. He looks away.

If Tiberius can smell his unease, he makes no mention of it.

“How’s school?” He asks instead, after a few moments of uncomfortable (one-sided) silence. He takes a deep inhale, chin tilted towards the sky. His long, pale neck is practically translucent in the reflection of the moonlight.

When he exhales, smoke curls around his lips and blends in with the sharp punch of his pheromones.

Tony has never been close enough to the older Alpha to dial in on his scent. Tonight, in such near proximity, it’s an unavoidable curse.

All Alphas scent strong to Tony. It’s biological. Even the old geezers inside, though muted with age and a general diminishing libido, release pheromones that appeal to Tony’s genetic makeup.

During the height of his heat, he would hypothetically crave any random Alpha’s knot over a physical connection with the most dashing, intimately familiar Beta.

It’s why every Alpha in this building feels entitled to fuck him.

Tiberius is not old. Not compared to the median population of current gala attendees, anyway. Tony supposes he’s roughly twenty-eight, give or take a year. He’s a tall, objectively handsome Alpha in peak physical condition at the prime of his adulthood.

His pheromones cling to Tony like a vice.

He smells earthy, and abrasive, and loud. Like the tense, fraught pause in a terrible storm between bursts of thunder.

It makes Tony’s blood sing and his skin crawl, concurrently.

When Tony says nothing, he sighs, rotating his body so that his back presses against the railing. He holds the cigarette out as an offering.

“Relax, Omega.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Tiberius laughs; a harsh, terrible sound.

“There’s no use denying what you are, Tony. The world will never let you forget it.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, Socrates. Is that your mantra for coasting through life as Howard’s bitch?”

Tiberius’s eyes narrow. He withdraws the cigarette. Tony expects a slap in the face, but instead, he gets, “Do you speak to your Alpha like this?”

He stills. His fingers spasm around their grip on the balcony rail.

“I don’t have an Alpha,” he says through gritted teeth.

Tiberius hums.

“No, I suppose you don’t.”

“What do you want, Stone?” Tony whirls around, and he’s angry. He’s wasting time, and after the events of the night, he feels strung tight enough to snap. “Are you trying to blackmail me? Scare me with threats of telling Daddy that I was hiding in the broom closet with some Beta schoolboy?” Tony laughs, though it’s closer to a sob, and he yanks a hand through his hair so he doesn’t accidentally lay a punch right into Tiberius’s razor sharp jaw line. “Go right ahead, asshole. You might ruin my reputation, but not my fate. I’m fucked either way.”

Tiberius scoffs, dismissing Tony’s outburst.

“You’re such a child. I forget, sometimes, looking the way that you do,” Tiberius muses, and Tony might push him off the balcony.

“Says the evil henchman.”

“Grow up, Anthony,” Tiberius snaps, and Tony recoils. "You’re too self-involved to perceive the reality that’s laid out before you. Aren’t you supposed to be a genius, Omega?”

He pushes off the balcony and crowds into Tony’s air. He presses the younger boy’s back up against the metal railing. Tony’s brain fogs with the sudden, abrupt display of dominance, pheromones curling into his nostrils.

“It’s my eighteenth birthday. My reality is somewhere in that room, sucking up to my father.” Tony’s tongue feels fuzzy in his mouth. He hates this.

“You may be an idiot, but your father is not. He is never going to bond you with someone whose expiration date is several decades closer than his own. It would be a foolish waste of time, given your worth.”

“What the fuck are you going on about?” Tony fires back, appalled. “Why the hell would I even be here, if not for the fact that my father needs to auction me off like a prized pig? I’m an Omega, I’m male. I’m tied to a multi-billion dollar empire. There’s nothing else for me. Howard has made that very clear.”

“Howard will do what’s best for his company, what’s best for him.” Tiberius looks at him with disdain, the way a tired mother does when she scolds a misbehaved child. “Do you really think that Howard Stark will find long-term security in a match between you and some senator, whose remaining days in Congress, therefore his influence, are limited? Or an aging aristocrat, whose entire fortune will ultimately pass through to an oldest son?”

Somewhere, undetectable, the universe shifts minutely on its axis.

Tony stares up at Tiberius, eyes wide, mouth slack.

“You, Anthony Stark, are much more valuable than you even know,” Tiberius voice drops into a whisper. His words slither down Tony’s spine like poison. “Yes, you are an Omega. Yes, you are male. You will breed no heirs. You will secure no inheritance.” He steps even closer, ice eyes burning. Tony’s back curves over the rail, chest-to-chest with Tiberius Stone. He can feel the Alpha’s heartbeat. He feels sickly, achingly dizzy.

His skin buzzes for a different touch. Yearns for it, like a drug. Everything else burns like betrayal.

“But you are young. You are… untouched. You are absolutely fucking delectable.” Tiberius’s left hand comes up to cup Tony’s jaw, the pad of his thumb tracing his cheekbone. His palm is ice cold. Tony flinches.

Tiberius’s breath wafts across Tony’s face, and Tony’s insides twist.

“Any man in that room with half a functioning cock would sign their life away to Howard for the opportunity to bond you, keep you, and stick their knot in you for the next decade.”

Tony squeezes his eyes shut.

“Stark Industries requires more than a decade. Howard is a selfish bastard, but he is no fool. Whatever ideas he has been planting in your head about your upcoming match, he has been deceiving you.”

When Tony speaks, he can’t summon more than a whisper.

“Tiberius… what do you know that I don’t?”

Tiberius doesn’t say anything, at first. He just looks at Tony, unimpressed yet contemplative. Restrained, yet hungry.

The hand cupping Tony’s face travels down to grip at his jaw, tight. Locking him in place. His other hand comes up, and Tony spots a flash of blackened, broken skin before his fingers are pulling Tony’s collar to the side. Revealing his bruised, worried scent gland.

Tiberius presses his thumb into the gland, molds it into the mark left by the shape of Bucky’s mouth, and Tony’s knees buckle. He screws his eyes shut when tears start to burn. It feels wrong, and it hurts.

Twice, in the span of twenty-four hours, he finds himself exposed. At the mercy of an Alpha.

The second experience certainly hasn’t been anything to write in his diary about.

“I broke my first bond,” Tiberius states simply, like he’s commenting on the weather and not speaking a dangerous, abhorrent rumor into existence. “She didn’t mean anything to me. It was a match created by our parents when we were both in grade school. She was a silly, pretty little thing.” His fingers tighten on Tony’s jaw and Tony’s muscles coil with unrestrained wrath. “She loved me, I presume. Until she didn’t. By then, it didn’t matter. She was in my way.”

Tony’s gut churns. It’s a savage, malicious thing, to break a mating bond prematurely. Mating bonds are delicate, powerful manifestations of two physical entities. The individuals become biologically hardwired to depend on one another. To exist as one.

To break one requires severing your soul. At least, that’s what Tony’s orthodox teachers have always warned. The subject is too taboo to discuss in depth. There are hardly any texts.

Tony doesn’t believe in souls, necessarily.

But if they existed, he wouldn’t doubt that whatever was left of Tiberius’s resembled something that had journeyed through a paper shredder.

“I never should have let her bite me, but we were teenagers. We thought it would be progressive. A show of collaboration, if you will.” Tiberius smiles, all teeth and no charm. Wrist mating bites for Alphas are more symbolic than anything, after all. Only a bite to the Omega’s mating gland is necessary to secure the bond.

“Either way, I’m branded now. A reminder to myself, and everyone else, of my unfortunate… transgressions.”

Tiberius leans down and inspects Tony’s gland. The Alpha’s breath caresses the spot where another Alpha lay claim mere hours ago. Tony wants to spit on him.

“The point, Tony, is that we are both outcasts. Societal rejects, if you will. Damned by the public because of fates beyond our control.”

If Tony’s jaw wasn’t currently secure in the mitts of his father’s lackey, he might laugh.

“I think our circumstances might be a little different here, Alpha,” he scoffs, speech garbled. He attempts to tug out of Tiberius’s grip. “I was born like this. You were born into privilege, and you set it on fire. You destined yourself to a life of exile here, pal.”

Tiberius slackens his grip, but before Tony can yank himself away, he grips the Omega by the neck. Tony’s vision goes soft and his knees wobble.

“I would stuff this smart mouth full of my cock day and night to keep your loose tongue quiet, you insolent creature.” Tiberius’s words whip at Tony’s skin.

“Fuck off,” Tony slurs, exhausted by this entire ordeal.

God, he knows it’s been way more than ten minutes.

“You would do right to consider me an ally, Stark,” Tiberius warns. His thumbnail digs into Tony’s gland, and Tony snarls. Thrashes like a wild animal.

“Your father trusts me. He confides in me. My guidance is priceless to him.”

“You think my dad will bond me to you?” Tony laughs to hide the crippling, paralyzing realization that creeps into his bones. “His glorified manservant? My father operates a business that functions at the level of a world power. You are nothing.”

“Your father owes everything to me, and he knows it,” Stone growls. “I am more valuable to him than every man in that room, ten times over. I walk away, and S.I. crumbles.”

He releases Tony, and the Omega stumbles out of his grip, finding purchasing on the railing behind him. Both of their chests heave.

Tony swallows. His jaw aches. His scent gland throbs, and not in a pleasant way. His skin feels hot, his chest heavy, his resolve weak.

Still, he speaks first.

“Well. As positively delightful as this has all been, I’m sorry to say that my butler is waiting for me outside.” He tugs his suit jacket back into place.

Tiberius sneers at him.

“Run to your Alpha, young Anthony. Lord knows you should make the most of this pathetic affair before your father burns it to ash.”

Tony pales.

“I don’t - ”

“And know, sweet Omega, that when you fall into his arms tonight,” Tiberius words are a soft murmur as he leans forward to an immobilized Tony, once more, to stroke the young boy’s cheek. “I will be the first thing he smells.”

With that, Tiberius Stone withdraws his hand, stubs out his performative cigarette, and leaves Tony alone on the balcony.

It’s not hard to find Jarvis, after that.

No one impedes his departure. Howard is nowhere to be found.

That’s a problem for another night.

Wordlessly, Tony descends the front steps of the hotel and slips into the front passenger seat of his father’s Rolls Royce.

Jarvis casts him a peripheral glance, sighs, and pulls out into Fifth Avenue traffic.

Neither of them speak for twenty minutes. The radio croons Bing Crosby. Tony’s forehead is plastered to passenger window. He breathes condensation onto the glass. Inhales it back in. Repeats.

Jarvis casts him another glance.

Eventually:

“You made it out in one piece, it appears.”

Tony snorts. “Barely.”

“Any respectable suitors?”

Tony smiles, despite himself. He presses his cheek to the cool glass.

“Depends; are liver spots the new fashion?”

“Liver spots and cataracts, I believe, are what the magazines are pushing.”

“Well thank fuck,” Tony mumbles. He shuts his eyes. “I guess you can say that I found the Garden of Eden.”

Jarvis is smiling now, too, a subtle thing, and Tony loves him. He loves him unconditionally.

“Jarvis,” he says. “Jarvis, they don’t know I’m coming.”

“Who, Tony?”

“Bucky. And Steve. They don’t know. I didn’t tell them. I didn’t - they might not want me.”

Jarvis hums, and turns down the radio dial. Tony turns away, focusing his attention back out the window. He feels like a coward.

“These men, they care about you?”

Tony’s eyes burn. He’s tired. He’s so, so tired.

He’s only been eighteen for one day and he’s so very tired.

“I mean, I think so. They’re friends.”

“Friends, like we’re friends?”

Because Jarvis is his friend. Jarvis is his best friend.

“Well… yes. And No. Both.” Tony rubs at his eyes, and is mortified to find that his knuckles come away damp. “Neither? I don’t know.”

“Tony, look at me.”

Tony blinks up at the roof of the car. He sniffles, a little. He feels small, and vulnerable, and his jaw still aches.

“Anthony.”

“Edwin.”

“I will stop this car and make you walk across the bridge.”

He won’t, and they both know it, but Tony looks at him anyway.

“Tony, if these boys feel for you even a fraction of the care I feel for, and that Ana feels for you, they will want you.”

Tony’s a near-blubbering mess, but he does his best to tamper it.

“It’s different, J,” he says softly.

Jarvis is quiet for a moment. And then:

“Both?”

Tony blinks.

“No. Not… both.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Not like that.”

Jarvis nods, contemplative.

“I would not be driving you here, and Ana would not be letting me drive you here, if we didn’t trust your intuition.” He gives Tony a pointed look - no pity, no sadness, just trust.

And gee, Tony finds himself without a quick retort for once.

“Okay,” he whispers. He twists his fingers in his lap.

“Okay,” Jarvis agrees. And then, “And if you’re truly that miserable, or they make you sleep on the floor, and the cooking is terrible, I am only a phone call away.”

And Tony does not let himself entertain the idea of sleeping arrangements.

Because there is still a chance that the Alphas will see the Omega show up on their doorstep in the middle of the night, broken and weak, and slam the door in his face.

“When you fall into his arms tonight, I will be the first thing he smells.”

Bucky may have wanted him last night, but who’s to say that the Alpha will want anything to do with a boy who found himself in close proximity with a different Alpha, not even twenty-four hours later?

There is still a faint buzz to Tony’s skin - the same thrum in his veins that has pulsed since Bucky last kissed him goodnight. An anticipation; a current drawing him back towards the young soldier.

But now, all Tony wishes is that he could scrub his skin raw. That he could erase the presence of Tiberius Stone from his body forever.

“You don’t suppose we could stop home for a quick bath, huh, J?” He aims for the delivery to land like a joke.

It falls flat.

Jarvis gives him a strange look.

“Did you spill something on yourself?”

Tony bites the inside of his cheek.

“Sir, we are less than five minutes from your acquaintances’ apartment. I’m sure that there are adequate accommodations for you to bathe, if you so desire.”

Tony’s cheeks bloom pink.

“And,” Jarvis continues, tone hinging on delicate. “Perhaps some ice for your jaw, if you have the time. To prevent swelling.”

Fucking Tiberius.

Tony nearly panics, but it resolves itself quickly when he realizes that Jarvis can’t smell anything suspicious. It’s more likely than not that the Beta simply assumes that Howards got a little handsy.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Is it bad?” He asks, voice flat.

“To the untrained eye, it’s hardly noticeable. Perfectly explainable.” Usually so reserved, there is something inexplicably sad in Jarvis’s careful reassurance.

Tony thinks back to the last time Bucky caught him with a bruised face. How he explained himself into the gutter, metaphorically speaking.

“Great,” he says instead.

Jarvis eventually pulls down a quiet Brooklyn street. He parks the car across from a narrow tenement building, red-bricked and unassuming and modest. A fire escape scales the exterior.

Tony swallows.

“I’m not sure which - ”

“Their apartment is second from the top, on the left. Four flights up.”

Tony regards his butler with careful suspicion.

“The yellow pages, huh?”

Jarvis shrugs, posh as always. “I did specify ‘primarily’ legal resources, did I not?”

Tony squints. “Do I want to know?”

“I wouldn’t tell you either way,” Jarvis dismisses, and the reality of the situation sets in when Tony’s heart leaps into his throat.

“I can’t do this, J. This is nuts. What if they’re not even home?”

“They’re home.”

Alright, then.

“Give yourself a weekend of grace, sir. You’ve had a long day. Find comfort with friends.”

“And when I come back?”

Jarvis reaches over Tony’s shoulder to unlock the passenger door. Tony fidgets in his seat.

“And when you come back, we will navigate accordingly.”

“Reassuring.”

“Do you want me to escort you like a child, or are you capable of climbing stairs on your own?”

Tony imagines knocking on Bucky and Steve’s bedroom window with his thoroughly pretentious butler in tow. He snorts.

“I’m sure I’ll manage.” And then, quieter: “Will you stay until I get inside?”

“As if I would leave you on this street alone.”

“Snob.”

“Out.”

Tony’s stalling, probably, but he reaches for the door handle and pushes it open, welcoming in the late Spring breeze.

“Jarvis? Thank you.” He should say more. He can’t.

Jarvis, of course, understands. He leans over and gives Tony’s shoulder a small squeeze.

“Be safe, Anthony. Happy birthday.”

Tony does not cry.

Instead, he nods.

He exits the car.

He crosses the street.

He navigates a chipped, rusty fire escape with the grace and dexterity of a drunk toddler. His heart pounds in his ears. His palms are slick as they grip the railing.

He climbs four flights, and finds himself facing a large window. The curtains are drawn, but too dark to peer inside. He turns around to look at Jarvis.

His butler flashes the Rolls Royce high beams twice in encouragement.

Rip the bandaid off, Stark.

God, Tony feels rude, more than anything. It’s the middle of the fucking night.

He rolls his shoulders and lifts a fist to knock, running his desperate, rehearsed plea through his head in preparation when the wide window suddenly opens and he finds himself face-to-face with a brunette, sleep-rumpled Alpha.

Bucky blinks.

“Tony?”

Tony blinks. And then:

“I guess we should really stop meeting like this.”

#winteriron #bucky barnes #wip #tony stark #steve rogers #captain america #ao3

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