Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/2011494. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage Category: M/M Fandom: The_Avengers_-_Ambiguous_Fandom, The_Avengers Relationship: Steve_Rogers/Tony_Stark Character: Steve_Rogers, Tony_Stark, Howard_Stark, Obadiah_Stane, James_"Bucky" Barnes, Maria_Stark Additional Tags: SO_MUCH_DARKNESS, Evil_Steve_Rogers, Monster_Steve_Rogers, Wendigo_Steve Rogers, Let's_go_with_that, Cannibalism, Dubious_Consent, Public_Sex, Murder, Multiple_minor_character_deaths, I_Wrote_This_Thing_To_The_Rhyme Of_My_Dark_Mood_Inspired_By_Lovecraft, Inspired_by_H.P._Lovecraft, Baby Wendigo_Tony_Stark, Howard_Stark's_A+_Parenting, Wendigo_James_"Bucky" Barnes, Blood_and_Gore, REALLY_PUBLIC_SEX, Serial_Killers, Wendigo Supervillains, Wendigo, Supervillains, Howard_Stark_is_Iron_Man, Howard Stark_WAS_Iron_Man, AU, Alternate_Universe, Alternate_Universe_-_Wendigo, I_Put_All_Of_My_Bad_Feelings_In_This_Story, please_tell_me_if_I_missed_a tag, Attempted_Murder, It's_So_Cold_Here, Evil_James_"Bucky"_Barnes, Bucky_Barnes_&_Steve_Rogers_Friendship, Dark_Steve_Rogers, Dark_Tony Stark, Something_Is_Wrong_With_Tony_Stark, Transformation, They_bang, The Author_Regrets_Everything, Underage_Sex, Rough_Sex Series: Part 7 of "Morally_and_Legally_Unacceptable_Histories"_~_Nanao-chan Stats: Published: 2014-07-24 Words: 3927 ****** Father's Disgrace, Lover's Embrace, The Cold We Brace ****** by sweetNsimple Summary “That's because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear - the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.” ~ 'Pickman's Model' by H.P. Lovecraft The blonde man of the two, the other brunette, looks up right into Tony's eyes. It's like ice, the man's stare, eyes so blue and clear. Like frosted windows. He smiles and Tony thinks of cold nibbling at his throat. The two men are closer, coming up against the security without even having drawn Howard's attention, and Tony knows, he knows that he needs to get up and tell his father about them. That something bad is going to happen if the two men get through. He stays right where he is and doesn't say a damn word. Notes See the end of the work for notes Tony Stark is fifteen years old, a gifted, technical genius attending his sophomore year at MIT, and bleeding in an alleyway in New York state while two assholes empty out his wallet. There's some loose bills that amount up to two hundred dollars plus some credit cards that are portals to Tony's vast allowance and inheritance. Tony glares at them, licking over his cracked bottom lip as he slides along the filthy brick wall towards a broken wine bottle. He's thinking he'll get out of this mess one way or another, preferably not in a body bag, but it's not out of the question. Then they notice he's moving. The hail and blows of fists and feet crumples him into a broken heap on the broken cement. So, yeah. Tony thinks he might die here. He doesn't feel too bad about it except for not putting up more of a fight. It feels like he made it too easy. And then it stops. Just – stops. He hears a cut-off shout and opens his one good eye to see what the Hell's going on, but everything's shadowed and hazy. He thinks he sees feet not touching the ground. He thinks he sees a head sitting unnatural and crooked on limp shoulders. He thinks he sees a lot of things in those few, eternal seconds. But what he knows – what he will never be convinced of otherwise – is that blood spatters against the other brick wall. He sees the dark red with strange and pointed vividness among the black and white shapes in his vision, glossy and thick like ink that the street corner lamplight catches and now it's almost glowing. Body parts fall, Tony's not altogether sure how they do that without the human torso attached to them. The blood's flowing and he feels warm and wet all at once, all along the side he's lying on, spattered against his face and clothes. Then he sees boots. He focuses on them, on the clean leather, the clean double- buckled ankle gaiters. The pants that are tucked into them could be blue or gray, Tony isn't really sure, but they look tactical and, it keeps circling through Tony's head like a stuck record, clean. So very clean, and why is that so weird? The person in the boots crouches and Tony is touched by fire. No, not literal fire, but it sears and burns and the last thing Tony had touched that had been so hot had been a soldering iron. Tony had been wearing gloves then. Tony tries to jerk away, but the fire grabs his face and holds on, individual points of pressure forcing Tony's head up and towards the man in the boots. Tony can't see a face through the phantasmal world of half-unconscious and mostly delirious – he thinks, distantly, he might have just witnessed two murders – but he can see crystal ice eyes and puffs of smoke as the man breathes. The pressure points – fingertips – feel as if they're burning holes through his skin and he clenches his teeth, jolting when a rush of agonizing cold stabs at his brain when his teeth crunch together. The man leans over him, so close that his smoke touches Tony's face and that isn't smoke, no, it's snow against Tony's face, freezing his eyelashes and blistering his cheeks, chapping his split lip and taking his breath away. The touch of this man isn't fire, but something so frozen that it burns like it, something so cold and frigid that Tony thinks he might die from the exposure alone and long before his other injuries catch up to him. It is an alarming thought that Tony isn't very alarmed about. The man takes Tony's head between both palms and Tony has this moment where he is perfectly coherent, completely and altogether aware of what is happening, and he knows the man is about to kill him before the cold and his own internal injuries. The splintering headache he has from the man's antarctic hands may be to blame for his sudden centering of the senses, or maybe it's that the warm blood that had blanketed him has now turned frozen and is pulling painfully at his skin, or perhaps it's simply the man's eyes, so blue and so clear that they're like chipped ice. For a moment, Tony can actually see, and he sees the man, and the man is... strangely beautiful. Broad and strong, classic bone structure and a jaw so cut that Tony could measure a right angle off of it, hair cut formally and blonde. He's pale but not ghostly so. Tony actually thinks he might be looking at an angel. He can't figure out why an angel would be so cold or kill so messily, but the man is utterly untouched by the bloodshed, so very clean as if he had simply floated into the alleyway after a wild beast had torn apart two living, breathing bodies till they were scraps and this ethereal being had no part in it. If he is an angel, he probably has good reason to kill Tony. So Tony sighs and closes his eyes and lets the angel's touch burn him and the ice crystals of the angel's breath hurt him, and he waits. He waits, he feels for a very long time. Getting dizzier and dizzier, feeling in his lungs and heart the struggle for survival as his heart jerks and his lungs fill with blood. He feels his face going numb, stops feeling his toes and fingers completely. The angel tips his head back – finally, Tony thinks – and the touch of the angel's lips is so sharp and cold that it's like being bitten and Tony yells in surprise and pain as the angel licks his throat and then he feels... Everything. He feels the air above him, weighing him down. He feels the ice beneath him, tugging at him. He feels the angel against him, hot and cold, feels the ice chips of the angel's teeth close gently, almost teasingly, around his gullet, feels the breadth of the angel's searing hands traveling up under his shirt to push against his chest, pushing, pushing, sinking beneath the skin Oh God NO – Tony wakes up later. Three days later, to be exact. There's nothing wrong with him, he just wasn't waking up. There are no bruises, no broken bones, no internal bleeding. He's completely healthy. Healthier than he was at his last doctor's appointment, even. They're not sure how he came to be in one of their hospital beds, unconscious and unresponsive to all stimuli. All scans came back normal. Asking around, the doctors admit to being more concerned about where Tony came from. No one admits to bringing him in, no one is responsible for checking him in, and he never went through the emergency room. Tony Stark was found in, not delivered to, the trauma unit. They ask him what he remembers. He tells them that he can't remember a damn thing and that's he sick of their questioning and, yeah, okay, the concern is great, but he's fine, they said he was fine, so he's going to go now, bye, see you never again – “Did you even notice I was gone?” is the first thing Tony says to his father when he stalks into Stark Industries. He's missed enough classes that he doesn't even care at the moment. Everything is duller now than before, nothing is as important as it once had been. Except the anger he felt. The growing distaste towards the man who had brought him into this world and then thrown money at him as if money could be shaped and held in the form of a doting father. Howard is fixing the gauntlet of his Iron Man Mark V suit. “You're in college now, Tony,” Howard says, completely distracted. “I'm not there right now, am I?” Tony asks, sneering. He thinks his father will notice that Tony is supposed to be in class at that very moment. He thinks his father will look up and see the time and get upset at Tony for wasting his vast amount of money on an education he isn't even partaking in. Howard grunts, his eloquence diminished when his intelligence appears to be at his highest, and forgets that Tony exists. Yet again. Tony snorts and walks out. What had he expected? Howard Stark is everyone's hero. Everyone's but his own son's. To Tony, Howard is nothing but a sperm donor and an ATM. A constant compare and contrast, a contrary subject. It just goes to show that, when Tony could use a hero, his father still never showed up. That man in the boots had been there, though. Tony feels that man's presence in his chest like a block of ice, and it's settling. Comforting, when the everyday weather feels too hot and dreary to handle. Everything and everyone is slightly too hot to the touch for Tony ever since waking up. He remembers the man's touch and it's the cold he thinks of, not the pain, and Tony knows that he needs it. Fuck, he needs the cold back so damn badly, like a drug, like he's burning underneath his skin and the strange angel is the only one who can keep him from turning to ash and dust. As much as Tony needs the cold, Tony also needs the strange angel. Nothing he does is with any great purpose anymore. Nothing but taking himself in hand at night, remembering cold teeth against his skin, a rough tongue, large hands on sliding up his belly and chest. All of this he remembers in blunt detail, but he'd be damned before he could remember how he had met the angel or where. It's almost a dream. It's almost a nightmare. ~::~ Howard Stark is is doing a public announcement in reply to the uncomfortably growing number of gory and vile cannibalistic murders happening in the Northeastern states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Tony Stark is sitting between Maria Stark and Obadiah Stane as if he's supporting his father, Howard behind the podium in his Iron Man suit with helmet in arm. Howard looks exhausted, almost mad with agitation and rage, but all the crowds see is a superhero who has been moved to great passion by the slaughter of so many people, both innocent of all crime and guilty of heinous acts. Tony has retreated into the back of his mind, is seeing nothing but blue and code and computer screens. And then he blinks and there are two men casually walking towards the stage through the overwhelming swarm of reporters and civilians, collared by security and bodyguards. He doesn't know at first why his gaze is immediately drawn to them when all they're doing is walking towards the stage. Everyone is trying to press closer. It takes a moment to realize that while everyone else is trying, these two men are succeeding, and succeeding effortlessly at that. The crowd parts around them, jerking back and away, and Tony sees several of the people the two touch turn blue in the face and collapse out of view. Everyone else is too focused on Howard to care, and the people who do notice offer quiet and mature attention instead of causing a scene. The blonde man of the two, the other brunette, looks up right into Tony's eyes. It's like ice, the man's stare, eyes so blue and clear. Like frosted windows. He smiles and Tony thinks of cold nibbling at his throat. The two men are closer, coming up against the security without even having drawn Howard's attention, and Tony knows, he knows that he needs to get up and tell his father about them. That something bad is going to happen if the two men get through. He stays right where he is and doesn't say a damn word. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Obadiah shift towards him and then Obadiah is standing in front of him and he can't see the blonde man anymore, and the autumn day is sweltering, it feels like he's breathing in heat and sweat and he hates it. “Move,” Obadiah hisses, hand tight around Tony's upper arm, and Tony almost believes that Obadiah knows that disaster is imminent. But then Maria is ushering them on, eyes focused on Tony's chest, and Tony realizes that it's not the two men who are strange enough to draw immediate attention. There's a dulled glow emanating from Tony's chest, so bright that it shines through his stiff black suit and casts his hands in blue when he holds them over its illumination. The light is refreshingly cold, even without touching it. His mother, when she reaches towards it, screams and snaps her hand back to her chest. Tony knows how it feels to touch something so frigid that it burns and he knows that is what just happened to his mother. Howard has taken notice of them and not the men, and now everyone, everyone is looking at him. No one is watching the two men who step over the shivering, blue-lipped security guards and ascend the stairs to the stage as if they were called forth to do so. As if they've been waiting for this day as surely as one requested to make an appearance. Howard looks from Tony's chest to his face with betrayal carved into the lines of his face, hurt and confused like he has the right to, like Tony's well-being actually matters at all to him, as if Tony is a person worth protecting and Howard has failed, all because Tony is glowing like some fairy out of a Disney movie. Tony glares right back, not even sure what is happening but knowing that he hates what he sees stricken across his father's face. The brunette man pushes Howard's unsuspecting form away from the podium with the formal air of someone meant to do so and Howard goes with the force unquestioningly until he hears the crack of the titanium alloy of his suit beneath the man's hand. He looks down and there are veins of ice spreading over his chest plate. The brunette doesn't smile at the now confused and fearful people watching. He says, “No more,” and then doesn't explain what there is no more of. But Tony knows. No more hope. No more time. No more superheroes. Howard goes to raise his gauntlet, to fight, but the blonde man in the combat boots Tony remembers clearly grabs his arm and forces it back down to his side, taking Howard's helmet in his free hand and crushing it with nothing but the pressure of his fist closing around it. Of course Howard fights. Of course he tries to. Of course he brings up his other hand and that's when the arc reactor in the center of his chest flickers and dies and then the suit is just dead weight with him inside of it. The suit is lighter than earlier models, but still a good half ton of metal and weaponry compressed into one bodysuit. Howard's expression closes off. The brunette man is holding the microphone, so no one but those on stage hear Howard snarl, “What do you want?” And they're the only ones who hear the blonde man reply, “We're getting to it, but thanks for your concern.” Tony can see how the man's breath explodes from his mouth in clouds of ice crystals. He shrugs free of Obadiah's hold and walks towards the blonde man. The brunette glances at him, blinks, and then looks at the blonde. The blonde gets some silent cue that Tony doesn't from the brunette and turns to watch Tony approach. When he's within hand's reach, the blonde drops the crumpled helmet and wraps his fingers in Tony's dress shirt instead, pulling him in close and against his body. Tony is fifteen years old, but that doesn't stop the full-grown man from bending his head and bruising Tony's lips beneath the forceful attack of his mouth, and it feels like a claiming and an insult all in one because he holds Tony in one hand and Howard in the other and Howard is watching and can't move to stop it. The blonde man's touch doesn't burn this time. It's pleasantly cool where Tony has been feverishly hot ever since that night in the alley months ago. Where Tony has taken ice baths that felt lukewarm and walks in rainstorms just for the slight relief, the man inside his mouth finally brings a touch of sanity in a world boiling over with madness and Tony melts into him, feels his suit slick with sweat begin to freeze against his skin and it is wonderful. Everyone watches and no one stops it and the blonde man strips Tony of his clothes while Howard struggles to even raise his arm, and then the blonde man lifts Tony up and lays him on the podium. Everyone's afraid and mortified and someone starts to yell and that... That is when the sun disappears and the temperature drops so suddenly that even Tony feels a shiver of too cold over his skin before the blonde man is between his thighs, his fly undone and his manhood bare and his hand is slick with something, something red – Maria screams and Tony throws his head back and groans as the blonde man uses the blood from the spurting opening of Obadiah's neck as lubricant, thrusting and pushing into his body, massaging and stretching, relaxing him and setting his insides on fire, a different sort of fire, one Tony is more familiar with from his escapades at MIT, the ones he isn't allowed to tell anyone about because he isn't legal, but now all anyone can do is watch while the blonde man replaces his fingers with his dick and fucks Tony like there's nothing and no one to stop him from defiling a prepubescent boy on national television in New York Times Square. He hears a gun go off distantly, thinks dazedly to himself that someone must have finally remembered that there are police officers that do the job that Howard does for entertainment. The brunette man gingerly touches a hand to the side of his head, but there's no blood and the dented bullet makes a pretty tinkling sound when it rolls over the stage. Tony laughs breathlessly because he can feel the solid weight of the blonde man inside of him, not like flesh but like ice, like he's frozen inside and only skin covers this man-shaped glacier. His arms are around the blonde man's shoulders and his nails can't puncture his flesh, they chip and scrape against him as if he's trying to dig into steel – these men are not human, they don't have human weaknesses. Tony thinks, wildly, brainlessly to himself, that all they have is human desire – because that he feels inside, forcing its way into his body again and again and again until there is no resistance and Tony feels like a well-worn glove around the blonde man's dick, and he wants to cum so fucking bad, from the tips of his toes to the bitten edges of his fingers. The blonde man grabs him by his chin and forces his head back and then his teeth are in Tony's throat, and Tony feels how hard it is to breathe, feels how hot his blood is dribbling down his skin, can see the dark shadows dancing in his vision, a pressure growing in his skull, pressing down on his lungs, and he smiles maniacally because this is all so very perfect, all so very good. And then his father stutters a sequence of numbers and letters and the suit splinters and then falls to the ground in pieces. His roar of rage as he comes at the blonde man's back is almost grounding, as shocking as it is, and Tony almost comes out of the madness the blonde man is pounding into him, almost realizes the sanity that is bleeding out of him, but then the blonde man lifts his head, chin and mouth smeared red, and looks right into Tony's eyes. The ice freezes his sensibilities and he closes his eyes as the blonde man presses their mouths together and feeds Tony his own blood. It's like a kiss and not one at all, and Tony feels so tangled and taut and ready to explode at any minute – He thinks he cums as his father's body hits the floor, the crowd too cold to do little more but scream weakly. Maria watches her son orgasm underneath the blonde man, probably a monster, in frozen terror, not a breath leaving her stiff body. When the blonde man comes, it's like a blizzard, and it feeds Tony, makes him feel full and tingly. He sighs and savors it. He feels like he's been fucked dumb. Nothing is getting through the snow storm of sensation in his mind, nothing feels real outside of the blonde man's touch and abuse, nothing is more important than the dick he's impaled on, and no words have ever been more potent than the blonde man's when he says, “You're mine now, Anthony.” Tony doesn't even know his name and he doesn't care. He has no care in the world, he is completely without care. His picture is right next to Carefree in the Webster's Dictionary. The blonde man lifts him up and sets him on shaky legs. No one hands him his clothes, so he doesn't really think he needs them. It's only a little chilly out anyway. He follows the two men off the stage and feels the slop of the blonde man's seed inside of him, trickling down his inner legs. He's filthy from the too-hot weather and the too-hard sex and something in the back of his mind feels just as filthy and somehow degraded, but he can't make sense of why. The blonde man holds out a hand at the bottom of the stairs and Tony takes it without complaint, smiling without really knowing why beyond that he feels well used. There is no true depth to the feeling, just a pit of sexual satisfaction and mental quiet. It feels like a good day. He's not boiling to nothing in his own skin anymore and this handsome, hulking guy just gave him a good dicking. Also, the blonde man's friend isn't hard to look at and fine art is always nice to have around. The brunette takes a body and rips into it, hands and face bloody, eyes unnaturally dark, and he takes the entire left calf muscle in his jaws before tearing it into bite-size chunks. He brings it over and holds the smallest piece to Tony's bloodied mouth. He looks up at the blonde man, who simply looks proudly back at him, as if he is a child that has done good, who has done and said all the right things up until that very moment and he knows Tony will continue to do and say the right things just for him. Howard never made Tony feel like that. Then again, Howard had never fucked the sense out of him either. Thank God for small mercies. Under that Lion-proud gaze, Tony's smile grows and he opens his mouth and takes the meat between his teeth and chews. It isn't bad. Not at all.   End Notes I did something. I read H.P. Lovecraft and I'm filled with all sorts of bad somethings. Tumblr helped not at all. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!