Steve sits down at the bar and props his head up on his hand – and then very swiftly picks his head back up, because he will fall asleep sitting here if he doesn't.

"What's going on, Tony?" Steve asks sympathetically. He'd thought Tony was doing better. He was understandably pissed after the whole deal with the Accords, but he's been acting so much more cheerful since then; so much more normal. He'd thought they were past this.

Tony flops his head to the side, squinting as he looks up at him. "When did you get here?"

"Just now," Steve answers briefly before turning the conversation back to where it belongs. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Tony groans and buries his face in his arms again. "I think I'm going to go back to being a semi-functioning alcoholic."

Steve furrows his brows.

Okay...?

"Why's that?" he asks.

"'Cause it's easier," Tony mumbles into his arms.

Steve presses his lip into a straight line. He feels like he's not getting very far with this.

He reaches over, resting a hand on Tony's shoulder, and reluctantly, Tony lifts his head to look at him. That's progress, he feels. Maybe he'll get some sort of explanation out of him this time.

"What's going on, Tony?" Steve asks.

Tony lets out a long breath. "I don't know what I'm doing," he admits.

Steve gives him a moment to elaborate, and when he doesn't, he asks, "What do you mean?"

"Like..." Tony rests his elbow on the bar and props his head up on his hand, the other hand gesturing vaguely as he speaks. "I retired, so I'm not an Avenger, but apparently I'm not actually retired because I'm still working in the lab and I'm still dealing with Ross, but I am retired because I'm not fighting, so I'm not an Avenger except I am still an Avenger because apparently you can't just stop being an Avenger, in which case maybe I should keep fighting with you guys and maybe it's selfish not to, except the whole reason I stopped fighting was because I wanted to do the right thing, and I don't even know what the right thing is anymore–" He cuts himself off to take a much-needed breath, and then he slumps over again, resting his cheek against his forearms on the bar. "I don't know," he mumbles. "I don't know what I'm doing. I want another drink."

Steve sighs, looking down at him with a frown. This feels like a really hard conversation to have with a drunk man – not that it would be easy if he was sober, but he has to imagine it would be easier.

He takes a few moments to plan out his next response. "It's not selfish to not want to fight," he says. That feels like a good place to start. "I can't say if it's the right thing to do – and that's the hard part about doing the right thing: I don't think you can ever really know if you are. But you're doing what you think is the right thing, and that's what matters."

Tony rolls his eyes. "I think you're overestimating the importance of intent," he says. "I never intended to get anyone hurt. I never intended for signing the Accords to tear the team apart and almost put your best friend in prison – or six feet under. I never intended for Ultron to literally destroy an entire country, killing hundreds and displacing–"

"Tony," Steve interrupts. This isn't helping. Talking about his failures is probably the least helpful thing he could possibly be doing right now.

But Tony ignores him. "And displacing thousands," he continues as though Steve had never spoken. "I never intended for Stark Industries to play both sides and sell weapons to terrorists that'd use them to blow up innocent people. That doesn't change the fact that it happened. It doesn't change the fact that everything I do ends up being wrong, and innocent people get hurt every time." He groans and buries his head in his arms again. "Is life really this goddamn hard, or do I just suck at it?"

Steve sighs. "You don't suck at it, Tony," he says. "Life is hard, and when you have as much power and as much influence as you do, it's pretty damn easy to make a mistake. But you've also done good things. I mean..." He scoffs, shaking his head. "You carried a nuke through a wormhole into outer space! You literally saved the entire island of Manhattan! Half of the people in this building wouldn't be alive right now if you hadn't done that."

"I thought about that," Tony admits, "but I'm pretty sure I'm still running in the net negatives – and I can't do anything about it because every time I try to do something about it, I fuck that ratio up even more, except apparently even by pointedly not doing anything, I still risk fucking it up. And now every time I do something or every time I don't do something, I have to worry about getting people killed, 'cause I do that so well – and god help me if I get one of you guys killed. I don't think I could ever come back from that."

Tony lifts his head, propping it up on his hand with his elbow resting on the bar. "And now you've dragged that kid in, too," he says. "That Spider... boy... Spiderling... Peter..." He gestures vaguely with his free hand. "What's-his-face; I don't know. But he's, like, fuckin', fourteen or whatever, and the last thing I need is do something stupid that's going to get him killed, which is why I didn't want him anywhere near this whole thing, but that didn't fucking work."

Steve has absolutely no idea what to say to any of that. He needs another minute to process all of this. He's not surprised, exactly, to hear about Tony's residual guilt over things having gone wrong over the years. He suspects they all have a bit of that. But to hear it all laid out like that... At least Steve can take comfort in the fact that knows he's done more good than harm in his lifetime. He genuinely believes Tony has, too, but he has a good case for thinking he hasn't.

Tony huffs a sarcastic laugh at his silence. "Bet you're wishing you stayed in bed now, huh?"

Steve shakes his head. "Of course not," he says. He wouldn't have wanted to leave Tony to deal with this on his own – and he definitely wouldn't have wanted to make Bucky deal with it, either; he's got enough on his plate. "I just don't know what to say. I don't know if there is anything I can say right now that's going to make a difference, 'cause I don't think you're in the right place to have this conversation right now."

Tony clicks his tongue. "Great," he says. "Then I will see you at two o'clock tomorrow when I finally drag myself out of bed, and until then, you mind giving me my bottles back?"

Steve sighs. "Tony..."

"What?" he says, almost playfully defensive. "Your buddy took 'em and I wasn't done with 'em."

Steve shakes his head, a frown on his lips. "Go to bed, Tony."

Tony rolls his eyes, still somewhat playful in his movements. "What are you, my dad?"

"I'm serious," Steve insists. "If this is still bugging you when you're sober, then we can talk about it, and we can figure out where to go from there. But turning to alcohol isn't going to help you."

"Maybe not," Tony agrees, "but it's fun."

"It's self-destructive," Steve says. "And there are too many people who care about you too much for us to let you do this."

Tony makes a show of rolling his eyes, even more dramatically than before. "If it means that much to you, I'll go to bed," he concedes.

"Thank you."

Tony stands up, and he has to grab onto the bar behind himself to keep himself steady on his feet. He blinks a few times, then squints slightly before raising his gaze to meet Steve's. "I think I might be a little more drunk than I thought."

"No, really?" Steve says sarcastically. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's absolutely wasted.

Tony slowly takes his hand off the bar, and he takes a cautious step forward, and then another, and then another. "I think I'm good."

Until you wake up, Steve wants to add, but he bites his tongue. Instead, he asks, "You want me to bring you some water and advil for the morning?"

"I'm not an amateur, Rogers," Tony says with playful condescension. "I've got a stash by my bed just for this."

Steve shakes his head to himself. Of course he does.

"How'd you even know I was up, anyway?" Tony asks him.

"Wanda woke me up," Steve says. "She sent me over." And he's damn glad for that. He still doesn't necessarily like Wanda, but she definitely made the right call with this.

Tony's face scrunches in confusion. "Wanda?"

Steve shrugs. "I don't know; I was too tired to ask questions."

Tony just looks at him for a few moments, and then shakes his head once and brushes that thought off. "Well, it was nice to see you, unless I wake up in the morning and decide it was not nice to see you, in which case, I'd like to pretend this conversation never happened."

Steve waves that off. "We'll see," he says. He suspects this won't be the end of this conversation, whether Tony wants it to be or not. "Now let's get you to bed."

~~~

To say Bucky is relieved that Steve showed up in an understatement. He had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He can't even remember the last time he had to deal with someone else's emotions. He can barely deal with his own emotions, after having had them stripped from him for so long. That was just too much for him.

Now he just feels weird walking around, though, so he opts for the second-best thing: plopping himself down in front of the TV to watch some mind-numbingly boring show on cable until he passes out. He heads off on his way to the common room, content to spend the rest of the night alone...

And, as misfortune would have it, he runs into Wanda Maximoff in the hall.

He gives her a polite nod, content to walk right past her and go about his day, but she steps into the middle of the hallway to block his path.

Bucky just looks at her, a frown on his face. If he'd known it would be this hard to get around the compound in the dead of night without running into anybody, he would have just stayed in his room.

"You need to tell him," Wanda says.

Bucky furrows his brows. "What?"

"About his parents," she says. "You need to tell him what happened – before he finds out on his own."

Bucky just looks at her for a few moments; then, cautiously, he asks, "How do you know...?"

"Your thoughts are not quiet," she tells him.

Bucky's frown deepens. Maybe it's time to go back to Romania. He's not sure he's cut out for living with a... psychic... telepathic... witch? Is that what she is? He doesn't even know what kind of person – person? – he's talking to right now.

"He won't be happy to hear it," Wanda continues, "but he'll be even more upset to learn that you've been keeping it from him. If you tell him yourself, before he begins to suspect anything, you'll have some semblance of control over the situation."

Bucky just shakes his head to himself. "I'm going to watch TV." He steps past her, and she steps aside to let him. She's not holding him hostage, at least; that's nice to know.

"Just think about it," Wanda says. "Your secret will come out eventually. If you admit it yourself, you may stand a chance at forgiveness."

Bucky looks back at her over his shoulder. "Are you going to tell him?"

She shakes her head. "It's your secret to keep," she says. "I just don't think that keeping it is a good idea."

Bucky takes a deep breath, wills himself to keep his mouth shut before he says something he'll come to regret, and walks away.

This time, Wanda doesn't try to stop him. She's said her piece; now the rest is up to him. And, as far as he's concerned, there's nothing he needs to do about it. He doesn't need to tell Tony. He doesn't need to tell anybody – not Steve, not Loki, and definitely not the man whose parents he murdered and who owns the building he lives in and could kick him out at any moment.

So, instead of worrying about that, Bucky makes his way to the common room, turns on the TV, curls up on the couch, and lets the first thing that pops up play as he tries to fall asleep. That leaves him with one simple question:

Who the hell is James Corden?

Still, it should be enough to bore him to sleep. He's not watching for the actual content or because he expects to be interested by this unfamiliar man telling largely unfunny jokes on the screen. The less enjoyable it is, the better.

Except he soon finds that if he's not thinking about the show, he's thinking about Tony.

He's thinking about how Tony opened his home (and his larger-than-life wallet) for him on a whim, without knowing nearly anything about him.

He's thinking about how they faced off against each other, the Avengers quite literally split in two almost solely because of Bucky, and how Tony hasn't held it against him for a moment.

He's thinking about how he is keeping what very likely may be a life-shattering secret from him.

And he's thinking about how utterly fucked he'll be if this life-shattering secret comes out and he's not ready for it.

There are still people out there who know what he did. HYDRA isn't gone. Not yet; not entirely. If they run into the wrong HYDRA agent... Or the supposed doctor, even, that framed Bucky for the bombing. He knows the truth. If he were to somehow make it known...

Bucky shudders at the thought. Maybe Wanda is right. Maybe he does need to tell Tony the truth – to take control of the narrative while he still has that chance. At least this way, he may still be able to leave without a fight.

He lets out a long breath and closes his eyes. If only James Corden was interesting enough to distract him from the shitshow that is his life.