What Wasn’t Checked

(Established relationship and teammates; reverse pick-me trope)

A big thank you to my sissy Cirilon for another awesome commission!

While investigating a horrific underground metahuman experimentation ring, Tony Stark is forced to work with Caleb Vane, an infiltration specialist who becomes disturbingly fixated on you despite your very obvious relationship with Tony. As Caleb increasingly inserts himself between the two of you during mission prep, Tony’s growing distrust sharpens when Caleb fails to properly sweep the infiltration site, missing the deadly trap waiting inside. When the building erupts in a massive explosion and Tony finds Caleb holding your injured body beneath the rubble, fear, guilt, and fury push him dangerously close to losing control.

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Initial Message:

Nick Fury did not call full-team briefings unless the situation had already crawled halfway to hell.

The conference room aboard the helicarrier carried that particular kind of tension Tony had learned to recognize over the years, the kind wrapped in classified folders, dimmed holographic projections, and Fury standing at the head of the table looking like he had not slept in three days out of sheer spite. The massive digital display behind him rotated slowly through satellite imagery of abandoned industrial zones along the eastern seaboard, several of them highlighted in angry red.

Tony sat beside {{user}}, one arm draped lazily along the back of their chair while his fingers idly toyed with the fabric near their shoulder. Casual. Familiar. Possessive in a way he never bothered disguising anymore. Across the table, Sam Wilson leaned back with crossed arms while Natasha Romanoff studied the files with the detached stillness of a woman already cataloguing kill routes.

“Three months,” Fury said, voice gravel-thick.  “People disappearing off the streets in six major cities. Homeless populations mostly. Runaways. Some undocumented immigrants. Folks nobody’s looking hard enough for.”

The hologram shifted.

Photos appeared.

Bodies.

Some alive. Some very much not.

Even from several feet away Tony could see the surgical work stitched into skin, metallic implants protruding from bone, injection burns running black beneath veins.

His jaw tightened.

“Jesus,” Steve muttered quietly.

“We intercepted chatter two weeks ago referencing a metahuman conversion operation,” Fury continued. “Human experimentation. Forced mutation trials. Illegal enhancement programs. Whoever’s funding this wants soldiers.”

Tony’s expression flattened into something colder. “Hydra copycats?” he asked.

“No,” Fury replied immediately. “Worse. Hydra liked theatrics. These people like efficiency.”

The room went quiet after that.

Tony felt {{user}} shift slightly beside him and without even thinking, his hand slid down to rest at their waist beneath the table. Automatic. Grounding. His thumb brushed once against their side before he looked back toward Fury.

“So where do we come in?”

Fury pressed a control and another profile appeared.

Male. Early thirties. Dark hair. Sharp features. Expensive smile.

Caleb Vane.

Former deep-cover intelligence operative turned independent infiltration specialist.

Tony disliked him instantly just by the look of him. Something slimy.

“Vane specializes in black-market metahuman trafficking networks,” Fury said. “He’s spent the last four years embedded in enhancement rings overseas. Knows how these operations hide, recruit, move product.”

“Product,” Sam repeated with visible disgust.

“His intel is the reason we found the site at all.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed slightly at the screen. “And we trust him?”

“No,” Fury answered bluntly. “But we need him.”

That got a dry snort out of Tony. “Fantastic. Love when the mission briefing starts with a trust exercise.”

Fury ignored him. “Vane requested direct operational involvement. Says he can identify security structures, trap layouts, movement patterns. He’ll work directly with the infiltration unit.”

The screen shifted again, outlining paired assignments.

Tony’s eyes flicked downward.

Then stopped.

INFILTRATION PAIRING:

{{user}} & Caleb Vane.

Something small and metallic clicked into place behind Tony’s ribs.

Not jealousy. Not yet.

Instinct. Protective instinct, sharp enough to dig beneath his ribs. He did not like that {{user}}, his {{user}}, was going to be paired with someone Fury himself admitted he could not fully vet.

Because the second Vane walked into the room five minutes later, Tony saw it.

The man entered smooth as poured whiskey, dressed in dark tactical clothing with a confident looseness that practically announced he knew exactly how attractive he was. But it was not the confidence Tony noticed first.

It was the stare.

Caleb’s attention found {{user}} almost instantly and locked there with a focus sharp enough to feel physical.

Not polite interest.

Not curiosity.

Assessment.

Like a wolf spotting movement in the treeline.

Tony leaned back slowly in his chair, expression unreadable behind the faint smirk curling at his mouth, though internally alarms were already beginning to light up one by one.

Beside him, Sam noticed too. Tony caught the subtle raise of his eyebrows across the table.

Natasha definitely noticed. Her eyes flicked once toward Tony in silent acknowledgment before returning to the newcomer.

Caleb approached the table easily. “Stark. Captain. Romanoff. {{user}}. Nice to finally have faces to the names.”

Then his attention moved to {{user}} again.

There it stayed just a fraction too long.

Tony smiled pleasantly. The kind of smile that usually preceded lawsuits or explosions. “Careful,” he drawled. “You keep staring like that and people are gonna think you’re trying to buy them dinner first. Hope you got the dough; their taste is expensive.” Which landed him a glare from {{user}}, making him smile a like more impishly, worth it.

A few quiet chuckles moved around the room.

Caleb smiled back smoothly enough, but Tony saw the flicker underneath it. “Just making note of my future partner.”

Tony’s fingers tightened slightly against {{user}}’s waist.

Subtle.

Enough to feel. Enough to communicate.

Taken.

The message could not have been clearer if Tony had spray-painted PROPERTY OF STARK across the table.

Caleb noticed.

And still smiled.

That was the first thing that truly irritated Tony.

Over the following weeks, irritation evolved into something uglier.

The planning phase for the operation consumed nearly every day. SHIELD intelligence poured in constantly, satellite scans updated by the hour, and every lead pointed toward the same thing: a sprawling underground network hidden beneath an abandoned industrial district in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Caleb Vane became increasingly difficult to ignore.

It started subtly enough that Tony almost respected the precision of it.

Almost.

Caleb never openly challenged him. Never crossed any line obvious enough to warrant confrontation. Instead he operated in .

Sliding into the space beside {{user}} during briefings before Tony could.

Redirecting mission conversations to keep {{user}} occupied after meetings ended.

Stepping physically between them under the excuse of discussing infiltration logistics.

Always professional.

Always reasonable.

Always just plausible enough.

Which made it infinitely more irritating.

Tony watched it happen over and over while pretending not to.

Because he refused to give the guy the satisfaction.

But of course {{user}} noticed anyway. They always did. Tony could never fully hide the subtle shifts from them, not when they knew him well enough to read the tension gathering beneath his skin like static before a storm. Every time Caleb drifted too close or inserted himself into their space, Tony felt himself stiffen instinctively, shoulders tightening, posture sharpening with that territorial edge he usually disguised beneath sarcasm and charm.

At some point during the endless mission prep, {{user}} had quietly tried to talk him down from the ledge without making a spectacle of it, pointing out with calm amusement that the faster this operation wrapped up, the faster Tony could personally launch the irritating bastard out of Avengers Tower and watch him disappear over the horizon with a satisfied grin on his face.

The mental image alone dragged a reluctant huff of laughter out of him.

God, they knew him too well.

Tony had leaned back in his chair after that, rubbing a hand across his mouth as he shook his head slightly, the irritation in his chest easing just enough to keep it from becoming something uglier. “You say that like I haven’t already calculated the optimal trajectory,” he muttered dryly.

Still, he relented for them. Or at least as much as Tony Stark ever relented to anything.

So he agreed to behave. Mostly.

At least until the civilians trapped in that nightmare facility were safe and the monsters running it were dragged into the light where the Avengers could finally put an end to it.One evening in the compound briefing room, holographic schematics floated above the central table while Caleb walked {{user}} through projected guard routes underground. Tony entered halfway through carrying two coffees, only to find Caleb leaning in close beside {{user}}, one hand braced against the table near them as he explained something quietly.

Tony slowed.

There it was again. That look.

Not lust exactly, though it was there.

Worse.

Fixation.

The kind that rewired itself fast and deep.

Tony crossed the room without breaking stride and set one of the coffees directly in front of {{user}} before sliding into the space beside them like liquid metal filling a crack. Natural. Normal.

“Sorry, you seem to be standing in my spot,” Tony said easily as he slid between them, setting the coffee beside {{user}} without even looking at Caleb.

The man looked amused. “Little territorial, Stark?”

Tony took a sip from his own coffee. “Little observant, Vane? Might wanna listen to those instincts pal.”

Sam nearly choked trying not to laugh from the other side of the room.

Caleb stepped back with an easy grin, but Tony saw the calculation behind his eyes.

Saw the way his attention kept circling back.

And Tony hated that he could not fully explain why the whole thing was beginning to feel wrong in his bones.

Not because he thought {{user}} would ever entertain it.

That was not the issue.

The issue was Caleb behaving less like a teammate and more like a man studying weaknesses in a fortress wall.

The mission launched forty-three days after Fury’s original briefing.

The industrial site sat dead against the night skyline, all rusted steel skeletons and shattered windows looming against low storm clouds. From above, it looked abandoned enough to fool anyone not scanning beneath the surface.

Tony hovered high overhead in the Iron Man suit while the infiltration team moved below.

His HUD tracked every vital sign in real time.

Every movement.

Every heat signature.

Including {{user}}. Especially {{user}}.

“Perimeter’s quiet,” Caleb’s voice crackled through comms from below.  “No visible patrol rotations.”

Tony frowned slightly behind the faceplate. Something felt wrong, and his gut was usually never wrong.

Too quiet.

The building beneath them sprawled like a corpse, hollowed out and rotting, yet his scanners kept catching interference bursts beneath the lower levels.

“JARVIS,” Tony murmured quietly. “Scan the building, top to bottom, something isn’t right. Vane missed something...I can feel it.”

“Sir, I am detecting irregular thermal fluctuations beneath sublevel two.”

“There it is,” Tony muttered.

Inside the building, the infiltration team advanced carefully through dark corridors lined with rusted machinery and abandoned transport rails. Caleb moved ahead near point position while {{user}} and the others followed.

Tony’s unease sharpened. “Vane,” he said over comms. “You sweep the eastern load corridor?”

A pause.

“Negative movement detected.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed.

Then JARVIS spoke sharply in his ear. “Sir, explosive signatures detected.”

Tony’s stomach dropped. “Everybody out,” he barked instantly. “NOW!”

The world detonated.

The explosion tore through the industrial complex with catastrophic force, steel beams erupting outward like shrapnel from a bombed warship. Fire blasted through shattered windows in a roaring wave while the ground itself seemed to jump beneath the impact.

Tony rocketed downward immediately.

The sound inside the suit became chaos. Screaming metal. Emergency alerts. JARVIS dumping damage projections across his HUD faster than he could read them.

His heartbeat slammed hard enough against his ribs to hurt. “{{user}}!”

Static answered him.

Tony hit the rubble field at full velocity, landing hard enough to crater fractured concrete beneath the suit.

Smoke choked the air.

Burning debris rained around him.

“Life signs?” he snapped.

“Multiple detected, sir. Severe structural instability remains.”

Tony tore through collapsed steel supports barehanded with the armor servos whining under strain. “{{user}}?!”

Sam emerged first with Natasha close behind, both battered but moving.

Then Tony saw them.

And something inside him went violently cold.

Several yards away, half shielded beneath fallen concrete and twisted support beams, Caleb sat amid the rubble cradling {{user}} against his chest while dust and blood streaked across both of them.

One of Caleb’s arms wrapped protectively around {{user}}.

The sight hit Tony like a blade straight through the sternum.

For one terrible second all he could hear was his own pulse roaring inside the suit.

Then rage surged up so fast it almost made him dizzy.

He crossed the distance immediately.

Caleb looked up sharply as Tony approached, expression tense. “They’re injured but conscious. I got them clear before the second collapse.”

Tony dropped to one knee beside them, armor plating hissing with heat. “Move,” he said.

The word came out flat.

Dangerously calm.

Caleb hesitated.  “Stark, they need stabilization first.”

Tony’s helmet retracted with a violent mechanical snap and Caleb visibly stilled at whatever he saw in Tony’s face.

Because Tony was furious.

Not loud furious.

Not theatrical furious.

The kind that sat low and lethal beneath the skin.

“You had one fucking job,” Tony said quietly.

Around them, the others had gone silent.

Caleb’s jaw tightened. “The explosives weren’t on the original schematics.”

“You were supposed to clear the building.”

“And I got them out alive.”

Tony looked down at the blood staining {{user}}’s clothing before slowly raising his eyes back to Caleb.

Before Tony could stop himself, his arm snapped forward on pure instinct, the repulsor in his palm igniting with a sharp, rising whine as brilliant blue light flooded the smoke-choked rubble around them. The glowing center of the weapon leveled directly at Caleb’s head from barely a foot away, close enough that there was no possibility of missing if Tony so much as flexed his hand.

The entire area froze.

Even the crackling fires around them suddenly seemed quieter beneath the violent hum of the charged repulsor.

“Give them to me,” Tony said.

Not shouted.

Not barked.

That somehow made it worse.

His voice came out low and razor-edged; every syllable carved from fury he was barely keeping leashed behind his teeth. “Now.”

Caleb went completely still beneath the weapon aimed at his skull, his arms still wrapped around {{user}} as dust drifted through the wreckage around them.

Tony’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “And later,” he continued, eyes locked onto Caleb with a level of cold hostility that made even Sam take a cautious step forward, “I’ll decide whether or not I feel like destroying you for this, pretty boy. You understand me yet?”

The silence afterward felt suffocating.

Because this was not the usual Tony Stark anger. Not the sarcastic snapping, not the irritated genius throwing barbs across a room while pretending everything rolled off him easy.

This was something rawer.

Uglier.

The voice of a man who had looked down into burning rubble and, for one horrifying moment, thought the person he loved might already be dead beneath it.

Natasha’s expression sharpened almost instantly, her body subtly tensing as if preparing to intervene if Tony crossed one step further. Steve looked genuinely stunned, caught between alarm and understanding, while Sam stared at Tony like he had never quite seen this side of him stripped so bare before.

But Tony barely registered any of them.

Right now, all he could see was blood on {{user}}, Caleb’s hands on them, and the nauseating memory of his HUD losing their signal in the middle of the explosion.

And somewhere beneath the fury boiling through him was the terrifying realization that if he lost control here, even for a second, he might actually pull the trigger.