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In the dream he says, “we started the same, you and I.” In the dream he tells him the truth, back straight, chin held high. In the dream he says, “when I woke, I thought of you.”
Tony makes comparisons, runs algorithms, and he tries to narrow down that statistic probability of older scientific geniuses dying in order for a hero to be born. Or awakened, or redeemed. Redeemed, yeah that seems like the right word.
After the first time he has the dream, he starts thinking back to how he became Iron Man. He throws in a snide remark of, a man riddled with PTSD and guilt the size of a private island. I should do that, I should buy an island and go live on it, it’s not like anyone would notice. I could suffer in silence there, and by silence I mean with a drink in my hand. Maybe Rhodey can come, and Pepper can... Pepper can keep running Stark Industries and be better off without him.
Steve only talked about Dr.Erskine once, and Tony only heard Howard talk about him once. Tony knew this; Erskine believed in Steve the way no one else had. He learned that from Steve. He was a brilliant doctor, ahead of his time and that no one had been able to replicate the serum, and that he learned from Howard.
He’d seen a photo before, he instantly remembers where; Steve’s file from the Avengers Initiative. Erskine was shorter than Yensin, but he had the same kind eyes hidden behind a pair of circle rimmed glasses. This is where statistics comes into Tony’s mind.
What is the probability that someone believed in Tony the way that someone believed in Steve?
He wishes he still had JARVIS to throw these ideas at, to come up with an algorithm to be able to factor in the percentage. For something to make sense, because if it was a number presented to him then maybe he would finally understand how all of this happened to him.
At first he thought it was some punishment delivered personally by the universe, and if he gave himself a moment to believe in god it would have been when he was flying out of the mountains surrounded by a metal suit. That in order for him to be forgiven for what he had done, for the countless lives that were lost when Obadiah was selling weapons, well Tony figured that made the most sense. A man like him didn’t deserve his metal suit, didn’t deserve to be wrapped in gold, but he wasn’t the shining and loud mouthed person they all thought he was. Tony was that to keep himself sane.
Now he’s thinking about things outside of his control, things like greater powers and destinies and written in the stars. He wipes his hand in front of his face like he’s clearing a white board.
What good is any of this if he can’t figure out the why.
Maybe I need to have the dream again.
He stays in Wakanda until he can’t bare it, until he can’t think of Bucky and his choices that he made. Until the green on the leaves no longer holds beauty and promises but instead a reminder of the things he left back home. How the green here is starting to look like the same green in central park, the same green of the trees that line the streets of D.C.
“Stark is a good man,” T’challa walks around reading minds it seems.
“I never thought he wasn’t.”
T’challa stands with grace, his head held high. “You try to tell yourself he’s not in order to make your decisions easier.” It’s not an acquisition, he says it how it is, simply as a fact.
Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, a habit he picked up from Tony. “He’ll never forgive me. I kept, ” I knew it was Bucky and I was selfish, I was too selfish, I wanted them both.
“You didn’t want to lose his friendship.”
Steve laughs, it’s bitter and he realizes how much of him has taken on some of Tony’s traits. “And by keeping it from him I lost him and I lost Bucky. I lost the Avengers. I lost everything.”
“And yet you chose to hide out in the jungles and to do nothing for your troubles. That is not the Captain America I have heard of, nor the Steve Rogers.”
Steve asks him what he knows and T’Challa gives him a small grin. He tells Steve about Tony, the small glimpses he saw of him and how fighting Steve was tearing him down.
“I used to think there was nothing worse than the desert, nothing worse than having my chest ripped open. I used to think that there was nothing worse than flying through a wormhole and feeling cold seep through the Iron Man suit. I was wrong. I hate being wrong.”
Steve listens to the few stories T’challa has, gets lost in the way he talks about Tony and Steve lets the feelings he’s been repressing come rising up the the surface. He lets himself remember the way Tony actually talks, the Tony who is an engineer and not a showman. His Tony.
He stops himself when he has that thought, but all he can remember is the way that Tony holds a coffee mug, his his hand pressed tight against the ceramic and close to his chest. Tony who spins on his work chair, Tony whose mind works so fast that he doesn’t even finish sentences at times and it already three conversations ahead.
Steve lets himself get lost in the way T’challa talks about Tony, with facts and fondness, he lets him talk until the sun sets and the windows are fogged with humidity. He tells Steve to sleep and Steve lets his head hit the mattress and he lets himself dream.
“We started the same, you and I.”
If Tony wasn’t a mechanic, a simpler term he liked to use, he could have been a chemist. He could be anything he wanted to be if he had a few hours to study the subject. So he mixes a cocktail, crumbles up a sleeping pill and stirs it in. He takes it down in one gulp. He knows it's the right ratio for his tolerance and his body proportions, and now he sits on the couch, his hands outstretched in front of him.
Tony doesn’t know how to say, “I had a dream once, a nightmare, I think it might be a premonition. We’re in space, back through the wormhole, back where all of my nightmares are in full manifestation swimming and swirling around me and out there, out there the stars don’t matter, black holes aren’t like how they are in books, and you die. You die, your blood on my hands and ‘my fault’ on your lips and that’s why everything I do is just me trying to protect you.” In the dream Steve’s blood is still warm against his skin.
The thing is, there is grace in his hands and he is justice personified and Tony thinks if he could be like him for just a fraction of time then maybe being Iron Man and all of these things happening to him will finally make sense.
In the dream he tells Tony that his smile is magma bright and when Tony asks Steve what that means he smiles and replies, “it matches your suit.”
He told Steve once, that part of his issue was years of resentment built up and waiting to spill over.
“Resentment for what?”
“Did you know you were one of my dad’s only friends? The thing is, Howard had people filling in and out of his life, but he never really called anyone a friend? But you? You, Steve Rogers, were the best man he ever knew.”
“Howard was-”
“Let me finish, see the thing is Steve, sometimes when I look at you I see him. I see him in your shield, in the way you carry it. I see his greatest achievement, you, standing in front of me. I think of all the years as a kid where I tried to learn everything that I could about you so that maybe, I don’t know, maybe he would fucking give a damn about me then.”
Tony cuts off the conversation after that. He doesn’t tell Steve about the video, about how Howard told him that he was his greatest creation. Tony wanted to tell him that it wasn’t true, it wasn’t him, it was the vibranium. It was Steve’s shield, it was an element and nothing else. That even then Tony couldn’t unwind himself from Steve.
He thinks about the way bones break, a clean break, the way it grows back. He thinks himself a wishbone, the smaller piece that doesn’t get to become a wish, that doesn’t get to become anything.
Tony falls back into old habits. He tries to work his drinking into a chemical equation. How much of what will get him to fall asleep the fastest, which alcohols supply more pleasant dreams and which ones cause nightmares, crawling with terror.
“Mr.Stark, I do believe that what you are doing is considered alcoholism by most accounts.” Vision floats behind him with his feet a few inches off the ground. Sometimes he wishes that he didn’t sound like JARVIS.
“It’s science. I’m writing down the results, therefore science. I wish Banner was still around, he would understand.”
In the dream he says, “I have a video. I’ve never told anyone what was on it. It’s of Howard, it’s directed at me for when I was older, after he knew he was going to be gone, because god forbid he ever said anything nice when he was alive. Anyways, he says, my greatest achievement will always be you. Do you know how much that fucks with me? When I know that it wasn’t? Did he say that so I would buckle down and figure out the arc technology? It has to be an ulterior motive because there’s no way-”
“No way what? That your own father could love you?”
That anyone could.
Tony wakes in cold sweat, his heart pounding. “Too close, too close, too close,” he repeats until his breathing evens out.
Eventually the drinks aren’t enough, eventually Tony is crushing up pills and adding them to his glass. He tells himself as long as he writes it down then this isn’t a problem. White powder slides down his throat chased by amber liquid. Eventually this isn’t enough either. Eventually he looking for other means, other ways, looking for something that will go straight into his bloodstream with a needle pressed into his skin.
Steve, Steve who doesn’t understand, Steve who gets so mad at Tony that he shuts him out, shuts down.
“You never tried to get to know me,” Tony says to him one night, a molotov cocktail of drugs and hurt coursing through his veins. He’s asleep but he always feels so awake.
“I know,” Steve replies with his fingers reaching out and touching the back of Tony’s hand, tracing patterns. It’s not the answer Tony was expecting. “There’s so much I should have done differently.”
Tony doesn’t want to feel this, doesn’t want to have Steve tear down his walls with a small touch. A touch that isn’t even real. He wakes himself and promises himself that he won't let himself sleep for a few days. He doesn’t need it, doesn’t need Steve.
“I would do nothing but disappoint you,” he just wishes that through the dream that Steve could smell the alcohol on his breath, so that he would truly know what all of this has done to him.
Steve shakes his head, “you wouldn’t.”
“I already have, too many times. It’s what I was born to do, be a disappointment.”
Steve dreams of his shield, the one left, how he pressed it against Tony, how the armor in his suit started to crack.
“It’s funny,” Tony says with a smirk.
“What is?” Steve asks as he picks up the shield. Even in the dream he can feel the familiarity of the weight.
“Vibranium saved my life and it’s also the thing that tried to kill me.”
Steve pauses and looks down at the shield then back up at Tony. “Back when you were sick.” He swallows, his throat feeling like sand and wondering if Tony’s throat ever felt this way when he was in a desert fighting for his life. “I never tried to kill you,” Steve says but his voice feels weak, like the sand is filling up his throat.
Steve tries to steer the conversation. “Why wouldn’t Howard have told you about the element sooner? Why-”
“Maybe if your friend hadn’t killed him then I would have known.” It’s said with malice, with venom, with heartbreak.
It’s another way that they’re entwined, that their lives are wrapped together and Steve wonders if he ever had a chance of fighting this.
“Tony, I-” but the dream is already being ripped from him and he’s shooting awake in bed with beads of sweat dripping down his forehead.
Tony is swallowing the sky and Steve is swallowing water and they’re both trying to choke it down and hide it behind their teeth.
And he doesn’t know if the spine of a book feels the same way as a spine on a body, he doesn’t know when the last time he touched either was.
When Steve looks up at the street lights, their yellow glow, he thinks of the repulsors on the Iron Man suit and tries to ignore the tightening in his chest.
Tony wonders at what point the truth will leak out.
“I read a book you had down in your workshop once. One of the ones that doesn’t take a genius to read. It was about space and how the universe was made and I didn’t think that you liked space but then I started noticing little things, like a replica of a space shuttle, maps of stars, a telescope. Then after the wormhole they all disappeared. I thought that you reminded me of a protostar, and you were always just waiting to kindle, to catch fire.”
Tony knows the feeling of desperation, knows it from the way the palladium kept failing him. Wanting Steve feels the same way, like his body is shutting down, stopping his heart and cutting off his oxygen but he can’t seem to stop from wanting more.
“I took the train once from D.C. to New York just to see you.” Steve says the moment he lands in the dream.
“I thought you were on SHIELD business.” Tony takes a step back as he says it, analyzing Steve, analyzing the situation.
“Why wouldn’t they fly me if it was business?”
“Huh,” Tony shoves his hands in his pockets and rolls back onto his heels.
“I,” Steve rubs the back of his neck, “I feel so awkward. I feel pre-serum all over again when I talk to you sometimes, like I’m being rejected-”
“You think that I would reject you? Cause I can make you a giant list as to why I never would. In fact FRIDAY probably already has one made up for me.”
Tony always makes things like this a little bit easier. “I had missed you. Being stationed in D.C. was hard, it’s not New York, not even close. It’s not as loud, its not as colorful, everything seems a little gray.”
“Didn’t know you were also a poet.” Tony jokes as he paces around the small room they’re in. “Where are we anyway?”
“My old room back in Brooklyn.”
“I’ve never seen it before.” Tony says as he runs a hand across a small wooden table with scratches in it.
“You’re thinking.” Steve watches closely as Tony starts taking in his surroundings.
“Obvious? Guess I don’t really hide it.” He pulls out a kitchen chair and stands on it, running his hands across a support beam in the ceiling.
“What are you looking for?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. I guess some indication that this is a two way street.”
“Like you and me are in the same dream?” Steve stands up and walks closer to where Tony is.
“We’ve dealt with weirder.”
“And if we are, and we’ve been meeting up all this time, what does it mean?”
Tony doesn’t know, but he wakes with a jolt, wakes with his skin crawling with gooseflesh. If it’s them both then he doesn’t know who stopped the answer from coming out but Tony swears the room feels cooler than normal, that when he exhales he can see his breath.
Steve wonders if the wormhole felt the same as the ice. If Tony shuddered, if he felt the cold in the marrow of his bones. If it crept through his heart, his lungs, into his brain. He wonders if they were meant to have this together as well.
They fall back into a dream a few days later. It’s Steve that speaks first, “you never answered me. What if we are here together?”
It’s Tony that wakes. Wakes with his heart pounding and ringing in his ears.
“Then I would ask you to come home,” he puts his head in his hands and tastes the liquor still on his tongue, sour and warm.
The dreams feel real, too real, so Steve tries to sleep as much as he can, tries to reach Tony and tell him everything that he can.
“You know this isn’t a healthy form of coping-” Sam, leave it to Sam to not be afraid to point out what Steve is doing.
“I just, there’s so much wrong I’ve done.”
“We all have Steve.”
“I took the Avengers from him, I broke the team apart, and for what? Because I kept a secret from him, because I was selfish and I-”
“Whoa, I’ve been with you for years now and I wouldn’t say what you did was selfish, I don’t think beating yourself up over this is going to help anything.”
Steve runs his hands across his thighs. “When I woke up, I had nothing. All of a sudden everything I knew had changed and I hated it, I hated that I had nothing. I had SHIELD and that was it and even that turned out to not be true. When Bucky came back, I was so desperate to help him, to remember him how he was, that I didn’t really care what happened in the process and that’s not who I am, I don’t do things like that. God, Sam, Nat was the only one trying to use her head in this and I couldn’t separate myself from the situation.”
Sam pauses, “none of us could.”
“When I sleep, I dream of him, in the dreams sometimes I feel like he’ll forgive me.”
“Do you remember our first fourth of July together?” Steve asks.
“You mean your first birthday we had together? Didn’t know that anyone could wish on fireworks.” Tony smiles and Steve aches for it. “Honestly, how much more in the stars or destiny can you get? You were born on the fourth of fucking July. All fireworks should just be your face, shields up in the sky. Maybe we can get two and they explode at the same time to make the shape of your ass. I’m pretty sure I can make that happen.” Tony wiggled his eyebrows at Steve and Steve doesn’t disapprove, doesn’t tell Tony to stop, instead he laughs, he clasps a hand on Tony’s shoulder and watches the surprise in his face.
“I miss this,” Steve says with laughter lines around his eyes.
“Then come home,” Tony says with eyes that say too much.
Steve swallows and tries not to let the sand back into his throat. “What if you don’t forgive me.”
“The problem is Steve, is that I already have. It’ll be hard, I’ll remember sometimes, and I’ll be fucking furious, but I miss you. I miss you sitting in the workshop, I miss how it sounds when you put pencil to paper, I miss all the drawings you won't let me see, how you put your notebook out of reach when I ask. I miss how you would storm down to the gym after we fight and you would destroy punching bag after punching bag. I miss,” Tony pauses and looks at Steve, what he thinks is his mind's perfectly crafted version. “I guess it doesn’t matter, I’m just telling a dream.”
The phone rings and before Tony can even think he’s tumbling words out of his mouth. “Fourteen billion years ago the universe was created from nothing, and god, I could write a thousand theories about this, about you and me and all of the things that we’ve done wrong but I could also write algorithms on what we’ve done right so maybe this time we can be better.”
“Tony,” Steve’s voice cuts through the phone, he says Tony’s name like he’s been holding it in his lungs, biting it on his tongue and fighting to not let it out through his teeth.
There’s explosions in Tony’s chest, planets in his veins and stars behind his eyes and he thinks about how the universe all of a sudden took up space and how Steve always seemed to be taking up more and more in his life.
“It’s like when they decided Pluto wasn’t a planet.” It’s through Tony’s mouth before he can think about stopping himself.
“What?” He can hear the confusion in Steve’s voice.
He tries to backpedal, thinks about what he could say that would make some semblance of sense but figures what does he have to lose if he says the truth.
“You leaving, it’s like when they decided Pluto wasn’t a planet and all of a sudden the galaxy felt a lot smaller.”
There’s silence and for a moment Tony is worried that Steve hung up. He pulls back the small blue phone, outdated, and looks at the screen. He brings it back to his ear just in time to hear Steve’s laugh, the one that starts out low and quiet and builds itself a crescendo.
After everything this is what they’ve both missed, the easiness that fell between the harder moments.
“It was all real,” Steve breathes out.
“All of it. There’s things I still haven’t said.”
“Wait, wait to tell me when I get there. I want to hear it in person.”
It takes two days to travel back to New York and Steve wonders why he ever thought anywhere else could be home.
All of Tony’s movements are restless and Steve makes note of all of them, memorizes them. He waits for him to say something first and it’s like when someone turns down the radio during the best part of a song.
“I don’t ever think I’m sorry will cover what we did to each other.” Tony stops pacing to look Steve in the eyes. “Fuck, I’m starting to think this would be easier if we were asleep.”
Steve moves closer to Tony, grabs his hand the same way he did in the dream and follows the same path his hands did before.
“I know. I just want to know that we’re both going to try.”
“I will, every day, I will try so hard that I’ll make-”
It’s all Steve needs, he cuts Tony off by pressing their lips together. It’s warmth, it’s everything Steve wanted it to be. He was afraid that it would be cold, that their pasts had seeped into their veins and turned them into something cold but he should have known Tony would be warm, that he would be fire bright.
Tony has never believed in religion, or stars, or greater powers and Steve laughs gently when Tony says this. “I believe in blue prints and I think that maybe ours were meant to be together, that we were designed for the same thing.”
“Blue prints?” Steve asks with a grin. It’s endearing, how he imagines Tony in his workshop trying to find a way to explain them. Trying to find a reason for why hearts beat faster and pupils dilate. “You’re gonna have to tell me all of your theories one day.” Steve tries not to laugh when he says it.
“All of this is just so simple to you, you just accept that we-”
Steve shakes his head, “I love you, that’s all I need to know.”
And Tony decides it’s all he needs to know too.