Chapter Text
After several, long months of mildly dysfunctional but mostly successful and at times even enjoyable teamwork, Steve is convinced that when it comes to Tony, he knows about as much as he’ll ever be allowed to know.
Which—okay, really, his mistake here is assuming that he can boldly settle on any convictions that involve Tony at all, because the man is a riddle at best and pure havoc at worst. By what Steve has been able to parse through months-long awkward team-building exercises (in the style of takeout and late-night ramblings) Tony enjoys it when people can’t really tell what his next move is going to be. Declarations à la “I am Iron Man” seem to be his speciality, and he’ll say just about anything in any given situation as long as he can be sure it’s not the thing that the other person is expecting to hear. Steve’s pretty sure that being born into a great deal of expectation and having tabloids aching to categorise you into a neat box will do that to a man. Then again, Dr Green (his psychologist that Bruce convinced him to go and see) says that psychoanalysing your colleagues is bad form, but social faux pas have always been Steve’s thing in one way or another.
But really, his first mistake happened within hours of meeting Tony. Steve may not be as old as a calendar says he’s supposed to be, but simultaneously he’s also not as green around the gills as he looks, and he’s already met enough oil-slick, sleazy moneybags types to be able to smell them from a mile away (perhaps two miles, if he accounts for the super-serum). Tony had very firmly landed himself in that category very soon after Steve met him. That was the sort of ‘barrel’ in Steve’s mind that no regular man would ever be able to crawl out of, and yet Tony was somehow doing it.
That was one of the first things that Steve really filed away about Tony; he’s good at salvaging the unsalvageable. No matter what PR nightmare he got himself in, he always got out of it. Stick him in a cave with terrorists for three months and he’ll become a superhero. Give him chemicals poisoning his blood-stream and he’ll invent a semi-new element about it. Put him in Steve’s bad books, and he’ll figure out that Steve loves a good slice of pizza and an old movie from the golden age of Hollywood (though to Steve, they aren’t old, thank you very much).
That becomes their thing. Steve has a thing with every Avenger, because living together was never going to work otherwise. It may feel like the Avengers Tower is roomy, and sure, by comparison to any other building, it is. But they all have lots and lots of baggage, and not necessarily the type you can unpack onto a clothes-rack, so it pays to learn a bit more about each other. For example, he knows what Nat’s favourite drink is (very dry vodka martini, minimum two olives or don’t even bother bringing it). And he knows that when Clint hides in the vents, there are some vents it’s acceptable to have light conversation with him through, but others it’s absolutely not okay to even greet him through (which is quite frankly an insane thing to have learnt). He knows that Bruce is only truly comfortable somewhere when he gets to walk around barefoot. And he knows to stay away from Thor after he’s had more than six drinks, lest he wants to hear a repeat of one of the same five stories of war, glory and blood for Asgard (the guy was more than a thousand years old; you’d think his story catalogue would be more diverse). And so on and so forth. He doesn’t mean to start thinking of them this way, not just as a team, but as friends, but he does. And it's nice.
Steve has his own demons and he sees how the others have understood that about him as well. He appreciates it when he knocks another punching bag off its hinges until it bursts and then goes to the gym later and finds that Tony has replaced it without a single word. He appreciates it when he gets locked into his own head and Thor or Nat spar with him to draw him back out to the land of the living. He appreciates when Clint joins him on early-morning runs, though he complains about it the whole time and always struts to the shower after with a promise of I’m never doing that again which he inevitably breaks a week or month later. And Bruce and Tony let him hang around the workshop and sketch while they’re having scientific debates he can’t hope to follow because they know that their chatter distracts him in a good way. And so on, and so forth.
It works surprisingly well. Perhaps it shouldn’t. The first time that Fury and Hill end up coming by the tower for a meeting (which hasn’t really happened since—Fury doesn’t like getting off his ass and coming to them), there were multiple comments made. Steve recalls distinctly the moment that Nick spotted the takeout boxes and empty beer bottles that had been left on the coffee table. The evidence of their latest late-night adventure in team bonding. Nick had shot Steve a look which was the closest the man could ever come to bewildered. And that was before he realised Thor was still passed out under the coffee table (in Steve’s opinion, the most bewildering part was how Thor managed to fit under there in the first place). Steve had thought to himself that perhaps he should be slightly ashamed that Avengers Tower appeared more like a college dorm than Superhero HQ but, really, they worked hard and they deserved a bit of grace when it came to their down-time and how they chose to spend it. Especially when the result, for Fury, was a semi-dependable team of people that actually somehow placed trust in each other, despite each having a lifetime of chips on their shoulder that were reason enough to not trust anyone.
So, anyway. All this to say: Steve had reevaluated Tony. He got to know him, and he changed his mind about him. After the whole nuke and portal and alien thing, Steve was munching wordlessly on shawarma and staring vacantly at Tony from across the restaurant table, putting his thoughts in order. Because an oil-slick, sleazy moneybags type wouldn't do this sort of thing, and maybe that meant that Steve had been slightly (sigh) wrong. Then, when Tony redesigned the tower with all of them in mind and then casually invited them to stay, offhandedly almost, as though it meant nothing, Steve reeled all over again. But he did move in, and (following his lead) so did everyone else, and the rest was history in the making. Now he knew a great deal of detail about Tony, like what he put into his post-workout smoothies and the sort of music he blasted while in his workshop, and that he had a bit of a thing for clothes that would have been insufferable to witness in any other person (and was the reason why Clint introduced Steve to the term metrosexual, though Nat had insisted it wasn’t the right term to use. Steve hadn’t gotten around to asking her to clarify on that yet). Steve believed that, at this point (having prepared himself to always be surprised by Tony), there was nothing that could be truly surprising about him anymore.
But really, this whole thought was initially challenged not because of Tony, but because of Pepper.
Steve liked Pepper. There were times where little parts of her reminded him of Peggy. She's kind and caring but she takes no bullshit and she gets stuff done, quickly and properly. None of the wishy washy BS that Steve expected of someone running a company like SI (because realistically, Pepper could sit on her ass for the majority of the day, or really just do whatever she wanted, and the company would never outright die. That's how big it was. And that was roughly what Steve imagined Tony did before he handed the role over to Pepper). Steve liked Pepper, but he kind of worried about her too, because Tony didn't seem to take their relationship as seriously as she did. He made crude jokes about their love life, he never really held or kissed her when other people were around, and Steve never once heard him proclaim any sort of sentiment about her that went beyond I love a fiery redhead, and I landed myself the best one, which really was a comment more appropriate for a car than a woman. At least by Steve's reckoning.
He always sort of winced at the thought of how the relationship may end, picturing the damage Tony could cause simply by being slightly unthinking and mildly crass and mostly unaware of other people's feelings. He could run over Pepper's heart and then go did anyone feel a bump? as though he'd unknowingly created roadkill on the highway. So Steve thought. It was one of the things he hated most about Tony but resigned himself to put up with, because as it turned out there were also parts of Tony he really did like, and friendship was always sort of about compromise anyway.
He hoped to God that he would never find out what Pepper's I've been dumped face looked like, and instead imagined what it might be like to have the Avengers all attend a wedding together and watch Tony and Pepper kiss lovingly at the head of a church and then get drunk (Steve and his super-serum metabolism excluded) and dance the night away. Because Steve loved believing fiercely in romantic, beautiful and untainted things such as the power of love. He was a bit of a sap like that, but it was his act of rebellion against a world that hadn't ever really given him anything but misery and hatred. It felt good to be fiercely and unrelentingly positive. He expected that one of the two possibilities (roadkill vs marriage) would come to pass, and hoped firmly for the latter.
So, he couldn’t have been more surprised when neither came to be. He walked into the shared living room on board game night (prepared to have Thor knock the monopoly board to the ground again in anger at having to pay half his net-worth to Nat) and saw that a member of their group was missing.
“Where's Tony?” He asked, sitting down. Tony never missed boardgame night.
“In his workshop,” Nat explained simply, and Steve saw a look of sympathy flit across Bruce's face. “He's not coming.”
“What?” Steve exclaimed. “Is he okay?”
“Wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot-pole,” Clint said from where he lay sprawled out on the floor. “Trouble in paradise.”
Oh God, it was happening. “What sort of trouble?”
“The kind that means paradise no longer exists,” Clint said and upon seeing Steve’s confused face, elaborated. “Pepper broke up with him.”
To say Steve's jaw hit the floor would have been an understatement. “What?”
“Yeah,” Bruce jumped in, appearing meek. “Yesterday evening. She's jetted off to give him a bit of space. And also, uh, I think there's some sort of SI thing in the UAE anyway.”
“Wow,” Steve said dumbly. “That's, uh. Wow.”
“Yeah, they were going steady for a while,” Nat added semi-detachedly, beginning to set up the Monopoly board.
Thor spotted it and whined. “Oh, by the Gods, Natasha, not Monopoly again–”
“Just because you lose every time–”
“Well, it's only because you–”
And promptly the conversation moved on and Steve was left behind, in his own staggering thoughts. Pepper had broken up with Tony. And apparently Tony was taking it badly enough to shut himself in his workshop and miss boardgame night, his favourite night of the week.
Steve stood abruptly before he realised he had. “Start without me.”
Clint yelled out after him as he exited. “Good luck!”
Steve had plenty of time to reconsider what was possibly a bad idea in the elevator on the way to Tony’s floor. After all, in the same way that he hadn’t taken kindly to Tony to begin with, the sentiment had also been shared. Tony had his own thoughts about Steve, ones that Steve hoped he had by now proven wrong, but Steve himself was also better at recognising when he was incorrect than Tony was, so there was no real way to tell. They had never outright talked about it.
In the past few months, they had grown a friendship that felt like a tentative handshake, and it was still on a tightrope. Things like this, Steve intruding on his friend right after a break-up, were the sort of make or break instances that would either break the tightrope or make it stronger. Steve still didn’t know which was more likely to happen as he marched to Tony’s workshop.
The door was locked, and his override didn’t work.
“Jarvis?” he piped up, question unspoken.
“I’m sorry Captain, Sir has advised that I am not to let anyone inside.” Jarvis’ smooth, disembodied voice rang out, clear as a bell.
“How is he doing?” Steve asked, for lack of being able to check for himself.
If AIs could be hesitant, then that’s what Jarvis was. “Sir has acquired his father’s old bottle of Glenfiddich and is not using a glass.”
Steve couldn’t hold back a groan. There was no more ludicrously expensive and coveted gem in Howard’s whisky collection, and Tony had once told him that the day he breaks out that Glenfiddich is the day his father comes back from hell to haunt him. Seeing as there was no sight of Howard anywhere, Steve had to conclude that there was a secret second option which involved Tony stepping into an early grave via alcohol poisoning.
“Jarvis, please,” Steve was not above begging the technology. “Let me in before he downs the whole thing.”
There was a pause in which Jarvis was surely digging through his code for any sort of loophole that would allow him to do this, and he seemed to have found it because a second later the door clicked open and Steve all but rushed inside.
Tony was, miraculously, still upright and seemed to be hard at work tinkering—his mask was on and he was soldering, which Steve knew could only end badly when he spotted that one of Tony’s hands held the soldering iron while the other clutched the whisky.
“Hey, Tony,” he said gently, as though not to startle him, but Tony surely already knew Steve was there. Jarvis would’ve told him. “You, uh. Doin’ okay?”
Steve hadn’t thought this far. What little experience he had to draw back from in this area (Bucky had nary a single relationship that didn’t end in tears and spontaneous trips to bars) was centred around such a different time, such a different person, that Steve knew he was out of his depth to begin applying any of it to the current situation.
Tony removed the mask and put down the soldering iron, but not the whisky. Startlingly, Tony’s eyes were rimmed red. Steve felt a pang of discomfort at the sight—this was private. Tony wouldn’t like him seeing this.
He was right to think that. Tony’s nose scrunched unpleasantly at the sight of him.
“Thanks for that, Jarvis,” he snarked in a low tone, but quickly recovered. “Cap, you wanna try?”
He offered the bottle towards Steve and Steve would be damned if he was going to turn down a drink that was worth more than he was. Perhaps this would be a good way to get the conversation off on the right foot and take that pinched look off Tony’s face.
He stepped closer and hesitantly took the bottle, bringing it up to his lips and taking a sip. That one sip was worth about as much as a luxury car, and yet expensive things were always kind of wasted on Steve, who apparently couldn’t tell this Glenfiddich apart from petrol.
“It’s nice,” he lied.
Tony barked a laugh.
“You’re a bad liar,” he made grabby hands at the bottle, and Steve reluctantly handed it back.
“Listen,” Steve began gently, moving a bit closer, close enough to see dried tear marks on Tony’s face. “Do you, uh. Wanna talk about it?”
Tony scoffed. “Talk about what? About Pep? And how she dumped me? Is that what you wanna talk about?”
Steve pursed his lips awkwardly. “Yeah.”
Tony appeared caught off guard by Steve’s bluntness. “What is there to say, Cap? Add it to the list of self-perpetrated disasters—it’s growing long.”
Steve’s eyebrows knitted together. “Self-perpetrated?”
Appearing to realise he wasn’t getting out of it, Tony sighed long and hard and then took an extended sip of the whisky. Steve watched his damp lips as he pulled them away from the bottle.
“It’s like this,” Tony began once the bottle was back on the work bench. “I find a good thing. I act like me and fuck it up. The good thing ends.”
Perhaps he was less sober than Steve initially thought. He would never be saying this while sober. In fact, sober Tony would have strangled his non-sober self into silence by now if he could hear him. At that moment, Steve noticed that the whisky bottle was about half consumed. It felt wrong to pull Tony into a conversation that he wouldn’t normally allow to happen. But it also felt wrong to leave a clearly broken-hearted man alone with a bottle of whisky and a soldering iron.
“Tony,” he began, feeling like he was facing a wounded animal. “I’m sorry. You…really love her.”
Tony sighed, and an impossibly sad look slumped onto his face that Steve had never seen before. The magnitude of it was overwhelming, and it made a little part inside Steve want to hug him, but he doubted they were really there yet.
“Love has never been enough, Cap,” he mumbled, almost to himself, and went to grasp for the bottle again. His hand wavered on its way there. “It’s—all the details, the minutiae, get in the way.”
“That’s… tough,” Steve said, for lack of knowing what to say. He was so underprepared for this.
He could understand what Tony was saying to a degree—whatever attempts he had made at romance in the 21st century had been cut short by a lack of compatibility, and never in the romantic or sexual sense of the word compatibility, but always for seemingly stupid reasons such as work schedules or lack of compromise. In that sense, he understood that Tony and Pepper may love each other a whole lot, but Tony being Iron Man and living with five co-workers may have put a damper on some of the other aspects of the relationship.
“It’s always better in my head than it is in real life,” Tony continued through Steve’s thoughtful silence, unbidden. When Steve’s eyes shot back to him, he was staring at the wall. “I always thought I’d find somebody and it would feel natural, like breathing. In my mind, it always does. But then in real life, well—”
He cut himself off with another sip, and Steve mobilised and grasped gently at the bottle, pulling it down and away. He placed it back on the workbench. Tony shot him a wounded look. Thankfully Steve was one of the only members of this team who wasn’t susceptible to Tony’s big-brown-eyes and batting-eye-lashes schtick. Even Nat weakened at the sight.
“C’mon,” Steve goaded gently. “Let’s get you to your room. Sleep will help more than this.”
He expected a fight, but Tony appeared to not be prepared to give it, because he simply sighed and dragged himself off his stool with a nod. He supported himself into Steve’s side and allowed the other man to take him out of the room.
“J, lights,” the lights in the workshop flickered off. “Thanks.”
“Goodnight, Sir. Goodnight, Captain Rogers.” Jarvis farewelled them.
Steve didn’t respond, too busy keeping an eye on Tony. From this angle, he only really got a view of the top of Tony’s scruffy, dark hair, but he watched it anyway as he helped Tony hobble to his bed. It was only when the other man fell forward into the bed that Steve felt a weight come off his shoulders and exhaled loudly.
Tony was asleep in seconds, it seemed like. Steve stayed and watched him for a moment. Not on purpose, mostly he was lost in his own thoughts.
He’d wished he had been able to say something, anything, that would have soothed Tony’s mind. Steve was always better at thinking of what to say only after the actual moment passed. But anyway, what did Steve really know about love? In what capacity would he be able to help? He hadn’t even been able to gauge Tony’s relationship with Pepper properly. The thought made him wince.
Pepper had broken up with Tony. Not the other way around. Steve kissed his dream of dancing at Tony’s wedding goodbye (a damn shame too—in his mind he wore a dark blue ensemble that Tony’s fancy tailor whipped up for him and he felt like a million bucks). Further, Steve was proven wrong in a much more shameful way. He confronted the part of him that up until a few minutes ago believed, truly, that Tony hadn’t really been that in love with Pepper. Herein lay the proof of Steve’s folly. Tony, with red-rimmed eyes and damp eye-lashes. And the Glenfiddich.
Steve pursed his lips and watched his friend sleep for a second longer. A pang of sympathy clenched in his chest. He sighed again, and then walked out, shutting the door behind him gently.
“Jarvis, could you please let me know when he wakes up?” Steve requested, knowing Tony was prone to fits of eyewateringly early tinkering in the workshop.
When this occurred, he presumed it meant Tony had had uneasy sleep and elected to get up and busy himself rather than risk a few more hours at the mercy of his own brain. Steve, who while sleeping still sometimes smelled burning flesh and tasted dirt and blood, was intimately familiar with what that felt like. All of them were, in their own way.
He walked absentmindedly back to the living room, where the Monopoly game had already been abandoned on the floor (and Thor looked both embarrassed and happier for it).
“How is he?” Bruce asked when he saw Steve approach.
Steve grunted. “Not good.”
The team let out a collective sigh. Thor shook his head.
“Matters of the heart affect him so,” he mused, and the others nodded their heads along.
Steve realised, staggeringly, that that was true. He had never connected it in this way before, perhaps his own sureness had blinded him, but Tony’s life for as far as Steve knew it (both in personal experience and through past research) had always revolved in some way around his latest love affair, romance, lay, etcetera.
Steve pursed his lips in worry.
“He’ll bounce back,” Nat must have seen his face. “He always does. He'll be focused on someone else soon enough. He's a glutton for punishment like that.”
“Yeah,” Steve nodded hesitantly, only half listening.
That statement certainly agreed with his assessment of Tony’s resilience. He could only hope he hadn’t been wrong on that account as well.
___
Steve kept an eye on Tony from a distance, but gave him space to recover.
Tony approached him a few days later in the gym.
“Hey,” at the greeting, Steve paused his assault of the punching bag and turned, breathing heavily.
Tony appeared to be fighting off a look of meekness.
“Hey,” Steve responded, attempting to take the gentleness out of his tone. He knew Tony wouldn’t like to be coddled. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m good, Cap,” Tony said nonchalantly, and Steve didn’t poke at the lie. “You know, uh. Good as can be.”
Steve nodded awkwardly, giving Tony space to say his piece.
“J told me that you, uh, helped me to bed,” Tony appeared to cringe at his own words. “And stuff.”
“Yes, yeah,” Steve cleared his throat, nodding his head. “You’d uh. Had a bit to drink.”
“Oh, God, yeah” Tony rubbed a hand across his face. “About 500 thousand dollars of a drink.”
Steve baulked at the number and Tony, seeing his face, let out a little awkward laugh.
“It’s okay,” he said, with a boyish grin on his face that made Steve fill with hope for his state of mind. “Howard’s rolling in his grave, for sure. It’s nice to think that I’m still pissing off my old man post-mortem.”
Steve shook his head fondly, and Tony laughed again, clearly enjoying destabilising Steve, as he always did. Suddenly, his face appeared a bit sullen again, and Steve’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest.
“Look,” Tony said with a sigh and rubbed the back of his head. His hair was very messy today, sticking out in all different directions. “The stuff I said…I can’t remember exactly, but… could you do me a solid and just forget about it?”
Steve pursed his lips. “Tony…”
“It’s okay,” Tony rushed to reassure him. “I’m okay. Just. That comes out of me sometimes. When I’m drinking. I used to be better at keeping it to myself, but I don’t drink so much anymore, so I guess I…” he trailed off, not wanting to admit a loss of control.
Steve understood it anyway. If only just to wipe the look of desperation from Tony’s face, he relented. “Don’t worry, Tony. Consider it forgotten.”
Tony beamed at him, and Steve found himself involuntarily smiling back.
“Great, awesome,” he exhaled and a weight dropped from his shoulders. “Take that off the to-do-list, Jarvis.”
“Item ‘Tell Captain Rogers to forget drunken ramblings’ has been marked as complete, Sir.” Jarvis responded dutifully, and Steve’s eyes involuntarily flew to the ceiling, even though he knew logically that the AI didn’t live there.
“You’re the best, J,” Tony said and nodded his goodbye to Steve. On his way out, he spoke again. “We still on for movie night tomorrow?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Steve called to Tony’s retreating back.
He only allowed his worry to colour his face once Tony was well and truly out of sight.
___
The next night, he allowed Tony to pick the movie.
Which, in saying that, Tony always picked the movie, but there were certain times where Steve put up more of a fight before relenting to what Tony wanted to watch anyway. When he was feeling particularly generous, such as tonight, he allowed Tony free choice without the added arguing act that they usually did.
Tony scrolled through the online catalogue presented to him by Jarvis and eventually settled on The Best Years of Our Lives.
Steve hadn’t seen this one before. It had come out about a year after he’d been frozen. Tony informed him that he’d seen it with Mrs Gelding as a kid—Mrs Gelding had been his nanny from the ages of four to about nine, and she was a lot of the reason why Tony knew and loved old films such as this (though Steve still took issue with the use of the word ‘old’ in this context).
Tony, at some point after PTSD flashbacks started showing up on screen, shot him a halfway guilty look that indicated he hadn’t really thought his choice through. Steve didn’t say anything, however, so Tony stayed silent as well. Later into the film, when Steve turned to look at him, he appeared altogether engrossed in the movie, so Steve supposed he couldn’t feel too bad.
He tuned the movie out, mostly, feeling he couldn’t let himself focus on it too much without making the night sad for everyone involved. And he liked that Tony seemed to be enjoying himself—God knew he needed a distraction to get his mind away from Pepper.
Steve found himself interested in at least part of the storyline. Homer, a veteran who lost both his arms, is worried that his sweetheart Wilma will not want to marry him anymore after his return back home, now that he’s disabled. It was during Homer and Wilma’s storyline that Steve paid the most attention.
Wanting to ask Tony what he’d thought of the film as a child, he turned to look at his friend, seated at the other end of the couch from him. Seeing Tony, Steve paused, mouth still open with his aborted question resting on his lips.
Tony was huddled in on himself, eyes wide and unblinking, staring at the screen. His face was all shadows, lit only by the flickering light from the screen. It may have just been the reflection from that light, but Steve thought his eyes were too bright, gleaming with emotion. His brows were knitting together in a look that spoke of desperation. Steve clamped his mouth shut and breathed quieter, as though his breath would disturb the sight.
“I told you I loved you,” Wilma spoke from the screen, and Steve swallowed thickly as he saw Tony mouthing the words.
“I love you, Wilma,” Homer’s voice responded, and Tony mouthed along still, perhaps unaware that he was even doing it. “And I always have. And I always will.”
As Homer and Wilma embraced on screen, Tony let out a quiet, involuntary sigh. Steve’s eyes shot briefly to Tony’s mouth, tracking the sound, and then he had to look away. There was something in Tony’s gaze, something raw, something that held so much warmth, so much open want, that it was difficult to keep looking at without Steve’s insides stirring uncomfortably. Steve knew what longing looked like.
The rest of the movie flitted by without Steve realising. He didn’t look at Tony again, but even without looking, his thoughts rarely strayed from the man for the rest of the run-time. He wondered if Tony was thinking of Pepper while he mouthed along to the lines, clearly having seen this film many times. What was it about that particular scene that drew Tony to stare at it so personally, so openly? Perhaps it was the acceptance; Steve could understand that as well. He and Tony, everyone here—none of them felt whole. In one way or another, they all had pieces of them missing, lopped off during the dragging of the years. There were few things as romantic as having someone who could see you, all of you, and still decide to love you wholeheartedly, and to want to spend their life with you despite the pieces you lacked and would never be able to get back.
Steve’s own heart palpitated thinking about it. He looked down at his hands, in his lap. They were clenched into fists. He thought back to what Thor had said about Tony at last week’s game night. Matters of the heart affect him so. Steve’s brain brought forth the image of the expression on Tony’s face unbidden. It made his fists clench harder, but the discomfort of it held something smaller and sweeter that he found difficult to name. Protectiveness, perhaps. This was a part of Tony he had only recently become privy to, and up until then thought nonexistent.
He didn’t bring anything up, only speaking up to agree with Tony’s assertion that it was an excellent film once the credits began to roll.
___
“Nat,” Steve asked a couple of days later, the image of Tony’s vulnerable face still bright in his memory. “You ever seen The Best Years of Our Lives?”
She didn’t like films like that very much, but Steve found it impossible to speak about anything else at that moment.
Sure enough, Natasha paused her sparring with Clint and shot him a grimace. “Sad veteran movie?”
“Yeah,” Steve confirmed.
“Seen it,” Natasha said efficiently, going back to swinging at Clint without preamble. Clint was steadfastly ignoring that a conversation was happening at all. He hated any movie that didn’t involve a car-chase and several explosions. “Tony showed it to me once. Almost fell asleep. Why?”
Steve’s eyebrows knit together in thought, and he shook his head as though to say ‘nevermind’. She didn’t accept that. She was also smart enough to know that yesterday had been his and Tony’s movie night.
“Uh oh,” she tutted. “He didn’t show it to you, did he? He’s so damn stupid sometimes,” she presumed his quarrel was with the content of the film, which—a fair thought.
“He did,” Steve said with a shrug, pretending to oversee their fight still. “It was good.”
She shot him a look that said she smelled bullshit, but didn’t actually call him out on that until Clint was on his back on the ground yelping.
“Tasha, Nat! Nat! You’ve–ow!–you’ve made your point!” Natasha mercifully allowed him and his bruised ego to stand and stopped bending his arm behind his back. “Jeez. Aggressive.”
“Hit the showers, sweetie,” she clapped him on the back as he rubbed his arm with a screwed up face of pain. “That’s right. Walk away.”
He stuck his tongue out at her but seemed to recognise the veiled call for privacy because within seconds, he had picked up his towel and walked out, leaving Nat standing in front of Steve, still deep in thought.
She shot him one of those looks that felt like x-ray vision and raised an eyebrow in wordless questioning.
“It’s fine, Nat,” Steve attempted to backtrack, unsure how to parse his own thoughts out enough so that she could help him.
“Do I need to beat up Tony?” she said, tone light but eyes serious.
“No, God, not that,” Steve rushed to respond and ran a hand through his hair, sighing. How could he begin expressing to her something he barely understood himself? “I think I’m just,” he searched for the right word. “Worried about him. Mostly.”
Nat scanned his face with a small nod.
“Did he get all weepy at the scene with the armless guy and his girlfriend?” She asserted more than asked, and Steve was once again struck with the knowledge that she probably knew everything about everyone. He suddenly felt very exposed.
He didn’t bother lying. “Yeah. He was probably thinking about Pepper.”
Nat tutted and shook her head. “Doubt it. I watched it with him months ago and he did the same thing.”
She must have seen Steve’s confusion because she continued. “Just be happy he didn’t pick Casablanca. Had to pretend I fell asleep halfway to save him the awkwardness.”
Steve got the sense that she expected the statement to ease his worry, so he let out a little tense laugh that she could take as an easy out of the conversation if she didn’t want to deal with it. She didn’t take it.
“Steve,” she said, and he looked up off the floor to meet her eyes. “What’s on your mind?”
He thought back to his conversation with Tony. The Glenfiddich. He supposed he was worried that Tony was slipping off the rails again. He’d gotten better, even Steve could see that, and he hadn’t even known Tony for that long. But that statement didn’t feel like it wholly encapsulated that snarling ball of protectiveness that had curled inside him when he took Tony to his room and watched him fall asleep. He wasn’t sure he wanted to put any of that into words.
“He said something,” he settled instead. “Last week. Something like, he always thought love would be easy, like breathing.” he stopped there, pondering the next words. Nat waited patiently. “I guess I didn’t think he was that…”
“Sensitive?” Nat offered.
“Romantic.” Steve finally settled.
Nat nodded. “And that’s what makes you worried?”
Steve hummed in thought. It didn’t feel precisely like the correct word to use, but he didn’t know which one to offer in counterargument either. He shook his head at her.
“Wanna go a round?” he asked instead, seeing as she’d scared off her training partner for his sake.
Recognising his plea for her to let it go, she did just that, instead holding up her clenched fists as a show of ‘come get it’.
___
The weeks rolled on and Steve wasn’t given much cause to think on his conversations with Tony again for a while.
Having requested that they pretend the conversation never happened, Tony went back to his usual self, showing nothing of the bare-faced vulnerability that Steve had seen from him on those two different occasions.
Once or twice, they got lunch or coffee together. They watched movies on their movie night and played board games on board game night. There were three relatively low stakes full-team missions and a handful of ones that Steve went on with either Nat or Clint.
Steve also saw Pepper, once. She appeared just about the same in mannerisms and behaviour, showing no sign of any unhappiness or discomfort aside from, at times, the tightness of her smile. She and Tony interacted briefly in front of the team during a meeting with minimal awkwardness and surprising grace.
Steve had nudged Tony after Pepper had said her piece and ducked out and spoken to him in a low tone. “You guys seem okay.”
“We’re fine,” Tony had rolled his eyes in a fond manner. “Stop hovering.”
Steve found it hard not to. He could recognise he was hovering, and yet the realisation didn’t stop him from doing it. It felt like he was helpless to the way his opinion had swayed on Tony and, despite wanting things to go back to normal for Tony’s sake, was unable to return to a sense of normalcy. To feel only what he felt before.
Nat, perceptive as always, could see there was something up with him. She hadn’t endeavoured to speak to him about it directly, but when she set him up with a SHIELD friend of hers, it felt like a pointed message to just worry about your own shit for once.
“So, do you feel like you’ve adjusted? To life in 2012?” The woman across him asked him, shaking him from his thoughts.
He had taken her to a semi-fancy restaurant, on a recommendation from Nat, who said that Alicia would appreciate an excuse to wear something nice. It was true she looked incredible in a dark, elegant dress that hugged along her sides in a way that reminded Steve just exactly how unadjusted he was to certain aspects of 21st century life.
It was an exceedingly uninteresting question. Possibly the question he heard the most since he’d been taken off ice. He managed a polite smile and fiddled with the cuff of his shirt.
“No. I, uh. I don’t think so,” he began, chuckling awkwardly and observing the way her eyes took on a shade of compassion. “It’s a lot of new things. Every time I feel like I’ve finally got it, something else comes up. Like, the other day, I thought I was doing pretty well and then Clint used a word I hadn’t heard before and it made me feel out of my depth all over again. It’s funny how little things like that feel like such a big deal, now.”
It was possibly too honest an answer for a first date. Alicia’s attention dropped to the napkin in front of her. But again, it was tough to keep answering the same question he got on an almost daily basis in any sort of interesting way without oversharing. He found he didn’t particularly feel ashamed. Alicia let out a small chuckle.
“What was the word?” she asked, a curious glint in her eyes that made her seem even more beautiful, and Steve momentarily felt that this might just work out.
“Oh. We were talking about,” he laughed, “Tony, actually. And his love of pants.”
“Tony Stark?” Alicia confirmed. “Please tell me the new word isn’t ‘pants’.”
“No, no, not that interesting,” Steve smiled. “It’s… Clint said he’s a ‘metrosexual’. I haven’t looked it up yet, so if I’m about to embarrass myself or something—”
“You’re not,” she said, rushing to reassure him, amused. “It’s just… metropolitan and heterosexual. Straight guy who’s into fashion, essentially.”
Steve, curiosity only partially sated, thought back to the glimpse he’d caught of Tony’s closet and his fifty pairs of seemingly identical pants that he insisted all gave a different sort of lift or had different hemming or something or other. He nodded his head at the thought, but then got stuck on the word heterosexual and thought back to some nasty articles he’d read about Tony in the past that begged to differ. Nat’s contention with the term suddenly made sense.
“It’s a portmanteau," Alicia added after a beat of silence, awkwardly. “It’s a bit dated, actually.”
“Nat did say it’s not the right word for him,” Steve mused, trailing off, in his own thoughts.
He realised he was glad the conversation had turned to Tony rather than himself, but thought that it was probably bad date etiquette to keep the conversation there. Plus, Alicia’s face was carefully expressionless, and Steve got the sense that she didn’t share his gladness at talking about Tony.
After a moment of pause, painfully aware of the sounds of other peoples’ cutlery hitting their plates, Steve spoke up. “So, uh. How do you know Nat? I mean, from work, obviously, but…”
“Has to do with your metrosexual buddy, actually,” Alicia explained with a small smile. “SHIELD assigned me to Stark, undercover as his PA. That’s how Tasha and I met, she took over from me.”
Steve’s jaw tightened involuntarily. “They did that more than once? With him?”
She cleared her throat, eyes shifting. “Well, I’m sure you know, as a coworker of his, that he’s…He can be a little hard to read sometimes,” she said, then added quickly, “Not in a bad way, just—he’s kind of intense, I guess. I don’t know if that’s the right word. And SHIELD needed to read him, so.” Alicia finished awkwardly. “I didn’t think you and him got along, to be honest…”
Steve felt that bristling sensation again. It was frustrating, because he couldn’t altogether deny that she was correct in her assessment that Tony was hard to read. But now, with the image of Tony’s bright eyes filled with longing fresh in his mind, it bothered him that he couldn’t show Alicia that version of Tony. And it bothered him to no end that he would have once agreed with her.
The silence made it so that Alicia felt prompted to move the conversation along.
“Well, let’s not talk about work,” she said, smiling at him, and he made an effort to smile back, but he was sure it looked a bit like a grimace. “Wanna get dessert?”
___
Returning to the common room on Tony’s floor after the date felt like coming back with his tail tucked between his legs.
His teammates, sans Bruce, were lazying around the couches. At the sight of them, all relaxed and smiling, he wished he’d stayed there the whole night with them instead.
“Woah, Mr Date is back!” Clint called out, and Steve laughed. “Give us a twirl!”
Steve relented and gave a couple of reluctant turns, hearing his friends woop and holler to hype him up. His suit did look good. Too bad the date hadn’t been the right fit for it.
“Mr. Date. That’s new,” Tony quipped to Clint, accentuating it with a throw of a piece of popcorn, which lodged itself firmly in Clint’s hair. “You come up with that all on your own, Legolas?”
“We all know you’ve cornered the nickname market, Tony.” Nat said jokingly, prompting Tony to stick his tongue out to Clint.
Nat ignored them. “How’d the date go?” she asked, and her tone showed him she already knew how it went based on the probably pitiful expression on his face.
“I don’t think there’ll be another one.” Steve said plainly, hoping that would be the end of that.
“Was she not to your liking?” Thor jumped in, voice too loud, drawing Tony and Clint’s attention back to him.
“What? She’s a babe, Cap.” Tony leaned back, tossing another piece of popcorn. “And apparently she also spies on me for a living, so really I’m showing remarkable restraint by not being more judgmental.”
“You’re a saint,” Nat rolled her eyes. “But seriously, Steve. She’s hot.”
“Who are we talking about?” Bruce walked back into the living room holding a mug of tea. “Oh, hey Steve.”
“Alicia. She’s in Intelligence.”
“Oh, she’s gorgeous.” Bruce agreed plainly and the team nodded in agreement.
“Sure, she’s beautiful,” Steve’s voice edged on exasperated. “The conversation just got a little stale,” he left his jacket on the back of one of the dining room chairs and then walked closer to situate himself on the end of the couch, next to Nat. “We had nothing to say to each other. She did explain what metrosexual means, though.”
Clint and Tony howled with laughter, but Steve was just glad they were talking about something other than how hot a woman who had spied on Tony was.
“You know the internet exists, right? So you don’t have to ask women embarrassing questions like ‘what does metrosexual mean’ on a date?” Tony snarked through a mouthful of popcorn. “It’s important to me that you know that.”
“That’s how desperate I was to make conversation,” Steve went along with it with a small smile.
It was only when the others went back into whatever they’d been talking about before Steve arrived (something about Rubik’s Cubes, judging by the shouting) that Nat leaned in closer and whispered knowingly.
“Why did that term come up?” When Steve looked into her eyes, he knew she was recalling the moment with Clint and Tony’s closet. Her implication was clear by the smile on her lips. She knew Steve had only heard that word in one context.
In a moment of utter betrayal, his eyes flicked briefly over her shoulder and shot to where Tony was currently attempting to wrestle a Rubik's Cube out of Clint’s grasp while Thor and Bruce took bets. He didn’t recover quickly enough for Nat—a spy—to not notice. She blinked at him once, twice. Then followed his gaze until it landed on Tony. Then looked at him again.
“Huh,” she said plainly, and Steve had no words that would salvage the situation at this point. “Interesting.”
“What’s interesting?” Steve panicked, despite himself. “Nothing’s interesting.”
“No, it is,” Nat doubled down. “It’s interesting that I set you up on a date with an objectively incredibly attractive woman and you ended up talking about your coworker.”
Steve shot her warning looks and made sure Tony wasn’t paying attention to them. Nat laughed at him with a look of disbelief. Her eyes flicked down to look at where Steve’s fists were pressed tightly to his thighs. Steve’s face felt warm. Her eyes raked gleefully over every detail of his face and body that gave him away.
“You could not be more obvious,” she said, and her smile suddenly appeared less mocking and more delighted. “The Captain America instinct is strong, huh? All it took was seeing a kicked puppy—”
“Nat,” Steve warned again, and perhaps there was something desperate in his tone, because her smile fell. “Don’t. Please.”
She blinked at him a couple of times. “You’re serious,” she stated as though just then realising.
Which, to be honest—Steve had only just realised as well. Every moment of blank-headedness around Tony for the past few weeks suddenly crystallized. The memory of Tony’s emotion and vulnerability had haunted Steve in an uncomfortable way that he’d interpreted initially as protectiveness, worry. He had barely noticed the warmth that had sidled up alongside those until he was looking across the other end of the table to Alicia and wishing he was home with Tony.
He wanted to see that expression on Tony’s face again, open, unguarded. Like the night in the workshop, or when they watched the movie. The weight of the realisation hit him like a punch to the chest. He didn’t just want to see the expression—he wanted to put it there himself.
His silence spoke volumes. Nat seemed unable to hold back her curiosity. She looked around them and noticed that they still weren’t being paid much mind by the others, so she leaned closer and asked him in a low tone.
“Is that a new thing?” she asked, and then specified. “Generally?”
“No,” Steve admitted, and his mind threw him back to lingering gazes in changing rooms, how he’d always been so aware of the men around him. He had always kind of known. “Not new. Just not as strong. As with women, I mean.”
She nodded, curiosity abated. “But this,” and he knew now she was talking more specifically. “Is new?”
He nodded, and found his gaze wandering again. Passively, he was aware that Tony was now arm wrestling Thor and losing easily. He was sure he had some sort of stupidly wistful expression on his face, because when he turned back to Nat she looked smug. He sighed heavily.
“Okay, okay!” Tony’s voice rang out and saved Steve from further awkward conversation. “I concede, I concede!” he was pulling away from Thor’s grip.
“Are you sure, Stark? Don’t want a fourth rematch?” Thor said smugly, and Tony scoffed at him.
“Not that I’m not enjoying watching Tony get his ass handed to him,” Bruce spoke up and Tony made an indignant sound. “But do we wanna put something on the TV?”
“Bruce is bored of us,” Clint snarked, but reached for the remote on the side table anyway. “What are we feeling? They usually have some stupid action comedy on at this—hey, what’s this?”
The full team’s attention fell on him as he pulled his hand up from the side table holding not the TV remote, but something small and shiny. A Stark Industries badge, Steve realised. Thor was closer and so spotted the full context quicker. Tony spoke up first, with a casual tone of voice that had an undertone of someone witnessing a car crash.
“Oh, that’s nothing, don’t—”
“‘Virginia Potts’,” Thor read off the name on the badge and shot a look at Tony. “Pepper?”
Tony rolled his eyes. Steve wasn’t sure if he was reading too much into it (perhaps way too in tune with Tony’s emotions on the heels of his personal realisation) but he felt there was an air of panic underneath it.
“I forgot to put it away, don’t worry about it,” he said plainly. “Put it back.”
Clint swooped in like a vulture. He was scary sometimes when he smelled weakness. “You ‘forgot’ to put away your ex-girlfriend’s badge?”
“As a matter of fact, Legolas, yes, I did,” Tony said, and Steve had an urge to jump in and defend him, but he was very aware of Nat’s gaze flicking between Tony and him and he didn’t want to be too obvious and give her more ammunition. “Could you stop being so nosy and—”
“Oh my God, it’s a souvenir,” Clint realised delightedly. “You keep souvenirs. Tony Stark keeps souvenirs—”
“Clint, I swear—”
“Tony Stark has a sentimental streak. Tony Stark keeps souvenirs lying around.”
“Maybe lay off, Clint,” Steve couldn’t hold himself back from jumping in anymore, but at the same time, Tony spoke as well.
“Lying around? Please, I’ve got a system.” he said, which really wasn’t helping his case.
“A system?!” Clint responded, and now even Steve was curious.
“Souvenir?” Thor asked suddenly, question pointed mostly to Bruce and Nat. “Like those gaudy little magnets that say ‘Roma, Italia’ on them?”
“For relationships,” Bruce explained gently, shooting an apologetic look at Tony. “It just means keeping something that reminds you of a person you used to be with.”
“I see,” Thor said, and he shot Tony a fond look. “You have more heart than you claim, Stark.”
“Let’s not do this today,” Tony groaned and got up, holding a hand out to Clint. “Just hand it over, you gossip.”
“Only if you show me where you’re going to put it.” Clint held the badge out of Tony’s reach like a petulant child.
“Not a chance, Barton,” Tony’s voice was getting firmer, and Steve found himself drawn to the sound of Tony’s distress like a moth to flame.
He stood. “C’mon, Clint,” he said lightly, and Clint’s gaze fell onto Steve.
“Since when are you coming to his rescue?” he asked, but then his gaze shot to somewhere behind Steve and he handed the badge over to Tony without another word. Steve could only assume that Nat was giving him a warning look behind Steve’s back. “Fine, God. I wasn’t going to make fun of you, or anything.”
Tony shot him a disbelieving look as he pocketed the badge.
“There’s probably too much stuff to go through, anyway,” Clint continued, wanting to dispel the awkwardness that had settled. “If you’ve kept something from every girl you’ve been with, I mean—”
“Wow,” Tony shot back. “If you think I’m the type to steal a pair of underwear from every one night stand, you’re mistaken.”
“So there’s criteria?” Natasha, the traitor, jumped in. “Like, minimum three months? Have exchanged I love yous?”
Tony turned to look at her with a look of surprise, voice cutting. “Okay, from gossipy grandma over there, I expected it. You? Why do you want to know? Need to put it in a report to Fury?”
Nat’s face scrunched up a bit, and the air in the room got thicker. “That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair,” Tony continued, “is you all poking your noses into this.”
“Tony,” Steve said in a lower tone, and felt something like a shudder when Tony’s eyes fell on him, big and desperate. Like a cornered animal. His heart jumped into his mouth. “Nobody’s writing any reports. It’s okay.”
“I—” Tony pulled away a bit, taken aback by the sincerity on Steve’s face. “I know. It’s—I’m sure anything that I could tell you has been reported on by the tabloids, since you’re all that interested in finding out.”
“Not from the tabloids, Tony,” Bruce said gently, and Steve saw Tony’s face soften. “You know that’s not the same thing.”
Tony, for once, appeared to not know what to say. After a moment of thought, Steve placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. He tried not to think about the fact that Nat was witnessing this and filing it away in her mind palace. Before Steve could devise his next words, Clint spoke up.
“Hey, I keep souvenirs too,” he said, slightly huffy. “I didn’t say it’s weird to keep things.”
“They’re not—!” Tony cut himself off with a deep breath. “It’s not souvenirs. Just—” he appeared a bit flushed, and in disbelief at himself. His gaze landed briefly on Steve’s hand on his shoulder. “Oh, I’m going to regret this.”
He shrugged off Steve’s hand and walked away and out of the room momentarily. Steve took that time to shoot Clint a direct look.
“What’s with you?” Clint whispered to him, appearing genuinely curious. “Ever since he—”
He was mercifully cut off by Tony coming back into the room holding a small cardboard box. He plopped it down onto the coffee table, where it landed with a thunk.
“There you go,” he said in a resigned tone. “My image is never going to recover from this.”
Despite himself, Steve leaned in closer along with the rest of the team. They didn’t comment as Tony opened the box. Tony must have seen Clint get too close for comfort, because he shot him a murderous glance.
“You keep your sticky paws where I can see them,” he said warningly, and Clint held his hands up as though he was being threatened with a gun. “Good. Okay.”
Inside the box, there was a surprisingly small collection of things. Steve immediately spotted an old lighter with an American flag design on it, then a plain, silver cuff-link, and a business card from some sort of diner that had the tag line ‘best pancakes on the East coast!’ proudly proclaimed in tacky red cursive. The last item was a photograph, but it was face down in the box, so Steve couldn’t see it. But there was a date written on the back—1988.
“‘88,” Steve said, despite himself. “You were eighteen?”
Tony appeared surprised, as though he’d forgotten the photo was in there. He was in the process of grabbing the name tag out from his pocket and slowly, almost reverently, placing it into the box alongside the rest of the things. Nobody spoke for a moment, as though afraid that a single word would have Tony scuttling back into his shell like a frightened turtle. Steve believed his question had been ignored until Tony, face carefully guarded, took the photograph out of the box and held it out towards Steve.
Steve stared at the photograph, stupefied. He looked back to Tony’s face questioningly, but Tony only pressed the photograph closer to him with a sort of fed up eyeroll. Underneath the nonchalance he was broadcasting, there was a distinct air of vulnerability in his shifty gaze that made Steve’s breath stutter. When he reached out to take the photograph, he felt the slight brush of Tony’s skin against his as though amplified by a thousand.
With a quick look to Tony to see how he would react, the others crowded around Steve to also catch their own glimpse as he turned the photograph around to look at it.
It was yellowed, fading. Its edges were slightly crinkled. It depicted, as a main focal point, an old but well taken care of red car. On the side of it, leaned against the car itself, was a young man, smiling faintly. He was tall, wide-shouldered, and a cigarette hung loosely between his lips. On the roof of the car sat another man, younger still, his legs hanging over the side. The man leaning against the car had an arm held out in a motion almost like a flex, wrapped around the underside of the legs of the man on the roof. It was only when Steve focused on the boyish, coy smile of the man seated on top of the car that he realised he knew its curves and edges very well.
“That’s you,” Nat pointed out, stealing the words from Steve’s mouth. “On top of the car.”
Clint seemed to only realise it just then. “Oh my God, that’s you? You’re—”
“Clint,” Nat cut in without even looking at him, having sensed imminent disaster. Clint shut his mouth and mimed zipping it closed.
“That man was your beloved?” Thor spoke, massive, godly finger pointing to the man leaning against the car.
“Are those jorts? This is so 80’s.” Bruce added, and Nat chuckled softly.
Tony shot them a warning look and held out his hand. “Give it,” he commanded, and Steve handed it back obediently, sad that he didn’t get longer to drink it in.
Tony, very pointedly, did not even glance at the photo before he placed it carefully back into the box, face down. He shut the box up with steady hands.
“There you go,” he said pointedly. “Sharing time is over,” he turned to Clint. “And you have unequivocal evidence that it’s not just a collection of underwear.”
Nat smirked a little, pressing against the bruise Tony exposed with the tone of an inside joke. “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart?”
Steve, heart palpitating at the memory of a young boy seated on top of a car, bathed in sunlight, spoke unbidden. “Already knew that, Nat.”
He had a moment of consideration where he realised he was being exceedingly obvious. But then Tony’s gaze shifted over to him, and there was something in his eyes, something surprised but grateful and touched, and Steve didn’t regret speaking at all.
“Can we now watch TV, or are you going to keep staring at me all weepy eyed like a bunch of old ladies?” Tony said in a tone that left no room for questions. They had to take what they were given and accept they would get nothing else.
Chatter resumed as normal as Tony put the box away, coming back and taking a seat on the couch next to Steve. Steve kept his eyes fixed on the TV, even as he felt Tony’s gaze land on him subtly a couple of times throughout the night.
___
Steve, riding the high of his newfound realisation regarding Tony, spent the next few days reorganising memories.
Now, when he looked back, it was as though a soft, warm light was bathed onto every interaction with Tony that had previously appeared regular or run of the mill. It was simultaneously a beautiful and deeply terrifying sensation.
At the same time, his thoughts strayed often to the photograph that Tony had chosen to share with him (because he did hand it to Steve, not anyone else), and wishing that he could know more. The more Tony opened up another layer of himself to Steve, the more Steve thirsted to see.
He and Tony went out for pizza a few weeks later, just the two of them. A mere few months ago, this would’ve been unheard of for them, but when they announced it to the team on their way out nobody batted an eye (aside from Nat, who all but wiggled her eyebrows at Steve suggestively).
“No, not the—You are joking if you think Fellowship is better than Two Towers,” Tony was impassioned, speaking around a mouthful of pizza. “Maybe you just don’t get it. Maybe you’re too old to get it.”
“I’m technically younger than you,” Steve shot back, wiping the grease from his fingers onto a napkin and relishing the faux shock on Tony’s face. “And you only like the Two Towers because of Aragorn.”
“Are you—” Tony waved his hands around in a way that made Steve burst out laughing. “Of course, have you seen him? The moment with the—”
“The doors.”
“—The doors—yes, literally, Cap! Nothing in Fellowship holds a candle to that!”
“Return of the King is the best anyway,” Steve settled, and Tony’s mouth clamped shut with a click.
“We can agree on that, at least,” he said lightly, but then a teasing gleam appeared in his eyes. “So, you’re telling me you don’t agree at all?”
“About what?” Steve raised an eyebrow.
“Aragorn,” Tony said as though it was obvious, narrowing his eyes and leaning closer. “The doors. Don’t tell me you feel nothing?”
Steve held his face carefully neutral. “I didn’t say I feel nothing.”
“Aha!” Tony pointed, vindicated. “So you agree he’s hot.”
Steve wasn’t sure what Tony’s aim was here. Perhaps to make Steve uncomfortable? To embarrass him? Regardless of his aim, his gaze rested warm and heavy on Steve’s face. Steve let out a sigh.
“He’s,” he paused to consider. “Yeah, he’s good looking. He has nice hair.”
Tony guffawed a laugh. “Only you would say it that way, Rogers,” he said, but before Steve could question that statement, Tony probed again. “Just the hair? Not—and I’m just spitballing here—the jaw? The shoulders—”
“You’re getting distracted,” Steve laughed.
“—The physique in general, really. The eyes. The stubble. The speeches. I could go on.”
“Please do,” Steve said, and his voice sounded just a touch too soft. Tony paused and glanced at him, eyes searching his face for something. Steve cleared his throat. “I, uh. I like dark hair,” he admitted sheepishly.
“Huh,” Tony responded. “Is that why you didn’t like Alicia? From Intelligence?” He took another bite of his pizza. “Got a thing against blondes? God, I can’t have another bite, finish this off.”
“What am I, your bin?” Steve spoke through a mouthful of Tony’s pizza. “Alicia was nice. She and I just didn’t really click, is all. And not because she’s blonde.”
“Why, then?” Tony asked, wiping his fingers on a crinkled napkin and taking a sip of soda. “It wasn’t your first date, right? I mean, not with her, in general. Since you’ve been out of the ice?”
Steve shook his head. “Not my first date, no.”
Tony looked at him blankly when Steve didn’t offer any further information. “Don’t make me torture this out of you, Rogers.”
Steve pursed his lips momentarily. “Nat’s set me up on a few dates. But I just—it’s hard, sometimes. To uh. Pretend, I guess.”
“Pretend?” Tony tilted his head in curiosity, and Steve observed the flash of neck the motion revealed. “Like, the whole first date thing of having to present yourself in a certain way?”
“Yes—and no,” Steve shook his head, trying to find the right words. “Pretend that everything’s normal. That I’m normal. Sometimes they look at me and I can tell they’re seeing the propaganda poster.”
Tony hummed lightly, and a flash of recognition lit in his eyes. “I had those up in my bedroom as a kid, you know.”
“What,” Steve paused around a mouthful of pizza. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly,” Tony said, laughing, and Steve’s brain latched onto the sound. “Howard’s choice, really. He wanted me to grow up idolising you, I guess.”
Steve felt a squeezing in his chest. “Did it work?”
Tony appeared surprised at the question. “No,” he said, not seeming apologetic. “Not in that way.”
“In another way?” Steve asked, leaning closer, as though their conversation suddenly shouldn’t be privy to other peoples’ ears.
Tony considered him for a moment, his hand drumming a pattern onto the table. Steve tracked the movement.
“Yes, in another way,” he said, but before Steve could ask him to clarify, he spoke again. “So, have you let Nat know to set you up with some Aragorns instead of Alicias?”
Steve choked on his soda. “No, uh. Not yet. I guess? But she knows, I mean.”
“You would, then?” Tony asked again, and Steve’s brain finally clicked on what Tony was really asking him.
“Date men?” He asked, and Tony seemed slightly taken aback by his bluntness.
“Woah, Captain America is more liberal than I thought he was,” Tony said, and a satisfied look settled onto his face. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish Howard was here. He would absolutely freak.”
“Well, good thing it’s not contingent on your father’s opinion,” Steve said, slightly more curtly than he intended to. He swallowed dryly. “Sorry. It’s, uh. Tough to talk about. Sometimes.”
“That’s fine, I get it,” Tony rushed to say. “Well. Not in a 1940’s sort of way, but I get it.”
“In an 80’s sort of way?” Steve said abruptly, mind shooting back to the photo of Tony, young and perched on top of somebody’s car.
Tony was silent for a moment, and Steve observed the way his dark eyes tilted downward, obstructed by his eyelashes. The silence dragged, just a moment too long, and Steve was considering apologising so that he could get Tony’s eyes to lift up and meet his own again.
“Yeah, it was a weird time,” Tony said finally, and his tone was a bit removed, as though his mind was elsewhere. “You can ask about it, you know. I’m not going to bite your head off.”
“You sure?” Steve asked, remembering the reaction in the living room. “You didn’t seem keen to talk about it.”
“That was with everyone else,” Tony said with an eyeroll, and, appearing to realise exactly what he’d just said, pursed his lips. “I’ve told you worse things, Rogers.”
Steve’s mind shot back to Tony’s admissions to him in the workshop. Tony must have realised this by the look on his face, because he tutted.
“Things which we agreed you are to forget about entirely!” He said, and covered his face with his hands in a way that made Steve’s breath pinch.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve jokingly went along with it, memory heavy with the truth of Tony’s beliefs about love. Feeling brave, he added. “But if I did know, I would tell you you’re wrong.”
Tony gingerly put his hands down and away from his face, looking at Steve with a calculatedly neutral expression, leaning closer. “Is that so?”
Steve, feeling bold now that his inside thoughts had suddenly become outside ones, doubled down.
“Yes,” he asserted. “Love is enough.”
Tony blinked at him a few times, stunned. He huffed a quiet laugh. “A fag and a romantic. It’s all surprises with you.”
“If that’s my torch, I’ll bear it,” Steve shrugged, smiling at Tony and reveling in finally being the one to shock Tony, rather than the other way around. “There’s worse things to be.”
“Like what?” Tony asked, and his voice was low, careful. As though Steve’s answer, whatever that was going to be, mattered a whole lot.
“Someone who doesn’t believe in anything,” Steve levelled, matching Tony’s posture and leaning closer. “Someone who doesn’t even try.”
Tony held his gaze boldly. “Is that why you keep going on dates with all the Alicias of the world? To keep trying?”
Steve’s answer tumbled out of him before he could stop it, much too earnest. “I keep going on dates to remind myself that when they took me off the ice, they didn’t just unfreeze Captain America—Steve Rogers came with him too. And I have to make sure he’s still hanging around.”
Tony searched Steve’s face silently. Steve held his gaze, if for nothing else than just to make sure his eyes wouldn’t stray to Tony’s lips.
“God, you’re so sickeningly perfect sometimes,” Tony said suddenly, leaning back into his seat. “You didn’t even have that pre-written or anything.”
“I guess it comes with the territory of being a fag and a romantic,” Steve quipped, leaning back as well. “I’m sure you’re familiar.”
Tony barked out a surprised laugh (though he denied nothing), but it very soon tapered off into a sigh. “‘88 was the year I started my Masters at MIT.”
Steve raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” He said, more softly.
“I met him there,” Tony continued, and Steve knew he was talking about the man in the photo. “He was a few years older—you know, the age you’re actually supposed to be when you’re starting a Masters.”
Steve couldn’t hold back a fond laugh. “Modesty is a gift.”
“One I wasn’t born with,” Tony said plainly. “I just—I guess he made me understand what love could be.”
Recognising a softness that he didn’t want to scare away, Steve’s voice was quieter when he responded. “Could be—what?”
“Real,” Tony said, and he wasn’t meeting Steve’s eyes anymore. He was looking at the table, at his own hands, fingers tangled together. Steve recognised the controlled, restless glint in his eyes as something akin to what he had seen when they were watching the movie. “My only example up until then had been from films I’d watched as a kid.”
Steve knew enough about Tony’s family at this point to know that whatever Howard and Maria’s household ran on when Tony was growing up, it certainly wasn’t love. That had been true of Steve’s childhood as well.
“It was too real,” Tony said, looking faraway. “Burned too brightly. I never wanted it to end.”
Steve pursed his lips sympathetically. “But it did,”
“Of course it did,” Tony said, with a self-depracating laugh. “And now it’s a photo.”
Steve stayed silent for a moment, considering this. The look of Tony in that picture, his face still holding something of that brightness of youth, his knees and elbows too sharp. Splayed out in the sun. It made something thunderous ring out inside him.
“It’s not just a photo.” He said simply, and Tony looked up at him in surprise.
There were a few beats of silence again where Steve wasn’t sure that he’d said the right thing, but suddenly, Tony smirked at him.
“Aaand that’s what Steve Rogers would say if he did remember what I told him in the workshop,” he teased lightly. “But he doesn’t, because he promised he would forget. Right?”
Steve smiled back. “Right.”
“Phew!” Tony mimed wiping away imaginary sweat. “I was getting a bit nervous there. I have an image to uphold.”
“I’m starting to see that,” Steve said, digging back into the pizza that had since gone cold. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“My hero,” Tony snarked, but when Steve met his eyes they were smiling and bright.
They walked back to the tower, talking and laughing the whole way. Steve said goodnight to Tony by the elevator, opting to take himself to the kitchen for a glass of water before bed. He needed a second to cool down.
When he got there, Nat was waiting for him like a parent whose child has broken curfew.
“So,” she said pointedly. “You didn’t put out on the first date?”
“Nat,” he rolled his eyes, grabbing himself a glass. “Be serious, please.”
“I am being serious, Steve, you’re the one who’s not being serious,” she said and dragged herself off her stool to stand next to him. “Watching you is torture. Torture.”
“Stop watching, then,” Steve said simply and filled up his glass, ignoring Nat’s groan of frustration.