“Can’t it be both?” Tony hadn’t been asking for a blow job. He just wanted to watch Steve crawl around again, and maybe to make fun of the fact that he’d clean up when someone’s whole job is to clean up. He’d half expected an argument so that they could diffuse the old fashioned way, with a shouting match. Steve could have told him that making more work for the staff is unconscionable. Tony could have shot back that he always tips well anyway. But evidently what Steve had admitted to when it came to his early day promiscuity, to his need for relief when it comes to giving pleasure, hasn’t quite changed.

The look in those sharp blue eyes causes a twinge of need, burning and bright, in Tony’s stomach.

Maybe they both need it.

Sex doesn’t have to change anything. It’s never changed Tony.

That said, he doesn’t really want a blond head in his lap. Steve is nothing like Pepper. His shoulders and back, the shade of his hair and it’s cut would never allow Tony to mistake the two. But that’s not going to be enough.

Steve’s got to understand how important that can be.

“It’s not chicken unless there’s something you can swerve from,” he says, wishing there were a pair of red boots around in Steve’s size. “It should hurt. A little,” he says, dropping the plate he’d just spilled to free up his hands so that he can reach out and touch the fair blond locks on Steve’s head. It feels different now than they had when he was sober and trimming it. “I can’t hurt you.” Case proven by a sharp tug of that hair. “And I don’t want a blow job. No one regrets a blow job. Want to tick off some boxes? Strike out that ‘technicality’ on your virginity?”

Tony’s not serious.

Well maybe a little serious. His voice hasn’t dropped the way Steve’s has. Tony’s games are hard to figure out the rules to.