The hands in his hair feels so nice. The touch of their bodies together is both soothing and invigorating in a way that is surely part of Steve’s plethora of super powers. Tony will have to look up his dossier when they get to SHIELD tomorrow or the next day to double check. He isn’t a man who is easily swayed. A pretty face might get his eyes to move or his head to turn to see if that pretty face comes with a nice ass too, but this is different. Steve had both a pretty face and a nice ass, but he’s not just a generic person with a good body and a good soul.

Can you be attracted to depression? Can you be attracted to the cracks in the old vase, the signs of weakness and of age and of morality? Tony is pretty sure that’s a shitty thing to admit but he can’t stop himself from feeling that way. Or from wanting to find finger holds in those cracks and climb to the top, to peer inside, to know the truth.

How long as it been like this? He felt shadows of this emotion cross him when he flipped through sketchbooks or played chicken with the speed dial on the flip phone. He could have gone on forever with just that shadow but Steve’s gone and done to him what very few have ever done before. It’s not the sadness. It’s not the loss of a surrogate child and a fiancée that’s caused all of this. It hadn’t been grief sex.

Soap in his hair, Tony turns slightly to catch a glimpse of this foolish idiot’s jawline. ‘Let me be good to you’ translates word for word into ‘let me love you.’ It’s poisonous and irresistible. Tony turns again, this time to put his arms around Steve’s waist.

“So be good to be me.”