Oh, God...

[shieldborne]

Infinity War Open Post






THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Drop me a prompt, or ask me to drop you a prompt. Open to doomy pre-IW foreshadowing, fix-it AUs, post-IW angst, character interactions that should have happened but didn't on-screen, crossovers, and whatever else anyone can come up with.

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[shieldborne]

A century old, and yet somehow still a twenty-five-year-old cadet whose emotional development got arrested during wartime. Steve is a decent soldier, a good man, a dedicated leader, but there are phases he missed out on in his life, holes that can't be patched up after the fact. The alarming truth is that Tony is slightly more qualified to be the grown-up here. Only slightly, but when Steve is at a low point, as he is now, that extra competence matters.

His body feels heavy, as if every caress through his hair weighs him down a little further into the bed, into Tony's arms. He sort of wants to just roll with that, let himself relax, see if he might even fall asleep like this. Banter and friendship are priceless, sex is amazing, but this? Quiet moments of holding and being held, gentle touches and pillow talk? This is love.

He's silent for a few seconds, catching his breath and processing what Tony's telling him, and then his fingers curl against Tony's skin, stroking his side lazily. "You know, what I always liked about you is how you challenged me," he says. "You'd push, I'd push back, we'd fight, we'd shake hands and agree to disagree. I figured you hated me a little, but I didn't take it personally. The army was like that. You live in a tent with six or eight other guys, you're gonna fight and hate each other half the time. But you're also indispensable to each other. You have their six, they have yours."

"You're right, though. I'm on the edge, and you're acting more like yourself, right now, but I know you're pretty close to it, too. We better handle with care." Especially if they're going to sleep together.

"I honestly...don't know how to live, is the thing. I don't know how not to have my brain in battle mode, planning for the next fight. I don't do downtime. So, I know as long as we're chasing down stones to destroy, as long as we have a fight, I'm going to be able to hold together. I have bad moments, but I'm here."

"After we finish this, it's just a big blank slate. Maybe that's why I like Iron Man better than Captain America. He's got an endgame in mind. He can build something better, adapt to things changing, direct the changes. Captain America is only good for holding the darkness at bay until dawn shows up, and then he's a relic. Or until the sun burns out for good--and the idea of being the last man standing is romantic but it doesn't actually help anyone."

God, does he want to be saved, though. He'd gotten used to the idea of a violent death, of never coming home from the battlefield. Not like he'd be the only man, or woman, to end that way. But the greatest good isn't found on the field of war; he was a painter, and he knows that there's a quiet glory in a job well done, in beauty, in peace.

"All I know for sure is I need this," he says, arm curling a little tighter around Tony. "To be...held. Touched. Like when I was a kid and having an asthma attack, or when the heat broke in the tenement building and we had to sleep in the same bed so I wouldn't get sicker. This makes sense, when nothing else does."

"And I need you to see me for who I am. Steve, not Cap. Or at least not just Cap. I think Cap's about to die one way or another, for me. For good. Steve might be able to try again."

[starkingenuity]

“Someone told me that it’s healthy to hate someone a little,” Tony says, which might be the truth or maybe just the truth he wants to hold onto. He says a lot of stuff, only some of which are true. It’s not that he’s a pathological liar, but god forbid he ever let anyone in. Not telling the full truth is as rigid a mask as the one in his armor. He feels strange without having it close, really. For so long, he and the arc reactor had become one. He is Iron Man, Iron Man is him. But it’s different now. The machine is still technically inside of him. He never removed the implants, though he did have his heart fixed. He needs to feel connection to the suit. Maybe that’s why he put the nanotech armor in a reactor to be worn around the chest instead of as a belt buckle or a wrist watch. He needs it to be close to his heart.

There’s not much he needs to be there. His tech had trumped even the need for love at one point, but Pepper came back. Where Harley had needed a mentor, and taught him a bit about kids in general, Peter really made it hit home how good it felt to be a parental figure.

Husband. Father. That’s what’s important in life. Having a family and being someone else’s family too.

Tony huffs warm air against Steve’s hairline. “So I guess our relationship has always been pretty healthy,” he concludes after a moment. “You made me need you. That’s annoying. Especially now that everyone else that made me need them is dead.”

Pepper. Peter. Jesus. Is the last that small? Bruce proved that he could get up and go whenever. Rhodey’s always had his own life. And everyone else is just everyone else.

This is a little too much pillow talk for the inventor.

“Pretty sure you gave up being Cap anyway. Is what it is. At least you’re in luck about always having some sort of job. Evil doesn’t disappear, yanno. But you’ve got to work on doing stuff just for you sometimes. Oh my god, I’m a life coach. I just became a life coach. We’re doomed.”

[shieldborne]

You made me need you. Love, and maybe even 'like', are too much to acknowledge right now, assuming they're even there on both ends. Why 'need' isn't is anybody's guess, but just to have it vocalized is good. It's enough, at least for Steve. At least for the moment. He takes a ragged breath, tears threatening briefly then receding as he laughs at Tony Stark, Life Coach.

It's a release of tension, not just a chuckle of acknowledgement, and it goes on for a long moment. His hand curls against Tony's chest, pressing over his rib cage. "Ow. Ow, stop, I have too many feelings."

Everyone else is dead. But they won't be, Steve reminds himself, catching his breath. They're going to fix this, even if they're not exactly fixing it for themselves. "You're giving me hope," he says a moment later. "That's what it is. It's hard to process. I want it. I want it so bad, Tony, but it's hard to wrap my head around."

He's smiling, though. Tony can probably feel the curve of it against his skin. "Gimme a little longer here. Just a few minutes. And then I'll pull the dinner cart over and we can just...turn on the TV or radio and eat and try not to think so much for a few hours."

[starkingenuity]

“Radio?”

Where Steve lays his hand is a concave scar, more or less healed to near perfection to the eye, but still tangible. Tony has suffered a little too much trauma on that part of his body. The shrapnel, the implementation of the socket for the reactor, the various changes of the reactor itself, the surgery to remove the socket the shrapnel, and finally the shield bursting through the suit had done more damage than most people ought to ever have to know in their lifetime outside of frequent heart patients. Even with Helen Cho and his own technology capable of knitting the body back together, he’s got thin, deformed bones in his chest. The scar proves it.

There are other scars too, all over his body, scars Steve had already touched. His back is a smattering of six year old wounds, glass pulled from his muscle after Loki tossed him through the window. There’s worse along his arms, at his wrists, from too many times he’s been held captive. There are even scars in his hairline.

But the chest, that one alone has Steve’s mark on it and yet Tony doesn’t flinch anymore. Evidently it’s hard to be scared of someone whose dick had been inside of you. Or rather, to whom you now have a physical as well as an emotional connection to.

So he lets Steve stay as long as he wants. And then he happily eats junk food in bed with an Adonis who seems perfectly oblivious that he’s hanging out in bed naked with a former teammate and the son of his old rival and partial creator. Tony touches him while they watch the news, reaching out to stroke his shoulder or his arm. They’re reaffirming touches. He’s still there. This is still real.

He needs that even now. Even with a blond head resting on his thigh as he skips from MSNBC to CNN to watch more than half a decade’s old news. A lot of it is about him, actually. About Stark Tower. His exploits. It’s boring, watching himself, and he hands over the remote to the younger man.

“No black and white movies. Only stipulation.”

[shieldborne]

Haha, radio. Okay, maybe he's still a bit addled. Does anyone listen to the radio when they're not in the car these days? He can't help it; he's always liked to have background music playing, for drawing, for doing chores. For daydreaming. For just a moment he wonders what it would be like if he could take Tony to the world he, Steve, left behind. The Dodgers, Coney Island, radio plays...

Tenement buildings. Virulent prejudice. Grinding poverty. Maybe not.

Steve's nostalgia is pretty clear-headed, most of the time. He wouldn't really want to drag anyone he knows now to the poorly-ventilated little hole in the wall in Brooklyn he used to share with Bucky, where they rationed milk and meat and butter out not because of the war but because they could hardly afford them, on top of the expensive medications Steve needed to survive. But there are bits and pieces he misses sometimes, and juxtaposing the good ones next to Tony Stark's flashy futurist presence makes him feel strangely happy.

Still, he's not oblivious to the shape of the body beneath his head, and his touch turns increasingly slow and gentle as he notes the shape of Tony's ribcage, the surgical scars, the feel of...not hollowness, per se, but not-quite-rightness where his sternum should be. They're not all Steve's fault, these marks, but he played a part in dealing them out. If he could give him everything back, not just undo the damage he's done, he would, in a heartbeat. Either way, it's a sobering reminder of the consequences of Steve's own actions.

And either way, there's nothing to be gained by saying anything, no point in apologizing when it would just be a painful reminder for them both. Instead, he silently resolves to do better, stroking across his chest. And he won't say it, but he's grateful for the forgiveness he's being given. Grateful that he somehow still has a hero here that wants to save him.

He gets up eventually and pulls the cart over, and manages to make himself eat a reasonable meal. More food, in fact, than he's eaten in a very long while, and he's left a little bit sleepy afterwards. He almost protests the news shows, but then he remembers what time period they're in, that he already knows how many of these stories end, and settles in to Tony's lap instead, which turns out to be the best decision he's made all year.

He's ridiculously relaxed by the time he's handed the remote, and that makes him lethargic as he accepts it and rolls onto his back to smile up at Tony. "What if they were originally filmed in black and white and got colorized later? Is that acceptable?"

[starkingenuity]

Tony Stark flew to Titan with a wizard, met some aliens, had everyone he loved turned to dust, met up with Captain Lumberjack, traveled through time to the past to destroy the infinity stones with a weapon forged in a star, was throughly and beautifully fucked by said former lumberjack and now is finishing up some pie and agreeing to watching old, colorized movies. His life has always been weird but this really takes the cake. Err. Pie.

Tony has always had a strange life. It’s part of his name, the brand his father started. He’d never been normal and he’s never going to experience normalcy. He’s a guy that can literally purchase almost anything he could ever want. Except the guy he thought about the first time he had ever had an orgasm in his life, staring at an old trading card of Captain America and his chorus girls.

But now he’s had him too.

Tony won’t make it through the first few minutes of pretending he’s on Mystery Science Theater with Steve’s head in his lap. Once the pie is set aside, fork balanced perfectly on the edge of the plate, he’s fallen asleep. He’ll snore a little, look a little older than he actually is as he dozes, but otherwise won’t bother Steve. The sleep will be restorative. Rogers might not need too much of it, but Tony does.

Even if that sleep is plagued with nightmares of Steve laying in a pile of dust and slowly turning to dust himself. It causes him to wake with a start, the room dark and the city lights dazzling behind partially shut curtains.

[shieldborne]

It's probably the endorphins from sex, and from being cuddled and petted, coupled with general exhaustion, but Steve feels quiet and peaceful and a little floaty. It lasts for a couple hours, even after the channels have been shuffled through and they've watched part of one of the Thin Man movies, and Steve has commented that he had a crush on Myrna Loy when he was in his teens.

That confession is met with a faint snore rather than a verbal response, and for some stupid reason that makes him feel warm all over. It's strange, it really is; they both have strange lives, and yet for just a few minutes Steve feels like he is in some way home.

Domesticity can't last, not in a fancy hotel, not while they still have a major mission to pull off, but once he realizes Tony's asleep, Steve turn the volume down low and settles where he is to enjoy reality instead of the silver screen. He sleeps, too, and unlike Tony he sleeps well. Not long, but deep, and he finds his head much clearer when he wakes a few hours later.

The frantic adrenaline rush has eased, though it's not completely gone. The euphoria has calmed to something manageable, and Steve finds himself thinking things that are melancholy but not desperate. A tremendous improvement. When Tony stirs and starts, Steve is still on the bed, but he has a pad of hotel stationary in his lap and a few full sheets of it set aside on the nightstand. He's been writing letters, to Bucky, to Natasha, to Sam, with the intention of giving them to himself to pass along.

Tony gets his immediate attention, though, and he sets the pen and paper aside. "...hey. You okay?"

He puts a gentle hand on the man's knee. "We're still safe."

He understands nightmares. He's had a few, himself.

[starkingenuity]

As reassuring as that hand is, Tony had forgotten to expect it. Of course Steve wouldn’t have gone off to shower or do push ups or fight some minor crimes while he slept. Of course he’s still there, a guardian angel who is probably more cracked than he himself is. The touch might relax him in one level but it also causes him to wriggle our of the sheets left draped across his chest and get to his feet.

“You might be okay but I had enough salt to stop my heart,” he immediately deflects, standing between the bed and the beautiful view, body outlined in light with his face cast in shadow. Now not the time for the pair to infiltrate SHIELD but it would be a good time to travel closer to whatever underground base they’re currently working out of.

His other self will be busy too, Steve’s might be asleep or hitting a heavy bag around or sketching pictures of people he lost. They need to move.

But Steve has always proven to be a little overly sensitive since the sex and while Tony is not much of s lover outside of bed, he really likes the way Steve’s eyes alone adore him. It’s refreshing to have them less focused on putting him down.

“I’m taking a shower. You smell like you need one too.” Tony isn’t just throwing Steve a bone here. He genuinely wants the company. And the contact.

They can get in with the mission after.

[shieldborne]

Steve is a little more mellow at this point, and while he's disappointed to have Tony move away and get up, he's not hurt or upset by it. He lets him go with only a regretful sigh, and takes the opportunity to stretch both arms over his head with a soft grunt. "Better rehydrate, then," he says. "With actual water. Scotch doesn't count."

Tony's not wrong; it's a good time to get moving, and Steve feels like enough of his psyche has been restored to get going at it. He can't see his friend's face well, with him standing between him and the city lights, and he has to assume Tony's still on the edge of physical exhaustion, but if sleep doesn't come easy to him--and he can't imagine why it would--there's satisfaction to be found in motion and routine. He wants to comfort Tony, reassure, care for him--but it doesn't seem to be the time for it, and too much affection too soon might just come across as weird and desperate.

Times like this, he falls back on banter. "Thanks a lot," he smirks and looks himself over as if trying to see the smell Tony's talking about. "You know, I showered less than ten hours ago. You're bound to be way smellier."

But there is no way he's going to turn down a shower with company. Tony has his number there, and he stands and circles around the bed to come closer to him, touching his hip lightly. "But I didn't get to paint your nails, so you may as well let me condition your hair."

[starkingenuity]

“If it would make you happy to condition my hair and open yourself up for ridicule, then let’s do it.” Tony finds Steve an enigma. He’s subtly fascinated by him, curious at where they might be headed with the next few hours, and confused all at the same time. Tony finds fuel in confusion, a genuine need to poke and prod until he gets his answers, and Steve is good subject matter for that.

Things have changed, of course, in their relationship. No matter what people say, sex always changes people. Tony thinks about that as he heads, naked, towards the bathroom and laments that FRIDAY isn’t set up to regulate his shower for him. He doesn’t mind menial labor but he doesn’t like it when he knows things can be better.

Those scars along his back are more visible in the bright bathroom light. Tony is softer now than he had been when they first met, but he is still incredibly pleasing to the eye. He stays well groomed and there’s nary a hair out of place. His heritage hasn’t given him Mediterranean overgrowth.

And he’s been known to get laser treatments.

As Steve pads onto cold tile in bare feet, audible despite the Captain’s light step, Tony glances over his shoulder and lets his eyes linger.

“Can we rewind back to something you said earlier? Why me? I’m not your type.” Except, Tony kind of is. He cracks wise and has dark features. Plus, Tony tends to be everyone’s type. “Or are you just attracted to people you want to punch?”

[shieldborne]

"When am I ever not open for ridicule?" Steve says dryly. There are layers of feeling there, but he follows Tony into the bathroom anyway, watching him closely. It's not so much that he's trying to get an eyeful, but there's body language to be read, and then when they get into the light there's a more distinct view of the scars on his back.

For some reason that hits Steve hard, for the second time tonight. He wants to reach out and touch, smooth them away, along with the minor, subtle signs of change (age?) in Tony's body. Fragility, he realizes. That's what's tugging at his attention; the reminded that Tony is as mortal as anyone, and not as durable as Steve, and he could slip through his fingers so easily...

That's a bad train of thought. He shakes himself a little, belatedly, and meets Tony's eyes, brows raising. "Brunettes that give me a hard time aren't my type? Better go further back in time and warn me before I start falling for 'em."

Peggy. Bucky. Sam. Sharon was sort of an outlier, although Steve has found himself deeply drawn to so many different types, he can't definitively say he has a single one. "I'm not sure how to answer that seriously, though. Sometimes there isn't a why, you know? Maybe it just is."

That sounds like BS even to his ears, though, so he worries his lip as he slips past Tony to turn on the water. "You're not like anyone else I've ever known. I've known a lot of people who started out with nothing and claws their way to where they ended up.
Lying in the mud, looking at the stars. You started out on the moon, and here you are slogging alongside the rest of us in the dirt, because...you chose that?"

"There are even easier ways to do penance for all those deaths you blame yourself for. Charity gigs, children's hospitals, get involved with lobbyists--I guess you do some of that, too. And then you run right out and put your life on the line when the need arises."

[starkingenuity]

Does Steve automatically know what to say? Is it part of the serum? Does he have a sixth sense? Tony dismissed that immediately. Of course he doesn’t. Tony has wanted to rain down fire and brimstone on Rogers off and on since the day that they met. The blond is unnerving and endearing and he just says what’s on his mind. Tony might appreciate that quality, but only in himself. So no. Steve doesn’t always know what to say. And he’s not being manipulative either or telling Tony what he wants to hear.

The brunet does step back to let Steve into his space, towards the beautiful glass shower with the rain head and the massagers. His chin immediately lifts and his eyes follow the progress of Steve’s shoulder and face as they lean passed him and back again.

The water steams the bathroom quickly, turning the mirrors and the expensive tile clammy.

“I’m not— You’re wrong about me. I do what I do because I know I’m capable. Haven’t died yet,” he says, putting off the compliment. He knows how to take them, he likes the stroke to his ego, but their not necessary. He doesn’t need someone to tell him what he’s good at. “If I didn’t think I’d always be coming back, I wouldn’t do half of what I do.”

Which isn’t true. Tony nearly killed himself twice hoping to save humanity. And both times involved space.

The rest were just bouts of misplaced ego.

[shieldborne]

Steve isn't completely incapable of manipulation, but he sure doesn't excel at it. Honesty is his comfort zone. Honesty, contained by silence when there's too great a danger in sharing what's on his mind.

"I'm not, though," he tells him. "Not this time. I started out wrong about you, and it bothered me that I misjudged you so badly. I've been reevaluating ever since. Not that you're an open book or anything. I still can't track your moods. But you, I'm starting to get, I think. You're not just a magazine cover. Not even Scientific American."

He straightens and dips his hand in the shower spray to test it with a sigh of approval. "You're more like a novel by James Joyce. A lot of words to get through. A lot of layers and literary devices."

Turning back to Tony, he smiles wryly. "That's good to hear, because I sometimes think you're more reckless than I am. I need you to keep coming back."

[starkingenuity]

Mouth dry, Tony scoffs. “I’m insulted. I think I should be insulted,” he says, as if playing off that he doesn’t know what Steve means about being a Joyce novel. It’s a little too much attention. He doesn’t like it when people see through him. Pepper’s never even done that, or at least never brought it up. She knows — knew? — all about his suicidal tendencies but somehow managed to live with them. It hadn’t been easy.

But Steve doesn’t just know. He understands. He commiserates. That makes a big enough difference that Tony feels a little awkward. And not just because he’s staring at some perfectly crafted pecs.

Tony grabs the bottles of conditioner from the sink counter and hands them over to the blond. Change of subject.

“Right now, I just hope that you’re up on your conditioning game. This mission calls for it,” he says and climbs under the spray.

[shieldborne]

"What, you're more of a Hemingway kind of guy?" He teases gently. "I know you don't read Proust. You wouldn't be able to sit still long enough."

Steve can't sit still long enough, either.

But it takes one to know one, Tony. The impulse to risk life (or throw it away) isn't new to Steve. One might even say it's part of his personality, ever since he was 5'4" and asthmatic and desperate to join the military; it's just that with depression on top of it, it's taken an even darker turn of late. He can't be sure, but he thinks Tony has that same streak of madness within him, and maybe it's been there since he was a kid, too. And he knows Tony's hurt, as badly as Steve or worse. Their backgrounds are wildly divergent, their worldviews are a century apart, but their reactions are terribly close parallels.

He's not going to push his point, anyway. Heart to hearts can come after the mission's done, or trickle out even more slowly over the course of the next few years, if they live that long. With any luck, they'll have time together.

"Sir, yes, sir," he says with a smirk, accepting the bottles, and follows Tony into the shower. He doesn't get much of the spray, himself, but standing behind him and watching the water trickle down his skin is plenty rewarding. It would be nice, he thinks, to just kneel down and catch some of those droplets with his tongue...

But they'll never get anywhere if he doesn't control that kind of impulse.

"I'm sure you're not shocked to hear this," he tells him, pouring conditioner into his palm, "but you're awfully easy on the eyes."

[starkingenuity]

Tony isn’t a fiction kind of guy. If he’s going to read anything, it’s fact based. And usually, it’s a teaching tool. His brain absorbs information, almost to the point where it simply can’t hold anymore. He’s a sponge. When it’s too full, it doesn’t just overflow, but he loses some valuable data too. He’d rather that information include last names and his social security number than anything else, however.

Without turning, Tony’s eyes lift as if signaled by the smell of tea tree oil and lavender. “Shampoo first,” he says softly, which is more intoned like a ‘thank you’ than an admonishment of any sort.

Tony doesn’t know how to be genuinely appreciative, even if he feels it. Expressing those feelings takes effort. More sponge-effect.

He follows it up by subtly leaning against Steve’s broad and solid like a tree. He’s watched the HUD replay of their fight many, many times and he knows the amount of force he was pulling with each punch and forward momentum. It still surprises him how sturdy Steve is, given Tony’s own weight. He does the math in his head, solving for breaking points, as if he’s forgotten that Steve and Captain America are the same person.

He feels cozy. Lazy. Heated, but not so much that he can’t pay attention to anything else. The feel of the now softened but still impressive muscle against his skin reminds him of the release he’d been given.

Steve can get a few minutes without all of the snark. You know. As that thanks he can’t say. Besides, what’s one of the most beautiful people in the world doing giving him compliments like that?

[shieldborne]

Steve will read almost anything. Fiction, philosophy, strategy, history, science, poetry. He knows when he's run up against something beyond his easy comprehension, and he'll skip high-level mathematics and quantum physics, but nearly everything else is fair game. And yet, he does favor fantasy and sci-fi, and classic philosophy. His brain latches onto things he doesn't care to remember. It's good to have backup fiction to pull into place, like its own kind of shield, when the sounds of men screaming on the battlefield get too loud in his ears.

Shampoo first? Steve glances at what he's poured into his hand, huffs amusement at himself, and runs it through his own hair. He'll rinse it out after, and he's quick to switch bottles. Lavender is one of his favorite scents. Roses are nice, but strike him as funereal. Lavender is a summery smell, sweet but not too sweet.

He welcomes the lean into his chest, smoothing back Tony's hair before massaging the shampoo into it. This is actually not something he's done before. Showers with Bucky have involved more splashing water into one another's faces, playful sexual tension rather than succumbing to intimacy. It's nice. It's healing.

"I just wanna be good to you, Tony" he says quietly. He's not even sure where the impulse comes from. It's complex, born of fondness and need and guilt and loss and a host of other emotions and memories both sweet and bitter. "Let me be good to you."

It's not even sexual--although there's a high chance of him getting turned on again by the proximity and heat, but he can control that, to an extent.

[starkingenuity]

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.”

[shieldborne]

Maybe there's a little of that on both their parts. Maybe that's some of what Steve's feeling now, the pull toward the wounded parts of Tony, to the signs of vulnerability, the holes in his armor. He's less interested in seeing and analyzing than soothing and healing, though. Which is like him: he has a deep-seated drive to help and to give.

It's not altruism, though. At least, Steve doesn't feel like it is. Maybe it's an outlet for emotions he's repressed for too long. Maybe 'let me be good to you' is as much a plea for forgiveness as an offer of affection. Tony's interpretation isn't wrong, either, though. Let me love you. I want to love you.

He already does, obviously, with or without permission or common sense. He's just not ready to admit it, and it's probably safer for them both that way, for now.

Something in his eyes flickers when Tony turns, bright blue piercing and hungry as his gaze sweeps his face. Then, lashes half-lowering, he goes back to massaging his scalp, sweeping down to the back of his neck, and leans in. He kisses his temple, nuzzles against his cheek, working his way down to his throat. They're soft kisses, featherlight touches against his skin meant to give pleasure, though not necessarily to arouse.

"You've been on my mind," he murmurs. "I don't know how to explain. But I missed you. I wanted you to be happy. Wanted to tell you I didn't mean to hurt you..."

There are things he can't take back, things he can't apologize for, things he wouldn't do differently if he had them to do over again. That doesn't mean he's not sorry they happened, though. And it doesn't mean he doesn't bitterly regret some of his actions.

"Even before all that I just...really wanted to see you happy," he adds quietly, as if remembering.

That probably explains why he seemed so excited about the idea of Pepper potentially being pregnant when they talked about the Accords that last time. "I guess I should've told you that."

[starkingenuity]

He’s never been thrown so off balance before. Tony’s fingers press more firmly against Steve’s spine, as if he could see the same person making him feel this way for support against feeling this way. Tony’s blown himself up, had someone sacrifice their life for him, been backstabbed by an old family friend, and literally breathed in the dusty remains of a teenager over the last decade or so, all of which might have ruined his stability, but it took Steve God Damned Rogers to say a few words and lightly drop a few kisses along his hairline to completely undo him.

Steve says things youd expect the good guys in Noir movies to come up with, the ones that have the dame before she decides to fall for the gritty, demon-laden leading man. You’ve been on my mind. I just really wanted to see you happy.

How do normal people react to that? Tony’s first instinct is to push Steve away, but he battles that like he’d been battling his body to keep from flinching. No one has time for him to be physically afraid of his only ally, no matter what circuit his fight or flight mentality is currently wired to. This feeling has nothing to do with physical fear, though. Steve Rogers is intense with a big black hole in the center of his chest, threatening to suck everything in even as it provides stability for other bodies to orbit peacefully.

He should not be thinking of the blond in terms of astromical physics but he can’t help himself, caught in a gravity well. “You’re telling me now,” he manages, though he feels so stiff, his body tense and his voice frozen in his throat. He sounds icy. He doesn’t mean to. This is just a bit much for him. “I’ll be happy when we fix this.”

[shieldborne]

"Yeah," Steve's kisses stop their downward progress as he feels Tony tensing up. He's not sure whether the withdrawal is emotional, physical, both. It's a lot, he realizes. A lot, fast, for both of them. And he's not trying to make a confession of love, either. Just trying to make things as right as they can be, reaching for some kind of assurance between them and letting his own honesty carry him away.

Too far, he thinks, hearing the tone in Tony's voice. It's strangely fascinating, though, how he doesn't physically pull away, doesn't verbally push back. Freezes. It makes Steve feel a little too powerful. He draws in a deep breath and rests his forehead against Tony's shoulder a moment, then straightens up and curls his hand across the other man's brow to keep suds out of his eyes as he rinses his hair.

"Sorry," he murmurs. "I'm...a lot. Too much."

He doesn't bother asking if Tony's okay. Ultimately, neither of them are. He has to hope he'll at least try to push him away if he needs physical space, though. "You, uh, want the conditioner now?"

[starkingenuity]

Steve is a lot. He’s heavier than Tony would have expected, filled with more substance than he had given him credit for. More than that, however, Steve feels too much. The stoic soldier out of time on the battle field and the guy who was always quick to smile over pizza but rarely talk about himself has more emotion in him than Tony thought possible for a human being to have. It’s oppressive, to have that force directed at you.

Tony’s never shied away from a challenge though. While he might have agreed that Steve is a lot, ‘too much’ are words that don’t compute. Nothing is ever too much for him. He can handle everything.

Tony shakes his head, water flinging itself against the shower walls. “I can take you,” he says, hinting at the double entandre. “Already did and I can do it again this time too.”

They’ve lost so much that this feels like a rush patch job. Nothing’s been sanded, nothing’s been left to dry. It’s not solid, but it’s their only game plan to push forward with. They needed this. Tony needs it.

They’re still playing a game of chicken, he realizes, but the stakes are insane and the odds are dismal. It’s his sort of challenge. “Don’t hold things back from me.”

[shieldborne]

Steve needs this just as badly, emotional intimacy and reassurance and--he knows he's off-kilter, functional but far from at his best, and he should not be doing this now. Should not be reaching for Tony Stark from a place of desperate emotion, even if there's a spark of something real underlying it.

Or should he? Has he been too quiet all this time, too stoic? Sam and Natasha seemed to think so, always trying to get him to open up. Trouble with opening up is you have to let stuff out and let stuff in.

So which is right? Lean on Tony the way he's being invited to, or pull back and try to recover the equilibrium he thought he had before?

'Don't hold things back from me' Tony says, as if he's reading Steve's mind, and the soldier's expression flickers from mild uncertainty to genuine distress. Not holding things back is light years out of his comfort zone. They have to trust each other, though. They have to trust each other now, because there's no one else, and they have to work together, save the world and save one another.

He's going to have to trust Tony with everything, and at last he swallows hard and gives a little nod, acknowledging that. "Promise me the same," he says. Not a question, but a demand.

[starkingenuity]

If there’s nothing else to lose and nothing really to give up, why not? Who is this really hurting? They’re already both torn up and raw, bleeding where no one else can see. The argument of this eventually going to happen, or that they need this for relief is null and void at this point. As there’s a lack of good reasons not to carry on, there’s no reason to fight the carrying on.

Tony can let Steve love him, even if it’s artificial. Maybe he can love Steve too, even if it’s just a facsimile of what he’d had with Pepper. They can be like the Spartans at Thermopile, a set of lovers facing the unknown in hopes to save everything. Good enough for Tony. It’s about time that he reinvent himself.

Steve’s demand is still a little shocking. He blinks up through the water, willing whatever lacks a connection to find it in the blond, sooner rather than later. Now. They’re about to shape history so he can damned well shape himself.

“I can do that,” he says without any need for goading. This is the path to their survival. “It’s going to get messy. Glad we’re in the shower. You want to start with the conditioner? We’ve got time to let it sit.” He doesn’t break eye contact. “I really am going to need you to love me. And tell me that you love me. Often. I need something to fight for and you’re it, Rogers. Something more than the future we’re messing up for ourselves. I’m guessing you’re going to need more than that future too. It’s not conventional, I get that. I think that suits us.”

[shieldborne]

Steve gives a little nod, slowly at first, then more emphatically, running his fingers carefully through Tony's hair to help get the last of the soap out. He's trembling a little, feeling like he just opened Pandora's Box to see if Hope was still stuck in the back corner somewhere.

They can get through the mission one way or another--and Steve has thoughts about what work could come after that, but whether they can carry on that long seems to be up in the air. He wants to, though. He wants things to stop, wants a break to try and find something inside himself that's not broken, that's normal, that's some kind of recognizable remnant of the youth he was before Rebirth. He doesn't really want his life to end like this, spilled out in hopelessness as the world burn around them.

And he wants to see Tony Stark happy, just for once.

"I do, though," he says, voice harsh and quiet and raw. "I do love you." Before you even asked for it, Tony.

"I'm scared," he adds, almost a whisper. When has Captain America ever admitted to being afraid? Not often, that's for damn sure.