Chapter Text
For a few hours, Tony thinks that that last session worked. He and Steve sit through one and a half late shows before calling it a night, and then Tony stays up for another hour-ish in the workshop to get through the familiar lethargy of a comedown, where he indulges his need to put his brain through its paces in order to prove to himself that it’s not damaged.
Once that’s satisfied, he goes to bed and crashes.
Only to get shaken awake by a nightmare.
Disruptive nightmares aren’t unusual, but what is unusual is the fading afterimage of dream-Steve, grim and stoic but also distraught and on the verge of tears. Tony knows, in the inherent ways of dreams that feel bone-deep real, that he’s responsible for dream-Steve’s distress, and his subconscious is so upset about this that he wakes up shivering all over and his throat thick with apologies.
He lies there in the dark while the nightmare-made image of Steve hurt on his behalf is slowly overtaken by the memory of how Steve really did get hurt for Tony’s sake. Steve was just trying to help, and he couldn’t have known that there are parts of Tony’s brain that are inadequately defended. Of course Steve would be upset that he’d flicked at the funny bone of Tony’s brain; he’s a soldier, he must’ve seen it among his peers, and seeing that he’d done that to Tony must have poked a switch in Steve’s brain right back. They’d gotten caught in feedback loop of traumatic funtimes, as it were.
Is it right for Tony to keep asking this of Steve? Maybe that’s the sign that this is as far as they can go.
They were both so drained last night that neither of them remembered to bring up the next question on Steve’s list, which is just as well. It’s still nice that Steve cared enough to put this much effort, though.
Tony’s chest seizes up. He coughs, as is his typical response, but his chest resists harder than usual.
“JARVIS.” Tony wheezes and kicks off the covers. He can still get up, so he grabs the oxygen mask he’d left on his side table on standby. “Light up Cho, on my way.”
“Notifying her now, sir.”
It’s still dark out, so Tony manages to slowly-but-steadily sneak his way down to the medical floor without incident, where Cho is up and waiting for him.
When Tony wakes up next, it’s late into the morning. It might even be near lunchtime, judging by how bright it is outside the window. Tony takes a deep breath and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, his fingers bumping against the oxygen mask as he does so.
“You’re awake,” Steve says.
Tony turns towards the voice. Steve is sitting in a chair wedged at the room corner like a bad impression of Nick Fury, though at least he’s dressed in a nice beige button-down instead of all-black. Though Steve would probably be really hot in a black trenchcoat, too.
“Did you bring me coffee?” Tony asks.
Steve’s eyebrows go up. “Coffee? No, Tony, I didn’t.”
“Oh, then I don’t like you.” Tony yawns and shimmies his way into sitting up against the very comfortable pillow at his back. Steve gets up, too, and carries his chair over so he can sit next to Tony. “What’s up?”
“How awake are you?” Steve asks.
“Awake enough. I didn’t mean to sleep in but the albuterol got to me. I did tell Cho, but what can you do?”
“Do you want water?”
“Won’t say no to that.”
Steve fetches him a glass of water, and after wrestling the oxygen mask off, Tony takes his own sweet time enjoying the cool, soothing drink. It’s only delaying the inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a waste of time. Steve has brought the goddamned notebook with him, so Tony knows what’s coming next.
“I’d like to talk to you about something,” Steve says.
“Can it wait?” Tony says. “I’m tired.”
“That makes it all the more important.”
“I’ve already talked with Cho about surgery, okay. I don’t want to have to go through all of that again first thing in the morning. Is it morning? What time is it?”
“Not important. But you’ve decided about surgery?”
Tony had hoped to have a little time to prepare for this conversation with Steve. To say that he has mixed emotions is an understatement, and he’d swung wildly to-and-fro through last night’s agony while Cho stabilized him. The exercise with Steve is working, but it isn’t working fast enough, but there is still time for it to work because Tony isn’t in a critical stage yet, but is the emotional toll on both of them worth it?
Tony never bothered with surgery in the past because he hadn’t been confident with the medical tech of the time. The field has improved leaps and bounds since then, a not-insignificant portion of it thanks to SI’s medical arms, but Tony’s doubts remain. The arc reactor is a factor, but it might also be an excuse, because so much is still unknown about the disease itself.
“I’m… considering it,” Tony says.
Steve frowns. “If you want to go for it, the faster you do, the better.”
“I know that,” Tony snaps. “But it might change me, and I hate not having control over that.”
Steve’s frown clears. “Of course. After everything, that’s perfectly understandable.”
“I’m not being a cowardly lion?” Tony asks, trying and failing to sound upbeat.
“You know you’re not. And if you don’t know, I’m telling you that you’re not.”
A little more awake now, Tony takes Steve in more fully. His clothes are neat and his hair is tidy, but he’s wan, almost pale. The serum obviously works hard to optimize all the imperfections of Steve’s physical self, but last night was obviously draining for him.
Yet he still came when he heard Tony was here. Tony told Cho not to notify anyone until they’d figured out the next round of meds, so Steve must have sought her out, or he came to medical all by himself. Steve must have been worried.
A sharp pain lances Tony’s chest. He grits his teeth as he breathes through it, and follows Cho’s counting method to calm himself.
“Goddammit,” Tony breathes.
“That didn’t look good,” Steve says. “Maybe we could—”
“Just let me have this a little while longer, okay,” Tony says quickly. “I know I push too hard, I know I get too close to the edge, but I just… I’m going to miss this.”
Steve looks horrified. “You’re going to miss being in pain?”
“No, not that. Geez, what do you take me for? I’m going to miss this feeling. Being… fond of you.”
“You won’t miss it once you’ve had it cut out. That’s the point of cutting it out.”
“Sure, if you want to get technical about it.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“It just feels nice, okay? Being around you feels nice, and when it’s gone, it’ll all be gone. I know that’s selfish when you never asked to be a part of this, but I was enjoying it. You could make my whole fucking day just by looking at me, or smiling at one of my stupid jokes, or, or, or poking holes in one of my arguments because you actually thought about it seriously.”
“You don’t want it gone,” Steve says slowly. “You don’t want to go through with it, even though you’d—”
“No, I don’t want to die, I won’t let it get that far, obviously,” Tony says tetchily. “You’re the one with a deathwish, not me.”
Steve has a strange, resolute expression on his face. “I don’t have a deathwish. I did a while back, though I didn’t think of it in those specific terms. More like, I kept taking the close calls I saw in front of me because I felt cheated out of the sacrifice I wasn’t supposed to survive. I didn’t want to die, exactly, but I just… thought it might be easier, if I didn’t try so hard to take care of myself. It’s gotten better since then, and I haven’t felt that way in a while, but I remembered enough of how it felt to use it during our discussion the other day.”
Tony frowns. “Okay? That’s… good that you feel better now?”
“And I think you’re amazing,” Steve says. “You give more of yourself than most people realize you do, and sometimes I wish you would let them see that because it must be so exhausting. But I understand why you don’t, because so many people seem determined to misunderstand you. Yet you care so much, in this… deep way, like you’re seeing all the layers at once. I care about things, too, but it’s different. You are so wholly part of the world that you’re trying to protect, and I envy that.”
“What are you doing?” Tony asks.
“What we’re doing as the Avengers is important,” Steve continues. “The rest of the team – we know that none of it would have been possible if it weren’t for you. Not just the gear, or the support – you brought us back together because you could see, clearer than any of us did, how much better we are as a team. I couldn’t have done this.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true, because after SHIELD, I was going to walk away. I have no links to anything anymore. I could disappear one day and it wouldn’t make a difference, because it’s happened before. We’re making it up as we go along, but look at Bruce, look at Natasha – their fates get to be in their own hands now, and I know Natasha’s grateful for it. Clint’s relieved to have a job where he can make a difference and take time off easily. Thor’s glad Earth has its protectors, and me? Goodness, Tony. Letting go of…” Steve briefly closes his eyes, a pained shake of his head encompassing more than words can manage, “… has been rough, but it would’ve been so much rougher if I didn’t have something new to build on. Though I’m ashamed to admit, I thought you were just tolerating us. Tolerating me.”
“Tolerating you?”
“We’re coming into your space, using your resources, operating around the groundwork you prepared. I know how you feel about the cliché of Captain America, so I thought, all right, you believe what we’re doing is just that important, that you’d be willing to let me lead the team despite your misgivings about me.”
“I, uh.” Tony clutches at his chest. “This isn’t—I don’t know what you’re—”
“It must’ve been so difficult to upend your life the way you have, but you made that look easy, too. As if it was a natural choice. But it takes courage to face your past directly and rise above it. You are exceptional, and I’m very grateful to be able to fight beside you. I’d say I’m grateful to be your friend, too, but I don’t think I’ve been a good one. If you’d let me, I’d like to do better, and perhaps I can start by going over everything I’d stretched the truth on, or outright lied to you about over the last few days.”
“What the fuck, Steve,” Tony wheezes. “What’s happening?”
“And I’m not straight.”
“What?”
“You’re a genius. Think.” Steve’s hands cup Tony’s jaw, and the touch is so gentle that Tony almost doesn’t feel it at all, but Tony definitely feels it when Steve leans across the space between them to kiss him. The press of Steve’s lips is firm, as if a point is being made.
This is new, is Tony’s first thought. The kiss from Steve is new, yes, but also new is the way there’s a weird hiccup in Tony’s chest that seems to spread outward, and then the internal pressure that’s been accompanying him lately is just… gone. As if it’s all turned into some freaky Hanahaki slush that instantly drains through his sinuses and trachea, which is goddamned weird.
Steve pulls back. “How do you feel?”
“That was goddamned weird,” Tony says.
Steve relaxes. “You already sound better. That’s good.”
“What? No. It’s.” Tony tries to shake the thoughts in his skull into some semblance of order. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Providing a solution.” Steve has the gall to take Tony’s hand, and squeezes it gently. “I’m glad that worked.”
“No! No, you—” Tony pulls his hand away. “You can’t make yourself – that’s mercenary!”
“There’s no ‘making’ myself,” Steve says. “I kept my mind open to the chance, and it happened naturally.”
“You kept your mind open,” Tony echoes flatly.
Steve takes the notebook from where he’d somehow kept it perched on his knee, and it flips it to the first page of scribbles. There’s the list from the day they first sat down in Tony’s lab, and though the later points of the list are phrases that hark to familiar topics of the past week including ‘previous incidents? - process, resolution’, ‘previous relationships’, ‘relationship expectations????’, Tony can very clearly see the item that’s at very top:
- Keep an OPEN MIND about him.
Tony stares at the page, then back at Steve. “You were trying to… from the very beginning?”
“Not ‘trying’. I just kept myself open to the possibility.”
“From the very first discussion we had? Your very serious plan to cure me led with that?”
“Yes. It made sense.”
“It made—no!” Tony exclaims. “I refuse. This is bullshit. This is a bullshit solution.”
“Just because you’ve never stopped the disease this way before—”
“You don’t actually want me!” Tony yells. “You don’t! This doesn’t come out of nowhere.”
“Of course it didn’t. It came out from getting to know you better, that’s what happened. It’s far from the best way to have done it, but it did happen, and maybe I should be sorrier about it, but the only thing I’m sorry for is hurting you. I don’t regret anything else.” Steve ducks his head sheepishly. “I’m just… grateful to have been here. And that you picked me.”
“I didn’t pick you,” Tony says weakly. “You just… you existed, and I… couldn’t help myself.”
Steve smiles as if that is most incredible thing he’s ever heard. “I couldn’t help myself, either. Maybe I was already on the way there, and it just took a little… push.”
Tony was literally just kissed by him, but it’s Steve’s resolute gentleness that makes him want to melt into the floor in agony. There’s being ill-prepared, and then there’s being fucking blindsided. On the mouth.
“I didn’t push you.”
“No. You were just your honest self.”
“And that’s enough?” Tony pauses, but this weird ride he’s apparently on doesn’t stop. “All that crap that came out of my mouth, that’s what you’re into? And after everything you told me about your lost chances for a happy ending? Yet you want me anyway? C’mon. Be real.”
“I was exaggerating to upset you, but I admit, the core of it has some truth. However.” Steve leans in towards him, slow and bold, and puts a devastatingly gentle hand on Tony’s cheek. His eyes are bright and determined – a look that Tony knows, but has never had directed at him so fully and completely – that it has Tony shivering from head to toe. Steve says, “Second chances can come from the most unexpected places. You know that very well.”
“Fuck,” Tony whispers.
“And in the words of someone else, you don’t get to tell me what I want or how I feel or what I can do.”
“Great, that’s my fault now, too.”
Steve shrugs. “We don’t have to do anything about this. The goal was to cure you, it seems that we’ve done it, and we can leave it that. Though it’d be funny if I get the disease next. Then I can finally find out what it’s like.”
“That’s so stupid,” Tony says. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, from the stupidest person I’ve ever met. What is wrong with you. Everything, apparently!”
Tony punctuates that statement by grabbing the front of Steve’s shirt and hauling him in for a fierce kiss of his own, which he expects to land as devastatingly for Steve as Steve’s kiss did for him. But apparently it doesn’t, because Steve’s immediately kissing him back, hot and frantic and… relieved?
Yes, there’s relief there, in the huffing laughter Steve presses against Tony’s mouth.
Tony doesn’t mean for his kiss to be a challenge, but that’s what it becomes when Steve does a quick hop over onto the bed next to Tony, so their knees knock together and Steve’s hands find Tony’s waist to hold on. Steve’s mouth opens against Tony’s, bold as brass, so it’s only right, it’s only proper, for Tony to kiss back with superior fervor and skill. And maybe he’ll paw at Steve’s shoulders a little bit, and pull Steve close until their mouths are mashed together and Steve’s gasping. Why shouldn’t they make out on a medical bed with gusto, as if they’ve just discovered a brand-new way for them to argue?
Generally, Tony doesn’t enjoy the feeling of being conned, which is definitely what Steve did. But he can magnanimously downgrade what’s happened to a specific brand of Steve Rogers Thoughtfulness that comes into play via his headstrong, stubborn choices.
Anyway, why would Steve be relieved?
It’s because Steve knows that just because Tony wanted him, that doesn’t mean that Tony wanted to get him. Tony almost said as much, by explaining the ways that Steve fascinated him, but said nothing about what a dream relationship with Steve would be like. The reason for that omission is clear from Tony’s side of things: he just hadn’t thought about it much.
But when it comes right down to it, Tony wants Steve to be happy. Is this what it takes to make Steve happy? Really?
Tony pulls back and out of the kiss, and does his best not to be charmed by the way Steve’s eyes flutter open. “I’m not trying to encourage you.”
“Hmm, what?”
“Okay, maybe I’m encouraging you a little bit.” Tony’s hands are on Steve’s biceps. When did they get there? He gives a friendly squeeze, and is startled when said biceps flex pointedly against his fingers. Tony’s eyes jump to meet Steve’s, and Steve smiles. “What the hell,” Tony says.
“You’re unsure, I get it,” Steve says. “You’re still you, and I’m still me. All the good ways, all the bad ways, but especially, I think, all the ways we work together way better than either of us thought was possible.” Steve closes his eyes for a moment, and Tony is surprised to recognize the effort of having to pull the next words out of. “You might chafe against me. I might have to work really hard to make sure you never feel second best. But why not try?”
Tony thinks he might still be shaking. Maybe it’s due to the breathing meds, or maybe it’s because Steve’s figured out just how much he affects Tony and has figured out how to direct that power. On purpose. World forgive him, but Tony thinks he likes it.
“Did you write that in your notebook?” Tony asks.
“No, but I was thinking over some of it last night,” Steve admits. “Though I suppose it’s just as possible that we’ll date for a few weeks and call it off when we get bored.”
“For sure,” Tony says. “I’d totally do that.”
“Me, too.”
“Oh, so now we’re both lying?” Tony scoffs. “Is that we’re doing?”
“Look, I know this is a lot,” Steve says, “but I’ve spent this last week having to stop myself from saying what I really mean, and I’ve already lived a whole other life of waiting too long to say anything at all. So, yes, I have to tell you now. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Oh no, that got him. It’s like the jolt of excitement Tony gets when he sees Steve, but dialed up to eleven. Tony’s heart might not be equipped to handle this.
Except Tony also feels that urge, that all-encompassing urge he gets when he discovers something new, something dangerous, something that might change the world, and wants to jam a metaphorical fork in it. What will this do? Doesn’t he want to find out? Yes.
Tony feels himself smile. “Even though I said all those things where I wanted like, intimacy. Shared closeness. All that.”
“Truly a hardship,” Steve says. “But I’ll be strong.”
Tony bursts out laughing. “Oh no, I’ve tipped my hand.” And Steve takes it exactly the way Tony meant for it to be taken, which means that Tony gets to see Steve’s blush up close.
It takes Tony’s breath away. He doesn’t have defenses for Steve knowing how he feels and wanting to get closer to him anyway. Maybe it was inevitable that he’d give in the moment he woke up and saw Steve already sitting there, waiting for him. To give in is to surrender, but it’s also to accept that he wants this, and will do the work for it.
“We good?” Steve asks carefully.
“Yeah.” Tony takes Steve’s hand and squeezes. “We’re good.”
“Okay. So, we’ll get you checked out with Cho, maybe you’ll need to stay for observation a while, and then… let’s have a meal that doesn’t end with me saying something I immediately regret and you hacking up your lungs?”
“I’d be into so that. And, uh. Thanks for saving my life, I guess.”
Steve smiles. “No problem.”