Chapter Text
For such an earth-shattering realization, a paradigm shift in Steve’s very soul, the world doesn’t suddenly stop turning. It’s kind of a let-down, considering the upheaval he feels, but he welcomes the reprieve. Tony is a day away from being released from hospital, maybe less considering how ferociously he is terrorizing the nursing staff. All indications point towards him being back to his usual self, and that thought terrifies and excites Steve in equal measure.
Because now he knows what these feeling are, feelings he thought were numb, buried in the ice and held hostage by grief, he’s not sure he knows how to contain them. He’s woefully out of practice, poorly prepared for his libido kicking to life with a roar, ripping through his gut when he sees Tony yawn upon stepping into the communal floor after his release. The movement stretches his shirt, causing the fabric to ride up and slip a sliver of tantalizing skin that sends him into near cardiac arrest.
“You alright there Steve?” Nat calls from across the fog, searing through the haze that’s cluttered Steve’s vision.
“Yeah.” His voice is hoarse, “yeah fine. Glad to have you back Shellhead.” He manages to force out, clapping Tony once on the shoulder, before making excuses to puzzled faces and running out the room like the hounds of hell are nipping at his feet.
He clenches his fist once, twice, still able to feel the phantom press of Tony’s skin like a brand.
It’s surprisingly difficult to avoid people in the Avenger Tower, considering its size. Steve makes it work, though. He takes to waking obscenely early, even for him, running until his lungs burn with it, before returning to the Tower on shaky legs. He runs through the motions of showering, eating, just doing enough to be present. It doesn’t feel dissimilar to when he first resurfaced after the ice. He is still Captain America in the field, able to reel off orders within a breath of assessing the situation. He’s clinically efficient, working faster than ever, but he only receives strange and questioning glances after battle. He doesn’t look at Tony, only sees the looks of hurt and confusion out the corner of his eye. He doesn’t think he could stand to see his ever so expressive eyes head on and not blurt out the whole sorry affair.
He dreams, sometimes, of what that would be like. They take on a nightmarish gleam, a feverish and angry thing. One night Tony looks at him with horror, tells him to pack his things and leave. Another Tony laughs in his face, asks him how he ever thought a man like him could look at a man like Steve. They change, shift, every night, but the common thread is the same. It’s always rejection, always Steve left wanting. So he smothers his feelings, chokes the air out of them until they are nothing but simmering embers. He may not have anything left now but stilted conversations and Natasha breathing down his neck, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world, and would lay waste to those who wanted to take it from him.
He’s barely surviving, this half-life, going through the motions like a ghost, ice crawling back up his throat ready to choke him. One dream nearly kills him, a vicious one that has him confessing at Tony’s deathbed, one sacrifice for another. It leaves him shaking and screaming, waking sweating and disorientated. It takes a moment to focus, recalibrate, and in that moment his door is flung open, and Tony is there.
“Steve.” Tony pants from the doorway, chest bare and pajama pants barely clinging to his waist, skimming his hips with the barest hint of immodesty, “Are. Are you okay?”
Steve’s voice is hoarse from screaming, eyes helpless to do anything but track a bead of sweat that slides down Tony’s abdomen, slips under the drawstring of his trousers. He shivers as lust disorientates him and shudders through him in a wave. “S-sorry.” He coughs, “bad dream.”
“It’s okay, I get them too.” Tony replies, voice awkward, eyes painful as they dart around the room landing on anywhere but Steve, “Look – I know, for whatever reason, you don’t want to hang out with me anymore. And that’s fine – I’m not going to hold it against you. You lasted longer than most. But –“ and Tony takes a step further into the room, air becoming thick and heavy and stopping Steve from breathing properly, “But can I just ask, and don’t let my intense vulnerability here become any kind of factor here, can I ask what I did?”
And the admission, the question, floors Steve. It unmans him and leaves him destroyed. He was too busy hurting to realize that Tony was hurting too, carved out in the face of Steve’s silence. He rises up, letting the blanket fall a little, pushes himself out of his sweat-soaked sheets and stands on shaky legs. And he misses the way Tony’s eyes grow wide, misses him bite his top lip, leaving it flush.
“Nothing.” He lets the words rush out at once, “nothing. Tony you did nothing. Tony you were, you were everything. When I woke up, I never felt like I left the ice. Everything was so cold, and I just thought that it was fine, I could cope limping through this life so long as I had a job to do, so long as I didn’t look too closely at the world I was protecting because I wasn’t sure I’d like what I would find.” And maybe it’s the dregs of the nightmare, maybe it’s the sight of so much of Tony’s skin, the look in Tony’s eyes, that has him confessing like sins to an altar. “But you. You made me feel again, you gave me a home. You gave me a purpose, gave me a reason I wanted to suit up and fight and do whatever it took. Because even if we were losing, we’d do that together. And I found that I didn’t mind that. I didn’t even mind the thought of losing, if you were by my side.”
The room is uncomfortably silent a moment, and Steve flushes at how his words have laid him bare, skinned his bones and showed Tony every rush of blood.
“Steve –“ Tony sounds broken, and Steve’s eyes tangle with his, devastated by the pain he sees there, “See – Steve! You can’t just – you can’t just say things like that. You can’t just not talk to me for weeks, you can’t just avoid me and then say all that. I can’t – you leave me running behind you unable to keep up! You make me want to shake you and slap you and – and – and!”
“And what Tony?” Steve bites back.
“And – oh for fuck’s sake.” Tony surges forward and captures Steve’s lips with his own.
It’s messy, and painful, and angry. It’s everything Steve never thought it would be, even when he let himself dream it. It’s a battle cry, it’s a call to arms. It’s every angry word left unspoken and teeth clashing and Tony swears against his mouth when Steve bites his top lip a little close to painful.
It’s glorious.
“Wait. Wait.” Steve stops them, Tony’s flush against his skin, panting heavily, “What.”
Tony looks up at him with heavy-lidded glittering eyes, “I’m angry with you over how much I love you.”
And it’s just like Tony to dress up his words, to hide a confession so earth-shattering behind quick wit and smart language. Here, it says, take what I tell you, but only if you can decipher what I mean behind cock-sure arrogance meant to protect it.
“Oh.” Steve says, “Me too.”
The kiss that follows is less sharp, slow and easy and there is too much teeth still cause neither of them can stop smiling. Steve can’t bring himself to care. He gets this. This is his.
He thinks, a lot later when he stares down at Tony sleeping softly beside him, tracing patterns against the other man’s chest, that he finally understands the 21st century.
And, well, anything he doesn’t, Tony is sure to explain.