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Tony aches.
He’s bruised from the Avengers latest escapades, but not bad enough to explain why the hell he aches all over. He hasn’t been sleeping, which probably does explain some things, but that’s not for lack of trying. He keeps spending hours lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling with gritty eyes.
What he really wants is to curl up in Steve’s lap so Steve can bury his fingers in his hair, but fat chance of that happening. Steve’s been in DC for over a week talking to legislators. If Tony’s being honest—which he tries to avoid—the real reason he feels like shit is because Steve’s been in DC.
He misses him, misses the steady stream of touches his presence brings. Steve’s tendency to over-touch, at least by modern standards, is one Tony’s favorite things about him.
Of course he likes Steve for his mind, too, but the touching thing is a major perk, especially for someone like Tony, who fights the urge to flinch every time he so much as thinks wistfully about how nice it would be to hold someone’s hand, since dear old Dad had given him hell for wanting hugs from his mother as young as five.
Stark men are made of iron. He remembers his father’s voice saying those words, hand gripping Tony’s arm tight enough to hurt, more clearly than anything else he ever said.
“Thanks a lot, Dad,” he grumbles, and drops the screwdriver he’s holding.
He can’t focus like this. There’s no way he’s going to embarrass himself looking for a cuddle with anyone here, so he needs the next best thing.
The coffee pot billows steam, burbling a pleasant murmur as the carafe fills. When it’s done, Tony fills a mug and pads over to the heap of blankets and pillows and the giant rejected rabbit in the back corner of the workshop where the whole arrangement can’t be easily seen. He looks up at the rabbit, rueful. That hadn’t been one of his finer moments. He blames sleep deprivation.
Briefly, he considers texting Pepper and asking her to come play his snuggle-buddy, but he’s pretty sure she’d tell him to go upstairs and bother his teammates. So he sighs and sets the steaming mug precariously on some of the semi-level nearby pillows and pulls a fleece blanket around him, followed by one of the thick, puffy comforters. Then, careful not to dislodge the blankets from around his shoulders, he reaches for the mug and pulls it in to the little cavity glowing with the light of the reactor and settles it against his belly. It’s warm, like Steve’s hand would be, and he closes his eyes and tries to pretend that’s exactly what it is.
He zones out for a little while, running calculations on fuel for energy consumption. He’s fighting with the variables when he hears, “Tony?”
His eyes snap open, and he narrowly avoids lurching upright and spilling coffee all over himself. “Steve?”
“Tony?”
Frantic, one handed scrambling fails to extract Tony from the blankets, so he’s got one leg stuck when Steve peeks around the corner, a smile slipping across his face. Tony stops for a minute, distracted by the sight of him, here, in reality—shit, wait, is he dreaming?
“You’re not dreaming,” Steve says, voice colored with amusement, and moves forward, reaching out to cup Tony’s face as he leans in for a kiss. Tony leans into it, tipping forward against Steve’s chest.
“You’re back,” he says, dazed, when he finally lets Steve pull away.
Steve’s hand comes to rest at the juncture between his neck and shoulder, thumb stroking the dip of the tendon in his neck and Tony practically melts into the touch. “Yeah, I am, no thanks to Washington. At least three of them rescheduled on me more than once.”
“Assholes,” Tony says, fingers toying with the fabric of Steve’s shirt.
“What are you doing back here?” Steve asks, glancing around at the heap of blankets and up at the giant rabbit. “Did I wake you?”
“No, not sleeping, just—” He looks around at all the pillows and things, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s comfortable.”
“Looks like,” Steve says, surveying them again with something like interest. Then he looks at Tony again. “You look exhausted.”
Tony’s shoulders hop in a dismissive little shrug. “Sleep. Who needs it.”
Steve huffs. “You do.”
“What about you?” Tony asks grudgingly. “If you don’t have to sleep, I don’t have to sleep.”
“I need sleep too,” Steve agrees patiently. It’s impressively unpatronizing. “But right now I’m hungry.”
Tony laughs, a warm glow kindling in his chest. “You’re always hungry.”
Steve glances down, but his mouth curves into a smile. He kisses Tony again and then squeezes his shoulder. “Go back to what you were doing. I just wanted to see you after I got home.”
He starts to draw back and Tony’s adrenaline spikes. He gropes for Steve’s retreating arm, stepping forward without thinking and the blanket catches around his ankles. A yelp echoes around the workshop as he plummets toward the concrete floor.
Steve grabs him a split second before he hits.
Tony blinks at the ground, heart hammering painfully at the back of the arc reactor. “Thanks.”
“Jeez, Tony,” Steve says, as he levers him back up onto his feet, “careful.”
“Yeah. Whoops,” he replies, voice light. When he’s steady again, Steve starts to take his hands away and Tony, embarrassingly, clenches his fingers around Steve’s sleeves.
He stops, eyebrows going up.
“Tony?” he says slowly, and heat starts to crawl up the back of Tony’s neck. Even though it kills him, he loosens his grip and slips his hands into his pockets, where he clenches them into fists to keep himself from reaching out again.
“Go on, soldier. Feed your gaping maw.”
Steve studies him for a moment. “Okay.”
Letting him go sucks. Tony lets out a rush of a sigh when he’s gone and crawls back into the heap of blankets. Stupid. He’s getting pathetic, spending all this time with Steve. God, this is humiliating.
The blankets aren’t all that satisfying anymore though, even though he burrows deep and wraps them tight.
Dammit.
He starts, eyes snapping open when someone tugs at the blankets.
“Move over,” Steve says, tugging again. He’s holding one of Tony’s protein shakes in one hand, a couple of bags of dried fruit tucked under his arm.
“Wh—” Tony manages and then Steve’s pressing his way into the pocket in the blankets, body fitting up along Tony’s side. As he settles in, he catches the look Tony’s still giving him, his bewilderment obviously written all over his face.
He replies with his own unimpressed look. “Tony, I know what to look for now. You want touch but you don’t want to ask.”
For the second time in ten minutes, heat boils up the back of Tony’s neck, across the bridge of his nose. “I don't—I don’t want touching,” he protests.
Steve just gives him another look and curls an arm around his shoulder, depositing the bags of fruit into Tony’s lap. “It’s fine, Tony. You know I understand.”
Tony swallows, remembering the—only mildly—awkward conversation they’d had when he’d teased Steve, saying that people would get the wrong idea with all the touchy-feely going on. Steve had been embarrassed and confused and he’d started to pull back into himself just after they’d finally gotten him to loosen up a little. Tony had felt awful and it had been the first time he’d admitted out loud to anyone that he liked it when people touched him because he felt like it didn’t happen enough. Steve had obviously taken it to heart.
He watches Steve’s throat work as he drinks the protein shake, Steve’s body warm and solid against him, his thumb tracing a line across Tony’s bicep that’s giving him chills.
Steve finishes the drink and leans to set the empty bottle aside, but he pulls Tony along, never letting him get so much as a centimeter away.
“Thanks,” Tony manages to rasp. When he gets the courage to look up at Steve, he’s smiling, his expression soft and relaxed, eyes crinkled around the corners. Nothing like the hard lines and stiff features Tony had been introduced to first.
He settles back again, pulling Tony that much closer and brushes a kiss on his temple. “Anytime,” he murmurs. Tony falls asleep with his forehead in the crook of Steve’s neck, the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes like the rock of the ocean below him.