Chapter Text
They are in a sports bar when the newsreel comes on. Steve is digging into another order of greasy fries at their little corner table, slouching a little, relaxed. He looks progressively more comfortable as their date out in town goes on. His team has won the baseball match earlier, he's been telling Tony minute details about the next match-up in the series, and Tony's been watching him talk. He hasn't been bored at all: cataloging the way Steve's nose scrunches up when he is discussing referee calls, the way he waves his hands and almost knocks the ketchup off the table, catches it, and looks guilty anyway as he puts it back. And sincerely asks Tony if he is boring him.
"Not at all," Tony says honestly. Steve's passion rivets him. Tony couldn't tell you exactly why any of that baseball stuff matters, but he has heard every word. Steve obviously knows his stuff. Cares. (Tony loves that he cares. It's his favourite Steve quality and he never wants to see it fade.) "The Mets. Next Saturday. Go on." He props his chin on his hand, settling in for the long-haul with a smile. This is usually when their friends roll their eyes at them, but Tony doesn't give a damn. They've paid for their sappy moments in spades.
Steve gives him a tiny pleased smile and looks about ready to launch into another tale, when his face freezes as he is looking over Tony's shoulder. He grows pale, and all of Tony's vague feelings of contentment evaporate in an instant as he twists around to face whatever danger's got Steve so spooked. The man doesn't even flinch at the idea of jumping off buildings, so it's gotta be serious to visibly shake Steve. Tony's hand is already on his watch, mid-gesture to initiate a defensive protocol, when he recognizes the still-frame frozen on the news screen above the bar, the date on it, December 16th. The sound is too low to hear but Tony knows the scene at half a glance.
The still looks poor in quality. Worse than the tape he'd seen that was subsequently destroyed in the explosions from their fight.
The anchor caption states: "No Accident! The Truth Behind the Assassination of the Legendary Genius, Howard Stark". They don't mention Maria at all.
His world tilts a little. What do you know. Zemo had managed a poor quality cell-phone recording that he'd uplinked from Siberia.
The disturbing content warning flashes on the screen. This content is unsuitable for children.
If Tony were to laugh now, he would never stop. He glances back at Steve as if to say, hey, can you believe this is happening? Next to him, Steve is pale and horrified, looking at Tony like he'd like to swaddle him up in blankets and take him away from this place, somewhere safe. It's too much like back then. Tony turns back to the screen, the freeze frame. His perfect memory replays it for him, sharper than on the news.
He watches the car crash again. He knows what's coming. (The hostess will be so disappointed if he throws up all over her pretty setting.)
"Don't watch," Steve says at his side in a pleading low voice, "Tony."
Underneath the table, out of sight of any other guests, Tony feels Steve's hand wrap around his. He holds on to it; feels Steve's fingers squeeze his gently and tug to get his attention.
"Tony, please."
They'd been through this, nearly two years ago now. Tony turns to Steve, who's got honest to God tears in his eyes while his own are dry; and how ironic is that? That's what gets Tony to snap out of whatever fugue state he is in. It's not just him. "Let's get out of here," Tony says.
Steve looks over his shoulder towards the restaurant entrance. There's a commotion outside that Tony knows well, but Steve still finds difficult to predict. Of course, they would want a statement from the heir to Howard's legacy. Tough. "Get us to the car?" Tony says.
Steve makes an excellent stand-in for a bodyguard; it's one of the things that got Pepper to unclench about having Happy travel with her, leaving Tony on his own. He feels his phone buzz in his pocket. And that would be Pepper. He ignores it. Contrary to popular belief, he knows exactly where his limits are.
He pulls his sunglasses on as they leave, and even so the flashes are blinding. Somehow, Steve's broad shoulders and square jaw part the throng of the reporters enough for him to open the door for Tony, and soon they are both encased in metal and shaded windows.
He wishes he was driving, but it's probably best they've got a limo since there's a new ache behind his eyes. His glasses land on the nearby seat with a bounce when he takes them off to squeeze the bridge of his nose. The driver's new, he catches Tony's eyes in the mirror with a look of entirely too much sympathy, but professionalism soon takes over and he pulls on a straight face, raising the privacy partition without a word. Once the car gets on the road back towards the Tower, Tony slides his hand down to the leather seat between them and catches one of Steve's hands again. He stares straight ahead while Steve slowly lifts their hands and places a soft kiss on Tony's knuckles.
"Is this another one of your apologies?" Tony silently acknowledges a smidgen of guilt for the snarky tone, but not enough to take the question back.
A side-look. "It's another one of my worrying about you."
"Well, stop it," Tony says, despite the traitorous warmth spreading through his chest. His memory is an infinity mirror: back when his parents died, back when he found out, found out the truth, now.
"Nope," Steve says with a pop of his full lips, and sets their hands down on his warm thigh, stroking Tony's thumb with his own, a mute offering of comfort.
Which just gives Tony an idea. It's a way to wipe his mind clean.
By the time they near the Tower, he is straddling Steve's lap and Steve forgot to demur or do anything other than kiss back enthusiastically, pushing up into Tony. He is hard, it's gonna be hell walking like this, but the memory of the road crash scene recedes from his mind's eye for a while, to be replaced with the immediate sensation of the firm planes of Steve's body, his hot mouth, the way his hands slide up Tony's back, under the shirt.
He looks down at Steve's upturned face. All that pale skin. Nobody could look at him and think he did anything other than make out for the past ten minutes. Tony is almost tempted to just let him get out of the car like this, mouth flushed and red, but ― this is Steve.
Tony runs a thumb across his upper lip, wiping the spit there. Their noses are almost touching, and he smells the tomatoes from the ketchup and fries Steve was eating earlier.
"You might want to get presentable, soldier, before you let anyone else see you like this," Tony tells him, and absurdly can't resist placing one more short peck onto his mouth.
Steve's brow creases and he turns his head to look at himself in the reflection of the car's tinted windows, but even the super soldier eye-sight isn't enough to see what Tony's seeing. Steve's flushed with it, radiating caring emotion and heat; a heady combination on anyone, let alone the epitome of human perfection Tony's got sitting between his thighs. It's all his. That heat pressing against his own groin is for him. He doesn't want anyone else to see Steve like this, not today when another veil of privacy has been stripped away from him. It's a raw, possessive feeling, and he doesn't like himself when he gets like this. It's a little bit disgusting to see himself so clearly. He is too greedy. He wants, and wants and wants.
Tony slides back to his own part of the backseat and tries to calm down. The nice thing about a secure private garage on site and a private car is they can be alone for a little longer, but Tony knows eventually the rest of the Avengers will find them if they don't come upstairs. There's an elevator connected with all the floors up to the penthouse suite that Steve now shares with him.
Tony doesn't intend to stop at the common areas, he is heading to the workshop. It's how he copes, Steve already knows this. They shouldn't have to have an argument.
Still, he finds his shoulders tense up as they each press a button: Steve for the communal floor, Tony for the floor beneath their suite, where he's got all his toys and Iron Man suits. Even when the elevator doors slide open silently, he is still expecting Steve to ask after him or try to talk him out of working. Try to get him to be among friends, all well intentioned and exactly what Tony doesn't want.
But Steve does neither, he just walks out and looks back at Tony.
"I'll come up later," Steve floats it as information for him to make use of as he likes. Behind Steve, there's a TV playing, and he can hear voices of the other teammates.
"Yeah, okay." Then the doors slide shut and he is free to slump back against the wall. He just hates the thought of Natasha or Sam or, hell, even Clint on a video link from all the way back on his farm, looking at him like he needs their sympathy. The anticipation of their pain on his behalf makes his skin crawl; all he wants is to be allowed space to put himself together among his computers and his bots before he has to deal with their emotions spilling all over him, shaking him apart.
Let Steve deal with it. He volunteered to be the brave one.
Another two missed calls from Pepper before she puts in her override and Friday lets her through. Tony always forgets to remove that override now that they aren't a them anymore. Anyway, Pepper worries.
"Are you okay?" are the first words he hears. Her mouth is pinched tight. It's 3 am in Paris, where she phoned from, but she still has makeup on and looks like she is working from her stylish hotel room.
"Not like I didn't know about it," Tony deflects, turning to the other screen where he can open up a console. His hands fly over the keys while he listens to Pepper tell him she is sorry, that it'll be alright, and that she's got the company stuff covered.
"What stuff?" he throws in, in between the torrent of her words, eyes still on the scrolling logs. The leaked video bounced around on different servers for a while, compressed but unencrypted and leaving a copy at each location, but it originated from a server in Europe. An amateur job, no attempts to hide. He can't be the first person who noticed this little hideout on the network, but Tony sets Friday to break in anyway.
He looks up when he realizes he hadn't heard Pepper's answer. At his glance, she sighs and looks guilty.
"You've got enough on your plate."
Oh, he is so done with people protecting him by keeping things from him. "What stuff?"
Pepper purses her mouth. "Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but I've been getting requests for interviews. I didn't think anything of it at first, but some of the prepared questions I got concern Stane." She gives a significant look over the video call.
"Stane? What?" They'd done that song and dance when Natasha made SHIELD's files public. Everyone knew there was no plane crash.
"That's what I thought, random interest story. But with this video out there, with the way it makes us look..."
"Makes us look?" Tony is not proud of how he is parroting her statements back as questions.
"We knew." Pepper stares at him sorrowfully as though she is apologizing for what she has to say. As though it personally hurts her to tell him this. He always admired her ability to power through and say what she has to anyway. "How Howard and Maria...how your parents died. We knew for years and we never made it public."
"So what! That's personal. Isn't that something I get to decide?" Tony kicks away from the desk in frustration, because he can already anticipate what she'll say.
"You do."
"Right. Company. CEO. Shareholders."
She nods, almost reluctantly. "My first responsibility is to the company. Two previous CEOs both died in accidents that turned out to be not so accidental? It's a conspiracy theorist's wet dream. The board is putting pressure on me to ensure this renewed interest doesn't splash over into consequences for the upcoming business deals, for company's stock."
Tony ignores all that, because he's figured as much out before the words finished leaving his mouth. "But there's no new investigation about Stane?" (At least since then nobody wonders why Tony didn't attend Stane's funeral. He hates funerals.) He returns to the logs scrolling on his other screen. The server that the leaked phone video came from was bought and paid for by Zemo months before their fateful encounter in Siberia. The video was uploaded on the day that's burned in Tony's memory as much as he'd like to expunge it. Zemo had it setup on a timed release since then, possibly as insurance in case of eventual capture.
Pepper is frowning. "Not as far as I know. Like I said, I'm handling it, Tony." Her eyes say what she won't say out loud over the phone: they killed Stane together, and the optics of self-defense while true, aren't great when they've been covering up his death for years. The revelation had caused enough of a furor before, during the SHIELD take-down. With the new video tape of Howard and Maria's murder it just casts a dark light over Stark Industries ownership as a whole. "I just wanted to warn you, in case you get any interest from the media."
"Oh, there's interest. There was a full entourage at the bar today, during our....date." He stumbles over the word. Talking about your current lover with your ex: awkward.
Pepper frowns, but she doesn't remark on the idea of Steve and a date. "We should put out a statement."
Tony lets her go off on that angle for a while. She has always had a better grip on the PR aspect, even before she made CEO. (One of the best decisions of his life.)
Her tone over the video link sharpens. "You're going to be there for the board meeting Monday? As head of R&D you can't miss it."
"Of course." It's days away, he doesn't make plans that far ahead. There could be an alien invasion. He'd like there to be an alien invasion. Just a small one. "No rest for the wicked." Self-pity must come through in his tone because Pepper's face softens again with that motherly affection.
"I wouldn't insist if I didn't think it was necessary. Especially right now, with all this. I know it's difficult."
Yeah.
She asks him to take care of himself before she signs off.
Tony has about a thousand different thoughts swirling in his head, like shards of colored glass in a kaleidoscope, reassembling into random patterns. He pushes them away. He can forget the rest of the world when he is in his lab.
After a while of working on the proof of concept new propulsion for his gloves his breaths even out, his thoughts stop going in circles. The work centers him. It's been his lifeline to sanity on numerous occasions. Much later, when the servos in his hands begin to blur in front of his eyes, he knows he is too tired to keep going and surrenders to the inevitable, heading to their bedroom.
He walks in to see Steve passed out on their bed, on the covers, sitting up high against the pillows at his back, the book he had open sliding onto his lap. It's such a domestic picture that Tony instantly wants to slide in next to him, curl up close and stay like that. Just be. No company, no video tapes, no past. Just him and Steve.
Yawning, he goes to brush his teeth in the adjoining bathroom and changes into the black tee and shorts for bed. He tries to be quiet, but by the time he comes back to their bedroom, Steve is rubbing his eyes awake.
"Coming to bed?" he says glancing at the four am on the bedside alarm clock. He looks restless.
"You didn't have to wait up."
"Lost track of time," Steve motions at the book in his lap, and doesn't appear to be lying. "But I'm glad I'm up. I've been thinking about what you said in the car. Can I ask you something?"
The words don't actually cause Tony any anxiety they might have in his past relationships. He and Steve have definitely seen the worst of each other and if Steve's still here, then nothing that Tony might have said in the car over could possibly make him rethink this. That kind of certainty is relieving in some ways, and frightening in others because then Tony is the only one stopping Tony.
Tony motions for him to go on while he grabs a water bottle from the table.
"Do you mind if the public knows about us?" Steve fiddles with the book in his lap before closing it and setting it aside.
Tony looks up from unscrewing the cap. Screwing. Cap. Heh.
He needs sleep.
Steve's got that determined look which means he has already made up his mind about something.
"Why would I mind?" He has thought about it and has put the ball in Steve's court. Let Steve decide when he is ready to jump out of the closet for the media circus.
"You're the one with shares and shareholders," Steve waves his hand as if to encompass all of Tony's various commitments. Which, fair. Steve expects him to act responsibly, even though Tony really, really isn't the guy for the job.
"As opposed to you, with the Avengers reputation riding on your broad and well-equipped to handle that sort of thing shoulders?"
Steve snorts. "Our shoulders. It's not just me."
Tony doesn't feel the immediate need to correct him. Besides. He takes a slow sip of water. "What brought this on?"
Steve runs his hands flat up and down his thighs.
"I don't see any reason to keep 'us' secret. We might want to get married someday and―Tony?"
Tony coughs to clear his windpipe. That water went down all wrong.
Steve rolls his eyes a little, not looking upset, but maybe a touch exasperated, "But obviously not anytime soon, since the idea makes you react like that." He crosses his arms on his chest.
"No, I―uh," Tony says, eloquently. He sets the bottle of water down, glancing at the clock. Four am but he is fairly sure he is not dreaming. He recovers with, "You caught me by surprise! I'm not opposed to the idea, of, um, maybe getting married someday?" How did that become a question?
"Well, great," Steve says wryly, "since, I'm for the idea of maybe getting married someday."
"You are."
"This can't seriously be a surprise, Tony," Steve says, motioning for him to come closer with his hand and, wrapped around his finger, Tony comes over, spellbound. "We love each other. Things are going well between us. It's legal now. So. Someday is not such a stretch, is it?" He puts his arms around Tony's waist, and butts his chin into Tony's lower chest, looking up at him with true-blue eyes fanned with thick blond eyelashes. Steve also knows exactly what he is doing.
It's a sign of progress that Steve is able to say the 'L' word out loud, rather than some symbolic expression of attachment and need. Demonstrative with verbal affection he isn't, and it took Tony months of saying the four letter word before Steve broke down enough to admit what he'd been confessing to Tony in touch and looks for ages. The fact is, it has been months, and things have been going smoother than Tony had expected at the start, and he has gotten used to having Steve's back just as Steve had his earlier today. So maybe Steve's not off his head thinking along the general lines people do in relationships like this. Tony just wouldn't know. He's been trying to cool things down to match the pace he imagined Steve would be comfortable with and still overshooting the mark, being overeager. And here Steve was apparently thinking ahead.
"What made you ask?" He sinks his hands into Steve's hair, running his fingers through the soft, golden threads already mussed from sleep.
Steve angles his head so his cheek is pressed to Tony's chest, nose mushed into Tony's t-shirt. He speaks softly, "Days like this remind me not to wait too long."
They stay in silence, with Tony brushing his hair for a while, watching the top of Steve's head, his heart heavy with tenderness.
"Is it any comfort that I don't see myself marrying anyone else?" Tony blurts out, making Steve tilt his head back again to look at him. Tony doesn't physically kick himself for the bemused look on Steve's face, but it's a close thing.
"Just think about it," Steve says eventually, when his eyes uncross.
"Can I think about it after we have celebratory sex?"
"We're celebrating?" Steve quirks a sharp brow.
"You semi-proposed to me in a hypothetical future. This is literally the highest stage I've ever reached in a relationship where both parties were sober. Also I want to do this."
He pushes Steve back (Steve lets him, they are kidding no one) and proceeds to climb on top of him intending to enthusiastically show Steve what he's learned in those months of being together. He knows all the sensitive spots now, it's great. And Steve knows all of his, which he doesn't mind in the least. He's got to show Steve his appreciation. So he kisses Steve, runs his hands into Steve's soft hair again and he thinks about what a wonderful mess his life has been that it has brought him right here into this moment, into the arms of this man.
And maybe it is too much, to think about their future with everything that lies in their past, because the heat leaves his blood and his kisses dwindle and soon he is just pressing his cheek against the smoothness of Steve's, lying on top of him like a limpet, unmoving, breathing heavily into Steve's shoulder.
Steve's hands pause and resume running up his back. Up and down.
Tony has a wild unreasonable desire to jump off the bed and go invent something cool, while at the same time never wanting to leave. It's pathetically non-sexual given the way he is pressed up against Steve's very hot, very charged body. Instead of having passionate, romantic sex (the way they were certainly going to before his emotions screwed them over), Tony is sucking up all the comfort and warmth that Steve offers so freely. He doesn't want to stop holding on to Steve or for Steve to stop touching him. Steve does love him, after all, which sort of means he has to put up with Tony being selfish.
Steve rubs his shoulders, hands circling his back as they lie there in a totally awkward pose: Steve on his back on the bed and Tony― Well. It's best if he doesn't think about what he is doing in detail.
"I'm sorry you're in pain, sweetheart," Steve whispers into his hair.
All the petting and kissing his hair that Steve's responsible for is what makes Tony lose his mind a little and do the next-level embarrassing thing he can feel bad about tomorrow: blindly find one of Steve's hands and turn it, to intertwine their fingers together. He has seen the gesture in some romantic movie or something and deep down always thought it wouldn't feel like anything (was afraid it wouldn't feel like anything) but to his relief he can empirically observe that it's more than just another way to combine their hands together. The nerves all through his fingers and palm revel in the connection. Steve hums, a cross between a purr and a sigh, clearly approving. Tony's heart twangs with satisfaction. He knows Steve's the romantic one, it makes sense he'd like this mushy stuff. Tony doesn't need any of it, but he'll have to remember to do more cutesy stuff like this with Steve, to make him feel good, the way Steve makes Tony feel. Tony's lips quirk up against Steve's neck before he falls into a deep yawn. Later, he'll make it up to Steve for jerking him around like a yo-yo. They'll weather the storm together.
Eventually his hands go slack and his breathing evens out. Then he falls asleep like that.
In the morning, Steve somehow manages to pick himself up and go on his regular morning run at dawn. Tony tries to help him overcome his ridiculous discipline with a copious application of limbs, gets laughed at for his trouble, and Steve still leaves the bed before Tony is remotely coherent. At some point much later, Tony lies awake thinking of how to attack this day, before shuffling down to the common areas for coffee and breakfast. It's for the best if he sees the team before he officially heads out to work.
It's awkward. Everyone on the team knew how things went down before yesterday: there's been a cleansing sort of shouting match at some point or another to get everyone's feelings out in the open. (There was a lot to get out in the open.) The murder of his parents orchestrated by Hydra is no news to the other Avengers, but Tony knows first hand how different that abstract knowledge is to seeing something with your own eyes. The whole world has seen Howard die now, has seen the mess of his broken face, has heard Maria's dark scream for her husband. Tony will never unsee or unhear any of those little details, he's had to learn to move past it.
"It was some kind of a timed release," he says into the dead air of the room as he saunters over to coffee. There's no hot coffee. Of course. He has to do everything himself. "Insurance for Zemo straight from prison. In case we didn't get the impact the first time around."
He doesn't quite manage to hold Natasha's eyes as they follow him, and busies himself with setting up his coffee to brew.
"It's smart," he adds as the silence stretches unbearably loud.
"The video's gone viral almost immediately, even before the major news outlets picked up on it." Sam says, his VA councilor voice, calm and steady. No sudden moves, Tony. He hates being treated like an unexploded bomb.
Wanda hands him the container with sugar, which for the two of them is downright friendly. Not that Tony drinks his coffee anything but black. At least the kid is trying.
"The major damage is contained to the blow-back against Barnes," Tony says, searching for coffee on the shelves, irritation spiking when he doesn't find it. There's a part of his brain that's entirely occupied with an internal dialogue about the idea that Steve floated last night, about their future. Another part of him is mentally tinkering with the schematics of Iron Man suit, eager to get back to it when he gets a chance. Most of him is focused on the problem that concerns all of them, because it's his responsibility to clean up this mess. Stuff like this clings to Tony, if it wasn't Zemo's tape it would be some other scandal. It's his responsibility to not let it affect the team, the company, his relationship with Steve. His thoughts roll over to the memory of Steve sitting on the bed last night, wiping his sweaty palms against his shorts as he talked about marriage. With an effort, Tony yanks them back on target. "The Presidential pardon should take care of the legal side of things; he needs to keep lying low a bit longer."
"Don't worry about James," Natasha says easily. "How are you doing?"
What's that supposed to mean? "Fine."
"Fine fine, or Fine?" she insists.
"I don't know. Could you rephrase that in adult terms?"
"Why would that help?" she asks pointedly.
"I believe Ms. Romanoff is concerned about the well-being of the team, and you in particular," Vision says.
Tony rolls his eyes over to Viz, just holding back a wince at the frankness. Even with the leg-up of JARVIS inside him, Vision doesn't quite notice the subtleties of human interaction every time, such as a magnificent Keep Off sign Tony's been radiating the entire time he's been in the room.
That's when Steve walks off the elevator, fresh from his run. His shirt is sticking to his abs, and he's got a furrowed brow that clears when he sees them. There's a part of Tony that almost doesn't want to watch him come in, but he can't very well look away. Everything sort of goes soft and fuzzy around the edges with Steve there, like a beacon calling him. Then Tony sees the familiar bag in Steve's hands.
"Is that―?"
Steve looks down and glances up again with a sweet smile. "I...yeah. I picked some up during my morning run."
"You ran all the way to the other end of Manhattan―" Sam starts to say incredulously, but Tony finishes the sentence:
"For me?"
Steve's face turns a touch sheepish, but he walks over with a pleased little grin. "I know you like the coffee beans from that shop best." He sets the bag next to Tony. Steve runs his fingers up Tony's arm, as though checking he is alright by touch, eyes soft. If a fountain of affection and kindness existed in nature it would exist as the expression on Steve's face.
Tony is entirely oblivious to any barfing motions being made off to his side. He is looking at Steve who might sort of maybe want to get married someday. His boyfriend, who got up at an ungodly hour on basically zero sleep, all Tony's fault, and still thought to try to fix things, because that's how Steve functions. When he knows that someone needs him, Steve will turn the world over to help, won't rest until he does. All of that attention, all of that amazing focus is currently turned on Tony. Maybe there's no way even he can fuck up something so good, so pure.
His eyes prickle and, yes, he might hate Steve a little for making their friends think he is getting emotional over the coffee ― even the best coffee this side of Atlantic ― but all he can think is:
"You are so fucking perfect." His voice has gone soft, but Steve's right next to him to hear the words meant only for him.
Steve swallows. "I'm―I'm not."
Of course, someone good like Steve wouldn't think so, he probably agonizes over every decision he has to make. But Tony knows the truth down to his bones, has known it practically from the moment he's laid eyes on him, however long it took to admit that was real. Steve is only a man, and he makes mistakes, but he works harder than anyone to make up for them and that's more beautiful to Tony than if an actual angel descended from the sky. Because Steve is just a man. Seeing Steve before him now, every chiseled muscle glistening with sweat, the light that's practically shining from within him, it's a little bit like radiation that sets off a genetic mutation down on a cellular level inside Tony. With every moment of exposure to Steve he is closer to who he wants to be, like a search algorithm sent down the right path; like he found his yellow brick road, from that book his mom used to like. It's like plants with the sunlight, or whatever, and Tony's been alone in a cold, dark cave without that sunshine and he wants to reach towards it. He wants it so badly.
As selfish as Tony can be, he could possibly deny himself this except for Steve looking like he doesn't know how to back off, like Steve wants to be reached for and needed, even with the crushing onslaught that is the only way Tony knows how to be.
He knows how unwavering Steve is. He can't fight against what Steve wants, too.
He throws his hands around Steve's neck even as Steve meets him half-way, leaning into a kiss. Tony is both entirely present in this moment, every part of him that is touching Steve burning with want, and at the same time he is half-unconscious, like someone has clocked him a good one on the temple.
Later, when they part, stumbling and breathing harshly, Tony remembers the rest of the room. They find it empty. Tony has no memory of their friends leaving, gone since the moment they'd been transported into an entirely separate world together, just by looking into each other's eyes. He shivers.
The only way he knows to deal with things that are a bit scary is to jump in with both feet.