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It had only been a month, but some days it felt like years. Like decades and centuries had passed since the last time he’d felt the brush of Tony’s skin against his own, heard the all too infrequent sound of his laughter. Real laughter, the kind only his closest friends could startle from him versus the company fake he put on when it was asked of him. Tony’d always hated the parties and events he’d been forced into in his role as Tony Stark, billionaire. A month, since he’d seen that light of passion in his lover’s eyes; be it from building something bigger and better and newer than anyone else could have come up with; from continuing to improve things; or even the simple joy of waking up Steve in some still unexpected way after more than twenty years together.
“I miss you.” Steve says softly. “I know you’re rolling your eyes at me and making faces because you think it’s sappy – but it’s true. God, I miss you. I wake up and the bed’s too big and too empty and too fucking cold.” He shivers, the shudder running down his spine under the too small shirt he wears. It’s worn, ragged and faded to almost obscurity; but it smells like him. Feels like him, the way it had stretched and knotted under his hands when he fisted them in the fabric on Tony’s body. Pulling him in tight for a kiss to reassure himself that he was still there.
Steve eases himself down onto the bench nearby, the one that Tony had specifically designed to be placed there despite his protestations to the contrary; like he’s the old man with tired bones for all the he looks like a man in his prime despite being approaching fifty. He laughs softly. “I still can’t believe you ever told me to find someone else. To move on.” Even right up until the last moments of his life, it had never stopped the billionaire from dispensing his trademark sass. Steve had a feeling it was much for his own comfort as for the soldier’s. It had to do with the way Steve had never really quite managed to break Tony of his own disbelief in his worth. Because contrary to popular belief – Tony Stark’s favorite person was by far not Tony Stark. Steve could see it in the wonder that graced the brunette’s eyes sometime when he thought the blonde wasn’t looking; how he seemed like he could not understand why Steve would ever choose him over anyone else in the world despite everything he had done to disabuse Tony of the notion.
He stares at the grave, hands clasped loosely in front of him with his elbows balanced on his knees. “JARVIS calls me sir, and sometimes I can’t help but turn around and look, like you’ll be standing right there behind me smirking at me and chuckling because it’s all some joke.” Steve laughs, but there is no humor in it and it is a hollow, bitter sound.
“You left me.” He says finally. “You made me a promise once; a promise that for all the reckless things you did, all the stupid risks you too – you’d always come back to me.” He’s angry now, hands tightening into fists and unclenching again; knuckles white from the pressure. “You left me.” The words start out a yell and end on a sob. Everyone he’d ever loved, everyone he’d ever cared about had left him. His mother, Bucky; Peggy. Bucky had come back but now Tony was gone. “You broke your promise.” He whispers.
It feels like futility, to sit here staring almost blindly at the grave of the man he loved. Particularly when he wanted nothing more than to be six feet below his feet and gone. It was even worse knowing that he’d be buried no where near here, hundreds of miles away in Arlington; at the monument he’d rendered obsolete when they’d pulled him out of the ice.
But he couldn’t, wouldn’t even contemplate it – that was the crux of the matter. Because as much as he wants it, needs it; needs to find that oblivion and join Tony in it. He can’t. Because of the very simplistic fact that he is Steven Grant Rogers; Captain America. And the world still needs him.
And hadn’t that been a killer. That despite the fact that he’s only forty seven, his muscles are as firm as they’d been the day SHIELD defrosted him from the ice and his fighting skills not degraded an inch. But as he’d watched his lover slowly wasting away before his eyes, saw him slipping through his fingers to old age and a life hard lived and there had not been a single thing he could do about it. “You left me.” Steve repeats, voice broken on the words.