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“Be with you in a second,” Steve calls when he hears the ringing that signifies the door has just been walked through. He frowns at the display behind the counter- something is wrong with the spelling of this flower name, but he’s not sure what it is and he sure as hell isn’t Googling it. He drilled these flower names into his brain for a reason, and like hell if he-
“Did the… hmm, the Slavia do something to piss you off?”
“Salvia,” Steve corrects him automatically, and then smiles: he knows that voice. The day’s looking up.
“Thanks,” Steve says, making a mental note to change the label later. He turns around to see Tony, the guy who’s become his favourite customer in the past few weeks. He’s gorgeous as always- windswept hair, probably from driving around his convertible; sunglasses pushed just far down enough for Steve to see those eyes.
“For what?”
“Huh?” Steve blinks hard. Right. “The flower. Sam labelled it wrong after it got brought in yesterday. You saying it made me remember how to spell it right.”
“Ah. You’re welcome.” Tony beams.
Steve can’t help but grin back. “Do you need to apologize to your PA again? We have some lilies that just got in-”
“Not today.” Tony pockets his hands. There’s something oddly jumpy about his face. “Hey, why flowers?”
Steve takes a second. It sometimes takes a while to decode Tony-talk into something that makes sense to him.
“You mean why open a flower shop?”
“Yeah.”
Steve shrugs. “It was one of those things I never thought about until the option fell right in front of me. Plus they’re one of the only things I’m not allergic to.”
“You’re allergic to a lot of things?”
Steve snorts as he runs through the mental list. “That’s an understatement.”
Tony nods. He rocks up and down on his feet and Steve is opening his mouth to ask something like so what brings you here today when Tony cuts him off with, “Are you allergic to steak? Is that a thing?”
Steve’s mouth closes. Then, when Tony keeps looking at him expectantly, he says, “Uh.”
That’s apparently enough for Tony, who continues, “Are you a steak kind of guy? Maybe you’re more of a salmon guy. Do you like salmon? Wait, are you allergic to fish? That’s common, right?”
Steve blinks hard again. He’s starting to get whiplash from how many times Tony has turned the conversation around in their minute-long conversation. “I like salmon. I’m not allergic.”
“Great. Great.” Tony clears his throat. “I know a place that serves great salmon.”
Good for you? It’s the years of customer service experience that lets Steve keep the confusion out of his expression. “Alright?”
“Alright?” Tony’s eyebrows jump up above his sunglasses. “There’s also a good vegetarian place opening.”
Steve gets the feeling they’re not on the same wavelength. “I’m,” he starts, and then doesn’t know how to finish. “I don’t know what’s happening here,” he says instead.
Tony’s mouth does a funny little jump at one corner. “Yeah, I’m starting to get that,” he says, and puts on the smile Steve’s seen on the news. It doesn’t fit with the usual smiles Tony gives him and it’s enough to set Steve even more on edge than he already is.
“It was me asking you out,” Tony says. “Just so you know.”
Steve’s confusion flatlines. His lips part, which is the closest he’s ever come to having his mouth drop open.
Seconds pass. Tony folds his arms and then quickly unfolds them, watching Steve all the while.
Say something, Steve thinks. Anything! Say yes!
“Really,” is what comes out instead, and he has to hold back a wince.
Tony’s nervousness gets visibly shot through with confusion. “Yes? Is that okay? I heard- there’s that thing now where you’re not meant to ask people out while they’re working, right, ‘cause they’re paid to be nice to you- I won’t be offended if you say no, I just didn’t want to creep outside the store until you got off your shift-”
“Whoa, hey!” Steve holds up his hands. “No, I’m not- I’m not saying no.”
Tony stops. “So you’re saying… yes?”
“Yes! Yeah, I- definitely. Yes.” Steve clears his throat and hopes like hell he isn’t blushing. He 100% could have handled that better if he’d just not been so self-pitying. ‘Really’- it’s a fair enough question, he has no clue why Tony’s interested in him, but Steve could’ve kept it to himself.
“Great!” Tony grins and Steve can’t help but grin back, that thing is infectious. “There’s this new restaurant opening tomorrow. The vegetarian place. You’ve been experimenting with that, right?”
Kind of. He’d said so a few days ago, during one of their exchanging-pleasantries-that-turned-into-half-an-hour-of-conversation, which has been happening at least twice a week since Tony had come in almost a month ago needing flowers for his PA.
“I am,” Steve says, when he realizes Tony is waiting on him to say something. “We could- go?”
“That was what I was aiming for,” Tony says, nodding. “Uh, I could pick you up from your place tomorrow.”
“Sounds great!” Steve tries to reign his grin into something less manic. “How’s 6.30?”
Tony pauses. It’s not a long pause, though it’s long enough for Steve to wonder if he’s said anything strange, but then Tony says, “See you tomorrow at 6.30, then.”
He gives Steve another smile, and turns around to leave. He’s near the door when Steve realizes wait, shit, and calls, “Uh, my address!”
“Hm?” Tony turns back. “Oh.”
“Yeah!” Steve reels it off and watches Tony nod, then give him a wink that would look cheesy on anyone else. Tony makes it work.
“See ya, Steve,” Tony says, and then he’s out the door and the bell chimes to signify yes, the door has been used, and Steve is left staring at it in slowly-mounting excitement.
Huh. He’s got a date. Okay, then.
He’s grinning like an idiot at nothing when Sam comes in from the back room.
“Another successful-” whatever Sam was going to say cuts off when he takes a look at Steve. “Okay, what’s with that smile, what happened?”
Steve doesn’t even get through saying Tony’s name before Sam talks over him: “It’s that Tony guy, right? I knew he was sweet on you. What’d I tell you!”
“Yeah, okay, you were right,” Steve says, rocking sideways with Sam’s good-natured shoulder punch. “We’re going to a restaurant tomorrow night.”
“Yeah? Bet it’ll be fancy. Not the good fancy, even. That rich people kind of fancy, the weird kind where the food moves on its own or whatever.”
God. Steve hopes not. “It’s a new vegetarian place. I mentioned that I was ‘experimenting’ with that kind of stuff,” he explains when Sam frowns.
“Oh, is that what you call deigning to eat my falafel that one time?”
“I’ve been looking at recipes on Pintrest,” Steve tries.
“Yeah, and have you made anything?”
“I’m a busy guy!”
“Yeah, you are.” Sam laughs, then leans in and hits his shoulder again, this time latching on and squeezing at the end of it. “Man, I’m glad he finally got the guts to ask you out, I was worried I’d have to start miming things at him while you two talked.”
“Please don’t.” Steve tries for stern, but he can’t keep the smile off his face.
Sam grins at him. “Awww-”
“Shut it,” Steve tells him.
Steve frets for the whole evening before the date. He’s always assumed that ‘obsessively changing outfits beforehand’ is a gimmick in movies. Apparently not- by the time he heads outside to wait for Tony to pick him up, he’s changed his outfit eleven times.
As he stands outside on the sidewalk, he wonders if he should’ve gone out and bought some fancier clothes for the date. Tony usually wears casual clothes when he’s in the shop, but Steve’s googled him and he knows the guy has some seriously snazzy outfits. Maybe Steve should’ve-
He blinks out of his thoughts as a limo pulls up in front of him.
Well, here’s my ride, Steve thinks, trying to keep the inner worry at being in a limo out of his mind.
One of the back doors open and Tony smiles at him, waving at him to get in.
Steve smiles back, unable to stop himself, and climbs in. “Hi,” he says as he closes the door behind him.
“Hi yourself,” Tony says. He’s not looking at Steve’s clothes, which Steve isn’t sure is a good thing or not. Instead he’s looking at Steve’s face, gaze flicking all over it with that same nervous energy he’d displayed in the shop when he’d been trying to ask Steve out.
The idea that Tony is as nervous as Steve is… oddly soothing.
“You look great,” Steve says, because he’s seen movies.
Tony blinks. “You too,” he says, and this time he actually takes in Steve’s clothes.
Steve waits, but nothing much changes about his expression. “How’d your day go?”
“Oh god,” Tony says, and then launches into a tirade on how fucking boring his meetings were. It’s one of the days where Tony actually goes into an office and listens to people talk- definitely one of the worst things about the CEO gig. Steve already knows this, just like he knows what Tony’s favourite part is: inventing things. Tony hasn’t talked a lot about his workshop or the things he spends most of his time on, but on the few occasions he’s mentioned it, his eyes had lit up.
Steve really wants to see that again, so he spends most of the ride leading the conversation towards Tony’s favourite part of his job. It’s not hard- Tony relaxes slightly as the car makes its way through the New York streets, and by the time they pull up to the curb there’s a bit of that light in his eyes, which are creased in laughter.
Steve is still dazed at the notion that he can make Tony laugh. That Tony finds what he has to say interesting, that Tony finds him interesting- interesting enough to spark small talk that stretched into a half-hour conversation in a flower shop.
Steve is still riding on that thrill as they make their way into the restaurant, even though the worry starts coming back at the sight of it: even the outside is bewilderingly fancy. The inside makes Steve have to chew the inside of his cheek to keep back a laugh, because seriously?
Whatever his face is doing, he does his best to wipe it away when he notices Tony looking. He tries for a convincing smile, and Tony returns it, but it’s clear that some of the worry is back for him as well. Shit.
As they get seated, Steve clears his throat, trying to steer them back on track. “So, what’d Dummy do next?”
It works, mostly. When Tony smiles again, it’s genuine.
“This isn’t really your thing, huh.”
Steve pauses. He’s busy chewing the last bite of tofu. It’s better than any tofu he’s had before this, which isn’t much, but still. He’d gladly have this instead of meat sometimes, but he expects the preparation for it would be more than he could manage.
“What do you mean,” he asks after swallowing.
Tony’s fingers drum soundlessly on the tablecloth, because this is the kind of place that has tablecloths. “This- restaurant scene. You seem, uh, uncomfortable.”
Steve opens his mouth to disagree, but- well, yeah. Every time a waiter’s come up, Steve’s tensed up. When they gave him a finger-bowl, which is apparently a thing, he’d thought it was a soup. When they’d given him a napkin folded in a tight circle, he’d thought it was food and popped it into his mouth, already chewing before he’d realized that both Tony and the waiter were staring at him. That had- yeah. That’d been hard to recover from, even with Tony insisting it was fine.
“I’m,” Steve says, and pauses. “I’m having a good time,” he says finally.
That gets a bit of a smile back onto Tony’s face. “Good. Good. Uh. Hey, you mentioned the zoo a few days ago, right?”
“The zoo?” Steve tries to remember. Yeah, he probably mentioned it.
“You were thinking of going to see the new penguin exhibit,” Tony says.
Jesus. Why the hell is Tony interested in him when Steve says shit like that? “I was. I am. Sometime.”
Tony nods. His fingers continue to tap. “Want to go now?”
Steve stares. “Right now?”
“Yep. Right now. How about it? You, me. Penguins.”
Steve stares at him. There’s something both endearing and heartbreaking in the clear desperation behind Tony’s tight smile.
“I- sure.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Great,” Tony parrots, and then he stands up and Steve realizes okay, he means now-now.
“Oh, give me a second-” Steve turns to a waiter as he passes. “Can I get the rest of this in a doggie bag?”
The waiter looks at him the same way he did when Steve tried to eat the napkin and Steve thinks distantly that this isn’t the type of place where doggie-bags happen.
“Nevermind,” Steve says. He turns to Tony, who is watching the exchange with that same tight smile. “Let’s go.”
“Yep,” Tony says. He falls into step beside Steve, hands in his pockets, and when Steve looks down he can see Tony’s fingers moving in them. He imagines them tapping against his leg.
When they climb in the car, Tony’s fingers are still moving in his pockets.
“The zoo, Hap,” he says to the driver, and Steve thinks oh, it’s Happy, he mentioned Happy. He wonders if he should introduce himself, but Tony is taking up a lot of his focus.
You’re doing fine, Steve wants to tell him. But he knows that’s probably not the sort of thing you say on dates, especially first dates- he thinks it’d sound insulting. But he knows he should do something, he wants to do something to get that weird nervous not-frenzy off of Tony’s face, so he shuffles over until their shoulders are touching.
Tony’s gaze jerks over to him.
Steve gives him a smile he hopes is comforting. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Tony says after a beat. His eyebrows draw inwards. “So, you’ve probably noticed that I don’t- I don’t do this much.”
“What, date?” Steve frowns. “You date.”
“Not like this.” Tony’s mouth opens and closes. He looks out the window and says, “Uh, not like. I mean. I go to parties and I sleep with people- or I did, I’ve kind of stopped in the past five years or so, call it a lifestyle change- but I don’t, y’know, go out to dinner with people and talk unless I want to buy out their company or form a business alliance, you know?”
“Well,” Steve says. “Yes and no? I don’t do business deals, but I know how it feels not to-”
Steve pauses as he struggles for the best wording. “I don’t date, either,” is what he ends up with. “So. You’re not alone on that front.”
I’m nervous too, he doesn’t say. He hopes Tony hears it, though, and judging by the look on Tony’s face when he turns to Steve, he heard something like it.
“Don’t worry, okay, we’re both clueless,” Steve says.
Thankfully, Tony doesn’t seem to take it as an offense. Instead, he blinks at Steve for a few seconds before his whole face creases into a smile, which turns into a surprised laugh. “Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“Yes? I don’t know.” Steve watches the lines in Tony’s face bunch and thinks about drawing them. Has he told Tony about his years at art school? He should. He wants Tony to know. He wants Tony to know so much about him, and he wants to know Tony in turn. He’s felt this before at the start of friendships, but never this intensely and it’s never punched Steve in the stomach like it’s doing now.
Tony wets his lips and Steve watches his tongue right as he realizes that he and Tony are sitting very close beside each other. Their shoulders are more of a press than a light touch, and their knees are brushing together.
From Tony’s expression, he’s noticed the closeness. His face goes slightly slack, smile shrinking- not in a bad way, just in a way that implies he has other things on his mind.
Steve wonders if Tony’s thinking about kissing him. Kissing happens on dates; Steve is sure about that even if he isn’t sure about napkins or finger bowls.
He watches Tony’s throat click. There’s a tenseness in his shoulders that’s back again, and Steve thinks very hard about just leaning in and going for it before his sense wins out: “You alright?”
“Always,” comes Tony’s response.
Steve nods. Then, with a courage he didn’t think he had, he brings his hand up to Tony’s face, placing his palm over Tony’s cheek, fingers brushing his ear. “Is this okay?”
Tony hesitates, but then he nods very fast. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s, uh. Aces. A-plus. Gold star,” he says, still like he’s busy thinking about other things, bigger things that are sitting right in front of him.
Steve is sure he’ll keep rambling if he doesn’t stop him, so he drags in the deepest breath he can get in without being loud about it and then tilts his face up. He watches Tony’s eyes as he does this, but all that happens is that Tony’s eyes go half-lidded, his words skating to a stop just before Steve’s mouth touches his.
Steve only remembers to close his eyes when their lips meet. Right, he thinks, kissing involves your eyes being closed-
After a moment, his thoughts trickle down to a soft murmur, then a nondescript haze. Tony’s mouth is very soft, and Steve can feel the edges of his goatee. Steve’s never kissed anyone with a goatee. It’s nice.
Tony’s lips part, which means Steve is led to do the same, which is- oh. Very nice. Steve hears a sound and only afterwards realizes it’s him, that pleased humming noise. As he realizes that, he feels Tony smile against his mouth. This makes Steve smile back, and they’re both smiling like dopes when they pull apart- not very far, but enough to meet eyes.
Steve clears his throat. “’S a good date,” he says, trying for reassuring but likely coming across more breathless.
Tony’s looking at him like Steve is something confusing but incredible, like some new equation he can’t wait to solve. “Yeah? I could use more convincing.”
Steve laughs too loud. “Convincing?”
Tony nods, brushing their noses together.
Steve swallows. He thinks he should say something, but the way Tony’s watching him freezes up all the words in his throat, so he settles for kissing him again. Tony doesn’t seem to have any complaints- he makes a noise to mirror Steve’s earlier pleased hum and reaches up to touch Steve’s elbow as they kiss.
Steve feels the light pressure of Tony’s fingers and wonders if it’d be weird to ask to draw them sometime. Probably, he decides.
They’re both a little rumpled by the time they get out of the car- out of the limo. Steve is still caught up on that no matter how much he tries to ignore it. He smoothes down his hair as he climbs out of the car behind Tony.
“Thanks, Hap,” Tony says through the driver’s window.
Happy gives him a two-fingered salute. “Enjoy the zoo, Boss.”
“Will do.”
Happy gives Steve a wave and Steve feels bad about not doing so before. “Thanks for the ride.”
“’S what I do,” Happy says. He’s grinning, looking between the two of them with more enthusiasm than Steve supposes is appropriate. “Go on, you kids.”
“I’m older than you,” Tony says, but his eyeroll is fond as he falls into step beside Steve.
“He seems nice,” Steve offers. “How’s his, uh, boxing injury going?”
“It’s healing fine,” Tony says, and there’s a momentary glint in his eyes that makes Steve think Tony’s pleased Steve remembered.
He claps and Steve supresses a jump. “So! Penguin exhibit. Brand new penguins. Very exciting. Are you excited?”
Steve laughs. “Oh, yeah. You can’t see it, but I’ve got goosebumps.”
“Yeah?” Tony reaches over and takes Steve’s arm, pulling the sleeve up. He runs a hand over the back of Steve’s forearm. “Ah, there they are.”
Steve tries to think of something slick to say, but Tony’s looking at him with a weird mix of relaxedness and nerves, so he settles for taking the hand Tony’s touching him with and holding it as they walk through the zoo gates.
Tony glances down at their joined hands, eyebrows raised, and for a second Steve wonders if this isn’t what one does on Actual Adult Dates. But then Tony’s mouth does this twitching jump like he’s supressing a big, loose smile and he gives Steve’s hand a squeeze.
Steve squeezes back. Okay. Still going good.
The penguin exhibit isn’t hard to find- there are bright signs all over the place, displaying massive arrows pointing them in the right direction.
“So you never explained why the penguins are such a draw,” Tony says as they make their way through the zoo towards the exhibit. “You started going on this speech back at the shop but then a customer interrupted.”
Steve remembers being glad, in retrospect, that the customer had interrupted- he’d been more than a little embarrassed about the prospect of going on a spiel about penguins. “Uh, yeah- they’ve been transferred over from the Chicago zoo, I might’ve been following their stories for the last month or so.”
“Stories?”
“Their backstories. And their day-to-day stuff. It’s on Snapchat.”
Tony puts the hand that isn’t holding Steve’s to his own chest. “Please tell me about the backstories of these penguins. I must know.”
Steve laughs and knocks their shoulders together. It’s instinct, it’s what he does with people, but Tony looks a little taken aback when it happens so Steve thinks he did it too hard. “Sorry,” he says, and when Tony shakes his head like it’s fine, he continues, “Well, there are six of them- Mary, Zelda, Jessup, Hilda, Bob and Glen.”
“Bob and Glen. Wow.”
Steve thinks of the best way to put it, why he’s gotten so invested in these damn penguins, and the best way he can think to start is with, “They’ve all been through a lot. Most of them aren’t very social with anything but each other- one of them, Zelda, she’s pretty hostile-”
“A hostile penguin. Incredible.”
“Shuddup.” Steve nudges their shoulders together, gentler this time, and Tony does it back. “So, she’s pretty hostile to humans and pretty much any other penguin except for the ones in the enclosure with her, the other five I just mentioned. She’s really affectionate with Mary, it’s adorable- she just kind of puts up with the others and is downright mean to anyone else but with Mary she’ll get all warm and cuddly.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
Steve shrugs. “They’ll probably have some signs around the place that can say it better than me.”
“You said it fine.” Tony squeezes his hand.
Steve doesn’t know if he should be this flattered, but he’s rolling with it.
As they near the enclosure, Tony clears his throat. “So this is more your speed? More than the restaurant?”
“This is more my speed,” Steve says after a moment. “Uh, the restaurants I tend to go to are…”
He searches for a way to say much less fancy without putting his foot in his mouth. “Smaller,” is what he comes out with.
Tony nods. Steve thinks he gets it.
“Not that I didn’t like it,” Steve says. “It was- it was nice. It was really nice that you wanted to take me to a vegetarian place because I said I’d been trying it out. That was- thoughtful of you. I liked that.”
“Yeah, well,” Tony says, and it sounds like he’s trying to come up with more to say but he ends up trailing off as they come up to the glass window that lets them see into the enclosure. It’s bigger than it seemed in the pictures.
Steve tries to pick out which penguin is which- that one with the spot on her head is Mary, obviously, and the one with the dented beak is Bob, but the others are harder to sort out. Focusing on penguins is easier than obsessing over what Tony was going to say.
“I want you to have a good time,” Tony says, and Steve tears his gaze away from the penguins. Tony’s looking at them, but Steve guesses it’s mostly so he doesn’t have to look at Steve.
“I am.” Steve rubs his thumb over Tony’s knuckles. “This is great, Tony. Thank you for- thank you.”
Tony nods quickly. “You can pick out the next date place. If you want. I mean, if-”
“I’ll start thinking of places.”
Tony finally looks over at him. The relief is clear in his eyes. “Good! Good.”
Partly to settle Tony’s nerves and partly because he suddenly can’t not do it, Steve leans up to kiss his cheek. The momentary embarrassment, the unsureness, is wiped away instantly when Tony does that mouth-twitch again like he’s trying very hard not to break out in a huge grin.