Chapter Text
“What are you going to say to him?” Sam asked, leaning against the side of the jet. Steve put a box in the cargo space, and tightened the straps to hold it in place. It was already filled with all the supplies that the Rogue Avengers would need for their mission back to the US to work out the terms for their return. The boxes included clothes, paperwork, gifts, and absolutely no weapons. He had already found several knives that Natasha had hidden away and returned them to her with a disapproving look. They were on thin ice, and lucky that the US government was opening up negotiations at all. No need to push them on any of their terms, at least not so early and something as reasonable as ‘no weapons will be present at the meetings’.
“We’re going to negotiate the terms of our return to the US and to the Avengers, I have a list of reasons why it would be beneficial to all parties-”
“To Tony.” Sam clarified.
“As far as I’m aware, the majority of the negotiations will be between me and the other relevant governmental bodies-”
“Steve,” Sam said, “Cut the crap. This is going to be the first time you’ve seen him in what, three months? Four?”
Steve dusted his hands off on his pants and shrugged. “Four months, one week, and three days. But who’s counting?”
“Jesus, man.” Sam scrubbed a hand up and down his face. He stepped in front of Steve and put a hand on his chest before he could go back inside to get the last of the stuff.
“What are you going to say? You need to think about it now so you don’t freeze up when we actually get there.”
Steve brushed past him without responding.
Sam yelled at his retreating back, “You’re going to remember this conversation tomorrow!”
After packing up their stuff, they all boarded the jet and started the trip. Steve was going as leader of the Rogues, and bringing everyone else along with him, hopefully to stay. The flight lasted about six hours even on the fancy Wakandan jet, and they arrived around nightfall. Carol Danvers, had created them politely and showed them to a set of three adjacent rooms in a small hotel adjacent to the government center, before retiring for the night. Guards walked along a chain link fence surrounding the whole property, and cameras watched from above. Though they had been promised full immunity for the duration of the talks, he felt trapped. Steve settled into his room and then the three of them had met up in Sam’s room to talk strategy. The talks tomorrow would be vital to their future, but as Natasha and Sam strategized Steve found his mind drifting. Tony was somewhere inside this fence. Maybe somewhere inside this very building. It was late, he was probably in bed, though knowing Tony, the late hour was no guarantee. Tony had always had troubles sleeping over the course of the four years they were together. Steve had to drag him to bed almost every night, and Tony would toss and turn for hours until Steve pinned him down and growled at him to please just go to sleep! It used to drive him nuts. Sometimes he’d wake up, an unconscious itch under his skin dragging him awake, and he’d find the other side of their bed empty. And he would go downstairs to the basement, where blue lights shone bright in the dark house, where impossible ideas blossomed into new life while the rest of the world slept the sleep of the dead. Down in the basement, Tony was completely in his element, writing the future in lines of fire, his hands a blur, his eyes manic. Steve had asked him once, why he worked with such fervent desperation. Tony had answered with big words, with grand visions, and with poorly concealed fear; his normally impenetrable masks broken down by time and exhaustion and familiarity, until all that was left was a man desperately making the future a better place, because he couldn’t bear to spend another second in his own past.
So Tony built monuments, Tony built marvels, he built fame and fortunes and Steve watched him do it from the stairs outside the workshop, standing the shadows where the light didn’t reach, his feet cold against the rough concrete floor. Then he went back upstairs, to the room they were supposed to share, with the pictures of them he had framed on the nightstand and the cork board he had covered in mementos from concerts and movies they’d been to, and lied in the cold bed and drowned in the past. Things had only gotten worse from there, eventually Tony started sleeping on the cot in the lab and two months later they tried to kill each other in an airport, and again a few hours later in the bunker.
Steve still wasn’t over him. You don’t live with someone, love someone, for almost four years then simply let it go. At least not Steve, though Tony had always said he had a problem with hanging on to the past.
When they wrapped up their meeting in Sam’s room, Steve had no idea what the other two had said. Though he felt guilty, it was fine, they would have no problem speaking up in the meeting tomorrow if there was something else important to add. And really, what was there to say beyond warning everyone of the coming threat and reinforcing the value of a full team? He went back to his own room and changed into pajamas and fell into bed. Packing and traveling always took a lot out of him. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. There was a decent chance that he would be seeing Tony tomorrow, and though he had ignored Sam at the time, his advice now haunted him. What do you say to the man who used to be the love of your life?
He played out a scenario in his head. Tony would approach him, with Sam and Natasha standing behind Steve. Tony would offer his hand, Steve would ignore it, and he would slowly let his hand fall, hurt. Steve desperately wanted to be bitter, to hide his personal pain behind a shield of stoicism. He wanted to say something deep, something cutting, something that would leave Tony raw and hurting like only the words of someone who knew you better than you knew yourself could do.
The problem was that Steve wasn’t bitter. As mad as he was at Tony at the time for going after Bucky, he couldn’t blame him in the aftermath. No, he wasn’t bitter.
He was lonely.
He closed his eyes and played out another scenario. Their eyes would meet from across the hall. He would be too thin. He never ate enough without Steve nagging him. Tony’s eyes would widen, his hands would tremble, and he would take a step forward, without even realizing that he had done so. Steve would step forward too, and reach out a hand to shake, and Tony would ignore the hand to grab onto him in a desperate hug.
Steve would say, “I’m sorry, I should have told you, I’m sorry,”
Tony would whisper, “I miss you, I love you, I’m sorry too, let’s go back to the way things were,”
And Steve would mumble “Yes, yes, yes,” into the downy soft fluff of Tony’s hair, and he would feel all on the broken parts inside him settle back into place like nothing had ever been broken.
He liked that version better. He liked the idea of all the doubts he had had over the last few months being drowned out by a loud resounding “I love you”, all his insecurities soothed by a balm of kisses, all the baggage burned away by a fire of passion.
Too bad he would rather die than beg Steve to take him back, and knowing that put a damper on scenario number two.
Scenario number three was much less interesting than the first two. Tony calls him into a meeting room. They have a civil conversation. They take care of the upcoming threat. Then he goes home without Tony (if it can even be called home without Tony) and they live out the rest of their lives apart. No hatred, no passion, just endless apathy. A sedate thirty mile an hour drive through the doldrums until the final crash into the wall of oblivion.
Scenario four. Tony hates him. Whatever they ever had between them is broken beyond repair, and it’s all Steve’s fault. Steve would enter the room and Tony would look away, cross his arms across his chest. He would shake Natasha’s and Sam’s hands then slap Steve’s away. Would yell at him, going on a twenty minute tirade of every wrong he had ever committed, in alphabetical order, accompanied by a PowerPoint. He would take what torn bits Steve still had of himself and rip it all to shreds, and he wouldn’t do a thing about it. Because he had fucked up. He knew he had fucked up, from the moment Tony had turned to him after watching that horrible video, his eyes wide and his face heartrendingly vulnerable, asking
“Did you know?”
Steve had always considered himself a good man. He assisted the elderly across the street and watched out for children, he kept to his word and was always ready to drop everything to help out a friend in an emergency. He didn’t lie, cheat, or steal, no matter how bad things had gotten back in the depression. He used to smoke, but as soon as he learned that it could give people cancer he quit one of the few comforting habits he had left in the new century to set a good example for all the kids who looked up to Captain America. He had even filmed a series of cheesy PSA videos for public high schools. The team teased him for it, but if they helped even one kid turn their life around than it was worth it. Might as well use the almost mythic proportions of the title of ‘Captain America’ for some good.
Scenario five. Before he gets to the meeting room, he gets a call on the burner phone. Tony tells him not to come at all. The deal has been called off, they’re stuck in Wakanda forever. He would have had to fight to get the Government to hear them out. He wouldn’t have to sabotage anything to get the decision reversed, just not fight as hard as he could have, and the whole thing might end before it starts. Steve never sees him again, things never get resolved.
That was enough scenarios for one night. There was nothing he could do about it now. Steve closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep.
He woke up the next morning and got ready, meeting Sam and Natasha in the hall. Natasha pawed at his head. “Did you put gel in your hair?”
Steve pushed it back into place with a huff. “This is an important meeting. I wanted to look nice.”
“He’s trying to show off for Tony. Note the lack of beard too, after spending the last few months looking like a mountain man,” Sam told her.
“Ah. Do you want to go back and put on a tighter shirt? We’ll wait for you.”
“Very funny,” Steve said and walked down the hall to the conference room where everyone would be meeting. The room was mostly empty, which was unsurprising since they were ten minutes early. Carol Danvers sat at the head of the table, as was her right as the leader of the hosting pack. A black woman with short hair and a gold necklace sat beside her, and on her other side was Tony.
Tony looked up from his tablet and Steve’s brain shorted out. There was Tony, right there. His Tony, after all these months, looking like he had just stepped out for a minute to buy more milk, and now he was back and they could pick back up exactly where they left off.
Tony’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Rogers.”
Steve stared at him, trying to convey everything he had felt over the last few months in a few seconds of shared eye contact. “Tony”
Tony looked away. “Does he have to be here?”
Carol frowned at him. “Be nice Tony, they’re going to be useful.”
Tony leaned down in his chair. “Doubt it.”
Steve slowly shut his eyes, digging his fingernails into his palms. He expected something like this, a slight variation on scenario three. He had prepared for a moment like this, made his plans.
Tony tapped his papers on the table and kept his eyes averted. After all these months, they were finally together again.
Steve didn't say anything.