Work Text:
Both May and Rhodey were watching him with knowing looks, not quite smiles nor frowns. It wasn't helping.
Today was Peter's graduation day, a big motherfucking important day and Tony didn't seem to be able to tie his damn tie, " Dammit ,"
He slid the fabric off his neck and threw the poor piece of silk on his bed. He didn't see the nod May gave Rhodey but a moment later the man was out of the room and May was sitting next to Tony on the edge of the bed.
Tony looked up slow and weary; she wasn't saying anything, her legs and arms were crossed and that was never too good for him. When he finally met her gaze he sighed and hoped his relief wasn't too obvious. She was smiling, the glint in her eyes the one she had when she was ready to both give him hell and make fun of him for an undetermined amount of time.
"I know what--" he tried but May tsked.
"No, you don't. So shush it." she raised an eyebrow at him, a challenge to question her. God that woman could be scary.
She made an impatient little motion of her hands for Tony to sit sideways and face her, so he did. He looked at her face, at the way her traits were so smooth and calm when he'd spent the last two hours frowning and mumbling under his breath. He sighed.
"You done being an idiot?" she asked, her tone matter-of-fact as she pulled up the collar of Tony's shirt with delicate, cool fingers.
Tony glared at her or at least he tried to. She flicked his nose halfway through.
"Don't play dumb with me. I know why you're nervous but today is about Peter, remember?" her voice was soft and yet, the edges of it were home to the exact sternness Tony needed.
“What would I do without you, Parks?”
May winked at him, an indulgent chuckle escaping her just as she patted his shoulders; she was done tying his tie for him.
“Apart from the fact that you’d be underdressed for your son’s graduation I’m sure you’d be fine,” she talked but she wasn’t looking at him, she was doing this thing that betrayed her own nerves: brush her slender fingers in Tony’s hair to make sure it was all neat and square.
Tony indulged her for a while, then circled her wrists with a gentle touch. “From what he said in the letter he’s okay now,” his voice was shaky at best, but he wanted to believe it and by the look in May’s eyes, Tony knew she hoped he was right too - if only for Peter’s sake.
She gave him a short nod then seemed to shake herself, “Fuck it, come here.” She held out her arms and Tony went easily, resting his chin on her shoulder and trying to take deep breaths in. She held him tight then cleared her throat, “Let’s go before the Colonel comes yelling about us being late, huh?”
Tony followed her out with one last look at himself in the mirror. His eyes didn’t quite hide the fact that he’d been crying for the better part of the night but hopefully they would be seated far enough from the stage that Peter wouldn’t notice. Who was he kidding? That kid saw everything.
“Ready?” Rhodey asked the second they came into view and Tony nodded weakly. He wasn’t.
The ride to Midtown High School wasn’t very long but Tony still spent it worrying his bottom lip and bouncing both his knees in turn. His mind went in a thousand different places and directions without ever choosing one - which might just be as well - and he tried to calm down but with poor success. On top of everything else he felt guilty for his thoughts straying so far from Peter so often.
Arriving at the school made that last part a bit better. Just the sight of the front doors had him grinning and misty-eyed. His baby would be behind those doors, wearing his blue robes and cap.
“May-Love, you took the camera, right?” he asked as they got out of the car but he didn’t wait for the answer. He walked to the front doors, only stopping for the other two when he could peer inside the school from the doorstep. They were right on time, the ceremony wouldn’t start for another half hour.
He tapped his foot on the steps waiting for them until he realized they were taking way longer than they should and turned around. Shit.
They were still at the car, Rhodey still sitting sideways on the passenger seat with May leaning on the open door.
Stephen was there, all dressed up and walking up to him with his eyes searching Tony’s from the distance - distance that narrowed and narrowed with each step.
Tony counted to ten and backwards in his head, trying hard to remember his therapist’s tips for staving off his attacks. Easier said than done. God, he looked stunning in that damn suit. Why did he look stunning, he had no right to look this good.
Tony shook his head trying to clear it. He wasn’t exactly proud of his assumption that Stephen would look like shit but given that that was how he felt himself he thought maybe he could catch a break just this once.
Stephen walked up the steps and Tony spotted the way he clutched the railing on the side just a tad harder than anyone else would, the way his left leg seemed stiffer than the right. He frowned.
He watched him close the last of the distance that separated them to come stand barely a foot away from him and Tony nearly whined. This wasn’t going to be easy - all he wanted was to hug the shit out of the other man. He settled for searching his eyes and face instead. He hadn’t changed much. Sure, the depression beard and chaotic hairdo of the last time he’d seen him were gone but he was the same man Tony had always known, or so it seemed.
The lines around his eyes were a little deeper than what they used to be and Tony couldn’t help but feel floored by the light he saw in Stephen’s eyes. Stephen.
He wanted to reach out and touch him, wanted to say a million things - the million things he’d articulated so many times in his head and finally had a chance to say. He stayed unmoving and silent. Stephen’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he squared his shoulders, the look in his eyes so close to pleading Tony’s heart soared.
“Tony,” his voice was the same velvet it had ever been, deep and caressing Tony’s very soul. He’d missed it so much. “I...I’m--”
“Shhh,” Tony took a small step closer, just one, just so he could raise a trembling hand up to Stephen’s face.
Stephen’s eyes followed the path of Tony’s hand until it touched him. He searched Tony’s face while Tony’s gaze was fixed on his fingers sliding across the other man’s smooth skin. The very feel of his cheek under the pads of his digits, surreal and grounding all at the same time.
A tear escaped his eyes and he only felt it when it reached his lips, salty and indisputably real. Stephen took a sharp breath that dislodged Tony’s hand and it fell on the man’s neck.
Tony looked back into his ex-husband’s eyes, caressing the hollow of his neck and the birth of his collarbone. He, too, felt words start to form at the back of his throat only to die on the verge of coming out. There was so much to say, too much for such a small amount of time and too little privacy to say it all.
The bell rang as a first call for parents and relatives to gather in the gym. It startled Tony into glancing inside for the tiniest second. His eyes flickered right back to Stephen, no matter the hand he still had clasped on the side of the man’s neck. Actually seeing him still standing there pushed a relieved sigh out of Tony’s lips.
Stephen hesitantly put both his shaky hands around Tony’s wrist, brushing a thumb on the inside of it. His eyes seemed filled with the same pleading notes it had since their eyes had first met again and Tony tried to find words to tell him he didn’t need that, didn’t want it.
“You look good,” was what he said instead, barely a whisper but with a bittersweet smile on his lips and an annoying mist blurring his vision.
It took him everything he had in him, all the energy left in him - or that he’d been able to harvest back after Stephen vanished from their lives - to detach his hand from the man’s neck without going into a full-blown panic attack. Something must have tipped Stephen off because he took Tony’s hand in his, clasping long and scarred fingers around the back of it without asking.
Tony breathed in the feel of it, trying to analyze it and the millions of other thoughts pushing through the forefront of his mind. Stephen squeezed his palm and Tony stopped looking at the concrete at his feet when the man hooked his index finger under Tony’s jaw, feather-soft, “Let’s go inside.”
That sounded like the appropriate thing to do; Tony agreed if only a bit distantly. He’d stopped hoping for the letter that had come only a handful of days before. He’d abandoned all hopes of still being important to this man and yet, now that he was there, Tony felt it. The bond that used to make them one - severely roughened up and bruised but still there, in need of intensive care but far from shattered. Tony wanted to fall right in those arms and feel the strength of them as Stephen held him. He wanted to melt in the soft touch and equally delicate cleverness of this man he’d given his everything to from the age of twenty-five onwards.
But they owed it to Peter to stop whatever reunion moment they were having and get in, get to him. Tony smiled again, a little more frankly now that his mind was clearing enough for the picture of his son in robes to fill it again.
He waved to May and Rhodey and they nodded back from the distance, May making a “shoo” motion of her hands at the same time as she turned to Rhodey to help get him on his feet - undoubtedly too stubborn to let him turn her down.
Tony turned back to Stephen and gave a short nod, more to himself than to the other man before tugging him along to where Peter would be waiting with all the other graduates.
His palm tickled with the feeling of the man’s hand in his - the feeling that was equal sparks of joy and sharp jabs of fear. They entered the room together, their hands still linked together and Tony’s eyes immediately searched and found Peter. Finding his son in the crowd was second-nature, the easiest thing Tony ever had to do was locate his head of curls anywhere. It was like his heart knew where to look right from the start.
Their eyes met above Peter’s classmates’ heads and he saw the minute movements of his eyes that told him he’d already taken the whole scene in. Tony tried to convey as much reassurance as he could given the state he was in but they’d talked about this. They hadn’t made any promises to each other regarding their respective reactions to reuniting with the missing piece of their family. The only thing they’d both sworn to was to be honest with one another and open about their emotions, to talk things out the way they’d learnt to do when they ended up just the two of them.
Peter smiled at Tony, it was faint but it was there and the dad in him, the most important part of him, instantly felt better. He nodded his own smile, winking the equivalent of a thumbs up that remained just between the two of them.
He felt Stephen’s hand convulse slightly around his own and he turned to him the moment Peter went back to talking with his friends. The man’s eyes had that distant look they took on when he refrained from crying and Tony brushed his thumb over the back of his hand, “Come on, our seats are over there.”
They sat next to each other, their hands joined between them and wasn’t that a clear cut sign? Tony was in no mood to laugh. Or maybe a little, hysterically so. Possibly. He chuckled. Then giggled. Low and as discreetly as he could but he shook with it, his eyes narrowed to slits and leaking tears of laughter that was as much nerves as it was two whole years of emotions all over the place and unable to be sorted and controlled. Stephen looked at him curiously, smiling faintly at the little noises that weren’t quite glee but that Tony couldn’t control. He turned to see him more clearly, questions filling his eyes.
Tony's mood changed instantly, his face blanched and his eyes widened. Stephen had retrieved his hand when he'd turned. Tony took a deep breath before he shook his head. The realization dawned on him that it wouldn't work and he scrambled to get a hold of one of Stephen's hands again. He'd crossed them over his lap so the closest to Tony ended up being the left, it was a little awkward but he was already relaxing again so it would have to do.
He looked from Stephen's eyes to their hands before he answered the unspoken question, his voice a little too squeaky for his liking, “Don’t let go, please.”
Another tear made its way down Tony’s cheek and he’d never experienced such an ambivalent set of emotions all at once. Stephen’s eyes widened slightly before he nodded twice, three times and upon sitting back to face the stage, wound his right arm around Tony’s waist. He kept their joined hands on his own lap, enveloping Tony in the warmth and scent of him.
Rhodey and May entered the room right before the principal came onto the stage and Tony smiled at them. Rhodey’s eyes did a double-take at the position they were sitting in - almost an embrace - but other than that the couple just sat down two rows to their left.
There was loud clapping going around before the principal could start his opening speech and Tony’s eyes hooked on Peter’s again. He didn’t hear anything the old man had to say, calmed by the almost otherworldly presence of the man he’d loved his whole life and the complete conversation he was able to have with his son through looks only. Peter’s brown eyes were filled with a wonder Tony recognized for all its varied origins.
Nervousness, hope, anger, questions upon questions, optimism and the desire to forgive, to love - to be whole again.
They kept staring into each other’s eyes - brown for brown - for the entire ceremony. The only instance of Peter’s gaze straying away happened during his valedictorian speech and Tony smiled so hard he couldn’t see anything much anyway. Peter’s eyes went to his aunt and might-as-well-be uncle - a bright, grateful smile on the boy’s lips - before going back to Tony and just a little to the left. He lost himself and stuttered into his father’s icy blue eyes for the first time since they’d entered the room.
The way he shook himself out of it and finished his speech with the brightest grin known to man was their son’s verdict. Tony felt the way Stephen’s entire body seemed to relax, the way his shoulder sagged against his own and his breathing deepened a tad. He looked at him sideways, studying the careful way he kept a veil on his emotions but still couldn’t prevent the twitch in the corner of his eye from betraying his incoming tears.
Tony refused to fool himself into thinking that Stephen hadn’t changed, that he was the same man he’d always known. It was too clear how different he seemed but they’d changed too, he and Peter, and he decided that was okay. Some things were bound to change and hopefully they’d all evolved for the best. Some things on the other hand never did change and judging by the look on Stephen’s face when Peter ran up to them and collided with his chest in a vice of a hug, that too was for the best as well.
Tony let go of Stephen’s hand then. He took a little step back and fell into May’s chest when she winded her arms around his midsection and put her chin on his shoulder. Together they watched father and son squeeze the life out of each other for a long moment - a necessary, yearned for embrace that revived everyone involved.
Their eyes met above Peter’s head, now lodged under Stephen’s chin, and Tony thought just for once he’d take a page out of Peter’s book and think everything would be ok.
“You smell like old lady tea,” Peter mumbled, his nose still stuck in Stephen’s neck as they sat in the car, the five of them driving back home.
Stephen laughed, a crystalline sound Tony felt resonate through his very core.
“That would be the Nepalese gooseberry,” he answered, a cryptic glint in his eye that told Tony there was much more to be said about this than the simple words let on and Stephen nodded, tapping his jaw in their old college sign for “Later.”
And Tony was holding on to that now. He allowed himself to think there would be a later in which Stephen was still there and maybe, when they were ready, a later where they were all back to being the family they used the be, the family they were - a trip to Nepal one more story in their own personal History books.