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“Tony?”
There was a click at the door but the room was too dark to see who it was standing at the door. Steve could make out the soft shuffling of the shadowed figure by the threshold as he tried to make out who it was.
“Tony?” he said softer this time. Because if it wasn’t, he just might thought his heart would crack.
“Hey Steve.”
It was Natasha. Natasha and her soft voice and softer heart. She stepped forward into the sliver of light that filtered through the blinds of the dusty motel window, rubbing her hands to salvage some warmth from the fiction.
It was cold these days. Always cold.
Steve laid back down on the mattress, the sheets ruffling against his skin as he drew them over his shoulders and gripped them tight. He knew Nat meant well and maybe he should be more grateful for their support but he couldn’t help wondering every night what it would be like to slip back into Tony’s bed, tucking himself under his arms and drifting off to sleep. He wondered if Tony had been sleeping alone. Or sleeping at all for that matter.
He watched Nat walk over, scooting over so Nat could gently settle down on the edge of his bed.
“Alright?”
Steve didn’t answer because Nat was rubbing her hands and each time she did that, he felt a little more choked up because I was the one to drag them all into this; and for what?
Nat caught on because she was perceptive and knew her team like the back of her hand, always catching on the most fleeting and subtle expressions.
“It’s not your fault, you know”, she said, “all of us are doing what we all believe in is right”
Being right and being in love. In a kinder world, he would have both in his hands. In this world, he would be stuck in between the two, never quite catching the other and so long as he ran towards one, the other would collapse in and of itself, making him stripped bare and left with nothing in the end.
Don’t bullshit me, Rogers! Did you know?
Steve, I’ll be in bed in a minute, love.
He thought of the many differences in Tony. His bright eyes and brighter mind when he talked on and on about his project, his soft slump of his shoulder when he finally came to bed, his muscles and limbs slipping into the warmth of his arms as he thought to himself how he could ever have been the Steve before the war, before HYDRA and the ice and still end up here, a century later, in the crystallized moment and enigmatic ways of life and time. He thought of his hair ruffled in the many shades of brown in the morning back when it was still Summer and his honey-brown eyes and olive skin would glow like a flame that would eventually lick and burn it’s way into his heart and mind – a scar that you would run your fingers over and over again, mapping out the tiny etches and crevices and smile because it reminded you of happier days when you felt bold and dared to cup the world into the tiny palms of your hands.
Steve scrunched his eyes and buried his nose into his pillow, inhaling his own scent and the constant suffering of the absence of Tony’s.
He felt the delicate combing of Natasha’s dainty fingers carding through his hair, sighing because it was better to feel her touch so as to bring him back to the memories of feeling when Tony would do the same.
“You thought it was him at the door”
It wasn’t a question so Steve didn’t need to answer.
“You miss him”, she said. Sadness and longing slid into the gaps of her words, choking her voice – something that Steve was all too familiar back in Siberia.
Yes.
“So call him, Steve.”