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Tony has never gotten over Bruce.
It doesn’t hurt like it used to, not like those fierce, sharp stabs, along the lines of the ones he’d showered Bruce with when they first met, partly from insatiable curiosity and partly in pathetic “NOTICE ME SENPAI!” desperation.
No, it doesn’t stab anymore; it’s more of a muted ache that’s burrowed in behind the arc reactor and made itself at home.
An ache that flares whenever Bruce finishes one of Tony’s sentences about Tony’s latest brainwave, in the lab or at dinner, cutting right to the heart of the breakthrough, with every bit as much jargon as Tony himself would have used.
An ache that throbs whenever someone accidentally references some Hulk-related fallout from a recent or not-so-recent battle, and Bruce goes small and so, so quiet.
An ache that sears whenever Bruce lights up as Tony walks into the lab — and pierces when, as always, he just wants Tony’s take on whatever brilliant research or experiment he’s working on, because Tony is a means to an end.
The end being science.
Tony doesn’t remember when exactly he realized that science was, is, and will always be the center of Bruce’s universe. That the usual basic needs like food, water — and, more pressingly for Tony — sex and companionship, just fall away and become secondary to the point of being irrelevant.
Sure, Tony gets like that himself from time to time, going on workshop benders, so caught up in an idea or a project that he loses all sense of time and physicality until he surfaces (or Pepper threatens to tranq him).
But Bruce...never surfaces. That’s just how he is. All the time.
He’s never talked to Bruce about this, doesn’t know how Bruce relates to his sexuality, if he even cares enough to label it or identify in any way. Once upon a time, Tony might have just barged right in with the question, the way he blathered to Bruce’s face upon meeting him that he was a fan of how he turns into a giant green rage monster.
But there’s always been something about Bruce that makes Tony quietly desperate to say the right thing, to pull off his masks and connect, dammit. That first day on the helicarrier — he’d basically pleaded with Bruce to come home with him, looked him in the eyes and tried to project: you’ve been alone for so long but I swear I understand and value you; please let me in.
And in the end, Bruce had responded to Tony’s overtures. He’d come back to fight, he’d saved Tony’s life in his rage monster form, and then he’d climbed into Tony’s sporty Acura and been the one Avenger who stayed.
The last thing Bruce needs is for Tony to drive him away by asking too much of him.
Because without a doubt, what Tony wants is not something Bruce can give.
Oh, he’s entertained the thought of giving up sex and whether it would be worth it if it meant he could have Bruce. He, perhaps disingenuously, leans toward “maybe” on that, but underneath it, he knows the answer doesn’t really matter, because it’s not the right question.
Because even if he could give up sex, Tony knows that he is a black hole of need for attention and adoration. He thrives on it. It sustains him. It’s pathological, probably, this need for as many people as possible to be looking at him at all times, to the point where he’ll accept hatred and revulsion if it means that they are just paying attention.
Tony needs to be the center of someone’s universe. With Bruce, the most he can hope for is to be a neighboring satellite orbiting cutting-edge scientific discovery together.
It would be thrilling and literally world-changing, but it would never be enough.
But then, there’s Steve.
Steve, who has always been beautifully responsive to Tony. Who, from the very start, has reacted to everything Tony says and does, every quip, every provocation, whether it’s to huff in frustration, to challenge Tony to put on the suit and go a few rounds, or flash an exasperated smile down at Tony lying on the shattered pavement and babbling about shawarma.
Steve fell into Tony’s orbit from Day One. Steve couldn’t ignore Tony if he tried. And it’s been a long, long time since he’s tried.
And Tony loves him, loves him hot and fierce and combustible, like a newborn star, so bright he’s amazed he can even look, but he can, because Steve looks at him just the same.
Steve is enough. And so much more.
But sometimes, Tony still aches.
He knows it’s lousy to compare people, that it can’t ever be a fair calculation with all the variables floating around in those genetic and psychological constellations that make up human beings.
It’s Steve’s fault, really. If he weren’t so much like Bruce, and so different from Bruce, Tony wouldn’t be making any comparisons. Dick move, Rogers.
Steve’s got Bruce’s calm, that way that he cloaks his emotions in stillness, as opposed to Tony, who slathers his own with perpetual motion and exaggerated mannerisms to throw people off the scent of anything approaching a real feeling.
Tony has always been drawn to those gravity wells of stillness, to what he’s never been able to master for himself. First Pepper. Then Bruce. Now Steve. Hell, even Rhodey is like that, although thank baby Jesus Tony’s never caught feelings for him this way.
Steve is his North Star, reeling him in whenever his feet drift too far off the ground. Just like Bruce does when Tony’s ideas get too reckless or outlandish even for him.
Except Bruce would never yell at him like Cap used to, whenever Tony’s recklessness endangered himself, the way it did whenever he swerved to take a hit for Steve or dove through a collapsing building to grab as many civilians as the armor could carry.
Bruce’s upper limit is “mild agitation,” no matter how bad Tony gets — Steve was a blaze of so much more than that when he’d rip off his cowl the minute a battle ended and get in Tony’s face, seething: “What the hell were you doing, Tony?! You could have died!”
And something in Tony would glow white-hot at how much Steve cared, even if it was just as a Captain for a teammate. He grew to masochistically look forward to those outbursts, and to the inevitable knock on his door later from a contrite Steve, who would look him in the face and say, “I’m sorry, Tony. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I was just scared.”
Only Captain America could make admitting his fears sound so damn brave.
And of course, Bruce would never have read him like a book the way Steve did when Tony exploded at him after a stupid self-sacrificial move that left Captain America bleeding out on the pavement so badly that he might not have made it if Iron Man hadn’t snatched him up and rocketed straight to the nearest hospital. Tony hadn’t been able to stop himself from ranting as he paced furiously at Steve’s bedside, raging at Steve’s carelessness, his lack of self-preservation, his hypocrisy — until he noticed the slowly-dawning light in Steve’s eyes, the gentle smile starting to form on Steve split lips.
"What?" he’d demanded. “Something funny about all this, Cap?”
Steve had raised a bandaged hand, palm outward in appeasement. “You can yell at me some more if I’m seeing this wrong, but...can I take you out to dinner sometime?”
Tony had stood there, gaping, as a thousand and one thoughts exploded in his head, including that one constant voice: Bruce would never see me like this.
Tony craves being seen.
Steve doesn’t yell at him anymore, no matter how foolhardy Tony gets in battle. They’ve worked out a less volatile system: Steve still comes storming up to him the minute he’s declared the all-clear, still gets in his face — but now he just places both his hands on Tony’s armored shoulders and grips, until Tony slides back the faceplate.
Sometimes Tony blurts, “I had to,” and sometimes Steve sighs, “I know.”
But usually, they just look at each other, breathing each other’s air, Steve cataloguing every bruise and cut marring Tony’s face, and Tony feels seen, and wanted, and needed, and whole.
Bruce barely makes eye contact on a good day. Tony assumed at first that he fell somewhere on the autism spectrum, and maybe he does, but also, he just has better things to look at than Tony. Or listen to. Or register as being in the same room.
There have been times when Tony has been blathering for half an hour or more, and he knows that Bruce isn’t listening, but he corkscrews onward and upward, just to maybe get a reaction and prove to himself that he isn’t shouting into hard vacuum.
Steve indulges him when he's like that.
Bruce wouldn't indulge him. No, that's not quite right. Bruce would indulge him, on the rare occasions that he did notice, because Bruce is a good friend like that; he lets Tony run his mouth with that quiet resignation and slight eye-roll, then pats him on the shoulder and gets back to work.
Bruce indulges him, yes. But he doesn't enjoy indulging him, like Steve does. Bruce doesn't get that little twinkle in the corner of his eye when Tony rambles, that irrepressible smirk that quirks Cap's lips as he watches Tony ram his foot further and further into his mouth, doesn't raise his perfect Captain America eyebrows as Tony runs out of steam, as if to ask are you quite done yet? And he certainly doesn't take that step closer and rumble in Tony's ear with layers of honey and warmth in his voice: "Sweetheart. You're ridiculous."
Steve loves his ridiculousness, and Tony loves Steve so much for that that sometimes it's hard to breathe.
There are so many things Steve gives him every day, every hour, every minute, that Bruce never could.
Tony knows that. And more than knowing it, he feels it, in his core, in his heart, right beside the conviction that he feels for being Iron Man. He feels with unshakeable certainty that Steve is the one he wants, and that he is the luckiest person in any universe because Steve wants him back.
And yet.
There are gaps. Where Bruce fits and Steve doesn’t.
There’s the science jibber-jabber, of course; that’s probably what everyone sees on the surface when Tony and Bruce are blasting into the stratosphere on a new concept that only the two of them understand.
But it’s not just that.
Steve has never been a monster. Steve has never done monstrous things. Steve doesn’t know, not from the inside, what that weight feels like, how it presses down unforgivingly in every waking hour. Steve doesn’t know what it’s like to catch something about yourself, some mannerism, some turn of phrase, that’s a holdover from the monster you’ve been — and the crushing terror of not knowing how much still remains to uproot, and how much is a permanent, inherent part of your soul.
Steve can listen, or nod, or distract him, or murmur reassurance and forgiveness into his hair, or hold him to his warm, sheltering chest when Tony is locked in a spiral of self-loathing and regret, but Steve simply can’t know. Not like Bruce does.
It’s selfish, and ungrateful, and exemplary of all the things that made Tony a monster in the first place. But he can’t seem to shake it, and the only thing keeping him from dying of unending shame is that Steve doesn’t know.
Steve can never know.
It’s definitely Bruce’s fault that Steve finds out.
Definitely Bruce’s fault for entering the common area where all the Avengers are gathered at dinnertime with a fraction more buoyancy in his usual laconic step, prompting Tony to ask, “Why so jolly, Jolly Green?”
“I...ah...may have figured out a way to do that thing you said I should. With the Other Guy.”
Tony narrows his eyes as the other heads in the room also swivel to Bruce. “Well, obviously I was right, but refresh my memory about what exactly I was right about this time?”
Bruce’s gaze drop to his hands, which are fidgeting. “Uh, what you said the day we met. About making him part of me.”
He remembers what I said! wails that small, constant voice and oh, there’s that ache again, right on schedule. “Yeah?”
“Yeah…” Bruce looks distractedly over Tony’s shoulder at everyone else’s curious faces, then back at his own hands. “I’ve been working with Vision on studying phase shifting effects on radiation waves, and it looks like with enough electromagnetic force applied in combination with theta particles through Vision’s phasing algorithm—”
“—you were able to shift the gamma radiation into a stabilizing matrix,” Tony finishes, feeling his eyes go wide.
“Bruce,” Natasha soft voice breaks in from somewhere on Tony’s left, “what does that mean?”
“Well, I can’t say for sure,” Bruce hedges carefully. “But I think...maybe...with enough fine-tuning...me and the Other Guy could learn to share. In one body. Without me having to lose control to smash stuff. Only intentional smashing.”
“Oh. Wow.” Nat has gone very still, but the slow beginnings of a smile are starting to leak across her face.
Tony is suddenly aware that she and Bruce are looking directly at each other.
Bruce looks away again, with a flustered little half-laugh. “Yeah. Wow. I mean, it’s still mostly just a theory, it’s nowhere near a finished procedure, still needs months of testing, maybe years, but—”
“Bruce.” Nat’s striding across the room, straight at him, past Tony like he’s not even there. “Bruce, stop. This is amazing.” And she surprises everyone by throwing her arms around him in a hug.
The hug breaks the ice, and now all the Avengers are surging forward, past Tony, to offer congratulations, well-wishes, hugs, and pats on the back to Bruce, who stands there a bit sheepishly but with pride and just-visible excitement on his face.
And Tony just stands there, watching Bruce smile, watching Natasha’s fingers wind discreetly around his. He knows this doesn’t change anything, that Bruce is equally as incapable of loving him today as he was yesterday, and that Steve is the center of Tony’s universe and Tony would never, ever trade that — but his breath catches as wave after wave of sharp, vicious longing batter him.
He manages not to stagger as he backs slowly toward an abandoned armchair and drops into it.
It’s around then that he realizes that Steve hasn’t lost track of him in the commotion. Because Tony is the center of Steve’s universe.
Steve is looking right at him, with a soft, questioning smile.
Gravity crushes Tony’s lungs.
Steve knows.
“So. Bruce,” Steve says, as they enter their bedroom that night. His voice is light, cautious. “Can I ask?”
RED ALERT, DEFLECTOR SHIELDS AT MAXIMUM! “He is looking an especially pleasant shade of not-green today, isn’t he? I knew I wasn’t the only one who noticed; I should ask Jarvis what his skin care routine has been lately—”
“Tony.”
“—it’s really working for him, he should tell me what it is, I deserve to know, he lives in my house after all—”
"Tony." Steve has planted his feet and rolled back his shoulders, not buying any of this for a second.
DEFLECTORS DOWN; FIRE AT WILL! “What?” Tony bursts out. “What, Steve? Can you ask? Can you ask what, if I’m sleeping with Bruce? Think I’m stepping out on you, Rogers? Huh? That what you’re asking?”
The words spray like bullets, and Tony’s blood turns to ice in horror at his stupid, stupid impulses. But Steve doesn’t even flinch.
“No, I know you’re not having an affair with Bruce,” he says, mildly.
“How can you possibly know that?” Shut UP, Stark!
Steve takes a small step closer, and starts counting off on his fingers. “Well, number one: because I trust you.” He gives Tony the smallest of smiles, and Tony’s heart stutters helplessly in his chest. “Number two: because there’s clearly something happening with Bruce and Nat and there’s no way Bruce has bandwidth for that AND an affair with you. Number three: I don’t think you’d look at Bruce like he’s your dying wish if you already had him.”
Tony flinches. Whirls around to face anything but Steve. He can’t look at Steve.
From behind him, he feels a gentle hand settle tentatively on his shoulder. “Number four: did I mention that I trust you?”
Tony’s eyes fall shut. “Goddamn it, Steve.”
The hand glides from his shoulder to his bicep, but before Tony can even register the loss of warmth, Steve’s chin slides over his shoulder in its place. Tony reflexively relaxes into him, eyes still closed, his back melting into Steve’s chest as Steve’s other arm winds around Tony’s waist, enveloping him.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve’s voice murmurs in his ear.
God, of course Steve would say that. Steve can take in new information like this and just adapt, the way he always has — to his rebuilt body, to his new time, to the fall of SHIELD, to Tony’s idiosyncratic habits and defenses. Steve is a nebula, clouds continually re-forming; Tony is an asteroid, careening, unyielding, inflexible. He can’t keep repaying Steve’s endless patience and generosity with nothing.
“You deserve to know,” Tony mutters.
“Do I?”
“Don’t make me say ‘duh,’ Rogers.”
Steve’s chuckle vibrates down his spine. Tony still can’t open his eyes, but he forces himself to speak. “Listen, Cap,” he mumbles, defaulting to the title-nickname he always uses when he needs Steve to remember that Tony needs his help, needs more Captain America in this moment. “I’m definitely going to say at least ten wrong things before I get anywhere close to saying what I mean, so can you bear with me here?”
Steve just hums his acquiescence.
Tony’s mind is racing, overwhelmed. He needs Steve to understand, but how does he even start— “I’m not in love with Bruce!” he blurts out.
But wait, no, that feels wrong, somehow. He owes Steve honesty, complete honesty, he can’t just— “I mean, I don’t think I’m in love with him. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know. I—it’s not—I never figured it out, okay? What I feel. What it is. I stopped trying to and I never—I don’t know. But I don’t care. Because it doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.”
“Kinda feels like it matters to you right now,” Steve points out, voice still somehow light.
“It doesn’t, ” Tony hisses, eyes popping open. He breaks free of Steve’s embrace, finally turns to face him.
Steve’s face is still so open, so receptive, gaze steady and uncritical. He’s goddamn beautiful and Tony doesn’t deserve him.
“The only thing about it that matters is that it’s fucking us up,” Tony says, voice quavering.
He swallows, trying to bring his voice back to full strength. “How I feel about Bruce doesn’t matter, Steve. I mean it. It doesn’t, because A) Bruce is a terrible fit for me, and B) because you—”
Tony breaks off with a choked noise as his voice abruptly dies.
Tony doesn’t have words for what Steve is.
As the silence stretches, Steve’s head begins to tilt quizzically, and a glimmer of uncertainty appears in his eyes. “Tony—”
“Because I am so, so, so, so in love with you,” Tony whispers.
The glimmer melts behind Steve’s smile. “You’re saying you didn’t settle for me?”
“God, no.” He knows that’s what everyone would think, lives in fear that it’s what Steve would think. “I’m just selfish, Steve. That’s all it is.”
The uncertainty flickers back onto Steve’s face. “Because Bruce can give you things that I can’t.”
Tony wants to scream. Because Steve is not wrong, but he just doesn’t get it, and every second he doesn’t get it, he’s hurting, and it’s all Tony’s mess and Tony’s fault.
“Steve.” Tony cups that perfect face in his hands, firm and unrelenting. “Work with me here. Can you imagine what I’d be like with Bruce? I’d be begging for every scrap of attention. I’d be doing backflips and cartwheels just to get him to notice me. And forget about sex; does the man even have a libido? Come on. And maybe it’s conditioning and intimacy issues and not some inherent asexuality or aromanticism, but at this point it’s irrelevant.” Tony’s left hand slides from Steve’s face, gliding lower to press down, hard, in the center of his chest, right where the star rests when Steve is in uniform. “If I were with Bruce, I would feel so fucking inadequate, and I’d make him miserable, and I’d be pining for you every damn day.”
Steve turns his head and kisses the hand Tony has left cradling his face.
Tony breathes.
“So you’re saying you’re incompatible,” Steve says quietly. “That you’d need him to be someone he’s not.”
“Yeah, and I’ve been on the other end of that with Pepper, and hoooo boy, let me tell you, 0 out of 10, do not recommend.” Tony tentatively dips his head, moving in closer, just enough to nestle under Steve’s chin. Steve’s hands seem to automatically leap up, threading their fingers through Tony’s hair. “And I may be an asshole, but I’m not stupid enough to put someone else through that kind of pressure cooker, now that I know better. Nat and Bruce, though, they might be compatible. Nat doesn’t need the things I need.”
“But you and me,” Steve prods. “We’re compatible?”
Tony pulls back to stare incredulously into Steve’s face. “Steven America Rogers, you spectacularly enormous moron, you are everything I could ever possibly need.”
“But not everything you want,” Steve adds softly.
Helpless rage floods Tony again, and he opens his mouth to protest—but Steve cuts him off.
“It’s okay,” he says, fingers still stroking Tony’s hair. “You’re not everything I want either.”
Tony’s mind buzzes blank.
Then roars to life with a wild panic, thrashing in his chest. “Steve, no, please—”
Steve registers his misstep, eyes going wide. “No, Tony, I didn’t mean—This is not a breakup speech. God, I’m sorry, that’s not how I meant it to sound.”
“Oh, thank god.” He all but collapses against Steve again, resolving to just stay there until Steve forcibly moves him. It’s a good spot for the winter, probably. “I’m not ready to let you go, old man,” he mumbles into Steve’s chest.
Steve makes a contented sound that warms Tony down to his toes. He rubs Tony’s back in gentle circles for nearly a full minute before he speaks again.
“Ever since we got Bucky back, I — I’ve wondered.” Steve’s words are uncharacteristically hesitant. “He’s the only one who can understand so many things about me. Life then, life now, my family, the way it feels to look at the city now and know you can never go back, what it felt like to have nothing and no one…” He exhales. His hands slow on Tony’s back. “You’re amazing, Tony, but you’ve been richer than God since the day you were born. Just, for example.”
Normally, Tony knows he would have reacted very poorly to such an insinuation. But right now he’s just so warm and so relieved to be in Steve’s arms that he can’t muster up any outrage. “I didn’t know that bothered you.”
“It doesn’t, not really,” Steve replies, breath ghosting over Tony’s scalp. “It’s just something I know you and I will never feel in the same way. Like all those other things. Bucky does, though. Bucky’s lived it. He doesn’t have to try, he just knows. And that’s...appealing.”
“But?” Tony asks, because he hopes to god there’s a “but” in there somewhere.
“But I’d never stop wanting him to be who he used to be. And that’s unfair to him, because he’s not that person anymore.”
“I’m sure he’d still love you, though,” Tony can’t help saying, because Steve sounds so sad and wistful, and he shouldn’t, he doesn’t have to, because Bucky’s love is unquestionable, what with the way Steve was able to break through the Hydra conditioning. “I’m sure you could work something out, if—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Steve overrides him.
“How can it not—”
“Because I am so, so, so in love with you.”
Oh.
The tightness Tony’d barely realized was winding through every last muscle in his body suddenly releases him. Steve’s strong arms twitch, ready to catch him if he needs, but Tony doesn’t stumble. He just clutches Steve to him, drawing in oxygen in quick bursts until he has his breath back.
He looks up at Steve.
“I didn’t hear as many ‘so’s in there as I gave you. You not serious about me, Rogers?”
“Guess not,” Steve deadpans, and kisses him.
Later, when they’re tangled together in the late night starlight, and everything is starting to go hazy as Tony drifts off against the warmth of Steve’s body, Steve murmurs in his ear, “You know, I’m just saving that last ‘so.’”
“Ya?”
“Yeah.” Steve nuzzles his neck. “Gotta have something left in the tank when I ask you to marry me.”
Tony manages to open one eye. “Cuz you’re serious about me?”
“A little bit.”
“Ha. I knew it.” Tony brushes his lips sleepily across Steve’s shoulder, and aches less than he has in a long, long time.