Work Text:
He knows it's right here. Right down the street. All he'd have to do is take the elevator down, leave the building, walk a few yards, pop the door open, sit at the bar, and eat his chip like it's a fake chocolate coin.
It's been two hours. He can feel the sweat that makes his skin all clammy and sticky in his tank top.
Everything was fine. He was working, had been working for hours, probably, but Steve let him, and Pepper did too, and even Morgan didn't try to come and distract him.
Everything was fine and now it's fucking not. Now all Tony can think about is the one gorgeous kick-you-in-the-crotch and spit-on-your-neck fantastic taste of whiskey. He feels like shit. He curses himself.
But he does it all in silence, with his hands ready to rip at the fabric of his pants with how he claws at it. He watches Morgan's face as she sleeps, only illuminated by a hundred of glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling and walls.
She's the answer, she's always the answer.
Steve is sleeping, too used to his work binges to stay up too long, and even supersoldiers can't survive a whole day in meetings with Fury.
Tony smiles. He wants to cry. Or shout. He wants to sleep, but he's scared. He's always scared.
He keeps watching Morgan. Each of her small lashes cast its own shadow on her round cheek, and her hair, somehow, is still gucked behind her ears. She's hugging her War Machine themed Hugsy plushie - 'my two favorites, Daddy! Uncle Rhodey and Penguins' - and it seems to soothe her as much as seeing her tiny hand squeezing its paw soothes Tony.
He's sitting in the one chair that faces the side of her bed, the one either he or Steve occupy when the other is reading to her and she is hanging on by a thread of consciousness - otherwise she makes them both squeeze on either side of her in her tiny-people bed, bossy 5-year-old . Tony only barely catches the all-body sigh that wants out and rubs his face instead.
The glow of the small stars they took so long and out so much care into sticking to the walls makes his hands look greenish. It's working. He doesn't want to think it too loud, lest he pushes himself into another episode of craving, but it is. His hands have stopped trembling and even if his heart is still beating too fast, it's slowing down. Finally.
He can never predict when they'll happen, and that's also why he'll have to make sure Steve knows and doesn't blame himself for sleeping through this one - they've worked on that, every episode comes, seemingly out of nowhere, there are some identified triggers, but the ones that come without those are just as valid and awful, and no one should blame themselves for them when they're not anyone's fault.
Tony's only happy he managed to stave it off. Certainly helps that there isn't a drop of booze in the Tower. Certainly helps that their daughter is everything he ever needs to be both focused, and to bathe in an ocean of tenderness that is too pure, too incandescent to taint with the ember liquid that almost very much ruined his life, and Steve's, barely two years ago.
Tony considers just getting more comfortable in the armchair, pulling the blanket that's draped over the back of it to him and cover himself in its softness. But he doesn't. Because he's not that young anymore, and because Steve would probably be hurt he didn't come to bed, and because Morgan would have questions and that's simply unacceptable. So he gets up. He stays there, rooted on his feet just a moment longer to look at her, at the way her ribcage expands with every deep breath she takes in sleep, then only does he turn back, and leaves the room as silently as he can.
One stop in the hallway, to open that one drawer that looks at him in pride every day, and Tony keeps walking to their bedroom, to his husband, in their bed.
Tony sheds his pants after two steps in. Steve is sleeping soundly too, his face smashed into his pillow and his lips parted around continued little snores - what a gorgeous dork.
It's with a smile on his face and the exhaustion of both hours in the workshop and a good two hours of binding his every instinct to go get himself a drink that Tony finally rests his head on his pillow, on his side facing Steve, and with his 2-years sobriety chip clutched in the hand that's only peeking below his pillow.
He managed. He really did.