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The first time it happened, Tony wanted to say he understood. He had known Steve since they were, technically, kids. They’d met during his first year in Massachusetts back when he still had felt trapped in a life he didn’t want. He still wasn’t friends with Rhodey, not the brotherhood they’ve grown into now ten years later, so he had felt a little too alone. Easy enough of a target for the type of predatory assholes who’d heard of his money and his brain.
So meeting him down in Boston had never really been a part of Tony’s plan. Yet there they were, on a crisp fall afternoon, with Tony’s scarf wrapped tightly around his neck and one hand deep in his coat pocket while the other held the espresso cup tightly to his chest. Steve had been coming out of some shop, a candy one probably knowing his sweet tooth, and hadn’t had time to stop the crash. Barnes’s face, ironically, is the earliest memory Tony has of meeting the man he had fallen in love with. His widened eyes and half-shouted warnings.
Steve had been too late to stop the mess, and the cynical part of Tony’s mind thinks now
that it should have been taken as a sign, and so the cup had gotten crushed against his chest. He had been apologetic, of course, though at the time Tony had been surprised. It’s what you’re meant to do, right, apologize when you inadvertently cause discomfort to someone. Unless, of course you had lived years with Howard Stark and a parade of like minded assholes brought up to believe they were better than you.
So there they had been, Tony blinking stupidly at a flushed Steve. Barnes’s voice asking if he was all right, but being unable to answer. Steve’s fingers still wrapped around his forearm and a stuttered apology in his lips. The rest of what he remembers now had been this: the tousled blond hair, the bright red of his lips probably from some cheery sweet monstrosity, the deep blue of his eyes and the sweet cadence of his voice.
Tony had been a goner and hadn’t even known it yet.
***
Steve’s twenty when he tells him he’s leaving him for something “that had always been the plan.” Maybe that was what hurt the most since the beginning: his plans had never changed. Tony, of course, had jumped into their relationship feet first. Crashing crystal during the holidays, tearful admonishments and cold silences from his parents be damned when what he wanted was Steve .
At the time, it hadn’t really sunk it just how much that had hurt. It was fine, they were trying to figure their futures out. Steve was on scholarship at his college, trying to make a future out of a dream, and Tony had been trying to figure himself out. They didn’t see each other as much as they Tony had wanted to, but they were making it work. He understood, really, that Steve considered the tribe he’d built for himself as family. They were his priority, having lost his mother and never known his father, so he had found himself content with getting the time he could.
Even when that included missing out on some of Tony’s awards. Or meeting with Rhodey and his family for a christmas. Or having to endure Howard’s silent judgment when dinner was served and he had been sitting next to an empty space. He had understood that it was just something that happened, sometimes, when they were as busy as they were. Steve was making plans for something, something that would help his future but wouldn’t tell Tony about, and of course Barnes and Peggy and his other friends needed him. Of course they did.
So, technically, he had already been getting used to being alone. With only Steve’s dad’s compass on his bedside and his hoodies in the closet. With the late night facetime calls from Steve’s art studio and the voicemails telling him “it’s been you all along, Tony.” Still, he’s not ready for the conversation they have a week after Tony’s eighteenth birthday. It’s the first time in weeks that they’ve managed to get time together; Steve had apologized profusely for missing the day of, but Tony got it. He’d been pretty immersed in his lab and Rhodey and Carol and Jan, too.
“Signed up-- signed up for what? I don’t understand,” Tony’s hands wrap around the mug of tea he drinks because Steve likes it. Their legs had been tangled before, but Tony feels as though he has to be sitting up for this one. His brain, his goddamn big ass brain, is having a rough time right now.
“I enlisted, Tony,” Steve says softly. He’s always like that, with him, like he’s fragile. Sometimes Tony thinks it was a mistake to tell him… everything . Shouldn’t the fact that he had survived it, that there were only scars now instead of something more permanent, had made him seem stronger? Resilient? He lies to himself and tells himself that Steve is soft because that’s just how he is.
“Enlisted? When… why… when did you decide that?”
Steve blinks up at him, his brow furrowed, and God it hurts. He seems honestly confused at Tony’s shock. “It’s been decided for a while now, sweetheart. It… Tony, this was always the plan. It’s what’s paying for my schooling, remember?”
“That’s not what you said,” Tony says faintly. And it’s weird, now, how the hurt is already feeling distant. Like, sure, this sucks and Steve is going away and they’re going to see each other even less than they do now but… it also feels like Steve is right . This feels as though it was always the plan and it feels like routine.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know this isn’t ideal, but hey,” Steve’s eyes are wide and earnest and so blue . “I’ll always come back to you, huh? You know that, Tony.”
***
Steve leaves him in a mess of blankets with love bites on his neck and his thighs and a cheap ring on a chain around his neck. Tony puts on a smile for him, puts the St. Christopher from his mother around his neck and wishes him luck. He tells Barnes to take care of his lover when he picks him up and tries his fucking best.
He makes it till Rhodey walks in from his run before he breaks. Rhodey is there to hold and rock him, though he can’t take the hurt away. Rhodey is leaving, too, in less than a year. Three days after they walk that stage together, almost four years after they met, and Rhodey will be leaving in fatigues, too. He can’t take this hurt away when he’ll be adding to it soon, too.
Still, he tries. Rhodey always tries.
***
“I’m sorry, baby,” Steve’s voice cuts across a story Tony was telling about one of DUM-E’s misadventures. “I have to go. Peggy’s waiting on a call from me and you know I’ve only got so much time.”
Tony swallows the bitter taste of rejection from his tongue. Tries to ignore the familiarity of the gesture and grins at Steve. Tells him he loves him and to take care of himself. He watches as Steve pulls the medallion Tony put around his neck, kisses it, and then blows Tony a kiss, too.
He tries to will it to be enough.
***
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Steve says with a grin. He throws a smile over his shoulder, Tony can’t quite see where he is on the screen of his phone, and then looks at his boyfriend bright eyed. “Bucky wants to go to some pub the boys found. I have to go.”
“We haven’t talked in a while,” Tony says softly. Not a complaint or a recrimination, he knows better than to phrase it like that, but it’s there, all the same. He tries to tell himself it’s him standing up for himself. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too, love,” Steve’s eyes go soft. His eyes are always soft when he looks at Tony. He doesn’t know how the blond can look at him like that and hurt him all the same. He kind of wishes he could look at him with the same calculation Howard and Sunset and Rumi did; it would confuse him less. “I’ll call you this weekend, okay? Right after my call with Peggy.”
“You call Peggy on the weekends?” Tony asks, bitterness on his tongue. He’s done being jealous of Margaret. He is. But Steve only calls him during the week, maybe, and sometimes not for very long. He has other priorities, too.
“Yeah, her schedule isn’t as flexible as yours, baby. It’s the only days she has time, most weeks.” Tony wants to rebuff that; between his thesis and new projects and Howard and Obie breathing down-- it’s fine.
“Right, yeah,” Tony smiles at Steve. Tells him he loves him; waits till the blond says it back and then cuts the call.
Steve doesn’t call that weekend.
***
“Well, you know how the military is, Anthony,” Howard’s voice pretends to be concerned but Tony can hear the mocking underneath. His mother can, too, if her pitying gaze is anything to go by. They’re sitting at dinner, Rhodey’s hand tight around his under the table, and Tony tries his best to keep his expression blank.
Steve had called him after graduation to say he was sorry he couldn’t make it. He had had other things come up. He was so proud of him. Wanted him to know how happy he was for him. If it weren’t for Rhodey’s presence, there would have been an empty seat next to him again. Still, the humiliation and the pain don’t lessen by having his brother next to him.
He just wished he could have been Steve’s priority. This time.
***
“I’m sorry, babe,” Steve’s voice is distracted. He’d answered on Tony’s third try. He had been so excited to tell the soldier about his new project. How finally, finally , Howard had given up his reluctant go ahead to start R&D on clean energy solutions. Tony’s plans are finally coming to fruition. Yet, here they are. It’s a saturday. It’s evening where Steve is which means-- “I’ve got a call with--”
“With Margaret, yes, I know,” the bitterness leaks out into his tone. It’s the first time he’s called her Margarent in the three years they’ve known each other.
“Tony?” Steve’s voice is worried now. The distance Tony had hated gone. Suddenly, Tony doesn’t want to go down this road. It’s fine. Steve is due back in a few weeks and-- it’s fine.
“Sorry, Steve,” Tony says, heart breaking. “Pepper’s just sent a message about something urgent. I have to go.” it’s a lie, of course. Tony’s sitting in his workshop with the lights dimmed and an aching heart. Still, he knows Steve has other places to be.
“Baby--”
“I really have to go,” Tony says, eyes clenched shut. He takes a breath he hopes doesn’t sound so shaky across the line. “I’ll talk to you next week.”
“I love you,” Steve says, something new in his voice.
“Bye, Steve.”
***
“I’m sorry,” Steve’s voice breaks as he whispers the words against the skin of Tony’s shoulder. He had shown up weeks ahead of schedule, fresh and wide eyed from the airport. Tony’s favorite coffee on one hand and take out on the other. After their last conversation, the one where something had been in Steve’s voice when Tony had begged off the call, Steve had been… different. Somehow.
Tony wants to believe it’ll last. He showed up early; begged his CO to let him take his leave earlier than expected. Left without Barnes, even. Tony wants, desperately, for this to be the last time he feels this disconnected from him.
“It’s all right,” he says and means it. He takes Steve’s hand, wraps their fingers around the chain on his neck, and kisses his knuckles. “We’ll be okay.”
“I love you so fucking much, Tony,” the words sound desperate. Tony says the same back.
***
On Tony’s twenty-first birthday he resigns himself to being alone. Rhodey and Carol were away on deployment like Steve. His parents are on some island to have some “connection” time. Jan is in France for some designer thing. Tony’s new friends Bruce Banner (!!!!) and astrophysicist Thor Odinson said they had plans and Tony couldn’t help but wiggle his eyebrows suggestively though his heart deflated. Even Pepper had other things to do.
So when he walks into the penthouse at seven, early for him but his heart wasn’t in it, he had resigned himself to a night of takeout and rom coms. At least he could pretend to cry about the movie’s misfortunes instead of the sad state of his life. So he can be forgiven for screaming when a fucking kazoo blasts across the silent apartment and suddenly a group of people are laughing and chanting happy birthday.
Pepper’s the first one to pounce on him for a hug. He cries into her shoulder as silently as he can but knows he can’t fool her. God, he can’t believe they’re all here. He pulls his head up, looks around the room hopefully, but no towering blond is there to greet him.
“I’m sorry, Tony,” Pepper says with a rueful smile. “He couldn’t make it. Something to do with his best friend?” Her tone implies that he should know about this. She’s still fresh enough that Steve’s absences haven’t colored her perception of him. From the corner of his eye he sees the severe frown on Rhodey’s face and Carol’s pointed taking out of her phone.
“Yeah, of course,” Tony says too brightly. “Something with Barnes.”
It’s always fucking Barnes, he thinks viciously as Rhodey wraps an arm around his shoulders and kisses his temple.
This will be the first time he thinks so. It will not, however, be the last. Three days later, when Steve calls him with his throat clogged with tears and something about Barnes being injured, Tony knows it to be the shift he never wanted to face.
***
Steve gets leave, by trading off time during Christmas he had promised Tony, in order to fly home with Barnes. Even though he’s back in Brooklyn, and Tony has been in Manhattan since graduation, they see each other a total of three times. One of those is for Barnes’s fitting of the prosthetic Tony offered to build him. They talk to each other on the phone even less than they had when Steve was overseas.
The last time they see each other then, Tony takes the plunge. It’s three a.m. and Steve is scheduled to ship out at six. They’re still wrapped up around each other tightly, skin sticky with sweat, and Steve’s fingers are playing with his hair. Tony mouths at his collarbone, stomach tight with nerves, and grips tightly to his back.
“Hey,” Steve’s quiet concern brings tears to his eyes. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
“Stay,” Tony begs quietly. It’s killing me. Please, just this once, he doesn’t say. “It’s-- I need you here, now.” He knows Steve knows him well enough to hear the quiet accusation in those words.
“I can’t, sweetheart,” Steve’s voice is now thick with tears, too. Tony doesn’t know if he can feel the gap ripping through them the way the engineer can. “I would if I could, my love. It’s-- it’s almost over, yeah? I’m almost done; I promise you. I promise you.” He grips at Tony tightly, kisses him desperately, but…
It’s not enough.
It hasn’t been enough in a long time.
***
“Tony… God, i’m so sorry, my love--” delete
“Tony, please answer me. I--” delete
“Rhodey told me to go fuck myself. I don’t-- no, that’s a lie. I know exactly why. God, please answer. Tony, please, please--” delete
“I love you… God… It’s always gonna be you, sweetheart. It’s--” delete
“They won’t let me… I tried. God, please, believe me when I say I tried. I wish I could be there with you. I wish i could have been--” delete
Howard and Maria Stark had been run off the road on their way to their yearly winter sojourn three days ago. On December 16th. Tony is twenty one, abandoned by his lover and now an orphan. Rhodey had shown up thirteen hours after Tony had called him, dead voice telling him his parents were dead, to hold whatever pieces of the boy he called his brother together. Carol had come six hours after. Jan the next day. Pepper and the Jarvises had been there from the start.
Steve had traded his leave to help Barnes. The military hadn’t let him leave, not so soon and not after he’d used his time. He is not married to the love of his life. It’s not his fault, not really, and he knows that part of Tony knows that. Because that’s just the type of man the boy he fell in love with is.
Steve knows, if the ice cold feeling that creeps up his fingers as he picks up the phone to try again is anything to go by, that there is something different this time.
***
Steve is staying at Buck’y apartment now. It’s his last leave before his contract is over, and he’s excited. He’s going to surprise Tony with a visit. He’s just gotta drop his shit at the apartment to put his plan in motion. It’s been four months since the Stark’s passing and things have been… very different. They’re conversations are so stilted. Tony’s voice is different, and even when they can’t call there’s not a day that goes by when he’s not in Steve’s notifications. Not because he’s reaching out, but because the tabloids have gotten a hold of him again. He’s either brawling on some bar or “making a scene” at some function.
When Steve asks, Tony waves him off. Begs off the call with some excuse. There’s been a couple times when he’s just straight up hung up on him. Steve can’t even be upset, not when he can see the look in Tony’s eyes he’s trying so hard to hide. And he’s not there . He’s not there to wrap Tony in his arms and try to soothe the hurt. He can’t do anything but watch his lover fall apart across a fucking ocean.
So he’s on his way out the door again, Bucky ribbing him about using protection, when there’s a knock on the door. Bucky goes to answer while Steve looks over the supplies he needs for his plan. He’s too distracted to pay attention to the conversation in the other room. Doesn’t hear the footsteps. Or the worry in Bucky’s voice.
“Steve,” it’s Tony’s voice so he looks up. Has a brief moment to worry about spoiling the surprise, but he doesn’t have time before Tony hands him the box in his hands.
“Baby, hey,” Steve’s still rooted on the spot. His eyes take in the sharp line of Tony’s suit and the tinted glasses. His face is pale and his lips chapped; his hair’s got the wild look he gets when he’s been stressing over something. “How’d you--”
“Sam told me,” Tony’s voice is hard. Steve has never heard that directed at him. Bucky swears somewhere behind them and leaves the room. Steve’s fingertips are ice cold. “Asked if I was coming to Barnes’s for drinks. Seemed real confused when I asked what the hell he was talking about.”
“Sweethe--”
“Stop calling me that,” this Tony is different. His Tony would have yelled at him if he were upset. Would have been wild and passionate and fiery. This Tony is detached and cold and it scares the hell out of Steve. “I just came to give you that,” he nods at the box. Steve’s shaking hand opens the flap on the box and he feels bile climb up his throat. The chain with his ring is sitting atop stuff he knows is his and Tony has toted around every time he moved.
“No,” it’s a whimper or a last plea. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that it suddenly feels like everything is breaking around him.
“I’m done,” Tony says softly, hands deep in his pockets. Steve figures they’re shaking; Tony has always hidden when he’s been feeling vulnerable. From people who might hurt him. It just had never been him. “I’ve been… I’ve been waiting for you to put me at the top of your list. To stop-- I always knew Barnes and Carter,” Steve flinches at the venom in his voice. “Were first. I knew that. I was okay with that but… I can’t do this anymore, Steve. I need someone to love me,” Steve hates himself for the raw, agonized way Tony says that. “When I asked you to stay,” Tony sniffs. Steve hates himself for the empty way he looks at him now. “I promised myself it was the last time I would let you treat me like this. Like i’m an afterthought.”
“Baby, you have never--”
“Shut up!” Tony screams, this time. He’s swaying on the spot; he’s trying so hard to hold himself together. “I have been breaking in front of you, Steve. I made concessions, God knows it’s hard for me, but I did. God help me, I was so in love with you,” Steve’s knees just about give out at the past tense. “But I can’t keep this up. I thought having you apologize would be enough because I know you meant it,” his mouth twists into a bitter smile. “But it’s not and I guess that makes me selfish but I--”
“You’re not selfish, sweetheart,” Steve whispers. “I--”
“Tony,” that’s Carol’s voice. She’s staring at Steve like it’s taking all her self control not to kick him in the dick. Steve would let her if it made the agony in his heart stop.
“I have to go,” Tony says to the floor now. Steve begs him to stay, but Carol shoots him a murderous look and takes a hold of Tony’s hand. Steve would be glad she’s held him together if his world wasn’t splintering like this.
And just like that, in the blink of an eye, Tony and Carol are gone. Steve’s hands wrap around that ring. His knees buckle, Bucky’s tear filled eyes are right in front of him, hands pulling him up… but he’s gone. He’s gone, gone, gone.