Chapter Text
Tony is four years old when he first learns about otters. His Aunt Peggy and Uncle Danny give him a book about marine animals on his birthday, and when he turns the page to the section all about otters, he’s immediately hooked.
After that, he spouts fact after fact to anyone around him who will hear.
Howard learns to leave the room whenever his son is on one of his binges, preferring the silence to the boy’s constant chitter-chatter. He thinks the otters are just some childhood interest that would go away quickly, but they don’t. Why on earth couldn’t Peg and Daniel give him a book about machinery, he often wonders.
Maria, on the other hand, puts on a fake smile she usually reserves for Howard’s snootier friends and hums and haws in all the right places.
But then, there’s Edwin and Ana, the two outsiders who quickly become part of the Stark family, treating Tony like their own son as they listen with rapt attention to the boy’s current interests.
“Did you know otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t float away from each other?” Tony asks with an eagerness only a child his age could ever possess, despite it already nearing his bedtime.
“I did not, young sir,” Jarvis says, indulging the boy with his current fancy as he dutifully tucks him in. It quietly pains him that Tony’s own father and mother have been too busy lately to give their child a kiss goodnight, but Edwin makes due with what he can.
He finishes and looks expectantly at his young charge. His brow furrows slightly when the boy begins to fidget with his duvet.
“Is there something wrong?” He gently prods and waits for Tony to reply.
“Can you… can you hold my hand like the otters do?” The boy asks shyly.
Edwin smiles, soft and gentle. He doesn’t question the young boy’s request. Lord knows he’s been denied so many times by his own parents. So he sits on the edge of the bed and takes Tony’s much smaller hand in his.
“Of course,” he answers with no hesitation. “Good night, young sir. Sweet dreams.”
“Night night, Jarvis,” Tony mutters sleepily, pleased that he could fall asleep without worrying about floating away.
-
Holding hands before bed becomes almost like a ritual for the young boy, and Jarvis, and in extension, Ana, are there to indulge him every evening when he asks.
-
The first year Tony is sent to boarding school, he is eleven years old and terrified. His daddy and mama say it’s a good thing for him to spend time away from home, away from all that he knows, but he doesn’t want to. Not when Jarvis and Ana and Aunt Peggy are there. Not when he has no one to hold onto in the middle of the night when he goes to sleep.
On the night before he’s supposed to leave, Ana slips into Tony’s room, where her husband is already holding his hand, to give a gift to their young change.
“Tony, my darling. I have a present for you,” Ana sing-songs in her familiar Hungarian lilt.
The boy, already so upset about leaving, doesn’t even perk up. He only sniffles and burrows deeper into the covers. “What is it?”
“Oh, kicsim . I know you’re scared about leaving, but don’t you fret.” Ana then pulls out a stuffed otter from behind her back and holds it out for Tony to take. It isn’t perfect, not like the stuffed animals that line the shelves at the toy store, but it doesn’t matter because Ana made it for him. He loves it immediately.
“That’s for me?” Tony asks, his eyes widening just slightly.
“Yes, of course. He’s yours. We won’t be there to hold your hand, but you’ll be able to hold him and think of us. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
He tucks it away in his backpack so his father doesn’t see and hides it underneath his pillows so the boys at his school don’t make fun of him. But throughout his years at the boarding school - before he’s taken out to go straight to high school then college - the stuffed otter is always there, keeping him company and keeping him from floating away.
-
Years pass, and the little stuffed otter, that was once a staple in Tony’s life, becomes an afterthought, thrown carelessly into some dark corner in a box that wouldn’t see the light of day for years.
His parents die, then Ana, then Edwin, and he falls into a whirlwind of mistakes that he believes will help him forget the pain and the overwhelming wave of grief.
His face is on every tabloid, scrutinized beyond belief by strangers he couldn’t care less about. Pictures circulate the news of the young Stark heir snorting cocaine, going on drinking binges, taking shots out of supermodels’ belly buttons, kissing strangers and sleeping with them.
It goes a little topsy-turvy and blurry after that, and when Tony’s caught kissing a man, it’s almost game over for him. The tabloids have a field day, but Tony still refuses to let anyone reel him in.
He floats (with the help of copious amounts of drugs and alcohol in his body), and he accepts it. Aunt Peggy calls and calls and calls, but he ignores his only family, his only tether to reality, and floats away.
-
He meets Rhodey, and the first time in his life, he thinks he can hold onto him. And for a moment, he does. He holds on tight, and he doesn’t float away anymore.
But Rhodey’s in the military, the Air Force. He’s a bird that can’t stay too long in the water unless he wants to drown, and so he flies, flies away, leaving Tony without a rock to stay grounded.
Then comes Pepper. He hires her as his personal assistant, and it’s her job to keep him grounded. He pays her to keep him from floating away. When Rhodey’s gone on off doing something classified for the sake of American safety, she’s there to hold him, and he grasps for her desperately in return.
He thinks he loves her.
The first time they fall into bed together, they hold hands before they fall asleep, and Tony thinks this could be forever.
But then, Afghanistan happens.
-
There’s an ugly cavern in the middle of his chest, and he holds onto Yinsen’s hand for dear life as they torture him over and over.
Even though he holds on, he’s still drowning and floating away from his very existence.
The car battery in his chest is the reason why he isn’t dead yet. In the dark, when it’s only his thoughts clouding his mind, he wishes that the shrapnel had gone quicker through his heart. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have to go through all this torture and pain.
They ask him to rebuild a bastardized version of the Jericho, but instead, he builds a suit of armor capable of blowing their entire operation to smithereens.
He escapes, but Yinsen doesn’t. And it’s a long way home from here.
There’s an ugly blue light in the middle of his chest, and he wakes up screaming most nights.
Pepper, sweet Pepper, wakes up and doesn’t mind holding him, and she offers him comfort, far more than Tony could ever deserve.
-
Tony is no stranger to death, but that doesn’t mean he’s not terrified of it.
There was Afghanistan.
Obadiah.
The palladium poisoning.
Vanko.
But flying a nuke into a wormhole probably takes the cake.
In the few moments before his consciousness gives out, Tony lets go of the bomb and simply floats in the space of nothingness. His mind drifts. He thinks of Pepper. Of Rhodey. Of the rag-tag, band of superheroes SHIELD put together to protect the world.
He thinks it’s the end, but then, he wakes, and he sees Rogers looking down at him with a smile clouded with relief.
“We won.”
-
Pepper doesn’t hold him as often anymore. She tells him it’s the stress of being CEO of his company, but he knows, he knows it goes far deeper than that. She’s afraid of him—well, not him in particular, but of the fact that he’s flying so high to reach the stars, that perhaps he’ll never come down.
Iron Man is part of him now, and she’s afraid that soon there will be no difference between Tony Stark and the titanium-alloy armor.
She doesn’t tell him that either, but he already knows even when she doesn’t have to say it. That’s why she doesn’t hold him anymore.
They slowly drift apart after that. Holding hands in quiet slumber turns into sleeping on the far sides of the bed, which then becomes sleeping in separate rooms, then on separate floors. The chasm between them grows too big for Tony to control, a riptide cutting through their interlocked fingers and pushing them to either side of a vast ocean.
They part in quiet understanding, going their separate ways in amicable silence. They don’t speak about it any longer than they have to, and Tony ends up sleeping alone.
-
Tony can’t quite make his mind up about Rogers. Or the rest of the team, for that matter.
They had met in an explosion of colorful words and spiteful jabs, throwing digs at each other because a powerful scepter and its bright mesmerizing blue stone wanted to see where it hurt the most. They had simmered down slightly since then, but he still has no idea what to think about their threadbare relationship.
Tony supposes he hates him, but he can’t say that’s true, not when the team—the Avengers, they call themselves, like some deranged boy band—move into his tower and make themselves at home, not when he’s seen all of them at their most vulnerable, in the quiet of the morning when they could barely get any sleep.
Sleep is a rare occurrence nowadays for all of them. They’ve all experienced horrors no one has ever seen, haunted by memories both new and old. Tony, alone as he is, finds that he doesn’t mind having a companion to sit with as they watch the morning sunrise peek through New York’s skyline. And soon, a revolving door of weary superheroes join him at the kitchen island to sit in silence until the sun rises. It’s not holding hands somewhere in the ocean, but it’s close.
Natasha-slash-Natalie brings her knives, sharpening them with deft precision. They never bring up their history nor do they want to.
Bruce often nurses a steaming mug of soothing, calming chamomile tea to keep the big angry guy at bay. He’s surprisingly zen for a man with monstrous anger issues.
Clint, the coffee fiend, drinks straight from the carafe, bleary-eyed and haunted. Tony buys another coffee machine for him to use after that.
Thor, when he is back on earth after delivering his brother back to his home planet, silently offers him a flask of Asgardian mead, which he politely declines.
But Rogers— Steve— is the first one who talks, breaking the silence Tony had constructed for so long. It startles him at first, to have a conversation so early in the morning, but he listens. He stays silent as Steve apologizes for the things he said back on the helicarrier, for assuming too much and saying just enough to hurt him, for not giving him a chance.
This is the difference between him and Steve. Despite all the vitriol shared between them, Steve has the guts to acknowledge his faults and accept them. While he just sits there and wallows in his own self-pity.
He doesn’t outright apologize, but days later, when it’s just the two of them in the kitchen one quiet early morning, he gifts him a compass, found somewhere deep in the National Archives. The varnish has lost its luster to time, but it doesn’t have to look so spectacular, not when Steve’s face shutters with a mixture of grief and bittersweet astonishment the moment he opens it.
He already knows what’s inside. The Captain America film reels from the forties didn’t shy away from showing it off. But he allows him this moment of silence. He’ll tell him he spent hours upon hours contacting all the sources he knows to retrieve this precious keepsake later. For now, he settles for the hug he receives from a Steve so overwhelmed with gratitude.
-
Things change after that.
The quiet mornings turn into occasional run-ins during the day. Somehow, he and Steve always bump into each other, catching the other as they go. They exchange some pleasantries, and that’s that. The only time they truly get to know each other is during those peaceful moments, sipping their coffees (Steve’s with cream and three heaping spoonfuls of sugar and Tony’s with no cream and just one) and watching the sunrise.
But then, those quiet mornings and rare sightings during the day turn into lunches at a cafe Steve comes across on one of his morning runs. One lunch becomes two, then three, then once a week, and then finally, a daily occurrence that becomes a sort of tradition between the two.
They both stay busy with board meetings (Tony) and SHIELD missions (Steve), but they still make time to see each other every day. Even if Steve’s off being Fury’s lackey, Tony will still come to their usual spot at the cafe just to keep up with tradition. He is a man of habit, after all.
Clint catches him one day around noon when he’s on his way to the cafe, an eyebrow raised and smirk on full blast.
“Going off another date with Steve?” He teases, which Tony, of course, chooses to ignore.
But that doesn’t stop him from overthinking about every single lunch he’s had with Steve. Was it a date? Were they dating? They haven’t said anything about the possibility for anything more than friendship, and if Steve wanted to say something, he was being quite mum about it. They were just two best friends going out for lunch. Nothing more.
Though, Steve doesn’t have to say a word when it actually happens. He simply reaches across the table and takes Tony’s hand. He smiles shyly, like a little schoolboy with a crush, and there’s a moment where Tony just takes it all in.
Oh .
“Is this okay?” Steve asks, his cheeks just as red as the fresh heirloom tomato in his sandwich.
“Yeah,” Tony breathes, and it’s the start of something new, something good .