Chapter Text
Steve and Tony have been fighting. They work late on all the wrong nights and there are emergencies they have to cancel plans for and they don’t see much of each other at all, and when they do, they argue. They sleep with their backs to each other and one of them is always gone by morning.
They go to a marriage counselor and she asks them to play something she calls ‘the game of truth,’ where they take turns asking each other questions and they answer with complete honesty. It’s supposed to build emotional intimacy and help them reconnect. She hands them a thin stack of cards with suggested questions on them.
Tony finds it hard to look Steve in the eye when he reads off one of the suggested questions, “What’s one thing you haven’t told me about recently?”
Well, fuck it, Tony thinks.
“I kiss you when I come home late and you’re already asleep.” Tony glances at the counselor, then briefly back at Steve. “Same question for you, I guess.”
“Why do you do it when I’m asleep?”
“She said we get one question each.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Stark,” she says.
“Fine. I do it when you’re asleep because you don’t want to touch me.”
“Why would you think that?” Steve asks, his expression unreadable.
“You already got two questions,” Tony says, taking the cards from him. “My turn. Same thing for you. What’s one thing you haven’t told me about recently?”
Steve’s quiet and Tony looks up.
“I pretend to be asleep to feel you kiss me,” he says.