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Steve’s room is the same.
He doesn’t know what, exactly, he had expected. He knows that Tony wouldn’t have given it to one of the new team members—even at his pettiest, Tony wouldn’t be so cruel as to give away their home—but he’d thought that maybe Tony would have had them cleaned? Put their stuff away in storage? Locked them up for an appropriate grieving period before giving them away once the team got to be so large they needed more space?
Whatever it is, he hadn’t expected to walk into his old room and find that, other than the thick coating of dust, everything is exactly the same right down to the open sketchbook he’d been working in when FRIDAY had told him that Wanda needed someone to talk to. He already knows what he’ll find if he looks at his last sketch but he walks over there anyway and picks it up, staring at the graphite drawing of Tony on one of the rare nights he’d visited the Compound. He’d curled up in one of the armchairs and fallen asleep only a few minutes into Anastasia, exhausted, as Rhodey had told them, from a long few weeks of politics. Steve knows now that Rhodey must have been talking about the Accords. Back then, though, he’d just thought “politics” was a politer phrase for what Tony called his “past-their-expiration-date board members.”
“I didn’t touch them,” he hears behind him and turns to face Tony, who’s leaning up against the doorframe.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Steve says, opening his arms up for Tony to step into, which he gladly does, tilting his head up for a kiss that Steve gives him.
“I didn’t touch anything in here,” Tony continues. “Or any of your rooms. Guess I just kept thinking you’d all be coming home any minute now. Like you were just on a mission or something.” He grimaces. “I probably should’ve had them cleaned before you got back. Didn’t think about it with—”
“Tony,” Steve says, kissing him again. “It’s fine. It’s perfect, even.”
“Well, not perfect,” Tony argues. “I wouldn’t want to sleep in that bed without getting the sheets washed.”
“So maybe we could just bunk up,” Steve says slowly, willing Tony to get it.
“Like Nat and Ororo,” Tony agrees. “Yeah, I can see this. Sam can share with Scott and—oh, I see what you did there.” He winks. “Very sneaky of you, Captain Rogers.”
Steve says amiably, “That’s me: the sneakiest.”
“Anyway, I didn’t come in here to reassure you that I didn’t touch your Pokémon cards. I wanted to tell you that Ororo’s organizing a team night.”
“Yeah?” Steve used to love team nights. He’d had regular team nights with the original team back when they all lived in the tower. One of them would cook, someone else (usually Steve) would drag Tony out of his lab, and they’d spend an evening relaxing together until eventually Tony, forced to stop after hours and occasionally days, fell asleep on Steve’s shoulder. He’d had a few with the new team as well, but it hadn’t been the same, and that had slowly trailed off until he was pretty sure he could count on one hand the number of times they’d had a team night together.
“Yeah, she says it’s a good way to foster community and build teamwork between the two teams. Figured that was probably something we should take advantage of so we don’t have another civil war.”
“I hate that term,” Steve admits, wrinkling his nose. “It wasn’t a civil war; it was—”
“An airport fight in Germany?” Tony suggests.
“No, more of a—we can’t have a civil war when one side doesn’t even know why they’re fighting. It makes it sound like we wanted to fight each other. And I didn’t. I never wanted you to be my enemy, Tony.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Tony says dryly, kissing Steve’s cheek. “Pretty bad way to begin a relationship if that was what you thought about me. So, anyway, Ororo’s got this idea for a team night. She suggested a game night, but wanted someone from your team to pick the game, so Natasha suggested an extended version of Clue to accommodate all of us, and then we’re all supposed to cook dinner together because that somehow won’t be a disaster. But the problem is, I assumed it would be like any other move-in day and we’d just order pizza and beer, so there’s nothing in the fridge, and really this is just a long-winded way of asking do you want to go grocery shopping with me?”
It takes a moment for Steve to parse through what Tony is asking, but once he does, he can feel his face light up. “Seriously?” he asks, higher than he means to. He clears his throat, ignoring the shit-eating grin on Tony’s face. “You want to—you’re not just going to put in a grocery order?”
Tony shrugs. “I could, but Ororo’s got the team doing some kind of training exercise—well, she says it’s training, but I’m pretty sure it’s just laser tag on steroids—and I thought I could skip out on that by, you know. It could be our first date.”
“Oh so now none of those times we were meeting up while I was on the run count as dates?”
“We were discussing politics,” Tony spits as though it’s a dirty word, but it’s hard to understand through his laughter. “Of course they don’t count.”
“Well, sweetheart, only problem with that logic is that we’re not supposed to sleep together until the third date, so I don’t see how we’re gonna share a bed tonight if—”
“That’s sex,” Tony laughs and then goes, “Oh wait, I don’t want to wait on that either.”
Steve laughs and tugs him closer, resting his chin on the top of Tony’s head. His hair is as soft as he remembers it being from the last time he got to touch it—all the way before Ultron and things going wrong. Tony makes a happy sort of noise and tucks himself into Steve’s chest, breathing him in for a long moment.
“Alright, so grocery shopping,” Tony says eventually. “And then we’ll go check on the kids and make sure no one’s killed anyone else yet.”
“They won’t,” Steve says confidently. “We’re building things up better this time, remember? They’ll be fine.”
Tony hums. “Yeah. I think we will be.”