Work Text:
The question makes Steve’s breath catch.
Makes his heart skip a beat.
This is the first time Tony’s ever outright asked him something like this, the first time he’s ever put it out on the line so boldly.
And yet …
This, the desperation in Tony’s voice, the resignation in his eyes, the tired but determined set of his shoulders…
It all looks so familiar somehow.
Like this is a question Tony’s asked before.
Like this is a question Tony already knows the answer to.
Because, Steve realizes at that moment, both of those things are true.
Understanding washes over him like the cold of the Arctic. Like the salt-tinged ice that once held him close and steady and still for decades on end.
Because Tony really has been asking him this question for years now.
In little gestures and phrases. In suggestions and lingering looks.
In a million and one different ways this has always been the question Tony has been asking him.
And, with the exception of a missile and a one-way trip to a cold so deep it threatened to eat worlds, Steve has never actually managed to give him the correct answer.
It hurts, a sharp, aching bolt of pain, to know that Tony feels like he has to ask this now.
It hurts worse to realize that Tony feels as if he already knows the answer.
That Steve has never given him a reason to think otherwise.
Because Steve has always turned him away. With bitten-off words and sharp gestures, with secrets and avoidance.
It feels so obvious to Steve now that, in a million and one ways, he has never, when the chips were down, trusted Tony in the ways that Tony has always been asking him to.
Had never been willing to return the trust he himself had demanded, the faith and the support he’d craved and needed. Had never opened himself to all of the intimacies both big and small that Tony had been offering.
And they, the team, the family, him and Tony, they’d fractured right down the center because of it.
And in the process all of the maybe’s and could have’ s that Steve has dreamed about off and on over the years since New York had become if only’s and should have’s instead.
So now, years and hurts and missed chances too late, Steve thinks he finally understands.
Because Tony is asking Steve if he trusts him and, finally, Steve knows that there is, has always been, only one right answer.
