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Fucking ouch was Tony’s first thought upon waking.
I really hate hospitals was his second, upon registering the beep beep beep of machines.
What the fuck happened was his third.
It came to him in bits and pieces. Late night at the office. Driving home in his Audi R8. Thinking about soft sheets and his comfortable as fuck mattress. An out of control driver, the blare of horns, trying to swerve out of the way. Crashing. It all got pretty hazy after that.
Tony’s train of thought is derailed by nurses coming in to check on him. Later Doctors explained that while his injuries would take some recovery time, they could’ve been much much worse.
Another close call with death. Lying there, Tony contemplated how he felt about that. What the life lesson to be taken was.
He needed to work less? Get a life that didn’t involve leaving at work at 1 AM?
He’d tried that already. It had crashed and burned spectacularly. Not something he was excited to repeat.
Tony could always go back to the playboy ways of his twenties. And his thirties. But he didn’t really want to go back to that either. Especially because it had involved more reckless endangerment than driving late at night.
It was just… a freak thing. It wasn’t deliberate. Not like his last near death experience. That one had shaken Tony to his very core. He’d taken a hard look at his life and he hadn’t liked what he’d seen.
From that situation he’d decided to take himself more seriously. Take his life more seriously. He’d started drinking less, poured more of his energy into innovation, into putting good into the world.
He’d also started sleeping around less and spending time with people he wanted to see the next day, and that, well, that hadn’t panned out so well. It was something of a raw wound, still. But Tony didn’t like to dwell on past failures.
He liked his life a lot more than he had a few years ago.
He was doing well.
So did he make any grand changes just because he’d been unlucky? Nothing really came to mind.
Except for the break-up that hadn’t been his decision in the first place. So nothing to be done there, either.
———
Steve wasn’t even in New York when he got the call. He was meeting with a gallery owner in Philadelphia. It was the kind of meeting he’d been waiting years for.
Years of making contacts and working to get his art noticed and he was finally here. Talking to someone who wanted to have a showing of his work. Not because someone gave him an in but based on his own merit.
Steve shouldn’t have even been paying any attention to his phone, but it buzzed in his pocket while he waited for the gallery owner to return, and he checked it without thinking about it.
Private number. Odd.
It would probably just bug him later if he didn’t figure out what that was about.
Steve answered.
“Is this Steven Grant Rogers?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Nurse Stevens. I’m calling on behalf of Anthony Stark, to inform you that he was in a car accident last night.”
The only reason Steve didn’t drop his phone was that he was holding onto it like a lifeline.
Tony. Hurt. His stomach twisted.
He couldn’t think, couldn’t organise his thoughts into anything useful, but he needed to know if he was okay.
“What—is he? Okay?”
“He’s stable, but has several injuries. No surgery but the recovery will take time.”
“Okay, okay.” Don’t panic. Stable. No surgery. That was good. He was okay. He’d be okay. “I—thank you for calling. I’ll be—I’m on my way.”
He must have been called because he was still Tony’s emergency contact, Steve realised when he hung up. That was… he wasn’t sure what to feel about that. He wondered if it meant anything that Tony hadn’t changed it.
Steve was glad he hadn’t. He hated the idea of Tony being hurt and not even knowing about it. Not being able to go to him. Steve avoided tabloids and gossip shows so religiously he might have just never even known about it.
Steve would’ve thought Tony would’ve changed it to Rhodey or Pepper but he hadn’t.
The door opening interrupted Steve’s search for flights on his phone, and he abruptly remembered where he was and why. It took less than half a second for Steve to decide that he didn’t care. Tony was more important. He might not even want Steve there. Definitely wouldn’t be expecting it.
Too bad. He was going.
“I am so sorry Victor,” he apologised to the owner. “I can’t stay. I just got a call from the hospital, my… my boyfriend was in an accident and I just need to—”
“Go, go, of course you should go. We can reschedule.”
Steve breathed a sigh of relief that he was so understanding and wasn’t writing him off completely. He pointedly did not think about the fact that he’d felt the need to lie about who Tony was to him, and that perhaps it made a lot less sense to run off to his ex-boyfriend’s bedside.
————
“Up for a visitor?” One of Tony’s nurses asked.
Tony nodded eagerly, pressing the button on his bed to make himself sit upright. He was going bored out of his skull without anything to entertain him. He was surprised it had taken this long for Pepper to get here, but it was early, he supposed.
The door opened, but it wasn’t Pepper.
What the fuck was he doing here?
“Tony, hi. How are you?” Steve asked with such naked relief on his face, like he hadn’t taken all of Tony’s hopes and dreams for them and shattered them into tiny little pieces.
“Sore,” he said flatly.
Steve nodded sympathetically. He sat down beside Tony’s bed, and looked like he was gearing up to say something else, but no. Tony was pretty sure he wanted no part of whatever the hell this was.
“Listen, Steve. Great of you to come.” Did that sound as sarcastic as it felt? “But you really didn’t need to come down here, you could’ve just called Pepper. Guess I forgot to check off change emergency contact in my break up routine. Won’t forget that one next time.”
Steve looked hurt, which was pretty damn unfair if you asked Tony. Steve was the one who chose to end things between them, so what gave him the right to look all distressed that Tony didn’t want him here?
“Tony.”
“What, Steve? What the hell are you doing here?”
Steve looked floored.
“Honestly, what did you expect?” Tony was hurting, and grumpy, and he didn’t need Steve here being a reminder of what he didn’t have. It was aggravating a wound that was supposed to be closing.
“I don’t know. I don’t… you got hurt. That was really the only thing I could think about. That and getting here. I got the first plane I could.”
“Wait, plane? Why? Where were you?” A strange thing to focus on, maybe. But Tony didn’t know how to deal with the rest of it. And Steve did have the distinct look of being caught out.
“I uh, it’s not important.” He wouldn’t meet Tony’s eyes, though.
“Spill,” Tony demanded. “Or leave.”
Steve met Tony’s gaze, his eyes flashing with frustration. “I was in Philly. Meeting a gallery owner. About a show.”
Tony felt his face go slack with shock. “And you just left? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You were hurt!”
“Since when do you even care about that?”
Steve’s face paled, anger draining out. “Tony—”
“Shut up. Forget I said that. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. I’m sorry I hurt you, Tony. I really am.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged, smiling insincerely. “Everyone I date gets sick of me eventually, nothing I’m not used to.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“I’m too pushy. Isn’t that what you said?”
“I said you push.”
Tony rolled his eyes at the semantics.
“No, Tony, listen. It wasn’t about you being at fault. You were entirely wonderful. It was me.”
“It’s not you, it's me. That’s what we’re going with here?”
Steve gave a chagrined smile. “I was overwhelmed by you. You’re fast, in everything you do. When you graduated college, when you first invented incredible things, you're so… ahead of the curve. And that’s incredible. But you don’t really do slow, you know? If you want it you make it happen, with intelligence, or money, or sheer determination.”
“Yeah,” Tony agreed cautiously.
“Nothing about us was slow, either. You fell fast and hard, and I can’t say I wasn’t right there with you because you swept me off my feet. But I felt like you were so serious about us right from the beginning and I didn’t know how to find my footing.”
Tony thought about that for a minute. Found it hard to deny. That was exactly what he was like. Tony had never been in love with someone before Steve and he’d just wanted everything. “Huh. I thought it was more ‘cause I tried to help you with your work. Or your friends hated me.”
Steve looked down. “I… kind of. It was another way you pushed, that you wanted something to happen immediately because you could make it happen. But I was more proud about it than I should’ve been. Wanting to help wasn’t a bad thing. I wish I’d just been clearer with you about what my boundaries were instead of…”
“Biting my head off?”
Steve winced. “Yes. That. I wanted to get there by myself and I didn’t want to be too reliant on you. And my friends don’t hate you. They were just worried about me getting caught up in your charm and crashing down hard when… you got tired of me.”
Tony barked out a harsh laugh. “Funny. Guess my friends should’ve been worried about the same thing. Instead they were just happy I was happy. Idiots.”
“Tony.” Steve said plaintively. “I’m trying to tell you that it’s not your fault I was overwhelmed. Not when I wasn’t better at telling you what I needed. There were so many things I would do differently, if I could.”
Tony’s heart felt like it was beating double time. He wondered idly if it would make the machines hooked up to him start beeping. He didn’t know what to do with this. Steve’s earnest expression. The feelings this conversation was stirring up. The fact that Tony hadn’t really dealt with any of this.
The realisation that despite what Steve said, maybe Tony could have handled things better. He’d known Steve was a little skittish, but he’d thought it was the trappings of wealth, of fame. Tony had known he was humble, down to earth. Had liked that about him. But he hadn’t realised the full extent of it. He wished Steve had told him. He also wished he just known.
So yeah. Safe to say Tony understood having regrets, wishing for a do over.
“Are you asking for one?” Tony couldn’t help but ask.
“For what?”
“A chance. To do things differently.” Steve’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth, but Tony was on a roll. “Because I’d like that chance. I can’t promise I won’t be, well, me, but I understand how I scared you off now. I can pace myself. It doesn’t have to be everything, all at once.”
Steve’s smile was blinding. “I would like that, yes. But you don’t have to be as careful as I needed you to be then.”
Tony’s brows furrowed in confusion.
“I already know that I’m in love with you. And that every day I don’t see or hear from you is pretty terrible, so. There’s that.” He shrugged helplessly.
“You—”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“It’s okay if you don’t—”
“Of course I fucking love you.” Obviously he did. “It’s a real problem.” Tony joked wryly.
Steve reached out and gently clasped Tony’s hand. “I don’t want it to be.”
“Well, not seeing you pretty much sucks. So let’s figure it out, huh.”
“Deal.”
Steve squeezed his hand. Tony squeezed back.