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There is a calm, after. There’s so much to do, but they let themselves be, let things fall into place. Steve returns the stones. He puts each one back in place with a gentle prayer for the different versions of his friends in these different timelines, hoping they manage to have an easier time with it.
He dances with Peggy, he presses his forehead to hers and thanks her. Then, he returns home to his apartment in Brooklyn. He takes a moment to wryly appreciate that it still stands, a delipidated stamp in the passing of time. He lets himself stand in the entrance and lets his shoulders slump where there is no one else left to see them. He trembles, and then exhales ninety years of exhaustion and takes another step forward.
Sam calls him a week later to ask him if he’s sure. Steve tells him there are very few things he’s ever been as certain of as this. Sam breathes new life into an old moniker. It lets one of the million loose pieces of Steve’s crushed soul fall back into place. Trouble brews, it always will, but they let themselves take a moment to let things settle.
Steve turns in his resignation, he doesn’t know if the bureaucracy is just a symbol at this point, but the sense of permanency makes him feel a little less hollow. He thinks some people were never meant to belong, and thinks about the life Tony told him to try out. He gets breakfast with Bucky after mass on Sunday mornings.
Bucky holds a notebook in his hands, cradles it delicately, his broad shoulders are hunched around it. “I don’t know if it will ever be enough.” He says.
False platitudes have no place between them, so Steve just pushes Bucky’s plate closer to his friend, and he stays until the vulnerability around Bucky’s shoulders softens into something that feels a little less tenacious.
Bucky shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been talking to Natasha. Sam suggested it, he said that it might help.”
Nat had thrown herself right back into it with Sam after Dr. Strange and Wanda had managed to figure out how to get her back from the Soul stone. She had held the broken pieces of the team together, and now it felt right to watch her help lead a new generation.
“Did it help?” Steve asks.
Bucky gives the little black notebook in his hands one last look before tucking it into the front pocket of jeans. “Yeah,” he says, and there’s enough Brooklyn in his tone that tells Steve there’s more to it.
He has a lot of time on his hands and nowhere to spend it. He takes up an art class. He tries his best to build a new life, and tries to mend himself too. A painting turns into two, into three. He doesn’t look too closely at himself, at his fractured soul, at the flecks of red and gold staining his callouses.
He takes walks to the nearby dog park and pushes down any feelings that could change this calm that’s settling. He can’t help himself when he searches the sky, when the fatigue feels more than bone deep, when all he wants is a glimpse of something that will make him feel like he isn’t tethered to the world by a frayed piece of string.
He knows Tony has retired too, that he’s with his family. Somewhere that is warm, comfortable and safe, somewhere Steve wishes-
Rhodes comes by and asks him about the young Avengers. It’s a fledgling team with a bunch of teenagers and young adults. It’s a shock to see him. Steve is hesitant. Rhodes stands in his kitchen, in full regalia and the exo-suit Tony designed for him. He looks Steve in the eye and tells him, “We have to help them, and I have it on good authority that you’re the best man for the job.”
Steve’s mouth twists. “I’ve retired.” He says, and it sounds empty even to himself.
Rhodes must hear it too. “Men like us, Captain, we’d always return.” He taps on the braces around his thigh. “Don’t you want to be able to choose how it happens?” He asks, both wry and understanding.
He meets the kids at the Avengers compound. They’re waiting for him, lined up like ducklings in one of the training rooms. It’s obvious that no one bothered to let them know who would be handling their training. Peter is the first to recover. He slides right up to Steve, “Mr. Captain Rogers, sir! It’s an honor to meet you, again.”
Steve’s mouth quirks, “We fought a war together kid. Call me Steve.”
Peter’s eyes widen, and the anxiety that had been buzzing around him softens. The kid had been worried about meeting him again. He was still so young, and reminded Steve so much of himself.
His eyes shift to the others.
“I’m Kamala Khan,” one of them pipes up. “I once beat a kid dressed up as you at comic con. I was Captain Marvel! Um, on who had the better costume I mean, I didn’t actually beat anyone up, even though I could now. If I wanted to, but I wouldn’t.” Her eyes dart to the young woman next to her who rolls her eyes, steps ahead and sticks her hand out to Steve, “I’m Riri Williams, IronHeart.”
The name makes something catch in his throat. Steve shakes her hand, and she grins at him with confidence. He likes them. There’s a spark to them that reminds Steve of himself with the potential to be so much more. It’s easy to fall into this new routine, it only takes him a few training sessions to adjust. These kids are brilliant, young, intelligent, capable, and they work well together.
Kamala stands beside him as they watch Peter and Riri attempt to execute a fall and catch. “Um,” she begins, “this might be a little weird and you can say no, I really won’t mind, but my mom invited you over for dinner. You don’t have to come, I’ll tell her you're busy.”
She’s resolutely not looking at him, and that’s enough to let him know this is important. “I look forward to it.” He tells her. She looks at him with round eyes, “really? like really, really? My parents are just worried, but if you tell them I’m okay, they might worry a little less?”
Steve smiles at her, feeling unbearably fond. “I’ll make sure to be early. You’ll have to give me tips on how to make a good impression.”
“All you need Steve,” she solemnly tells him, “is that smile of yours. It makes us feel like everything will be okay.”
They watch Peter and Riri train in companionable silence. There’s so much each of these kids is carrying on their young shoulders. Steve resolves to do everything in his power to make it as much easier on them as he is capable.
Steve lets himself settle then. He continues to paint, the same face, the same metallic plains, the same scarred body. He trains the kids, has breakfast on Sundays with Bucky, who is sometimes accompanied by Sam or Nat.
And then Tony stops by the compound one day, and the calm Steve has built collapses. He looks good, in a brown leather jacket with Morgan on his hip. Morgan waves delightedly at Peter and wriggles out of Tony’s hold to run over. Peter swings down from the ceiling to gather her up in his arms, which makes her giggle.
“Hey,” Tony says. Steve’s heart thunders in his chest, his hands twitch by his side and he folds them under his chest to keep them from doing something stupid. They just look at each other for a moment. Tony registers the signs of age around Steve’s eyes, the glimpses of silver in the pale blonde of Steve’s hair. Steve takes in the pinked scar curving around Tony’s eye and jaw, and his prosthetic arm.
Steve feels like he’s a second away from breaking apart after months of clinging onto the pieces of himself. “Hey,” he replies, instead of all the other things he wants to say.
Tony tucks a smile under his chin and nods towards the kids, “They're giving you hell, Cap?” Riri and Kamala are in the middle of a simulation, but their attention has been captured by their visitors, and they keep shooting them increasingly curious looks.
“Not as much as you did.” Steve teases, it’s easy to fall into old habits. With Tony, Steve never felt the need to be polite or anything less than exactly who he is. It makes him burn with need, and he tries his best to fix his expression and snuff the vast and overwhelming nature of his feelings into something he can wrangle.
He fails, so he turns around and beckons Kamala and Riri over to make introductions. Tony is just a step behind him, and Steve’s awareness hones towards it, reaching, even when he knows he shouldn’t.
Tony instantly gets along with the kids. He falls into a conversation with them that sounds like it had no beginning and just started somewhere in the middle. Riri, who is usually a little more reserved, discusses her designs with an animation Steve hasn’t seen in her before. Kamala pipes up with encouragement when her eyes dip bashfully and Tony looks enamored by the both of them.
Fatherhood has flourished a part of him, and somehow, Steve finds himself falling further. Tony’s eyes flick up to meet his own, and he shoots Steve a smile that is so beautiful it pierces through Steve’s heart. Tony stays for the rest of the training session, and the rightness of it curtains Steve in an embrace he never wants to step out of.
Steve goes out for a run that night, looks up at the sky and thinks, shamefully, I still want to belong.
With him.
He doesn’t sleep after he gets back home, instead, he paints. He doesn’t bother with brushes, with the tips of his fingers he traces the twisted knots of Tony’s scars, the honey brown of Tony’s hair with glimpses of silver, and the warm comfort of his wrinkles. He presses his palm against the wet paint and wills what he has to be enough. He is so tired, he wants to go home.
Tony comes by a little more often, the kids are delighted when he does. He leans against Steve’s side sometimes, the way he used to when they watched their team train at the tower. His advice fits in seamlessly with Steve’s, telling Riri, he trusts you to catch him, believe in that if it’s difficult to trust yourself.
Without warning, he loosens his body, softening the lines of it until he no longer bears his own weight. Steve can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed by how his own body immediately shifts to accommodate Tony’s weight, the shape of his body molding like it was made for this, to hold everything that Tony is in his arms, and to belong. Like that, Tony tells Riri and Peter, you have to trust each other .
Steve has to close his eyes because he knows they would show too much.
When he’s left the training room he catches Kamala whispering to Peter, “They’re worse than you said they’d be.”
“ I know .” Peter groans.
Tony invites Steve over. He rides over to Tony’s farmhouse on his bike. It reminds him of making this trip the first time he came here, when they had lost everything. He wonders if he had been this obvious then as well, carrying his heart on his sleeve.
Morgan comes tumbling out of the house, and Tony waits on the porch in a cardigan and sweatpants. Steve gets on one knee to give Morgan the hug she wants, not caring that the grass will stain his best pair of slacks. “Steve,” she says with joy. He’s met her a few times now, but it still surprises him how much she’s opened up to him. “Let’s go play!”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” He agrees, endlessly charmed. He picks her up and walks them over to Tony who comes forward to meet them halfway.
“Hey Steve,” Tony breathes, and it feels so lovely to hear his name spoken like that. Affectionate, well loved, holding Morgan in his arms, it makes Steve feel like he could belong to them. He stands there, arrested by his own emotions. Tony laughs, and then steps forward and wraps his arms around Steve.
Steve presses his lips together worried that the kisses they hold, waiting to be pressed onto Tony’s skin, will find a way to escape.
These visits become a new part of his routine. Sometimes Pepper is there too, dropping Morgan off for her days with Tony. Steve takes a cup of tea with her in the kitchen. It’s nice.
“We don’t regret our time together,” she tells him, “not when it gave us Morgan.”
Steve understands. He used to feel a vicious jealousy towards their relationship, that she got to have a child with Tony. But each time he carries Morgan to bed after a day of playing catch, those feelings simmer, feeding his growing love for this child instead.
Tony watches them, with dark eyes that feel a little possessive. When he has to leave, he drags it out, letting the sun dip under the horizon, so Tony can look outside and say, “It’s late, maybe you should crash here for the night.”
There’s nothing out there that could hurt Steve on his journey home, but he responds, “Yeah, it’s late.” What he wants to say is, please, let me stay forever. Those nights become his favorite, because they sit on the couch by the fireplace, Tony lays a thick blanket over them, and they talk.
Tony tells Steve about his recovery. He lets Steve watch the way the light from the fireplace dances over his scars and reflects off of his grayed iris. Steve tells Tony about his fears, the serum has overcome a lot, but it cannot overcome his age. He has retired now, but he knows that the kids are too young, and if needed he would run into the battlefield again, but as the years weaken him, there will be less he can do.
Tony listens to him with an open, sincere expression, tilting his head towards Steve’s. He gives Steve a cheeky-soft grin, “You could get a tattoo, I hear that’s a solid midlife-crises activity.” His teasing is gentle, and Steve sinks into the familiarity of it. Tony reaches out and cups his cheek, “It’ll be okay Steve,” he tells him, pressing his thumb to the corner of Steve’s eyes where the skin folds into crow’s feet, “whatever happens, you won’t be alone.”
And the thing is, Steve believes him. Steve has always believed him, it’s what brought him here when the world had lost and brings him here again in the aftermath of winning. He falls asleep like that, pressed against Tony’s hand, touch starved and too far gone to hide it.
He knows Tony said it offhandedly, to comfort Steve with his ridiculous teasing, but the idea haunts him. He sends Bruce an email. He knows regular needles won’t work, but if it’s something that can pierce the hulk, then maybe it’ll do the job for him too. Bruce doesn’t take as much convincing as Steve thought he might.
“Steve,” he says, as demurely as he always has, “if I can do anything to help you, I always will. You know this.” He grins a little, his curls bouncing as he tilts his head. “I’m also hoping this is the step that makes the two of you finally get your act together, and I don’t have to listen to Tony’s drunken whining during what is supposed to be Science-time. I like science-time.”
Steve flushes down to his chest, he’s too old to get flustered this easily, but the hope that flares in his chest is sharp. They both know what he wants well, and it makes designing the tattoo easy. Bruce goodnaturedly grumbles about them always making him work outside his actual job description.
“You mean you’re not a real tattooist?” Steve asks him, all wide eyed incredulity.
“You mean you’re not in love with Tony?” Bruce replies, just as wide eyed.
Steve flushes again, and Bruce is exceedingly cheerful about one-upping him.
Steve doesn’t try to hide it. But he doesn’t show it off either, just keeps it tucked against his chest as something that’s his . It’s there when Tony runs his eyes along Steve’s body as he walks from his bike to Tony’s porch during his weekly visits. It’s there when they’re training the kids and Tony has to brace himself against Steve with a hand on his chest to show the kids a move.
Steve rides on the high it brings him, and it’s nearly enough. It’s more than he had months ago. The red and gold paint starts to mix with white and blue. He wraps himself around Tony on canvas, lets them seep into each other here in his Brooklyn apartment, where no one else can see it.
And then Riri accidentally blasts him with a repulsor shot right in the chest during training. He hears Tony shout, rushing to Steve’s side. Steve groans, he presses a hand to his chest. “It’s fine, we had safety measures in place, remember.” He tells Riri, her expression is ashen, but she nods shortly and looks relieved when he takes his hand away and there’s nothing more than a bit of reddened skin.
Steve doesn’t have time to be glad that they had made sure Riri dialed down the impact of her repulsor shots- there is a soft gasp beside him and Tony is staring at his chest. The kids are looking at him too, with wide eyes and flushed faces. Steve looks down at his own chest, and ah, the tattoo is visible now that half his shirt is in tatters.
“Steve,” Tony whispers, trembling fingers reaching for the ink drawn permanently onto Steve’s skin. “That’s-“ Tony can’t continue, he just stares in shock at the arc reactor sketched right on top of Steve’s own heart. The same one Tony had shoved into Steve’s hand after he returned from being lost in space.
Steve swallows, and the bob of his throat seems to break Tony out of his reverie. “Kids,” Tony says, not taking his eyes off of Steve, “could you give us a moment please.”
Riri grabs Kamala and Peter and starts to drag them out of the room with her immediately. “No wait, I have to watch them get together. It’s been years .” Peter whines, but Riri pays him no mind and soon it’s just Steve and Tony in the middle of a simulation room.
Tony breathes in deeply. “Why?” he asks, something tentative in the way he holds himself, like his hope is too much for him to bear just as Steve’s has been.
Steve takes Tony’s hand in his, and presses his mouth to the back of Tony’s metal palm. “When we were young, while we are old, when facing death, or a second chance at life, I have never wanted anything more than to be by your side.”
Tony inhales sharply, and then he is climbing into Steve’s lap, his fingers tangling with Steve’s, “I love you,” he breathes into Steve’s mouth. “I love you.” He presses against Steve’s lashes. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” He feverishly imprints it onto every inch of Steve’s being, and Steve’s eyes fall closed as he lets go of all the parts of himself he has been holding onto and lets them slot into place against Tony.
He feels the wetness against his cheeks and Tony presses kisses against his tears too. Steve has never wanted anything more than to be owned by Tony. The breadth of his want overwhelms him as he clings onto Tony. Tony holds him and lets Steve hyperventilate against his chest as he breaks down, because this is where he belongs.
Tony’s embrace is grounding, and Steve knows that now that he has had it, nothing in the world could tear him away from this. It doesn’t calm his desires, instead they grow, and Tony just pulls him in closer accepting it all, his goodness and his weakness have always had a home here.
“Come home with me,” Steve asks him, when he’s managed to find the words he’s always wanted to say to Tony, to be so audacious to not just want to belong but to want to own as well.
Tony runs his fingers through Steve’s hair and presses his forehead against Steve’s. “Yeah, yeah I’ll go home with you, Steve.” He says.
Later, Tony will spend a long time looking at all the paintings Steve has made of him. Of them. He will stand in front of the one of them embracing and trace the same paths Steve’s fingers had taken and submerge in its meaning.
To belong, and be belonged to.