Work Text:
The sky was blue.
Everyone knew that. Factually, at least. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the dirt was brown, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There were all sorts of things that people knew the color of. There were lists out there, actually, compiled carefully by those who actually saw the colors.
But the sky was blue.
Tony knew that. And not just factually the way a good portion of the population did.
He knew, because when he looked up at the sky stretching out above him, he saw the ever-changing yet always-the-same blue—sky blue, he was told to call it, but that was a denomination that felt so patently inadequate, not when the blue of dawn was so different from the blue of day, and that so different from the blue just before the sky went dark, which was so different from the blue before a storm: so many different blues, how could one just call it sky blue and expect that to mean anything?
He knew blue, because blue just so happened to be the color of his soulmate’s eyes.
Not that anyone was sure how it worked, how the color of one’s soulmates eyes made it possible to see so many different shades and hues beyond just the one exact color. But it did, the science or the magic—depending on who you asked—simply worked that way.
So Tony knew blue.
He also knew green. Knew that the grass was green, except when it was dead, when it was the same monochrome everything else was, knew the budding of leaves in spring were green, knew green in the pine trees that could be spotted in window after window in the winter.
Of course, the sky was never blue the same time the grass was green. It happened when a person’s eyes changed between blue and green.
A nifty little gift.
Tony was one of the few lucky people who could see two colors before ever meeting his soulmate. Blue and green. All because of his soulmate’s eyes.
So green existed.
But blue, blue was his favorite.
It was the sky again, that endless, always-the-same yet ever-changing blue—a contradiction that no one seemed to understand—that stretched on and on and on. He supposed the sea—with its blues and greens—was similar but…
But it wasn’t the sky.
It wasn’t freedom encompassed in one moment.
All that was to say, the sky was blue and Tony loved it.
He thought, even if he hated his soulmate—though of course he hoped he wouldn’t—when, or if, they finally met he’d still always love them at least a little. Because they’d given him the sky.
He could imagine nothing better.
“When do you think you first loved me?” Stephen asked, fingers curling around Tony’s wrist, bringing Tony’s hand to rest on Stephen’s chest. They were on Stephen’s bed—red blankets, patterned with gold, and Tony could see that now all thanks to the man he was currently cuddled closely with—relaxing together for the first time in what felt like weeks despite the fact that it was far too early to be in bed.
They were both busy men, and soulmates or not, life didn’t stop for anyone, so they took what time they could.
“What makes you think I do?” Tony asked. He winced the moment the words escaped. “Sorry, no, automatic defense there.” Love was dangerous, and even loving Stephen hadn’t fully erased those lessons. “I do love you.”
Stephen let out one of his exasperated laughs, tinged with a fondness that took out the sting it could have left behind. “I know you do. Trust me, I wouldn’t have risked asking the question if I didn’t.”
That was fair. Stephen was… well, he risked his life on a constant, heart-attack-inducing basis—which really, was not great for Tony’s heart problems; but also, Tony wouldn’t change Stephen, risky heart-attack-inducing stunts included. But risking his heart on the other hand? No, Stephen was painfully careful of it.
Tony didn’t know why yet, but he tried to treat Stephen’s heart as the precious treasure that it was regardless.
“When did I first love you or when did I first love you?” Tony asked, getting back to the question and trying to ignore his emotional gaffe.
Stephen, thankfully, let him.
This time it wasn’t a laugh but an the sigh of someone who spent a great deal of time with Tony. “Given I have no idea what the difference between those two questions was, I’m going to have to say both.”
Tony grinned a little, smothering a laugh of his own. He hadn’t actually meant to be exasperating that time, when for him the two phrases were so patently different that he didn’t have a better way to say the words. “Well, I first loved you, or at least realized it, when you dropped into my lab, muttered absolute gibberish at me, then fell asleep on my couch within a total of three minutes.”
“I didn’t do that,” Stephen protested, sounding embarrassed. Which was ridiculous, there was absolutely no reason for that to be embarrassing. Tony had found it endlessly endearing. Not that he was going to tell Stephen that, because he’d probably get more embarrassed.
Tony snorted. “Oh, I’ve got video evidence.”
He could feel Stephen pouting a little, not that Stephen would ever admit to pouting, but it still happened. “And that made you love me.” The tone of voice only reaffirmed what Tony already knew: pouting.
Tony rolled his eyes. “It didn’t make me love you. It made me realize I loved you. There’s a difference. I’ll have you know I actually turned off my music and worked in silence so that you could get actual sleep. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“What a sacrifice,” Stephen said dryly. Stephen’s hand tightened around Tony’s wrist, a gentle squeeze that betrayed more of Stephen’s emotions than than his words had exposed.
“You mock, but it was.”
Stephen’s scoff said exactly what he thought about that. “So that’s when you first loved me, when did you first love me?”
Tony smirked a little at the way Stephen said the words, as though he couldn’t believe that Tony was making him talk in nonsense.
It would be a lie to say that Tony didn’t take visceral pleasure in getting Stephen to say ridiculous things—not that he had to try that hard when Stephen said things like ‘hitherto undreamt of’ completely unprompted—but for once this hadn’t been one of those attempts.
“When you gave me the sky,” Tony answered. “I didn’t know you yet, obviously. But you gave me the sky. I mean, you got stuck with brown, but I—“
“Your eyes are beautiful,” Stephen interrupted, sounding offended on Tony’s behalf. “Rich, deep, warm… grounding.”
“I gave you dirt to see,” Tony said dryly. “Not a fair trade at all.”
“You gave me the color of the ground beneath my feet, you gave me the color of the trees I climbed, you gave me the color of my sister’s hair.”
A small smile curved at Tony’s lips. When Stephen said it, it didn’t sound so bad, even if Tony was going to have to insist that he got the better end of this deal. “And you gave me the sky,” Tony said. “There has never been anything quite so limitless as the sky.”
“Technically—“
Tony flicked at Stephen’s chest. “Don’t ruin it, Stephen.”
He tilted his head back to see that Stephen was smiling a little. “So you loved me before you knew me because I gave you the sky.”
“Pretty much.”
“And you loved me once you knew me because I mumbled gibberish at you and fell asleep on your couch.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “I realized I loved you, all right. Don’t go messing that up, I clearly loved you before then. But I realized because I realized something else, something maybe even more important.”
“And that is?”
Tony closed his eyes for a moment, spreading his palm flat on Stephen’s chest where he could feel the warmth Stephen radiated even through his shirt. “I realized that, somehow, you trusted me. And that that was all I ever wanted. Well, not all, but that if all I ever earned was your trust, then that would be enough for me.”
“Of course I trust you,” Stephen said, voice quiet. “How could I not?”
Tony opened his mouth to give a long list of reasons for that, but Stephen pressed a finger to his lips.
“Don’t,” Stephen told him. “Don’t try to ruin that. Because it’s true.”
It took effort, but Tony forced himself to stay silent.
Stephen sighed, and they went quiet again. It was comfortable. And that was just one of the things that Tony loved about Stephen. Tony didn’t do quiet well, but somehow, with Stephen, he could. He could handle the quiet and the still.
And maybe it was because Stephen seemed to understand when Tony couldn’t be quiet and still, letting Tony work out his energy however he needed, which meant that when the energy passed Tony felt safe returning to Stephen, knowing he was understood.
Trust, understanding, love.
Tony had gotten more than lucky with Stephen. Not all soulmates went romantic, some didn’t even manage platonic—which seemed even more heartbreaking, he’d take Stephen in whatever way Stephen wanted to be in his life, would have taken friendship and friendship alone in a heartbeat and would have considered himself happy—but he and Stephen…
Well, they were friends before they were lovers, that friendship a bedrock of their relationship. But Tony definitely enjoyed the part where they were lovers.
“It is beautiful,” Stephen said into the silence.
“What is?” Tony asked, pretty sure that Stephen’s thoughts hadn’t gone the same direction his had and that his comment wasn’t commentary on their relationship. Though, Tony was certainly not going to argue with the idea that it was beautiful.
“The sky.”
“It is,” Tony agreed. “Which was why I loved you before I fell in love with you.”
Stephen snorted. “Now you’re doing it on purpose.”
“Yes,” Tony admitted. “It was just so much fun the first time.”
“Well, I’m glad you fell in love with me.”
Tony resisted telling Stephen that it had been impossible to not. Not when Stephen was Stephen. “Me too,” he said instead. “Best thing that’s happened to me in quite some time.”
“I would have thought defeating Thanos would take first place,” Stephen said, not because it was true, but because he delighted in being contrary and Tony knew it.
But still, that was a good point. Averting the end of half the universe should definitely take higher precedence than a relationship, even a relationship with Stephen. “I stand corrected, you’re the second best thing to happen to me in quite some time.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You better,” Tony told him. “You were the one who demoted yourself to second place.”
He didn’t even have to look to know that Stephen was smirking. The small, smug expression would be playing around his lips the way it did when he won one of their little conversational competitions—arguments, some people called them, but that was a very limited way of looking at it.
“Just keeping you accurate.”
“What would I do without you?” Tony asked, more sincerity leaking into the joke then he’d really planned on letting.
Stephen must have realized, because he just hummed in agreement instead of drawing attention to it. “What I hear you saying,” Stephen said after a moment. “Is that you were a cloud-gazer as a kid.”
So they were back on Tony’s talk about the sky. “Oh, absolutely. If I wasn’t ripping apart home appliances I was outside trying to turn clouds into shapes. It’s a sign of imagination, you know.”
“Not really. The sky was gray for me. The clouds weren’t nearly as fascinating.”
“So you’re saying we should go to central park and cloud gaze?” Tony asked. “Because I approve of this idea.”
For a moment Stephen didn’t respond. “You know what? Why not.” He shifted and Tony let out a humph of disgruntlement.
“What, right now?” That had not at all been what he’d meant. He’d been enjoying their moment of ‘just being’. Which was a rare state for either of them to manage, much less both of them.
“We still have at least two hours before the sun goes down,” Stephen pointed out, as he slid out of the bed. “So, yes.”
Tony grumbled, but felt a smile tugging at his lips.
It didn’t take long to make it to central park—Stephen’s portals coming in handy, once again. Tony spread out the blanket—this one a quilt of purples, blues, and greens that Stephen had pulled out of the sanctum’s storage—and plopped down, waiting for Stephen to lay down before he settled himself against Stephen’s side the same way they’d been in bed a few minutes ago.
The sky lay blue—ever-changing yet always-the-same—before them, as limitless as ever. Stephen pointed at a cloud, declaring it looked like a rabbit—it looked nothing like a rabbit, Stephen clearly wasn’t very good at this—and Tony figured he had been right from the very first.
He was going to love Stephen always—or at least he hoped to, wanted to, intended to—for hundreds of reasons, big and little alike. But there would always be a part of him that loved Stephen for one simple reason.
Stephen had given him the sky.