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Tony’s still panting underneath him, the rise and fall of his chest mirroring the hot, quick breaths against Steve’s neck. The room is so quiet that he imagines that if he concentrated, he could hear Tony’s pulse, or perhaps feel it through the warmth of his skin.
Steve feels himself coming down slowly, as it tends to happen in the unpredictable new development that has been sharing a bed with Tony: it’s like waking up from a haze, the warmth and comfort tinted by a distant disquiet. It’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of his uneasiness; sometimes he thinks he’s still waiting for Tony to bolt and not mention this fragile thing between them again, the worry heavy on his chest as it was the day Tony first kissed him, hopeful and hesitant. Other times, when honesty doesn’t come as easy and he’d rather bury himself under the comfort of denial, he picks the culprit amongst the vast assortment of reasons they shouldn’t trust each other: their frequent, at times incessant fights, their roles as leaders of the Avengers, their past, Tony’s past.
Regardless of his cynical thoughts, Tony’s a solid figure right under Steve’s weight, grounding in his appeased placidity. It’s kind of marvelous, actually. Tony, who’s all deliberate movements and smooth talk and brilliant eyes, rendered breathlessly still by Steve. Steve tries not to let it go to his head.
By now, one of them should have broken the silence. It’s usually Tony, complaining about Steve being heavy in a weak attempt to dismiss the growing tenderness; mostly, Steve attempts to indulge his eagerness to draw out the intimacy of their connection, apart from when the feeling of fluids drying between their bodies grates enough to push him to get up, quietly grumbling. Tony finds it very entertaining. Tony, he’s discovered, has no qualms about wearing the product of their lovemaking on his skin. Despite his polished looks, despite his tidy and unblemished exterior, his elegant suits and neatly trimmed facial hair, Tony would fall asleep with his and Steve’s come on his body, staining his belly, drying between his thighs.
It’s Steve who’s left with the task of cleaning them up: he is quick and methodical about it, and refuses to come back to bed before a perfunctory stop in the shower. Sometimes he manages to drag Tony with him — when he does it’s less quick and less perfunctory: it starts with a smirk on Tony’s face and ends with Tony on his knees.
This time, Steve cleans Tony and then himself with absent focus, discards the towel tied at his hips before rejoining Tony, whose eyes have lost that relaxed dimness Steve’s only managed to evoke after making him come, and are lit with bright concentration again. He’s tapping quickly on a screen, one-handed.
“We’ve talked about this,” Steve sighs, immensely fond. “No work in bed.”
“This is my bed,” Steve is looking at the ceiling, and can only imagine the amused smile on Tony’s lips by the way he shapes the words. “I decide what’s allowed in my bed. Who are you to boss me around?”
He hasn’t stopped typing. Steve exhales quietly, letting his eyes drift closed. “Just an old man who cares about you.”
“Old man,” Tony repeats, amused and unconvinced. “I’m gonna be feeling you all through tomorrow. Old man, he says.”
“You insisted,” He points out, no real bite to his words. They’re lying side by side, and he only needs to turn his head towards Tony to leave a soft, open-mouthed kiss on his shoulder. He wants to say, Sorry. He wants to say, I hope you felt as good as I did. He says, instead, “Hey. Respect your elders. And go to sleep.”
It’s an old ritual between them. Steve has yet to discover a way to exhaust Tony completely, and he’s found out that not even sex will manage to tire him out to the point where he’ll simply lie down and sleep. Tony’s body will be sated and lax, beautifully languid, all lithe muscles and sharp angles; yet his mind will spring back to full activity in minutes, sometimes seconds. Every so often, Steve catches the spark of a thought across Tony’s features, and watches as all the exhaustion vanishes from his face, replaced by ideas and connections and sharp desire to turn thought into action.
Besides, Steve himself is too pleasantly worn out to insist, despite the stubborn voice in his head protesting he convinces Tony. He’s not going to fight Tony about sleep, of all things. Not when the warmth of Tony’s body close to his permeates deep beneath his skin, reaching somewhere hidden and unguarded.
Tethering the edge between consciousness and sleep, he doesn’t catch Tony placing the phone on his nightstand, accompanied by a sigh so soft it’s barely more than an exhale. There’s a long silence, a stillness so quiet that Steve’s mind, only half awake, registers as Tony being asleep.
Strange, he considers absently; Tony’s rarely still, and he’s often the antsy one of the two, especially before falling asleep. It’s a fretful process for Tony, all movement and restlessness until he succumbs to a sleep no more peaceful.
Unnerved by the stillness, Steve’s eyes slowly open. He finds Tony watching him in silence, something he can’t quite put his finger on dancing across his features like a barely there shadow. The bright azure of his eyes is almost concealed by the dark, not unlike the way pleasure obscures his gaze. But there’s something cautious and intent there, now.
The silence stretches, almost tangible in the limited space between Tony and him. Steve finds himself motionless, frozen in wait. It’s the anticipation he feels in battle when he catches the shine of Iron Man’s armor and trusts his brilliant mind has conjured an impossible plan, it’s the sharp inhale before the jump.
“You’re the love of my life,” Tony whispers then, quiet in the dark. Steve’s breath catches in his throat, stuck somewhere between his lungs and his lips.
It’s not that he doesn’t know Tony loves him. As far as confessions go, it’s less surprising than the raw I love you’s and Fuck, Steve, there’s no one like you’s Tony was burying in his neck minutes before, mouth flush to Steve’s skin. At the time, Steve was thoroughly distracted by Tony’s body, his clever hands and warm mouth. The words had reached him later, catching his breath while still buried in Tony, their bodies melted into one.
He hadn’t said anything; it wasn’t the first time he heard it fall from Tony’s lips like a broken, reverent prayer. And Steve doesn’t need to hear it, he knows how deep Tony’s devotion can run. He knows Tony runs his mouth while overwhelmed by pleasure, and he knows Tony means it, despite not quite meeting his eyes right after, and despite not acknowledging it most of the time.
As for Steve, he’s always felt clumsy with his words, especially with Tony, especially with these words. He’s thought, for a long time, that they’d spent so long learning how to hurt each other that the words for affection he’d once offer Tony so easily would never resurface, would stay buried somewhere lost and distant and almost but not quite forgotten.
But Steve has never truly forgotten how to love Tony. He’d just thought the words exchanged between the two of them… unnecessary, and so he’s opted for the coward’s way out, and avoided voicing how he felt. That means he doesn’t expect it from Tony, either. Not when he can read it in the tenderness of his gaze, in the way Tony sometimes grips him impossibly tight, as if he’s afraid Steve will slip away and never return. In the careful way Tony made love to him, the first time. In his burning kisses, in his quiet exhales.
Besides, he knows. Tony is building this with him. He doesn’t need to hear it.
It’s in that breathless moment that everything makes sense, it all fits into place — how he imagines Tony’s mind works, in its relentless pursuit of solving every problem, present and future.
“You know that, right?” Tony continues, and there’s something in his voice that Steve immediately recognizes — it’s a typical sort of restraint he’s only heard from Tony, open and self-deprecating and opaque all at once. It’s the voice he uses when he expects catastrophe. “You must know that.”
And Steve — in hindsight, he can point out the exact moment he misunderstood. He’ll blame himself, after, long after; when he’s remembered a dark room and faces shadowed in regret. But now, in the quiet dark of a moment that’s only theirs, Steve catches the insecure tilt of Tony’s words and worries.
Tony, he’ll think later, is a masterful architect of artfully constructed misunderstandings, a virtuoso of symphonies of deception. It’s no wonder he stepped once again into one of his castles of lies, after all it’s what Tony does. Tony builds.
But now Steve looks at him and feels a wound of love and worry reopen in his chest, bleeding red and golden across his ribcage, and reaches out to place his palm on Tony’s skin, right over his heart. He takes Tony in: his disheveled dark hair, like shadows over his forehead, his bright, intelligent eyes, the slight curve of his lips. The lovely architecture of his face, endlessly pictured in Steve’s sketchbooks.
“I know,” He says. Simple. What he forces himself to say next is harder, comes out a little choked, “I love you too, Tony.”
It surprises him — not the love, that has been there for a long time. This capacity to express it freely, that’s the unexpected. He and Tony used to be so open with each other, and then they weren’t, and Steve didn’t even know there was some hidden part of himself longing to have the friendship they burned to the ground back. For so long, he didn’t even know how deep he’d buried that longing, until Tony came to him with his ideas and plans and his arms open, always open.
Here’s what Steve’s discovered: it’s easy to fall back into old habits, especially when it’s Tony; it’s easy to trust him again, easy to love him. Even when everything was wrong between them and they were fighting each other, when Steve was bitter and hard and thought he could never forgive Tony; even then a part of him loved him, would trust him with his life.
He’s held tight to his anger for so long, letting the bitterness consume him from inside. Now that Tony’s on his side again, now that he’s in his bed, Steve feels like the impossible depth of this emotion Tony evokes in him could consume him. It’s not unlike jumping without a parachute: he feels the wind roaring in his ears, the ground rising to meet him, his heartbeat accelerating, accelerating.
He’s used to the freefall, after all. And he trusts Iron Man to catch him, every time.
The silence has stretched on again, but that foreign tension between them feels absent now, dissolved by Steve’s confession. At least, Steve feels — appeased, in a way. Like a wrong has been made right.
A glimpse at Tony reveals the man deep in thought, his gaze distant, contemplative. All the pleased leisure has abandoned Tony’s features, leaving a tightly guarded mask in its wake.
Steve feels his own easy enjoyment dissolved, replaced by growing concern. Tony, Steve imagines, is overthinking again, buried under the exceptional power of his thoughts, his genius mind. Tony’s strongest asset and, sometimes, his greatest enemy. Steve knows Tony’s mind is not a good place to be for Tony, despite the brilliant magnificence of his ideas; it’s taken him some time to accept that it’s what makes Tony Tony that wounds him deepest.
Guilt roars in his chest, and then a familiar anger that he desperately tries to suppress. Steve has given Tony many reasons to mistrust him, they’ve been at each other’s throats for so long and so viciously Steve’s surprised Tony would accept him in his arms, in his bed. Yet, what right does Tony have to doubt the love he has for him? Why would he lie about it? Why won’t Tony simply trust him?
“Well,” Tony says then, in that precisely controlled tone that signals he’s overwhelmed, and trying to conceal it. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
It takes Steve a moment to force the conflict of emotions down, to bury the pain of old scars that have resurfaced. Instead, he looks at Tony, worried. “You okay?” He tries a small smile, and feels it rueful on his lips. “Having second thoughts?”
“What?” Tony sounds genuinely surprised. He looks at Steve puzzled, as if he can’t quite make sense of his words. “No, never. About you? Never.” He stresses the last word, a strange intensity to his voice.
“A man oughta ask.” Relief is a cold breeze in Steve’s aching chest. “It looked like you were somewhere far away.”
“Ah,” Tony sighs, “No, just thinking about work. Haven’t been sleeping a lot. You know me.”
Steve feels his smile turn sincere, encouraging. He hasn’t quite managed to brush the ache of emotion away yet, but he attempts to lock it somewhere hidden. He’ll come back to it later, maybe exorcise it in training. Now, he looks at Tony expectantly and tells him, “A perfect occasion to catch up.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony’s smile is more like a grimace. His voice has that bashfully dismissive tone he uses when he’s settled into the prospect of disappointment: in himself, mostly, but also when he expects it from whoever is expressing interest in his well-being.
Having known each other for years means that Steve is well acquainted with Tony’s reluctance to accept being cared for. It means that Steve has learnt that Tony has to be convinced and pushed to take care of himself; sometimes tricked, even. Back when their friendship was still new, when the trust between them was real and unbroken, Steve had channeled all of his righteous bullheadedness into that hopeful mission. At times, he’d thought of it as just a quirk of character, if a worry-inducing one: he’d thought Tony’s carelessness in himself lay in his good intentions, that it was a byproduct of having objectives bigger than the simple tasks of normal life.
Time had proven him wrong. It became another source of frustration in Tony, at one miserable point. A proof of his inability to care for anyone, himself first of all. And then all the righteous anger had cleared from his clouded sight, and — years after — he’d berated himself for thinking Tony careless. Tony, who had stopped his heart for him.
It’s what prompts him to insist, to keep him close as long as possible. “I mean it,” He stresses, stretching an arm over Tony’s chest. “Come here.”
Tony’s answer is a quiet sigh. But he doesn’t try to move away, and Steve, his eyes drifting closer and heartbeat slowing, wonders how they ever slipped out of each other’s grasp.
You’re the love of my life. You know that, right?
In his memories, the absence of light is menacing rather than comforting, and Tony is a shadow in the dark. In his memories he can’t see his face, the gentle grin he only wears when he’s really pleased with Steve, the furrow between his elegant brows; it’s all obfuscated by the shadows running deep, bleeding like ink across Tony’s handsome body.
He plays the words over and over again, tries to find the truth buried beneath the lies. Tony had seemed so sincere, so unsure. Steve had agonized over it, had even blamed himself after, for having held his love back for so long that Tony would have trouble accepting it as genuine. He’d thought of it as a betrayal of sorts, on his part; the terrible proof of how spiteful he’d been to Tony for so long: he’d been so hard on him, blinded by his anger, that Tony felt Steve could never love him again. His thoughts had run in guilty circles without end, all the while Tony was probably very pleased with himself for having redirected Steve’s doubts. To Steve’s oblivious ignorance, he’d shaped his fears into something useful, just another instrument to his duplicity.
But that’s what Tony does, isn’t it? He obfuscates and lies by omission, creates a narrative of deception so brilliant it rivals his greatest creations.
It’s the sharp puncture of an old wound, the ugly feeling of inadequacy that has risen in Steve’s chest. He could never keep up with Tony’s intelligence; could never measure up to the genius of the Avengers. His desertion to the Illuminati shouldn’t surprise Steve, it shouldn’t hurt — it shouldn’t even feel like a betrayal, Steve muses bitterly. He’s the most skilled goddamn strategist in the world, and still he’d failed to account for Tony’s penchant for cunning duplicity.
In his mind, Tony’s gaze is dark and steady, fixed on Steve with uncanny intensity. His mouth, still bearing the evidence of their kisses, quirks a charmingly intimate grin, galaxies away from the broad smiles he wears in public, or the amused ones he offers their teammates. This is only Steve’s, and in his red-tinted memories it distorts into a smirk that cuts through Tony’s face, bleeding shadows over his features. It transforms, gains a derisiveness that Steve is now sure was there in the first place — it becomes proof of Tony mocking his naiveté while sharing his bed. Hiding Steve’s stolen memories behind a delightful, enamored façade.
Had it all been a lie? Had it all been part of Tony’s design, his best bet to keep him complacent? Tony’s grand scheme, started with their lips crashing together in what Steve had thought was an unexpected yet inevitable development of their relationship. He couldn’t have predicted how the quiet joy in the comfortable silence after yet another day spent working on their new Avengers project would slowly unfold into an unfamiliar tension, until Tony had looked at him, gaze dark and hungry and hopeful, and Steve had kissed him, overwhelmed with the simple bliss of having Tony by his side.
He couldn’t have predicted it, but Tony could. And he’d fallen for it, he’d let Tony play him like a cheap fiddle. For all his stubbornness, Steve has always been defenseless to Tony’s brilliant mind. Truly, he’d believed him. What a fool Tony must have thought him — yet, a part of him that sounds cold and cruel and awfully similar to Tony’s voice, was he wrong?
Even just imagining Tony’s voice evokes a heavy wave of burning anger, so intense it crashes into Steve like a physical force. The violence of his emotions suddenly rips him from his thoughts and brings him back to reality; as he fights to suppress them, his eyes slide to the map laid out in front of him with the sole purpose of locating Tony.
His gaze sharpens, and a single-minded determination settles in his cluttered mind. Stubbornly, he redirects all the anger and all the hurt into sharp focus— towards one goal, a single target.
He is going to find Tony. And once he finds him, he’ll get to the truth.