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They know different kinds of war, different kinds of bloodshed. Tony breathes in sand, desert heat and Steve exhales winter, lets the cold cling to his frame.
There’s an understanding between them, something that goes deeper than the others. Neither one of them calls it anything, doesn’t want to put a name on it. It’s something reserved for the middle of the night when neither one of them can sleep. When Steve refuses a glass of water because he can’t even think about the cold and Tony is trying not to gasp for air, trying not to think about sand in his eyes and desert storms. Trying not to think about his name on a missile and the hundreds of screams that died on lips.
Tony lets his body dry out the way the desert did, lets his lips dry and crack until they bleed and he tastes copper on his tongue.
They’re in Tony’s workshop, Tony doesn’t know how many days its been since either of them have slept but Steve no longer nags Tony, no longer passes judgement. Not since he saw Bucky, not since he looked into his eyes and let the winter soldier’s fist connect with his jaw. Not since he was dragged out of the water for a second time in his life.
They both no loss like it’s no ones business. They both grieve for people still alive. Tony thinks that what Steve is going through exists practically in a whole nother dimension, on some godly scale of tragedy. Steve never once lets Tony think that his pain is any less valid, that his heartache isn’t as real.
“Pepper is still alive, she’s still her. I can’t imag-”
Steve cuts him off, “You don’t need to imagine. Loss is loss.”
Tony doesn’t know when he started talking, when he started letting the grief bubble up through his mouth. Maybe it was always the even breathing of Steve, the constant rise and fall of his chest, that eventually put him at ease.
He doesn’t realize his lip is split open, that iron trickles from his lip. Not until Steve is in front of him, pulling up the bottom of his own shirt and pressing it to Tony’s lip to stop the bleeding. Tony stares at him in wonder. For a moment he let his mind think that the good old captain was about to give him a strip tease. This he finds more intimate, more unsettling, but he can’t find it in himself to want it to stop.
“You should drink more water,” Steve says with a soft voice, concern bleeding through. He pulls back his shirt, small crimson stain near the hem of the white cotton.
The next day Steve finds a glass of water sitting next to Tony, half full and smiles to himself.
They don’t talk about their wars, they leave their discussions about loss to that of love but never mention the battlefield.
Tony figures if he opens that can of worms that it will spiral, that it will trickle down into everything he’s never spoken about.
He’s afraid his treacherous mouth will finally speak up, spit out that sometimes Tony really is the selfish bastard that everyone makes him out to be because everything he’s done recently has been for Steve. Because Tony just wants to see the bastard happy and god fucking damn it why does that have to be so hard?
He doesn’t know how to say that the missile in his arms that day was some sort of vow he made to himself to prove himself worthy because Captain fucking America wouldn’t stop looking at him with disappointment.
That Ultron was a way to protect everyone, to protect Steve, because what the actual fuck can Tony Stark not accomplish anything without a massive screw up. He thought that in some way Steve would be proud of the steps he was taking, of how he wanted to protect. But his ideas get criss crossed in his mind and the execution always seems to fall flat or somewhere close to life threatening and dangerous.
So they stick to loss so Tony can’t develve down that road and the countless things he's done wrong because he’s spent his whole life living in the shadow of the greatest man alive and he still can’t manage to have Steve feel for him anything but indifference.
Loss, loss, loss. Tony thinks. He can’t talk about Pepper, it’s too much, the weight and guilt that looms over him. How Pepper called Tony dangerous, that he’s too risky, too willing to put his life on the line.
Tony laughed the first time she said it, the only one who could see right through him. He doesn’t tell her that it’s because he doesn’t care what happens to him as long as everyone else is safe, that he isn’t valuable, isn’t needed and if he could just save one person that he loves then this would all be worth it.
The rest of them don’t grasp that about him yet and for that Tony is somewhat thankful.
His heart has been full, it’s always been brimming with it, with love and adoration. With emotions he couldn’t place or name, they’ve been there pushing against his ribs asking to come out. So when Steve looks at him with eyes that match frozen waters Tony can’t help but feel the organ in his chest twist and his tongue tie.
“What?” Steve asks him.
Tony looks down, focuses on anywhere but Steve, which results in his eyes memorizing the lines in Steve’s knuckles and the way his fingers hold a pencil, how his wrist rests against his sketchbook.
He shakes his head, plays it off as his mind thinking about a new alloy, a new addition to a version of the Mark suit and he ends up spitting out so many words in order to confuse Steve that it gets to the point that he doesn’t even know what he is saying. Steve just nods as Tony turns his back to him, sweat across his brow, and not for the first time in Tony’s life he thinks about praying.
He looks at Tony with his arctic eyes and Tony swears he can feel the shift of tectonic plates, feel them crashing together and the ground trembling beneath his feet. Tony thinks himself a glass house, thinks of his frame rattling and windows shattering across the floor. It’s unsettling but he can’t seem to find new blueprints to prevent the oncoming storm.
The violet veins of Steve’s skin are unknown territory, uncharted and waiting for skylines.
Steve tells him one day that sometimes Tony’s eyes look like they're flickering. Tony smiles, slight confusion and holds back a small laugh.
“Like what?”
“Fireflies.” Steve says with sincerity.
“Halogen bulbs.” Tony says back.
Steve shakes his head. “No, that’s a different kind of light.”
“My eyes are reflecting the light from here which is coming from ha-” Tony stops, realizes that in some way what Steve said was a compliment and that Tony shouldn’t try to explain it away with science.
“Fireflies huh?” Tony asks instead.
“When I was a kid, I used to go out of the city during the summer, to look for a lake or somewhere to cool off and there would be all sorts of fireflies swarming around at night. I caught a few in a jar, took them back home and tried to keep them alive. They didn’t last long, they weren’t made for the city.” And even know, even over seventy years later, there is still a hint of remorse in Steve’s voice.
Tony wants to make a promise, can feel it grinding against his teeth. “Summer is coming up.” It’s casual enough.
“Yeah?” Steve asks as he takes a seat on a barstool.
“Yeah, maybe we can take a trip out of the city for a few days.”
Steve smiles at that, says he would like the quiet and Tony thinks that he would as well.
He tries not to analyze himself, tries, tries, tries. He can’t stop himself, his mind works faster than he can comprehend at times. He’s going through his childhood, chalking it up to the fact that Howard never showed him love the way a father should so maybe that’s why he can’t identify most of his feelings now or some bullshit. Maybe he should see a professional? Or he can just study psychology himself and be his own therapist, he’s become an expert overnight in far more complex subjects.
Ok so human nature is not the same as physics and he still doesn’t know why he lets himself love.
Steve talks about Brooklyn like it's the only thing that means anything anymore and Tony thinks that maybe it is. Maybe the skyscrapers are a little bit different, a little bit bigger, but it’s the only thing left of Steve’s past. Tony tries to understand.
He compares Brooklyn to Long Island in his mind and can’t find a connection, can’t find any attachment to the word home.
Tony talks about Malibu, talks about Manhattan but he realizes his voice falls flat. It doesn’t sound like Steve’s, filled with passion and love. For the first time in his life he thinks that he can’t make everything sound charming.
Steve thinks if he could cut Tony open that his ribs and spine would be plated in red, that he would bleed gold.
Steve knows that he lets people take little pieces of him, parts of his history, parts of him. He lets people take, and take, and take. He’s afraid that if he lets Tony in that he will never let him stop, that he won't want him to. That Tony will deconstruct him and leave him nothing but a shell.
The thing that Steve doesn’t get is that Tony would swallow it all whole, the grief, the pain of every hurt they have ever caused to others. Hell, he would swallow all the oceans, choke them down, just so Steve would never have his hands tremble around open waters again.
He says something awful one day, because well after being around Tony Stark for so long, having every single one of your buttons pushed, tends to do things to a person. That and the lingering thoughts of some preconceived notion of a selfish Tony Stark keep pushing the forefront of his mind.
“You know what Stark? I think you like it.” Steve crosses his arms, locks his knees and straightens his back.
Tony expects something along the lines of drinking and fucking someone so hard he forgets his own name. “Like what?” Tony mirrors Steve’s pose.
“Falling apart.”
Maybe his organs are tied in knots and there’s a chasm in his throat where a voice should be. He doesn’t fight back, doesn’t have a witty remark. Not when the truth is star spangle wrapped and delivered with sparkling eyes and a set jaw.
It’s infuriating, this lack of communication. He thinks about making a program, some sort of code. He thinks of it along the lines of Google Translate, he says something and it translates what he really means so all of this lightning quick tension that seems to be building can cease.
He tosses a pen up in the air and catches it, taps it against the counter and tries to rationalize what other people must do in situations like this. When veins thrum and all his body wants it to touch, to touch Steve so much that he doesn’t know where he ends and Steve begins.
Steve is watching a documentary on the moon landing, listening to the old recordings from Apollo 11, mindless chatter about losing a map and listening to the crack and static of thousands of miles apart. Steve listens with something akin to wonder. Tony wants to tell him that they use far more advanced technology during their missions but thinks better of it, lets Steve have this moment.
He wants to tell him that he’s been to the dark side of the moon, that he’s seen the shadows that crawl and linger there and that Steve would look beautiful cast in them.
Steve shoves his hands in his pockets, tries to ask himself what the hell he’s doing here. Out in the countryside at a summer home, grass up to his knees.
Night falls and he hears the buzzing before he sees the flickering lights. Fireflies buzz around him and it all slots into place. He thinks himself a moth and Tony with his flickering eyes always seem to be beckoning him.
He’s different, things aren’t easy with him and in a way Steve likes it. He wants to say it’s something like ‘a breath of fresh air’, but he knows that it's darker than that as well. That there is something lurking in Tony Stark that neither one of them can understand but god does Steve want to try.
“What are we doing?” Steve asks and Tony.
Tony immediately stops, backtracks. Tries to think if he can invent a time machine in a few seconds flat and fling him back to before he recommended this dumb idea in the first place.
“Science experiment; seeing why Barton likes the countryside so much.”
“No, Tony, wh-”
“I thought it would be fun to do together. We can write a thesis and-”
Steve slams his hand down on the counter to get Tony to stop.
“Please, Tony,” it’s the way Steve’s voice breaks over the vowel, hangs onto the ‘y’.
“I wanted to see you,” Tony bites his tongue, swallows down the word, “happy.” He can’t look Steve in the eyes, can’t face the icebergs and sinking ships.
Steve’s knuckles loosen, his posture relaxes. He adjusts his shirt, something to keep his hands busy. “I want to see you happy too.”
It’s honest, brutally so and Tony is glad there is at least the cover of night so maybe tomorrow he can wake up and hope that he dreamed it.
There’s always a war raging on, a war between them, between summer and winter, between foxes and crows. Birds take flight, love sick and summer skin sticks to them. Tony’s boots trample the grass, press down on the green back down into the earth and he tries not to notice the way Steve disapproves and tells him that plants are living creatures too.
Love doesn’t discriminate, it breaks like fever and burns.
Tony thinks that he can’t love anymore, that his heart will break with it. He runs out of the small house, screen door slamming shut behind him. He runs out to the tall grass, to the wild flowers. He falls to his knees, fists slamming against the dirt, nails digging past grass and earth worms. Warm salt water tears streak down his face, soak his lashes and sink into the soil. Chunks of dirt cling between the hollows of his fingers but he screams and tears at the earth, he’s digging, fighting, trying to find something he just can’t figure out what. He expects to find bones, ivory and pristine, buried here in this garden, bones of all the lives lost at his hands. Bones clawing for him and whispering of how he doesn’t deserve to feel this way again, he doesn’t deserve the swelling beat in his chest.
Pain eats at him raw, speaks to him of destruction and Tony thinks that maybe he does like it. Maybe he likes the way that heartbreak sits upon his head like a crown for a throne that was made for him, inky black and bristling with thorns.
The damp earth presses into his knees, stains his jeans. His teeth clench, jawbone tightens and his muscles ache.
He shatters the way that glass does, spiderwebbed and crystallized, and beautiful.
He doesn’t realize that he’s been talking to himself, that Steve’s words were static buzz in his head. “It’s what you’re good at Tony, just keep falling apart.”
Steve had heard the screen door slam, watched as Tony ran across the field, how he fell to his knees, hands gripping his hair before they fell to the earth to start pulling at wildflower veins.
He runs after him, full on Captain America sprint, and notices that Tony is not entirely Tony. That his cheeks are tear stained, his eyes brimming with them. The veins in his throat accentuated as his jaw clenches and he whispers about failure between his teeth.
Steve drops to his knees, his arms going around Tony, pulling him close to his chest so that Tony will stop his mad crusade to rip the earth apart.
“I didn’t mean this, I didn’t mean it. Oh God, Tony, I’m so sorry,” Steve says a litany of apologies, pours his heart into every one of them. One of his hands cards through Tony’s hair, massages the scalp as the other one makes circles down Tony’s spine.
He should have known better, should have seen the signs, they were the same as his. He just thought that Tony Stark was really made of iron, that he was immune to the things that had taken place in Steve’s chest as well.
He chastises himself for being so stupid, for making assumptions because the Tony Stark he knows would never intentionally let himself fall, it’s just that he wears pain like a second skin and Steve Rogers thought he was invincible.
Later, hours have passed, Steve has cleaned the dirt off of Tony’s hands, wiped his knuckles clean. He sits Tony down on the edge of the bed, white sheets bright against his dirt stained clothes. Tony’s cheeks are flushed, his eyes heavy and worn.
Tony’s tears are still ripping through Steve, still pulling him apart at the seams.
He stands in the doorway, room dim from the bedside table.
“Do you want me to leave the light on?”
“Stay,” Tony’s voice breaks, raw from his screams. His eyes look up at Steve’s and Steve thinks of moths, of being drawn towards flames and he agrees.
They lay in bed, the light off, on top of the sheets. Even through their jeans Steve can still feel the heat radiating off of Tony.
Steve reaches over, picks up one of Tony’s hands, feels the raw skin there and brings it to his lips. He kisses his knuckles, one by one in hopes that it will heal some of the pain that he caused. He closes his eyes and lets his lips linger.
“I’m sorry,” it hangs like a eulogy for a funeral Steve never wanted to attend.
His chest heaves as he waits in the silence. He turns to his side, his hand going to Tony’s chest, it rests there. Tony faces him, even in the dark he can make out all of Steve’s features.
He leans forward and presses his lips to Steve, Steve who pushes Tony back on the bed quickly and wraps their legs together and kisses him like they’re both in mourning.
August envelopes them with greed and hunger, wanting the last remaining days of their summer.
Tony can’t figure out if its limiting or infinite, that kissing Steve is the rawest thing he’s ever felt and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever have the feeling again.
Steve is whispering against his lips, “take me,” and Tony thinks that’s one thing he does well.
It’s not how they’ve both loved before, it’s not sickening and filled with flowers and movies. Their words are always on the brink of tearing the other part, of slaughtering them and ripping out butterflies from each other's stomachs.
Steve knows that he needs it, needs Tony’s tinge of dark, needs it like the sun needs the night and the sky needs the stars and summer needs winter. He needs it with his whole being and there are times where he wishes Tony wouldn’t stop, that he wouldn’t let him catch his breath because he can’t even begin to explain that he never thought that he would feel again.
He presses his lips against Tony’s, makes them war ravished and hungry for more. It’s their language of each other, with a flick of tongues and clawing hands.