Chapter Text
Determined to ignore his rude, noisy stomach, Tony wanders out to the dock, one hand curled around a tall glass of iced tea Bruce gallantly poured for him. His tongue itches for the mellow heat of good Scotch, and it’s been so long since he’s had a drink; it’s extremely tempting to dig up the 1926 Macallan he picked up at Christie’s in London for a crisp $1.53 million more than a few years back—what’s he even saving it for when the worst-case scenario’s already happened and Thanos has come and gone?—but Tony resists the pull: he wants a clear head for tomorrow and 2012 Manhattan.
With a sigh, he sets the glass on the dock and follows it down with his body. He cuffs his jeans, rolling them to just below his knees; removes his socks and shoes; has just closed his eyes in blessed relief as he slipped his feet into the lake, the cool water parting almost soundlessly around his skin and gently kissing from his toes to his ankles, when the wooden boards groan and the air around him is disturbed as someone settles next to him.
Even with his lids shuttering his eyes, Tony knows who else is present: Steve. Though he hasn’t figured out how it works—yet, at least, but give him time—even blind and deaf at the (next) end of the world, Tony’s certain he’d recognize Steve. Everything in him reacts to Steve’s presence, seeming to sit up at attention and say Oh, it’s you; I’ve been waiting for you.
Time travel’s a fickle and treacherous beast; who knows what will go wrong when they reverse the clock? He’s a futurist and has lived long enough to become a pragmatist, too; he’s a father, and he doesn’t have the luxury of pretending what they are about to do doesn’t have certain risks packed into it alongside the possibilities. So he’s made arrangements—for Morgan and Pepper, for Happy, for Rhodey, for May, and for his other Avengers (marshmallow-hearted old fool that he is, Tony’s accepted they are his, or perhaps they belong to each other)—in case things don’t go as smoothly as they all hope they will.
“Should I go?” Steve asks. “Do you want to be alone?”
No, I’ve been without you for years; why would I choose to be alone now? “Two separate questions, big guy,” Tony answers, deliberately keeping his tone light and playful, “possibly with two different answers.” His hand finds his glass, clicks his nails against the rim, and swirls it. The ice cubes inside tinkle with a sound like laughter.
He’s missed Steve’s laugh—has spent years learning to live without it, in fact. Since Germany. Since Siberia. How he used to laugh in Tony’s workshop, loose and bright, when DUM-E would pat him on his head like he was a dog, beeping joyfully, or snatch up one of Steve’s drawing pencils with a claw and refuse to return it until Steve gave in and hugged him.
Tony’s discovered it’s worse to have something and lose it than it is to never have had it all.
Without answering, Steve makes as if to rise, and Tony watches his chance start to slip away, grains of sand spilling through his cupped hands.
After switching the glass to his other hand, Tony shifts. Before he can talk himself out of doing it, Tony’s hand darts out and catches Steve’s cheek, his fingers damp from the condensation collected on the outside of his glass. Steve inhales sharply and sits back down again, watching Tony, a tiny tremor working at one corner of his mouth.
His eyes are the truest blue Tony has ever seen, the kindest, the softest, the coldest, too, at times, the standard against which all others are measured and found lacking; they track back and forth between Tony’s eyes as if searching for something. What is he searching for? “You probably should go,” Tony says, and though his better angels are screaming at him, he just tells them to shut up, “And if you want to, I won’t stop you. But I’d rather you stayed.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I want a lot of things, Steve.” He can’t resist teasing Steve. What can Tony say? He’s played at being good, sure, without ever truly embodying goodness. Tony allows his lips to curve into a slow smile as his gaze dips to the soft, pink bloom of Steve’s mouth. (A mouth that sweet should be kissed, early and often and thoroughly.) “You gonna give ‘em all to me?”
They stare at each other, the moment expanding and gathering weight, Tony waiting to see how Steve will respond, and Steve waiting for— Well. Well, Tony has often wished he knew what Steve’s thinking. He never has. Certainly not now.
“I’m too slow for your riddles,” Steve replies, eventually, as if he expects Tony to accept that copout of a response. Fat chance of that. He’s the first to look away, angling his body and his head out toward the lake instead.
Tony shakes his head and eyes the clean contours of Steve’s profile; grins like Steve’s said something amusing. “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” he says mildly. He lets the words freefall from his mouth for the sheer pleasure of watching a blush spill down Steve’s cheeks and neck—knowing that Steve will catch the subtext. It’s always been unfairly easy for Tony to ruffle him; to goad him; to sneak metaphorical fingers under his collar and tickle. “You are so very many things, Steven Grant Rogers,” he says, dragging his feet through the water, “slow isn’t one of them.” Tony hasn’t wet his whistle with anything stronger than iced tea, but something dangerous simmers in his blood nonetheless. Not simple recklessness, no, but a sharp clarity that could be so much worse.
“Maybe I should go.” There’s a stiffness calcifying at the edge of Steve’s mouth and along the slant of his broad shoulders. Tony hates it. Then Steve shifts his attention back to him; Tony feels it like a kick to his kidneys.
Damn Steve’s eyes.
When they turn their focus on him, Tony thinks of Siren song and rocky shoals. Thinks, also, of damnation. If life has taught him anything, though, it’s that hell is here on Earth. Here in him.
“Ah, but if you go, you’ll never know what I was going to say. One time only offer, Steve.” Tony dangles the mystery in front of Steve and waits to see if he’ll bite.
Steve stands, slowly, but doesn’t retreat. At his full height, with Tony still seated on the dock, Steve looms over him. The realization sends a delicious shiver of something that definitely isn’t fear cascading through him. “What do you want to talk about?” Steve asks.
“No small talk,” Tony says off a shrug that’s supposed to appear casual. He pulls himself to his feet, too, and peers up at Steve; watches his shoulders straighten and his jaw tighten into tense lines. The posture of a soldier. Steve’s bracing for it—for whatever Tony’s going to say. The sun-warmed wood pressed beneath Tony’s toes and soles feels good—and grounding. “Don’t have the time for it. Only the things that matter. Looks like this is the Tony Stark confession hour. If I were a better person, maybe I wouldn’t do this. But let’s face it, we don’t know for sure what’s gonna happen tomorrow, and I—” Tony pauses and clears his throat; scrubs roughly at his beard.
Steve’s brow furrows, his features taking on the cast of someone braced for terrible news. “Tony, you’re scaring me.” His big hands find Tony’s shoulders—curve over them and hold him there with a comforting weight. Tony can feel it, the warmth of Steve’s palms, of his skin, even through the barrier of his shirt. What should be an innocuous little touch isn’t, because it’s Steve doing the touching, no matter how harmless the intent, and it dries Tony’s mouth and leaves his tongue thick and heavy. Leaves the ancient ache of want swirling low and dizzying in his gut, crawling through his bones, parasitic.
It’s always, always been like this; it will always, always be like this.
Remembering a time when this yearning for Steve wasn’t his North Star is possible—but only just.
“What’s going on?” Steve asks. His grip tightens on Tony, and Tony wants that—wants bruises he can map with his own hands for the next week and feel the echoes of Steve’s fingers touching him. Anywhere. Everywhere. “Are you okay? Tell me.”
Tony isn’t going to hell; he’s already there. Right here, right now. Hell is making your choices and then feeling them tighten around your neck, cutting off your oxygen.
What’s about to happen has an air of inevitability to it. But it isn’t inevitable, even though it would be easier—more palatable—if Tony could lie and tell himself it is. It’s a choice that he’s actively making.
He’s married; he’s made promises; he loves Pepper; he loves Morgan, who is his miracle; he loves the family they’ve made together in their home by the lake.
He does, he does, he does.
But he loves someone else, too. Denying it has only strengthened that feeling and given it roots that have curled deep inside Tony. In the darkness, in rich soil but with scarcely any water, light, or tending, still, still, a tiny seedling has sprouted, biding its time. Now it unfurls slender shoots that shove up through Tony’s chest and into his throat. Seeking sunlight.
The sun’s descent splashes the sky in brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red. It paints everything in flames.
The words burn; clamor to be spoken; have built a settlement there made of clay and bone, blood and sentiment, that Tony longs to raze to the ground but can’t, even though he’s tried. He wants to be good—wants to be noble and selfless—but he isn’t, damn it. He isn’t. If he was, he wouldn’t do this. “I know it’s selfish, maybe the most selfish thing I’ve ever done,” Tony says, tunneling the fingers of both his hands through his hair, “and God knows I’ve done a lot of selfish things. I’ve got nothing for you. Nothing, Steve. Nothing.” He underscores this with a slash of his hand through the early autumn air. “I can’t give you anything. But I need you to know. I want to say it, and I want to watch you hear it, just this one time.”
“Say what? I’m sorry, but you’re not making any sense,” says Steve.
“How do you make a Venetian blind?”
At this unexpected question, Steve’s face contorts, confusion clear in his expression.
“Okay, okay,” Tony says, holding his hands out in front of him in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll repeat it: how do you make a Venetian blind?” Tony can feel his lips twitch, so he sucks them between his teeth to avoid grinning.
Steve’s hands fly to his hips, and his mouth works, forming the words of the joke, even as he remains silent. “I...don’t know.” Cautious. “How?” His weight shifts from side to side on those long, long legs as he waits for Tony to answer.
“Easy,” Tony says, capturing Steve’s gaze, “you poke him in the eyes.” He enunciates slowly, deliberately.
One of Steve’s hands leaves his hip and drifts up to tug his hair. It’s long, for Steve, anyway, and Tony’s fingers buzz with the need to touch the sandy strands. Steve’s lips give a telltale twitch like he’s trying to decide whether he should laugh, and then he commits to it, arms crossed and palms flattened against his chest. With his eyes scrunched tight, Steve laughs, silently at first, and then full-throated and easy, his entire frame shaking with it, with much greater enthusiasm than Tony’s terrible joke merits, honestly, but fuck it, Tony’s missed that beautiful melody far too much to care about that.
“Get it, Cap?” With two fingers, Tony makes a jabbing motion, then grins toothily at Steve, pushing his weight back onto his heels before shifting forward again and bouncing up on his toes. “You poke him in the eyes.”
“Yeah, Tony”—Steve nods; swipes a hand at his eyes—“I get it.” His voice is breathless with laughter; Tony almost loses it then. Straightening, Steve narrows his eyes in mock censure in Tony’s direction. “I really wish I didn’t, but I do. You need better material. That was…That was—”
Tony interrupts him, one eyebrow cocked: “A really shitty joke?”
This time when Steve laughs, it’s quiet and soft—not much more than a small puff of air—but still with such an undertone of warmth that Tony can’t help but reach out and touch Steve’s forearm, bare because he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows.
“It’s okay, you can say it.”
When Steve’s gaze slips down to where Tony’s hand rests on his arm, Tony slowly releases it, then swallows thickly as he watches Steve track the movement. “Yeah, pretty much.” Steve shakes his head, a rueful smile sliding over his face like water. He’s living art, always, but it’s eternally Steve’s smile that does Tony in. “Where did you even get that?”
“Oh, you know.” Tony shrugs and fingers his goatee. “It was in a joke book Pepper’s mom got for Morgan.”
It might be his imagination, how Steve retreats a step, putting distance between them, and his body suddenly goes rigid, all the ease that was there mere moments ago wiped clean away. Then again, maybe it’s not. “Hm. And is that what you wanted to tell me?” He’s not looking directly in Tony’s eyes but off to the side by a few inches, Tony can tell.
“Yes. No.” As Tony waffles, Steve’s eyebrows slowly inch up his forehead toward his hairline. “Yes, part of it anyway.”
“What’s the other part?” Steve crosses his arms; wraps his fingers around his biceps and cups one elbow in his palm; looks Tony dead in the eyes again.
Though Tony wants to smash the figurative glass with a hammer, with the pressure of Steve’s gaze and concentration on him, gradually circling to the full truth seems easier. “You know, all those years ago while you and your band of merry men were gallivanting around the world without me, I’d go in your room sometimes.” It’s Tony’s intention to sound casual, but he worries his statement came off too solemn, too contemplative.
Steve cants his head and shoots Tony an inscrutable look. “You never told me that before.” In his eyes, something flickers, slow enough for Tony to catch but too fast for him to identify.
“I didn’t?” Tony taps his chin and shrugs. “Hm,” he says, non-committal. “Guess I forgot. Anyway. I looked at your bookshelf, ran my fingers down the spines of your books. Don’t worry, I didn’t go through your things. Huh, let me rephrase: I did take something of yours.”
“What did you take?”
In lieu of an answer, Tony takes a deep breath and says, “‘I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, / How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over / upon me, / And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your / tongue to my bare-stript heart.’” Reading aloud for Steve the archaic language and eroticism in the verse makes Tony’s skin prickle with a heavy awareness. He’s read and reread the book many times over the years—often enough that he’s memorized certain sections—stroking his fingers over the now-coffee-stained pages and imagining Steve touching the same ones, eyes lingering on certain stanzas. Touching something that belonged to Steve had almost been like touching Steve himself. Sure, it had only been a proxy for the real thing, but Tony made do with what he could get.
A spark of surprise leaps across Steve’s features. With his eidetic memory, he’s sure to know what Tony’s just recited.
Steve stares back at Tony with sunset catching in the soft, golden curve of his eyelashes.“‘And reach’d till you felt my beard,” Steve says, “and reach’d till you held my / feet.” His voice has grown thick and hoarse, a touch deeper than usual, and it shivers over Tony like a caress, sending a flare of heat through him. Tony almost reaches for Steve at that moment, but he shoves his hands into his pockets before the impulse can become irrevocable action. “You”—Steve pauses and clears his throat—” took my copy of Leaves of Grass ?” It would be natural and even expected for Steve to be angry at Tony’s confession, but he isn’t. Tony’s been on the receiving end of Steve’s wrath enough times to be able to recognize it, and this is—not that.
“Guilty as charged.”
“Why?” Steve sounds genuinely puzzled, and oh, what a luxury, to be that blind.
“You left.” Me, Tony thinks but doesn’t allow himself to say. “The book was lying on your nightstand. I’d go in there sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, and I’d sit on—” Your bed , he almost says before he catches himself and ruthlessly cages the thought. What he’s given Steve is already plenty revealing. “I’d, uh, I’d sit and read for a while.” Some nights, after Steve and the others had gone on the run, when the first gray fingers of dawn stretched across the sky, Tony stumbled into Steve’s old room and fell into his bed, face pushed into what used to be Steve’s pillow, searching for phantom traces of his scent, clutching the worn paperback. Cursing himself and Steve, both. “You marked your page with a drycleaning receipt. At some point, I just took the book. I wanted something of yours,” Tony admits. I wanted you. “And before you ask, no, I’m not giving it back. Finders keepers, natch.”
“That’s okay. I, um, I’m glad you took the book, and...I want you to keep it. Or don’t keep it. Give it away or just—just do whatever you want with it. It’s yours now.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Of course.” Steve nods, a bit jerkily, Tony thinks, and then says, “I’m sorry.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about your parents. I was wrong, but I couldn’t— I knew it would hurt you, and I didn’t want to be the one to hurt you like that. I...I know I took the coward’s way out, and I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry I wasn’t in NY when Thanos came. If I had told you the truth, I would have been there. Maybe together we could have stopped him. I think of you in space, all alone, and I...I just...I hate it. I’m sorry.”
Tony doesn’t respond immediately. He lets the silence settle over them until it’s almost suffocating, and only then does he speak. “Thank you,” he says. “It means something to me that you can actually say the words, ‘I’m sorry.’” His lips tilt in the ghost of a smile. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure you could.”
“I wasn’t sure I could, either,” Steve says, shamefaced. He looks away and scuffs the front of his shoe against the dock. Scratches just above his upper lip. “In the support groups I work with,” he says slowly, “sometimes we talk about missed opportunities—the things we wish we could say to the people Thanos took away from us. I pushed you away. It wasn’t Thanos. You’re still here, and Tony, I don’t want to be that person.”
“Which person?”
“The one who can never admit when they make a mistake.”
“Well, congratulations, buddy, ‘cause you just admitted it. Look, you made mistakes and you hurt me. But I’m not innocent, either.” Tony shakes his head. “I’ve fucked up so many times. There is literal blood on my hands.” He holds his hands out in front of him, palms facing down, and notices that they’re trembling. “But I’m still here, trying to— Just trying , period, and you are, too. I’m just a tired, old man, Steve, and I don’t want to hate you. I don’t hate you. So if you can, you need to forgive yourself. I forgave you a long time ago. What you need to know...What I’ve been trying to tell you…” Tony makes a rough sound of frustration and covers his face with his hands. Why can’t things just be easy sometimes? “This’ll be enough. It has to be enough,” he mutters into his palms, though he knows very well that Steve hears him. For the next part, he uncovers his face and looks up at Steve. He has to. It’s an illusion, of course, it is, but time seems to thicken and turn molasses-slow as Tony licks his dry lips and shivers at the touch of a cool breeze against the back of his neck.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen when we time travel tomorrow, and this is too important. I need you to know...You should know that I—that I love you.” These words leave Tony on a quiet breath. These words are for both of them, for himself and for the man who’s staring back at him with sunset catching in the soft, golden curve of his eyelashes. “I’m not asking for you to...to love me back,” he rushes to add. “I know you don’t, and it’s okay. I have nothing to offer you, anyway. I can’t leave Pepper. I—"
Steve cuts him off. “How do you know?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How do you know that I don’t?” In front of Tony, Steve stands rigid. Tony can’t help but admire the pugnacious twist of his mouth. “What makes you an expert on my feelings?” A muscle in Steve’s jaw flexes.
“I’m not an expert. I just know that you...you can’t.”
“Why?” Steve’s nostrils flare. He’s not shouting, but his tone is undeniably aggressive. “Tell me, what do you mean when you say you love me?” he asks, and Tony can see the fight leave him.
Tony swallows. “That’s easy,” he says, face almost unbearably hot, but the fact remains that uttering those three words felt easier than explaining what they mean. “I mean that knowing you’re out in the world makes me happy. I mean that I want you to be happy.” With each successive word, Tony’s voice slants quieter, softer. “Things happen, and I want to talk to you about them. I see things, and they...they remind me of you. When I wake up, you’re one of the first things on my mind, and right before I fall asleep, you’re one of the last things I think about.” The last sentence is nothing more substantial than a whisper.
“Then you’re wrong because it’s no different for me.” Steve touches Tony’s chin; gently pushes it up so they’re looking at each other again. A sigh whispers from his mouth, and then he speaks. “ Tá mo chroí istigh ionat. ”
The unfamiliar words melt over Tony. There’s a lyrical quality to whatever Steve just said, but Tony can’t decipher the meaning. “What’s that mean?”
He’s unprepared for the small, sad smile that finds Steve’s mouth. It immediately makes Tony want to wrap his arms around Steve until he stops looking like that.
“Just something my ma used to tell me every night before bed.”
“You’re not getting off that easy, buddy,” Tony says because they’re matched in their stubbornness. “Tell me what it means,” he adds, pushing a little command into his voice.
With a single fingertip, Steve touches him, starting at his hairline, stroking between his eyebrows and down over his nose. He stops just short of Tony’s mouth, his finger settling soft and soundless as a snowflake in the tender divot above his upper lip. Tony can feel Steve’s finger shaking. “It means, ‘My heart is within you,’” Steve finally answers. His hand falls away from Tony like it was never there, and a fierce ache seizes Tony. “If you don’t understand what that means, I don’t think I can help you.”
Even as pain curls inside him, Tony laughs, quietly, and shifts on his bare feet. “No, I get it.”
“So where does this leave us?” Steve asks. He’s still standing there only a few scant inches from Tony, but it’s too far. Too far. It feels like he’s across the world again and Tony needs him. He needs Steve, who isn’t there.
“Nowhere.” Tony thrusts his hands into his pockets to keep himself from doing anything (else) stupid. “Same place we were before, I guess. I won’t leave Pepper. I love her, too, and I owe her a lot.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Steve replies, and Tony believes him. “You have a life, and that’s as it should be.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have more to give you.”
Steve shakes his head, thin-lipped. “No, don’t apologize—not for that and not to me. You gave me a home, and...and you gave me words I never, ever expected to hear.”
“You can say it, you know.”
“Say what?”
“You can say that I love you. At least here with me, you can. Maybe never again, but for now…”
“You love me.” And there is a raw wonder in Steve’s voice.
“I do. Very much.”
“ Me .”
The disbelief in that one word cracks Tony open—leaves him a fatal wound at Steve’s feet. “Dance with me?“ he asks. “Just once.”
“I can’t. Never got the chance to learn.”
“It’s easy. I’ll lead. Trust me.”
“I do trust you. Ask me for anything, and if it’s within my power to give it to you, I will. But please don’t ask me to do this.” Steve shakes his head, and Tony’s heart plummets.
“Then just hold me for a minute.”
“I don’t...If I put my arms around you, if I hold you, I don’t think I’ll be able to let you go. I won’t. And I’ll have to, Tony, won’t I?”
The lie hovers there on the edge of Tony’s tongue. He tastes it, sweet right on the border of cloying. False. To give it breath would be so damnably easy, but there have already been too many lies between them. “Yes, you will.” It hurts so much he can’t look at Steve as he says it. He fumbles in his pocket until his fingers capture the baby matryoshka doll. “I have your book. My mom gave me this”—he places the doll in Steve’s hand but doesn’t let go—“and when I touch it or look at it, I remember that she loved me.” He folds Steve’s fingers tightly around the doll and wraps his hand around Steve’s. “I want you to have it now. You can look at it sometimes, maybe, and know that...know that…” Tony can’t get the rest out, so he just shakes his head and silently rails at his impotence.
“Shh... Tá mo chroí istigh ionat , ” Steve says again, curving his free hand ‘round the back of Tony’s neck and bending until their foreheads are pressed together.
“I know. IknowIknowIknow,” Tony says until his voice breaks.
A drop of water splashes Tony’s cheek.
He doesn’t know if it belongs to him or Steve.