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I was writing this as a Secret Santa for @goldenazk. I was just about finished with it, so I figured I would go ahead and post it anyways. I took the prompt off of fic rec you were looking for - I hope you like it. Mind the cut.
Steve rolled over as he came out of sleep and felt restlessly across the bed. His hand encountered only cool, smooth sheets, and he opened his eyes blearily. His memory fumbled around in the semi-darkness, trying to place exactly where – or more the point when – he was. Not in the tenement, not huddled in a pup tent, not in his SHIELD barracks. He was in his bed at the Tower. It had been his bed for three years, and for several months of those years, he’d shared it with Tony Stark.
It took several seconds to remember that Tony didn’t sleep in his bed anymore. Even though it had been 6 months since the breakup, he still found it hard to grasp on the bad mornings. The haze cleared, and he was settled in the present again, distanced from his dream of Hydra bases, closer to the evening when Tony had smiled his brittle smile and said, “This isn’t going to work for me.”
Almost without his consent, Steve’s hand continued to drift over the sheets, searching for the phantom warmth of Tony’s body. Waking up alone hadn’t meant much when they’d been together. He and Tony kept wildly different sleeping schedules, and it was just as likely to find Tony curled up on a couch still in a business suit as it was to find him naked in bed. It had only been four months, and they’d probably slept in the same bed only a dozen and a half times, but some mornings Steve missed it like breathing.
Giving up the search for something he wasn’t going to find, Steve swung his legs out of bed, stretched, and got up. The world continued to move, and Steve had to move with it, or he’d grow roots into his bed and never leave. He went through his morning routine, though it was still nighttime for most people, and went for his jog. Natasha joined him without a word, and then peeled off when she’d had enough. Sam took her place as the sun was rising, pointedly moving so he was on Steve’s left, and kept pace for about five miles before he also pulled away.
Steve decided to take a lap around the park’s perimeter, and then turned for home. Freshly showered and feeling the exertion of his long run, Steve got dressed for a day in the training gym. He found Tony in the common area with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, and they both paused. They were good, mostly, as long as they were alone. Before that first time they’d fallen into bed together, it had seemed like Steve could talk to Tony about anything. Since the breakup it had been hard to even look at him. Steve never knew what to do with his hands, or where to look, and Tony seemed so wary all the time.
“Cap,” Tony greeted after an awkward heartbeat or three. His lips parted, and he shifted his weight like he meant to say something else, but then decided against it. He offered Steve a tight smile instead, and took a long drink.
Steve nodded at him in acknowledgement, silently mourning the loss of the easiness they’d had. Tony’s weight shifted restlessly, and then he gave Steve another uncomfortable smile, holding his coffee cup up in a mute farewell, and turned to go.
“Tony, wait!” Steve lurched forward a step, and then back. Tony stopped, but he didn’t turn around completely, just looked at Steve over his shoulder. “How are you?” Steve blurted out.
Turning around reluctantly, Tony shrugged. “Fine. You?”
Steve wanted to say, “I miss you.” What he actually said was, “Fine.”
They nodded to each other, bobbing their heads like they were on strings. “Good,” Tony said.
“Good,” Steve echoed.
Tony waited a moment while the silence grew longer and heavier. When Steve didn’t come up with another stall, he lifted his free hand in a wave, and turned back around. Steve let him go. Once the door was closed, Steve let out his breath and smacked himself lightly on the forehead.
“How are you?” he sneered at himself. “Smooth, Rogers.”
“It was pretty awkward.”
Steve jumped at the unexpected voice behind him, and turned to find Bruce at the table. Bruce had his shoulders curved in, and a crooked smile to match his furrowed eyebrows. He tried to smile, but it came out a wince, and then lifted his hands in an apologetic shrug.
Steve couldn’t blame him. He scratched at the back of his neck in a nervous tick, but he finally managed a smile of his own, and then a laugh. “Sorry.”
“He’s complicated,” Bruce said instead of responding to Steve’s apology. He gestured toward the closed door. “Tony. Complicated. It might actually be his middle name. He’s good, though.”
Swallowing hard, Steve said, “I know he is. I need to hit the training gym. Text me if you need anything.” Rather than waiting for any further uncomfortable conversation, Steve retreated from the room with a quick salute. He and Tony hadn’t gotten to the point of discussing their relationship with anyone else, but they lived in a tour full of smart people who were all trained, in one way or another, to observe people. He’d be more surprised if any of his teammates didn’t know about his and Tony’s fling and subsequent breakup, but none of them had discussed it. Steve wasn’t sure what anyone thought about it, and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. The one person whose opinion he cared about didn’t seem inclined to share.
The hell of it was that Steve still didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. He’d thought they’d been doing well – they worked well in the field, they communicated well off the well of the field, and they enjoyed each other’s company. Or at least Steve had been enjoying Tony’s company. For all he knew, Tony had been silently dreading being anywhere near him. He couldn’t guess at what he’d missed, and on the bad nights, he spent hours rehashing their conversations, the dinner’s they’d spent together, the evenings in his bed. He had an eidetic memory, but it didn’t work like instant replay on interactions. He found himself wondering if really remembered a smile and a laugh, or if they had been strained. Had Tony wanted it when they’d had sex, or had it been forced?
“Cap, you joining us anytime today?”
Steve looked up to realize that he’d made it to the training gym without realizing it, and he had no idea how long he’d been standing in the doorway while Sam, Clint, and Natasha waited.
Get it together, he told himself, and then did his best to put Tony out of his head so he could he make it through the day.
~*~
Steve sat unhappily in the recliner with his ankle propped up on a pillow, and a bag of ice wrapped around it. He glared and batted away projectiles while Sam threw bits of carrots and cheese at him. One moment of inattention, and Sam had dumped him like a green newbie. Steve had landed badly on the ankle, and Sam and Clint had both taken great delight in carrying him back to the common room over his strident protests that he could walk. Once they’d set him down, he’d tried to get back up, but quickly found himself swaddled in a blanket, and propped up on ice.
“This is not necessary,” Steve complained, trying to get up again, but Natasha had somehow knotted him into the blanket so that his elbows were held close to his sides and his hands were up uselessly by his neck. He wasn’t going to get on his feet without ripping it. “C’mon, you guys, I need a shower.”
“We’re making you soup,” Natasha said with a wicked smile in her voice.
“Yeah, Mamma Cap. Soup,” Sam said, throwing another carrot at him.
Steve caught it and popped it into his mouth. He bit down on it loudly and chewed with his mouth open, just to be obnoxious. He got a chunk of cheese to the face for his troubles, and his arms were too encumbered to catch it. He glared at Clint, who just flicked another cube at him.
He’d made the rookie mistake, so Steve put up with the razzing with as much good grace as he could find.
“Sparring is not practice for real life, Steve,” Sam explained solemnly while he scraped the cut veggies into the pot. “It’s important to pay attention, and treat it like it’s a real fight. You hear me?”
Steve rolled his eyes hard and squirmed in his blanket cocoon, but Natasha’s twists were frustratingly effective.
“Hey, are you listening, Captain?” Sam called.
“I’m listening!” Steve grumbled.
“Good, because out there, a stumble like that, and you’d’ve lost your head. You know that right?” He dragged a finger across his throat. “Six inches right off the top.”
He dropped his head back against the cushion and let Sam have the moment. He could just about recite the speech, he’d given it to others often enough, but it wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. Peggy had delivered it to him the first time after landing him square on his back while he’d been entranced by the swirl of her hair in the sunlight.
Clint joined in on The Speech, and Steve put up with it until Clint came over with the bow of soup and the spoon already held out.
“No!” Steve shouted. “No, that’s enough! You’ve had your fun!”
“Oh, this is happening,” Clint said, grin stretching his face. “This is so happening.”
“What’s happening?”
“Tony, thank God,” Steve breathed. His heart fluttered under his breastbone, and he twisted to look around Clint’s side to see Tony standing in the doorway, blinking at the strange scene, his tie draped over his neck and first button undone. “Help,” Steve mouthed.
“Riiiight. This is new,” Tony said, tilting his head one way, and then the other. He looked around with exaggerated scrutiny. “Are we in a reality show and no one told me?”
“Cap screwed up in training,” Clint explained.
“Bad,” Sam added. “We’re taking care of our injured teammate.” He gestured to Steve’s injured ankle.
“Did you give him the ‘not a trial run for the real world’ speech?” Tony asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yup.”
“Twice, basically,” Clint added.
“And I see he’s being iced,” Tony said, gesturing to the recliner where the ice bag had been taped around Steve’s ankle.
“Dad is about to spoil our fun,” Clint said with a heavy sigh, but he set the bowl of soup on the coffee table and Steve was saved the indignity of being spoon fed vegetable soup, though he did have to admit that it smelled fantastic. Steve watched the three of them collect their own bowls, and thought of his Commandos. It was the kind of good-natured hazing that he would have been subjected to at their hands, and that he’d watched from a distance when it was one of the men, only stepping in if it started to go too far to give the hapless subject a break. It made him homesick like he hadn’t been in a long time.
Sam paused next to Tony, who was still looking on in indulgent bemusement, and clapped him once on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
Tony arched an eyebrow at him, but Sam left without another, just barely making it into the elevator before the doors closed. Silence fell on the common room, leaving Steve acutely aware of being trapped in the blankets. He twisted and tried to get his elbow untangled.
“Are you actually hurt?” Tony asked after a long moment. When Steve looked up, Tony pointed at his leg.
“Twisted it,” Steve admitted, trying to squirm out of the cocoon. “It’s fine.”
He heard footsteps and looked as Tony crossed around behind him. Steve leaned forward, letting Tony work at the knots in the blankets. Tony didn’t speak, but he made huffy noises of annoyance while he tugged at the blanket. This was obviously not the first time that Natasha had tied someone up with a blanket. He was curious about where the experience had come from, but also immediately decided that he didn’t want to know.
The blanket finally loosened around Steve’s shoulders, and he was able to get his arms straight up in the air. He stretched gratefully as the blanket puddled around his hips, still tied about him like a tight skirt, but at least he could move more than his wrists.
“Thanks.”
Tony hummed in agreement, and then disappeared into the kitchen. Before Steve could figure out what to say, he returned with his own bowl of soup and dropped down to the couch. He blew at the steam wisping off the top and swirled his spoon through the liquid, but he didn’t eat any. Steve ended up caught in indecision, as trapped as he was when he’d been wrapped up in the blanket. He wanted to get up and leave the uncomfortable silence, and he wanted to go sit next to Tony on the couch, and he wanted to just go back to the way things had been before. If he just turned on the T.V. and pulled up some episode of How It’s Made, Tony might relax enough to make commentary, or design a new machine to improve their processes just because it hurt his heart to see the inefficiency.
“We’ve never…” Tony started. His spoon clinked against the side of the bowl. “I’ve never started a conversation about.” He let the bowl rest on his lap and made a loose gesture between them. “Us. I thought that it would just go away, and it seems like… maybe it’s not?”
Steve bit into his lip to stop himself from blurting out any number off snap responses. What did Tony expect to ‘go away,’ in the first place? The awkwardness? Their relationship altogether? Did he expect Steve to just forget it, or pretend it had never happened? Steve’s feelings? Maybe Steve’s feelings had been the problem from the beginning.
“Not sure what you want me to say,” he said finally.
Tony shrugged. His heel tapped restlessly on the carpet, making his spoon rattle in the soup bowl, and he rubbed the edge of his middle finger over the pad of his thumb in a nervous tick. “I just want to know if we’re okay? We’re teammates, and ‘leadership’ whatever that means. We need to be okay, and I keep waiting for us to just be okay again.”
“Tony… We’re fine. As teammates, and ‘leadership’ we’re fine,” Steve said, curving his fingers by his ears and mimicking Tony’s tone. The team still called them ‘mom and dad’ most of the time, but then they’d started that long before he and Tony had ended up in bed. “As for ‘us’… I don’t know. I don’t even know why we broke up, so it’s hard to be okay about it.” When Tony didn’t respond, Steve gently prodded, “Why did we break up?”
Unexpectedly, Tony laughed. Steve tried not to be offended – it seemed like Tony was laughing at himself more than Steve, but the sound still grated across his nerves and stabbed through his chest. Tony dragged his hand down his face.
“We broke up to avoid this,” Tony said through his laughter.
Steve frowned. “You broke up with me.”
“To avoid this,” Tony repeated. He made a wide gesture to the room in the general.
“Don’t say ‘we’ then when I didn’t have a choice. Maybe if you’d told me what you were worried about, we could have worked through it together.” He tried to be understanding, as a general practice, but he hated things being decided for him. “Is there something else? Is that you letting me down easy?”
Tony laughed again. “I walked away from you six months ago without a word of explanation. I don’t think that counts as easy in anyone’s book.”
Steve felt heat flushing angrily up his neck and over his cheeks. “Then why are you bothering to talk to me now?”
“I miss you.”
The bubble of anger building in Steve’s throat popped. It made an audible whistling sound as it escaped through his teeth. He clamped down on it and just stared at Tony, aware of the way his chest was heaving, and his skin was just flushing hotter. He wanted to know what right Tony had to miss him, and what Tony was trying to achieve by telling him in the first place. He breathed heavily in and out through his nose.
“Goddamnit, Tony,” he hissed. “I miss you too. And I’m really fucking mad at you right now. Don’t you ever do this to me again.”
Tony went very still, his eyes wide, chin pulled back. “What?”
Glaring at him, Steve swiped his soup off the coffee table, and repeated, “Don’t ever do this to me again. I get to make my own decisions.” He locked eyes with Tony. “Promise me.”
“I…” Tony floundered for several seconds.
Steve took a sip from his soup while Tony gaped at him like a landed fish. It tasted as good as it smelled, even though it was going cold. He took another spoonful to give them both a chance to think, and then just tipped the bowl up to drink out of it. When he encountered the chunks of vegetables, he chewed on them deliberately to distract himself from the thoughts running circles around his brain.
“Okay,” Tony said once Steve had drained the bowl. “Okay. I promise.”
Looking up cautiously, Steve repeated, “Okay?”
Tony nodded. Steve realized for the first time that he was shaking faintly, and the smile flickering on his lips looked equal parts terrified and hopeful. “Okay.”
Setting his bowl down, Steve stood up and shimmied out of his blanket skirt. He sat down cautiously at Tony’s side, and held his hand out.
Tony hesitated a second before surrendering his own hand. “This might go very badly,” he said hoarsely.
“Can’t go worse than the last six months.”
Tony winced, but then nodded. He squeezed Steve’s hand tightly. A smile broke across his face like a sunrise, making Steve realize that it had been a very long time since he’d seen Tony really smile. When Tony leaned forward, Steve met him halfway.
“Maybe we can take this somewhere else?” Steve asked quietly. “To talk,” he clarified, and then raised his voice, “Where we aren’t being evesdropped on.”
There was a curse from the other side of the door, a flurry of whispers and thumps, and then silence again.
“You know they haven’t actually left. They just want us to think they have,” Tony said, smile growing even larger.
Steve gave him a smile to match, and felt the distant hurt and anger simmering down in the face of his radiant joy. “Thank you for rescuing me. From the soup.”
“Anytime,” Tony said with a laugh. He leaned forward to press their foreheads together. “Though you looked pretty adorable caught in the blanket. Maybe I’ll get Natasha to teach me.”
Hiking an eyebrow, Steve replied, “Maybe I’ll get Natasha to teach me.”
“I would not look cute in a blanket cocoon.”
Steve begged to differ. He made a humming noise, tilting his head side-to-side skeptically. “If that’s what it takes to keep you in bed…”
“Cocoon not necessary. All you have to do is ask.”
(Your picture was not posted)
I was writing this as a Secret Santa for @goldenazk. I was just about finished with it, so I figured I would go ahead and post it anyways. I took the prompt off of fic rec you were looking for - I hope you like it. Mind the cut.
Steve rolled over as he came out of sleep and felt restlessly across the bed. His hand encountered only cool, smooth sheets, and he opened his eyes blearily. His memory fumbled around in the semi-darkness, trying to place exactly where – or more the point when – he was. Not in the tenement, not huddled in a pup tent, not in his SHIELD barracks. He was in his bed at the Tower. It had been his bed for three years, and for several months of those years, he’d shared it with Tony Stark.
It took several seconds to remember that Tony didn’t sleep in his bed anymore. Even though it had been 6 months since the breakup, he still found it hard to grasp on the bad mornings. The haze cleared, and he was settled in the present again, distanced from his dream of Hydra bases, closer to the evening when Tony had smiled his brittle smile and said, “This isn’t going to work for me.”
Almost without his consent, Steve’s hand continued to drift over the sheets, searching for the phantom warmth of Tony’s body. Waking up alone hadn’t meant much when they’d been together. He and Tony kept wildly different sleeping schedules, and it was just as likely to find Tony curled up on a couch still in a business suit as it was to find him naked in bed. It had only been four months, and they’d probably slept in the same bed only a dozen and a half times, but some mornings Steve missed it like breathing.
Giving up the search for something he wasn’t going to find, Steve swung his legs out of bed, stretched, and got up. The world continued to move, and Steve had to move with it, or he’d grow roots into his bed and never leave. He went through his morning routine, though it was still nighttime for most people, and went for his jog. Natasha joined him without a word, and then peeled off when she’d had enough. Sam took her place as the sun was rising, pointedly moving so he was on Steve’s left, and kept pace for about five miles before he also pulled away.
Steve decided to take a lap around the park’s perimeter, and then turned for home. Freshly showered and feeling the exertion of his long run, Steve got dressed for a day in the training gym. He found Tony in the common area with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, and they both paused. They were good, mostly, as long as they were alone. Before that first time they’d fallen into bed together, it had seemed like Steve could talk to Tony about anything. Since the breakup it had been hard to even look at him. Steve never knew what to do with his hands, or where to look, and Tony seemed so wary all the time.
“Cap,” Tony greeted after an awkward heartbeat or three. His lips parted, and he shifted his weight like he meant to say something else, but then decided against it. He offered Steve a tight smile instead, and took a long drink.
Steve nodded at him in acknowledgement, silently mourning the loss of the easiness they’d had. Tony’s weight shifted restlessly, and then he gave Steve another uncomfortable smile, holding his coffee cup up in a mute farewell, and turned to go.
“Tony, wait!” Steve lurched forward a step, and then back. Tony stopped, but he didn’t turn around completely, just looked at Steve over his shoulder. “How are you?” Steve blurted out.
Turning around reluctantly, Tony shrugged. “Fine. You?”
Steve wanted to say, “I miss you.” What he actually said was, “Fine.”
They nodded to each other, bobbing their heads like they were on strings. “Good,” Tony said.
“Good,” Steve echoed.
Tony waited a moment while the silence grew longer and heavier. When Steve didn’t come up with another stall, he lifted his free hand in a wave, and turned back around. Steve let him go. Once the door was closed, Steve let out his breath and smacked himself lightly on the forehead.
“How are you?” he sneered at himself. “Smooth, Rogers.”
“It was pretty awkward.”
Steve jumped at the unexpected voice behind him, and turned to find Bruce at the table. Bruce had his shoulders curved in, and a crooked smile to match his furrowed eyebrows. He tried to smile, but it came out a wince, and then lifted his hands in an apologetic shrug.
Steve couldn’t blame him. He scratched at the back of his neck in a nervous tick, but he finally managed a smile of his own, and then a laugh. “Sorry.”
“He’s complicated,” Bruce said instead of responding to Steve’s apology. He gestured toward the closed door. “Tony. Complicated. It might actually be his middle name. He’s good, though.”
Swallowing hard, Steve said, “I know he is. I need to hit the training gym. Text me if you need anything.” Rather than waiting for any further uncomfortable conversation, Steve retreated from the room with a quick salute. He and Tony hadn’t gotten to the point of discussing their relationship with anyone else, but they lived in a tour full of smart people who were all trained, in one way or another, to observe people. He’d be more surprised if any of his teammates didn’t know about his and Tony’s fling and subsequent breakup, but none of them had discussed it. Steve wasn’t sure what anyone thought about it, and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. The one person whose opinion he cared about didn’t seem inclined to share.
The hell of it was that Steve still didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. He’d thought they’d been doing well – they worked well in the field, they communicated well off the well of the field, and they enjoyed each other’s company. Or at least Steve had been enjoying Tony’s company. For all he knew, Tony had been silently dreading being anywhere near him. He couldn’t guess at what he’d missed, and on the bad nights, he spent hours rehashing their conversations, the dinner’s they’d spent together, the evenings in his bed. He had an eidetic memory, but it didn’t work like instant replay on interactions. He found himself wondering if really remembered a smile and a laugh, or if they had been strained. Had Tony wanted it when they’d had sex, or had it been forced?
“Cap, you joining us anytime today?”
Steve looked up to realize that he’d made it to the training gym without realizing it, and he had no idea how long he’d been standing in the doorway while Sam, Clint, and Natasha waited.
Get it together, he told himself, and then did his best to put Tony out of his head so he could he make it through the day.
~*~
Steve sat unhappily in the recliner with his ankle propped up on a pillow, and a bag of ice wrapped around it. He glared and batted away projectiles while Sam threw bits of carrots and cheese at him. One moment of inattention, and Sam had dumped him like a green newbie. Steve had landed badly on the ankle, and Sam and Clint had both taken great delight in carrying him back to the common room over his strident protests that he could walk. Once they’d set him down, he’d tried to get back up, but quickly found himself swaddled in a blanket, and propped up on ice.
“This is not necessary,” Steve complained, trying to get up again, but Natasha had somehow knotted him into the blanket so that his elbows were held close to his sides and his hands were up uselessly by his neck. He wasn’t going to get on his feet without ripping it. “C’mon, you guys, I need a shower.”
“We’re making you soup,” Natasha said with a wicked smile in her voice.
“Yeah, Mamma Cap. Soup,” Sam said, throwing another carrot at him.
Steve caught it and popped it into his mouth. He bit down on it loudly and chewed with his mouth open, just to be obnoxious. He got a chunk of cheese to the face for his troubles, and his arms were too encumbered to catch it. He glared at Clint, who just flicked another cube at him.
He’d made the rookie mistake, so Steve put up with the razzing with as much good grace as he could find.
“Sparring is not practice for real life, Steve,” Sam explained solemnly while he scraped the cut veggies into the pot. “It’s important to pay attention, and treat it like it’s a real fight. You hear me?”
Steve rolled his eyes hard and squirmed in his blanket cocoon, but Natasha’s twists were frustratingly effective.
“Hey, are you listening, Captain?” Sam called.
“I’m listening!” Steve grumbled.
“Good, because out there, a stumble like that, and you’d’ve lost your head. You know that right?” He dragged a finger across his throat. “Six inches right off the top.”
He dropped his head back against the cushion and let Sam have the moment. He could just about recite the speech, he’d given it to others often enough, but it wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. Peggy had delivered it to him the first time after landing him square on his back while he’d been entranced by the swirl of her hair in the sunlight.
Clint joined in on The Speech, and Steve put up with it until Clint came over with the bow of soup and the spoon already held out.
“No!” Steve shouted. “No, that’s enough! You’ve had your fun!”
“Oh, this is happening,” Clint said, grin stretching his face. “This is so happening.”
“What’s happening?”
“Tony, thank God,” Steve breathed. His heart fluttered under his breastbone, and he twisted to look around Clint’s side to see Tony standing in the doorway, blinking at the strange scene, his tie draped over his neck and first button undone. “Help,” Steve mouthed.
“Riiiight. This is new,” Tony said, tilting his head one way, and then the other. He looked around with exaggerated scrutiny. “Are we in a reality show and no one told me?”
“Cap screwed up in training,” Clint explained.
“Bad,” Sam added. “We’re taking care of our injured teammate.” He gestured to Steve’s injured ankle.
“Did you give him the ‘not a trial run for the real world’ speech?” Tony asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Yup.”
“Twice, basically,” Clint added.
“And I see he’s being iced,” Tony said, gesturing to the recliner where the ice bag had been taped around Steve’s ankle.
“Dad is about to spoil our fun,” Clint said with a heavy sigh, but he set the bowl of soup on the coffee table and Steve was saved the indignity of being spoon fed vegetable soup, though he did have to admit that it smelled fantastic. Steve watched the three of them collect their own bowls, and thought of his Commandos. It was the kind of good-natured hazing that he would have been subjected to at their hands, and that he’d watched from a distance when it was one of the men, only stepping in if it started to go too far to give the hapless subject a break. It made him homesick like he hadn’t been in a long time.
Sam paused next to Tony, who was still looking on in indulgent bemusement, and clapped him once on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
Tony arched an eyebrow at him, but Sam left without another, just barely making it into the elevator before the doors closed. Silence fell on the common room, leaving Steve acutely aware of being trapped in the blankets. He twisted and tried to get his elbow untangled.
“Are you actually hurt?” Tony asked after a long moment. When Steve looked up, Tony pointed at his leg.
“Twisted it,” Steve admitted, trying to squirm out of the cocoon. “It’s fine.”
He heard footsteps and looked as Tony crossed around behind him. Steve leaned forward, letting Tony work at the knots in the blankets. Tony didn’t speak, but he made huffy noises of annoyance while he tugged at the blanket. This was obviously not the first time that Natasha had tied someone up with a blanket. He was curious about where the experience had come from, but also immediately decided that he didn’t want to know.
The blanket finally loosened around Steve’s shoulders, and he was able to get his arms straight up in the air. He stretched gratefully as the blanket puddled around his hips, still tied about him like a tight skirt, but at least he could move more than his wrists.
“Thanks.”
Tony hummed in agreement, and then disappeared into the kitchen. Before Steve could figure out what to say, he returned with his own bowl of soup and dropped down to the couch. He blew at the steam wisping off the top and swirled his spoon through the liquid, but he didn’t eat any. Steve ended up caught in indecision, as trapped as he was when he’d been wrapped up in the blanket. He wanted to get up and leave the uncomfortable silence, and he wanted to go sit next to Tony on the couch, and he wanted to just go back to the way things had been before. If he just turned on the T.V. and pulled up some episode of How It’s Made, Tony might relax enough to make commentary, or design a new machine to improve their processes just because it hurt his heart to see the inefficiency.
“We’ve never…” Tony started. His spoon clinked against the side of the bowl. “I’ve never started a conversation about.” He let the bowl rest on his lap and made a loose gesture between them. “Us. I thought that it would just go away, and it seems like… maybe it’s not?”
Steve bit into his lip to stop himself from blurting out any number off snap responses. What did Tony expect to ‘go away,’ in the first place? The awkwardness? Their relationship altogether? Did he expect Steve to just forget it, or pretend it had never happened? Steve’s feelings? Maybe Steve’s feelings had been the problem from the beginning.
“Not sure what you want me to say,” he said finally.
Tony shrugged. His heel tapped restlessly on the carpet, making his spoon rattle in the soup bowl, and he rubbed the edge of his middle finger over the pad of his thumb in a nervous tick. “I just want to know if we’re okay? We’re teammates, and ‘leadership’ whatever that means. We need to be okay, and I keep waiting for us to just be okay again.”
“Tony… We’re fine. As teammates, and ‘leadership’ we’re fine,” Steve said, curving his fingers by his ears and mimicking Tony’s tone. The team still called them ‘mom and dad’ most of the time, but then they’d started that long before he and Tony had ended up in bed. “As for ‘us’… I don’t know. I don’t even know why we broke up, so it’s hard to be okay about it.” When Tony didn’t respond, Steve gently prodded, “Why did we break up?”
Unexpectedly, Tony laughed. Steve tried not to be offended – it seemed like Tony was laughing at himself more than Steve, but the sound still grated across his nerves and stabbed through his chest. Tony dragged his hand down his face.
“We broke up to avoid this,” Tony said through his laughter.
Steve frowned. “You broke up with me.”
“To avoid this,” Tony repeated. He made a wide gesture to the room in the general.
“Don’t say ‘we’ then when I didn’t have a choice. Maybe if you’d told me what you were worried about, we could have worked through it together.” He tried to be understanding, as a general practice, but he hated things being decided for him. “Is there something else? Is that you letting me down easy?”
Tony laughed again. “I walked away from you six months ago without a word of explanation. I don’t think that counts as easy in anyone’s book.”
Steve felt heat flushing angrily up his neck and over his cheeks. “Then why are you bothering to talk to me now?”
“I miss you.”
The bubble of anger building in Steve’s throat popped. It made an audible whistling sound as it escaped through his teeth. He clamped down on it and just stared at Tony, aware of the way his chest was heaving, and his skin was just flushing hotter. He wanted to know what right Tony had to miss him, and what Tony was trying to achieve by telling him in the first place. He breathed heavily in and out through his nose.
“Goddamnit, Tony,” he hissed. “I miss you too. And I’m really fucking mad at you right now. Don’t you ever do this to me again.”
Tony went very still, his eyes wide, chin pulled back. “What?”
Glaring at him, Steve swiped his soup off the coffee table, and repeated, “Don’t ever do this to me again. I get to make my own decisions.” He locked eyes with Tony. “Promise me.”
“I…” Tony floundered for several seconds.
Steve took a sip from his soup while Tony gaped at him like a landed fish. It tasted as good as it smelled, even though it was going cold. He took another spoonful to give them both a chance to think, and then just tipped the bowl up to drink out of it. When he encountered the chunks of vegetables, he chewed on them deliberately to distract himself from the thoughts running circles around his brain.
“Okay,” Tony said once Steve had drained the bowl. “Okay. I promise.”
Looking up cautiously, Steve repeated, “Okay?”
Tony nodded. Steve realized for the first time that he was shaking faintly, and the smile flickering on his lips looked equal parts terrified and hopeful. “Okay.”
Setting his bowl down, Steve stood up and shimmied out of his blanket skirt. He sat down cautiously at Tony’s side, and held his hand out.
Tony hesitated a second before surrendering his own hand. “This might go very badly,” he said hoarsely.
“Can’t go worse than the last six months.”
Tony winced, but then nodded. He squeezed Steve’s hand tightly. A smile broke across his face like a sunrise, making Steve realize that it had been a very long time since he’d seen Tony really smile. When Tony leaned forward, Steve met him halfway.
“Maybe we can take this somewhere else?” Steve asked quietly. “To talk,” he clarified, and then raised his voice, “Where we aren’t being evesdropped on.”
There was a curse from the other side of the door, a flurry of whispers and thumps, and then silence again.
“You know they haven’t actually left. They just want us to think they have,” Tony said, smile growing even larger.
Steve gave him a smile to match, and felt the distant hurt and anger simmering down in the face of his radiant joy. “Thank you for rescuing me. From the soup.”
“Anytime,” Tony said with a laugh. He leaned forward to press their foreheads together. “Though you looked pretty adorable caught in the blanket. Maybe I’ll get Natasha to teach me.”
Hiking an eyebrow, Steve replied, “Maybe I’ll get Natasha to teach me.”
“I would not look cute in a blanket cocoon.”
Steve begged to differ. He made a humming noise, tilting his head side-to-side skeptically. “If that’s what it takes to keep you in bed…”
“Cocoon not necessary. All you have to do is ask.”
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