Fic: X = {1, 2, 3, 4} = P(SL|TGU) = 0 : Four Times Steve Could Have Left Tony Going Under But Didn’t
It was not the normal response to hearing someone entering through one’s window to simply continue highlighting a passage, but then again Steve knew exactly who was crawling through his bedroom’s window and knew that Tony wouldn’t mind waiting until he reached a good stopping point in his assigned reading. After all, when said friend had created and installed some sort of specialized lock that no one besides the two of them could open, it was pretty much a given who his late afternoon visitor was.
“And done!” Steve declared, tossing down his highlighter. Technically, he still had one more chapter to read, but he was at a good spot to take a break and Tony was there, after all. He rolled his neck to work out the kinks from hunching over his tiny desk and then, in one quick movement, shifted his weight and swung one leg over the back of his chair so that he was now straddling his seat and facing his best friend.
The sixteen-year-old was perched on the edge of Steve’s twin bed a foot away - the upside to going to a local college was living at home and saving on rent but the downside was that he was stuck in a room the same size it had been since he was three.
“Hey,” Steve said gently, a nondescript conversational opening. The first sign was that Tony hadn’t reacted with that typical glimmer of admiration at Steve’s agility that he normally did. His slightly hunched shoulders, unusual stillness, and downcast eyes were the confirmation. It was all Steve needed to see to know that Tony was not in a good place, and there was only one thing Steve knew of that would put him there. Although Tony was three years younger, his intelligence and force of personality burned so brightly that it was easy to forget how young the source really was; Steve normally forgot the age difference altogether until confronted with a wounded Tony. Asking would only send him running off by himself. It was enough that he had come to Steve instead.
“Hey,” Tony echoed, his voice a plaintive shadow of its normal confidence.
Response, yes! That was Steve’s cue to approach, to sit at Tony’s side and let him lean a little against his shoulder. After all this time, Steve had this down to an art.
“Business meeting,” Tony explained shortly. Then with a little, bitter laugh, he added, “He decided to turn it into a weekend visit. See how I was getting on.”
Steve slid an arm around Tony pulling him in a bit more snugly. “I can blanket counter everything he said on principle, or you could tell me, and I can give specifics.”
Tony hummed a little and went boneless at Steve’s side, seeming to curl up against him without actually moving. Steve smiled to himself, pleased that that was all it had taken this time. It wouldn’t hurt to murmur a few things about Tony’s inestimable worth, but it didn’t seem to be essential now.
Normally, Tony had no problems with speaking up for himself, arguing that he was right - but normally, those were framed as academic debates or engineering challenges. Human nature was the one subject on which he bowed to another’s superior knowledge; it was unfortunate that for many years his father had counted as the prime authority on Tony-as-a-human.
Steve still remembered the first time, not long after they had struck up a tentative friendship, when he had seen ten-year-old Tony, shaking and white-faced, and how he had known that he could not let him leave like that, to shove it down by himself. Instead he had grabbed him and towed him in, enfolding him in the warmest hug he could manage. He remembered how Tony had been so stiff and uncertain in his arms and how he had haltingly whispered terrible things about worthless and worse, never should have been born. Steve had exploded in righteous fury over the verbal garbage Tony’s father had spewed, and Tony had looked at him wide-eyed and awed and told him with uncharacteristic shyness that he was ashamed that he hadn’t sought out competing theories as any good scientist ought. It was the most meaningful and heartbreaking thank you Steve had ever received and he had vowed then and there to always make sure Tony knew Steve’s personal second opinion.
~
d(ft(x), ft(y)) > δ
Mathematical definition of “butterfly effect” in chaos theory
~
Considering they were dependent on government funding, Steve didn’t think things were as bad as his teammates often complained. Then again, he had grown up during the Depression (and wasn’t it just amazing to see Hollywood’s romanticized view of what he’d known as a child) and even this much funding seemed exorbitant to him. He would have been completely adrift if the Avengers had been given a larger budget and living space.
Then again, it wasn’t really anything to do with where he lived - Steve was feeling rather lost anyway in this new time period. His teammates were friendly enough, a little too awed for Steve’s comfort, but none of them had really connected. Steve felt as though he was floundering as he tried to make sense of the changes in the world around him even as he dealt privately with his past and his nightmares. Crowded as the team was, Steve admitted in the privacy of his own thoughts that he nevertheless felt lonely.
He was rinsing off his own dishes in the sink when Jan wandered in. She tossed off an absent but pleasant greeting as she switched the television on to the news and then, letting it jabber, poured herself a glass of milk.
Steve smiled at her, wide and automatic, and turned his attention back to his dishes. He’d indulged in waffles for breakfast but was now stuck making sure he got the syrup off by hand since he had forgotten the dishwasher was malfunctioning.
Glass shattered, and Steve found himself in battle stance before he even realized that Jan had dropped her cup and was staring horrified at the television screen. She pressed her hands over her mouth in clear distress
“…police say that at a conservative estimate he was traveling at well over 200 miles per hour…”
“Jan?” Steve said hesitantly, moving towards her and hovering uncertainly
She blinked several times and seemed to come back to herself. “Oh, Cap, this is awful.” She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it tightly as they watched the footage of the silver car being pulled from the river.
“I knew him,” she said suddenly. “Tony Stark, I mean, the man they’re talking about. Not well or anything, but I knew him.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said, casting about for other words to say. The news anchor was harping on about how Stark’s death had come as no surprise. The man had been a media darling because he had provided so much fodder for reporting - a thrill-seeking, party-hard playboy - and the media was certainly milking the last big Stark story for its every indignity. They were flashing stills of Stark now, a mixture of publicity stills, all glossy and hollow, and paparazzi candids. Stark was - had been a handsome young man, clearly in the prime of his life.
“He had so much potential, you know,” Jan continued, in defiance to how the media was portraying him. Another picture of Stark, a blurry cell phone snapshot, from a time he had apparently tested an experimental rocket pack without notifying the proper authorities was showing on the screen as she spoke. Steve thought that it was the only photograph he’d seen so far that Stark’s eyes actually looked alive.
“Wasted potential, true,” she admitted, a moment later, “but such remarkable potential. He was truly brilliant. He could have done such amazing things if, if… I’m not sure what it would have taken to shake Tony out of this, this course of his, but the results would have been something to see.”
Steve stayed silent, not sure how to respond. He didn’t think Jan was even talking to him, per se, merely that he was the witness to her thoughts in the moment.
He saw the clip yet replay again, noting the dirty water sheet out from the cracks of the doors and the spiderweb cracks of the windshield. The silver paint and sleek lines of the car created the illusion of cleaner water, shimmering, and Steve felt inexplicably sad as he watched. Stark, for all the faults being gleefully trotted out by the media, must have been someone exceptional - Jan wouldn’t talk about just anyone like that. It made Steve wonder what had brought him to this point, dead at twenty-three, and whether Steve could have saved him if he had been there.
~
N = Wr(Ct + βt)/0.8z
Widmark’s equation describing the relationship between number of drinks and blood alcohol content
~
Punching the wall didn’t help. Really didn’t help. It certainly didn’t hurt his hand enough to distract him nor could he even use enough of his real strength on the flimsy hotel wall to release some of his frustration.
Steve sighed, one of those great full-body exhales that would have to suffice to calm him down, and slumped against the wall.
He just couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t anything new to not understand Tony - the man’s extraordinary mind and mental prowess was beyond most people’s understanding let alone Steve’s - but his drinking was an entirely different story. How could a man so intelligent, so downright brilliant do that to himself?
He slid down the wall, pulling his knees up and resting his arms on top, letting his hands dangle loosely. Perhaps if he sat here for a few minutes, Tony would change his mind. Steve had a sudden vision of Tony bursting through the door, having realized that he needed help and that Steve was the one who could help him.
Steve snorted and shook his head, letting the rather melodramatic scene unfolding in his thoughts dissolve. He had been watching too many movies. Even if by some miracle, Tony had turned himself around in the last five minutes, it certainly wouldn’t play out like that. Tony wasn’t a damsel in distress and Steve might be a superhero but he certainly wasn’t playing the part of Tony’s hero with any modicum of success.
If only he could understand. He had always forgiven Tony so long as he understood his reasons, and Steve couldn’t imagine that ever changing. But it all hinged on understanding the cipher that was Tony’s reasoning and that required Tony explaining things and that was where Steve was currently stuck. Because Tony wasn’t talking and Steve obviously wasn’t getting it on his own.
He thumped his head back against the wall as he replayed the encounter in the hotel room. Okay, so perhaps, probably getting angry hadn’t been the most effective approach. But it was such an inexplicable thing - to throw his life away like that - Tony had to see it, why couldn’t he see it?
If you could be inside my skin… If you could feel what I’m feeling, you’d know… you’d know that I’ve got to drink…
Steve jolted upright from his slouched position in sudden realization. Those weren’t… those weren’t the words of someone blind to what he was doing. And if Tony was cognizant of what he was doing, fully cognizant of his behavior and was… god, was destroying himself on purpose… And if… if you replaced the word drink with another term, one without the stigma of alcoholism that clouded the issue, that described how Tony was - go ahead and think it - slowly killing himself, it would sound like…
Steve didn’t want to be thinking this, didn’t want to believe it possible, but it made a frightening sort of sense, far more than anything else he’d been able to come up with.
There was no way that he could leave now. If his suspicions were true, it wouldn’t be right for a good man to leave someone in Tony’s state of mind on his own but moreover, Steve couldn’t bear to leave Tony. Not when there were wholly new and horrible images of what he could have found when he had entered Tony’s room.
He got to his feet, fixing a steely gaze on Tony’s door with every ounce of determination with which he had ever faced an opponent as he strode forward reached for the handle a second time. If ever there was a time to be as stubborn as Tony said he was, it was now, for Tony’s sake. He was Captain America and more importantly Tony’s best friend, and he was not about to surrender this fight of all fights.
~
Average soma membrane potential of a population of neurons
~
Steve hadn’t meant to fall asleep, not knowing when Tony would wake and wanting to be sure he was the first thing he saw. He did, thankfully, wake up before Tony did, but only because he had his body well trained to respond to Tony’s nightmares.
Tony’s worst nightmares were quiet. Any big production with screaming and shouting and flailing and startling into panicked awareness - those weren’t the bad ones; they were just his brain visiting the horrors Iron Man witnessed and the pain he had survived. No, it was when Tony was quiet that was when the real nightmares were tormenting him. It was when tears silently slipped from his eyes, wetting the hair at his temples, and when every muscle in his body went immovable with tension, that was when Tony was dreaming his most virulent dreams where he was the monster. No other nightmare could compare to the torture he put himself through casting himself as the guilty party or worse, as the genuine villain.
They were in bed, Tony cradled in his arms and between his legs. He was as stiff as a posed doll, muscles twitching from the sustained contraction, and Steve could feel his t-shirt dampening where Tony’s head was nestled at the juncture of Steve’s neck and shoulder. Steve raised a hand and petted at the strands of hair flopping over Tony’s forehead, damp with sweat. He kept his movements gentle, as though trying to soothe a distressed animal, hoping to ease Tony into wakefulness.
He could feel the shifting in Tony’s body that signaled his waking and relaxed his hold a fraction. Normally, Tony would pull away, huddling in on himself, and Steve would curl around him and coax him back from the edge. Tonight, however, Tony gave an almost subliminal moan and instead of pulling away, he pressed himself into Steve, hitching himself closer and pressing his face to his collarbone.
“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve began immediately. He didn’t know what Tony had dreamt or even how much he was even aware of what Steve said, but it didn’t hurt to try. “It’s okay. You were hit with a toxin. Do you remember? Gave you some nightmares, I know, incredibly realistic ones, but I promise, it was just nightmare. Whatever you saw just now, it was just a nightmare. Everything’s okay.”
Steve felt the warm, rapid puffs of Tony’s breath and realized that he was whispering something, stifling his words against Steve’s shirt. He paused in his litany of reassurance to listen and heard, “Wasn’t worth it. Steve, it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth it,” over and over.
He didn’t know what to say to that - without knowing the context, any direct response he could give might very well backfire. Instead, he resumed his own soft-voiced comforting, holding Tony tightly and sweeping his hands over his back. Tony clutched at Steve, a spasmodic, desperate grasp, and instinctively, Steve wrapped his legs around Tony’s lower body, bringing them even more snuggly together.
Tony’s breath caught and then he lifted his head, to stare Steve in the eye. The expression on his face was difficult to decipher but the most overwhelming factor was determination. Steve opened his mouth to say something - he wasn’t sure what - but Tony beat him to it.
“I love you, Steve.” His voice was rough and peculiarly hard for such an emotional declaration and he was clearly forcing himself to say the words aloud, but there was no denying the truth of what he said nor that somehow, he needed to say what they had always known but never declared out loud.
Tony flinched a little around the eyes and immediately ducked his head back down, burying his face in Steve’s neck.
“I know, Tony,” Steve whispered, still amazed at the bravery of the man he held, but knowing he needed to speak. “I love you, too.”
There was a muffled sound that might have been his name and Steve smiled. “I’m here, Tony, I’m right here.”
~End~
A/N: And there you have it. Please let me know what you think. ^_^ I’m actually considering writing a few drabbles/ficlets in the first AU scenario where Tony and Steve meet as children and live in a real world like ours without superheroes. Good idea/bad idea?
“And done!” Steve declared, tossing down his highlighter. Technically, he still had one more chapter to read, but he was at a good spot to take a break and Tony was there, after all. He rolled his neck to work out the kinks from hunching over his tiny desk and then, in one quick movement, shifted his weight and swung one leg over the back of his chair so that he was now straddling his seat and facing his best friend.
The sixteen-year-old was perched on the edge of Steve’s twin bed a foot away - the upside to going to a local college was living at home and saving on rent but the downside was that he was stuck in a room the same size it had been since he was three.
“Hey,” Steve said gently, a nondescript conversational opening. The first sign was that Tony hadn’t reacted with that typical glimmer of admiration at Steve’s agility that he normally did. His slightly hunched shoulders, unusual stillness, and downcast eyes were the confirmation. It was all Steve needed to see to know that Tony was not in a good place, and there was only one thing Steve knew of that would put him there. Although Tony was three years younger, his intelligence and force of personality burned so brightly that it was easy to forget how young the source really was; Steve normally forgot the age difference altogether until confronted with a wounded Tony. Asking would only send him running off by himself. It was enough that he had come to Steve instead.
“Hey,” Tony echoed, his voice a plaintive shadow of its normal confidence.
Response, yes! That was Steve’s cue to approach, to sit at Tony’s side and let him lean a little against his shoulder. After all this time, Steve had this down to an art.
“Business meeting,” Tony explained shortly. Then with a little, bitter laugh, he added, “He decided to turn it into a weekend visit. See how I was getting on.”
Steve slid an arm around Tony pulling him in a bit more snugly. “I can blanket counter everything he said on principle, or you could tell me, and I can give specifics.”
Tony hummed a little and went boneless at Steve’s side, seeming to curl up against him without actually moving. Steve smiled to himself, pleased that that was all it had taken this time. It wouldn’t hurt to murmur a few things about Tony’s inestimable worth, but it didn’t seem to be essential now.
Normally, Tony had no problems with speaking up for himself, arguing that he was right - but normally, those were framed as academic debates or engineering challenges. Human nature was the one subject on which he bowed to another’s superior knowledge; it was unfortunate that for many years his father had counted as the prime authority on Tony-as-a-human.
Steve still remembered the first time, not long after they had struck up a tentative friendship, when he had seen ten-year-old Tony, shaking and white-faced, and how he had known that he could not let him leave like that, to shove it down by himself. Instead he had grabbed him and towed him in, enfolding him in the warmest hug he could manage. He remembered how Tony had been so stiff and uncertain in his arms and how he had haltingly whispered terrible things about worthless and worse, never should have been born. Steve had exploded in righteous fury over the verbal garbage Tony’s father had spewed, and Tony had looked at him wide-eyed and awed and told him with uncharacteristic shyness that he was ashamed that he hadn’t sought out competing theories as any good scientist ought. It was the most meaningful and heartbreaking thank you Steve had ever received and he had vowed then and there to always make sure Tony knew Steve’s personal second opinion.
~
d(ft(x), ft(y)) > δ
Mathematical definition of “butterfly effect” in chaos theory
~
Considering they were dependent on government funding, Steve didn’t think things were as bad as his teammates often complained. Then again, he had grown up during the Depression (and wasn’t it just amazing to see Hollywood’s romanticized view of what he’d known as a child) and even this much funding seemed exorbitant to him. He would have been completely adrift if the Avengers had been given a larger budget and living space.
Then again, it wasn’t really anything to do with where he lived - Steve was feeling rather lost anyway in this new time period. His teammates were friendly enough, a little too awed for Steve’s comfort, but none of them had really connected. Steve felt as though he was floundering as he tried to make sense of the changes in the world around him even as he dealt privately with his past and his nightmares. Crowded as the team was, Steve admitted in the privacy of his own thoughts that he nevertheless felt lonely.
He was rinsing off his own dishes in the sink when Jan wandered in. She tossed off an absent but pleasant greeting as she switched the television on to the news and then, letting it jabber, poured herself a glass of milk.
Steve smiled at her, wide and automatic, and turned his attention back to his dishes. He’d indulged in waffles for breakfast but was now stuck making sure he got the syrup off by hand since he had forgotten the dishwasher was malfunctioning.
Glass shattered, and Steve found himself in battle stance before he even realized that Jan had dropped her cup and was staring horrified at the television screen. She pressed her hands over her mouth in clear distress
“…police say that at a conservative estimate he was traveling at well over 200 miles per hour…”
“Jan?” Steve said hesitantly, moving towards her and hovering uncertainly
She blinked several times and seemed to come back to herself. “Oh, Cap, this is awful.” She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it tightly as they watched the footage of the silver car being pulled from the river.
“I knew him,” she said suddenly. “Tony Stark, I mean, the man they’re talking about. Not well or anything, but I knew him.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said, casting about for other words to say. The news anchor was harping on about how Stark’s death had come as no surprise. The man had been a media darling because he had provided so much fodder for reporting - a thrill-seeking, party-hard playboy - and the media was certainly milking the last big Stark story for its every indignity. They were flashing stills of Stark now, a mixture of publicity stills, all glossy and hollow, and paparazzi candids. Stark was - had been a handsome young man, clearly in the prime of his life.
“He had so much potential, you know,” Jan continued, in defiance to how the media was portraying him. Another picture of Stark, a blurry cell phone snapshot, from a time he had apparently tested an experimental rocket pack without notifying the proper authorities was showing on the screen as she spoke. Steve thought that it was the only photograph he’d seen so far that Stark’s eyes actually looked alive.
“Wasted potential, true,” she admitted, a moment later, “but such remarkable potential. He was truly brilliant. He could have done such amazing things if, if… I’m not sure what it would have taken to shake Tony out of this, this course of his, but the results would have been something to see.”
Steve stayed silent, not sure how to respond. He didn’t think Jan was even talking to him, per se, merely that he was the witness to her thoughts in the moment.
He saw the clip yet replay again, noting the dirty water sheet out from the cracks of the doors and the spiderweb cracks of the windshield. The silver paint and sleek lines of the car created the illusion of cleaner water, shimmering, and Steve felt inexplicably sad as he watched. Stark, for all the faults being gleefully trotted out by the media, must have been someone exceptional - Jan wouldn’t talk about just anyone like that. It made Steve wonder what had brought him to this point, dead at twenty-three, and whether Steve could have saved him if he had been there.
~
N = Wr(Ct + βt)/0.8z
Widmark’s equation describing the relationship between number of drinks and blood alcohol content
~
Punching the wall didn’t help. Really didn’t help. It certainly didn’t hurt his hand enough to distract him nor could he even use enough of his real strength on the flimsy hotel wall to release some of his frustration.
Steve sighed, one of those great full-body exhales that would have to suffice to calm him down, and slumped against the wall.
He just couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t anything new to not understand Tony - the man’s extraordinary mind and mental prowess was beyond most people’s understanding let alone Steve’s - but his drinking was an entirely different story. How could a man so intelligent, so downright brilliant do that to himself?
He slid down the wall, pulling his knees up and resting his arms on top, letting his hands dangle loosely. Perhaps if he sat here for a few minutes, Tony would change his mind. Steve had a sudden vision of Tony bursting through the door, having realized that he needed help and that Steve was the one who could help him.
Steve snorted and shook his head, letting the rather melodramatic scene unfolding in his thoughts dissolve. He had been watching too many movies. Even if by some miracle, Tony had turned himself around in the last five minutes, it certainly wouldn’t play out like that. Tony wasn’t a damsel in distress and Steve might be a superhero but he certainly wasn’t playing the part of Tony’s hero with any modicum of success.
If only he could understand. He had always forgiven Tony so long as he understood his reasons, and Steve couldn’t imagine that ever changing. But it all hinged on understanding the cipher that was Tony’s reasoning and that required Tony explaining things and that was where Steve was currently stuck. Because Tony wasn’t talking and Steve obviously wasn’t getting it on his own.
He thumped his head back against the wall as he replayed the encounter in the hotel room. Okay, so perhaps, probably getting angry hadn’t been the most effective approach. But it was such an inexplicable thing - to throw his life away like that - Tony had to see it, why couldn’t he see it?
If you could be inside my skin… If you could feel what I’m feeling, you’d know… you’d know that I’ve got to drink…
Steve jolted upright from his slouched position in sudden realization. Those weren’t… those weren’t the words of someone blind to what he was doing. And if Tony was cognizant of what he was doing, fully cognizant of his behavior and was… god, was destroying himself on purpose… And if… if you replaced the word drink with another term, one without the stigma of alcoholism that clouded the issue, that described how Tony was - go ahead and think it - slowly killing himself, it would sound like…
Steve didn’t want to be thinking this, didn’t want to believe it possible, but it made a frightening sort of sense, far more than anything else he’d been able to come up with.
There was no way that he could leave now. If his suspicions were true, it wouldn’t be right for a good man to leave someone in Tony’s state of mind on his own but moreover, Steve couldn’t bear to leave Tony. Not when there were wholly new and horrible images of what he could have found when he had entered Tony’s room.
He got to his feet, fixing a steely gaze on Tony’s door with every ounce of determination with which he had ever faced an opponent as he strode forward reached for the handle a second time. If ever there was a time to be as stubborn as Tony said he was, it was now, for Tony’s sake. He was Captain America and more importantly Tony’s best friend, and he was not about to surrender this fight of all fights.
~
Average soma membrane potential of a population of neurons
~
Steve hadn’t meant to fall asleep, not knowing when Tony would wake and wanting to be sure he was the first thing he saw. He did, thankfully, wake up before Tony did, but only because he had his body well trained to respond to Tony’s nightmares.
Tony’s worst nightmares were quiet. Any big production with screaming and shouting and flailing and startling into panicked awareness - those weren’t the bad ones; they were just his brain visiting the horrors Iron Man witnessed and the pain he had survived. No, it was when Tony was quiet that was when the real nightmares were tormenting him. It was when tears silently slipped from his eyes, wetting the hair at his temples, and when every muscle in his body went immovable with tension, that was when Tony was dreaming his most virulent dreams where he was the monster. No other nightmare could compare to the torture he put himself through casting himself as the guilty party or worse, as the genuine villain.
They were in bed, Tony cradled in his arms and between his legs. He was as stiff as a posed doll, muscles twitching from the sustained contraction, and Steve could feel his t-shirt dampening where Tony’s head was nestled at the juncture of Steve’s neck and shoulder. Steve raised a hand and petted at the strands of hair flopping over Tony’s forehead, damp with sweat. He kept his movements gentle, as though trying to soothe a distressed animal, hoping to ease Tony into wakefulness.
He could feel the shifting in Tony’s body that signaled his waking and relaxed his hold a fraction. Normally, Tony would pull away, huddling in on himself, and Steve would curl around him and coax him back from the edge. Tonight, however, Tony gave an almost subliminal moan and instead of pulling away, he pressed himself into Steve, hitching himself closer and pressing his face to his collarbone.
“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve began immediately. He didn’t know what Tony had dreamt or even how much he was even aware of what Steve said, but it didn’t hurt to try. “It’s okay. You were hit with a toxin. Do you remember? Gave you some nightmares, I know, incredibly realistic ones, but I promise, it was just nightmare. Whatever you saw just now, it was just a nightmare. Everything’s okay.”
Steve felt the warm, rapid puffs of Tony’s breath and realized that he was whispering something, stifling his words against Steve’s shirt. He paused in his litany of reassurance to listen and heard, “Wasn’t worth it. Steve, it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth it,” over and over.
He didn’t know what to say to that - without knowing the context, any direct response he could give might very well backfire. Instead, he resumed his own soft-voiced comforting, holding Tony tightly and sweeping his hands over his back. Tony clutched at Steve, a spasmodic, desperate grasp, and instinctively, Steve wrapped his legs around Tony’s lower body, bringing them even more snuggly together.
Tony’s breath caught and then he lifted his head, to stare Steve in the eye. The expression on his face was difficult to decipher but the most overwhelming factor was determination. Steve opened his mouth to say something - he wasn’t sure what - but Tony beat him to it.
“I love you, Steve.” His voice was rough and peculiarly hard for such an emotional declaration and he was clearly forcing himself to say the words aloud, but there was no denying the truth of what he said nor that somehow, he needed to say what they had always known but never declared out loud.
Tony flinched a little around the eyes and immediately ducked his head back down, burying his face in Steve’s neck.
“I know, Tony,” Steve whispered, still amazed at the bravery of the man he held, but knowing he needed to speak. “I love you, too.”
There was a muffled sound that might have been his name and Steve smiled. “I’m here, Tony, I’m right here.”
~End~
A/N: And there you have it. Please let me know what you think. ^_^ I’m actually considering writing a few drabbles/ficlets in the first AU scenario where Tony and Steve meet as children and live in a real world like ours without superheroes. Good idea/bad idea?