Work Text:
Until You Stop
“They mean it well,” Steve says reasonably, making cooking-sounds in the tiny alcove that serves as a kitchen.
“Ha!” Tony paces the living area, which is smaller than his closet at home. “They’ve set up a perimeter and thrown away the key.”
“Well,” Steve says, appearing with two cups of steaming beverage and holding one out to Tony. “We have been arguing quite a bit.”
“Arguing!” Tony scoffs, taking the cup and sitting on the sofa. “More like... discussing.”
Steve sits down silently on the other sofa cushion.
“Couldn’t you, like--” Tony waves his hand at the space around them.
“There’s nowhere else to sit.” Steve’s voice sounds weird.
“Fine, okay. Okay.” Tony slurps his tea -- tea! -- noisily. “Just because I’m locked in with a sanctimonious, uptight throwback from--”
Steve makes a frustrated sound and leans over and kisses him on the lips. He pulls back quickly, before Tony has time to do anything more than think, What?
Steve looks away. The back of his neck is red. “I... Sorry,” Steve says. He turns away and scoots to the edge of the sofa. “I’m going to go for a walk.”
“A walk. You do realize it’s 40 below out there, with 15 foot drifts?”
Steve nods. “I’ve been in worse.” His voice is choked, tight.
So is Tony’s throat, suddenly. Now Steve would rather walk around in a frozen wilderness than be with Tony. All alone. Like he always is in this century.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick to you,” Tony blurts. It still doesn’t relieve the pressure in his heart, so stupidly, he keeps going. Actually, that’s kind of a motto for him, isn’t it. “I’ve stupidly, well, kept going. Messing with you. I’m sure there are lots of deep-seated psychological reasons, yadda yadda...”
Steve nods, back still to Tony. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I’ve kind of been a dick to you, too, I guess.”
“No. You haven’t.” Tony is pretty clear on that. “Or if you have, well, Jesus Christ: new century, loss of all you knew, having to deal with me...”
“Tony,” Steve sighs, turning around and looking at him. “I like dealing with you. I thought I made that embarrassingly clear. I’m really going for a walk now.”
“But--”
“There are snowshoes. And a walkie-talkie. And Norse gods guarding the perimeter to keep us here. So it’ll be fine.” Steve’s muscles bunch in preparation for standing.
“Wait,” Tony says, hand somehow on Steve’s thigh.
Steve freezes in place. His eyes are old-young on Tony. Like always. Like they see stuff. Tony isn’t comfortable with people seeing stuff about him.
Tony listens to himself some more for a while, then rolls his eyes. Well, sucks to be him. And okay, fuck it, he’s been more scared in his life; this is nothing.
A big, warm hand slowly covers Tony’s where it’s lying on Steve’s thigh.
Tony lifts his eyes to Steve’s and raises an eyebrow.
“Your hand is shaking,” Steve says, very quietly.
“Yours isn’t exactly rock-steady,” Tony manages.
“Because I’m scared.”
Tony’s chest hurts. Physically. Wow. Steve has a lot of reasons to be scared. But he’s still here, right next to Tony, understanding him.
Tony takes a deep breath. “I think in my whole thing, my thing of being a dick, I missed the part where Captain America kissed a boy. And I think--No, I know -- that I don’t want to have missed that.” Tony’s heart is beating fast, fast.
Steve just looks at him, eyes dark.
Tony sighs melodramtically. “I have to do everything, don’t I? Of course I do.”
The corner of Steve’s mouth lifts and Tony kisses it, then waits there, kisses it again, lingering. He can feel Steve’s breath on his face, hear his sharp inhale when he moves his mouth fractionally to the side, hovers above Steve’s lips.
“Kiss me, you asshole,” Steve finally growls.
Tony laughs, and does.
~ ~ ~
“We’re still fighting?” Tony attempts, when the rest of the Avengers give them the all-clear meaning they aren’t locked up here any more.
“Whatever,” Natasha says. “It can’t be any worse than before, and we need you back.”
Tony glances over at Steve, who is lying sprawled next to him, half-hard again already, a sheen of sweat over every inch of his magnificent body, the look in his eyes that means he wants Tony to--
“Yeah, okay, no,” Tony says. “Call us when there’s, you know, an apocalypse or something.”
Steve smiles lazily and reaches for him. The wind howls outside, like it pretty much always does, and a couple of flakes have actually beaten their way through the boards and landed on Steve’s eyelashes.
“You have snowflakes on your lashes,” Tony says. “I think we get a refund on rent.” He licks at the flakes, then presses his lips where they’d been.
Steve arches up under him in a very distracting way, but there is a thought just at the edges of Tony’s large mind... “Buying it!” Tony says triumphantly after a while.
Steve laughs. “My dick is not for sale.”
“No, but this shack is,” Tony says, gasping as Steve pushes two fingers inside him.
“Mmm,” Steve agrees. Or at least Tony takes it as agreement. They’re going to need a place to go to after the ceremony -- and whenever they need to after that -- where there arren’t any paparrazi or, actually, idiots of any kind.
A Canadian shack -- along with about a thousand square miles around it -- is about to be Stark Enterprises’s next acquisition. Tony can live with that, he really can.