#// I'm imagining that Steve spent the night after they returned from Austria trying to process everything and coming up empty

[a-man-outof-time]

in the back of a notebook in a box in the closet

I wish I could tell you

We shouldn’t have gone to Austria, but since

Tony.

God forbid you ever find this notebook. If you have, God forbid I haven’t told you all of this already. It probably goes without saying that 

I love you, Tony Stark. I should have told you in Austria, by the Ferris wheel. I should have told you at Thor’s wedding. The ice rink. The bookstore. At your house in the Hamptons. When Jane died. When we babysat the twins. When Killian tortured you and I couldn’t stop it

I’m not very good at this. Maybe the sketches in the rest of this notebook will say it all for me. All I can find the words for is I love you and I wish I could say it. But I’m not sure what good it would do. Everything’s so fragile already. If you hated me I’m not very good at sticking around. Peggy could tell you. Everything’s so fragile. Even if I thought you loved me too, I couldn’t promise that I’d stick around. You deserve someone who sticks around.

I do think about it a lot though. I wonder what it would be like to wake up with you.  I wish I could have spent every morning drinking coffee in an empty kitchen with you. I think about your hands on me. And mine on you. But not always We sparred once and I tried to teach you choke holds, and I think about your hands on my throat. How much I trust you. How you might be the only person on Earth I’d let touch me like that. I didn’t tell you then, and I’m sorry. 

You’re beautiful. I hope I’ve told you that, too.

When all of this is over, let’s go to Europe, on that King Arthur trip. I know there’s no starting over, but maybe we can start again. And then I can tell you all of this myself. I’ll stick around if you can stay in the present with me every once in a while. Maybe when it’s just us. When we aren’t Captain America and Iron Man. Do you know I’ve never been to Ireland? I spent some time in London but never made it over the Irish Sea. I think my parents would have liked it if I’d gone.

I don’t know why I keep thinking you’re only reading this if I’m dead. I guess I hope I’ll throw this away when if when if I ever tell you.

If that’s the case: I loved you. God. I fucking loved you. I hope I told you so before I went, but if I didn’t, I loved you. Even when we fought, even when we were distant. Even when I saw you with Jan. Maybe that’s when I knew for sure. Before that I guess I hoped to make things work with Peggy, but between you and me, and I suspect Freud would have had a thing or two to say about all of that. I like to think a part of me knew what I was doing and that it wasn’t right. That it wasn’t Peggy. When Peggy died

I knew for sure when you gave me those photographs of LA. Or when I gave you the key to my hotel room and you used it the next morning to give them to me, I guess. You’d just lost both the mansion and the tower, and you still took the time to do that. And it felt perfectly normal that you were there when I got out of the shower with two cups of coffee, it felt natural. I miss that. It’s not really mine to miss, I guess, but I do. I wish we could have done that more. I hope we do.

It’s late. I should probably throw this out now, but maybe it’ll come in handy later when I’m finally ready to tell you everything. Because I will. I want to. I’m scared to hell, but I want to.

I love you, Tony Stark.