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itsallavengers · 6 years ago

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Answering Call

(commissioned by the lovely @song-of-freedom , who asked for a continuation of my tumblr fic Echoes! This can be read as a standalone, but for some context: Post civil war, Tony and Steve still aren’t talking but do occasionally hook up in motel-rooms. This turns out at 6k.)

He was going to die here.

Tony knew that much. Some time had passed since he’d been taken- six days, give or take, and there was no sign of anyone coming. Not that he’d expected anything, to be honest. Who was left to care? The Avengers had gone, Rhodey was away in Abu Dhabi for some new muscular therapy, and Tony had made it damningly clear to Steve after their last encounter in the motel that Tony wanted nothing other than a quick fuck out of him. The man hadn’t called him since then, and that had been three months ago. Tony was pretty sure he’d lost him for good, that time. Probably for the best.

God, he didn’t need to be getting hung up on Steve right now. He was about to die.

“Talk,” one of the men spat, backhanding him across the face. Tony’s head snapped sideways, and he shut his eyes. He was tired of this. “We’re getting impatient, Stark, and you would not like us once we reach the ends of our temper.”

“Oh, because I’m currently loving your personalities right now,” Tony muttered, before being swiftly punched in the ribs. He was tied to a post, as he had been since he’d arrived. He could move up and down in order to sit and stand, but that was about it. They’d told him that if they didn’t get what they wanted in a week, he was getting delivered back to the door of the Avengers Tower with a bullet in his head. Tony had informed them it was no longer the Avengers Tower any more, seeing as no Avengers even used it, and no Avengers technically even existed any more. They’d told him he’d stop running out of jokes soon enough.

Not true. Tony had less than 24 hours to live and was still cranking them out freely.

“Give us what we want,” Man No.1 hissed, grabbing Tony’s face by the jaw and wrenching it so that he was looking right up into the hard grey of his attacker’s eyes, “we know you know where they are. We know you still meet up with Captain Rogers to whore yourself out to him. We want his location, and we will get it. If not through you, then through someone else.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Find that someone then,” he told them, “because this whore is not telling you shit.” Man No.2 punched him in the mouth for that one, and he reeled back, feeling coppery blood on his tongue. They were going in harder today, as they became more and more desperate. “I don’t even know what you want anyway,” Tony continued when he’d got his breath back. “As you said, it’s not like me and Rogers do much talking in there.”

Man No.1 stopped, looking at him with a sneer. Seemingly deciding to change his angle, he peered in closer, looking Tony up and down. “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” He hissed softly, fingers clenching down on Tony’s face in five spikes of pain. “It’d be a shame to ruin a nice face like that. But we will, won’t we?” He turned to No.2, who nodded. “We’ll break you, body and soul. They sent us in for the last 24 hours to do whatever it takes to get that location outta you. There’s a whole table of equipment to help us with that, and believe me- we’re good at what we do.”

Tony knew the table they were talking about- he’d seen them set it up. None of the things on it were particularly pleasant, and he had to agree with them- he did have a pretty face. He didn’t want any disfigurements if he could really help it. “Would you like to consider a compromise?” He offered with a tilt of his head. “In return for you letting me go, I’ll direct you to the nearest police station, where you can turn yourself in and pay for your cr—”

He was cut off by the side of a hand snapping against his throat and blocking his airway. Man No.1 turned his back and walked over to the table while Tony simply gasped for air and watched nervously through watering eyes as a scalpel was collected from the surface.

No.1 Turned back around, this time with a smile. “Will Rogers thank you for this?” He asked gently, “will he appreciate you putting yourself through this for him? I don’t think he would. I think he’d beg you not to.”

Tony’s face was carefully blank, hiding the twist of pain under his sternum. He was used to it by now. “Rogers doesn’t give a shit,” he said coldly, “sorry to disappoint you, sweet-cheeks, but if you were looking for an emotional impact on him, you should have kidnapped Barnes.”

No.1 laughed and drew closer, twirling the little blade in his fingers. “I’ll go gently at first,” he murmured, drawing up to full height next to Tony, “but when we really get into it, I may lose myself a little.” He winked, and Tony just rolled his own eyes in response. They were shitty mercenaries. They didn’t even have any good quips.

And soon he was going to die, probably quite painfully, at the hands of said shitty mercenaries, all because he refused to tell them that Steve was currently sofa-surfing all over Pennsylvania. What a fucking joke.

“Make it easier,” No.1 said, pressing the instrument against Tony’s arm and slowly applying pressure until the skin broke and Tony winced, feeling hot blood run down his bicep, “just tell us where Steve Rogers is.”

“He’s right here,” someone said to Tony’s left.

Then, without warning, No.2 went flying from one end of the room to the other, his head knocking against the concrete with a sickening crack. Tony jumped wildly, turning his head to the direction of the voice. There, he spotted none other than Steve himself, marching through the room with a look of pure fury on his face. He was wearing the darkened version of the suit Tony had made for him, weirdly bare without the splash of red-white-blue that he usually carried with him.

Steve was… here.

Tony’s first thought was ‘why?’

He watched, dumbstruck as Steve advanced on No.1, who by that point had yelped unprofessionally and scrambled to the other side of the room. Steve blocked the only way out, though, and after a feeble attempt at a fight, Steve grabbed No.1 by the throat and punched him hard enough that Tony heard at least three different bones break. The man slumped to the floor as soon as Steve released him- completely unconscious.

Tony gaped, unblinking as Steve rushed over, eyes panicked and hands outstretched. “Tony,” he breathed, sounding almost frantic, “Tony, shit- are you okay? How badly did they hurt you? God, I’m so sorry—”

“What the fuck are you doing here,” Tony blurted dumbly, “aren’t you…. What the fuck?”

Steve stared at him- God, he still had that ridiculous fucking beard and long hair, it looked so strange to Tony. “I came to get you,” he said simply, voice quiet, “I—we’ve been looking ever since you got taken.” He swallowed and then brushed a trail of blood off Tony’s chin absently, before remembering where he was and stepping back, moving around to the other side of the pole. “Backup’s on the way,” he explained, “I just went on ahead, but they’re behind me.”

Tony couldn’t really understand what Steve was saying. Surely the man had better things to do than send himself into some skeevy domestic-terrorist base in order to go rescue Tony? “Where are we?” He asked instead, keeping his voice level as Steve wrenched the metal cuffs apart and freed Tony.

“Utah,” Steve told him, and Tony made a face. Really? He’d been about to die in fucking Utah? Talk about anticlimactic. “Can you walk?” He put a steadying hand against Tony’s shoulder, but Tony just shrugged him off snappishly.

“Yes, thank you, I’m just fine, you don’t have to feel me up” he bit, “you shouldn’t have come here. You’re who they want.”

“Yeah, and you’re who they took,” Steve responded, stepping away sadly until he was no longer touching Tony. He refused to wish that Steve had just ignored him and kept holding on anyway. “I wasn’t… I wouldn’t just leave you.”

“Really?” Tony asked, raising his eyebrows, “I remember things quite differently.”

Steve froze, his eyes turning down to the ground. For a second, he looked so sad- but then he just took in a small breath and turned back to the door. “Please, Tony- just let me help you,” he asked, “then we can go back to ignoring one another, alright?” He jerked his head in the direction of escape, avoiding Tony’s eyes as he said, “let’s get outta here before they notice all the bodies I left behind me.”

Tony, stupidly, wanted to stand and argue more. If only because a part of him- a dumb, idiot part of him- wanted to extend the amount of time in which he got to talk to the other man, even when it was just fighting. Once Steve pulled his ass out of here, like he’d said before, they’d just go straight back to ignoring one another. Which was… good, it was what Tony wanted, but...

Sometimes he just missed Steve’s voice.

Wordlessly, Tony stepped forward and followed Steve out of the room, keeping close as they both peered around the corridor. Tony swallowed down the little burst of light-headedness that rushed over and threatened to topple him completely. They hadn’t fed him in a while, and he was weaker than he wanted to admit. Probably wouldn’t be all that much use in a fight. Luckily, however, a fight wasn’t something that seemed to be needed. Steve snuck them both through the shadows and around the corridors expertly, keeping them out of sight the whole time. The people responsible for grabbing Tony obviously weren’t all that organised or well-funded; seemed like some sort of home-grown thing that had yet to even take off. Tony was just embarrassed that he’d managed to let himself get kidnapped by them, honestly.

Then an alarm started to ring out through the corridors, and Tony’s spirits only dropped further. Steve rested a hand against his chest, stopping him from walking around the corner hastily. “That’s either backup arriving, or someone noticing the fact that you’re gone,” he said.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “How well did you hide the bodies in your trail of righteous destruction?” He asked, watching as Steve blushed a little. He’d never learned quite how to curb that little trait of his. Tony had always used to think it was adorable.

“Uhhh—” Steve rubbed his neck, shrugging, “I sort of just. Left them there.”

Tony blinked, and then threw his hands up in the air. “Of course you fucking did,” he muttered, “how absolutely subtle of you—”

“I was in rush!”

“What the hell for?”

“You!” Steve grabbed his shoulder urgently and pushed him into the wall, hiding them both from sight as a handful of armed men ran across the junction in the halls. When he leaned back, his hands remained against Tony’s shoulders. “Goddamn it, Tony, I know you don’t believe it and I know I don’t deserve you to, but I still fucking love you, and when they told me you’d gone missing I went outta my goddamned mind! So no, I wasn’t exactly thinking about how to best cover my tracks when I forced my way in here, and no, it probably wasn’t the best idea to try and come here before the rest of the team arrived, but fucking sue me, Tony, I don’t think straight when it’s your life on the line!”

He stared intensely at Tony, jaw set in a hard line as his chest heaved. Tony noted that his hands were shaking against Tony’s shoulders.

Tony shoved him off. “Oh, fuck you,” he spat, “don’t fucking pretend— whatever you feel about me, it sure as shit isn’t love—”

“What the hell do you know about how I feel?”

“People don’t do what you did to the people they love!” Tony hissed, and God, this was so not the right time to have this argument with Steve- they hadn’t talked properly in literal years, not about anything that wasn’t directly related to the sex they’d been having, and now that they were in a terrorist cell in fucking Utah with people running all over the place trying to find them, and they decided to stop and hash out the last five years of their relationship with one another.

Steve paused, whatever he had been going to say catching in his throat. He looked down. “Tony, I—”

“Can it, Captain,” Tony snapped, “if you want to call fucking me in a hotel room at 2 in the morning whenever you’re in the area ‘love’ then you go for it. Just… God, lets’ just fucking focus on getting out of here.” He turned on his heel and started walking down the corridor, his jaw clenched tight to keep him from saying anything else. Steve made a noise in the back of his throat, but followed a moment later all the same, hurrying to take lead. Tony just glared at his back and pretended that what he’d just said had made him feel better.

(It didn’t. Just like the drinking didn’t, just like fucking other people didn’t. Everything always ended up coming back to Steve, and he wished it wouldn’t, but he didn’t really have a choice. Love was a fucking bitch like that.)

Someone spotted them in the corridor and began to yell, but Steve quickly incapacitated them with a twist of their arm and a powerful boot landing on their knee, shattering the joint. Tony leaned down and swiped the gun on the floor, and then took the knife strapped to the soldier’s thigh for good measure. The weight of the weapon felt good in his hands, and he flipped it expertly, glancing over to Steve as the man watched. “Don’t piss me off,” he warned as he tossed it again. Steve almost laughed.

Then his eyes widened in horror as he looked behind Tony’s shoulder. Without warning, he grabbed Tony by the arm and hauled him forward. “Run, now,” Steve said, taking him by the hand and starting to sprint. Tony felt himself getting dragged along behind the other man and he turned his shoulder to see what it was that Steve had spotted.

Ah, he thought as Steve yanked him down to the floor to avoid the firing of ominous purple energy that the man on the other end of the corridor had just shot at them, that was probably it.

Tony rolled painfully, feeling his sore ribs flare up as they both hit the floor. Steve grabbed his shirt and yanked, pulling him around the corner. His eyes were wide. “That’s the man I’ve been tracking for months,” he told Tony as he pulled them both to their feet and started up running again, “God, shit, I wasn’t expecting to see him here. He’s been manufacturing an army’s-worth of weapons based off alien tech- that beam can cut straight through steel.” He pushed Tony forward and started up running again, taking a swift left and pulling Tony along with him.

Tony heard the sounds of shouting and heavy footsteps in the corridor they’d just been stood in, and figured all the men were now reconvening to hunt them through the building. That probably wasn’t good. “How long out is backup?”

“Too long,” Steve bit, “there’s an exit at the back of the building though- once we get to that and we’re out in the open, we’ll be okay.” He pulled on Tony’s hand, urging him on. “Come on, hurry.”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m not feeling quite so athletic as you, what with all the torture,” Tony snapped, instinctively ducking at the sound of a bullet whipping down the corridor. Steve pushed them left into a wide room that looked like some sort of garage area and then pointed a finger.

“Get to the door,” he ordered, “I’ll hold them off.”

“What? Don’t be fucking stupid, if that weapon is as dangerous as you say it is, you’ll be fucking wiped out—”

“That door is encrypted, Tony, and I sure as hell don’t know how to open it!” Steve told him, giving him a gentle push, “I’ll keep them back, you do your computer thing, then we can both get out of here alive.” He pushed Tony again. “Go!”

This didn’t sit well in Tony’s gut, but he didn’t exactly have much choice. With a frustrated snarl, he turned away and ran over to the large steel door Steve had pointed to, eyes scanning for a keypad. His fingers fumbled for it once it was in his sights, hands scrabbling at the bottom. It looked like every conventional keypad he’d come across during his career, which meant Tony only had to get into the mechanism and sort out a few wires to get the red light to go green.

He lifted the knife that was still in his hand and then jimmied it into the bottom of the little box, ducking instinctively as twin gunshots fired through the room. He looked behind him, panicked- but Steve was okay. He was currently driving through a herd of soldiers, taking them all out one by one as they filed through the single door.

Red wire, red wire, red—there it was. Tony yanked it out shakily, hearing Steve crack bone and tear muscle behind him, a lethal weapon packed into a human body. Tony had forgotten what it felt like to fight at the man’s side. There was something so utterly aweing about it.

But now wasn’t the time to focus on that.

He shifted about in the insides of the little keypad, trying to find the right wire. More shots went off behind him- he wondered how much time they had left before Steve came toe-to-toe with the guy with the big purple energy gun. Probably not long. Tony needed to move.

He pulled out the blue wire, twisting the copper at the end around the red one he’d just pulled out, and then felt the relief as the switch flicked from red to green, and the door unlocked with a loud click. He turned to Steve, noting with surprise that the flow of men into the room had stopped, leaving only Steve panting heavily, and with a deep frown on his face. “Where the fuck did Malicious go,” he muttered to himself, peering cautiously around the door. Tony figured ‘Malicious’ was the guy with the Big Gun, and made a face at the name. Totally clichéd.

“Who cares?” He called out, getting unsteadily back to his feet and waving at the door. “I unlocked it. Now let’s blow this popsicle stand before more people come to try and kill us.” He turned back to the door, hand going to the giant iron bar.

Behind him, he heard Steve shift. “Tony… wait, TONY!”

Time slowed down a little as Tony turned, looking at Steve in confusion. There was a deep terror in the man’s voice; sudden and cracking through the middle like he couldn’t get the word out quickly enough. Things happened too fast for him to even process them properly- one second Steve was on one end of the room, the next he was there, lurching forward at a speed too fast to see, yanking Tony in and then hauling him sideways as the door opened. He fell on his side, there was a flash of purple and a scream and-

Tony reacted instinctively, flipping onto his side and throwing the knife at the shadow of a man he’d seen out of the corner of his eye as he’d opened the door. He processed a dozen things at once- but then he saw Steve, on the floor, not moving, and it all singled down to that one fact.

Steve.

Oh God, no.

The guy- fucking Malicious, staggered back in shock as the knife lodged itself into his shoulder, and Tony whipped out the gun from the waistband of his jeans and fired four shots to his head without blinking, too fast for the man to try and dodge. He slumped to the floor, his plan to surprise them by coming around the back failing almost as quickly as it had begun.

Except- had it, really? “Steve,” he breathed, turning back to the body on the floor, “Steve, fuck, answer me.” His body ached ferociously, but he hardly felt it as he scrambled forward, fingers curling around Steve’s shoulder. He could see red start to pool around the man’s torso, a hellish sort of halo, and suddenly Tony couldn’t breathe.

No, no no no no no no.

He turned Steve over onto his back, seeing the way the man’s blue eyes fluttered hazily. Immediately, Tony saw the damage. The beam must have caught his profile- except it had ended up going straight through him, twin holes in each side of his chest. Tony blanched. Oh God. “Fuck, fuck- Steve, stay with me, okay- stay with me, you hear me? Fuck.” He pressed his hands into each wound, but there was too much blood, it trickled out through the gaps in his fingers, leaking over his skin and staining it red.

Steve coughed weakly, and then the red dripped out of his mouth too. “No,” Tony said, voice hoarse, “fuck you, no, don’t do this to me now, Rogers, you fucking bastard, don’t fucking… why did you do that?” He whispered, trying to wade through the terrified fog in his mind and come up with something that was going to fix this, patch up the two gaping holes where Steve’s organs were. “Why did you fucking do that, you fucking idiot?”

Steve rolled his eyes and smiled. “You…” he coughed again, blood staining his teeth, “you know why,” he finished, and Goddamn it, Tony fucking did. Deep down, he did. Because Tony would have done the exact same thing. Without even hesitating.

His hands were shaking, there was blood all over them, he couldn’t see properly through the water in his eyes. “Shut up,” he hissed, “shut the fuck up and stay awake, okay?” He tried to remember how to breathe, ultimately failing when Steve refused to listen to him and dropped his eyelids, head falling sideways. God, this wasn’t fucking happening. Tony had more shit he needed to shout at Steve for, more arguments he needed to have. He hadn’t gotten it all out yet, he never would, Steve was someone who was supposed to be there for the rest of time, available whenever Tony had something else he needed to add about hating Steve Rogers. He knew Steve would have let him use him like that too; Tony’s emotional punching bag, his outlet, because Steve always had. He’d always accepted Tony’s refusal to do anything other than fuck, never ignored a text Tony had shot off to him at 11 in the evening when he was too drunk and too bitter to ever be using that stupid fucking burner phone.

He was supposed to be alive so that Tony could do his best to hate him, he was supposed to…

Tony choked, hands going to Steve’s face, cupping his jaw, getting blood in the man’s beard. “Wake up,” he said, “fuck you, wake up, wake UP!”

Steve didn’t.

Tony hated the sound of the heart-rate monitor.

He’d listened to that thing so many times for so many hours in his life, all it ever reminded him of was everything he’d come close to losing. But the steady beat of it belonged to Steve, so at least that was comforting.

Sam, Natasha and Rhodey had found them in the end- Tony doesn’t remember, though. He’s only vaguely aware of what happened after Steve closed his eyes- hands pulling him away, quinjet med-table, ‘he’s lost so much blood’. He remembers how the red had caked his hands. He’d washed them since then, but he can still feel it dripping down his fingers.

That shot had not been meant for Steve. But he’d taken it anyway.

His heart had stopped three times on the operating table. Tony had watched them defib his heart, watched him jump on the table as hundreds of volts of electricity shot through him, again and again and again. His chance of survival had been at 12%.

But, somehow, he’d ended up stabilizing. Against all the fucking odds. Of course he had- what else was Steve Rogers gonna fucking do, lie down and take what the world gave him? He still hadn’t woken up yet- it’d been a week by that point. Doctors said there could be brain damage. He’d been oxygen deprived for a terrifyingly long time.

He was still alive, though. Tony knew, because the heart monitor beeped and it beeped and it beeped.

“You know, he looked at that burner phone every hour of every fuckin’ day.” Tony turned, watching as Barnes shifted at the doorway. He was looking at Steve with a tight jaw. “Just in case you texted and he missed it.”

Tony had been shocked to see Barnes out of Cyro when he’d arrived back at Wakanda. The last he’d heard, the guy had still been under, and Tony had never bothered to check, simply using Steve’s continued booty calls as proof Bucky wasn’t out yet. It didn’t make sense for him and Tony to carry once Bucky got better, after all. He thought he should have been more angry, when he saw the killer of his parents again. But he wasn’t. He was just heavy.

He was always so fucking heavy.

Tony shrugged, looking over to Steve. Too pale. “What can I say, I’m a great lay—”

“He didn’t give a shit about the sex,” Barnes said sharply, and Tony’s head jerked over to him, tensing up apprehensively at the tone. Barnes paused, waiting for Tony to settle again before talking. “You could have texted him to say you’d do nothing other than use his face as a dartboard and he would’a come running. It wasn’t ever sex that he wanted.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “You don’t know fuck-all about our relationship.”

“And you don’t know fuck-all about it either, apparently.”

Tony stood abruptly, turning to face Barnes with a twisted face of rage on his face. “I know that he left,” he spat, “I know that he left and lied to me and loved you more than he could ever love me. That’s enough. That’s all I need to know. I don’t care whether or not he regrets it, I don’t care if he misses me. I fucking hate him.”

Barnes didn’t even flinch. “Then why are you still here?”

Tony tried to think of something, but no words came. He shook his head and turned away instead. He was making a fool of himself just by staying. It was uncomfortable on these dumbass hospital chairs- a thing they seemed to have even in Wakanda- and he kept seeing the eyes of all his ex-team looking at him through the windows as he sat there, waiting. And for what? For Steve to wake up so Tony could continue to fight with him? He was fucking tired of it. He was tired of everything, and Steve had jumped in front of a death-ray to stop Tony from getting hurt without even hesitating, and he’d run into a terrorist base alone because Tony was in danger and he had no idea what to fucking do with any of that information.

“Steve fucked up,” Barnes’ voice filtered through the haze, “he did a lot of things he shouldn’t, and he knows that. He hates that. But it wasn’t because he loved me more. For one thing, we have never been and will never be like that, and for another… it’s not true anyway. He loved you just as much. But he had to make a choice, and you weren’t slowing down. You would’ve killed me.”

Tony stared at the wall. “He’s a stubborn piece of shit who always thinks he’s right and doesn’t ever listen to anyone else because he’s also a self righteous prick.”

“True,” Barnes said with a shrug, “he’s also unwaveringly kind and always puts other people before himself. He’s brave and loyal and he jumps in front of certain death because the people he loves matter so much more to him than himself.”

Tony huffed, looking down and shaking his head. He doesn’t love me, the voice in his head wanted to say- but it was cold and unstable and the foundations of that belief weren’t solid enough for him to say it with conviction. He wished things didn’t have to be so difficult. He wished he could just stop loving Steve, hate him instead, cut all ties like he’d been saying he was going to do for months. He’d always told himself that the next time he met up with Steve at those shitty roadside motels would be his last. He’d always pretended as if he could live with never seeing or touching or tasting him again.

He was a filthy fucking liar and everyone knew it.

Steve woke up after 9 days, and, once it was established he was going to be okay and Tony wasn’t indirectly responsible for giving Captain America brain damage, he got the first plane back home.

It was for the best.

_____Steve_____

Highland Motel, 12:15, room no.8.

-Tony

Steve blinked at the notification on his phone, sitting up jerkily in bed.

It had been three months since he’d last seen Tony in the hospital in Wakanda. Three months since he’d seen the man’s face, heard his voice. He’d thought that would be his last. He’d been working on trying to accept as much.

And then here Tony was, hitting him up on a Sunday out of nowhere.

Steve shoved the covers off and grabbed his clothes from the floor. He was laying low in Queens on a recon mission which Tony must have known about. He only ever called when he knew Steve was in the area.

Steve knew, really, that he probably shouldn’t go. That he should probably stop doing this to himself. Being close to Tony was good, so fucking good- but it was too short lived, just a shadow of everything they had been before. Tony never touched him like he’d used to. Sure, Steve still loved the contact that had remained- kissing Tony in the dark, feeling the curves of him that he’d long since memorized and feeling the beautiful heave of Tony’s chest as he came- but he hated the fact that that was all he got now. No holding him in the afterglow, laughing into his hair, curling their hands together and murmuring their love into one another’s skin. It was fuck and go, now, and Steve felt a piece of his soul leave him every time he walked out of the door. The one time he’d broken, begged Tony to just stay for a night, Tony had told him exactly where to shove that idea. Steve figured that wasn’t going to change just because he’d nearly died. They were superheroes. They nearly died every month.

It wasn’t healthy for him to keep doing this, and he knew he should say no.

But Steve was weak and selfish and some days, all he could ever feel was longing. Sadness. Seeing Tony, even when it was only brief, even when they kissed too hard and fucked too roughly to be real, was still the highlight of Steve’s life now.

So he pulled on his jacket and left the house, heading to the place Tony had sent him. Tony only wanted him for sex, and that was okay. Steve could live with that. One day, he knew Tony would get bored of it, or he’d find someone else, and it would be the worst thing in the wold- losing the final straw that tied them together- but Steve would just have to deal with that too. For now, though, he still had the chance.

He knocked on the door of the motel, four staccato beats, and waited until Tony pulled open the door. His face was pale in the frosty moonlight. He looked tired. Then again, when didn’t he?

Tony motioned him in and shut the door with a click, locking it behind him and then turning to face Steve, a strange expression in his eyes. “We’re not fucking,” he said, “not this time.”

Steve blinked. Huh. That was new. “Then what are we doing?”

With a resolute determination in his every move, Tony marched over to the bed and hopped on it, crossing his legs. He pointed to the spot in front of it. “Sit,” he demanded.

Steve sat.

Tony looked at him for a long time, and Steve’s heart beat too fast to be normal. He knew he was blushing- a nervous habit he’d never quite managed to curb. He was sure Tony had used to find it adorable.

“We’re going to talk,” Tony said, hands smoothing over the bed, “about everything. About the accords, about how I feel, about how you feel- all of it. We’re going to talk about me getting kidnapped and you coming after me, and we’re probably going to end up screaming at eachother, and I’m going to say I hate you, and it’s going to be a fucking mess.”

Steve just blinked at him, while Tony licked his lips and looked away. “You saved my life,” he continued, quiet, “you nearly died for me. And I’ve been thinking about why for three months straight. Now—now I want to talk about it. Find a conclusion, somewhere, good or bad. I’m tired of feeling like we’re unfinished.”

He didn’t really know how to respond. He felt like he was reading it wrong, but it seemed as if this was… a chance. At something. Steve wasn’t sure what.

Seemingly reading his thoughts, Tony’s jaw clenched. “I’m not saying this is going to fix things,” he warned, “I’m not… it’s still going to be there. A conversation or two won’t make it all better.”

“I know,” Steve said throatily, “I understand that.”

“And I’m still fucking furious.”

“I know that too.”

Tony blinked, biting his lip and looking Steve in the eye. Steve looked back, realising it felt hot and uncomfortable behind his eyes. He’d never even thought he would get this chance.

Tony was right. This was definitely going to get messy. But love wasn’t clean, especially not theirs. It hurt like a bitch and it twisted in all the wrong places. Maybe it couldn’t get untangled.

Maybe it could.

“Don’t walk away,” Steve told him quickly, “don’t run if it gets difficult, please.”

Tony’s eyes flashed. “I’m not the one who fucking ran in the first—” he stopped himself, taking a small breath and then huffing as he shut his eyes. “Wow, okay, so this really is gonna suck, huh?” He sighed. “I hate talking.”

Steve smiled. Crossed his legs. “Yeah,” he agreed, “it’s gonna be pretty painful.”

There was a short silence, where Tony looked down at the patterns on the bed. Every line of him was tense, exhausted. He was the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen.

“Right,” Tony looked up, eyes determined, “let’s begin.”

#stevetony #itsallavengers writes #post-cw / hopeful ending / whump #can u tell i was listing to 'lets hurt tonight' by OneRepublic during the last scene lol #commissions

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