Work Text:
There’s a knock on the door, and Tony chokes out a laugh so harsh that it reverberates painfully in his chest, still sore from the surgery and cavernous from something else entirely. But that damn knock is getting to be a bad-news omen, so he doesn’t know why he keeps opening the door. Except he does, because of course, Steve is on the other side.
He looks exhausted and rough around the edges, and he has a duffel slung over one shoulder. Tony catches his breath and opens the door wide. Steve steps in, neither of them saying anything. Tony’s been expecting this since Steve up and disappeared for the remainder of his hospital stay, but he’d started losing hope after a week spent confined to his apartment. He though ‘This is it. We’re over. Not even getting shot and making grand gestures while bleeding out in your lover’s arms could quite overcome homophobia.’
He’s not sure if he’s relieved that Steve is here, or worried.
“You want something to eat?” Tony tries gently. Steve just drops his bag in the hallway carelessly—sign #1 that he’s not okay. “A beer?” Steve nods, and that’s sign #2. Steve doesn't drink. Tony goes to grab a couple beers from the fridge and Steve sits down on the couch, stoic as ever.
Tony’s not supposed to drink with all the pain meds he’s still on, but he figures there are extenuating circumstances at work. He collapses on the opposite end of the couch from Steve, with room for all their mistakes between them, and hands Steve his beer wordlessly. Their fingers don’t so much as brush.
Steve downs his beer in record time, and Tony offers his own to him after just one sip. Steve takes it without protest, and that’s 3 strikes, you’re out, there goes the game.
“Wanna talk about it?” He asks lamely, wincing once it’s out. Clichéd. Damn it.
Steve makes no response though, just keeps tugging at his beer and staring in front of him. Great. Somehow, this is Tony’s fault, and he can’t even figure out how to fix it. He turns on the TV to Discovery channel and keeps the volume low. Then he waits Steve out.
It takes another beer and the promise of stronger stuff at Steve’s disposal later in the night before Steve starts talking. Once he does, though, it’s everything, pouring out of him like a flood during a hurricane.
“I told Bucky first. Couldn’t face Peggy right off. He was freaked but helped me get some shit together at the house before I told her. The boss knows by now, too. Haven’t heard anything on that front. But Peg—Christ, Tony, I broke her heart. She wasn’t even angry right away. Just sad. Kept looking at me and crying. I left her alone for a few hours and came back and had dinner before she even started throwing things.”
Steve’s fingers tap against the damp bottle, nails picking at the label and pressing it back down before peeling it up again. There’s a small scratch above his eyebrow with a butterfly bandage on it. At least Pepper hadn’t thrown things at him, though he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had.
“When she calmed down I just told her I loved her and left. She looked so sad and betrayed I just–” he stops to catch his breath. Tony doesn’t bother breathing, all too aware of how much Steve needs silence right now, like a skittish bird without the use of its wings.
“Headed to my parents’ place after. Told them Peggy and I were done but not why, not at first. I spent 3 days locked in my old room before my sisters showed up and then I just told them all. Most of it. The important stuff. It…didn’t go well. I think Shirley gets it but she still hates me because of what I did to Peggy. I left before any of us even talked about it. Christ,” he scrubs his hands roughly over his features and sighs. Tony stills his trembling fingers by digging them into the meat of his thighs. He suppresses the urge to move over and comfort him.
“I don’t even know if they love me anymore. Dad won’t speak a word to me and Mom looked like it was the end of the world. Shirley keeps sayings I can stay with her but she lives in a tiny apartment she can barely afford as it is. Peg is serving me with divorce papers any minute now and at this point I’ll sign whatever she wants. I can’t face her again. She’s miserable. She hates me and I hate myself and–” Steve’s voice cuts out with a crackle and he swallows. He’s not crying, which is more than Tony could say for himself, when he told Pepper. But Steve looks broken and exhausted, and Tony wants nothing more than to hold him in his arms until everything is better. Which is a stupid idea.
Instead, he stares at the floor and clasps his hands together until they shake. “You can stay here.”
Steve’s entire posture melts in relief, though Tony can’t imagine what he thought would happen, given that Steve just showed up here with a bag and a sob story. Christ, what is Tony doing? “Tony–” Steve says desperately, moving toward Tony on the other end of the couch. Intruding on the space they left for all their mistakes, and Tony can feel the weight of everything pressing between them, suffocating him, and he’s had his chest cracked open enough this month already.
“As friends,” Tony snaps immediately, and Steve stills and looks away.
“Right. Yeah.”
Tony chews on his lower lip until he tastes copper. “You can’t just–” Tony starts, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He has no doubt that Steve will have to face a whole fierce, messy hurricane of anger eventually, but not tonight. “We are not okay,” he says carefully, just as a tiny voice inside of him screams that Tony should just take Steve to bed and give up on all his issues. He ignores it. “Dying-moment declarations aside. I gave up my wife and nearly lost my son for you, and you left me.”
“Those were your terms,” Steve says tersely.
“That’s not the point!” Steve winces and Tony draws in a few deep breaths. “I’m pissed. Because of that, because you spent over a year playing white-picket-fence with a woman you lied to and were never going to love–”
“I love her,” Steve protests.
“You know what I mean,” Tony waves it off impatiently. “You pretend I don’t exist for a year while my life is in ruins. It’s as much my own fault as it is yours. We’re both shitty people. Maybe we deserve each other. But things are still fucked up. You don’t just get to walk in here with puppy eyes and a sob story and right back into my life, pretending we’re still a happy fucking couple.” As if we were ever a happy couple. “I’m not going to ask you to leave but I’m not forgiving you yet. Okay?”
Steve nods solemnly and Tony lets his shoulders slump forward, arms propped up on his knees. All Tony wants is to jump Steve and fuck like rabbits. But even if he weren’t recovering from open heart surgery, he’s trying to act like a damn adult. Which means he and Steve need to have a couple long, honest talks and a whole lot of time between them before they even think about giving this another try. A real try.
Before things get too chick-flick for even his battery-powered heart to take, Tony stands. He gets a pillow and blanket from the hall closet and hands them to Steve. Steve accepts them gratefully without so much as a glance Tony’s way, and Tony turns to leave.
Just as he reaches the door to his bedroom—the room he used to think of as his and Steve’s—he looks back at Steve, making himself some sort of bed on the couch. “This is probably going to fuck everything all to Hell, but it’s not like we aren’t there already so….” His eyes skitter away when Steve looks at him, and he digs his nails into one palm before he figures he should just bite the bullet—excusing the ill-timed idiom.
“I still care about you.” Not 'love', don't say 'love', not 'love'. Tony doesn’t know whose breath catches, Steve’s or Tony’s, but everything is suddenly very, very still. “Fuck,” he huffs out, bitter amusement sharp on his tongue, and he shakes his head. “I’ll probably always care about you, in some secondary sense. I just don’t know if I want to anymore. Hell knows it hasn’t been good for my health before.” He rubs a hand absentmindedly over his chest, the bandage still covering the staples. As if he didn’t have enough metal in his chest, the surgeon had to go and add more.
Steve stares at Tony’s chest with guilt radiating from his every pore, and Tony stops drawing attention to it before Steve does something even more stupid this week and blames himself for that bomb. He thinks between the two of them, they have enough guilt to last a Catholic lifetime, or ten.
“Just…thought you should know,” he blurts out hurriedly and escapes to his bedroom before Steve sends the rest of Tony’s self-restraint tumbling down with something a 14-year-old girl would say, something like “I love you, too.”
Christ, they’re both fucked six ways to Sunday. Just hopefully not literally. Or until Tony’s doctor says his heart can take it.
Who does he think he’s kidding, anyway?