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They don’t get married. Hell, they don’t even really date. There is no white picket fence or golden retriever or 2.4 kids, and Tony isn’t incognizant enough to think that there ever will be. Theirs will never be a charmed life. There is no grand love story to tell. They simply fall toward each other.
Tony gives up the apartment they had because the lease is up and he has too many negative memories to really call it a home, and he’s getting to the age and has enough money that he just bites the bullet and goes for a house. Nothing quaint or suburban, but a house nonetheless, and if it feels entirely different from the houses he’s owned before, it’s because this one is for real.
Steve collects all his things, which maybe amount to a handful of boxes, and they sit around on the floor of the new place until they both, by unspoken mutual agreement, make the leap and unpack.
There’s no decorating to be had. Tony couldn’t give a shit about the color of the curtains so long as they block out the light in the room he’s turned into his workshop. Tony honestly couldn’t remember the color of the paint on the walls if he tried. The back window is permanently fogged on one side and neither Steve nor Tony bother to fix it, or even mention it.
Slowly, methodically, they go through each of the boxes and each of the rooms and unpack and combine what they have, loading up the kitchen with all the necessities—toaster, fridge, microwave, and an entire cabinet devoted to cereal and chips, with a dozen boxes of cheap pasta that they eat off paper plates with plastic forks they picked up at the grocery store.
Tony spends an inordinate amount of time fiddling with the TV and speaker system until they’re exactly as he wants them, and by doing so he leaves Steve free to wander through the remaining rooms and choose the one with the best light for his studio. It’s the top floor, Southwest-facing, and it happens to be next to Tony’s workshop.
The high ceilings and skylights make the place seem deceptively large, but it’s really a rather modest house, considering the vast amounts of wealth Tony has stored up. He doesn’t know whether it’s because he honestly doesn’t need that much, or if he’s hesitant to spend too much when Pepper still watches him from time to time, comparing his actions now to the way he acted around her, during their marriage. As much as she’s forgiven him, he doesn’t think she’ll ever stop feeling like she just wasn’t good enough.
They have to pause when they reach the bedrooms. There are only two left, one of which seemed to have served as a nursery in the recent past, but which they can use as they please. It doesn’t help them any when it comes time to figure out what the fuck they think they’re doing.
They bought a house together. You would think making a conscious decision to live in the same bedroom wouldn’t be that big a deal. But even at the apartment, they still had a separate bedroom for when one of them was pissed but whatever lie they’d told their wives that week meant they weren’t due back for another day or two.
This is significantly different. This is a conscious decision to try to be a real couple. To work things out, sleep in the same bed every night even when one of them is seething. For two guys that just came sprawling out of the closet, it’s a terrifying thought.
Steve is the first to move. He steps into the smaller of the two bedrooms, looks around briefly, nods, and then turns to Tony and asks “Guest bedroom?” It’s a compromise Tony hadn’t thought of, and he capitalizes on it as soon as he gains back his motor functions, swallowing and nodding clearly. They start moving the boxes into the other bedroom, the master bedroom, setting aside a few non-essentials for the guest room.
All in all, it’s a quiet and rather boring affair. They call for pizza that night and then wind up in front of the TV, on the futon because they need to buy more furniture for the abundance of room they now find themselves with. Steve unearths one of his sketchpads and Tony slides farther down the couch until his head ends up against Steve’s shoulder while a commercial with the Billy Mays replacement yells at him to buy Sham-wow.
But it’s too much. Things in Tony’s life aren’t meant to be this simple. And yes, while he’s sick and tired of all the struggling and the guilt and shame and endless misery, he doesn’t quite feel he’s deserved this. Such a quiet, domestic scene, completely routine and relaxed and without any expectations whatsoever and Tony just can’t.
Tony Stark doesn’t cry. He usually runs to his workshop, or deflects, or kills everyone with snark and kindness until they all leave him alone. But he’s trying to do this right. For all their mistakes, he’s trying to make this into something real with Steve, something he treats as he should. He’s trying more than he ever had with Pepper, and that’s saying something.
So he doesn’t move. He sits with his head still pillowed on Steve’s shoulder, and he watches the TV screen get progressively blurrier as he tries to parse some kind of explanation as to where the hell it said that people like him deserve the kind of life he’s setting himself up for. That people like him get to live in the end. That people like him could have a chance in hell at the fairytale ending, no matter how rare.
He fully expects the sky to fall.
It doesn’t. Instead, he gets Steve, noticing him by either the tears on the shoulder of his shirt, the sound of increasingly difficult-to-mask sniffling, or by some kind of divine, supernatural instinct. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. Not this simple acceptance. Not Steve’s arm reaching to curl around him, pull him closer. Not the way Steve’s entire body shifts to make room for him.
They sit there in complete silence, watching some court drama unfold on TV, and they both ignore the constant weight of a thousand things gone wrong. It’s been drowning them, slowly, since this thing started or maybe even before, and now it’s finally up to their necks.
Tony doesn’t know what to do so he keeps on treading water.