Steve tips his head to one side thoughtfully, ruminating over Tony's words. "I don't think you're weak," he says, and it's true. He's never thought that, and especially not in conjunction with their scenes. Tony wants to be able to let go, to let someone else make decisions for him. Steve can certainly see the appeal in that. And the guilt that seeps through - that's not weakness, either. It's simply being human.
"I was trying to sort of..." Steve shrugs with one shoulder. "Not really flirt, but kind of? I wasn't trying to bring you under. I know you choose that, because I asked you if you wanted to do it earlier." It's all clear to him, but he doesn't have the particular emotional difficulties that Tony's wrestling with. "I was trying to be seductive?" He sounds a little confused as he searches for the right language, possibly because Steve Rogers has never tried to seduce anyone in his entire life. "Point is, I did it wrong and it was open for misinterpretation."
Finally, Tony allows himself to lean the small of his back against the counter edge, his hardened will bending with his stance. Steve wasn't trying to send him under. (Then what does that say about him, if he was already on his way?) "You actually still being terrible at this is a big comfort," he says offhandedly.
"I don't think I could ever claim to be anything else," Steve offers ruefully, ducking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. Yeah, he'd fucked up, he's willing to admit that. With something like this, with the fragile balance of power dynamics, it's downright toxic to try and ignore mistakes. They can take root like weeds and be just as hard to deal with as time passed.
"You aren't weak," he adds earnestly. Not just the qualifier that he, Steve, doesn't think that. It's an objective fact. "One thing all those websites told me is that being submissive isn't being weak. You gotta be strong to trust someone so implicitly, right?" That's what it is, at the heart of it - that's what speaks to Steve. Trust.
"I know that," Tony says quietly, then flounders with his thoughts and words, looking away. He's not weak. He was Iron Man, after all, but he's never met a doormat that wasn't flimsy either, and that's what he becomes. Lately with Steve, the line Tony draws between himself and the submissive has been blurring.
"So?" Steve prods, trying to draw more out of him. "What're you thinking?" He doesn't want to rush him, but he doesn't want Tony to clam up, either. There's a fine line here. He knows that Tony, even though he's still getting used to this, allows him to see more of his vulnerabilities than he would otherwise - and that there are even more that he's hiding, that he's probably unaware that he's hiding.
Pepper said the same thing about submission a couple years back, once Tony finally spilled the beans on his worries. That was after the Killian debacle, during the year he recovered from surgery and the multiple grafts. So he knew, but could never wrap his head around it: submitting was something he did, not who he was. Who he was was Iron Man, and Iron Man stood up as the world's protector. He didn't -- doesn't kneel behind someone else's shield. Now with Steve and after Ultron, those two worlds of Tony's are crashing into each other more and more, and what he knows for certain is little.
Maybe it's for the best you get put on a leash.
Tony smiles briefly. Thoughts and emotions jumble up inside of him, too fast and deep to be ordered and filed. "That you got your work cut out for ya," he says.
"Tell me something I don't know." Steve pulls a face, but it's largely good-natured, more teasing than anything else. Everything with Tony is more than it appears at first glance. It's one of the things Steve loves about him, but, like many of the other traits Steve loves, it can also be goddamn frustrating and occasionally infuriating. That's Tony Stark in a nutshell.
Chuckling under his breath, Tony strokes his thumb across the mug, the warmed ceramic a comfort -- the basic sensation of touch and something in his hands, a comfort. Slyly, but again with those softened edges from earlier this morning, just saddened, he responds, "You want me to start with the 1950s, or later?"
Steve snorts and rolls his eyes. "Yeah, you're hilarious." He nudges the chair with his foot again, making it scrape across the floor. "Come sit down, Tony." Steve's tired of having him out of easy reaching distance. He wants to be able to touch him.
After a glance down at the kitchen tiles beneath the chair and a sigh, Tony pushes off from the counter but pauses next to his seat. Then, haltingly, he plops down sideways onto Steve's lap and sips his coffee, eyes stubbornly ahead. "Ya didn't say where," he mumbles into the mug, as both explanation and excuse.
Steve just hums contentedly, although his cock twitches under the towel, and he's pretty sure that if Tony stays there too long, he's going to need to get off again. But right now, Tony's sitting on top of him and Steve feels positively blissful about it.
"Your choice." He rests his chin on Tony's shoulder and wraps one arm around his waist, his hand curling around his hip.
--
The next day, Tony is in his workshop again, and Steve's left to wander around the mansion by himself. He finds himself in a light, airy sitting room, one that's been mostly cleaned, with only a couple chairs covered by sheets. He lets his fingers trail over the white keys of the piano, letting out a few tinkling notes, then ends up settling down on a couch. So much of the house seems like a museum, rather than anything that's been lived in - a monument to Howard and his wife, Steve imagines.
In the distance, he hears footsteps - Tony must be done with his tinkering. "In here!" he calls out, rather than getting up. They don't have any plans for the rest of the day today, but Steve knows their time is coming to an end; he's got to drive back to the compound, and he's sure Tony's schedule is booked solid for god knows how long. It's been a welcome escape, though. (Probably Tony only has the energy to do this once a month, he thinks wryly.)
When Tony locates Steve finally via Steve's voice, he slows his previously steadfast steps. He knows what the scene before him will be -- the grand piano, the glass curio cabinet, the windows with the sunlit gauzy curtains. It mimics exactly the room he's digitally recreating, or rather his digital one mimics this: the last place Tony ever saw his parents alive. Steve's there, though, which thankfully cushions the memory, even if it's still bizarre to witness his past and present (and future, he guesses) meshing together like that. The past two days have been a balm to his head and heart. He doesn't want the weekend to end, but he knows it has to.
Tony leans his shoulder, arms gripping themselves, against the doorway, eyes clearer than they ever are save for the day after a scene. He smiles and nods to the piano. "You play at all?"
"Nah." Steve shakes his head. "Never had the chance to learn. What about you?" Isn't playing a musical instrument the sort of thing rich prodigies do? Maybe Tony's secretly a piano virtuoso on top of everything else, and that's why this room is so clean. It's nice to imagine Tony's fingers dancing over the keys, drawing out some impossibly complicated piece of music. (On the other hand, he thinks that Tony is probably too impatient for something he can't master immediately, too manic for hours of meticulous practice. So maybe not.)
"Eh. A little. Taught myself a bit over the past few months." With a glance to the piano, Tony sombers with grief nearly twenty-five years delayed. No wonder he ended up stewing in trauma until it exploded in everyone's faces with Ultron. He draws in a big breath, wipes the look on his face away, and crosses the room to the piano bench where his mother so often sat. "I can play a mean Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Might even graduate to Mary Had a Little Lamb soon," he boasts.
Steve catches the look on his face - it's hard to miss - and guesses that the piano was his mother's. Tony doesn't talk much about her, and that's significant in and of itself, a different kind of silence than the kind that relates specifically to Howard. (To be fair, he deliberately avoids mentioning Howard to Tony; it didn't take him long to figure that one out, even when he'd still been discombobulated from finding himself in the future.)
"You'll be ready for Carnegie Hall in no time," he agrees with an amused smile. Steve thinks about sitting next to him on the piano bench, but decides to leave Tony his space. "She'd be proud of you." He's taking a gamble with that, he knows.
Sideways, one leg folded on the bench, Tony sits on the end farther from Steve but his body language stays open, comfortable, even after his smile subtly fades and a stunned, quick blink leaves his eyes searching Steve's face. In the end, he drops them to the piano keys, where he can still clearly picture his mother's small hands, short-fingered but beautiful, gliding across them. The notes always carried an air of sadness, but also regality. They reflected the woman herself. For so long Tony has kept the memory of his mother close to his person, always within reach, like the precious gemstone she handed him when she caught him reaching for her vanity. He used it like that, too, during his stupid adult years: a pretty thing to pull out and woo women. Older and wiser, he understands better now how precious her memory is.
As fresh as it was in 1991, the guilt fills him to his fingertips and blocks all words in his throat. She would have been proud of him, unquestionably. God. Tony didn't deserve her.
Since Tony doesn't seem too tense, Steve moves over to the to the piano bench and wraps an arm around him, tugging him close. "I still miss my mom," he offers quietly. He thinks of the long hours of work she put in, the even longer hours nursing him through various illnesses. She'd sit by his bed and mend clothes in the lamplight while Steve read to her, whatever books he'd had on hand. (He'd always read anything she brought home, because what else was there to do when he was in bed?) She cooked dinner whenever she could, and somehow, she still found time to help neighbors who were sick and couldn't afford a real doctor. People seem to think that Steve's personality is some magical thing that occurred on its own, but he knows the truth.
"You wanna tell me about her?" He presses a kiss to the top of Tony's head. Steve knows all about Howard, but nothing about Maria. It'd be easy to end up in Howard Stark's shadow, he thinks, just like it would be easy to end up in Tony's.
Slowly, Tony leans in and rests his head on Steve's shoulder, face turned inward, accepting the comfort he too often denies himself. He can almost hear with his eyes shut her voice singing. Lashes fluttering against Steve's neck and hands limp on his lap, Tony stares at some point past. "I don't even know what to say," he whispers, pained, which isn't a no. He wishes he spent more time with her (wishes he'd gotten the time) and gotten to know her, so that her legacy could be more than mother and wife of Starks and a charity foundation.
"It can wait." Not it's okay, because that sounds too dismissive, too flippant, and he doesn't want Tony to feel like he's just brushing off his grief. "Till you find the right words." Steve remembers Zola, in the bunker, or whatever remnant of him that had been, the quick flash of a microfilm headline, the implications. He can't not tell Tony, he decides. (It wasn't Bucky's fault, anyway; he'd been brainwashed and used by Hydra and the Russians. He just needs to make Tony believe that.) Maybe not now, but he deserves to know what really happened.
Some time passes. Tony doesn't know how long, because his brain is occupied with finding the correct words instead of any numbers. In the end, he fails to come up with anything even approaching adequate for his mother. Gently he pries himself away from Steve, sits up straight, and casts his eyes around the room, which has been unchanged since December 16th, 1991. "You know," Tony starts hoarsely, thoughtfully, "the thing not leavin' me alone right now is that this is the last place I saw them alive in. I watched them walk out that door," he flicks a hand toward it without looking, "and in all my petty ignorance, I didn't tell them goodbye or that I loved them." Finally, directly to Steve, he adds, "I've always regretted that."
The thing about TB is that Steve had all too long to say good-bye to his mom. He watched her cough up blood for months, watched her fade away until she was a ghost of her former self. He held her hand while she finally slipped away, looking more comfortable than she had in ages. She knew, without a doubt, that he loved her.
Even though Tony moves away, Steve reaches out and rests a hand on top of his. He still knows what it's like to regret all those things left unsaid, even if it's not in quite the same way. He feels a flash of anger on Tony's behalf - he should have had more time with his parents, should have been able to make sure they knew how he felt. He doesn't even know why Hydra wanted them dead, just that someone had decided that Howard needed to be murdered, and Maria was there, an innocent victim.
"They knew it, though." And that sounds cliche, but Steve genuinely believes it, even if it doesn't do a thing to ease Tony's guilt.
"Mom might've," Tony easily acknowledges, hand comfortable but still a little twitchy, ready to bolt, beneath Steve's, "but Dad?" He laughs under his breath. "He wasn't keen on the whole affection thing."
"I don't know if he ever was." Steve shrugs. Of course, he knows that people act differently in public than they do in private. And he knows that both Howard and Tony are complicated men, and that he's not sure he ever knew the real Howard Stark well enough to judge. "He always seemed like the kinda guy who was friendly to everyone and willing to put on a show, but like it was hard to get close to him. The only person he was ever really fond of-" He swallows past a lump in his throat. "Anyway, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it was personal."
"Well, he sure as hell was fond of you. Couldn't get him to shut up about the great Captain America. God, I hated you," Tony grouses, but surprisingly, the jealousy and resentment normally accompanying those memories stay buried, replaced by Tony's own resigned fondness. Turns out, his dad wasn't far off the mark about Steve.
"He only ever knew Captain America, though." Howard hadn't even spared a glance for the skinny guy being strapped down and injected with serum. Steve had seen the awe in the man's eyes afterwards, although that awe had clearly diminished by the time they met in Europe. "You're the one who knows Steve Rogers." Steve squeezes Tony's hand, favors him with one of those shy smiles, like he's still amazed that Tony would ever want to be with someone like him. (He is, and he probably always will be.)
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"I was trying to sort of..." Steve shrugs with one shoulder. "Not really flirt, but kind of? I wasn't trying to bring you under. I know you choose that, because I asked you if you wanted to do it earlier." It's all clear to him, but he doesn't have the particular emotional difficulties that Tony's wrestling with. "I was trying to be seductive?" He sounds a little confused as he searches for the right language, possibly because Steve Rogers has never tried to seduce anyone in his entire life. "Point is, I did it wrong and it was open for misinterpretation."
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"You aren't weak," he adds earnestly. Not just the qualifier that he, Steve, doesn't think that. It's an objective fact. "One thing all those websites told me is that being submissive isn't being weak. You gotta be strong to trust someone so implicitly, right?" That's what it is, at the heart of it - that's what speaks to Steve. Trust.
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Maybe it's for the best you get put on a leash.
Tony smiles briefly. Thoughts and emotions jumble up inside of him, too fast and deep to be ordered and filed. "That you got your work cut out for ya," he says.
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"Your choice." He rests his chin on Tony's shoulder and wraps one arm around his waist, his hand curling around his hip.
--
The next day, Tony is in his workshop again, and Steve's left to wander around the mansion by himself. He finds himself in a light, airy sitting room, one that's been mostly cleaned, with only a couple chairs covered by sheets. He lets his fingers trail over the white keys of the piano, letting out a few tinkling notes, then ends up settling down on a couch. So much of the house seems like a museum, rather than anything that's been lived in - a monument to Howard and his wife, Steve imagines.
In the distance, he hears footsteps - Tony must be done with his tinkering. "In here!" he calls out, rather than getting up. They don't have any plans for the rest of the day today, but Steve knows their time is coming to an end; he's got to drive back to the compound, and he's sure Tony's schedule is booked solid for god knows how long. It's been a welcome escape, though. (Probably Tony only has the energy to do this once a month, he thinks wryly.)
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Tony leans his shoulder, arms gripping themselves, against the doorway, eyes clearer than they ever are save for the day after a scene. He smiles and nods to the piano. "You play at all?"
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"You'll be ready for Carnegie Hall in no time," he agrees with an amused smile. Steve thinks about sitting next to him on the piano bench, but decides to leave Tony his space. "She'd be proud of you." He's taking a gamble with that, he knows.
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As fresh as it was in 1991, the guilt fills him to his fingertips and blocks all words in his throat. She would have been proud of him, unquestionably. God. Tony didn't deserve her.
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"You wanna tell me about her?" He presses a kiss to the top of Tony's head. Steve knows all about Howard, but nothing about Maria. It'd be easy to end up in Howard Stark's shadow, he thinks, just like it would be easy to end up in Tony's.
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Even though Tony moves away, Steve reaches out and rests a hand on top of his. He still knows what it's like to regret all those things left unsaid, even if it's not in quite the same way. He feels a flash of anger on Tony's behalf - he should have had more time with his parents, should have been able to make sure they knew how he felt. He doesn't even know why Hydra wanted them dead, just that someone had decided that Howard needed to be murdered, and Maria was there, an innocent victim.
"They knew it, though." And that sounds cliche, but Steve genuinely believes it, even if it doesn't do a thing to ease Tony's guilt.
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