"Hot date," Tony replies easily without looking up from what he's thumb-typing on his phone. "You'd like him. Bit old-fashioned, but he's one of the best people I know. Plus, his ass is killer when," Tony glances up, "he wears the combat gear I made for him and not Good Will leftovers." Smirking, he shoves his phone into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and stands. Curiously, there's already something small and coiled bulging from beneath it on his otherwise finely tailored form. The sunglasses for now stay on: he's guarding himself from something with them and the outfit—from the team, maybe, or something else.
"Tony, you've bought my entire wardrobe," Steve feels obligated to point out. At least, he's paid for it, even if he didn't select everything. And he's not dressed like a slob, he just doesn't feel the need to wear his combat gear for a workout. "Is there something wrong with my ass?" He glances over his shoulder, trying to get a look at it.
Steve clocks the bulge in Tony's jacket pocket, but doesn't ask about it; if it's pertinent, Tony will reveal it when he's ready, and not one moment sooner. "Is that my cue to shower and change?" he asks instead.
Tony follows Steve's gaze by nonchalantly leaning over, eying said ass, and humming about how more examination might be required. He snaps back up straight. "I love it when you take the initiative," he answers by way of confirmation and falls into step beside Steve once they begin walking. "I'll wait in your office."
"I'm well aware of that," he replies dryly. It's a little hard to miss Tony's inclinations, after all. Before they separate, Steve leans in and kisses Tony, cupping his cheek for a moment.
Once he's done showering, Steve rummages through his closet, pulling a rarely-worn suit out from the back. It's a three-piece suit in a charcoal grey color, and he's been assured that it brings out his eyes. Wearing a suit feels strange, but he's following Tony's lead on this one.
He tightens the knot on his tie as he enters his office, trying to look less uncomfortable than he feels. "Where are we going?" he asks.
The door clicks shut behind Tony, and he can finally breathe out. His head's a mess, big surprise—so many talking points, arguments, anticipatory counterarguments, lines upon lines of observational data that he can track to its conclusion when others might get tangled and lost. Some form of governmental oversight is incoming, he knows it. His dealings with key politicians might delay it, and good international P.R. might appease the masses for a time, but one straw on the camel's back, and bang, everything will come crashing down. Steve needs to listen, Tony thought desperately on the two-hour drive here, as well as right now. He will listen. He trusts me. He loves me. It won't be like with Ultron.
Keyed up, Tony beelines for Steve's desk, studiously avoiding the couch. A guy can only stay put and rock on his heels for so long. He's fiddling with a pen and tilting his head at the desk's framed documents (a certificate, an award, a yellowed copy of his military record, but only one real picture: the drawing of the circus monkey) and various books when Steve enters. Tony glances up at him from over his sunglasses. His brain screeches to a halt, reverses till it hits his throwaway joke about a hot date, and then cracks open all manner of gooey warm feelings because Steve dressed up for a dinner with him without question or even much of a heads up. How did Tony get so lucky?
The barrier Tony built with his business attire dissolves. He sighs and removes the sunglasses. "Well. Shit. I'm sorry," he says, abashed. "I should've been more upfront." He crosses the distance to the door and—there he is, that's the soft side so few people see, the warm, brown eyes and shy, adoring smile. He grasps Steve's hands by the fingers. Together. "We're not going anywhere, stud. This ... admittedly ain't a pleasure visit."
"Oh-" Steve colors slightly, embarrassed at his mistake, his eagerness to leap to conclusions with barely a hint from Tony. His own smile is awkward, a little self-deprecating, but it's there, because how can he not smile when Tony looks up at him like that? It makes his heart melt, and it's almost enough to make him miss Tony's last words.
"Hm?" He idly drags his thumbs over Tony's before pulling his hands back. Steve unbuttons the coat and shrugs out of it, tossing it over the back of his chair without paying much attention to how it lands. He doesn't seem to care about the potential for creases in the fabric. "So what's up?" He's still relatively relaxed, his muscles pleasantly loose from both the training session and the brief shower afterwards. "You wanna sit?" Steve gestures to the chairs in front of the desk.
Tony appreciates the sight of Steve in a three-piece, minus the jacket, in passing; the vest rests a little too loose on Steve's torso, a size to accommodate the span of his chest and shoulders. Should get him a tailor, Tony thinks absently, and from there his brain meanders to the weight in his inner pocket: the blue leather collar he snatched the last second from his beside table before he left. Then his thoughts branch to the time he sucked Steve off beneath his office desk, and—and this is why he needed the Mr. Stark the businessman front. Self-protection, really, else what would he get done? Restricting his orgasms to only be at Steve's say, whether in person or over the phone as they agreed two months ago, and not on any set schedule, means that whenever the opportunity presents itself Tony's libido rears up and wags its tail like a good boy because now at any moment Steve can equal playtime, yes, yes, yes?
So, "Uh, sure," Tony answers, suddenly suggestible, and mimics Steve by hanging his suit jacket on the chair (neatly). He blinks a moment, then squashes the yes, sir teasing his core. Not now, he tells it and by proxy his dick. I'm driving. Me. Wait your turn. He plops into his seat. Casual as can be, he says, "Lookin' good, by the way."
Of course Steve is aware of the effect his appearance has on Tony, but in his defense, he absolutely chose this outfit because he thought they were going on a date, with both the intention of getting Tony worked up on the date and the obvious post-date implications of being unwrapped slowly and carefully, layer by layer. (He thinks about the set of ropes tucked away in his closet, how he'd spent a solid week looking at them and debating before taking the plunge and ordering them.)
"You too." But that's obvious; Tony always looks good, and Steve always enjoys the way he looks in his fitted suits. Still, he softens around the edges, and the skin around his eyes crinkles a little. "I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go, I guess."
"I could change that," punches out from Tony's mouth before he can even think about it: a knee-jerk reaction to please. The shock at himself passes quickly and he sucks his lips in between his teeth. This is not going as he planned. It's like Steve accidentally bumped into the table that held Tony's Scrabble board of constructed arguments and scattered the letter tiles into loose nonsense and Tony just wanted to tell him it's okay, the game sucked, anyway.
Steve just chuckles quietly. "Yeah, I'm sure you'd be happy to whisk me off to Paris or Venice or somewhere fancy on a whim." And, yeah, he'd be lying if he said that part of him didn't want to see the world with Tony by his side, but there'll be plenty of time for that someday, he figures. (He hopes.) The romantic in him indulges in a moment of pure fantasy, the level of Tony Stark excess that usually makes him roll his eyes, but he tucks that away for a later date.
"You said you wanted to talk to me," Steve reminds Tony gently. "About business."
Grateful to be steered back on track, Tony gasps out, "Right. Yeah," like he was holding in his breath. His eyes trail down to somewhere past Steve's bicep. "Strap in. This is gonna be a doozy," he mutters and then squares his shoulders, posture tall and strong like the successful businessman's, before he changes his mind and slouches forward instead, closer, an elbow on the desk. Just doesn't feel right anymore shutting himself off from Steve like that.
"What's your take on the ... damage the Avengers can leave behind?" he begins. It's a question Tony has needed to field before. Not Steve so much; Tony tries to keep him (and the others) out of the hot seat. Steve has a team to lead. Even before they dated, Tony has smoothed Steve's way as much as he can.
The tack Tony takes with the conversation isn't a huge surprise; Steve follows Tony's media appearances closely enough that he's seen the subject crop up more than once. However, it isn't one that he's personally given much thought to - he started doing this in the middle of a war, after all, and things were usually pretty well wrecked before he got there. (Also, he has precisely zero remorse for ruining any Hydra facilities.)
"I think it's a legitimate problem," he says slowly, "but not one we can really do much to avoid. We don't choose where our fights happen, and I don't think people understand that."
"And the people who lose more than just money or buildings? Who lose other people?" Tony presses gently. He's not pushing Steve in any direction, but he's opening the door for him all the same, inciting Steve to look inside. "A 'sorry for your loss' card doesn't really cut it for them, does it?"
"I know," Steve agrees softly. He's not unaware of the cost their fights have, regardless of what the media might say. "If I could evacuate everyone from the area before fights, I would. But there's not always enough time to do that. Sometimes lives are lost, and the only excuse I have is that it's to save more lives. That doesn't make it better, but there's no real way to avoid it."
That kind of conviction must be nice, Tony thinks at Steve, because he looks at the numbers one-hundred seventy-seven (Sokovia) or seventy-four (New York) or others (always others) and thinks, I could've done better. "So that'd be your answer, then?" Tony asks with a kind of anticipatory gravitas like Alex Trebek on Jeopardy. "'Too bad, so sad, but hey, we tried our best!'" Finally, he lifts his eyes to Steve's. The groundwork has been laid. Time to move on to the main event. "We're not the ones drawing the short straw here, Steve," Tony whispers, eyes steadfast but pleading. Please listen. Please understand, they beg. Even though his stupid sentimental heart assures him that Steve will, Tony's head overthinks and second-guesses it.
"We can always do better," Steve corrects him quietly. "I won't argue that. But some things are unavoidable." When you're fighting an army of Ultrons, for example, there's no way to be everywhere at once, to stop everything. Sheer numbers make that impossible. Steve looks at these fights with the tactical mind of a general: losses will happen, and you have to minimize those losses while still defeating the enemy. He started doing this during a war, and so it's only natural to have a soldier's mindset.
"I'm worried that one day it'll be one of us drawing the short straw." Pietro already had; Steve carries that loss with him, thinking he should have found some way to prevent it. He knows that it's inevitable, that one of them will make the wrong move. He sees it in his dreams at night, worries about it when he's awake, and maybe that's what keeps him from worrying more about civilians. There's only so much weight even he can carry.
Tony's breath catches. "I'm not talking about us right now," he grits out, tensing, because it's supposed to be about the people they protect. If he starts thinking about his friends like that, those closest to him, his family, he—he just can't. He can't go there and stay intact. "Hell, there might not even be an us down the line!" he shouts, growing a bit manic, and God, he's losing it. This is the worst timing. Hold it together, Stark. Deep breaths.
Steve starts to rise from his chair, reaching out to grip Tony's arm. "Calm down," he tells him, keeping his tone steady and even. "Just take a deep breath." He knows this conversation is important to Tony, and he wants him to be able to focus on it. "People want to disband the Avengers?" He gently redirects things back on track - maybe a little less gently than intended, since he's gripping Tony's arm more tightly now.
Huffing, eyes locked onto Steve's hand gripping him, Tony breathes in deep enough that his shoulders lift. He holds it, and then pushes it back out. Calm. Instinctively, he rasps in answer, "I won't let that happen." Everything in him rebels at the thought—for Steve's sake, really. Tony will snarl and snap at anyone who tries to take away the home Steve has found. The knee-jerk reaction passes as his head clears. It's not just for Steve. The whole world needs the Avengers, and besides, disbanding is unlikely. No, that'd come only as a last resort—as long as they, he and Steve, face this before disaster can strike. "I mean, no. No, not disband," Tony clarifies. Here it is, here comes the big one, he hypes himself. Buck up and rip off that band-aid. He meets Steve's eyes again. "There's been ... talk on Capitol Hill about regulation for the Avengers. Nothing concrete yet, but I've ... heard some proposals. None of them ideal. But, Steve," he places his hand over Steve's, and he really starts rolling, gaining traction, "I think we should work with them. Hash something out, head the worse stuff off at the pass. It's bound to happen with or without our input. We've operated without red tape for years. To hell with laws and sovereign borders, we're the Avengers, right? We're the heroes. After New York and Hydra, people were too afraid to tell us no, but that's changing. They want accountability, and no one should be above laws, especially not us." His own grip tightens. "Tell me you understand."
Steve closes his eyes for a second. There hadn't been any accountability during the war, just goals to be accomplished. That's what he's used to - going in and getting the job done, no matter what it takes. But if he takes a step back and examines what they do in the framework of this new society, then, yeah, he can see where Tony's coming from, even if he doesn't like it, even if he doesn't think their hands should be bound by politics. What if someone needs help and the President wants to withhold it for whatever reason? He's not part of the petty power games Washington plays, and frankly, if someone told him no because of that, he'd just do it anyway, and damn the consequences.
Relief whooshes out of Tony. Steve isn't stonewalling him. Steve is listening, like Tony hoped (like he knew). "We can work that out," he says, almost woozy with the relief, but that was just the first hurdle. He curls his fingers around Steve's hand, a full hold instead of just resting on top: the reassurance that Tony is with him and a plea for Steve to not pull away both. "We still have leverage in this. We get on it now, we have a better chance of writing something up more on our terms."
"I trust you," Steve says simply, and he does. He's not any good at the wheeling and dealing of politics, the twisty state of mind needed to work through things like this. Steve's bull in a china shop attitude has never made him any political friends, whether in the past or now. But Tony, he knows, can do this; business and politics are just about kissing cousins, and he has no doubt that Tony can wrangle what they need from Congress or the Pentagon or whoever. Steve is more likely to make enemies if he tries to do this kind of thing, and while Tony can backtalk politicians when it suits him, Steve also knows that he can play the game if he has to.
The last piece of something unravels in Tony under Steve's gaze and trust. Slowly, a closed smile breaks through, warm and loose; it deepens his laugh lines and crow's feet. Tony ducks his head with it as if he's shy. (He kinda is, when facing and feeling such affection.) Loving Steve back seems to be only a matter of time. "Lemme pull some strings. Meet some people. I'll get us an audience," Tony whispers contentedly and strokes his thumb along the back of Steve's hand. This went better than he could have expected. To have Steve simply place his trust in him like that, like how Tony does in him when he's in subspace—that's huge. That's a real partnership, like the one Tony had with Pepper. The real deal.
Leaning across the desk, Steve catches the corner of Tony's mouth in a kiss. Of course he trusts him - trusting people is what Steve does, and nowhere is that more evident than with Tony.
"Any chance of squeezing some pleasure in now that we've got business out of the way?" God, he loves the way Tony looks like this, relaxed and open. It would be so easy to have another weekend of debauchery, to seclude themselves for a few days and wring every drop of pleasure from their time. Even a night would suffice. (He's going to be absolutely insatiable once Tony moves in; it's only a matter of time.)
They should probably talk more, lay out some of the legislation Tony's heard about and get Steve's opinions, but ... eh. Later. Caught between I'd give you anything and oh, boy, playtime, Tony mirrors Steve, tilting forward and angling his head, a breath away from a kiss. "I brought the collar," he murmurs suggestively. "I'd love to get on my knees for you right now, if you're so inclined. A lil' dessert before dinner, yeah?"
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Steve clocks the bulge in Tony's jacket pocket, but doesn't ask about it; if it's pertinent, Tony will reveal it when he's ready, and not one moment sooner. "Is that my cue to shower and change?" he asks instead.
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Once he's done showering, Steve rummages through his closet, pulling a rarely-worn suit out from the back. It's a three-piece suit in a charcoal grey color, and he's been assured that it brings out his eyes. Wearing a suit feels strange, but he's following Tony's lead on this one.
He tightens the knot on his tie as he enters his office, trying to look less uncomfortable than he feels. "Where are we going?" he asks.
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Keyed up, Tony beelines for Steve's desk, studiously avoiding the couch. A guy can only stay put and rock on his heels for so long. He's fiddling with a pen and tilting his head at the desk's framed documents (a certificate, an award, a yellowed copy of his military record, but only one real picture: the drawing of the circus monkey) and various books when Steve enters. Tony glances up at him from over his sunglasses. His brain screeches to a halt, reverses till it hits his throwaway joke about a hot date, and then cracks open all manner of gooey warm feelings because Steve dressed up for a dinner with him without question or even much of a heads up. How did Tony get so lucky?
The barrier Tony built with his business attire dissolves. He sighs and removes the sunglasses. "Well. Shit. I'm sorry," he says, abashed. "I should've been more upfront." He crosses the distance to the door and—there he is, that's the soft side so few people see, the warm, brown eyes and shy, adoring smile. He grasps Steve's hands by the fingers. Together. "We're not going anywhere, stud. This ... admittedly ain't a pleasure visit."
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"Hm?" He idly drags his thumbs over Tony's before pulling his hands back. Steve unbuttons the coat and shrugs out of it, tossing it over the back of his chair without paying much attention to how it lands. He doesn't seem to care about the potential for creases in the fabric. "So what's up?" He's still relatively relaxed, his muscles pleasantly loose from both the training session and the brief shower afterwards. "You wanna sit?" Steve gestures to the chairs in front of the desk.
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So, "Uh, sure," Tony answers, suddenly suggestible, and mimics Steve by hanging his suit jacket on the chair (neatly). He blinks a moment, then squashes the yes, sir teasing his core. Not now, he tells it and by proxy his dick. I'm driving. Me. Wait your turn. He plops into his seat. Casual as can be, he says, "Lookin' good, by the way."
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"You too." But that's obvious; Tony always looks good, and Steve always enjoys the way he looks in his fitted suits. Still, he softens around the edges, and the skin around his eyes crinkles a little. "I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go, I guess."
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"You said you wanted to talk to me," Steve reminds Tony gently. "About business."
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"What's your take on the ... damage the Avengers can leave behind?" he begins. It's a question Tony has needed to field before. Not Steve so much; Tony tries to keep him (and the others) out of the hot seat. Steve has a team to lead. Even before they dated, Tony has smoothed Steve's way as much as he can.
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"I think it's a legitimate problem," he says slowly, "but not one we can really do much to avoid. We don't choose where our fights happen, and I don't think people understand that."
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"I'm worried that one day it'll be one of us drawing the short straw." Pietro already had; Steve carries that loss with him, thinking he should have found some way to prevent it. He knows that it's inevitable, that one of them will make the wrong move. He sees it in his dreams at night, worries about it when he's awake, and maybe that's what keeps him from worrying more about civilians. There's only so much weight even he can carry.
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(That definitely isn't what Tony wants to hear.)
"What kind of regulations?" he asks finally.
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"Any chance of squeezing some pleasure in now that we've got business out of the way?" God, he loves the way Tony looks like this, relaxed and open. It would be so easy to have another weekend of debauchery, to seclude themselves for a few days and wring every drop of pleasure from their time. Even a night would suffice. (He's going to be absolutely insatiable once Tony moves in; it's only a matter of time.)
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