A fully restored Avengers mansion meant that now instead of only seeing his team when there was danger, Tony Stark could now mingle and flit like his social butterfly self in the comfort of his own home. J.A.R.V.I.S was fit into every place Tony ever needed and the mansion was no different. Every night for two months now the artificial butler had been sending Tony a distress warning, but thinking it was a bug, Tony had ignored it.
However two months was a long time for a genius who had fixed every other bug in the system, and was now absolutely baffled by the distress call. He'd run and re-run the coding every way he could, and even simulated a few emergencies to try and figure it out. But there was nothing wrong with J.A.R.V.I.S, he was following his 'make sure everyone is safe' orders as it had been written. So Tony sat watching the screens late one night, a full mug of coffee in one hand and a generously buttered slice of toast in the other. If he needed to stay awake all night to find this fucking glitch then so be it.
By 2am it started. J.A.R.V.I.S flashed a red warning light, and Tony was on it with a mere point of his tablet pen. He began to search for where the signal came from, whilst several other holographic windows at eye level ran the continuous string of coded list commands that J.A.R.V.I.S was running off of. Of course Tony couldn't keep his eyes on everything, but he was pretty sure he knew where the code might be going wrong. He was pretty much 99.84% sure that it was a loose wire somewhere in the building.
His ideas however changed in a breath. The signal was coming from Steve's room. Instantly Tony assumed Steve was just taking advantage of the sound proofing to knock one very loud one out. A little disappointingly Tony found he was wrong twice in a row as he brought up the visual, to see the super-soldier trying to sleep. The covers of his bed were kicked off around his middle, and he slept curled on one side of the double bed, as though still used to the army bunks he'd slept in for years before getting here.
Tony brought up the audio as he watched the poor blonde roll out of this foetal position, and the distress signal peaked just as Tony tuned in to hear Steve screaming. It was heart breaking, really. The soldier's arm was out across the double, hand clutching for something in his dreams that wasn't there in the bed. Blue eyes snapped open, reflecting green in the video night vision.
One arm gropes to the covers to bring them up to his chest, and his body stays stiff for a moment as his fingers curl into his palm. Then his arm draws back in, and he drifts back off to sleep. It only takes an hour for the process to repeat, and Tony realised that it wasn't a bug, but a terrifying nightmare routine that alerted J.A.R.V.I.S.
Tony brings up his special loophole coding that he used after his time in captivity, and it allowed for J.A.R.V.I.S to ignore any yells or screams from a particular room between certain hours providing there was no use of phrases such as "help" "attack" or "dear god not my beautiful face".
That morning Tony laid off being sarcastic towards Steve, and instead just leaves him a coffee as an extension of the olive branch. He doesn't say a word, but he's acting hyper aware of his own actions around the blonde. His mind was working on an idea, but he didn't want Steve to catch wind of it. He knew trying to talk about last night wasn't going to help the star spangled man.
Tony observes, and recognises the tell tale signs of a bad nights sleep. Steve was yawning more, his eyes looked heavy although he'd definitely had time to wake up and shower, and he wasn't quite as responsive as normal. Given more time Steve might actually get his concentration wrecked and that was no good for the point second decisions required in their line of work.
Steve had wondered about the coffee, and decided that with no snide good morning joke, Tony was up to his experiments. "If you've poisoned that mug I'll only throw it up. Do you really want me to ruin another expensive carpet?" The blonde tries a small joke, but Tony blanked him. Steve thinks back to information stored in his mind, wondering if today's date matched to any of Tony's file dates about injuries or deaths. It didn't. Steve quirks an eyebrow and takes the coffee in silence, settling in to his seat to read the newspaper.
Tony liked that about Steve, the use of paper, the morning coffee and very grandfather way of scolding people when he wasn't sure about what was going on. 'Endearing' was the term Pepper had used once, and Tony had scoffed at it, as he didn't think there was anything endearing about a man who could kill someone with a custom Frisbee. But Steve was. The soldier was every inch an average guy out of uniform, and it was endearing to see him in a state of peace.
That thought stayed with Tony all day, and when it came to midnight he got ready to make his move. Steve had gone to bed long before then, and Tony had automatically registered J.A.R.V.I.S to keep the cameras trained on the blonde. Tony had noted it took forever for Steve to drop off, the tossing and turning, and occasional sighs of discontent from Steve made it hard for Tony not to go in there and inject him with an almost lethal dose of tranquillizer.
But eventually sleep claimed Steve, and Tony padded down with his shoes off to Steve's room, keeping as quiet as he could when he unlocked the door by system command. The billionaire slipped through into the still of the sleeping man's room, and waited near the door with pricked ears. Steve hadn't woken, and Tony was thankful he wasn't about to get a punch to the face for disturbing the man's much needed R&R.
He crept closer, and checked the time on his phone, it was almost 2am. He knew it wouldn't be much longer as he slid into the bed. He was a master of stealthy bed manners from his many nights slinking around the wild girls who dozed as he pretended to need the bathroom. Tony kept his eyes on Steve's face, and could almost see the dream happening in the same strict routine as last night. Steve turned, then back to the middle, his brow creased in a deep expression of concentration. Then the fear came, and his almost white lips opened as he moaned a low protest, which grew steadily louder as he began to scream.
In the room the noise was ear shattering, the sound proofing so good it had dulled the noise to the cameras last night. Tony shook as he fought all his instincts to wake the blonde and save him from his own mind. But he wouldn't need to, as Steve's arm shot out and his bright blue eyes snapped open. The scream seemed to be a defensive measure for Steve, and the moment he was awake, the silence fell thick in the room again.
Tony had counted on this fact, and had a smile on his face as Steve started to put together the puzzle of why Tony was in his bed. But those big puppy eyes looked down, to where Tony was squeezing Steve's hand with his own fingers carded between them. There was a hitch of breath as Steve figured it out, and his own fingers pushed back against Tony's hard worked skin. The soldier closes his eyes, and his grip relaxes in Tony's palm as he finds the sleep catching him again.
Their hands stay where they are, and whether Steve was aware of it or not, his thumb was lazily pushing over the back of Tony's knuckle. The brunette props himself up for a while, unsure if he should leave once Steve had fallen asleep or stick it out and make some lurid comments in the morning. Perhaps the latter would be better given the circumstances of the Captain's nightmares.
"Thank-you." The only whisper that echoed into the room to break the blonde's sleepy silence. Tony looked over, and Steve was awake, but his eyes were transfixed on their hands. He had a look that told Tony that he was fighting an urge to ask a few questions. The silence blanketed around them again.
A long pause later and Tony figures out what Steve wanted to ask. "J.A.R.V.I.S doesn't like to see 'unhappy house-guests'." He imitates the AI voice, clearly fond of the dry spoken British butler. He gives Steve's hand a little pressure.
"I was... Making trouble?" Steve asks innocently. He didn't like to be a pest, and although it took some getting used to he'd finally resigned to the automated shower systems and coffee that J.A.R.V.I.S had set up. This of course was after it had collected personal habit data, as instructed by Tony when he first wrote the code. Really Tony could have just asked all the avengers for a personal routine or rough timetable to work from, but funnily enough J.A.R.V.I.S could predict each pattern better than Natasha and Clint, who knew their routines off by heart from shower to sleep. Tony always assumed it was because his own routine was fairly chaotic, and from that J.A.R.V.I.S had updated basic steps to incorporate his creators disorderly scheduling.
"No, no." Tony cuts in before Steve can start off on his whole 'I'll take up my old apartment, I'll pay my way' bullshit that he'd heard a hundred times before whenever Tony had come close to telling Steve off. Sometimes the blonde forgot to put his mug on a coaster. That had been a funny little yelling match. Something as simple as a coffee ring and about half an hour of full on screaming at each other about how much a table cost. "You yell in your sleep. It's pretty depressing." He taunts softly, but says nothing more than that. Tony finds his own fingers slipping along Steve's, marvelling that for a guy who wore leather, and carried a shield, and had a vigorous training exercise; his hands were as soft as any woman's.
The healing in Steve's blood was really something Tony should invest himself in. There were more and more people on the planet who could go straight back into battle a day after getting their spines reticulated, and Tony knew that even one dangerously false move without his suit and he'd throw his back out for a month. Not that he didn't love his Iron Man suit, but just how many more windows could a guy get thrown out of?
"Sor-" Steve's apology was cut off as Tony spoke over him.
"There's not a lot you can do about it Cap." He shrugs a little, his eyes flicking to the ceiling as he tries to do his best to let Steve know that for once Tony was being understanding. He didn't have to lie here and hold his hand like this.
"Maybe." He nods and turns in a little, hand still pushed against Tony's. "Fury said.." Steve looks down for a moment, unsure if telling Tony would result in ridicule. "He said I should go see a shrink." He says it with a bit of a scoff, eyes darkening for a second.
Tony does laugh too, but it's not a mean smirk on his face. "That man doesn't need to send you to a shrink to find out what's wrong with you. How long have you and Natasha been hanging out?" He asks, as fair enough, Tony didn't exactly see 'Miss. Rushmore' as anything else than a secretary when she first came to start evaluating him for the Avengers Initiative.
"Miss Romanoff?" Steve swallows as he thinks. "A lot actually, she's really great, and I like a woman who can focus on her career." He smiles back. The poor fool.
"Yeah, don't get too chummy with her. She's called Black Widow for a reason. She'll spit you out in a minute." It wasn't that Tony didn't like her, but he hadn't liked being told there was psychiatric evaluation going on whilst he was trying to figure out what to do about the whole 'dying for the nth time' problem.
"Oh." Steve shifts, his body turning in a little. "So... You think I should give this whole, head doctor business a go?" He looks very sceptical about the idea. Tony shifts back without moving away, to face his friend and co-worker.
"Sure, if you think getting ripped off to be given the answers you already know is worth your time." Tony scrunches his face up: He didn't like the idea either.
Steve moves again, face buried in his pillow as he sighs a long and heavy groan. "I'll think about it." He says quietly, and then with a yawn he closes his eyes.
It takes Tony a while to drop off after that but their hands, albeit a little strange to the genius, stay connected. Throughout the night he felt Steve slowly shifting and curling, until eventually the blonde was pressed close against Tony's side. The billionaire had to stifle a little chuckle, as it wasn't as though he was unused to having another body close to him, but it wasn't often they were flat chested, bearing stubble, and sculpted close to resembling Adonis. Pepper's words about endearing came back to him too, and sure enough seeing Steve's resting face with his lips only slightly parted as his chest rose and fell was endearing.
Before he knows it, Tony's spare hand pushes into Steve's hair, feeling the way the long strands on top suddenly shorted out into the buzz cut of the back and sides. He repeats the motion a couple of times, finding that it was harder to keep his eyes open, and that he'd instinctively pushed into Steve's warm body as the soldier sighs in his sleep.
Tony shut his eyes for what feels like a minute, but when he opens them again the morning Sun was pushing through the blinds. Confusion was Tony's go to reaction. When had he last slept so peacefully without a dash of liquor to aide him? When had he last gotten up with the Sunrise? And when the hell did he ever get to wake up next to Steve mother fucking Rogers looking like an actual glowing angel?
Tony blinks a few times, then moves his hand to wipe the sleep from his lids. But there's a heavy feel and looking down he finds that their hands are still connected. Tony uses his other hand, and turns just a little to observe the man next to him. The blonde was pushed against him, the hand holding Tony's now draped over the brown haired genius' chest. Not only that but Steve's leg had hooked over Tony's hip too, which left the billionaire stuck. He might have been strong enough to wriggle free from under Steve, but it wouldn't be possible without waking the super-soldier. Besides, the blonde's head was tucked neatly into Tony's neck, and the warmth he provided was not unlike a wonderfully human sized hot water bottle.
Tony rolled his eyes. He should have never done this. Steve was going to freak out when he woke.
As soon as the thought had crossed his mind, Steve's alarm blared angrily from the bedside table.