The Choices We Make
Steve is jolted awake by the sound of a door opening. The hard snap of the bolt sliding across the lock housing cuts through the relative silence of the cell block like a gunshot. The two guards, who had given up trying to talk to Captain America hours ago in favor of staring mulishly into nothingness, jump at the sudden noise.
The door to the cell block opens, and when Iron Man's red and gold armor passes through the hatch, one of the guards barks out a crisp, "Director on deck!" and they both snap to attention, their fingers curled tightly around their pulse rifles.
Tony strides across the room, his booted feet reverberating on the grated floor. He comes to a halt in front of Steve's cell. The guards don't react to his presence, remaining stiffly at attention.
Steve stares up at him through the bars. He is sitting on the floor, legs bent, arms hanging off his knees. He clenches his jaw, wanting to say something snide, but his eyes flick to the guards, and he keeps his silence. Iron Man, following Steve's gaze, half turns towards the guards as if just realizing they were there. He dismisses them with a curt, "Leave."
The cold malice in the suit's mechanical voice conveys the severity of the command, and the young soldiers don't have to be told twice. They salute sharply, a gesture which Tony doesn't bother to return. They quickly turn to make themselves scarce, only one of them sparing a swift sidelong glance at where Captain America sits stiff-backed against the rear wall of the cell. Steve is pretty sure the young man is disappointed to miss what would no doubt keep the rumor-mill turning for weeks.
When the soldiers are out of sight and the door to the cell block closes securely behind them, Steve glares at Tony through the tops of his eyes. "Come to gloat?" he asks, sneering.
Tony stares at him wordlessly, the expressionless mask giving nothing away. It lasts a long moment, enough for the sneer to slide off Steve's face. Enough for him start scrutinizing Tony's form, as if the motionless armor might give some clue as to the thoughts of the man inside. Then, Tony tilts his head slightly to the side, as if considering something.
When he speaks a moment later, it is not directed at Steve. "Armor order. Sesta Drama Conci. Cut Global Information System."
[Global Information System holding…]
Then that's it. Tony just stands there, staring at him. Steve gazes back for a few moments, but it's hard to get into a staring contest with a metal mask. Eventually Steve looks away, his lips drawing back in a grimace. He doesn't want to play games. "What do you want?" he asks.
The cell door disappears without any prompt from Tony. At least, no prompt that Steve is witness too. The blue energy beams dissipate with a faint hiss and it's so unexpected that he stiffens, his muscles automatically coiling, his head snapping up.
Tony enters the cell and pauses just inside the threshold. Steve watches warily as the locking mechanisms on the armor's faceplate shift, and then Tony tugs it off.
Steve gets his first good look at Tony. His black hair is mussed and Tony absently runs a gauntlet through it, brushing the rakish strands off his forehead. He needs a haircut. There are half-healed cuts on his face and the remnants of a nasty bruise on his left cheek. They stand out vividly against Tony's pale skin, giving him an exhausted, battered look. It takes Steve a moment to remember that he left those marks.
Tony tosses the faceplate onto the floor. It lands with a resounding thud between them, its eye-slits dark and empty.
Steve doesn't rise to his feet, but he does shift his weight, his eyes flickering between Tony and the faceplate. Tony takes a few steps forward until he's practically looming over Steve. Steve cranes his neck and looks up at him, schools his features into casual dismissal, displaying the fact that Tony's invasion of his personal space wasn't in the least bit intimidating, if that was the effect Tony was aiming for. He stays sitting, because it puts the confrontation on his terms. It forces Tony to adjust to him.
Tony stares down at him, his face calm, almost robotic in its emptiness. There are lines that didn't used to be there framing his eyes, his mouth, making him look older, wearier. His eyes search Steve's face, and Steve stares back.
"Damn you," Tony says, flatly, his eyes boring into Steve. Having been silent for so long, his words cut through the silence with startling clarity. There's a pause, where Steve stares back at him for a moment, lips parted like he's going to say something, but can't find the words. Tony stares back impassively, still with that sort of half-attention Steve had begun to associate with the Extremis.
"For what?" Steve finally asks, feeling that dark, restless anger that had fueled so much of his life the last few months. The look on Tony's face, the blank detachment...
He looks at Tony and he thinks, nothing has changed. Even now, after everything, it's all still the same. He hasn't changed.
"For making me do this alone." Tony answers softly.
Steve has a retort for that, on the tip of his tongue – he wants to say that nobody was making him do anything, and he'd dug his own grave, and a thousand other recriminations- but Tony's knees connect loudly with the deck as he sinks down to the floor of the cell. Steve has time to blink, once, before Tony leans forward and plants his hands solidly on the bulkhead on either side of Steve's head, and Steve recoils in surprise at the gesture, shifting his weight, expecting some kind of attack, but not willing to make the first strike himself.
No attack comes. Instead, Tony leans in and roughly captures Steve's lips with his own.
His mind detachedly processes the feel of Tony against his mouth- a warm, insistent pressure, his goatee scratching faintly at Steve's skin- while his hands make an aborted gesture, half raising towards where their faces touch, before lowering to settle on either side of Tony's waist. He doesn't have enough time to figure out if he is holding on or summoning the willpower to push away. He doesn't even have time to properly realize what is happening.
It lasts only a moment, the span of a few heartbeats, and then Tony pulls back, just enough so that their lips are no longer touching, but Steve can feel every exhalation of Tony's breath fluttering against his skin.
"I hate you." Tony breathes, softly. "I hate you so much for doing this."
Steve sucks in a sharp breath, because somewhere along the way he stopped breathing, and Tony pulls back enough that they can see each other properly. Steve can see the hate in Tony's eyes, the smoldering resentment, and Steve feels something similar. Because this… this thing that Tony has just done. This line that he's crossed. Steve hates him for doing this, and hates himself for what he's about to do.
Maybe it's Steve who leans forward this time, or maybe it's Tony again. It's too quick to tell. Armored fingers clasp the back of his head, bury themselves in the short strands of his hair as their lips crush together. Steve's fingers clench spasmodically around Tony's waist, the hard metal unyielding as Tony's tongue traces Steve's bottom lip and Steve opens his mouth automatically, and then he's tasting Tony, feeling something spread through his chest, something warm and tight.
Another few heartbeats, pounding heartbeats, and something in Steve comes loose. Something is tugged free, and the feel of Tony on his lips, beneath his hands, is not something he's prepared for.
Tony pulls away again, his harsh breaths hot against Steve's face. "No," Tony says, faintly.
Maybe Steve is angry. Maybe he feels betrayed, or used. The only thing he's sure of is the fact that he has no idea what to feel right now – which emotion to give in to.
This can never work. This is wrong, wrong on so many levels, so beyond fucked up that Steve can't even comprehend the ramifications of continuing this.
"Shut up," Steve growls, yanking Tony forward, spreading Tony's lips with his tongue, feeling heat fill his mouth, and his fingers are scratching against the armor, frustration building in his chest. He knows instantly where this is going, where he wants this to go, the knowledge hitting him with the weight of years of fighting side by side, years of sacrifice, camaraderie, and understanding. And at the same time he's rational enough to realize that maybe what he wants isn't what either of them needs, and there are better ways of dealing with the problem than fucking Tony in a jail cell. Just as he realizes that he really doesn't care.
"Take it off," he demands, and there are a series of clicks, the armor twitching with each one, and then the pieces fall off, pooling haphazardly on the floor. Steve traces his thumbs over Tony's ribcage, feeling the smooth heat of the golden second skin, which begins sliding under his hands. A few tendrils trail over his fingers, and he wonders absently if Tony knows how that feels.
When Steve's hands finally make brushing contact with Tony's skin, the touch has Tony instantly stiffening – he can feel the muscles coil and Tony's chest stop moving, his breath catching – and then Tony is pulling away, again- only Steve's had enough of that.
He cinches his hands around Tony's waist and uses his considerable strength to hold Tony in place. He applies enough force to know that there'll be bruises, finger shaped and dark, but Tony doesn't make a sound. Steve growls, "Don't you dare pull away from me-", and he feels anger, real anger. Because he didn't want this, but Tony- Tony Fucking Stark never gave a damn about things like that. He just plunged head first, damn the consequences, and took what he wanted.
Tony's fingers are still twisted through the hair on the back of his head, and they clench, so he can faintly feel fingernails scratching at his skin. Tony's other hand withdraws from the bulkhead and wraps around one of Steve's wrists, hard, digging into the tendons, tugging the hand away from where it digs into his hip. The move is demanding, powerful, controlling. Steve allows it to happen. Tony's mouth pulls away from Steve's lips, connects with Steve's jaw line, traces it back with his tongue, then down Steve's neck, and Steve groans.
What the fuck are they doing? This is out of control. Steve knows that. It's irrational. But Tony's tongue sweeps across his skin and his teeth bite down over the vein in his throat, which thrums with his rapidly beating heart. Tony has a vice grip on Steve's wrist, severe enough that he can feel his tendons grinding against bone. Steve's free hand is flat against Tony's side, the muscles hard beneath his hand, and Steve's nails dig into Tony's skin as his fingers clench.
Tony's hand trails down his back, across his shoulder blades and down his spine. The touch is faint through Steve's uniform, and he makes a noise of frustration that clearly denotes his annoyance at the fact. Tony complies by yanking up the bottom of Steve's uniform and sliding his hand beneath it.
Steve shifts at the feeling of Tony's fingers against the skin of his stomach, arching into it ever so slightly. Tony's fingers search him, like Tony is memorizing him, cataloging the contours of his skin, his thumb catching on and tracing the scars that criss-cross his body. He groans in the back of his throat as he wonders if Tony knows where he got most of them. Tony reaches the one on his left side, just above his hip, and in his head Steve thinks, Ardennes. Then the hand is flat against Steve's stomach, pausing over the one on Steve's left ribcage, and he thinks Red Skull, and he thinks that there are ones that Tony knows about, and others he doesn't, and maybe Tony wants to know them all. And it's irrational and fleeting, just like what's happening now, but he thinks that maybe he wants Tony to know them all.
He has a feeling that any control either of them has over the situation is rapidly dwindling. There's an urgency to it, a desperation that should be setting off all Steve's defenses. Tony releases Steve's wrist, which is accompanied by the pins and needles of blood rushing back into his fingers. Tony's free hand tugs at Steve's belt buckle, the other fingering the faint collection of shrapnel scars just above his navel. The buckle comes undone, easily, but it's not fast enough. Not nearly.
Steve can clearly see Tony's reaction to all of this, and he can feel the vibration of a moan through where their lips are connected when he reaches forward and grasps Tony's cock with a firm hand.
Tony pulls back, his hand pausing at Steve's waistline. He moans, "God-" and Steve's hand starts stroking, and he's not gentle about it. Maybe it's the years of subliminal attraction. Maybe this had been building up, from a thousand innocent moments, to this. Maybe it all started somewhere long ago, and neither of them realized, and it's all pouring out, right at this moment.
Or maybe, as he feels Tony shift against him, his panting breath against his cheek, the visceral moan that slips past his lips, maybe… maybe this is a kind of revenge.
It's a horrible thought, but Steve is angry. He's furious, betrayed, and above all he's reckless. Maybe he's doing this because he knows it will destroy them, as surely as anything they've done to each other over the past few months. Maybe he's doing this because he knows how much this is going to hurt Tony. Maybe he wants Tony to hurt, because Steve has been slowly dying inside from this, and yet Tony can still look at him with eyes that say, this isn't touching me. This doesn't matter. I'm somewhere else.
Tony will be here for this. This will matter to him. He will feel this. That's what Steve is thinking when he's jerking Tony off, feeling him react under his touch, Tony's hands a vice grip on the hard planes of Steve's body, the sounds that escape his throat low and desperate. Steve is drawing this reaction from Tony, and when Tony palms Steve through the fabric of his uniform, roughly, like he's looking for some kind of control, Steve hisses, and strokes harder.
He knows when Tony is at the raw edge, can feel it in the way his breath hitches and stills, and he grips Tony's hard cock in his hand and squeezes, snarls, "Not yet," and Tony, Tony just makes a sound low in his throat, and somehow manages to comply. Tony's never had any defenses as far as sex was concerned, and Steve knows this. Knows that whatever he wants to do, Tony will go all the way.
Steve's still fully clothed while Tony isn't, which is faintly ridiculous. It's getting in the way of things Steve wants to happen, and happen now, because he can read the desperation in the way Tony's hand is flat against his stomach, just above his waistline, fingers clenching and unclenching. The unseeing way Tony stares through his face into nothingness, his panting breath. He releases his grip on Tony and impatiently pushes him away to start taking off his uniform, because Tony seems temporarily unable to do anything more than breathe, with Steve's hand wrapped around his cock like that.
Regardless of the intent behind it, it's enough. It's enough for Tony to come back from whatever half-aware state led to this, enough to break the moment, enough for Tony to gather something of his armor around himself – the emotional armor, the mental armor. Tony's hand is still splayed across his stomach, the other gripping the muscle of his thigh, as his glance catches Steve's and their blue eyes lock. Steve has Tony at arm's length, about to let go, but he stills.
They're both breathing heavily, and Steve can see something in Tony's eyes. Fear, maybe. Uncertainty. Desire. But most of all, what he sees is that Tony is here. Fully here, every part of him.
And that's how he finally sees it. Something in his gut clenches so hard it's almost nauseating. For a moment he's breathless, then he swallows thickly and asks,
"How long-?"
His voice is rough, catching on his own breath. He can only ask part of it, can't even finish the question, but the unspoken words hang between them nonetheless.
How long have you loved me?
Tony studies him, and while he's here, completely here, there is no emotion in his face. The only hint that any of this matters to him is the fact that his eyes are bright, and his lips are bruised and red.
"Until now," Tony answers softly.
Steve's mouth opens, but there are no words. He can't think of a single thing to say. And then Tony is pulling away, the ghosting touch of his fingers against Steve's stomach vanishing as he retracts his hand. Tony stands up, the yellow film spreading over his skin. Steve hears the almost silent hum of the microscopic repulsors activating in Tony's armor as the fragments rise up, then the sound of the pieces clicking and sliding together. The faceplate still sits on the deck between them.
It all happens fast. "Tony-" Steve says, something like panic starting to creep over him, and Tony bends down to scoop the helmet up off the floor, and he slides it back on, hiding his face behind the emotionless armor, and he's turning and walking out of the cell, the bars springing to life swiftly behind him.
Steve stares after him numbly, for a moment, then surges to his feet, yelling after him, "Tony!" He wraps his hands around the bars to his cell without thinking, only to yank them back with a snarl as twin shocks of energy snake up his arms like fire.
Tony's retreating back doesn't pause.
"TONY!" Steve roars. When that has no effect, he takes a step back and viciously kicks one of the bars of his cell, with every ounce of strength he has. It makes a tremendous screech of static, flickering, and the responding shock kills all feeling in Steve's leg, but Tony neither stops nor makes any sign that he's heard. And then the door to the cell block is snapping open, reverberating through the corridor with an undeniable sort of finality, and Tony vanishes from sight as the door closes behind him.
Steve stares after him, frozen, mind a whirlwind, trying to piece together the thousand meanings behind what just happened. How it changes things. How it changes everything.
He turns, faces the back of his cell, crosses his arms and wraps his hands around his forearms so tightly his knuckles turn white. He breathes deeply, trying to force down the heavy blot of anger and panic and desire in his chest. Almost absently, and without consciously wanting to, he remembers the feel of the little flecks of gold gliding beneath his hands, and that follows with the memory of Tony's tongue in his mouth, then sliding across the planes of his throat, then Tony's hard fingers buried in his hair, then his softer, callused hands tracing their way across his chest…
He exhales, heavily, and tries to slow his racing heart.
-
There's an irony in all of this, considering the course of events that follow.
Steve is left to sit alone in his cell, the hours filled with the memory of Tony's hands on him, and all the feelings it provoked. Feelings tempered with the look he remembers in Tony's eyes, the one that surely must have been mirrored in his own… the look that says, I'll never forgive you for doing this.
Irony, because for all the choices made in that one moment, nothing changed. Despite everything, it didn't matter, because the next time they stand in the presence of one another is when Steve's dead body is brought to the Helicarrier, before eventually being interred in Arlington, and the distant happenings in a jail cell all those days ago might as well have never been.
Tony is left to stand alone in a storage room, the hours filled with nothing but the sound of his own breathing and his heart pounding in his ears. Several times he sucks in a sharp breath, intending to say something aloud, but the thought of his voice marring the heavy silence seems somehow grotesque, and his words choke off into nothing.
Eventually, his fingers will hesitantly reach forward and touch Steve's lips. The armor will be on, because no matter what horrible things they did to each other, Tony thinks touching the lifeless cold of those lips with the warmth of his fingers would be too obscene for him to bear. So Tony touches Steve's cold body with the cool metal of his armored hands, feeling nothing. The connection lasts for a brief moment, before gently withdrawing.
The mask never comes off, and he leaves without saying a word.