A/N: I was listening to 'Unusual Way' from Nine sang by John Barrowman (I'm in love with the guy) and then I send the link to Irem about how much this reminds me of Stony and I know I've promised her like three other LONG stories but this bugged me and Irem is feeling homesick so this! Feel free to shoot me if I'm too much OOC or this is just plain terrible.
It's always moments like this that Steve really gets to think. Moments where he's surrounded by people, conversations buzzing around him, it's easier to let go in a chaos. A small one but a chaos nonetheless, because that's how life with Tony is.
Always a small chaos and Steve wouldn't change it for anything in the world.
He often contemplates the nature of their relationship. How they came to be, how he found himself in Tony's arms seventy years into the future where his feelings are considered normal and people actually even praise them. It feels wrong but also the most right thing he's ever done in his entire life and it confuses him so much. But that's how Tony is anyway and Steve doesn't want to change that either.
He's happy and carefree one moment, and then mean and sarcastic, and then he dives into a string of explanations about this or that and Steve is already lost but he doesn't want to stop Tony's bubbling because in its core it's just so comforting. Yes, sometimes it's comforting to let go of things and let the present wrap around you like a protective blanket, shielding you from anything and everything that could ever hurt you. That's what Tony is to Steve, he's what keeps Steve sane these days.
Because SHIELD, and Fury, and even the Avengers it's become too much, too much responsibility resting on his shoulders and he feels like he's caving in. But Tony is somehow always there, and he's also in other five different places and he suffocates Steve as he breathes life into him and Steve wishes for what they have to end and keep going all at once.
Pepper warned him once, they were sharing a drink late at night and she warned him that there was going to be a point where he'd think about this. For her it was the point where she walked away, where everything she wanted came into focus and she realised that she couldn't tie herself to Tony like that. But for Steve? For Steve Tony has a special place in his life, from the very first moment he opened his eyes in this century to years later, while sitting around this huge table with a dozen of friends talking and laughing.
He had the chance to walk away, he had the chance to give up on them, to give up the role of Tony's muse but he didn't. Maybe a part of him regrets it, maybe another doesn't but the simple truth is that he didn't left Tony like all the others did. In a very unusual way Tony completes him like no one else did before, not even Peggy and Steve really did love her.
Something inside him goes weak when their eyes meet across the table, Tony's laughing at a joke Thor made and he smiles at him and Steve surrenders again to something that can possibly kill him in the end. Because Tony has no idea how dangerous his way of loving a person can be. He doesn't know what it's like for Steve to watch him, to live in his shadow, in fear that one morning Tony will get tired of him and desert him. Steve's so in love with him it's almost painful to even breath sometimes.
Steve's forced to push all those thoughts in the back of his mind when Tony calls everyone's and launches into a speech about him and them and the family they've built around them and for a brief moment Steve lets himself believe that this thing between them won't ever end.
Just for a single moment everything is perfect and it's just the two of them and they are both whole.
Yes, that sounds about right.
Tony makes him whole.