Most nights Tony Stark doesn't sleep.
It's been this way for as long as he can remember, the need for rest never quite conquering the need to create. From his childhood bedroom, to dorms, libraries, and the laboratory he now calls home, Tony has always been found substituting his bed for a more unforgiving surface. Benches, the floor, a stool, he sits with his shoulders slightly hunched, chewing his lip as he concentrates, words spiraling out on paper, from his lips. Calculations, algorithms, curses and prayers shape endless moments. An empire is built in his darkness. Reckless, irresponsible, arrogant, whatever you want to call him, there is no denying the fact that the man is a genius and it is in these moonlit hours, these days without pause that he devises his greatest inventions.
JARVIS, the Iron Man tech, were born after dusk and well before dawn, products of desperation and determination, proof of a mind as hardwired and advanced as anything the man makes.
Some nights are less important, of course. He doesn't sleep because he's too drunk, or maybe he's not drunk enough. He has galas to attend, speeches to make, Pepper to please, a world to protect. Tony has a nightlife that's made of gadgets and tech, of blurred names and forgotten faces, tangled sheets and racing hearts. There are nights that he doesn't come home simply because he doesn't remember where it is, though his own identity is something he would much rather forget. He grins, and he poses, and when his name ends up in the paper Tony pretends he feels no shame, but he's a man of science and there are some facts he cannot escape.
Tony Stark can lie to the world but the truth is simple; he's petrified of being alone.
On the nights that he does sleep, it's anything but easy. Nightmares plague him, those days trapped in the cave weighing heavily in his mind. The heat presses in on him from thousand miles away, sand seeming to grind into his skin in his pristine Malibu bedroom. His chest aches, the terrors causing him to sweat and shake till he wakes up, a trembling mess. He's seen Yinsin die a thousand times over again, feels the panic of a failing arc reactor. Tony, who can talk until his throat bleeds, wakes up unable to scream, a thousand worries trapped behind a clenched jaw.
These aren't his only nightmares of course. He remembers Howard at his worst, and more importantly, he remembers Howard at his best. Those are the dreams that cut the deepest, those fleeting memories of what he could have had with his Father, the approval he yearned for. Still yearns for, if he could bring himself to admit it. Tony dreams of Pepper sometimes, of the way it ended, the disappointment he so frequently brings her. Sometimes Tony sees his own death and it burns, and it frightens him, but those dreams are the easiest to swallow.
The best nights are the ones where he's so exhausted that he doesn't dream at all.
Or at least they were.
Steve, being Steve, had changed it all. His presence was unsure at first but persistent. A nudge here, a reminder there, those goddamn blue eyes peering down at Tony with a concern the engineer insisted he didn't need or want. Steve seeped into his life quietly, the shift from teammate to friend a subtle adjustment that Tony didn't quite notice until he caught himself missing him one day. He had grown accustomed to that slow smile, the mantra of his own name infused with gentle scoldings to eat, to stop working, or for godsake, to just shut up every once in a while. He can't pin point the day he realized things were sliding past camaraderie, and oh god how he's tried, but suddenly Steve became Steve, a body that Tony knew every line of without ever having touched him.
These are feelings Tony Stark didn't want to have, but it's far too late by the time he realizes they're there. The memory of that first kiss still bruises his lips whenever he thinks about it.
Neither of them trusted easily, not with their pasts, and some things came easier to one than it did for the other. An "I love you" danced behind Steve's lips long before Tony allowed himself to think similar thoughts, and though the man waited as patiently as ever to say those words, Tony knew they were there. He covered up Steve's mouth, pushing the phrase back with tongue and teeth, hoping to trap them there for good. It didn't work, of course. He was saying it back in his own way, frenzied tugs on buttons and zippers, desperate kisses and crushing hipbones. The simple need to have Steve near him said enough, but eventually he found himself saying it anyway.
It wasn't until Steve began to sleep beside him that Tony understood what he had been missing. It still scared him sometimes, the prospect of falling into bed and making himself vulnerable, both to another being and to his own thoughts that he fought so tirelessly to bury, but it didn't take much more than a glance at Steve to settle his nerves. The sound of his gentle breathing, the steady heartbeat in his chest, it had become something Tony couldn't seem to live without and while that faith was daunting, it was so much easier to live with than the prospect of losing him.
For the first time in years Tony knew what it was like to sleep peacefully again.
Not every night was perfect, of course. Some nights he woke up like he had before Steve: body shaking, heart racing, a blind panic still gripping his mind. Sometimes it was Rogers having the nightmare, his own losses and wars gripping tight to his sense of security, but now they had each other. A touch on the arm, or a gentle shake to wake the other before holding them tightly, fingers sliding through hair, lips leaving reassurances on tired skin. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they didn't, but Tony and Steve had devised their own language, one of touches and searching fingertips, one of promises kept in tight embraces. Tony only needed to hear his name in that dialect to know that he was safe.
Tony began to fall asleep the same way he fell in love with Steve; warily at first, slowly in the middle, and then all at once.