Title: Be Empty of the Miserable Things
Rating: T
Summary: Someone needs to tell Steve Rogers that loving the person you're with while you can is the best sort of selfish.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.
A/N: Contains mild LGBTQ themes, H/C and a good dose of angst.
Sometimes at night, Steve gets nagged, poked relentlessly in the inner workings of his mind, as deep as his soul. He'll wake up slowly, as if nauseous, and can tell that something is dreadfully wrong. He can't taste what it is; it's stubborn and won't surface on his tongue or under his nose so he can get an idea.
It's an ache that won't leave his belly for hours. It sits and sits, waits and waits. Steve hates not knowing what it's waiting for.
On these nights, he grips Tony tighter and fists the other man's warm tank, shirt, his skin. Whatever Steve can reach, he wants desperately underneath his fingers. He doesn't take anymore than that, doesn't want to wake Tony because no one in the tower sleeps without troubles. He'll either fall back asleep or meet the sun as though no time has passed. Either way Steve remains dreamless.
…
The day it's his turn to make dinner, Steve's at the corner market buying tomatoes and fresh basil and a tabloid cover story catches his eye. It's emblazoned in yellow with a hard edge.
Steve decides to buy the magazine and tosses it in the basket along with the brownie mix he's getting for dessert.
Later and alone, he flips through the glossed pages at the kitchen island. He stares at the actors in the photo spread, at their untamed smiles. They're out and proud. Vibrant.
Steve reads their words and wants to take each one as his own. He wants to use them like stones, strong and enduring, and build a home to live in. However, Steve recognizes a hiding place for what it is.
The public knows about his relationship with Tony so their story getting out is not a problem he has. Honestly, people know more than Steve is comfortable with. At the beginning, the media was always there with cameras—microscopes, Steve thinks—waiting to take pictures and steal private moments without Steve's permission. Anyone within reach of wireless connection could find out when Steve and Tony had their first date, what they ordered, even how much they tipped the waiter. People go as far as to discern the state of Steve's romance by what he wears. Steve thinks people have too much time on their hands.
So no, Steve doesn't want to be any more exposed than he already is and isn't seeking the approval of strangers.
His closet is far behind him. He shut that door years ago but for whatever reason, Steve still feels the chill of skeletons in his shadows. The dry bones rattle like the rhythm of an ancient curse.
It's not the couple's words that Steve envies. It's that layer under the happiness; it's a contentment that he can't quite get to and wishes he could scrape at with his thumb nail. He'd use a damned shovel if he could. He loves Tony and that's truer than the blood in his veins. It breaks his heart that some part of himself, his own self, won't let that be.
He throws the tabloid into the garbage and preheats the oven with no appetite at all.
…
"I don't like rainbows."
"What?" Bruce looks at him oddly and Steve can't fault him, it's an odd statement to make mid-downward dog during yoga at six in the morning. Bruce stops the stretch though, rolls up, and tells Steve to clarify.
Steve hates the he wore the athletic shorts without the pockets, hates that he has nowhere to hide his itchy hands.
"I don't like rainbows," Steve admits, earnest like he's ten and at confession. This is more important though, not as simple as being the one to let out Mrs. Brown's cat and letting Bucky take the blame. "And I want to marry Tony someday. He doesn't know that I do but I sometimes picture a ring on his finger. I've drawn it countless times. I want to marry Tony but I'm don't know how I could ask." Have the right to.
Bruce's look turns fond but also a little uneasy. "I'm not sure I'm the best one to talk to about proposal advice, Steve. I mean, I know that Tony's very loud but he probably wouldn't want a rainbow color scheme either."
"No, no. That's not it." Steve considers where he means to go with this. It's unfair what he fumbles at because how he can face a barrage of gunfire, aliens, and megalomaniacs determined to set the earth on fire but be so afraid of this?
Steve then remembers that being afraid doesn't stop the world from spinning and taking it with him. He continues. "Back in the forties, they weren't any flags to wave or marches to go to. Thinking of marrying a man wasn't something I ever imagined. Not seriously at least. I wasn't waiting for the day that a law would be passed because I thought I'd see pigs fly first. One state having same-sex marriage wasn't in the realm of possibilities and now there's fourteen. Fourteen and it's so incredible. I—frequently. Every damn second I feel like I cheated."
"You were trapped in ice for seventy years, Steve. You sacrificed for your country. Nothing has come easy for you," Bruce tells him gently and carefully with very concerned eyes. Steve knows he's being studied.
"It's not about it being hard or easy. It's not mine to have. He's not—" Steve is sure he's being ripped apart on the inside, voicing these thoughts. It hurts like hell and Steve knows that he's found it, the ache and the sick. He's picked the scar and now the wound can do nothing but howl because being unmasked isn't paralyzing; it's a constant cry that is finally, finally heard. He wants to fall to his knees, he's so tired. "I was meant to die in a plane crash. If not that plane, then on a field and before that, I should've probably died of a cold I couldn't get rid of. I'm a ghost, Bruce."
"That's not true."
"It—"
Bruce cuts him off smoothly but firmly, a snap in Steve's restless chaos. "You're forgetting two important facts, Steve. The fight for equality is far from over and still needs all of the help that it can get. Like any war, battles have been won but they've also been lost. You know that. I know you know that. Yes, it's no longer illegal here but the same can't be said for every country and nation. Also, a lot of people, too many people, face worse than jail time." Sympathy is the last emotion Steve wants to see in anyone's eyes pointed his way. It's different from Bruce however. It's why he chose Bruce in the first place. "Secondly, ghosts don't get haunted. That's what's happening to you. You've got demons crawling wild all over you. You think you're the relic but Steve, you're simply carrying them around and you don't realize it." He sighs and Steve knows the answer is next but he's no longer sure if he wants it. "You have to let them go."
…
But one night Steve does, he lets go.
He lies with Tony in his arms, pressed chest to chest and stroking his fingers down the other man's back.
"I lost my virginity to a man named Jeremiah when I was twenty-two," Steve whispers, louder than a secret. "I met him at an underground bar. It had a password and everything."
Mercifully, Tony understands. He kisses Steve and he doesn't joke. He asks in a hushed tone, "What was the password?"
Steve smiles small. "Ishmael."
"As in Moby Dick? Clever." Tony gazes at Steve intently. He puts his own hand into Steve's hair, comforting and calm. "What else happened?"
"He took me to his apartment and I was terrified. I kept thinking of the worst possible scenarios. It could've been my last night but I stayed. Slept in his bed. I even saw him a couple more times before I went off to war."
"You're the bravest man I know. I'm glad, Steve. I'm proud of you for letting yourself have that." Tony says. He curls in impossibly closer. He makes Steve feel impossibly safe. "You've been having a tough time lately."
Steve's stunned and not. Tony's always seen through him better than anyone. Steve resolves to being as fragile as glass. "It's just—I wonder how his life ended. If he ever found someone and if it was enough. If he did find someone, were they ever caught? Did the worst happen to them?"
Tony shakes his head softly. "You can't think like that. He couldn't have missed what he didn't know."
A necessary silence stretches. Something within Steve unhitches and melts; it gives way like heated snow.
"My first time with you was in a public restroom," Steve laughs humorlessly, is taken over by shudders. "But God, I wouldn't trade that for anything, Tony. Could never. If I went to sleep and woke up seventy years from that moment, I wouldn't ever say goodbye to it. You know that don't you?" His voice falters as he speaks, he didn't anticipate the burn in his eyes but there's a lesson he's learned again and again: a heart doesn't piece back together without pain.
"I know, Steve, I know. You don't ever have to worry about that happening," Tony says vehemently. He kisses Steve hot and hard. Steve feels the next words sear a tattoo to his skin, like they're his to keep. "I swear it to you."
"I can't cheat myself out of being with you and I'm not sorry about that," Steve breathes, releases it with everything he is. He cries it into Tony's bare shoulder, he doesn't know for how long. It doesn't matter for how long really because when he's finished, all is silent except for the small space between he and Tony. And for now, that's enough.