Of Half-Bake Equations: II
{the avengers}
There's this moment. Yeah, that one.
The one he can't stop thinking about, the one he can't find the mute button for. Everything he does is larger than life, is loud and over the top. This is the way he lives, the way he holds himself together.
It's always the quiet moments that make Tony unravel.
The silence when he calls out in the middle of the night for something beyond explanation. It's the breathlessness before the mask clicks into place. There's an echo where his witty comeback should be; it's a reflex by now but he's unbalanced and misses his cue.
Put your suit on—it's not an order but he follows anyway.
Steve likes to watch, his eyes wide open and admiring. Tony shivers, the chinks of his suit ripple and slide into place. If he were a religious kind of man, or maybe an optimistic one, he would think of rebirth and second chances.
It doesn't matter that he isn't because when he opens his eyes he is Ironman.
Steve is still watching him though.
Can I touch?—It's not a question he is prepared for.
Pepper is waiting for him at some restaurant. There is no reason that this fact should pop into his head; he has another hour before he has to be there.
Okay—later he'll wonder why.
Maybe it's the way Steve asks, unlike the drooling groupies or the half-naked girls with their kinky fantasies. It's not like Pepper either, with tightness in her voice. She touches him with reluctance, forcing herself not to look away.
They all make him feel dirty, one way or another. The guilt is worst, though, and lingers.
Can I touch? Steve asks. Not, Can I touch it?
It's this difference that messes him up, that keeps him frozen in one place as Steve reaches out and touches him with a gloved hand. There's something about the slide of leather against metal, something that makes Tony think of second chances.
Steve traces the curve of his suit, fingertips tracing over where his collarbone would be.
Logically, Tony can't feel the touch through his suit. That is the point; he is untouchable. But later, under the dinner table, legs twisted deliciously with Pepper's smooth ones, he presses a hand against the skin and it aches.
It's a moment. Then Steve steps back and it's over.
Whatever, life is full of moments.
Still, it's not the color of Pepper's dress that he remembers the next morning.
:)