A/N: Rating change for a reason, darlings!
Steve was sitting on his usual stool, feet dangling as he sketched idly, Tony sacked out on the cot Steve had dragged down to the workshop during their last fight about Tony's sleeping habits-which was really about Tony's worry that he was becoming dependent on Steve sleeping next to him. He'd brought it down and set it up and had slept there himself since Tony wasn't going to come up to bed and was depriving them both, then had woken up with Tony at his back, despite the fact that it was supposed to be the size of a single bed. Half-tempted to slide into bed with him and recreate that morning slightly more comfortably-being shrunken had to be good for something-Steve traced his pencil over the the page to create the lax curve of Tony's neck as lovingly as he'd trace his lips over that skin. Tony, he knew, had gone to bed with him the night before, and snuck out of bed sometime after Steve had fallen asleep thinking that it wouldn't result in Steve waking up to one of his nightmares if he'd started the night out with the warmth of Tony's body beside him. Instead, it'd been worse, and the only thing that soothed him was finding Tony down here, Howard's records piled around Tony's cherry red hot rod telling him exactly what he was looking for, though Steve was half-surprised that Tony himself wasn't piled in the car, unconscious and using the dreaded paper notes as a blanket.
It was the notes on Project Rebirth that were piled in the passenger's seat in easy seize-and-devour distance, and Steve could see the holograms of the sarcophagus-like machine Howard had built idly floating with sixteen different lists speculating what radiation had been used in those Vita Rays. Bruce had been frustratingly without results, and Tony had been getting more and more antsy the longer Steve was effected. As he carefully rendered the arc of Tony's arm thrown over his head, Steve considered the mounting desperation he could see in the way Tony searched for an answer; the thought that Tony didn't want him the same way was ringing in his head in a voice that was small, and quiet, but there nonetheless. Frowning as he smudged the lines of Tony's hair with a delicate touch, Steve ached to ask him; to talk to him, worried all the while that Tony wouldn't want to talk. Tony refusing to talk to him was a historically bad sign, and Steve's throat felt tight at the thought of it. But there was nothing he'd be able to do if it came to it. He could make himself learn to live with the fact that Tony's attraction to him was more physical than he thought-
"Stop that now." Tony groaned from the cot, but didn't move anything but his lips, as if he'd been awake the while time, carefully posed, "You're thinking bad thoughts, I can hear it: stop it. Keep drawing me like one of your French girls and then let me take you to breakfast, because I have a bet going with Rhodes on if you can put away an entire trucker's special at this size or not."
Steve shot him a look that he couldn't have seen with his head thrown back on the pillow and his eyes still closed, but Tony shot him a smirk anyway, then visibly forced himself to relax his features back into the pose. "I suppose it's his own fault for taking the sucker's bet." Steve murmured after a minute, his pencil resuming its passage over the page. "Why are you down here?"
Relying as he was on Tony's ability to know what was going through his head, Steve wasn't surprised when Tony knew exactly what he was really asking, "Because we can load you up with drugs all we want: you lead a stressful life and have a heart murmur and I will be the one to die first in this relationship, Steven; that's just how it's going to have to happen, 'cause I'm not up for going back to living without you. Certainly not like that, and barely if it happened the other way." Steve's pencil stalled again, and Tony sighed softly, "When I have nightmares, I use your heartbeat to calm my own. I hate to show my true, selfish colours, but I could use the steady beat when I'm worrying out of my mind that someone's going to attack you while you're not capable of breaking them in half with your bare hands."
Steve set down his pencil, sliding to his feet and swallowing a whine at the pull and pop of his joints from having sat there too long. He ambled over to the cot, near Tony's head, and one brown eye peaked open, then Tony blinked both eyes open, sighing again at the look of grim determination in the face of that admittance. "I've got you and Thor and Clint and Nat and Bruce, not to mention Coulson and Pepper-both of whom I would be more scared of than any of you while I'm like this." Steve grinned, and Tony shook his head, but not in disagreement, "I'm safe."
"My head knows that. My anxiety is making this horrible train whistle sound and freaking the fuck out." Tony told him, reaching to rest his hand on Steve's hip, "Get down here, will you?" Twitching a smile, Steve knelt into straddling Tony's thigh, lowering himself into Tony's arms and groaning at the warmth Tony radiated as they tangled their legs together. "I do kind of like this, though." Tony murmured, idle fingers pushing through his hair where his head rested on Tony's chest, "Your weight on me with you completely relaxed, not worried you'll crush me? It's nice."
Steve snorted, shifting slightly to drag one hand up, making a fist under his chin to prop up his head as he looked at Tony and chose to bite the bullet. "Do you...are you still attracted to me like this?" Steve asked with a feeling like he was facing down another stay in the Arctic with Tony on the line this time, and Tony made a sound like he was choking on air.
"Steve, you're gorgeous. Super soldier or no, you're still the most attractive human being I've ever met." Tony paused, features crumpling as he frowned at Steve, "Believe me, Steve; if I wasn't having a constant anxiety attack about your incredibly breakable bones and the supervillians who wish to break them, I doubt I'd let you out of our bed."
Steve snorted, rolling his eyes, but Tony's hand tugged gently at his hair, his features not smoothing out from the concerned furrow working against the laugh lines Steve loved. Steve bit his lip, feeling his own nerves creeping in on him, "Would you...could we try having sex? With me like this?"
Tony's pupils dilated, and his hand slipped from Steve's hair, running down his back. "Yeah...yes, of course..."
"I want to see what it's like when I don't have to watch my strength." Steve admitted, and Tony looked a little dazed at the prospect. "But if you don't want-" Summarily cut off by Tony's hips pushing against his, Steve groaned slightly at the fact that Tony was already getting hard, his hands folded around Steve's hips to grind them together.
"How would you like to do this, then, gorgeous?" Tony asked with his brow cocked and voice low and rough and a touch in itself, sliding down Steve's spine. Steve had the sudden need to have gotten naked already, and to get Tony's mouth all over him, shuddering as he dropped his face into Tony's neck to hide the lust-induced flush that came over him like a heatwave. "How would you like to come?" Steve whimpered, because Tony's voice had somehow gone deeper, darker; and he knew he was faced with an embarrassment of riches here, because Tony was unendingly creative.
"I want you to fuck me." Steve finally managed, his hands fisting at Tony's shirt in a way that certainly would have shredded it if he was at full strength, because he could already feel himself losing control. Tony hummed, pulling him up his body with that grip on his hips and sucking a small mark just under his ear while he rocked his hips up against the small swell of Steve's ass. "I'm not sure I've got the restraint to keep from coming right now, and without that refractory period...oh god, yes-I don't want to leave you hanging."
Tony got a gleam in his eye, and Steve arched into the drag of his hands up his sides, stripping off the t-shirt he'd stolen from Tony. "You never had sex before the serum: we don't know what your refactory period is at all." The gleam was a promise of experimentation, and Steve moaned at the thought alone. Tony's stamina when it came to sex was mind-blowing, but he had always played Steve's body like a virtuoso, and without his normal refractory period, Steve didn't want to think about how quickly Tony could make this come to an earth-shattering climax. And as satisfying as sex with Tony always was, he had never wanted to be the only one satisfied; and the only reason he was comfortable topping for Tony when he was such an easy touch was the fact that he was able to get hard again in moments and make it as good for Tony as Tony made it for him. All he wanted now was to let go and feel Tony letting go with him; to know what it felt like to let himself completely lose grip on his control and his responsibility in a way he couldn't quite manage as a supersoldier, even with as far as they'd come with the sexual education of Steve Rogers.
Tony shoved down Steve's sweatpants, his hand grabbing Steve's ass as soon as it was bared to him, hand large enough against Steve that his fingertips could run between his cheeks with the swell of one firmly clenched in his palm. Steve bucked against the too-light ghost of a touch at his hole, letting out a gasp as Tony's other hand ran down his thigh, hitching his leg up and curling him over Tony without having to lift him off. Grinding into his stomach, Steve sucked Tony's tongue into his mouth, flushed as brilliantly red as could be when Tony shifted, then flipped them on the cot like Steve weighed nothing. He should not have found that as hot as he did, laid out under Tony as the genius broke their kiss to fling his own shirt across the room, groaning in pleasure as Steve's leg immediately wrapped around his waist, dragging him in to grind against him again, bare skin against bare skin this time. Tony bit the tendon in his neck harshly enough that Steve nearly came from the flare of pain while the pleasure of Tony's rolling hips rode through his veins. Loosening Steve's leg with an insistent hand, Tony sat back, ignoring Steve's whimper of protest at the loss of contact as he undid his jeans and threw those, too, blessedly bare beneath.
Steve reached for him the millisecond the sound of Tony's jeans hitting the floor registered, their cocks trapped between them and the friction sending sparks of pleasure up Steve's spine. "Steve," Tony groaned into his chest, hands wrapped around his waist to stop the undulation Steve honestly wasn't conscious of rocking them into, "if you don't let me get the lube, we're not making it past foreplay."
As tempting as that was, Steve wanted much more, dropping his hold and grinning into Tony's reluctant groan at the loss, even though he'd asked for it. Tony growled, nipping at his jaw before rolling to his feet and grabbing for the toolbox that was not in the least stocked with actual tools. Tony dropped a bottle of lube and a row of condoms on the bedclothes, grinning as he climbed onto the side of the bed and leaned over Steve, kissing him slowly and curling against his side, Steve's legs tucking over his as Tony traced a thumb under his lower lip, Steve's tongue peeking out, pink and hot as he laved over the pad, then sucked it into his mouth. Tony whimpered at the sight of Steve's bee-stung red mouth wrapped around his the tan of his skin, reaching for the lube with his free hand and fumbling to open it one-handed. Steve scraped his teeth against Tony's fingertip just to give him a taste of the wild thrill that it brought Steve when Tony bit him, looking up at him with lust-dark eyes and bright red cheeks as he released the digit, moving so that he could part his thighs for Tony's attention. Tony nearly crushed the bottle of lube in finally getting it open, but Steve couldn't manage a laugh, the sound transmuting into a moan as some of the cold fluid dripped over Tony's fingers and onto his abdomen. Tony rubbed his fingers thoroughly to warm it up, kissing Steve in a way that took Steve's brain through something he'd learned to call a hard reboot; slow and deep and so teasingly seductive it was as if Steve wasn't already naked and spread indecently beneath him. Tony slipped a finger over his hole as he made Steve forget his own damn name, and Steve bit down on Tony's lower lip in surprise, the laugh Tony husked out making Steve buck his hips to get to the point where he'd be able to feel that laughter with Tony buried in him.
"Patience is a virtue, Rogers." Tony half-groaned, half-chuckled, pushing his finger fully in and bending to Steve's chest to worship attention over his nipples, sliding a second finger in with the first around the time Steve had a half-formed wonder if he could come just from Tony teasing all the places he most liked to be touched. When Steve had three of Tony's fingers in his ass and no more patience to even pretend to be patient, Steve pushed Tony's hand out of the way, covering the whine at being suddenly empty by pushing Tony onto his back on the bottom of the cot in a move he'd seen Natasha use on Clint with much more violent results; sliding into position to push himself down on Tony's cock. "C-condom." Tony reminded, sounding about as wrecked as Steve felt and the hand he shot out to stop Steve's forward momentum trembling.
"Don't care." Steve muttered, voice the low, determined rumble of Captain America as he lifted up and slowly impaled himself on Tony's cock. Tony choked on his sounds, one hand fisted in the sheets and the other folding around Steve's hip, steadying as Steve's thin arms began to shake at the effort it took not to take it all in one punishing push. Once he was seated fully, Tony too still beneath him as he watched every flicker of emotion on Steve's face, Steve took Tony's hand from his hip, moving it down to brush his fingers over where they were connected, Steve's broken moan nearly echoing in the unusual quiet of the workshop. Tony's thumb caught on the stretched rim of his hole, and Steve jerked like it sent an electric shock through his system, squeezing hard around the girth of Tony before the muscles relaxed so sweetly that Steve was shocked at how easy it was to start dragging himself up a few inches, dropping down fast and hard even for as slow as he went in rising. Tony planted his feet as much as he could on the awkward angle that Steve flipping them had left him in; using every bit of support he could get to thrust up when Steve dropped back down. Steve clenched, hoping he'd be able to feel this later, when with the serum, he healed too quickly to be able to. Tony let him control the pace until he was dripping with sweat and shaking with exertion, then wrapped both arms around him and unfurled from his position on the cot, picking Steve up with him, and Steve felt like he'd come just from that as Tony moved them, laying Steve down against a clear workbench and thrusting fully back into him before slowly dragging himself out. Steve arched into the slow burn, head thrown back and eyes closed as he made aborted little rocking motions to try to chase the breach of Tony's cock in his body.
Driving into him with a ringing slap of skin on skin, Tony expertly shifted his angle to hit Steve's prostate, the high cry forced out of Steve's throat bringing a rabid grin to Tony's pleasure-slack features. Tony drove hard into that angle, and Steve just let himself go; knowing that he was entirely at Tony's mercy and relishing in it.
Not even needing a hand on him with Tony's cock pressed hard into that bundle of nerves, Steve came breathlessly, being kissed through it as his cock striped them both, Steve's lower lip captured as a hostage as Tony's rhythm slowed to help him ride through the aftershocks rattling his higher brain function.
"God, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Tony told him with a voice just as wrecked as he was, still wonderfully hard within the hot flutter of Steve's muscles. Steve rolled his hips on Tony's cock, experimenting to see if the shock of sensation that sent roaring through him was pain or pleasure.
"Keep going..." Steve panted, his hands shaking as they reached to ease Tony into a kiss, slow and lingering as he rolled his hips down on the length of heat spearing him open and raw. Tony choked, and Steve smirked in response, lust-drunk and glowing with post-orgasm bliss. "Keep going, Tony, please."
"Don't want to hurt you-AH!" Tony tipped his head back, hips juddering as Steve squeezed around him with delicious intensity.
"Do I look like I'm hurting to you?" Steve asked with a cheeky smile despite the line of concentration forming between his brows, keeping as tight a hold as he could and rolling his hips at the same time, watching as Tony very nearly came just from that.
Tony reached between them, thumbing Steve's slit and licking into his mouth at the same time. Toes curling, Steve bore down on the pressure, his cock twitching in Tony's grip, a mess of precome dripping onto the mess already on Steve's skin as Tony ran his fingers over the length of him in time with his shuddering thrusts, stopping the tight pull of his hand only to trace a thumb down over his balls then behind them, pressing into his perineum as he pressed into his prostate, and Steve nearly shot off the work table, hands scrabbling at Tony's shoulders, blunt nails leaving pink tracks on his tanned skin. Tony bent, pressing kisses to the stark relief of his collarbones, his touch gone gentle, and Steve wondered for a second if there was something wrong: Tony was never this quiet during sex-but then, neither was he.
"You feel so good, Tony," Steve ground out in encouragement, groaning at the sound of his own voice because he was so far gone, "I want to be able to feel this for days." Tony shivered in his arms, his pace slowing and the pressure easing off, which was the opposite of what Steve wanted; so Steve reached up, winding his fingers in Tony's hair and using that grip get Tony to meet his gaze, "I'm still me, Tony. You're not going to hurt me, because I'm not going to let you. Can you trust me with that?"
Tony kissed the words off his lips, and Steve felt a bloom of fondness in his chest for the way Tony was holding him like a precious thing, "The whole distraction thing just switched from you to me, didn't it?" Tony panted with an edge of regret in his voice, "I'm..."
He knew Tony's signs; knew that Tony wasn't about to tell him that he was going to come, and could figure out what Tony was about to tell him, so he cupped his hands around Tony's neck with a tenderness matching Tony's own, "I don't need you to worry about me, not with this. Stop trying to take care of me and fuck me, Tony."
Tony hooked an arm under Steve's knee, and Steve's head thumped back against the table as the shift in pressure sent his body into overload, his cock fully hard again and drooling over his stomach when Tony wrapped his hand back around it. Tony rarely listened to an order, but Steve wasn't so sure that he had managed to sound anything close to in charge-more likely like he was begging. Before long, the building tension in his gut was coiling out, thick and heady, until Steve felt like he wasn't in any sort of control anymore. The satisfaction of it was almost an ache, Steve losing rhythm in pushing back against Tony's thrusts and just riding it out as the pleasure seemed to build like the pressure in a pop can left in the sun.
"Fucking hell, Tony." Steve groaned, and Tony looped his other leg over his shoulder, moving deeper but going slower, making Steve's eyes flutter closed and his bottom lip disappear between his teeth. Finally finding his voice, Steve growled, "I love you so fucking much."
"I love you, too, Steve." Tony murmured, voice low and honest in a way that had Steve shuddering, Tony pressing in tight and staying there as they both came. As Steve panted, stretching out when Tony let his legs drop, Tony raised his come-covered hand in order to lick his fingers clean. Steve moaned at that, dropping his head back again and squeezing Tony's hips with his thighs.
"I don't think I'm going to make it upstairs." Steve murmured muzzily, eyes fluttering open fever-bright, watching Tony with the same lust-blown expression they'd started with, "Please tell me we can both fit on the cot right now."
Tony chuckled, bending down to kiss him softly as he slowly pulled out. Steve hated that part, and Tony hummed gently in response to his wince. His fingers brushed over Steve's rim, but Steve shook his head that he wasn't hurt, nudging Tony with his knee limply and grinning as he reached for him to pull him into another kiss. "We need to put a complete bed down here." Tony decided muffledly as he kissed along Steve's neck. Steve shuddered in his arms, melting into the warmth of his embrace with no compunctions whatsoever about acting like a cat when it came to Tony's body heat and practically purring as Tony cradled him close and kissed over as much skin as he could reach.
"I refuse to move into the workshop, Tony; the cot is bad enough." Steve told him more firmly than he felt, propping himself up on an elbow when Tony straightened and wincing again as he felt Tony's come leaking from him. Tony pressed a kiss to his forehead, padding back to the toolbox, retrieving a container of wet-wipes and cleaning them up a little more thoroughly than he usually did. Steve sat up, moving to the edge of the table and wrapping his legs around Tony's thighs, his arms around his waist as he looked up at Tony with a gravity that wasn't usually a part of their being together. "Is your anxiety still screaming?"
Tony sighed, threading his hand through Steve's hair, "Little bit."
"Is there anything I can do to help that?"
Steve pulled him in tighter and pressed his face into Tony's chest just beside the arc reactor, smiling as he felt Tony's lips against his hair. He closed his eyes and listened to the slowing pound of Tony's heart, the steady, almost imperceptible whir of the arc reactor "I don't know yet." Tony admitted when his heart had slowed to the regular thump, "I need to figure it out."
"Maybe I should have asked more questions." Steve sighed, "That probably would've made this easier."
"Yes, you should've asked questions of the two mad scientists you let stick you with needles and pump you full of r-Wait, I'm being an idiot. You went through the process and you were conscious the whole time! What do you remember?" Tony was suddenly dashing back to his father's notes, the look of manic hope on his features forcing Steve to bite down on a laugh.
"Well, the serum was injected directly into the major muscle groups and the rays were to stimulate growth..." Steve stopped, knowing that that was what was on the tin, and Tony needed to know orders of magnitude more pertinent information than that; "the rays were painful-" Steve cut himself off again as Tony twitched, but shook his head with a faint smile at the memory of Peggy and Erskine yelling to shut the project down, "like getting a sunburn in thirty times the speed-"
"Sonofabitch." Tony breathed, flinching back from the notes like they'd bitten him, "He used solar radiation turned up to eleven, that fucking bastard of a mad-man. The serum stimulated growth, but it needed a reactionary agent to force it to attach to the cells in a stable way: Red Skull became Red Skull because the bonds weren't bonded properly, and what is the one thing that all cells need to survive and bond to life? Thermal energy. The sun is ours; geothermal energy wasn't so hot back then, but if dear old dad took that and ran with it; he may just have stuck you in the equivalent of a solar flare in terms of the radiation signature."
Steve cocked an eyebrow, but did not actually disbelieve it, "Wouldn't that have fried me to a crisp?"
"No, because he also connected a supply of liquid nitrogen, super cooling the whole thing so that the temperatures wouldn't fluctuate too badly-that dick!" Throwing his hands in the air, Tony stomped, completely nude, over to his bank of computers, and Steve slid off of the table, padding over to his discarded sweats and sliding into the shirt Tony had been wearing, imagining it was warmer than his own simply because it'd been on Tony last, since both shirts were technically Tony's shirt to begin with. "It felt like getting a sunburn at thirty times the speed because if it weren't for the healing factor of the serum, you would have had a fucking sunburn! It's not your freckled Irish genes that stop you from getting a farmer's tan; it's the damn serum. But I am not sticking you in a coffin full of fucking sunlight, so there's gotta be another way. There's something else-I can feel it."
Steve folded his hands over Tony's shoulders from behind the chair he'd dropped into with a dazed, searching look; leaning into his back slightly, "And I can still feel you. Come to bed; your crazy has given me a second wind, I think we can make it now." Steve teased softly, not daring to actually hope he could pull Tony out of the lather he'd worked himself into.
He should have known better than to underestimate Tony's penchant for surprising him, though, standing against the gentle weight of the man as he leaned back into Steve, dropping his head against Steve's shoulder, "Right, afterglow, that is a thing that needs to happen after sex like that. Let's go." Laughing, Steve took Tony's hand, leaning into his side as he walked them into the elevator still naked and completely shameless about it. Tony fixed him with a look of concern once what he'd said completely filtered through, and Steve would have been amused if it wasn't so annoying, "Are you okay, though?"
Steve rolled his eyes, leaning into Tony's chest instead of his side, and biting back a curse at the fact that he was too short to reach Tony's mouth like this. Scowling, Steve growled, "Get down here."
Tony snorted, his laughter trapped between them as Steve kissed him. When the elevator arrived at their floor, Steve felt almost like he'd be able to go again, and Tony seemed to sense this, pulling Steve out of the elevator and heading straight for the shower instead of the bed. "Now, this whole mess started because you bruise like a peach and we were trying to have shower sex. I say, we finish the whole thing off right and actually get to have shower sex, because I'm pretty sure I've figured out how to get you back in fighting shape. Objections?"
Steve let out a single guffaw of laughter, "Like I could say no to you."
Tony groaned, "Jesus, that is way too much power for one man; particularly this man."
