A/N: Okay, so first things first, I apologise in advance if this chapter is confusing to read! The first section is essentially a flashback, describing a fairly large period of time that has just passed, and hence it's in past tense. The second section, however, is in the same style (present tense narrative) as my previous chapters, describing "current" events. I'm sorry for jumping around between tenses...! '''orz
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Kisses for all!
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. . .
The slow progress of hours and days marked the passage of time at the SHIELD base where Tony was recovering, and in the endless cycle of day and night, time strolled idly by, lazy and unhurried. As it passed, Steve tended to Tony's wounds and nursed him, after a fashion. There is only so much you can mother Tony Stark after all, and Steve knew full well that the other man was letting him do so. But the wounds were healing, and they were healing well. His bruises had faded, leaving only vague patches of yellow to indicate that they'd ever been there at all. The cast on Tony's leg made it awkward for him to move around easily, but Steve helped him limp along, unable to resist making jokes about it here and there. The nickname "Hop-along Cassidy" caught on pretty quickly, much to Tony's dismay, but though he pretended to complain about his embarrassing new title, Steve could see the laughter in Tony's eyes whenever he referred to him as "Hop-along".
The billionaire and the captain were nigh on inseparable. Walking and limping, respectively, around the base, all agreed they made a bizarre pair. The others would see them sitting and talking, laughing and cracking jokes, occasionally shoving each other in a playful facsimile of a sparring match, but the captain was never too rough with the still-healing Stark.
What the others never saw were the stolen moments.
It was clear to anyone with eyes in their head that Steve and Tony deeply respected each other as friends, and as people, but there was far more than that burning beneath the surface, something much deeper at play that no one else was privy to, and every day it grew a little stronger.
The others never saw the notes Tony scrawled on the corners of Steve's sketches, nor those secreted in jacket pockets or folded under mugs.
They never saw the deliberate glancing contact of skin on skin snatched as the two of them went about their business.
They never saw the captain tucked away with his sketchpad in an alcove, awaiting the moment Tony passed by his hiding place, unsuspecting, when Steve would snag him, a finger hooked through the belt loop of his jeans, to wrap an arm around his waist and draw him close to steal a kiss in the half light.
They never saw them share sunrise on that rooftop, an unspoken agreement declaring it "their spot" after their mutual confession, and the brick and metal of that place had witnessed a great many more kisses since then.
If stone could speak, it would talk of the tenderness between them, of soft words and softer touch, of Tony's fire and passion, of Steve's quiet strength and pure heart; maybe even of love.
But stone does not speak, and so their secrets remained within its confines, in that quiet space between hot brick and blue sky.
Located as it was in the sprawling empty heart of America, there were times when the SHIELD base felt like the very centre of the universe. There was earth, sky, and open road, snaking through golden fields and dry red soil, that sprawled for miles in every direction, and not much else. With the spirit of the Pioneers of old, Steve itched to explore the sweeping plains and stretching spaces of pale emptiness around the facility on his beloved bike, but he had left her back in New York. After he mentioned the idea in passing one day, Tony somehow convinced one of the junior staff members to lend them a SHIELD-issue truck, despite protests that Tony wasn't confirmed fit to leave base just yet. The billionaire waved away their concerns, pointing out that not only had he had his stitches removed, but his cast was gone too, at long last - though internally he begrudgingly admitted that he was still far from full strength.
But to the medics, he pushed it. As he was, he wasn't good for much other than sight-seeing anyway, so why couldn't they let him enjoy the scenery, take in the fresh country air? And besides, how at risk could he be with Captain America himself there to look after him? The medics eventually conceded that he had a point, and agreed to let him leave the base. Tony wasted no time in reporting this to Steve, his new partner in crime, who received the news grinning from ear to ear.
The captain chose a truck without a roof for their adventure, opting for open bars instead of metal and glass, so the two of them could stretch their heads back and watch the muted hues of the plains melt by, a blur all around them in the waning evening light. As they drove, the cool night air washed over Steve's face, rushing through his hair, igniting something in his skin. The sky was hung with stars, such brilliant points of light in the abyss above them, like black velvet dusted with a thousand scattered jewels, burning millions of miles away, and as he looked up into the boundless black overhead, Steve felt a deep sense of peace sink slowly into his bones. Confronted with that infinite sky, strangely, he felt no fear. Instead, he felt connected. On all sides, the land lay open before him in the half light, gaunt and uncharted, broken only by sporadic clusters of jagged rock, and it was beautiful, in a harsh, almost haunted, kind of way. It made him want to paint. It made him want to draw.
With no roof he could see it all, and Tony smiled beside him.
There was something infinitely lonely about the plains at twilight, in their pale stillness, their washed-out colours, everything faded to grey, ochre, umber, by time and fierce winds, rolling ceaselessly over them. Sharp piles of rock reached up and pierced the sky, crags towering above the cracked earth, worn and sun-bleached, clawing up at the dark above. Wild dogs howled in the night, and the doleful sound sent shivers through them as they raced the open roads, the highways stretching silver, shining out into the night, strips of reflection a brilliant white in a sea of dark, cold earth, and the distance called to them. The horizon was endless, curving in a wide arc all around them, the roads a ribbon tying the world together with glittering moonlight.
On such nights they would stop, nowhere in particular, and climb the rocky spires upward, coming to pause in grooves and on ledges, a tangible calmness suspended like moisture in the night air. Insects creaked and hissed and screeched, a cacophony against the silence of the yawning dark. The air, so wind-licked as it was, would sting their faces when they climbed too high, but it was a sharp freshness, and pure, a burning ghost shifting on the breeze. The bite of it on their cheeks, the rush of it as it whipped through their hair, as they turned further upwards, was breath taking in and of itself. And Tony would lift his hands to his mouth and howl out across the vast expanse of rock and dirt, and the plains howled back, an echo racing on swift wings across the earth, rushing back to meet him. Stood atop the stony peak, with eyes full of starlight and silence, he would spread his arms wide, king of the world. And Steve would wrap his arms around him, nose to the curve of his neck, the hollow of his throat, and the silent kisses he pressed to his skin were tinged with biting wind, a sparkling cold woken by the breeze that swept along the harsh lines of the plains around them and the planes of their bodies both, and Tony would shiver.
On these pale cloudless nights, the earth whispered to them, the moon beat down bright on their skin, and they drank in the cold, still world, together.
. . .
PRESENT DAY
. . .
The captain and the billionaire still keep to their own rooms when they sleep, not quite willing to cross that particular line just yet. In a sense it would be more accurate to say that they decided that it was best to maintain separate quarters because the other team members were not yet aware that the nature of their relationship had changed. Monumentally. That is to say, they just hadn't quite got round to telling them yet.
The true extent of Steve and Tony's involvement is a secret known to silent stone and sand and sky alone, for the time being at least.
Aside from serving the purpose of pretense, separate rooms also give them their own space to retreat into. However, that doesn't stop Tony from sneaking into Steve's suite most nights, when he's been awake for hours tinkering with his latest project and the urge to see Steve suddenly grips him. He steals slowly, quietly, through the dark corridors and lets himself into the captain's room, slipping under the covers alongside him, where the familiar heat of Steve's sleeping form warms his limbs and calms his mind. He bends his head to the captain's shoulder blades to brush the barest whisper, the slightest hint, of a kiss atop the soft skin there. Sometimes this invites a sleepy murmur from the man curled in the blankets beside him, and the strange new warmth that has taken up residence in Tony's heart purrs and hums inside his chest and, their legs entwined, he curls his toes in the sheets, feeling a happiness bloom inside him unlike anything he has never known. The feeling lifts him, and he is calm and safe in its embrace, curiously certain. Tony feels no fear in those quiet moments, only serenity. Only peace.
Some nights, he meets another body in the hallways as he's making his late-night forays between lab and bed. More often than not, as it is on this particular night, it's Bruce that he encounters, as nocturnal as Tony himself when he has ideas crowding in his skull, begging to be released onto paper.
This night, holding a steaming pot of noodles in one hand and a thick folder in the other, Bruce doesn't seem overly surprised to find Tony creeping through the dark, but he does make him jump when he suddenly, loudly, asks,
"Another midnight stroll, Tony?"
Tony leaps forward, barely managing not to yelp in surprise and shatter the relative silence of the base at night.
"Jesus, Banner, what the hell, don't do that! I nearly jumped out of my fucking skin!" he exhales to try and calm his racing heart, and inquires, "What are you even doing up?"
"Could ask you the same thing, but, uh, I know better," the scientist smiles, and there is something in that smile, that tone of voice, that makes Tony frown, suddenly wondering what he means exactly. Bruce wiggles his noodle pot gently in answer to his question.
"Needed a snack. Got some pretty big ideas rattling around in my head tonight so I thought I'd get some work done while they're still in there."
Tony's heart rate is calming down, and yet he scrabbles for words, acutely feeling that he needs to cover his tracks here, because he has to throw Bruce off the scent, if he even has it that is... Still, better safe than sorry.
"Yeah, no, I definitely know what that, uh, what that feels like. Too many ideas, too many plans. Designs and concepts all swimming around in your head, I get that, total nightmare. Course, I don't sleep much either, obviously, same sorta problem. No rest for the wicked, etcetera etcetera… Hence me walking around at, uh, at night. Like now, for example. Brain won't let me sleep." Then he claps his hands together, and smiles, backing away in the opposite direction to where Steve's room is located, attempting a feint in case the scientist did suspect something.
"Anyway, better get back to it, huh? Don't want you forgetting something, do we? Good luck with your, uh, thing, whatever it is."
And Bruce just raises an eyebrow, smiling that knowing smile again as he pads off down the corridor, "Sure, thanks, and uh, you too. With your thing," he makes inverted commas in the air, before he says, "Night, Tony."
Tony is definitely concerned now, but he just nods and answers as nonchalantly as he can manage, "Have fun, big guy."
He makes sure he waits a minute or two, to be sure the doctor is gone, before he creeps back the way he came and quietly lets himself into the captain's bedroom. Inside, Steve is curled up in the middle of bed, fast asleep, his hair a messy blonde halo around his head, and Tony feels the corners of his mouth turn up into a smile as he pads over to climb under the covers beside him.
Curling an arm around Steve's stomach, Tony nudges the back of the captain's neck with his nose as he settles down to sleep, the warm smell of him comforting, and he thinks about his encounter with Banner, wondering if the scientist did in fact know why he was really sneaking around in the dark. But even if Banner did know, Tony has no idea what he'd say to him if the man were to ask him straight out for an explanation, because, truth be told, neither Tony nor Steve had yet managed to summon the courage to broach the subject of defining what exactly existed between them.
With neither of them particularly willing to be the first to bring it up, they haven't had that conversation, and so, instead, they carry on in much the same way as they have been, undefined, yes, but for the time being, content.
They aren't quite ready to explain themselves to the world just yet.
Random bonus titbit of info, the alternative titles for this were Metamorphosis,We Drove All Night, and Howling at the Moon.
+ I wrote while listening to ThePianoGuys covers of A Thousand Years - Christina Perri, and Just The Way You Are - Bruno Mars :) check them out on Youtube!