Tony thought Steve's words over and over in his head like a mocking refrain. When he was ready…
He felt ready! I mean, he thought he did. Each time he went to bed with Steve and woke up the next morning he wanted so much to prove himself capable of doing anything Steve hurled at him, but as soon as the blonde opened his eyes and smiled a good morning at him, his resolve crumbled and all he could do was murmur a good morning back.
He tried to find the root cause to his distress, he knew his past played a huge role with his emotions, he also knew that he was scared to move forward. Right now it was easy to pretend that he and Steve were just very good friends (women did it all the time, now more so that the men were gone), but that wasn't really the case, now was it.
He sighed into his gloves, Clint catching drift of something amiss with his brother.
"Trouble in paradise?" Clint teased, leaving his station to stand next to him.
"No, no…" Tony said, sighing again. He knew that Clint would laugh at him for such concerns, it wasn't as if he had any problems engaging in pre-marital coitus.
"Mh hmm, so what is it now? Did Steve say/do something stupid?" Clint asked, trying to get an answer from his tight-lipped brother.
"Why does it always have to be Steve's fault?" Tony asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Isn't it always?" Clint said, a mischievous smile playing on his lips.
"Har, har, no, this time it isn't so much something he did but more so something he didn't do… or I didn't do." Tony confessed, his cheeks brightening at the thought of revealing something so personal about himself.
"I don't quite get your meaning." Clint said, scratching his head in confusion.
"Funny thing is, neither do I." Tony said, morosely.
ooOOoo
"Steve!" Tony exclaimed as he jumped out of his skin. The blonde had caught him by surprise in the locker room at their workplace. It was quitting time, but people were still mingling about. The blonde had approached him and wrapped his two arms around his waist.
"What are you doing?" Tony asked, looking around frantically for any eyes who cared to glance over their way.
"I missed you." Steve murmured, putting a soft peck on Tony's neck.
"You see me every day." Tony reminded, a small smile overtaking his lips nonetheless.
"I know, but it's boring on the other floor." Steve said, slowly letting go of Tony, his fingertips the only thing remaining before he fully removed them as well.
"Then transfer over to mine." Tony suggested, turning to his locker to remove his coat and daily shoes. He would take a shower in Steve's house, that's what they've been doing since Tony unofficially moved in.
"I can't do that, then I'd really get no work done. Besides, Fury put me in there for a reason." Steve said, going over to his locker and doing the same thing as the brunette.
"Am I that distracting?" Tony asked, innocently but his smile was impish and his eyes were mischievous.
"Obviously." Steve replied, rolling his eyes.
"Sorry." Tony said, not really sorry at all. Steve shook his head and motioned towards the door. "Are we ready to go?" Tony asked, closing his locker.
"Yeah, if you are that is." Steve said.
They left the locker room, walking to the nearest exit were the Model T was parked. They entered the vehicle and went home. Today had been as normal of a day as it could be, Tony tried not to get too comfortable, anytime it seemed like everything was going to be okay, tragedy seemed to strike. It may be that the universe isn't quite content with letting you live your life peacefully.
That Sunday Tony became curious as to what else the giant house had to offer; he was alone now since Steve had gone out earlier to purchase some much-needed groceries. Tony had offered to come, but Steve said he had wanted to go alone. Nothing against Tony, it was just simply that grocery shopping was a strange art to him and so he wanted to experience it alone, this once, or some bullshit like that—Tony couldn't be bothered to remember.
After thirty minutes of wondering around, he realized just exactly what Steve had been talking about when he said the house was too big. He felt as if he were under the scrutiny of all the paintings, he had tried to read a book but, he felt that the quiet and the many eyes were slowly driving him insane. He put some music on in order to calm down his skyrocketing nerves.
That is when he gained the great idea to start exploring. He tried many doors, most of them locked. The ones that were open either contained bedrooms, bathrooms, or some form of storage unit.
He climbed many flights of stairs, finally making it to the attic where many items were covered with white cloths. The large round window illuminated the space, giving it a ghostly gloom as he glided his fingers across some of the surfaces, coming back with a handful of dust. He walked around some more, deathly curious as to what all the white sheets contained.
The window was at the front of the house, letting him see when Steve would arrive. He should have learned from his mistake last time, but what was the harm in uncovering old furniture?
He started with the nearest thing to him.
At first glance it just looked like a dresser, but he's been around the contraption many times in his youth back when his father would fix broken ones to know exactly it was. It was Regina box, or a 'Reginaphone.' He was very excited to get it started again!
He opened the top and cranked the handle, with the disk already inside all he needed to do was flip the switch. He did so and with great disappointment found that the instrument wouldn't move.
He sighed, bringing his hands to his hips and tapping his leg. He removed the disk from the contraption, looking at the inside. Nothing seemed overtly wrong with it at a glance. Then he noticed that when he cranked the handle, the rotating mechanism would get stuck and stop spinning. He figured it probably needed oil or something; he, very excitedly, ran downstairs and looked through the kitchen compartments to see if he could find some oil that would be suitable for the metal. He found cooking oil and figured, that in a pinch, it would be good enough.
Tony made the trek back upstairs and very carefully dabbed the mechanism with the oil. He then returned the disk to the machine and cranked the Reginaphone, to his delight the music erupted and he began to smile. It was like a giant orchestral music box! He looked at the disk to see exactly what song was playing. 'The Luna Waltz, 1899' eight years after he was born.
He cranked the contraption again after it was done, reveling in the sweet sound of the machine. He then walked around the room uncovering other devices and furniture. There were old desks, dressers, vanities, chairs, and so much more. You could fully furnish another house with the amount of unused furniture in the attic of the Rogers house. Once the song finished again he looked underneath the closet compartment at the bottom and found about twenty more disks. He chose one and random and replaced it, extremely content in listening to the music of his youth.
He went further into the attic, he removed the tarps of many square-shaped objects, realizing after revealing them that they were paintings. Hundreds of them stacked against the wall, Tony wondered what they were all doing there, shouldn't they be downstairs with the others?
There was a big tarp that caught his eye in the corner of the room, it was the largest he'd seen so far, he ignored browsing through the other paintings to uncover this one. When he revealed it he found there the largest painting he'd ever seen. It was of a beautiful blonde woman with the most piercing blue eyes. She reminded him greatly of someone, so much so that he almost felt compelled to embrace her. He looked around for a signature, a name tag, anything to elucidate that weird desire.
Close to the bottom lay his answer, it all became clear then, why she looked so familiar.
"Sarah Rogers." Tony said, he figured that she was probably Steve's mom and that the other paintings must be hers. Now he was incredibly excited to look through them, and figure out why her masterpieces where cooped up in the attic and not shown off.
But first, he had to change the disk.
He returned to the paintings with renewed vigor, he started with the first pile. Nothing extremely abhorrent about the first one, it was simply a scene of a girl overlooking a creek. The second one was a bit more bizarre, it featured the same girl at the creek, but next to her lay a body; he'd never seen a dead body before, but he imagined that it would look something like that. It only became stranger from there.
As he went further into the back of the pile, he noticed a consistent pattern. About every five paintings there would a repeat of a new one with slight variations of the last, the first one he encountered (of the girl) had a last painting with nothing but red for the color palette; as he was nearing the end of another pile he noticed that this one had nothing but blue for its color palette. There was something disturbing about the paintings, and now he kind of wished he hadn't uncovered the painting of Mrs. Rogers. Her eyes, which were so strikingly blue against her yellow dress, looked at him as if he were trespassing on some of her most private works.
A strong bout of shame and disgust for himself hit him and he stopped momentarily to regain his breath. He shouldn't have been doing this, not without Steve's permission at least. This wasn't his house, regardless of how long he had lived here, being with Steve didn't give him the right to snoop around like a low-lying thief.
He went to recover the tarp when he noticed the other pile and its first picture. Just a simple picture of a girl (it always seemed to be a blonde girl) sitting by a window and nothing else. His morbid curiosity got the best of him and he kept browsing through the other paintings. As they progressed he noticed a strange black spot at the corner of each painting, he thought it may have been a mistake at first, but as the paintings progressed he noticed the black spot growing larger and larger. The second to last painting had the spot taking up half the canvas and the little girl had finally turned around (mind you, this had been a stack of twenty paintings or so). The last painting was the same of the first, however, it was missing a crucial part: the little girl.
Tony gasped silently and let the paintings fall back against the wall. As he did so, he heard the tell-tale signs of gravel hitting the tires and an engine approaching. He ran to cover up all the tarps he had torn down with his eagerness. He found that he couldn't cover the largest painting of Sarah Rogers. He left it then, hoping that Steve didn't have any reason to come towards the attic and check out his mother's painting before he could cover it.
He ran back downstairs, ready to meet Steve by the door.
"Welcome back." Tony said, his cheeks red from the exhaustive running around.
"Have you been up to something naughty?" Steve asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow when he immediately took in the state Tony's face was in.
"No." Tony replied, but his voice cracked as he said it and his cheeks grew even redder as a consequence. "Do you need any help?" Tony asked noticing the many paper bags Steve carried in his right hand, his left hand was empty, Tony could only imagine it was because it was too much of a burden to carry anything in that one.
"No, no… what did you do?" Steve asked, stepping into his house worried now, did Tony set something on fire?
"I… I just… I may have tried to-to um…" But Tony couldn't think of a convincing lie, he was stuck for words. Jesus, why had he been so eager to rush towards the door, knowing full well his face would give him away.
"Come on, I won't bite." Steve urged, walking towards the kitchen. He placed the groceries down on the counter, starting to separate the ones that needed to go in the cooling box and the ones that could be left out.
"I missed you." Tony tried to say instead. It was a poor excuse, but it made Steve laugh.
"I missed you too Tony." Steve said shaking his head and smiling. The house seemed okay otherwise, nothing too out of place. So what could the brunette be hiding? "As long as nothing was broken, if you don't want to tell me what it was, I won't pressure you." Steve continued, he must have been doing something mischievous if he didn't want Steve to find out what it was… Steve really needed to get a bar of soap and scrub his brain clean from all the thoughts that bombarded him on a daily basis.
"The opposite really." Tony murmured, sighing in relief.
"What?" Steve asked, confused.
"Nothing!" Tony replied quickly, helping him with the rest of the groceries.
"Okay." Steve conceded, letting Tony off the hook.
ooOOoo
It was now night and they had spent their time doing separate things in each other's company. Tony was able to read his book in peace and Steve sketched Tony as he read. They were now in bed, getting ready to sleep for the next week of work.
"Steve, are you still awake?" Tony asked, barely above a whisper.
"Mm hmm." Steve replied just as silently. Tony's small head lay on his left breast, his mangled arm wrapped loosely on the brunette's side. For many nights now this had been how they slept, eventually they either separated or found another configuration of sleeping positions, and that's how they woke in the morning.
"Tell me about your parents." Tony asked, noticing that today's discovery had left him with a burning curiosity. There was obviously something wrong with those paintings, not wrong as in that they were physically unattractive, they had all been beautiful, but wrong. As if the creator had had something deeply disturbing to convey on the canvas. Tony remembered Mrs. Rogers's striking blue eyes, that had looked at him so deeply, he wondered if that was how she had been in real life.
"What is there to know? My father is a General in the Army and is currently fighting overseas to win the Great War." Steve said, finding it an odd question to ask in the middle of the night.
"And your mother?" Tony asked. Maybe it was because he was laying on the man, but he felt the blonde tense slightly, was this always the case or had he never noticed it?
"She was a painter, like I said, she was incredibly talented and died… she died when I was about eight years old." Steve said, his heart pounding a bit faster in his chest.
Tony squeezed Steve tighter, a silent acknowledgment of his pain; he had assumed that Sarah Rogers had died, when Steve spoke of her it was always in the past tense, that and she hadn't been here this entire time.
"Anything else, that couldn't have been just that, she must have made many friends with other artists." Tony pushed, he wanted to crack the reason why only her bright and shining paintings hung around the house, and her darker ones were covered under a tarp in the attic.
"She had, she did. But they disappeared as well when she passed, her death had not sat well with them, and though they sent their condolences they thought that maybe space would be better for my father and me." Steve admitted.
"Did it?" Tony asked, curious.
"Well, they never showed again…" Steve trailed off. There was something major he wasn't telling Tony, but he didn't want to bring it up, he didn't want Tony to think differently of his mother if he said it. Sarah had been a beautiful but troubled woman, he didn't think Tony would understand, Steve barely had when she… when she died.
"I'm sorry to hear that." Tony said.
"No, it's fine now, it's been years. I miss her the most on the day of her death, though." Steve admitted, trying very hard to keep his tears from falling.
"Understandably." Tony whispered against the rib-cage of his companion. He looked up to those blue eyes, in the dark shadows of the night Steve's eyes looked just like his mother's: piercing.
Tony placed a small kiss on Steve's lips, just to let him know he was there. Throughout their short lives they'd each gone through some tremendous shit, but they were still here. As long as they could move forward and remember the faces of the ones they had lost, in a good light, then they would be okay.
"I love you." Tony admitted, finding the courage suddenly to say something he had been feeling for months now.
"I love you too." Steve replied, a complex smile touching his face.
Tony lay back down on Steve's chest, the blonde's calming heartbeat lulling him to sleep.
Steve waited until the brunette was completely asleep to shimmy out of his embrace. He shoved his feet into his house slippers and made his way silently downstairs and into the backyard. He walked for a couple of yards until he found the disheveled, overgrown garden. It had a certain beauty to it, a beauty that one found only in chaos. The original owner had passed and Steve had been too young to take care of it, his father didn't want to go near it…
"You loved this garden mom, sorry there was nothing else I could do for you." Steve said, kneeling next to the slab of rock that displayed his mother's name, her date of birth, and her death. Tony had reminded him, painfully, of his mother's grave. He had ignored it because of everything that had happened, he would try to make an effort to visit it more often.
"You would enjoy him, he's incredibly handsome, and charming. Even if he can be hard-headed sometimes." Steve said, touching the soft grass that had grown over her.
"I miss you." Steve said, he looked up overhead and through the trees he could see the bright moon, it was only at first quarter, a couple more days until it was full.
"I'll clean this place up, I promise. It is the least I can do." Steve said standing up again and looking at the place. Maybe he could employ the help of Tony, maybe.
"Goodbye, I love you." Steve said, making his way back to the main house. He washed his hands and thought about the painting in the attic. It had been a while since he had seen it. On her twenty-fifth birthday his father had ordered a painter to capture her essence, give her a break from doing all the work. Steve was three years old at the time.
He made his way into the attic, the slight light from the moon reflecting off the white sheets and making them look like large lumps of ghosts.
He made his way to the back, noticing that the painting had already been uncovered. He panicked for a second, wondering who could have disturbed his mother's peace…
He didn't have to think hard. He sighed, suddenly very angry at the brunette, so that is why he looked so guilty today! And also the sudden interest with his parents. Steve pulled a stool from one of the corners and stood up on it, covering his mother once again with the tarp.
Was that the only thing Tony had disturbed? Steve looked over at the other covered paintings stacked against the wall. He knew how incredibly ghastly they had been to his father; he could only imagine what Tony would think if he had seen them. They didn't look disturbed, but he couldn't be sure of that fact.
Steve would have to remind Tony tomorrow not to go back to the attic. He didn't want to take the chance of the brunette uncovering the other paintings that were buried beneath the many piles of books and other things.
Before he left he noticed another object that had been left uncovered. The Reginaphone, it had been his lullaby machine when he was younger, it used to help him sleep and made his mom relax in her worst moments.
It had stopped working ages ago…Steve wondered if that's what Tony meant when he said something had been fixed.
He cranked up the handle and flipped the switch, surprised and delighted to find that the contraption worked again. He waited until the song finished to bring it downstairs (with some difficulty). He would confront the brunette about the snooping tomorrow, but he couldn't be too harsh on him, the man had fixed one of the most precious objects from his childhood.
He also couldn't fault Tony for being naturally curious, it wasn't as if he had told him to stay away from any place in the house.
Steve returned to the bedroom where Tony still lay in his calm slumber. Steve lowered himself as gently as he could unto the bed and placed a small kiss on the top of the brunette's hair.
Maybe one of these days he would have the courage to tell him about his mother, maybe then… no, he doesn't think he could ever tell anyone about it. If five therapists couldn't get him to talk, he didn't think Tony could bring it out of him either. Only his father knew the truth, and his father had decided to ignore it for the rest of their lives.
It was better this way, if he just let his mother's memory rest.
Let the sleeping dogs lie.
Is it just me, or is Stevey-boy being slightly cryptic about his mother's death? ;)