It's The Little Things
1) Beauty
Sometimes, Steve just sits and watches. Watches the way his nimble fingers hold the tools, admires the solid concentration on Tony's face, the small downwards tilt of his lips, the slight crease of his eyebrows. Steve loves the way his arc-reacter illuminates his face and softens the hard lines of his chin.
Then Tony looks over his shoulder at him, smirks a little and the juxtaposition of the bright blue tint on his pale pink lips is breath-taking. Tony preens under Steve's watchful gaze and turns back to his work. His smirk doesn't leave him.
Beautiful, Steve can't help thinking.
2) Love
Love, an intense feeling of deep affection. Created by chemicals released in the brain. Dopamine; the chemical related with pleasure. Norepinephrine; released by the adrenal medulla, causing flushed cheeks and sweaty palms. Phenylethylamine; an anti-depresent found in chocolate.
Norepinephrine was something Steve obvious had high douses off, because when ever Tony strolled into the room Steve displayed obvious symptoms that filled Tony with a type of awkward joy.
Three months though, Tony cautioned himself. Three months and Steve would come to his senses. The chemicals would resided and logic would dominate.
Besides, love's a pointless emotion anyway, Tony scorned himself.
3)Dream
It's sitting up on a bench on the balcony, a bottle of wine between them and their fingers laced together that Steve realizes it. That this is one of those moments, the ones Steve dreams of. One that tells him they could be a real couple.
Tony is talking about his dreams, and that they are his inspiration. He dreams of the impossible and how to make it plausible. Tony's dreams help him do what he loves.
Steve though, his dreams give him hope. Steve dreams of them, of the future.
So sat on the balcony, they sit and talk and there's no judgement between them, because it's only dreams.
4)Haunted
It's times like this that Tony wishes things were different. That Steve was born in the seventies like him. That Steve hadn't meet Howard. There's scorn in Steves voice, and Tony hates how much it makes him stop and think. Nobodies ever made Tony second guess himself before, but Tony knows why though.
Firing nearly one-hundred people so he can launch a new project is cold and ruthless, something his father would do. The fact that he was that close to doing it keeps him up that night. The fact that Steve saw it too haunts him for too long.
5)Memory
It's a lazy August afternoon and Steve managed to convince Tony to escape the city with him. They're sat down near a river in the middle of nowhere and Steve can't help but reminiscence about the fields and river near his childhood home. Now it's all just concert and stone, cold and modernised.
Tony is dozing between his legs, his back pressed against Steve as he pets his hair. It's nice to see the tension leave Tony for once. It's peaceful and simple. It's just them, neither without a care in the world.
It makes Steve long for the past.
6)Fragile
Tony likes to pretend he's stronger. He likes to pretend he can take it all, the hits, the bone-crushing punches. He pretends he's invincible, like the rest of the Avengers. The truth is, he's fragile. He knows that on the battle field, he's vulnerable. That on his own, he'd lose.
He's not a demi-god, he cant summon the power of the hulk and he's not a super-soilder. He's just Tony, he's just a human.
Then, when Tony wakes up after having his neck nearly crushed and his armour dented around him, Steve is staring down at him. Tony knows that Steve knows now too. He wishes he didn't.
7)Disbelief
Steve was an anchor, an island, a sanctuary in a turbulent sea, and Tony shielded his throbbing eyes in the curve of Steve's neck. The synaesthesia was making him want to vomit. Sounds shouldn't have associated colours, nor tastes, but every time he opened his eyes there were flickers of hues that had no place in his room and strange ripples of flavour over his tongue: acid fumes and beef.
"Have you taken anything?" Steve's voice was like a nail gun shooting through ear canal and Tony winced. "Sorry."
Tony felt something cool caress his forehead and darkness shortly consumed him.
It could have been minutes or hours before Tony rouse and he blinked in confusion, certain he was still hallucinating. He was staring up into a sea of blue, but his back was against something solid, Steve he realized, who was smiling.
Tony glanced at the clock on his bedside, confused as he read 4:03am. Tony blinked again and stared at Steve in disbelief, who had stayed with him the entire time. Tony couldn't help but wonder how he had gotten so lucky.
8)Secret
Tony loved secrets. He loved the sense of importance they gave him, the knowledge that he knew something everybody else was clueless to.
Apart from him and Steve, of course. Even then though, Tony enjoyed what could only be described as a series of sneak attack kisses. Steve would be around the house, doing mundane things and then Tony would appear, kiss him and then vanish, leaving Steve to sneeze at his dust trail.
It gave Tony a giddy feeling he hadn't experienced in years.
9)Promise
Tony wasn't good at keeping promises, Steve knew this. Tony was too impulsive and reckless to really consider promises. It was Tony's recklessness that had landed them into this position.
Tony was currently laid on his bed, pressing an ice-pack against his neck with his good arm while his other arm was in a sling, fingers broken and arm fractured.
"Tony, that was reckless, you could have gotten yourself killed," Steve said for the hundrenth time, feeling like a mother-hen. "You'd promised you'd be more careful."
It wasn't that Tony didn't try to keep his promises, it was that he always forgot them.
10)Innocence
Everybody expects Steve to be a virgin, to blush at a peck on the cheek and to be a vanilla type of guy. Tony knows better. Well, he didn't at first, but Steve's a fast learning and he learned from the best. Which is Tony, obviously.
Tony's still a bit surprised when Steve ties him up and is growling into the hallow of his neck. Then after when Tony has full control of his limbs again and they were lazing on his mattress, Tony can't help comment on it. Steve, being Steve, blushes and hisses at Tony, "Tony, that's disturbing!" And Tony realizes Steve still has a lot to learn.
11)Moonlight
When Tony couldn't sleep, Steve knew where he always fled to. Whenever Steve came up to an empty bed, he always worried.
Every night Steve did his nightly security check, because no matter what Tony said, he still didn't trust all the robots, he wasn't surprised that Tony was down stairs, in his lab.
So Steve found him, slumped over his desk, sleeping. He was bathed in the moonlight, making his skin glow and Steve committed it to memory.
With a small smile, Steve retrieved a blanket from up stairs and draped it across the mechanics shoulders.
12)Whisper
There was always whispers in the paper. Rumours about them. That they stood too close, stared too long. The papers thought they were lovers, they wouldn't be wrong.
They knew Steve was nervous around Tony, and not through shyness. Steve always had the impulse to grab Tonys hand, but kept himself at bay.
One day, facing the press, somebody asked, "Is it true that you and Tony are lovers?"
His skin heating up, he began to denial it.
Then Tony was there, face mask off and pulling Steve down into a fierce kiss. Smirking, he whispered, "That will give them something to talk about."
13)Echo
Tony was like an echo of the past. A shadow of Howard Stark, though their circumstances were not the same. Howard had worked along side his father to build an empire from the ground up, and Tony was born as an heir more than a son.
Although Steve could see some many similarity in Tony that Howard had possessed, they couldn't have been more different.
Howard had been a businessmen man down to his core, always calculating his next move. Tony preferred to live in the here and now, he liked to take risk.
It took both of them a while to grasp that Tony wasn't an echo of Howard, that Tony was his own damn shout.
14)Jealousy
He knew they were just friends.
Steve couldn't help it though. It's the fact that Bruce is able to connect with Tony on a level Steve could never copperhead, one genius to another.
Bruce was just a good friend, Tony's colleague, an ally. He'd never do anything to jeopardise their relationship.
And yet, he was hanging over Steve's head like a black ominous cloud.
The truth was, Steve would never be able to give Tony what Bruce could, and there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was hope the jealousy would fade.
15)Passion
Tony tapped the lantern in his chest, "It's 'cause of this."
Confused, Steve asked, "What do you mean?"
Fiddling with his suit, Tony explained, "It's a reminder. Without this, I'd be a dead man." He shrugged, seeming disinterested, but Steve could see the harden lines around his eyes, shrouded in memories. "It didn't even cross my mind in Afghan that I could die. I used to think I was invincible.
This reminds me that I'm not."
Steve understood now. Tony's extreme personality and passion was his way of grasping every second he could. "So you live life to the fullest."
16)Lies
His life was plagued by lies.
First his mother, shielding him from his father, then his father about his step-mom. Obidiah was the worst, giving Tony a set of blinkers and multiply stabbed him in the back.
Obidiah was meant to have his back, not destroy it. Lies and secrecy had clouded his life. There wasn't an aspect of his life that was free of them.
Even SHIELD had there secrets.
Pepper, while truthful, was too eager to protect Tony from himself. He had Steve though, who was always prepared to tell Tony the truth, no matter how painful it was.
17)Cold
This was defiantly one part of Tony's personality Steve did not like. It wasn't like Tony to be cold, even though he was rude, he had a warm vibe about him.
Now even his eyes seemed icy cold, his looks deprived of any warmth. He spent his time surrounded by robots and machines.
Steve knew exactly what the issue was though. Coulsons funeral was in less than seven days and it was weighing down on Tony heavily.
Steve just prayed that keeping his distance was the solution to the problem.
18)Regrets
Steve knew Tony regretted the way he reacted last night. The previous night had not been easy for ether of them, with Tony drinking himself into a rampage and destroying some suits, asking what the point was if he could not save anyone.
Steve knew it was just an enhanced emotion brought on by the binge drinking and in hind sight, he knew he shouldn't have lost his temper with him ether. Sometimes, even Steve forgot he had a temper.
19)Trust
Trust wasn't something Tony gave lightly any more. He didn't really show it, but it was true. He's got James by accident, Pepper by necessity and Steve, because, well, it's Steve.
It doesn't matter though, because everybody knows Tony; A Genius. Billionaire. Playboy. Philanthropist and that's all they need to know, probably all they want to know, but they still don't know him, and it's the way Tony wants to keep it.
"I trust you," Steve says while he's planning Coulson funeral, and Tony not sure why.
Then at the funeral as he hangs his head and the gun fire shoots out, Steve pulls him closer and suddenly, he knows why Steves on his list.
20)Tulips
Both Tony and Steve find it Ironic that the funeral is in Spring, and after everybody has left they stand in a field coloured by Tulips.
"They're my favourite, Tulips," Steve comments absently, as if he isn't expecting Tony to listen. "They grow in a field near where I lived and me and Dad used to pick some for my Mom." And Tony doesn't reply, just looks at him like he's one of Tony's robots, and it puts Steve on edge a little.
The next day though, Steve walks into their room to find a pot full of Tulips.