Steve is effectively Immortal. The serum did more than give him muscles. Something more happened. It gave him too much life- made him unkillable.
Steve is the last person that remembers Tony Stark as anything BUT Iron Man. The Immortal American’s Lost Lover, or some other overly tawdry story rendition.
Anymore he’s just The Immortal, no one but the more devoted Original Earth history buffs really knows what an “American” is anymore. And Steve’s albums are priceless relics sought by History buffs and romantics- but it’s an actual law that no one can take them from The Immortal. Tony’s reach can be long when he sets his mind, or more, JARVIS’s to it.
Tony had vision, he always had been a genius, even when he was an ass.
Tony, Tony had made fun of Steve when he first saw Steve’s hope chest. When he discovered that first album he had teased him profusely for taking up- well the first words had been the most hurtful. “Scrapbooking, of all things Steve. Really? First you nag me over my diet, then you nag me about how I’m always taking risks- now scrapbooking? And people call you the Husband in the tabloids.”
At least he had teased until later that same month, when Steve was literally decorating an entire room in red after desperately shoving Tony out of the way of an explosion- and still regenerated back into one piece without a single scratch to show for it.
After that, Steve’s hope chest got mysterious upgrades- and the book went missing for a single night before being replaced. Digital copies were placed beside it, sealed.
And an identical copy of that book was sealed hermetically in a full explosives and bulletproof clear case. It was placed beside the original without a single word.
When Tony discovered more gray hairs than dark ones coming into his beard after a lab incident had removed half of it, he asked Steve if he was sure he wanted to stay- if he was sure- and Steve cut him off and responded by taking them out, and filling another album with JUST new pictures. It became a tradition, every trip became it’s own album. And they took trips whenever time allowed. Even if it was just trips to the park.
Tony sometimes grumbled about it. Sometimes snarked about if he’d wanted to marry the paparazzi… but that had fallen flat as a joke. Steve wanted to Marry- but Tony had said that some things were better left untied. And Each time they made a new Album, Steve always made sure the laces on the sides that tied it up were Red and Yellow, Blue And White. Tied across the book then knotted in the middle. Tony never teased him, and each Album had a sealed duplicate appear beside it a few weeks later.
Tied exactly like the original, and made safe from age in a sealed haven. As much as Tony refused to consider them permanent, Steve always felt choked up when he saw the album copies, even then.
And Steve still found cashes of them, was still led to them by remnants of JARVIS, that had survived in the global networks of humanity for centuries now.
He knows that Tony would have been a magnificent man in all silver, but after 14 years, and 41 albums of memories, of every bit of Tony he could keep, neither one of them was able to stop a madman. It was the same type of bomb, 14 years prior, and this time, Steve didn’t make it in time.
He doesn’t remember much, but none of those bastards left the compound according to Fury, it looked like Banner had been in there, not him. Steve never once felt ashamed about that rage.
Steve found out on the one year anniversary of Tony’s death that Tony had in fact been on borrowed time anyways. The cancer scare that year hadn’t been a scare- and Tony had been too stubborn to tell him until they were sure it really was inoperable.
It had became a moot point on the battlefield, but when Steve found out he raged for days. He had been trying to accept that Tony was mortal and he was not, had tried to accept what that meant- had talked like it wasn’t as terrifying and rage inducing as it really was. All the doubts and rage, all the stages of grief with himself from the last 15 years combined with all the stages of grief over Tony he had also repressed.
All the grief he hadn’t let tear him apart first day, that first week when he slept not a single moment- because he couldn’t feel any warmth from Tony’s side, that first month when every time he thought they’d got every last member of the organization, another seemed to pop up for him to pummel.
All that grief he hadn’t really dealt with that entire first year, that he had just bottled away until the last thug, or the last memorial, or till the time was right- spilled out.
And he raged at Tony in a way that would have shocked Tony. Would have made him cheer and jeer and offer to join in. Steve trashed their room, trashed everything that made him ache inside, that made him cry. Nothing in their room survived. He pummeled everything and he cried and screamed at Tony the entire time. His voice finally gave out and still he screamed, and his tears finally dried up and even his arms grew weak.
And when he finally passed out, it was like Steve was a shaking scrawny boy again. Raw and weak and untried. He slept for almost as long as he’d raged and only really woke up when the house systems woke him. Having determined he was finally well rested for once Tony’s farewell program activated.
That was when JARVIS gave him the first “Love note for my immortal idiot.”. Tony had known him. And he had played him in his way. He knew he would die long before “Captain Tight-pants” would retire. Long before Steve would forget him, the rest of the world would.
And if Steve still wanted to be Tony’s immortal idiot, all he had to do was keep the laces tied on any book near his bed. It probably wasn’t supposed to be recorded- but for all the first teasing had hurt, this last bemused little teasing aside just made Steve ache for Tony. “And really, if anyone knew that Steve all but braided his scrapbook’s hair before putting them to bed, they’d stop calling Tall, Hot and Gorgeous the Husband. Talk about stereotyping missing the ball completely.”.
Tony would probably be entertained to know that tying a ribbon through the edges of a wedding or family album is now thought to bring those inside the book a long and happy life.
JARVIS survives, the internet crashes but JARVIS is in every server individually. Hardwired into Stark Tech for the last 15 years, built to last thousands of worst case scenarios. And over the ages, Steve wonders just how many of those scenarios quietly came and went.
Steve tries to love again, but every time- it never feels right. And every year, on their Anniversaries, first meeting, first kiss, first time sleeping together, first date, first mutual declaration of love, he opens an album, and he gently pages through it. It changes based on his mood, some are more common than others. Surprisingly his favorite is the one is the one where Tony looks old and grumpy. He’d been working hard, it’s the second to last Album but Tony looks a decade older. And Steve sometimes pretends it was 25 years they had together.
But sometimes, he makes a go of it.
He sets aside all the Albums but the first one, the duplicate of the first one, actually, and he keeps it by his bedside, and he tries to love with all the passion that he shared with Tony.
It sometimes works, and he never forgets Tony, and for a few centuries, he has a baby blue album besides the red and yellow one. A different few centuries it is a rose and silver album besides the red and yellow one. And when JARVIS sees those, sees through the cameras of the various worlds, that Steve is giving it a go, he queues the messages, sets them aside to be rationed for later.
It’s the centuries that stack on after those few brief centuries with multiple albums that JARVIS and Tony save Steve’s sanity.
And it is those millenia, the neverending little quests and goose chases that drag Steve out into the world- and perpetuate the romantic myth of The Immortal, and his Eternal Lover.
As much as Steve hated it, and hates it still… he also often laughs. He caresses the “newest” copy of some album, and, if it’s a copy of that first album. The copy filled with Tony from before he knew Steve, till at the end, covering their first date, and their very first trip- to a lake… he will share it with someone.
It’s only when he gets to that Red and Yellow, and an open, unsealed Red and Yellow Album rests beside it’s Sealed brother… that Steve lets himself try again… lets himself hope, that maybe this time… This time he’ll find his Tony… A different face, but in 6 billion worlds of humans… His Tony’s spirit and soul has to live on, his spirit and fire- his genius and wit… has to be there.
This time… when he finds his Tony again this time- she or he will refuse to marry him for a single life- and instead tie them together, again, for eternity.
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