word count: 513 | stevetony, angst, post-endgame
The shape of his face, the slope of his nose, the curve of his smile.
They don’t translate that well to the canvas in front of him, and it is just as haunting as the man he sees when he closes his eyes and dreams.
He tries to picture him, but every time he puts pencil to paper, every time he attempts to capture the image projected in his subconscious, he can never get it right. His battle-worn hands betray him and his eidetic memory, putting to paper an image that could barely pass for a basic facsimile of the real thing.
Perhaps, it is his mind telling him to give it rest. To let go of his past and move on. But he can’t. Not when there is still guilt and longing gnawing at his very being with every passing day.
He is borderline obsessed with the need to paint him, to relive the glory days and create some tangible evidence of his love for Tony through art, but this obsession soon becomes his downfall. He tries again and again, until his worst fears begin to come true.
It had been so long since he had the chance to look at himself in the mirror. Fine lines now mar the once-smooth skin of his face. The years following the death of the Avengers’ heart now catching up to him. He briefly touches the divot between his brows, which he knows only grows deeper with every frown and furrow of concentration, and his hand shakes with a slight tremble that strikes a sense of resignation into his lonely heart. He is not the same man he once was. He doesn’t imagine that he would be that same man ever again.
He hides away from his own image, tenses his hand into a fist to stop its shaking. He closes his eyes, and the man in his dreams remains unchanging.
Although, not for long. Even that seems to change.
The first thing to go is the color of his eyes.
From all the seconds, minutes, hours staring into his eyes - through friendship, love, and regrettably, turmoil - he swore he would never forget them. But the warm shade of his eyes fades into a color of mourning. He sees his face in his dreams, and it is the color of a mourning dove that takes over the shade of… of…
The image of his Tony is his mind is incomplete, and he cries for the first time in years.
He is afraid to close his eyes now. He is afraid to dream. The man he sees behind his eyelids is an imposter. A lie his subconscious created to soothe the aches in his heart and in his mind. He thinks he can learn to believe this lie, and he does - but only for a short while. He knows that this image he sees will never be the true image of the man he fell in love with.
The color of his eyes is wrong. So completely and utterly wrong.
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
