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you’d break your heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull (steve/tony)

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, mature, post-Winter Soldier & Iron Man 3 | on ao3 , artwork by @pineapplebread here & @clarksteve here

thank you @duckmoles for doing such a great job beta reading this, and @captainstevns @suitofhumour and athletiger for listening to me and helping me while i was brainstorming all the way back in september.

***

Steve wakes up and keeps his eyes closed as he takes in his surroundings. It’s a habit formed from the war, and Steve relaxes as he concludes that he’s in a hospital or something similar. Steve opens his eyes to confirm, and they land immediately upon a familiar shock of dark hair by his bedside.

“Hi,” Steve says, experimentally.

Tony flinches, then looks up quickly. “Hey, hi, you’re awake, that’s good, how are you feeling?”

Steve considers this question and notices the dull pain, everywhere. “Like a bruise,” he says.

There are two bags attached to his IV, and wires coming out from under his chest that are attached to a big machine that beeps periodically. The rest of the room is sparse and the TV is an old one, the muted newscast coming out grainy. Outside, through the blinds, doctors and nurses putter about in the hallway. So: a civilian hospital.

Tony reaches over to a small desk to hand Steve a glass of water.

“Where’d you come from?” Steve asks after having a drink. All other questions are moot, at this point; it’s Tony. Steve thinks that Tony probably has JARVIS monitor the team, alert him on big enough crises. He’s probably here because he saw the helicarriers explode, and came to check on Natasha, then dropped by to check in on Steve, since he was already in the area. It’s probably just a coincidence he was here when Steve woke up.

“New York,” Tony says, tilting his head a little as he regards Steve. “How’d you get out of the water?”

“I—” Steve starts, stops. “That’s a good question,” he finishes, smiling sheepishly. He remembers the fight, the explosion, but that’s it. He didn’t even know about the water.

What settles in his mind, now that he’s fully awake, is the memory of Bucky looming over him, wailing down punches. This is the first time since he’d seen Bucky on the highway that Steve has had time to breathe and really think about the newest reality in his life: Bucky is alive.

Bucky is alive, and Bucky wanted to kill him.

Bucky, the one person in the world who had stayed with Steve through everything. Bucky, who had fallen all those years (decades, he reminds himself) ago. Who Steve had believed to be dead. But he was never dead, and Steve had abandoned him, and maybe Steve did deserve to be punched to unconsciousness. But he also deserved to talk to Bucky, at the very least. He needed to talk to Bucky.

Lying on those white sheets, the smell of antiseptic making Steve feel dizzy, he knows, deep in his bones, that he’d be dead before he ever stopped looking for his best friend.

“Don’t do that again,” Tony says, cutting in to Steve’s thoughts as he leans back into his seat. Tony’s hand rises to his chest to rub at it.

Steve is familiar with the motion, and that’s the only time he realizes: “What happened to your—” he says, as he gestures to his own sternum.

Tony lets out a small huff of laughter. “Oh, you know. Got tired of it.”

Steve furrows his brow, expecting more of an answer, and chiding himself for not noticing the entirety of the man seated beside him. Gone is the bright light that emanated from his chest, and Steve wants to know why, and how, and when? But he doesn’t know if he can ask those questions, or if he did, if Tony would answer them. It’s a strange thing that Tony is here at all, really.

So instead, Steve says, “Oh, sure. Don’t fall into bodies of water, Steve, but I’ll go right ahead and remove my life-preserving tech.”

Tony shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. “How about we reserve story time for when you’ve fully recovered, huh?”

Steve grunts, but nods anyway: “Fine.”

They sink into a comfortable silence, waiting for the doctor to arrive. Steve’s itching to go, though—to tell Tony about Bucky, because if anyone would be able to help him, Tony seems like the best option.

Steve flexes his hand with the IV on it, and Tony’s hand covers his to stop the motion.

“Don’t,” Tony says, so Steve doesn’t, mostly surprised by the gesture and the tingle of electricity that races up his arm.

*

Steve expects a lot of things. It’s in his nature to be prepared. There’s nothing he can do in Washington, what with Natasha spilling everything on the internet and journalists requesting interviews at every turn. So he packs up his things, pre-terminates his apartment lease, and tells Sam that he plans on looking for Bucky.

He doesn’t expect Tony to offer him a place in Stark Tower, but he recalibrates and accepts pretty quickly; besides, New York was always home, anyway. Steve didn’t think Tony took their conversation at the hospital too seriously, but Tony’s text reads: Just stay in the tower, Cap. You owe me a story.

Tony isn’t home when Steve arrives, so Steve feels free to gape at how the space has changed from the last time he was there. Gone is the dark wood, now replaced by steel and glass. It’s like nothing happened. That’s the nature of the world nowadays, Steve has noticed.

Steve unpacks his bag efficiently and settles into what JARVIS had told him was his floor by rearranging some of the furniture (one couch, two settees, a desk and chair), then eventually putting them back.

From here, Steve can see all the way to Brooklyn, and he feels a bit funny, to be standing in a high rise with all this expensive furniture, when a few years ago, his apartment could’ve fit inside his current bedroom. Steve scrunches up his face and looks around the room again.

He feels antsy, but doesn’t want to go exploring alone. He looks over the tablet on his bedside, but doesn’t know what to do with it. There are no reports to be written, and it seems preemptive to use Tony’s tech to look for Bucky without Tony even knowing about it (or at least, knowing about it from Steve—he’s under no allusions that Tony doesn’t know about what happened in DC, but. There are probably parts only Steve can tell).

“JARVIS?” Steve says, looking around his room.

“How may I help, Captain Rogers?”

“Is there anyone else in the tower?” Steve asks. “Or, uh, would you know when Tony’ll be here?” He adds.

“Currently Dr. Banner is in India, Agent Romanoff in Washington, Thor remains off-world, and Agent Barton has requested that his location not be disclosed unless completely necessary. Sir should be arriving shortly.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” Steve says, taking a turn about the room.

“Always a pleasure, Captain.”

Steve picks up the tablet again and heads to the communal floor, hoping to catch Tony as soon as he arrives. He sits on one of the plush white leather couches and looks through the news about the information Natasha had dumped. Seems like a good a starting point as any.

*

“Glad to see you’ve settled in.” Steve starts up from his reading at the sound of Tony’s voice.

“Tony,” Steve sets the tablet aside to stand up. “Thank you,” he says. Tony waves him off and heads towards the kitchen.

Steve follows and leans against the marble counter as Tony presses some buttons on what Steve assumes to be the coffee machine. The rest of the kitchen is done in light wood and acrylic. It looks, in Steve’s opinion, too clean to be a kitchen.

“How was your flight?”

“It was fine,” Steve says. “Look, Tony, I wanted to talk about DC,” he adds quickly.

Steve doesn’t want to waste any more time than he already has. Every minute, Bucky slips deeper and deeper into obscurity, and Steve has had enough time to prepare himself to ask for Tony’s help (not that he didn’t want it, or think he needed it, it’s just—).

“Okay, cutting to the chase, all right,” Tony says, smiling as he pours himself a cup of coffee. “Lay it on me.”

So Steve does. Tells him about Fury, his apartment, about seeing Bucky, the fights, finding out about Hydra. Tony plays the perfect audience, listening in rapt attention and asking questions when Steve pauses. Steve isn’t used to this, at least not from Tony, who barely gives conversations enough attention to finish a sentence. Steve talks, and talks, and talks, and Tony nods along as he reaches into a cupboard to pull out a bag of chips or pour cups of coffee for them both.

Steve is wrapping up his story, and Tony, who had removed his jacket sometime earlier, now loosens his tie, and begins to roll up his sleeves. Steve’s eyes track the movement of Tony’s hands, and Steve only realizes he's stopped talking when Tony looks up at Steve from under his lashes, hand still on a partially rolled sleeve. “And then?” he prompts. Steve starts, then looks away, clearing his throat.

“And then I woke up in the hospital, and you know the rest,” Steve finishes.

Tony nods gravely. “That’s a fuck ton to process, Cap,” he says. “So, I guess you want my help finding Barnes?”

Steve feels something warm pool in his stomach at Tony’s choice of words: want, not need; Barnes, not Bucky.

“Yeah, if you could,” Steve says.

“If? If?” Tony scoffs and pulls out his phone, tapping on the screen quickly. Steve takes this opportunity to take a quick survey of what’s in the kitchen—outside, the sun is beginning to set and he wants dinner now, not just snacks.

“There. I’ve set up a tracker and I’m having JARVIS filter through everything Natasha sent out to the world,” Tony says. “That should be a start.”

Steve lets out a small, relieved sigh. “Thank you, Tony. Really.”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine, of course, anything,” Tony says quickly, averting his gaze and fidgeting with his phone again.

Steve has assembled ingredients for spaghetti on the kitchen counter, which Tony notices.

“Oh, Cap, no. We can get take out. Where did you even find these—” he holds up a mushroom and looks at it dubiously.

“Come on, it’s your turn. You talk, I cook. Should be easy enough,” he says, unpeeling a shallot.

“If you’re sure,” Tony says, making a face. “You really don’t have to.”

“You really want to talk to me about things we did or didn’t have to do?”

“Okay, fine. At least let me help—” Steve swats away Tony’s hand.

“You talk. I’ll cook.”

“Okay, okay,” Tony says, sounding annoyed. But Steve’s looking directly at Tony, and that’s the only reason he sees the small upwards curl of Tony’s lips, so Steve smiles back at him before he begins chopping.

*

Steve flips through the consolidated reports on Winter Soldier sightings again, checking to see if he’d missed anything. For two months now, all Steve had done was read and wait for updates. Slowly, the rest of the Avengers had found their way into the tower; still, only Steve and Tony remained permanent fixtures while everyone else filtered in and out.

“I just don’t understand how we haven’t found him,” Steve says. Sam is puttering around the communal floor somewhere, and Steve feels… he feels tired. Impatient. Put out.

“He has literally kept himself in the shadows for decades, man,” Sam says, from the kitchen. “If It were easy then I don’t think he’d be such a good assassin, you know?”

It took a while for Steve to really accept that was Bucky (not is). But for Steve to remain willfully ignorant of the things Bucky had done while being brainwashed was idiotic, so he stopped wringing his hands about it and decided to focus his energy on finding Bucky, instead. He tells himself that he’ll read all of the SHIELD/HYDRA files JARVIS has tagged as Winter Soldier related once they finally find him—if it wasn’t all in the file Natasha had given him, already.

Steve makes a small, whiny sound, just for himself. He hates not being able to do anything, hates waiting. He’s always been a man of action, and to be forced into a state of inaction makes him antsy.

All he wants is to find Bucky.

“I hate not being able to do anything,” Steve says, simply.

“I hear you,” Sam says, a laugh in his voice. “But you are, though. You’re looking. You’re reading up about everything that we know about him, what HYDRA knows. I think that’s something,” Sam says, his voice shifting to a more soothing tone. Steve clicks his tongue in response, doesn’t correct Sam, and keeps reading.

*

Sam can always tell when something’s off. Not to discredit the rest of the team; they know too, after everything, it’s impossible not to know. But Sam, Sam’s just about as stubborn as Steve, and he won’t stop until Steve’s acknowledged that thinking and feeling about something for an hour isn’t enough to fully deal with the issue.

So, Sam can always tell, and this is probably why he ambushes Steve after dinner. Steve is in the kitchen boiling a pot of tea for the rest of the team as they settle in to watch a movie.

“How are you?”

Steve would’ve prickled at the earnestness of the tone if it were anyone else, but it’s Sam, so he just sighs and says, “I’m fine, Sam.”

“Okay,” Sam says, leaning against the kitchen counter and scrolling through his phone. Steve frowns, noting Sam’s feigned indifference.

“I don’t really know what to talk about, if that’s what you want to hear,” Steve grumbles.

“Man,” Sam looks up from his phone to give Steve a once over, “I don’t want to hear anything, if you don’t wanna talk about it,” he says, looking back at his phone.

“There really isn’t—I don’t know, okay? I think I’m managing. I’ve been trying to write about it like you told me, but I can’t get anything out of my head.”

Sure, they’d all been working together and living together, but there was only so much anyone could do to address all the trust issues that had calcified through the years. At least, that’s what Sam had observed and told Steve; Steve was inclined to agree, but wouldn’t ever say it out loud.

Captain America, Steve Rogers, bastions of truth, loyalty, and justice. It wasn’t an expectation that Captain America trusted inherently in the goodness of people and are nothing but open and kind—it was a fact. One Steve felt the burden of maintaining more heavily on some days.

Sam shrugs. “Okay. I hope you keep trying.”

“I will,” Steve says, and means it. He turns back to the kettle that’s beginning to sing, and they both walk back to the team together. Steve feels the beginnings of doubt (fear) niggling somewhere below his heart. So, maybe, fine: write about your feelings, he thinks. Couldn’t hurt. There are worse ways to deal with your feelings.

(read the rest on ao3)

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