For the prompt thing if you still want :) #33 and #17 have Big SteveTony Energy
Prompt #17: “I can’t stay mad at you, and that pisses me off.”
It wasn’t Tony’s fault, and to that he would happily testify in a court of law. Well, not happily—who on earth walks happily into a courtroom, of all places—but he’d do it.
As it is, he only has to testify to it in a tower conference room, surrounded by his teammates, less a certain tall, blond, and handsome, and Nick Fury, whose one good eye is trained unflinchingly on Tony.
“You keep glowering at me like that, Long John Silver, and your face is gonna get stuck.”
“Don’t change the subject, Stark.”
“Who said anything about changing the subject? I’m just looking out for a friend. No, uh, no pun intended.”
“You disobeyed direct orders in the field.”
“Aha, but I didn’t!” Tony chimes, because he really didn’t. Turning to Natasha, he says, “Didn’t Cap say, ‘minimize civilian casualties?’”
Natasha, with her carefully constructed veneer of apathy, shrugs. “Technically, yes.”
Tony makes a so there! gesture at Fury, who palms his face.
“That’s exactly what I did! I minimized civilian casualties, just like Cap said.”
“Then maybe you can explain why there’s a giant hole in the ground where that UPS warehouse used to be?”
“I would,” Tony replies, already slinking out of his seat, a scratched and bloody hand pressed against his left uppermost ribs, “but unfortunately I have a date with a bed down in the medbay.” Also true. Technically.
“Stark, I haven’t given you leave to—”
“Send me a memo! I like giving them to DUM-E—he makes paper airplanes with them,” Tony answers, waving lackadaisically over his shoulder at the team before the soundproof door hisses shut behind him.
It’s a quick trip to medical if only because Tony speedwalks the whole way there, putting all of his pent up energy into taking the stairs two by two until he’s five floors down and opening the door to the room in which Steve is currently convalescing.
The smile that greets him on the other side of that door is worth a thousand angry memos (and paper airplanes to the eye) from Nick Fury.
Steve’s whole right side is bandaged, shoulder to knee, and his face is slightly sooty, but he’s whole, and he’s looking at Tony like he brought the sun into the room with him. He’s probably dopey from pain meds, Tony thinks, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s blushing under Steve’s smiling, happy gaze.
“How’s our patient?” Tony asks, checking his speed as he lopes across the room to Steve’s bedside. He realizes with a little skip of his heart that he’s allowed to press a hand to Steve’s brow, now, and he does. Just lays it right there above Steve’s eyebrows and watches his expression melt into something sublime.
“Loopy,” Steve answers with a slight giggle. “Happy you’re here.”
“They gave you the good stuff, huh?”
“Mm,” Steve hums, eyes slipping shut as he nudges catlike up against Tony’s palm. “The good stuff just got here.”
“Oh my god,” Tony snorts. “That was...spectacularly corny, Steve. Peak corny. Even for you.”
“Maybe. It’s true, though.”
After a few weeks of...this, Tony thinks he should be used to it. Steve. Emotionally intimacy with anyone was a tall order for Tony; when Steve fumblingly, endearingly put the moves on him earlier in the month at Rhodey’s birthday party, Tony had ignored the pang of regret, thinking that of all the things he wanted from Steve Rogers, a one-night-stand wasn’t one of them, but if it was all he was gonna get, he’d take it.
But trust Steve to completely upend every last one of Tony’s expectations, starting with his abilities in bed (Steve was inexperienced, but holy shit was he a fast learner, and sensitive as all get-out, much to Tony’s depraved delight) and continuing on through the morning after, when he kept Tony in bed by sheer force of his morning voice and muscly cuddles, and who was Tony to say no to either of those things, especially when they were everything he wanted and more than he ever could have hoped for?
Now here they are, three weeks later. Together. The others don’t know about it yet (at least, Tony doesn’t think they do, but between Natasha and Barton, it’s really only a matter of time), because for once, Tony wanted something that was just for them. So much of both of their lives was on display to some degree. And Steve had agreed—let this be just for them, for now.
Which meant sitting through Fury’s debrief having to pretend he wasn’t absolutely losing his mind from wanting to get to Steve and stay there. Because Steve had to go and drop a warehouse on himself after Tony had cleared it of civilians, and once Tony had done that job, he’d turned right back around and found Steve, only he’d had to uh, blow up some more of the building to get him out.
But now he was here, and Steve was here, smiling at him, holding his hand to his mouth and kissing his palm with all the reverence of a man in—well. He was alive, and happy, if a bit blissed out on pain pills, but Tony couldn’t fault him for that.
“So you gonna wait until the drugs wear off to tell me why you thought dropping a building on yourself was the best plan of action today?” Tony asks, making himself comfortable on Steve’s hospital bed, wanting to curl up around him but not wanting to at the same time, because injuries.
Steve wraps a bandaged arm around Tony and pulls him down to cuddle up against him anyways.
“I saw an opening and I took it,” he says. “Isn’t that what you would’ve done?”
“Yeah, and that’s what worries me,” Tony replies. And he had been—worried, that is. Terrified. But now that he has Steve safe in his arms, he doesn’t have the energy to be as mad at him as he thinks he should be. The self-sacrificial schtick was Tony’s M.O. Maybe he could sue Captain America for copyright infringement?
“You’re rubbing off on me, Shellhead,” Steve says sleepily, voice muffled against Tony’s hair. “You should take it as a compliment.”
Smothering a besotted smile against Steve’s bandaged shoulder, Tony laughs.
“I should be mad at you. I am mad at you! But I can’t stay mad at you. Why can’t I stay mad at you?”
“Because you like me.”
“Ugh. It pisses me off.”
Tony doesn’t even try not to purr when Steve pulls him in closer, presses a lingering kiss to his forehead.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
