Wrong Side of Love || Stony
Tony was quite far from ‘uncomfortable’ with it; in fact, he found himself instinctively leaning into Steve’s touch instead, pressing the man’s fingers even harder into his sides. There was nothing like that super soldier grip. At Steve’s words, however, Tony grew quiet and still. It wasn’t exactly usual, people coming down to sit with him in his lab. The place was dirty, grease stained and louder than any room should ever be. He always played the music a little too loud, made a bit too big of a mess, and talked a little too much, even when the room was empty. He talked to the bots, and he argued with JARVIS, and he yelled at his projects that weren’t working. There was nothing peaceful about the place, not in any standard sense at least. It was chaotic, a dozen holograms up at once, a handful of bots bumping into your legs, voices and commands and booms and bangs coming from all directions, and for most people it was too much, too crazy. Tony was used to being convinced to leave, used to being told that he wasted his time, that he he needed a cleaner space, a more functioning space, that it was time to stop “playing”; he wasn’t used to the easy, unflinching acceptance that Steve was showing him now.
”Can I see your sketches?” he asked quietly. They’d long had a system: Tony tinkered; Steve sketched. Tony had always spent a good deal of his time trying to sneak a peak at Steve’s sketches, but most of it was teasing, half hearted attempts to look over the top of the sketchbook; in the end, Tony always asked. Because it was amazing what Steve could do, amazing that the man could come down here, immerse himself into this mess, into the circus, and through it he could make art, take a blank piece of paper, a blank slate and create something beautiful far beyond Tony’s imagination, something that amazed him each and every time.
Steve ran his fingers through Tony's hair when he went still. He figured that he was just processing his words. While Steve did try to get Tony out of the workshop every once in a while, he knew that the man had been used to being pulled out by others before. Not that the man had outright told him so, but he figured that through the years spent together down there. He used to hear it a lot when Steve first started coming down to the workshop, when the Avengers were still getting on their feet ("Oh, don't tell me you're here to drag me out too,"). He heard it from time to time in Tony's conversation with JARVIS ("Sir? Col. Rhodes are requesting permission to enter." "Honeybear's just here to get me to come out again, isn't he? That rat. Let him in anyway,"). So when Steve wholeheartedly admitted that he would rather spend his time with Tony down in the lab where he was most comfortable was probably a new concept to him, even though they'd long been doing this. And he really would rather spend his time here. This was where the real Tony came out. This was where the persona fell away. The Tony that oozed charm to appease grubby businessmen on the Stark Industries board and to charm reporters off their feet? He didn't exist here. The Tony that worked best in the chaos of his workshop? The Tony that treated his bots like they were incompetent but really he loved them so much? The Tony that argued with JARVIS just to fill the silence? The Tony that played his music blaring loud in the workshop as to force himself not to think too hard? The Tony that invented, made, created? That was the real Tony, and Steve would take that Tony any day. If that meant being down in the workshop, then it was his favorite place to be. And it was. He made himself at home down there. It was pretty evident by all the random sketch pencils and pieces of paper left around that he's made his mark there.
When Tony asked about his sketches, he hesitated slightly and only for a moment. Only because he was trying to think of which sketches specifically to show him. He walked over to his little area where he liked to sketch and grabbed one of the books off the table before coming back to show Tony. There were countless of pictures, some of the Tower, some of the Avengers, some of Sharon and the kids (God Almighty, he forgot how much it hurt to see Sharon's face), but mostly it was of Tony. Tony working on some sort of gadget, Tony suiting up in the Iron Man suit, Tony petting Dummy affectionately. Steve always liked to think he did his best sketches around the man.
