Tell Me When You Know

"That was..."

"Unpleasant?" Adina prompted when Tony trailed off.

The genius scoffed. "Too mild a word for the experience I just had. I was gonna say, 'awful'."

"Still too mild, I suppose," Adina jested, reclining back in her chair as she regarded Tony. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be consoling your weeping teammates?"

Tony scoffed again — in amusement, this time. "Why do you hate them so much?"

"I don't hate them," Adina rolled her eyes at the disbelieving eyebrow Tony raised. "Okay, maybe a little."

"Why?"

Adina shrugged. "Too entitled."

"I think superheroes are allowed to be a little entitled. One of the perks of being an Avenger. Didn't you read the fine print?" Tony laughed at the woman's lukewarm reaction. "I mean we did save New York from an alien invasion."

"And from SHIELD. I think you should add that to your resume from here onwards." She smirked at his puzzled look. "The nuke?"

Tony's forehead smoothed in realisation. "You know."

"That the missile wasn't a coordinated effort with the Avengers to destroy the motherboard of the alien army vessel? Yes."

Tony sighed.

"You know," Adina said in a voice that promised anger sourced from hurt. "I would have thought being friends meant you'd share something like that with me."

He flinched. "You would have gone after them if I had," he muttered as a poor excuse, but a true one.

Adina didn't deny it either — just like he knew she wouldn't. "They would have deserved it." She paused, and then continued in a largely nonchalant tone that didn't fool Tony, "You could have died."

"It would have been for our planet. There are worse ways to go."

Adina's gaze shifted to him, and it nearly made Tony flinch again. The rawness in that stare, it was humbling. "I could have lost you." The woman didn't bother hiding the shake in her voice this time. "I could have lost my best friend. I could have lost the only man who ever cared to stay."

"Adina," Tony's voice was reduced to a mere whisper. "Fuck, Adina. I'm so sorry, honey." He met the seven–step distance between Adina's office door and her chair in three long strides, bundling her up in his arms. He didn't care that he had to bend in an odd position that would later give him grief in his back. All he cared for, in that second, was the woman who had been there for him through thick and thin, and to whom he had promised the same. "I'm so sorry, sweet."

Her arms tightened around him in what Tony recognised as a desperate plea to not let go. He tautened his embrace in a response that promised eternity.

~~~~~

A half–an–hour and several gooey emotions — that both of them would deny sharing till the last of their respective breaths; a secret, amongst many others, that they'd take to their graves — later, Tony sat in the visitor's chair, opposite Adina's intimidatingly tall one, hands fiddling with the paper weight he had plucked from the table, sending several papers flying on the floor which had earned him a death glare that vowed retribution.

"What is our future now?"

"Uh, Tony, you know I love you, but honey, we're just friends. I mean, I didn't know you loved me that way but my maven, we wouldn't be able to last together for more than a—" Adina was cut off by one of the cushions to her head, her laugh echoing through the room as she threw her head back in unconcealed delight.