* * * *
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
The workshop was lit with blue lights, little circles were calmly floating around the air, like he and Tony were standing in the middle of an entire solar system. If you didn't look too closely, they were just that—circles, some kinds of mythical orbs, but if you really looked at them, you could see that each circle, each light contained a world of its own. There were lines in between, ellipses and little objects rotating around each other, pushing and pulling, and while Steve didn't know what any of this meant specifically, he sure could appreciate the sheer elegance of it.
"These are all atoms," Tony explained, stepping behind Steve. He laid his arms on top of his and guided Steve's outstretched fingers into the lightbulb right in front of them. "They're pretty similar to uranium. They have the same transgenic properties," he murmured next to Steve's ear. He kept pushing his hand forward. "It's unique, though, as it simply absorbs any kind of vibrations, or any sort of kinetic energy directed at it." At first, Steve was sure his finger would just push through the projections, but they started to react to his proximity, first swirling around one finger, and then around the others. "It's called Vibranium. Like I said, my dad once possessed a small amount of it back in the forties, but he decided it was best to forge the whole deal into a weapon, instead of keeping parts for research."
Steve swallowed, and he would tell Tony, he would tell him everything. But not now—this moment wasn't about him.
"This," Tony breathed, his whole body pressed against Steve's, "is going to save my life."
Steve felt his eyes water and turned around in Tony's arms. It had saved his life, too. And, in a way, it was saving him now once again.
And then, because he couldn't help himself, he pulled Tony into his arms. He still couldn't quite grasp how he had gotten here. Before the mission, he had read Tony's files a thousand times and he had believed, had known without fault, that he wouldn't like this man. That Tony Stark would just annoy him. That, after everything he knew about the man, there was nothing left worth learning. But he knew better, now. He had seen Tony at his best and worst and he had never, never been so glad to be proven wrong.
"You did it," he marveled, and it wasn't an act, it was pure, unadulterated adoration. "How?" he asked and then he just let Tony's soothing voice wash over him, the excitement buzzing in each syllable. They watched the old tape of Howard again, and he felt Tony wiggling uncomfortably next to him until Steve laid a hand on his knee and pulled him closer. He patiently explained the schematics of the early Stark Expo-model to Steve, although at the end of it, the structures still didn't look like anything to him. He did laugh at JARVIS' joke about the Belgium waffles stands though.
Together, it took only a couple of hours to prepare the workshop for the synthesizing process. Tony had put his goggles and working clothes on and it took more force of will than Steve liked to admit to keep his fingers to himself.
If he'd once thought that Tony was a force of nature with handling reporters, he clearly hadn't seen this coming. Seeing Tony like this, watching him planning and calculating, watching him creating... It was—how had Pepper put it?—It was humbling.
When they were finished, the workshop was a complete mess. There were these huge pipes Tony insisted had to be positioned exactly in these directions (which meant they had to drill several holes in the walls). In the middle of it all, Tony had installed a huge laser.
The last part was a tiny silver triangle.
"That's just for tryouts," Tony winked as he clipped the triangle into a pedestal at the end of the room. "If this works, I will probably be able to build a whole tower out of this." He grinned at Steve cheekily and Jesus, he was so beautiful; more so than he would ever dare admit aloud. More so than he'd allowed himself to think until that moment. Most thoughts like that were beaten down the second they surfaced, but he couldn't deny it while staring right at him. Tony was beautiful, looking as he did now: so vibrant and full of life, he was gorgeous.
