TONY
His bedroom was disturbingly quiet. During those last days, there had always been sound. The noises of hundreds of construction sites all around the city, the sounds of renewal and recreating, but also weeps of goodbye and loss.
Today though—today the city was thoroughly quiet, a minute's silence stretching into hours for every single victim.
Even before the invasion, when Stark Tower had still been heavily under construction itself, there had been Steve's breathing from his makeshift bed at the other side of the penthouse. The sound of pencil on paper, creaks and cricks and some indication to give away the fact that, yes, someone other than Tony lived here.
There was none of that now. Steve and the twin agents had gone to DC to file in their mission reports and debrief with Fury about whatever had made SHIELD fire a fucking nuke at New York.
With Steve gone, there was nothing left to do but study the ceiling, and listen to nothing.
He would come back for him. He had said as much, right?
Silence.
God, could silence kill.
Tony knew from experience that the Earth could never truly be silent. Even in the quietest part of night, something stirred and created sound. An electric buzzing within a power cable, the whirring of a thousand little cogwheels, the pulses of magnetic fields all around—there was always something. Something to remind the world that it was still turning.
But right here—right now? The silence was deafening.
Nothing should be this silent. Silence was where the dead lived, and he hadn't died, had he?
He tried to concentrate on brighter things. Like Steve's ass in the Captain America uniform. Or Steve's shoulders... his waist, his groin, his thighs—really, it didn't matter... Steve in the uniform was one of if not the sexiest thing Tony had ever seen in his life. Even if the idiot had been lying to him since the moment they met. Tony was only human, and he wasn't ashamed to admit that he'd nearly caved in the moment Steve had first stepped up in the damn uniform. And the way he'd looked at him the whole time... with these huge sad eyes. If Tony was really honest with himself—he had been playing a losing game from the start. Trying to cut Steve out of his life had felt like cutting off a part of his body.
It had certainly not stopped him from letting Steve wallow in his guilt for as long as possible, though. The fucker damn well deserved it.
Steve Rowan. God he'd been so stupid. That was probably what had angered him most. That he hadn't seen it. That SHIELD had been able to trick him like that. He'd known that there was more to Steve than met the eye. He was obviously so much more than just a soldier, and certainly no personal assistant material. He was way too sassy for that, and—honestly—way too stubborn and short-tempered. Tony had known all that, and yet... he'd been too close and too much in love to see it.
And Steve hadn't told him. All this damn time and he hadn't deemed it necessary to...
Tony sighed and turned on his stomach, pressing his face into the pillow underneath. It was stupid to think about it any longer. They couldn't change the past, and Steve loved him. Really loved him. He'd made a mistake, a huge damn mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. He was genuinely sorry, and Tony might not be the most mature person on the planet, but he was able to forgive when it counted.
Did he trust Steve? Maybe not yet. But he would, eventually. They would overcome this, and they would move on.
Steve only had to come back.
