Steve Rogers wasn’t dreaming. He had pinched himself several times, to be sure. He was definitely lying in bed beside a naked Tony Stark - yes, the Tony Stark - watching him sleep. The soft blue glow of Tony’s arc reactor illuminated his striking features, casting deep and intriguing shadows. Too keyed up to sleep, and tempted by the play of light on his lover’s face, Steve slipped out of bed. He padded quietly to the dining table to retrieve his sketchbook and some pencils, then returned to the bedroom.
Tony was sprawled out on his back, with one arm up, overhead, and the other stretched out over the pillows. There was a very rumpled sheet haphazardly draped over parts of his torso. One of his legs had hooked up and over the sheet. His hair was sticking out in all directions, and Steve could see one particularly goofy spot where he’d tangled his fingers in Tony’s hair. He had a momentary impulse to smooth it down, but remembering how his hair ended up like that was enough to persuade Steve to leave it exactly as it was.
Seeing Tony like this, relaxed and off-guard, free from the defenses of snappy one-liners and casual coolness, felt profoundly intimate and important to Steve. The infamous playboy had lots of sexual experience, but somehow, he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who let his guard down that easily. It felt as though Steve had been invited into a top-secret bunker, and was being allowed to glimpse something altogether rare and wonderful. His heart swelled at the thought of what a precious gift this was.
With a tender smile on his face, Steve began sketching the sleeping figure. It wasn’t easy, in the wan blue light of the arc reactor, but Steve didn’t want to disrupt Tony’s sleep with another light, and wanted to somehow work with the light and shadows present in the darkened room. Where his earlier sketch exuded cockiness and raw sensuality, this portrait broadcast affection and trust. In the absence of their usual states of either smirking cynicism or slick seduction, Tony’s features were soft and warm and approachable. He looked contented, with a faint smile that seemed determined to linger well into the wee hours of the morning. Steve’s painstaking attention to detail allowed him to capture subtleties in his lover’s features, using the effects of the strange, steady blue glow to convey not just the shadows - something everyone tended to focus on in Tony - but the light. The shadows served primarily to stand in contrast to the unselfconscious beauty and goodness he saw in Tony. Maybe most people didn’t see that in him, but most people weren’t Steve Rogers.
When he finally set the sketchbook aside and crawled back into bed, he curled up against Tony, draping an arm and leg across him and resting his head on his lover’s outstretched arm. Stirring a little, Tony pressed a sleepy kiss to Steve’s hair, softly murmuring his name. Steve sighed contentedly, allowing himself to drift off to sleep.