Chapter 3
The rest of the day goes like this:
Steve does a few sketches of Tony, until he’s familiarized himself with Tony’s body with a pencil instead of just with his hands, and then he goes ahead and reacquaints his hands (and the rest of him) with Tony’s body again, because there’s only so much sketching Steve can take until he has to reach out and kiss that look off Tony’s face.
They stay in bed, mostly, and Steve doesn’t notice the time passing due to Tony’s scarily technological curtains that can make it seem like any time he wants. Eventually their stomachs start being loud enough that they notice, and Steve says, “We could go to the supermarket again, see if our carts are still there. The frozen peas are probably thawed by now.”
“I’m so sorry for pulling you away from your previously-frozen peas,” Tony sighs, his chest falling and rising rapidly from round- three? four? Steve’s having trouble keeping track, and he’s loving it.
Steve gives him a peck that turns into more than a peck, and they make out again for a while until Steve’s stomach makes a sound like it’s about to charge, and Tony starts laughing into Steve’s mouth.
“We can always pick up where we left off later,” Tony suggests, and Steve kisses his nose and asks, “Takeout?”
“Now you’re speaking my language, Steve,” Tony says, and is about to distract Steve from getting takeout by dragging him in again for another kiss when they both startle at Tony’s phone ringing.
“You should get that,” Steve says. “You kind of went off the grid after your supermarket trip. They might think you got kidnapped again.”
Tony makes a noise, sighs, “Wouldn’t want that,” and gets out of bed to rummage through his sweatpants, which are lying on a heap on the ground. He comes out triumphant, beaming at Steve who gives him a doofy thumbs-up back.
“Hello?”
“Tony,” Pepper says, and Tony wonders distantly how many meetings he’s missed. Enough to give her another raise, that’s for sure. “Where the hell are you?”
Tony checks. He has eighteen missed calls and thirty-two missed texts. Oops. Definitely another raise.
“I’m home, Pepper-pot, don’t worry,” Tony says, sitting back on the edge of the bed. He tries not to let the grin seep into his voice when Steve slides a hand over his chest, kissing his neck. “Totally fine over here, don’t bother coming around.”
There’s a silence on the other end of the phone that Tony doesn’t particularly like. “Tony, are you with someone?”
“You mean with someone, or WITH someone?”
“You agreed to stop having sex while on the phone to me, I remember this, you signed a form about it, it was the early 2000s, you shouldn’t have forgotten yet.”
“I remember,” Tony croaks, leaning his head sideways so Steve can get a better angle to suck on his neck. He’s going to look like a leper when he finally resurfaces from this room. He’s kind of afraid to see his reflection. “Is there a point to this call, my lovely Pepper-pot?”
Steve pauses, his lips stilling on Tony’s neck, and Tony gives Steve a look that is probably more offended than he means it to be and mouths, assistant.
Oh, Steve mouths back, nodding, and Tony gestures at his neck.
Continue, he mouths, and Steve huffs a laugh and does.
“I was checking to see you haven’t locked yourself in the workshop for three days again,” Pepper sighs. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“A-okay, Pep.”
“Good to hear it, Mr. Stark. Now, back to the last question-”
“I’m not WITH someone at the moment, but there was definite WITH-ness happening ten minutes ago. He’s still here, and he can hear you, judging from his proximity to the phone.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Pepper says, in a pleasantly exasperated voice, but Tony’s talking over her, handing Steve the phone and telling him to say hi.
Steve eyes the phone like it’s a bomb about to go off, looking like he’s much rather keep sucking on Tony’s neck, but Tony gestures encouragingly at it until Steve puts it to his ear and says, cautiously, “Hello?”
“Hello,” Pepper says, after a flustered pause. “I’m Virginia Potts, Mr. Stark’s assistant. Might I know the name of the very first fling Tony Stark has ever put on the phone to me?”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Potts,” Steve says, unsure at how to respond to the other part and feeling strange about talking to her while wearing only a sheet. “Steve. My name, I mean. Is Steve. Rogers. Steve Rogers is my name.”
Tony is shaking with the giggles he’s holding back, and Steve shoves him lightly so Tony rocks with the motion and then sways right back into Steve’s shoulder. Shut up, he mouths.
“Steve Rogers,” she repeats, sounding doubtful and something else Steve can’t identify. “You don’t mean Steve Rogers, the artist? In Brooklyn?”
“That’s me,” Steve says, surprised. “Unless there’s another artist named Steve Rogers who lives in Brooklyn.”
“I- no, there isn’t, it’s just you,” Pepper says, stammering a little. “You’re- oh my gosh, I love your work, it’s stunning.”
“Thank you,” Steve says, shrugging helplessly when Tony frowns at him questioningly. She likes my work,he mouths, and Tony says, “Oh yeah, shit,” and Steve elbows him.
“I’m always trying to get Tony to buy one of yours for the gallery,” Pepper continues, “but he never will.”
“Well, I will now,” Tony says loudly, leaning up so his mouth is an inch away from the mouthpiece. “It’s not his fault I never actually did more than glance at his stuff whenever you dragged me around showing it to me. I’m going to adorn the walls with it.”
“Tony,” Steve says, embarrassed, and Tony bites his shoulder. “Adorn,” he repeats, like a shoulder-biting idiot.
“Adorn,” Pepper says, and Steve can tell she’s smiling over the phone. “Right. Well, you are a welcome change to who Tony usually brought home.”
“Thank… you.”
“Thank you,” Tony yells, and Steve rolls onto his stomach so Tony can’t reach the mouthpiece.
Tony wriggles up to where Steve is lying, and they engage in a silent wrestling match to get to the phone, which Steve holds over his head. It’s just close enough so Steve hears Pepper say, “-was lovely talking to you, Steve Rogers.”
“You too,” Steve says, bringing it as close as he can without letting Tony near it. He bites down on a yelp when Tony starts tickling his ribs, and tries to bat Tony’s hands away with the hand that isn’t holding the phone.
“Please remind Tony he has a meeting in two days with the Japanese Ambassador,” Pepper continues, words Steve has only previously heard in a movie, and Steve blurts, “Yep, sure,” and then, “Goodbye,” when Pepper says it. He hangs up and throws the phone to the other side of the bed- it’s a very big bed, big enough for Steve and Tony and possibly five others- so he’s free to launch himself at Tony.
“No tickling,” Steve says, laughing along with Tony as he takes Tony’s hands and pins them on either side of his head. “Who tickles people who are on the phone, god.”
“Sorry,” Tony says, “so sorry,” sounding not sorry one bit, and Steve’s leaning in to kiss that smiling mouth again when his stomach makes itself heard again.
Steve groans in frustration and drops his head onto Tony’s shoulder.
“We were going to order in,” Tony points out, and Steve nods into his shoulder. “Phone distracted me. Then you distracted me.”
“So sorry,” Tony says, grinning like a cat, and Steve kisses him, keeping it short, before rolling over to grab Tony’s cellphone from where it’s tangled in the sheets.
They order Chinese, and manage to make it to the door when it arrives. Tony directs Steve through his house, which seems a lot bigger than it was when they were going to the basement and then to a guest bedroom.
“Put it on my account, thanks, Kels,” Tony says to the delivery girl, who smiles faintly and then glances over to Steve, eyebrows raised. Steve gives her a tight smile and a nod, wondering if a photo of this will be in a magazine later, and has seconds thoughts about walking around in jeans and nothing else.
Tony suggests TV, and Steve nods and they end up watching five episodes of Brooklyn Nine Nine, the food getting cold as they forget to eat it as they watch the episodes and talk. At several point they get into a good-natured debate that they pause the program for and argue for a while until one of them suggests they unpause the show, and the cycle continues.
Steve forfeits chopsticks for a fork and guffaws as Tony tries and fails to use the chopsticks they gave them.
“Just- just use a fork, jesus, they’re right there, they give them to the dumb Americans to use,” Steve chokes out as he watches Tony drop food on his shirt again. Tony had decided to wear the hoodie and sweatpants again, obviously not wanting to give the delivery girl a show of the scars on his chest.
Tony whines and settles for bringing up his carton too close to his mouth so he hardly has to lift the food, and pretty much ends up eating it straight out of the carton, no chopsticks needed, and Steve laughs until he’s bright red.
He stops eventually, wheezing, shoulder shaking. “I haven’t laughed that hard in ages,” he says honestly, because for some reason he feels safer here than he does in a therapy session, and god knows he’s been to a lot of those. There’s something about the darkening room, Rosa grinning on the screen in the background, the casual way Tony has tangled his legs with Steve’s on the couch.
Tony just shrugs, shovelling noodles into his mouth. “I should make you laugh like that more often,” he says, and pauses to chew. He swallows, and says, “You should- y’know, stick around. So I can do that. The making-you-laugh thing.” He looks down at his food as he says it.
Steve’s breath suddenly stings in his throat in a way that it hasn’t ever since he grew out of his asthma. He’s been hoping Tony is as enamoured as Steve is, that the last day and a half has been just as good for Tony as it has been for Steve, that he wants to keep seeing Steve as much as Steve wants to keep seeing Tony, which is an embarrassing amount.
Horrifyingly, Steve finds himself saying, “Sure, for as long as you’ll have me,” and Tony looks up and his lips part and they both forget about Brooklyn Nine Nine after that.
The second morning they wake up together, it’s in Tony’s house and Tony is snoring softly into Steve’s ear, better than a lullaby.
Tony wakes up when Steve gets out of bed this time, and sits up, his jaw cracking around a yawn.
“Not to say I wouldn’t love it if you walked around naked forever,” Tony says, and Steve’s heart leaps at forever, “but you’ve been wearing those clothes for two days now.”
Steve looks down at the shirt he had been pulling on. He supposes it must stink now.
“You could borrow something of mine,” Tony tosses out, and Steve eyes Tony’s torso and tries to find a way to say it without sounding offensive.
“I have a couple of shirts that I got in the wrong size,” Tony says, smiling at Steve’s expression. “They’ll be a little snug, but they’ll do.”
Steve nods, says, “Thanks,” and goes to the drawer Tony is pointing at. He pulls out a sweatshirt, takes off his own shirt, and, snorting at Tony’s noise of appreciation, puts on the sweatshirt. It is snug, pulling tight across his pecs and arms, but it could be worse. “Thank you,” he says again, and turns around, pausing long enough that Tony says, “What?”
“I was thinking I could go for a run,” Steve says. “I usually do, before breakfast. I could come back after, we could eat together? It’s pretty early.”
“Yeah, sure, what time is- oh god, seven thirty,” Tony moans as he sees his cellphone. He waves his hand at Steve. “Go crazy, I have to work out some stuff on my tablet anyway. Apparently I’ve been slacking.”
“Sorry,” Steve says, catching the hint of Tony’s smile with his own mouth, bending down so he can kiss Tony properly.
Tony strokes a hand through Steve’s hair, maybe more fond than he should be of a person he’s known for two and a half days. “Worth it.”
Steve grins at the last thing Tony said to him all the way to his usual jogging route, which takes longer to get to since he started out from Tony’s.
It’s not long until he sees a familiar back up ahead, and he grins harder as he falls into step with Sam Wilson. “On your left.”
Sam groans like he always does, looking over at him. His eyes do a quick sweep up and down, and he chuckles. “Man, you look like you’re blazed out of your mind.”
“I’m not stoned, Sam,” Steve says. “Just- happy.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Sam snorts. “Happy pills, more like. How’s Stark? It is Tony Stark, right? The Tony Stark?”
“Yeah, it’s him.”
“Holy SHIT.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Steve says, swerving to avoid stepping on a stubborn pigeon that refuses to move. He likes that about New York, even the pigeons are stubborn. “His assistant said she loved my work.”
“You do have fans on the up-high,” Sam nods, his breath coming heavier. “So, is Stark as good as the tabloids say?”
“I’m not talking about that with you.”
Sam butts their shoulders together. “Man, if you don’t talk about it with me, who are you gonna talk about it with? Bucky doesn’t come back for two months.”
“I’m not discussing my sex life with either of you,” Steve says, lips twitching, and Sam laughs triumphantly, even doing a little skip as they jog.
“My man’s got a sex life,” he crows, and Steve hisses at him to shut up. Sam is oblivious as he claps, whooping loudly and making several passerbys glance at them as they go past. “Took you long enough, man. Haven’t you guys both had a dry streak, what was it, four years?”
“Not talking about this with you,” Steve says, and picks up the pace a little so Sam has to yell at him and run faster.
“Are you dating,” Sam pants a while later, when they’re almost at the park. “Or is this just a Tony Stark thing? ‘Cause I don’t think he makes a habit of doing this sort of thing anymore, let alone keeping them for two days.”
“He didn’t keep me,” Steve says. “He isn’t keeping me.” The idea makes his chest twinge, not unpleasantly. He likes the sound of that, of Tony keeping him, or maybe Steve getting to keep Tony, or maybe, if they’re lucky, they’d get to keep each other. Steve knows it isn’t all going to be lying in bed or on the couch, having sex for half the time and talking the other half and somehow fitting all the other living stuff, but Steve thinks it might be nice, even if it’s only for a while.
Steve doesn’t think it is only for a while, though.
Tony rings Pepper and says, “So I might have fallen a little harder than I meant to.”
Pepper sighs. It’s a comforting sound. “Two days, Tony?”
“And a half,” Tony corrects. “I don’t know how many hours it’s been.” He’s lying. “He’s- I don’t even know how it happened, Pep, one second I was deciding what cereal to buy and the next I was tumbling into bed with an incredible stranger who I felt like I’ve known my whole life after I had been talking to him for an hour. It’s insane, Pep, this kind of shit doesn’t happen to me, I think he feels the same way, which is terrifying, oh my god. We watched TV for hours last night, and we kept losing what was happening on the show because we got caught up in talking, I hardly noticed how long it had been until I looked up and it was dark outside. And he’s- fuck, he’s great in bed, Pep-”
“Didn’t need to know, but still happy for you-”
“-but that’s only, like, a hundredth of what’s great about him, and I didn’t even know he existed last week, apart from those paintings I never looked at.” He leans his forehead on the bedframe. “This doesn’t happento me, Pep,” he admits softly. “I don’t- he’s so-”
“How about,” Pepper suggests, gentler than she would’ve been years ago, “you stop freaking yourself out and just see where this goes?”
Tony thinks that’s a good suggestion. He’s truly matured.
“I’ve truly matured,” Tony informs Pepper, who laughs louder than she should.
Steve comes back to Tony’s house when Tony’s mooching around the kitchen, and Tony stares as Steve drinks half a litre of orange juice in one go.
He makes a face after he’s done, screwing the cap back on. He twists the container, and then says, “Oh. Pulp.”
“Pulp is fantastic,” Tony says automatically, and then they’re arguing about the benefits of orange juice with pulp versus no pulp, which Tony thinks he’s winning until Steve says, “Tony,” and Tony says, “Yeah,” thinking Steve’s going to go off on another rant about the amazingness that is Non-Pulp, and then Steve says, “Our lives are going to go on and I’d really like to have you in mine after we have to go back to them. Our lives. Is what I mean.”
Tony stops, his prepared speech about pulp going out of his mind.
“What I’m trying to say is,” Steve says, hand scraping through his hair like he’s trying to pull it out, “I’d like to keep seeing you after we have to actually get out of bed and do things again. If you want.”
Tony blinks a few times, tries to think of what the mature thing to do would be before remembering he’s in a hoodie and sweatpants he’s been wearing for three days and is eating cereal that is aimed at kids seven or under.
“That’d be- good,” Tony finds himself saying, and Steve looks less like he’s going to pass out, so Tony continues. “That’d be great, I’d like that. I’d really like that.”
Steve nods, his smile a little like he’s got hit over the head but he’s happy about it for some reason. “Good. That’s good. I- good.”
He puts his hands on his hips, and Tony notices for the first time how sweaty he is. And how much he’s wearing Tony’s shirt, how much better it looks on Steve than it does on Tony. And how flushed Steve is from running.
“We don’t have to do the living, doing-things just right now, right,” Tony says, stepping closer. “We can do the bed thing for, what, another day?”
“Or two,” Steve nods some more, head bobbing like a maniac. Then he scowls. “No, you have a meeting tomorrow, Pepper told me to tell you.”
“Well,” Tony says, sliding his hand over the drawstrings of Steve’s pants, “I’ll tell her I distracted you enough that you forgot. Tragic accident. We’re both all torn up about it.”
“So very sad,” Steve says, and Tony stops him nodding by pulling him down for a kiss.
Pepper calls around eight in the morning the next day, and Tony rubs his face into Steve’s bare chest as Pepper yells down the phone at him.
“Sorry, Miss Potts,” Steve says when Tony hands the phone to him.
“I’m the absolute opposite of sorry,” Tony says. “Whatever the opposite of sorry is, I’m the personification of it-”
“Shush,” Steve says, and tries to shift away so Tony can’t get close to the phone, which ends up in another tickle war as Pepper warns Tony that if he has sex while on the phone to her, he owes her half a million dollars.