Cardinalities
Tony had gotten most of the quintessential college stuff out of the way. Sex and parties and getting high in frat bathrooms- check. The sexuality crisis was new though. Other than a passing and passed over tinge of interest, Steven Grant Rogers appears to be the exception to a lot of rules.
Said exception to the rules was currently reorganizing his fridge magnets. Rhodey had left them here on move in day, the blackout poetry kind, with his own crudely assembled prose like ‘warm my flower’ and ‘carefully insert your kindness into my holes’. Tony had left them up as proof someone else had been here. It certainly wouldn’t help him get laid, but sometimes when night stumbled too quick into morning for Tony to catch hold of, he’d look at the fridge over the rim of a whiskey glass and feel less shitty about himself.
His sad affair with loneliness took a shuttering breath at the sight of Steve, pink cheeked and sipping wine out of a measuring glass. He was cross-legged on the tile floor, leaning weightlessly against the stainless steel. His sticky fingers nudged the letters around, peeling and unpeeling the cheap magnets from the fridge. Tony was wine warm and happy, poking at the bruises of isolation underneath kitchen lights and finding they no longer ached.
Steve’s hair was so pale it seemed to shimmer under the fluorescents. Tony made a mental note to swap the bulbs out for something that wouldn’t make his fingers shake with need. His friend was too good at that, chasing out the shadows from his ribs and replacing them with something tender and terrifying. His breath caught in his throat.
“Tony?”
Steves voice is soft with wine, shaking him out of revelry.
“Yes?”
Steve laughs, and it turns into a hiccup. Tony groans. He is such a lightweight.
“Where are we at?” Tony says, pencil poised with the air of practiced science.
Steve tilts the measuring glass in delicate circles, struggling to see where the Merlot ended, and glass began. Tony laughs again, unable to help himself, and Steve glares at him with all the ferocity of a kitten forced to take a bath. He sets it on the ground then, and looks a bit drunkenly pleased with his problem-solving skills.
“Half a cup left,” he finally shouts across the kitchen. Life and color seem to spill out of the holes Steve's silence had left. Huh- Tony hadn't noticed until the warmth had settled just how dim everything is without Steve.
“Well, you’re sufficiently shit faced, so we have our control variable.”
Steve rolls his eyes.
“You’re drunk too.”
“Am not,” Tony chides, but he's smiling, lilt to his voice like summer and music and entirely unplanned.
He blinks.
“Are too. You were staring at the walls like Professor Durk stares at pictures of his ex-wife.”
“Was not,” Tony says indignantly, piling off the kitchen stool and onto the floor.
He shuffles toward Steve, and nudges at him softly with socked feet. Steve does the same, and then they're tumbling over laughing and have to catch their breath.
“How far of a walk is your dorm from here?” Tony asks when he can breathe again, delight still echoing through his tone.
Steve blinks slowly, eyes on the ceiling.
“Twenty minutes, I think?”
A breath tumbles slowly through Tony's teeth, half of a hiss, and he shakes his head.
“I’d offer to drive you, but I probably shouldn’t.”
“Ha!” Steve waves a finger at him, “you are drunk.”
Tony just rolls his eyes.
“It’s too far for you to walk, princess,” Tony flicks him on the forehead and Steve makes to do the same before Tony wraps his palm around his, “You should sleep here.”
Steve’s hand freezes, and then curls back into his palm. The hum of the freezer is a droll procession behind them.
“How’d you get permission to live here anyways? First years are required to live on campus.”
Steve glues his eyes to the ceiling again, stuck like flies to honey.
“How do you think?”
The silence beats with a pulse as heady as his heart. The sounds rots in his chest next to shadow puppets that look too much like his father’s hands. Steve’s good at this too; replacing joy with the reminder that he wasn’t built for it. The vehicle of his heart is a scrap heap. The paint is chipped, dented with desperate fingers, and the wobble in this chest is the same as it was at four years old. Steve may be the exception, but he’s not a guarantee. He is everything Tony’s ever wanted, and nothing he’s ever had.
He slips through Tony’s fingers like sand in his dreams. It keeps him up at kitchen islands staring at fridge magnets. It makes him angry.
“Walk home if you want- watch out for big bad wolf.”
He stands, and then stumbles. Catches himself, embarrassed, and looks down at Steve. He’s still looking at the fucking ceiling.
“Night," he says when Steve doesn't look at him, shame chewing through the loneliness. Even inches away, Steve isn't close enough to touch.
When he hears the front door shut softly, he pads socked feet towards the entryway. Looks at bare walls and empty couches and freshly rearranged magnets.
‘Your kindness is quieter than I thought.’
Tony finishes the bottle of wine, and then another. He stares at the fridge over the whites of his knuckles. Night trips over morning. Sleep never comes.