The ache of first spring; everything is growing but me
When he wakes up alone, his bed cooling quickly with no other body in it, no sounds scuffling outside his door, no clatters of silverware and mugs, he feels it again.
The ache. The hollowness.
It’s not every day. Because some days he has his people around, the ones who have stuck around and some new ones (young baby spiders and a slightly murderous potato-slinging child who have badass moms and aunts) and it’s okay. Sometimes he wakes up with a crick in his neck and an always cold baby spider trying to burrow into his side; sometimes he falls asleep in his lab and there’s a firm cool red and green bicep under his cheek; sometimes he sweats out all his hurt in a pair of boxing gloves with the one person always down to get a cheeseburger with him; sometimes he hears that sweet Irish lilt and is proud instead of reminiscent; sometimes he’s in someone else’s bed and he’s not panicking because of the strawberry hair or ebony skin contrasting with him and he’s safe. But they can’t be there every day.
Pepper has her own life and she’s always been more solo than Tony, less needy than him. She likes her space but also loves him so they have their once-a-month sleepover. (She’s busy, he gets it, Tony was doing her job before and much less efficiently and he was so exhausted then. So what if she doesn’t like to sleep tangled every night, so what if she prefers to have a side and likes quiet nights.)
Rhodey has his military thing that Tony completely appreciates. Plus the avengers, Rhodey has been an angel helping him out with that mess. And though when Rhodey touches down in New york he always spends the first night with Tony, he’s still gone a lot. Especially now.
And the kids. Petey. If there’s anyone Tony feels satiates his need to be around people, it’s Petey. Cause Petey is just as clingy but painfully shy and Tony is having a last teasing him out of his shell. But Petey has a family. He has school and girl problems and debate club. He has Queens to patrol and sweet old ladies to help with kittens and crossing the street. Harley is only available once in a blue moon, busy with his baby sister whom Tony adores, and taking care of his ma. Viz, well Viz isn’t exactly his kid, more like his grandson/ nephew but Viz is off-discovering himself. And Tony loves when he comes back with a new recipe and no concept of taste, and loves when Viz straightens him out in his lab and lets him rest against his synthetic arm, but Tony knows it’s temporary.
It’s all Temporary.
He misses the other temporary fixtures in his life.
He missed Natasha and Clint. He missed Bruce and Thor. And on very terrible lonely nights, he misses Steve. (He misses Steve in every sentence. Because Before he was Steve, he was Captain America, the most important thing to Howard and therefore Tony. He shaped Tony before Tony was even a thought. Tony spent his life living towards an ideal that didn’t exist. Legends must die, he learns when Captain America becomes just Steve.) (And again when Steve becomes just Captain America-- always the better man.)
Tony loves Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy. He loves Peter, Harley, Viz, and Fri. He likes the routine he has. And he knows he can count on them because after all the sins he’s committed, they're still here. And not because they’re not aware, they are, they ask questions and prod, they provoke and wonder; but they're still here— after knowing.
But Tony also loves the others. He misses them. He craves them when he’s alone and there are no other people filling the void.
They’ve talked about it, Pepper and Rhodey (Happy only contributed in grunts) about what would happen if it got too bad. Tony is working on transparency, and practicing what he preaches. They talked about what to do if the void was too wide and unsatiable. He agreed to their rules.
- call someone from the list first. (the list being
- Rhodey
- Pepper
- Happy
- Viz
- May so he can talk to Peter
- Helen so he can talk to Harley
- Friday (who always ends up just playing an old video of Jarvis)
- cry first drinks second and only with an age-appropriate friend
- Don’t call Steve
- Don’t search for a fight
- don’t look for the others (Tony refuses to call them the Rogues, it validates them and makes them sound cool)
- Don’t let the others in the house (his heart) without supervision.
And they, Pepper and Rhodey, really thought they would come back. Vultures, they called them. They would come back, knowing how that Tony was grieving and tired. That he was soft-hearted. That he was sensitive and forgiving. They would take him paying for their mistakes at Leipzig, Budapest, and Romania as part of his penance, evidence of his remorse. They would delude themselves into thinking that all that he did was for them. And they would be right.
Tony revised and ratified, revised and ratified, again and again, the Accords with the Heroes he met in 2012 in mind. Tony didn’t hunt them down and spill their oh-so-secret location, because he was thinking of the before versions of them. Tony recruited and initiated new heroes with the others in mind, thinking of all the new protocols and boundaries he had to learnwith blood in his mouth because of them. He designed outfits and created independent entities, separated the Avengers and SI, with the others in mind. Tony, Rhodey, and Maria wrote failsafe after failsafe with every single one of their actions in mind.
Tony did it for them. They were not lost completely. Perhaps Steve and Wanda were. But the others? Tony wished they would come back. He wanted them to see him better without them. He wanted them to be better with him. He wanted the pieces they had stolen back, and he wanted to be able to give them freely and trust that they would care. (He held all the pieces they gave him, all their secrets and wants, all the quiet love they had, all the ways they were more than soldiers, more than heroes, more than dangerous. He cared for those pieces, had made parts of himself with them in mind.)
Tony didn’t think they would come back, not really. They would be distorted and rippling reflections of past versions— if they came back at all. Mostly he thought they would fade away. That as everything around him kept growing, as more pieces were being left on the counter for him to pick up, as more people smiled as they left things with him, the others would simply fade.
It was only on those days that he woke up alone with only the void with him, no chatter, no buzz, no wonderfully solid colorful people to shoulder him, that he thinks they would come back.
And when they did, along with some others, the order surprised him.