Imagine Tony growing up not not knowing a gentle hand or a kind word. He sees displays of affection as rewards. Love is only given for being an unattainable figure of perfection.
He sees it on TV, love between family, friends, lovers. A gift, one given to those only worthy enough to be loved. He craves that, that status, that symbol, that trophy he can use to proclaim that he also deserves to be loved.
And he reaches for it. He reaches, and reaches. He reaches when Howard beats him for not being the son he was supposed to be. Reaches when his parents die, and nobody is there to measure how high he must go. Reaches when he's kidnapped, shrapnel in his heart, his life on the line.
He reaches until he doesn't even know what he's reaching for anymore.
Now he’s older. He has friends now. He has lovers, a lot of them, enough that the media decides he's a playboy now. They don't come and go because he actually is one, he wouldn’t want to make a person feel as unloved as him.
They always notice something. He doesn’t know how, it’s like they can sense the lack of knowing how to be loved. They can feel how he doesn’t deserve gentle hands holding his. He doesn’t deserve to be comforted in the night when his past comes back to haunt his dreams. He doesn’t deserve to be told he was right, it was worth it, he isn’t wrong for trying to do the right thing.
His lovers come and go because nothing fills that hole he's tried to fix his whole life.
Deep down he knows. He knows he’s so easy to rush at the first sign of love.
All it takes is the smallest hint of somebody appreciating the man behind the mask. He clings to it, he romanticizes it, he has nightmares of losing that feeling. This is what love is, right? When Rhodey combs his fingers through your hair. When he's worried sick after you pushed yourself to go after the Mandarin and ended up bedridden. When Pepper sits at the foot of your bed and goes on about everything you missed once you finally get out of rehab.
Romance is when you can’t get those things out of your head and they burn your chest (or what's left of your chest). It’s when they ferment in your thoughts and you feel guilt for being so easily appreciated. That’s what it is, that’s what it is.
What else could romance be? What kind of playboy would he be, questioning if he even knows what romance is. Questioning if he’s ever felt it before.
"I'm not finding the right person. I'm not ready. I need to get used to this." He repeats it until it feels true.
He always thought he'd finally feel loved when he could go out on his own. Childish expectations made him think he'd meet the one. Some magical person who'd make him feel whole. That other half people seemed to have in every show, movie, or wedding his parents had dragged him along to.
The only thing that's ever made him feel at peace like that was when he went to the bar to fill that hole with liquor.
But he doesn't do that anymore.
Now he's always empty.
It irks him. Maybe he's broken. Years of not being loved leaving him unable to finally enjoy the experience.
He tries, and he tries, and he can't for the life of him figure out how to mend the hole in his heart. The one that throbs when he's wide awake in bed with tears spilling down his face. The one that tremors when he remembers he's a human who has to eat and take breaks.
His remnants of a heart that shatters when blood that isn't his own is spilled.
He ignores it for years. He chases after every sign of love and appreciation, kissing, romance, sex, how else would he show love? That’s why people love him, right? To get those things?
He joins the avengers, he builds, he fights, he dies sometimes, he comes back to life, he keeps fighting.
His heart aches.
He’s beyond trying to save himself from the pain now. It's a part of him, he's learned to live with his eternal heartburn.
Then he falls asleep on the couch in the tower and wakes up with Bruce's weighted blanket draped over him. He goes down to his workshop, usually locked and secure and finds coffee waiting in Nat's favorite mug.
He brushes it off. One time things. He puts out of his mind. The fact someone thought of him enough to take care of him without the promise of anything in return.
It keeps happening. Maybe he'd never noticed it before. He can look back and point out all the times Rhodey had fought assholes in school who’d pick on him. That quiet little know-it-all Stark kid. He remembered how he’d thank Rhodey, he’d offer so much to him, but nothing was ever given or taken between them. He stares at his ceiling at 5 in the morning. He dozes to the hum of traffic in the streets below as he tries to figure out what it means.
He catches a glimpse of his face in one of Steve's sketchbooks. He can't describe the way his heart swells. It's too much, too sudden, before he excuses himself. He bites his lip as he tries (and fails) to keep the tears from falling. He can't allow himself to process it, being thought of when he wasn't there. Enough where Steve had taken the time to etch down whatever thoughts he had and turn them into art. Art inspired by Tony.
What was wrong with him? It felt so weird, so foreign, so... undeserving. To be cared about when he wasn't even offering romance, or sex or anything in return. Why should anyone bother to care about him for nothing in return when they never had before? His parents never did, his lovers never did. Love was something to be given as a reward and perpetuated in a romance.
Right?
Right...
“Right.” He tells himself, laying against Rhodey’s side as they rest on the couch after a mission.
“Right.” He tells himself, his loose tufts of hair being tousled by Steve’s fingers. Tony laying back in his lap as he flips through Steve's sketches.
“Right.” He tells himself, as a smile settles into his face when he zones back in to Rumiko talking. Her arm wraps around his as she tells him her latest stunt she pulled to piss off her parents.
A soft touch here, a hand hold here. No longer romance after romance after romance. He’d tumbled and fallen and drowned in so much, searching for a sense of belonging he’d never find.
He’d failed.
Yet he still was rewarded. He was loved so easily, so freely, so tenderly.
The action alone left him too far gone in his emotions to question if he really deserved it. Did he deserve something so easily given when it’d been withheld from him his entire childhood?
All he could do was let his sobs ring out in the earliest of hours. The hiccups, the coughs, they were a beat to go along with the chirping of birds as morning rolled around. The tear stains in his pillows were probably permanent at this point, but so was his smile.