He’s standing there, as beautiful as you remember the first time you stumbled across him, and every bit as unattainable as you though. It’s cruel, unfair. It’s everything you swore you’d walk away from. It’s everything you’re sliding up against, a soft smile and open shoulder.
Thing is, thing damn is, you always knew he’d do this. Knew he’d break your heart a thousand ways to Sunday. He’d do it, did it, and never even know. Because it never once occurred to him that he could hurt you that way.
Maybe it isn’t fair to hold this grudge. Maybe it isn’t fair, because you never told him, never said anything.
You stand here, with your heart tucked inside your throat and his head on your shoulder and you smile like the whole goddamned world isn’t collapsing. His world is, did. His world cracked into a million glittering shards he used to sew himself back together and you’re angry like some dime store novel cover art.
Mama always told you not to catch dreams, and you were a good boy. You always packed those fantasies away, buried them with the bodies, and kept on marching.
He’s a little like a cold though, creeping in all slow and gentle. A tiny sniffle, itty bitty cough. You caught him like a dream, like a nightmare you kept going back for.
He’s still wearing the bruises of the last galactic asshole, and you’re still covered in the bites that he gave you, the bites he can’t remember.
Thing is, it’s wrong and you know it, even as he’s licking at your neck. It’s wrong to love the scrap of his stubble across your chin. It’s wrong, because he’s going to leave and you aren’t telling him how you feel.
He’s going to leave, and he’s going to find someone, anyone else, and you’ll be left here.
Left in this room, this bed, left buried in the sent of him, of you, of lust. (He'll come back, he always does. That's how dream catchers work, right?)
Drowning in everything you were supposed to burn to ash, and here you are begging for it.
“Baby,” he calls you. “Darling,” and “dove,” and “love.”
And he’s too smart not to know. He’s the goddamned Futurist. He built himself a heart out of nothing but ache and sorrow, and he built it to love deeper than anything made of muscle and flesh. He has to know, but he’s fucking into you, and his eyes are closed.
You put your hand on the mangled mess of his chest, chase the corded muscles with blunt nails, bite at the jag-mended flesh.
You don’t ask, “Who do you see?”
You don’t ask, “Will you stay, just this once?”
You ask, “Hey, pass my shirt, yeah?’
He’s the most brilliant goddamned madman of the century, but when he smiles at you, passes the flute of champagne, you think, “God, but he’s so fucking dense.”
Thing is, you've always been a goddamned liar. Especially to yourself. You've always tried to catch the dreams. You walked in, and you saw him, and he was everything your mama warned you off of, and you. You walked right up and you stuck out your hand, "I'm James Rhodes." And you saw it then, the way he'd break you over and over and over, and you jumped anyway.
You love him, every disastrous, drunk, cocaine fueled inch of him. You think, he is my birthright. You think, I am owed this.
How many others have wiped the puke from his beard and lain him to rest. How many have burnt their fingers on his enthusiasm, and kissed his wounds instead.
No one, no one, will ever love him the way you do.
That’s why, you think. That’s why you do this, why you stand in his shadow and pass him his shield, his wrench.
Because if he is the future, then you are the past that leads him there. You are 1000 nights and as many mistakes. A billboard of unspoken affection, a trainwreck of absolute devotion.
And when Captain fucking America walks onto the screen, you fade into the static.
If Tony was born to break you apart, then Steve Rogers was born to set Tony aflame.
Tony broke himself, broke his own heart, and he forged those shards into a ring of armor around himself, body and soul.
Steve walked right through the guards like a puppy, and when the moon dissolved into mercurial ash, so did the beast inside.
Tony let him, because Tony, for all his degrees, is a fucking moron.
You let him, because Tony is the dream you’ll die chasing, you’ll live to put together.
And Steve does, break him. He peels the armor off like it’s nothing but lace. Drops the scraps all over the damn globe, and you chase.
Maybe it doesn’t count as catching if you capture.
Maybe the distinction isn't subtle. (Tony’s mouth on your nipple, nails digging into your scalp. Tony’s tongue on the shell of your ear, fingers a vice around your wrist.)
Maybe the distinction only matters if you care. (Tony, bathed in moonlight and naked on your back. Tony, glowing under the sun, lazy in your lap by a private pool.)
“Sweetheart,” he croons. “My heart,” and “babydoll,” and “platypus.”
A weaker man would feel ashamed on his knees, panting after the faintest touch. But you? You’re fucking salivating just because Tony smiled at you in a crowded room.
That’s why you do it.
That’s why here, in this crowded room, with everyone drunk on the light that is Tony, you chase dreams to the balcony and you smile. He’s exhausted, drunk, a thousand kinds of fucked. You offer him your hand, your arm, your shoulder.
You offer him everything you are, and he crowds into your space. He settles himself against your chest like he damn well belongs there. (He does, he always has.)
He says, “Take me home babycakes.”
You can’t even be mad about the endearment, because he says home the way you mean it. Forever, and I love you, and Never Leave.
He says “Take me home,” and you asks, “You’ll stay this time?”