Ghost of Christmas Past
Day 50.5
Everyone else had gone home after they helped clean up the mess of gift wrappings and heap of dirty plates. It was apparently tradition. Steve wanted a small celebration with family, but the family refused to let a birthday pass without showering Steve with gifts. Steve had smiled wide when he opened Bucky and Clint’s shared gift of an apron with muscular abs printed on the front, and he’d pressed Peter’s card to his chest, placing a wet kiss on the squirming boy’s cheek. Tony had been nervous when Steve reached for the plain box holding Tony’s gift for him, but the gentler, softer look that Steve sent over to Tony at the sight of rows and rows of exquisite pencils told Tony that he made the right call.
“Which one of you told him?” Steve asked, looking around the room.
Natasha only had to raise her brow for Steve to look back and take a red pencil out.
“They’re made to hold up against those ungodly biceps of yours, Rogers,” Tony had said, his usual snark failing to hit the right note.
Then, Steve had asked Tony to stay, and how could Tony refuse his blue, blue eyes?
So, they’re here now, sitting next to each other on the couch, Peter having just been tucked sleepily in bed. The little guy had wanted to stay up for longer with Tony, yet his body was tired from a whole day of excitement.
Behind the dark television, Tony can see the city lights through the large windows. A part of Tony wants to get back to what he and Steve were doing in the kitchen, but tucking in a man’s son really reminds people about boundaries and realities.
“Where’d you get that risotto?” Steve questions, both to break the silence and because it really was amazing.
Tony looks down, hands fidgeting, turning his phone around and around between his fingers. “I cooked it.”
“You can cook?”
There’s space between where the two of them are sitting. Tony itches to simultaneously close it and to widen it as far as possible. In the back of his mind, he remembers reading Rumiko’s will, how her letter told Tony to be happy, if there ever was another person in the world who could make him even half as happy as she did, Tony should keep them because being alone never suited Tony. This, here, feels like a betrayal of everything.
It feels like a betrayal against Steve, too, to pull Steve into a relationship with a man he would hate if he knew the truth. And yet, when has Tony ever done anything good?
“It’s really the only thing I can cook,” Tony tells him, “and I needed a distraction and needed to get you some birthday food.”
“Who taught you?”
Here’s the thing. Steve is so, so sincere. The way he asks the question, as if he truly does want to know, does want to get to know Tony. There’s a hope that Steve could want Tony, after all. He hears Peggy’s voice: he cares about you. Is that so bad to have again?
“Jarvis, he was my, uh, butler, really. But he was there more often than Howard,” Tony starts. It’s no longer hard talking about them – it’s not easy, but it spills out, cathartic.
Slowly, Steve’s callused fingers wrap around Tony’s, warm and steadying. Tony's hand stills, then, slowly, he lets his own fingers tentatively wrap around Steve's.
“I’ve been alone since my Ma passed away, before that it used to be just me and her, and the Barnes family against the world,” Steve takes over when Tony drifts into silence. “But I wanted Peter to know what a family feels like, and I’m lucky to have friends who are wonderful Aunts and Uncles.”
Steve looks at Tony, soft and fond, and when Tony struggles for words, Steve squeezes his hand gently, asking, “you okay?”
How does Tony tell Steve, a man who is so utterly devoted to his child, what Tony did to his? He wants to tell Steve the truth, but Tony’s always been a selfish, selfish man. He wants to keep this, Steve and Peter, for as long as he can. He wonders what Steve would say if he knew how Tony spent days pressing hard on cracked ribs just to hurt himself more, scratching blindly at his own skin to feel something other than the horror of being. How Tony had left bruises on Peggy that lasted for months when he fought against her, when all she was trying to do was to save him from himself. How Peggy had to sedate him just to bring him back to the hospital, its dreadful white walls and baby cries echoing in the corridors.
He’d woken up to Peggy sitting by his bedside, the beloved bear she’d given him so long ago in her hands. “There’s a boy who needs you, now, Tony,” Peggy had said, grief and anger and steel and kindness mingling in her voice, “he doesn’t have a name, and he hasn’t stopped crying for days. He needs someone. And if that someone can’t be you, then you have to decide, darling. It’s alright, I will never blame you for this. But he needs someone. I can arrange it, if you need me to. Just, give yourself a few minutes and go see the child, at least to spare the nurses the stress of him waking all the other babies up.”
Tony had eventually gone to the baby’s ward, the doll dangling from one hand, it’s soft fur a comfort and a cruelty. Just five days before that, the doctors had shoved the baby in his arms. For a blissful second, the weight felt perfect, and the boy had opened his brown, brown eyes to smile at Tony. Tony had smiled back at his son. His son. He wanted to see Rumiko, wanted to ask her if they couldn’t just name him Pumpkin because wow. He had a son.
And then the doctor spoke: “we’re sorry we couldn’t save your fiancée. The bleeding had gone too far, her skull was too badly fractured, and the stress of the pregnancy was too much. We had to choose, and the greatest chance of survival was with your son.”
Tony doesn’t remember much after that. He’d handed his child over to somebody, had blamed the innocent soul for taking his fiancée from him. Then he had raged and raged at himself until Peggy came. And when he saw his child again five days after his birth, Tony knew that the boy deserved better than the ruined remains of whatever Tony could offer him.
He had given the nurse instructions and placed the doll in the baby’s crib. Despite eyes still screwed shut in tears, the little hands had curled instinctively around the soft fur. Only then had the baby’s breathing began to calm down into a real sleep. Tony had wanted the boy to open his eyes one more time, so Tony could see him, but Tony knew in his heart of hearts that seeing the boy’s eyes for another time would mean Tony would never be able to let him go, and Tony wanted his, Rumiko’s, son to have better than that.
For all his regrets, Tony still knows that letting his son go far, far away from him was the greatest kindness he could ever do. He knows what Steve thinks, Steve had made that clear enough in their earliest meetings, and Tony’s not ready to have this fight again. Not when his heart still feels raw, overwhelmed.
So, Tony looks into Steve’s eyes, and tells him the only truth he can offer, “I used to have a son. I hope he’s as happy as Peter is because of you.”
Something in Tony’s eyes must be enough to make Steve not push for any more from Tony. Instead, Steve moves closer to rest his head on Tony’s shoulders.
“Peter’s happy because of you too, you know?” Steve murmurs.
Tony doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
They stay like that for a long time, warming each other as they stare out into the New York skyline until, one by one, the lights go out as the sun rises golden above the horizon.