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“You look great, Tony.”
“Of course I do, I spent an unhealthy amount of time preparing for—” Tony sighed as Steve undid his tie. “What are you doing?”
“You did it inside-out again.”
“So, I do not look great.”
“No—you always look great,” Steve assured, fixing his black tie for him. “Always. Great looks good on you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Tony breathed in tersely. “Can we just—go to Hawaii.”
“After,” Steve said. “Maybe. Don’t you have—”
“The rest of the Stark Expo? Steve—I don’t need to be there, J.A.R.V.I.S., he loves, he loves it, piloting the suit, it is his dream, he’s told me three thousand times, he—signing autographs—gives him such a rush, are you even listening to me?”
“Yes,” Steve assured calmly, backing off as Tony furiously shooed his hands away from the tie, disordering it. “Tony. You’re gonna do great.”
“No, now you’ve—jinxed it. Now tonight’s the night I—get shot from the balcony, you’ve manifested it.” He flopped back onto their bed, rumpling the back of his suit. He smudged a hand over his face, bringing bright red into his cheek. “Preventative measures, let’s just—stay here, watch it, from the—the—” He rolled over and pulled a box out from under the bed, a heavy-duty storage unit. Steve watched, amused, as he cursed and fiddled and fussed and finally wrangled the box open, still hanging half off the bed, suit tails drooping. At last, he popped the switches, then did a very undignified forward roll, so he could reach the floor by fastest possible route. He landed on his back with an impressive thud. “Shit, I’m too old for—”
“. . . You okay?”
“Hold on,” Tony grunted. Lifting a huge piece of metal over his head in a maneuver that was either going to kill him outright or do something spectacular, Tony dropped the rolled-up metal jacket straight down onto his chest before Steve could do more than raise his eyebrows in impressed dismay that this was the man he had married.
Thankfully, the iron ball did not crush Tony’s heart. Instead, it shattered like a big, powdery snowball into a trillion tiny pieces as the nanoparticles fanned around him, forming into the suit. Ignoring his actual suit, it quickly covered his whole body in protective plating.
“Ahh,” he sighed metallically. “That’s so much better. Look, Steve—I’m there. I’m there.”
Steve looked up at the ceiling dutifully as Tony projected a view from the faceplate to show a live camera feed of the main Expo hall. Assuming one did not enjoy mingling, it was a nifty way of beholding the spectacle.
Tony did enjoy mingling—to a certain extent. A couple stage appearances, a few drinks, and a bit of cake could definitely set the mood for a lively evening. But Steve knew that Tony marched to his own fife, and his resistance to flowing against it was extreme.
“C’mon. It’ll be fun,” Steve insisted, tapping Tony’s leg with a shoe tip.
“I’m having fun. Right here.”
“Tony.”
“Fun right here.” Iron Man patted the floor next to him with a metal paw. “Join me.”
It was a risk—building up more inertia only meant pushing harder to get him moving later—but it was better than literally dragging Tony out the door. With a sigh, Steve stripped off his own jacket, laid it over a chair, and then folded himself onto the floor beside Iron Man. A metal arm slid around his shoulders like they were star-gazing. “Can’t beat the view,” Tony breezed.
“Can’t eat cake from here, either,” Steve bribed.
“Delivery.”
“Never tastes as good.”
“I don’t need cake. I have you,” Tony said, a surprisingly sweet statement that was a testament to how strongly he did not want to move.
Still: “I do think you’d be missed, Tony,” Steve said quietly, putting a hand over his chest-plate. It surprised him how little armor protected the soft underbelly below, but Tony had fussed with the titanium alloy until he had one that better resisted shocks.
His dream was to make a suit just millimeters thick.
The very thought terrified Steve. Part of him rejected it outright. He wanted Tony in heavy-duty armor, safe from everything the world could throw at him, but Tony was stubborn in every regard. And the thin sheet was a lot stronger than it looked.
“It’s your call,” Steve decided. Even if Tony would be missed, Tony had been forced into enough corners in his life. Steve would not put him in another. “If you don’t wanna go—”
“It’s not that I don’t want to.” The metal face hid all as Tony gazed at the ceiling. “It’s just—I don’t see why. What if they don’t like me?”
The anxiety was couched in midnight conversations, pacing in the lab, stressing, stressing a world spiraling out of his control: You send the suit, the suit does the work—the press, the pictures, everything. You send five suits—more press, more buzz. People love it. They want it, they want it, they want it more than they want one suit.
So how can one guy live up to that spectacle?
Steve said quietly, “Tony.” He was no longer integral to the public’s perception of Iron Man. He was right: J.A.R.V.I.S., alone, could pilot the armor, strut around, answer questions, play human. But: “You know, Iron Man doesn’t ever . . . not become you. No matter how much you send it out there—it’ll always trace back. People will always want to know where it started. The spark.”
The arm around Steve’s shoulder flexed a little, tightening. Steve said, “You’re what they wanna see, Tony. They wanna be alive at the same time Iron Man was made. Twenty, thirty, a hundred years from now? People are gonna be talkin’ about you. How special you were. You, Tony, you’re—”
“Just some guy.”
“Beautiful,” Steve said firmly. “You’re beautiful.”
With a groan, Tony rolled over so he could lay partially on top of Steve, metal chin tucked over his shoulder. Steve allowed it, uncaring if it ruined his shirt, murmuring, “I don’t care what they think. You’re great to me.”
“I’m always good to you,” Tony muttered, but there was no derision in it. He did not cling tightly to Steve, but he was also in no clear rush to roll off, either. Steve let Tony’s weight, enhanced by fifty or so pounds of nanobot armor, reside on him for a good little while, reassuring with every second, I wont go. I don't care what the rest of them do.
Maybe it was what he needed to hear. Or maybe it was just what he technically didn’t—either way, when Tony sighed, “Rhodey keeps pinging me,” he did not sound as stressed.
Steve still offered, “You can tell him no-go, Tony.”
“If I tell him no, I don’t get cake.”
Relieved that Tony would attend without further argument, Steve stayed put as Tony disentangled himself. On his feet once more, Tony murmured something, and his suit changed colors, back to its trademark red-and-gold. He asked, with only a touch of self-consciousness, “How do I look?”
Steve stood up, then looked him over once. “Your tie’s good?”
With a sigh, Tony reached up and tapped the disassembly switch near the throat of the suit, unveiling both the helmet and the upper part of the torso. He watched, amused, as Steve adjusted his tie for him.
“Really?”
“You’re not gonna wear the armor all night, are you?”
“I could.” He smirked as Steve kissed his forehead. “That for good luck?”
“Gotta keep those snipers off ya somehow,” Steve agreed.
“Nothing like a giant, titanium suit of armor,” Tony concurred dryly.
Scooping his hands under metal arms, Steve picked Tony clear up off the floor, ignoring his disgruntled huff, and kissed right above the armored heart gratefully. “Don’t fail me now,” he murmured. Tony blew out an annoyed puff of air over his hair.
“You can put me down. Now.”
Steve obliged. Tony poked him in the shoulder, then kissed him once, a bit anxious but also, hopefully, just a tiny bit excited. Grabbing onto Steve’s shirt tightly, for comfort and to ensure his message was heard, he warned, “This is gonna be great. Right?”
“With you at the helm? How can it not be?”
Tony wrung his shirt, then let go and told him, “Dangerously close to jinxing it, Rogers.”
“Stark-Rogers to you, pal.”
Growling, Tony tossed his jacket at him. Steve shrugged it on smoothly, fussing his buttons on as Tony went on, “We’re late. We’re so—”
“You’re never late, Tony,” Steve said. “Everyone else just got there too—”
“That’s the Queen.”
Steve laughed all the way to Happy’s car. Happy, who was laying on the horn—either in spite of or because of the paparazzi filming him.
All said and done, the rest of the world could reject Tony Stark. Even his greatest creation, the thing they most coveted.
Because even if all else washed away—Steve would be right there beside him, quietly resting a hand on a jittering knee, a metal elbow sunk softly into his own side for comfort.
They had each other. Who needed the whole goddamn world, anyway?