(no subject)
Part One
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He still woke at 6am.
It went on after that, between vague attempts to free himself of his never-ending time loop that never seemed to work no matter what he did. Tony, though, there was never a time when Tony said no, no matter what it was that Steve suggested, and for a while that didn't bother him at all - after all, he'd never known there to be any real possibility of making Tony do anything he didn't want to do. They did it in the workshop bent over the benches, Tony's room and Steve's, before and after the party that Steve hadn't even wanted to attend the first time, during it more than once. They did it in Tony's overly large shower, on their knees, Tony's hands pressed to the cold tile wall and Steve's arms wrapped around Tony's waist as he moved in him. He marked him shamelessly more than once, hickeys at his neck or his chest, the inside of one thigh before he stretched out on top of him, Tony's legs going up to wrap loosely, comfortably, around Steve's waist. The whole thing was just so wonderfully decadent, wholly unexpected, and Tony... actually Tony just seemed just like himself, if a touch quieter, even when Steve asked if he'd like to try things the other way around.
It went on. Days of getting to know Tony's body so thoroughly he was sure he knew it almost better than his own, small scars, the curve of muscle beneath the skin, the texture of his hair and how that differed from his head to the neatly trimmed goatee, the coarse trail that led down from his navel, the finer hair over his shins that made him grumble but smile when Steve rubbed it the wrong way. Steve got to know all the ways that Tony could make him feel, the differing weights of his touches and the sounds they would elicit if he let them. He taught himself to relax through the odd initial shock of penetration, watching Tony's eyes, the expression on his face as they had sex, Steve's hands not shy of leaving marks on him perhaps only because he knew that by the morning they'd be gone. He even persuaded him into the suit just once or twice, one cold, slick metal finger sliding inside him, brushing almost torturously against his prostate with each slow, deep thrust until he came with an embarrassing shout all over Tony's worktop. He knew he should have been ashamed. It was just that by that point it was hard to find it in himself to be.
Of course, eventually the guilt had to set in. Steve wouldn't have been Steve if it hadn't occurred to him at some point that really this was wrong, not exactly on a par with world hunger or international terrorism, and it wasn't as if Tony wasn't perfectly willing each and every time because he was, every time. Steve had never felt like he'd forced the issue, but that wasn't the point and God knew he wasn't ashamed the way he was because of some kind of latent homosexuality - he was far past that. He just knew he was seducing him under false pretences, knowing there was no way he would've done it in any normal circumstance, only because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tony wasn't going to remember any of it at all - he'd wake the next day without a single memory of the day before, no matter what they did, where they did it or how and Steve didn't have to deal with the consequences of his actions. He didn't have to live with trampling all over the friendship that they had. That was more important to him than any attraction he felt, more important than anything else.
It had all felt strangely liberating that first time, for a while after that, but it had to catch up with him in the end that essentially what he was doing was taking advantage. Then, one morning, he just couldn't do it anymore. He sat down to breakfast with Tony just like he had for the weeks before that. They had coffee and Tony indulged in a hot, buttered croissant just the way he had for weeks and weeks on end, to the point where the previously wonderful, tempting smell of it was almost enough to turn Steve's stomach. Nothing had changed but he knew he couldn't do it again. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to live with it for so long.
He turned back to the real problem then, of course, suspecting from the get-go that it was more to do with the fact that he needed to escape from Tony and the way he imagined he was looking at him than with any real hope that he was ever going to solve the problem. After all, considering the fact that he'd had Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner amongst other all working on the problem for countless days, given weeks to it himself, he just wasn't sure how much more there was that he could do. At least not in New York City. Perhaps that was a brainwave.
Weeks prior, he'd investigated the possibility of a crisis occurring somewhere else in the world; he'd found nothing, nada, a big fat bupkis, even with Tony and his handy in-head computer working for him. Of course, that didn't mean there weren't problems of a smaller nature than natural disasters or terrorism, weapons of mass destruction or maybe Doom deciding that Latveria needed to expand its borders. Suddenly there was nothing so small it could escape his notice; Steve took a Quinjet every morning, headed out in an odd but systematic pattern about the globe. Fires in India, a small flood in Pakistan... there was a boating accident in Indonesia that he helped to clear up twice and prevented three times before he was sure there was nothing more he could do. There were still people dying all over the world, preventable deaths, but the more he did the more he realised there were places he couldn't be, things he just couldn't coordinate. But it drove him. There were going to be no deaths from unnatural causes that day by the time he'd finished, he swore that to himself.
But bit by bit, it was starting to wear him down. There was so much to remember when he woke up every morning, places he forgot that plagued him until he wasn't sure how much he could go on anymore without that ache in his chest when one of them slipped his mind from the lists in his daily despatches to whoever he thought could help while he went elsewhere to find more, save more. All those people, names he half remembered in those not-quite-five minutes of calm as the day rebooted to 6am. It didn't matter that it was Halloween. He couldn't believe he'd been sitting at a party that first day, laughing, smiling like there was nothing wrong in the world. Now the day went on forever; the only thing he hadn't tried was death and that wasn't for him. The day would go on.
"You look tired," Tony told him at breakfast one morning. He'd never said it before; anything new was good, or so the movies told him, and he frowned at him across the table. He'd had the exact same amount of sleep as he always had, thanks to his own private time loop, was ostensibly the same in every way as he'd been that first morning months of that day ago. But he felt drained. He felt tired. Much more and he'd be empty, completely, that was all there was to it.
"I guess I am," he replied.
Tony nodded, and poured him another cup of coffee. "You have plans today?"
"Well..."
"Cancel them." Tony took his seat again, looking at him over the table, his brows raised. "Go back to bed. Just take a day off, Steve, you look like you're about to fall down unconscious or burst into tears. Both, were that a physical possibility."
He couldn't very well tell him he had plans to save the world, and anything less he had a feeling Tony was going to tell him to blow off for sleep - when Tony made up his mind, he was extremely difficult to ignore or override. He left his bagel half finished and dutifully trudged back off to bed. And he slept, even will ten thousand lives on his mind and his conscience. He supposed they'd be there for him to save again tomorrow. There was a whole slew of emails winging their way out across the world anyway - the people he'd found so far would be safe, at least.
The hours ticked by - lunchtime came and went. It was almost 4pm when Steve finally hauled himself out of bed and wandered to the kitchen via the bathroom, grabbed a couple of coffees and headed for the workshop. Pumpkin #1 was already splattered all over the floor, three surfaces and a wall, and Tony was putting the finishing touches on Pumpkin #2 as Steve stepped through the door, avoiding the scattered debris so easily it might as well not have been there at all.
"Voila," Tony said, stepping back from the bench with a flourish, brandishing a scalpel that he'd apparently been using to vastly greater effect than the laser cutter. Then he tossed it aside with a clatter to take one of the cups from Steve with a small, grateful smile. He took a sip, grimaced at the heat of it then took a seat on a stool at the bench. Steve pulled one up beside him.
"Feeling better?" Steve shrugged noncommittally. "You don't look better."
"Thanks, Tony." Steve smiled wryly. "I mean that."
"Why don't you just tell me what's wrong?" Tony took another sip of his coffee, then set it down on a great glob of pumpkin, caught it only just in time to prevent an accompanying coffee cascade. "You're starting to look like you want to throw yourself out of the nearest window. What's changed since yesterday?"
Steve chuckled a little, almost bitterly. "A lot's happened since yesterday," he said. He guessed that was the truth, in an odd sort of way that almost defied explanation. He sighed, shook his head. "You're not going to believe a word of it."
"Try me."
He looked serious enough about it, Steve had to admit, even scowling at his over-hot coffee that he just wouldn't leave alone though he probably knew the exact speed at which it was going to cool. That was Tony, though, impatient and impulsive, the perfect kind of billionaire though Steve had never quite worked out whether that would have been the case had he not had the money or if that was where his demeanour came from. He suspected Tony would be Tony no matter what, which was at least a little comforting in its own way. Tony was the same man who'd believed him before. He supposed he didn't have a lot to lose, and so that's why he told him.
It was quite the story, no real finesse to it maybe just because Steve wasn't sure he had any kind of refinement left in him then, least of all finesse. His pre-prepared persuasive lecture fell by the wayside though he supposed that would've been the simpler route, but he guessed if he'd wanted simplicity he could just have walked away and had done with it. As it was, he stayed and he told him. He told him all of it from start to finish, tired and damn near ashamed and overflowing with it all once he'd begun, the workshop suddenly a confessional though Tony was just about as far removed from ecclesiastic as Steve thought it was possible to be.
He told him about the tests, the weeks of that when no one had had a clue how to help him and even when he'd done his best to prove that what he said was true there'd always been some small but invariable note of scepticism present. He'd tracked down Loki once, with Thor's help, just to make sure it wasn't him. None of Tony's technology had ever been able to help. Dr. Strange had had no answers. He'd been through every detail, every conceivable variable, so many times they were practically etched there on his brain and nothing had ever worked at all so now, now he was slowly trying to save the world, just for one day. There was really no wonder he was tired.
Then he took a breath and he told him the rest, the Teach-Yourself-Japanese and how he looked with black hair, making pizza from scratch, the first time they'd kissed. Tony didn't seem too convinced of the latter at first but Steve supposed his weary kind of solemnity as he told him a little of what they'd done and how many times they'd done it must have said something about his honesty.
He took it surprisingly well. A few moments of silence as he thought it through then he just shrugged.
"You know, we should run a few tests," Tony told him in the end.
Steve shook his head. "You've already run them all, Tony. A hundred times."
"But..."
"No buts. I'm done."
Tony nodded, for once surprisingly compliant, and they lapsed into silence as they sat there together. Tony fetched a couple of bottles of water from the refrigerator across the room and they drank together in silence, too. Still, he couldn't quite wish he hadn't told him.
When they kissed, it was Tony that started it. Steve had started to feel that there was no way for him to feel surprised about that day anymore in any way at all but there it was, Tony's mouth finding his about as subtly as a freight train, goatee tickling his chin as those rough, blunt but terribly well-manicured hands of his found their way to the back of Steve's short hair. It was unexpected the way nothing else had been for weeks, maybe months, so long since he'd really known for sure how long it'd been. And maybe he'd told himself this could never happen again but it really wasn't happening again, now was it. Those were Tony's hands trailing down firmly over his torso, Tony was the one taking the initiative then, even if Steve supposed he'd been the one who'd put the idea in his head.
"Have I ever told you how long I've wanted to do that?" Tony asked once he'd pulled back, his voice sounding there right by Steve's ear, the tone low and dark. His breath there made him shiver, or maybe that was the tone too.
"Not exactly," Steve replied. His mouth felt dry. "We've never done much talking."
"Not like today."
"No," Steve said. "Not like today."
Tony pulled his stool in closer then, close enough that when he pulled himself back up onto it his thighs had to frame Steve's knees; he leaned in, tugged Steve closer by the front of his shirt and kissed him again, that same familiar flavour of coffee there that somehow Steve found intoxicating though he doubted it had much to do with the caffeine. Tony sucked at his bottom lip, teased it a little with his teeth and his tongue and then pulled back, settling his hands at Steve's knees. He looked at him, closely - Steve could see and almost feel Tony's eyes moving over him, the look in them different now somehow, darker and deeper.
"For God's sake, Steve," he said, his voice still low with that tone to it that made Steve's eyes widen just a fraction, made his stomach tighten. "If you don't kiss me right now I'm going to get a complex, and you know how I feel about psychiatrists."
"In your case, they're usually female," Steve pointed out. "And you usually sleep with them."
"And you like me anyway. What does that say about you?"
"Nothing good," Steve said, with a smile.
He kissed him then. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.
After a moment, Tony stood as they kissed, slipping from the stool to stand right by him; the abandoned stool and Steve's knees were in the way of him standing in front so he shifted to the side, Steve turning his head to follow the kiss, twisting slightly on the stool. The height of it and Steve on top was just enough that Tony didn't have to stoop at all and Steve, impatient then once Tony's hands were on him, warm over the thin fabric of his t-shirt, kicked the other stool out of the way perhaps a little recklessly. It toppled backwards, hit the floor with a clatter and Tony just chuckled against Steve's mouth as he ran his hands down over his chest, his sides, hips and thighs to his knees that he eased apart to stand between.
He'd never been like this before, Steve thought, and Steve had never felt so desperate. Before then, it had never been Tony's idea. He wasn't sure what he should do with that, except to let him have his way.
When Tony tugged up Steve's shirt he let him, snickered when it caught under his chin then under his nose and Tony kissed him that way, with him all caught up in the thin cotton t-shirt that he didn't even try to get out of. Finally Tony did it for him, tossed the damn shirt aside and then his own to join it, stepped back in to kiss him again. Tony's bare arms went around Steve's bare waist and made him shiver, Tony's bare chest pressed to his and Steve's hands went up to one of Tony's biceps, the back of his hair, holding him in. Tony pulled back anyway, a small smile and that characteristic Tony Stark sparkle to his eyes as he didn't so much step back as step around, hand trailing over Steve's thigh, his waist, Steve following with his eyes just as far as he could until Tony pressed his mouth down between his shoulder blades, slow and hot.
Steve sighed. He hadn't been expecting this at all, and that was odd considering exactly how many permutations of this day he'd been through by then. Tony settled his hands at Steve's hips and moved down further, pressing his mouth down every couple of inches over the length of Steve's spine and then shifted back up, his unsurprisingly prickly goatee trailing right up to the back of his neck, making Steve bow his head and smile as Tony's arms went around him from behind.
"I guess if I'm not going to remember this we'd better make the most of it," Tony said, murmured against the back of Steve's shoulder.
"So you believe me?"
"You've never lied to me before," Tony said simply, reaching up to turn Steve's face toward him as Steve turned just a little on the stool, looking back at him over his shoulder. "Why would you start now?"
"It's just that up until now Thor's the only one who's ever believed this without proof."
"Have you ever told me like this before?"
"Well, no."
Tony quirked a brow somewhat wryly. "Well then, there you go." And he kissed him again.
Steve stood, quickly; he pushed the stool out of the way and Tony shook his head as it clattered to the floor just like the other had. Steve was quick but right then Tony was quicker, whether that was the Extremis in full effect or Steve's mental exhaustion or just the fact that Steve was willing for Tony to do whatever he wanted to do as long as he did it now wasn't terribly clear, but in the end it didn't matter - Tony pushed him up against the nearest bench, the one still sticky with exploded pumpkin, pressed himself right up to him and kissed him again. There was a kind of urgency to it that hadn't been there before, like Tony hadn't been kidding at all and he was intending to really make the most of this. Apparently he knew just how to do it, too.
"We've done it here before, right?" Tony asked, his voice low and a little breathless as his hands ventured down, thumbs catching at the waistband of Steve's jeans. He shifted, brushed his lips over Steve's throat, pressed a slow kiss to his sternum before he looked back up at him expectantly.
Steve nodded, hoping he wasn't starting to blush but suspecting he was all the same. "We have," he admitted, with a faint little smile as his mind flicked through all those times. Considering this was Tony's reaction to being told about it all, it was difficult to summon the previously requisite side order of guilt when he thought of one of the two of them being bent over a bench or the ache from kneeling there on the hard concrete floor that they stupidly never seemed to think of counteracting with a cushion. "More than once."
"So, who's usually on top?"
Tony sounded so damn casual about it, interested, intrigued like this was all fine and normal and not the oddest thing he'd heard in weeks. Steve found he couldn't help but smile, shake his head a little in bemusement.
"I am," he said. "Usually."
"And you want me now?"
"Tony, I always want you."
Tony smiled, practically lit up with it the way Steve hadn't seen him do in weeks, even weeks before Halloween, his hands shifting from the waist of Steve's jeans over his hips to the buckle of his belt. Talented fingers took their time unbuckling it, pulling it apart before he brought his hands to the button there, the back of his fingers brushing against Steve's abdomen as he did so. He remembered a time when waistlines had been much higher, when properly placed jeans would have sat further up, when the way this pair practically hung from his hipbones exposing so much of his abdomen and a strip of white boxers beneath would've been considered completely indecent, but this was one time he could honestly say he was extremely grateful for the change. Tony popped open the button with one deft flick of his wrist, dragged down the zipper, pushed the jeans down over Steve's hips to bunch over his thighs. Steve knew he was doing it but wasn't watching, his eyes right on Tony's face instead, even when Tony's fingers trailed down over his stomach so lightly it almost tickled, even when they toyed with the waistband of his underwear, even when they trailed down over the front of his boxers, tracing the outline of him through the flimsy fabric. Steve took a slow, deep breath. Tony smiled an almost wicked smile and dipped his hand down underneath.
It was one thing to know how this was supposed to feel, to know how it had felt those times before, and quite another to do it. Tony stroked him slowly and Steve felt himself hardening in his hand, felt his pulse nudge up a notch. Tony shoved the boxers down over Steve's hips and the cooler air hit his warm skin, made him tense for a moment and made Tony snicker as he stroked him again. Then Steve moved, turned, pushed Tony back against the bench instead. He wasn't snickering anymore. As Steve leaned in, pressed his mouth over the pulse in Tony's neck, he heard his breath hitch. When Steve pressed the heel of his hand down over the front of Tony's sweats, Tony was already hard. So he hooked his fingers down into the waistband and pulled down.
Honestly, Steve was already quite intimately acquainted with Tony's body. It wasn't as if he'd made a detailed study, probably because he would have expired of sheer embarrassment, but he was fairly sure they'd done this often enough, even if Steve was the only one that remembered, that he could've drawn out Tony's naked form on the sketchpad across the room just from memory. Still, when he shifted closer, took Tony in his hand, caught himself too... Tony gasped in a breath like he'd done so many times before and somehow it all still felt so new. He set his other hand at Tony's shoulder, leaned in to kiss him as he stroked them both together like that, Tony's hips shifting a little of their own accord just as Steve's were. When he pulled back, Tony's eyes were dark and his breath laboured, his hand brushing over Steve's hair, his jaw, his shoulder, biceps, pressing to his skin like he just couldn't stop, indecisive about placement but insistent nonetheless.
"I'm not going to remember any of this, am I," Tony said, flushed. His gaze met Steve's as his hands travelled down Steve's chest, tracing muscles beneath the skin.
"You haven't so far."
"But you will."
Steve nodded, his hand going still over the two of them. He leaned in closer instead, setting a hand either side of Tony's hips at the edge of the worktop behind them.
"Well damnit, that's just not fair."
Steve chuckled - he couldn't help thinking that was just Tony all over. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the side of Tony's neck, the hinge of his jaw, his skin still warm despite the faint chill in the air. "Yeah," he agreed, even if he couldn't say he was sure that he agreed or not.
"Then if you fuck me over this bench right now, I won't remember it."
If he hadn't been doing so before, Steve definitely blushed a little at that. "Nope. Not for a second."
"Then you'd better make it damn good while it lasts." Tony smiled. It was almost wicked. "I want you. In case you hadn't noticed." He gestured theatrically at his rather obvious erection and Steve found himself laughing in spite of everything. "Hey, I mean it! Right now. There's even some hand cream you can..."
Steve raised his brows at him. "I know," he said. "Tony, I know where everything is in here. I know which file name it is you've hidden your armour designs under. I know where the pep pills are that you really don't need when you drink so much coffee and I know Pepper's told you that at least twenty times. I even found that drill bit you lost last summer." He stepped away slightly, not simple with his jeans lodged around his thighs, leaned back and grabbed the squirty hand cream dispenser from Tony's main workstation. Then he shuffled back to him. "Besides, we've used this before."
Tony crossed his arms over his chest, not managing to look irritated in the slightest when he was mostly naked and smiling faintly the way he was. "And apparently you know everything except how impatient I am right now."
Steve snickered softly and stepped back in. "I know," he said, and slipped one hand down between the two of them, easily, directed. His fingers cradled Tony's balls while his cock rested snugly against the inside of his wrist - he stretched out one finger, teased the smooth stretch of his perineum behind and Tony almost squirmed against him, his complaints immediately forgotten. Apparently he still knew exactly what Tony liked. Maybe those days hadn't been such a bad thing after all.
"Please don't say you're just going to stand there and tease me," Tony said, his voice suddenly just as unsteady as Steve was beginning to feel. He shook his head, paused then rested his forehead down against Tony's shoulder.
"I'm not," he said, then took a breath, paused. "Turn around."
Tony, in a rare display of complicity, then did exactly as he was told. He extricated himself from Steve's hands with at least a little reluctance and turned to face the bench, face the wall; for a moment Steve kept his distance, running his hands down over the perhaps oddly pristine skin of Tony's back, tracing his shoulder blades and the line of his spine. Much as Tony had done to him, Steve stepped in to press his mouth against Tony's back between his shoulders, nuzzled against the skin as he moved down a little, just a couple of inches at a time. He'd long since discovered that quick and dirty was all very well but he liked to take his time with Tony - he'd developed favourite places to touch him, the indents at the small of his back where his thumbs seemed to fit just perfectly, the inside of his wrist, the side of his neck where his pulse beat so strongly just beneath the surface, a different tempo for each and every different activity. He stood straight again, pressed close, his own erection caught tantalisingly against Tony's bare back as he ran his hand around to rest against his throat almost possessively, his mouth at the nape of his neck. Tony let him do it, his breath already close to erratic. Steve found himself smiling, didn't care about the specifics of the reason why.
Then he reached for the hand cream. It was an expensive, unperfumed kind that Logan turned up his nose at every time Tony used it though Steve had a feeling if it hadn't been for his healing factor keeping his hairy skin conditioned in all weathers, Logan wouldn't have dismissed it quite so easily. It did its job and a few more it really hadn't been designed for, like making Tony squirm as Steve guided him down to bend over the worktop and trailed his fingers down between his cheeks. The slippery stuff and Tony's willingness made it easy for Steve to start slipping his first finger inside him, slowly, carefully, as Tony held his breath the way he always did at first. He sighed it out hugely once that finger was in just as deep as it could go, displacing a couple of stray pumpkin sketches from the desk with his breath to float to the floor to rest with their shirts. He let Tony catch his breath before he tried another, stretching him further, lessening the resistance of that tight muscle at his entrance just little by little. A few slow, well-angled thrusts, just like he remembered, and Tony practically writhed against the desk, no pretence at restraint at all. Steve had always liked that about him, how he gave himself over to the way it felt without reservation, how maybe that said a little something about the way he trusted him and in the end, it made it simple to tell when he was ready for more. That and Tony was never exactly shy about asking for it. Pretty soon he started to push back against Steve's hand - he didn't need to be verbal about it, that was enough.
He pulled back and Tony grumbled irritably under his breath, made Steve snicker as he reached for the hand lotion again. He slicked himself that time, the chill of the lotion making him take a sharp breath the way it always did but he had to admit he kind of liked that, in a way - he'd found out a heck of a lot about himself as well as Tony, that much he couldn't deny. Then he stepped in close, guided himself up into position, the slick head of his cock pressing there snugly to the muscle at Tony's opening. He paused, ran his free hand to Tony's hip, squeezed in reassurance then started to press inside.
One long, slow slide and he was inside him; a couple of shuffles of his feet, adjustments, and then he was just as deep as he could be, his breath unsteady so he paused to let it even out, to let Tony adjust to the size of him inside him as his fingers pressed tight to the desktop. Steve rested his own hands at Tony's hips, his grip just tight enough to leave white marks when he pulled them away that filled back slightly darker than before, not bruised but the potential was there if he let himself. He didn't. He leaned down, the action pressing him deeper still, and pressed his mouth to Tony's back.
"Ready?" he asked, voice low and unsteady. Tony just nodded his reply as he attempted to brace himself a little.
One thrust, two, and Tony moved, swept his hands across the desk - a few sketches got in the way, a pot of drawing pens and his precious pumpkin that went crashing to the floor where it broke into damp, unsalvageable pieces. Collateral damage, Steve thought, trying not to tread on pens to disastrous effect. Tony didn't seem to mind too much, considering the way he cursed just once then pushed back against him.
Steve knew how Tony liked it, couldn't have helped but develop a sense for it all those times before that still managed to feel nothing like this though how that was even vaguely possible was completely beyond him. Tony liked it hard, liked to be reminded that Steve was bigger than him, stronger than him, so that was what Steve did - his thrusts were deep and hard, a strain in his muscles as he slipped his hands from Tony's hips to the edge of the worktop, gripped there as he flexed his own hips against him. His nails caught at the rough surface of the desk, his breath caught in his throat; Tony didn't even try to keep from cursing, the good kind it had taken Steve a while to understand at first when it sounded so close to vicious but that was Tony, contrary, contradictory to a fault. Fortunately, he liked Tony unpredictable.
Which was why he didn't complain when Tony stopped meeting his thrusts, when he pushed up instead until his back was flush against Steve's chest. He paused, Steve paused, resting his forehead down against Tony's shoulder before Tony pulled away. He turned, cheeks flushed, caught Steve in a kiss then pushed him away again with an expression that said he really wasn't done with him, he shouldn't worry. There was a sort of odd contortionist act then, Tony almost tripping himself, treading on a hunk of smashed pumpkin though somehow in the end he managed to get one booted foot out of his sweats and underwear - he apparently thought better of trying the other and just beckoned Steve back in at that.
"Like this," he said, hitching up his freed leg to rest on one of the rungs of the nearest stool, and Steve nodded, knowing this was going to be difficult but he supposed he'd never backed down from a challenge before. He stepped in close, Tony's arm going around him as they attempted to arrange themselves that way, one of Steve's hands at the worktop that was pressing into Tony's back as he fumbled his way into position. They were face to face as he slid back inside him, as Tony bent at a slightly odd angle to kiss him before they moved again, so close together he wasn't sure they could be any closer.
Tony gasped with every thrust like that was just the way he breathed now, sharp inhalations as Steve leaned against the desk and pushed into him, watching him as he did so. There was a sheen of sweat standing out on their skin that made their movements slicker, even as Steve knew his muscles were jerking, his breath short, his pulse hiked up far enough to make his limbs feel sort of light and heavy all at the same time while a tingle travelled down his spine with every thrust he made. Tony seemed to be holding on for dear life, giddy and smiling with his head tilted back a little as they moved together. Steve's free hand came down between them then, wrapped around Tony's cock and stroked, not managing to keep it in time with his thrusts at all but judging from the way Tony bucked his hips against him he didn't really give a damn about synchronisation. He just shivered against him, kissed him again all hard and deep before he gasped in a breath and shuddered and came somehow in their almost impossible position that jarred their muscles but that just seemed to make it better. Steve wasn't long after, not with the way Tony tightened around him, not after all the times he'd had to tune into the way that Tony's body reacted, to match his own reactions to his.
They took a moment, their breath almost too loud in the otherwise mostly silent room. Of course it was never really silent, not with the hum of equipment and the vague sounds of the building's other inhabitants moving around in other rooms on other floors, the caterers who were setting up in the kitchen. Steve rested his forehead against Tony's shoulder as he caught his breath, Tony's pulse slowly calming under his fingers. He hadn't realised just how much he'd missed this.
"Well, that was different," Tony said, smiling faintly as they eased apart.
Steve took a breath and stepped back in, sticky skin on skin, feeling Tony's arms go around his waist securely. "Actually, it was," he said.
The party was just the same as always, in a way. Steve knew what was going to happen before it happened, knew each conversation and person and gesture by heart as he moved through the room in his Han Solo outfit, a small plate of Tony's ridiculous party food in one hand and a glass bottle of Coke in the other. He knew there'd be nothing out there that the NYPD couldn't handle, that they'd actually pay some attention to the email he'd sent them the second he was out of bed that morning detailing every last crime he could remember that was set to occur in their jurisdiction and no, the supervillains of the world weren't going to show their faces that night. He knew; he'd done it all before.
The evening wore on as it always did, as it had so many times that he'd seen, Steve staying out of the way making idle small talk with whoever happened by, occasionally catching Tony's eye across the room with a smile or a raise of his bottle. They'd done that before, sure, down to the point that Tony tugged him aside into the closest room, not really caring it was Logan's as they kissed pressed up hard against the door, costumes crumpling. They'd been doing that all day, after, finding excuses to be in the same place at the same time when there really wasn't a valid excuse at all, Tony pinning him to doors and walls and the kitchen counter before Pepper walked in and almost caught them. It was a welcome change, a welcome distraction from the names in his head that he'd entrusted in those two hours' worth of emails to the appropriate authorities around the world, just the way he'd started to in the days before. There'd just always be more, he knew that. Maybe there wasn't enough time in the day to save them all.
Johnny Storm set the carpet on fire. The caterers ran out of Tony's favourite hors d'oeuvres. Pete and MJ fell asleep on the couch and fifteen minutes after Steve slipped away from the monster movie to go to bed, Tony came in and joined him. He sighed, Tony spooning up behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist though they both knew when Steve woke in the morning Tony wouldn't be there. Tony wouldn't remember, not a minute of it, not a second. Maybe that, he thought, was the oddest idea he'd had all day.
That night, he found himself dreading two minutes to four like he wasn't sure he'd ever done before. It took a while for him to realise why, but once he had, well, there it was; this time, for the first time, he wanted Tony to remember.
He woke at 6am.
Just like every day, he reached over and turned off the alarm. Just like every day, for a moment he squeezed his eyes shut and steeled himself for two solid hours of emailing that had to come, all the places and times and names and events he had to recall and the order he'd spent so long devising just so no one was missed. Then he shivered. And he looked down.
His blanket was gone. He was lying there under a thin cotton sheet that was usually there under his blanket, his feet feeling not unlike large blocks of ice. He knew all about that, of course.
Tony grumbled beside him; Steve's stomach flipped and he turned to find Tony Stark snuggled up right there under the entirety of his blanket, his face covered up to the eyes that were just then cracking open.
"I thought you were supposed to disappear," Tony said, his voice low and muffled by the blanket until he turned to toss half of it over him, following it up with one arm sprawled over his chest. "Or I was or something."
"Very funny, Ms. MacDowell," Steve said, his heart not in it at all. "Look, Tony, this isn't funny. I've never got this far before. I've never made it past two minutes to four and you're never here and it all starts over again. I..."
Tony leaned over and turned Steve's face to him, warm fingers on his almost icy cheek as he settled closer. He looked him in the eye and then he kissed him, apparently morning breath be damned, and he supposed it did its job because immediately, Steve's attention was on him, freakout averted. "Take a breath," he said. "Then think about it. You must have done something differently. Just work it out."
There had to be something different, Tony was right. There had to be.
So he thought back, thankful that the day had finally been so different to the forty, fifty, however many days that had come before it because honestly, they'd all begun to blend together into one long, perpetual purgatory of a day that began and ended with people's deaths and the vain hope for the prevention thereof. He hoped to God he hadn't missed anyone from his list. Sooner or later, he was going to have to check. He tried not to think of all the others he could've gotten to with just a few more days. He supposed he knew what lay down that road.
That day, though, that day he'd looked tired, or at least Tony had thought so. He'd gone back to bed and slept for hours after that, gone down to the workshop once he'd woken and told Tony everything but he'd done that before, he'd told everyone and that had never changed anything. There'd been the party, of course, but that was really just par for the course right there, nothing out of the ordinary at all. Tony had kissed him, of course, and while that was new in a way he wasn't sure how that could've done it. Then Tony had... oh God.
"Tony, where did you get the design for that pumpkin?"
"The one we left in bits on the floor?" Tony shrugged. "A website. I looked at a lot of them, Steve. For months. I mean, I can probably find it if it's that important."
"I think it might be."
They got out of bed while Tony flicked through all the sites he knew, searching for the design he'd settled on in the end, the one he and Steve had carved more times than Steve could honestly remember. Then they put in the call to Dr. Strange who confirmed it shortly after, to Steve's exasperated amusement that maybe bordered just briefly on dismay. Maybe Tony wouldn't be using quite so much occult symbolism in his next Halloween project. In fact, once Dr. Strange was over and out, Steve forbade him to ever carve a pumpkin again.
"I guess it was evil," Tony told him, as they finally swept away the remains of the broken pumpkin from the workshop floor. "It did have to die."
It was an odd kind of day after that. They told the others what had happened, Steve not really sure why unless it was intended as some kind of cautionary tale against invoking incomprehensible magics to cause bizarre time loops that would come close to driving team members totally out of their mind. It seemed it was something about Steve having been the one who'd finished that original pumpkin that very first day, and Tony apparently couldn't help but point out over and over that it could just as easily have been him. In a way, Steve was glad it hadn't. As much respect as he had for Tony, as much as he cared for him, he did not want to think of him reliving that day the way he had. He didn't know how he would've held up. In fact, knowing Tony, he'd still have been working on a technological way to return time to the norm. Steve looked at him as Peter went into Science Mode attempting to explain magic in a way that Steve was happy to gloss over; Tony looked back and smiled. Tony remembered. Steve smiled back. Apparently he didn't regret it at all.
Tony bought a temporary replacement for his ruined rug on eBay, just until he got back to Nepal. Steve and Peter helped Jarvis clear up the residual party mess and when MJ came in from rehearsals she brought enough pizza to feed an army. Tony wouldn't let him check on any of the people whose lives he'd tried to save, not a single one of them; he supposed it made sense, since not knowing would gnaw at him but knowing, he didn't like to think what that would do. Tony was right, which was beginning to be a recurring theme. Then a quick crisis down in Florida took them away for half of the night - thankfully no one was injured and Steve was sort of grateful for the action in a way, the new action, the new day and the new start. His suit felt less constricting, his shield lighter though nothing had changed. Really, in the end, he was just glad he wasn't getting ready to spend yet another evening dressed up as Han Solo.
They came back and ate and talked around the table; Steve found ten minutes to glance at the paper with November 1st printed there on the cover once the others had headed for bed. It wasn't long after that he went that way himself, at the end of the new day.
But he was still awake at 03:58:04, not sure that he wanted to sleep through it, not sure he could have even if he had wanted to. He watched the seconds tick by on the little luminous clock by the bed, saw 58 minutes become 59 without the clock so much as thinking about stopping, though he supposed that would've been the height of irony. The time passed. He told himself he hadn't been expecting it to be otherwise but he knew that was only half true at the most. He might not have been expecting the chill and the silence before his 6am alarm but he'd dreaded it all the same.
And then, as the hands of the clock clicked by to 4am, the door opened across the room. It let in too much light just for a moment and Steve blinked against it but didn't look away. He knew who it was. Tony slipped inside the room and crossed to the bed in what was at least vaguely like pajamas, his footsteps padding softly on the hard floor. Steve turned back the blankets like an invitation - an invitation that Tony accepted with a shiver as he settled down out of the relative chill of the room.
"So, how was the first day of the rest of your life?" Tony asked, as he slid one chilly hand across Steve's chest and settled closer.
It probably should've been awkward but Tony treated it all like it was just the next logical step for them, like there was nothing odd about it at all; Tony didn't offer an explanation why he was there, didn't look like he was thinking about doing so from what Steve could see of his face in the near total dark of his room, and Steve didn't ask for one. He realised he was starting to think that same way, too.
Steve smiled and settled closer. "I'm looking forward to tomorrow," he said.
---
He still woke at 6am.
It went on after that, between vague attempts to free himself of his never-ending time loop that never seemed to work no matter what he did. Tony, though, there was never a time when Tony said no, no matter what it was that Steve suggested, and for a while that didn't bother him at all - after all, he'd never known there to be any real possibility of making Tony do anything he didn't want to do. They did it in the workshop bent over the benches, Tony's room and Steve's, before and after the party that Steve hadn't even wanted to attend the first time, during it more than once. They did it in Tony's overly large shower, on their knees, Tony's hands pressed to the cold tile wall and Steve's arms wrapped around Tony's waist as he moved in him. He marked him shamelessly more than once, hickeys at his neck or his chest, the inside of one thigh before he stretched out on top of him, Tony's legs going up to wrap loosely, comfortably, around Steve's waist. The whole thing was just so wonderfully decadent, wholly unexpected, and Tony... actually Tony just seemed just like himself, if a touch quieter, even when Steve asked if he'd like to try things the other way around.
It went on. Days of getting to know Tony's body so thoroughly he was sure he knew it almost better than his own, small scars, the curve of muscle beneath the skin, the texture of his hair and how that differed from his head to the neatly trimmed goatee, the coarse trail that led down from his navel, the finer hair over his shins that made him grumble but smile when Steve rubbed it the wrong way. Steve got to know all the ways that Tony could make him feel, the differing weights of his touches and the sounds they would elicit if he let them. He taught himself to relax through the odd initial shock of penetration, watching Tony's eyes, the expression on his face as they had sex, Steve's hands not shy of leaving marks on him perhaps only because he knew that by the morning they'd be gone. He even persuaded him into the suit just once or twice, one cold, slick metal finger sliding inside him, brushing almost torturously against his prostate with each slow, deep thrust until he came with an embarrassing shout all over Tony's worktop. He knew he should have been ashamed. It was just that by that point it was hard to find it in himself to be.
Of course, eventually the guilt had to set in. Steve wouldn't have been Steve if it hadn't occurred to him at some point that really this was wrong, not exactly on a par with world hunger or international terrorism, and it wasn't as if Tony wasn't perfectly willing each and every time because he was, every time. Steve had never felt like he'd forced the issue, but that wasn't the point and God knew he wasn't ashamed the way he was because of some kind of latent homosexuality - he was far past that. He just knew he was seducing him under false pretences, knowing there was no way he would've done it in any normal circumstance, only because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tony wasn't going to remember any of it at all - he'd wake the next day without a single memory of the day before, no matter what they did, where they did it or how and Steve didn't have to deal with the consequences of his actions. He didn't have to live with trampling all over the friendship that they had. That was more important to him than any attraction he felt, more important than anything else.
It had all felt strangely liberating that first time, for a while after that, but it had to catch up with him in the end that essentially what he was doing was taking advantage. Then, one morning, he just couldn't do it anymore. He sat down to breakfast with Tony just like he had for the weeks before that. They had coffee and Tony indulged in a hot, buttered croissant just the way he had for weeks and weeks on end, to the point where the previously wonderful, tempting smell of it was almost enough to turn Steve's stomach. Nothing had changed but he knew he couldn't do it again. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to live with it for so long.
He turned back to the real problem then, of course, suspecting from the get-go that it was more to do with the fact that he needed to escape from Tony and the way he imagined he was looking at him than with any real hope that he was ever going to solve the problem. After all, considering the fact that he'd had Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner amongst other all working on the problem for countless days, given weeks to it himself, he just wasn't sure how much more there was that he could do. At least not in New York City. Perhaps that was a brainwave.
Weeks prior, he'd investigated the possibility of a crisis occurring somewhere else in the world; he'd found nothing, nada, a big fat bupkis, even with Tony and his handy in-head computer working for him. Of course, that didn't mean there weren't problems of a smaller nature than natural disasters or terrorism, weapons of mass destruction or maybe Doom deciding that Latveria needed to expand its borders. Suddenly there was nothing so small it could escape his notice; Steve took a Quinjet every morning, headed out in an odd but systematic pattern about the globe. Fires in India, a small flood in Pakistan... there was a boating accident in Indonesia that he helped to clear up twice and prevented three times before he was sure there was nothing more he could do. There were still people dying all over the world, preventable deaths, but the more he did the more he realised there were places he couldn't be, things he just couldn't coordinate. But it drove him. There were going to be no deaths from unnatural causes that day by the time he'd finished, he swore that to himself.
But bit by bit, it was starting to wear him down. There was so much to remember when he woke up every morning, places he forgot that plagued him until he wasn't sure how much he could go on anymore without that ache in his chest when one of them slipped his mind from the lists in his daily despatches to whoever he thought could help while he went elsewhere to find more, save more. All those people, names he half remembered in those not-quite-five minutes of calm as the day rebooted to 6am. It didn't matter that it was Halloween. He couldn't believe he'd been sitting at a party that first day, laughing, smiling like there was nothing wrong in the world. Now the day went on forever; the only thing he hadn't tried was death and that wasn't for him. The day would go on.
"You look tired," Tony told him at breakfast one morning. He'd never said it before; anything new was good, or so the movies told him, and he frowned at him across the table. He'd had the exact same amount of sleep as he always had, thanks to his own private time loop, was ostensibly the same in every way as he'd been that first morning months of that day ago. But he felt drained. He felt tired. Much more and he'd be empty, completely, that was all there was to it.
"I guess I am," he replied.
Tony nodded, and poured him another cup of coffee. "You have plans today?"
"Well..."
"Cancel them." Tony took his seat again, looking at him over the table, his brows raised. "Go back to bed. Just take a day off, Steve, you look like you're about to fall down unconscious or burst into tears. Both, were that a physical possibility."
He couldn't very well tell him he had plans to save the world, and anything less he had a feeling Tony was going to tell him to blow off for sleep - when Tony made up his mind, he was extremely difficult to ignore or override. He left his bagel half finished and dutifully trudged back off to bed. And he slept, even will ten thousand lives on his mind and his conscience. He supposed they'd be there for him to save again tomorrow. There was a whole slew of emails winging their way out across the world anyway - the people he'd found so far would be safe, at least.
The hours ticked by - lunchtime came and went. It was almost 4pm when Steve finally hauled himself out of bed and wandered to the kitchen via the bathroom, grabbed a couple of coffees and headed for the workshop. Pumpkin #1 was already splattered all over the floor, three surfaces and a wall, and Tony was putting the finishing touches on Pumpkin #2 as Steve stepped through the door, avoiding the scattered debris so easily it might as well not have been there at all.
"Voila," Tony said, stepping back from the bench with a flourish, brandishing a scalpel that he'd apparently been using to vastly greater effect than the laser cutter. Then he tossed it aside with a clatter to take one of the cups from Steve with a small, grateful smile. He took a sip, grimaced at the heat of it then took a seat on a stool at the bench. Steve pulled one up beside him.
"Feeling better?" Steve shrugged noncommittally. "You don't look better."
"Thanks, Tony." Steve smiled wryly. "I mean that."
"Why don't you just tell me what's wrong?" Tony took another sip of his coffee, then set it down on a great glob of pumpkin, caught it only just in time to prevent an accompanying coffee cascade. "You're starting to look like you want to throw yourself out of the nearest window. What's changed since yesterday?"
Steve chuckled a little, almost bitterly. "A lot's happened since yesterday," he said. He guessed that was the truth, in an odd sort of way that almost defied explanation. He sighed, shook his head. "You're not going to believe a word of it."
"Try me."
He looked serious enough about it, Steve had to admit, even scowling at his over-hot coffee that he just wouldn't leave alone though he probably knew the exact speed at which it was going to cool. That was Tony, though, impatient and impulsive, the perfect kind of billionaire though Steve had never quite worked out whether that would have been the case had he not had the money or if that was where his demeanour came from. He suspected Tony would be Tony no matter what, which was at least a little comforting in its own way. Tony was the same man who'd believed him before. He supposed he didn't have a lot to lose, and so that's why he told him.
It was quite the story, no real finesse to it maybe just because Steve wasn't sure he had any kind of refinement left in him then, least of all finesse. His pre-prepared persuasive lecture fell by the wayside though he supposed that would've been the simpler route, but he guessed if he'd wanted simplicity he could just have walked away and had done with it. As it was, he stayed and he told him. He told him all of it from start to finish, tired and damn near ashamed and overflowing with it all once he'd begun, the workshop suddenly a confessional though Tony was just about as far removed from ecclesiastic as Steve thought it was possible to be.
He told him about the tests, the weeks of that when no one had had a clue how to help him and even when he'd done his best to prove that what he said was true there'd always been some small but invariable note of scepticism present. He'd tracked down Loki once, with Thor's help, just to make sure it wasn't him. None of Tony's technology had ever been able to help. Dr. Strange had had no answers. He'd been through every detail, every conceivable variable, so many times they were practically etched there on his brain and nothing had ever worked at all so now, now he was slowly trying to save the world, just for one day. There was really no wonder he was tired.
Then he took a breath and he told him the rest, the Teach-Yourself-Japanese and how he looked with black hair, making pizza from scratch, the first time they'd kissed. Tony didn't seem too convinced of the latter at first but Steve supposed his weary kind of solemnity as he told him a little of what they'd done and how many times they'd done it must have said something about his honesty.
He took it surprisingly well. A few moments of silence as he thought it through then he just shrugged.
"You know, we should run a few tests," Tony told him in the end.
Steve shook his head. "You've already run them all, Tony. A hundred times."
"But..."
"No buts. I'm done."
Tony nodded, for once surprisingly compliant, and they lapsed into silence as they sat there together. Tony fetched a couple of bottles of water from the refrigerator across the room and they drank together in silence, too. Still, he couldn't quite wish he hadn't told him.
When they kissed, it was Tony that started it. Steve had started to feel that there was no way for him to feel surprised about that day anymore in any way at all but there it was, Tony's mouth finding his about as subtly as a freight train, goatee tickling his chin as those rough, blunt but terribly well-manicured hands of his found their way to the back of Steve's short hair. It was unexpected the way nothing else had been for weeks, maybe months, so long since he'd really known for sure how long it'd been. And maybe he'd told himself this could never happen again but it really wasn't happening again, now was it. Those were Tony's hands trailing down firmly over his torso, Tony was the one taking the initiative then, even if Steve supposed he'd been the one who'd put the idea in his head.
"Have I ever told you how long I've wanted to do that?" Tony asked once he'd pulled back, his voice sounding there right by Steve's ear, the tone low and dark. His breath there made him shiver, or maybe that was the tone too.
"Not exactly," Steve replied. His mouth felt dry. "We've never done much talking."
"Not like today."
"No," Steve said. "Not like today."
Tony pulled his stool in closer then, close enough that when he pulled himself back up onto it his thighs had to frame Steve's knees; he leaned in, tugged Steve closer by the front of his shirt and kissed him again, that same familiar flavour of coffee there that somehow Steve found intoxicating though he doubted it had much to do with the caffeine. Tony sucked at his bottom lip, teased it a little with his teeth and his tongue and then pulled back, settling his hands at Steve's knees. He looked at him, closely - Steve could see and almost feel Tony's eyes moving over him, the look in them different now somehow, darker and deeper.
"For God's sake, Steve," he said, his voice still low with that tone to it that made Steve's eyes widen just a fraction, made his stomach tighten. "If you don't kiss me right now I'm going to get a complex, and you know how I feel about psychiatrists."
"In your case, they're usually female," Steve pointed out. "And you usually sleep with them."
"And you like me anyway. What does that say about you?"
"Nothing good," Steve said, with a smile.
He kissed him then. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.
After a moment, Tony stood as they kissed, slipping from the stool to stand right by him; the abandoned stool and Steve's knees were in the way of him standing in front so he shifted to the side, Steve turning his head to follow the kiss, twisting slightly on the stool. The height of it and Steve on top was just enough that Tony didn't have to stoop at all and Steve, impatient then once Tony's hands were on him, warm over the thin fabric of his t-shirt, kicked the other stool out of the way perhaps a little recklessly. It toppled backwards, hit the floor with a clatter and Tony just chuckled against Steve's mouth as he ran his hands down over his chest, his sides, hips and thighs to his knees that he eased apart to stand between.
He'd never been like this before, Steve thought, and Steve had never felt so desperate. Before then, it had never been Tony's idea. He wasn't sure what he should do with that, except to let him have his way.
When Tony tugged up Steve's shirt he let him, snickered when it caught under his chin then under his nose and Tony kissed him that way, with him all caught up in the thin cotton t-shirt that he didn't even try to get out of. Finally Tony did it for him, tossed the damn shirt aside and then his own to join it, stepped back in to kiss him again. Tony's bare arms went around Steve's bare waist and made him shiver, Tony's bare chest pressed to his and Steve's hands went up to one of Tony's biceps, the back of his hair, holding him in. Tony pulled back anyway, a small smile and that characteristic Tony Stark sparkle to his eyes as he didn't so much step back as step around, hand trailing over Steve's thigh, his waist, Steve following with his eyes just as far as he could until Tony pressed his mouth down between his shoulder blades, slow and hot.
Steve sighed. He hadn't been expecting this at all, and that was odd considering exactly how many permutations of this day he'd been through by then. Tony settled his hands at Steve's hips and moved down further, pressing his mouth down every couple of inches over the length of Steve's spine and then shifted back up, his unsurprisingly prickly goatee trailing right up to the back of his neck, making Steve bow his head and smile as Tony's arms went around him from behind.
"I guess if I'm not going to remember this we'd better make the most of it," Tony said, murmured against the back of Steve's shoulder.
"So you believe me?"
"You've never lied to me before," Tony said simply, reaching up to turn Steve's face toward him as Steve turned just a little on the stool, looking back at him over his shoulder. "Why would you start now?"
"It's just that up until now Thor's the only one who's ever believed this without proof."
"Have you ever told me like this before?"
"Well, no."
Tony quirked a brow somewhat wryly. "Well then, there you go." And he kissed him again.
Steve stood, quickly; he pushed the stool out of the way and Tony shook his head as it clattered to the floor just like the other had. Steve was quick but right then Tony was quicker, whether that was the Extremis in full effect or Steve's mental exhaustion or just the fact that Steve was willing for Tony to do whatever he wanted to do as long as he did it now wasn't terribly clear, but in the end it didn't matter - Tony pushed him up against the nearest bench, the one still sticky with exploded pumpkin, pressed himself right up to him and kissed him again. There was a kind of urgency to it that hadn't been there before, like Tony hadn't been kidding at all and he was intending to really make the most of this. Apparently he knew just how to do it, too.
"We've done it here before, right?" Tony asked, his voice low and a little breathless as his hands ventured down, thumbs catching at the waistband of Steve's jeans. He shifted, brushed his lips over Steve's throat, pressed a slow kiss to his sternum before he looked back up at him expectantly.
Steve nodded, hoping he wasn't starting to blush but suspecting he was all the same. "We have," he admitted, with a faint little smile as his mind flicked through all those times. Considering this was Tony's reaction to being told about it all, it was difficult to summon the previously requisite side order of guilt when he thought of one of the two of them being bent over a bench or the ache from kneeling there on the hard concrete floor that they stupidly never seemed to think of counteracting with a cushion. "More than once."
"So, who's usually on top?"
Tony sounded so damn casual about it, interested, intrigued like this was all fine and normal and not the oddest thing he'd heard in weeks. Steve found he couldn't help but smile, shake his head a little in bemusement.
"I am," he said. "Usually."
"And you want me now?"
"Tony, I always want you."
Tony smiled, practically lit up with it the way Steve hadn't seen him do in weeks, even weeks before Halloween, his hands shifting from the waist of Steve's jeans over his hips to the buckle of his belt. Talented fingers took their time unbuckling it, pulling it apart before he brought his hands to the button there, the back of his fingers brushing against Steve's abdomen as he did so. He remembered a time when waistlines had been much higher, when properly placed jeans would have sat further up, when the way this pair practically hung from his hipbones exposing so much of his abdomen and a strip of white boxers beneath would've been considered completely indecent, but this was one time he could honestly say he was extremely grateful for the change. Tony popped open the button with one deft flick of his wrist, dragged down the zipper, pushed the jeans down over Steve's hips to bunch over his thighs. Steve knew he was doing it but wasn't watching, his eyes right on Tony's face instead, even when Tony's fingers trailed down over his stomach so lightly it almost tickled, even when they toyed with the waistband of his underwear, even when they trailed down over the front of his boxers, tracing the outline of him through the flimsy fabric. Steve took a slow, deep breath. Tony smiled an almost wicked smile and dipped his hand down underneath.
It was one thing to know how this was supposed to feel, to know how it had felt those times before, and quite another to do it. Tony stroked him slowly and Steve felt himself hardening in his hand, felt his pulse nudge up a notch. Tony shoved the boxers down over Steve's hips and the cooler air hit his warm skin, made him tense for a moment and made Tony snicker as he stroked him again. Then Steve moved, turned, pushed Tony back against the bench instead. He wasn't snickering anymore. As Steve leaned in, pressed his mouth over the pulse in Tony's neck, he heard his breath hitch. When Steve pressed the heel of his hand down over the front of Tony's sweats, Tony was already hard. So he hooked his fingers down into the waistband and pulled down.
Honestly, Steve was already quite intimately acquainted with Tony's body. It wasn't as if he'd made a detailed study, probably because he would have expired of sheer embarrassment, but he was fairly sure they'd done this often enough, even if Steve was the only one that remembered, that he could've drawn out Tony's naked form on the sketchpad across the room just from memory. Still, when he shifted closer, took Tony in his hand, caught himself too... Tony gasped in a breath like he'd done so many times before and somehow it all still felt so new. He set his other hand at Tony's shoulder, leaned in to kiss him as he stroked them both together like that, Tony's hips shifting a little of their own accord just as Steve's were. When he pulled back, Tony's eyes were dark and his breath laboured, his hand brushing over Steve's hair, his jaw, his shoulder, biceps, pressing to his skin like he just couldn't stop, indecisive about placement but insistent nonetheless.
"I'm not going to remember any of this, am I," Tony said, flushed. His gaze met Steve's as his hands travelled down Steve's chest, tracing muscles beneath the skin.
"You haven't so far."
"But you will."
Steve nodded, his hand going still over the two of them. He leaned in closer instead, setting a hand either side of Tony's hips at the edge of the worktop behind them.
"Well damnit, that's just not fair."
Steve chuckled - he couldn't help thinking that was just Tony all over. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the side of Tony's neck, the hinge of his jaw, his skin still warm despite the faint chill in the air. "Yeah," he agreed, even if he couldn't say he was sure that he agreed or not.
"Then if you fuck me over this bench right now, I won't remember it."
If he hadn't been doing so before, Steve definitely blushed a little at that. "Nope. Not for a second."
"Then you'd better make it damn good while it lasts." Tony smiled. It was almost wicked. "I want you. In case you hadn't noticed." He gestured theatrically at his rather obvious erection and Steve found himself laughing in spite of everything. "Hey, I mean it! Right now. There's even some hand cream you can..."
Steve raised his brows at him. "I know," he said. "Tony, I know where everything is in here. I know which file name it is you've hidden your armour designs under. I know where the pep pills are that you really don't need when you drink so much coffee and I know Pepper's told you that at least twenty times. I even found that drill bit you lost last summer." He stepped away slightly, not simple with his jeans lodged around his thighs, leaned back and grabbed the squirty hand cream dispenser from Tony's main workstation. Then he shuffled back to him. "Besides, we've used this before."
Tony crossed his arms over his chest, not managing to look irritated in the slightest when he was mostly naked and smiling faintly the way he was. "And apparently you know everything except how impatient I am right now."
Steve snickered softly and stepped back in. "I know," he said, and slipped one hand down between the two of them, easily, directed. His fingers cradled Tony's balls while his cock rested snugly against the inside of his wrist - he stretched out one finger, teased the smooth stretch of his perineum behind and Tony almost squirmed against him, his complaints immediately forgotten. Apparently he still knew exactly what Tony liked. Maybe those days hadn't been such a bad thing after all.
"Please don't say you're just going to stand there and tease me," Tony said, his voice suddenly just as unsteady as Steve was beginning to feel. He shook his head, paused then rested his forehead down against Tony's shoulder.
"I'm not," he said, then took a breath, paused. "Turn around."
Tony, in a rare display of complicity, then did exactly as he was told. He extricated himself from Steve's hands with at least a little reluctance and turned to face the bench, face the wall; for a moment Steve kept his distance, running his hands down over the perhaps oddly pristine skin of Tony's back, tracing his shoulder blades and the line of his spine. Much as Tony had done to him, Steve stepped in to press his mouth against Tony's back between his shoulders, nuzzled against the skin as he moved down a little, just a couple of inches at a time. He'd long since discovered that quick and dirty was all very well but he liked to take his time with Tony - he'd developed favourite places to touch him, the indents at the small of his back where his thumbs seemed to fit just perfectly, the inside of his wrist, the side of his neck where his pulse beat so strongly just beneath the surface, a different tempo for each and every different activity. He stood straight again, pressed close, his own erection caught tantalisingly against Tony's bare back as he ran his hand around to rest against his throat almost possessively, his mouth at the nape of his neck. Tony let him do it, his breath already close to erratic. Steve found himself smiling, didn't care about the specifics of the reason why.
Then he reached for the hand cream. It was an expensive, unperfumed kind that Logan turned up his nose at every time Tony used it though Steve had a feeling if it hadn't been for his healing factor keeping his hairy skin conditioned in all weathers, Logan wouldn't have dismissed it quite so easily. It did its job and a few more it really hadn't been designed for, like making Tony squirm as Steve guided him down to bend over the worktop and trailed his fingers down between his cheeks. The slippery stuff and Tony's willingness made it easy for Steve to start slipping his first finger inside him, slowly, carefully, as Tony held his breath the way he always did at first. He sighed it out hugely once that finger was in just as deep as it could go, displacing a couple of stray pumpkin sketches from the desk with his breath to float to the floor to rest with their shirts. He let Tony catch his breath before he tried another, stretching him further, lessening the resistance of that tight muscle at his entrance just little by little. A few slow, well-angled thrusts, just like he remembered, and Tony practically writhed against the desk, no pretence at restraint at all. Steve had always liked that about him, how he gave himself over to the way it felt without reservation, how maybe that said a little something about the way he trusted him and in the end, it made it simple to tell when he was ready for more. That and Tony was never exactly shy about asking for it. Pretty soon he started to push back against Steve's hand - he didn't need to be verbal about it, that was enough.
He pulled back and Tony grumbled irritably under his breath, made Steve snicker as he reached for the hand lotion again. He slicked himself that time, the chill of the lotion making him take a sharp breath the way it always did but he had to admit he kind of liked that, in a way - he'd found out a heck of a lot about himself as well as Tony, that much he couldn't deny. Then he stepped in close, guided himself up into position, the slick head of his cock pressing there snugly to the muscle at Tony's opening. He paused, ran his free hand to Tony's hip, squeezed in reassurance then started to press inside.
One long, slow slide and he was inside him; a couple of shuffles of his feet, adjustments, and then he was just as deep as he could be, his breath unsteady so he paused to let it even out, to let Tony adjust to the size of him inside him as his fingers pressed tight to the desktop. Steve rested his own hands at Tony's hips, his grip just tight enough to leave white marks when he pulled them away that filled back slightly darker than before, not bruised but the potential was there if he let himself. He didn't. He leaned down, the action pressing him deeper still, and pressed his mouth to Tony's back.
"Ready?" he asked, voice low and unsteady. Tony just nodded his reply as he attempted to brace himself a little.
One thrust, two, and Tony moved, swept his hands across the desk - a few sketches got in the way, a pot of drawing pens and his precious pumpkin that went crashing to the floor where it broke into damp, unsalvageable pieces. Collateral damage, Steve thought, trying not to tread on pens to disastrous effect. Tony didn't seem to mind too much, considering the way he cursed just once then pushed back against him.
Steve knew how Tony liked it, couldn't have helped but develop a sense for it all those times before that still managed to feel nothing like this though how that was even vaguely possible was completely beyond him. Tony liked it hard, liked to be reminded that Steve was bigger than him, stronger than him, so that was what Steve did - his thrusts were deep and hard, a strain in his muscles as he slipped his hands from Tony's hips to the edge of the worktop, gripped there as he flexed his own hips against him. His nails caught at the rough surface of the desk, his breath caught in his throat; Tony didn't even try to keep from cursing, the good kind it had taken Steve a while to understand at first when it sounded so close to vicious but that was Tony, contrary, contradictory to a fault. Fortunately, he liked Tony unpredictable.
Which was why he didn't complain when Tony stopped meeting his thrusts, when he pushed up instead until his back was flush against Steve's chest. He paused, Steve paused, resting his forehead down against Tony's shoulder before Tony pulled away. He turned, cheeks flushed, caught Steve in a kiss then pushed him away again with an expression that said he really wasn't done with him, he shouldn't worry. There was a sort of odd contortionist act then, Tony almost tripping himself, treading on a hunk of smashed pumpkin though somehow in the end he managed to get one booted foot out of his sweats and underwear - he apparently thought better of trying the other and just beckoned Steve back in at that.
"Like this," he said, hitching up his freed leg to rest on one of the rungs of the nearest stool, and Steve nodded, knowing this was going to be difficult but he supposed he'd never backed down from a challenge before. He stepped in close, Tony's arm going around him as they attempted to arrange themselves that way, one of Steve's hands at the worktop that was pressing into Tony's back as he fumbled his way into position. They were face to face as he slid back inside him, as Tony bent at a slightly odd angle to kiss him before they moved again, so close together he wasn't sure they could be any closer.
Tony gasped with every thrust like that was just the way he breathed now, sharp inhalations as Steve leaned against the desk and pushed into him, watching him as he did so. There was a sheen of sweat standing out on their skin that made their movements slicker, even as Steve knew his muscles were jerking, his breath short, his pulse hiked up far enough to make his limbs feel sort of light and heavy all at the same time while a tingle travelled down his spine with every thrust he made. Tony seemed to be holding on for dear life, giddy and smiling with his head tilted back a little as they moved together. Steve's free hand came down between them then, wrapped around Tony's cock and stroked, not managing to keep it in time with his thrusts at all but judging from the way Tony bucked his hips against him he didn't really give a damn about synchronisation. He just shivered against him, kissed him again all hard and deep before he gasped in a breath and shuddered and came somehow in their almost impossible position that jarred their muscles but that just seemed to make it better. Steve wasn't long after, not with the way Tony tightened around him, not after all the times he'd had to tune into the way that Tony's body reacted, to match his own reactions to his.
They took a moment, their breath almost too loud in the otherwise mostly silent room. Of course it was never really silent, not with the hum of equipment and the vague sounds of the building's other inhabitants moving around in other rooms on other floors, the caterers who were setting up in the kitchen. Steve rested his forehead against Tony's shoulder as he caught his breath, Tony's pulse slowly calming under his fingers. He hadn't realised just how much he'd missed this.
"Well, that was different," Tony said, smiling faintly as they eased apart.
Steve took a breath and stepped back in, sticky skin on skin, feeling Tony's arms go around his waist securely. "Actually, it was," he said.
The party was just the same as always, in a way. Steve knew what was going to happen before it happened, knew each conversation and person and gesture by heart as he moved through the room in his Han Solo outfit, a small plate of Tony's ridiculous party food in one hand and a glass bottle of Coke in the other. He knew there'd be nothing out there that the NYPD couldn't handle, that they'd actually pay some attention to the email he'd sent them the second he was out of bed that morning detailing every last crime he could remember that was set to occur in their jurisdiction and no, the supervillains of the world weren't going to show their faces that night. He knew; he'd done it all before.
The evening wore on as it always did, as it had so many times that he'd seen, Steve staying out of the way making idle small talk with whoever happened by, occasionally catching Tony's eye across the room with a smile or a raise of his bottle. They'd done that before, sure, down to the point that Tony tugged him aside into the closest room, not really caring it was Logan's as they kissed pressed up hard against the door, costumes crumpling. They'd been doing that all day, after, finding excuses to be in the same place at the same time when there really wasn't a valid excuse at all, Tony pinning him to doors and walls and the kitchen counter before Pepper walked in and almost caught them. It was a welcome change, a welcome distraction from the names in his head that he'd entrusted in those two hours' worth of emails to the appropriate authorities around the world, just the way he'd started to in the days before. There'd just always be more, he knew that. Maybe there wasn't enough time in the day to save them all.
Johnny Storm set the carpet on fire. The caterers ran out of Tony's favourite hors d'oeuvres. Pete and MJ fell asleep on the couch and fifteen minutes after Steve slipped away from the monster movie to go to bed, Tony came in and joined him. He sighed, Tony spooning up behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist though they both knew when Steve woke in the morning Tony wouldn't be there. Tony wouldn't remember, not a minute of it, not a second. Maybe that, he thought, was the oddest idea he'd had all day.
That night, he found himself dreading two minutes to four like he wasn't sure he'd ever done before. It took a while for him to realise why, but once he had, well, there it was; this time, for the first time, he wanted Tony to remember.
He woke at 6am.
Just like every day, he reached over and turned off the alarm. Just like every day, for a moment he squeezed his eyes shut and steeled himself for two solid hours of emailing that had to come, all the places and times and names and events he had to recall and the order he'd spent so long devising just so no one was missed. Then he shivered. And he looked down.
His blanket was gone. He was lying there under a thin cotton sheet that was usually there under his blanket, his feet feeling not unlike large blocks of ice. He knew all about that, of course.
Tony grumbled beside him; Steve's stomach flipped and he turned to find Tony Stark snuggled up right there under the entirety of his blanket, his face covered up to the eyes that were just then cracking open.
"I thought you were supposed to disappear," Tony said, his voice low and muffled by the blanket until he turned to toss half of it over him, following it up with one arm sprawled over his chest. "Or I was or something."
"Very funny, Ms. MacDowell," Steve said, his heart not in it at all. "Look, Tony, this isn't funny. I've never got this far before. I've never made it past two minutes to four and you're never here and it all starts over again. I..."
Tony leaned over and turned Steve's face to him, warm fingers on his almost icy cheek as he settled closer. He looked him in the eye and then he kissed him, apparently morning breath be damned, and he supposed it did its job because immediately, Steve's attention was on him, freakout averted. "Take a breath," he said. "Then think about it. You must have done something differently. Just work it out."
There had to be something different, Tony was right. There had to be.
So he thought back, thankful that the day had finally been so different to the forty, fifty, however many days that had come before it because honestly, they'd all begun to blend together into one long, perpetual purgatory of a day that began and ended with people's deaths and the vain hope for the prevention thereof. He hoped to God he hadn't missed anyone from his list. Sooner or later, he was going to have to check. He tried not to think of all the others he could've gotten to with just a few more days. He supposed he knew what lay down that road.
That day, though, that day he'd looked tired, or at least Tony had thought so. He'd gone back to bed and slept for hours after that, gone down to the workshop once he'd woken and told Tony everything but he'd done that before, he'd told everyone and that had never changed anything. There'd been the party, of course, but that was really just par for the course right there, nothing out of the ordinary at all. Tony had kissed him, of course, and while that was new in a way he wasn't sure how that could've done it. Then Tony had... oh God.
"Tony, where did you get the design for that pumpkin?"
"The one we left in bits on the floor?" Tony shrugged. "A website. I looked at a lot of them, Steve. For months. I mean, I can probably find it if it's that important."
"I think it might be."
They got out of bed while Tony flicked through all the sites he knew, searching for the design he'd settled on in the end, the one he and Steve had carved more times than Steve could honestly remember. Then they put in the call to Dr. Strange who confirmed it shortly after, to Steve's exasperated amusement that maybe bordered just briefly on dismay. Maybe Tony wouldn't be using quite so much occult symbolism in his next Halloween project. In fact, once Dr. Strange was over and out, Steve forbade him to ever carve a pumpkin again.
"I guess it was evil," Tony told him, as they finally swept away the remains of the broken pumpkin from the workshop floor. "It did have to die."
It was an odd kind of day after that. They told the others what had happened, Steve not really sure why unless it was intended as some kind of cautionary tale against invoking incomprehensible magics to cause bizarre time loops that would come close to driving team members totally out of their mind. It seemed it was something about Steve having been the one who'd finished that original pumpkin that very first day, and Tony apparently couldn't help but point out over and over that it could just as easily have been him. In a way, Steve was glad it hadn't. As much respect as he had for Tony, as much as he cared for him, he did not want to think of him reliving that day the way he had. He didn't know how he would've held up. In fact, knowing Tony, he'd still have been working on a technological way to return time to the norm. Steve looked at him as Peter went into Science Mode attempting to explain magic in a way that Steve was happy to gloss over; Tony looked back and smiled. Tony remembered. Steve smiled back. Apparently he didn't regret it at all.
Tony bought a temporary replacement for his ruined rug on eBay, just until he got back to Nepal. Steve and Peter helped Jarvis clear up the residual party mess and when MJ came in from rehearsals she brought enough pizza to feed an army. Tony wouldn't let him check on any of the people whose lives he'd tried to save, not a single one of them; he supposed it made sense, since not knowing would gnaw at him but knowing, he didn't like to think what that would do. Tony was right, which was beginning to be a recurring theme. Then a quick crisis down in Florida took them away for half of the night - thankfully no one was injured and Steve was sort of grateful for the action in a way, the new action, the new day and the new start. His suit felt less constricting, his shield lighter though nothing had changed. Really, in the end, he was just glad he wasn't getting ready to spend yet another evening dressed up as Han Solo.
They came back and ate and talked around the table; Steve found ten minutes to glance at the paper with November 1st printed there on the cover once the others had headed for bed. It wasn't long after that he went that way himself, at the end of the new day.
But he was still awake at 03:58:04, not sure that he wanted to sleep through it, not sure he could have even if he had wanted to. He watched the seconds tick by on the little luminous clock by the bed, saw 58 minutes become 59 without the clock so much as thinking about stopping, though he supposed that would've been the height of irony. The time passed. He told himself he hadn't been expecting it to be otherwise but he knew that was only half true at the most. He might not have been expecting the chill and the silence before his 6am alarm but he'd dreaded it all the same.
And then, as the hands of the clock clicked by to 4am, the door opened across the room. It let in too much light just for a moment and Steve blinked against it but didn't look away. He knew who it was. Tony slipped inside the room and crossed to the bed in what was at least vaguely like pajamas, his footsteps padding softly on the hard floor. Steve turned back the blankets like an invitation - an invitation that Tony accepted with a shiver as he settled down out of the relative chill of the room.
"So, how was the first day of the rest of your life?" Tony asked, as he slid one chilly hand across Steve's chest and settled closer.
It probably should've been awkward but Tony treated it all like it was just the next logical step for them, like there was nothing odd about it at all; Tony didn't offer an explanation why he was there, didn't look like he was thinking about doing so from what Steve could see of his face in the near total dark of his room, and Steve didn't ask for one. He realised he was starting to think that same way, too.
Steve smiled and settled closer. "I'm looking forward to tomorrow," he said.