Chapter Text
If you need me, I’ll be there.
Tony thinks the words Steve leaves him with are a lie, a false promise made to others as a way to make up for their shortcomings, a comfort more for themselves rather than the recipient.
It is not the first time these words were promised to him.
And now what feels like a lifetime later, with courage that is as bitter as the half empty bottle of scotch in his hand, Tony is waiting for the line to connect with only one question he wants to cash in a little far too late. He doesn’t set his expectations too high, doesn’t think he’ll hear the answer the softest parts of him, the most broken and wounded parts of him is craving to hear. Tony had not walked out of Siberia with just a broken armor, a a wounded body and an abandoned shield.
Steve had taken his entire heart with him, leaving Tony with nothing but broken tissue and ripped flesh, like the torn sparking wires that hang loose in the chest plate of his armor, smashed open repeatedly by the shield that is meant to protect. Steve had walked away and left Tony with nightmares and paranoia, with pulmonary contusions that leaves him breathless and tired, limited and caged and is a constant reminder that the loss and disability isn’t just emotional, but physical, too.
(You didn't think, with the way he looked at you, with the way he held you and kissed you, with the way he had said your name, the syllables brushing against your ears, not in a million fucking years did you even think, that he'd leave so fucking easily. Just like that. You didn't think -- you weren't thinking. How could you when Steve Rogers, the man who cannot lie, had looked at you like you had been the love of his life?)
The call connects and Tony hears the smooth voice wash over him, hears single syllabled surname and returns the greeting with a question, “Did you mean it all those years ago, when you said you’d be there if I called? Were you really going to be there?”
( Call me -- just call me. I’m always here, you said. But you were twenty-two and I was twenty and you had your legacy paved before you and I had mine; you were a kid, so was I. We didn’t know better. We didn’t know promises were only as strong as the person who give them. You were not strong, then. And neither was I.)
“Where are you, Tony?”
“Were you?” The question comes out with a little grit, as Tony brings the cool bottle against his forehead, feels the cool surface of the glass press against the warm and salt on his cheek.
The silence is too long.
The silence hollows out the hole in Tony’s chest, forcing the already wide cavern to rip wider still.
Tony thinks the silence is his answer and is about to end the call when the answer comes through, clear and thick around the edges.
“Yes...”
There are stars behind the darkness brought upon the forceful scrunch of Tony’s eyelids, tiny little bright dots that flare and fade like the something that flutters somewhere in the numbness of his chest.
“Did it have an expiry date?” Tony asks, teeth grinding as he waits for the final bell toll.
There is a slow measured intake of breath followed by a silence that stretches too long; Tony drinks two full glasses of scotch before he gets an answer.
“No… no, there is no expiry date…”
Tony wishes he can feel relief at the words.
He doesn’t.
“I just wanted to know.” Tony says and it is about as close as to a goodbye as Tony can manage before he disconnects the call and empties the rest of the bottle. He empties another one and doesn’t remember what transcends between the second bottle and when he wakes up the next morning, slumped against the desk in Steve’s study, Steve's drawings all around the glass windows and sketchbook haphazardly open under the scotch bottles and empty glass, the red light and endless calls on hold blinking on the desk phone.
The room should have been empty as it has been the past weeks stretching after the Civil War.
Except it isn’t.
Bruce Wayne is sitting across the table, a cup from the coffee shop across the street propped up on the armrest, long empty with the way Bruce’s fingers are holding it from the base, tilting it left and right. His expression is guarded, jaw line sharp against the sharp lines of his suit; Tony sees nothing but stoney and carefully manicured persona that is billionaire playboy of Wayne Enterprises, nothing but what the press and world sees. Bruce is watching him closely, watching how Tony looks like he's got a fist in the middle of his chest, carving and nails scraping against whatever that is left.
Tony scrubs his hands down his face and applies pressure against his eyelids, all in an effort to ward what he thinks is a hangover mirage, a day dream of something his heartless body is cooking up and making him see things that had long left him behind.
Except he isn’t seeing things.
“Why are you here?” Tony asks, pushing off the desk and leaning against the chair, words thick and shaky, soft and barely a whisper and Tony is unable to do anything about the breathlessness. He is unable to stop the hand from coming to rest in the middle of his still bruised chest.
“You called,” is all Bruce says, something flickering in his dark gaze, something far too small to catch.
And Tony says nothing more, even when he shuts his eyes and his throat closes up, even as the cough wracks through his body leaves the sides of his ribs and the length of his spine burning with an ache that will never go away, even as the warm and oh so familiar hand slides down the length of his back.
I should have called earlier, Tony thinks.
(But you didn't.)