cap_ironman | "Where the Lovelight Gleams"

Author’s Note: Well, in the wake of Tumblrgeddon, I thought I would start posting my Stony fics to this fabulous community here. I hope this is okay. Is it possible to get an author's tag, too? Thank you so much!

Summary: After getting Sam home for the holidays, Steve finds out his friend arranged the same gift for him. However, going home means facing Tony, which he hasn’t done since everything fell apart in Siberia. It’s time to confront his feelings and finally tell the truth.

Rating: T (for language, adult situations)
Characters/Pairing: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Link: AO3

Preview:

“Please, I didn’t come here to fight. I didn’t come here to make either of us feel bad.”

Tony shakes his head. Every line of his posture screams confrontation and distress. “Fighting seems to be the only thing we’re good at. And I freaking excel at feeling bad.”

Now Steve takes a step forward. “You’re wrong,” he insists. “We worked well together. We did. And we’re friends. You said you were my friend, and I’m yours, and we led the team, Tony. You know that.”

Tony shakes his head, forcefully shoving away facts he doesn’t want to see. “Back then. But we destroyed everything we built, didn’t we? Just like that asshole said: an empire that breaks from within is dead for good.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“That asshole set us up, Tony! Don’t you see?” Steve comes another step closer, desperate to show Tony the truth the way he always is when they argue about this. “He set us up! He knew what would happen! He used Bucky and the past against us!”

And Tony steps forward too. “Yeah, because he knew how terrible we are together, how little you and I see eye to eye.”

“Tony, no, God, we’re not terrible–”

“Why are you here?” Tony demands again. His words are still getting hotter and faster as all the pent-up emotions from the last six months come spilling out in a flood. Steve turns away, hating himself, feeling his own pain turn vicious and stabbing. “Why? You want to show up and make sure I’m not alone like you said? Wish me a merry goddamn Christmas? Tell me we can still be friends? Make yourself feel better, just like you did when you didn’t tell me about what you knew? What is it you want to tell me?”

Everything Steve wants to say, that he has been saying, dies in his heart, in his mind, in his throat. He stares at Tony, who’s breathing hard and scowling. They’ve walked the whole lobby, so that they’re nearly face to dace. Drawn together, it seems, even as they shove each other apart. The pain grows to agony when Steve notices that, and he nearly doubles over from how crippling it is. “I didn’t come to fight,” he finally whispers. “That’s not what I want.”

Tony balks. Steve swears his eyes glitter with tears. “Then what do you want? What else is left?”

“There’s more to us than what happened in that bunker,” Steve insists, his own voice breaking. “There’s more than our mistakes.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tony hisses, and he turns away. “If that’s really what you came all this way to say, on Christmas, then you’re wasting your time.”

This is all falling apart. Steve feels helpless again, the way he did when he stood there and watched Tony watching Bucky killing his parents. The way he did when he watched Tony attacking Bucky. He can’t let the past dictate his future. Not anymore. “Tony, wait!” He needs to be honest. He has to talk. He has to tell Tony what he promised he would. “Tony!”

He has to do what he should have done long before.

"Where the Lovelight Gleams"

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