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cap_ironman2008-11-16 04:12 am
Listlessly Stuck In Dreams 1/? (Tony/Steve)
Title: Listlessly Stuck In Dreams
Author: ![[info]](https://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
thebetch
Rating: PG... ish.
Pairings/Characters: Past Tony/Steve, Pepper, Peter, Jarvis
Genre: Angst/general
Summary: The only link Tony has to Steve now is in his dreams and even then...
Warning: Post-Civil War... and if you didn't know Steve was dead, well oops.
Author's Note: I apologize if this is horrifyingly bad, it is unbeta'd and I apparently like to angst out on my birthday xD. This was inspired by the poem found below the cut. Enjoy! (PS, I own nothing <3)
I was asleep while you were dying.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,
the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking
you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.
*
Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.
But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in--still, trying--
I make between my slumber and my waking.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying. – “Myth” by Natasha Trethewey
Tony’s listlessly spending another day in bed; his will power to remove himself from the down comforter is all but decimated. It reeks of staleness and sweat, it is his swaddling that binds him to the mattress, it is the only thing that remains in this room that was touched by more of Steve than Tony himself. The ever present nausea deep in his torso keeps him from eating; no desire to sustain himself leads the once strong man to neglect his body to the point of ever present pain.
He accepts this pain over the mental and emotional pain every damn day inflicts on his psyche after he wakes up. A physical manifestation of the turmoil in his head completes the slowly churning ruination that is taking Tony apart pixel by proverbial pixel.
Here, in bed, is the only place that he knows he can be alone with his thoughts, his dreams. The dreams in which Steve is still behind him, beside him, in front and all around him all at once. Seas of red, white, and blue mixed with blond just flooding his subconscious and blanketing his sleep dulled senses. Warmth and comfort found only in the exhaustion fueled by malaise.
Tony finds solace in the loving memories that follow him gently into the dark of night, but he also finds himself waking up with a smile on his face that fades faster than the lights in a blackout. Tears soon wash over his cheeks and he can’t help it because that’s how every morning goes, his pillow is actually tear stained for Christ’s sake, and he doesn’t even care how cliché that is, nor how pathetic that is.
That’s who he is now, what he is now and it’s his own doing. He knows this, he wallows in this as he turns his face into the damp pillow, nose smudging against the corner of the blanket that Steve accidently tore that one time they were literally fighting for the covers. The good memories drift out of his mind as the less desirable ones float up to taunt him. Petty fights, squabbles, and he tries to stop thinking there, to just go as numb as he’s been for a while before the war comes back into his head and there it is. The shield pressing hard against his sternum, the gunshots ringing out over his television… Tony sobs once, brokenly as he buries his face into the pillowcase. The staccato sounds echoing the bursts of lead. Failing to breathe properly after a few moments of the self-inflicted suffocation, Tony’s sputtering and hiccoughing, his body’s motor functions kicking in to keep him alive.
He’s bitter, hateful toward the extremis not for the first time for not just letting him dissolve into nothingness. By keeping him alive in this misery wrought out of his own doing… it’s completely driving him into the ground. But it’s too much to hope that it’s literal.
-----
He misses work almost as frequently as he’s missing the feeling of being more than just alive, absent from the board room as he’s absent from Avengers meetings. Tony is just merely existing in a constant fluctuation of sleep, misery, and a basic need to use the bathroom for weeks on end. He ignores Pepper when she keys into his room, though she is respectfully silent most of the time, he cringes whenever she opens her mouth to tell him to eat what she’s brought him this time. He doesn’t. She still tries anyway. She isn’t the only one who does and it makes him want to just defy them all.
Peter tries cheering him up, despite all of the shit he put that kid through and it makes Tony all the more miserable for it. He fakes a smile for the good of the younger man’s sake, but as soon as he scampers away, Tony’s in the bathroom throwing up because he’s just gotten to that point of his self loathing where even his fallacious actions make him sick. This grief has just gotten worse and worse, a spiraling plane crash that only makes him wish that he hit the eject button weeks ago. It isn’t getting better, and he’s sure he hit rock bottom last Tuesday when he took a mouthful of vodka, but spit it back out.
With his face pressed against the porcelain bowl, body slumped on the bathroom floor, he laughs at himself. An uncontrollable, tear filled laugh that hurts his stomach when he’s able to catch his breath. It’s the only thing he can do, really, because he has no control over himself anyway. His laugh is hollow and lifeless, but loud and nearly fulfilling anyway. It dissolves to sighs and sobs long before he canstop it, and Tony just shakes his head and stands up. The hysteria is the worst part, and all he can do no is brush his teeth and seek solace in the bed he knows is far too big but won’t ever get rid of now.
-----
Tony starts going to work after he very nearly loses his company, and that is the only reason why. It’s a reason to get out of bed for once, at the very least, and Pepper seems to think it’s good for him. Work is a distraction, a delay of his inactivity and he only half-asses his smart remarks to his board when he refutes the fact that he was not, in fact, in Aruba for the past month. He doesn’t care one bit what these stuffy old shirts think, and in fact they can bite him, but he just sits in his chair and pretends to listen to the presentation as he scribbles stars and flags in margins of the outline he should have read.
Though he’s somewhat glad to be surrounded by people who aren’t shooting him worried glances as he moves from room to room in the building, the stuffiness of the building is suffocating him. He removes his tie as soon as he’s in his office alone, checks his e-mail as he stares out his window, and fires off the replies as he’s sneaking off to go for a walk in the park across the street.
The breeze chills him to the bone because he forgot his jacket, and Steve would normally huff and puff in his protective way as he handed over his own coat, but Tony couldn’t really expect the unnecessary weight of too much leather today. It’s chilly outside, which he is actually enjoying for once. It fits his ever present moodiness. The lower temperature brings some color and life into his face as he ambles slowly, weakly across the frost bitten grass. Being alone in the park allows him some more time to think about what he’s doing, and funnily enough not doing in his life.
When a jogger ghosts past him, he's sitting perched on the edge of a time worn statue. Tony looks after them and decides that tomorrow morning, before work, before refusing to drink the protein shake Jarvis hands to him, he’s going to try to jog. That one person, man, woman, he couldn’t tell because of the person’s speed, inspires him for some reason he doesn’t really want to know. The rest of the world is still moving he realizes – no one else is staying in bed all day mourning. Neither is he, he reminds himself out loud, as he has taken to narrating his thoughts to himself. And though he had spent all those days wasted wallowing in his own pity party, no one else stopped living their lives and just maybe Steve wouldn’t have wanted him to do himself so much harm. Just thinking about Steve for that brief moment makes Tony start to shake subtly, but that may just be the cold. Might be just the cold, but it isn’t and he isn’t fooling himself thinking otherwise.
He knows that it will be hard to get out of bed, like it was this morning when he sobbed into his pillow again, but he’s going to do it anyway. He thinks he’s past the point of inactivity now, and he wants to get on with his life, but he’s not quite sure he knows how to. So something new, something out of his normal realm of activity might spurn some sort of relent in his listless helplessness. He hopes to Christ Almighty that it does.
Dang, I've been there.
I believe in Tony Stark.
The poem is grand, one of the best ones I've come across in recent years. Thank you for directing me to it.
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Re: Dang, I've been there.
And we're studying Natasha Trethewey in on of my courses so, I had to share. It's honestly a mind blowing poem because it's palindrome like style had to take forever to work out correctly. But, you're welcome!
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That was aughaklsdf. Makes me wish I had vodka (to drink, not spit out).
Psssssssssssst. Happy Birthday. :3