They both have nightmares, but sometimes, Steve's are worse. Tony's eyes will flicker open in the middle of the night, and the sounds Steve makes as he fights off the monsters make his heart speed up and his palms sweat. He knows those noises like he knows his own voice. They're rough, broken noises. They're the opposite of everything Steve is.
Howard watches the way that Tony organizes the blocks, how he waits patiently for the swaying of the block tower to stop before adding to it. Tony's got these lights in his eyes that dance when he's thinking, and Howard knows how intelligent his son is, how brilliant his mind is, and suddenly this little boy is more than just a bundle of cells that share his genes – he's his boy.
They find a playground. Ellie is saying goodbye, and she doesn't even know.
He is a sweating, sick and arguably hot mess. And he is absolutely miserable, being confined to the box that is his room. There's light streaming through the giant glass windows that cannot be blocked out by even the darkest of curtains (and believe him, he's tried the blackout curtains)
Tony is used to waking up alone.
They Find Howard Stark's old workshop boarded up in the basement of the New York office during renovations.
It starts not long after you wake up. You feel it under your skin like needles, like someone is setting fire to your flesh, your nerves, your blood.
Tony falls apart on the kitchen floor one morning. Steve feels like a jackass. Clint is enjoying his new position as team therapist.
"There is paper hanging from my ceiling," Tony says, mostly because he doesn't know what else to say. "Wha—Oh," Bruce looks confused for a moment, but then he smiles again, a nicer smile, a soft one that makes Tony think very briefly of his mother, "Right. They're snowflakes."
There's a little church on 51st, nestled on the corner behind a wall of trees that stand stunted and short, leaves sparse on their branches no matter what time of the year. It's made of grey brick and black shingles, and it has windows that reach for the sky, tall and slim and shimmering stained glass.
Tony's standing there, holding the salad bowl in one arm and the tongs in the other. He's got a wicked smile on his face, a real one, one that's all teeth and lips while the crow's feet in the corner of his eyes and the laugh lines on his forehead crease. His hair is all mussed up, the same way it always is when he's been spending too much time in his workshop. This is his Tony.
He steals the bottle of vodka from the liquor cabinet when his mother and father leave for the benefit. It's a charity fundraiser for an organization that Tony has never heard of, and he's sure that means his father is completely clueless.
He doesn't like the military courtrooms. They're nice, Tony will give them that, but they're entirely too formal for his liking. California doesn't work that way. If there were ever a place where the practice of law was lax, it would be Malibu; and he can't complain. DC's Marine Corps courthouse is silent, spotless, and severe – Tony's 3 least favorite 's' words.
Steve finds him in the open expanse of the living room, sitting behind the white grand piano by the bar. He is wearing a tattered pair of sweatpants and a shirt with a circle cut out of it, a little opening from which the arc reactor peeks out.
Survivor; [n.], a person or thing that survives, often in spite of hardships. Inspired by David Levithan's 'The Lover's Dictionary'.
She knows it doesn't seem like it, but this is not a bad read.