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i.
Sleep isn’t easy to come by these days. It’s a pretty concept, to be able to close his eyes and simply rest, but Tony has closed his eyes and opened them to a lonely dirt road and pillowing clouds of smoke enough times to know better.
He does know better, but t his doesn’t mean he can't feel tired. This he confides to FRIDAY in a moment of weakness, and he sits in the dark and listens to her voice (not JARVIS, not JARVIS) hesitantly informing him that if he sleeps less, he’s more likely to have vivid dreams.
He tells her to bookmark those studies for him to look at in the morning. It isn’t fair, he thinks dully—a child’s declaration.
“I think you should sleep, boss,” FRIDAY tells him cautiously. He’s not sure if she learned caution on her own or if he taught her with lessons from betrayals laced into her coding.
“Trust me, there’s nothing I’d love more,” he chuckles to the ceiling, but the sound is brittle and hitches in his throat halfway through.
He makes it another twenty-five hours without sleep, and then he passes out in the middle of revising the latest batch of the Accords he’s been sent, and then, and then:
He dreams. FRIDAY warned him this; he resigns himself to it. He looks down the path that stretches out before him, but it’s made of gravel not dirt, and it’s early evening instead of late night.
He walks. He doesn’t have the mind to look down, but he thinks he’s barefoot; the shape of each pebble digs into the pads of his feet, making it all feel so solid, so real.
He comes upon a set of gates, and he realizes, Home. I’m home. There’s a shape in the distance too blurry to be recognizable, but he just knows, deep in his bones, that this is someplace he belongs.
He wakes slowly, peacefully, the gentlest that reality has welcomed him back in years, and finds that he isn’t in his own room. The walls are the wrong color, and the window is on the wrong side of the room. The bed he has curled up on is still neatly made, save for the faint impression his weight has left in the center. Too neat to be his.
“FRIDAY?” he calls, but his throat’s gone dry. There’s a desk across the foot of the bed, decorated with framed pictures and drawings, and he already knows before FRIDAY answers, You’re in Captain Rogers’s room, sir.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, rubbing a hand over his eyes. It's obvious enough. “Did— What happened?”
“Rhodey found you asleep and brought you to your room, but you exhibited signs of sleepwalking approximately two hours after. I tried to wake you, but you seemed to know where you were going, and you did fall right back asleep once you came here…”
Tony stands from the bed, minimizing how much he touches. There’s a blank notepad and pencil on the nightstand. A shirt folded neatly on the dresser, yet to be put away. A framed sketch on the desk. A closet that, he knows, hides a spare pillow for nights like— like—
He feels alien here, wrong, obtrusive. It's a museum, a relic of the past, and he's conscious of every imprint he leaves behind. He doesn’t belong here, no matter what he might have once been promised. “Did any of the others see?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Good.” There's that, at least.
He leaves the room and shuts the door quietly behind him. It’s well into the afternoon by now, and the rest of the hallway is quiet—the others must already be up.
“If I do that again, use your loudest alarm to wake me,” he decides.
There’s a long pause, but FRIDAY finally answers, “Understood.”
ii.
Again is two nights later.
He wakes with one of the pillows clutched tightly to his chest, curled towards the left side of the bed. He wonders when his body has become so unconsciously attuned to Steve’s absence. Maybe, he thinks, the inevitability of it is what he’s dreaded all along.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” he rasps.
The sheets don’t smell like Steve, not anymore. Whatever has him crawling back must be something rooted into the very walls of the room itself. Or in you, his thoughts whisper.
It makes him want to crawl out of his own skin and crawl under the covers at the same time.
“Setting off the alarm would have woken the others,” FRIDAY replies, “and I was under the impression that you didn’t want that.”
Tony tilts his head back against the headboard and waits.
A soft, filtered sigh soon follows. “And your vitals were at their calmest once you came in here.”
“Only because I wasn’t having a nightmare this time, Fri,” he says with a laugh. “I didn’t accidentally program confirmation bias into you, did I?”
“You only gave me the sharpest critical thinking skills, sir,” FRIDAY replies.
“Mhm.” Tony relinquishes the pillow, props it back up against the headboard. His side looks almost comically rumpled compared to the other, but once he straightens out the sheets again, it’s as if no one was ever there.
Outside, he tells FRIDAY to lock the door and activate the built-in retinal scanner. Steve never locked his door, much less activate the scanner — something about fostering trust and openness among the team, he'd said. The irony isn’t lost on Tony as FRIDAY confirms the activation.
Vision meets him on his way down the hall. Something about his eyes makes Tony fear that he knows, but Vision simply tells him that there’s a message from Secretary Ross waiting for him. “Thanks.” Tony musters a grin and pats him on the shoulder as they head down the stairs. “You eat lunch yet?”
Vision looks as if he wants to say something. It’s the kind of expression that Tony always imagined JARVIS might wear when Tony made questionable decisions. Not JARVIS, he reminds himself firmly, and he moves away before Vision can say a word.
iii.
The third time it happens, he finds the burner phone clutched between his hands and his chest, like Steve might hear him if he pressed it against his heart tightly enough.
Terrified, Tony forgets to demand what FRIDAY’s excuse this time is and finds Rhodey walking laps around the compound.
“Please?” is all he needs to ask, and something hardens in Rhodey’s eyes but his best friend only nods and draws him in for a hug. “Just hold onto it for me,” Tony says thickly, burying his face into Rhodey’s shoulder. “Please,” he adds, like Rhodey hasn’t already agreed.
He knows he looks like a mess and he can feel himself shaking, and Rhodey must have questions by now, but all his best friend tells him is, “Whatever you need, Tony.” Rhodey cards a hand through his hair and keeps it there, encouraging him to stay close. It’s incomprehensibly loving, and Tony takes a deep, shuddering breath, refusing the stinging in his eyes.
Rhodey brings him back inside. He suggests that Tony finally lets him test the latest prototypes of his prosthetics, and Tony gratefully snatches the opportunity for distraction.
After the test, he brings the prototype back down to his lab and works on it all night, until his fingers are sore from gripping the tools, until he forgets the fear of his own hands.
iv.
There’s a small tear in the rug just outside of Steve’s door. Tony knows this because he wakes up with his nose brushing against the uprooted threads. He uncurls himself from the floor with a panic, only to slam his back into something solid instead.
He turns, looks up. Steve’s door, locked like he’d left it the day before, watches him impassively.
Tony closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He stands, ignoring the way his limbs ache in protest. God, how pathetic, he thinks, shame curling rancid and rotten in his stomach, did I crawl for him?
You would, his thoughts murmur back. You would, you would.
“There’s a ghost in the compound,” Rhodey tells Tony over breakfast.
The smell of cooking food is inexplicably grounding, normalizing. The kitchen doesn’t look, doesn’t feel, as full as it used to be, but fuller than the empty space of Tony’s bed. Fuller than Steve’s room.
“I believe that’s highly improbable, Mr. Rhodes,” Vision says as he materializes through the counter to sit down at the table.
“It was a joke, Viz.”
“No arguing before I get my coffee,” Tony warns them mildly, reaching for a cup of coffee that has been prepared on the table. (He shoots Rhodey a grateful smile, and Rhodey smiles back knowingly.) “But what’s this about ghosts? Should I have our Ghostbusters costumes flown in for old times’ sake?”
“I mean, you can probably still fit in yours.” Rhodey grins, ignoring the scandalous look that Tony shoots him. “Might be easier to get the pipes fixed instead, though.”
“Pipes?” Tony frowns over his mug. “Don’t insult me, platypus.”
“Well, unless there really is something knocking around in the middle of the night, your pipes aren’t as reliable as you think.”
It’s meant to be a joke, he knows, but he can’t help the way his hands clench harder around his mug. Slowly, he sets it down before it spills from his trembling. He knows, is his first thought, fleeting and panicked. Heknowsheknowsheknows. He doesn’t want to look at Rhodey, doesn’t want to see the pity there: you still go to him, you still wait in front of his door, you still beg to be let in, you still crawl, you still love—
“Tony?”
Rhodey’s hand comes over his shoulder, gentle. Tony leans into it, willing himself to wrap around that anchor like a ship terrified of being swept out to sea. “I was just thinking that FRIDAY really might’ve been serious when she first brought up those pipes,” he replies, meeting Rhodey’s eyes. (There’s nothing there except concern. Rhodey doesn’t know. Thank God, he doesn’t know.) Tony grins. “And here I thought she’d finally learned some wit.”
“Thought I already proved that I have, boss,” FRIDAY chimes in.
“Don’t worry,” Rhodey says, leaning back with a faint smirk, “you probably have, he just won't admit it.”
“Oh, so you’re all ganging up on me now?” Tony says, allowing himself to feel lighter with the utter normalcy of the conversation. “Fine. See if any of you have access to the home theater tonight.”
“I can phase through your walls,” Vision says.
“And I can go with him,” Rhodey adds. “Right? That’s how it works?”
Tony rolls his eyes behind another sip of his coffee, but he’s smiling, and there’s a hint of questioning in the glance that Rhodey gives him. Tony shakes his head minutely and throws himself into the ensuing debate about how successfully he can lock them out of a room. Everything’s fine, this act says.
Everything is.
v.
He pauses outside Steve’s door.
This is ridiculous, he tells himself. An older, rougher voice agrees, You’re being pathetic.
He knocks, three quick raps. There’s no one around to hear him, he made sure of that, and reality also makes sure that there’s no one around to answer him.
“See?” he tells his trembling hand. “No one’s home. Take a hint.”
He sleeps and dreams of walking that same path to those same gates, a dream that goes on long enough for him to run his fingers over the limp padlock and push — was it ever locked at all? — and taking the first step through and then he is—
—standing halfway down the hallway to blaring alarms of an incoming aircraft. He has a few seconds to come to his senses before Rhodey’s door bursts open and Vision appears from his room, both heading for the stairs. “What’s going on?” Rhodey asks as he passes him, clearly expecting Tony to follow, but Tony’s gaze is hooked on Steve’s door.
He had walked past it. Had he been on his way somewhere else? Had his feet, his hands, finally learned?
“Tony?” The urgency in Rhodey’s voice brings him back to reality, and Tony turns on his heel and immediately closes the distance between them.
“FRIDAY?” he asks as they descend the stairs quickly. His watch tells him the suit is powered up and ready to be called at an instant.
“It appears to be Wakandan aircraft, boss,” FRIDAY answers, sounding as uncertain as Tony feels at the announcement. “Not hostile, far as I can tell.”
Rhodey mutters something under his breath, suddenly bringing Tony to a stop just before the door. Tony stumbles, his feet continuing a few steps before the sudden stop makes him stumble. “If it’s…” Rhodey begins, but he trails off like he’s not sure what to say after all. “You don’t have to go out there, Tony.”
Tony looks at him and wonders does he know and does it show. There’s no flare of panic this time, only a slow, seeping resignation.
Rhodey squeezes his shoulder. “You don’t owe him anything.”
But I missed him, his thoughts mourn. I missed him. I miss him.
“I know,” he says quietly, and then he turns and opens the door.
+i.
Tony puts off sleeping as long as he can, but by the time the commotion of the arrival has died down and everyone is settled in and can sleep before the inevitable whirlwind of paperwork the next day, he’s exhausted.
Later, he’ll realize dimly that he could have asked FRIDAY to lock his own door. He’ll think there might be a reason he never did.
When he wakes, the first thing he feels is fear—I’ve done it again, he thinks wildly, and now he knows and he’ll— he’ll—
He’ll what? his thoughts ask him. What do you think he’ll do, when you couldn't even talk to or even look at him when he came down from that ship and said your name like he missed you too?
He doesn’t have to answer this, thankfully. Tony sits up, and the world returns to him in soft pulses of light.
It’s morning, and he’s sitting in his own bed.
Tony doesn’t realize he’s shaking with relief until he reaches up to rub his eyes hard. It’s not a dream—he’s really here. He hasn't moved.
It worked, he thinks to his hands. This is a victory, he convinces himself, even though the heavy pull in his chest wants to argue otherwise.
Tony walks down to breakfast feeling the most well-rested he's felt in months.
(Steve sees it coming.
"If I see you taking him to his room again," Rhodey tells him barely seconds after he closes Tony's bedroom behind him, "if I see you touching him again when he has spent the past several months flinching when anyone so much as raises a hand in his direction, I will knock you on your ass." He cuts himself off even though there's more, there's anger brimming in his gaze, and forces out a too-stiff, "We clear, Captain?"
Steve thinks of how Tony had come to him. He thinks of how Tony had knocked on his door. He thinks of how Tony had waited—curled up at the foot of the door, like he would have kept waiting even if it took centuries.
He thinks of how easy it would be to let Tony in, to let him wake up in Steve's bed the way he had done so many times before.
He thinks of how much Tony would hate him, and he himself, if he let that happen.
"We're clear," Steve promises quietly, and he turns to leave for his own room.
He locks the door.)