Work Text:
He’s exhausted. He knows that. He just spent 72 hours on a mission, including clean up. Before that it was a recon gone wrong which landed him in the med bay for a few hours, which, given his superhuman strength, was a feat. And before that was another mission. The list goes on. And he’s exhausted.
All he wants to do is go home, find Tony, drag him to bed and sleep. Not make love. He doesn’t have the mental capacity for that at the moment. That’ll come later when he’s rested. He just wants to sleep. With Tony beside him. Or under. He loves covering him when they’re in bed. It makes him feel safe. Because Tony is there, safely tucked in his arms. The world could burn to hell but as long as he has Tony…
The flight back home is only supposed to be 4 hours, but it might as well have been a lifetime. He felt every minute, every second painfully tick by. Nat was saying something. Sam was saying something. But his mind’s already elsewhere.
Tony.
He wonders what his boyfriend—nay, fiancé is doing. He couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips as that word came to him, earning him a look from his team. Fiancé. It still feels surreal sometimes. That Tony would agree to marry him. That he even loves him back. When they first met, it seemed impossible for them to get along. Too much ego and misplaced anger. They were a ticking time bomb. He never imagined it was unresolved sexual tension, Nat’s words, and the unexplainable anger was actually a very explainable overflowing desire. Tony was everything he wanted in a lover. Smart, kind, feisty, charming, and beautiful. But he was a man, and that’s where the initial confusion came in. It wasn’t until Nat made him realize with a strongly worded lecture that being gay is not punished anymore that he found the courage to find Tony and kiss him. As he’d imagined doing a hundred times.
The kiss was awkward and sloppy, but it also felt right. And things haven’t felt right since he woke up from the ice. He always felt detached and living in someone else’s skin, watching the world go by and not really being a part of it. That kiss, that first kiss with Tony, was like a lifeline. And somehow, he tethered to something. It didn’t matter how lost he felt because for the first time since waking up, it didn’t feel like he belonged nowhere, was going nowhere.
Now, no matter how tired, or hurt, or lost he feels, all he needs to do is think of Tony. And things are right again.
He found Tony in his workshop, absorbed in the work he’s doing. He knows JARVIS is programmed to alert Tony the moment he steps into the building, but he shot the AI a request not to tell Tony because he wanted to surprise him. One of his favourite things to do, aside from making love to Tony, is watching him do his thing. Create. Build. Turn vision to reality. It’s one of the few times Tony’s ever unguarded and free. He loves seeing Tony this way.
So, even if all he wants to do is topple his fiancé to the ground like the overgrown human puppy that he is, he wants to stare at him first, so he can soak up all that Tony goodness no one gets to see, except him.
When he finally slid his arms around Tony’s waist from behind, and all Tony did was gasp in excited shock, a testament to how attuned they were to each other, all of Steve’s fatigue disappeared. Home.