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It’s half-four in the morning; the birds that roost in the green spaces of New York will start their dawn chorus soon.Tony is still awake.He does not, in fact, feel tired, had passed that stage, well. Years ago, probably. Even before Afghanistan, tired had been what he felt upon waking, his days alternating between trembling, cold hands and flushed cheeks; between gritty eyes and hazy, drunken stumbles.Now, he can keep a spare set of Iron Man gauntlets in the bags under his eyes. Now, half the time he wakes up with a thrashing of limbs and shallow breaths that only make him dizzy and more likely to choke. Now, he can’t sleep when it’s too quiet, or too cold, or when he’s lying on his back or his stomach. He can’t sleep when the rain outside reminds him of water streaming down his face and dripping from his hair into the wooden pail they used to drown him in. The sound isn’t similar, but his memories don’t care.Tony can’t sleep when between blinks at the dark ceiling, he sees stars. He can’t sleep when the brightness of the room overwhelms the life-glow of the arc reactor.It’s half-four in the morning. He can’t sleep. So he doesn’t.Instead, he works, holding his consciousness hostage with science and caffeine. He has taken to wrangling more R&D contracts out of Pepper’s troubled clutches even as he improves his armour and deals with the fall-out of aliens invading Earth and destroying New York. It’s not hard to keep himself busy. There are even rare moments when he is distracted from the bile-inducing fear that lingers in the back of his throat. The not-yet-tangible beauty of a thought come to light, radiant in its blue renderings. The gratification of Natasha’s nod, of Clint’s high-five, of Bruce’s praise when an invention passes muster. Steve’s smile.Tony blinks, realises he has been staring aimlessly at a container of wing nuts, and shakes his head.In three hours, Pepper will call him to prep for a Washington D.C. site inspection he has to attend. In four hours, if he goes up to the communal floor of Avengers Tower, Steve and Bruce will be sharing silence and breakfasting, Steve still splotchy from his vigorous exercise routine, Bruce luxuriating in his freedom to sip tea while drowsy. Since he’s not currently on a mission, Clint will emerge around midday wearing purple boxers and, if they’re lucky, a shirt full of holes. Natasha’s off on a classified SHIELD mission and won’t be returning till Thursday. If Tony hasn’t slept by then, she’ll threaten to sedate him.Given the run-down state of his reflexes and JARVIS’ tacit approval, she’ll likely succeed. Tony can’t have that.Clearly, it’s coffee time.
It’s late, again, and Tony is pounding away at a piece of armour plating that DUM-E is holding steady.He’s trying out a new alloy combination, wants to do the work by hand for this first test so that he doesn’t need to recalibrate the fabrication units twice if it doesn’t work out. Besides, it helps loosen the tension in his shoulders. Not as great as a massage, but Tony hasn’t been able to bear hands on his shoulders for a while now. He keeps feeling phantom hands, or worse, imagining Obie’s familiar weight pressing against his neck. Fingers kneading into flesh makes him even tenser, these days, so he has taken to breathing with the steady beats of his cross-peen hammer.When he breaks for a glass of water, Tony glances up and asks, “Hey J, what’s shakin’?”“Sir, it is Saturday, 2:23 AM. Mark IV of the Iron Man armour has approximately seven minutes of buffing before it will be fully operational. Ms. Potts has requested that you sleep a minimum of four hours tonight and has instructed me to usher you out of the workshop and into bed within the hour—”“—I’m sorry, how are you meant to usher me into bed exactly?” Tony raises a sardonic eyebrow. “Didja grow some metal bodyguards to boot me out of the workshop?”“I do not require a corporeal manifestation to render your workstation unresponsive and convince DUM-E to charge. Your body depends on rest to function, sir.”“Yep, and I could assign you the sweet side-job of sorting through the comments section of The New York Times, but that doesn’t mean you’d like it. How’s the team?”“Thor is off-planet. Hawkeye and Black Widow are on a SHIELD intelligence-gathering mission. Dr Banner is asleep. Captain Rogers is in the common-floor kitchen.”“Huh.” With a swipe, Tony enables a workshop-wide sleep mode. If only he could do the same thing to himself, but alas. Sleeping pills aren’t something he can indulge in, and he despises the side effects besides.“Well, let’s go say hi to our resident Capsicle, shall we?”“As you wish, sir, though his behaviour indicates that he will not be remaining in the shared Avengers space for long.”JARVIS is right as always. By the time Tony reaches the lounge, he can tell that Steve has left; the lights all brighten as he crosses the room, and the low hum of electrical systems is undisturbed by footsteps or kitchen-clatters. The blankets have all migrated to one sofa-arm, and when he interrogates JARVIS, Tony find out that yes, Steve was using them all earlier that night, and that he’d gone to his room with several mugs’ worth of cocoa.“Tell me when Steve is next up here, JARVIS,” Tony demands, concern laced over with ever-present curiosity.“Captain Rogers will assuredly be on this floor in the morning, sir. Shall I set an alarm to awaken you so that you may breakfast together?”“Don’t pretend to misunderstand me, you sassy AI. You know exactly what I mean.” Toying with the fringes of a heavy woollen blanket, Tony adds, “When Steve comes up to this floor between the hours of one and four in the morning, and it’s not because of an Avengers-related emergency, let me know.”“And if you are, as happens occasionally, asleep?”“Then you wake me up. Though somehow I doubt you’ll catch me napping when Captain Uptight is awake.”“Very well.”
Over the next week, Tony goes about his routine; daytime meetings he avoids when possible, yet another charity gala to raise funds for New York’s reconstruction that he can’t, armour and gear improvements for the Avengers, a half-dozen new projects started, and a video-game evening he’d been shanghaied into by a combination of Steve’s puppy eyes and a dare from Clint. It’s a good week. He only has nightmares six out of the seven nights.Twice, he gets a notification from JARVIS that Steve’s in the common room, but by the time he unearths himself from his project and makes his way up, it’s empty. The first time, the room he enters is spotless. The second time, he can see the TV switch off as the elevator door opens onto the floor, the blankets are all strewn across the middle couch, and there’s a still-warm depression where Steve was clearly curled up not two minutes ago.After that, he spends a day souping up the elevator to make it even faster and quieter—maybe those super-soldier ears could hear it coming? The third time Tony misses catching Steve in action, he crosses his arms and glares. A steaming mug of cocoa sits abandoned on the coffee table. There is a pillow on the floor which doesn’t match the rest of the decor, and most suspiciously, DUM-E had rolled a ball between Tony’s feet as he tried to leave the workshop. The threat of a sulking bot meant that he’d been delayed playing fetch, consequently missing Steve’s presence in the common room yet again. Given that DUM-E only wants to play fetch when he’s showing off or trying to distract him, and there’d been no one new to show off to, Tony has deep misgivings about where his AI’s loyalty currently lies.“JARVIS, anything you wanna tell me right now, buddy?” he asks.“Only that perhaps as you’ve left the workshop, it might be prudent to continue up to your own floor and sleep, sir. You have a tight schedule tomorrow.”“JARVIS! Seriously, come on now.” He frowns up at the nearest camera. “Did you or did you not convince DUM-E to delay my arrival just enough for Steve to leave?”“I merely gave him a nudge, sir. It was your decision to engage, and may I note that by doing so you made DUM-E very happy.”Tony strides over to the coffee table and takes a gulp of the cocoa, dimly aware of his tongue tingling from the unexpected spiciness of chilli. “Listen, JARVIS, I can make DUM-E happy any damn day I like. The aim here is to make me happy. I need to know what Cap’s up to in the middle of the night, capische?” Making his way back to the workshop, he shakes his head. “You’re killing me with this evasiveness, buddy. What gives?”“Sir, Captain Rogers politely requested that I alert him should anyone approach the common area. Your own inquiry as to his whereabouts did not countermand this in any way.”“What!” Frustrated, Tony slams the door to the workshop and boots up his holographic interfaces again. “Well, I’m countermanding it now. Don’t tell Steve that I’m coming next time. Or any time, for that matter.”He reaches for a glowing blueprint and gets back to work, certain that he has some unpleasant alarm noises (last time it had been turkeys gobbling) and a hot date with a super-soldier awaiting him in the near future.
He had no idea how on the nose that prediction would be. “Hot date” is right; as he stares across the room, Tony already feels itchy with heat from counting the number of blankets piled up on the couch. Under them must be Steve, though all that’s visible is a flop of blond hair and the tip of an ear. A whisper to JARVIS gets him the temperature display, and he frowns. It’s a solid 77 degrees, as it should be given the Avengers’ propensity for walking about in various degrees of undress and Tony’s own learned dislike of cold nights."Nrrgggh?" Steve slurs suddenly and Tony stills, feeling abruptly guilty. Then he remembers it’s his damn tower and that he’s meant to be pretending he doesn’t know about Steve’s game of keep-away in any case."Sorry, sorry. Go back to sleep.” He waves vaguely in Steve’s direction and about-faces to the kitchen. Glancing back at the sound of incoherent and decidedly not adorable grumbles, he continues, “I'm just your friendly neighborhood sleep deprived billionaire. Nothing to worry about.""Tony?" Steve’s voice is hoarse and sleep-mussed as he clumsily paws his way out from his blanket mound."Yeah, I'm getting some coffee. What’re you doing up here, did you have one of your old-man naps and sleep through bedtime?"“Tony.” And there’s the familiar tone of admonishment, Tony thinks. But there’s something else. Face lined with creases, Steve looks crumpled in on himself, tugging at the blankets in his lap with downcast eyes. He looks hurt, and more than a little ridiculous. Tony swallows and tries to be tactful.“Seriously Steve, if you’re cold, you can always ask JARVIS where the extra blankets are, or to raise the temperature in your room, you know?”“I know.” Steve curls in on himself further, drawing his knees up. “It.” He grimaces. ‘It doesn’t really help after a nightmare, s’why I come up here. I’ll warm up eventually, don’t worry.”His reassurances sound like trim milk, like he can’t really believe what he’s saying even as he tries to convince Tony. Tony, who knows intimately what it’s like to wake up longing for the comfort of someone else’s body heat. Who regularly reaches out across cold bed covers, yearning for a person to hug and a heartbeat to listen to only to realise, pained, that he is alone. Who never reaches out any further than that.Maybe he can do it for Steve, if not for himself."Okay, budge over," Tony demands. He leaves his coffee on the counter and starts digging into the blankets to Steve’s left so he can lift the whole lot and slip under."What?" Steve blinks bemusedly, not helping."Move." This time the demand is paired with a light shove to his shoulder as Tony shuffles in."Steve, just.” Tony bypasses Steve’s protests, burrowing next to him and draping the blankets across them both again. “Just let me, okay?"“Okay.”It’s half-four in the morning again, and Tony can feel Steve’s sleeping weight against his side. The heat is already stifling inside their mountain of blankets.He closes his eyes and drifts off.