Tony Stark (616), cool exec with a heart of steel (tonystark) wrote in marvelesque,
He didn't quite flinch, but Tony's gut response to we need to talk was still a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, irrational though he objectively recognized that was. Whatever else had happened when the universe shifted and then shifted back, his relationship with Steve had survived the ordeal relatively unscathed. It was one of very few things in his life, truthfully, that did. It's just that the last time someone said that to him, it was followed with something along the lines of, I'm pregnant, and it's not yours.
Of course, if he was being completely honest — and maybe a little bit screwed up and selfish — there was a part of him that was glad that the child wasn't his. Pepper had always wanted kids, and for Tony, they had never been on the table. There was something about having kids, about raising them, that threw all of your shortcomings into sharp relief. It made you acutely aware of the ways in which those faults would affect another human being. Would be reflected in the way they saw the world, in the people they became. And children were dangerous. To love something that fragile made you vulnerable in ways that Iron Man couldn't afford to be. He'd seen it in so many parents. He'd even seen it in Steve. The loss of Bucky Barnes had broken Steve in ways that no lesser man could have bounced back from, that had even left Rogers bloody and battle-scarred. That had made him so desperate to believe that Bucky could be alive and okay that he'd bent the world to make it happen, and found himself bereft when the world was "fixed."
Tony's life was in a constant state of flux. He was always being broken and having to rebuild. Always being burned and having to rise from the ashes. He lived in the midst of a cycle of constant destruction and rebirth. After every loss he'd suffered, he wouldn't let himself have something that he couldn't stand to lose.
It was better this way. Even though "better" was still "completely fucking terrible."
Shaking his head slightly to snap himself out of this train of thought, he glanced up at Steve again to refocus. He left the lid on his coffee cup, attempting to keep the heat in, as he raised it to his lips and took a deep swig of its contents. It was black, as was his preference, but he would have taken it however it arrived. Sure, he'd play a snob about the significance of a coffee's exact geographical coordinates of origin and the benefits of hand-picking the individual laborers who gathered your coffee beans when the opportunity presented itself. But in reality, the point was mostly the caffeine. As long as it wasn't flavored, instant or Folger's, he'd probably drink it.
"That's probably for the best. Even with the friends and family discount, my rates are pretty steep." He raised the cup to his lips to take another drink, wrapping his fingers around the cup to warm them up. "But I know what you mean. I'm not sure if the news or everything that was too insignificant to make the news has been more depressing lately."