Tony Stark: Earth's Best Defender (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} allaboutego) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} snapthread, |
The thing was, Tony didn't have any intention of throwing a punch. He didn't want to. Hell, he regretted having done it the first time around, given all the fallout that'd happened afterward.
But he'd just -- he'd been so surprised and hurt over realizing that twenty some years of his life had been built on a lie, and that he'd been forced to watch the reality of it without any warning whatsoever. It'd been a slap to the face - a complete and absolute betrayal that it was something Steve of all people had been keeping from him, that he'd been in motion before his brain had even really caught up with him. And that wasn't normal, not for someone like Tony Stark who was usually so many steps ahead of everyone.
"I never got answers wrong on tests," Tony said, even though obviously that wasn't the point at all. "And I don't do laundry." Hell, even here he didn't. Again, it wasn't the point. Tony took another drink from his mug and was a little devastated to find the bottom of it, but there was no turning back now.
"But it was a mistake. I shouldn't have lashed out. It wasn't your fault, okay? I was --" He paused, unsure of what to say. "It wasn't even you I was mad at." It had been Steve more than anything, because Steve had been his friend and he'd lied and hidden important truths. And sometimes that anger was still real. It was just this thing that they didn't talk about, a silence that they both pushed away. And it was -
It was unfair. Tony knew that, objectively. If he could come somewhere close to forgiving Steve his trespasses, there was no reason that Bucky should be hanging around on the outskirts of town like some kind of shunned outsider.