The thing was, endless streaks of work weren't a thing that Tony could really pull off the same way that he might have been able to when he was younger. Maybe even a few years ago. Somewhere around the seventy hour mark and he was just ... done. He wouldn't get anything done with spotty vision and drunken movement. But frankly, he hadn't been getting anything done anyway so it probably didn't matter.
Laying there in the dark, though, tired as he possibly could be in a mental and physical way -- well, that didn't really mean Tony was going to be able to sleep. His head was buzzing and he'd pressed his face into the pillow to try and quiet it down, even though there was no muffling out thoughts. That had always been Tony's problem, particularly when sleep was involved. There was just no shutting off.
He had a kid. Out there, in the future. He'd made it home from that drifting ship somehow and had just -- what? Fucked off into retirement, he supposed. Settled down with Pepper (and why not? They weren't perfect, their love wasn't the exact right kind, but they worked together. They had something) and then had this -- this probably amazing and great little girl and--
And just had something worth having. Apparently.
But that future was -- well, who knew, really. Gone now, maybe, because they were here and it was different. Tony had other things now and could hardly imagine the future that Natasha had painted for him. He hadn't wanted to bring it up again -- didn't even know how to begin bridging that information to Steve. Tony had thought that maybe if he just sat on it long enough it'd sink into the background, but it just hadn't. And the longer he sat with the information, the more restless he'd become until it was eating at him and surely it was so, so obvious.
And then Steve'd gone off to talk to Natasha, and that'd been forever ago. Surely all of her cats were out of the bag, and Tony's cats too. It would stand to reason. It would be fair. Tony would be --
Oh. Even in the noise-but-not of his own brain he wasn't completely shut off from the world enough to know that Steve was back, frame hogging up a doorway. "Did she tell you?" He asked, groggy and muffled because Tony saw no reason to move. He was asking after Natasha anyway, her own story to tell.