The Box (Steve/Tony)
(For @sirsapling)
They’re sitting at the table eating breakfast when Tony sets the matte black ring box between them and grins at it like it’s a triumph.
The world slows down, the way it does when Steve has to make a quick decision in battle, and he stares at this new test of his brilliant mind and tries to make sense of it. Tony just waits, smiling, until Steve finally gasps out, “You’re kidding.”
Tony splits into a beautiful grin and starts laughing, that full, deep, true laugh that means it’s not just funny, he’s happy too. And Steve is so happy, and he greedily wants more of that laugh, enough to fill him up and make his nerves sing, never so alive. So he looks back at the box and then Tony and says, “You’re kidding!” again, almost accusatory this time.
Tony has this cheeky, dancing light in his eyes, warm and vivid but not sharp-edged like the morning rays that stab through the windows. He’s laughing even when he stops and god, Steve loves this man so much.
“I bet there’s not even a ring in there,” Steve says tartly, and he reaches out to grab the box. But Tony gets there first, snatching it off the table and spinning up out of his seat. Steve grins; if this is the game they’re playing, he plays to win.
Steve rockets out of his chair and catches Tony halfway across the living room rug with an arm around his waist. He goes to scoop him up, but Tony must be paying more attention in training than it seems like he is, because he braces his weight on his foot, ducks under Steve’s arm, and twists, bringing them both to the floor. In a graceful, and startlingly Natasha-like, maneuver, Tony manages to drop Steve to his back on the rug with Tony on top, straddling his hips.
They’re both laughing now, almost at the end of their breath so it comes out gasping and broken in little skips and starts. Steve settles a hand on each of Tony’s thighs and squeezes. There’s energy built up inside him that he can’t seem to get out any other way.
Miraculously, Tony’s still holding the black box, and once Steve has made it clear he’s given in, Tony sets the box on the centre of Steve’s chest, right over his heart. Steve props himself up on his elbow so he can watch as Tony grips the lid and levers the box open. He turns it to face Steve, then sits back on Steve’s thighs, watching.
The ring is three tones, three bands of metal layered together. It’s heavy and masculine without being clunky, the edges ever so slightly squared off. The bottom band is jet black, almost impossibly black, and perfectly smooth. The upper band is charcoal grey with lines of lighter grey streaked through it. Even the small movement of Steve’s breathing shifts the box enough that he can see the depth of the changes in tone as it catches the light. It’s a thousand slightly different shades, maybe never the same one twice. The middle band is gold, but Steve recognizes the unique sheen of Iron Man’s gold-titanium alloy. He wonders if the whole thing is made out of it, or if Tony has somehow convinced three different metals to work together, bond, and form something stronger than any one of them alone.
Steve knows Tony, and he knows the ring will have a story, a long one, why he designed it the way he did, the options he considered and discarded, what each section means to him. But right now there’s only one thing Steve wants to hear Tony say.
“Marry me.” It’s soft and a little shaky, and it’s so terrifyingly, viscerally right to hear Tony say it, that for a moment - probably a painfully long one for Tony - Steve just breathes the words in and settles them inside his chest.
He never thought he’d get to have this. Sick and broken, doomed to die young, and then the war and then the plane and then waking up in a world where what he wanted never seemed to mesh quite right with what he was offered. Until he found Tony. He used to think about being someone’s husband. How nice that would be. He lay in his twin bed in his mom’s rundown apartment in Brooklyn, waiting up too late, partially because he wanted to hear her come home from her night shift and partially because it was so hot that even with the window open, he couldn’t sleep for the humid heavy weight that squatted on his chest.
And he’d think about being someone’s other half, making twice the eggs in the morning, splitting the paper over coffee, coming home to offer a space at his side to curl into, warm and safe. He’d thought about that, but he’d never thought about what it would mean to have someone be his, in return. And god, he never would have been able to imagine it could be Tony.
But they’ve built this thing together, on sparring in the gym, and quiet conversations after battles with too many bruises. They’ve thrown blue cloth and red metal into enough arguments that it’s an old, well-trodden pathway now. They can sigh and fuss and grip a weakened hand too tight and not have to say a word. They’ve built this thing on stolen moments, hiding from the eyes of the world, of their friends, even, sneaking through a dark sea of pressure and judgement and guilt and fear but finding light at the end of it in each other. They’ve built it on trust, trust broken and repaired, on devotion, freely given and gratefully received, and on love.
At the end of it all, there’s so much love Steve’s not entirely sure how he manages to fit it all inside him. It leaks out sometimes, he thinks, overflows. It wants to do that now.
Steve tugs Tony down into a kiss that’s at least a third laughter and at least a third tears, but they’ll both pretend it isn’t so Steve doesn’t try to hide them. Besides, they’re not all his.
He hears the ring case snap closed again between their chests as Tony leans over him, and he wants the ring, wants it desperately, wants the whole goddamn world to know he belongs to this man, but right now he wants Tony more. Besides, it’s his line now.
He pulls back until he can meet Tony’s eyes, and he tries to pour into his gaze some modicum, some sliver, of what he feels for the man in his arms. There are so many words, so many things he wants to say, things Tony needs to know. But he gets to have him forever now, so those things can wait. He can find pieces of those words every day for the rest of their lives and maybe, just maybe, it’ll be enough time for Steve to tell Tony how he feels about him. But for now there’s only one thing he can say, only one thing he wants to say, and in this moment, it says enough.
“Yes.”
