Chapter Text
"I know it's hard,
I know it's hard being around me.
I know it's hard,
I know it's hard being around me."
― Day Wave, "Drag"
Time trickles by like a slowing bleed. Tony finds himself losing his eye on the turf war in Boston and when the Maxims push forward and his dad finds out about that meager but crucial crawl forward, he bears down on Tony like a—well.
He's sent out of town for a week, returns with a bloody mouth and shaking hands that only settle when Steve finds him skulking around his grey pick-up. It's the first time Steve fucks him, the passenger's seat door open, Tony's torso concave over the worn fabric of the seats, his jeans shucked to the ground and a pain in his ankles from holding himself wide as Steve thrusts into him like he's a stretch of land Steve means to conquer.
Afterwards, while running a kleenex over his thighs, Steve presses a messy, biting kiss into the nape of Tony's neck, and though there's no mark when Tony checks for it, the sensation of Steve's lips haunts him for days, rippling phantom-like through him at random and often inconvenient moments, making his thoughts scatter like a bag of marbles let go.
Tony doesn't get to see him often over the next few days, not with the steel eyes Howard's got set on him, and it's mortifying how quickly his days melt into each other. He spends his nights tracking down leads. It's dreary work, made more difficult by how he's never had a knack for this type of espionage. His days are spent shmoozing and snoozing, the other type of surveillance work, the type that feels like a falsehood. The Stark name opens a lot of doors, always has, but more and more often, Tony's finding that what lies behind them are the sorts of folk that keep him on such an edge that his fangs refuse to retract.
It's a slow autumn day when Bucky tracks him down. It's not as if Tony hadn't expected it, but it would be a lie to say he'd anticipated it happening now, as he's doing a semi-decent affectation of a brooding vampire outside the Stark manor. Inside, the vamps are doing their best imitation of a party, some tradition-fettered upswing of dancing and melodrama. Outside, Tony struggles to reconcile the aching for a drink with the number 22 making hollow, even spirals in his head.
"Stark."
"You've gotta be out of your fucking mind." Tony tells the skulking werewolf. "Do you have any idea how much you risk?"
"That's funny." Nothing about Bucky makes it seem like he actually finds it funny. "That was gonna be my opening."
"So, what, Rogers won't talk to you." Tony raises his eyebrows pointedly. "You think I'll be any better?"
Immediately, Bucky barks, "are you fucking with him?" It's pretty stereotypical, all things considered. It's not like Tony expected any subtlety—not from a werewolf—but still.
He taps a finger against his lips, tries to affect calm when all he really fucking wants is a drink. "Would you prefer that?"
Bucky's eyes narrow, and he closes in. With almost wry amusement, Tony thinks that someone who wears such baggy jeans has no right to look dangerous.
"Careful." Tony says. "They'll smell you soon enough."
"Why are you doing this?"
Tony tries to keep an ear out. Something in his head is screaming and wriggling around like a worm.
Suffering makes him honest. "I won't hurt him."
"Just being around you endangers him." Bucky volleys. And that's—fair.
"Is that what Steve said?" Tony asks unwittingly.
Bucky's face shifts, something dark and confusing flitting over it. Like it's been ground out of him, he replies, "no."
"What did he say?" Tony asks, sensing—perhaps not opportunity but something that wears its skin.
Bucky's jaw clenches, and it scours the youth from him, makes him look—like he could kill Tony. Tony rubs the back of his hand over his mouth, notes how Bucky watches the movement with low, flint-like eyes. He has a feeling there's no right answer here, nothing that Bucky can hear from him that'll make this okay.
Well. If it's a fight he's wanting. "What, are you in love with him?" Tony tosses out.
"Am I what?" Bucky seems genuinely taken back by that.
"How does Natasha feel about that?" Tony asks. "Better yet, how does Wilson feel about it?"
"You don't know the first thing about any of that." Bucky says witheringly. His claws are out.
Tony shrugs tightly. "Maybe not." Wetting his lips, he cautions, "you should really go."
"I'm not scared of you." Bucky snarls.
"I'm not talking about myself." Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes. He juts a thumb tellingly behind him, at the front door.
Bucky's eyes follow his to the door, and some rationality seems to return to him. It's so obvious he doesn't want to drop it.
"What do you need?" Tony asks. "From me. What is it that you need?"
"...I don't understand why it's you."
A fretful something runs through him. "Over you?" he presses.
"It's not like that." Bucky insists. "He's my fucking brother."
"Last I checked, you're not related." Tony points out waspishly.
Bucky frowns with earnest appeal, eyebrows drawing in. Almost petulantly, he replies, "like that matters."
For some ineffable reason, it makes Tony think of Rhodey. Of dead air stretching like a thread between two people, and knowing with a certainty so acerbic that something inside you isn't just faltering, it's breaking. "It does." He tugs at a thread on his jacket, lets it go when he feels the fabric at the inside of his elbow shrivel inwards. "You need to leave," he tells Bucky, and his voice is like dead air, the presence of lack. "They've smelled something."
When he glances over, Bucky's nostrils are flaring tellingly. He's caught the same scent then, the same trepidation. It's two slow blinks, and the man's out beyond the treeline. Another, and he's completely out of sight. Where he'd been standing, the grass has been kicked up, loose clumps of dirt dislodged by Bucky's take-off. Tony sets a hand on the balustrade, and jumps neatly over and onto the grass. He steps onto the patch, flattens it with his shoes just as two overeager vampires burst through the door.
.
Nothing really leaves Tony's mind, just sinks out of eyeline before bobbing back up. The moon is a soft, plump circle in the sky when Tony's feet bring him to Steve's. He climbs easily, the notches on the tree's trunk slight, unremarkable divots that he navigates with practiced familiarity. The branch is still fucking uncomfortable, and he grimaces as it moves with his weight, watchful of his shoes as he slides down and over to the ledge. The window into the room reveals the lights are off, the dark-grey of the room casting everything into overly large, shadowy shapes. Steve's asleep on his bed, body curled away from him.
Fighting a swell of all-consuming fucking nothing, Tony taps the back of his knuckles against the pane. He repeats it after a moment, and watches as Steve gets up, head turning to the window with a bleary regard that flicks into alertness in a scant few seconds. Steve gets out of bed, kicking his comforter off, and leaving it dangling halfway off the bed. A broad, flat hand runs through blond hair, a shock of bright colour in the dim light. As he nears the window, Tony's able to see that Steve's face has faint creases from his pillow, and it's all too human how he visibly reels in a yawn before undoing the latch. "Yeah." Steve's voice rasps as he says it, and he clears his throat after, the soft give of his throat alluring in that inexorable way vampires can't help but notice.
"Bucky visited me." Tony tells him quietly.
Steve looks him over with stolid blue eyes that seem almost luminous under the moonlight. He's glowing again, Tony thinks. Just—does no one else see it?
"Yeah. He told me." Steve dips his head. It makes his hair flop interestingly. "After the fact," he clarifies.
The branch shifts under Tony's weight as he moves forward, and he tamps down a wince. "He can't do that." Tony says.
Steve's eyes are so fucking blue. Unholy hell. "I know," he offers. His eyes dart down to the branch before returning to Tony. "Y'wanna come in?"
Tony tries not to react to that even as a lightning strike of feeling zings through him. "Why?" He asks.
"You're pouting." Tony doesn't know if he's imagining the amusement in his voice, and while he tries to figure that out, Steve's mouth turns up at the corner. "C'mon. Bucky's not here."
That bristles. "I'm not scared of him," he says in a flat tone.
Steve's touch is blunt, his hand sprawling inelegantly under Tony's chin while his thumb presses down against his bottom lip. "Yeah." Steve says, as if this is normal. "But now that you’re here, I wanna be inside you."
"Oh." Tony says. "Are you out of your mind?" Immediately, he knows he's said the wrong thing.
He feels like maybe someone else, someone better, would be able to bite their tongue. It's like that time Tony had pissed off the Richards tribe saying one too many wrong things, weird joke after weird comment like a row of dominoes, knowing he should stop but not actually managing to get it to stop. Howard had been upset enough that when, in the car on their way back to the manor, Tony had tentatively poked around the moment, feeling like maybe Howard wanted to address it, wanted an apology, a better son, he'd told Tony to get out. Rhodey had been the one to pick him up—found him sitting pensively at a bus stop, a moody kid with a suit that had no loose threads—and he'd slung his arm around Tony's shoulders like it wasn't weird that Howard had left his heir on the streets. He'd given Tony a blood bag and made a pithy joke about it, how if vampires bit their tongues, they'd bite right through. Soon enough, they wouldn't be able to talk. And you know—shoulder nudging against his, such a comfort that Tony couldn't even define how it felt to lose it—Rhodey liked talking to Tony, liked how Tony talked, even when he said the wrong thing, so it would be a shame if he bit his tongue. Besides, everyone and their grandmothers knew that Reed was a dick, every-one, and Howard was an idiot for choosing a dick over Tony. And Rhodey hadn't even meant it like that when he'd said it but it had hit them both at the same time, and they'd laughed hard enough that Tony sputtered blood onto his shirt and that set Rhodey off into such a longwinded snit about dry cleaning that by its end, Tony's black mood had sloughed right off his shoulders.
Tony shakes his head lightly, realises as he returns to the moment that Steve had been saying something. "What—uh." He doesn't know why Rhodey's on his mind today. He thought he was stronger than this. "What'd you say, sorry—I."
"You don't have to come in." Steve says. He's watching Tony with an intentness that's almost intimidating. "You alright?"
"I'm fine." Tony says. He grabs onto the ledge, levers himself into the room before he can overthink it. Steve only moves partly out of the way and when Tony lands on the pads of his feet, still crouching, Steve's wiry frame encircles him. "Uh." Tony makes an uncertain sound as Steve practically hangs over him. "It's just—I get too in my head."
"Okay," Steve says evenly. His right hand rubs against the line of Tony's groin. He licks his lips, and the slight sheen of wetness makes the pink of his mouth all too distracting. "What's going on in there?" Steve asks it so frankly, so without inflection and context that it catches Tony offguard.
"Hm?" Steve's hand feels nice. Firm and assured.
"What's keeping you in there?" Steve asks. "Your mind."
"Uh, what?" Tony swallows. "That feels—yeah, that feels good." He undoes the stud of his jeans, drawing the zipper down right after. Steve doesn't take the literal opening though, hand moving off and onto his thigh, skating up his ribs.
"You space out a lot, you know." Steve says, straightening to close the window. His shirt rises up as he does it, the soft cotton drawing up to reveal a sliver of fair, freckle-dappled skin.
As Tony looks on, Steve stands up, holding both hands out to Tony. Feeling a bit off-balance, Tony lets Steve pull him up. When he makes to let go, Steve's grip tightens on his hands and he pivots in a slow circle, leading Tony backwards. He feels his mouth twist into an awkward rictus, but he lets Steve direct him onto the bed, sitting on the thin mattress and feeling like he's lost a few pages, read ahead. He tries to be seductive, gets his mouth into a barely teasing curl before it just drops. He can't get it back, but before he can think to try again, Steve's crawling on top of him.
"You get away with it because you've got such an intense stare," Steve continues, like this is a pre-arranged dance instead of a confusing series of moments. He adds, "a pure vampiric stereotype." Both his hands sweep over Tony's neck, his thumbs flattening over Tony's upper lip, pulling upwards to reveal Tony's teeth. Flat and white. His fangs are in. "What do you think of, when you get that quiet look? Where do you go?" Steve stops. Goes, in a tone boorishly low and foreign, "I want to suck your blood."
"Wow." Tony says, voice weird from how Steve's thumbs are still pressing his upper lip back. Every breath feels like it's too loud, or—not quite loud. Just obvious, when so much else isn't.
"Sorry, it's just. You're fun to play with." Steve smiles then, suddenly. There's something sheepish there, like Steve's admitting this isn't actually a dance, that it's not normal, but also like—he's not interested in taking it back. It's endearingly sweet. "You don't have to answer me if you don't wanna. I'm not trynna pry, I swear." He sits up, settling on his knees to Tony's right and taking off his shirt. He takes off his shorts after, and Tony should focus on that, on the easy reveal of Steve's body. But something about that question makes it feel like he's—pinned.
"I don't know," Tony answers truthfully. "I don't know where I go. I'm just—" Tony looks up, is suddenly arrested by Steve's gaze. The rest of the words fall out like marbles from a bag, again like marbles from a bag.
"I'm not always here when I think I am."
Steve's quiet for long enough that Tony starts to feel like he's misstepped. He presses a kiss onto Steve's chest, mouthing along his nipples and chest. He tries to be distracting, nuzzles into the hair between Steve's chest and feels the man shiver over him.
"Hey," Steve's hand drags his head back. Flexes until Tony meets his gaze. "You with me now?"
"What do you think?" Tony asks. "Come on, I thought you wanted to fuck me." He rises against Steve's body, drags the back of his nails against Steve's ribs, and feels the short breath Steve skips over like a resolution. Steve notices his smirk, and runs the flat of his index finger over it, like he's zipping Tony's mouth. In a murmur, Steve says, almost to himself, "yeah, yeah." He swipes a hand across Tony's chest, like he's vivisecting him. It's meticulous and precise, almost ritualistic in movement. Makes Tony think of witches charming him, and he's weirdly hushed, smirk sort of slanted and stiff, as Steve spends a minute there, drawing a line down his right, then left, arm, lifting Tony's shirt, and going over the v of Tony's hips like a tracing.
It's slower than he thought it'd be. Steve fucks him with his fingers for what feel like years, glorious 3-6-5 after 3-6-5 like he's being turned out from the inside. He gets this feeling, between Steve lining himself up and the stretch of pulling his legs wide, like he's being too loud, but when he tries to sling his arm over his mouth, Steve pulls it away. "That's nice, that's really—" Tony murmurs the rest of the sentence into an incoherent blubber as Steve kisses his chin, mouth open and soft wherever it lands on Tony's skin. Tony must be really out of it because it takes him a whole minute to realise Steve's touching him, a hand stroking then jerking him off with a dexterity that's somehow both surprising and utterly unsurprising from someone like Steve.
"I don't know if—mhh—okay, I'm close, I'm close," Tony screws his eyes shut. Every time Steve thrusts in, it's like the spark of a match catching flame. Over and over again. Tony thinks randomly of birthday candles, of the heat of them near your face when you lean close to blow them out.
"Tony, look at me." Steve's close too. The cadence, the tight breaths. A scattered collection of tells that Tony's catalogued over the past few months. He looks up at Steve, thinks to that blue, you're the ocean today. "Yeah," Steve grunts, letting Tony's dick go. "Just like—" When he comes, Steve lets out a long drawn-out groan that ends in the curve of Tony's shoulder. His teeth press against Tony's skin there, and it's almost a bite but not quite.
Tony lets him stay there, counts to 22. A reasonable number. A rationed number. "Rogers," he says.
"Hm." Steve mumbles. "Unfair." He sits up a little, hair askew and darkened with sweat. "Unfair to call me that after I've had my dick in you."
"Steve." Tony grabs Steve's hand and presses it against Tony's dick, near-weeping for relief.
"Oh!" Steve makes a snorting huff of a sound. "Oh, okay, okay." Tony thinks he's going to jerk him off but instead he slides down his torso and gets his mouth around Tony without preamble.
"Hey," Tony's brain is mush-like, he couldn't count to 22, couldn't count to 8. The pressure around his dick is so, so glorious. That's what he blames, anyway, when his mouth goes, in a drawling affectation of what his great-uncle sounded like, "you want to suck my dick?"
Tony's never had someone sputter around his dick before, pulling off and away to snicker into the sensitive skin at the jut of his thigh. He has no idea what to make of it, and his hands wind around the bedsheets, blinking up at the ceiling as he comes to terms with an unnerving sense of anticipation that both thrills and terrifies him.
He supposes it's an apt enough reflection of how he feels about Steve, too.