[FICLET] Let it Out
Team Kill fill for the 2022 SteveTony Games (
stevetonygames )
Work Type: Fic (554 words)
Universe: Ultimates
Bingo Square: First Date
Challenge: Location, Location, Location (living room of Ults Tony's penthouse)
Content Warning: Major Illness (Ults Tony's cancer)
Another couple of lines that I thought might barely amount to the hundred words, but grew.
I don't really know much of what the canon shows of Steve's and Tony's interactions in regard to Tony's cancer/treatment. So I'm just taking the kernel and running with it. All's fair in war and fanfic, right?
Ask for help, Tony reminds himself.
Accept support. You do not have to do everything alone.Steve looks and smells shower-fresh when he walks through the door; he was probably sweat-soaked and pounding the pavement 45 minutes ago.
"Morning. Thanks for coming." Tony gestures toward the breakfast spread Jarvis left laid out on the sideboard.
His stomach is reasonably steady today. He can take in the savory, grease-rich smells without it sending him to the toilet. Consuming the food would be a different story. It's his home and only Steve here right now, so he doesn't have to bother with moving some around a plate.
He gets a little side-eye when Steve starts filling his own, but it's more acknowledgment than question. Steve understands Tony's good days-bad days spectrum, and knows what it means when Tony provides a meal but skips it himself.
Steve picks up a slice of bacon and chews it down in three deliberate bites. Tony takes it for the tacit prompt that it is.
Ask for help. Ask. Tony silently prods himself again.
"I wondered if you might accompany me to an... engagement."
Steve raises his eyebrows. "Speaking appearance? Charity gala?" He sounds unconcerned. He's leaving Tony the opening, but that's clearly as far as he's planning to go in pulling him through it.
"Nothing so interesting or glamorous, I'm afraid."
"Those usually aren't. I go anyway." Steve shrugs, and continues methodically working his way through his mountain of scrambled eggs.
"You do." Tony takes a breath. Lets it out. "Hospital," he grumbles. "First session in the new round of chemo."
Steve's fork pauses minutely, but he takes the next bite.
"I'm tired of going alone," Tony blurts. Lets it
out. "Tired of coming back alone. Tired of seeing everyone with a family member or a, a partner, to meet them when they get through."
Steve sets his plate down. It's not empty. "I can be there."
"You really don't have to." Tony studies the floor. That is to say, he's not actually seeing much of anything, but it saves him from looking at Steve.
"Nope. But I'm going to be. It's a date."
Tony sighs. "It's an appointment, Steve."
Steve sticks his jaw out. He presses the point like it's an opponent he's wearing down with footwork and stinging jabs. "It's an event that takes place at a specific time on a specific calendar day. That little square -- it's a
date."
Steve is... For a hard-bit old soldier, Steve has a sideways sense of humor. It surprises a little huff out of him. "Really, darling,
that's your idea of what makes a date?"
"It is today."
"The appointment's not till tomorrow."
"Then it's my idea of a date tomorrow, too."
Tony doesn't need to be graceful. Or gracious. Or confident, or put-together, or in charge. That's the essentiality of Steve.
He gives in, with watery eyes and the ghost of a smile. "I'll try not to vomit on you till the third one." Uncouth. Foul and indelicate and only being realistic.
"Been up to my elbows in worse messes."
"This is... well, it's not a combat operation, Captain."
Steve's head goes up. "The hell it's not."
Good lord, how he blazes. Tony's heavy-taxed heart skips a beat.
"The
hell it's not, Tony. This is goddamned
war."