p • r • e • s • s • u • r • e

a question of atonement

He smiled wryly.  

"Don't waste your time, Bruce. Not on me, never on me. Talk about-about self-harm-I won't let you do that to yourself. Just forget about me, I'm begging you."

"You and I both know that's not gonna happen."

"Literally I've never begged for anything outside of the bedroom and you've just wasted it," he mumbled facetiously.

Tony got up, leaving his credit card on the table.  

"You don't have to-" Bruce started. 

"Stole your wallet, so-yeah I do," said Tony, holding it aloft.  "I'll be in the car."

The wind bit at his skin and once he got past the field of view from the window, he all but ran to the alley where they'd parked, deactivating the cloaking field to find the door handle.

He scrambled in to get away from the cold and sat for a moment. One by one his fingers curled round the steering wheel. His knuckles blanched white, as if touched by a heavy winter snow, like four little mountaintops in a row on each hand, sharp, jagged peaks. 

"GodDAMNit!" they beat at the steering wheel and the dash and his chest-

The pain came in waves. 

His body contracted, curled up as if to swallow itself. Veins stood along his forehead and a deep groan rattled in his throat and tore from his lips. The passenger side door's soft thwap was far away, as if heard by another him in another universe.

Bruce did his best to pry his hands from where they'd clamped onto his arms, the silken seams of his jacket pulling like caramel. 

"Hey, it's okay. Jesus, do I need to get you a nanny cam?" his tone was light but you could hardly notice over the worry it carried. Soft hands, burned and twisted into a chemical landscape felt along the bottom of the centre console where he knew there was a latch. They pulled it, and the console collapsed and tucked itself away, turning the seating arrangement into an old-fashioned bench seat. It was a feature Tony had installed when he was seventeen, a week before eloped with Julia Jones, heiress to Roxxon Energy Corporation. They'd met at a function, some charity event the both of them had been dragged into. Her grandfather was Hugh Jones, and after his death the VP of the company had held the reins until it became her turn. He didn't know it yet, but it was a story he'd come to share. They were the most valuable children on the planet, the future king and queen of corporate America and at the moment, nobody knew where they were. Tony wanted to keep it that way so they avoided hotels, sleeping his car until they could get across the border, if they ever decided which one. He and Julia lasted eight days and six hours before they were found. Julia lasted eight months before she died. Accidental overdose. 

Oh well. It was the 80s, they were teenagers, it happened. 

At least, that was what he told himself.  

He couldn't help but think of her, of the two of them, wrapped up in that bench seat together to keep warm.  Bruce hugged him, and he thought he might be sick.

"You in there?"

Was that lipstick?

"What-what are you doing?"

Tony scrambled across the dash and yanked down the passenger-side sun visor. 

"Is-what is it?"

Nothing. There was nothing. 

"Nothing," he echoed. 

"I-are you sure?"

He sat back down.