It only took Steve an extra fifteen minutes to find the arcade than it would have if Tony helped him. So that wasn't too much time. If it passed twenty then yeah tony probably would've helped him out. But it was entertaining watching him go in a circle for the third time without him realizing it.
"See, I told you I could get you here," Steve said with a victory smile while he held the door open for Tony. Tony just smiled in reply and walked into the arcade.
"Oh, how I stand corrected. I'll never doubt you again."
"Yeah, I'm counting on that."
Watching Steve fail to navigate himself totally calmed Tony down. He was just overreacting. In all honestly, he probably just hasn't gotten laid in a while.
God, how long had it been? At least since summer. Oh, my god, Tony hasn't gotten laid in months. This was probably the longest he's gone since before he started dating Bella.
He should really hit Dylan up sometime.
The arcade was pretty old, so it still ran in those tokens rather than those cards most arcades have now. Surprisingly, there was a good amount of people here. Odd, since there wasn't much cars parked outside.
Steve and Tony both stepped up to the coin machine. They eyed each other while both trying to shove money into the slot at the same time, causing Steve to accidentally knock Tonys hand on the side of the machine pretty hard.
"Shit! Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry," Steve said while Tony just shook his hand off. It stung a bit but nothing Tony couldn't handle. He was stronger than he looked.
"You're fine. Now let me pay," Tony pressed and tried to put the ten dollars into the machine again, but Steve quickly caught into his wrist before he could. Damn his quick football reflexes.
Steve gently brought Tony's hand down to his side to avoid him from paying. But if Rogers thought Tony would give up that easily he was definitely mistaken. Tony never backs down from a challenge.
"No, I'm paying," Steve said in his stupid matter-of-fact tone that Tony hated so much. Like now that he's declared his decision that's the only possible outcome. Tony rolled his eyes.
"Stop, I'm the rich one. Let me pay just ten stupid dollars for us." Tony snarked and tried to nudge Steve out of his way but Steve didn't even budge. Damn, way to knock Tonys ego down a few pegs. Steve didn't even seem to notice that he had failed to try and move he who was a brick wall.
"Stop it, Tony. I asked you here, I pay."
"You drove here. So now we're even."
"It's not about being even, Tony, it's about morals."
Tonys eyebrows quickly shut up.
"Morals? What? That a "gentleman" always pays? Well, guess what, Steve, I'm still a guy too."
Steve just blinked at him. Where the hell did that come from?
"Uhh, yeah, I know. But the person who asks the other out, pays."
Tony scoffed and looked away.
"That is definitely not how it works."
"Is so," Steve tried to pay again but Tony just slapped his wrist. Steve rolled his eyes at the younger man.
"Look. I'll pay first, and if we want to play more, then you pay. Deal?"
Steve gave a look that made you think he was thinking about it, but they both knew better. He wasn't going to give up that easily either. They were both so stubborn that it annoyed the other to the max.
"Hm, no. I pay."
"Oh, my god," Tony replied in an exasperated tone and tried to pay again. Steve caught his wrist again, and this time pinned it to the machine.
Oh. Oh. Um. Okay. This is okay. Everything is okay.
Tonys heart beat fastened. His grip on the ten dollar bill was so tight that the bill started to crinkle, making a weird sound.
Steve just stared down at Tony, noticing again how short he was compared to himself. Huh.
Steve finally looked away (finally!) but kept his grip on Tonys wrist, holding him down and to the machine. With his other hand, he easily slipped his own ten dollars in the coin machine.
No matter how much Tony struggled, or tried to get out of his grasp, he was stuck. Damnit!
Steve smiled in victory - once again - to the sound of the coin droppings like it was wedding bells. He finally released Starks hand, making him drop it down to his side.
Tony rubbed his wrist - not that it hurt really, Steve was careful with his strength, more to try and make Steve guilty. Steve just rolled his eyes at him, knowing what Stark was trying to do.
"You're so dramatic," Steve stated, and started to grab the coins out of the slot. Tony crossed his arms and watched how his fingers grabbed at each coin.
"You're annoying. It's only fair! You pay for gas I play for this." They were both so stubborn. Steve smiles a bit and dropped the coins into a plastic cup from the stack on the top of the machine.
"Come on, let's go play some games," Steve said and started to walk away. With the roll of Tonys eyes, he followed.
-
"That's not fair!" Tony glared at Steve after seeing his score. They were betting (over nothing) about who could get more baskets in at the basketball game. Steve had gotten 27 in and Tony had only gotten 16.
"How so?" Steve laughed and grabbed the tickets from his machine. Tony did the same.
"You're like all sports! Let's play a math game." Steve raised a brow at him and walked to find a different machine.
"Tony, Tony this is an arcade. People come to have fun, there's no math games."
They continued to play more games. Ski ball, which they tied in, a race car game, which Tony won, and some other random arcade games. Tony saw the zombie game and dragged Steve over to it.
One of those zombie games where you go into a booth and close the curtain. Tony got in and Steve followed after him. They put enough coins in for the both of them and started to play.
They were laughing with the occasional scream from a zombie jump scare. And Tony has to admit, it was the most fun he's had in a while. He looked over at Steve after he had died and Steve was still in the game.
He watched how Steve was smiling but had a line between his brows where he was concentrating. Tony smiled. They needed to hang out more often.
Once they had used up all their coins they went over to the ticket machine. After counting all of the tickets - they had a total of 346. They both laughed.
"We're really good at these games," Tony said with a smile. Steve smiled back and put an arm around Tonys shoulders.
Tony froze. Wow. Okay. This is like, actual couple stuff. Like someone only puts their arm around someone else's shoulder if they're on a date, right? So they were on a date? This wasn't just two friends going to an arcade.
Tony glanced up to see Steve's face. Maybe his expression could give away why he was thinking. But Steve's face was just focused on the ticket receipt. Maybe a little too focused.
Steve looked down at Tony, sensing his gaze. The eye contact again was too much for Tony. The way Steve was staring down at him, the way Tony was staring up at him. The arm around his shoulder.
Tony erupted into a fit of coughs.
"Oh- shit, are you okay?" Steve ask and moved his arm off of Tonys shoulder and onto his back, moving it in soothing motions to help and calm down Tonys coughing. Except this did the opposite affect, the hand on his back just causing him more panic. The cough attack wouldn't stop. "Umm."
Steve didn't know what to do to help. Was he choking on something?
Tony took a step back, Steve's hand dropping, and faced away. His coughing slowly died out and he cleared his throat. He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. Ugh. Talk about embarrassing.
"Are you okay?"
"Uh, yeah, sorry, I think I just got dust in my mouth or something." Steve looked skeptical just nodded with an 'okay?'
They both walked over to the prize stand. With how few tickets they had gained there wasn't much they could get. Maybe a few candy bars, a couple of slinkies, or something. Why were these arcade things ridiculously overpriced?
They both looked at everything until Tony found something. There were these braided string bracelets that were honestly kind of cute. There were only two of them left. One dark blue and one a faded light red, almost pink. He pointed them out to Steve with a smile. They were only a hundred tickets each.
Steve looked at Tonys smile. Fuckkk, even if he thought those bracelets were undoubtedly ugly, he couldn't not go along with it. They got the last two braided bracelets and spent the rest on random airhead candies.
They both sat in Steve's car, eating the airheads. Tony put the rest of his cherry airhead in his mouth and turned to face Steve.
"Okay, so. Blue or Red?" Tony asked and held up both bracelets. Steve looked between the two before pointing to the blue one. Tony scooted forward and started to wrap it around Steves wrist. He tied it and then tapped it twice. "There you go. Looks great, brings out your eyes," Tony teased and wiggled his eyebrows. Steve shook his head with a smile and put the matching red one on Tony.
The bracelets were gross and ugly and Steve didn't doubt they would fall apart in a week or so. He was never going to take it off.
-
On Monday when Tony got to school he had to make sure that Steve still had his bracelet on. When he saw the blue lining around his wrist he couldn't help but smile. Huh. So he really kept it on all weekend.
Tony smiles down at his own bracelet and fidgeted with it. The longer he wore it, the more it turned into a pink. He didn't mind though. The pink was still bright and looked like a happy color. He might prefer it to the dull red, actually.
Steve caught his eye in English class (he totally wasn't caught staring, definitely not) and smiled at him. A smile that showed off Steve's perfectly white, straight teeth that Tony hated so much. Hated because they were perfect. What a good symbol. Steve himself was perfect.
There wasn't a single flaw in him. He was sweet, caring, annoyingly handsome, and super athletic. The more Tony searched for a flaw, the more he grew to both Love and Hate him. He has to have something.
It only took until last hour, but Tony finally found one. Steve tended to run his hand through his hair a lot throughout the day. Weather he was focused, nervous, or even self consciously, he would do it. It made his hair messier and all over his face. And Tony absolutely loved it.
Actually, he seemed to love it more than his flawless actions. That made Tony even more angry.
Over the next few days Tony collected whatever he could of things Steve did that would be considered a "flaw".
He would talk with such self confidence. No matter what it was (or how incorrect he was), Steve would talk with such strength like he was right. It tended to make people question their own opinion because of how easy Steve would say his own opinion. Didn't matter the fact or the reason, it was his tone. Tony admired it.
He had some scars along his legs. Probably from all of he sports he played in Brooklyn that he talked about. Tony adored them, wanting to trace each and every one.
Although being very athletic and strong, Steve wasn't very flexible. He couldn't even touch his toes. When he showed Tony, Tony couldn't help but laugh. Even when the laugh died down, the smile stayed present on his face. For some reason it was appealing.
Every single flaw Tony searched hard for and found, he fell in love with. Every. Single. One.
Tony hated it so much. He hated it. He hated the fact that Steve was too self confident, his stupid ugly scars, and how inflexible he was. How he ran his hands through his hair way too often. He hated it. Hated it hated it hated it.
Oh, but Tonys favorite one of Steve's flaws was his eyes.
From afar, they looked crystal blue. Very alluring.
But up close, you can see the real color. They were a swirl of light blue and grey, with specks of green. It made Tony so weak. He hated his own eyes, he wanted Steve's. He hated Steve's, he wished Steve had his own eyes instead.
He wanted something. Anything, even something small. To grasp and hold close, to only focus on that one bad thing whenever he looked at Steve.
With just one bad thing about him, Tony could stop himself from wanting Steve. Because he did, he wanted him so much that Tony was starting to question if it was something beyond just lust.
It was Friday and the football team was getting ready for another game. This team was supposedly easy, but Steve was still scared. After last game (the first game) he didn't want to mess it up. What if they lost because he, the new quarterback, sucks?
Sam could sense his anxiousness and tried to console him, but it did little to no affect. He wants more than anything to win.
When he was drinking water just ten minutes before the game some cheerleaders came up to him.
"Good luck, Steve," a black haired girl said to him. Steve smiled and thanked her, not exactly knowing her name.
Beside her was (Steve was pretty sure) named Sunset. He remembered hearing the name somewhere and thinking it was kind of cool, but couldn't be sure if that was her or not. And then on the other side was Sharon.
He smiled at her and gave a wave. Sharon was cool, they didn't ever talk except for that one homecoming dance.
She tilted her head at him.
"Are you okay? You look tense," she asked him, and soundly one hundred percent genuine and curious. Steve gave back a nervous chuckle.
"Is it that obvious?"
"You're going to do very well, I can feel it."
Well, turns out Sharon was right. Because they won that game was a landslide. They won 23 to ten. Steve was so excited that he couldn't stop smiling.
"Victory dinner at Delcarmnies!" Thor shouted and slapped Max on the back. The football team (followed by Nat, Bruce, Clint, Rhodey and Tony as well. Because even though they didn't want to introduce Bucky literally dragged Tony.)
On the way out Steve gave a huge grin and wave to Sharon. She smiled back and mouthed "I told you so". Steve shook his head. He guesses she did.
-
Bingos was super loud. Or that was just Thor. Either way there was a lot going on. Steve felt kind of guilty being a guest there when they were so busy.
He sat across from Bucky and Tony who sat beside one another. He kept getting pulled into conversations by his teammates. There wasn't really a moment to enjoy a conversation before getting yanked into another.
Whenever he tried to get a point in between a debate with Natasha and Tony someone else called his name to get his opinion on something. Tony laughed at the face Steve made when getting interrupted for the third time.
All in all, it was a great dinner after a great game. It was safe to say he was pretty happy.
After the dinner Natasha asked everyone if they wanted to sleep over. Steve was kind of shocked, he was never allowed to sleepover at the opposite genders house. Even if he was attracted to both, his parents didn't know that. He didn't know opposite gender sleepovers were really a thing.
So everyone ended up asking their parents (or not asking at all, in Tony's case) to sleepover at Natasha's while Steve lied and said he was spending the night at Buckys.
Bruce, Natasha, and Tony were all in a game of poker while The Three Idiots played video games.
"Have you noticed," Sam said loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear, "ever since Steve got here everyone's been calling Bucky Bucky instead of James?"
Everyone thought about it for a while before agreeing. That's weird, they've never heard of the name before but all of a sudden it was a force of habit.
"Except Tony," Natasha pointed out after everyone said their agreements, "he still calls Bucky James."
"That's because what James and I have going on is special," Tony smirked while drawing a card from the deck. Bucky looked away from the screen to look at Tony through the closet mirror and winked. Everyone else just laughed at the two.
What an odd group they all made, and it was honestly so much fun.
Clint was the first to fall asleep (after he had said multiple times for no one else to fall asleep and that they were all gonna do an all nighter.). Bruce followed shortly after, willingly going to sleep because he had to be up early.
Yelena had made a surprise visit home from college so they all went to say hello. Then Natasha went to her room to hang out with her. They all didn't mind, of course.
Sam has fallen asleep while watching a horror movie with the other three (Tony guessed he won the bet on who would be the least scared?).
Bucky told Steve and Tony that he was going to go Natasha's couch for the rest of the night. To get alone time before going to sleep. He said he doesn't like to sleep around everyone else because he's a light sleeper and Sam tends to start snoring.
So it was just Steve and Tony, laying on the bed beside a sleeping Clint while half watching this sit com that was playing on cable.
Tony wanted to try and pick something on Netflix, but according to Steve he took too long to decide so he grabbed the remote and turned it to cable instead. Said they'd find something sooner there than with Tony nitpicking.
They made casual conversation while watching the comedy.
"Are you tired yet?" Tony whispered to Steve during their third episode. In the last one, a man cheated on his fiancé on "accident" when he was drunk. Now it's the part where he's trying to cover it up and keeping his bride-to-be from finding out.
Steve looked over at Tony who was already looking at him.
"Almost, I think," Tony laughed quietly at the weird reply. Steve rolled his eyes with a smile and went on, "I mean, I can go to sleep if you wanted. But I could also stay up."
"I like watching dumb shows with you, but I'm extremely exhausted." Steve smiled and moved his hand to tuck a lose curl behind Tonys ear. God, his brown curls were so beautiful. Steve wondered what product he uses.
Upon farther inspection, Steve started to take in all of Tonys face traits. His nose was such a perfect shape, one people would kill to have. So small and makes you want to just boop it.
He had a bit of baby face, with kind of chubby cheeks. Steve just wanted to squish each one. Tony was so unbelievably adorable.
His eyebrows were a perfect shape. In fact, Steve could even see how Tony had gelled them back from how close they were. He wondered what other makeup Tony might have on.
His eyelashes were incredibly long and black (mascara, maybe?) and god his eyes. They were light brown with honey gold within. Tony could probably get anything he wanted with just a doey eyes look and bat of his lashes.
Steve has heard some guy talk about how Tonys eyes in bed were the absolute best he's had in the locker room during gym back earlier in the school year when they weren't friends. At the time he had just scoffed and walked away, but thinking about it now, Steve didn't doubt his words one bit.
While admiring Tonys eyes he noticed some brown faded dots below them. He focused and squinted his eyes and... did Tony have freckles?
He moved his face even closer, without thinking about it, and looked at the freckles. They were, indeed, actual freckles. So small and dull that you could barely see them unless you were close enough to Tonys face. For some reason, Steve took pride in the thought of being one of the few of (hopefully) many to be able to see them.
He reached a hand out and cupped Tonys face.
"Do you have freckles?" He had asked, slowly and gently running his thumb over said freckles.
Tony was pretty sure that his heart had just stopped. Everything in his life has led to this moment, this weirdly intimate moment with his sleeping friends nearby and Jesus Christ. Steve was too fucking hot to be able to think correctly.
So all he did back was a lame and small nod. It probably looked pathetic, but Steve was too focused on looking at his dumb dots. Tony couldn't tear his eyes away from Steve's own. In them, they looked almost... determined?
"Theyre really pretty," Steve said back, still caressing Tonys cheek. Tony swallowed.
He was seriously not going to ever live past this moment. What happened next? Everything else will be a total let down. He'll spend the rest of his life thinking about this very moment.
"You're really pretty," finally. Finally, Steve jerked his eyes from Tonys cheek to his eyes. Tony couldn't handle the eye contact. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. He needs to calm down.
Deep breathes. In, out. In, out.
How do you breathe again?
Steve's hand slowly started to move. His fingers one by one moves down Tonys cheek, his thumb following last. Everywhere Steve's finger touched, tingles would take it's place.
His four fingers except for his thumb went under Tonys chin. He slid his thumb across Tonys chin, feeling the smooth skin underneath. Tony must not have seen a pimple in his life.
Steve was tempted to break the silence and ask what his skin care routine was.
Steve's thumb started to move up his chin, but then stopped, hesitating. When in the next couple seconds Tony didn't move, Steve's hand continued its search.
His thumb found Tonys bottom lip, and swept across it a few times. A shiver went down Tonys back. So much more intimate than anything he's ever experienced and they haven't even kissed yet.
Steve's finger then went to trace the shape of Tonys lips, stopping in the middle. He slowly started to slide his thumb between Tonys lip, and Tonys breath literally hitched. Loud enough for both of them to hear and determine the meaning behind it, but Steve didn't stop his actions.
Once his thumb was halfway into Tonys mouth, he slowly slid it back out. Wiping the saliva along Tonys bottom lip and chin.
Steve didn't know what had gone over him, where the sudden confidence came from, but he wasn't complaining. As long as Tony was okay with it (which he obviously was, Steve himself could even figure that out) then he was okay with it.
And if they weren't around their whole group of friends, Steve wouldn't have stopped whatever it was that was happening.
"You're tired, right? Go to bed, Tony," Steve said while his hand was still next to Tonys face, his four fingers rolled up in a fist under Tonys chin with his thumb on the far right bottom of his cheek.
Tony couldn't reply, he could understand that much. So instead of risking embarrassing himself, his just nodded and then turned around, knowing that he slept facing Steve he wouldn't be able to get any sleep, opening an eye every five seconds, and tried to sleep mushed behind Clints back.
Steve lazily threw an arm around Tony and closed his eyes to sleep as well.
Well, fuck.
-
Well, fuck!! Hi guys!!! Ahh I loved to write the last 2.5K of this chapter. I hope you enjoyed it!!
Finished writing: 2/9/22
Edited: 2/9/22
Published: 2/10/22