“Oh. Hi. Hi, is anyone home? This is Scott Lang. We met a few years ago at the airport in Germany. I got really big. I had my mask on. You wouldn’t recognize me.”
“EDITH is this an old message?” Natasha asks breathlessly, watching as the man on the screen bangs on the front door once more.
“Ant-Man. Ant-Man. I know you know that.”
“It’s the front door of the compound Natasha, a live feed” EDITH replies calmly.
“I really need to talk to you guys,” Scott shouts, waving at the cameras, and Natasha can’t stop the wet laugh that bursts out, vision blurring with tears.
“Shall I wake James?” EDITH asks politely and Natasha grins, wiping under her eyes, something like hope igniting in her chest.
He looks up and Tony is leaning forward, elbows on his knees and hands between his legs, loose and relaxed, sweater sleeves pushed up so Steve can see his muscular forearms. They flex as Tony’s fingers twitch and he tears his eyes away reluctantly to meet his burnt sugar gaze.
Tony’s lips curl slowly and Steve feels it like those lips are on his skin, soft and warm and he shivers, swallowing hard.
“I’m glad you came,” Tony murmurs, voice low and honest and a little raw with emotion.
Summer bleeds into fall and Tony watches the leaves turn, crisping as the air cools, the rolling mountains in the distance coppery in the sunlight.
When he stands on his back porch and looks out at the lake in the morning he imagines watching Steve see this view for the first time—eyes going wide at the light filtering through the forest, the gleam of the lake in the distance, the trees afire with color.
He does this more—thinks about Steve, wonders if he thinks about Tony too—or maybe his new boyfriend takes up all his thoughts.
The coffee in his mug abruptly tastes bitter and he scowls at it, flicking the lukewarm liquid out with a snap of his wrist that sends it sailing over the edge of the porch.
He has more important things to do than mull over what Steve Rogers and his boyfriend are getting up to.
When Steve wakes for the first time he hears soft voices talking distantly, but he’s fuzzy from the painkillers they have him dosed with and the words sound as though he’s hearing them from underwater; muffled and distant.
When he wakes again his head is clearer and his eyes open slowly, a throbbing deep in his skull telling him the man with the crowbar got a few good hits in before he’d managed to fight his way free and out into the street.
The room is empty—no cards, no flowers, no people and for a moment he’s overwhelmed with memory of the last time he’d been in the hospital. He’d just found out Bucky was alive and had nearly died trying to get him back. Sam had sat by his bed, protecting him, smiling when he’d woken up, a soft crooning song on in the background.
There’s none of that now.
The utter loneliness sinks into his chest and leaves him gasping; shaking and crying, he presses his hands to his face and sobs, stripped bare and raw for the world to see.
He cries himself into exhaustion and sleeps again.
