"You don't ever feel like the world's taken too much from you?" Steve asks one night, soft and low.
Tony turns on his side to smile at him and Steve wants to live in those smile lines forever, the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. Tony has a way of making Steve feel like that, like time slows and the world narrows, to Tony, to this.
"Don't you?" Tony asks back, reaching out to take Steve's hand, and Steve can feel the callouses on the pad of Tony's thumb as he rubs little circles into his hand.
Steve thinks about it and shakes his head.
"Me neither," Tony says. "And whatever they did take, I'd say they paid me back ten times over."
"What do you mean?" Steve asks, brows furrowed in confusion because the hero gig is a thankless job so much of the time and trying to balance the books would be a fool's errand. Tony, who signed up for this life, must know that.
Tony doesn't answer, just smiles deeper and leans in, pressing warm lips to Steve's and sucking his bottom lip softly, once. In the kiss, slow and sweet, Steve thinks he hears what Tony didn't say out loud—