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“I thought you’d be out for your date with Tony already.”
“He’s still stuck in a board meeting, we’re doing lunch later.”
Steve freezes as the full weight of Nat’s words sink in, and feels his face heat automatically. “And it’s not a date.”
“Sure, Cap.” Steve blushes harder at the laughter he swears he hears in Nat’s tone. When he peers at her over the spine of his James Bond novel, she sends an innocent smile his way that doesn’t fool him in the slightest.
“It’s just lunch!” Steve tries, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck. He feels oddly fidgety for no good reason at all. This isn’t even the first time someone on the team has made a joke about his weekly lunches with Tony - Steve usually takes those jokes in good stride with an eye roll and an exasperated sigh. But something about the teasing coming from Nat specifically when she had tried interrogating him last week about why exactly he kept dodging her attempts at setting him up on blind dates, and the fact that Steve missed the joke on the first cue, has him feeling like this time the joke’s on him.
“Have fun. You two have tickets to the new Van Gogh exhibit at the Met, right?”
“…yes,” Steve answers slowly, feeling like he’s falling into yet another trap. He’s been excited about the new exhibit for weeks, and Tony had seemed pretty happy about it when he had surprised Steve with news of the tickets last week.
“That’s sweet,” Nat says. She’s at the doorway when she bats another joke at him before walking away. “Make sure to dress nice to impress your date.”
Nat’s teasing shouldn’t bother Steve, and yet Steve finds himself replaying her remark in his head as he waits for Tony at their regular lunch spot, a hole-in-the-wall diner that serves the best sandwiches in Manhattan.
He's wearing his favorite blue button-down shirt, not because of Nat's advice, but because it's a nice shirt. The fact that Tony once said he looks good in blue is irrelevant.
“It’s not a date,” Steve repeats to himself, his hands clenching hard on his thighs.
It’s just lunch with Tony like they’ve been doing every week since the first time Steve had hesitantly stopped by Tony’s lab two weeks after he’d moved into the Tower and asked if he wanted to head out together for burgers. It had been meant an olive branch at the time, a chance to clear the air again after the rocky start they had had on the Helicarrier during the whole Loki debacle, but to Steve’s surprise, what started out as an awkward lunch turned into spending all day together when Tony had asked Steve if he’s been seeing the New York sights, and then the week after that Tony had taken him out for Mexican food, now it was their weekly thing.
Somehow, their weekly lunches have become one of the highlights of Steve’s week.
It’s not that Steve has anything against the basic concept of dating Tony - he’s become one of Steve’s best friends in this new century, and for all his flaws, Steve also knows that Tony is funny, unexpectedly sweet, thoughtful, and yes, very handsome. It’s an opinion that Steve can easily admit to, one that he knows is shared by pretty much everyone else on the planet.
But that’s the kicker; Steve isn’t dating Tony. And now that he’s thinking about it, he doesn’t really understand why pretending like they’re dating is so funny to their teammates.
“Sorry I’m late, I thought that meeting would never end.” Steve looks up with a smile as Tony enters his view. He looks a little ruffled in his suit with a few buttons of his shirt undone, but ruffled in a good way that for some reason has Steve’s throat feeling dry. Must be allergies.
“You’re fine, Tony.”
Tony’s frowning now, his eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Steve lets his hands relax in his lap and leans forward. “Wanna order?”
“We get the same thing every time we come here, Steve. And your face is doing that thing where you’re smiling but it’s not your real smile.”
“I don’t have a thing, Tony.”
“Uh huh. You definitely do.”
Steve sighs. “It’s nothing, I promise,” he says, and tries for a smile that he hopes is a better attempt than his previous one. “Just feeling hung up on something, but it’s nothing.”
“If you’re sure,” Tony peers at him over the tall sandwich that’s just arrived at their table, heaped with bacon and eggs and cheese. “You know you can tell me about it, right?”
Steve feels himself relax at Tony’s words, warmth pooling in his stomach. “I know, Tony.”
Tony smiles at him, the kind of smile Steve got to see for the first time during their first lunch together, and Steve feels his worry drain away at the sight.
That should be the end of it. Just a joke that Steve spent a little too long dwelling on, that’s all.
Steve realizes over the next few weeks that he spends a lot of his time with Tony, though it’s not really something he’s thought much about before. Aside from their weekly lunches, Tony’s lab is a regular go to spot for Steve, and a week usually doesn’t go by without Tony asking if Steve wants to go with him to an event, because “they’re much more bearable with company, Cap,” or to a spontaneous outing because “what do you mean you’ve never seen jellyfish? They’re a marvel of nature, Steve.”
All of this would be fine, more than fine really, since Steve honestly never gets tired of being around Tony. Except for one crucial detail.
The inescapable, inconsequential fact that Steve can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to date Tony, and it’s slowly driving him crazy.
It’s not even that they’re doing anything different.
Steve hangs out at Tony’s workshop, Tony complains that Steve keeps spoiling DUM-E and Steve retaliates by making paper hats for DUM-E. Except when Tony grins up at him from across the lab, Steve now wonders what it would be like to press a kiss to Tony’s cheek. He thinks of how it would feel to pull Tony close and clean that smudge of grease on Tony’s chin off with his thumb, and when Tony sits down next to him on the couch and peers over at Steve’s sketchbook, Steve wonders how he would react if Steve moved closer with an arm around his shoulder.
When they’re at the team’s weekly movie night, Tony sits next to Steve on the couch like they usually do. Steve misses most of the movie trying his hardest to stop thinking about the scant inches of space between them on the couch, and how Tony’s hand would feel in his if he reached for it over the popcorn bowl on his lap.
They go for Italian during their next weekly lunch, and Steve completely forgets the punchline to a joke he’s halfway through telling when Tony beams at him, suddenly thinking that if this were a date, he certainly wouldn’t be able to resist kissing Tony right about now.
Steve’s pretty sure he’s gone insane.
Judging from Tony’s confused frown as Steve trails off, he’s not the only one with that opinion, unfortunately.
“You okay Steve? You kind of spaced out there.”
“I’m fine, Tony.”
There’s never an alien invasion in Times Square when you need one to happen, he thinks to himself in despair.
Steve waits patiently for his bout of madness to subside. He tells himself it’s just intellectual curiosity, that it’s natural to wonder what it would be like to date a friend when you spend that much time with them.
He mentions it to Clint one day with what he considers to be an impressive amount of confidence.
Clint spends the next minutes laughing in his face. Steve once again wishes desperately for another alien invasion, or even just a small skirmish.
Anything to distract himself from thinking of Tony—his laugh, the way his brow crinkled when he was concentrating on a project, the sweep of his eyelashes, the curve of his mouth when he smiled…
“Steve? I think you burned the toast.”
Dammit.
Steve never figures out exactly what compels him to finally ask Tony out.
One moment he’s sitting next to Tony on the couch, trying his best to follow Tony’s explanation about his newest invention and how it’s “definitely going to kick Hammer’s ass as usual, of course”, watching Tony gesture animatedly with his hands and trying not to be distracted by the sliver of skin peeking out between Tony’s tank top and his shorts, and the next moment he hears himself blurting out: “Do you want to go on a date?”
“With me,” he adds belatedly, then wonders if he can convince Tony to help him invite a time machine to erase this moment and save him from eternal embarrassment after Tony’s inevitable rejection.
Except Tony stares at him for a long moment, mouth open in surprise, and then—then he nods. “Yeah. Yes. If you want.”
Steve barely stops himself from asking “Really?”
“Yeah, I want a date with you,” he says instead, unable to stop himself from grinning besottedly. He has no idea what’s happening, but if Tony’s saying yes, he’ll take it.
“Good,” Tony says, nodding again, and Steve’s still not sure if he’s dreaming, but Tony’s smiling, and Steve can’t look away.
So after weeks of daydreaming and fantasizing about dating Tony, Steve finally goes out on an actual, proper date with Tony.
And it’s amazing and wonderful—and absolutely nothing like he imagined. Because while holding hands with Tony in the candlelight sends his heart racing, and the way they can’t stop meeting each other’s eyes across the dessert plates has Steve blushing, most of the time dinner also feels surprisingly normal—Steve doesn’t worry over what they’re going to talk about because it’s Tony, Tony teases him about his love for the the breadsticks, and Steve steals Tony’s mushrooms off his plate because he hates them even if he pretends he doesn’t.
Later, when they’re huddled together on the sidewalk, their arms keep bumping against each other, until Tony finally lets out a quiet laugh and reaches for Steve's hand.
Tony’s hand is warm in his, a perfect fit. Steve thinks back to all the moments he had imagined doing this, and kicks himself for hesitating.
“It’s weird that this doesn’t feel weird, right?” Tony asks, his eyes bright as he pulls Steve a little closer, and Steve shakes his head in disbelief.
“It feels like we should have been doing it all along,” he admits quietly, taking a deep breath before meeting Tony’s gaze.
Tony’s fingers are warm on the nape of Steve’s neck. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Better make up for lost time then,” Steve whispers against Tony’s mouth and his answering grin.