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larougie · 4 years

Text

absence

genre: angst

pairing(s): felix lee

word count: 1.2k

description: You had always figured that this was your future. It was something out of a fairy tale. They said absence only makes the heart grow fonder. You call bullshit.

You’d always hated the cold. It was miserable and seemed to seep in through all the cracks, through the stitching of your clothes and underneath your bedroom door. As winter approaches, all the once blooming flowers in your front garden begin to wither, with petals falling from the dying stem. You thought it fitting. You could never understand the people who revered the coldest months - preferring to hibernate until the sun decided to show itself again. He had tried to change that - you remembered countless days where he had taken you by the hand and dragged you out from your warm cocoon of blankets and to a public park, where the trees glistened against the cool air , strung up with fairy lights in every possible colour you could imagine.

You spent hours there on those days, sitting on the damp grass with your head on his shoulder, singing softly along to a song only the two of you knew. There was never a good melody, and to anyone else it sounded off-key and pitchy, but to you it was perfect. It was heaven. He was an angel to you. You remembered how the yellow glow lit up the dark sky and you found yourself wondering how on earth you managed to deserve someone like him.

Those were the times that you didn't truly ‘hate’ winter. His smile just seemed to chase away the bitter cold and warmed you up from the inside, like your very own personal sun. Those were the best days, because you always woke up to a vice-grip around your waist with legs intertwined, hair in your mouth and a ridiculous number of blankets piled on top of you both. You fought gently against the limbs that caged you tightly to a warm chest - freeing yourself only after replacing your body with a pillow that had been banished to the floor during the course of the night. The cool flooring nipped at your bare feet as you sleepily shuffled to the kitchen, and tried your level best to quietly maneuver the cocoa powder from its hiding place at the back of the cupboard. Strong arms would always envelope your frame, and a gentle kiss would be pressed to the crown of your head in lieu of a verbal greeting. These were the hours you treasured - before Felix had to leave the peaceful environment you shared and left to spend another day in the studio, creating masterpieces to be seen by one or two at most. However, he seemed to take the warmth with him, for as he left the building, all the cold air seemed to take advantage of your vulnerable state and come rushing back in.

Now, you were sitting on a park bench. In the cold.

This time however, you welcomed the frigid air gladly, thankful for the icy fingertips that crawled up your arms and into your body. It helped to distract from the small pains in your chest - your icy fingertips tracing small swirls in the early morning frost that had settled on the arms of the old wooden bench.

You didn't know when it had started.

You had no idea when your honeymoon-like reality, your golden mornings and loving smiles turned to brief and infrequent sidehugs before a mad dash out the door - when the nights became longer and colder without him by your side to keep you warm.

When those eyes that once sparkled like stars held dark bags underneath them, when the once soft, fluffy hair that you used to toy with and run your hands through on a lazy afternoon became sparser - having been tugged out by the very hands that had once comforted you in the dark of night during a thunderstorm. Felix had taken it upon himself to cover the two of you with a blanket and made you watch the most cringe-worthy shows he could find on Netflix until the last clap of thunder had passed. You had not complained.

Now your apartment was empty when you returned home - nose red from the bitter cold and eyes for another reason - there was no one there to scold you for foregoing a coat, nor hug you softly and rock you side to side as you cried. So, you canted yourself towards the floor, and stumbled over your own limbs as the near empty bottle of alcohol slipped from your numb fingertips. The liquid sloshed out of the narrow bottleneck and onto the floor.

Any other day, you would have panicked and wondered if it would leave a stain on the wooden floor, but at that moment, you couldn't bring yourself to care. It seemed, when Felix had left that morning, he had taken with him your last shred of sanity. For now, all that was left was a broken shell and dull eyes, a red nose and numb hands from the cold. You really did hate the cold. All the blankets had vanished from the bed.

It seemed Felix was hellbent on prolonging your suffering.

He spoke about how you two had drifted apart. That you weren't putting in as much effort to the relationship as he was, that he didn't want to have something so wonderful with a person who wasn't invested for the long run. He spoke about how the video chats became less frequent and phone calls became shorter and the texts became harsher and more formal. The relationship felt clinical, he said.

After he left, you scoured your messages. You discovered subtle differences that you originally hadn’t, or didn't want to before. Punctuation, spelling mistakes going unnoticed and unmocked. It started to read like bad fanfiction, too much emotion or not enough. The conversations read like they were forced, two incompatible characters that never should have been paired together in the first place.

He had been away on tour.

You never realized what the end impact would be as you sent him out the door with a smile that day. He was going to fulfill his dreams with the eight bodies you had grown so fond of and watched grow. You never realized how you did not fit into his future, an extra puzzle piece that added nothing to the final picture. A laugh on your lips, a crease at the corner of your eyes and a few tears were the only words needed as you shared a small, sweet kiss goodbye, before he moved away. He stopped only to wave one more time, before he turned his back on you for the last time. You couldn't have been more proud.

That was a different pain in your chest. It was the emotion of loving someone too much, too fast and altogether at once - not enough. You felt the emotions of a thousand years sitting on your lungs, and yet you smiled because you could feel the love and the happiness engulfing you. This was your paradise. He was your paradise. Felix was your paradise. You guessed you weren't his.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. You call bullshit.

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robertdowneyjjr · 6 years

Note

What if the guardian of the Soul Stone isn't actually a real person but a manifestation created by the stone replicating the soul of the best messenger for the particular seeker? So not *really* the actual Red Skull (though he thinks it is) but a copy chosen for Thanos because he would best reflect Thanos & his reasons for wanting the stone etc. So maybe when Tony goes for the stone he doesn't meet the Red Skull, but Yinsen (or knowing Marvel, Howard).

holy shit, anon. this theory is wild af and i love it. i was going to expand on it, maybe write some meta, talk about how shitty howard is, but instead i wrote a fic.

title is (spoiler alert) tony yeets howard off a cliff

In the blink of an eye, the Space Stone transports them to the remote lands of Vormir.

Tony looks around, lets his eyes adjust to the darkness surrounding them.

“Well this place is certainly…big,” he says.

“Please don’t tell me we’re supposed to search every inch of the place,” Steve replies.

Tony looks at the gauntlet he’s wearing and shakes his head. “No. We don’t need to do that,” he responds. He looks up, stares across the distance at the two pillars looming overhead. “It’s there.”

“How do you know?”

“The stones…it’s like they’re drawn in that direction. They’re telling me they need to be there.”

Steve nods and turns to the stony path on his right. “Alright. Let’s go then.”

“Steve, wait.” Tony engages his thrusters and lifts a few inches off the ground. “Need a lift?”

***

As Tony touches down and waits for Steve to step off the suit, he notices a shadowy figure awaiting by one of the pillars.

“Welcome, Steve. Anthony.”

He knows that voice.

Steve steps forward. “How are you here?”

Howard Stark removes his hood and answers.

“I woke up here, after I died. I wasn’t given the privilege of reincarnation. I wasn’t welcomed at the pearly gates of heaven, or sent to hell for eternal damnation. Though I guess, this is its own kind of torture, isn’t it? This is my punishment, for trying to harness the energy of an infinity stone to shape the future as I saw fit.” Howard looks at Tony for the first time in 28 years. “Not unlike what you’re trying to do now, wouldn’t you say, son?”

“This is nowhere near the same,” Tony says.

“Isn’t it?” Howard turns to Steve. “If you were the one wearing that gauntlet, Steve, I would have believed this to be my last day guarding the stone.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “But no, you and your team decided to trust Tony with it. A big mistake, really. He’s always been too soft, too weak to do what needs to be done.”

Tony grits his teeth. “Just tell us what to do, old man,” he hisses.

“A sacrifice.” Howard looks at Tony and steps closer. “The soul demands an exchange. Someone you hold dear. Someone you love. A soul for a soul.”

Tony flinches back. “No. I’d kill myself before that happens.”

“But you don’t love yourself enough for that to work, do you?” Howard tsks. “So what will it be, son? Do you have what it takes? Are you strong enough?” He spares a glance at Steve before settling his eyes back on Tony. “I know that you love him, crave his attention and validation. Just like you craved mine. I dare you to tell me that I’m wrong.”

Steve cuts in. “Tony…”

He turns around and looks at Steve, sees the overwhelming sadness displayed across his features, and Tony knows, without a doubt, that Steve isn’t planning on leaving this barren planet.

“We don’t have any other choice. The rest of the universe is at stake.”

Tony scoffs. The rest of the universe. The universe is a joke, hellbent on making Tony as miserable as possible. Just when he got his team back, just when he got Steve back, he’s expected to give the man up again.

“There’s always another choice,” he insists.

Steve takes his hand. “Tony,” he whispers. “There’s no cutting the wire this time.”

Tony looks back at Howard, who’s standing with his arms crossed and eyebrow raised, expression the same as Tony remembers from his childhood, dripping with doubt and disdain and disappointment.

“Either do it or don’t. Stop wasting more of my time, boy,” Howard spits out.

Rage burns throughout Tony’s body as he hears his father’s words. The man has been dead for almost three decades, but he still has the ability to hit Tony where it hurts. Twenty-eight years, where Tony has gone through hell and back again, turned his life around and positively influenced other people, built a family and saved the world. But it’s still not enough to make Howard proud.

And suddenly, Tony knows what he has to do.

He lets go of Steve’s hand and walks towards his father.

“You’re right, dad,” Tony says. “I don’t have what it takes to give Steve up. Call me selfish, but I just won’t do it.”

Tony watches as Howard smiles smugly at him, looking as if he knew Tony would let him down, just like he always did.

“You’re also right,” he continues, “because I did always crave your attention. All I wanted was a father who was there for me. A father who was proud of me. Even now, after you’ve been gone for so long, I still assess everything I do by asking myself what I think you’d say if you were still alive. I’m almost 50 years old, and I’m still looking for validation from my dead, absentee father.”

Tony lets out a deep breath and smiles. He feels lighter now, like a huge weight has finally been lifted off his aching shoulders.

“I’m done with that now. There’s nothing I can do that would make you proud of me. Even after everything I’ve been through in the last decade, I can still see that you consider me a failure. It’s fine. You may not know my worth, but I do.”

Tony can see the smirk slowly slipping off Howard’s face as it dawns on the man that he’s underestimated his son yet again.

“I loved you, dad. I still do, even though the feeling was never mutual. I know you did the best you could.” He pauses and spares a kind smile for Howard. “I’m really glad I got to see you one last time. Goodbye, dad.”

He lifts his arm up, splays his fingers out, and repulsor blasts his father off the cliff.

***

In the blink of an eye, they’re back where they started when they first landed on this planet.

Tony’s fist is clenched–he doesn’t know when that happened–and when he opens it up, the Soul Stone shines bright and orange in his palm.

He turns to Steve and sees the man already smiling back at him.

“Let’s go save the universe.”

now on ao3

#i know that there might be a couple ~plot holes~ but who cares when tony can yeet howard off a cliff #tony stark #steve rogers #sort of implied #stevetony #stony #howard stark stay dead #lol die again u lil bitch #kay writes things #anonymous #ask

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