Chapter Text
Today is the day, Tony reminds himself as he brushes dirt off his palms.
They have gardeners, but the rose garden behind the Stark manor is special. Howard planted it for Maria when she married him and she’s been taking care of it since, and Tony took over when they were too old to put their hands and knees in the dirt anymore. He used to dream of asking for someone’s hand in marriage and promising the garden to them and it would mean more than a ring, but that dream is over now because he’s getting engaged today—to someone he’s never met before.
“Your mother and I aren’t getting any younger,” Howard had finally said after Tony’s days of incessant protest, and Tony’s eye caught on his wrinkled hands, the gold band on his ring finger and the faint scars from metalworking accidents over the years. “You’re coming up on forty in a few years, Tony. The eligible bachelor schtick was charming while it lasted and you’ve had enough time to look for a partner on your own, but the Stark heir needs someone on his arm now. You’re doing well with our business on the homefront, but the rest of the world needs to know you’re ready to settle down and be serious or the vultures circling our estate will make their dive.”
Tony may have lost the fight when he looked at his father’s hands and all at once saw everything he worked to earn his entire life, from sitting in a small metalshop earning pennies on the dollar to making a name as the most renowned jeweller on this side of the world. Tony was born into all of that money and power, and he always knew it was a responsibility as much as it was a privilege.
He sighed then, reaching out to clasp one of Howard’s hands in his. “Is it safe to assume you and mom have someone picked out for me already?”
Of course, they had.
That was the day Tony learned that the rest of his life was named Steve Rogers, the youngest of six children in his family, and he knew what that meant: no one his age from a family comparable to the Starks was still eligible, and this was the best Howard and Maria could do for him.
“He’s not too young,” Maria tried when she saw the look on Tony’s face. “He just turned twenty one this summer. He’s very nice. You’ll like him, Tony. Virginia has met him, you know, why don’t you have tea with her this afternoon and talk it over?”
Tony hears a lot about his new fiancé in the weeks between then and now, some of it from Howard and Maria and some of it from Pepper, whose mother hates it when Tony won’t call her Virginia and insists on calling him Anthony even though it’s been thirty years.
“He’s very polite,” Pepper had told him, stirring sugar into her tea. “He doesn’t make any trouble, either. Very handsome, but don’t tell Rhodey I said that.”
“One of you two should have married me instead,” Tony said, pushing his scone over to Pepper because he couldn’t find his appetite.
They started to talk about the engagement party then, and Tony warily supposed he could make the whole thing work. He’s dated around, but he hadn’t been serious about anybody before and he tried to convince himself he doesn’t ever need to be. It doesn’t need to be more than a living arrangement, a political convenience, and if Steve Rogers is really as lovely as Pepper says he is, they might even end up friends. Perhaps he could be away on business most of the year after he marries, if they really can’t stand each other.
Tony gives the roses one last look and stands up.
“There are worse things,” he says under his breath, then allows himself one profanity because no one is within earshot to rap him on the knuckles for it, and because the possibility of ever falling in love for real has fallen off a cliff and he deserves it. “Get it the fuck together, Anthony Edward Stark.”
Then he heads inside to get ready for the engagement party this afternoon, where he’ll meet the rest of his life for the first time.
-
Tony lets himself into the ballroom before any of the guests have arrived, while servants are still draping pristine tablecloths and maids are shining the floors. Maybe he wants to be prepared for one thing about the day, or maybe he’s hoping the pastry chef who adores him will let him have a bite before the kitchen puts out the food for everyone else.
Tony stops mid-step when he sees someone who definitely doesn’t work at the Stark estate standing by one of the windows, drenched in sunlight, having a conversation with one of the domestic staff. Tony has never seen someone who glows that way, as if lit from within, quietly and not demanding any attention.
“Lord Rogers—”
“Just Steve,” he says quickly, softly, and his voice is music to Tony’s ears. “Please call me Steve.”
Tony can’t help but stare as it occurs to him that he should have prepared a proper greeting. Pepper wasn’t wrong when she called him handsome, but Tony would have gone with something more along the lines of earth-shatteringly beautiful or the kind of heavenly that puts Helen of Troy to shame. The curve of his back alone could start a war. What on earth is someone so young and pretty doing in an engagement like this?
“Good afternoon,” Tony calls when Steve meets his gaze, and he dives into eyes so clear azure he could swim in them.
The staff Steve had been speaking to slips away and the smile drops off Steve’s face as his eyes dart to the door, like he’s looking for an exit.
“I was about to leave,” Steve says hastily. “I didn’t—I just wanted to—”
“Hey, hey, whoa, it’s okay,” Tony soothes, taken aback by the response. “Nobody’s in trouble. You’re alright. You’re Steve Rogers?”
“Yes,” Steve says, still cautious, but he looks less like he’s about to run. “That’s me.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Tony Stark.”
Steve’s eyes go wide at the realisation that Tony is his fiancé, and then his shoulders droop almost imperceptibly. Tony can hardly blame him. If he had been so reluctant and disappointed about the arrangement, he can’t imagine how disenchanted Steve must be, forced to sign away the rest of his life and lose the prospect of true love at twenty-one. Tony barely remembers what he was doing at that age. He was probably up to no good.
“Nice to meet you too,” Steve says, holding out his hand for Tony to shake. Tony takes it and resists the temptation to lean down and kiss it instead.
“Did you have much of a say in all of this?” Tony asks.
“No more than you had, I don’t think,” Steve says carefully. He looks apologetic, even though he has no reason to be. It’s not his fault. “Please, don’t tell my family I was in here. I just wanted to see the room.”
“You got it,” Tony says. The poor thing looks tense enough already. He doesn’t want to make him more uncomfortable by pressing and asking why his family can’t know that he was in the ballroom before the engagement party. He always thought the youngest child could get away with most things; that’s the case with the Parkers and the Keeners, anyway. “So I should pretend I’m meeting you for the first time at the engagement party later?”
That finally, finally teases a little smile out of Steve.
“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I look forward to meeting you for the first time later, Steve Rogers.”
Steve smiles wider at him before turning to leave. Tony watches him go, then goes through the backdoor of the ballroom to the kitchen, still hoping for a macaron or chocolate truffle.
Steve clearly doesn’t want to be here, Tony thinks, but like Pepper said, he’s very polite. Now that the two of them have met, he can tell that Steve isn’t the kind of arrogant, entitled brat that children born into families like the Rogers tend to be. He’s sweet and a little shy and he likes to smile, and he talks to the domestic staff as equals.
Tony has heard too many stories of arranged marriages where both people in it were miserable until the day they died, and their estates spent a ridiculous amount of time and money covering up their affairs, and Tony would try not to grimace at their funerals because they were always buried together as husband and wife and he hated thinking about two people who felt nothing for each other forced to be together even after death. There were even worse stories where one family was too much wealthier than the other and the marriage could never be fair, and someone was always flinching and hiding unexplained injuries. Those tended to end in bleaker burials.
Tony slips into the kitchen still thinking of Steve smiling and Steve painted in strokes of sunlight, and he vows not to let this marriage turn out anything like the ones he grew up pitying, even if they’ll only be each other’s husbands in name and nothing else. When they’re alone, he won’t say anything that suggests they’re more and he won’t touch Steve when he doesn’t want to be touched.
That ought to be a good start.