Chapter Text
Natasha and Clint are sheepish the next morning and apologize profusely, but concisely.
Later, Clint tells him that he feels most comfortable up in the air, that his skin crawls whenever he’s below ground. He also says, a lot more flippantly, that he doesn’t like clowns, but Steve understands the gesture.
Natasha volunteers, out of the blue, while they’re sparring, that she hates being tied up, even if she knows she can get out of the restraints at any time. She glares at him after she tells him, vaults over his head, kicks him in the shins, and makes him swear never to tell anyone.
Thor is back in Asgard, but Jane Foster calls him and asks how he’s doing and says that Thor sends his regards and love.
Bruce doesn’t say anything, but he invites Steve to cook with him every single night for a few weeks. Steve understands, he thinks, cooking for Bruce is like his woodworking, something structured and achievable. It’s somewhere to put his monsters and fears, not to banish them, but to make them co exist with a normal life, filled with friends, and hobbies and the delicious smell of chicken rendang, the Malaysian curry Bruce is trying out today.
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It still takes some time before Steve leaves the tower. The others do not press him, but when he walks into the kitchen one day, rummages through the cupboards, and says offhandedly, “We need to go grocery shopping, we’re out of potatoes,” they pull their shoes on, and Tony does not point out that all the groceries to Stark Tower get delivered on Tuesdays.
Steve walks to the grocery store in the middle of the pack of Avengers and he notes that they carefully prevent anyone else from getting too close, while talking to him constantly, keeping him distracted. He laughs a little inside, thinking that it was silly that Captain America needed an Avengers bodyguard detail to buy some potatoes, but he feels alright, surrounded by Natasha and Clint laughing and making faces at each other and Bruce whistling a tune he’s never heard before. And Tony - Tony is next to him, his hand softly resting at the small of Steve’s back, and Steve feels alright with that too.
They buy five pounds of potatoes, and flour and sour cream and applesauce.
Bruce insists on grating the potatoes by hand, while Tony points out that he already made a robotic food processor that does so 4 times as efficiently as a Cuisinart. Steve makes latkes for everyone.
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No one presses him about anything, they’re just always there and ready if he decides he wants to try going out somewhere.
Clint goes with him on a 5 minute walk outside to procure hot dogs.
Natasha walks with him when he goes to meetings at the SHIELD field offices, and she appears out of nowhere when he’s ready to leave to walk back with him, even if he hasn’t said a word about his plans.
Tony takes him to a specialty wood supplier when Steve starts talking about the properties of zebrawood. They buy three hundred linear feet of lumber, and Tony resists whipping out his card to pay for the haul and delivery to the tower, letting Steve sign the receipt.
He still panics sometimes. It never happens during a mission, when Captain America is in control, but when Steve Rogers looks around, and sees that everything has changed, and no one he once knew is alive, and he is so very alone, someone’s hand reaches out and steers him back to Avengers Tower and reassures him that he is not alone. It is usually Tony’s.
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Tony and Steve build two side tables, and four chairs for his room.
Then, they build Natasha a rocking chair, which takes two weeks because Steve insists on hand shaping the rockers, and also that they should be perfectly even. Steve stains it a dark red. Natasha blushes with surprise when they present it to her, and the chair starts appearing in random places around the tower, often filled with a quiet Natasha and a Russian novel.
Clint asks them if they can make a bow. They try, but it’s not a very good one. Clint uses it anyway, not in actual battle, but he has them make wooden feather-fletched arrows with suction cups attached, and soon Stark Tower is a battleground. Tony programs a bunch of little robots to fight back against Clint. Steve shrugs innocently when Clint is attacked by a pair of robot chopsticks - what would he know about programming robots anyway?
They make a ridiculously large goblet for Thor on the lathe, fill it with Pop Rocks, and leave it in his room for his return.
Bruce just gets a simple chopping board, but it is oiled perfectly and the woodgrain is lovely. He uses it every day, and declares that everything chopped on it is more delicious than anticipated.
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It gets better, and it doesn’t. Steve goes out with the Avengers more, and they eat meals, and visit museums and go shopping together. As long as someone - a friend - is with him, his heart usually pounds a steady beat and his brain functions normally, and he can talk to Natasha about Picasso and compare prices on tomatoes and calculate appropriate tips(at least 50%, if you are with Tony Stark). He starts taking short trips out alone and he thinks that maybe in a few months, he’ll try the subway.
He still has the panic attacks, and sometimes they have no real cause that he can figure out, and he apologizes always, and Tony rubs his back and tells him that he’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s not broken.
“If you’re broken, Steve, then we all are, and that’s just not a very nice thing to call us, is it?” he says, and Steve laughs a difficult laugh.
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Tony is there. He is always there. He’ll say that he wasn’t really busy that day(untrue, Tony Stark is always busy) and behaves like he’s imposing on Steve’s time(he’s not). He finds way to share space with Steve, even if Steve is just reading or writing mission reports. Tony falls asleep on Steve’s couch while watching movies a lot. Every time, Steve tucks Tony into his bed and takes the couch, until one night Tony wakes up while Steve is arranging blankets around him and pulls at Steve’s arm until he gets in bed too.
When they sleep in the same bed, their nightmares wake each other up, even though they are both sound sleepers, and sometimes it is Tony that holds Steve when Steve’s drowning, and sometimes Steve holds Tony when Tony’s drowning.
When Tony wakes up with a jolt, his hands scrabbling at his arc reactor, it is Steve that puts a gentle hand on his chest and whispers him back to sleep, the heaviness of his large hands reassuring Tony that he’ll keep the reactor in, and protect it - and Tony - with his everything.
They don’t kiss, not yet. They are clothed in t-shirts and boxers when they climb into bed together, and they are still too tired, too broken, to explore further. They’ll take the time to explain this thing, this connection, between them later, but right now, this is enough.
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Steve is drowning again. He looks up as the cold fills his lungs and sees again, the horrible, faraway streak of sunlight through the ice.
This time, it’s not Iron Man’s gauntlet that reaches out to him, it’s Tony’s hand.
Steve reaches up, and grabs it.