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He’s fine. He has to be fine. There’s too much going on right now for him to be anything but fine. He swipes a hand across the nape of his neck, wiping away the blood that’s trying to clot there and tugs the cowl back up and over the hair undoubtably beginning to mat with blood. It will heal by the time the get anywhere calm enough for someone to check it out anyway. He’s fine.
You don’t have to fight every battle for everyone.
The words feel like a slap, and he remembers fingers pressing bandages to wounds despite his insistence that it wasn’t needed. He remembers being tucked into the scratchy wool blankets of pallets in makeshift camp – haylofts, caves, tents, mostly demolished homes in the aftermath of bombings that might or might not have been aimed at legitimate targets.
“Rogers, you with us?” It’s Natasha’s voice over the comms, and he grunts out an affirmative, shoving the memory down deep for now and getting back to the business at hand. The missions haven’t changed much. Still chasing crazy people who want to take over the world and make it look and think like them.
When it’s over and the quinjet is touching down at the compound, he strides away from the rest of the team and calls over his shoulder that he needs a shower and a nap. No one follows him. He’s the old man, after all. Sometimes he wants his silence. They all know that. The ones who don’t want to listen have been helped in their comprehension skills by all the curses learned in the days of the Howling Commandos and a few picked up in Brooklyn for good measure.
The shower makes him cleaner, but it doesn’t do a thing for the throbbing in his skull or the churning in his gut. He hates it when the mission involves kids. He hates it more when the kids won’t grow up because they got there just the tiniest bit too late.
Clean clothes, a shave, all the things that should get him back to the here and now, the knowledge that he’s safe and sound, seem bittersweet lies today. He’s not safe. He’s almost certain that his mind is anything but sound. He can’t remember the last night he slept longer than the darkness. He can’t remember the last time he went to bed before the date changed.
You got your bell rung pretty hard today, huh?
Steve’s head whips around so fast he sees stars. This has to be an effect of the hard landing that afternoon. Bucky’s gone. He’s not lucky enough to get third chances. The spinning doesn’t do his upset stomach any favors and he staggers to the toilet in time to bring up bright blue Gatorade and the remnants of a protein bar swallowed nearly whole on the flight home.
There’s a hand on his back and he swats it away. He just wants to be alone, he can’t be weak, can’t be less than the image.
Steve’s back arches again, bile and saliva falling in long strings from stretched wide lips.
There are hands against the sides of his rib cage now, and he knows this sensation, knows it deeply, permanently. These hands, though, are too small.
“Hey, Steve, I’ve got you,” Natasha tells him. “Bucky’s coming. He was down at the range.”
He whines, gags, and drops his head to his forearms, still clinging to the toilet through what feels like a rib breaking series of retches. His head is throbbing. Maybe this is what dying is supposed to feel like. Not cold and numbing like sinking into the arctic. Hot, searing agony as his body purges everything it can and his brain implodes.
He wants her hands off. Now. But he can’t move, can’t do anything but cling to the toilet and wait until the bout is finished with him.
Before it is, new footsteps sound on the floor of the increasingly crowded bathroom. These are heavy, familiar, and when Natasha’s hands leave their positions on his back they are replaced by the large hands they were mimicking.
“Rough day?” Buck asks him.
Steve lets him tug him away from the toilet, barely hears Natasha’s retreating footsteps. He doesn’t care if this is a fantasy. He lets Buck hold him, brush his hair away from his face and hoist him to his feet.
“Let’s get you to bed. Nat said you took a nasty hit earlier. Sleeping it off’s a lot more pleasant than trying to fight it like this. You’re just making it worse.”
Buck’s always been the practical one. Steve still wants to insist he’s just fine, that the blurred vision will be gone in a few more hours and the nausea should be finished with him now that he’s let it have its way. He doesn’t, though. Buck’s been taking care of him all their lives, and even if he did concuss himself thoroughly enough to forget he wasn’t the only one to escape the ice in their pasts, he knows enough to let himself be cared for when he needs it.