Chapter Text
“Steve, Steve, Steve, please.” His chest hurt. Someone was calling to him, welcome and familiar, but that beloved voice had gone scratchy and rough. As he listened it dropped down nearly to a whisper, little more than a hoarse rasp. “Steve. C’mon, Cap, don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to me, big guy.”
Tony. Tony was talking to him. Why were his thoughts coming so slowly? He felt cold, and not much else, other than that tightness, that pain, in his chest. His eyes weren’t open, he realized. He was very aware of the passage of air over his bottom lip, which felt dry. Tony was talking to him. That was Tony’s voice. Was Steve even still alive, then?
There was a firm, callused hand, a little dry and cold but still warmer than Steve’s skin, pressed to his cheek, along his jaw. He sighed out a breath, found himself turning his head, pressing into it, without consciously telling himself to do it, as if he was watching himself, but without opening his eyes. Tony’s thumb pressed against his cheekbone. It felt good. As much as he was feeling, focusing on, tracking on anything.
He heard Tony suck in a breath, harsh and unsteady. “Hey, c’mon, God, what’s wrong, what’s wrong with you,” Tony said, “can you give me any sign here, shit, Stark, he’s out, of course he can’t, don’t be stupider than you need to be, Jesus—” his fingers slid down to Steve’s throat, curling around his neck, leaving his face, and Steve felt his head loll a little, bobbing unsteadily at the loss of that support. Tony was taking his pulse, he registered dully.
He was all right, Steve thought. He should tell him he was all right.
“Okay, so, that’s a strong pulse, that’s good,” Tony was rambling. “Sensors—let’s see, colder than he should be, yeah, that’s a given, shit—” Oh, he was—he was brushing Steve’s hair back off his forehead, that was—that was really nice, too, the way his thumb slid along Steve’s hairline, gently, the way he carded the strands back. “God, that’s a low metabolic rate—brain activity lower than normal—” he hissed between his teeth. Steve thought, really? Was it really? “Broken ribs, some sort of—God, ouch, Steve, your leg, Jesus Christ—”
It took a strange, herculean effort to push his eyes open. Tony’s face was there—wow, was it really him, really Tony? But it looked like him, his beard was neater than ever—the faceplate open, and an entire world of concern there in his eyes. He had one gauntlet off, because his bare thumb was still resting on Steve’s neck, tucked under the protective band around his neck to rest warm where his pulse beat. Steve felt like he could feel it in his heart. “Lookin’ sharp,” he said, or tried to say, because Tony was, he looked great, faceplate pushed up to reveal his features. Of course any way Tony looked just then would probably have looked great to him. Tony was there, and present, and apparently real? Was he real? Anyway, that was . . . incredible, almost impossible to believe. The words came out of him very, very slurred and slow, and Steve frowned. That wasn’t right. Was it?
Tony gave a breathless, disbelieving little laugh, with a catch in his throat like it was almost hysterical, and there was a strange sheen in his eyes. “Okay, yeah, there you are,” he said. “Now you decide to join us, right, of course. Doing a great Capsicle impression there, big guy.”
Steve blinked. He felt very tired, and his chest hurt. He couldn’t really feel his legs, but he had the impression that there was something wrong. He took a breath, tried to remember. His head hurt. He’d been walking—he’d had to drag his leg, there had been blood. He’d worried about—about bears, or wolves. His chest had hurt. His helmet had come off in the—there’d been a crash. He’d—he’d fallen. Out of the plane. Hydra plane. Ugh. He didn’t want to make a habit of this. He’d fallen and then he’d found the wreckage of the plane and they’d been dead and the radio had been dead and the experimental mind control drug they’d been carrying had all been contaminated and leaking into the soil. Which probably wasn’t good, but it had to be injected, so Steve had figured he’d just tell people where this had happened and—once he got back to—where was he—
“Mission,” he managed to say, finally.
“Yeah, an itsy-bitsy spider clued me in, big fella,” Tony said. “That you’d gone down, and hard, too. Everything all right on the many-headed snake front?”
Steve managed to raise a hand, wobbled it back and forth. He had a feeling he was smiling in an unforgivably dopey way. “S’okay for now,” he said. “Under control, Iron Man.” He reached out, patted the shining metal arm of the armor clumsily. “Good to see you,” he managed to say, and had to blink. His eyes felt very, very heavy. He was so tired. But it was, it was Tony.
Tony’s face seemed to shutter strangely, close off, at that, and that hurt, a twinge of pain tight in Steve’s already tight chest. “Yeah, you’re really loopy,” he muttered under his breath. But that wasn’t right. Steve would have wanted to see Tony, regardless. He always wanted to see Tony, and—and there was something he had to say—
“S-sorry,” he blurted. That was it, what had been circling around his mind for months, that—“I’m so sorry, Tony.”
“What? Jeez, slugger, that’s taking it to the next level, don’t you think?” Tony said. “Don’t have to apologize for being out of it.” He sighed, and Steve thought no, wait, that’s not right. That wasn’t what he’d meant to apologize for. Why couldn’t Tony understand what he’d meant? He took a breath to try again, but then Tony was shifting. He lifted Steve’s leg, one hand under his boot, the other against his knee, slid it up onto the thigh of the armor, and oh, now that hurt, now that hurt a lot. Steve shut his eyes and tried to breathe out evenly. He didn’t want to—to cry out, or seem like he was—was weak or angling for Tony’s sympathy, or his pity. “So, this is broken, champ,” Tony said. “And I mean, you probably know it’s—it’s pretty damn torn up, yeah?”
Steve nodded, or tried to. His head hurt. He swallowed, took a breath. “S’—” no, that was too much trouble to say. “Yeah,” he finished. He’d had to set it, before he could try and walk on it, gritting his teeth and bracing himself against a nearby tree trunk.
“So I don’t want you walking on it,” Tony said, firmly. Was Tony really—really here? Steve found himself wondering again. “I’m gonna get you on your feet, and I’m gonna fly you back to a nice warm quinjet, okay? And then you’re, uh, you’re going to rest a little while I make some repairs to the stealth system, and then I’ll . . . figure out where to meet up with the itsy bitsy spider I mentioned, and we’ll get you all safe and sorted out.”
Wait. There was something. Steve squinted at the sky beyond Tony. It seemed very light, even though it had to be late in the day from the shadows. It was snowing, he realized. “The Accords,” he finally managed. “You weren’t—you can’t have been authorized to come and, and extract me.” Rescue him? But rescue was—was a big word. A warm word. Steve didn’t know if Tony would apply it to him. Especially not now.
Tony gave him an incredibly—pained look, almost sad. “Yeah, okay, whatever,” he muttered, dismissively, Steve thought, looking down and away, then reached out, slid one gauntlet around Steve’s shoulders. The other reformed around his hand. Steve stared at it.
“What was that,” he finally managed to slur out.
“That was nanotech, brain freeze,” Tony said. He leaned in, scooted up a little, and his body was pressed against Steve’s now, or the armor was, half supporting him, and his lips brushed against Steve’s temple, along his forehead, pressing in soft and rough and gentle against his skin. Steve immediately felt a sting of heat across his forehead, wherever they touched, like he’d gone warm into his core at the touch, but it couldn’t have been a purposeful kiss, he knew that. A moment later, Tony’s gauntleted hand was firm under Steve’s wrist, his forearm, gripping at his hand.
“I don’t want you . . .” oh, ouch, that hurt, yeah, that was painful, how Tony was shifting him, oh yeah, and there was a strange pause, like Tony froze in mid movement before carefully resuming, “getting in any trouble for me,” Steve managed, as firmly as he could, and then Tony was lifting him up onto his feet and he couldn’t think about anything other than not crying out in pain as he hissed out his breath from between his teeth to try to stop himself, feeling cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.
He thought he heard Tony mutter, under his breath, “Oh, sweetheart, that ship sailed a long time ago,” but that . . . couldn’t be right. Maybe it’d been something like, oh, saphead, it’s cute that you think you can protect me, or, hey, what’s a satellite network for anyway. Steve ended wobbling on his feet, pressed awkwardly into Tony from shoulders to thighs, his weight mostly on the armor, collapsed half into Tony’s chest. Tony’s hand came down, curved under his rear end, and Steve felt a strange sense of—not quite embarrassment, more like a frisson of awareness, of how much he’d wanted Tony to hold him like this—before, and also a strange, stupid sense of safety. “Whoopsie daisy, champ, gonna want to put your arms around my neck,” Tony said, and his breath was on Steve’s face, and, stupidly, suddenly, there were foolish tears burning in his eyes. He shut them, quickly, let his head rest on the shoulder of the armor, and brought his arms up around Tony’s shoulders, just as Tony had instructed. His chest hurt. Hold on, he told himself. Hold on tight.
He heard Tony flick the faceplate down, and sure enough, when he spoke again, his voice was staticky with the armor’s vocal filter. “There’s a good boy,” he said, and something inside of Steve went liquid and warm. He bit the inside of his cheek and called himself an idiot even through the cold haze he was feeling. He realized he was standing on Tony’s foot with one of his own, the better one, the way Tony used to fly him, but clumsier than ever. Tony was basically holding him up with that arm under his rump, but still.
“Thanks, Tony,” he managed to get out, and it came out of him low and thick and raspy.
“No one needs you to go into another deep freeze, Captain Courageous,” Tony said, and Steve thought just like Bucky and then that that was something he would have thought Tony wouldn’t have minded too much, because, after all, from Tony’s point of view he wasn’t really needed too much, was he, and then Tony was taking off into the air, and oh, it was—cold. It was very, very cold. Steve held on tighter and tried not to shiver, tried to breathe evenly, tried to—to just breathe. He didn’t have time for any of the rest of it right now. He probably didn’t have time for any of the rest of it ever.