Chapter Text
He was right in the middle of the ritual when the call came. Avengers Assemble et cetera, et cetera. Steve's whole body stilled. Panic seeped in like CO2, pushing the oxygen from his lungs, his blood.
It wasn't the call that made Steve panic. It was the timing. Regardless, he sucked it up and stood. There was nothing to be done but force his chest to rise and fall, and go and be the leader they needed him to be.
The ritual would have to wait.
It had evolved by accident, as most things do. A strange happenstance struck feeling into Steve's half-frozen bones, and so it went on. After being encased in ice and half-dead for seventy years, sometimes it was hard to feel anything but numb. As soon as something forced him to life, Steve clung to it, and the ritual began.
It started with a shaving accident. In theory these so-called safety razors should have been safer than the cut-throat he'd used in the past. The word safety was in the name, for goodness sake, though how five blades could be safer than one, Steve didn't know. The shave had been going well until it wasn't, and then there was a trail of bright blood running down Steve's face. His first reaction was the usual mild consternation, the abandoning of the little plastic handled thing, grabbing a towel, pressing it to his cheek. Then Steve looked, really looked, at the welling red.
It was obscene against the blue paleness of the artificial light in his apartment bathroom. The blood swelled into a bud, then bloomed and slipped down the concave under his cheekbone, languidly trailed down his half-shaved chin, then dropped soundlessly into the cloudy water. The bright red turned into a murky swirl, before it twisted and dissipated into oblivion.
What remained was the pain.
Steve turned his eyes back to the hardlight reflection of his own face. The cut was healing already but the translucent trail of blood was still there. He kept his gaze on the cut as the serum worked to knit the tissue, and as it did, the pain vanished. As the pain vanished, Steve's anxiety rose.
That gave him pause. Where had it gone? For that brief moment as he watched the blood track the curve of his face, then drop into the water, Steve hadn't felt anything but curiosity and pain. He'd been freed of the fear gnawing at his stomach lining. He hadn't worried about how much Tony hated him, or how Steve felt about the other man, and the guilt he could never shake at being sweet on another fella. For a moment, Steve had disappeared into a microcosm, and for a few seconds he hadn't been afraid.
He hadn't been afraid.
That started it. 'It' evolved until Steve had everything he needed, not just the blade but the antiseptic wipes and the wool pads and the towel. He knew his body could fight off any infection, but it made him feel better to feel prepared. The more prepared he felt, the longer the relief lasted.
He kept it to his inner thighs, because no one would see them there. Why would anyone be near his naked, inner thighs? He kept the cuts shallow, straight and long, until his leg looked like it was marked with one of those barcode things folk put on products now. Steve could look at it like that after the fact, because after the fact, he could think. He could see. He could even smile.
The lines never lasted long, but that wasn't the point. He didnt want to look at them. They weren't marks of shame or punishment. What he wanted was the pain. The physical sensation gave him something to focus on, away from the roiling in his head.
The ritual worked most of the time. Except the fateful time when the team needed Steve while he was right in the middle of it. Anxiety shuddered through him as he laid down his tools, hastily shoving the towel over the top of them even though he knew no one would ever see them. As he answered the call, Steve sucked in a breath, trying to quell the panic rising inside. If he'd been able to finish, he would have been fine.
But it didnt matter. He had to be fine anyway.
Unfortunately he wasn't, and the last thing he remembered wasn't the building coming down on his head, but the sight of Tony, riding high as Iron Man, silhouetted against the blue sky.
At least Tony was safe. That was all that mattered.