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Prompt 1: Rescue. Steve/Tony
It’s been awhile, Steve knows, since he’s felt anything but the blank numbness.
Weeks. Months? Certainly not months- not that long. Not yet. Von Strucker haunts the hallway where his cell sits, deep in the basement, levels below civilization. It’s filthy down here, walls that resemble old, mossy gravestones. Like his mother’s was before they dragged him from the ice and he got it taken care of.
His eyes slip closed as he leans against the wall, slowly drifting off into a nap. He sleeps more than his fair share, until the energy is wired into his veins, ready to burn. Instead, it’s like a dying star. He hears his knees creak when he paces the room out of boredom, feels the sensation of unused muscles protesting their use. The sleeping reminds him of when he was a weakling. But Steve naps anyway. Punishing silence softens when he uses it to his advantage.
His hands drift to his sides, resting at the verge of back and ribs, warming him there. He’s awfully tired.
Sleep is the most content anyone can get, here, he thinks.
He wakes up to the flickering of an incandescent lightbulb in the stairway. Steve watches it swing. Back and forth. Side to side. The stairs are a blackened stone, well worn, and he can’t remember descending down them for the life of him. He can only think of watching as Strucker comes down, snarling agitation in his walk, to look at Steve.
He’s the only one down here. Two cells bracket him on either side; another three are across from him. But they’re empty. The threads of happiness, delicately woven, that he’s balanced on have all snapped. He wants to talk to someone so badly. Again, his blue eyes, bracketed by smudges of tired dark circles and pale eyelashes, look towards the stairs. He is deep, deep down here. Buried in the dungeons. How many sets of stairs did they carry him through? Probably a lot.
He swallows around a lump in his throat, resting his chin on his chest and rubbing his ice cold ears. His ears- they were freezing all the damn time. During his time at base, a rarity with how successful Commandos missions were, Bucky’d knitted him a hat that went down over his ears.
He’d lost it at a HYDRA base just like this one.
They’re doing their daily drills. With his super soldier hearing, he always knows. A cacophony of black boots echoing through the floor and nearly reverberating in his skin. It’s so loud . His eyes squeeze closed; shut tight. The spectrum of feelings he has is stuck somewhere between tired and sad today. Not the best place to be. Once the noise passes, new recruits farther away, he opens up again, rubbing at his feet to get some feeling.
He knows that it’s HYDRA, and he’s their greatest enemy, yadda yadda yadda, but couldn’t they have given him some goddamn socks?
The noise returns, louder this time. Slowly, Steve’s even face twists into a frown. Some dust shakes, a single pebble rolling down the stairs.
The lightbulb flickers off.
Steve’s on his feet instantly, back against a wall. Holy- holy- the place is coming down. On top of him. His breath spasms but his head remains clear. It won’t do much good, of course, since he’s trapped. A breeze blows through the stale air of the room. First thing he’s felt other than his own fingers and frost in awhile.
A boom echoes; Steve ears ring from it. An answering rattle and crash confirms his predictions. The blast proof door has been thoroughly beaten. “Help,” he says thinly.
Oh- oh. His breathing isn’t as good as he thought. Steve’s eyes, dark and terrified, bounce from the shape of the stairs to the shiny gleam of the bars to his cell. ‘Help!’ he shouts again, this time clear, as he goes to grab the bars and tug at them. They haven’t budged in the weeks he’s been captured, but he still feels so broken.
His tailbone will ache later. He’s landed so hard on the floor. Eyes shut and pressed onto his knees, he dreams of brightness. Daylight. The room is so dark and all he wants is the pretty glow from Tony’s arc reactor to light it up. He’s crying in earnest now, tears soaking the thin cotton jumpsuit they dressed him in. “Please?” he asks the empty room, one more time.
Steve’s muscles twitch and shake with every new crash and thunderous crack of cement splitting open. The noise gets closer. Daylight, daylight, daylight , he prays.
You are what you love . Tony and his pretty reactor, like a windswept sea, next to Steve’s matching eyes, as they sleep with hands clasped together. Meeting him at midnight, meeting him in the mornings, on the Helicarrier for a day of busywork .
“Help!” he screams again. Why does he sound that excruciatingly raw? The words tear out of him. “I’m down here! I’m down here! Someone help me!”
An almost familiar sound replies. He can’t place it, not at first, surrounded by the horror and dark, but after a moment, he listens closer, closer, closer, and he can hear it. It’s the Hulk. His head snaps up, forehead leaving his knees, and looks at the stairs. He can see again.
There is a glimmer of gold, and red, and blue, as Tony’s armor pushes past debris and rock, decades old stone that is still just as good at trapping Captain America. Steve stumbles to get up, watching with damp eyes as he walks forward. Tony is stylish as always, kicking rocks out of the way. Unphased by toppling ceilings. Steve blinks, wrapping his hands around the bars. A metal finger reaches out to rub his starving, touch hungry skin.
“Hey, winghead,” Tony says gently, slowly stroking down one of the fingers that is wrapped around the bars.
Steve breathes slowly, staring at the metal plates resting on his fingers. “Shellhead,” he breathes back, voice catching deep inside of his throat.
“Let’s get you out of there. Stand back,” he says, the reassurance like an old friend kissing Steve’s hair. Steve takes a few trembling steps to put his back on the wall. Repulsors blaze a burning line through the cold bars keeping him trapped, easily doing what Steve couldn’t, and ghosting a breath of warmth across his skin. Goosebumps rise.
Slowly, Steve pitches forward. Tony holds onto his forearms, pulling Steve’s head onto his shoulder. The Hulk roars, far, far above them, again. Tony’s hand clasps at his neck, playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck. He gasps in a breath. “Got you, Steve,” Tony says. Promises.
The inside of his armor is warm, leaking heat into the air around Steve, glowing just like the reactor on his chest. They stay like that. Steve, he is safe in Tony’s arm. “Had faith you’d save me,” he whispers.
“Of course I would,” Tony replies. Steve, even with his hearing, can barely hear it over the sounds of battle overhead. “Of course I-”
“Thank you.” Tony’s hand strokes like he always imagines it would stroke down the edges of a valuable invention. Jarvis’ servers, maybe, those are plenty valuable.
“Anything, Winghead.” Steve meets Tony’s eyes. They are brown in the way he always imagines the furthest reaches of the forest would be. Tree bark near the center and the golden flecks of sunbeams through the foliage. Steve’s watched Tony’s eyes so often that there are a thousand other comparisons he could add on, to that. A smudge of oil paint, and a desert.
Sam and Natasha’s familiar headbeams shine through, interrupting them. Steve’s face melts back into resigned exhaustion and he staggers to the side, standing straight up. “I guess I didn’t find anything,” he says wryly, to them. The mission had begun as recon.
Behind him, the delicate golden hand that he’d just been clutching like his life depended on it caught his shoulder. It was an act of steadying. “Up the stairs, Cap.”
“Glad to have you back,” Sam adds, touching Steve, too. His hands tighten near his sides. Touch me again? he wants to ask as he uses the mossy wall for help. Sam’s goggles are equipped with lights that lead the way. Natasha takes up the behind, nosing around the cell room. Steve could tell her what was in there: nothing. A hanging light bulb. A metal toilet and a bowl of used up water.
But she won’t rest until she makes sure it’s safe. No secret tunnels or passages. “Need help?” Sam asks him. Steve grunts as he takes the next step with a set jaw. He shakes his head at Sam. They’re on each of his side, light fingers helping him.
He wishes they would squeeze him into a hug. Steve misses the touch so badly. “Yeah,” he says, after a pause. Sam offers his hand and Steve grabs it.
“Really a feeble old man now,” Tony teases.
Steve’s face crinkles into a smile. “Come on, give me a break,” he tells Tony, finding strength as they go up. His face tips towards the ceiling as he struggles up the slippery stone, towards the golden light. Three more flights of stairs? He’s six levels down and he can hear people coming down. All these rooms are cells. All empty. All full of rubble. He can’t help it; his head follows the destruction. The stairs are still pristine.
It’s luck. “One more flight,” Tony tells him gently, rubbing his back. He wants to arch up. Bruce’s cat sometimes does that, arches into touch like some hungry and desperate poor thing. He hasn’t realized how far they’ve gone.
Nausea and sickness swirl through his stomach when he looks back at how far they’ve come together. “It’s daytime?” he asks quietly.
Tony’s voice is close to his ear. Velvety soft and comforting. “See for yourself.”
Daylight streams through a broken window. He can see evidence of the Hulk. He can see the dangerous map of broken glass and sharp stones on the floor. But his eyes are drawn to the sun. He looks at Tony, captured by the glowing light. All he can see is the gold. The shine. Steve buries his head into Tony’s armored shoulder.
Tony sweeps him into a bridal carry, a classic gentleman. Sam swoops overhead, taking off. Dirty water runs through a creek across the clearing that holds the airstrip and the quinjet. “How long has it been?” Steve asks roughly, hand closing around air. A gust of wind and a torrent of rain fall through the gaping hole in the ceiling and he hiccups around tears.
The fight seems to be over. The Hulk lumbers over, growling at air the way a dog sniffs at nothing. “Three and a half weeks.” Steve drags a hand down his face- that’s a long time.
Tony’s hand is in his, holding on for dear life. Steve wipes rain off of his forehead, and like a miracle, there Tony is again, warm, in his old shirt and sweatpants, ones Steve recognizes. Out of the metal suit. “Base is all clear,” Natasha says.
Tony’s breath imprints on his back. The relief of the rescue drives into his ribs and he turns around, gripping Tony’s forearms and holding him in warm embrace. “I’ve got you, Winghead,” Tony tells him, without an ounce of irony or insincerity. “I’ve got you.”
Warm hands on his arms, and rain on his skin. Dark eyes, still scared, facing the sun. Steve breathes out.