Work Text:
Percy isn’t as unaffected by the PTSD as much as he wants other people to think.
Because leaders are supposed to be strong; how can the others stay strong if their leader isn’t? How can he be strong for everyone else when he’s shattering on the inside?
Shattering more with every single nightmare, every time he closes his eyes.
Darkness, red warmth, glass-shard sand, pain in his throat and never-ending monsters, on and on and on, over and over and over again.
So when he startles awake, a scream on the tip of his tongue, he slaps a hand over his mouth and shudders until he doesn’t feel the need to throw up anymore. He heads to the bathroom attached to his bedroom and brushes his teeth again and again and again until his gums are raw and he can’t taste bile rising in the back of his throat.
It’s not surprising that he can’t fall back asleep.
So he grabs Riptide, fidgets with it for a while, and thinks.
He thinks about his new team – the Avengers, all crazy and stupid and weird and family in their own right. Peter Parker, Spider-Man, whatever he calls himself, whose parents and uncle and girlfriend had all died. Hiccup, with superhero parents and huge steps to fill; Pietro, who had died protecting Clint and had come back to life; Jack Frost, who’d spent the last three hundred years alone.
They all understand, but they can’t help him.
He pads out of the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click, and rubs his sleep-fogged eyes as he wanders down to the kitchen. He opens the fridge, grabs the orange juice, and pours himself a mug (since glasses are overrated and Thor shattered them all, anyways), sipping it a bit and putting the juice back in the fridge.
He contemplates what to do. He could try to go back to sleep, which would ultimately result in more nightmares, or he could seek out someone else.
He doesn’t want to go back to the nightmares.
So he quietly makes his way to the elevator. The carpet feels strange underneath his socks, but it keeps him awake, and he asks JARVIS if anybody’s still up because he doesn’t want to wake anyone.
“Sir is still in his lab, Mister Jackson.”
“It’s Percy, J. Thanks.”
He takes the elevator down to Tony’s lab, finishing his orange juice before he slips inside. The ACDC, surprisingly, is turned down low; the billionaire pops his head up with a puzzled expression as the sliding door whooshes shut behind Percy.
“What’re you doing up, kid?”
Percy wraps his arms around his middle like he’s keeping his guts from spilling out onto the floor. “Couldn’t sleep.”
And everybody in the Avengers Tower knows that “couldn’t sleep” is just their proud way of saying “I had a crap nightmare,” so Tony sets down his hammer and his screwdriver (Percy doesn’t know why he’d need both of them at once; even though Tony was brilliant he could be pretty stupid sometimes) and stands up.
Percy stiffens as Tony’s arms wrap around him, a hand rubbing the place right between his shoulder blades.
“It’ll be okay, kid,” Tony says. “You wanna stay on the couch tonight?”
“Okay,” Percy says, and his voice is quiet and world-weary. Tony hands him a blanket and a pillow and Percy curls up on the couch, watching Tony go back to his work, the quiet ACDC lulling him to sleep.
He doesn’t have nightmares that night.