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Although the Sanctum doors swing open for Tony as they always do, it’s Wong who meets him in the foyer. That’s unusual: whether announced or not, Stephen almost always meets him, and if he’s engaged he sends an apprentice. “Stephen around?” Tony asks casually.
“He is indisposed,” Wong says evenly. “I will tell him you came by.” He takes a step forward, as if to escort Tony out again.
Tony stands his ground. He’s convinced now that Peter was right to be worried. He decides to level with Wong. “Look, Peter came to see me late last night. He was incredibly freaked out by whatever he saw or overheard or learned about Stephen’s heat. I promised him I’d talk to Stephen.”
Wong sighs. “Stephen tried to explain,” he says. Turning, he leads Tony deeper into the Sanctum. “His heats are not normal. It is nothing Peter needs to worry about.”
“Peter worries about other people,” Tony says dryly.
When they reach Stephen’s room Wong knocks on the door but opens it without waiting, which seems a little rude. But rude or not, Tony’s not going to turn it down. He steps inside and stills in momentary shock.
Stephen looks terrible. His skin is sallow and his eyes bruised. His pajamas cover most of him, but Tony can see raw spots on his palms and forearms where he must have clawed at himself. The pillow propping him up threaten to swallow him; he looks to have lost substantial weight, which shouldn’t be possible during a three day heat. Worst of all, the entire room still smells of sour slick and distressed omega.
Seeing him, Stephen slumps. “Peter called you?”
“Yeah.” Tony forces himself to move closer to the bed. There’s not really a convenient chair, and all Tony’s alpha instincts are screaming at him to soothe the omega, so sits on the edge of the bed by Stephen’s hip. “You’re not okay.”
Stephen laughs weakly. “No,” he admits. “But I’ll recover.”
“Until your next heat,” Tony says.
“Yes.”
“There must be something—”
“No,” Stephen interrupts. The word is the strongest thing he’s managed so far. “This is a side effect of my viewing our possible futures. There’s nothing any doctor can do that can’t be done here at the Sanctum.”
Tony wasn’t planning on making any kind of offer, but when he opens his mouth, the words pop out: “If you had an alpha—”
“Tony,” Stephen stops him. Tony’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m not capable of bonding,” Stephen says carefully. “This is just something I have to live with.”
Tony wants to ask How do you know? and Wouldn’t it help to have someone here anyway?, but Stephen’s gaze drops to the bonding ring Tony wears on his left hand and the grief that flashes over his expression is intense enough to stop the words in Tony’s throat.
For the first time, Tony wonders what Stephen saw in the millions of timelines where they didn’t win. He’d assumed that it was all failure and death. Now he wonders if the timeline where they won was the timeline where Stephen lost.