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A loud, almost panicked curse brings Tony quickly to the kitchen. He’s not quite running, but he definitely gets there at speed. Stephen doesn’t curse very often, and he panics even less often, and neither of those things should be happening in their kitchen.
When he arrives, he finds Stephen standing over a cutting board, knife discarded and vegetables forgotten. He’s got one hand wrapped tightly around the other and he’s breathing too fast. Tony approaches carefully. He can’t see blood right now, but Stephen’s reaction is intense. “Let me see?”
“You’re not a doctor,” Stephen snaps.
Tony blinks. “No, but I’ve done more than my share of first aid in the field,” he says. Stephen closes his eyes and forces himself to let go of the wound practically one finger at a time. Tony takes Stephen’s hand carefully in his. The cut is small, barely an inch long. It’s bleeding, but sluggishly. It hasn’t even dripped onto the counter. Stephen got worse injuries in the field on a weekly basis. What the hell was going on? “It doesn’t look too bad—”
“Do you have any idea how closely packed tendons and blood vessels and nerves—” Stephen’s voice cracks and realization washes through Tony.
He steps in close, wrapping one of his hands around the cut and the other arm around Stephen’s waist. “It’s going to be fine,” he murmurs quietly. “You’re going to be fine.”
Stephen turns more towards Tony, who drops his hand in favor of pulling his partner into a closer embrace. Stephen leans into it, head bowed, trembling. Slowly, Tony runs a hand up and down the length of his spine.
Some wounds take longer to heal than others.