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Warm rain taps a gentle rhythm on the thin glass of the window and patters off the tree ferns just beyond the sill. Beyond the double doors and the veranda his room opens on to, Tony can see brilliant shafts of sunshine piercing the gray cloud cover, falling on the valley of thick vegetation below. Somewhere close a Tui is singing its odd little melody of trills punctuated by clacks. It would be the perfect day to linger, savoring the tranquility from the comfort of a four poster bed instead of his usual lumpy bedroll and drippy tent.
Unfortunately, Tony won't be enjoying much of anything today. He’s paying the price for yesterday’s hubris.
The bump on his head still throbs and aches, as do the gashes on his hands, and the bruises on his sides. But the chill of the watery cave seems to have done him one worse. He feels like someone’s taken a hot branding iron to the inside of his throat. Every inch of him is cold and even the bits of him that aren’t black and blue are sore. When his assistant pushes open the bedroom door, a tray laden with breakfast in hand, Tony's misery reaches new heights as the earthy smell of strong coffee nearly makes his stomach turn.
“I don’t think I’ll need that today,” he says in a scratchy voice, waving a hand at Rogers as he sits up. “Just Pepper’s latest.”
His assistant is a slight man, all of ninety pounds, liable to blow away in a stiff breeze. And there are parts of New Zealand’s north island that are very windy indeed. Tony still occasionally wonders if he made the right choice in hiring Rogers, given how dangerous the job can be. Tony was certainly surprised when Rhodey showed the man into his office for an interview.
“What?” Rhodey’s eyes had sparkled with mischief. “You said no more pretty women for candidates.”
No pretty men, either, Tony had wanted to say, though of course he couldn’t.
But as Rogers sets the tray on a wood bureau, Tony must admit his slender assistant has been a very nice sight these past several months. Rogers has also adapted remarkably well to life beyond the city. Rhodey and Tony may yet make a Teddy Roosevelt of him.
Rogers approaches Tony’s bed wearing a dubious look, a sheaf of crisp white papers in hand. “No coffee, sir?” There is a certain lyricism in Rogers’s Brooklyn accent, even if it’s thick around words like ‘coffee.’ “The hit to the head you took must have been more serious than we thought.”
“I’m fine,” Tony croaks waspishly, reaching for the papers—which Rogers promptly pulls just out of his reach as he gets a good look at Tony.
“Of course you are.”
Damn it.
Tony’s was taken with Rogers’s moxie from the start. It’s just rather inconvenient when it gets turned on Tony like this.
And Tony recalls that during their interview Rogers mentioned frequent illnesses as a child—relevant because Rogers isn’t afraid of death’s doorstep, that he has in fact been there plenty of times before, when even catching a cold could turn each breath into a struggle.
The man has probably had everything there is to catch and knows each malady intimately.
“A little head cold won’t prevent me from reading Pepper’s drafts or Rhodey’s maps,” Tony objects, sitting back against the velvety pillows and drawing the sheets up around him to keep the worst of the chills at bay. He’s dealt with a repulsor pump powered heart for years now. A little bug isn’t going to keep him down. “I’ll be fine. There’s work to do.”
But Tony’s insistence is undercut when Rogers snakes a hand out with speed his stature belies, placing a palm on Tony’s feverish forehead. “You’re burning up. You should rest, Mr. Stark.” From the way Rogers’s brow creases, Tony can tell he is in for an uphill battle.
“Thank you, Nurse Rogers,” Tony says with disdain, brushing the other man’s hand away.
It’s the wrong thing to say, and Tony regrets it immediately as Rogers’s blue eyes frost over, hiding something behind a steely determination. But Tony can guess; he knows what he said stings. He knows damn well what gets bandied around about men like Rogers who are slight of frame and who have caring spirits.
Men who, no matter how hard they try to sharpen and harden themselves, always come off as soft around the edges.
And Tony knows how very hard Rogers has tried to buck the lot with which nature has saddled him. Thanks to a discrete PI—hired because Tony has some serious trust issues after Gialetta—he knows about Rogers’s army application and his 4F status. And Tony knows too, from Rhodey’s account, how scarlet Rogers turned when he realized the homely woman walking out of the Marvel’s office was his competition for the Adventurer’s Assistant position. How it must have disappointed him, finding out he was vying to fill a woman’s shoes at a men’s magazine.
But if Rogers feels any shame in the job, he’s never let it show.
“I’m sorry,” Tony says.
To his surprise, Tony sees Rogers’s knuckles tighten on the papers. “There’s nothing wrong with taking care of people.”
“No, I suppose not. Honestly, though, I’ll be fine. It’s nothing serious.” Tony insists, a hand with aching joints held out for the papers once more.
Rogers narrows his eyes at the outstretched fingers. Then he shucks his shoes and folds his legs up on the bed, sitting at Tony’s feet. “Fine, if you must work, lay back and I’ll read Pepper’s latest to you.”
“Rogers, don’t be silly. Run along before you catch it too.”
“If it’s nothing serious, then it won’t really matter if I catch it.”
Checkmate, Tony thinks, more impressed than irritated. It surprises him that Rogers is making such a big deal of the thing, but if he insists, Tony knows he’s going to cave eventually. He obeys, shifting to lie on his back, bruises protesting.
“March 10th, 1940,” Rogers clears his voice. “We descend through the opening in the earth one by one, as what the locals call the ‘throat’ is barely wide enough to accommodate the width of a full-grown man’s chest.” Rogers’s lips quirk because Pepper has embellished this for dramatic flair. “The limestone is wet and slick beneath our feet as we rappel into darkness, a deep chasm that our lamps cannot hope to fully illuminate…”
Tony shuts his eyes as Rogers reads back the details of their climb down. For such a lightless, confined setting, Pepper’s writing is vivid. Tony can practically feel the cold and wet of the cave floor, and he remembers how consummate the silence was as he waited alone, holding the end of the rope as first Pepper, then Rogers, and lastly Rhodey, descended to join him.
“Tell Pepper to trim it down, it goes on too long,” Tony interrupts.
He hears the rustle of papers as Rogers skims through the rest of the passage. “I’ll tell her that you started to fall asleep.”
Tony cracks an indignant blue eye open at him. “You will not.”
“Then she’ll be after you. Blaming your exhaustion on her writing instead of your health—”
“Where did you pick up such atrocious bedside manner?” Tony asks, voice full of long-suffering, even though Rogers has only been in his employ for a handful of months. “Are all Irish mothers this difficult?” He gives silent thanks that he was, in essence, raised by men, before biting his lip, realizing what he has once again insinuated about his assistant.
“My father, actually,” Rogers says. When Tony looks puzzled, Rogers’s lips thin and it sounds as though he is explaining to a small child. “Mam was the only one who could find steady work as a washer. When I was sick, it fell to him to take care of me.”
Tony doesn’t know how to make heads or tails of the bitterness in Rogers’s voice. The man’s father died during the Great War, if Tony’s memory of the PI’s file serves. Tony would press, but a coughing fit seizes him, and whatever he did to rile Rogers seems forgotten as the slender man presses a clean handkerchief into Tony’s hands.
“Are you ready to give up on this yet?” Rogers asks. He’s scooted closer to Tony during the coughing and hasn’t drawn back. His blue eyes are wide and deep, and focused solely on Tony.
“I’m fine,” Tony insists, even as his nose drips. He hides it quickly with the handkerchief and wriggles away from Rogers till his shoulders are pressed against the bed's backboard. “Go on reading.”
Rogers reluctantly turns his eyes to the paper again. “We press on through the stillness, the passing of time seemingly longer in the twisting caverns of this place. Stark’s pocket watch indicates two hours pass before we pause to orient ourselves, having finally heard the sound of the falls. The roar of distant water is magnified by the cave's walls, and it is hard to tell just how far away our destination lies, but Stark is cheerful with our progress. It is, however, at this junction that we encounter our first problem of the expedition: Rogers has taken the opportunity to clean the lime from his lamp, and when he attempts to turn it on again, one of the valves refuses to function properly. His lamp will only emit the faintest of glows, hardly enough to see by.”
Rogers sighs because Pepper has played up Tony's gallantry in the next bit. But he reads it all the same. “ ‘Take my lamp, but stay close to me,’ our intrepid leader says.”
“It is not long after that we climb down a slippery passage and find ourselves up to the knee in water. Rhodes points us to the left, and we follow the underground river. The bottom is rough and hard to traverse, and the stream winds lazy serpentines around sharp, jutting limestone, but the lure of a treasure hidden ‘beneath skyless stars’ keeps us moving.”
“Rogers and I wonder at this cryptic clue until Stark laughs and tells us all to shutter our lamps. When we do, we find the ceiling above flecked with constellations of small blue-green light. The newest addition to our team swears, and there is a splash as Rogers nearly falls, certain that he is seeing magic. Fortunately, Stark grabs him before he can dash anything on the rocks.”
The man in question looks up from Pepper’s writing. “How was I supposed to know what a glow worm was? You gave me no warning.”
“It was endearing.”
And then some. Tony grins, remembering the feeling of Rogers in his arms.
“Can’t you have her cut this too? Your readers will think I’m a simpleton.”
“Not a simpleton. A Watson. You ask questions the reader needs answers to. You think that all of them would know what a glow worm was?”
Rogers hunches his shoulders, clearly not satisfied with this answer.
“It could be worse,” Tony points out. “She could have gone into more lurid detail.”
He is referring to the fact that “grabbing” his assistant was less of a steadying grip on the shoulder, more of a wild flailing that left Rogers pressed face first into Tony’s chest and Tony’s arm wrapped tightly around his slender waist. But for the circumstances, it would have been quite nice.
Rogers doesn’t look like he agrees, but for once his stubbornness ebbs and he continues reading. “As always, we follow the sounds of the falls. The water moves quicker beneath our feet. And when at last we glimpse the froth of white water in the yellow lamp light, twin bridal falls crashing down from thirty feet above, Stark gives a whoop that echoes off the cave walls.”
“I did not whoop.”
“Stark gives a whoop,” Rogers emphasizes by way of answer, flipping the page. “We follow our stream to where it joins the flow of the falls, stepping out beneath a high domed cavern. Turning with the river, we see the cusp of the lower falls—the path forward to our prize.” Rogers scans silently for a few moments, looks up, and this time there’s a devilish twinkle in his eyes. “You’re certain you want me to go on?”
Tony looks from assistant to paper. Suddenly he is not so sure. “What did she embellish?”
“Nothing,” Rogers says.
Tony draws a stiff knee to his chest and puts his hands over his tired eyes. Great.
Pepper spares no detail.
He had ventured near the edge of the lower falls, adjusting his lamp to full brightness and shining it out over the water, just barely able to perceive that a chasm opened up below. The haze of water droplets in the air made it difficult to see, and he had inched forward in the fast-moving, knee-deep water, wedging his feet in the riverbed rock.
All it took was misjudging his footing once because Tony had also underestimated just how close to the drop-off he was.
It was terrifying: the feeling of losing his balance, hands scraping at the rocks as he fought against the rushing water—the sudden weightlessness. Tony only just managed to take a gasp of air before plunging beneath icy water.
He sank, cold and dark, disoriented, before kicking wildly, desperate to tell up from down. He was both fortunate and unfortunate that he propelled himself head-first into one of the jagged limestone rocks. By running his hands over the sides and finding a point on the thing, it was enough to give him hope for which was way up. Pushing off the rock with all his strength took faith, but he was rewarded for it, breaking the surface of the black water with a gasp. He’d never been happier to be greeted with the sound of shouting.
By all accounts, Tony had been a damn lucky fellow.
“Tell Pepper to make me sound more heroic,” He mutters, still hiding behind his hands, before the coughing takes him again. This time it seems to take an age before Tony can breathe again properly. He feels Rogers put a hand on his shoulder, urging him to lie back again.
Fine, just for a few minutes, Tony thinks, letting his tired eyes close. But then he wants to look at Rhodey’s maps.
“You’re plenty heroic without Pepper’s embellishment,” he hears Rogers say, tucking Tony beneath the covers. There’s something funny in his voice, as though he’s talking around a lump in his throat.
When Tony peeks an eye open, the man is packing up the papers.
“That’s all there is, Mr. Stark,” he says, trouble writ in the furrow his eyebrows. “So I’m putting my foot down. You really ought to try to get some more sleep. I’m sorry, I should have insisted earlier.”
A bit of Tony balks at the thought of him leaving, even though he knows he ought to send him on his way.
“Why do you care so much?” he asks.
Rogers purses his lips, as though weighing whether it’s worth telling him the truth. “My father died of the Spanish Flu,” he says. “When he volunteered to go to the front, we worried. We never imagined that flu would be what took him."
Deep inside, Tony feels an ache that has nothing to do with the illness or his fall. He knows all too well what it's like to have a father go off to war, only to lose him to something unexpected. He starts to search for the right words, but Rogers plunges on before he can find them.
"I thought that because I was…” Rogers pauses awkwardly, and then starts over. “I didn’t think a man could die from something like that.”
It breaks Tony's heart to hear that from the mouth of defiant little Rogers. Tony wants to touch him, to reassure him. He wants to tell Rogers that he’s braver, better, and worth so much more than most men Tony’s met.
So as Rogers pads back over to the bed to collect his shoes, Tony fumbles for his assistant's hand.
“I think you’re more a man than anyone I've ever met,” Tony says. “Nothing about you could change that.”
He feels Rogers’s fingers tighten on his, and the other man’s eyes get big, looking at their interlocked fingers.
“I wouldn’t say nothing.” The point of his throat bobs, and his lips are parted ever so slightly.
And like that Tony knows one thing more about his assistant. He swallows, lost in Rogers’s deep blue eyes. It feels like going over that waterfall all over again, dragged beneath forces he can’t fight, swept out over the edge.
It’s such a cruel trick of fate that he can’t draw Rogers on top of him into a kiss, can’t pull him close beneath the covers.
As if reading his thoughts, Rogers licks his pink lips and bites his lower lip. “Seeing as how you have more than just a bump to the head now, maybe we ought to plan a few more nights here.” He says it so innocently that even now Tony would never suspect his true intent, but for the look Rogers is giving Tony.
“Yes, a few nights more,” Tony agrees, hunkering down in the bed. “Provided you keep me well updated on what’s going on.” Not that there will be much progress to appraise him of with Tony bed-bound. But it will keep some of the boredom at bay. And now there’s incentive to get better as quickly as possible.
“Oh, I’ll be sure to visit frequently throughout the day.”
A sly grin steals over Rogers’s face and Tony flushes.
Maybe resting won’t be so horrible after all.