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When the doctors had cleared Stephen for visitors after his surgery, Tony was the first person to enter the room, camcorder at the ready. Last year, when Tony had to get an extraction done, Rhodey had convinced Stephen to film Tony coming out of anesthesia for ‘blackmail material’. Tony had pretended to hate it all, but when he watched the footage, he had to admit that it was pretty funny.
Today, however, was payback. Well, payback for the recording thing, Tony had also brought some ice cream and Stephen’s favorite stuffed animal and had offered to be Stephen’s ride home after he was discharged from the hospital.
“Hello?” Stephen asked suddenly, his eyes still closed and his words slurred. “Heys…”
“Hey, Stephen. How you feeling?” Tony asked.
“Mmhm,..” Stephen groaned. “Eyes… where my teeth?”
Tony laughed. “The dentist took them. You got your wisdom teeth out, remember?”
“Mean doctor… where boyfri… boyf… Ari?” Stephen mumbled, his eyes opening slightly as he stared at Tony and his camcorder in confusion.
“Ari’s not here, Stephen. He was busy, remember? So, I offered to be here when you woke up.” Tony explained.
Stephen seemed to sigh in relief, sluggish moving his arm towards his face. “Good… Ari hits me… I don’t want to be hit…”
Tony froze. He stared at Stephen in shock as he slowly lowered his camera. “Stephen… does Ari hurt you?”
Stephen muttered something and nodded, then winced at the pain it caused. “Hs hits me… when we’s alone. Says mean things too. Scares me. Don’t like him, but he’ove’s me. Loves me. No one else will so I hafta stay.”
Tony felt anger and fear boil in his chest. He set the recorder down with the tub of slowly melting ice cream. “Is that true? Do you think that no one else loves you because Ari says so?”
Stephen nodded quietly. He looked away from Tony, tears leaking from his eyes. “‘E says so. ‘Its me when I do something wrong. Don’t like him… like you much better, T’ny. Love you. Not him.”
Stephen turned his head back to Tony, smiled at him, then said something about butterflies being pretty, but their name is misleading because butter doesn’t fly. It almost made Tony laugh, but he was too shocked to get his camera back up and running. Stephen was scared of his boyfriend, who supposedly hit him. Ari Flaires, who didn’t have enough time to be there for his boyfriend who just had surgery. Ari Flaires, who told Stephen that he wasn’t worthy of love, that Ari was the only one who could love Stephen. Stephen, the amazing human who was so kind and funny and sarcastic and wanted to be a doctor so he could save lives after he couldn’t save his own. The Stephen that Tony knew, who slept with stuffed animals in college, who named his childhood cat after Marie Curie because he admired her work in the medical field, who’s favorite animals were horses and butterflies, who liked to eat runzas and hated zucchini but loved Tony’s homemade zucchini bread, who sneezed when he walked outside in the sun, who was already halfway through his master’s degree two years into college. The Stephen that had made life bearable for Tony and had just admitted to not only being scared of his boyfriend but liking Tony more. Loving Tony more.
Stephen babbled something again, something about Harvey Cushing and Tony just smiled. The next time Tony ran into Ari Flaires, he was a dead man for hurting the one thing that Tony couldn’t live without.