penistower | ❄ but the most special are the most lonely ❄

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❄ but the most special are the most lonely ❄

I. ( tony + steve + bruce )

[ tony's face-plate comes up, all but dragging steve over the threshold. he just has to focus on keeping the super soldier awake so they can get to bruce and get patched up. and then everything will be fine - it'll all be fine. nevermind that cap's best friend is now a psycho killer and is totally on the loose and natasha blew up s.h.i.e.l.d. via the interwebs and put a huge target on all of their heads.

at least he's not panicking.

he has no actual way of knowing how injured he personally is under the suit, either. he's in so much shock and so jacked up on adrenaline that anything is possible. he just hopes it isn't beyond the doctor's scope. JARVIS puts in the passcode wirelessly so tony can carry steve through the door, princess-style. ]

Medic? We need a medic... [ the joke dies on his lips, meeting bruce's gaze across the room. god is he a sight for sore eyes. ]

II. ( tony + steve + bruce + pepper )

[ once tony and steve are cleaned up and back in their street clothes, they may as well get ready for the q&a that's coming. there are a lot of things he's still not willing to discuss - peggy and her husband; his father; bucky... but neither of them are going to get a choice. he loves pepper and bruce with all (both) his heart(s) but this is some heavy shit, so instead he just blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.

it's also the dumbest. ] Widow will be happy you finally got yourself a date, huh, Cap? [ he nudges the other man's shoulder and looks to everyone else, sorry. that's the best he's got. ]

III. ( tony + steve )

[ tony wanders out to the living room, finding steve out on the couch where he'd left him. he knows just by the unsteady rise and fall of his chest that he's not sleeping. how could either of them after that? without saying a word, he slots his slighter frame in next to him, carefully avoiding both of their injuries and pulling out his phone. ]

I wasn't kidding about that like page, you know. [ he shows cap the facebook fan page that allegedly phil set up. it has a much more flattering image than the twitter. also 14 million something likes. ] You have almost as many fans as me.

[ he's not even being cheeky (much), he has over 19 million. ]

IV. ( tony + pepper )

[ pepper's not up yet and tony hasn't slept yet, which really, if it weren't so commonplace by now might be more traumatic. as it is, he eyes her heels at the base of the bed; she had fallen asleep in her clothes. poor pepper, he'd probably exhausted her and worried her sick with all of this. again, par for their course, but still.

before he can talk himself out of it, he sits on a corner of the bed and goes about trying to get his feet into her shoes. she would totally kill him if she woke up right now, but as they'd established that day they went to the park, it was really hard being short. ] What does she have, elf feet...?

[ he asks the open air, wobbling to his feet and immediately falling to the ground. this wasn't his best laid plan by far. he's just going to lay here for a while. this carpet is soft and his entire body is a bruise. ]

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[It's not as bad as it could have been if Tony hadn't intervened. That's basically the running theme of Steve's life for a while now. Why break it up now? Steve, if he were having much in the way of coherent thought right now, would argue that his way would lay to rest any doubt on whether there was anything left of Bucky Barnes. Sure he'd be dead if he were wrong, but he was supposed to be dead decades ago anyways. Natasha and Tony had their whole lives ahead of them. They needed closure on whether or not one of the greatest assassins alive was still gunning for them.

Thankfully his thoughts are trained on simpler things like putting one foot in front of the other. Sure, he wasn't shot those extra two times, but the Winter Soldier still stabbed him more than once. A fight between two super soldiers was always destined to get brutal even with help towards the end. He might also a bullet lodged in his side, but hey it might have just grazed him. Who knows? Steve has done an excellent job ignoring the extent of his injuries so far or so he convinced himself. The fact that he hasn't even registered yet that he doesn't need to keep walking says everything about his condition.]

I can walk. [It comes out too delayed to be convincing. Everyone can keep on ignoring him when it comes to what is best for his physical well being.]

[Steve barely seems to register much of anything. His eyes are trained downward, vacantly staring at nothing in particular. He failed his best friend even more spectacularly than he originally thought. He gave up his life for nothing. The love of his life and his dearest living friends let this happen. One of them found out too late to even fix the mess he started and took an innocent woman, Tony's mother, down with him.

He's not at rock bottom. That would be the scenario where HYDRA won and everyone had been killed. He's pretty close. Despite seeming oblivious to Tony's joke and well everything, he still skips to the point.]

Where do you want to start? [He assumes they weren't sitting here wishing them well. They must have some information if only thanks to Natasha.]

[Steve opens his eyes briefly. He looks without ever really seeing the image in front of him. There's a hundred different ways he could play this. He could say he doesn't care, tell Tony he appreciates the distraction, ask him how feels about everything they learned, and so on. Instead he just shuts his eyes again.

He's too tired and hollowed out to pursue anything anymore except maybe what could possibly be Bucky or a monster wearing his friend's face. (As if he needed more reminders of how he made the ones who loved him suffer due to his weakness.)

That one would have to wait until he was (ironically enough) stronger.]

[ Pepper didn't mean to fall asleep at all, much less in her clothes, but the past several days haven't exactly been easy. The whole mess with SHIELD, Tony's absence, dealing with her own safety, keeping abreast of any updates Tony occasionally sent her way while trying to do whatever she could in her end to help and prepare for the aftermath -- as always, she does her best to plan ahead. All of it had been accompanied by constant worry, of course. Needless to say, sleep hasn't been a high priority, lately.

Pepper startles awake with a sharp intake of breath at the thump as Tony goes down, one hand clawing at the sheets as instant panic crawls up her throat, grogginess blurring her ability to think clearly and leaving her unable to immediately remember where she is. A small sound of distress squeaks past her lips, her heart hammering furiously inside her chest. Another second passes until she finally recognizes her surroundings and remembers what's been going on. Relaxing, she faceplants back into the pillows, sighing in relief.

Through a filter of cotton, feathers and unbound hair, she mumbles wearily, ] What are you doing?

[ ...She's fairly sure Tony's around the room. Somewhere. ]

[ tony and pepper had finally showered and changed into pajamas at some point, and now he was clinging tightly to her, still without having slept yet. he'd dozed, a little, both after his card game with steve and now, but his body won't shut down. not with so much still looming over the horizon.

the door creeks and he's instantly on high-alert, body shielding hers even as the pleasant aroma of bacon fills the room. and that's when he recognizes the silhouette, squinting against the light from the hall. what time was it even? ] Steve?

[ ever the engineer, tony slots the last pillow into place and stands up to observe their work. he grabs the blanket and gestures for steve to help him put it over the structure. ] You know, I've never actually made one of these before.

[ he had been missing out, this was totally great. ]

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