“We got you,” Tony murmurs, holding onto Steve’s hand and stroking the other up over the back of his head. “Steve, I got you.”
Steve wakes up again a few hours later, lying on his side and curled into something warm. The something warm is stretched out in front of him, against Steve’s cheek and hips and knees, and it’s moving every now and again, shifting gently next to him-
Abruptly, Steve realises that the thing he’s curled into is Tony.
His first thought it thank god, because Tony is here and safe and Steve knows he’s alive and back in the right dimension. His second is that Tony is warm and comforting and smells nice. His third is to remember that at least thirty versions of him across the multiverse have slept with Tony Stark.
Without even thinking, he jerks back, limbs not quite cooperating up to their usual standard. He feels something tugging at his hand and a constriction around his feet, confusion and mortification warring in his stomach. Oh god, no, he and Tony aren’t-
“Steve, whoa!”
Luckily, Tony is scrambling up off the bed, swinging onto his feet so he’s not pressed against Steve. He stands close though, hands planted on Steve’s shoulders in a futile attempt to keep him still. Still seized by a minor amount of panic, Steve shoves back at him and then there are more hands pressing him back down with considerably more force than Tony managed.
“Steve, stay still, you’ll tear your IV out,” Tony says, and Steve looks around wildly and realises that first, the tugging sensation is indeed a line that’s in the back of his hand, and second that Thor is there, and he’s the one that’s got him firmly pinned in place.
Somewhere close, he hears Thor’s deep chuckle, and then the pressure on his shoulders lifts and then vanishes. “You are not back to your usual strength yet, in body or in mind. Be still, my friend.”
“Where am I?” he tries to ask, but his voice is rough and hoarse and it feels like his throat is lined with sandpaper. Everything in front of him swims, blackness creeping in at the edge of his vision. Bending his arm up at the elbow, he blindly reaches out, fingers fumbling and uncooperative.
Strong fingers catch his and hold firm, and he grips them tightly, trying to force his eyes open. Oh god, he feels like he did that time he and Bucky drank that horrendous excuse for whiskey on his twenty-first birthday; disorientated and sick and like he could throw up. It’s something he’s not felt for years, not since he became Captain America.
Groggily realising that maybe he should sit still, he acquiesces to Tony’s request and stops moving, sinking back down into his pillows. He’s confused, doesn’t like how it seems to be taking ages to latch onto a thought. He tries to swallow, inches his free across hand to take the goddamn IV out the back of the hand being held, because he guesses it’s pumping all sorts of drugs into him, strong enough to make him feel woozy.
“Nuh-uh, not on my watch,” Tony says, and another hand grabs his wrist, pulls his hand away. His fingers are warm and strong on Steve’s wrist but he wants the damn IV out as soon as he can, fingers scraping at the tape that’s holding it in place. “Steve, don’t – there’s no sedatives in it, I swear. Just the usual crap, to get your fluids and electrolytes back in balance, you’re pretty dehydrated.”
Steve’s fingers fall away from the tape and he allows Tony to move his hands apart. The fingers of his left hand push between Steve’s and Steve realises that Tony is now holding both his hands, gripping tightly like he’s scared Steve will vanish. Steve doesn’t blame him in the slightest; he’s pretty worried himself, scared that if he slips back into the darkness that’s still hovering on the edge of his vision then he’ll end up back in the apartment with the rest of the Steves-
Oh god, the others. Steve’s insides all clench and he struggles to get up, panicking again. SJ - where will SJ be? Is he alright? Will he be still with Steve, waiting for him to get up again – hang on, will Steve have vanished from the apartment, or will there still be a body?
Will the rest of them have got home as well? He remembers SJ’s tears when he’d seen Bucky through the mist, and he feels like he’s being torn in two, he can’t bear the thought of not knowing if he’s okay-
“Thor, a little help!”
Steve finds himself once again firmly clamped down by a pair of weighty hands on his shoulders, but this time he’s less willing to play along. He yanks his hands back out of Tony’s grip and tries to shove free, and then there’s a lot of pushing and shoving and there’s abruptly more weight on his shoulders and across his legs and he can’t move a damn thing-
“Steve, stop!”
It’s not the sudden weight on his limbs or the way Tony yells at him that stops his struggles; it’s the way his stomach roils and he has to swallow convulsively against wave of nausea. He goes limp and the room goes silent, and when he blearily opens his eyes he realises why he can't move.
Thor has got his shoulders pushed back against the pillows; Tony and Bruce have got an arm each, his elbows shoved tightly into his sides and wrists in the tightest grips the pair can manage; Clint is sprawled across his thighs and Natasha is sitting on his shins and looking at him in such a way that he knows that if he tries to kick her off she will have him by the balls.
“Jesus, Steve,” Tony says fervently, and Clint starts to laugh, his chest shaking against Steve’s thighs. Thor is also chuckling, and then Tony and Bruce and even Natasha are joining in, and Steve is suddenly hit with such a wave of emotion that he could burst into tears. He’s home, god, he’s home with this bunch of idiots and there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. He’s not been left behind again, not lost everyone, they’re all here with him-
“Alright, let him go,” Tony’s voice suddenly says. “Hop to, Romanov, get your beautiful ass off his feet-”
The weight from his feet vanishes and then Clint slides off his thighs as the same time Bruce lets go of his arm. Thor is the last to move; nodding and stepping back, apparently satisfied that Steve isn’t going to make another ill-advised break for it.
Tony, however, doesn’t move away; Steve feels gentle tugs at the back of his hand and watches as Tony untangles his arm from the IV line again, before leaning over to tug the sheets straight. His hands are efficient yet gentle and it makes his stomach twist in a confusing new way, shaky and warm and not altogether comfortable. He still feels strange, like his thoughts are trying to wade through treacle, slow and groggy.
“Someone go find some more chairs,” Tony says, though his eyes don’t leave Steve’s face. “And raid the vending machine. Raid all the vending machines, the poor guy hasn’t eaten in days and he gets cranky when he misses second breakfast. Actually, a thousand bucks to whoever can get a damn pizza here in the shortest amount of time.”
His hands smooth down over Steve’s shoulders, and they’re shaking slightly.
“Don’t-” Steve begins, but he falters, stops. He wants to ask Tony not to go, but everything’s so tangled up and confusing, and he doesn’t even know how to begin looking at Tony anymore, not after what he found out about Seven and Stephanie and Six-One-Eight and hell, every other damn version of himself-
“Steve, here.”
He blinks and Tony is holding out a cup of water. He reaches out with a shaky hand to take it, draining it and realising just how thirsty he is, and Tony takes the empty cup and refills it without question.
Steve drains that one too, and as Tony takes the empty cup he almost feels himself give up. He’s exhausted and sick and emotional and he doesn’t want to second guess or appease the denial that he can feel lurking on his periphery. He just wants to allow himself whatever comfort he can before the fog clears from his mind and he has to start making sense of it all.
“Don’t go.”
The words are hoarse and quiet, and Tony doesn’t so much as flinch. He simply clambers back onto the bed next to Steve and sits up, sliding an arm over his shoulders and pulling Steve around until Steve is resting against his shoulder, head on Tony’s collarbone.
“You think I’m going anywhere ever again, you’ve got another thing coming,” Tony turns his head abruptly and speaks into Steve’s hair, and Steve is confused because that’s not what Tony usually says, he usually makes jokes and tells Steve he can do perfectly well without his star-spangled-ass, and he never sounds so genuine.
He thinks of Stephanie, Seven and the wedding band, and is this what they saw in their Tonys? Tony’s fingers side over his ear and into his hair, the heel of his hand pressing gently against Steve’s cheekbone, thumb stroking against his temple. Steve can hear the others moving around in the room and he should push Tony away because this isn’t how they are in this universe, or maybe Tony is just being so handsy because Steve got hurt and he thinks it’s his fault?
Should he even care?
He lifts his own hand and clumsily wraps his fingers around Tony’s wrist, holding the hand in place. Tony’s fingers stroke through the short hair above his ear and he shudders out a breath, aching for the comfort, the simple touch keeping him grounded and reminding him that he’s okay, he’s still here.
He feels his eyelids drooping, tries to fight it. Tony notices and shushes him, thumb stroking Steve’s cheek.
“Go to sleep, Cap,” he says. “I swear on JARVIS I won’t let you turn into a Capsicle again.”
He hears Clint snigger, hears something that sounds like Natasha smacking him upside the head. He hears footsteps and the scrape of chairs on the floor. The quiet movement around him is so soothing, everything he needs right now to chase away the fear that he’s still going to end up alone once more.
“Where am I?” he asks again, voice still hoarse and painful.
“SHIELD medical. They wouldn’t let me take you back to the tower,” Tony says, and his voice is wavering slightly, just enough for Steve to notice. “And you’re too damn heavy to smuggle out.”
“Have,” Steve tries, coughing roughly in the back of his throat. His fingers tighten on Tony’s wrist.
“For once in your life, stop talking,” Tony says, but there’s no heat to the words, just a soft genuine cadence that Steve rarely hears from Tony, and certainly not ever directed at him.
Steve ignores him, forces the words out.
“Have I been here the whole time?”
There’s a long pause. “Yes,” Tony finally says, dragging the word out and sounding cautious, hesitant. “I told you they wouldn’t let us move you. Why are you asking? They haven’t stolen any super-solider organs to experiment on, if that’s what you’re worried about, Bruce has been checking-”
“No,” Steve says, exhausted and edging swiftly and inexorably back towards sleep. With Tony right next to him and the others nearby, it doesn’t seem as frightening as it should. He feels more fingers slide through his hair, strong yet delicate, mostly definitely Natasha. “I just…I think. I think my mind has been places it shouldn’t have been.”
And sleep is rolling over him like a smothering blanket, pulling him down despite his best efforts to keep his eyes open. He dimly hears someone swear, voices talking urgently and footsteps moving quickly away. They’re mentioning the doctors, saying something about brain scans and checking his frontal lobe activity, and he hears Reed Richard’s name being thrown in there too, and Stephen Strange.
Must have been something I said, he thinks, and then he’s out.
