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The noise of the battle is still raging around Steve when the bullet hits his thigh. He looks down long enough to check that it hasn't shattered his femur, then goes back to flinging his shield at the oncoming waves of deformed wasp-things. Steve had learned very quickly that you either ignored it when the enemy wounded you, or you died. The wasp-things didn't look any more likely to stop while he got things stitched up and bandaged than HYDRA had. No one was sure who had sent these mutated drones yet, but Nick Fury had gotten that look when he'd heard, and Steve was pretty sure they'd either know for certain or have an educated guess by the time he and Tony had finished putting down the minor riot the—the—well, whatever they were—were causing.
“Steve,” says the Iron Man armor, landing next to him. Steve catches his shield as it bounces back to him off some poor, unsuspecting wasp-minion's head, then holds it up for Tony to use as an amplifier for his repulsor blasts. But Tony doesn't hold up his gauntlets and fire, or use his chest plate. He just stands there, looking down at Steve.
“Tony, what--”
“Steve, you're bleeding,” the armor says.
“Oh for heaven's sake, Tony,” Steve sighs. “I'm fine. Are we really going to sit here and discuss this while there's a riot going on?”
“Steve, they shot you,” the armor says. If Tony's voice was unfiltered, Steve is pretty sure he would sound positively annoyed. “I don't like it when you get shot.”
“I don't like it much either. Watch your six,” he adds, as an afterthought.
Tony turns and fires a repulsor blast at the minion-thing sneaking up on him, then turns back to stare down at Steve from the lofty heights of his helmet.
“Seriously, one good blast from your chest plate and we're done here, you know? And you can fly me to a hospital?” Steve tries. Unless Pepper or Bruce has magically learned how to remove bullets—actually, that seems pretty plausible, now that Steve thinks of it. Plus, Bruce would probably give him one of those lollipops he saves for the kids who tour the Stark Industries plant on field trips. “Or you can take me home and watch Bruce fix me up. That would be better, wouldn't it? You could make sure he didn't sew any scalpels into my thigh personally.”
Tony sighs, nods and holds up his hands. “One blast. If that doesn't take care of it, I don't care, we're leaving. And no matter what, we're not staying to help clean up.”
* * *
They stay to clean up. “Only until Fury can send us reinforcements,” Steve promises. That happens half an hour later, while Steve is bleeding all over someone's Oldsmobile and Tony is sulkily pulling a streetlamp out of an Armenian bakery's front window.
Natasha, Clint, and Thor show up, and quickly take over repairs and damage control. Thor isn't a lot of help, but Agent Romanov can usually convince him to move the bigger pieces of debris by looking defenseless and batting her eyelashes a lot. Thor seems to be a sucker for gender-normative stereotypes, despite his fast friendship with Sif. Steve watches to make sure they've got things under control, then turns to Tony, who is—he can tell, despite the faceplate—glaring at him.
“We can get to a hospital now, Tony,” Steve announces, and the faceplate flips up so Tony can yell at him more effectively.
“Steven Douglas Rogers, we are not going to a hospital. Hospitals have community college nurses and MRSA and streptococcus infections,” Tony explains in a loud, adamant voice.
“Okay,” Steve says calmly, looking down at his leg again. It's still oozing blood, despite the bandage wrapped around it.
“And before you ask, I am not taking you to SHEILD, because I don't trust them not to screw with you or steal your DNA for their own nefarious purposes or somehow maim you by mistake only it's not really a mistake or deactivate your super-soldier-serum, which would make both of us miserable since you'd still try to save kittens from trees and punch evil bee-people in the face and I'd have to come rescue you all the damn time so--”
“Tony, could you hurry up and make your point? I'm pretty sure I'm nearing critical levels of blood loss and I would like to get the bullet out of my leg before gangrene sets in, if you don't mind?” Steve requests. He's maybe exaggerating a little to get Tony to shut up, but only a little. Tony goes pale, flips his faceplate back down and grabs Steve before Steve can protest being flown around the city like some wilting wildflower. He is not a daisy, damn it! He tries to say as much to Tony, but Tony either doesn't hear him because he's interacting with JARVIS, or he ignores him because he thinks Steve is being silly. It's probably the latter.
* * *
When they finally arrive in the medical wing (really an entire three floors since they get hurt a lot) of Stark Tower (now popularly, if not legally, known as Avenger's Tower) Bruce is waiting with gloves, a scalpel, and seven cans of Tony's favorite spray-on surface cleaner.
“What's with all the Lysol?” Steve demands. “You're not going to Lysol me, are you? That sounds like it would be painful. Besides which, I didn't think Lysol had a marketable disinfectant that wasn't for hard surfaces or toilet bowls yet.”
“I'm not going to Lysol you,” Bruce promises. “I had to clean the lab as fast as I could to make room for you to lie down.”
“Okay, good,” Steve says. As he reflects on the conversation he just had, he decides he's hitting the looped-out-on-adrenaline part of the injury. “I may be a little out of it just now,” he warns Bruce.
“I hadn't noticed,” Bruce lies. Bruce is a good liar sometimes, but not when he's lying to Steve. Steve inspires honesty. Tony told him that once.
Steve frowns, then turns to Tony, who is still wearing his armor. “My inner voice sounds like you when I'm high,” he announces.
“Steve,” Tony says for the umpteenth time that day.
“Tony, get out of that armor and out of my lab,” Bruce orders. “I refuse to allow a giant, human-controlled robot into my laboratory, particularly not when I'm operating on the owner's boyfriend.”
“Oh, I'm not his boyfriend,” Steve corrects. “Not yet, anyway. He keeps glaring at me, though. I think that's a sign.”
“I'm sure it is,” Bruce agrees, affable and easy.
“You're easy,” Steve says. “My leg hurts.” As soon as he says it, it's true. His leg really, really hurts. There goes the adrenaline high.
Tony comes back into the room, wearing a power suit instead of his suit of armor, and Steve closes his eyes. Tony's mouth is a grim line, his lips white. Tony never gets that look. Well, once, when they all thought Pepper had been kidnapped by the villain du jour, but that had been for thirty seconds until Natasha found Pepper's note that she'd gone to the store for a few things they'd probably need before the regularly scheduled grocery delivery came on Monday. That had been a bad thirty seconds.
Bruce is examining the wound and ignoring white-lipped Tony. “Oh, this is much better than I thought. This was almost a through-and-through, see? Or, oh, yeah, you probably can't, sorry. But um. The bullet's very close to the surface on this side, which is good. It also didn't hit bone, so you won't require bone grafts or any of that nasty reconstructive stuff.”
Tony doesn't say anything, just stares at Steve. Still. Again. Whatever. Steve ignores him and says, “Okay.”
“I don't think it should hurt too much if I just . . .” There's a pause and Steve whines, because tweezers shouldn't get shoved that far into your leg without a little warning first, and then Bruce is holding up a pair of disgusting looking tweezers with a dripping, bloody bullet pinched between their arms. “Got it!” he announces.
“Oh good,” Steve sighs. “Now I can pass out without worrying if I'll wake up with both legs.”
Bruce laughs, because he thinks Steve is joking, but wow, Steve is so very, very serious about that. Steve hears Tony shout his name, and Bruce say something about how he's never seen someone Steve's size just conk out like that, but he's too busy blacking out to formulate any sort of response.
* * *
To say that Steve Rogers does not like pain is to put it mildly. It stemmed from his childhood, he thinks, putting on a brave face is easy when you're scrawny and it's all you can do, but when you're a six-foot-amazing, brawny super-soldier, you wimp out a lot. Okay, Steve wimps out a lot, but usually behind closed doors and only when no women, children, or Starks can see him.
That rule has failed him this time. Specifically the part about Starks. Tony is standing over him when he swims up from the haze of pain-ow-hurts-sleep and rejoins the living. Tony is still not talking, and he is still glaring.
“I don't like it when you glare, Tony, it makes me very uncomfortable,” Steve says.
“What am I supposed to do, Stephen Douglas Rogers?” Tony demands.
Steve takes a moment to appreciated the way Tony cares enough to try to use Steve's full name. “All right, nice as it is that you care, you do realize that's not my full name, don't you?”
“What?” Tony blinks.
“Douglas,” Steve explains, “is not my middle name. I don't have a middle name.”
“You should,” Tony says, sounding rather petulant. “How else will you know when I'm serious about what I'm yelling at you?”
“I'm sure I'll muddle through somehow,” Steve promises. Tony glares some more. “Besides, I think you stole that one from a baseball player.”
“Seventy years on ice and the first thing you do is catch up with baseball,” Tony mutters, but he doesn't look truly angry anymore, just scared and a little sad.
“I had a lot to catch up on,” Steve says, pushing himself over on the bed. “Now come here and tell me all the ways I'm a horrible person for being shot.”
“Don't try to make me feel better, it won't work,” Tony scowls, but he sits awkwardly on the side of Steve's bed until Steve tugs him to lie down. “I'm wearing a suit,” he says, probably worried about wrinkles, but Steve just shakes his head.
“Tony, if I promise never to let myself get shot again, will you feel better?” Steve asks.
Tony thinks about it. “Yes,” he decides.
“In that case, I promise never to let myself get shot again,” Steve swears quietly. He's face-to-face with Tony, so he can see it when Tony relaxes.
“That's a dumb promise, Steve,” he says, sneaking an arm around Steve's waist when he thinks Steve isn't paying attention. “We both know you can't keep it.”
“But it did make you feel better,” Steve points out. He wants to shift Tony closer, so Tony can put his head on Steve's chest and hear that his heart is still beating, but he's pretty sure Tony's not ready for that. Steve isn't sure he's ready for that, come to think of it. Instead he hums softly, some tune he'd heard on the radio slowed down and jazzed up. His brain still thinks in swing rhythm, even though he hasn't heard a single big band since he woke up in that too-sunny hospital bed.
They're silent for a while, musing over mortality and the way it feels right to be this close to each other. Eventually Tony frowns at him.
“Why is it that I'm the one who needed comforting but you're the one who got shot?” he demands.
Steve laughs, but doesn't answer. Instead he carefully takes Tony's hand and laces their fingers together. Tony snorts, but doesn't pull away.