#the horrors being the fever haze I’ve been dealing with for the past week

[olympiansally]

The horrors are rattling today: already switched between wips three times and I know I’ll be soon losing the battle to a little nap

[xxx-cat-xxx]

Devils and Dust

“He´s been going down for so long that he´s starting to yearn for the moment he´ll finally crash. But not tonight. It´s the Friday after Peter´s birthday, and Tony owes him a grand party at the very least, after all he´s made the kid go through.”

Steve witnesses a feverish Tony falling apart after Pepper has left. This is set in an AU where Civil War didn´t happen, where Cap and Iron Man haven´t known each other very long, and where Tony´s mental health is much much worse than shown in the movies. It´s somewhat longer than I intended it to be, and also darker than the stuff I usually write, but I was in the mood.

PTSD, angst, depression (maybe?), illness, emeto. Additional TW for alcohol overuse.

I've got my finger on the trigger And tonight faith just ain't enough When I look inside my heart There's just devils and dust

- BS

It´s been a quiet week and that´s exactly the problem. Tony has always been able to deal with pressure, with adrenaline-pitching situations, life-or-death decisions. It´s peaceful times like these that get to his bones, when the lack of distraction leaves him with numb and empty and feeling useless.

The flashbacks have been coming and going for the last few days, and it doesn´t help his fragile sense of reality that he´s caught a bug somewhere and is running a temperature. He´s so detached from the world that he might find it comical, wasn´t it for the bone-deep exhaustion, the pounding in his head and the sense of foreboding that´s been weighing down on him for weeks.

He´s been having trouble sleeping, the dreams turning more and more violent every time he tries. They leave him breathless and sobbing when he awakes in his too-large double bed, Pepper´s absence so overwhelming that it´s nearly tangible. She´s been away for a month, and he´s been going down for so long that he´s starting to yearn for the moment he´ll finally crash. But not tonight. It´s the Friday after Peter´s birthday, and Tony owes him a grand party at the very least, after all he´s made the kid go through. .

He´d shifted all appointments to have the day off for preparations, but owing to another sleepless night he was finished with everything at noon, leaving him wandering around his own empty tower, unable to come up with something worth doing. He´s lacking the motivation to even enter the lab and fix the pair of robots he broke during his latest week-long workshop binge, which would probably get him worried if he could spare any energy to care about it.

When it´s time for him to get ready, his hands are shaking hard enough that he´s having trouble fixing his tie.

“How do I look, Friday?” he prompts when he has finally managed to make himself presentable. Tony has neglected the AI recently, and he can practically hear her scowling when she replies.

“Dead tired and high on caffeine, Sir, so nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Yeah, that´ll do,” he mumbles to himself and startles when he hears the doorbell ring.

The security cameras inform him that the whole group has assembled at the front door, carrying a protesting Peter on their shoulders, throwing him into the air with shouts of Happy Birthday, Spiderman. The ease of the whole scene makes something in Tony´s chest ache with longing. He takes a last look into the mirror, draws a deep breath, and opens the door.

“Look who´s here! Underoos, isn´t it past your bedtime? You´re what, 14 years old now?”

The world presents itself through a haze, making it feel like he´s watching everything on a movie screen. He hugs Rhodey a few seconds longer than usual, prompting the older man to examine him with dark, concerned eyes.

“You okay, dude? You look...worn out.”

But if there´s something that Tony Stark has become an expert at, maybe even more so than at contriving genius inventions or saving the world, it´s pretending to be alright when he´s not. He´s made it through months of Palladium poisoning, so a touch of fever and anxiety feel like a walk in the park.

“I´m great, Rhodes,” he grins, “Whaddaya say, wanna try some cobweb brownies? Took me ages to find a shop that bakes them in this shape out of the Halloween season...”

He makes his way through the evening alright, joking, catching up, and avoiding anyone who might notice his sweating and the constant jittering of his hands, which means Nat, basically. She´s been watching him closely all the time, and he has no doubt that she has realized something´s off, just as she did when he was dying a few years ago. She doesn´t say anything, though, and neither does he.

The giant cake arrives, and Bruce recounts elaborately how he managed to convince Clint not to prank Peter by hiding a bunch of real spiders inside of it, and Tony laughs and claps his way through it all, smiling at the kid whenever he catches his eye. Pete looks so happy, and he deserves it. But Tony doesn´t. He hasn´t earned himself the right to be part of anything so good or pure. The piece of cake that´s forced into his hands nearly makes him gag.

Finally, most of the group settles on the various couches for a movie. The inevitable Star Trek versus Star Wars argument commences, and Tony zones out, exhausted, slightly nauseated, thinking how he only has to last a few more hours before he can drown himself in scotch and Heavy Metal. But then Peter elbows him back into the present, and there´s a black hole on the screen that´s swallowing a spaceship, and suddenly it all comes back at him without a warning.

He barely has time to bolt to the toilet before the cake comes up together with the memories. He feels disgusted at himself when a thick stream of vomit hits the bowl, but he can´t stop retching. He´s long past empty when dry heaves are still tearing him apart, making his whole body scream in pain.

The wormhole closes in from all sides and pulls him down, deeper than he ever was. He´s retching, then shivering, then hyperventilating, and then he feels like he is dying. And what scares him most is that he can´t bring himself to really mind it anymore. He rests his aching head on the rim of the toilet, finally succumbing to the horror film that´s playing in his mind.

----------

Steve has been having an unexpectedly good time. The restriction on hard alcohol that even Tony had agreed to because of Peter´s age means that the conversations are actually making sense even a few hours into the party. Peter´s constant happy chatter keeps everyone engaged, and whoever prepared the food has absolutely outdone themselves.

He doesn´t really catch the reason for everyone getting worked up about which of the sheer infinite list of silly alien-battle movies to play, nor the fun they seem to draw from watching things being blown up in outer space. But he goes along with the general mood and relaxes as good as he can. They are a twenty minutes into the movie when he feels the urge to use the bathroom and excuses himself.

When he opens the door to the floor´s common restroom, he is greeted by the sound of violent retching carrying over from one of the stalls.

“Hello?” he calls out hesitantly. “Do you need help?”

The answer is silence, and then what sounds like a suppressed sob. Steve is just about to leave - there are a few people at the party whom he doesn´t know closely, after all, and he doesn´t want to disturb - when the door of the stall opens. The man who staggers out, pale, trembling and wiping sick from his mouth, is the last he´d expected to see in such a state.

"Tony, what...?" is all he can say.

"I´m okay, Cap, just..." he trails off breathlessly and stumbles, apparently caught in a dizzy spell.

"Whoa, whoa, easy." Steve motions to hold the other man up when he sways on his feet.

"I´m okay, I´m okay, " Tony seems to say more to himself than to Steve, batting his hands away and leaning heavily against the basin.

“What happened, Tony? Did you drink?” Steve asks, trying not to sound disappointed.

“Always assuming the worst, Rogers, aren´t we?” he coughs. It´s meant to come out lightly, but Steve can hear the bitterness swinging along. “No, even I wouldn´t pull that one on the kid´s birthday.”

“Sorry...” Steve says. “But in my defense, your records aren´t exactly the best.”

“Just leave me alone, Cap.” Tony rebuts, sounding tired.

Steve examines his teammate´s appearance, and he is taken aback by how worn down Tony looks, almost old. He seems to be having trouble taking even breaths, and there´s an expression on his face that Steve would call afraid if he didn´t know better. Tony Stark might be a showman more times than not, but from all Steve knows, he is certainly not someone to be scared of things. Rather, what causes trouble is usually his lack of fear and respect in situations where such feelings would be appropriate.

But still, Tony looks...haunted. It reminds Steve of Bucky on his worst days. And then it dawns on him.

“Tony, I don´t want to interfere- ”

“Then don´t.”

“Did you have an anxiety attack? PTSD, flashbacks, something like that?”

Tony gives him an exasperated look. “Rogers, I´m serious, just do what you came here to do and then get lost.” He swallows hard, apparently fighting the nausea. “Okay, that came out rude, but what I´m trying to say is that it´s not the first time this happens. I can deal with it. Alone.”

For a moment Steve imagines Tony in the tower all by himself, shivering his way through panic attacks, and something pulls in his chest. He has heard of the break-up with Pepper, and he also knew about the PTSD, but he´d never had any idea that it gets this bad with Tony.

Still, the man is right, it´s better to leave if he is not wanted, and hovering will most likely only make things worse for Tony.

“Okay.”, he finally says. “But I´m here if you need...someone to talk, you know. Not only me, the whole team is there for you.”

There´s no conviction in his eyes when Tony fakes a smile. “Sure, capsicle. I know.”

----------

The party continues till late into the night. Cleaning up, which Steve commits to despite Tony´s insistence that he´s got robots to take care of it, takes even longer. By the time he is finished, most of the guests have either left or gone to sleep, so Steve decides to stay over as well. But once he is lying in his giant guest room´s ultrasoft twin bed, covered in smooth sheets of silk, he is entirely too comfortable to be comfortable.

When sleep doesn´t come, he starts walking the halls, searching for someone else who is still up. Most of the Avengers have trouble sleeping for one reason or another, and it wouldn´t be the first night he has run into Bruce killing time in front of the TV, Clint hitting the gym at 2 in the morning, or Nat just sitting in the darkness, silent, unmoving, practicing invisibility. 

He isn´t disappointed, but the sounds he hears when he enters the common area are not what he´d hoped for. Ragged breaths and curses carry over from the direction of the bar. Steve nearly steps into a heap of large ceramic shards lying on the ground, spotted with dots of blood. They appear to be remains of a mug that has the Iron Man mask plastered on it. Steve recalls seeing Tony gulping coffee from it several times, and he briefly wonders whether it was a gift from Pepper, but then discards the thought, bending to pick up the sherds.

“I was gonna trash it. But it just...broke”, a toneless voice mutters from behind the counter.

Tony is slumped on the ground, the bar barely holding him upright. He looks so much worse than earlier that Steve wonders for a moment whether he wound up in some sort of time-travel experiment and skipped a few days. His teammate is deathly pale, only his cheeks flushed red, the breathing shallow, sweaty curls plastered against his forehead. His suit jacket and tie are gone, the half-opened shirt is soiled by flecks of vomit and blood from where he must have cut himself on the shards. One of his hands is clutching his chest where the arc reactor used to be, the other crushing a bottle of something high-proof.

"God, Tony...” Steve exhales. The man is a mess. “It´s fine, I can fix the mug.” He knows it´s stupid the moment he says it.

“Doesn´ matter.” Tony slurs, his eyes glistening wet. “I don´t wannit. Won´t make anythin´ right.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve soothes. “Is there - is there anything I can do?”

Tony just shakes his head before lowering it onto his knees. “I don´ need your pity, Rogers.” He takes another swig from the bottle. Steve doesn´t know how to comfort him, but he doesn´t want to leave, either. They sit in silence for a while.

"´s all my fault", Tony mumbles suddenly, less coherent than mere minutes ago. His breathing hitches up. He tries to pull himself up at the counter, failing and losing his balance. Steve is there without thinking, supporting him, but it turns out to be a bad idea. Tony swings a fist at him, his eyes large and glazed over, his whole frame trembling. “Don´t- “ he croaks, “Don´t touch me-”.

“Alright, alright”, Steve mumbles, easing him back to the ground and then taking a step back, not failing to notice the heat radiating from the other man´s body.

“I don´t  wanna - I can´t - no- “ Tony pants, gesticulating into empty space. Steve has no idea where he thinks he is, but he´s sure it´s not here.

“It´s me, Tony,” he says as calm as can manage, “We´re at the tower, remember? Breathe, just breathe, okay?”

“Fuck”, Tony exhales. “It´s just... all going to shit.”

“It´s okay, Tony. You´re running a fever, it´s messing with your senses. Whatever you think you are seeing, it´s not real.” Steve slowly moves into his direction, empty palms raised in front of him. “Let´s get you to bed and- ”

“The fever´s not the problem, Rogers!” Tony yells in a hoarse voice, and Steve is shaken by how desperate he sounds. “You don´t understand, you, you don´t know what´s going on in my head  - what´s happening  - you can´t get -” he breaks off, gasping for breath. The look on his face is pure terror. “It´s not getting any better. I´m - I´m losing this one, Steve. Everyone.”

And that´s when he understands that Tony has been broken for a long, long time. Steve has been to war, he has had his fair share of trauma to deal with in the aftermath - but it was never like this. He has come to terms with his conscience. Whereas Tony... Steve used to think that tech and sarcasm are all there is to the man, that all his reckless, death-provoking actions are simply evidence of how he fails to take anything about life serious. But now it dawns on him that this was just Tony´s way of keeping himself from falling apart. Steve wonders how a person can talk so much about himself and yet reveal so little.

He doesn´t know what to say. And it doesn´t matter, because he is not the one needed here.

“Does Pepper know?” he finally asks.

Tony is sunken together, looking like a shadow of himself, but his eyes focus on Steve, and his ashen face seems a little more lucid.

“Not...not all of it.”

He attempts to collect himself and fails. When he looks at Steve, his mask has nearly fallen, and he is an inch from pleading.

“Cap, please, just don´t try to help in that.” He takes a shallow breath, then another, and swallows frantically. “This is my mess, my fault, and trust me, you don´t wanna be pulled into it. I´m - I´m gonna get it under control, somehow.”

He reaches for the bottle, misses it. He doesn´t try again, and that´s how Steve knows his words were empty. Because Iron Man wouldn´t give up, ever.

He takes a decision.

“Just let me get you to bed, at least.” It´s not a question. Steve pulls the other man up and frowns when he realizes that Tony has lost weight, a lot of it. The shirt dangles lose around his body.

They stop at a trash can halfway through the corridor for Tony to heave up bile and what smells like pure alcohol. He´s barely conscious anymore when Steve positions him into bed and drags a blanket over his trembling form. Once Tony has fallen into a fitful, feverish sleep, the lines of exhaustion and pain never leaving his face, Steve sets water and aspirin on the bedside table and quietly leaves the room.

He pulls out his phone. Tony is going to hate him for that, maybe forever. But if there is something Steve Rogers has become good at doing, it´s taking hard choices. Most of them were of the kind that would haunt him for the rest of his life, but if he had do, he´d take them all over again.

The phone rings two, three times. It´s late, the night already melting into morning, but he knows that she will pick up eventually, as clear as he knows that she will help.

Pepper doesn´t sound sleepy when she answers the call.

“It´s Steve”, he states, preparing himself to speak the words Tony could never say. “We need to talk.”

part 2