This is a commission for pocketsizedstark, who wanted a fic based off of this stevetony grey’s anatomy au drabble. This rolls in at 10k.
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Steve has imagined his first shift as a doctor hundreds of times over the years. Growing up, he’d spent as much time in hospitals as he did out of them, and eventually he’d started wanting to know the details about what was happening to him this time. He’d poured over books and later the internet, asking his doctors- or his mother, a long-suffering nurse- questions when he didn’t understand something.
Even though the more serious ailments had faded over the years, this had bloomed into a dogged pursuit into medicine, and after years of medical school he’s finally ready to take the step he’s been picturing for years.
Somehow, the naked stranger in his bed never made it into the daydreams he came up with in medical school. Mostly because Steve tries not to be unrealistic.
Head thudding dully, Steve sits up and looks at the man beside him. He’s snoring slightly, his front pressed into the mattress, bare to the waist where Steve’s duvet is tugged over him.
Steve cranes his head to see the man’s face. He raises his eyebrows: it hadn’t just been the bourbon, the man really is attractive. Steve has no idea what propelled the guy to come home with Steve, who weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet and buys his clothes from discount stores.
An alarm makes Steve wince and scramble for his phone. But when he clicks it, it tells him he has eight minutes to go. As Steve concentrates on the sharp, intermittent buzzing of the alarm, he realizes it’s coming from the floor.
“Mrghfuckoff.”
Steve looks over to see the man groping off to the side of the bed. The man lifts his head, frowns, squints at his hand and then around him.
His eyes widen when his gaze lands on Steve. “Uh. Hi.”
“Hey,” Steve says. Should he smile? He sticks with clearing his throat and saying, “I think your phone’s in your pants.”
The man nods and starts looking around again, sitting up.
Steve points. “Over there.”
“Thanks.”
Steve averts his eyes as the man climbs out of bed and walks over to the pile of clothes, rummaging until he resurfaces with a phone. He curses quietly and the room falls blissfully silent.
Steve flicks his own alarm off as the man says, “So! How-”
Steve cuts him off before he can get any further. “It’s fine, you don’t have to. We both know this was-”
He pauses. Is there a couth way to say it? “Anyway, I’m going to shower and when I wake up you won’t be here, so.”
He trails off awkwardly. He wants to pull the sheet up to cover more of him, but all the important parts are out of sight and Steve feels it’d be strange if he tried to hide his nipples.
"Hey, whatever floats your boat,” the man says after a moment. He holds out a hand. “Throw me my boxers, will you?”
Steve blinks around him before noticing the underwear stuffed under the opposite pillow. “Oh! Sure.”
He debates leaning far out of bed in an attempt to grab his own underwear. Then he imagines falling out of bed, so instead he gets up and speedwalks to the tiny bathroom attached to the bedroom.
The shower drowns out any noise that might be coming from the bedroom. Steve spares a thought to hope the stranger isn’t stealing any of his stuff and then concludes there’s not much worth stealing. His laptop is on his bedside table in clear view, but it also has a thick strip of duct tape covering one of the hinges along with a general air of crappiness.
Steve’s hangover takes a backseat under the constant stream of hot water and he finds himself recalling as much of last night as he can. He’s relieved to find it’s all there, just fuzzy at the edges, the fuzziness getting progressively worse as the night continues. Even so, Steve can recall the two of them coming home from the bar; the man running his fingers down Steve’s sides and grinning against his mouth.
One thing he can’t remember is the guy’s name. He knows he asked and got told, but that was early in the night and it skids just out of reach when Steve searches for the memory.
Steve braces himself as he steps back into the bedroom, but the man is gone along with his clothes.
The whole way to the car, Steve examines his shoes. Sam, Natasha and Bucky are all staring at him or trading look with each other, which busts through Steve’s hopes that none of them noticed the guy leaving. He just hopes none of them caught them last night, laughing and groping each other as they stumbled to Steve’s bedroom.
When Bucky speaks up, Steve stifles a sigh. He’d hope they could at least make it to the hospital before he got grilled on this.
“So some stranger stole a roll from the kitchen and left,” Bucky says. “That have anything to do with the incessant thumping we all heard from your room last night?”
Great, Steve thinks.
“And moaning,” Natasha adds from the backseat. When Steve turns to glare at her, she beams innocently.
Sam is busy annihilating a muesli bar. Holding a hand in front of his mouth so nuts don’t spill out, he says, “Seriously, man. Of all the nights to have your sexual debut, you pick the one right before our first day of work?”
Steve hunches into his shoulders before realizing what he’s doing and forcing himself to stop. “I got nervous, okay?”
Bucky snorts. “You usually paint when you’re nervous. Or study.”
“Yeah, well- I just, I went to the bar for a drink, I didn’t expect someone to start hitting on me, come on.”
The flirting had been a miracle in itself. the idea that the man actually wanted to follow through on it- Steve wasn’t about to let that chance pass, even if he had work the next day.
Bucky swears as someone cuts him off. Eyes on the road, he says, “You gonna see him again?”
“From what we saw, he looked hot,” Sam says through a mouthful of assorted nuts. “That’s to say, the back of his head was hot. Good hair.”
“I didn’t get his name,” Steve admits, ignoring the three incredulous looks he receives for it. “And isn’t this, y’know, what happens with one nights stands? You sleep together and never see each other again. Simple. He didn’t seem too interested in getting to know me, anyway.”
That earns him a few seconds of silence. Then Sam shakes his head, crumpling his muesli bar wrapper in his fist. “Man, med school did a number on you.”
Steve has to peel off from the group after they change into scrubs.
“Good luck,” Bucky tells him before he heads off. He claps Steve on the shoulder. “Hope your resident’s not a dick. I heard mine tries to make at least one intern cry on the first day.”
Steve winces in sympathy. Also because Bucky clapped his shoulder with more force than necessary. “Think you need luck more than me, then.”
He heads out into the hall with Sam and narrowly avoids getting hit by a gurney. He flattens himself to the wall until it passes him.
“Steve Rogers? Sam Wilson?”
Steve turns in the direction of the voice. There’s a resident waving them over, surrounded by interns who Steve assumes are also on their first day due to their matching terrified expressions.
Steve tries to tamp down on his own nerves as he approaches. It helps when Sam bumps their shoulders together, subtly enough that it looks like an accident to passerby. Steve is glad that even one of his friends got placed with the same resident as him.
“You’re both late. I’m Dr. Coulson,” is the resident’s greeting, already turning around to walk down the halls. The interns follow and Steve is briefly reminded of baby ducks trailing desperately after their mother.
Dr. Coulson hands out their pagers, goes down a list of their duties today, tells them what he expects them to know by the end of their shift, all while striding through the halls in a manner that gets Steve thinking Dr. Coulson has spent more time inside this hospital than out of it since he started working here.
By the time lunch swings around, Steve almost misses med school. At least when he was there, the worst thing that could happen is fail a paper. But if he messes up now, he could literally kill someone.
Natasha makes a beeline for him when she spots him. She immediately starts digging into her macaroni salad when she sits down at the table next to him and Sam. “My resident spits when he talks. How’s yours.”
“He’s okay. Could be less of a dick, but I don’t think he means it maliciously,” Sam says. “Seen Bucky?”
She nods. “While I was in rounds. He was getting shouted at.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
As Steve is making a mental note to Google how often doctors’ fuck ups kill patients accidentally, he sees someone familiar across the cafeteria.
At first it’s a vague familiarity, someone you take public transport with but never speak to. The man is talking to his coworkers, swinging his hands animatedly, and Steve is running over a list of where he could know this guy from when the man turns around and Steve gets a full glimpse of his face.
He’s sure his own expression is less amused than the man’s, who had gone from puzzled to grinning in a two second span. “Ah, shit.”
“What,” Natasha says through a mouthful of pasta. She starts to lift her head to follow Steve’s gaze.
“Nothing,” Steve says. He jerks his own gaze down to the table in front of him and starts determinedly rushing his way through his sandwich. His cheeks are bulging chipmunk-style when a voice says, “So you’re the new interns.”
Steve swallows. The last of his sandwich goes down his throat like a stone. “Some of them,” he says, meeting the man’s- doctor’s- eyes reluctantly. Even under the hospital lightning, the man’s eyes manage to look just as appealing as they did under the heady lights of the bar.
“Sir,” Steve adds.
The man’s grin resurfaces. “Please, call me Tony.”
Steve stops himself from snapping his fingers. The memory from last night fleshes out; the man’s lips forming a name. Tony. That was it.
“No,” he says. It prompts a laugh from Tony and gets him twin confused glances from his roommates-slash-coworkers.
Tony’s lips twitch. “Doctor Stark, then. I look forward to seeing more of you.”
He says it blandly, but Steve catches the brief downward glance Tony gives him, like he’s remembering what Steve looks like naked.
It isn’t until Doctor Stark begins to walk back to the two doctors- a terse looking redhead and a weary black man who both look expectant- that Natasha and Sam make noises of realization.
“I know the back of that guy’s head,” Natasha says.
“Oh,” Sam says. “Shit.”
“Shit,” Steve agrees.
They all startle when a tray slaps down onto the table next to them. Bucky drags out a chair and falls into it, scowling at his food before looking up at the others. His scowl lessens when he takes in the shellshocked expressions on his friends’ faces.
“What,” he says.
Shit, Steve thinks again.
The first thing Steve assures himself is the largeness of the hospital.
“‘S a big place,” Sam says when Steve brings it up, after they’ve all finished their ‘oh my god’ stage which involved a lot of swearing. “You won’t run into him that much.”
Which is what Steve is trying to convince himself of right up until his group walks into a patient’s room during rounds to see Dr. Stark standing by her bed. They seem to be in the middle of a conversation that’s spurring laughter from both of them, but it dies down when the interns walk in with Dr. Coulson.
Steve always feels sorry for the patients whenever rounds comes up. He knows firsthand what it’s like being peered at like a fish in a bowl, having his condition surmised by a group of tired doctors who didn’t know the first thing about him apart from what was wrong with him.
Coulson starts, “Can someone tell me what Mrs. Simmons is here f-”
An intern to Steve’s left immediately starts giving a detailed report of the brain surgery Mrs. Simmons needs. It’s going well until she starts listing the possible (and numerous) complications that can arise during or after surgery, at which point Coulson clears his throat and says, “That’s enough, Carter, thank you. Sorry about her,” he tells Mrs. Simmons, who tries to rearrange her expression into something less scared.
“No, no, it’s- Tony here was just explaining those to me. Less, um, grotesquely.”
Steve sneaks a look at Dr. Stark. Does he try to get everyone calling him Tony?
He averts his gaze when he catches Tony looking back at him.
Mrs. Simmons continues, “He failed to mention that last one.”
“It’s very rare,” Dr. Stark tells her. When Steve looks at him, he’s beaming down at Mrs. Simmons, hands folded behind his back. “And doesn’t usually happen to people as healthy as you. We’re expecting a good outcome for your surgery.”
“Touch wood.”
“Touch wood,” Dr. Stark agrees, and makes a face as he looks around. “Sadly, everything in here is plastic or metal. Touch linoleum?”
“It’ll have to do.”
Dr. Coulson clears his throat. “Dr. Stark?”
“Yes?”
“Dr. Rhodes is looking for you. He said he’s paged you several-”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it.” Dr. Stark winks at Mrs. Simmons as he gears to leave. “Tell him to keep his panties on. Hi.”
The last word is directed with a smile towards a man who’s just walked in. The husband, Steve guesses, judging by the bouquet of flowers he’s holding. He’s blinking at Tony with the confusion that comes with walking in on a doctor saying ‘panties.’
“Just… checking in,” says Mr. Simmons. “How is she?”
Mrs. Simmons pipes up from the bed. “I haven’t even gone through the surgery, Bob, all I am is bored and tired.”
“She’s bored and tired,” Dr. Stark reports with a smile that the man returns. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a coworker to attend to.”
Steve makes sure to concentrate his gaze on the railing of the hospital bed as Dr. Stark leaves, so he isn’t sure if Stark looks his way or not. He thinks he can feel a gaze on him, but that might just be Sam trying to give him a pointed look.
Big hospital, Steve reminds himself again.
Steve is beginning to doubt his hypothesis after stepping into an elevator only to see Dr. Stark leaning on the side of it.
Shit. Steve makes to step out of the elevator, but the doors are already closing. When he’s stuck scowling at the metal doors, he moves to press the button for the fifth floor.
“Not the worst reaction I’ve gotten from a one night stand,” Dr. Stark says.
Steve wonders if silence is the right response.
Dr. Stark continues, “So I’m guessing you’re not interested in making it a recurring event.”
Silence is overrated. “No thanks,” he says. A tiny section of his mind immediately starts yelling at him for it down- he’s stupidly hot!
He’s my superior, Steve tries telling it.
He’s offering you sex on tap!
Superior, Steve tries.
When are you ever going to get this chance again!
Shut up, Steve tells it. Out loud he says, “I don’t want people to think that I’m getting- advantages that they aren’t.”
A shuffle of movement and suddenly Dr. Stark is standing examining the closed elevator doors with him. “Only advantage I’m offering is regular sex. Everything else depends on how good you are as a doctor.”
“Even if that’s true, I doubt others would believe that.”
Dr. Stark moves so he’s standing in front of Steve, hands in his pockets. Steve takes a step back.
“Look,” Dr. Stark says. “I get it. You don’t want people to think you’re sleeping around to get ahead, fine. Fair enough. But I’m just saying, people don’t have to know. I’m very discreet. And it wouldn’t be like we were dating, there’d be no feelings mush to make it complicated. All I’m offering is the occasional roll around in the on-call room-”
“God, people actually have sex in there?”
Tony- Dr. Stark smirks. “Less than TV dramas would have you believe, but still more than they should. Where else would we go? We spend most of our time here.”
Steve feels himself nodding. When he realizes Tony’s waiting for more of a response, he folds his arms. “Uh. I’ll think about it?”
Dr. Stark beams. Steve tries not to let on how much it knocks him on his ass.
This is not how I imagined my first shift going, Steve thinks blearily as the hours trudge on. He’s nearing the end of it, but all that’s keeping him up right now is his use of strategic napping and a near-constant stream of snacks he keeps in his pocket.
When he goes into the viewing room to look in on a surgery, it’s mostly so he can have an excuse to sit down. He can’t even bring himself to feel anything but weary acceptance when he looks into the operating room and sees Tony poking around in Mrs. Simmons’ brain.
He looks over when someone grunts in greeting. It’s Bucky, looking just as dead on his feet as Steve. “Nat’s sleeping in a supply closet.”
Steve drags up a laugh. “Yesterday that would’ve surprised me.”
“Yesterday we were here. Shift carried over.”
“Oh.” Steve rearranges the days in his head. “Day before yesterday.”
“Mm.” Bucky scrubs a hand over his face and blinks hard and rapid in that way people do when they’re desperately trying to stay conscious. “Hey, isn’t that… that guy?”
Steve spares a second to be thankful that sleep deprivation hasn’t eaten Bucky through to the point of blurting out ‘isn’t that the guy you slept with before your first shift and neither of you realized he was technically one of your bosses ha ha.’
Steve says, “Yeah.”
“Huh,” Bucky says. Then, “He’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“Googled him during a toilet break earlier,” Bucky says. “He’s pretty goddamn famous. Like, it’s in his blood. His dad was Howard Stark.”
Steve digs through his years of study and comes up with vague memories of the man’s photo in a textbook.
“Also I think we studied Stark Junior at some point for about five seconds.”
Steve doesn’t remember that and doesn’t particularly want to.
“He did some experimental brain surgery about six years ago and managed not to mess it up.”
Steve nods and tries not to slump over in his seat. Below him, a nurse hands Tony a scalpel.
The end of the shift rushes up on Steve. He doesn’t even notice he’s allowed to leave until Sam comes up to him in the same clothes he was wearing at the start of his shift and says, “Dude, what- we can leave, man, hurry up or we’ll leave without you. Dibs not driving.”
“Dibs not driving,” Steve replies. “Tell them I said that.”
“We’ll be in the car,” Sam tells him, waving over his shoulder at Steve as he makes his way to the elevator. The first trip is a non-event, and Steve changes and grabs his bag without incident.
The second time the elevator opens to take him to the ground floor, Steve finds himself looking into Tony’s exhausted face.
By this point, Steve is so wiped he can’t manage any emotion except acceptance. “Dr. Stark.”
“Really? You’ve seen my dick.”
Steve sighs. “Tony.”
“There we go,” Tony says. He smiles over at him and Steve wonders if he’s been awake as long as Steve has. Not to mention the surgery- hours on his feet having to keep full focus at all times, not to mention the adrenaline that must’ve come along with it. Even with the obvious exhaustion there’s something in Tony’s face that Steve imagines racecar drivers must have after finishing a round.
“That was a great surgery,” Steve tells him.
“Thanks. She should pull through.” Tony tilts his head up and eyes the ceiling of the elevator. “Always good to give good news.”
Steve hums in agreement. He hasn’t had to tell anyone anything yet, and he’s dreading it. Or, he will dread it when he has the energy to have emotions again.
Tony asks, “So what do you want to go into? Let me guess- pediatrics.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Cardiologist.”
“Yeah? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
It’s the exhaustion, Steve thinks later. Or the fact that Tony manages to look attractive even when he’s covered in dried sweat. Or the fact that neither of them have been able to rest other than hasty naps in awkward places for over a day.
Whatever it is, Steve feels himself turn around and crowd Tony into the wall as gently as someone can push someone up against the side of an elevator. Tony looks at him, and he’s actually shockingly short, and he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something but Steve cuts him off with a kiss.
Tony makes a muffled noise against Steve’s mouth, but then his hands come up to touch Steve’s hair.
It only lasts a few seconds before Steve hears the telltale ding and he wrenches himself backwards. There’s no-one waiting for the elevator when it opens, but Steve doesn’t want to take chances.
When he looks back at Tony, he seems more dazed than Steve would expect.
“I take it you’ve thought about-”
“Yeah. I’m in.”
Tony nods. “Okay. Great. Good talk, Dr. Rogers,” he says, and the last part is with a raised voice and directed more at a passing doctor than at Steve.
Steve rolls his eyes again, but can’t help the smile that tugs at his warm mouth as he steps out of the elevator.
A week into their new arrangement, Steve is beginning to understand why Tony doesn’t date. They hardly have time to fool around, let alone get to know each other.
Which is why Steve is confused when he reflects how he knows Tony’s favourite food- pizza- and that his closest friends both work here with him and have ever since they were interns together. He knows Tony got a scar on the back of his hand from an accident involving scalpels when he was a kid, and that he has a rocky relationship with his father.
“When the hell do you even have time to find out these things,” Bucky asks when Steve mentions that Tony doesn’t use hair gel because he doesn’t like the texture.
“It just happens,” Steve says honestly.
“What, pillow talk?”
“No.” Usually they’re racing the clock, so there’s not much time to lie around afterwards, but they always- when they meet in the on-call room, they always rush their way through something that’s been bothering them today, or commenting on something that’s happened, and sometimes that leads to a conversation, or something akin to one. A halting, distracted conversation that happens as they get each other’s clothes off, but still.
Bucky says, “Don’t get in too deep, okay?”
“What? I’m not.”
“Okay.” Bucky mutters it into the lip of his beer. When he resurfaces from a drink, he says, “Knowing shit about him is fine. Just- don’t get too invested.”
Steve is kept busy enough that he doesn’t have much time to meet with Tony, much less to stress over the fact that he’s sleeping with his superior on a semi-regular basis.
He’s so busy that a few weeks into their arrangement, Steve is in the middle of getting his neck kissed when he finally gives in and pushes Tony back.
“I’m sorry, I probably should’ve cancelled, but I thought I’d be-” He stops and rubs a hand over his forehead. “I’m so tired. I don’t think I’m… up for anything.”
“Hey, fair enough.” Tony looks disappointed, but there’s nothing but understanding in his tone. “Uh, I’ll just-”
He starts to get up, but Steve catches his wrist. “I’m not kicking you out of an on-call room on the only break you’re going to get for hours,” he says as he lies down on the bunk. God, it feels so good to lie down.
“Take a nap,” Steve tells Tony when he just sits there with one foot on the floor, staring down at Steve.
Steve shuffles to the side, pressing against the wall to make room. Eventually Tony lies down beside him, and Steve would be thinking about how this probably violates some invisible terms of their agreement if he wasn’t being dragged into unconsciousness like he had rocks strapped to his feet.
When Steve wakes up, it’s to a beeping alarm and a narrow bed that’s empty apart from him.
He silences his alarm and forces himself out of bed, pushing down the urge to flop right back into it and stay there for the next eight hours.
It’s only when he realizes his phone is black that he looks down and sees his pager going off. He holds it up and his chest tightens when he reads the code and the room number.
By the time he gets there, things are already in full motion- there’s a nurse trying to herd Mr. Simmons out of the room with minimal success as Tony and another doctor try to get Mrs. Simmons’ heart beating again.
Steve goes straight for Mr. Simmons, who is close to wrestling the nurse away. Steve puts a hand on his shoulder. “Sir-”
“Why is this happening- you all said she’d be fine-”
“The best thing for you to do right now is to let us handle it,” Steve tries, keeping his voice calm and level like he’d been taught. It doesn’t help, and Steve is wondering if he’s going to have to join the nurse in keeping him back when the heart monitor goes from a continuous drone to a series of spaced beeps.
Mr. Simmons sags as he watches it.
Steve turns around. Mrs. Simmons’ chest is rising and falling, but her eyes are closed and Tony doesn’t look any less troubled than he did when he was shocking her back to life.
“What the hell was that,” Mr. Simmons croaks. He steps around the nurse, who looks like she doesn’t know whether to grab him or not, and walks up to Tony. “You said- you told us she could go home soon! That she’d be okay!”
“I said she had very good chances,” Tony says. Steve can see him trying to push the stress down. Tony continues, “We’ll run some tests to see why this happened. I promise, we’ll take care of your wife the best we can.”
Mr. Simmons’ eyes are full and shining as he surveys Tony dubiously. But then he’s giving a tight nod and allowing the nurse to escort him into the hall.
“It wasn’t anything you did.”
Tony glances at him, then back to the vending machine. “You don’t know that,” he says, and taps at the glass in front of a chocolate bar. “C’mon, you piece of shit.”
He bangs his palm against the glass and swears when it jiggles but ultimately stays in place.
“Hate this thing,” Tony mutters.
“I have food in my bag,” Steve offers.
Tony sighs. He steps back from the machine, giving it one last hateful look. “Fine. As long as it doesn’t have literal maggots in it, I’ll eat anything you give me.”
They walk in silence towards the elevator. There’s a doctor inside it when they get in, but she steps out onto the next floor they arrive at.
As soon as the elevator doors close, Tony says, “She’s brain-dead.”
Steve winces. “I heard.”
“Uh-huh.” Tony taps his fingers relentlessly against the surface of his watch. His nails click dully against it. “I keep going over every part of that damn surgery and everything that came after. I can’t see where we went wrong.”
“These things just happen,” Steve says, and holds back another wince at how condescending he sounds.
If Tony notices, he doesn’t react. His fingers continue tapping.
The elevator doors slide open and they start towards the locker room. It’s almost automatic now, the path they take- Steve only gets lost in the parts of the hospital he doesn’t frequent.
It’s only been a month, but Steve is at the hospital so often he feels like he lives here. He’s just glad it’s not like how it was when he was a kid- at least now he can move around and has endless things to do, which is both a blessing and a curse.
When they make it to the locker room, Steve rummages through his bag and comes out with a banana and a granola bar.
Tony takes the granola bar with a quiet ‘thanks’ and Steve puts the banana back in his bag for later, making a mental note to eat it before it goes brown. He’s not sure how long it’s been in his bag for.
“I’m just, uh. I’m off now, so I’m going to get changed.”
Tony waits. When Steve continues to look pointedly at him, Tony bites off the end of his granola bar and grins. It’s flimsy. “I’ve seen you naked dozens of times, Steve.”
“Yeah, but-” Steve sighs and starts pulling off his shirt. He reaches for his hoodie and pulls it over his bare chest. “Quit staring!”
“I’m not allowed to enjoy the view?” Tony leans against the lockers, still chewing. He swallows, says, “You’re weirdly insecure about this.”
Steve shrugs, keeping his gaze on his scrub pants as he steps out of them and starts pulling on his jeans. He knows he’s touchy about it- he prefers to get dressed straight after they spend time together, whereas Tony is comfortable walking around the on-call room without a stitch on.
“You shouldn’t be,” Tony continues, almost stiffly, like he isn’t sure he’s allowed to say it. “You’re, uh, nice to look at.”
Steve chances a look at him. He looks sincere, even though he’s shifting onto the balls of his feet and back again. “Thanks.”
It’s Tony’s turn to shrug. “You going home?”
Steve pulls on his backpack. “Yep.”
Tony’s head bobs in a sharp nod. His eyes train on a spot beside Steve’s shoulder. “Get some rest.”
“You, too,” Steve says slowly. Tony is still staring at the wall.
Steve takes a cautious step closer, small enough that it’s barely a step. “Hey, uh. Or you could come home with me and we could… not get rest.”
It’s not his best line, but Steve doesn’t have many lines anyway. At first he thinks he’s said the wrong thing, because Tony’s vulnerable and they still don’t know each other very well and Tony finally looks at him but Steve can’t tell if his expression is pleased or not.
But then Tony’s saying, “Okay,” and then clearing his throat. “I’m going to need sleep at some point, though. I know you can just go and go, but-”
Steve talks over him. “We can sleep.”
“Good.” Tony gives him a smile. It’s oddly endearing. “I remember your bed being comfy.”
They walk out of the lockers together and Steve wonders if he’s making a mistake. It doesn’t feel like one, but neither does having yet another shot when you’re already stinking drunk.
Steve wakes up alone.
There’s a brief moment where he remembers more or less kicking Tony out, back when he didn’t remember Tony’s name and the biggest thing on his mind was how his first shift was going to go.
He lies in bed for a minute, trying to pin down the tight feeling in his chest. Then he gets up and heads to the kitchen. Sam and Bucky are bickering over a pan of eggs as they cook and Natasha is sipping tea at the table.
She gives him an odd smile when she sees him, and Steve’s eyes are in the middle of narrowing when he spots Tony sitting a seat away from her.
Oh. Huh.
“Hi.”
“Morning,” Tony replies, slightly less awkwardly than Steve’s greeting. He’s drinking what looks like coffee from a mug that used to be Steve’s before the ownership of mugs started to blur around the house. “Uh, I can get out of here if you-”
“No, no.” Steve steps forwards and falters. “It’s fine.”
“Okay,” Tony says. His fingers tap rapidly against his mug.
From the stove, Sam takes a break from hissing at Bucky to ask, “Steve, you want eggs? We’re going scrambled-”
“-which are obviously shit when the alternate option is omelettes,” Bucky says over him.
“Omelettes take longer.”
“Your scrambled eggs are shit!”
“We’re not going into this again, Barnes, don’t make me-”
Steve sits down at the kitchen table in between Tony and Natasha. Natasha is trying to send him a look, but Steve ignores her. This gets harder when she starts nudging him under the table with her foot.
When she graduates to kicking, Steve clears his throat. “Any kind of eggs are fine, guys.”
Sam and Bucky don’t even look at him, too deep in their egg argument. They’re seconds away from wrestling.
“Whatever eggs you’re making,” Natasha calls, “They’re burning.”
Both Sam and Bucky dive for the spatula.
“Is it like this every morning,” Tony asks.
Steve looks over at him and has to swallow over a suddenly dry mouth. He’s seen Tony’s sleep-crumpled hair before, but for some reason it now strikes him as impossibly adorable.
“Only on the mornings we get days off,” Steve tells him. “Usually we’re too busy cramming breakfast and four showers in before we have to leave for the hospital.”
At the stove, Bucky and Sam’s argument has escalated to a yelling match.
“Guys,” Natasha yells over them. “Eggs! Burning!”
When Steve looks over at Tony again, he’s watching the men argue with something like fondness. “Jesus, I’m glad Pepper, me and Rhodey never had to live together. We’d kill each other.”
“It gets close,” Steve says, watching Sam viciously scrape the eggs onto several plates as Bucky glowers.
Tony’s mouth is open to say something else when his pager beeps. He makes a face and reaches down for it, swearing quietly as he reads the screen.
“I have to go,” he says, standing.
“Good, Steve can have your eggs,” Bucky says, distracted. “Guys, eggs are ready, come and get ‘em,” he continues, holding the frying pan out of Sam’s reach.
The pinching in Steve’s chest comes back with a vengeance as he watches Tony move for the door.
“Hey,” he says, and Tony pauses to look back.
Steve hesitates, but then moves to the fruit bowl and tosses Tony an orange. “‘Cause you didn’t get your eggs.”
Tony fumbles, but catches it. He blinks down at the orange like he isn’t sure what to make of it, which is fine, because Steve doesn’t know either.
“Thanks,” Tony says, and gives a little wave with the hand holding the orange before he opens the front door and leaves.
Steve picks up his plate of eggs from the bench and returns to the table, where Natasha is eyeing him as she chews her own eggs.
“Dude,” Sam says. He’s stopped reaching for the frying pan even though Bucky’s let it drop to his side, both so they can look at Steve.
“What? I gave him an orange.”
“No, you care that he didn’t get breakfast.”
“It’s basic human decency!”
“He could pick something up on the way to work, man, you don’t know.”
Steve ignores them. When Natasha’s foot bumps into his, he prepares himself for a kick. Instead, Natasha’s foot stays pressed against his as if offering comfort.
When Steve walks into Mrs. Simmons’ room the next day on rounds and finds a different patient in the room, he doesn’t think much of it. Patients get shuffled around rooms all the time, and Steve busies himself with answering questions correctly when Coulson asks.
When Steve texts Tony to ask if they can meet up in the on-call room and half an hour and he gets a ‘no’ in response, Steve assumes Tony is either tired or busy. Which is fair enough- Steve thinks Tony works just as much as Steve, which isn’t supposed to happen once the intern stage is over. God, Steve can’t wait for the intern stage to be over.
It’s only when he asks Coulson about Mrs. Simmons that he gets a sense something is wrong. Coulson’s pen pauses on his paperwork, but he doesn’t look up. “We were forced to pull the plug on her yesterday. She had signed a request for us to do so in the event that anything like this happened.”
“Oh,” Steve says, and proceeds to feel more than a little guilty when his first thought is for Tony and not for the woman who died.
Coulson glances up at him, then back to his paperwork. “Go help the nurses. We’re understaffed today.”
“Yessir,” Steve says. When he gets to the nurse’s station, he only gets halfway through ‘how can I help’ before someone is giving him a list of rooms he needs to clean out the bedpans of.
Two hours pass before he gets anything resembling a rest. It’s more of a hurried toilet break that he takes when he’s in the middle of three separate tasks, but he locks himself in a stall and unpockets his phone.
You okay?
He stares at the text for ten seconds before sending it to Tony- is he overstepping a boundary? Is he being clingy? Is this allowed?
His main reason for sending it is being in a rush. He clicks send and then spends the next four hours being too busy to focus on anything that isn’t the numerous things he’s been told to do.
The end of his shift sneaks up on him. By the time he realizes he can leave, it’s ten minutes past the time he should’ve clocked out.
He checks his phone as he speedwalks towards the lockers. He already has two texts, one from Bucky and one from Nat, both telling him they’ll drive home without him if he doesn’t get here soon.
There’s nothing from Tony.
It worms its way into Steve’s head as he changes out of his scrubs. Tony’s just as busy as Steve. And if he’s been in surgery since before Steve sent the text, he wouldn’t been able to check his phone anyway. And even if he has checked it, that doesn’t mean he has the time to reply to a text he probably doesn’t think is worth answering, or doesn’t want to answer.
As Steve heads for the elevator that will take him to the ground floor, he spots the back of a familiar head out of the corner of his eye.
He slows and stops. Tony’s busy talking to a man and it looks heated. He wouldn’t appreciate Steve butting in to check how he’s doing.
Still, Steve stays and watches Tony through the glass that separates the room and the hallway. They’re in an empty patient room and Steve can hear the voices of the two men rising. As Steve continues to stare, he realizes that Tony isn’t the only familiar one in that room. Where has he seen the other-
Mr. Simmons reaches into his jacket. At first Steve thinks he must be seeing things, interpreting it wrong, because he can just see the back of Tony’s head as he moves. Steve can’t see what Mr. Simmons is holding, though he can see how he’s holding it.
But what Steve can see is the sudden forced calm that has made its way into Tony’s posture. He’s raising his hands, holding them out in front of him and taking a careful step back. Through the glass, Steve watches Tony’s mouth move. It’s slow at first, and Steve can almost hear the measured calm coming from Tony’s lips. Then his mouth moves faster and Steve thinks he sees Tony mouth the word please-
The din of it makes Steve jerk in unison with Tony. But unlike Steve- who stays shock-still and disbelieving- Tony staggers and falls out of Steve’s line of sight.
With Tony out of view, Steve can finally see Mr. Simmons. He jolts again as his gaze lands on the gun, which is still raised-
Oh, god, it’s raised at him. Steve’s veins turn to ice even until he looks up to see Mr. Simmons’ face. It’s directed down at Tony, dazed.
Steve immediately drops to the floor, pressing against a rack of supplies. He can’t seem to think in coherent sentences. Most of his inner dialouge is a mix of shitshitshit and Tony and oh god.
It’s only when a door opens and closes that Steve realizes he probably should’ve ran into the closest room instead of hiding behind a rack of medical supplies. He goes rigid, wanting to squeeze his eyes shut but not being able to. He presses himself hard into the wall and bunches up his knees to his chest.
Surely Mr. Simmons will be able to hear him breathing- or he’ll want to go this way and will come across Steve and raise the gun again and this time when he points it at him it won’t be through a pane of glass without knowing Steve is there-
Footsteps sound down the hall. Steve listens as another door opens and closes and can’t help but think that Mr. Simmons is walking oddly calmly for a man who just shot a surgeon in a public building filled with people.
Slowly, Steve peeks out to survey the hall. It’s empty.
God, he thinks. Then: Tony.
He shoves himself to his feet and sprints to the door. His hands are shaking, so it takes him two tries to turn the knob before he bursts in.
“God.” This time Steve can’t stop the word from spilling.
Tony flinches and stares up at him, eyes wide and pained and terrified. He has both hands over his left side, but they’re more hovering than anything, like if he doesn’t touch it then there isn’t a hole in him after all.
Steve falls to his knees beside him. “Tony, we need to put pressure on that.”
Tony continues to stare at him. A noise leaks out of his throat.
Steve casts his gaze around the room desperately. Surely there’s something-
He shrugs out of his jacket. “Tony? I’m going to need you to hold this against it for a few seconds while I go and get supplies.”
Tony makes another noise, flinching when Steve nears the wound with his jacket.
“I know it hurts, I’m sorry,” Steve tries. He moves Tony’s hands away gently, then presses the jacket against the bullet hole.
Tony makes a choked howl, but lets Steve guide his shaking hands to the balled-up jacket and applies pressure when Steve tells him to.
“Doing great,” Steve tells him. He swipes a hand across his forehead. He’s already sweating. “Stay there, okay? Keep pushing. I’ll be back in a few seconds.”
He squeezes Tony’s wrist and then rushes back outside to the supply rack he had cowered beside. He grabs for gauze and tape and then stares at the rack. That can’t be all, there’s more he needs, why the fuck can’t he think of anything, he went to med school for how many years-
Just stopping the bleeding, Steve reminds himself. Not performing surgery. Breathe.
He races back into the room and goes to his knees again. “Hey, hey. I’m here. Give me a second.”
One of his knees is in the pool of blood. He shuffles out of it, but his knee leaves bloody prints on the linoleum.
“It went through.”
Steve doesn’t pause, but he slows in tearing open a strip of gauze. “What?”
Tony grunts. He still looks like he’s in shock, but his eyes are tracking. “Bullet. It went through me.”
“Oh! Good,” Steve says weakly as he lifts Tony’s scrub shirt. Sure enough, there’s a raw hole in Tony’s side that’s mirrored in the front of Tony’s side and his back. “Okay. Good.”
“Doesn’t feel good.”
“Yeah, I bet not,” Steve says. He can’t look away from it. He’s seen things like this before, but not when he wasn’t prepared for it, not with anyone he knows-
“Didn’t-” Tony grits his teeth as Steve straps gauze over both holes. He makes a sound like a sob. “Didn’t, ah, get any organs. Sh-should be okay if I don’t bleed out.”
“That’s- very comforting.” Steve tries to laugh. It comes out more as a wheeze.
“You okay?”
“You just got shot. I should be-” Steve has to duck his head. He gulps air and leans away, scrabbling at his pocket. He shoves his inhaler in his mouth and takes a drag. “Guh.”
“I’ve never been so attracted to you.”
“This isn’t funny,” Steve tells him. It’s only when Tony takes his hand that Steve realizes both their hands are shaking and both are bloody.
“I’m either going to joke about this or I’m going to have a panic attack.”
“Joking it is,” Steve says. “Can you get up?”
“Should we get up? Is Simmons still around?”
Steve opens his mouth and stops. Then he curses. “God, I’m an idiot,” he says, and digs out his phone. He dials 911 and waits.
“911, what’s your em-”
“We’re at New York Methodist,” Steve says. “There’s been a shooting-”
“We’re already aware of that situation, sir, a team is on their way. Right now you have to find somewhere safe, lock the doors and-”
“A doctor’s been shot.”
“We know, sir-”
“No, I mean he’s right here, he’s been shot, he needs medical help and we don’t know if we can go anywhere without getting killed!”
A pause. “The reports that have been coming in have said that the gunman is sitting alone in a room in the West Wing, but he could go on the move anytime and everything is on lockdown until we can apprehend him. What’s your location?”
“Uh.” Steve looks behind him at the number on the closed door. “West Wing, room 203.”
“A team will be at your location as soon as possible. Please stay on the line so I can transfer you to someone who can advise you about the medical situation. Is the doctor conscious?”
“Oh, we don’t need- we’re both doctors, we don’t need medical advising. Do we need medical advising?”
He directs the question at Tony, who looks bemused through the pain.
“If I pass out, then yes. Not that I think you’re incapable-”
“No, I get it. And you’re shot, you can hardly be rational about your own medical care. We’ll stay on the line,” Steve tells the operator. “But we’ve done all we can, what Tony needs now is surgery. Unless you can give us that over the phone, I think we’re good on medical advice.”
The operator tells them to stay on the line in case anything further happens. Steve agrees, and they fall into silence.
Steve lets the phone rest beside him on the ground, away from the blood. Not that it helps- the blood covering his hands had transferred onto the phone, so it’s now tacky with drying blood.
“Okay,” Tony says, strained. “So now we just hope Simmons doesn’t come back to finish the job before the cops get here.”
“We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
“Mm,” Tony hums. He’s gazing up at Steve, muscles in his face and neck flexing with the pain. “You just starting or just finishing?”
Steve takes a second to get what that means and why Tony asked it. He looks down at his scrub-less-clothing. “I was leaving, but then I saw- I saw you.”
Steve tries not to remember how Tony had said please, how his body had jerked with the bullet entering his side, how Steve hadn’t known where the bullet had hit and if Tony was even alive until he saw him on the floor blinking up at him.
Tony hums again. His gaze transfers to the wall behind Steve. “You should go,” he says.
“What?”
“You should go,” Tony repeats. “If he comes back-”
“What if you pass out?”
“What can you do if I do? You can’t leave.”
“I can if-”
“If you want to get shot.”
“I-” Steve works his jaw and stands. “I’ll shove the desk in front of the door. Good enough?”
“He could shoot us through the window.”
Steve looks up at the glass. Well. “I’ll hide under the bed.”
“He could come in and-”
“Did you not hear my plan about the desk?”
“Steve-”
“I’m not leaving,” Steve says, loud enough that they both hush up and stare at the door. Steve looks back when he feels a squeeze on his hand. Their joined hands are resting on the floor between them.
Tony is staring at him. There’s a smudge of blood in his goatee and Steve doesn’t know how- did Tony touch his face with bloody hands? Did Steve?
“You’re a surprise,” Tony tells him.
“I’m a what?”
“A welcome surprise,” Tony says. Then, closing his eyes: “Ignore me, it’s the blood loss and tremendous amount of endorphins talking.”
Steve pinches his wrist gently. “Hey, keep those eyes open.”
“‘M not passing out, Steve. I can rest my eyes,” Tony says, but his eyes flicker open obediently. This time his gaze focuses on the wall. “I was going to break things off.”
At first Steve doesn’t follow the sudden change of topic. Then it clicks. “Oh. We’re, um, talking about this right now?”
“Nothing like a possibly imminent death to-” Tony shifts and then stills, tensing. “Jesus fuck.”
“Don’t move.”
“‘M not,” Tony croaks. He wets his lips, breathes out thinly. Steve tries not to think about how much it must hurt just to breathe.
“Things were getting, uh.” Tony pauses, breathes in and out slowly. “I don’t- I don’t date. No-one has the time. I honestly can’t put in the effort of getting to know someone unless we’re stuck in the same place every day. Which is, it, it can happen here. So that’s fine. But mostly it, uh. I try not to get attached to people? Romantically? It’s, it’s a thing.”
He stops, drags in a few more slow breaths.
Steve sits and waits. “Okay.”
“I might be getting attached to you,” Tony says. “Romantically. So.”
Steve’s chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with the gunman that may or may not kill them any second. “So?”
“So,” Tony repeats. “I was going to break things off.”
“Was?”
Tony is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Figured I should get your input on the situation. Y’know. In case.”
Steve is about to say something like good idea when the door opens.
Why didn’t we hear footsteps- on instinct, Steve feels himself jerk forwards so the brunt of his body is covering Tony’s. Below him, Tony meets his wide eyes. His lips part.
“In here,” comes a yell.
Steve twists. There’s a man in a SWAT uniform standing back to make way for a man in a similar uniform and a medical kit.
“I’m fine,” Steve says when the man eyes the blood on Steve’s clothes and hands. “It’s him, he’s been shot. The bullet missed his organs-”
Steve moves away to give the man access, letting go of Tony’s hand to do so.
When Steve sees his roommates, they all turn to him in horror.
“None of it’s mine,” Steve assures them. “I’m fine-”
That’s as far he gets before finds himself tackled under the weight of Bucky’s hug.
“Don’t hog him,” Sam says, and throws his arms around Steve the second Bucky lets go.
Natasha doesn’t hug him, but she grabs his shoulders and kisses his cheeks with almost vicious intensity. She hisses something through her teeth in Russian at him, then lets him go.
“You too, I guess,” Steve says.
“They wouldn’t let us text you in case you were hiding and the shooter heard your phone go off,” Sam says in a rush. “What happened? All they would tell us was that you were on the same floor as the shooter.”
“Yeah.” Steve pockets his hands; fingers his inhaler. “I, uh. I actually saw it.”
“You saw him shoot Stark?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. He has to clear his throat. “He should be fine,” he says when everyone’s mouths open again. “They’re taking him into surgery now. It was a through-and-through, didn’t hit any organs. I’m just glad Mr. Simmons is a bad shot and- and didn’t think to shoot him a couple more times to make sure he did the job.”
In his mind, Tony’s body jerks, his back to Steve through the glass screen. He falls, over and over.
Bucky’s hand on his shoulder brings him back. “You helped Stark? That’s how the-” he gestures at Steve’s clothes and hands, which are flecking with dried blood.
“I didn’t do much. Just stopped the bleeding,” Steve says. He tries for casual, but he guesses that his expression is giving him away, if the looks of his friends are anything to go by.
Sam asks, “You’re allowed to go home now, right?”
Steve nods. “They’re letting me take the day off tomorrow.”
“Aw,” Bucky says. It looks like he’s going to continue with a truly inappropriate joke, but his mouth snaps shut when they all pin him with a look. “Uh. Good for you, take some time off. Wait, they’re just giving you a day?”
Steve shrugs. The exhaustion is coming back now in waves, zeroing in on him after being pushed back by adrenaline. “Can we go? I’m at the stage where I genuinely might fall asleep in the car.”
“We’ll paper-scissors rock on who carries you in,” is Natasha’s instant reply.
He’s dozing when he gets carried from the car but he thinks Sam lost the game, if the black arm his face is mushed against is anything to go by.
Steve wakes up at noon the next day. When he pads out into the kitchen, there’s a store-bought muffin with a post-it attached to the bag that says ‘glad you didn’t get shot’ with what looks like a sunglasses emoji scribbled next to it.
He picks bits out of the muffin and eats it. Then he showers, taking ten glorious minutes to glee over the fact that no-one’s yelling at him about how soon they have to leave.
He spends a good two hours attempting to channel-surf and not paying attention to anything he’s watching before he gives in and goes to the hospital. His roommates are using the car, so he takes a bus and gets off at the nearest stop.
When he gets to the front desk, he clears his throat. “Hey, Betty.”
Betty looks up from her computer. When she notices him, she squints. “Jeez, you look weird without scrubs. Aren’t you supposed to be off today?”
“Yeah, uh.” Steve pockets his hands. “I’m here to see T- Dr. Stark.”
Betty’s mouth twitches and Steve uneasily remembers the rumour that nurses know everything that goes on in the hospital and gossip about it when doctors aren’t listening. “Yuh-huh,” she says, but she gives him the floor and room number.
Someone’s already in the room when Steve walks in. He lingers by the door.
It’s Pepper, rolling her eyes fondly as she says something that coaxes a laugh from Tony. Steve sees Pepper around the hospital, but he sees most doctors around the hospital- he’s talked to her once or twice, but only about medicine. Last week, she had rode an elevator with him and he’d thought he felt her eyes on him, but whenever he looked her way she was examining her nails.
Tony spots him first. His laugh trails off, his eyes widening. “Steve.”
“Hi,” Steve says, stepping in. “I can come back-”
“No, stay.” Pepper smiles at him, warmly enough that Steve doesn’t remember to smile back until he gets over the surprise. “I should’ve left five minutes ago, anyway. Don’t let him take out his IV,” she mentions as she passes Steve into the hall.
Steve frowns at Tony as he approaches. “Why would you take out your IV?”
“I just-” Tony sighs down at his arm where the needle sticks into his skin. “I really hate them. I hate putting them in people, I hate having them. It’s not even a needle thing, I’m fine with shots. I never got my IV hatred.”
Steve nods. He sits down in the chair Pepper had been sitting in. There’s another chair next to it, which Steve assumes had been Rhodey’s seat at some point. “I heard your surgery went well.”
“Yeah? Who told you that? I thought they told you to stay home today.”
“I got my roommates to text me about it,” Steve admits. “And, uh. I wanted to see you.”
Tony’s expression flickers. “Well, here I am.”
“There you are,” Steve agrees. He pauses, rubs his hands over his jeans and remembers the slickness of Tony’s blood on his skin. He swallows and looks back up at Tony, at the wound that’s covered by the sheet pulled up to Tony’s chest.
“I’m- I’m glad you’re okay.”
Tony’s face softens. “Thanks. I’m glad you didn’t get shot being a hero.”
“Anyone would’ve done it.”
“No, some people would’ve run to the first place with a lock and stayed there.”
“Well, I wouldn’t.”
“I know. You wouldn’t do that to anyone.” Tony smiles, fleeting and nervous. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”
Steve takes a breath. You’ve seen him naked. You’ve seen him sleeping and bleeding and coming, you can have this conversation. “I like you, too. A lot.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. The next words shrivel in his throat, but then he remembers Tony jerking and falling; how lucky they were that the bullet didn’t hit anywhere important or Tony would have taken his last breath in Steve’s arms. If that had happened, Steve would- he’d-
“I probably would’ve agreed, if you said we should break it off a few days ago.”
Tony’s small smile thins into nothing. “…Oh.”
“I’d be wrong,” Steve rushes to say. “I’d regret it, I’d- I’d end up kissing you in an elevator again before the week was out. But before I saw you get-”
He can’t say it, but he moves ahead anyway. “Before, I would’ve thought it was a bad idea, us being together as anything other than what we were. But lately, it’s been- I’ve been- I think it might be a good idea, to try it. To try us.”
Tony’s throat works. He’s not smiling again, but his eyes are bright with something like joy. “It could crash and burn.”
“I guess.”
“It’d be a scandal.”
“I think the nurses already know.”
“We work together. What if we break up and-”
“It’s a big hospital,” Steve says, swallowing a laugh. “I’m sure we could avoid each other.”
Tony gives him a dubious look, but his lips are curving upwards. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll date. You can finally take me somewhere that isn’t an on-call room.”
“Excuse me? I’m a broke intern. You’re a hotshot doctor, you take me out.”
Tony says, “Deal.”