I Won't Let Go Of Your Hand
Tony had his hand in Bucky's as they both stood on one side of Steve's hospital bed, Shuri on the other side with a large syringe filled with a bright blue liquid. "You ready? I'm positive that I have the calculations right this time and he won't blow up."
Bucky wordlessly nodded as Tony just stood there frozen, having waited nearly a full month for Shuri to check, double check, triple check, and even quadruple check her experiments to make sure that the amount of proto-serum to blood was balanced on the fine line between not enough and blowing up. Tony watched as Shuri lined up the syringe with the entrance into the IV tube and hesitated, checking over math and equations in her head. "Just put it in already, PLEASE!" Before she could chicken out, Shuri started to press the end of the giant needle and Tony and Bucky watched. as the blue liquid slowly trailed through the tube until all of it was inside of Steve's body. The three of them held their breath, waiting for Steve to blow up or something, but they just waited for something to happen as Steve's skin turned gray. Tony grabbed Steve's hand in a panic, but quickly pulled it back because of the sticky blackish liquid coming out of every one of Steve's pores. Soon, all of the black stuff was sloughing off in gel-like sheets, taking the dry and cracked skin with it as Tony brushed it gently away so that it wouldn't cover Steve's mouth or nose, despite the tube keeping him breathing. The whole bed was covered in black gel and dead skin, but Steve was left with raw, barely new skin covering up his old wounds, the scars that were going to be left behind obvious now. Tony went pale with panic and looked up at Shuri. "Why isn't he healing properly? What's wrong?" Before she could answer though, Steve's skin twitched, moving very slowly to cover places that had started to bleed again or were leaking a clear yellowish liquid. "Thank god." Bucky sighed in relief and hugged Tony, silently thanking him. "Thanks Buck. You really saved him."
Bucky shook his head. "You and Shuri created the serum Eds."
"It was your blood though that saved him Buck." Tony jostled Bucky's shoulders playfully. "And here I was three months ago, almost getting you killed in Bucharest."
Bucky rolled his eyes and let out a dry, mocking laugh. "Ha ha, very funny. I will never allow you to drive me anywhere ever again and I'm pretty sure that you have convinced me that I hate flying too."
Tony laughed, audibly relieved that Steve would be waking up soon and hugged Bucky again. "Don't worry. I'll take you for a real fly soon and your mind will change about that part."
Bucky smiled, looking down at Steve's face, finally going from unconscious to just temporarily sleeping. "I'll have to take you up on that offer after Steve wakes up."
"I'm going to keep you to that someday." Tony let his hand fall from Bucky's shoulders to walk over to Steve, just calmly watching the miniscule movements of the super soldier's skin. "Shuri, I'm staying here until he wakes up and you can't stop me."
Shuri grinned when she made to walk out of the room. "I wasn't even thinking about stopping you. I think it would be best if you watched over him." She grabbed the doorknob, and started walking out while waving a hand over she'd shoulder blindly. "It's easier to have a specialist watching over him just in case something goes wrong. I've got to go because I haven't slept or had a good solid slice of pizza unnecessarily brought here from New York in a long while." She waved as she slipped out of the door. "Make sure Bucky sleeps if the Captain doesn't wake up in the next seven or eight hours. And remember to take out the breathing tube soon."
Bucky just rolled his eyes and sat down on his favorite chair in Steve's room, watching the rise and fall of the blonde's chest, quietly counting the breaths in the corner of the room. Tony on the other hand was just sat in his usual chair that was pushed right up against Steve's bed. The black goop had been quickly deflating, evaporating and turning into dust, so Tony slowly brushed the remnants off of Steve's face and arms. He brushed all of it off of the bed onto the floor with the promise that he would clean it up later, but the damn stuff left black smears all over like charcoal, so Tony just left the smears that he couldn't do anything about. He picked up Steve's hand, watching the broken skin heal and the mess of scars up to his hand start forming. The scarring on his hands was almost as bad as the scarring that would start showing soon on his legs, but it didn't matter, because to Tony, nothing could change how perfect this man was. "Congratulations Angel. You're going to wake up soon and be able to walk around. You might have some problems with it at first since you've been asleep for a long time, but I know that's not going to stop you because you're a Capsicle, the most stubborn man on the planet. Well, second most stubborn because there's still me to think about and I can be a little dick sometimes."
Bucky paused his counting to look at Tony, just saying, "Jar" before picking up again.
Tony sighed, pulling out a dollar and shoving it into the swear jar on Steve's bedside table. "You know Angel, I thought this was a private conversation for a moment." He shot a glance over his shoulder at Bucky who was mumbling his numbers, then he turned back to Steve. "I guess it's not right now, but in the first moment possible, I'm going to steal you away from this place and take you for some tacos or pizza. I don't know which one you prefer, but according to JARVIS the last time we talked about three months ago, you have a surprising liking for junk food. I really didn't expect that from you, but we can always just go out to some joint in the middle of Nevada to grab some good old fashioned cheeseburgers. Hey, that's actually a pretty good idea. I'll plan the trip, try and get something set up for the both of us to block Wanda's powers so we aren't getting mind controlled the second we step out of Wakanda. Or how about going to New York for shawarma. I know how stupid that sounds because of the risk of being caught, but we could send a message to those council bastards about not messing with the Avengers while letting our team know that we are still coming so save them. See Angel, I can make plans and build strategies, you aren't the only one." Tony sighed, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. "You're still the best at it though, so I'm going to need your help if we want to do that. Or we could just eat here. I don't know what we should do, you've been asleep for so long and I'm not sure you even know what's going on around you. It gets lonely over here on this side of life, even with your little puppy to keep me company. By puppy I mean Bucky since he followed me around like a puppy for the first few days. It was pretty funny, but I guess I can't judge because I'm probably going to do the same to you when you wake up. There is no way in hell that anything will get me to let go of your hand because I trust you Angel and I will never leave you." Tony leaned forward to place a light kiss on Steve's forehead, then let his head fall into the blonde's chest lightly, taking a deep breath to calm his pounding heart. "I love you Steven Rogers. More than my own life. More than anything in the world. So please, come back to me and never fly away ever again."