Chapter 1
“Fury expects me to yell at you two for skipping the debrief today,” Steve said as he stepped into the common room of the Avengers tower, followed closely by Thor, Natasha, and Bruce. Clint was still wearing his suit, his hair smoking and singed, and Tony beside him in the skin tight suit he wore under the armor. They had their feet up on the coffee table and were playing videogames.
When the Avengers first moved into his tower, Tony made an impressive effort to distance himself from them, constantly coming up with excuses to be down in the lab or out of the building entirely. Over time though, he had grown comfortable, perhaps even happy, with the domesticity of his new life.
“Go ahead,” Clint replied as he took out his hearing aids. Tony suppressed a giggle, knowing his reaction would only irritate Steve more. Beside him, Bruce flopped down in an armchair looking exhausted, and Thor sat on the opposite side of him. Steve and Natasha remained standing.
“We’re meant to be doing debriefs as a team, not just missions. We have to go over how we can improve for next time,” Steve continued, stepping in front of the TV.
“Come on Cap, you just lost us the level!” Tony whined, setting his controller down on the table and looking up at him. “In my professional opinion, I did everything flawlessly. I don’t know what you want me to improve on.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nat roll her eyes, but she said nothing.
“Hawkeye jumped out of a building without warning!” Steve said, raising his voice in annoyance. He didn’t move.
“First of all Cap, you’re one to talk, you do that every other mission. Second of all, I caught him!” Tony shot back.
“I knew Tony would catch me,” Clint added. Of course he had been reading their lips the entire time. “It was a very elaborate trust fall.”
“What if one day Tony doesn’t catch you?” Steve asked, turning to Clint.
“Just because you don’t trust me enough to have your back, Rogers, doesn’t mean everybody else feels the same,” Tony retorted, getting up to leave.
“That’s not what I meant Tony,” Steve pleaded, his voice softer. The sudden change in tone made him almost consider staying, but only almost.
“I remember trust falls from when I was a kid,” Bruce offered, trying to distract the two.
“Holy crap Bruce you have the best ideas,” Clint exclaimed. That got Tony’s attention enough to turn around. Steve was looking at him intently, but Tony didn’t meet his eyes. Instead he looked to where Clint was running with a blanket over to the bar. He beckoned for the others to join him, before he climbed up to the balcony which hung over the bar.
“Clint, I don’t know what you remember, but this is not how we did trust falls back in my day,” Bruce commented, as Clint instructed them to each take a corner of the blanket. It created a net under the balcony.
Tony nodded in the direction of the rest of the team, signaling for Steve to join them. He was about to follow, when he realized that there were only four corners of the blanket, and five of them. The math left him out. Instead, he leaned against the nearest wall to watch, staying clear of them.
“See Steve? I trust all of you to catch me,” Clint said, as he climbed up on the railing of the balcony. Steve sighed, but nodded at him as he grabbed his own corner of the blanket.
Clint turned his back to his teammates, letting himself fall from the balcony and land with a bounce on the blanket they all held. He whooped in exhilaration, rolling off the blanket with a grin so wide Tony was sure he would be stuck like that for all of eternity.
“Okay, my turn,” Nat announced, handing her corner of the blanket to Clint. Instead of standing on the railing however, she put her hands on the railing and lifted her legs over her head into a handstand, much like a gymnast on a bar would. This earned her many cheers from the team, and Tony smiled, but stayed silent. Clint shouted a countdown, and Nat let herself fall onto the blanket with incredible grace.
“Do you think it would be possible to hold my weight?” Thor asked, handing his corner to Natasha. Tony, seeing he wasn’t needed, started quietly towards the door.
“Of course we can,” Clint scoffed. “Tony, get over here!” he called, and Tony froze. He didn’t expect his teammates to notice his absence for at least another half hour. Not that he was complaining.
Tony pushed down the feeling of warmth blooming in his chest at the sudden inclusion, walking over to join his his team. He reached for the middle of the blanket, between Nat and Bruce, where muscle was more noticeably lacking than between Clint and the supersoldier.
Thor’s impact caught Tony off guard, but together the team kept him from dropping onto the ground. Thor jumped up and demanded to go again, and for a second Tony was afraid he would smash something, but he seemed to have learned after the coffee incident in New Mexico.
Afterwards, Clint begged like a puppy to go again, until Nat pointed out that neither Tony nor Steve had been.
“Oh, I don’t know…” Steve said quickly, which earned him several questioning looks from his team members. Clint opened his mouth to push, but Tony jumped in before he could.
“I’ll go,” he offered. He gave Steve a small smile and a nod, a silent message that whatever it was that was bothering Steve, Tony understood. Steve looked like he was about to hug him as thanks, or say something nice (neither of which Tony was overly excited about, because eww feelings). Tony quickly escaped up the stairs, taking them them two steps at a time.
When he stood at the edge, however, Tony immediately cursed himself for, as always, trying to help without thinking about how it affected him. It wasn’t heights, he had always liked heights. Imagine flying the Iron Man suit with a fear of heights. No, Tony was afraid of falling. It was one of the many repercussions of his little stunt in New York.
“Come on Tony, we’ll catch you!” Clint called, as Tony staggered away from the edge. Murmurs of agreement joined him, but it did nothing to quell the rising panic. All he could think of was falling forever and ever, and being completely alone, and cold and dark emptiness.
“I know,” Tony whispered to himself, incapable of bringing his voice to an audible level. The edges of his vision went blurry, and Tony reminded himself to breathe. On his right wrist, he wore a watch which pulsed lightly against his wrist with every second, a birthday gift from Rhodey after he found out Tony was struggling with panic attacks. He closed his eyes and focused on it, breathing in for four seconds, and out for three, with a break for one second. Soon he found he could see straight again, but below him the rest of his team grew more restless.
“Anthony, you trust us, do you not?” Thor queried. Tony felt guilt begin to war with panic for his attention, and slowly he approached the railing again, gripping it hard.
“We’re going to catch you Tony,” Nat said, frowning. Tony understood it was meant to be reassuring, but it felt more like a slap in the face after Tony had done this just to get Steve out of a similar situation. He sighed, knowing it was pointless in being angry with them. From their point of view he could imagine it looking like he didn’t trust them.
Tony had trust issues, and had had trust issues for as long as he remembered. But after they bonded over the end of the world, he had thrown his usual reservations out the window. This wasn't an issue of trust, this was an issue of him feeling like he was going to die all over again. He would appreciate not having his somewhat regular panic attacks being out in the open. They wouldn’t be the first people to think he was just overacting, and Tony wasn’t sure he could take that from people he already cared so deeply for.
It was Steve who finally spoke up, with frustration seeping into his voice, and asked, “If you can’t trust us to catch you now, how can you trust us during missions?” The same annoyance was visible on the faces of his other teammates, and he realized panic was beginning to push its way up again, but this time it was for fear of disappointing the team. Tony finally gave into the pressure and climbed onto the railing, sitting with his feet dangling off the edge.
Tony’s breathing sped up, and he tried to stay and go through with it, but his vision blurred again and nausea rushed over him. He almost fell backwards as he scrambled to get off the railing, and squeezed it tight to make sure he didn’t fall as he stumbled down the steps. He heard the voices of the other Avengers, but they were drowned out by the sound of his heart beating in his ears, and ignored them as he headed for the elevator, and then the lab.
“JARVIS, lockdown the lab, six hours,” Tony gasped as he stepped out of the elevator, promptly collapsing on the cold floor. He was shaking, and felt tears run down his eyes. In the background, he could hear JARVIS reciting the location, date, time, before moving on to questioning Tony on scientific laws and vocabulary to distract him. Dum-E wheeled over to him and patted his back with his metal claw. He was rarely as grateful for his genius as when JARVIS and his bots helped him through a panic attack, or woke him up during a nightmare. And they wouldn’t leave, unlike so many people had after New York.
Fifteen minutes later, Tony drifted into an exhausted sleep on the floor, which was where Bruce found him in the morning.