Author's Note: Good morning/afternoon/night! =)

I read this fic a while back for a 5+1 thing where the prompt was five times so and so cared for themselves and the one time that they didn't have to, so I'm basing this off of the idea of that one (which for the life of me has proven to be quite elusive). Anyway, I hope that you guys enjoy it! =)

Summary: Or, alternatively, five times Tony cared for himself and the one time that he didn't have to.

Rated for: Implied/referenced child abuse, Howard's A+ parenting, references to alcoholism and drug addictions, minor violence, references to PTSD, and paranoia on my part.

Just a personal note, if you could refrain from using cussing/strong language if you comment (no offense to how you speak! Promise! =) It just makes me uncomfortable) I would greatly appreciate that. ;)

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Sorry for any grammar/spelling errors! =)

For your information this is cross-posted on Archive of Our Own under the pen name of "GalaxyThreads".

Yet Even Metal Must Be Oiled:

It's bleeding and it hurts a lot, and he really wishes that someone would wrap it in a band aid and make it all better. He's not stupid, he knows that kissing a wound doesn't actually giving it healing properties, but the thought of someone helping his palm to stop bleeding appeals a lot. He doesn't know how to make it stop, even though he's applied pressure and he's wrapped it (without a bandaid, he's not tall enough to reach the top shelf yet) and it keeps leaking blood everywhere.

At this point, he would usually go find Jarvis, but the butler went home for the night because his family was having a birthday party (Tony wanted to go with him and see what that was like—he's heard that they have cake, but Jarvis insisted he stay home, even when Tony pouted) so going to him isn't an option. But it hurts. And he wants it to be better.

Tony bites back a cry of pain as he presses the paper towel further into the wound and carefully treks his way across the hallway. It shouldn't even hurt this bad, it was more of a scratch, really. A scratch that bled and bled and bled.

Ow. Ow. Ow.

Tony thins his lips tightly together and advances towards the office, trying to build up courage—he can do this. He's five years old, for pete's sake, he can be brave and ask his dad for help. He just has to be like Captain America.

Resolve settled, Tony moves forward and presses his uninjured hand against the door, shoving it open slowly. His dad's office is always a mess of scrambled parts and bright lights that make his eyes hurt, but today seems worse than usual. Papers are strewn to and fro and Tony can immediately pick out the distinct sharp smell of alcohol.

His mom's gonna be angry at his dad again. She doesn't like it when he drinks.

They yell at each other a lot.

Tony doesn't like it.

It makes him uncomfortable and scared.

Tony takes a tentative step into the room, peaking for the familiar gray hair of the scientist, "Dad?" He questions softly, "Dad?"

He takes a few more steps and moves towards the table set up in the middle of the room. It's where the current blare of light is focused and it's set up like some sort of weird castle-thingy. Tony doesn't know what it is, but he wants to. He moves forward slightly, and keeps the paper towel against his hand firmly to prevent spilling.

Tony moves forward and presses a hand against the edge of the table to peak over the top. It still doesn't make much sense, but he wants it to and—

"Tony." Tony whirls at the sound of his voice and sees his dad walking towards him—stumbling more accurately. His coordination doesn't exist and in one hand he's holding a bottle of beer. Tony's nose wrinkles at the smell. "You shouldn't be in here." His dad's voice is slurring.

He's drunk. Jarvis says that his dad spends a lot of time there. Tony doesn't quite know what it means, but he knows it's bad and it's nothing that he wants to be like when he's older.

"I know," Tony says quietly and lifts up his hand. The paper towel is soaked through with blood now. He couldn't sleep (insomnia, Jarvis says) and decided to take apart the toaster. He cut his hand on one of the sharp pieces of metal. The bits of the remaining machine are still scattered all over his floor, but when he couldn't get the bleeding to stop or the pain to ease, he decided to find outside help. "I cut my hand."

His dad stares at the paper towel for a long few seconds, as if confused before he looks up at Tony.

"It hurts." Tony explains, "Can you make it better?"

His dad doesn't take care of his bruises, cuts or injuries, he sends him off to his mom or Jarvis. His mom is away at some charity party and Jarvis isn't home. He wants someone to make it better.

His dad's lips curl into a snarl and he takes another swig of the drink. Tony makes a face, "You shouldn't drink that." He says quietly, "Mom's going to be mad again."

Tony doesn't want her to be mad, then she'll cry and Tony always feels helpless when she cries. He doesn't know how to make her tears go away, and sometimes when he says something that supposed to comfort, it makes her cry harder. Jarvis says that his mother his fragile. His father says that he has no social skills regarding sympathy. Tony still doesn't quite know what it means, but he knows it's bad and he'll fix it.

He likes fixing things.

Even if he's bad at it.

"Do you think I flipping care?" His dad growls, "Good grief, Tony can't you read a calendar, don't you know what day it is?"

No.

He doesn't.

Tony stares at him with confusion.

His dad shakes his head with disgust, "Get out, I'm not going to clean up a scratch. Stop being such a child, Tony. Stark men are made of iron."

It's not a scratch! It hurts more than a scratch does and it bled a lot! But Tony doesn't say this, because he knows that it won't make his dad any more willing to help him, and make it better. He can feel tears brimming on the edges of his eyes and Tony moves forward a half step, desperate, "But Dad—"

"Out Tony."

"I don't wanna—"

"OUT!"

His dad makes a swing towards Tony's head with the bottle and Tony scrambles out of the way, making a break for the exit. He slips from the room and doesn't stop running until he reaches the safety of his bedroom. He slams the door shut and throws back the paper towel as he navigated across the mess to his bed and climbs onto the covers trying to hold back his heaving sobs.

HIs chest burns from the effort and he eventually loses the battle.

Five. He's five now, he shouldn't cry like a baby.

Tony slips into the bathroom and wraps toilet paper around his hand tightly. It's not a bandaid, and it's not going to stop infection, but it will at least keep him from bleeding out. Tony curls up onto his bed and shakes against his quivering tears.

He needs to stop.

Stark men are made of iron.

Tony glances up at the calendar and quietly promises himself that he'll never forget the days of the week again. His dad won't be angry with him, and then maybe he'll put a bandaid on his next cut. Today was the day that Captain America was lost as sea, marking another year that Stark Industries hasn't found the body.

Tony doesn't ever think they will.

And his dad is going to keep drinking forever because of it.

Don't cry.

He's five years old. Crying is for babies.

But it really does hurt and he wanted someone to make it better. Tony holds his bleeding hand against chest and cries himself to sleep.

000o000

Years go by and Tony's prediction comes true: Captain America's body remains MIA, his parents fight brutally and Howard still continues to drink, then his mother does as well. It doesn't seem to help her enough and she spends long hours of the day zoned out as she sits or lays somewhere. Tony gets shipped off to school at age five and is in seventh grade by the time he's ten, then well into tenth when he's twelve, but it still feels to easy.

He's smart and everyone is well aware of that fact.

And they hate it.

He doesn't understand it. Tony has no clue as to why they can't remember the teachers entire lecture, memorize a book by reading it through one time, or solve even the simplest of equations in their heads. The quadratic equation is barely above addition. He doesn't understand when they don't get frustrated at the technology because it isn't better, they don't understand when Tony steals parts from the robotics shop to make devices at home and nearly gets expelled when he's caught, no one seems to grasp Tony's mind beyond the fact that they hate it.

And after years of this, Tony begins to hate it to.

Tony never really had an opportunity to make friends when he was younger, to busy being jumped grades, and his skills in the matter are close to nothing. He tries. He tries so hard, but no one likes him. It doesn't matter what he does, or what he says, no one wants to talk to him. His mind keeps getting in the way. Over and over again. It runs to fast, sometimes so fast that the barest bit of sensory input hurts, but no one understands that. No one cares to.

So he spends most of the first semester friendless and alone, drifting like a ghost through the halls. When second semester hits, he transfers classes again, being placed in honors that still doesn't feel like a challenge, mostly boring, where he meets the "T" band. Tiffany, Thomas, and Trent.

Tony actually points this out to them when he meets them, and he's pretty sure that's where the whole mess started. Bullying was something he had read about by that point, but experiencing it was different. More painful. Tony isn't sure how to make it stop, because for once in his life he has no idea how to solve a problem.

He doesn't know how to make people like him.

The guidance councilors at the school try to talk to him, but Tony's too old to be seeing a shrink, thanks, and he knows that word will eventually make it back to Howard and he'll be furious that Tony's embarrassing the family name. Again. He does that a lot recently. Never mind the fact that Tony is gallops ahead of his peers. But that's beside the point. The point is that Tony makes it through one painful ten minute talk about the T-team with Ms. Abigail before he runs out of the room trying to resist the urge to slam his head against the walls.

After silent fuming, he tries to take her advice into play by ignoring them.

It works for a little bit, even though Tony's mouth runs faster than his mind, he manages to keep it shut and has done an admirable effort for the remainder of semester two. It's the last week of quarter four and Tony is eating lunch by himself quietly on the table furthest from the cafeteria doors when Tiffany plops down in front of him with her lunch tray the ugly pony-tails that make her face look horrendously oval shaped presently attached to the sides of her head like they were glued there.

It would probably be rude to point that out, so Tony doesn't and continues with an admirable effort to focus on his sandwich. Jarvis made it, and though it's nothing fancy and Tony recently has had struggles with keeping food down or eating it he appreciates the thought. Jarvis has been sick recently and has had to take more days off for the last two weeks than work them and Tony's admittedly afraid that the illness is going to take his life.

The butler is old, in his sixties, Tony's pretty sure, but he's the only thing close to a friend that Tony has and he doesn't want to lose him.

So Tony eats the sandwich, even though he doesn't want to and pointedly looks away from Tiffany's oval head. Then Trent and Tom arrive and plop themselves onto Tony's bench and he flicks his gaze up to them, scooting further down it pointedly.

"Aw, c'mon geek-kid, don't be like that." Tom chides and swings a large hand up to drag him back across the bench. Tony doesn't like being touched by anyone that isn't Jarvis, and this time is no different. Tony shoves Tom's hand off of him with his admittedly pathetic strength and scoots down the bench.

"Go away, Tom." Tony commands.

"You've been ignoring us all month, squirt, and my feelings are hurt." Tom insists. Trent is staring at him with that gaping smile that he does, with his two crooked front teeth that are to large for his head. Tony once pointed that out and Trent shoved him really hard.

"You don't have feelings." Tony blurts out and Trent's eyes narrow. Tony resists the urge to plop a hand over his mouth like a child whose said a bad word (his parents wouldn't care, but Jarvis would and give him that look.)

Tiffany gasps and takes a bite out of her apple making an annoying chewing sound, "Tony," she chides. If Tom and Trent are bad cop, then Tiffany adores being good cop. She's always trying to mother him, insisting that he's short, small, and defenseless and needs someone to look out for him.

He doesn't.

Everyone's mean to him, anyway, and he's used to it now.

"Be nice." Tiffany commands.

"Why should I be if he's not?" Tony questions, a desperate bubble of something that he really doesn't understand. He knows that it's courteous, but why should he not be mean right back?

Tom clicks his tongue, "Tsk, tsk, don't you have it gathered by now that short-stuff isn't nice?"

"I'm not short." Tony defends. He's not. He's twelve. His mind is fast and grows faster, but his body doesn't. He's already shorter than most of the kids his age and he doesn't like it when anyone points that out.

"Well," Tiffany shrugs, "that's true. I guess we really shouldn't expect any more from the son of a drunk and a junkie."

Just let it go. Ms. Abigail said in their brief ten-minute session. They only want to get a reaction out of you. So just let it float on by and they'll leave you alone.

But up to this point, they've only ever made fun of Tony.

Howard can take up a hobby for sucking cactus' for all Tony cares, but no one insults his mom. So Tony does exactly the opposite of what Ms. Abigail wanted and leaps at Tiffany. He makes it over the table and tackles her to the ground throwing the first punch and yells, "My mom isn't a junkie!" before Tom and Trent pull him off of their friend and Tom punches him squarely in the face. Tony is slammed backwards into the hard metal bench and his head slams into it, making a loud thwuaking noise as his vision spins.

Tears immediately blur in his eyes and the desire to throw up immediately follows. He stumbles to his butt un-politically or impressively, and gasps out heaving breaths of surprise and pain. Students are gathered around them, holding out tissues for a crying Tiffany, but Tony has no sympathy for the girl. He lifts a hand out tentatively to check his head and doesn't feel any blood. Just a concussion.

Tony presses his head into his hands to try and quell the pain and waits for someone to help him, but when the teachers come running, they only fawn over Tiffany.

Tony goes home, passes out, managing to sleep for seventeen hours straight before waking up with news from his very not-there mother that Jarvis had a heart attack and passed on last night, and he was suspended from school for attacking a student.

Tony's vision remains blurry for ten days, but whether it's from tears or the headache, he never learns.

000o000

Howard does eventually learn the events behind Tony's suspension and is terribly embarrassed by them. Apparently the media got word of their messy family from somewhere and were none to impressed. Howard, fearing a loss in money from Stark Industries, immediately drags them all to a party where he spends as much time gushing over his wife and Tony as he can to show them all that the rumors of drinking are wrong and no sir, they are a very loving family.

A dark man with a long coat on speaks briefly with Tony at the party, asking if he's alright, but Tony pointedly avoids the question by asking about his shoes instead. Insulting them, really, but what's the difference?

Years pass and the media accepts the loving, but distant family easier even if it isn't the truth. It's less juicy, but it's "truth". Tony's frankly done with them, he grew up learning to push cameras away from his face before he could walk. If he wants to go get a hot dog in Manhattan, he has to dress up like he's committing a murder to avoid paparazzi.

His mother is forced into rehab by Howard, who hypocritically, doesn't try any attempts to stop the drinking. When she returns six months later, she's a ghosting shell of herself, but learned to play the piano as a coping skill. Instead of the hauntingly quiet void that has filled the house since Jarvis died, it's haunted by his mother's melancholy thoughts instead.

Tony eventually makes it into MIT at fifteen and has no way to get there. Howard refuses to drive him, and his mother has been banned for medical purposes, but Tony doesn't have a license, nor is he exactly old enough for one. His father refuses to let him stay at the dorms because he doesn't have a roommate he knows and Tony throws up his hands in frustration before stealing one of Howard's expensive cars and teaches himself how to drive on an abandoned road near their house.

It's a messy process, but Howard never questions how he gets there.

Instead, he chugs down another bottle.

Tony hates the smell of alcohol and the distant thought of actually drinking any makes him want to throw up. He gets invited to dozens of parties because of his father's name, but Tony has very little interest in any of them. College students don't have time to be mean and nasty, to worried about their grades and futures, but the teachers have plenty of time. Tony can't help it that he knows more than the professor on a subject and it comes blurting out and he gets the stink eye.

He swears that everyone he tries to come in contact with is plotting his murder behind his back.

Tony turns sixteen and gets an actual license and feels slightly less guilty every time he takes the car out to school. But right-of-way was something that he never really understood (and winged his way through on his test) so a crash was inevitable.

Howard's car is in tatters and Tony's body is an aching mass unlike any other with his broken fingers and cracked ribs. His father arrives before his mother, whom Tony knows would have given even the slightest bit of sympathy to and starts yelling.

"ANTHONY EDWARD!" Never mind that they're in public and all Tony really wants to do is sit down and have a good frustrated cry because he doesn't understand why this had to happen when he has three tests that he has to be in attendance for and his evil teachers will be more than happy to fail him even though he has a legitimate excuse.

The woman that Tony hit had three children in the back and though the only person injured was Tony, the police and medical professionals are more focused on them than Tony. Which he isn't angry about, they deserve it more than he does. He gave the mother a check of more than twenty thousand dollars in an apology and swore up and down the street that it was his fault as he stared at the three kids he nearly killed.

She had smiled sweetly at him and taken the check, and it was the strangest sensation to have done something wrong but not be yelled at. Until the police showed up. And the media.

Howard drags Tony to his feet where he was sitting at the curb by his upper arm and rattles him back and forth, "What were you thinking, you imbecile!? You destroyed my car!"

Because that, as per usual, is his father's first worry.

His possessions.

Never mind the fact that Tony hasn't slept in three days and it clearly shows on his face, or the the woman and her children that he hit, no, just the car. The stupid, bloody car.

"I needed to get to school, Dad." Tony says sharply, because what else is he supposed to do? His robots are waiting for him in the lab, but Tony can see from his father's expression that he's not going to be working on them today.

The media is fawning over the destruction happily and Howard takes this as their cue to leave.

He shoves Tony's battered body into the car he drove here, then drives them home.

"I have school, I can't miss it." Tony argues sharply.

"I don't bloody care, your such an embarrassment." Howard growls, his breath smells like alcohol, and drags him upstairs, throwing him into his room and locking the door. Tony's furious. He throws anything he can at the wood and desperately wishes for the day when he'll live by himself and be in charge of the locks and the keys and the bloody cars.

When he can leave by his own choice.

This house is a prison and his dad holds all the keys.

Tony spends the night setting his broken hands and wrapping gauze around his ribs as he tries desperately not to cry at the pain.

000o000

His mother is the one to relieve him of the two day lock-in with a sad smile and a plate of food. She murmurs an apology for Howard's temper, then guides him towards her piano as he eats the meal desperately shoved against his stomach. Taking away food isn't something that Howard's really done before as punishment, but he doesn't see it being above him.

His mother begins to play her haunting tunes again and when Tony's finished, she invites him to join her on the bench. Tony plays his first strums on the instrument with only four good fingers, but his mother's proud, beaming smile is worth it.

College continues to rear its ugly head and Tony manages as best he can with it. Howard grows steadily worse over the next year and during the last week of summer, Tony runs smack first into someone with his first completed version of DummE and sputters out words in embarrassment, backing away as the man stares up at him flabbergasted.

It's the first time that Tony meets Rhodey, but he's nice to Tony and laughs at Tony's jokes as he helps him clean up the mess DummE made in the hall.

Tony is more than grateful.

He and Rhodey become something close to acquaintances and Rhodey says, almost out of the blue that he's look for a roommate and Tony jumps at the opportunity to leave the house with more enthusiasm than is probably nice.

He avoids home as much as he can for the next year, but at his mother's pleading he returns home for the Christmas break. His parents are leaving to go stargazing for his mother's birthday that night and Tony barely makes it through a conversation with Howard's steel grey eyes boring down on him before both leave. The house is empty and strangely cold and though Tony's half tempted to throw the party he was expectantly told not to out of spite, but he doesn't and instead plucks at his mother's piano.

His parents don't return that night.

Tony sleeps through most of the day because he stayed up waiting for them and is called the following morning from a hospital aid in regret that Mr. and Mrs. Stark's bodies were recovered that morning. They were in a car accident and the suspected reasoning is because Mr. Stark was so drunk his liver should have been running away from his body.

Tony is horrified.

He hangs up before she finishes and can find no solstice for the grief that grasps him. His mother is gone and he's never going to see her again. Gone, gone, gone. Tony's grief turns to anger and he spends a good hour destroying anything in his father's labs, papers on the Super-Soldier serum, future projects, anything he can find with a wrench and matches.

It doesn't help.

He wants it to stop.

Tony turns to his father's liquor cabinets and has downed two bottles before he realizes what he's done. The alcohol is bitter on his lips along with the broken promise he swore to himself that he wouldn't follow in his father's footsteps.

Tony passes out among the broken equipment, alone.

000o000

Afghanistan happens.

Tony holds the press conference, eats his burgers and Pepper fusses over his appearance briefly before sending him out into the wild. Everyone is bursting at the news of his decision to stop the weapons trade (the first toy he ever showed his father when he was six was promptly destroyed because it wasn't a weapon and Howard shoved him out of his office because he wasn't useful so no, Tony bares no regrets on the decision. It wasn't ever his in the first place).

They don't care to ask how he is.

Not that Tony minds.

He would have been surprised if they did.

He has a hole in his chest, he can't stand the sight of water right now and has been living off of solely apple juice for three days because the smell of beer makes him think of the taste of the food they forced down his gullet in the cave.

Tony's chest aches, and his hair is a mess and he needs more than an American Cheeseburger to fix this.

He doesn't know what to do.

He attempts to take a shower again today, but barely manages to get the shampoo into his messy hair before he's stumbling out of it on his knees, clutching at his chest in panic, faintly hearing the wisps of car battery buzzing in the back of his mind. It wasn't his first time being kidnapped, a lifetime of baring "Stark" attached to his name has guaranteed that, but it was the first one that lasted more than three days.

And where water was—

Tony heaves and gasps as he tries to breathe, but can't. He knows that he's crying for help somewhere in the back of his mind, but Jarvis doesn't have access to the bathrooms (he is practically a human being at this point and there are some things that must be kept private) and no one else would come for him.

Tony curls up on the bathroom floor around his stomach, heaving for breath that doesn't come.

He spends what he's certain is close to an hour like this before he manages to get himself together enough to put on his clothing, stumble out of the bathroom and collapse on his bed refusing to move or think of anything but how nice it is to see windows.

000o000

Getting sick isn't something that Tony frequently experiences. As a child, he'd always managed to avoid the worst of diseases and beyond a few colds he caught every now and again, he never really got hospitalized for anything. Getting deathly ill was just sort of something that everyone else did.

After the arc reactor, even the smallest bouts of illness can have him wiped out for days.

Pepper finds it incredibly rude when he avoids her for days on end when she's ill, but hey, he gives her tissue boxes and a handful of chocolate bars at the beginning of the week when he notices that she's sick before not seeing her again till the end of it. Rhodey receives the same treatment. Tony hates getting sick. He learned the hard way how awful it is.

Hiccups can be the death of him if they persist hard enough.

He's never really lived with a group of large people until the Avengers, but he becomes adequately aware that when one person is sick, within three or four days everyone else will be wiped out. Tony manages to avoid the first two swings of the virus as the rest of them grumble and moan about his unbreakable immune system and Tony laughs and throws tissue packets at their heads.

Though being sick is a downside, certainly, Tony would be lying to admit that even though he hates that small fact, living with the Avengers is...nice. They're teasing in a way that doesn't make his insides hurt, Clint shares his sense of humor and they tolerate him better than most people do.

But, yes, being sick is a downfall.

Natasha comes back from Russia with a small cold that she recovers from in a day and, amazingly, it doesn't pass around everyone. Tony is relieved that he doesn't need to spend the next week in his workshop living off of the endless supply of energy drinks and stale bagels Jarvis keeps stocked up.

That is, until a week from Natasha's return, Tony wakes up with a pounding headache, his chest heaving and his nose running. He barely manages to make it to the bathroom before he's throwing up whatever he ate for dinner last night (take out, Chinese because Chinese food is a mercy from on high they granted to the mere mortals) and trying not to cry at the pain.

Pepper has a board meeting that she wants him to attend, though, so Tony can't sit on the floor forever.

He drags himself to his feet, drinks some water and dresses in a newer suit before stumbling out to the elevator. He thankfully doesn't run into anyone as Happy takes him to the meeting. He can't focus on anything but his headache and the slightest bit of light makes him want to tear out his eyes. Everyone is too loud and his chest is still aching from the coughs he's been hacking throughout the day.

Stupid arc reactor.

He goes home, passes out and doesn't move until late in the afternoon to a hacking fit. He then also realizes that he missed a call to assemble. Panic wraps around his throat and he staggers to his feet, throwing off the covers and ripping off his tie and shirt to put on a T-shirt and jeans (because wearing a suit in the Iron Man armor is one of the most uncomfortable things possible, except for maybe a hotdog suit) and stagger towards the door.

"Sir," Jarvis says distantly, but Tony can't really hear him through the swimming effect going on around him, "I really must advise against this."

Great.

That's great.

"Yeah, well, bit busy at the moment, J." Tony hisses out in response through his aching throat. He slips into the elevator, "Communal floor, J."

"I still don't agree with this. Your temperature is worrying, Sir."

"I can't." Tony disagrees, moving out of the small space as it opens.

Tony can't not arrive because he has to prove that he can be on the team, that he's worth the effort they put into getting along with him and he can't do that if he's sick and coughing his brains out through his nose and—whoa, dizzy, dizzy, dizzy—

Tony slams head first into the ground and everything spins around him as another coughing fit rounds through him. His arc reactor is pulsing against his ribs, burning through him as if it's trying to crawl it's way up his throat and there is very little as uncomfortable as that.

Tony can't breathe.

Panic sputters through him again, and Tony slams a hand against the ground trying to get off the ground in the middle of the hallway leading to the communal room but can't. The skin around his arc reactor is raw, blistering and bleeding and he can feel the blood leaking into his shirt. This doesn't make him very happy because it was a shirt that Pepper bought him on a whim and he adores it.

But no air.

Blood.

Tony heaves desperately, coughing in response and it makes the reactor grind against his open sores again.

"Sir!" Jarvis calls, he sounds desperate, and worried.

"Don't. Call." Tony hisses out through his teeth. He hates doctors, hates their prodding and their poking and—and the stupid things that they do that Tony can't remember.

"Sir!" Jarvis protests. Tony wants to assure him that he's fine, but his tongue is swollen in his throat and he can't.

Instead, he lays on the floor sideways, hand fisted in his shirt as he tries to breathe.

Making it to the Mark Vlll is a distant dream at this point.

And not one becoming a reality.

Tony lays on the floor for what he's pretty sure is a good hour as Jarvis attempts to rouse him, but without the ability to call anyone for aid it's hopeless. The sounds of battle distantly stop after a while and Tony squeezes his eyes shut attempting to get even, deep breathes out. The slower he breathes the less it grinds against the arc reactor and the less he needs to cough.

He's not really certain when he slipped off into a doze, but he knows when he awakens because it's too Steve's hand on his face and saying something to him. Tony can't make out the words. It's blurry and he makes a confused sound, but can hear Jarvis's voice explaining the situation, that traitor.

The other Avengers are suddenly in his face as well their expressions to much for Tony to really process or understand.

Tony's consciousness finally decides that getting in the right channel as his body would be great, because he slips back with a jolt.

"—er you hurt, Tony, answer—bloody—" Steve starts, his voice is pinched.

"Language." Tony reminds tiredly.

Five faces of equal relief look back down at him and someone's fingers, Natasha's? give his hand a quick squeeze. He sits up slowly and nearly tumbles back onto his back, but Steve's hand against his back keeps him upright. It's humiliating, but not unwelcome.

"What happened?" Thor questions, he looks helpless and the expression is wrong on the Asgardian because Thor can beat the crap out of anyone and rarely wears that face.

Tony stares at them with confusion. "Does it matter?"

"Yes." Clint answers firmly, his voice firm and promising pain unless Tony agrees. He's echoed by everyone else in the room. Tony tries desperately to bury the lack of understanding from his expression.

"Natasha brought back a cold." Tony explains, "I caught it."

Clint looks exasperated. "She brought back a cold. Not a doomsday poison."

Tony flicks his gaze to Bruce desperately, whose eyes widen with understanding a moment later. "Your arc reactor," he says, thinking aloud, "it makes anything ten times worse, right?"

Tony gives a slow nod.

Bruce's lips press together in sympathy, which Tony can accept because sympathy is different from pity. It means that Bruce doesn't see him as a lesser being that needs to be fixed, but as someone who...Tony doesn't know, but sympathy isn't pity. Natasha's fingers grip his hand again, tight, and her expression to anyone outside of them would look blank. Tony can see the apology, and the worry.

"I see," she murmurs, "I'm sorry."

Tony shrugs, "Hey, it's fine. Everyone gets sick and—" Tony's reassurance is cut off as his chest picks his moment to hack again and Tony leans over with pain, gripping at his arc reactor and can't help the exclamations of agony that escape between coughs. Steve's hand doesn't leave his back, and Natasha's fingers move to his shoulder.

When Tony has slipped to breathing as regularly as he can again, Clint shakes his head. Tony realizes then, that they're not dressed in their suits, but rather normal clothing. They were probably coming to find food or something to wind down from the battle and now he really feels humiliated because them grouping together to come yell at him would have been better.

"Alright, we're not nursing a sick man back to health on the floor." Clint declares, "Sick people deserve sick places."

"He's right," Bruce admits, "I doubt the ground is helping."

The others make noises of agreement and Tony stares at them helplessly, rubbing at his chest before another stream of conversation he doesn't understand is spoken and suddenly he's being lifted off the ground carefully by Steve and Tony makes a loud noise of protest.

"Whoa!" Tony exclaims, "Whoa. I am a grown man, Grandpa! I can walk—watch out for your elderly back and—" Tony releases a few more hacks and Steve ignores his protesting as he moves into the communal room and gently lowers him onto the couch.

Bruce quickly reappears to take a quick analysis of his predicament before beginning to move away. Tony makes a grab for his wrist, "You don't have to do this, I can sleep it off in a few days. Really, I know you're busy."

Bruce shakes his head. "It's fine."

"You came up here for food." Tony protests, "I know the drill."

Bruce's eyebrows are thinned and he shares a glance with Steve who is beside him, his expression set in something that looks sad for a second. Steve rocks on his feet, then shakes his head, "We came to find you. We were worried."

"But why…?" Tony doesn't understand.

"You're an Avenger." Steve answers simply.

Thor arrives with blankets a few seconds later, and as the rest of the Avengers scramble behind them for something. He has a wad of gauze in his other hand with disinfectant cream between two fingers. He puts one of the blankets on Tony's legs then takes a seat beside them.

Tony stares at him.

"Your bleeding." He explains and lifts up the gauze, "I don't know if the others noticed because of the dark color of your shirt, but…" Thor shrugs, "Will you take off your shirt?"

Tony frowns and sighs with resentment because he really just wants to lay down and do nothing, but if Thor doesn't want him to get his blood everywhere, he'll oblige. He sits up slowly, and with painstaking effort tugs off his shirt moving to take the gauze from Thor, but the Asgardian doesn't offer it to him. Instead, he shifts forward and squints toward the injury for a moment before popping off the containers lid and pouring a generous amount of the disinfectant cream onto his fingers and presses it against one of the cuts.

Tony flinches at the contact of the touch and Thor looks up at him. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause you greater pain."

"It's not that," Tony reassures, "I just...I can do that myself."

"Perhaps," Thor agrees, rubbing the cream in, "but allow us to take care of you."

"Take...care…" Tony repeats helplessly, staring up at him. For most of his life save small few bits that he has relished, he's been looking out for himself. If he gets injured, he drags his butt out of the fire and wraps the broken bones, the cuts, the blood. He stops the worst of the damage. He's never...he hasn't had anyone...anyone who...who…

Thor's staring at him now, with one of those quizzical expressions that he gives a hard battle field. "Tony," he says slowly, gently, "you need people to care for you. That is what family is for."

Tony's not quite certain what his expression is, but he's pretty sure that his eyes are wide and he's close to gawking. Thor smiles softly and finishes wrapping the wounds as best he can around the arc reactor before Natasha reappears with one of Tony's shirts in hand. She had, apparently, realized that he was bleeding—because she's unnervingly perceptive about things like that—and brought him a spare. Tony is grateful beyond words as he pulls on the long sleeve and buries under the blankets, warm at last for what feels like days.

The other Avengers appear again, Bruce holding some sort of warm tea that is supposed to help his throat and they pile around the couch. Thor doesn't move from his position from near Tony's feet and Natasha squirms her way onto the other side, lifting Tony's head and laying it on her lap to run her fingers through his scalp. It feels nice in a comforting way and Tony doesn't protest too much against it.

Clint perches on the couches back like the weirdly bird-like part of him demands and Bruce and Steve take positions on the ground beside the couch with a box of tissues between them. After a bit of talking, Clint declares that a movie would be a good distraction and they end up watching Lord of the Rings even though Tony prefers Star Wars. (Who wants to watch a bunch of short men running around delivering jewelry while their grandfatherly figure dies and comes back from the dead with a better hairdo?).

Somewhere after the Mines of Moria, Tony's phone begins to buzz from where it's in his pocket, though he can't recall putting it there. He squirms in his position to stuff his hand into the pocket pulling out the device to see a text from someone at SI. A board member of some sort that Pepper was talking about a few days ago. It takes a bit more focus to realize what he's talking about, and Tony's stomach sinks minimally when he does.

He can't sit here and do nothing on the couch all day. He has work to run, the press to clean up from where the Avengers inevitably left a mess, and a dozen others things that have slowly been pressing against his mind for the last hour or so.

The phone is ripped from his grip suddenly and Tony makes a noise of protest, flicking his gaze to Clint who is pocketing it in his jacket. "I have...things…" Tony tries to explain through his hoarse throat.

"Nope." Clint disagrees, "Not today. Today, you are sick."

Natasha runs her fingers through his hair again, "And we get the pleasure of taking care of you. Sleep, duratskiy malchik, we have you."

Tony settles into her embrace, and when he jerks awake at a phantom running through his mind, Thor's fingers on his feet and the heads of his team reassuring him that he's safe, Tony allows himself to calm.

Because he knows that his team is going to catch him if he's going to fall.

And it's one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.