what needs, part vi
part v | part iv | part iii | part ii | part i
don’t uh. look too closely at the technical stuff
--
Tony is slightly less agitated now that they're actively working on something. Slightly.
Normally he'd have already gotten lost in the project, but he keeps glancing behind the others to look at Steve. He looks as horrific as he'd sounded.
It's never fun seeing Steve suffer, but this is a new, fresh hell.
“Tony, what do you think?”
“Huh?” Tony tears his eyes away from Steve and back to Jane. “Sorry. About what?”
“We think we can disrupt the locking mechanism with an electric current.”
Tony frowns. “But Steve—”
“JARVIS says you've got thin rubber sheeting. We can put it between the cuff and his skin—”
“And it'll protect him from the current. I should have thought of that!”
“So you approve?” Jane says. “I mean we're pretty sure it will work, but neither of us specializes in electrical engineering.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says, “it should have occurred to me, it's perfect.”
Jane beams.
Behind her, Steve jackknifes on the couch with a strangled yell. Peter tumbles to the floor.
Steve curls forward around his arm with a low groan.
“Honey?” Tony says, voice rising.
“Dad?”
“What happened? Steve, what happened?” Sam asks, darting over.
Peter watches him come with big eyes. “He fell asleep! It was just for a second—”
“Oh, damn,” Sam says.
“Fuck,” Steve mutters and his voice breaks.
“All right, okay, you're all right,” Sam says, cupping the back of Steve's head. Tony hates him a little because he wishes he was there to do it.
Steve groans, low and wet, wanting. It's a horrible sound.
Sam kneels down. “Let me see. Can I?”
The others form a loose half-circle around them and block Tony's line of sight. He drags his hands through his hair. If only he'd brought the goddamn suit.
Pepper looks up from her tablet and the flash of the light over her skin catches his eye. Tony looks at her. “Natasha got me into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files.”
Tony drops his hands. “And?”
Pepper's mouth draws into a thin, tight line. “There's no record of Steve being subjected to these procedures. This week's records include x-rays, MRIs, examinations, physical fitness tests, mental acuity tests—standard procedures. According to these records he was there this morning to provide a urine sample.”
Tony stares at her, dumbfounded. “Someone's doing this under S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nose. In their own facilities.”
“That's probably why he was sent home with the bracelet,” Pepper says grimly.
“Son of a bitch,” Tony hisses.
“I'll notify Fury.”
“Directly,” Tony tells her, even though he knows he doesn't have to. Pepper will have already figured it out. “We don't know who we can trust.”
Pepper nods and pulls out her phone, setting aside the laptop.
Tony turns back to the feed. “Guys? How's he doing?”
Bruce is closest to the station. “As well as can be expected. He got another dose of epinephrine. He said he's already had three or four today—”
“Christ.”
“—he's fidgety and his hands are shaking.” Bruce's face creases with a frown. “I'm worried about his heart. If they've been doing this for days and it's happened multiple times a day that's an elevated level of adrenalin over an extended period of time and that's going to put a strain on it no matter how next-level he is.”
“It doesn't matter because you're going to get it off him right now, right?”
Bruce nods. “Jane and Sam are getting the rubber sheeting into place.”
Tony scrubs a hand over his mouth. “Take care of him, Bruce.”
Bruce smiles crookedly. “You know we will.”
–
Peter hovers over his dad's shoulder while Aunt Jane and Uncle Sam work a rubber sheet in between the cuff on his dad's wrist and his skin.
His dad keeps flinching—Peter can feel it through the hand he has settled lightly on his back.
“It's okay, dad,” he murmurs. “It's okay, it's okay. You know, it's like dad says it's no big deal if it hurts you can cry or yell or whatever and it doesn't make you weak, you know? So you can do that, I won't judge and Aunt Jane won't judge and Uncle Sam won't judge and—”
“Peter,” his dad says and sounds exasperated, only a little quaver in his voice. Peter's pretty happy with that.
“Okay, I think we've got it!” Jane says.
Peter peers over his dad's shoulder to get a look at his wrist—it doesn't look like much. Kinda like he's wearing a weird armband. His dad tenses though pulls back from Sam a little.
“Are you sure?”
Sam reaches out and squeezes his dad's knee—there's barely anywhere else he can touch without hurting him—and looks him in the eye. “Tony wouldn't let us do anything that might hurt you, right, man?”
After a slight hesitation, dad says, “Right. Okay.”
“So this'll be just like we're giving the cuff a jump,” Tony says from the screen. “Only we're trying to overload it.”
Aunt Nat smiles reassuringly at Steve as she attaches one of the jumper wires to the cuff. He's stiff, eyes fixed apprehensively on the cable. Peter curls one hand around his, careful to be gentle. His dad looks up, eyes red-rimmed and swollen. It makes Peter's gut ache.
Aunt Nat hooks up the other wire. Then, without giving any warning whatsoever, she flips the switch. The prongs on the cuff spark and there's a faint crackling sound, then a click and the cuff splits open, tumbling off his dad's wrist and clattering to the floor.
His dad flinches again, like that's the only way he knows how to react to anything right now and then pulls his wrist in toward his body, the rubber sheeting slipping free and flopping to the ground too.
“It worked!” Natasha announces, fiercely triumphant.
“Steve? You okay?” Tony asks and Steve nods, dazed.
“Yeah, it's—” His face crumples a little. “I can—”
“Yeah, honey,” Tony says, so gentle.
“Can I take a look at it, Steve?” Sam asks.
Reluctantly, his dad holds his arm out and Peter winces when he sees the state of it. He's got a big, ragged bloody cluster of punctures on the inside of his wrist and the skin around it is blotched dark purple and red.
Bruce makes a stifled angry noise.
“All right, it's time for you to go get some rest,” Sam says, gingerly guiding Steve's arm back to his body. “Come on, we'll do what we can to make you comfortable.”
They all troop upstairs to Uncle Clint's. His dad protests when they take him to the master bedroom, but Natasha just puts a hand over his mouth and tells him to shut it.
She and Sam help him get situated in the bed and then Sam cleans up the wound on his wrist. When that's bandaged, He gets up and Natasha takes his place, pressing a kiss to his dad's forehead.
“Go to sleep, grandpa. You're safe now. We'll take watch until Tony gets home.”
His dad nods head barely moving. He's coming down from the adrenaline and now that there's nothing standing between him and sleep, he's barely keeping his eyes open. “Sorry,” he mumbles, expression going miserable.
Aunt Nat shushes him and strokes his hair just twice before he goes lax with sleep. It's scary seeing him like this. He's always so tough. He takes hits that would cripple other people and he just keeps coming.
They go back out to the living room, leaving the door cracked behind them so they can check on him.
Peter ducks his head guiltily when he sees Aunt Darcy. “Hey—Aunt Darce, 'm sorry, I shouldn't've—”
“Oh, please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You don't think I knew you were going to run off the second I turned my back? How dumb do you think I am?”
Clint hooks an arm around Peter's neck and gives him a noogie. “You're lucky I don't kill you for it.”
Peter groans.
“Hi, Tony,” Jane says, pulling up a holographic screen on the nearest table. “Everything's fine.”
Peter's embarrassed and pleased when Aunt Darcy and Aunt Nat pull him down in between them on the couch. It makes him feel kind of like a baby, but it also makes him feel steadier, so he can't really complain.
“Yeah?” his dad says, tone anxious. “He's okay? Sleeping?”
“He's sleeping,” Bruce confirms. “This is a good step toward getting him on the road to recovery.”
“What do you know about the people who did this?” Natasha asks and her tone is so measured it makes the hair on Peter's arms stand up.
“Well,” his dad says and smiles darkly. “They've been doing this behind Fury's back, so I imagine that will go over well.”
“How have they been doing that?” Jane asks, frowning.
“Falsified reports,” Tony says. “Pepper's done some digging and all the reports say they're doing the usual stuff.”
“They sent him home to keep Fury from getting suspicious,” Clint concludes and Peter's dad nods on the holoscreen.
“Yeah, that's what we think.”
“So what do we do about it?” Sam asks.
“You don't do anything,” Tony says. “You keep your eyes on Steve and make him comfortable because it's killing me that I can't.”
“Of course we will, Tony.” Bruce pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “He's safe with us.”
“Yeah,” Tony sighs and slumps on screen. “If Peter hadn't heard him, we might have never—”
“It's not your fault, dad,” Peter says and then shrinks back when everyone looks at him.
His dad smiles wanly.
Clint kicks the leg of the coffee table. “I thought he'd stopped doing shit like this.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too,” Tony mutters.
“That's a talk for later,” Sam says. “You let us know what we can do to help get the bastards who did this and we'll take watches. Steve won't be alone.”
Dad looks around at them all and his face melts into something soft. “Thank you. Dunno what I'd do without you guys.”
“Be lying in a ditch somewhere,” Natasha says, a smirk tugging up the corner of her mouth and his dad smiles back.
“Nobody fucks with Cap and gets away with it,” Clint says, darkly.
Everyone around him is practically pulsing with violent energy, but for the first time all day, Peter finally feels like
