@damagedtoysoldier liked for a dark steve starter
"There’s my boy,” the Captain crooned, coming in to the examining room, an indulgent smile on his face that doesn’t entirely mask the concern in his eyes. No one else in the room holds any interest for him, not at the moment -- not when the Soldier’s right there in front of him with that confusion rising in his eyes again, the wounded and slightly bewildered expression on his face a scald on the Captain’s heart.
The Captain was concerned, worried that something was happening to his Soldier. To his friend. To the man he loved, in his own way and after his own fashion; as much as a man like the Captain could love anyone, that is. With a consuming and possessive love, where there was no room for dissent or confusion or uncertainty, just for hard fact. Which was why these spells of the Soldier’s were so concerning -- these moments of confusion where the Soldier seemed to forget who he was, what he was. Sometimes he he even forgot who the Captain was, his brow furrowing and a frown tugging at his lips, as he stared at the Captain as though hew thought he should know him, might remember him from somewhere, but couldn’t quite place him. Sometimes there was something else, something worse behind his eyes, something like dawning horror amidst the confusion, something dark and wild and terrified, something like a fever -- a fever that the Captain felt rushing off the Soldier in waves, washing over him and through him, raising a matching unease inside him.
There’d been moments, in the long years that they’d worked together, loved each other, lay wrapped up in each other’s arms when it was time to sleep in the cold again, that he’d looked up at the Soldier after a mission, looked up at him in this very room or another just like it over the years, and wondered if maybe it wasn’t just his Soldier who might be going crazy, but if he himself was, too; when something small and low deep down inside him tried to echo up out of the past and tell him to go, to flee, to take the Soldier and run, to kill their way out if he had to and burn this place to the ground behind him.
A man less in control of himself, whose will was forged of some lesser, weaker metal, might have given in to that echo. But not the Captain. And if the Captain wouldn’t give in to these paranoid delusions, he damn well wasn’t going to let his Soldier fall victim to them, either.
“They told me you asked for me.”