#um. merciless killing machine Steve tearing apart punching bags in the gym.

[itsalmostavengers]

Ik we stevetonies love our ‘Steve pulling Tony out of a bender in the workshop’ trope but me? I LOOOOVE the other way round. A bad mission and Steve loses someone - he tried to save them but it was too late, he couldn’t get there in time. And post-mission he just holes himself up in the gym and stays there. For days. Working himself to exhaustion just so he can shave half a second off his sprint (half a second and that person would be alive), punching bag after bag until his hands are bloody and raw.

Tony is the only one who can get through to him like this. It’s only his voice that can make Steve pause, come back to himself. Sometimes Tony has to actively stand in front of whatever it is Steve’s attacking, which absolutely infuriates him, but damn if it isn’t effective in a way only Tony no-thought-to-his-own-self-preservation Stark could be. And Tony is equally as infuriated that steve is insisting on doing this to himself, but even though his tone is angry, his touch against Steve’s knuckles is impossibly soft.

He’ll drag Steve back up to the land of the living. Put him in the shower and clean him off, freshen him up, make him feel human again. Steve will already be healing, of course, but Tony still tends and bandages his hands - attentive to the finest detail, devoting every part of his mind to just making Steve feel a little bit better.

They don’t talk much throughout this. God knows Tony’s tried it before, but Steve is never in the headspace for it, and Tony never says the right thing anyway. But he’s there.

He runs his fingers over the back of Steve’s palms. Up his forearms. He strokes the sharp curve of Steve’s neck, settling against the quick pulse. Steve’s face is blank, but Tony is always surprisingly patient with him. He waits.

“I’m fine,” Steve will say every time, while his face will say the opposite.

“You’re an idiot,” Tony will respond. “I’m locking you out of the gym.”

He won’t. Steve needs it, even if it’s unhealthy, even if it’s agonising for Tony to watch. This is just how they get through.

But Steve will see the way Tony is looking at him- distressed, angry, worried - and it’ll break through the fog. The thing that always takes priority over everything is Tony, and even though Steve’s brain is screaming at him to get right back to it, he just can’t put it above Tony’s well-being. He couldn’t ever do that.

“I Guess I can take a break now.”