Disclaimer: I do not own, am not associated with, make no money from the Avengers.
Warnings: This is a high school AU. It also involves medical issues and hospital stays. There are, however, surprisingly few bullies, much to Tony's disappointment. He doesn't get to use the bully deterrent he invented even once.
Actually, there's not really much to specifically warn for in this fic, but on the off chance you don't like high schools or medical drama, here's your chance to back away.
The Story
Later, if there was a later, Tony was definitely going to blame the entire incident on the P.E. teacher. He had to be the worst P.E. teacher in the history of P.E. teachers, and it was definitely all his fault.
Everyone knew that Steve wasn't really supposed to participate in sports, that he had a note from his doctor that excused him from moving, let alone exerting himself, that the kid tended to keel over from asthma if he tried to run, or got too excited, or had to face a mildly steep hill. He was small and sickly and exactly the stereotypical nerdy type who always gets shoved into lockers according to TV. He was shorter than Tony for goodness sakes, by a good half inch, and Tony was the one who had skipped two grades to be able to share the same high school gym class. Actually, maybe it was Tony's dad's fault, as he's the one who insisted Tony stay in public school with kids his own age, of all the ridiculous things, particularly considering they weren't his own age, and to just take his university classes on the side.
So between the worst gym teacher ever who not only allowed Steve to participate but pretty much insisted that he try, the worst father ever who insisted his son participate with his 'peers', and the fact that the particular method of torture chosen that day was dodge ball, Tony was pretty sure that he was going to die.
Yes, he was definitely going to die. This was the day that Tony Stark, age 12.364, was going to have his life ended.
Or maybe he'd just blame Loki, because yeah, generally everything was always Loki's fault. It was probably a universal constant or something. And Tony totally wouldn't put it past him to have set things up to fall out as they did, no matter how surprised he looked afterwards.
What happened started out as a fairly normal gym class day. Coach Erskine (who was also supposed to teach U.S. history but rumor had it his classes stayed firmly on the World Wars and tended to gloss over everything else) was a sadistic fiend disguised as a kindly old man. He started the class as he always did by lining up his students and giving a hard, shrewd look towards those he considered his 'problem' students. By 'problem', he wasn't looking out for bullies or slackers. He was looking out for kids like Steve, who would almost definitely insist they were in good health and ready to go if they were dying. So some days, no matter how straight Steve tried to stand, the coach would bench him or assign him some alternate, lighter exercise.
This day, Coach Erskine turned his shrewd eyes over Steve, and then Justin Hammer, who had plenty of doctor's notes but no actual ailments, and then at Bucky, who had a prosthetic arm but was otherwise in perfect health and still got to participate even on the days he decided not to wear the arm. And then for quite a long moment the Coach looked at Tony, which was ridiculous because Tony was in perfect health, not even a cold, and actually looking forward to the chance to release some pent up energy after a morning of enforced desk labor. The look he gave Tony was more probing than usual, almost as though he were some sort of psychic who actually knew what was about to occur and was thinking about stopping it before it could start. If that were true then he was a bastard, because at the end of his long look he just went on to give all the other able bodied students a look over, and announced to the class at large that today they would be doing the usual warm up and then playing dodgeball.
Justin Hammer immediately whined about being too sickly to participate, like he always did. He wasn't, of course, but he did have the genuine notes and Coach Erskine always let him go when he asked.
Warm up was four laps around the gym for everyone who wasn't Steve, as he was only allowed two laps going in the opposite direction (because if he went the same direction he would try to compete with everyone else's pace instead of the slower one the Coach actually put him on). If you went too slow and your name wasn't Steve then you got even more laps.
Tony wasn't a big fan of jogging in circles, but the one time he had tried Justin's method of 'I'm too poorly for gym today' to get out of it, he had enjoyed the reprieve for at most five minutes, and then when the fun part of gym had started Coach Erskine had refused to unbench him and it was agony having to sit still when this was the class he was allowed to move, and really, being benched in gym class ultimately turned out to be the worst kind of torture possible.
So Tony jogged his laps without complaint, and tried to race Clint and failed utterly when Clint managed to completely lap him. He blamed the fact he had shorter legs. And Loki. Sure, Loki was just jogging in his ridiculously long strides and wasn't exactly holding Tony back or helping Clint run faster, but whatever. It was still his fault.
Four laps later and feeling a bit winded and light headed and like his heart was beating just that tiny bit too hard to be comfortable, Tony found a comfortable place on the ground and lay down to die or to wait for the slowpokes to finish their journey around the gym.
This day the slowpokes were Pepper and Jane, which was totally unfair to Pepper since she's generally good at sports, but she had slowed her own pace down to her friend's, and Jane literally had created charts and graphs to calculate exactly how slow she could get away with jogging before Coach Erskine gave her extra laps. Whatever speed she'd come up with, she had failed at it today because both Pepper and Jane ended up having to do six laps before he was satisfied.
Then Coach Erskine came over to ask Tony if he was actually dying and if he needed the nurse, the bench, or a gurney.
"No, none, neither, or," Tony had answered, hopping up to show how completely alive he still was and how he totally definitely did not need to be stuck on a bench while everyone else go to run around and have fun, because he'd done that torture, thanks, and never again.
Coach Erskine gave him a long, hard look, told him to go hydrate, and left it at that. The Coach was always very insistent on hydration. It was one of his things, along with allowing kids like Steve to try and kill themselves playing sports like everyone else.
Tony obediently went and grabbed his water bottle, because fountains were gross, and drank half of it in one go.
Dodgeball itself turned out to be rather more fun than anticipated. All Tony really knew about dodgeball up to that point was that cartoons suggested it had been invented as a way for jocks to torment nerds while teachers watched. Whoever had created those cartoons had apparently not been to Tony's school.
In the first place, while there were bullies, they tended to not be the 'I'm going to beat you up and steal your lunch money' kind who would use dodgeball to cream the weaker kids. Anyone who tried that sort of thing was usually caught by teachers, or worse, by other students who didn't take kindly to bullying. So most bullying was the snubbing, name calling, stab you in the back type, or the 'my Daddy can fire your Daddy, do my homework' type that Justin tried (and failed at; in the end he had to pay fair wages to get others to do his homework for him). Tony had actually been a bit disappointed by his school when he figured that out. He had already invented a bully deterrent that was totally legal on school grounds (though only because they didn't know what it was, being new and all), and he never got even the slightest chance to have a legitimate reason to try it out.
So dodgeball was, for the most part, fun. The hardest force was generally reserved for those most able to take it, like Thor who could probably take five balls to the groin in a row and not even wince (untrue, as it turned out; Loki got in one good groin shot on his brother during the first round and Thor crumbled in on himself and whimpered on the floor for a good minute before he got over it). Boys tended to go easier on girls, which seemed unfair to Tony since girls never went easy on the boys, and he knew that both Natasha and Pepper were a match for most guys in the school, Thor included.
And when Tony was hit by a ball at full force in the shoulder by Clint, it didn't leave him in the horrific agony Tony half expected. Well, it still hurt, but that was more from falling over and hitting his elbow on the ground, not from the ball itself, which only stung for half a minute and didn't so much as bruise later.
So running around the gym and throwing balls at each other was fun, and not the massacre it might have been. In fact, Tony being smaller than most people was actually an advantage; there was less of him to aim at and he could move out of the way more quickly, and he didn't care what Rhodey said about math not actually helping in practical sports situations, he was totally using it to help his aim. Or maybe he was just that good, because in the third round of the game, his team was winning and he had gotten three people out himself and dodged seven balls so far, and he was totally awesome at dodgeball.
And then there was Loki, and Tony was completely going to get him, and if his aim was a little low, well, Loki deserved revenge for getting Thor. Besides, Tony was short. Surely no one could blame him if he 'missed' Loki's stomach and hit lower.
Tony put all possible force behind his missile. Loki used some sort of supernatural power to suddenly not be where he was just standing. And suddenly the full force of Tony's throw was plowing into the one person on the opposing team who was totally off limits. Well, Pepper might have gotten away with tagging him out if she tried a wimpier than usual throw. They had to tag him out at some point or they'd never win. But no one was going to throw a ball as hard as they could to ram Steve Rogers directly in his diaphragm.
Steve folded over with a quiet 'oomf', his eyes bulging. The ball bounced away and rolled across the floor to who knows where. For all Tony knew or cared, the ball could have hopped into an alternate dimension. At that moment, Tony could happily have followed.
His entire body froze up and he just stared while Steve spasmed and gagged and utterly failed to do anything like draw in a breath, and maybe Tony stopped breathing for a moment at the same time, because his entire chest felt frozen and locked and pretty much tied into knots.
He was dead. He had just killed Steve Rogers, and if that guilt didn't eat him alive, then Steve's psychotic and overprotective friends definitely would. He was totally dead, and okay, maybe this panic was also a bit not good, but definitely deserved, and his entire body was tingling and his lungs were paralyzed, and he hoped that his dad had something awesome engraved on his gravestone and not something stupid like 'beloved son' because how generic was that?
The game stopped as Steve went down, not like time had seemed to, but really stopped because Coach Erskine was completely on top of things and had blown his whistle, and didn't even turn his head or halt his quick stride in Steve's direction to give Killian detention for throwing a ball at the unsuspecting Maya after the whistle was blown. Peripherally, Tony was aware of Killian whining that he hadn't noticed the game had stopped, and it wasn't fair, but most of his attention was still fully centered on the ring of people now surrounding a desperately spasming Steve Rogers.
"Go, call the nurse," Coach ordered, and Natasha peeled away from the group to make for the phone on the far wall, and then the Coach was clearing the space around Steve a bit, and murmuring something that really should have been too soft for Tony to hear, but the entire gym was unnaturally quite in the wake of this disaster, and all of Tony's senses felt a bit on fire, and he could hear him saying 'It will pass, relax, and it will pass.'
And then Loki, who as far as Tony could tell just liked to create chaos and then watch everyone run around him like chickens with their heads cut off, looked right at Tony, then down at Steve and the Coach, and of course felt the need to offer his perfectly innocent assessment of the situation.
"I know you are rather busy, Coach Erskine," he said, his voice practically dripping with innocence, "But I'm fairly certain Stark's about to go into cardiac arrest."
Which of course meant just about everyone in the entire gym turned to stare at Tony, except maybe for Bucky who was holding Steve up and Tony was able to clearly hear him growl, "Let him, the little punk," even over Pepper's shriek of "Tony!" Then Steve coughed and somehow managed to gasp out, "Bucky!" in that completely disappointed and disapproving way he had when any of his friends said something mean.
That should have been comforting because apparently Steve Rogers wasn't actually dying, and he seemed to not want Tony to die either, or at least didn't want his friends to wish death on him, which boded well for Steve not letting his friends kill Tony later.
Unfortunately, the knowledge that Steve's friends weren't actually going to kill him didn't really save him from certain doom, because it finally occurred to Tony that Loki actually might have a point, and that his chest wasn't all locked up because he was in shock, but because he had had a bit of a shock, on top of a lot of exertion bordering on overexertion, because okay, maybe he had been feeling a little bit off all day, and, wow, he knew he was going to die, but he didn't realize he was actually going to die, because the gym wasn't supposed to spin that way or go all sparkly around the edges and his heart wasn't supposed to beat so hard he could feel it like a sledge hammer in his chest and when had his body become reacquainted with the floor?
Coach Erskine said something in whatever foreign language he was born to which Tony was pretty sure translated to something R rated and not appropriate for a teacher to say surrounded by his young, impressionable students. Then he shouted at Natasha, "Ambulance, now!" before using whatever super power he secretly possessed to suddenly be hovering right over Tony, and then he said a whole string of words in that foreign language that Tony was totally using his eidetic memory to look up later so he could use them himself, assuming of course there was a later and he wasn't really going to die.
Pepper was somehow hovering over him as well, and the Coach was ordering him to breathe with him, and you had to do what the Coach ordered you to when he used that tone or he'd make you run extra laps or do detention or he'd bench you for the rest of class, so Tony did his best even though his chest felt heavy, like Thor had decided to sit on it or something, and the world was starting to fade a bit around the edges.
It was just as the world went away completely that he heard Steve say, "I killed Tony Stark. I'm so dead." So maybe he hadn't killed Steve Rogers after all. That was good.
The world did come back. As it turned out, Tony wasn't dead after all.
He did have to stay in a hospital room for two whole days, which was pretty much worse torture than being benched during gym class, because for the most part he was supposed to 'take it easy' which meant they didn't want him holding wheel chair races down the halls, or trying to work on five projects at once on three different tablets, or to pretty much do anything at all more exhaustive than watching cartoons.
Luckily they did let him have visitors, so Pepper and Rhodey pretty much moved into his room, and Pepper got revenge on him for terrifying the life out of her by getting him the most ridiculous, pinkest stuffed animal in the gift shop. This turned out to be a bunny rabbit with a slightly demonic look in its too far apart button eyes that was holding a giant red heart in its hands with white lettering saying that was meant to say 'Good Luck', which was odd enough in a gift shop full of get well animals, but the paws also happened to be inappropriately placed so that the letter 'L' was half covered, allowing the interpretation to what the phrase was meant to say up to the reader. The absolute best part was when he caught his dad surreptitiously lifting the paw to check that it really was an 'L' when he thought Tony was asleep.
His dad didn't exactly move into Tony's hospital room, which was definitely fine by Tony, but he did pop in a surprising number of times considering Tony's heart health wasn't exactly a new thing, and in his experience his dad never knew what to do with him and handled the novel feeling of being out of his depth by avoiding it. Perhaps it was because Tony spent an annoying amount of time sleeping so his dad didn't have to try and converse, just sit next to him and work on his phone. Then his dad got into a loud argument on his phone and the nurses, who really should have been cowed before his billions but somehow weren't, came and kicked him out.
Later, Tony learned that his dad had spent most of his time spying on his sleeping son arguing with Tony's school and Obi, and Jarvis about getting Coach Erskine fired because 'What kind of irresponsible slave driver pushed a kid with a heart condition into running laps and having balls thrown at him?!'
Thankfully, either someone talked Tony's dad out of it, or Tony's school principal is the toughest one eyed pirate in the world who isn't about to bow to any outraged parent or his money, because when Tony was finally released from his prison, and then house arrest, Coach Erskine was till in residence, with not so much as a formal complaint on his record (Tony may have hacked the system to check.).
In present time, Tony just got to be weirded out by his dad spying on him while he slept and played games with Pepper and Rhodey and whoever else showed up to wish him well as a distraction from the fact that his chest still hurt and he wasn't allowed to do anything remotely exhaustive (and okay, maybe he did feel a bit exhausted, but that didn't stop his brain from running a hundred miles a minute, and he needed outlets, darn those drill sergeant nurses who caught him at every turn).
Bruce, his science bro and one of the few friends he had who was his own age, came a couple of times, but hospitals always kind of spooked him a bit, so Tony didn't mind that he didn't camp out like Pepper and Rhodey. He did text a lot, mostly inappropriate but hilarious heart humor. So Tony couldn't really say he missed him. Besides, along with Pepper, Rhodey, and his creepy dad, he was getting a whole host of visitors, including kids he only thought of as acquaintances up to that point.
Steve Rogers came by several times to visit, looking a bit askance at Tony's new rabbit and somehow convinced that Tony keeling over from his chronic heart problems was entirely his fault for not dodging Tony's ball fast enough. Bucky came too and mumbled an apology about wishing him dead, which didn't even sound completely forced so he probably meant it. Anyway, Tony could relate to saying stupid things without thinking them through and then feeling horrible afterwards, and he had almost killed Bucky's friend, so whatever. Tony forgave him.
Rhodey took slightly longer when he heard the details, but somehow the end result was Bucky and Rhodey being the best of friends, so by default Tony had to be friends with Steve and Bucky too. And if you're friends with Steve and Bucky, you also have to be friends with Clint and Natasha and Thor.
So maybe the entire incident wasn't the worst thing to ever happen. Tony didn't die, and Steve didn't die, and Coach Erskine continued his reign of terror and even eventually ended Tony's torture and allowed him off the bench again during gym class. And Tony totally won that dodgeball game, even if Steve and Bucky insisted it was a draw.
The end
Author's Note: No, I have not abandoned any of my other Avenger fics. This is just a one-off that popped in my head that I wrote out all in one go. I've no intention of continuing this story further, though I might consider adding more one-shots to this universe.