"Who was the first man to set foot on the moon?"
"Uh-wha?" Steve turned over on the unnecessarily large and luxurious bed he and Tony called their own. Unable to sleep, he had found himself constantly fighting to stay awake. He would lie down a lot, as if to take a nap, but never actually ended up closing his eyes. Instead, he'd usually just daydream or find himself deep in thought. Nothing of importance coming to mind, yet it still occupied his time.
"I said," Tony swiveled the wheeled chair in front of the desk he had been sitting on in order to face the barely conscious beauty. "Who was the first man on the moon?"
Realizing Tony was interrupting his fantasies only to test him on modern trivia, Steve rolled back onto his stomach, uninterested. "Not now, Tony."
"Come on you should know this-"
"I know it, but I don't care."
"If you know it just answer the question…" Tony mumbled under his breath, looking at the Iron Man gauntlet he was tightening onto his right wrist with a screwdriver.
"Shut, the fuck, up." Steve was exhausted. His eyes were heavy, and he had absolutely no energy, patience, or motivation to accomplish anything. He couldn't even move muscles and limbs, for they felt like lead on top of the bedspread. He just wanted to rest. "Why do you always have to annoy me when I'm trying to get some peace and quiet? I don't give a good goddamn about your stupid '21st Century' triva games."
"Goddammit," Tony muttered, slamming his metal-clad arm onto the desktop. "Just stop with the whining. I never whined. You know why?"
Steve didn't respond. He was too exhausted to respond. The last few weeks in therapy had been hell on both him and Tony.
"I said do you have any idea what the hell my father would do to me if I ever showed attitude?" He didn't realize how drastically he'd skewed the subject. When Tony spoke like this, it didn't hold a threat. He wasn't trying to intimidate Steve by any means… he was only trying to prove a point, as if to purposely sway the topic from Steve ignoring him to his own relationship with his dad.
"No. No for Chrissake, I don't." Steve rubbed his hands over his tired face. Rubbing the heels of his palm against the sensitive eyelids so hard that he began to see patterns of lights and stars behind his closed eyes.
Tony stood up, advancing towards the right side of the bed (which was usually Steve's spot, but he had been occupying Tony's side at the given moment). "Look, Aurora, I'm just saying, you're damn lucky to have someone love you in a time of need like this."
"Don't give me that." Steve had worked up enough strength to roll over in order to face Tony, who was now next to him on the bed. "Don't play the sympathetic 'daddy never loved me' card. I knew your father and he was a good man. A little rough around the edges but was my friend, and so are you. And although it was way before you were born, from knowing his character, I highly doubt he didn't love you."
"Now, I never said he didn't love me-"
"Really? Because the way you implied it really could've fooled me."
Tony looked back at the sarcastic eyes. What had they become? He had devoted his time and effort into helping Steve, just like Robin had instructed… but things hadn't been going over so easily in the last month, and it was getting harder and harder to keep this promise.
Steve's prescribed medication had nearly made him a completely different person. He was cranky, anxious, and constantly tired. Fighting and bickering was becoming more and more relevant, as the number of days since they first met the psychiatrist grew.
Tony tried to stay patient. He did everything in his will to keep Steve happy. But as the number of tests and psychological activities went on, the harder it was to cope.
Week one: Observation. Detecting the fear. Rorschach tests and "When I say a word, I want you to tell me the first word that comes to your mind" psychoanalyzing activates.
Week two: Forming a hypothesis. What made Steve tick? What was the 'trigger' (so Robin called it) that sparked these devilish dreams? Fear of war perhaps? Fear of flying? Or maybe certain sleeping factors influenced it.
Week three: Testing the hypothesis. Sending Steve on a one-hour flight with Tony in one of Stark Industries' private jets. Steve, of course, was a panicking mess the entire time, but Tony still held his hand for the sixty minutes. They showed him World War II movies, hoping to spark some sort of reaction. But Steve just shrugged them all away, finding ways to deem them all either 'inaccurate' or 'unrealistic'.
Week four: Or 'The week of fucked up sleeping' as Tony would put it. Between the therapist's consent and Tony's technology, they practically monitored Steve's brainwaves in every single possible scenario. At night, during the day, when it was light, when it was dark, with Tony, without Tony, after sex, not after sex, spooning, no spooning. They did each three times. The whole thing was tedious and tiresome and, despite how often they were forced to sleep for researching purposes, it seemed they were always lacking rest.
"I told Robin about it," Steve rolled off his tongue as if he were drifting off, eyes barely open. "About you and your dad."
Although Tony wasn't technically happy about the news, he didn't lose his temper or show a sense of anger. "… Why?"
"Because," Steve said having rolled back onto his backside, eyes now completely shut." I'm not the only one who needs help around here."
Tony let out a long exhalation. Steve's words absorbed into him, like a sponge. Taking in the information quickly, but needing a moment to process it. Eventually, he just placed a loving hand on Steve's shoulder. You'd think the poor guy would be sick of sleeping, after hibernating for seventy years…
Now, of course, it was the only thing either of them ever thought about. When they'd be blessed with a good nights sleep again. The days Steve didn't wake up with his heart nearly beating out of his ribcage became treats. It was rare, but they were treasured. Soon, they each forgot what it had been like to be able to rest easily at night. Worrying about whether or not a panic attack would be in the near future became a part of their regular nightly routine.
"Neil Armstrong," Steve let out in a soft, quiet, sleepy voice.
"What's that?" Tony hoped for a repeat, having not heard the drowsy voice the first time.
"Neil Armstrong." Steve's blue eyes slightly creaked open again, shifting slightly to look at the man next to him. "The first man to walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong."
3:02 AM. Tony couldn't sleep. He rarely did to begin with. So many years he practiced a tolerance to such early hours by staying awake to work on robotics or drinking coffee. It hadn't been until a few months ago, after Steve always insisted on him staying in bed during the night, that Tony retained a normal sleeping schedule. That, like many other things recently, had been reset as well.
Vengeance fueled his energy. He didn't know what he was angry about… maybe it was Steve, or Robin, or himself. No one could really be at blame for the PSTD. Sure, Steve was the one keeping him awake with the awful screaming and breathing that sounded asthma-induced. Robin was the one pushing all the unnecessary experiments, and prescribing powerful medications left and right. And Tony was the one who couldn't deal with it.
He didn't know what he was building when 3:02 AM hit. He had mostly been fiddling with some surplus scraps of metal he had scraped from the arm he'd been fixing just a few hours earlier.
Either way, he had been sitting as his desk, chest-piece slightly illuminating the entire room with a light blue hue, when he heard the familiar voice call his voice behind him.
It was a yell or a cry or a shudder. It was simply, "Tony…?" As if Steve had just woken up, his voice tired and slightly confused to its surroundings.
"Steve?" Tony perked up, not expecting to be spoken to as this hour. "Steve are you… are you awake?"
"Tony…" Steve moaned again, his eyes were open wide, blinking, and looking straight at him.
Understanding this was a 'come here' statement; Tony obeyed, and left his screwdriver and bolts to sit on top of the bed, facing his fellow Avenger.
"Steve," he repeated as his weight caused an incline of the mattress. He picked on his feet, sitting his entire body on the top of the blanket, and placed two hands delicately on the captain's. "Are you awake?"
Steve had been looking past Tony, but when confronted by the question, he turned towards him, and nodded, still as if in a daze. His mind was somewhere else.
. There was a glistening streak of water left on his cheek, but besides that, he seemed strangely calm.
"… Sweetheart? Baby, what's wrong?" Tony used these comforting words when he noticed how fearful and distraught the other man looked. Granted, words like 'sweetheart' and 'baby' rarely passed his lips, but in a moment of panic he had selected them conveniently out of seemingly nowhere.
Steve opened his dry mouth, the voice coming out silently at first, but augmented in volume after cracking. His eyes remained wide open, and his pupils shifted to look into Tony's. "I remembered it."
"So, I've looked over the tests. I've done my research. And I have some good news and some bad news." It was time for Robin's weekly visit, and she pacing, strolling back and forth in the same living room she had met the couple in. Only this time, a month later, she was standing tall walking back and forth along the hardwood floors, a finger pressed to her lip.
Tony and Steve shared the crouch, each playing with or moving their own fingers in some sort of way. Steve held his hands in a praying position, only pressed against his nose as if in thought. Tony drummed his fingers along his knee impatiently.
"And…?" Tony said after a long pause proceeded Robin's original statement.
"The bad new is…" she inhaled and exhaled deeply, as if to imply exhaustion. "I have no idea what's triggering your nightmares."
Another pause, this one shorter, for Tony barked in a sarcastic, "Great."
"However," Robin began, assumedly to state the good news she had referred to only moments ago.
"No… you know what? Just stop right there," Tony interrupted her, standing up from the couch in the process. "Because, you've been here, what, a month? And you're done Jack-squat for Steve."
"Actually, Mr. Stark, if you'd just let me finish, please? In fact, I'd like to talk to you in private after my session with Mr. Rogers today, if you don't mind."
"Why the hell should I?" Tony shrugged, placing his hands in his jean pockets. "Last time I checked, Ms. Orwell, I wasn't paying you $250, a week for you to talk to me."
"Tony," Steve broke in, lifting a hand as to single his turn of speaking. "Money… isn't an object, here."
"Look, I'm just saying, if Little Miss Tight Black Skirt With A Suit here would do her damn job we wouldn't be in this fucking mess."
"Tony…" Steve tried to interrupt again, but his attempt failed.
"Which brings me to another point, why the hell haven't we been trying to find ways of stopping this? All you ever seem concerned about is what's causing it-"
"Well if we can find the cause of it we can figure out how to stop it," the doctor had raised her voice now too, and Steve was caught in between the two arguers.
"You've done your stupid tests and therapy sessions, you've made poor Steve here, go through hell and back, what with all the meds he's been on and making him go up in that damn plane. You really have some nerve coming in here and telling us all what to d-"
"Anthony!" Steve yelled loudly, stopping both Tony and Robin to stop dead in the tracks.
Tony remained silent. No friend ever referred to him as 'Anthony'. For Tony, it was the name parents used when they scolded their kid. It was the name teacher's asked during roll call on the first day of school. It was the name on your driver's license. But it certainly, under any circumstances, was the name your lover called you, unless they were seething with anger and viciousness. And Steve might as well have been.
"I want to listen to what she has to say," he spoke again, this time softer.
An awkward silence had pierced the air once again, until Robin cleared her throat and continued where she left off as if nothing had happened. "Well," she said, pulling out a sheet of paper with handwritten notes scribbled around the corners from her suitcase. "It's quite obvious what factors affect your dreaming state. What's strange about it though… is that they don't add up."
Shock turned to curiosity, Tony rubbered his neck behind Ms. Orwell, scanning the paper she held from over her shoulder.
"For instance," she shifted her eyes to look at the man behind her. "Steve sleeps better alone than when you're in the room… but that's only if you're not touching him. See, after coitus and/or spooning, Steve's brainwave patterns and heart rate remain normal."
"When are they the worst?" Steve asked, still from his seat on the couch.
"The worst," Robin began, furiously scanning over the paper in front of her for the information she desired. "The worst is when Tony is next to you, but doesn't display affection and/or touch you."
"So, he's best when I'm there and worst when I'm there?" Tony asked, scratching at his stubble. "What's killing him his what's keeping him alive…" He chuckled and then added, "I'm way too familiar with that concept."
"Ms. Orwell," Steve said, his tone suggesting he was going to be changing the topic. She looked at him, and raised an eyebrow. "I had the dream again last night… only this time, I remembered what I dreamed about."
Interested and surprised, Robin cautiously moved to sit down next to Steve on the couch. Tony remained standing, but turned his attention towards the speaker. "Would you care to share?" She whispered.
Steve nodded. "I-I was in the airplane," he began. He diverted his eyes from both Robin and Tony, only looking at one of them once in awhile for a mere second each. "I was in the plane and, I could feel myself dropping in the dream. Like, my stomach felt strange from the descent. And I was really cold. So I'm flying the plane and I'm feeling really cold and then I hear someone from behind me say 'Cap, why is it so hot?'. So I turn around, and Peggy, Tony, and Bucky are there. All standing in a line behind me. And they're all there asking, 'Captain. Why is it so hot?'"
He licked his lips and inhaled, taking a second to remember and finish the story. "And I don't know what to tell them because I want them to be happy but I'm freezing cold… so I told them 'Guys, it's really cold and I'm trying to land this plane, I don't know how to help'. So I turned back to the window, to look where I was going, and when I looked back… Tony," he had paused again, his voice slightly quivering, as if he didn't want to continue, "was gone. And… in his place… was the Tesseract."
The two pairs of brown eyes were locked on his. They didn't say anything out of both respect and wish to not interrupt.
"And… All I remember was that they were all falling, like they were melting into the floor. And they were going to fall out of the plane. And I needed to catch them, but I needed to fly the plane. And I didn't know what to do and that got me all worked up and upset and… and then I woke up."
Then the room was quiet. All three seemed to ignore the ambient New York City noises coming from outside, and the humming appliances coming from the open kitchenette, and the sound of breathing from the three adults. Steve was reflecting, Robin was analyzing, and Tony was heartbroken.
"So," Robin broke the silence harshly. "I suppose we've narrowed this down. Now, it obviously has something to do with Tony. And your nightmare suggests tha-" She stopped mid-sentence, and her eyes went wide, as if she were subjected by some form of an epiphany.
Quickly she turned around. "Tony," she instructed, "Take off your shirt!"
Tony and Steve looked at each other in shock. "Uh, okay… but just so you know, if I get sued for breaking the patient-doctor confidentially-"
"Just take it off!" She said again, this time stricter.
Tony did as he was told, and raised the black Rolling Stones T-shirt off his body. The arc reactor was exposed, placed neatly in the center of his chest, radiating a faint light unnoticeably considering the bright daylight that shown in through the large glass windows.
Robin nodded. "I think we've got ourselves an answer."
Tony and Steve looked at one and other again, only this time with confusion. Catching on, Robin exclaimed, "Oh come on! Don't tell me you don't see it." The men remained silent.
"What… my chest?" Tony finally broke in. He was a genius, and yet even he wasn't grasping whatever concept the therapist had thrown at them.
Robin turned back to Steve who still sat beside her. "Steven," she said. "Explain to me again, in detail, what the Tesseract is. What does it look like?"
"It's… uh, a cube," Steve said, unsure of what else to say. "It's a cube of energy that emits a…"
Robin raised her eyebrows, egging him to continue. Steve had finally seen where she was going with this, and quietly finished his sentence.
"a radiant blue light..."