All Steve wanted was a casual lunch out. He thought they all deserved it, after the stress of the last day. It wasn't even like he was asking for a lot. Sitting in a restaurant for less than an hour shouldn't have much of an impact on a person's life one way or another, but life always seemed to find a way to surprise him.
The encounter with the waitress was awkward at best and uncomfortable at worst. Steve wasn't used to people being so forward, no matter how typical it seemed to be these days. He and Peggy had moved at a snail's pace, which he could admit now was probably a bit too slow, even in circumstances unlike his. But the overt flirtatiousness of the waitress, when he hadn't reciprocated at all, had been off putting.
Even still, he wasn't really sure what to do about it. Steve didn't know how to outright reject someone in situations like this. It reminded him of that kiss he'd been pulled into the day he'd gotten his shield. He hadn't really wanted it, but he was too startled to react beyond standing there in shock.
In the end, he hadn't needed to do anything at all. Celia had swooped in and sent some sort of aggressive girl signals out and solved the problem. Steve was appreciative, but also felt a little tingle stirring in his stomach from the action. She had only done it to make the waitress back off, but maybe there was something else there too. Maybe they were going to finally have to talk about this thing they'd been dancing around for a while. It sure wasn't going to happen in this booth with Bruce and Clint though.
He happily started eating his meal, listening to Clint go on about how useful he was. It was sort of relaxing hearing him babble about nothing important, just providing a soothing background noise for their meal. Steve snickered when Clint brought up the time he thought he was posing as a driver for an important Shield executive, but later found out that he really was just a last minute fill in for a driver who called out sick.
"Don't," Celia mumbled suddenly. It was so quiet that Clint didn't pause in his spiel, but Steve heard her.
"Celia?" Steve questioned, looking up from his plate to see what the problem was. He was taken aback a bit when he saw that blank look on her face that he recognized from Tony's party. Both of them had brushed it aside in the moment and he hadn't really thought about it since, which he was regretting now.
"No," Celia whispered. Their little bit of interaction had caught the attention of Bruce and Clint, who were now staring at them in confusion. Steve was about to reach over and tap Celia on her shoulder to hopefully break her from her trance, but something else broke before he could. Steve startled back in his seat as the glass in Celia's hand seemed to explode.
"Celia!" Steve shouted, finally pulling her from wherever she'd gone in her head.
"What?" Celia murmured, looking around at all of them. "What?"
"Your hand," Steve whispered. She looked down to where he had gestured and he could tell she had no idea what had happened.
"Shit!" Bruce hissed, grabbing a wad of napkins and pressing them against Celia's bleeding wounds. The commotion had drawn the attention of others in the restaurant and they all turned to stare at their group.
"What the hell?" Clint mumbled, pulling a handful of bills from his pocket and throwing them on the table.
"Oh my goodness, should I call an ambulance?" a different waitress asked as she rushed up to the table.
"No, we're fine. We can take her to get patched up," Steve assured her. Celia gave her a strange look as she crouched down to wipe up some spilled water off the floor. She shoved her non-bloody hand in her pocket and pulled out something, handing it over to the waitress.
"If you ever need help, call this number," Celia whispered. The woman's eyes flicked toward the back of the restaurant and away again before she took the card and slid it into her apron pocket.
"We need to go," Steve said, standing up and pulling Celia out of the booth and toward the exit. She held the handful of napkins against her cuts, keeping her injured arm close to her chest. Bruce cleaned up the leftover blood as best he could, muttering apologies to the restaurant staff. Steve tugged Celia into an alley nearby to wait for the others to catch up.
"Steve-"
"What happened?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean one second I'm eating lunch and the next second you're freaking out and I have glass in my skin," Celia shrugged helplessly.
"You don't remember breaking it? At all?" Steve whispered.
"No."
"What about that woman? Did you know her?"
"I heard her. She was talking to someone and it just sounded so familiar."
"Someone from your past? Someone who knew you?"
"No, it was something I remember hearing so much and I just got lost in it. It was like everything else around me disappeared, but I couldn't do anything about it," Celia murmured. Steve could tell she was being honest because she looked just as rattled as he felt.
"We need to get you back to the tower so you can heal, then we can sit down and try to figure this out," Steve declared, peeking around the edge of the building to see Clint and Bruce finally leaving the restaurant and heading toward them.
"No, I have to get back to the clinic. The rest of my afternoon is booked and I can't cancel on such short notice," Celia argued.
"Are you kidding me? You're going to try to work like this?" Steve asked incredulously. There was blood running down her arm and she was just going to try to brush it aside?
"I once took an exam with a broken wrist because my ex wanted me to fail. If I didn't let an injury stop me then, I'm not going to let it stop me now," Celia shot back, closing her eyes in frustration. "I'm too amped up to try to fall asleep right now. I've just got to deal with this."
"I don't care what the plan is, but we need to get back to the tower so we can clean this up," Bruce insisted, wrapping a few towels around Celia's hand. He must've gotten them from the restaurant before he left.
"We'll have to do it from my office. I have a call I need to be on in twenty minutes," Celia conceded, taking her hand back from Bruce and tucking it against her stomach.
"It's gonna be fun to explain that to the front desk," Clint snorted, falling in step with them as they started the walk back to the tower.
"That's why you're going to distract them," Celia said, flashing him a tight grin.
"Why do I have to be the decoy?" Clint grumbled.
"Because Bruce is going to be busy with my hand and Margot already dislikes Steve."
"Of course I can't interrupt your special blood meeting. There were probably better ways to get Bruce more of that blood he craves."
"It's not very funny anymore," Bruce mumbled.
"It never was," Steve grunted.
"It's fine. Let's all stop talking and just get back to the clinic," Celia sighed. They made the rest of the journey in silence, even though it was killing him. Steve wanted to know more about what happened and make Celia sit still and tell him, but he knew he wasn't going to get his wish. She didn't seem to have any of the answers he was looking for and that worried him. As if they needed something else to cause issues.
They climbed into an empty elevator when they got back to the tower, making a pit stop at Bruce's lab before they went back down to the clinic so he could get his supplies. It would raise too many questions if they raided the clinic's supplies and they didn't need to cause more of a scene than they probably would just going to Celia's office. Bruce threw a jacket he found over her shoulders and she tucked the bloody towels out of sight.
Celia had a placid look on her face as they rode the elevator the last few floors. She had the same blank features that she'd had back at the diner, but he could still see the normal animation in her eyes that was lacking before. Even now, while she was actively trying, she couldn't achieve that same level of nothing that he'd seen before. Steve wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse.
Clint stepped off the elevator first, going straight over to the front desk. One receptionist was busy talking to a patient, so he went up to the one who was alone, turning her attention to something pointing away from where the rest of them were headed. Celia led them down to her office, nodding politely to the few people they passed. Steve recognized a few of them from the many times he came down for lunch, so his presence didn't really seem out of place.
As soon as they were safely closed into the privacy of Celia's office, Bruce got to work. He urged Celia into her desk chair and pulled the visitor's chair around to the other side of the desk, perching on the edge so he was close enough to do what needed to be done. Steve hovered around the room, wishing he had something to do besides watch. But there was no way he was leaving.
Bruce peeled off the layers of towel and the only sign of discomfort that Celia showed was a slight scrunching of her nose and tightening of her jaw. The serum had given him a higher pain tolerance, but he wasn't sure how much of that transferred to Celia. He knew she still felt pain, being a witness to it every time she fell asleep. But was that consistent pain changing how she felt other pain?
"When is your next appointment?" Bruce asked, dabbing at a few of the still bleeding cuts with some gauze.
"I have a phone call scheduled in about five minutes, but no in person patients for thirty," Celia replied.
"I don't think anyone will appreciate you bleeding on them during their sessions," Steve pointed out.
"I'll wear gloves," Celia shrugged.
"We need to get the bleeding to stop if we want that plan to work," Bruce murmured, rifling through his supplies. "A few of these cuts are going to need stitches."
"Wait, you can't just put in stitches like it's no big deal," Steve objected.
"Natasha put stitches in you on Tony's couch the day we met. And that was for a gunshot wound," Celia reminded him. "This is nothing compared to that."
"I also wasn't on a phone call," Steve shot back.
"This is the situation now, so there isn't any point arguing about it," Bruce snapped, pulling out a pair of tweezers.
"Uh oh, I think we upset Bruce," Celia mumbled, hissing as Bruce poked at one of the bigger shards of glass.
"Well, maybe if you were taking this a bit more seriously," Steve sighed.
"Do you think I'm not freaked out by this? I didn't even know I was capable of shattering glass in my fist and to do it without thinking is kind of freaking me out, but I can't do anything about it now. So sorry if I'm not reacting in the way that you think I should right now," Celia bit out.
"Celia, I-"
"No, I'm sorry. It's not your fault and I shouldn't be taking this out on you," Celia insisted, glancing up at him quickly before looking away. "We can figure out this new way that I'm defective when I'm not on the clock."
"You're not defective," Steve argued.
"Agree to disagree," Celia muttered, just as her office phone started ringing. "Okay, I need you guys to be quiet and to pretend we aren't violating so many HIPAA laws."
"What about your hand?" Bruce asked quickly, his tweezers poised over one of the pieces of glass.
"Just do it," Celia shrugged, clearing her throat one last time before picking up the phone. "Thank you for calling the Stark Clinic, this is Dr. Burke." She jerked her chin in the direction of her hand, urging Bruce to get started.
"Here we go," Bruce whispered, blowing out a calming breath before gripping one of the slivers and carefully pulling it out. Celia let out a little gasp, but quickly turned it into a laugh.
"Yes, thanks for getting back to me. I know how aggravating all this can be," Celia chuckled, tapping something on her computer. At least she'd hurt her non-dominant hand. "If you could just go through the different procedures you performed on the patient, that would be great. Their chart was a mess." Steve winced as Bruce pulled out a particularly large looking shard of glass from just under Celia's thumb and a new wave of blood poured out. It reminded him of those unfortunate times he'd witnessed field medicine being performed on his fellow soldiers during the war. The fact that it was being done mere feet from where Celia could be getting proper care made it feel even worse.
"Twice? Ouch, that couldn't have been very comfortable," Celia mumbled, blinking rapidly as Bruce put in the first stitch. Steve had to hand it to her. The person on the other end of the phone probably had no idea she was in pain right now. But it also worried him that she was about to hide it so well. "I'll have to tweak my plans due to that."
"Steve, could you help me for a moment?" Bruce murmured, motioning for him to come closer. Steve stepped to the other end of the desk, eager to have something to do to help. "Can you move her hand a bit to help me get to some spots easier?" Steve nodded in acceptance and let Bruce guide him on what to do. It felt weird spreading Celia's fingers apart so Bruce could get to a piece of glass, but it was better than making her hold her hand at uncomfortable angles while she was in pain.
"I'll have to make a note of that too," Celia said, watching with mild interest as Bruce wrapped some bandages around her fingers. Those cuts weren't deep enough to warrant stitches, but they were still going to sting.
"I'm good now, Steve," Bruce said, but Steve didn't fully move his hand away. He kept his fingertips resting against Celia's, giving her a bit of support for the rest of the ordeal. Bruce put in a few more stitches, but Celia stayed cool through it all, finishing her phone call without giving anything away.
"Well, that sucked," Celia scoffed as soon as she hung up the phone. Bruce was covering her palm with a thin layer of gauze, to help protect the stitches. "Let's not do that again."
"Are you okay? I know you don't want to cancel your appointments, but maybe you should," Steve suggested.
"Nah, I'm good. There isn't too much touching involved in my sessions and I can probably get away with doing it one handed," Celia brushed off, pulling her hand back and testing the movement with a wince. "I never really thought I'd ever have to get stitches again, after everything."
"You should probably find me before you go to sleep so I can take them back out. I'm not sure how your body will react to healing around them and there's no point in having to deal with it after the fact," Bruce said, putting his supplies back in his bag.
"After my last patient, I will. And we can also try to figure out what's wrong with my brain. Maybe I'm finally losing it? Wouldn't surprise me," Celia laughed, standing up and straightening her clothes.
"You're not losing it," Steve insisted. There couldn't be anything bad going on with Celia, because it would be his fault and he wouldn't be able to deal with that. Celia just made a humming noise, not agreeing or disagreeing.
"I need to get going. Thank you for this," Celia said sincerely, gathering up her hair with her good hand and frowning when she ran into trouble. Steve rolled his eyes and held his hand out, pointing toward the hair band on her wrist.
"You're going to treat patients, but you can't even put your hair up in a ponytail?" Steve questioned. Celia snorted but gave him her wrist, letting him pull the elastic off.
"It's not like I'm performing surgery," Celia reminded him, turning around so her hair was facing him.
"And this is on the same level of difficulty as that?" Steve asked, grabbing all of her hair into a bunch like he'd seen her do a million times. It hadn't felt strange to offer to do this, but now that he'd started, it was a lot more intimate than he realized. He swept a few strands that had fallen to join the others, accidentally brushing his fingers against her neck as he did so. He felt Celia shiver a little at his touch, but she quickly covered the reaction by joking with Bruce about making sure she didn't look too messy when Steve was finished.
"Maybe if Clint isn't available, you can do my hair for the next event," Celia joked, patting his arm in thanks. "I gotta go, but I'll see you later." She slipped out the door before Steve could say anything else, leaving him alone with Bruce in her office.
"Has anything like this happened before?" Bruce asked with a look of concern on his face. Steve sighed, staring down at the spot where he and Celia had sat during the clinic party.
"We have a lot to talk about."
