Fuck, he was dizzy.
Sitting up so suddenly had not been a wise choice.
But at least Danny was gone now, so Steve could wallow in his own suffering and not move for the next six hours.
He was pretty sure he'd never reacted to a medication like this before. Sure, starting a new med always made him a little nauseous, or gave him a bit of a headache, or made him a little tired, but he'd never been knocked out like this.
His skin was unbearably warm and his head felt like someone had lodged a railroad stake somewhere in between his ears, and every little motion cause pain to spike through his skull, leaving an unpleasant ache behind. And yet, his entire body felt twitchy, like he was a live wire, though he wasn't quite sure where his feet were at the moment.
Was it Monday, or Tuesday? No, it had to be a weekend, or else he'd be at work right now.
Hm, work.
Had Danny been here earlier? Steve was almost positive he had been, but then again...
Was that a spider on the wall? Steve squinted. The room kept swimming in and out of focus, and it was making things very difficult. "Stop that," he muttered indignantly.
The room sharpened momentarily, and it was long enough for Steve to recognize that the shadow on the wall was not, in fact, a spider, but a reflection of the sun off his phone screen, which was lying on the bedside table right next to his—
It is 104 degrees, the sun blazing high in the sky, and Steve's BDU is way too hot; he's sweating so much that his grip on the gun in his hands slips, the barrel of the AK-47 sliding sluggishly out of his slick fingers—
—gun.
Fuck.
Why isn't this medication doing what it's supposed to? It's just making things worse, not better.
Maybe he wasn't taking enough.
With a herculean effort, Steve rolled himself over—trying desperately to ignore how his whole body protested the movement—and scrabbled for the pill bottle he knew was on the bedside table. After two botched attempts, he managed to get the orange vial between his fingers and screw the cap off. He'd taken two before, but maybe he needed more?
Dammit, could his hands stop quivering enough for him to get the pills out? Would that be too much to ask?
With difficulty, Steve managed to shake out three white, round pills into his trembling palm. He shoved them into his mouth, dry-swallowing, before laying on his back, squinting up at the pill bottle he held between his thumb and forefinger.
Was it even his name on this bottle? Because it might have been just his rapidly blurring vision, or the uncontrollable tremors in his hand, but last time he checked, he was pretty sure his name wasn't that long...
Whatever. It was probably just him.
Besides, the bottle said 5.4 mg, and Steve was pretty sure he'd learned in SEAL training that 15 mg was an acceptable dose of—
It's still sweltering—and why the hell is it so fucking hot in the desert?—but at the moment Steve is chilled to the bone, because a member of his team—and it could be York, or Ogata, judging from rough size alone, though it's hard to tell at the moment—is on the ground writhing in pain, and there's blood gushing from his leg—or where his leg would be; Steve can see the wound clearly enough to make out the mangled remains of body fat, tendons, and arteries—and spurting out all over the sand floor, intermingling with the dust to flow sluggishly outward. Steve's ears are ringing, his equilibrium feels off—was there an explosion? It feels like there might have been—but he staggers somewhat upright—ignoring the flaring pain in his gut and shoulder, and throbbing of his head (is that blood dripping down into his eye?)— and scrambles over to York—he can tell, now that he's close enough to see his face, see the 20 year-old's expression twisted in agony and abject terror and that agedness that only men who've brushed too close with death can have, and dammit, York's his E5— pushing York's bloody hands away to assess the damage...there's a tourniquet—he thinks he might have torn something to make it, but he can't remember what—because curse these IEDs, he's already had to use up his supply. Someone's shouting, there's a small cloud of desert soil that's flung into the air as someone skids up alongside Steve, and fuck, his heart is pounding so fast he might code, and it's so damn cold and someone's screaming for morphine—
Steve barely made it to the bathroom before he was violently ill, and the cold tile of the floor was the last thing he remembered before blackness overtook him.