The thing was, Bruce had been lying, but only by omission. Steve really was dragged out of Tony's room by Coulson and Thor, half asleep and demanding to stay, but that wasn't the whole of it.
No, it went something like this:
- The Avengers unknowingly killed an angsty alien crown prince.
- The prince's family didn't particularly appreciate losing their heir.
- Aliens invaded Earth.
- The Avengers were sent on many more missions to kill angsty young aliens, ones who weren't so important as princes.
These missions were near constant for our group of misfit heroes for the first four days, the same as every other superhero team on the planet. In their spare time they all collapsed in debriefing rooms and on the hard, metal benches of the Quinjet, and while hiding out in ruins of skyscrapers, waiting for back-up when things got too bad.
All of them, that is, except for Steve.
He watched over his team with an obsessiveness that none of the rest had quite seen before, with wild eyes that kept searching for red and gold armor every time he did yet another head count. They knew he didn't need much sleep, but it didn't take them long to discover that the only times he slept at all were when they were at SHIELD and he was in Tony's room. The psychologists said it wasn't healthy; no one stopped him.
And that's how things went for the first three days of the invasion, until someone mapping the attacks began to see a disturbing pattern. All the heaviest bombardments and thickest concentration of troops followed the Avengers across the continent.
When Fury first told them they were going into hiding it had been an utter shitstorm of "Nay. We will not hide." and "But we're fuckin' superheroes!" and "If you attempt to force the issue, you may soon be missing both eyes, sir." All it took to make them back down was an estimate of how much collateral damage followed in their wake. A horrified silence followed.
Steve broke it by asking, "Where do you need us to go?"
They needed to go to a remote facility somewhere deep in the woods of Canada, as it turned out. It was a sprawling compound, completely undetectable. The accommodations were just barren enough to make everyone remember how spoiled they were up in the Avenger's tower. They all hated it immediately.
It was on the fourth day that they moved in. Steve didn't bother stopping by his room, heading straight to medical- to Tony- instead. It was on the fifth day that Natasha looked in to see him drooping in the guest chair, desperately fighting sleep because he decided he wanted to greet Tony when he woke up. She rounded up Thor, for strength, and Coulson, for his ability to look past Steve's pleading eyes and make sure he got what he needed, if not what he wanted. They forced him into his barren room and promised him that he could come see Tony again in twelve hours if he would just sleep for a while, Christ.
A couple hours later Tony stumbled awake to ask Bruce for coffee out loud, and where Steve was underneath that, because he needed both of them really. Then he fell asleep again and Bruce and Clint tagged Thor in, so he would have a more cheerful face to wake up to the next time.
Author's notes: This chapter has been brought to you by insomnia, because turning around one's hours in preperation for school is an awful experience, especially when one is naturally nocturnal.
Also, this story is more dramatic than I originally intended; these things never work out the way I plan for them to. Should I change the genres? I honestly intend for there to be comedy in the future, but melodrama is my drug of choice and I'm horribly addicted.
Anyways, I hope this wasn't too much of an info-dump, but I was writing the next chapter and realized that it was horribly confusing to anyone not living in my brain without some explanation.