The seventh time it happened was definitely all Tony's fault, even if he hadn't done anything on purpose. Then again, it might as well have been Doom's fault, since he started the whole thing in the first place.
They'd been called out to fight another batch of Doombots (something that happened far too often for anyone's liking). Tony had been running on a maximum of two hours of sleep and fifteen cups of cold coffee for three days, having been too busy building new gear for the team and for SHIELD to bother with such trivial things as sleep and food. Bruce had actually come down to drag him up to his bedroom to get something resembling a good amount of slumber when the alarm started blaring through the Tower. Tony had just managed to shrug the physicist off with a tired grin and step into the suit to head out and kick some ass. He's carefully ignored the suspicious look Bruce had given him in the meantime.
He'd been the first one to get to the battle site – Central Park, because apparently Doom had something against trees – and had started in on blasting the flying robots out of the sky as soon as he'd gotten there. He'd opened up the com-channel for the rest of the team, who had been coming in on the Quinjet in three minutes, which hadn't been fast enough, if Tony had anything to say about it.
"What do you mean, three minutes?!" he shouted, swerving out of the way of an attempted hit and blasting at the robot that had dared to try. "I needed you here five minutes ago!"
"We know, we're trying!" Steve spoke for the rest of them, tone urgent, and the HUD in his faceplate flickered when he narrowly escaped being decapitated from a laser.
"This thing only goes so fast, y'know!" Clint told him, and Tony rolled his eyes. He winced at the pain that flashed through his skull at the movement, skimming the tops of the trees and allowing JARVIS to pinpoint where the nearest enemy targets were.
"Yeah, well, maybe – shit!" He was tackled from behind, nearly being weighed down out of the air, and barrel-rolled to throw the heap of metal onto another approaching group of them. He panted to the worried shouts of the team over the com, "Relax, no biggie, I'm fine."
"You don't sound fine, Tony," Bruce said firmly, and he ignored him in lieu of shooting at another team of robots.
This went on for another two and a half minutes before his vision had started to go blurry from an abrupt and intense wave of exhaustion for half a second, and one of them had been quick enough to notice. The next thing he knew, he'd been blasted in the gut and had gone flying against a tree hard enough to splinter the wood. While he'd been busy trying not to pass out or let himself get too dizzy, the Doombots had already managed to rush him, and he was being beaten within an inch of his life by at least twenty or so robots. The suit had begun to dent and cave, and he could feel the metal start to dig into his skin. The pain had woken him up slightly, enough to order JARVIS to relocate all of the excess power in the suit to the reactor and fire at will. He'd ignored the AI's concerned remarks and the team's harried demands of a call-in in favor or blinking sluggishly at the dangerously blinking HUD in front of him, lines red and flashing and blurring together all at once.
The chest canon went off and the Doombots were blown back, and a circle of charred metal and sparking wires were left where some of them had been directly in the line of fire. Others who had managed to avoid the blast or were not as mortally wounded as their counterparts continued to wail on him like he was a punching bag, and he groaned unhappily at the blood he could feel dripping from his nose and temple.
Hearing the furious roar of their resident jolly green giant through the crackling of his helmet made him smile painfully, even if it was wiped right off his face when a particularly strong hit caught his faceplate. The HUD flickered pitifully, JARVIS' voice wobbling in and out of focus, before the blows being wailed on him finally stopped.
It was eerily quiet for a few seconds, to Tony, inside the suit, his breaths shallow and irregular from how the chestplate had been bent inward and was compressing his ribcage. He was trying to keep himself from passing out, and if the grey beginning to cloud his vision said anything about it, he wasn't doing a very good job. The combination of lack of sleep and lack of food was actually starting to seem like a bad idea. He could hear the faint sounds of roars and crashes and shouts outside of the helmet, but with the com-link down, he couldn't decipher exactly what anyone was saying.
Then, he was picked up, quite gently, although he let out an uncomfortable hiss as his aching limbs were jostled in the air. There was a sad-sounding grunt, and then his faceplate was pried from his helmet, and Tony squinted painfully against the brightness he saw afterwards. Above of him, he could see a huge blur of green, and if he focused hard enough, he could see the worried expression in place of the usual angry one on Hulk's face. He couldn't help but smile in relief at the sight, and he wanted to pat the giant's arm reassuringly, but from the throbbing pain emanating from both of them, he wasn't sure he'd be able to move for quite a while.
"Tin Man okay?" Hulk asked, and his voice was quieter than usual, too.
Tony couldn't nod, so instead he rasped out, "Yeah, bud… Tot'ly… tot'ly fine." God, even that had felt like a challenge.
His head was starting to spin, and he closed his eyes. Hulk told him, in the same firm tone Bruce had used beforehand, "Not fine. Sleep."
Tony had clocked out before he could mull over those words. His body was not going to be happy with him later, and neither was Bruce.