Clint sighed and hefted Nathaniel onto his shoulder as he quietly padded out into the hallway. The toddler fussed fretfully and clutched his shirt, pressing his forehead into Clint's neck. Clint closed the door softly, then patted his back. "Friday, is anyone else up?" It was a long shot at that hour, but it was worth a try.
"Boss is in his workshop," Friday reported.
Huh. Clint bounced Nathaniel a little as he went to find out what Tony was up to.
The wall between the workshop and the hallway was glass, so Clint could see Tony and vice versa, though Tony didn't seem to notice him. Clint stopped where Tony appeared to be staring straight at him but his presence went unnoticed. Tony was slumped at his workstation, an elbow on the table and his chin in his hand, his oxygen backpack making him look a little like a turtle.
Clint went to the door and knocked. That sound and Friday's notification of his presence seemed to rouse Tony from his reverie and he sat up straighter as Clint came in. "I didn't expect anyone else to be awake," Clint said. "Can't sleep?"
"You could say that," he replied evasively.
Clint tried a different tack. "What are you working on?"
"Nothing," Tony said glumly. "I can't seem to focus. I . . . I don't feel like myself. I don't know how to fix that."
Clint came a little closer, seeing defeat in Tony's bleak expression. That he had admitted so much spoke volumes. "You almost died. It takes time to come back from something like that."
Nathaniel noticed it was Uncle Tony and held out his arms toward him. Clint gestured and Tony nodded, so he handed Nathaniel over.
"You haven't slept well since you got back from the hospital, have you?"
Tony sighed. "No."
"Nightmares?" Clint knew too well what that was like, but could only guess at the things that haunted Tony's nights.
He looked down at Nathaniel rather than meet Clint's gaze. "It feels like I'm suffocating and I wake up and it's hard to breathe," he admitted quietly.
Clint was silent for a moment, considering. "Was that a problem in the hospital? From our perspective, it seemed like you were sleeping okay."
"It was only a problem a couple of times. Here it happens almost every night."
Clint could hear the weariness in Tony's voice, and he knew it wouldn't help his recovery to sleep so poorly night after night. It explained all the napping, though. "Would it help if someone sat with you, like we did at the hospital?"
Tony finally glanced up at him. "I don't know," he said reluctantly.
"Come on, let's see what happens. It can be an experiment."
"Barton, I don't need you to be my minder," he said sourly.
"You need to sleep," Clint said pointedly. "And so does Nathaniel. Part of the experiment can be to see if he'll sleep for you, since he sure isn't sleeping for me."
Nathaniel yawned and rubbed his eyes with his fists.
Clint waited patiently.
"Fine," Tony said, sounding resigned.
.
Clint waited until Tony was settled in bed before giving Nathaniel back to him. Tony still seemed unconvinced about the whole endeavor, but Nathaniel contentedly snuggled into his side and was asleep almost immediately.
He quirked a smile. "Score one for Uncle Tony."
"I'll know who to recruit the next time he won't sleep," Clint said.
Tony didn't answer. He was obviously tired, but he seemed to be fighting sleep the way Nathaniel had been earlier. Clint wished there was something he could do, but willing him to sleep wouldn't work any better on him than it had on the toddler.
Eventually Tony surrendered and he relaxed into sleep. Clint relaxed some too, and kept watch through half-lidded eyes.
Tony slept soundly for a good three hours before his breathing changed, coming in shorter pants as he began shifting restlessly. Clint touched his arm and that seemed to shake him out of it for the moment. He studied Tony a little longer, then carefully slid a second pillow beneath his head.
Clint woke Tony out of dreams twice when his breathing grew labored; each time, Tony stared at him blearily, never speaking, and didn't even seem to recognize him. Once, Tony clutched his arm in a bruising grip, and Clint had to pry his hand off. He couldn't even guess what sort of dream prompted that reaction.
Nathaniel didn't even twitch until well after the time he was normally awake. When he finally sat up and held his arms out to Clint, Tony was sleeping quietly so it seemed safe to take him to Laura.
The errand took longer than Clint anticipated-he should have just texted Laura and asked her to send someone to retrieve Nathaniel-and when he returned, Tony was sitting up in bed, gasping and wheezing. Clint sat facing him on the bed, close enough that Tony could lean against him for support.
Not only did Tony lean on him, even resting his head on Clint's shoulder, he clung to him, his arms snaking around him almost in a hug, and clutched his shirt with both hands. Clint returned the embrace, rubbing his back gently like he would do for one of the kids, and spoke quietly into his ear, encouraging him to breathe slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Tony's breaths evened out and he relaxed his grip on Clint's shirt. He remained tense but did not try to pull away. At length he spoke into the stillness. "Have you ever been afraid you'll go to sleep and just . . . not wake up again?"
"Once or twice, when I was injured," Clint replied after a moment's thought.
Tony released a long sigh.
"Go back to sleep. I've got you."
"It's not that simple, Barton."
"Really? You've been hugging me for the last, like, fifteen minutes, and I'm still 'Barton' to you, Stark?" he teased lightly.
Tony snorted. "Fine. Clint."
"Tony," Clint replied. "I'll make sure you keep breathing."
"How good of you," Tony said, weariness seeping back into his tone.
Rachel arrived about two hours later, accompanied by Rhodey. They found Clint supporting a snoring Tony. Clint looked back at them over his shoulder. "I think I know why he's not sleeping well."
.
Clint's observation was a simple one: sleeping Tony tended to breathe through his mouth, so the oxygen at his nose wasn't doing any good.
Tony protested being called a mouth breather. Clint pointed to the wet patch on his shirtsleeve. Tony didn't try to argue after that.
Rachel's proposed solution was also simple: he could try wearing a mask at night instead of the cannula.
After that was settled, Clint pulled Rhodey aside and they discussed something quietly enough that Tony couldn't hear it over the nebulizer. Which wouldn't have been a big deal, except for the way they kept glancing at him while they talked. He found that very suspicious.
As it turned out, they had been conspiring . . . about having someone sit with him overnight. He put two and two together when Rhodey settled in beside his bed while Rachel was getting his oxygen mask squared away.
He was too tired despite two naps during the day to try to convince Rhodey to tell him if they'd discussed anything else. He was also too tired to be anything but grateful that he had company if the oxygen mask didn't help.
He woke up a couple of times but never for long, and never because he felt like he was suffocating.
When he woke for good, Clint was sitting with him. "Did you sleep well?" he asked, and seemed genuinely interested.
Yeah, Tony replied with his hands rather than his voice. Thanks.
.
After three nights of sleeping with the mask, Tony was feeling good enough that he tried ditching the oxygen during the day. He didn't think he needed it anymore, and the only way to find out was to try.
He didn't just leave the tank behind, that would be too obvious. He continued wearing the dratted setup, but 'forgot' to start the airflow going.
After two days, Rachel realized he hadn't had any empty tanks and questioned him about it. He admitted what he'd done without remorse and, to his surprise, she wasn't angry. "I wondered if you would try before I forced you to," she said, sounding pleased. "Keep it nearby, just in case, wear it if you do anything strenuous, and I'll start reducing the amount you get at night after a few more days to see how it goes."
The first day without the cannula, he almost felt naked. He also felt lighter and freer, and the only damper on the day was that he still took a nap in the afternoon. He'd really hoped those would stop being necessary when he started sleeping better, but apparently not. So annoying. At least no one had tried drawing on his face with markers yet. (He was almost certain someone would do it eventually.)
Another continued source of frustration was his inability to focus on just about anything. Rhodey had finally given him permission to design a better wheelchair, but all his mind drew were blanks. He'd started and restarted that project at least half a dozen times, always with unsatisfactory results.
Fortunately, there were usually other things going on that could occupy his time, what with Christmas being only days away. The last of the gifts were wrapped, including his to the kids; Laura had taken pity on him and given him a few ideas, like some of those cat books for Lila. An astonishing amount of baked goods and other sweets issued forth from the kitchen, most of it arranged onto decorative platters and taken to various areas of the compound for the staff who worked there.
Lila was only too happy to have Uncle Tony help her decorate sugar cookies or pick which pieces of fudge to put onto a particular plate. Laura liked to make him stir the fudge while she provided direction. He got to be pretty good at telling when the milk-butter-sugar concoction was ready for the other ingredients, though his arms were tired from stirring long before the batch was actually done.
At least he was useful, even if not in the usual ways. He still worried privately about whether he'd ever feel like he was fully back to being himself.
And Lila enjoyed reading him naptime stories before he dozed off for a bit in the afternoons.
Then it was Christmas Eve and the flurry of activity shifted from baking to preparing for a large dinner the following day. Tony mostly watched, bewildered, as dishes were washed and counted, foodstuffs were grouped on the counters in various locations and accounted for against printed recipes, and lists were made of what needed to be started when and by whom. Evidently cooking the meal was going to be an all-hands-on-deck situation; he hoped they'd assign him something easy.
Even the topic of food wasn't safe from good-natured bickering; when Rhodey found out that sweet potatoes were on the menu, he insisted they had to be made with marshmallows. Sam, the designated potato preparer, disagreed vehemently. "Do you know what's in a marshmallow? I am not putting that crap in my body."
"Have you even tried it? Learn to live a little, man," Rhodey shot back in his 'I'm older and wiser than you' voice. Tony was well acquainted with that tone.
"We can make some both ways," Laura interjected, the voice of reason and compromise. "We have plenty of potatoes."
"Want to bet which ones are gone first?" Sam asked with a grin.
"It won't even be a contest, but I'll go for it," Rhodey agreed.
They were debating the terms of the bet when Tony was distracted by Steve taking a seat next to him at the counter. He'd gotten the impression that Steve was avoiding him, but apparently that could be set aside for the sake of Christmas dinner.
"What do you want to do?" Steve asked, sliding him the scribbled list of what needed doing and what was already being taken care of.
He was about to offer to handle the dishes-the dishwasher was first-rate, so it wouldn't be a big deal-but they were all distracted by Natasha and Clint returning from a last-minute run to the grocery store with the report that it was snowing. Food-related activity ground to a halt as Cooper and Lila begged to go play in the snow.
Tony missed exactly when it happened, but somehow that request turned into everyone preparing to troop outside. He shrugged and followed the crowd to a closet he didn't even know was there, stocked with cold weather gear in all sizes.
"Are you sure this is a good idea for your lungs?" Rhodey asked as Tony shrugged a fleece-lined jacket onto his shoulders. Rhodey was already dressed in coat, hat, scarf, mittens, and boots. Why he needed boots when he was in the wheelchair, Tony didn't know and wasn't going to ask.
"I'll be fine. That's what a scarf is for, right?" Tony answered casually, though the same thought had crossed his mind.
As he trailed near the back of the pack of people, sticking close to Rhodey and fussing with his overlong scarf, Tony realized he hadn't been outside since he'd come home from the hospital.
He'd improved by leaps and bounds since then. He still had a way to go, but he wasn't in a wheelchair, wasn't on oxygen, and that was something. When he'd talked to Dr. Harris two days before about the naps and the concentration issues, she'd assured him that was a normal part of the recovery process. He would get there, she promised, it just would take some time.
For now, it seemed he had both time and people who were more or less willing to look out for his health, even if he wasn't convinced that they had his back when it came to anything else. Still, they were getting along better than he'd expected and, hell, he'd even hugged Barton-Clint-and that's not something he would have predicted. Maybe they had a chance, not to go back to the way things used to be, but of finding a way forward they could all live with.
The snow was falling softly in large flakes, quickly covering exposed surfaces in a layer of white. Lila almost immediately plopped down to make a snow angel while Cooper wandered in the opposite direction to see if the snow was good for snowballs and Clint pulled Nathaniel around on a little plastic sled. Sam had found a shovel somewhere and was clearing the sidewalk ahead of Rhodey.
All terrain wheels, Tony decided, watching Rhodey carefully inch across the pavement. The new wheelchair needed all terrain wheels to handle snow and other such obstacles. He added that thought to his mental file on the subject, then returned it to the recesses of his mind.
The air was cold but not biting and, after a few experimental breaths through the scarf, Tony pulled it down. One careful breath through his nose, then two, and he felt fine. The chill on his cheeks was briskly invigorating and there was no sign of coughing yet.
"Uncle Tony, come make a snow angel with me!" Lila called, waving eagerly.
He pulled the scarf over his mouth before trying to talk. "In a minute, little bit," he replied.
For the moment, he was content just to breathe.
A/N: A brief word about roads not traveled:
-Recovering from sepsis can be a big deal (for instance, google the CDC life after sepsis fact sheet), and Tony's recovery as depicted here is faster than would be realistic when you consider both the pneumonia and the sepsis. I considered making more of a point about some of the lingering effects like appetite problems, but I needed this story to not be novel-length, so I didn't.
-I also debated making Tony's lung issues more disabling as a result of becoming so ill, along the lines of fibrosis or COPD, but again, I needed this story to actually end. It seems plausible to me (disclaimer: not a medical professional) that, with the extent of the damage assumed by the prompt, it wouldn't take a whole lot more to make his lungs dysfunctional enough to require a low level of oxygen assistance permanently. If that thought inspires anyone, feel free to run with it. ;-)