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Part 5 of AvengerKink meme fills
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Published:
2013-02-09
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(re)Learning to Breathe

Summary:

Avengerkink prompt

In an AU where Coulson lives, he still has to deal with a giant chest wound.

Know who else had to deal with one of those, in enemy territory while being tortured to build weapons? Tony.

I really want to see a fic where Tony is supportive (in his own dysfunctional way) of Coulson throughout his recovery and gets what the agent is going through.

Maybe the rest of the team is worried because Coulson is reluctant to talk about his injury with anyone - and then they realize he's been talking to Tony, who just hadn't informed the rest of the team because he's reluctant to show he's a nice guy.

 

(a part of Coulson found it endlessly amusing that he now knew what it was like on the other side of “I watched you while you were sleeping.” To this day, he blames it on the morphine talking)

 

Alternatively titled: Proof That Tony Stark Has a Heart.

Notes:

prompt here

I wrote this around 2-3 in the morning, and you can tell when I went from exhausted to delirious...it's kind of like a game!

This has been mostly unedited, and I should go back and fix it, but...who knows.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The few times Coulson regained consciousness, he was detachedly surprised to find Tony Stark of all people sitting in the chair adjacent to him, but was gently lulled back into the haze of unconsciousness before he could so much as twitch in response.

It had taken the better part of a week before Coulson was taken out of the ICU, and another eight days on top of that before he was deemed well enough to have visitors while he was awake (a part of him found it endlessly amusing that he now knew what it was like on the other side of “I watched you while you were sleeping.” To this day, he blames it on the morphine talking).

But he was still mildly surprised when his first (only mildly drugged) view was of Stark fiddling around on his phone, slouched in one of those god awful plastic chairs.

Coulson cleared his throat (entirely unsurprised to find that it felt as if someone had taken a grinder to his esophagus and trachea, filled it with gritty cotton, and emptied a city’s worth of septic fluid into it, before leaving the mess to sit out in the arid, desert sun), and gestured with one heavily IV’d arm towards the cup of water sitting on a nearby end table.

Tony talked a mile a minute about everything and nothing, while holding the cup and straw in front of Phil’s mouth, not even bothering to give Phil the option to hold it (to which Phil was rather grateful; doped up to his eyeballs or not, moving his arms – and by proxy stressing the muscles in his chest – was not something he wanted to try yet).

“In case you were wondering, the Wonder Twins have been by about…eighteen times to see you, half of which they had to be pried away to get sleep and food; but I’ve so far been the only one lucky enough to witness any of your incredibly zombie-like reawakenings, Shaun of the Dead.” Coulson let Tony’s usual running commentary wash over him like an ill begotten child. That is, to say, he would have interrupted his stream of babble to shut him up, if the doctor didn’t just walk in, stopping Tony’s mouth. Or attempt to.

“Good god, you are slower than the second coming of Christ. Anyway, Agent, I’m going head out before they completely kick me from the wing (not like that’d stop me – no! do not give me that look, Doc. There’s nothing you can do, and you know it).” Tony turned slightly, almost facing the on call doctor. “No, seriously. Get your shit together. There’s no way you wouldn’t have known if he–” Tony jerked his head in Coulson’s general direction, “–so much as breathed differently.”

The hapless doctor half opened his mouth in an attempt to defend himself against the irritated man, but Tony was having none of it.

“Ah-ah-ah! No.” Tony made to leave, but not before addressing Phil one last time. “Be seeing you around, then, Agent.”

---

The next handful of days all just congealed into a mess of people and paperwork and pain. There were civvie’d!agents buzzing around and about, but the low points were balanced out with visits by Clint and Natasha, Steve (he was mortified by some of the things he let slip – and really, here was Steve Rogers – Captain America – himself in the flesh with no pending world destruction, and Fury ruined his vintage, near mint-condition cards and oops, did he say that out loud?), Bruce, and still Tony. Clint and Natasha stayed the longest, but for what Tony lacked in time, he made up for in quantity. Rarely daily, but a few times a week, Tony Stark would drop by Coulson’s room; sometimes an hour or two, sometimes just long enough to replace the mostly melted ice chips before running late to the next meeting. But always with a tidbit of information (liquids might feel fine going down, but don’t even bother with solid foods for at least another month. Remember those hamburgers during The Press Conference? Yeah, shitty idea, that). Phil never acknowledged the tidbits (best way to scare off Tony Stark? Emotions.), and Tony always just carried on with his scheduled monologue.

It had actually taken quite some time before all of the Avengers had a cohesive chunk of free time, and it was though a mostly unspoken agreement that they chose to visit their no longer indisposed handler.

---

Phil had been secretely weaning himself off of his morphine (he has too much to do and not enough time to do it; the faster he can prove he’s no longer dependent on medicine, the faster he’ll be back at Shield. Never let it be said that Tony Stark owned the monopoly on shoving his body’s needs to the back of his mind), so it was a bit of a shock to hear Thor bursting through the door and into the once quiet room.

“Son of Coul! It is wondrous to see you in such good health! Hel will be bereft of such a soul, as one such as you will surely feast in the halls of Valhalla when the time is right!” Choking on the sip of water he had been in the middle of taking combined with the lack of morphine spilling through his blood triggered a coughing fit. A painful coughing fit.

(What the hell? Was his life becoming some big cliche, or something?)

Phil’s chest felt constricted and bursting and fiery pain each too-short breath rattled around in his lungs before being hacked up and repeating the tortuous cycle of forcing air down was toomuchhurtpainstopstopstop–

It took a moment or two before Phil realized that Steve was calling for a doctor, Bruce was reading his confidential chart, Natasha was bodily holding Clint back, and Tony was…was that Tony’s face right in front of him? Phil blinked heavily, painfully languid, and tried to decipher the low tones attempting to assert themselves as words.

“Hey, Agent. Agent…Agen-- Phil! Are you with me? I need you to listen to me so much as you hate hearing me talk and I promise I can make it stop, you just need to listen to what I’m saying. Okay? Slow your breathing down. I can promise you that it’s doing your body more harm than good. I need you to take slow, shallow breaths from your diaphragm. It’s gonna be a while before you can take a deep breath again, but I can swear to you that breathing is not going to be the dirty motherfucker that takes you down. That’s it. Slow breaths – ah-ah! Shallow. Slow, shallow breaths. You’ve gotta take it easy I know, rather rich coming from me, right?; you’ve got a hundred and seven stitches crammed in your chest cavity, and I can guarantee that the doc’s got enough on his plate without you tearing those. And – Oh. Cool. You’re back with us. How’re you feeling? Shitty? Par for the course, then.” Tony turned to survey the audience he had gathered.

“Whoa, Christ, cool your jets, Merida; you’re about to start foaming at the mouth.” Tony turned towards the doctor again and, hell, if this wasn’t starting to feel like a routine, looking down his ridiculously awesome, thank you, purple-tinted sunglasses. “Seriously, your timing? It could use a little work. Does it always take you this long to respond to critical patients, or are we just special?” Any attempt at an excuse was cut off by Tony No really, there were some recurring themes here, none of which were doing the hospital any favors.

“Whatever. Point is, you need to fix it. Anyway, I’ve got priors, so I’m gonna roll, okay?” Tony strolled out of the crowded room, looking for all intents and purposes like he owned the place, leaving the rest of the team (plus Coulson) to watch his back with varying levels of thoughtfulness.

Notes:

I was way overusing parentheses, so I tried to mix it up with the subscript. Dunno if I like it, so sorry if it reads weird.

And I'm not even sorry for the "priors" quote. seriously, if you haven't yet, go watch the Tropic Thunder Viral Video.

(smidge of editing 4/15/13. Someday I'll get around to the rest of it. Maybe)

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