Chapter Text
Steve waits.
It’s been a long time now. Maybe no time at all – a week returned in the face of almost two years gone, well, it’s nothing at all, is it? He still hasn’t celebrated. How can he? Bucky and Sam are back by his side – hell, they won’t fucking leave – but Tony is- Tony is-
Peter’s still unconscious in the hospital bed. Steve can’t let go of his hand, won’t let go. Peter can’t wake up here alone. Steve even made them move the bed – he sits between Peter and the door, the only defence left that he can provide, keeping Peter’s right hand safe in his. His left is bandaged up, apparently healing fine, and Steve hopes the doctors are right.
People start reappearing as soon as Peter settles his hand into the gauntlet – and it’s so big on him, but he wields it regardless. His eyes are closed, and Steve watches as his son’s face contorts with the effort of it all. He wishes that he could do this for him, but Peter has risen to the task magnificently.
It’s like a ripple, a wave, seeping out and slowly rebuilding life itself.
The dust had been long since blown away, but people reform in blades of light. Steve can only see those forming behind Peter and it’s not quite reverse order of the snap. Steve has never met Stephen Strange, but he’s instantly recognisable – he looks incredibly smug as he looks around, but then… Steve can tell he’s looking for something in particular. Someone. His gaze lands on Steve and flicks to his hands, and then he sees Peter. Steve can’t watch his reaction.
“Where’s the kid? Where’s the kids?!” An impossibly familiar voice behind him, and oh god, Steve turns then. Bucky, angry, the most alive Steve has seen him in years, demanding to know where – oh god he’s asking after Ned, Peter’s Ned. Sam is yelling back, I don’t know man, I don’t know, where’s Rhodes? And Steve wishes he quite had the answers, but-
“D-dad?”
Peter’s voice shakes, and Steve is back at his side in a moment. “Hey kiddo.” Steve tells him, and when Peter opens his eyes, Steve takes three seconds too long to school his shock.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” Peter whispers, and he’s crying, he’s crying with eyes that won’t settle on a colour and have entirely lost Tony’s brown. “Dad, what if I can’t do this?” Steve pulls him close and presses a firm kiss to the boy’s head. He looks so young, so impossibly young all of a sudden and Steve wishes he could change everything.
The gauntlet ends up pressed against Steve’s side as Peter latches onto the only comfort he’s got left, and Steve is only too willing to hug his son back. “You’re already doing it, Petey, I promise. You’re doing so well.”
“I don’t think I can hold on-,”
There’s a little knock on the door, and then Natasha is sticking her head around it. She’s smiling, something tiny and honest and Steve may get used to it one day. Her hair is red again. Steve had missed that.
“Thor got word from the Asgardians this morning.” She tells him, “Peter did good.”
And then she’s gone again. She doesn’t ask how Steve is, and he’s certain she’s already asked the nurses about Peter. It’s all a case of waiting now. Something still eases in Steve. “You here that Peter?” Steve tries to smile. “You brought back a whole race, right back from the verge of total loss.”
His voice still shakes. The heart monitor is steady. Peter doesn’t wake.
“Why the kid all of a sudden?” Rocket bites out, and Rhodey has to agree.
Peter isn’t here. He’d come back, handed over the stone to Shuri for safe keeping, and completely ignored his new friend as he stormed off. Steve had collapsed into the floor and stayed there, on his knees, face buried in his hands. He looks like he’s praying. “I- On Vormir…” Steve starts. Stops. Breathes. Rhodey realises belatedly he’s about to cry.
“Steve… where’s-,”
“That fool.” Nebula bites out suddenly. She looks angrier than normal, and Rhodey honestly doesn’t know what that means for her. “He had the stone?”
Steve nods absently, and his shoulders are shaking. Rhodey no longer wants to know why, but he needs to, he needs to.
“What did you do, Rogers?” Rhodey asks, and it’s sharp, but Steve-
“He stepped. I had to choose.” Steve’s voice is hollow. “I caught Peter.”
Steve doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He’s legally Peter’s last remaining guardian, but whether Peter will want him or not… Steve can’t consider. A life without one of them sounds impossible, but without both of them… it’s not something he can do.
“He’ll wake up.” Bucky grumbles. “Or I’m gonna hav’ words.” He won’t even be looking at Steve, so Steve doesn’t look back. He hums, but it’s a hollow noise. He realises that Sam and Bucky are playing cards when Sam lets out a little “ha!”
The heart monitor continues.
Peter’s heart bottoms out, no, no no no-
He knows he’s going over too, he’s misjudged the balance and he can grab Dad’s hand as he slips back off the world, but he’s just going to take them both down- Peter’s unafraid of this moment now he’s in it. The horror on his father’s face is worth not having to be alone again. He can cope. They’ll find another way – or Steve will. Dad #2-
An arm snags around Peter’s waist, hauling him back. “No!”
His grip slips.
“No, no no no! No, Steve- Dad- Dad no- I can’t- Let me- no.” Peter fights to reach out, but he’s being hauled back and Dad’s still falling, and Steve won’t. let. go.
“I’m so sorry-”
“Let me go, I can- I can-” Peter tries to break his hold, tries and tries but Steve is unrelenting steel.
“You’d- you can’t catch him at that force,” Steve sounds wretched but Peter doesn’t care, doesn’t give a single shit right now. “You’d break his neck.”
“He’s- I won’t- just let me so he’s not- he’s not-”
“Peter, Peter I’m so sorry-”
“SHUT UP, shut up, he’s not- Dad- dad, he’s not- he can’t, he promised… he promised.” Peter stops fighting, the impossible seeping in like the ice-cold plunge into a lake. The shock comes first, he thinks numbly, isn’t that how it goes?
“I’m so sorry.” Steve tells him, not even loosening his grip as Peter gives in. “We need to- we need to head back down, get back to- to-.” He doesn’t finish, but Peter doesn’t need him to. Steve carefully rights them both back onto their feet. Peter nearly looks, but it’s not- if he doesn’t look, he doesn’t know. “Peter?”
Peter looks up at him. Dad #2. Captain America. The only man who had in any way rivalled Tony for Peter’s affection, and now Peter sees him for what he really is in this moment. Maybe always had been. A young, war-torn man, who has fallen a little short of the world’s expectations.
“You should have let me fall.”
Steve can’t get the words out of his head. He still doesn’t know if Peter meant them. He doesn’t know what they’ll do if he did – not that he knows any more about what they’ll do if he didn’t, but that still seems like less of a shit show.
Steve wonders, idly, if they’re the only people in the world dealing with a loss right now, or if there’s still chaos on the streets outside. A part of him wonders if the sky is still as blue as it was, but the rest of him knows it won’t be, not when Iron Man will never- will never-
Wait.
Steve turns towards the door then – he hadn’t realised that Bruce, Rhodey and Natasha had slipped in to join Bucky and Sam at some point, but he can hear- no he can’t, it’s impossible, surely it is-
Bucky looks up suddenly – are they playing poker? – and grins brightly. “No fuckin’ way.” He mutters, getting up even though it dislodges the table and the gameplay, ignoring the other’s yells. “Yeah, you can hear him Stevie, what the fuck-”
Steve gets up, ignoring how even his body aches at how long he’s been still, and sticks his head out of the room door – and surely they can all hear it now.
“WHERE THE FUCK IS MY HUSBAND? I NEED TO KICK HIS ASS!” Steve chokes on a laugh, even as Rhodey and Natasha crowd him out of the doorway, pushing past into the corridor to stare – the shouter has just rounded the corner. “NO I AM NOT DEAD SHARON, AND I DON’T NEED A CHECK-UP! I NEED-” he looks away from the determined looking nurse, and stalls. Steve’s heart skips it’s next few beats and immediately starts up a rhythm that would take any one else to an early grave. “You’re alright.” Tony Stark says, breathless relief. Rhodey might be cheering, Natasha might have burst into startled laughter unlike anything Steve’s ever heard before, but Steve’s universe has narrowed down on his husband, miraculously, blessedly, alive.
Steve’s grinning before he’s even quite realised he’s doing it, and Tony’s shoving past the nurse trying to box him downstairs to admit him, breaking into a run to make it down the corridor before someone can stop him. Steve’s sweeps him up into a hug in the doorway, unable to help himself, but Tony accepts it gladly, and god, Tony’s alive, Tony’s alive alive alive, lungs breathing heart pounding-
Tony breaks himself away from the hug, kissing Steve soundly, before- whacking him over the head. “What the fuck, Steve!” Steve doesn’t drop him, and honestly, he couldn’t stop grinning even if fucking Victor Von Doom chose this moment to crash the party. “Why did Peter use the gauntlet?!” Tony demanded. Steve’s heart clenched, but Tony was already leaning up to kiss him before he could explain. Steve was never ever going to turn down the opportunity ever again.
“Oh god, I died.” Comes a groan from the room they’re hogging the doorway too, and shit, that’s it, Steve’s crying and he may not stop for a while because- “I’m dead.”
“Peter.” Steve doesn’t know whose voice cracks worse, and they’re both dragging each other into the room then, to sit at the edge of his bed and in the god-forsaken plastic chair. “Not yet, you’re fucking not, what the hell were you thinking?” Tony demands, even as he gently pulls Peter up into a hug that has the teenager shaking.
“You’re okay,” Peter mumbles into Tony’s shoulder. Tony leans back and flicks his forehead, before immediately hugging him close again.
“Of course I’m okay, kid. I’m always okay.
“We’re okay.”