Chapter Text
The problem with having Gym in the morning is that Tony Stark’s next class, Science, is all the way across the building, which means that after dressing out of the gym clothes he has about 1 minute left to get to class. He’s late to his second favorite class nearly every day unless he feels up for sprinting across campus after all the physical exertion which comes with Gym class.
No, thank you.
Tony isn’t particularly athletically talented, mostly because he doesn’t try to be, and this is how he finds himself slumped against the lockers with a sprained ankle 3 minutes after class started, covered in mud.
Great, he thinks, nothing like breaking your fucking leg to make an already bad day worse, eh?
It’s not bad enough he has to sneak out of his house at fucking 6:30 in the morning just to avoid his dad’s ugly face, now he’s gone and done this stupid shit.
They’d been running around the field because Gym teachers were fucking unoriginal, and Tony had been so concerned with absolutely-fucking-nothing that he hadn’t noticed Justin Hammer, a pissy bastard he’d beat out in the science fair last year, had come up behind him until Hammer shoved him into a small ditch on the side of the field.
“Bon-voyage, bitch boy!” Hammer had screamed in laughter, his rabid squad howling like drunk dogs as they kicked dust into Tony’s face.
Usually, he’d have a snappy one-liner to say to assholes like that (something involving first class and the unreasonable amount of money Howard Stark owns), but when he hit the ground he’d felt a blinding pain shock from his right ankle and travel to the rest of his body.
He’d had to bite his lip to avoid screaming, and it takes several seconds to notice he was the tears streaming down his cheeks.
When he puts his injured foot against the ground, in a half-hearted attempt to stand, he almost throws up, the pain is so great.
It’s definitely sprained, if not broken. For about forty seconds, Tony stares at his ankle, thinking fuckfuckfuckfuck over and over, until his pride reaches a point low enough for him to start crawling along the field. The rest of the class is long ahead of him by now, moved on to the football field to play soccer, and nobody notices Tony, crawling broken and alone.
It hurts. A lot. Usually Tony downplays the pain he experiences because of reasons he doesn’t quite want to divulge into without his therapist and the non-disclosure agreement he made him/her (he wonders which one it might be today) sign, but.
It feels like a billion snakes having a field day/buffet on his nerves. He has to stop several times to bite down on his hand, the part that isn’t covered in mud turning from pale-olive to bright red.
At some point, probably when he’s about three-quarters of the way to the entrance to the door, the bell rings and he stops to remove his shoe.
Whether he screams or not is up for debate.
And honestly? He’s justified in shrieking. His foot is bright red and swollen up so much that when he’s removing his shoe he leaves an indent in his own foot. It’s bent at a frankly disgusting angle and he almost laughs at the fact that he’s going to have to tell people he broke his foot being shoved in a ditch.
Tony starts hearing a droning sound, then it shapes into words, then he realizes it’s him speaking, rasping, “fucking hell shit motherfucker,” over and over.
He enters the building through a propped open door just quick enough to see the flash of a person on Heelys skid away, and he swallows the disappointment that threatens to bubble out of his throat.
He worms over to just past the Theatre door before he gives up and shoves himself against the wall, breathing hard and fast, reciting elements under his breath as Tony tries to keep his mind off the overwhelming pain radiating from his ankle. Black is starting to creep into the sides of his vision.
Tony loses track of time for a while, and before he drifts off to the pain, the Theatre door opens next to him and a husky, familiar voice says, “Tony?” Tony’s vision fills with the unfortunately handsome face of Steve Rogers, his most notorious ex.
Just before his eyes roll back, he snarls, “Rogers.”
Then his head lolls into his chest, and he blacks the hell out.
When Steve Rogers walks out of the Theatre room, he’s having a pretty good day. His boyfriend, Bucky, had driven to school with him, which meant another successful morning of getting Bucky out of the house early to avoid That Bastard Pierce, Bucky’s adoptive father. The custom of Bucky jumping the fence, all long, thick legs, and long, wavy hair was a guaranteed way to pick up Steve’s day.
On top of that, on the way to school Steve’s phone dinged with a text from Natasha asking if they could pick her up.
She provided no explanations as to why she couldn’t drive her own car, and neither of the boys asked for one, because she was Nat.
So the last five minutes of the drive had been spent on expired pop music and “Did you do the ___ homework?” that of course, Natasha had done (somehow), and equally as unsurprising, Bucky hadn’t done half of.
Add to this already stellar morning the fact that Steve was walking out of a meeting with the Drama teacher in which she finally agree to Steve’s idea for a set backdrop (1940’s typical American house, it’s an ironic statement for a feminist play), and Steve felt like he was bouncing in zero-G.
Then, he sees Tony slumped against the wall, half-passed out and covered in sweat, tears, and mud, and Steve feels like somebody has splashed a bucket of ice water on him.
Tony looks… awful. Not that Tony Stark has ever looked un attractive (nope, not going there, thought train.) but it’s quite obvious that he’s had way too many days of sleeping late and waking early. Of course, being covered in blood and the whole… broken leg… thing… doesn’t help.
“Tony?” Steve blurts, and somehow Tony works up the alertness to slur, “Rogerssssssss,” at him like a drunk.
Then he passes the fuck out.