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“How would you rate your pain?” Stephen asked quietly, trying to focus past the ill feeling in his chest. Tony was leaned against a wall while bleeding from several slashes in his side, his eyes screwed up in pain. Damn wraiths.
“Zero stars,” Tony told him, sending him what was probably meant to be a cheeky grin. It was rather ruined by the grimace of pain that won the battle of facial expressions. “Would not recommend.”
Stephen didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh, scream, or smack Tony upside the head. None of them felt like particularly appropriate reactions to the situation, though. “Zero to ten, Tony. How bad is it?”
Tony winced, gaze darting to look at anything but Stephen. “Four.”
And since Tony had a very flawed view of what constituted pain, Stephen could easily add several levels to that.
Stephen bit his lip, turning his eyes back to the claw marks in Tony’s side. Tony hadn’t been in his suit when he’d been attacked, and while he’d managed to handle himself fairly well, all told, the wraiths had still gotten a good few hits in.
Tony was lucky he wasn’t dead.
He could tell that Tony was trying to clear the pain from his face. “Stephen, sweetheart—“ It was always a bad sign when Tony pulled out ‘sweetheart’, ”—I’m going to be fine. I promise. You’ll badger Christine on her day off, I’ll be a terrible patient, you’ll hover and do that annoying ‘backseat doctor’ thing you do, Christine will give you the murder eye, and despite all that, she’ll patch me up just fine and I’ll be complaining about red-eyed shadow creatures—“
“Wraiths,” Stephen supplied.
“—And driving you insane within days.”
“You never could,” Stephen said quietly.
Tony’s lip tilted up in a pained smile. “Yeah, I know. But that doesn’t stop me from giving it my best shot. You know, before you, I was pretty sure I could irritate anyone into leaving me alone.”
“I’m too persistent for that,” Stephen acknowledged. Some of his tension was battling to release itself, soothed by Tony’s assurances.
Most of it was held stringently in place by the fact that Tony had been attacked because of his connection to Stephen. That Stephen had been the one to endanger Tony, that Tony was hurt because of him.
“Stephen.” Tony took his hand. “Stop. I’m going to be fine. Those little black gremlins—“
“Wraiths.”
”—would have attacked someone, they didn’t need outside motivation for that. Maybe they chose me because of you, but the violence was already there. Better me than someone else.” Tony met his gaze. “And maybe you’d have chosen yourself instead, but that just proves me right. Better us than some civilians.”
Stephen wondered what it said about him that, yes, he’d choose for Tony to get attacked over someone innocent when he claimed to love Tony.
But then, Tony felt the same.
Yes, they’d both choose to take the pain themselves, but when that wasn’t an option, they’d hand that pain to each other before they’d ever risk anyone else.
Maybe it was messed up. Maybe it was who they were. Maybe it was simply how it had to be.
“But seriously,” Tony said, interrupting Stephen’s thoughts. “Zero stars. So get me to Christine already so I can get over this.”