Chapter Text
There were benefits to being one of the only people who lived in Stark Tower that was human but Better™ was that now that Tony had a high schooler (and sometimes his high school friends, when Peter begged enough) hanging around the tower on a semi-regular basis meant that there was always SOMETHING going around that he couldn’t catch.
Natasha, Clint, and Peter Quill were all sitting on the couches in the living room when he came back from [classified] and he could tell that they were sick because Water for Elephants was playing on the television, commercials and everything, and no one was complaining. That, combined with the mountains of tissues and empty mugs of tea and the constant sniffling and coughing from the room’s occupants, was enough information for him to assume that the human Avengers were sharing a cold and that it was probably still just the first day or two of it. The last human Avenger whom he’d expect to spend a sick day in Stark Tower, the eponymous genius himself, didn’t seem to be part of the cuddle puddle they’d formed, which wasn’t unusual and did not mean that he wasn’t just as ill as the rest of them. Ever since Bucky had moved into an upper level of the Tower (which Tony had provided for him, it should be noted), he’d stopped spending much time upstairs with the others, confining himself to his lab for stretches of time that were reportedly even longer than his normal. If it weren’t such a maladaptive coping mechanism, Bucky would have sworn that Tony was avoiding him—which, coincidentally was exactly why he SHOULD have assumed as much.
Clint turned watery, red eyes on Bucky and pointed. “Quarantine,” he warned, “you should get out.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bucky said vaguely, grimacing at the pathetic sight before him. “Do you guys need anything?”
“The sweet release of death,” Peter requested, but before Bucky could make any specific arrangements, the elevator doors opened to reveal an equally-flushed, absolutely exhausted-looking Tony wavering in the doorway donning the same crumpled clothes he’d gone down there wearing three days ago.
“It lives,” Natasha quipped with a rough, nasally voice. Tony took in the scene and frowned.
“Am I running a sanatorium out of my living room?” he asked, his own voice sounding shot, as well, but whether that was the cold he clearly had or the three days of not speaking to another person was anybody’s guess.
“Sounds like you could use a bed,” Peter said, scooting over on the couch and kicking off one of the several blankets that he’d gathered as a sort of offering. However, predictably, after sparing one glance at Bucky, Tony was already shaking his head.
“No need,” he declined, undermining the believability of the response with a harsh cough he stifled into the sleeve of his hoodie. Was he wearing two hoodies?
“Come on, Stark. The consumption’s only contagious to those who don’t already have it,” Clint said, making spooky wiggly fingers toward Tony.
“I’m the picture of health,” Tony replied, but he did tend to not drink enough water when he was in the lab, particularly for someone who’d been running a low-grade fever for the past few hours, and he was starting to get a bit dizzy, so he not-so-casually made his way to sit on the cushion Quill patted invitingly. “But I will do you all the service of dazzling you with my company for a few hours. It seems pretty bleak in here. What is this, Twilight?”
Clint sighed. “If only,” he said wistfully, tossing Tony the remote. “None of us know how to work your stupid TV.”
“Could’ve asked FRIDAY.” However, he wasted no time clicking around channels until he found M*A*S*H*, the one show everyone in the Tower could usually agree on, and setting the remote back down beside him.
“Consider us dazzled,” Natasha deadpanned. “There’s Dayquill in the medicine cabinet.”
“It’s my house; I know that.”
Clint scoffed. “I refuse to believe you know the location of even one self-care item in this whole tower.”
Tony had neither a good rebuttal nor the energy to keep bantering, so he smirked a little at Clint’s jab and sunk into the couch to nap.
For the next two days, they sat like that, taking turns doing things (read: taking turns calling for Bruce to do things for them). However, Bruce had been called to Wakanda, so they were on their own for the rest of the day.
And they were hungry.
“Hey, Tony, can FRIDAY make us food?” Peter asked hopefully, rousing him from a near-dose.
“Uh,” he stammered, barely awake enough to even comprehend the words being spoken to him, “no. Not unless it’s already in the microwave.”
“But I’m hungry,” he whined, kicking his feet a little for emphasis. The movement made Tony feel more nauseated.
“Bruce said there’s soup in the freezer.”
“Will you make it?”
Tony shook his head. “Not hungry,” he replied, “ergo, not eating, ergo, not making.”
The famous last words of a man who somehow, after approximately four minutes of incessant begging, finally caved and agreed to heat up the soup for everyone. Just the effort of standing to get the bag of frozen soup was enough to make his head spin, but he forced himself to put the chicken-flavored cube into the pan and turned the heat on before he allowed himself to sit down with his pounding head resting on his arms. He’d set a timer, so he rest his eyes…
Tony woke up to the fire alarms blaring in the kitchen. There was a flurry of activity in the kitchen, including Bucky and Nat tending to the charred remains of soup on the stove while Clint and Peter catching him under either arm while he tried to fight to get to the fire.
“Hey, that’s handled,” Clint reassured, wrestling his arms down to his sides. “Come on. Calm down.”
“I’m gonna get my phone to Facetime Bruce,” Peter declared, rushing away to grab his phone as Natasha came over to Tony’s side and Bucky rolled his eyes and disposed of the soup.
“S’rry; I was tryin—”
“Hey, woah,” Clint interrupted, shushing Tony before he could lethargically apologize for falling asleep at the table. “Bruce warned us that your BP sometimes bottoms. Come on; we’ll get you back on the couch.”
Bucky found it hard to believe that the genius that could work for hours on end in his lab or launch himself into space in the Iron Man suit might be laid up by simply trying to make soup with a cold, but kept his mouth shut as Nat and Clint supported him the whole way back to the living room, even as the cough that made him have to stop along the way visibly worried the others. Tony was dramatic, after all, and he’d be the first to admit it. Bucky was willing to write it off as nothing more than that.
Until the next morning when there was an urgent call to assemble.