Life in Brooklyn

Chapter 15

Tony woke up in the hospital. Monitors beeping and the light burning his vision. His chest hurt, it burned. He looked at it and saw a hospital gown covering most of the bandage stretched across the incision. "What the-" he whispered hoarsely.
Rhodes had scooched his chair closer to he bed. "Tony?"
Tony looked at him and grunted. "What happened?"
He sighed. "Steve did something and you ended up here."
Tony frowned. "Steve?"
"After he left we found you on the floor, barely alive. He was te only one there before-"
"Steve didn't do anything." He shook his head. "I fucked everything up."
"You were drunk. No way you would've remembered-"
I remember what happened! He didn't do anything but tu to help until..." he trailed off.
"Until what"
"He left." He looked down. "He left me."
Rhodes didn't know if he should tell tony that steve been arrested or not, now that he felt wrong.
He locked his lips together and slowly left the room just as Bruce entered. Bruce watched him leave awkwardly. He went back to the station. Try to see what was going on, what was being said.
He wasn't allowed to know though, he was allowed to sit in the lobby and wait, where he saw Bucky and Natasha waiting desperately, and he kind of just held his hand up to the side of his face in hope that they don't recognize him in any way.
But of course Bucky does. He just stared at first, but then he decided to glance over for one damn second and he knew it was him. "You mother- get out of here!" He shot up and marched to him. He stood up to be able to face him and backed up a few steps when he reached for his shirt. "You have some courage to show up here." He growled and took his shirt again, this time grasping it tight and jerking him forward.
"Your friend might of tried to kill mine." He mumbled back.
"Steve couldn't hurt a godamn fly if he wanted to, and you think he'd want to kill the one person he's loved this way in a long time."
Rhodes knew what he was going to say, knew what it would probably get him, knew that this wasn't him, insulting and getting soldiers arrested. But it just slipped "Well, I don't know, he seemed fine with bombing a school."
And boom, Buckys fist met his face over and over and over until cops were on him and putting him in cuffs. He was being dragged off to a small cell in the back, passing by the room steve was being interrogated in, who saw the tall man with the dark man bun walk by. He stood up from his chair and tried to walk to the small window in the door, but his handcuffs stopped him. "What the hell? He didn't do anything!"
"Sit down." Steve looked at the cop and back at the window, then back at the cop.
He couldn't see Bucky anymore but he knew that he's probably going to have a panic attack. In handcuffs, in a cell, alone. Triggers
"He can't be there alone. He's going to have another attack." He shook his head and balled his hands into fists.
"Attack?"
"Panic attack. I thought you would have read my file too, along with some of my closest friends. We wee in iraq for a few years. It's how he lost his arm."
The cop seemed to tense up and intense a bit. He stood up and walked out of the room. He saw him standing right outside the door, talking to another cop before waving someone over, that someone being Natasha. She peeked inside for a moment and saw steve stare at her, worried. She frowned and locked her lips together before taking a seat next to Bucky small cell.
The cop entered again. "Thank you." Steve told him and he actually nodded back.
"So, you served?"
"Yeah. Three and a half years. I don't know how this has anything to do-"
"You said 'read my file too'" he pointed out, "who else went through it? Psychiatrist? Doctor?"
"No." He answered, but remained quiet after that.
"Then who?" He pressured.
Steve shook his head. "Tony, and a few others."
"Who?"
"Bruce banner and James Rhodes." He sighed.
"And they went through your war file?"
"Yes." He said, stubbornly.
"Motive enough to hurt the other?"
"No! I wouldn't ever hurt him! I've already told you!" He leans dover the table and kept his expression serious, but he didn't seem convinced. "Look, I met tony in a gay bar. We started dating and got really close. Then his parents died and he just... disappeared yet he didn't. Bruce and Rhodes found me this morning if I could try to get him to come out, I tried, he was drowning in liquor and vomit in his basement when I found him. When he woke up, I tried helping, but he wouldn't let me." The cop raised his eyebrows. "That's when he brought up incidents that occurred while I was on the field that I haven't told anyone about other than Bucky and a few of my other friends who are dead now." Tears burned in the back of his eyes but he fought them away. "So I left, and went back to my apartment building."
Rhodes came back an hour later with a black eye and a stitched cut on his face. Bruce was sitting next to tonys bed with a magazine while he watched some tv. Tony looked at him. "What happened to you?"
Bruce looked up, and asked the same question.
Rhodes sat down next to his bed slowly and scratched his head. "I was at the police station."
"Why?" Tony asked.
He looked at Bruce, who looked furious and angry. "Uhm, well, after steve left earlier, we thought he was the one who did this to you, so, I called the cops."
"You got him arrested?! What the hell?! Ow." He groaned after he yelled, the burning in his chest increasing.
"We thought he tried to kill you tony."
"Steve couldn't hurt a fly." He hissed in pain. "He found out about you guys opening the godamm file. He got mad, or sad, but he left. He. Left. Because of you guys."
"Tony-"
"Stop it. Just, shut up." He moaned again and the doctor finally came in.
"Mr. stark, your cardiac function is weakening, mostly because of the accessible alcohol consumed. I'm afraid you will need a transplant, so you have been out on the list, but in the meantime, I I stalked a pacemaker that should keep you going."
Tony only nodded, he needed to call the police station. Get steve out of there, but a way Bruce and Rhodes could just go away. He needed Thor and he needed to be there in person. "When can I leave?"
"After about a week."
A week? That was too long. He had to get an officer here. "I need to make a phone call, now." He said in a raspy voice.
He was handed a phone and he kicked Bruce and Rhodes out. They felt bad, they did. They were also lost.
But tony called the station and convinced an officer quite easily to get there.