If You Were Here (Tony Stark x Reader)

Part 5

Outside, the approaching dawn paints the sky pink and purple. You watch the horizon line with rapt attention. Tony watches you with the same amount of care. Your every breath is measured. Too even, too deliberate, as if you have to concentrate on the movement. He lets you rest on the floor, but still holds you to his chest, unable to bear letting go of the contact. For an agonizing fifteen minutes, Tony waits with you, counting each breath you take. As the sun breaks over the line of trees, flooding the room with orange light, you stop breathing altogether. Tony looks to your face in alarm and sees a single tear escape down your cheek.

#

Existing is... difficult. Every sensation over ||beat || whelms your sensitized mind. You're flooded with input, all at once, a jumbled mess ||beat breathe in || of extraneous information. Your senses ||beat || go to war, demanding equal attention from a mind incapable of looking at more than one thing at a time. You can't ||beat breathe out || stop the onslaught.

Tony is talking. To you or to ||beat || Bruce. It's hard to keep track. You can't focus on any one thing for long.

He touches your hand and all your ||beat breathe in || attention floods there. A million touch receptors cry out at he feel of his skin against yours, demanding ||beat || to be heard. Warmth and pressure, slight roughness. And then there's ||beat breathe out || his smell. Soap and cologne and grease and—

"Cheshire?" The timbre of||beat || Tony's voice rumbles through your ears, but you can't think past the feeling of the vibrations passing into you, as if ||beat breathe in || they connect his body to yours through the invisible wall of air. You ||beat || watch his face, concentrate on the way his lips form the words he's saying. Phonetics string together, then separate to ||beat breathe out || form words, then reconnect to make sentences. Sentences ||beat || are parsed into meaning. The process is agonizing, your mind ticking away to come ||beat breathe in || to some conclusion of what he wants. "Talk to me. What's going on? What are you feeling?"

What do you feel? You feel everything. ||beat || You sort through your brain, looking for the path to your voice, like shifting through a warehouse ||beat breathe out || of folders, all without labels. You have to try a few times before you find ||beat || the right switch. "...Confusing."

"Okay. Okay—confusing we can work ||beat breathe in || with. That's just the mapping. That'll be easier as you get used to it."

So ||beat || frustrating. This is your body, damn it, but you're fumbling around inside it like it's some sort of organic ||beat breathe out || suit and you still have to learn the controls. What moves your arms and legs? What is the meaning in the minute signals ||beat || coming from your sensory cortex? You made your way into the living ||beat breathe in || room out of sheer desperation. Now that you're trying to act with any deliberation, ||beat || it's a mess.

#

You try to touch your toes, an inexplicably difficult task. You watch the tips of your fingers as they close the space between them and your feet. You can't judge the distance correctly, like you're mentally measuring with an invisible ruler. This... shouldn't be this hard. You move each muscle individually—back, hips, hamstring—contract, relax, each at the right time or the movement doesn't work as expected. You tense each experimentally, testing the connection and establishing the routine so you can shortcut it later.

You move a muscle a little too far and the ground rushes up to meet you. Your reflexes scream at you to catch yourself, throw your hands out, but that connection isn't made yet, so you fall on your face, internally swearing, but outwardly completely calm. You can't even fuck up properly. You want to scream and curse and throw a tantrum but you fucking can't because you don't know how.