Stitches⚣Stony

Twenty-Seven

"So I'm somehow an asshole because I called your face pretty?"He's amused, Tony knows it because he can see it in the way that the corner of his lips tug into a sort of an amused smile, or maybe it's a smirk, and his eyes sort of dart to pinpoint Tony's own reaction. Tony scoffs a sort of half-laugh, rolling his eyes as he begins to walk away.

"Because you called my face pretty for the wrong reasons, Doctor."And he's off to the ER department, located down the hallway, opposite direction of where Doctor Strange had been heading, but he's sure that they'll meet up one time or another before Tony leaves.

Hospital still leave an unnerving feeling in Tony's stomach, and maybe it's because hospitals bring back such memories that Tony often wants to forget, of hurt and pain and loneliness. The last time he had been admitted to hospital had not been a pleasant experience and the time before that, it had been worst. It's been 10 years since Tony had been rushed in after the explosion and Tony still cannot remember the early days of that incident, but he does remember the days, the weeks, the months after.

Tony has the Stark Tab untucked from under his arm, it's glass screen illuminating the patients information along side doctor notes and Tony's own as he slides the curtain open of the ER cubical. There's so many notes alongside his profile, from way before he had joined the army it seems he has been in and out of hospital as much as Tony has, maybe even more, for stupidity and knucklehead situations nevertheless.

Tony looks up, eyes falling to the patient on the bed in grey jogging bottoms and white wife beater, a jacket draped over his shoulders in an attempt to conceal the absent limb on the left side of his body. Tony knows this man before he even has time to look at his face because he recognises the jacket, warned out and ruined and made of the type of thick leather than you can only really posses if the jacket had been made in the 70's, expensive but ruined.

And they knew him too, obviously, as they shift in a sort of surprise that has their steel blue eyes widening in shock but it seems to be the only recognisable expression that graces his stoney features.

It could be worst, it could be a lot worse and there could be a figure sitting beside the bed, haven been seated in an uncomfortable plastic chair for hours and hours, more nervous than the one in the bed with a missing arm up to the shoulder, more worried and feared, with baby fine blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes that always look up in such earnest and honesty and loveliness that Tony sees when he closes his eyes, when he's wrapped up in warm duvets on cold winter nights and wants them to be the arms that had held him that early morning in a diner booth.

And there is such figure, such person, such man, that Tony remembers, and really has never really forgotten because how could one forget such a person? How could Tony forget such a person that had left such an imprint on his life, who had taught him how to love, and be kind to oneself, to be human, to feel. But to feel in the all the wrong reasons to, to have left him stuttering on a raining doorstep, wailing into a shoulder, to feel pain in places he hadn't expected to hurt, to leave a boot print stomp on his heart.

He gets up from the chair, Tony takes a step back, feeling the papered curtain brush against his back, tickle the back of his neck as he makes it sway with his touch, knuckles white around the transparent glass of the tablet in his hands that illuminate all the information that Tony needs to see, that Tony needs to read out and nothing more.

"Mr. Barnes, I'm Dr. Stark."His smile is tight across his face as he turns his attention back to James on the bed, the bed elevated into a sit. He's changed, his hair remarkably being what has changed the most, military short, and the way that those steeling blue eyes have seemed to shift into a darker territory of consciousness than before, haunted with horrors and disturbed damages. "I'm going to be the one modelling, designing and helping to fit your new prosthetic, I'm sure the nurse has already ran you threw the simple procedure-"