Chapter Text
“Does Steve know?”
"Does Logan?”
~*~
3:26 AM
Tony sat back against the cold tile, hand pressing through his hair and half expecting some of it to fall out. But when he removed his hand, nothing came away. No sudden disease that would make this all go away in a few short months. No easy copout this time. His stomach turned again and he swallowed the groan, eyes closed as he pressed his hands to his face in hopes of transferring the cold. Any minor soothing he could find was appreciated. He lasted another two minutes before he had to surge forward, hands out and grasping the sides of the toilet bowl and emptied the little contents of his stomach. Shuddering, he fell to the side, bare chest slick with his mild fever. As if his emotional state was miserable enough, now his body decided to multiply his misery.
Misery. What a lovely name for a baby, he thought dryly, turning his head to rest his forehead against the tile. The door to the master bathroom opened and Tony barely had the energy to roll his head back the other way to see who it was. Not like there were many options. Pepper had left after Tony had admitted to his one night affair; Vision stayed at the compound to wait for Wanda to come back; Friday would have announced Rhodes’ presence. His brother stood there, his ex-partners shirt hanging limply from his frame. A second Stark child must have been too much for their parents, Tony didn’t sit around and try to understand their reasoning, but the fact of the matter was Sherlock had been sent to London and adopted by a mildly wealthy family. After observing the plentiful news resources regarding Tony and the Avengers, Sherlock’s uncanny likeness to the billionaire couldn’t be ignored. So there he was, and Tony was in no state to turn people- to turn family- away.
In spectacularly ironic fashion only Starks could endure, they fell for their own respective World War Two veterans and would, as fate demanded, undergo this terrible political schism while both with child. But Sherlock knew his brother was taking the worst of this. While still separated, at least Logan and Sherlock were in the background, they didn’t have to face one another. Perhaps that made it worse. Sherlock didn’t have an excuse not to tell Logan; Tony still had to save face. At least he could tell himself that.
Sitting behind Tony, Sherlock laid a cold wash cloth over his brothers shoulders, murmuring something about this part would pass eventually. Or he’d simply get used to feeling like shit both outside and inside. Tony banked on the latter, swallowing yet another groan as he curled into a tight ball. It didn’t hurt, but it was far from pleasant. Fingers pressed through his hair, a liquid voice filling his head. Smooth like their mothers’. “How’s your eye?”
“Least of my fucking problems, right now.” Tony strained, closing his eyes and breathing slowly. “They didn’t get Logan, did they? He wasn’t on the raft when I went, but who fucking knows. Coulda sent him back to weapon-” A grimace and he swallowed bile. “Back to weapon X.”
“Last I heard, he was with the… Xmen.” Sherlock murmured, throat tightening as he realized it meant Logan and Scott were reunited again. And when Logan left with Steve and Sherlock couldn’t just leave his brother… He was with Scott. Undoubtedly. And that, despite how much it hurt him to think about it, Sherlock couldn’t deny was a better alternative to prison or Weapon X. “They won’t let anything happen to him.”
“You think he’d stay with Scott over you? Especially now?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t risk him leaving the safety of the mansion. Even for this. We can’t contact them.”
“Still a chance he’d choose you, though. Over Scott. Maybe even Victor.” Tony’s voice managed to be dry while hoarse, conveying all of the sarcasm even when he had nothing left to hide. “No chance in hell Steve comes back… Not when he has that fucki--”
Sherlock moved away, watching as Tony surged up and gripped the toilet again. But his hand soon rubbed down the older man’s back, humming quietly. “I don’t think that’s--”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see… You didn’t…” His breath was coming faster, nails scraping against the porcelain bowl without purchase. Tony had been wrong. This was absolute misery. He couldn’t breathe, everything just felt wrong. Water was running somewhere, and it didn’t register Sherlock had turned the shower on before a cold towel was wrapped around his entire chest, water rolling down and dampening his pants. But it brought him back. Finally managing to sit up, knees pressed to his chest, Tony pulled the soaking wet towel around him, shocking himself out of the attack. “This isn’t going to be a constant thing, right?”
“The panic attacks or the vomiting?” Sherlock was standing, grabbing extra towels out of the closet to mop up the water. “Morning sickness varies, but it shouldn’t last all day. Only spike during certain periods. If you’re lucky, it will be constant. But, seeing our situation…”
The older brother laughed, a shiver beginning to rock his body. He was coming down from the fever. Rapidly. Sluggishly, he pulled the towel off of him, dropping it in the corner of the shower with a sickly wet ‘slop’ sound. Sherlock was already there with a dry towel, gently working it over his skin as Tony sighed. “What are we going to do, Sherly?”
“I don’t know…”