[ Steve takes a breath because he needs it, and he tries to hold it together. Tony's the one dying and he's over here trying to tell Steve that he's smart and how good of a partner is, but that's not what Steve wants. He doesn't want to take Tony's support, when he should be the one giving it, unconditionally.

And Steve knows that Tony's a lot more square with his own mortality, and also with gambling his life on a project of his, than Steve is. And yes, he does believe in Tony, he does know he's a supergenius and so are Shuri and Bruce, but they don't have a lot of bandwidth to do test runs, and that's part of the process. Even Maya had to blow up some people before Tony could come fix the errors. Even Red Skull preceded Steve. Tony improves his suits every iteration, and so yes, Steve is maybe just a little bit worried that it won't work as expected, or it won't fix all their problems, or that it'll introduce new ones.

He's gentle in how he washes Tony, particularly when they get to the parts of him that have been scarred and rendered delicate by the infinity stones. It was scary then, watching Tony struggle to come back to them, not knowing if Steve had just prolonged his life only to watch him slowly fade away. But then he'd come to from the surgery the Wakandans gave him, and even full of fading anesthetic and having his body nearly torn to shreds, he had still been full of life. That was his Tony. ]

I just can't wait for us to get on the other side of this. I'll take the gum, the alpacas, Carol bringing creatures home from space again.

[ He'd stay as close as Tony needs, through the next few weeks or months, however long they have. And he'd stay even if Tony said it was too late for them to fix this. There will be more tears, yes, but Steve can only hope they'll be ones of joy. ]

What do you need?

Besides the lab things, and besides me to be here.

[ He realizes he should ask. ]