Dearest Betty,
It seems I have been away from you for longer than the few months we have been apart. My letters may have become less frequent, but do not believe that my affections for you have lessened, only that there has been nothing of interest to report. That is until only this morning I met someone, one of the most arrogant-
"HEY! I am not arrogant."
Bruce placed his pen carefully on the table beside his half-finished letter and removed his glasses. He let out a long breath before turning and looking up at the intruder. "Tony, I am trying to write a letter."
"Okay, okay. But tell her how cool I am. Change arrogant to… extraordinary." Tony beamed, showing his new friend his pearly whites and imagining them shining like in the cliché films he used to watch as a kid.
"Stop reading over my shoulder." Bruce shooed him and put his glasses back on, picking up his pen.
"Hey- why do you write so formally anyway, it's not 1818."
"And here was me thinking I was writing a private letter to my fiancé."
"Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?"
"Tony"
"Hey, you telling her about me 'n Lo?"
"And why would I tell her about you and your science experiment for a boyfriend?"
"Duh, cause we're awesome." Tony stood there for a minute while Bruce continued to write about how arrogant Tony was in an eloquent script. "Hey, budge over. You wouldn't tell it right anyway."
"Pep and I were supposed to get married. I proposed; ring, knee, the whole shebang. Problem was, I'd just got back into contact with an old girlfriend, Maya. No, I know what you're thinking, we did naughty things while Pepper wasn't looking. No. No, we did not, and quite frankly I'm appalled and disgusted that you even thought of that. I'm a nice guy, I'm offended you would ever think that of me.
Right, the point. The point is that Maya had done some pretty swanky research on the extremis project, and it had gone seriously far since the exploding plant stage in the 80s. Apparently I had scribbled some notes on a… I don't even know. Point is, I accidently gave her some awesome scientific genius help by accident, and I found out I was even more awesome than I thought, and in a field I knew virtually nothing about. This got me interested in all that biological science stuff, so I thought I'd give it a go. Well if you're going to be a biologist, what's your holy grail? Creating life right? Right? So I started at it. That's what got me into this tiny little hovel with your fiancé. Don't worry- he's not my type. Anyway. Life.
So I went off for a couple of months, trying to see how far other people had got with this stuff. Anything to be lazy and steal a bit of some other people's research. I'm going to be a terrible narrator here and skip all the sciency stuff and what kind of stuff I did in those months. I don't really want you stealing all my genius and doing it for yourself now do I? No. Okay, so lets say about ten months passed."