"Hey Bruce," Tony asked as he frowned at the phone in his hand, "what color is this dress? It's blue with black lace, right?" He held his phone out to Bruce.
Bruce leaned over and said, "Yeah, blue and black. Why wouldn't it be?" He paused, then asked "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything! The internet did it!" said Tony.
Bruce stared. This conversation wasn't helping his understanding. "And what did the internet do, exactly?"
"This dress, a bunch of people see white with gold lace!"
"What? How?" asked Bruce. This dress was clearly blue and black. This was probably a prank of some sort, but he couldn't figure out how.
"I'm serious, it's all over social media," said Tony, "News sites are starting to pick it up, too. I'm going to go ask the others."
This was clearly a bad idea, Bruce decided. But Bruce generally thought talking to people was a bad idea and his SHIELD-approved therapist said he needed to work on that. "I'll come, too," he said.
The lab was about three storeys above the lounge, where the Avengers were most likely to hang out. On the way down, Bruce pulled up the image on his own phone to study. Sure enough, sites seemed to be freaking out over this dress. People honestly seemed to think it was different colors-white and gold, apparently. How did that even work? Surely if there was a discrepancy it would be closer-purple maybe. It seemed to be nationwide and include news sources, but that honestly didn't rule out a prank from Tony.
They walked out of the elevator and turned the corner into the lounge, where Steve was sketching, Coulson was apparently doing paperwork, and Thor appeared to be watching a cooking show. That one with the guy who yells a lot, but Bruce didn't really recognize much beyond that.
Bruce lingered, unsure of what to do. Tony had no such compunctions.
"What color is the dress?" he asked the room at large. Its three occupants looked up in confusion. Tony thrust out his phone and Steve stood up to look at it.
"It's white, isn't it?" he asked. He looked over at Bruce for help. Bruce just shrugged and gave nothing away. It wouldn't do to impact the results.
Thor looked over too. "No," he said, "It's blue. With black stripes." But he sounded hesitant after hearing Steve.
"Coulson, what do you think?" demanded Tony
"Blue and black, I believe," said Coulson. He looked over at Steve. "Steve, are you okay? Tony, did you do something?"
Tony made an offended noise, but Bruce didn't let him speak.
"Tony and I see blue and black as well," he explained, "but it's apparently up for debate."
"No it isn't," said Tony gleefully. "Four out of five saw blue and black. Steve, you need to get your eyes checked!" He turned around to go back to the lab and Bruce moved to follow him. Before they could get there , the door opened and Clint, Natasha, and Sam walked in.
"Hawkeye! What color is this dress?" asked Tony. He held up the picture.
Clint looked at Tony suspiciously. "White with gold," he said, "Why?"
"Another point for Steve!" said Tony.
"It's completely white and gold," said Steve, "and I don't know why you don't think so. It's so light-it doesn't look remotely like black and blue. Not even a light blue."
"It isn't a light blue, it's really dark," put in Bruce, "it doesn't look white and gold at all."
"No, it's white and gold," said Sam, "A hundred percent. Why are we discussing this?"
"Because no one can agree," said Tony, "but it's totally blue and black." Coulson and Thor nodded in agreement.
Natasha leaned over the tiny screen. "Blue and black," she said definitively. Then she frowned and squinted. "Wait, now it looks white and gold. What's going on?"
"I haven't heard about it changing for anyone," said Tony. "Bruce?"
Bruce was already looking at his phone. After a minute he looked up. "A few people say it changed. Some also see odd combinations. For most it's just white and gold or blue and black, though."
"Wait, this is a thing? Like, a non-Tony thing?" asked Sam.
"Yeah, hashtag 'The Dress' is trending on Twitter," Bruce said.
Natasha had pulled her phone out of somewhere on her skin-tight suit and was studying it. "It looks blue and black from farther and white and gold from closer," she said after a while.
"Really?" asked Tony, "How? What shades? At what point does it switch?"
"I don't know!" she said, "It just kind of does!"
Tony continued to pester her and received no answers. Meanwhile, Bucky walked in. He stopped, look at all of them in the same room, noticed the raised voices and attention of everyone on one place, and froze. "Is there a problem?" he asked.
Tony immediately began advancing on him. "What color is this dress?" He held his phone out. Bucky stared at it before saying, "White with gold lace? Why? I don't think I'd fit in it."
"There's some debate," said Bruce, "People see it differently. Most of us see blue with black lace. It's become popular online."
Bucky looked incredulous. "Blue and black?" he asked, "That's not even close! I could understand seeing, like silver, or something. If you have bad vision, maybe."
"Things probably get distorted along the optic nerve," said Bruce, "Our eyes see the same thing, we interpret it the same way. Something must just get lost in translation."
"No, it's gotta be something with your eyes," said Tony, "People have problems with blue and yellow. That must be it, the cones in your eyes. For some, more blue, so darker. For some, more yellow, so the light colors. There, science!"
"Tony, that makes no sense," countered Bruce, "If it was something with eyes, people would be disagreeing over every color. It's actually probably something with the optic center of the brain. People filter out colors. White light is bouncing off the dress. Some people would filter out the light, so the white is ignored. Some wouldn't, so they see the white."
"No, Bruce, no!" Tony said, "If it were something in the brain, it's based on color context. Like those optical illusions where the things look like different colors because they're surrounded by different colors, but they're actually the same color."
"That also doesn't make sense. If it's based on the image around it, people still see the same image. They would see the same colors."
"Well if people did based on light filtering, they'd disagree on every color."
"No, that's not it. You're missing that-" began Bruce. Tony cut him off.
"No, you're ignoring things."
"You both are being stupid, the dress is white anyways!"
"No, it isn't!"
"It's blue"
"It's changing, you idiots."
"No, Nat, it really isn't."
"It's gold, guys."