Title: Smokes (Little Wonders Arc)
Pairings/Warnings: Tony/Bruce, high school au, explicit language, underage smoking
Notes: Basically I'm trash who doesn't actually want to think up a timeline and enough events to create a cohesive fic with meaning and what have you so I'm being lazy and throwing these ideas into a loosely tied together high school AU arc. Enjoy. FYI – they are supposed to be sophomores here and the name of this arc is based on the Rob Thomas song of the same name.
Nervous laughter broke through the tension and Bruce watched as birds cut across the break in the leaves overhead, black against clear blue sky. The sun was warm on his skin, heating up the wooden deck and it was almost uncomfortable to lay his bare arms across it but he leaned his elbows into it anyway. His thumb rested comfortably on the butt of a cigarette while his other hand spun the lighter in a false act of bravado designed to impress the other boy, the one who always laughed a little too loud when he was anxious.
Bruce glanced at Tony, noting the way his dark shaggy hair fell into his eyes and the way those same eyes were deliberately not looking at him. It made the corners of Bruce's mouth quirk up into an evil little grin as he got high on that spike of adrenaline he felt at making a kid who had the proverbial "everything" nervous with his own breadth of experience. It made him feel powerful to have Tony by the balls. He rarely felt powerful.
The crack of the lighter was loud in the stillness – easily competing with the hum of the sprinkler next door and the latino music turned up too high two houses down. Bruce stuck the cigarette between his lips and cupped the flame with his palm as he breathed in, feeling the burn and the hit of nicotine. Nerves made him want to cough despite having done this at least a hundred times and he held it back, instead turned lazy eyes towards Tony to catch him staring.
He liked the way Tony watched him though, intently, his sole focus trained on Bruce as though Bruce held some secret. A secret Tony couldn't even fathom, couldn't even guess, but he still wanted to know what it was, and he couldn't look away. But he did blush when he realized Bruce had caught him – faint, just the vaguest tint of pink on his cheeks – and Bruce liked that too.
With practiced ease Bruce drew the cigarette from his lips and blew smoke in a thin, straight line outward, turning his eyes back towards the cigarette as he dangled it casually between two fingers, watching it burn.
Bruce could practically hear the breath caught in Tony's chest, the weight of his anxiety. For a minute he considered letting it go, letting Tony out of the challenge, but –
He turned and pinned Tony with a very knowing look, holding the cigarette out towards him, tongue lined with a belittling comment. It was unnecessary, though, and he watched the way Tony rubbed his palms on his jeans before he held out his hand to accept the offering, nervous fingers brushing against Bruce's own. And Tony stared at the cigarette like a challenge, like the whole damn defensive line on the football field was staring back at him. Bruce couldn't help it – he thought it was terribly cute.
It was funny how life brought them around to this moment but here they were. Tony, the awkwardly endearing class clown and second string quarterback for the Varsity team, an exceptionally brilliant slacker who never did any work but aced the tests thrown together with the hardworking and studious Bruce who just couldn't get his shit together most of the time and spent his school career alienating all the other students and sucking up to the teachers all because their Chem teacher Mister Gregory thought Bruce would be a positive influence on Tony. The thought nearly made him chuckle given their current situation. Bruce knew he wasn't capable of being a positive influence on anybody.
"What do I –" Tony started, the cigarette held awkwardly in front of his face and Bruce grinned a real, genuine grin.
"It's easy – just put it between your lips and breath in."
Tony's poorly maintained facade fell for an instant as he frowned at the cigarette and took a deep breath, preparing himself for the experience. Bruce liked that about Tony, liked that he put on a brave face too.
It was hard not to notice Tony's lips as he placed the cigarette between them, drawing in immediately like he just wanted to get the whole thing over with and predictably sputtering out a horrible cough. Bruce laughed as he saved the cigarette from Tony's loose grip, freeing him to brace himself against the deck as he regained his composure.
In a moment of vanity Bruce took another effortless drag, making a show of it as Tony took a few deep breaths with a thinly veiled glare in his direction. The easy smile that Bruce wore was rare, his appreciation for this moment more than even he could put into words.
"No, you gotta do it easier than that," Bruce explained. "Slow and steady." He could feel Tony's eyes on him as he closed his own, making an example of it, feeling the smoke fill his mouth.
People underestimated Tony but he was watching, always watching, and he didn't back down from a challenge. Bruce knew it, saw him being escorted out of the school only a month ago, bloody knuckled in the hall, one eye glaring out under a swollen shock of darkness – healed before he'd returned from his suspension.
Bruce blew the smoke from his mouth, leaning over on his elbow as he handed the cigarette back. "Don't draw the smoke into your lungs. It's not like pot."
He could tell the reference to pot made Tony uncomfortable, knew he'd never smoked it himself, and truth be told Bruce had only done it once – but who was keeping score? This moment was a good moment and if he could hold another experience over Tony to sweeten the deal...? So be it.
Tony took the cigarette back, still uncomfortable but then not as much so as before, and when he studied this cigarette this time he seemed less nervous about it. But he was a quick learner. And Bruce thought for a moment, if he dared be so vain, that Tony wanted to impress him – at least as badly as he wanted to impress Tony.
Bruce watched his lips again and quelled the unfamiliar pang of desire that coursed uncomfortably through his gut. He licked his own lips, quick, just a flick of his tongue that he couldn't help, and breathed out a shallow breath. Now his palms felt sweaty and he didn't like it and he didn't want it to end.
More carefully than before Tony drew in and Bruce could see the way his cheeks puffed out, the somewhat disgruntled look on his face. When Tony pulled the cigarette away all the smoke came rushing from his lips in one unsexy breath but Bruce grinned anyway.
"I don't get it," Tony admitted, as he put the cigarette back in his mouth for another puff, coughing a little as he took it just a bit too fast.
Bruce chuckled as he tapped his own cigarette out of the rumbled pack he'd pilfered from his father. He only took them when there were just a few left in the box, easy to miss and forget about, and he only let himself have one or two a day because he wasn't friends with any seniors so he didn't have any connections. Not that he could've paid for them even if he did. The last thing he needed was to be feeding an unmaintainable addiction...
He shrugged as he leaned over the rail, bending down to light his own cigarette and trying not to watch Tony out of the corner of his eye but it was difficult. The way Tony moved was so unintentionally sexy – even his obvious nervousness couldn't detract from that.
"There's nothing to get," Bruce replied as he watched the smoke dissipate over the edge of deck, feeling the nicotine calming the rush of the blood in his veins.
"Why does my dad give a shit?" he clarified, staring hard at the accumulating ash, clearly going to just let the whole thing burn out.
Bruce bit his tongue on a laugh. It was endearing the way Tony still cared about what his father thought.
"Next time I'll get us a coup'la beers, too," he offered, eyes flicking up to meet Tony's for just a minute.
Tony laughed.
The sound of it made Bruce's insides do something funny and he had to look away because his heart was pounding and his face felt hot and he thought it would be too obvious, Tony would be able to see it all right there, written in bright pink right across his face but...
No one ever laughed at him, not like that. Not where he was in on the joke. Not where he'd instigated it. And honestly, he wanted to be mad at Tony. Right from the start of these damned study sessions Bruce had wanted to hate him because Tony was the very archetype of everyone that had ever made his life hell – he dressed the right way, the right people liked him, he didn't have to try and he knew it because daddy would come soaring in on wings made of hundred-dollar-bill-lined righteous disregard but...
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he'd been a little too quick to judge. Because Tony was here with him now, laughing with him, smoking with him, trying to impressive him, even, and Bruce just – Bruce just didn't know exactly what to make of that.
"Dad'll really hate that," Tony grinned and Bruce's lips quirked up too, though he tried to hide them beneath his hand as his fingers worked their way onto the paper wrapped tobacco, reaching for something familiar.
Tony's tongue wet his lips and Bruce felt weak as he thought I know something else your dad would really hate – but he didn't say it. Couldn't say it though his imagination could supply a brilliant scenario instead where maybe he didn't say it but he leaned in and wet Tony's lips for him, biting away the burn of smoke and nicotine and then soothing it with his own lips.
But the problem with Bruce was always that his imagination was too vivid, his desires too real, too tangible – and so he squashed them down, deep down inside his internal pandora's box where he hoped they could never escape. Because Tony wasn't – Tony wasn't gay and even if he was, he wouldn't give a fuck about him, no one really did, it would be too much to ask. There was no world in which he deserved the affection of a guy like Tony.
And yet...
Yet there was this moment when he looked back up over the rim of his shitty pair of cheap aluminum rimmed glasses where Tony looked back and he could swear he felt it – that animalistic draw, that awareness that Tony was predator and he was prey and that if he faltered for even a second he would be consumed.
But he didn't falter – he never would. Wishful thinking was wishful thinking and no matter how hard he wished it would always remain just a thought trapped in his head.
"Good," he said instead, his mouth dry around it and he swallowed, tried not to let his nerves show. "Then I'll definitely do it."
"Good," Tony repeated with a smirk. "I look forward to it."