This chapter wasn't meant to be like this... but they literally started this in my head and wouldn't leave, so...
I don't own anything but my own reckless enthusiasm.
TapTap
"Surely this is industrial espionage of some sort," Tony's voice was more amused than anything, as he stepped through Bruce's medical lab to hand his science bro a folder.
Bucky was sitting on a ledge over by the window, shoulders tense, but his breathing calm. Steve was lying on the couch, electrodes attached to his skin and disappearing underneath his half-unbuttoned shirt. Their Bruce was looking at a screen nearby, while Claire was fiddling with their CT scanner, where Bruce Wayne was lying entirely relaxed, watching her. He seemed to try and avoid laughing at his supposed rival's remark, and on a general note, was clearly enjoying himself.
"I'm pretty sure it's not. Pepper and Edward both seem pretty relaxed about it, so I'm sure it's fine. Maybe it's all about whether or not you know I'm me, so to speak? And you do, so...?"
"Wow, you really are geniuses," Claire scoffed at them, shaking her head casually, "that sentence gave me a headache, just from standing next to you." Steve chuckled, and even Bucky smiled, looking a little less tense.
Wayne looked over at the super soldier, noticing his body language, and suggested surprisingly gently, "You need not be here for this, surely, if it distresses you?"
Bucky shrugged, as Tony and Bruce cozied up in a corner with their results and Claire continued double-checking values. "Actually, I find it... a little soothing. Both you and Steve are so calm - it helps a little. Claire does, too."
"Well, it's not a very clinical, scary environment in here," Claire confirmed, not looking up. "I know it's not the same, and that you have hell of a lot more reasons, but I don't really like hospitals, either."
"Nor do I," Bruce Banner added, briefly looking up from his papers. "I had a few 'tests' run on me, myself, for obvious reasons, and I'd never treat anyone that way."
"No one likes hospitals. No even remotely similar environments are allowed in my tower, unless someone is actually dying," Tony's tone implied his mind was quite made up on this matter.
Bruce chuckled. "As if you'd make an exception if we were dying. You'd just invent something brilliant so that the environment could stay casual while they saved our lives." Wayne laughed at his namesake's conclusion, but looked as if he agreed, based on his own personal experiences with Tony.
"Now, now," Claire winked at her boyfriend, before addressing the other Bruce, "it's only his own life dad is reckless with... but I believe he already has made those inventions, just because..."
"I can confirm this, Miss Thomas," Jarvis interrupted without any real reason, except perhaps to make Tony scoff. He succeeded.
"Everyone's a critic!" And with those words, accompanied by an almost smug smirk, presumably from getting the last word, Tony Stark; genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist and inventor extraordinaire, left the room to go blow something up.
Natasha and Pepper had gone out to dinner, Bucky and Steve had shut themselves in for dinner, Thor was rather busy being a god, and Clint had gone off again, presumably to see his 'secret' family, leaving the three geniuses and the woman they all loved, although in such different ways, alone with the baby.
Claire had changed into pyjama bottoms and a sweatshirt before accepting charge of the little one, braided her hair as an afterthought, and then proceeded to spread out over the softest carpet in the living room with Natalia Maria and a multitude of toys, some of which almost as adorable as the small girl herself.
Tony, Bruce and the other Bruce were watching her over from Tony's bar table, each with a finger of whiskey they pretended to drink more than anything else. Wayne was the first to speak in a long while, voice so soft Claire had no hope to hear him over the baby's cooing, even had she not been across the room. "She's quite a woman."
Tony merely nodded, so it fell upon Bruce to respond. "Quite. She doesn't see the world like anybody else does. It's like she has no barriers. I've never met anybody else who treats Steve and Bucky like they're the same. Everyone else sees one good and one bad supersoldier, nevermind how false they know it to be. Like he's tainted. Not Claire. It's the same with me, for that matter, even amongst circles who should be above or beyond it, to some extent. I had never truly experienced having my... other self overlooked, not until Tony... imagine my surprise when she did the same. Immediately, no questions asked."
"She doesn't judge," Tony took a deep swallow from the contents of his glass, then reached out for a bottle to refill it, this time with something which smelled soothingly like apples. He wasn't trying to get drunk. "Not me, not Bruce, not Bucky, not Natasha. Nobody."
"Nor me." Wayne shook his head. "I've never been out with a woman before who isn't either very aware of, or actively avoiding the topic of who I am. I guess Claire had Tony to try on for size, when it comes to many things. Still. She's something else."
His words were greeted with a scoff. "Don't fool yourself. She didn't give a damn I was Tony bloody Stark, either, not even back before she was a multimillionaire and a superhero bestie." Tony shook his head, as if in delayed disbelief. "I still remember how she charmed Dummy before most people would've even have had time to stop freaking out about sentient bots."
"And then she taught him how to stop poisoning your coffee with motor oil," Bruce pointed out.
Tony made an incredulous sound, but it was soft at the same time, affectionate. "I know. I could love her on that score alone..."
Wayne smiled, eyes fond and very tender as he looked over to the woman he had fallen so deeply for, in such a relatively short while. He understood the sentiment. The next moment his eyes widened instead as the other inventor added, "Not to mention sitting there, dead calm, after spending four hours locked in with the Hulk. Because you know, that's totally not a big deal or anything..."
Wayne merely stared, but the first Bruce laughed. "And that's quite something, coming from you!"
Tony merely responded by looking over at Wayne and noting, "Your daughters will be beautiful and so smart. Keep me in the loop, when the day comes - we'll scare the shit out of their suitors together."
The two of them, two of America's most powerful men, clinked glasses in an agreement sealed, and a moment later Bruce joined them, confirming that they weren't the only ones who would always see her as family, one way or another.
