Title: Epilogue: Big and Green and It's Not the Hulk
Warning: reference to awkward medical stuff
Summary: Bucky always thought it was satisfying to finish a job well done. Even if someone else was reaping the fruits of his labor.
There was heavier security on Stark's lab than there was on his resident floor, so Bucky figured he'd start with easiest first, the virility-renewal potion.
He'd baked the potion until all the moisture in the lotion was completely evaporated leaving behind a dried medium sized lightly copper colored brick. All he'd had to do after that was grind it into a fine powder and pour it into a dented tin salt shaker.
Climbing up the Tower's private elevator shaft was easier the second time. Bucky had the sensor patterns down now and was up to the penthouse in nearly half the time. Unfortunately he was going to have to leave the cover of the ventilation shafts and move through Tony's large modern penthouse.
Sticking to the shadows and camera blind spots, because doing everything he could to make stealth charms' jobs easier was a good idea, Bucky cautiously stepped into Tony's bedroom.
The room was just as contemporary as the rest of the penthouse and surprisingly neat considering Stark gave off the impression of not being particularly concerned with organization in his normal day to day life.
Opening drawers in the walk-in closet's built-in shelves, Bucky pulled out over a dozen pairs of silk underwear; boxers, briefs, and boxer-briefs. He went through them shaking powdered virility-renewal lotion on the crotch of every single pair. Placing them back exactly how he found them, stacked, folded, and organized by color, Bucky ghosted out of the penthouse and back up into the elevator shaft.
Stark's workshop, unlike his bedroom, was chaos. Amazing, futuristic chaos. It was everything Bucky always imagined the future would be. There were even robots rolling around the place beeping to each other.
He was frozen, hanging upside down out of a ventilation duct just staring in awe. Holograms were floating idly in the air, state of the art tools were littering all the surfaces, scuffed and battered parts of the Iron Man suit were scattered around on the worktables. Bucky would have been content to examine each and every inch of the place for hours, but with a shake of his head he got back on task.
Gracefully lowering himself from the vent, Bucky landed on his feet on the concrete floor with no sound. The robots moving seemingly aimless around the shop suddenly stopped and turned toward him. He sucked in a breath and held perfectly still.
His notice-me-not and plain-sight charms were in working order and he could feel his stealth enchantment radiating from his skin across his eyes and temples. He knew the bots couldn't see him, but it hadn't occurred to him that they would be able to register a presence, a disturbance in the area.
The curious, squealing bot wearing a dunce hat trundled toward him. Its claw was opening and closing as the camera inside scanned the air around him; up and down, back and forth. Heart pounding, body unmoving as stone, Bucky watched the bot and wondered what its pips, hums, and whistles were communicating to the other two bots.
Finally after several long slightly nerve wracking moments, the bot seemed satisfied that there wasn't anything interesting about that patch of space and turned around rolling back to the other bots. The three of them beeped and whistled at each other some more as they went back to ineffectually sweeping up a spilled pile of nuts and bolts.
Cautiously taking his first step toward the small wet bar-kitchenette, Bucky watched them for a sign that they would come investigate again. Luckily they stayed occupied with tidying up.
It seemed Stark had thought to do the dishes at some point, or maybe one of the bots did, 'cause the smoothie cups Bucky was looking for were all stacked in the dishwasher. There were six in all, brushed silver and gold and hotrod red insulated cups. He pulled all of them out and set them on the small counter.
Reaching into his trusty backpack, Bucky pulled out an old chewing tobacco tin and the half empty tube of superglue. He took one of the red cups and squeezed a penny sized glob of glue in the bottom. In the tobacco tin there were ten shards of shiny black obsidian, as long as a matchstick and around a half inch wide. Grabbing one, he carefully dropped it in the cup and pressed it down in the glue for a few seconds until the glue set.
Satisfied that it was good and stuck, Bucky put it back in the dishwasher and grabbed the next cup. When all six smoothie cups were finished, there were still four shards left so he grabbed some coffee mugs and glued the rest of the obsidian in those too.
Bucky wasn't worried about Stark discovering the bits of rock krazy glued inside the cups because he'd muttered an inanimate object notice-me-not enchantment over the shards before packing them in the tin. Replacing the last cup back where he found it, his task was done and it was time he got the hell out of the Tower before his presence really was discovered.
Taking one last wistful look around a futurist's haven, Bucky lifted himself silently up into the vents and started the tedious trek back down the Tower and then out of Manhattan all together.
Tony couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. He was sleeping deep and long, a full eight hours most nights (or days). His limbs felt lighter somehow, his joints moved smoother, and the darkly stained veins around his reactor had almost completely disappeared.
He hadn't noticed it 'til it was gone, but an odd kind of tension inside him (almost like it was coming from his actual internal organs) had dissipated. And his lungs, over the course of two and a half weeks he realized his lungs had steadily lost that barely there crackle that had settled in before he even came back from Afghanistan.
All of this he could have ignored indefinitely with a liberal application of engineering binges and willful obliviousness. What he couldn't ignore were his balls. Because they tingled.
They didn't burn, not like that one time his doc put him on heavy duty antibiotics and his no-glove-no-love policy became nonnegotiable. No, it was a gentle almost unnoticeable tickle inside his scrotum. If he was being completely honest it actually felt kinda nice.
So nice in fact that he hasn't jerked it this much since college. He'd gone from spending the average (or less than, but he refused to acknowledge that yet) amount of time with himself for a man his age, to running through two and a half bottles of lube in two weeks.
He probably would have been able to ignore that too. If he hadn't looked down one day to see that his whole groin area was suddenly a light shade of green.
"JARVIS!" Tony stared wild eyed at his abnormally colored junk trying not to panic. "Call my doctor! I need an appointment ASAP!" He shifted around his bits and bobs to get a better look. With a strangled kind of sound in the back of his throat he shouted, "Today! Tell him I need one today!"
Within the hour (and a very large emergency appointment surcharge) Tony was being slightly violated by a q-tip, doing the turn-your-head-and-cough, and experiencing for the first time that thing with the glove and, "Hello! At least buy me dinner first." He was also drained of approximately a pint of blood and instructed to pee (and other things) in a cup.
At Tony's insistent urging (and another sizable add-on to the bill) the doc put a rush on the results.
"Well, Mr. Stark," the doctor said examining Tony's results calmly, "there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with you."
"What do you mean nothing's wrong with me? My family jewels are green." Tony gestured downward pointedly as if the doctor hadn't just gotten pretty hands-on with his privates not twenty minutes ago. "How is that not a cause for concern?"
"Ah, yes, about that." Finally looking up from the file in his hands, the doctor had a slightly puzzled expression on his face. "It seems your sperm count has risen to normal levels, better than normal actually."
His frenetic movement brought to a screeching halt, Tony stared at the doctor. "But I'm sterile," he protested blankly. "The palladium poisoning rendered me sterile."
"There isn't any palladium in your system, Mr. Stark," the doctor told him looking even more bewildered. "The trace amounts that lingered in your system are completely gone. And by what I can tell from your blood work, the drug and alcohol damage to your kidneys and liver has healed almost completely as well."
Jaw dropping open and closed in shock, Tony demanded, "What about the green? There's no way that's natural."
"No, it isn't," the doctor conceded. "While the palladium is gone you do have slightly elevated levels of copper in your system. Nothing harmful though," he rushed to reassure when Tony looked like he was ramping up again.
"That's most likely why your skin is green," the doctor went on. "When exposed to the acidity from our bodies copper takes on a green tint. If I had to guess you must have come in contact with a fairly sizable amount of copper and it reacted to this spontaneous purge of toxins from your body."
"'Spontaneous purge of toxins'," Tony repeated dubiously. "That's what you're going with? My genitals somehow got dipped in some copper and it turned them green because my body just suddenly decided to spit out every toxic thing I've put in it over the last forty-five years."
"The green should go away after a few hot showers," the doctor offered awkwardly, attempting to placate him. "But, well, yes." Deciding to just throw himself completely behind this explanation, he nodded more confidently. "You haven't been this healthy since you were in your twenties." Then shrugging he added, "I've never seen anything like this before, Mr. Stark. Frankly, if I didn't know any better, I'd almost say it was just like magic."
"Magic," Tony repeated again, unimpressed. Maybe he needed to get another doctor because obviously this one didn't actually know any better if the best he could come up with was "magic".
Back at the Tower, Tony stepped out of the elevator in a daze. He was still circling the mystery of his many and varied (and obviously useless) test results around in his head. Nothing about this made any sense. The human body didn't just heal from permanent damage all on its own. There was no cure for toxic sterilization or alcohol damage to the liver.
This is exactly why I don't do the squishy sciences, he thought sullenly.
"Tony!" Looking up he saw Cap sitting at the kitchen bar drinking out of his personal orange juice jug (because he drank enough to have his own). "JARVIS said you had a medical emergency. Is everything okay?"
"Huh? What? Oh, yeah," Tony responded absently, still distracted with his spinning thoughts. "Apparently I'm the picture of health."
"Oh. That's good." Hesitating when he saw the odd expression on Tony's face, Steve added, "What's the problem, then?"
"The problem," Tony frowned grabbing a mug and pouring himself some coffee, "is that I haven't been this healthy since I was twenty and the doctor has no idea why."
Seeing Steve's expression of confusion and earnest concern, Tony rolled his eyes as he sat down across from him. He took comfort in the caffeine boost as he explained the utterly illogical situation.
"Apparently there isn't single trace of palladium left in my system, my kidneys and liver are pretty much like new, and my swimmers are ready to go for gold." Tony looked way too exasperated for having received such good news.
"I don't understand," Steve admitted, bewildered by Tony's attitude. "What exactly is the problem?"
"The problem is that stuff like this doesn't just happen," Tony flailed his arms in exclamation. "Super soldier transformations notwithstanding, it's just not scientifically possible. Even after a whole battery of apparently useless tests the doc couldn't even come up with a good explanation for it all."
Frowning thoughtfully, Steve asked, "What did the doctor actually say?"
Scoffing in derision, "I probably need a new doctor 'cause the best he could come up with was that it happened just like magic," Tony replied.
Then yelped as Steve sprayed him right in the face with a mouthful of orange juice.
END.