NOTES: Sorry for the weeklong delay in getting this posted. I (saranoh) am busy with my own beginning of the school year activities. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and thanks for being patient with us (mostly me).
"Could we please not make this a thing?" Bruce asked, his fingers poised to pinch the bridge of his nose.
Tony raised both hands. "I'm not the one boxing up physics books to make room for my girlfriend," he defended. Well, defended until he paused and frowned. "Well, okay, technically I am the one boxing up physics books, but under your careful tutelage. And definitely not for my girlfriend, though if you and Red are into swinging, we can talk about—"
Bruce flung a Sharpie at Tony's head, and Tony only barely deflected it.
He also grinned, but that's another story.
For all his laundry list of wonderful qualities—the foremost of which being his willingness to deal with snot-nosed children one-hundred-eighty days of the year—Bruce always seemed to forget how bad he was about keeping secrets from Tony. Not secrets from the general population, because lord knows nobody ever knew how to read the guy, but Tony knew Bruce Banner like the back of his hand. They'd made it halfway through a single AA meeting—paying diligent attention to the sharer, obviously—before Tony'd texted his platonic life partner. stop fidgeting, it'd read, and Bruce'd gone still and white the second he'd read it.
Pay attention, he'd texted back, and slipped his phone into his pocket.
yeah not until you stop fidgeting, Tony'd retorted, but Bruce'd just stomped on his foot without reading the message.
Afterwards, at the diner, he'd stammered and wriggled his way through the story: kid-related baggage, moving in together, the whole bit. "Red's not gonna be able to leave once she realizes Parker's screwed his girlfriend on every surface in her apartment," Tony'd pointed out, gesturing with a French fry. "You'll be stuck with her for life."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing," Bruce'd replied, and he'd stolen a handful of fries off Tony's plate to prove it.
The memory sat pretty heavy in the back of Tony's head as he watched Bruce rearrange crap on the perpetually overstuffed bookshelves in his living room. He was humming to himself, squinting as he moved around some battered science fiction novels that probably predated Star Trek. "She knows you're a hoarder, right?" Tony asked as he dropped another of the books in the nearest box.
Bruce rolled his eyes. "She has been here."
"Being here and living here are two different things. Has she seen the under-the-bed bin with the sweaters? Because that alone might scare her away."
Bruce smirked. "If Pepper can endure the engine graveyard you call a garage, Natasha can tolerate my sweaters."
Tony scoffed, which just turned his friend's smirk into an actual grin. "I'll have you know that every last engine part in that garage has a purpose," he defended. Bruce raised an eyebrow. "I might not know what that purpose is, and I might not use it any time soon, but I assure you: I will someday need that one bolt in that one drawer, and I will be glad I had it."
"And you're worried about my relationship," Bruce grumbled, but his voice sounded warm.
He turned back to the shelf then, leaving Tony to drop the last physics book in the assigned box. Even though Natasha planned on subletting her place, Bruce insisted on clearing out a lot of space for her—half, Tony expected, to show that he really wanted her to make herself at home, and half because—
"You're sure about this, right?"
The words popped out of Tony's mouth without any warning whatsoever, and he knew the second he heard them that they sounded wrong. Tighter and more urgent than he meant them, at least.
Across the room, Bruce's shoulders tightened, and Tony could immediately imagine the half-pained, half-challenging expression crossing his face. "Excuse me?"
"That's not how I meant it," Tony promised, and when Bruce turned around, he didn't look angry. No, he looked fearful, like he expected Tony might say or do something monumentally stupid. Which, to be fair, Tony's track record lately on the Natasha front wasn't all that great. He rubbed a hand over his face before dropping it to his side. "Look," he said after a couple seconds, "I think you guys are great together. Honestly. And Natasha makes you happy, and I like seeing you happy, and I'd do pretty much everything in my power to keep you that way. You and Pepper, you're my people—her in a very different, often-naked way, mind you—"
"Tony," Bruce cut in. He sounded almost amused, but with that razor's edge of worry, like a guy waiting for the guillotine to drop.
Tony rested his hands on either side of the box. "What I'm trying to say is that I want this to be the right thing," he explained, and he watched as Bruce pressed his lips into a tight line. "I want you and her—my best friend and my best friend's girl—to have your long and happy life and your fairy tale ending or whatever else you both want. And that means it's kind of my job to, right now, make sure you're sure. Before I'm as all-in to this thing as you are."
Bruce snorted, his mouth not quite quirking into a smile. "You don't need to invest all your time and energy into my relationship," he said.
"Uh, you gave the woman we thought was pregnant with my kid the shovel talk right before we got married," Tony reminded him, and then, Bruce finally grinned. Tony grinned too, until his face almost felt warm with it. "See? All in."
"Is this where I point out your habit of sleeping with women of questionable taste?" Bruce asked, still smiling.
Tony snapped his fingers and pointed at him. "No," he returned, and his buddy laughed.
A good fifteen minutes later, after Tony hauled the physics books down to the basement and cracked open an ice-cold bottled water (complete with some Crystal Light sprinkled in—recovering alcoholics lived life on the edge), Bruce glanced across the living room at him.
"I'm sure," he said, and there was so much conviction in his voice that Tony's stomach almost hurt.
Tony grinned. "Okay," he said, and raised his water bottle in a silent toast.
One long weekend every summer—too long for her husband's liking—Tony and Pepper made their way out for their bi-annual visit to Pepper's family farm in Virginia. Pepper wished that she went out of longing, but it always felt more like obligation.
She had no issue with her upbringing at all, but she could only take so much of getting side-eyes from women her age who were still stuck on farms and never could break free. It was one of many reasons she'd stopped attending high school reunions, especially after marrying Tony. Pepper never intentionally held it over people's heads that she had a crazy rich, crazy smart, crazy husband (unlike how some of her former classmates would). But news of her marriage had spread like wildfire through the rural community, and visits home hadn't been quite the same since.
Trips home were hard. Her family freaked Tony out; he constantly worried that he still wouldn't win their approval after three-and-a-half years of marriage. Some portion of their nights in bed were spent soothing his anxiety about the whole thing and reassuring him that he was doing fine with her relatives.
At the moment, Tony was inside sucking up to his mother-in-law by fixing her dishwasher. Pepper silently prayed that he had better luck at home repairs here than in their house. Needing a moment to herself, she snuck out the back door to the wraparound porch. Tony complained (out of her family's earshot) that there was too much green for his liking in the land surrounding the farm, but Pepper didn't see or smell the same things he did. She saw a legacy her brothers would inherit. She didn't smell manure; her brain interpreted it as her family's well-being.
She watched fireflies flicker their way across the tall grass and listened to the pigs snort at each other in their pens—the sounds and sights of home. She didn't realize she wasn't alone until she heard chain links creak. Apparently she wasn't the only one who'd decided to sneak out the back door. Pepper turned and smiled at her father sitting in his favorite spot—the porch swing.
"He still talkin'?" he asked as Pepper sank down next to him.
"You know Tony only rambles when he's nervous."
"Is there any time he's not nervous?"
"You scare him. You have eight inches on him and are twice the weight. He's also pretty sure you have the pigs waiting for a command to attack him."
"I could arrange that," he replied. He used a booted foot to set the swing into motion again, and Pepper closed her eyes to listen to the familiar creaks and groans. "He good to you?"
"Yes, Dad," Pepper answered. It was a question she was asked every time she came home. "Tony treats me very well."
"Except for the part where he married my only daughter without letting me give her away," her dad grumbled.
Pepper twisted in her seat to study his profile. This complaint was one he'd only brought up twice before, and as much as she'd tried to brush it away and tell him it wasn't a big deal, it obviously still ate at him. "He didn't want things to look bad," Pepper explained. "We may teach little kids, but they can count to nine—or at least, their parents certainly can."
"So damn worried about his reputation—"
"He was worried about mine," she interrupted. She let the words sink in a moment before she continued. "He doesn't need this job; he has money. But he knew I didn't. And if the parents at school wouldn't have made a mockery of things, what little press still interested in what he does certainly would have. He knew I would've been dragged through the mud. He was trying to protect me."
Inside, there's a loud bang followed by a muttered swear from Tony and a litany of apologies. Pepper heard her mother ask what was wrong, and she could barely make out Tony's reassuring tone of voice, one that Pepper was guaranteed to hear whenever he got in the mood to upgrade something in the house.
"If he breaks that thing—"
"He'll buy you four new ones," Pepper reassured. They both sat and listened for a few minutes as Tony puttered around with the broken dishwasher a little bit more. "We could renew our vows if it would make you feel better," she offered. "Don't tell anyone, but Tony's a closet Pinterest addict. He says he looks at it for ideas on home renovation, but I know there are at least five date nights that I can attribute to that website."
Her father stared at her for a minute like she was speaking a foreign language, which to him she kind of was. "He's good to you?" he repeated. "You're happy?"
"Yes, Daddy," she answered.
He mulled those two words over for a minute before he nodded. "Your mother giving you a hard time about how you don't have kids? I know she wasn't subtle at Christmas. And I warned her not to stir that pot this time."
"She's fine. She only drops the hint about wanting more grandkids every other month on the phone."
Her dad snorted. "If you ask me, I think your oldest brother should've stopped a kid ago. I'm glad the two of you have enough sense and guts to say no to something you might not want." He nudged his shoulder against hers. "But let's keep the fact that I just complimented your husband a secret, okay?"
Despite what his wife and best-science-friend-forever sometimes muttered under their breaths, Tony Stark was not even a remotely stupid man. He realized that most of his coworkers had families, friends, and lives outside of school. He could even (grudgingly) admit that they had sex lives, or took vacations, or spent their spare time raising terrifying creatures who looked a lot like them and called them Mom or Dad. Fine. But he also felt these occasional spikes of "land of misfit toys" fondness for the people who, like him, lived a little on the fringes of traditional family life.
Which explained the party, maybe, but not the— "I don't know if all of those fireworks are strictly legal," Pepper said as Tony sorted through the giant box in the garage. The sounds of a great AC/DC playlist drifted in from the back yard, where their friends drank beers and grilled meats. When he glanced at her, she rested her hands on her hips. "I am not bailing you out of jail again, Tony."
"You say that like the last time wasn't an honest mistake," he retorted. She raised an eyebrow, and he rolled his eyes. "Seriously. Two Anthony E. Starks in the tristate area, separated by a mere five years of age? It's not my fault that my boyish good looks made the cop mistake me for a wife-beating, liquor-store-robbing convict."
"It's your fault you mouthed off to him," Pepper reminded him.
"Details," he said, and waved a hand. Her jaw tightened, and he returned to his box. "I already promised Cage that I wouldn't set off anything too huge. Something about scaring the baby."
"You'll promise Jessica that you won't start a fire, but not me?"
"Your husband isn't the size of the Empire State Building and twice as mean-looking," Tony fired back, and Pepper huffed as she walked out of the garage.
Look, Tony's spent his whole life hearing about how totally sane families deal with holidays like the Fourth of July. Hotdogs, burgers, lemonade, lawn darts, the whole nine yards. The fact that he never had that—the fact that a couple times in his youth, they were in some foreign country on some contract-signing god-knows-what with his dear old dad on the fourth—has never bothered him and probably never will. But some of his friends used to have that, and now—
He'd never been a sentimental bastard, but the least he could do once a year was roast some weenies and light sparklers, you know?
He ended up dragging the whole box out of the garage.
The July sunset threw these long yellow-gold fingers of light all through the yard, fireworks in their own right, and once he ditched the box with Bruce ("Because you can't be trusted," he said tersely, and Tony responded with a couple rude hand gestures that made the guy roll his eyes), he surveyed his kingdom for a couple seconds. Rhodey'd offered to man the grill way back when Tony'd called him about the party, but he'd apparently handed off his spatula to Scary Husband Cage in favor of flirting with Danvers in her tiny cut-off shorts. He grit his teeth when Tony flashed him two thumbs up, but whatever—Tony knew from the way his friend held himself that he was enjoying the hell out of that conversation. Natasha hung around with Munroe, Drew, and a couple other of the lady teachers while Cage and May Parker cooed over baby Dani. Parker'd just rolled in from a ten-day retirement cruise to the Bahamas, too, so she looked a little like a tanned rock star. The disgustingly cute couples—Barton, Coulson, Barnes, and Rogers—all clumped together, and Tony tried not to throw up in his mouth a little at that. Worse, they'd dragged his wife into it.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and sent Rogers a text. don't you dare infect her with your romantic mushy bullshit. He watched as Steve pulled out his phone, frowned at it, and then glanced over; Tony made a point of glaring menacingly at him, just to prove his point.
Steve rolled his eyes. When he showed Barnes the text, Barnes stole the phone right out of his hands. A couple seconds later, Tony's own phone chimed.
Cardigans and Loafers: you know you're twice the "mushy romantic" either of us are
ten bucks says that you guys release white doves with love poems on their ankles when you get big gay married, Tony returned, and Bucky turned a great shade of red as he flipped Tony off across the yard.
Tony grinned, about to return the favor, when Danvers suddenly swore loudly enough that she stopped at least three other conversations. Everybody turned to her, and she shook her head. "I need another beer," she announced, and headed for the cooler that Barton'd brought as—
Sitwell's appearance at the party was weird in-and-of itself, what with his weird food-based vacation habits and his occasional weird Fury playdates. (Fury, by the way, had responded to Tony's e-mail with not on your life, Stark. Just the way Tony liked it.) But Sitwell's date—the date he'd RSVP'd for without using a name, the date that now trailed into the yard after him—left Tony laughing so hard that he nearly choked on air.
"Do not be an asshole," Rhodey growled. How he showed up at Tony's shoulder at exactly the right moment, Tony would never know.
Sitwell, on the other hand, looked one part embarrassed, one part pissed off, and one part like he just realized he'd screwed the pooch in about ten different ways. And since everyone was staring at him—or, in Danvers's case, silently seething—he cleared his throat. "Uh, so, I don't know if you all know Maria," he said, and man, is that how Roman emperors introduced prisoners to the ravenous lions they had to fight?
Maria Hill—mom of the worst students in the universe (well, one was the worst, one was just scared shitless of his brother) and occasional pain in everybody's ass—raised a hand. She carried a brown paper bag with her. "Hi," she said. "I brought tequila."
"I forgive you for the fruits of your loins already!" Drew exclaimed. She practically skipped over to Maria to divest her of her tequila—and to drag her, somewhat awkwardly, over toward her clump of friends.
Danvers downed half her beer in one go before Rhodey came over and touched her shoulder. She relaxed a little. Slowly, everybody stopped acting like Maria'd just announced that she ate babies for breakfast and went back to boozing, or eating, or some combinations of both.
Tony didn't really realize that Jasper was bringing him a soda until he was there, at his elbow, halfway to scaring the shit out of him. A couple feet behind him, Pepper—now talking to Bruce instead of the captain and crew of the Love Boat—mouthed behave.
Always, Tony mouthed back, and Pepper rolled her eyes.
"Listen," Jasper said, sort of thrusting the soda at Tony until he had no choice but to take it. He looked halfway to embarrassed, which was pretty unusual. "I know that half our friends think she's the devil incarnate because of the boys. Hell, I don't even disagree, half the time. But they just left last week to go stay with their dad until maybe Christmas, and—" He paused for a second before he shook his head. "Shit, you know?"
Tony shrugged. "We're kind of the land of misfit toys around here," he said as he cracked the seal on the soda. "The more the merrier, unless Danvers shivs her in the kidney when you're not looking."
Jasper grinned. "Risk I'm willing to take if it means introducing her to the people I don't hate," he replied, and Tony— Well, he had never been a sentimental bastard, but that didn't mean he couldn't understand shit like that on a cellular level, either.
Tony felt no shame in admitting that he drove twenty minutes and three Krogers away to do his grocery shopping. A man needed to buy his foodstuffs in peace. So on the rare occasion where Pepper, in the middle of making a delicious dinner, realized she forgot to put an ingredient on the shopping list and she needed it pronto, Tony hated life.
Don't misunderstand him—his tiny human students were the light of his professional life. He was just adamant about having an impenetrable barrier between them and his personal life. Call it a sour taste in his mouth from whenever a news story on who he'd banged the night before resulted in, at the very least, a meeting with Obie if not a dip in stocks for his company.
Tonight, Pepper'd realized she'd forgotten, ironically, peppers for Taco Tuesday (which tonight was technically fajita Tuesday, but whatever). Tony managed to wait until he was sitting in his roadster before letting out a remorseful sigh. Despite the sun setting, Tony put on a pair of Aviators, threw up the hood on his jacket over his ball cap, and pulled the zipper up tight. Pepper refused to be seen in public with him when he pulled this stunt, which was ridiculous because he looked awesome and one-hundred percent, straight-up like a badass spy.
He slinked into the produce department, checking around corners as he went. He knew self-checkout was a must; his former students were now reaching the age to be cashiers or baggers. Thanks to his AA chip and a little snipping, he'd never been rung up for booze or condoms by a kid who used to be in his class. He knew plenty of co-workers who couldn't say the same.
"Mister Stark!" a young boy exclaimed.
"Damn goatee," Tony muttered, as he quickly grabbed a bag that contained a trio of peppers.
"I told you it was him," the boy argued smugly.
Tony turned just in time to see the kid's older sister give a dramatic eye roll. He recognized them immediately: the snot siblings. The boy earned that name because he literally blew through half of Tony's tissue stockpile every year, and the sister because she was the pure definition of brat.
"Students," he greeted.
"See? It is him," the boy bragged to his sister.
Tony couldn't remember either of their names at the moment. He usually just referred to them by their seat number in his lab. He could, however, look at most kids and know their passwords since he seemed to have to reset them far too often for his liking.
"Where's Miss Potts?" the kid asked, looking around.
"At home, making dinner," Tony answered. "Not that it has to be the woman in the relationship who has to do the cooking, but… You know what? Working in a not-quite-red taco joke right now might not be the best idea."
Brat girl scrunched up her face. "Why would Miss Potts make your dinner?"
Her brother smacked his hand to his forehead in a way that only little kids could get away with during normal conversation (or so Tony was told). "How many times do I have to tell you?" the boy whined. "They're married to each other."
She looked at Tony with curiosity. He waved the fingers of his left hand around before pointing out the platinum band that'd been there for three-and-a-half years. "It's kind of the worst kept secret in the entire school, you know," he pointed out.
She crossed her arms and stared Tony down. "But she goes by Miss Potts and not Missus Stark. You don't act like you love her at school. You don't talk or kiss or do anything like that."
Tony was about to argue when he heard a woman start arguing loudly into her cell phone. Judging from the way the kids cringed, Tony wasn't the only one who heard it. And he now understood a little bit better why girl student was a brat.
The woman's eyes darted around while she continued her side of the fight on phone until they landed on Tony's students. She pursed her lips and snapped her fingers; her kids ran to her immediately.
Tony fought the urge to go confront her about being a shitty parent. Maybe she was having a bad night. Hopefully, she was having a bad night.
He watched them until they disappeared around a shelf of organic potato chips, the kids keeping their heads down and trailing after their still-arguing mother. He shook it off as best as he could while walking to the self-checkout.
On the way home, he let the girl's words worm their way into his head. He dropped the bag of peppers onto the marble counter, grabbed his wife by the hips, and spun her around. "What can I do to show you that I love you?" he asked.
"Washing the dishes wouldn't hurt. Also, cleaning the sink in the bathroom with all the tiny hairs from your electric razor would be appreciated. And please don't tell me if those hairs are coming from some place other than your face," Pepper said, pointing a finger at him. "Just because I'm married to you doesn't mean I need to know every single thing about you."
She began to twist in his grip to start chopping the peppers when he asked, "But you know how much I love you, right?"
"I sent you to the store for vegetables and you came home with an existential crisis?"
"Pep—"
"Yes, Tony." She placed her hands on either side of his face. "I am well aware of how much you love me," she replied quietly before brushing a kiss against his lips. "But seriously, clean out that sink in the bathroom. It's disgusting."
"Nova Scotia?"
"No."
"New Brunswick?"
"No."
"New Zealand?"
Pepper glanced at her husband over the rims of her sunglasses. "Are you naming every country or province that starts with an N just to annoy me?" she asked.
"That is absolutely, completely, and totally not the case," Tony swore, his hands (cell phone included) raised up in front of him. Pepper nodded and leaned her head back against her lounge chair. At least, until Tony asked, "The Netherlands?"
She sighed.
Despite all the various summer obligations that one or both of them always seemed to stumble into—professional development hours, mandatory training, server upgrades, a visit to the Potts family farm—Tony always made a point of scheduling a "dream vacation" for himself and Pepper. Their first year together, they went to Monte Carlo; the next year, they spent a week in Thailand. This year, Tony'd booked a ridiculous ten-day cruise through the Caribbean and down to Panama, and Pepper'd looked forward to lounging on deck chairs, wandering old cities, and drinking ridiculous beverages with tiny little straws.
Had looked forward. Past-tense.
Because after three days on a cruise ship, Tony'd gotten bored.
She couldn't exactly blame him, not when he had a thousand-miles-per-hour brain and the personality of an ADHD kindergartener, but she'd voiced her concerns about the cruise months before they ever packed their bags. She'd needled him about it, making him swear up and down that he could survive days with limited internet and less ability to tinker, surrounded by strangers and, worse, by sunlight.
"I'm starting to think you don't trust me," he'd complained during their last vacation-related conversation.
"Depends on how we're defining trust," she'd deadpanned, but she'd laughed when he grinned.
She flicked her sunglasses up onto her head and turned toward him on their deck chairs. In a ribbed tank and board shorts, he actually looked good—broad shouldered and healthy with the sun highlighting the flecks of gray in his temples and goatee that she loved so much. He fiddled with his phone, grumbling to himself.
"You're bored," she observed.
He almost dropped his phone as he twisted to stare at her. "Me? Bored? Now?" he asked. When she nodded, he rolled his eyes. "I'm on an enormous ship full of fitness rooms and activity rooms and restaurants and an actual casino with a woman who packed a different skimpy swimsuit for each day of our trip. Nice choice today, by the way. Did I mention that already?"
He traced the cut out that ran along her hip, and she snorted. "You mean besides when you peeled it off me this morning?"
"I don't remember having that conversation. Must've been distracted." His hand felt like a brand when he spread it across her bare hip, and she tried not to suck in too sharp a breath. "We're surrounded by the sun and spray and tomorrow, we get to go develop enormous blisters in the name of learning about history or food or both. I'm great."
She frowned at him. "Tony."
"And the fact that I can't even get enough cell phone reception to play Candy Crush, let alone download another Kindle book from Bruce's 'lending library of woe'—seriously, the man loves a depressing memoir, I think you should refer him to a therapist or something—is totally immaterial to my continued happiness."
"Except for where it's completely material to your happiness?" Pepper returned. He snorted at her and turned back to his phone. Or rather, he turned back to his phone until she swung around to sit sideways on her lounger and snatch the damn thing right out of his hands. "Why do you do this?" she demanded as he stared at her almost in fright. "This is just like when we went to that private gallery in Monte Carlo and you spent the whole time almost keeling over from boredom."
"I didn't—"
"Or the sight-seeing in Bangkok where you somehow found a way to sample some new candy every stop and ignore the tour guides?" Tony glanced guiltily out at the endless blue sky, and Pepper sighed. "I don't want to be on a vacation where you're planning our next trip when we're supposed to be spending time together and enjoying ourselves. And I definitely don't need a ten-day cruise or a safari—"
"We never went on the safari," he reminds her.
"—to be happy." He sent her one of those sideways glances that reminded her of a lost puppy—soft-eyed, a little scared, and so stupidly fond. It took her breath away for a moment, and she smiled at him. "You don't want to sit here and watch me get a tan, do you?"
"To be fair," he noted, raising a single finger, "we are going on a very long hike through some set of ruins or another tomorrow, and with you being so beautifully pale and the new studies on skin cancer—"
She snorted a laugh as she reached down to her bag. "Right. And I don't want to sit here getting a tan if you're going to use Google Maps to find all the places in the world we've never visited."
"So your solution is . . . " Tony prompted, peering down at her.
She pulled out the giant pamphlet of daily cruise events that they'd been handed when they boarded the ship. It only took a few seconds to find the correct date and time—and, better still, the twenty-some different things they could spend their time doing. She thrust the page at him. "Pick something."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "You know we could end up doing underwater salsa lessons and—"
"I don't care," she cut him off. "Especially since underwater salsa lessons kind of sound fun."
"Fun for you, the classy woman who can run in expensive heels," Tony groused, but he grinned as he accepted the pamphlet from her.
In the end, they spent their afternoon watching the original Robocop in the ship's theater before soaking in a hot tub until dinner.
Pepper liked the sight-seeing, the hikes, and the food, but honestly? Robocop and an afternoon in the hot tub kind of beat sunbathing any day.
"Wake up, Daddy's home," Tony announced as he flipped on the special switch he'd personally wired. It turned on everything in the computer lab thanks to a series of wires and relays that'd taken a month to craft and implement his first year teaching.
The lab hummed to life, a sound that was ridiculously soothing to Tony. Never in a million years would he'd have thought teaching in an elementary school would give him peace—and, okay, some days it absolutely did not do that—but there's an odd calm that came with being back in his classroom.
Now that summer school was finished, he was able to finally come and scour his machines of both germs and the damn pop-ups the kids managed to download despite his top-notch protection filters. He spent a minimum of fifteen minutes at each seat in the lab, trying his best to bring order to chaos.
At some point, Pep stopped by to leave him his favorite smoothie and a kiss on the cheek. He was eighty-eight percent sure he muttered some form of gratitude at her before she left.
Thank goodness for understanding wives.
He was halfway through his cleaning routine when noises began to drift down the hall. People had been walking by all day, in and out of the building for the initial set up of classrooms, but Tony thought everyone had left by now. The sun was definitely closer to the horizon than the last time he looked out the window, and his watch read almost seven in the evening.
And there the noise was again: an unmistakable groan. Not an I'm in pain kind of moan. Oh, no. This clearly fell under the category of hot, sweaty, so-good-I'm-going-to-bust-out-of-my-skin sexy times moan. And clearly, it had to be investigated.
As Tony stepped out into the hall, he noted the sounds were coming from his left. That was a relief, since the library was to his right. If he walked in on Coulson getting his rocks off, Tony would have to bleach his beautiful, genius mind.
Slowly and quietly, he edged his way down the hall. He only needed to walk a couple doors down the hallway before he was standing outside Wanda's old room.
Okay, so Tony won't lie—if he had to watch another couple at the school have sex, it would be Bucky and Steve. Clint and Phil would be disgusting, watching his bestie bang Red would be awesome yet weird, and like hell he was going to watch Sitwell and Hill go to town on each other.
He peaked around the doorframe, fully expecting to see some bare asses, but instead saw the pair fully clothed and Bucky holding his phone in his hand with a shit-eating grin. "Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds," the newly minted fourth-grade teacher declared. "Told you it wouldn't take more than three minutes."
Tony shook his head. "With the kind of sounds you were making, not making it past the three minute mark isn't something I'd brag about."
"I'll brag all day long because of what that bet won me," Bucky replied with a smirk that caused Steve's ears to go pink.
"Yeah, like he doesn't suck your dick all the time anyway," Tony responded. "Oh, young puppy love. Still disgusting."
Steve smiled softly and his left hand came up to rub the back of his neck, one of his classic gee-shucks examples of body language. "Well, actually—"
"Actually, we were just getting ready to get out of here," Bucky interrupted. "We wanted to see if we could have some fun with you before we left."
Steve looked at Bucky, confused, and Tony watched as they had a conversation using only eyebrows that went from curious to boring in no time flat. "Any time you two want to have fun with Pepper and I, we'd be open to it. God knows I'm not the only one in my marriage who wouldn't mind seeing the two of you naked."
Bucky's face looked interested for a half a second, much to Steve's obvious horror. "No," the art teacher said loudly. "Absolutely not. What are you thinking?" he asked his boyfriend.
"Maybe I want to show you off," Bucky answered
"To Tony?" Steve responded with disbelief. "There are some things, or at least one thing in particular, that I would like to show off."
"Is it a third nipple?" Tony questioned while looking at Bucky. "Please tell me the Adonis has some hilarious flaw on his body like that."
"No," Bucky answered in a quiet voice. He and Steve shared another glance, but Bucky shook his head. "We're getting out of here. You gonna have a slumber party with your computers?"
"Jealous?" Tony returned as he began walking out of the room. At the door, he spun around. "Hey, you talked to Romanoff this week?"
Bucky shook his head, jaw slightly clinched. "Heard anything from Bruce?"
"No," Tony answered. "He has one more day before I invade his personal space."
"Sure that's a smart move?" Steve asked.
"I think we all know that I don't always make smart moves when it comes to my best friends. It's pathetically how I show my love," Tony replied. "You two kids go home and have fun. Or have fun here and let me record it."
"Good night, Tony," Steve said in a cold tone.
"Seriously," Tony prodded, "you would make my wife so happy."
"Happy or not, I have to look her in the eye when she comes in my classroom looking for art supplies."
"We could just limit it to making out with a little bit of grinding," Bucky suggested.
"Fine," Steve replied as he crossed his arms over his broad chest. "But then I get to tell him about what happened on Tuesday."
Bucky sighed and shook his head. "Have a good night, Tony."