"This class just feels... empty without Banner here now," whined Tony, sitting down next to Steve in their usual back-of-the-classroom lab table.

"It's not that bad," Steve said. After all, this was only the first day. And they could only get used to it from here. Bruce decided to take a three-week hiatus from school to meditate on his inner Hulk and try to understand what it meant to keep the big guy down.

"But all our smarts are gone! How will we suffice? How will our grades stay up?"

"We do have you," Steve mentioned, and Tony blushed. "But," Steve quickly changed the subject, "we do have to go talk to the teacher-"

"Mr. Erlenmeyer," Tony corrected. Steve hadn't really noticed that as the teacher's name since the beginning of his time here.

"Ok, whatever. Either way, we have to go as Mr. Erlenmeyer what we should do for the experiment. Tell him it failed, or we figured out we didn't have the right equipment, or something. You get to cover for us this time."

All Tony could do was let out a small moan and a whimper.

"Oh, come on," Steve rolled his eyes, "I had to take responsibility for transforming our friend into a Hulk. The least you can do is cover for a science project. Plus, you're the science genius here. I'm just an art nerd."

"Whatever," Tony moaned, and then dragged his feet to the front of the room, Steve following close behind.

"Um, Mr. Erlenmeyer?" Steve asked first, to get the teacher's attention.

The teacher spun around, his white lab coat spinning, and pushed up his half moon glasses. "Yes, Mr. Rogers," he responded.

"Tony and I and, well, Bruce (despite his absence) have a question about the project you offered extra credit for."

"I'm all ears," Mr. Erlenmeyer replied. Steve quietly chuckled at this; he had never noticed before, but the teacher's ears were rather big. So, if he wanted to be technical, yes. He was all ears.

"We need to get an extension on the lab," Steve said quickly. He hated trying to bend the rules: it was something he legitimately could not do.

"Hmmm..." Mr. Erlenmeyer scratched his chin, "any particular reason why?"

"We really screwed up our lab," Tony said, "but we couldn't just redo it. And for some reason, today Bruce got really sick, so we won't be able to do it for a few weeks."

"I suppose that makes sense," the teacher looked off for a second, going into deep thought. "I'm going to need your lab within the next month," he said.

"I guess that might work," Steve said, scratching his head.

"I'm also going to require some manual labor though," Mr. Erlenmeyer chuckled as Tony moaned. "No, no, nothing too serious. I have mountains of papers that need grading. You can help me with that."

"When?" Steve asked.

"This afternoon," Mr. Erlenmeyer replied, "you two are going to be the only ones in my office. I have a meeting. But no crazy parties!"

"We promise," Tony winked at Steve, "no wild parties."

As both of them headed back to their seats, Steve kept wondering what Tony was thinking. It couldn't have possibly been anything good.

But the idea of spending an hour together with Tony Stark seemed to excite Steve, because the day couldn't have passed any slower. Even gym with Clint seemed to drag on, and it was a free day with archery again. Clint tried to show Steve how to use a bow and arrow, but Steve preferred his fists and his shield, or whatever he could get his hands on.

"Hey, Captain," Clint said, lowering his bow and looking toward the gym entrance, "Stark hasn't been in our class before, right?"

Steve looked in the same direction as Clint and dropped his jaw. "What the- Stark, what the hell are you doing here?"

Tony Stark walked confidently over to Steve and Clint in a pair of tight spandex shorts and a gym shirt. "I needed the gym credits. What's up? What're we doing?"

"Well, I was trying to teach Captain shield here my skills at archery," Clint motioned to his bow and arrow, "while Nat over there is scaling the rock climbing wall, like always.

"Awesome," Tony said, picking up another bow and a quiver of arrows. "Let me give it a shot." He held up his bow, fumbled around with an arrow, launching it at the target. The arrow soared past the target, and hit another student square in the forehead, the suction cup tip sticking to his head.

Tony burst out laughing, followed by Clint. "Wow. What do you call that trick?" Clint asked.

"I'm not sure," Steve replied for Tony, "but now we know never to give him a projectile weapon, ever."

Clint chuckled, and sent another arrow flying into the bullseye, and then put his weapon down.

By the time the class (and with it, the school day) had ended, Steve had gotten a healthy dose of entertainment from watching Tony attempt to work a bow and arrow, and Clint had enjoyed showing off his abilities.

But what mattered now was that Steve was going to be trapped in an empty teachers' office with Tony Stark for an entire hour. And he had no idea what that exactly meant for either his own sanity or Tony's.

In the office, Steve couldn't help but laugh at how much of an understatement "mountains of papers to grade" was. He tucked himself into a corner with the more advanced papers and started to grade, using one of the teachers' nice red pens to grade with a clean hand.

Across the room from him, Tony sat stuck with the freshmen papers, trying his hardest to concentrate, but to no avail. Tony's knee was constantly bouncing up and down, his pen tapping on the desk in small levels of agitation.

"Hey, Stark," Steve started, "you ok? Want me to come help?"

Tony pushed himself back from the desk and came behind Steve, putting his hands on Steve's strong shoulders. "No, I think I'm just gonna sit right here and watch you work," he breathed into Steve's ear.

Steve stuttered an inaudible murmur, turning bright red. Tony kept moving his head closer to Steve's, and Steve could feel Tony's breath down his neck. "No one else is here, so why are we working if we aren't being monitored?"

"I-" Steve started, but kept frozen as his face turned a deeper red. "Um..."

Tony kept leaning in, pushing his body further over the back of Steve's office chair. "You know, Captain, Bruce is only going to be staying away from school for so long..." he continued to breathe down Steve's neck and shirt, and all Steve could do was sit there, wide-eyed and blushing, frozen into one position.

It was only after Tony had leaned in as close as he could without touching Steve that anything happened: Steve turned his head. He didn't even mean to; it was probably subconscious, but he did.

And Tony leaned in for the kiss.

It's not that Steve was expecting it-because he wasn't-but what he received was a pleasant surprise. Tony's kiss was gentle, well, at first.

But then Steve spun the chair around and he and Tony became one whole being for a few moments.

Steve caressed Tony's face, not to push him away, but to embrace him. To Steve's surprise, he actually was enjoying this. He didn't want it to stop. And neither did his inner soldier that Howard Stark had so kindly created inside him.

Almost hoisting Tony up onto his lap, Steve spun the chair around, the two still interlocked with each other. Steve sat up from the chair, and pushed Tony against the edge of the desk.

"Wow," Tony breathed, his voice ragged and rough. "You certainly know how to take control." He stared into Steve's crystal blue eyes and Steve stared back into Tony's deep and endless pools of liquid chocolate.

Steve smirked. "Well..."

But he couldn't finish his sentence. Tony had already weaved his fingers through Steve's perfect blond hair, stealing his words into another kiss.

Just before Steve closed his eyes to embrace it, he saw the door click open out of the corner of his eye, and watched Mr. Erlenmeyer walk in. Before anything could be done, Mr. Erlenmeyer's eyes widened to the size of saucers, and he slowly backed out of the room, quiet as anything.

The door silently clicked shut. And Steve's eyes slid closed.

He wasn't sure how much longer this warm embrace could last, but he knew it couldn't be forever. Despite that, he intended on making it last for forever.

"C'mere," Steve muttered through the kiss, and pulled Tony closer. They entwined with one another, passionate for once about one thing and one thing only: the only other person in the room with them.

There was something in Steve's heart that he could not put a finger on, but it made him want to leap for joy. He finally found something to make all the stress of having created Bruce's monster to simply melt away, and the good news was that that something was always going to be around for him.

Eventually, Tony pulled away. Steve gazed at him with eyes that demanded he continue the kissing, but Tony shrugged his shoulders.

"We still got some work to do," he laughed, "if you want to get credit for that lab."

Steve couldn't help but smile at the disheveled Tony's comment. "I guess you're right. Our brainiac is missing. So we need all the help we can get." But all of the effort put to finishing the papers that Mr. Erlenmeyer had given them was futile: there was far too much of a distraction between the two of them for any productivity.

It was shortly afterwards that Mr. Erlenmeyer came in and excused them, and they headed for the parking lot.

"Well," Steve said, blushing as he bid Tony farewell for the day.

Tony boldly came up to him and kissed him on the cheek before heading toward his car. "I'll see you tomorrow, Cap. I'll be sure to text Bruce tonight, ok?"

"Ok," Steve muttered, waving a hand absentmindedly toward Tony.

It could be said now: Tony Stark had officially stolen the heart of Steve Rogers.