Chapter 3: What It Feels Like For a Girl

Tony had done lots of good thinking in caves and thus installed his private shop on the tower's second subfloor. It was a palatial, windowless bunker of polished concrete and large-scale abstract expressionist paintings he'd mostly bothered to pick out himself, though just at present, he found the Rothkos so excruciatingly bright he thought his head might explode.

"Jarvis, give me hangover lights," Tony said, snatching a tablet from a work surface and flopping onto the black leather sectional in front of the massive flat-screen. All the gallery lighting over the artwork went abruptly dark; the overhead lights and the screen of his tablet dimmed. The subterranean twilight made him feel immediately better. His head felt less pound-y, and he was comforted by the idea of being hidden in the shadows, even from himself. On the tablet, he changed a few security settings, played around a little with Jarvis's intercom functions, then stowed it under the edge of the couch where he planned to never look at it again, maybe ever. As far as he was concerned, he was going to rot on the sofa watching television until the end of time. Or until he no longer felt like he was going to hurl, whichever came first. Jesus, but that elevator ride had been dicey.

"Hey, Jarvis, where's the—?" But his question was interrupted by a little electric hum and the appearance of a mechanical arm in his field of vision. "Good boy," Tony said, taking the proffered remote from Dum-E's claw, and the robot sped away with a whir of pleasure. Tony wondered vaguely if the robot actually knew who he was or if it was happy to pass out remotes to anyone who might need one.

Watching television proved to be more fraught than he remembered. He already knew he couldn't face the complex decision-making process of selecting a streaming service, much less a streaming show, so he cast his lot with the cable gods. The gods were not kind. STARZ was in the middle of The Fly, but Tony had already had enough body-horror for the day, thank-you-very-much. VH1 had reruns of Drag Race. TCM was showing Victor/Victoria. In a final act of desperation, he turned on PBS, despite the fact that he knew they were in the middle of a pledge drive. Sure enough, there was the infamous canvas tote bag, followed by the coffee mug, followed by the organic cotton hoodie. It was not great television, but seeing as the stream of thank-you gifts didn't immediately remind him of his painful personal crisis, he watched it anyway. At some point, the swag gave way to Antiques Roadshow, and Tony fell into a doze.

It took awhile for the pounding to penetrate his nap. The shop was sound-proofed out the wazoo, but if Steve Rogers wanted you to know he was banging on the door, eventually you'd know he was banging on the door. "Christ," Tony muttered, and scrubbed at his face with his hands, stopping abruptly when his fingertips registered the distinct lack of beard. He patted his chest once for good measure, and sure enough, the breasts remained.

"Fuck," he said, for probably the hundredth time that day.

The pounding continued.

Still lying down, Tony reached a hand under the sofa, groping for the abandoned tablet. He pulled it up and propped it on his chest, selecting the icon for the door camera. He wasn't sure why. He knew who was at the door, and he knew he had no intention of answering it. Sure enough, there was Steve, in high definition, banging away with the end of his fist. He looked terrible, or at least terrible for Steve. The fresh jeans and t-shirt did not mitigate his haggard appearance; he didn't look like he'd slept at all. Tony knew he was worried. He felt a little stab of guilt and considered how he might assuage it. Maybe he could just tell Steve he was okay over the intercom system. Or maybe he could let him in, just for a minute. Steve didn't look angry so much as chagrined, and Tony noticed the tall paper cup and little tissue bag in Steve's non-banging hand. Despite Tony's cowardly retreat from the guest suite, Steve had evidently gone out for his favorite take-out coffee and— Tony poked at the picture with his finger to zoom in on the bag—yep, that was a donut. Damn Steve. It was hard to freeze out someone so thoughtful. The least Tony could do was open the door, but then what? He'd tell Steve he felt so uncomfortable just existing by himself alone in a room that he couldn't bear for Steve to be there too? He couldn't say that. He'd say... but the issue flew from Tony's mind, and he sat bolt upright, his blood suddenly ice cold and boiling at the same time. He'd been so fixed on Steve's face, he hadn't even noticed the second figure skulking at the edge of the frame. Well, he sure as shit noticed him now. Tony stabbed the intercom button on the tablet.

"I can't believe you, Steve. I cannot believe you. Go away."

Tony watched as Steve's gaze swung immediately to the camera. And just like that, he saw every trace of frustration and fear melt away from Steve's face, because it was Tony's voice, Tony's real voice, coming through the intercom. For a second, Steve looked so relieved it made Tony physically hurt because Steve's relief was only going to last a millisecond. He was going to see through the ruse in 3, 2— The smile on Steve's face reset into stony gloom.

"Is he—? I mean, he sounds normal," Bruce attempted to whisper, but the mics outside the door were very good.

"No," Steve answered flatly, "He's using Oz, The Great and Powerful. Right, Tony?" Steve's gaze swung again to the camera.

"Oz, The Great and Powerful?" enquired Bruce.

"It's voice manipulation software," Steve explained.

"I see." A furrow appeared between Bruce's brows, "Why would you even have that? Oh, and uh, hi, Tony," Bruce directed this last to the camera, stepping more directly into the gaze of the lens so he could give a little wave with his free hand. In his other hand was a black medical bag, and Tony felt another mingled surge of panic and rage. "How are you doing?"

"Why is he here, Steve?" Tony snarled, ignoring Bruce completely, ready to get down to the brass tacks of Steve's betrayal. It had been fucking agreed that Steve would keep his big mouth shut—

"Because you need a doctor," Steve said matter-of-factly, "and he's a doctor and a friend."

"But you promised me," Tony said, his voice still rising. "You promised me you wouldn't tell anyone, and you turned right around and—"

Steve began to talk over him, his voice rising, too, "I didn't, Tony. He already knew. He figured it out on his own."

"Bullshit!"

"What do you mean, 'bullshit?' Tony, you were on stage singing karaoke in front of hundreds of people. You weren't exactly inconspicuous."

"Yeah, you're right, Steve, of course! Most people see a woman on stage singing and ask themselves, 'Wasn't she just a man? You know, I think she may have undergone a radical full-body transformation sometime in the last five minutes,'" and Tony's voice didn't just drip sarcasm, it spewed it.

"Bruce recognized your suit," Steve protested, "He found your jacket."

"My jacket? He found my jacket and decided I was now Toni with an 'I'? That's the stupidest—"

Steve's mouth was open around his next argument, when Bruce cut in, "I know it sounds crazy, Tony. I know it does. I get it. But he really didn't tell me, for what it's worth. I saw you drinking with Thor and Sif, and I saw Steve pull you onto the elevator, and I sort of put two and two together and got four."

"Four?" Tony snorted, "More like two and two make seventeen plus a dinosaur."

"Sure," Bruce nodded, "But I am more, uh, attuned to the possibilities of transformation than some people, okay? It's always sorta on my radar, and well, there was a blip."

Everyone was silent while Tony considered this. There was a certain logic to Bruce Banner a.k.a. The Hulk, Transformation Detective. The math checked out.

"Tony," Steve said gently into the silence, "open the door. Please?" Then he held up the coffee cup for the camera and waggled it enticingly.

"I have my own coffee machine, thanks," Tony sniffed.

"But my coffee is ready now and requires no effort on your part. C'mon," Steve cajoled.

Tony rolled his eyes. He could already feel himself softening. He was somewhat mollified that Steve had probably kept his secret. Hell, could Captain America even break a promise? And eventually, he supposed, he would have to open the door. There was food to consider. And then there was Bruce, who had experienced some Cronenbugian horror of his own, and thus wasn't the worst confidant Tony could think of. He groaned, reluctantly self-acknowledging the inevitability of it all, and slunk to the door. He pressed a thumb to the bioscanner—at least his prints hadn't changed—and the door unlocked soundlessly. He eased it open, his palms starting to sweat, and was shocked at the immediate feeling of exposure, like he'd been unexpectedly stripped in front of a crowd. He was tempted to drop his head, to let his hood and the dark curtain of hair beneath obscure most of his narrow face, but he fought the urge, instead raising his chin defiantly. Jesus Christ, they were both gently smiling at him. He felt like a childhood cancer patient or something. Ick.

"Gimme the coffee," he said brusquely, "and the donut."

"You're welcome," Steve said, handing over the goods.

"Alright," Tony said, cramming most of the donut into his mouth, "let's get this over with." His new mouth, Tony noticed, had an unhappily decreased capacity for donut. He used to be able to talk around a whole donut, no problem. He chewed for what felt like too long, then swallowed. "Whatever you're going to do to me," he said finally, "just do it."

He stood back from the door, and Bruce gave him a nervous little smile as he slipped past into the shop. Tony waited for Steve to follow, but he didn't.

"Well?" Tony said irritably, "you wanted in." But Steve shook his head.

"No. I wanted you to let Bruce in. I'd only be in the way."

Tony glanced back over his shoulder at the cavernous shop beyond and then looked back at Steve with raised eyebrows.

"Alright," Steve admitted, "maybe not in the way. But this is between you and your doctor. I don't want to intrude." He reached for Tony's arm, and there was only a microsecond of hesitation before Steve's hand decided on Tony's shoulder as a safe place to land. It felt unusually massive, like a reassuring side of beef, and Tony couldn't help but turn to look at it resting on his newly birdlike shoulder. The contrast was vaguely upsetting. Tony blinked, redirecting his attention back to Steve's face even as his whole body remained acutely attuned to the point of contact.

"I'll see you later," Steve said, "I'm going to make lunch, and I'm hoping you'll show up and eat it. Twelve o'clock?"

Tony's eyes slid to the floor. "Maybe," he said, though in his mind, he was already counting himself a no-show.

Steve's big hand, still massive, still resting on his shoulder, gave a gentle squeeze. "I'll take it," said Steve, and then finally let go, turning back down the hall towards the elevator. And much as he wanted to, Tony would not let his eyes follow Steve all the way there. He closed the door instead, turning back to the dim shop and to Bruce, who had taken a seat on the sofa and was studiously watching PBS while the understated little marital drama played out in the doorway. PBS, Tony noted, was back to the pledge drive.

He joined Bruce, collapsing on the sofa. PBS was offering a pair of travel mugs at the $75 dollar level. He looked down at his own paper cup and took an untasted swallow. Steve had practically beat down the door, then declined his invitation. What did that mean exactly? Was he trying to give Tony space, following Tony's panic-induced disappearing act? Or could he just not handle Tony's body in the level of living color a medical exam might provide? Steve was as upset last night in the elevator as Tony had ever seen him, and it was scary. Tony could handle a lot of things, but he could not handle Captain America in an emotional crisis. He was currently far too dependent on Steve's sanity. Taking another sip of coffee, he was shocked to find he had already drained the cup. He shook himself.

"You know, I've got one of those," Bruce nodded at the television, "one of the hoodies, I mean. Very soft. And it's held up well in the wash."

"Can we move this along?" Tony said hostilely, as if he hadn't been the one quietly drinking coffee and staring into the abyss.

"Oh, uh, sure," Bruce turned off the television with the remote and then retrieved his bag from the floor. "It won't take long. So first," he snapped open the bag and rooted around, unearthing a plastic cup with a purple screw-top, "if you could just get me a sample, that'd be great. While you're in the bathroom, I could move the papers off that work table over there to use for the exam." He extended the plastic cup towards Tony expectantly. Nothing happened. "Tony, is there a problem?"

There was a problem, of course. That little plastic cup represented an existential threat to Tony's manhood and was making the blood rush so loudly in his ears he could barely hear himself think. But the ability to phrase this in a coherent sentence eluded him, so he took the cup without a word and then just sat there, holding it, staring at it, trying to envision a scenario in which he didn't imminently have to go into his bathroom and fill it.

As if reading his thoughts, or at least the vaguest outlines of them, Bruce said, "You could drink some water first. And don't feel like you have to fill it up all the way. If you could just get to the first line there, that would be—"

"Keep the papers in order," Tony said brittlely, got to his feet, and shut the bathroom door firmly behind him.

He unscrewed the purple lid with shaky fingers and set it wobbling on the edge of the sink. He could do this. In the grand scheme of things, this was nothing, right? Peeing while sitting on a toilet was nothing, as long as he didn't think too hard about the body parts he now had that required him to sit on the toilet in the first place. He needed to have some perspective. Once, he'd woken up with a car battery and an electromagnet attached to his chest. In terms of body horror, this was small potatoes. At least that's what he told himself. He made his way over to the toilet. The seat was up, of course, so he eased it down, and then, dwelling on it as little as possible, he dropped his pants and sat.

He did need to go. With the alcohol and the water and then the coffee, his bladder was plenty full, but he couldn't quite decide where to hold the cup. It had always been obvious before, he thought ruefully. Rather arbitrarily, he decided on a spot somewhere towards the middle of his undercarriage, then took a deep breath, trying to relax his tensed muscles. Nothing. Not even a trickle. Reluctantly, he got up and shuffled to the sink with his pants around his knees. He turned on the faucet for some mood music, then shuffled back, repositioning. The water did the trick, but the cup was too far back, and he had to adjust mid-stream, resulting in urine on the inside of the cup, the outside of the cup, and on his fingers. When this was all over, he vowed he would never again take for granted his ability to confidently direct a urine stream.

After a thorough scrubbing of both cup and fingers, Tony stalked back out into the shop.

"Oh, great! Thanks," Bruce said brightly, plucking the cooling sample from Tony's fingers and stowing in his bag.

"I peed on the cup," Tony said with an equal brightness, waiting with spiteful glee for the inevitable falter in Bruce's smile.

Bruce was irritatingly unflappable. "Eh, what's a little extracurricular urine between friends? And now," he said, gesturing at the freshly cleared table top, "if you'll just hop up there—"

"Yeah, about that…" Tony trailed off, eying the impromptu exam table dubiously.

"I am going to listen to your heart, look in your throat, take some blood. After that, I'd like to do a pelvic exam," Bruce said, answering Tony's unasked question, "but, ultimately, that'll be up to you."

"Nope," Tony said immediately.

Bruce spread his hands. "Can I at least give you the pros and cons?"

Tony narrowed his eyes.

"Con: you'll feel very uncomfortable, but it will be very quick. Pro: I'll know and, more importantly, you'll know, whether or not you have a uterus and ovaries."

Tony blinked. "Is it possible I don't?" It wasn't something he'd considered.

"Sure, why not? If it's a party trick, why would the magic totally rearrange your insides?"

"Bruce, there has clearly been some rearrangement," Tony gestured vaguely downwards.

"Well," Bruce said, looking at his shoes, "when I said 'party trick,' I really meant party trick slash weird alien sex thing. You need a vagina and clitoris for sex but not much else." It was a salient point. More than salient, even.

"Fine, okay, yes. Let's do it," Tony said with a level of decisiveness he did not actually feel. He forced himself to move towards the table before he could talk himself out of it, backing against its hard edge. He expected the table to hit somewhere against his upper thighs; it always had before. Today, it didn't. Tony, now a good four inches shorter, had to perform a little jump and wiggle to sit on top of his own fucking table. It was just the latest in a long string of indignities.

As Tony settled, Bruce took out a stethoscope.

"You're going to have to lose the hoodie," Bruce instructed. Tony complied with reluctance. He suppressed a shiver as his arms came naked from the bulky sleeves, already feeling uncomfortably exposed. He closed his eyes, inhaling intentionally through his nose, trying to make his mind blank as Bruce pressed the stethoscope against his back and listened to what was left of his heart.

"Still ticking," Bruce said as he drew back. He traded out the stethoscope for an otoscope and a tongue depressor. "Now, open wide." Bruce held down Tony's tongue and peered around the rafters with the little light.

"You haven't been having any unusual cravings, have you?" Bruce asked seriously, withdrawing the depressor and pulling back. Tony's brow furrowed. "Haven't wanted to drink blood, anything like that?"

"Oh," Tony said sourly as the joke dawned on him, "cute."

Bruce's straight face broke into a smile as Tony popped the custom caps off his teeth. As Bruce went back to his medical bag at the end of the table, Tony considered the fangs in his cupped palm. He felt irrationally annoyed. Didn't he look foolish enough already, hungover, stuck in awful drag he couldn't get out of, without finding he'd also been wearing a forgotten set of vampire teeth? And Bruce was making a joke out of it. Irritation bubbled up in Tony's chest, and before he knew what he was doing, he'd launched the bits of porcelain across the room. Hard. Bruce, headed back with the phlebotomy kit, ducked just in time. Tony watched the projectiles whizz harmlessly over their target, tracking their progress as they sailed across the shop. They hit the concrete with a barely audible rattle.

"Shit," Tony said, and he wasn't sure whether he was cursing his grade-school level of maturity (Did he really just throw something? At Bruce?) or his aim. The way Bruce was looking at him, it was clear Bruce didn't know either.

"Can you pretend," Tony said suddenly, "just for a second that you are shocked by any of this?" He swept a hand up and down himself, the gesture encompassing everything from the dirty tumbles of hair on down.

"Erm—"

Tony ran right over whatever Bruce was going to say. "Really though, can you just acknowledge what a totally ludicrous, fucked up—can you believe I even did this?" There was a slightly hysterical quality to his voice. He felt a hot sheen spread across his eyes. All at once, he felt an out-of-body urge to go help this poor woman who was clearly about to cry (he couldn't bear to see a woman cry), and the innate, Howard-borne reflex to Man the Fuck Up. Jesus. He was about to have a nervous breakdown. Maybe he was already having a nervous breakdown.

"Tony," Bruce approached carefully, easing the phlebotomy kit down on the makeshift exam table, "Tony, do you want a—a hug or something?" He extended his arms tentatively, and his expression would have suited someone about to embrace a man-eating tiger.

Tony gave a half-hysterical snort. "Pass," he said.

"Hey," said Bruce gently, "you know this is probably all going to work out, right?"

"'Probably all going to work out.' Wow, Bruce. That's some pep talk." But Tony didn't need a pep talk anyway; what he needed was to pull himself the fuck together. He rubbed viciously at his eyes, then jerked the sleeve of his too-large t-shirt up over his shoulder. "Alright," he snapped at Bruce, "you gonna take some blood or what?"

Bruce, to his credit, rolled with it. He donned surgical gloves without comment and pulled out a whole handful of empty vials.

"Jesus, Bruce, am I going to have any blood left?"

Bruce did not reply, instead tying on a rubber strap just above Tony's naked elbow. "So," Bruce said as he swabbed the veins, "tell me about Oz, the Great and Powerful."

"Are you trying to distract me?" Tony didn't like being handled.

"Just curious," Bruce said mildly, "Why? Are you distracted?" He tapped at Tony's vein with gloved fingers.

"No. Ow," Tony said as Bruce slid in the needle. He looked away as the first vial began filling with blood. Truthfully, blood draws did make Tony a little queasy; he sucked air through his teeth, then said, as a way to redirect his mind, "It's just a joke. It's almost too stupid to explain."

"Almost too stupid? Now I have to know."

"I wanted to order coffee using the voice of God."

"Huh." Bruce was nonplussed.

"I wanted God to tell Steve to bring me coffee in bed. Look," Tony explained, "Steve doesn't do lazy Sundays. Or lazy any days, for that matter, and sometimes he gets it in his head that I should get up, too, and he holds my coffee hostage. I had to do something."

"Holds your coffee hostage?" Bruce got ready with a new vial.

"By that I mean he expects me to come to the kitchen and pour it myself."

"I didn't know Steve could be so ruthless."

"I know. But I figured he would bring it to me in bed if God commanded it."

"And what does God sound like exactly?"

"James Earl Jones. You remember the television commercials for James Earl Jones Reads the Bible?"

"I remember. 'The Greatest Voice of our Time captured on 16 audio cassettes.'" Bruce switched vials again. "And did it work? Did Steve bring coffee for God?"

"Nope. And he wouldn't bring it for FDR. He finally brought a cup for Shirley Temple, but by then he may just have been worn down."

"Is my voice on there?" Bruce asked, filling the last vial and untying the rubber tourniquet.

"Um," said Tony.

"You know what? I don't want to know." Bruce applied the obligatory cotton ball and stretchy tape over the puncture in Tony's arm, then he tidied away his supplies and put on fresh gloves. "Now we'll do the pelvic exam, if you're still up to it."

I was never up to it, Tony thought. Out loud, he asked in a rush, "And just why do I want to know if I have a uterus, again?"

"For one thing, if you do have a uterus, there could be a risk of pregnancy."

Tony snorted, "There is zero risk of pregnancy."

"Or, if this goes on long enough, you might experience menses."

"Menses? As in—" Tony choked on a new lump of horror in his throat.

"As in a period, yeah. The ovaries, if you have them, would play a role there, too. They secrete the hormones that control all that stuff. Actually," Bruce's brow furrowed over a new consideration, "at your age, you could experience some symptoms of menopause."

Tony had a sudden, urgent desire to just crawl in a hole and die already.

"Or you may not have any internal female sex organs at all, other than the vaginal canal. Right now, we don't know," Bruce concluded.

"Hence the pelvic exam," and Tony's voice sounded small and distant in his own ears.

"That's right," Bruce agreed.

Tony threw up his hands. "Ugh. Shit, fine. I'm taking off my pants, I guess." Before he could think too much about it, he was pushing them down around his ankles. Bruce turned around in some meaningless gesture of professional courtesy that made Tony roll his eyes.

"Leave your shirt on," Bruce instructed over his shoulder, "but when you lay down, pull it up above your stomach. And then bend up your knees."

"Yeah, yeah. I've seen movies."

The metal table was freezing under Tony's ass, and his flexed knees made him feel more exposed than he'd ever felt in his life. It was like the dream of going to school naked raised to the nth degree.

"Ready?" Bruce asked solicitously.

"Not really, but sure."

Bruce turned around and gave Tony something vaguely resembling a reassuring smile. Tony directed his gaze determinedly towards the ceiling as Bruce stepped to the table.

"So, I'm going to insert two fingers into the vaginal canal and press on your abdomen with the other hand. There will be pressure but no serious physical discomfort. It'll take thirty seconds."

"Terrific," Tony said flatly.

Suddenly, there were fingers where there decidedly should not be fingers. Tony had been on the receiving end of fingers, both medically and recreationally, a billion times, but they'd always been in his ass, and this was wildly, wildly different in ways he couldn't begin to categorize. Was it more sensitive? Less sensitive? Tighter? Looser? The answer to every question seemed to be, impossibly, 'yes.' The only thing Tony was entirely sure about was that it sucked, and he hated it. There was an uncomfortable pressure inside, and then another uncomfortable pressure outside: Bruce was pushing around on his stomach like he meant to remodel Tony's insides. Joke was on Bruce, 'cause the renovation was already done.

And then it was over. Bruce stood up, pulling off his gloves with a look of profound contemplation. Tony, for his part, couldn't get off the table and find his underwear fast enough.

"Well?" Tony demanded once he'd gotten his pants back on.

"Well," said Bruce, "no uterus, that's for sure."

Tony felt a sudden surge of relief. "So no periods? No unplanned pregnancies?" he asked, just to hear Bruce say it.

"No," Bruce agreed, but he was making a face, the sort of face that made Tony's guts tie into knots.

"But?" Tony prodded, "I'm sensing a 'but,' here, Bruce."

"But, there is something. Well, two somethings. Ovaries, I guess, but they aren't, I don't know—," Bruce said, drifting off in a dreamy mutter towards the end, talking more to himself than to Tony. He shook his head.

"They aren't what?" Tony prompted sharply, and he was willing to shake Bruce back to meaningful utterance if he had to.

Bruce blinked, refocusing on Tony's face. "They aren't quite right. They're kinda too big. They're kinda in the wrong place." Then Bruce smiled in a pained way that instantly turned Tony's stomach; he was about to ask for something Tony wouldn't want to give, and the smile was meant to soften the blow. "You have to come to the lab."

"No," Tony said instantly.

"You have to have an ultrasound."

"No," Tony said again, and crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant child.

Bruce gave a nervous laugh, "Look, you have to. Whatever you have going on in there," he waved towards Tony's pelvis, "is atypical, and I've got to get a look at it. What if you have some kind of alien ovarian cancer or something?"

Tony kept his arms crossed and said nothing.

"Look, there's no one else in the lab, and it's totally non-invasive. It's just a wand that I'll press against your abdomen. Thirty minutes tops. Please?" Bruce unleashed the full force of his liquid puppy eyes, but Tony was unmoved. Bruce tried again, "Alright, how about this? You must be hungover, so what if I did one of those vitamin-y, mineral-y, IV things for you? You ever had one of those?"

Tony hadn't, but his interest was piqued because he did feel like shit. He decided immediately that he'd have to work on his poker face because Bruce broke into a wide smile.

"You want to try one? I'm sure I could mix one up in the lab. We could do the drip during the ultrasound, even."

"Do they actually work? Sounds like snake oil." Tony was skeptical, but potentially willing.

"Who knows?" Bruce admitted, "But it wouldn't hurt either. And the snake oil is on the house."

"Fine," Tony relented. "Thirty minutes. I'm putting you on a timer."

Steve cut up vegetables: onions, potatoes, carrots, celery. One by one, they passed under the chef's knife, coming out the other side in more or less evenly-sized chunks. The rhythmic shunk, shunk, shunk of the blade against the wooden cutting board, the repetitive motion of his wrist, was comforting somehow. He tried not to think about Tony too much. He had limited success.

His mind was fixated on Tony's hands, circling back to them any time there was a lull in the mental load. They had changed. Naturally they had. Inevitably. But they'd still seemed so unbelievably small as Tony had taken his coffee in the hallway that Steve couldn't get over it. Somehow more unnerving, Steve had noticed that the torn nail on Tony's right hand was whole again, neat and pink and perfectly manicured.

When Steve had changed into fresh clothes, he'd moved Tony's ring from last night's pants into his jeans. He could feel it, deep in his front pocket, as if it were giving off heat. While Tony's hands were supernaturally reduced, the ring seemed to have amplified; it felt heavy against his thigh.

A memory came to him of their wedding night, the two of them side by side on a hotel bed at some impossibly late hour, both still fully clothed, punch drunk with happiness and exhaustion.

"You know," Tony said, "I get now why Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times. That was fun. And just look at my party favor." He held his hand up above their heads, fingers spread to display his wedding band. The ruby winked at them as it caught the light. "I think I'll do it again sometime."

"I just hope I'm invited," Steve said.

"Oh, definitely. You can be my Richard Burton. Elizabeth Taylor married him twice."

"Elizabeth Taylor," Steve said around a yawn, "I feel like I actually know that one. Was she the little girl in National Velvet?"

"Why, Steve, I didn't know you were a horse girl."

"You're telling me that sweet little girl grew up and got married eight times? Geez."

"Oh, I know! It's enough to make you clutch your pearls," Tony said, nudging him in the ribs with an elbow.

"It's just sad," Steve mused. "Eight times? She must have been an unhappy person."

"On the other hand, my parents were only married once and still managed to be perfectly miserable."

"Well, that won't happen to us," Steve assured him.

"Absolutely not," Tony agreed, with an unexpected note of ferocity. "I won't let it. If I ever make you as unhappy as Howard made Mom, I'll kick you to the curb myself."

"I'm not worried. I'm pretty sure this is a happily-ever-after situation." Steve rolled over in the bed, slinging a possessive arm and a leg over his new husband. "I mean, I did marry a good-lookin' billionaire. Not too bad for a poor kid from Brooklyn."

"You didn't mention that the poor kid from Brooklyn became Captain America in the interim. I think the public at large would say 'not too bad for Tony Stark.'"

"Yeah? What do you say?" Steve asked, burying his nose in the spot just behind Tony's ear.

"I'd say your thigh weighs approximately a thousand pounds, and you're crushing me."

Steve laughed, but it turned into a stale-tasting yawn. Steve's whole mouth felt tacky. "I've got to brush my teeth," he said aloud, as if stating the fact might rally him to action.

"So do it," Tony said. Neither moved.

"I've got to take off my tux," Steve tried again.

"So do it."

But Steve couldn't do it. He was inert. He couldn't even summon up the energy to kick off his shoes. He let his eyes drift shut instead. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he felt a gentle hand at his throat: Tony was unknotting his bow tie and unbuttoning his collar. Without opening his eyes, he caught Tony's hand in his own and brought it to his mouth, pressing the square knuckles to his lips before laying the palm decisively against his chest. Tony's hand was warm through the fabric of his starched shirt.

Tony's hand.

Steve reached the end of his recollection and found his eyes were watering. But then, he'd reached the end of the vegetables, too. Maybe it was just all the onions. He sighed and started digging for the really big stock pot, the one that always prompted Tony to ask: Are we expecting the entire platoon for lunch? Or do you just really like soup?It was true—when it came to soup, Steve struggled to break from army portions. Oh well. Maybe he could feed some to Bruce, freeze the leftovers.

He got the soup going on the range, tidied up the kitchen, and then checked his watch. It was only eleven. How was that possible, he wondered, when the day thus far already felt about a hundred hours too long? Needing something to pass the time until lunch, Steve retrieved an empty basket from the laundry room. Basket under his arm, he went to survey the wreck in the living room. It was as bad as he remembered, like a Halloween bomb had been detonated. Sometime that afternoon, an army of cleaners would descend, and it would all be taken care of whether or not Steve lifted a finger, but he desperately wanted a job, so he designated himself the official Party Guest Item Picker Upper.

He started with the top of the bar, plucking cat ears and plastic swords from the assemblage of dirty cups. Behind the bar, he found a stash of more precious items: keys, wallets, handbags, cell phones, stowed out of sight and thus forgotten. He added them to the basket. Maybe he'd call the wallet owners later in the afternoon; it would give him something else to do at least. Moving away from the bar and into the sitting area, the abandoned items grew larger, mostly jackets and coats (and a few capes) draped over the backs of the furniture, and he had to stop to get another basket.

With the jackets gone, he turned his attention to the floor, dropping to his hands and knees to collect things that had rolled or been kicked under the furniture: jewelry, lipsticks, a single acid green stiletto. There was a bit of something white under a low chair, about the size of a business card, and when he fished it out, he discovered it was a tiny plastic bag filled with powder. Coke? Something else? He put it in his back pocket to dispose of. Captain America will not return your illicit drugs, he thought primly.

He decided to check between the sofa cushions. There was the usual handful of crumbs and loose change, and then, on the end, crammed between the cushion and the arm, was a scrap of fabric: a lacy, black g-string.

"Some party," he muttered to himself, contemplating the nominal panties hanging from his finger. He rolled them into a little ball and stuffed them in the pocket with the drugs. Captain America also didn't return underwear he found stuffed in his sofa cushions.

He was about to haul himself off the floor when he heard the elevator door open. His heart skipped a little as he scrambled up, abandoning his laundry basket, hoping against hope for Tony. His Tony. His hungover, unshaven, unwashed Tony.

It was Bruce instead. He had a thick Manila folder. "I, uh, have some test results," he said, holding up the file.

"Where's Tony?" Steve asked, trying to sound less disappointed than he was.

"Back in the shop, I think. He said he was going to take a nap. He was, well, I think he was upset." Bruce sounded exhausted.

"He's seen the results, then?" Steve said, his stomach tightening with a sense of dread.

"Yeah. He came to the lab for an ultrasound, but then he actually helped me run some of the blood work. I don't think he could help himself, once he got up there. He really knows a lot about the biochemical engineering stuff. I mean, of course, he would… " Bruce trailed off, suddenly very interested in his shoes.

Steve said the hard part for him, "The results are bad."

Bruce nodded. Wordlessly, they went into the kitchen. Steve poured them fresh cups of coffee and set them on the table as Bruce dropped into a chair.

"Soup?" Steve offered.

"No thanks," Bruce said, already spreading papers across the table.

Steve knew how he felt; he didn't have an appetite either. He eased into the chair across from Bruce, and Bruce slid him a glossy black and white sonogram. It looked exactly nothing like a colored illustration from a biology textbook.

"What am I looking at, Bruce?" Steve asked, frowning down at the image. It might as well have been a Rorschach blot.

"A modified testicle. At least I think? Only it's been relocated internally, about where an ovary would be."

Steve winced.

Bruce presented him another document, a chart this time, "And here are Tony's hormone levels. His levels of testosterone and estrogen are completely normal, identical to the levels from his last routine panel. What is abnormal is this reading here," Bruce put his finger on what, to Steve, looked like a random string of letters and numerical subscripts.

"And that is—?"

"Well, Tony dubbed it 'extragen,' which is pretty accurate. Basically, it's like estrogen, spironolactone, and progesterone all in one molecule." Bruce produced another paper, a complex molecular diagram made of a dozen hexagons and dozens more attachments.

"Extragen," Steve said to himself, tasting the word. It had the same sort of flavor as 'vita-ray' or 'vibranium,' smacking of lab glass and dark magic. He sensed in the syllables yet another mysterious substance that would affect his life intimately but that he himself would never understand except in the abstract. He pulled over the molecular diagram, looked at it blankly for a second, then pushed it back across the table.

"Bruce," he said, "I went to art school."

"Oh," Bruce's brow furrowed, "right." Bruce felt around his person before producing a pencil from a shirt pocket. He circled part of the molecule. "Well, this portion acts as a androgen receptor antagonist—"

"Art school."

"Still too much?" Bruce tapped his pencil on the table, recalibrating. "Okay," he said, "you know testosterone is responsible for male sex characteristics? Male pattern hair growth, sperm production, stuff like that?"

Steve nodded.

"So," Bruce tapped the circled portion of the molecule, "this part keeps testosterone from working." He circled something else. "This part acts as an estrogen, the primary female hormone. It causes breast growth and fat redistribution, among other things. Progesterone, which is like this part here, also contributes to female sex characteristics. Put them all together, and you have, essentially, the hormone regime of a patient undergoing a male-to-female gender transition, only extragen works more or less instantaneously, and these new sex organs," Bruce pulled back over the sonogram, "whatever they are, replenish the hormone supply as soon as it's metabolized, no prescription required." He took a breath, then asked, "How was that?"

"That was better." Steve ran a finger over the molecular diagram, tracing the penciled circles. "What I don't understand," he said, "is that Tony told me last night he'd be back to normal when he sobered up."

Bruce grimaced. "He told me the same thing in the lab, but we ran a lot of tests, and there's just no correlation between blood alcohol levels and the concentration of extragen in his system. Either he misunderstood something or whatever the Asgardians gave him works differently in humans."

Steve resisted the urge to lay his head on the table. "And there's nothing you can do?" he asked.

"Right now? Not that I can think of. I mean, what would I do?" Bruce sighed, "I don't even think I can synthesize extragen for study. It shouldn't even exist." He pulled back over the page of hexagons, marking features with his pencil. "All these bonds? They aren't chemically stable, but they act stable. The whole molecule should break apart. It defies the basic laws of physics. I don't know what's holding it together. Or, I guess I do know what's holding it together, but I can't replicate magical bonding in the lab. I wish I could. Tony's situation aside, this would be a breakthrough drug." He let his pencil drop forlornly to the table.

Steve watched the pencil fall, then looked at Bruce, really looked, for the first time since early that morning. He was unshaved and baggy-eyed. Every line on his face was magnified by exhaustion. It was a face Steve had seen in foxholes after a night of shelling.

"Bruce," he said, suddenly very tired himself, "when's the last time you slept?"

Bruce looked genuinely taken aback, "Slept?"

"You know, that thing you do with your eyes closed. Preferably in a bed."

"Oh," Bruce snorted, "that." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I'm fine. I got an hour or so in that chair this morning."

"Okay, I'm calling it," Steve said, collecting the papers back into the Manila folder. "You have to go get some sleep. And I mean as much as you can stand. No alarms set. That's an order."

Bruce didn't even argue, "Yeah, okay. What're you going to do?"

"Try to feed Tony if he'll let me in the shop. And then I might try to sleep a little myself."

"Good luck," Bruce said, accepting the neatened paperwork as he rose from the table, "knowing Tony, you'll probably need it."