Chapter 6: Bedtime Story
Steve didn't sleep the night Tony kicked him out. He lay on top of the quilts, listening to every siren, feeling like his brain was eating itself. All he could do was think about the last twenty-four hours, and everything he should have done or said differently. Once, a lifetime ago, Howard Stark had tried to explain to him the theoretical possibility of time travel. "Where's my time machine, Howard?" he wondered aloud at three in the morning. "It's your kid I'm dealing with. Couldn't you could give me a lousy twenty-four hour do-over?" Neither the ghost of his dead friend nor a time machine was forthcoming. He finally fell into an uneasy sleep around dawn and promptly had a harrowing dream.
It started out fine: Steve was Steve; Tony was Tony; they were making out in an anonymous hotel bedroom, growing progressively more naked, though somehow without anyone taking off any clothes. Garments were there and then simply not there a moment later.
Steve started to give Tony head; he could taste Tony's dick in his mouth, like velvet and salt, and then he was taking Tony all the way into his throat, something he'd never attempted in real life. And then Steve realized, with a sinking horror, that he wasn't having sex with Tony at all; Justin Hammer was. Steve was just a bystander. And now Hammer was hurting Tony, and Tony was crying out. When Steve tried to intervene, his legs began sinking into the carpet, as if it were patterned quicksand. The harder he struggled, the faster he sank, until only his fingertips stuck up above the busy blue and gold Berber, and then they too slipped from sight. He was falling through the floor.
When his bare feet hit the ground a moment later, he was in a different hotel room, one with thick crown molding and an oriental carpet. The window was open, and Steve could smell rain and baking bread. When he drifted to the sill, he found the unmistakable stone facades and slate roofs of Paris. The view made him unaccountably sad, but he couldn't remember why.
"What is it, darling?" Peggy asked, sliding up beside him. She was in a filmy cream-colored peignoir, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.
Steve nodded at the building across the street, finding that he remembered why he was supposed to be sad after all. The line rolled off his tongue, well-rehearsed, "I can't believe I'm in Paris, and I don't get to go to the Louvre. Feels like being a kid in the candy store without a nickel." Was that why he was sad? It sounded right, but hadn't there been something else? Something about Tony…
She put a consoling hand on his naked back. "Sweet thing," she said tenderly and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Let me see what I can do."
He looked down at her and saw a mysterious little smile spread across her mouth. Her expression was not unlike the Mona Lisa's. "What does that mean?" he asked.
Her smile deepened, "Take me to bed, and I might whisper it in your ear."
He whipped her off the floor and into an over-the-shoulder carry while she squealed and beat his back with her fists. He tossed her on the bed and then jumped in after her, making her shriek with surprised laughter.
"Alright," he said, braced above her on his forearms, "I'm all ears."
"All ears?" she said mischievously, sliding a hand between their bodies to cup the front of his boxers.
"Yep, that's an ear, too."
"You know, I've heard art students take anatomy." Her hand snaked through the opening of his fly.
"Sure. I just made a 'C.' Now what did you mean back there?" he asked, trying not to get sidetracked by Peggy's languid stroking.
"Did you really take anatomy?" Her voice had dropped into its lowest, plummiest register, the one Steve privately thought of as the Velvet Purr.
"I really did."
"And did you really make a 'C'?"
"No," he admitted. He was starting to pant now. "I was on the dean's list. Peggy. Please tell me." He was too curious to let it go, even for sex.
"Well, the Louvre is just a shell, isn't it? You don't really want to visit the Louvre."
She pulled her hand out of his shorts and used it to hike up her gown, exposing the soft white of her thighs and the delicate pink satin of her panties, darkened down the middle in a damp stripe. Steve's mouth flooded with saliva. He looked back up at Peggy's face, not quite brave enough to take what he wanted without asking. This was still pretty new. Reading his thoughts, Peggy threaded her fingers into his hair, directing his head down her body with gentle insistence. It was all the encouragement he needed. He opened his mouth and licked luxuriously up her wet panties with the flat of his tongue, then pulled his mouth away just enough to get his fingers in her waistband.
"If I don't want to visit the Louvre," he asked, as he peeled the damp lingerie down her legs, "where do I want to visit?" He didn't wait for her answer before burying his face between her thighs.
"Not where," she said, with a delighted little groan, "who. You want to visit Winged Victory. And Olympia. And La Grande Odalisque. And it just so happens that I know the ladies' addresses—"
He jerked upright in surprise, saying, "That has to be top secret."
"Oh, Steve!" she laughed in frustration. "Don't stop in the middle! For heaven's sake!"
"Peg," he said, looking her right in the eyes, "you don't know what it would mean to me. Those are things I've studied from books."
"They're all much lovelier in person, I promise you. Mind," she said gently, "you'll have to choose the one thing you'd like most to see. Not all the ladies share the same apartment, I'm afraid."
"Da Vinci's portrait of John the Baptist," he said, without hesitation.
"Well, that isn't a lady at all!" she laughed. "Not La Jaconde? I believe she would be most people's choice."
"I'm not most people."
"No," she agreed, and ran her fingers over his cheek. "I'll find out where it is, and then I'll arrange it for you. It won't be soon. Probably not until the winter lull. Do you have a second choice, by the way? In case Mr. John the Baptist can't be reached by telephone?"
"Michelangelo's marbles."
"Not Tony Stark?"
"What?" he asked, sure he'd misheard. The scene had been proceeding so neatly, and now there was this line, dropped in from another play entirely.
"I thought for certain you'd want to see Tony Stark. She's very lovely."
"Tony? My husband Tony?" Steve bit his lip. This was wrong. They were definitely off the script now. It was like two pieces of music playing over the top of one another. He couldn't follow the notes; the melodies twisted discordantly.
"Husband?" she asked, her brow furrowing, "Don't you mean your bewitching wife? Surely you must. But we'll sort it out. She's here, you know. Tony?"
A door to an adjoining room opened, and Steve wasn't sure whether or not the door had been there before. Tony stood framed in the doorway, wearing high waisted panties, a garter belt, and a brassiere, all in black satin. She looked like every cover of every twenty-five cent detective novel in Bucky's under-the-bed teenage stash. Her hair (But, no? His hair? It wasn't so certain anymore in Steve's mind.) fell in loose pin curls around her shoulders, and her lips were deeply red. Steve had read enough of Bucky's library to know she was dangerous, a jeweled blade. Fortunately, for now at least, she looked amused, smiling wryly at the lovers entwined, and twisting a curl around one manicured finger.
Steve jumped out of bed like a married man caught with his mistress, only he wasn't sure which woman was which in this scenario. Peggy chortled and sat up, extending an inviting hand to Tony, and she strode over on her patent heels, seams of her black stockings running down the backs of her legs like they'd been straightened against a plumb line.
"Do sit down," Peggy said, gesturing at the white counterpane.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Tony continued to stand. Peggy shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by the declined invitation, and then stripped off her peignoir and gown. She lay back naked on the bedclothes, folding her lithe arms behind her head, a display that Tony eyed up and down with a mix of wonder and dismay.
"My god," Tony said, "how old are you right now? You're gorgeous."
"Twenty-three," Peggy said, with a radiant smile.
Tony rolled her kohl-rimmed eyes. "Great. Twenty-three. Now I feel like the crypt-keeper. I'm so sorry I asked. How about you, Boy Scout? You're looking very fresh-faced." She turned her head to look down her nose at Steve, who was still standing paralyzed in the middle of the room.
"I don't—I mean—what year is it?" asked Steve, feeling consummately stupid.
"1943, Steve darling," supplied Peggy.
"Makes me twenty-five, I guess."
Tony tipped her head back and groaned, "Ugh, I'm robbing the cradle. Alright, Bobbsey Twins," she snapped in Steve's direction and then pointed towards the bed, "let's hop to it. Reading between the lines here," Tony made an up and down sweep at her lingerie, "I'd say I'm supposed to fulfill somebody's sexual fantasy."
Steve stumbled to the bed as a twice-removed, dream within a dream feeling settled over him, and sat down beside Peg in a daze. The brass alarm clock on the nightstand was, he noticed, beginning to melt, the little black numerals slipping down its face.
"Ladies first," Tony said. She kicked off her high heels and then crawled between Peggy's legs, smearing a kiss along the inside of Peggy's thigh, leaving a bloody trail of lipstick behind. She buried her face in the same wet locale that Steve had recently vacated, until Peggy indicated with a hand in Tony's hair that she should stop. Tony sat up, her chin glistening, then held together the ring and middle fingers of her right hand and put them in her mouth, coating them thickly with spit.
"Steve stopped in the middle, you know," Peggy said with fond accusation as Tony slid the wet fingers into Peggy's pussy all the way up to the wedding band. The gold ring winked in the morning light as the fingers thrust slowly in and out. Peggy rocked her hips in luxurious counterpoint to the motion, her clitoris rubbing against Tony's precisely held thumb.
Tony shot Steve a wry smile, "Stopped in the middle? Guess you won't get that merit badge. Want to try for another?"
Steve gawped. It had all escalated very quickly, and he couldn't catch up.
"Sure you do," Tony answered for him. "Give us a lesson on female anatomy; I heard you're an expert. That'll get you the badge with the embroidered vulva."
"It wasn't reproductive anatomy; it was anatomy for artists," Steve said, knowing it sounded pedantic, but unsure what else to say. He couldn't look away from the slow, repetitive plunge of Tony's manicured fingers.
Peggy reached for Steve's own hand, guiding it to her white throat. "How many vertebrae are there," she panted, "just here in my neck?"
"Seven," he said, automatically.
"Count them," she said, turning her face from him to show him her spine. So he counted, pressing firmly into the back of her neck to number the nodes with his fingers. Her eyes drifted shut. Steve's fingers reached the base of her neck and stilled, uncertain how to continue.
He became aware of Tony's eyes on him, and he glanced up, meeting her gaze. They were intimately close, separated only by a few inches of Peggy's creamy flesh. Tony took her free hand and placed it gently on the hollow of Steve's throat, "What is this called?" she asked.
Steve's fingers drifted into the same depression on Peggy. "The suprasternal notch," he said, "formed by the gap between the trachea and the clavicles."
Steve felt Tony's fingers drift along his collarbone. Steve mirrored the action, dragging his fingers firmly along the same line on Peggy. "The length of the clavicle is the same length as the face," he said, understanding the game now, "and also the same length as the breastbone." His fingers slid down the center of Peggy's chest.
"Now, breasts," Steve said, eyes on Tony, "breasts are tricky. They aren't how you think. For one thing, they aren't spheres; they're tears." He drew the drop shape around each of Peggy's breasts with a single fingertip, beginning and ending each slow outline at the tapered attachment point near the armpit.
"Breasts aren't even where you think." He cupped one now, eliciting a soft sound from Peggy and a momentary flutter of her lashes. "People tend to place them too high, and too close to the sternal line. " He pushed the tissue gently upward and towards the center to demonstrate; he held it there for a moment, massaging the pleasingly overflowing handful before releasing it back to its natural position. He did the same with the second as he explained, "In reality, unless they're pushed or bound, gravity pulls the breasts down and slightly outward at 45 degrees to the midline and halfway down the chest."
Something was happening in Steve's mind; this, he realized, was back on book. This had actually happened. One rainy Parisian morning, Peg had asked him to show her what he saw when he drew a woman's body, and he'd traced the knowledge onto her skin with his fingers. He'd meticulously counted each rib, run his hands and tongue over invisible angles and lines…but now Tony was here, with her own secret script and choreography. What did Tony want, Steve wondered? Or what did he want from her? More accurately, what didn't he want from her?
"Hey, Cap," Tony said, sparing him a brief glance now that he'd gone quiet, "you earned that badge. Now go ahead and kiss her."
Steve considered the invitation. Peggy's eyes were shut tight in concentration, her mouth open in a desperate pant, as she chased after the climax that was clearly just ahead of her. Theoretically, it was all very arousing. Certain parts of Steve's anatomy were clearly interested in Peggy's lovely body in the throes of pleasure, but his actual attention, he realized, was reserved for Tony. Had been from the moment she'd stepped in the room.
"You know," Steve said, coming to a decision, "I could kiss her, but I don't think she'll notice." He leaned over Peggy to take Tony's chin in his hand. "I'd rather kiss you."
It was almost a modest kiss, just a speculative press of closed lips, followed by the slightest contact of tongues, though any real sense of chastity was undercut by the fact that both Steve and Tony smelled and tasted undeniably like Peggy. The kiss deepened, their mouths melting together, faces coming into contact. Steve closed his eyes. And then something changed; the taste of the kiss, the feel, the smell. There was suddenly a note of single-malt scotch in with the saliva, the rasp of beard against Steve's chin. He could smell expensive aftershave and motor oil. Steve shut his eyes tighter, knowing with the weird certainty of dream logic that if opened his eyes, this version of Tony would disappear again. Orpheus looking back at Eurydice.
There was an explosive wail from the bed between them; it startled Steve out the kiss, his eyes flying open. He and Tony broke away from each other to watch Peggy climaxing, arching off the bed for a moment, before falling boneless and silent back to the mattress.
The once-again femme Tony reclaimed her wet fingers, smirking, "And that's how it's done, Boy Scout. You'll notice I did not stop in the midd—"
"Quiet," Steve shushed, "she's practically asleep. Get off the bed so I can cover her up." They both stood up and then worked together to get Peggy tucked in, with Steve lifting her up and Tony with the turndown service. As Steve pulled the covers up to her chin, she briefly roused.
"I'm cold," she muttered. "Come to bed."
"In a minute," he assured her and kissed her forehead. She rolled over, mollified, and went back to sleep. Steve and Tony moved to speak on the other side of the room, away from the bed.
"Look," Steve asked in a half-whisper, "what are you doing here exactly?"
"Making your outrageously hot girlfriend forget her own name. And you didn't even thank me."
"Hey, I was doing alright before you showed up. I would have gotten there eventually."
"Really? I heard complaints."
"Tony, I mean it. You aren't supposed to be here. It's 1943. I'm in Paris with Peggy. What gives?"
Tony shrugged, "Who do you think I look like? Jiminy Cricket? It's your subconscious, not mine."
"Now that you mention it, I think you look an awful lot like Peggy Carter. The figure at least."
Tony ran her hands over her full curves, "You noticed that, huh? Just don't point out the family resemblance to Actual Me. That ego is basically a soap bubble right now; it can't handle comparison to the glamazon, not even favorably."
"Trust me, I hadn't planned on it. But what does it mean, Tony?"
Tony considered, then asked, "What were you going to do after the war? You're a planner; you must have had a pretty good idea."
"Yes," he agreed, though he had no idea where the conversation was going anymore.
"So, what? The girl, the house, and the dog?"
"More like the girl, the brownstone, and the cat, but yeah, that was the general idea."
"Babies?" Tony tossed the question off casually, and Steve was still shocked by how much it cut.
"Yes," he admitted, and found the answer snagged in his throat.
He wasn't sure he'd ever talked about his post-war plans honestly with anyone, not that he hadn't had the opportunity. 'After the war' was all anyone talked about in 1944. Mussolini had fallen; North Africa was under allied control; the Nazis were on the run everywhere: the good guys were going to win and win soon. Steve had privately assumed he'd be there to see it, but he'd still hemmed and hawed when anyone enquired about his plans. To speak so openly about something he wanted, and wanted badly, had felt like a jinx. Turned out silence had been the jinx instead.
"And how were you going to pay for life in this high style?" asked Tony. "Take Captain America to Hollywood? That would have been a sure thing for you, but you'd have hated L.A."
"And I'm a terrible actor. L.A. would have hated me, too. I planned to finish my art degree on the G.I. Bill. I had enough talent to be a commercial illustrator, and I thought I'd try fine art on the side. I figured Peg would keep working for the government; she wasn't the housewife type."
He really had had it all planned out. Looking back on it now, he felt like a fool for his hubris; it was war, he should have known anything could happen, but it just hadn't felt that way at the time. It'd felt like he was about to land headfirst in a happy ending and get everything he ever wanted.
"Okay," Tony said, interrupting his increasingly gloomy rumination, "Here's how I see it, then: my physical similarity to Peggy has you thinking about everything you left behind in the war. And I'm not just talking about your actual life, Steve, but your fantasy life as well. The hypothetical job and the hypothetical cat and the hypothetical kids. I even bet that, hypothetically, you wanted to see Peggy in this femme fatale, pulp fiction get-up, too."
"No comment," said Steve, dismayed. This was getting messy, opening up old wounds he thought had scarred over long ago.
"I don't blame you. If it looks good on me, it would look great on her," Tony said, "but more to the point, I think this whole dream sequence raises some questions about which fantasies of yours still want fulfillment. In 1943, your five year plan was to be Joe Taxpayer with a mortgage and 2.5 kids, and yet here you are, seven-something decades later, still stuck as Captain Fucking America. Have you gotten anything you wanted since you were frozen in carbonite?"
"Of course," Steve insisted, "I got you."
"But me and what else? Don't tell me you forgot all your domestic ambitions when you met me. Memory is, as they say, persistent; I can see the melting clock from here. Actually, you know what? I take it back," Tony declared. "I am fucking Jiminy Cricket. Captain America's slutty Jiminy Cricket. Unless I'm wrong?"
Steve felt a headache coming on.
"Welp," Tony gave him a semi-sympathetic pat on the arm, "All I can say is good luck, buddy, because it sounds like you're up to your eyeballs in an emotional quagmire. Sucks to be you. And didn't this start out as a sort of wacky comedy involving magic potion at a Halloween party?"
"The wacky comedy part only lasted about five minutes," Steve said. "We've been sinking into the quagmire for ages now."
"Want a new wrinkle?" Tony asked, eyes alight.
"No." Steve actually held up a hand, as if to physically ward off whatever she was going to say. "Absolutely not."
"Tough. I want you to fuck me." Tony stepped close enough that suddenly Steve could feel her body heat.
Steve groaned, "No. Come on. Don't do this to me."
"Technically, you're doing it to yourself. You knew this was going to come up. Have you seen the outfit?" Tony took one fingertip and dragged it purposefully over her generous cleavage. "I'd say these have been pushed and bound into something less than 45 degrees from the midline, wouldn't you?"
"Dammit," Steve hissed under his breath, as his own finger followed hers over the tops of her breasts. He couldn't help himself. He grabbed her by the arms and buried his face against the side of her neck, kissing her throat. She moaned and put her fingers in his hair. The alarm clock, now dripping from the nightstand, began to ring gooily, as if the bells were drowned in syrup—
Steve woke up half-hard and groggy. The incipient headache from the dream had, he found, followed him into reality. His phone was ringing beside the pillow.
"Hello?" he croaked as he pushed himself up to sitting, still on top of the quilts.
"Steve? Where are you right now?" It was Bruce, his voice just on the edge of panic. "I asked Tony, and he said, and I'm quoting here, 'I don't know, and I don't care.'"
Steve yawned and rolled his eyes. "He knows where I am. I'm in Brooklyn."
"You had a fight?"
"I guess. I've been exiled, anyway. I would have told you, but you were still asleep when I left yesterday afternoon." He stood up and cracked his spine. The mattress was terrible.
"When are you coming back?"
"Whenever I can. Ball's in Tony's court, Bruce. I screwed up. Not on purpose, but I did."
"So I'm on my own over here?" Bruce didn't sound that happy about it.
"Looks that way."
"Okay," Bruce sighed, resigned. "Well, we're working in the lab right now, trying to figure out some kind of… I don't know. Some kind of something. I'll call you later, I guess?"
"I'll come back as soon as I'm invited, Bruce. Maybe remind Tony that I exist from time to time, huh?"
"Will do."
They hung up. It was eight o'clock. There was no food in the apartment, so Steve dressed and went to the diner down the street. He sat at a table by the window and drew melting clocks with a ballpoint pen in the margins of his newspaper.
After breakfast, he walked to the big artist's supply store on 2nd Street and filled a basket with good paints, and then he picked an expensive seven foot stretched canvas. It wouldn't fit in a taxi, so he marched awkwardly down the street with it, earning amused side-eyes from the sparse mid-morning crowd. The back window of a cab rolled down while it waited at a light, and a young man leaned out, yelling, "Steve Rogers! I want you to draw me like one of your French girls!" The sidewalk collectively sniggered.
"I'll keep you in mind next time I need a model," Steve called back. The young man laughed and fell back into his cab, fanning himself furiously with his hand as if in a swoon.
Steve smiled to himself as he kept walking, plotting his project in his head, part artwork, part exorcism.
Tony had little burns up and down his arms from weld spatter. His leather jacket was now too big and stiff to maneuver in, so he'd just given it up in favor of a hoodie from good old suite 67. Sparks and slag went right through the cotton sleeves. Most of the burns were just pin pricks, but he had a good one on his right forearm where it looked like someone had ground out a cigarette, and it felt like he had another good one now. He finished his weld as neatly as possible while his skin sizzled, then cut the torch and ripped off his helmet. When he peeled back his sleeve, he saw it was indeed a good one: a nice, round, quarter-sized hole in his skin, only on his left arm this time. A matched set.
"Fuck," he swore. "Jarvis! Stop the music!" He needed new girl-sized PPE. Just like he needed new girl-sized shoes and jeans and underwear and everything else.
The music had been so loud that he evidently hadn't heard the shop door open, and he just about jumped out of his skin when Bruce grabbed his wrist.
"Christ, Bruce!" Tony exclaimed. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
"Lemme see that." Bruce pulled over the burned forearm for inspection. "Geez. You've got to stop welding without a real jacket or you won't have any skin left. Come on. Let's go in the bathroom and run some cold water on it."
Tony shrugged out of Bruce's grip. "It's fine. Just give me some triple."
"Forget it. That hurts just to look at. Will you just go to the bathroom, already?"
Tony rolled his eyes, but allowed himself to be bullied to the sink. It did, in fact, hurt like crazy.
"Alright," Bruce said, turning on the tap to what Tony supposed was some optimal flow rate, "keep the arm under the tap for ten minutes at least. Twenty is better. You want a chair or something?"
"Sure. I guess," Tony said, flexing the arm under the cold water. It still hurt like shit, but it was better than nothing. Bruce came back in, dragging a pair of shop stools. He plunked one down for Tony right in front of the sink, with the second beside.
"Well, this is cozy," Tony said sarcastically; their knees were close enough to touch.
"I need more blood," Bruce explained, already opening his omnipresent medical bag and pulling on gloves.
"Honestly, Bruce, I'm starting to question your medical training. Like, I shouldn't have to tell you that bleeding patients went out of style sometime before the last century. Every time you see me, you try to siphon out some more."
"Well," Bruce said, tying a rubber strap above Tony's free elbow, "until I can synthesize extragen in the lab, you are the only source, and I can't do anything without it."
Tony sucked his teeth as he felt the needle slide into his arm yet again. He'd lost track of the number of vials they'd filled, but it was dozens at least.
"I do have some good news," Bruce said, as he switched out for a new tube.
"Yeah?"
"I officially broke a quote unquote magic bond. For a fraction of a second, at least. It snapped back together."
"Let me guess," Tony said, without enthusiasm, "the conditions under which this break occurred are incompatible with human life?"
"Oh, absolutely. Very high heat, pressure, and radiation levels. But I did break it, so, magic or no magic, this is a molecule that has some relationship, however tentative, to thermodynamics. And speaking of relationships, however tentative—"
"My god, Bruce, your segues—"
"This is your daily reminder that Steve Rogers—"
"Who?"
"My friend, my marginal boss—"
"My marginal husband."
"So you do remember. This is your daily reminder that he would like to come back. He's been gone for a week—"
"If I weren't being bled to death out of one arm and caring for a second degree burn on the other, I would walk right out of this conversation," Tony snarled.
"You think I don't know that? Look, Tony," Bruce said, exasperated, "would you say that we are doing well here by ourselves?"
Tony's mind automatically cast over the penthouse—the dirty laundry, the empty refrigerator, the unmade bed—and knew there was no possible response to Bruce's question. When Tony said nothing, Bruce continued, "I haven't seen you eat anything, and I mean anything, in a week. You've been living on coffee and the green stuff—"
"Wait a minute," Tony jumped in, "wait a minute! I know for a fact that all you've eaten in the last seven days is Haagen-Dazs—"
"Exactly, Tony! That is exactly my point! All we do is work and make bad choices. I mean, look at you! When's the last time I saw you in something other than those sweatpants? You need actual clothes. Welding leathers and work boots at the least—"
"I don't need them. This is very temporary—" Tony was starting to feel something akin to panic. He was about to rip the needle out of his arm and leave.
"If you really believed that, you wouldn't be working day and night building another suit."
"I'm not. It's…" But Tony's powers of mendacity temporarily failed him.
"I have seven PhDs, Tony. Seven. Don't bullshit me," Bruce snapped. He capped his last vial and ripped off the strap. He didn't even offer Tony a band-aid, and a drop of blood oozed down Tony's arm. "We need Steve back."
"To do what?" Tony scoffed. "You're telling me we need Captain America here just to do our laundry or something?"
"Yes! Absolutely! Do the laundry, buy the milk, enforce a curfew; I know you aren't sleeping. We need somebody here who cares about something other than the science fair projects. Hey, you don't even have to talk to the guy. Make him a bed in the bathtub if you want to, but please let him come back!" Bruce was actually pleading; Tony thought he might drop to his knees.
Tony rolled his eyes, "I will do some laundry. I will order groceries, okay? Would that make you happy? Text me a list, and I will buy them and have them delivered. That's something people do, right?"
Bruce's look of shocked skepticism was borderline insulting. "Yes," he said, "it's something people do. But is it something you can do?"
"I may not have seven PhDs, Bruce, but I am a genius. I am pretty sure I can crack InstaDash."
"InstaDash," Bruce shook his head, pondering the word. "InstaDash."
"See, the way you're saying it makes me feel like, maybe…DoorCart?"
"Please let me call Steve," Bruce groaned.
"No."
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know what? Just give me a credit card. I'll order the groceries."
"Wallet's on the table in the shop. Use the black one." Bruce started to leave when Tony blurted, "How's he sound?"
"Who?"
"Oh, aren't you just hilarious? You know who." It hurt Tony's pride to ask, but found he couldn't stop himself. Bruce slid back onto his stool, his expression softening from irritation to pity. Tony found it particularly goading.
"Don't give me that look," Tony warned. "Let me remind you that if I am a miserable, lonely asshole, it's my own fault."
"Don't do that, Tony," Bruce said. "Anyway, he sounds lonely."
"What's he doing over there?"
"Says he's planning a painting."
"What does that mean?"
Bruce shrugged. There was a beat filled with the sound of the running tap.
"Why won't you just call him?" Bruce asked finally.
Why wouldn't he? Tony asked himself. Tony had almost called a hundred times, but the concept of actually interacting with Steve Rogers made him mildly ill. It felt too complicated. He, Tony, wanted this version of himself to slip under the waves, never to be seen again. Steve, on the contrary, now seemed to want something else. And what if Steve got it? What if Steve got what he seemed to want and preferred it to what he'd had before?
"Hypothetically," Tony said, answering Bruce's question with another, "what would you do if someone expressed, shall we say, an interest in The Other Guy?"
"Oh," Bruce chuckled uncomfortably, "well, that's not hypothetical. I forward those letters to SHIELD. I think there's some kind of watchlist—"
"But I don't mean the weirdos, right? I mean what if someone you were actually dating was interested in Hulk, y'know?"
Bruce chewed his lip, considering, "I think I understand where you're going with this, but it just doesn't apply here. The Other Guy is not relationship material, and also he is The Other Guy. He's not Bruce Banner. Whatever you want to call this, uh, iteration," Bruce swept a hand at Tony, "you're still Tony Stark."
"Tony Stark, now in paperback," Tony quipped. "And that's essentially what Steve said. But here's my problem: what if he gets his hands on this edition and likes it better?"
"Whoa," Bruce shook his head, "Tony, that's crazy."
"Is it?"
"What could possibly make you think that? He was really, really upset about this."
Tony laughed mirthlessly, "Yes, he was. Past tense. And then he got over it. And then he got hot and bothered by it."
"Okay," Bruce held up a hand, "I don't want to know this—"
"We were in the shower. I was telling a really horrible story—"
"Come on! I said I didn't want—"
"But you're my gynecologist? You're already automatically involved in my sex life, right?"
"Not like that." Bruce scrubbed a hand over his face. "Geez, Tony." He processed the new and unwanted set of images in his mind's eye before responding. "You're upset because Steve liked what he saw in the shower? Is that what I just heard?"
"Yeah. But we'd already agreed this shower was, uh, nonpartisan?"
Bruce sighed, "I want you to know that I really resent you for having to say this. But if you can get past the clothes and whatever you've done to your hair, you are, objectively, an incredibly attractive woman right now. And last time I checked, Steve Rogers had a pulse. You had him in the shower with you? Give the guy a break."
"But again, I was telling a horrible story about my life?"
"You honestly think he was listening? At some point, he was just staring at your breasts, Tony. Oh god, I hate everything about this conversation—"
"See, you aren't reassuring me—"
"Tony, being like this is making you miserable; it's making us all miserable. Steve would never pick this. He wouldn't pick this if you looked like Cindy Crawford on her best day."
Bruce stood up and switched off the tap. He pulled Tony's arm out of the basin and inspected it unhappily. "I'll have to debride it. Let's go to the lab. I'll pull you up a shot of lidocaine."