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“Pepper, you can’t be serious,” said Bruce.
“Of course I can,” she said, and smiled at him serenely, crossing her legs under her glass desk. She looked like Sheryl Sandberg’s wet dream.
“Did Nick sign off on this? Tell me Nick didn’t sign off on this.”
“Do you really think I would have recruited without his approval?” She signed another form with an unnecessary flourish. “And Erksine’s?”
“I think you’re—”
“Careful. I am, technically, your employer.”
“Barely!”
“And yet enough that it counts.”
“He’s acted in, what, two productions—”
“He’s done very well in both of them. He’s part of the demographic we need to be courting if theater is going to survive the 21st century.”
“And his father’s connections have nothing to do with it—”
She set down the pen abruptly. “You know,” she said, and her voice didn’t change, but it warned him; he stopped talking. “I get tired of having my decisions constantly questioned. I may not be your director, but I am your one and only PR director, and if Tony is good enough for Abe, he’s good enough for you.”
Bruce sighed, pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. The slowly-swelling migraine throbbing behind his eyes was going to need some attention, and some drugs, shortly.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sure Abe can make it work.”
“And I’m sure Tony will be just fine as our lead.”
“I know I’m not a hotshot baby actor with an MFA—”
“Bruce, you were just apologizing, do you really want to screw it up this fast?”
“Fine. Fine! I’ll bring you flowers. And if this is a disaster, you’ll buy me a drink. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said, and took another unhealthily large swig of her diet soda.
It wasn’t that Bruce didn’t trust Pepper. It was that he didn’t trust anybody. Absolutely anyone, ever, at all. A stage manager who trusted people was destined to be temporary.
“You have to learn to delegate,” said Steve over Chinese that night. He gestured emphatically at Bruce with his chopsticks. “If you can’t relax at least a little you are going to blow a gasket before opening night.”
“It’s not enough the playwright is such a—okay, first off, it is ludicrous that he insists on going by ‘Loki,’ he’s not Cher for God’s sake, we all know his name is probably Herbert—but he’s a huge pain in my ass. And now we’re picking up a pretty-boy actor with a rich daddy? And this is supposed to go well? I don’t like being attached to flops. It’s bad for the resume.”
“You’ve survived before, you’ll survive it again.”
“Nobody cares if a set designer has a flop, nobody blames you, they just look at all the pretty things you made and they get that warm fuzzy feeling.”
Steve rolled his eyes expressively, mouth too full to permit immediate reply.
“Anyway, it’s just the latest in the never-ending shitshow that is this company.”
“Look,” said Steve around the remaining mouthful, “so he’s a rookie. Everybody was at some point. At some point, back in the distant, dim, unimaginable past, even you were a brand-new baby stage manager. You can suck it up and help him out for one fucking run.”
“I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”
“I’m the only person left who will listen to you, that’s why.”
Bruce flipped him off. Steve grinned around an egg roll and returned the gesture with both hands.
“You’re very sassy for such a little man,” muttered Bruce.
He was steadily working his way through the first pot of coffee when the new lead arrived, voice carrying through the entire goddamn theater.
“Hi! Hello! Is everyone here? Are we all ready to embrace the day? Get a fresh outlook on life? Greet the sunrise? Maybe do a little yoga.”
Oh, fuck you, thought Bruce, slamming the pot back down viciously. It tasted like asphalt anyway.
Tony Stark, with his fucking awful little goatee and his ridiculous face, came around the corner with a grin on his face and an arm slung loosely around Steve’s shoulders. Bruce’s sense of deep, immediate hate deepened further.
Steve was laughing at something. “No, no,” he was saying, “I am not repainting—”
“Not even for me, Sunshine? I swear—”
“Okay, we’ll talk about it. Tony! Meet Bruce. Bruce, meet Tony.”
“Hi,” said Bruce grimly, sticking out his hand.
“Hi! Hey, it’s good to meet you, I really enjoyed your work on The Children’s Hour last year.” Tony pumped his hand with greater than necessary enthusiasm. Bruce dropped his hand as quickly as humanly possible.
“Thanks,” he said flatly, “but the credit for that really goes to Maria. She was an exceptional lead.”
“Yeah, no, absolutely, I couldn’t agree more! Maria and Betty were fantastic! But the overall flow was just top-notch, ran like Usain Bolt.”
“Thanks,” said Bruce, through gritted teeth, “but I really need to get back to work.”
Steve grinned at Bruce with a roguish wink. “Of course you do, buddy,” he said. “Of course you do. Bruce is no fun, you’ll learn that soon enough. Come on, you should meet Natasha.”
There was some comfort in that. Natasha, at least, would probably hate him.
Tony insisted on listening to ringtones to decide which one to switch to while Bruce was trying to talk to him about his cue for Act 1 Scene 3.
Bruce said, “I’m—are you kidding me?”
“No, no, just a sec,” said Tony, poking through three bone-jarringly awful sounds in quick succession.
Bruce could feel his eyes bugging out with the urge to commit murder.
Tony jabbed at the phone one more time and set it down. “Okay. Sorry. What were you saying?”
Just as Bruce opened his mouth to answer, the phone went off again.
“Sorry! This is my accountant, I need to take it!” He touched Bruce’s arm briefly, in apology, as he lifted the phone to his ear.
“Accountant?” Bruce was left saying, scathingly, to an empty stage.
“He’s not bad,” Natasha said when they were struggling with the speakers, up in Clint’s territory of catwalks and rafters and cobwebs everywhere Jesus Christ.
Bruce just snorted.
“No, I know,” she said, thoughtfully. “It really seems like he ought to be. That beard. But he’s all right.”
“I’m not talking about this,” he said. “Pass me that staple gun.”
“You’re going to set yourself on fire.”
“Still preferable to this conversation.”
No matter what Pepper thought, or what Natasha thought, Bruce read the fucking news. Howard Stark was a goddamn asshole on Koch-brother levels, who thought money could buy him literally anything, up to and including elections and other men’s wives, and Tony Stark only showed up in the papers when he got photographed falling out a window drunk off his ass or abducting a yacht full of supermodels. There were pictures.
So he’d gone to acting school. Good for him. It wasn’t going to fix what looked like a wicked case of rich-boy-itis.
Tony showed up late to a meeting with Costume. Bruce wandered in, looking for Peggy, just as Tony rushed in, out of breath, gasping, “Sorry—ran—into—friend—couldn’t get away, had to tell her about the play, very exciting,” and Bruce was ready for Peggy to shoot him a withering glare.
Peggy sighed and said, “When are you going to invest in a watch, Stark?” in a voice that from her very nearly qualified as fond.
Tony immediately started stripping out of his clothes, saying, “Okay, no, we can catch up, look, I’m practically naked already!” as Peggy burst out laughing. Tony peeled off his already-tight shirt, up over his head, and for a minute there was just his fucking sculpted chest and abs and arms, as he got his head stuck in the fabric and flailed. A huge surgical scar down the center of his chest, raised, white with age.
Bruce left without remembering what he wanted to ask Peggy about.
Natasha was right. Tech rehearsals started—just the outlines, getting the blocking down, figuring out how not to kill the actors. The play, called What Light Left in Heaven, featured what Loki called “magic realism as translated from literary conceptualizations to the stage with a Dali-esque flare,” which meant to Bruce that there were all kinds of large, heavy objects that needed to come out of nowhere and then return to nowhere. It was a fucking nightmare.
But Tony wasn’t bad.
He had a monologue in the second scene of the first act. The main characters had been established, and this was his chance to ruminate out loud about what it all meant. It had a definitively Shakespearean quality to it—one man, on a shadowy stage, spotlight pinning him, talking about life and death and love. It was just a tech rehearsal, so it didn’t need to be good. It would have been easy to chew it beyond repair or to fuck up the cadence of Loki’s poetry, which (though Bruce would have died rather than say this to Loki out loud) was elegant and even beautiful. Or to get distracted by the props whizzing past his head and drop a line or stumble on the timing.
Tony didn’t, though. He kept to his pacing and he delivered the lines so naturally it sounded like—like Patrick Stewart, for fuck’s sake.
Toward the end of the scene he leaned forward, conspiratorially, which wasn’t in the stage directions. From his booth, Bruce found himself leaning back.
“Not bad,” Nick said from the shadows of the front row when Tony finished, getting a nasty frown from Abe.
Bruce jerked back. Jesus Christ.
Tony made it a little easier to hate him when he blew in to a tech rehearsal twenty minutes late, carrying a tray of donuts.
“You stopped for donuts?” asked Bruce in disbelief. “When you were late?”
“It’s only civilized. Besides, I’m barely even—”
“TWENTY. MINUTES,” roared Bruce. “Do you have NO RESPECT for the OTHER PEOPLE HERE? Do you think you can do this show by YOURSELF?”
“Hey, come on! You don’t even need me! You can, what, get a stand-in, I’m just here for—”
“You’re HERE so you UNDERSTAND WHAT WE’RE DOING. If you had ASKED your stand-in and ASKED US it might have been DIFFERENT BUT YOU DID NOT. YOU WERE TWENTY MINUTES LATE. AND YOU STOPPED FOR FUCKING DONUTS.”
Tony looked down at the box in his hands. “Does this mean you don’t want one?”
Bruce let out a wordless howl, flinging down his clipboard, and by the time he came back, Tony was up on the stage with the rest of the crew and they were working around Bruce’s absence. Tony looked insultingly unruffled. There was a smear of chocolate next to his mouth.
“He knows Pepper,” Clint volunteered the next time they were up on the catwalks.
“Huh. Really?”
“Yeah, I think they used to date. And when he found out where she was working he was all ‘come on, honey, let me come work on your show,’ and she was like ‘ew, no, you’re such a dick,’ and then he was like ‘but it’ll be fuuuuun’ and you know Pepper’s a sucker for fun.”
“Is she, now?” asked Bruce dryly.
“I don’t know, I’m just here for the rope climbing.”
“I started to suspect that a long time ago when you wouldn’t shut up and do your work.”
“For what it’s worth,” Clint added, with studied nonchalance, “I hear he’s single. And ready to mingle. On both sides of the aisle.”
“Is that—Clint, what the fuck are you even trying to say?”
“That he swings both ways? Or, shit, all ways. Something like that? Anyway, he’s single, you’re single, you’re grumpy—”
“I can’t fucking believe you right now. I’m going to jump off this catwalk just to avoid you. And then haunt the theater.”
“You can’t do that. OSHA.”
Bruce twisted the screwdriver so hard the interchangeable tip came off and plummeted to the theater floor, far, far below them.
“You motherfucker,” he said to Clint, or the screwdriver. Either. Both.
“You coming tonight?” asked Steve, sticking his head in the door.
Bruce sighed. “I don’t know. I really wanted to go over the notes from the rehearsal.”
Steve just waited, batting his extravagantly long eyelashes.
“You know that doesn’t work on me.”
“I’m giving it a shot anyway. Come on. You need a break, you need a drink, I need someone to drink with.”
“Steve…”
“Bruce…”
“Oh, fine.” He shut the binder for the show bible with a decisive snap. “But if I have nothing worthwhile to say tomorrow, it’s on your head.”
“I can live with that. Get your shit together and let’s go.”
Peggy and Angie were already at the bar, an order of hot wings between them, and Natasha was tapping away on her phone with an expression of somewhat foreboding concentration.
“Bruce,” she said without looking up as he slid into the booth next to her, “what do you think of Vivaldi for the second act lead in to the love scene?”
“What, Four Seasons? Hackneyed? Trite? Cliche?”
“Fuck you too.”
“Don’t ask if you don’t want to hear it.”
“That’s what I told her,” said someone else, sliding in next to Bruce—it was Tony. Where the fuck had Steve gone—he was up at the bar. Go fucking figure. “She didn’t like it any better from me.”
“You’re an actor,” she said, finally glancing up long enough to grab a fry off Angie’s plate. “I expect you to have terrible taste.”
Steve came back, smile suspiciously wide, and dragged a chair up to the end of the table.
“What is it?” asked Tony. “No, don’t tell me, let me guess. He’s going to be able to make it tonight after all? Oh, you’re saving him a seat, aren’t you? That’s adorable.”
“Who is?” asked Bruce, feeling unpleasantly out of the loop.
“Only the light of Steve’s life, the most attractive and heroic—”
“Oh, shut up,” said Steve, laughing, slapping at Tony’s gesticulating hands. “He’s a friend, that’s all.”
Tony said to Bruce, very seriously, “A friend. A friend, you understand, who’s a wounded veteran, recently returned from war, and, I have seen pictures so I can verify this, very sexy, who apparently went to school with Steve in their boyhood and Steve has never gotten over his enormous crush on him—”
“Keep talking and I’ll find a way to rig the sets to disembowel you on stage,” said Steve, but his cheeks were still pink and there was a little smile curling around his mouth.
“That’s terrifying, Tinkerbell. I mean it, I’m shaking in my boots. Anyway, he has that whole tall-dark-and-handsome thing going on. Very James Dean, really, he looks like he could break into a monologue about how fucked-up the system is at any moment.”
“You’re the only monologuer around here,” Steve said. “Now shut the fuck up, he’s going to be here any minute.”
“This is the absolute kicker, though,” Tony said to Bruce, turning to face him and lowering his voice conspiratorially. “His name is Bucky. It’s a childhood nickname that stuck. How cute is that? Is it not just disgustingly cute?”
“Yeah,” said Bruce. Tony was close enough that the air between them was warm, and he smelled a little like cologne. Bergamot, maybe. His hair had lost some of its perk over the day despite whatever gel Tony used, and was falling over his forehead.
“You want anything? I’m going to head up and get a drink anyway, you want me to bring you something back?”
“I’ll—sure. Whiskey. Neat.”
“Get me one too,” said Natasha, who was back to frowning intently at her phone.
“Will do! Be right back! If Buuuuucky gets here make sure you torture Steve for me!” Tony scooted back out and headed up to the bar, and Bruce, glancing after him, had a moment to profoundly regret that Tony had worn jeans that looked like they’d been worn soft and thin, painted on to him.
Peggy, meanwhile, came up for air from her wings (a neatly-demolished pile of bones slowly growing next to her) to say, “So, Steve,” and Steve just shook his head frantically at her.
“Ah, give him a break,” said Angie. “Steve, what are you thinking for the big love scene in the third act? Velvet?”
“Oh, God, no,” said Steve, visibly recoiling. Angie laughed.
“Good, because velvet would have been a terrible mix for the nightgown I want to use.”
That was about the time the much-discussed Bucky showed up, and Christ on a crutch, he was gorgeous. Bruce smiled and shook his hand—Bucky didn’t seem inclined to say much of anything, which was fine; a bunch of theater people could fill any amount of silence—and watched as Bucky and Steve tried to form some kind of telepathic bond by staring at each other all through sharing a personal pizza. God.
Tony came back after a few, and managed to behave himself reasonably well with Bucky, limiting himself to the topic of Bucky’s hair: “Do you condition? What do you even condition with? Your hair is so glossy, it’s unreal, I have got to try that product.” Bruce’s teeth ground slowly.
When people finally started breaking off for the night, Tony turned to Bruce and said, “Want to split an Uber? I’m not far away, I just feel too lazy to walk it.”
“Nah,” said Bruce, “thanks.”
Bruce ended up leaving before Tony, and the next morning, he was treated to the sight of hickeys all along Tony’s neck.
It was just a rehearsal. They had plenty of time for any and all assorted bruising to fade before the play opened. He drank two pots of coffee by himself before lunch.
“You have a problem,” said Natasha, appearing from nowhere behind him to grab a wad of cables.
“AUGH!” he shouted, and tried to pretend he hadn’t jumped out of his skin.
“Caffeine isn’t a food group,” she added on her way out.
“Shows what you know!” he yelled after her, and then covered his eyes with one hand in regret. He used to have snappy comebacks. Maybe he did need to cut down.
Once they got into rehearsals with full blocking for the love scenes, everything was so much worse.
Tony and Helen should have looked ridiculous together. She was petite, graceful—champion bowler, which you would not necessarily guess, unless you got a good look at her right arm or got your ass soundly kicked over beer and disappointment—and Tony, when he was being Tony, was like an overactive RC toy car, crashing around the stage with all the subtlety of a drunk moose. But as Raphael, Tony had a way of holding her, cradling her, really, while managing to look breathless and overwhelmed and grateful and distraught all at once, that crushed the hell out of the second act scene, and Helen would waver into his arms like a mirage in a desert, and it was just. It was very upsetting. It was good, it was a good scene. Bruce took notes in a black, fuming mood.
“What do you think?” asked Abe, slipping into the booth, rubbing his thumb across the stubble of his beard like he always did when he was thinking. “Good?”
“Yeah. It’s good.” Bruce flipped back a few pages in the bible. “I’m thinking we maybe have Tony start farther to the left, gives them a little more room for movement.”
“Mm. I like it. We can try that next time. What do you think of our boy wonder?” His comment sounded even drier with the Austrian accent.
Bruce shrugged. “He’s—doing well.”
“I think so, too. I am almost disappointed. He seems too lucky, somehow. Rich family, powerful father, and then he comes out on to my stage and manages these scenes? It is unfair.”
“No disagreement here,” said Bruce, playing with the edge of the pages in the binder, letting them flip across his fingertips.
“Yes, I did not think there would be. Well, their break is nearly over. Let us move on.”
Someone on stage yelled, “What the—Bruce! Bruce! There’s—is this oatmeal?”
(It was not, unfortunately, oatmeal.)
A week later, after hours, when he had assumed he was alone in the theater, he was going to check out one of the rigs that had been giving them trouble and found their master carpenter pinning Tony up against a wall, Tony’s legs wrapped around Thor’s hips.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelled, dropping the bible. A small explosion of sticky notes and sheets of paper came out of it like a mushroom cloud.
“Oh, shit,” said Tony. Thor set him down carefully.
“I’ll just—I need these—and then—”
Tony dropped to his knees to help Bruce round up the notes, their heads almost bumping as they both reached for the papers, and Bruce resolutely did not look at Tony’s face, the high heat across his cheekbones or shining, kiss-red lips. He definitely did not jump when their hands touched while Tony handed him notes and as soon as he had the last of the papers he scrambled back to his feet.
“I’m really sorry about—” Tony was yelling after him.
“Not a problem! Sorry to interrupt!” Bruce shouted back, and when he got back to his booth he sat down heavily and then started banging his head against the desk, as quietly as he could.
Tony showed up sans hickeys the next day, which was something.
He attempted to find Bruce in his booth, which Bruce could see from the far corner of the catwalks, where he was definitely not hiding.
“What the fuck are you doing up here?” asked Clint suspiciously. “Are you spying on me? My work is just fine, I’ll have you know, I get no complaints.”
“No, no complaints. I just wanted to verify what kind of equipment we’re using.”
“You have never done that.”
“I’m starting now. It’s a good habit to get into.”
“Do you have a hangover?”
“What?”
“It’s dark up here. Sometimes people come up here when they have hangovers.”
“No. I’m not hungover. I was here last night until God knows when.”
“Oh. So you don’t have a life.”
“No.”
“Good, I was worried there for a minute.”
“Fuck you, Barton.”
“Fuck you too, boss.”
Bruce watched Tony retreat from the booth, looking puzzled.
“Hey,” said Tony, at lunch. Bruce dropped his entire carton of fried rice. “Oh, God, I’m sorry!”
“How did you find me?” asked Bruce, brushing some of the fried rice off his shirt, peering into the carton to see if anything had survived. It had not. “I’m—this is a storage room!”
“Yeah, I’m naturally curious,” said Tony. “Like a bird dog, except instead of treeing raccoons I just poke around and see what I can see. And on that note, about seeing things, look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for messing around in the theater, I’ll try and keep it more professional than that, I usually am, it’s just, have you seen Thor, that guy is the size of a—”
“How much would I have to pay you for you to stop talking immediately,” said Bruce.
“But it’s not a thing—”
“How much?”
“Look, it’s my fault you have no rice—”
“Damn right it is—”
“Let me get you lunch,” said Tony, and they stared at each other for a minute.
“I really need to work on my notes,” said Bruce. “But if you wanted to bring me more rice I’d eat it.”
Tony nodded, looking solemn. “Okay.”
Fifteen minutes later Tony came back with rice, gyoza, and egg rolls.
“You didn’t have to,” said Bruce, but the effect was ruined by the gyoza already crammed into his mouth.
Tony smiled. It was big and sweet. It made him look about sixteen, all hopeful.
Jesus fucking Christ, thought Bruce, and shoved an egg roll in before he could say anything stupid.
“Gotta work on these,” he mumbled around the food after a minute. “See you at r’hrs’l.”
“Yeah,” said Tony, still smiling at him, and then thank sweet baby Jesus he finally left.
“Attention, crew,” said Bruce over the mic. “It has come to my attention that some of you think that your personal lives are my business or should be discussed with me in some way. This is not the case. None of us are friends. Thank you. Places.”
“We love you too, big guy,” said Helen into her mic.
He flipped her off from the booth. She mimed kisses back.
God damn it, she was a good lead. She went from all business the second before they started to the soft, pliant, romantic heroine instantly.
Abe said, “Oh, no, no,” and went onstage to murmur at her. Bruce couldn’t quite catch it, but she didn’t look annoyed; she tipped her head to one side, thinking about it, and then nodded.
The next time, she put more delay into the approach to Tony, almost dragging her feet. Abe was right. It was better. It made Tony look even more luminously uncertain, prolonged the agony of waiting to find out whether Raphael would get to hold Lucia.
Bruce looked down at the bible. He scratched into the margin in pencil, slower approach = better tension, adjust blocking?
Then he added fml because if you can’t complain to the binder, who can you complain to, really.
Tony showed up with hickeys again. Bruce burned himself on his coffee and spent the rest of the day insulting Peggy’s sketches, Natasha’s transitions, and Steve’s sets. All three of them just rolled their eyes at him, the assholes.
“Bruce,” said Peggy, pleasantly, “do get bent.”
“Or get laid,” muttered Angie from where she was fishing a measuring tape out of her kit.
“Go to hell,” he said. “Also, the ruffles here are going to drag, do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass that’s going to be with the cords we’ve got taped down? Can you at least lighten it up so nobody trips and dies?”
Once dress rehearsals started, everybody started getting tense. It was just there, in the atmosphere, like the smell of sulfur or the inevitability of death.
Tony’s costumes were all rich, deep jewel colors in soft fabrics, which made him look a little like a figure skater, and also made his eyes look twelve percent larger, which Bruce wouldn’t have had to notice if he could have avoided him completely.
Unfortunately, when Tony wasn’t in costume, he’d taken to showing up in clothes that had holes and patches. Bruce lost a significant amount of time at one meeting staring at a hole in Tony’s shirt over his side.
Watching Tony and Helen kiss—which was spectacular, they were very good, very convincing; he cupped her head in his hands and kissed her like it was the end of the world, like she was the only thing in the world—Bruce slowly crushed an empty tin can of the root beer he’d been drinking.
Opening night, everyone was ready to jump out of their skins. Bruce, for once, was in a pretty decent mood. Load-in had gone fine. The blocking was set; cues timed; lighting—well, Clint actually was good. They’d have the moody gels when they needed them. Natasha was just slowly flipping a knife as she waited in between obsessively checking and re-checking the sound equipment, looking even more inscrutably Russian and threatening than usual. The last rehearsal had been solid but not exceptional, which was good, because too perfect a final rehearsal meant the show would probably suck.
Then Tony showed up. He stuck his head into the booth and said, grinning, “What do you think?”
The goatee was gone. His face looked younger, softer. It was going to be a great change for the character. It was—
“It’s good,” said Bruce, “but did you run it by Jane?”
“Yeah, yeah, she said it just makes the makeup easier because she doesn’t have to work around my ‘ridiculous chin upholstery.’”
“Okay, great,” said Bruce.
When Tony left, Bruce sat down, adjusted his headset, and then pinched the bridge of his nose, hard. More Tylenol. He needed more Tylenol.
The show that night was good. A flying prop almost decked Helen and it turned out they hadn’t accounted for a few seconds of time in a song that Natasha had changed a few days ago, and one of the supporting actors blanked completely during their scene but Helen gave him a lead-in and he managed to recover without making it too obvious that he was a complete asshole.
After the show, Thor carried Steve to the green room on his shoulders like a conquering hero, laughing and waving; Bucky, who’d made his way backstage, saw it and there was a sour twist to his mouth. Everybody was talking over each other at once, rehashing the best parts of the performance, bemoaning the dropped cues and missed lines, celebrating the sense that they had done it, they had survived this at least once and could therefore survive it repeatedly.
Bruce was squeezed in, trying to reach Abe to congratulate him, when he heard Tony mutter to Bucky, “Little advice, Thor could sling Steve around like a discus thrower. You want in on that action, get it while the getting’s good.”
Bruce risked glancing over to see how Bucky was taking it. Bucky was staring at Tony with an expression that registered as simultaneously blank bafflement and shocked rage.
“Just saying,” said Tony, putting his hands up, palms out. “If that look in your eyes is anything to go by, you should be, well, I would say getting flowers but that might not work for your boy, I don’t know, rooftop dinner by moonlight? Start a fight club?”
Bucky didn’t say anything at all, just escaped through a gap in the crowd.
“Sheesh,” said Tony, turning around. “You try to help out.”
“He might not have wanted any help,” said Bruce dryly.
“He needs it, though! He’s dragging his feet, Steve’s dragging his feet, they’re going to waste way too much time doing this whole weird thing they’ve got going on. Life is short, it’s for living.”
“Yeah,” said Bruce, “I got the feeling that was your philosophy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Tony, but Bruce had finally managed to get to Abe for hand-shakes and mutual complimenting.
It was further proof of the non-existence of a benevolent god that Tony had groupies.
Most of them were a gaggle of high school kids who came to see the play as often as they could. They took to lining up outside the actors’ door, and Tony, god damn it, encouraged them, signing whatever ridiculous souvenirs they’d brought with them this time. Bruce went out once to help Natasha load some gear and heard Tony holding court, pontificating about career advice.
“—just never know when you’re going to find out what you want to be doing,” said Tony.
“I already know, theater is it for me,” said a girl wearing black lipstick and so much tattered fishnet it looked like she was campaigning to be an honorary Rodarte sister.
“Well, just keep an open mind,” said Tony. “You never know what’s going to catch your interest, you don’t want to miss out on something good just because it’s not what you expected. I was going to be a scientist!”
“You could have been a scientist?” asked a skinny kid with a spiked leather harness over, bafflingly, a flowered grandmother sweater. “Dude.”
“Hey!” said Tony, in mild outrage. “I’m contributing to the world here! I’m making people happy, that’s got to count for something!”
“Yeah, but—” the kid started to say, but one of the other girls jabbed him sharply in the ribs with her elbow.
“Shut up, he’s being nice,” she hissed.
“Bruce?” said Natasha, sounding bored. Bruce whipped around and handed her the pack.
Stage Report
Run time: 146 minutes
House count: 563
Notes:
General – Good, cue issues from yesterday fixed.
Props – There was a dildo stuck to the prop wall for the entire duration of Act 2 Scene 1. No one is admitting to putting it there. It is absolutely, 100% Steve Rogers. I have no proof, but I know it in my bones. This is revenge for Tony calling his boyfriend “peaky” and “Edward Scissorhands chic” at rehearsal.
He sighed and started hitting the delete key.
Helen was a little slow on her feet one night and took a nasty whack to the side of her head from the flying props. Bruce said, “You should go to the ER. You might need stitches.”
She glared at him, holding a wad of gauze to the side of her head; it wasn’t a big cut, but she was bleeding. She said, “Fine,” with a low, angry sigh.
“I’ll come with,” said Tony, who looked pale.
“You don’t need to,” said Helen.
“Do you want me to, though?” He sounded so anxious and so young.
Helen hesitated for a moment. “Well,” she said.
“I’ll come, I’ll come. Here, I’ll get my—let me get my jacket—look, I’ll look up the closest place on my phone. I’ll navigate, I can be a navigator. Bruce, are you driving?”
“Yeah, I’ll drive.”
Helen got the front seat and Tony clambered into the back.
“So this is a worker’s comp thing, right?” said Tony, directly into Bruce’s ear, much more loudly than was strictly necessary. “Injured in the line of duty? Helen, do you want me to call a lawyer just to check? I don’t know whether the ER will be on the ball about this, I’m—”
“I’m sure they’ve seen worker’s comp claims,” said Bruce.
“Don’t bother calling yet,” said Helen. “If they try to fuck me over on it, then you can call.”
“Okay. Okay.” Tony was still breathing fast, little gusts of breath tickling Bruce’s ear. “How are you feeling? You can get bleeding into the brain, you know, and if you start feeling, uh, dizzy, or faint, or—”
“Then the best thing to do would be to go to a hospital, which is where we’re going,” said Bruce.
“I know, I know. I’m just, you’ll tell me if you start feeling dizzy? Or seeing double?”
“I don’t have a concussion,” said Helen.
“But would you know, though? How many fingers am I holding up? I’m very concerned for your brain, it’s the brain that has to hold up to the weight of my tremendous brain on stage, you see—”
“How many fingers am I holding up,” said Helen, and eloquently raised just the one.
“Oh, good,” said Tony, “your shining personality is intact.”
They made it to the hospital without any attempted murder. Tony said, “Pull up in front, I’ll get out with Helen, you can park and then come back and meet us.”
“Okay.”
Parking was irritatingly expensive, but he made it back into the waiting room in time to see Tony making Helen laugh helplessly, before she dissolved into tears.
“Whoa, whoa,” Bruce said softly, sitting down in the free chair next to her. “What’s the story?”
Helen shook her head.
“She’s worried it’s going to scar and she’ll never play a Hollywood lead,” Tony supplied. “I told her it’s fine, she doesn’t have to worry, because a) she was never going to play a Hollywood lead anyway, she has too much pride to take whatever shit role they come up with, and b) if it does scar she’ll make a wicked awesome villainess, Hollywood can’t resist an Asian badass with a scar. If Lucy Liu had a scar she’d get twice the roles.”
“Yeah, but then they’d all involve swordplay, as opposed to maybe half of them.”
Helen laughed harder, still hiccupping a little bit.
It took them the better part of an hour to see her. Tony kept finding excuses to loudly point out that he was Tony Stark, and for once, Bruce couldn’t complain about it, because it did seem to speed things up a little. There were other people waiting with cuts just as bad who’d been there longer when they called her back.
The doctor who saw them peered at the cut with a penlight.
“How bad is it, Doc?” asked Tony, vibrating with anxiety. “I mean, this is my co-star, here, so give it to me straight, unless the news is bad, in which case, give it to me very gently with some vodka and a chaser, you hear me.”
The doctor clicked off the light and straightened up. “She’s going to be fine. This won’t scar. She doesn’t need stitches, we can put on some butterfly closures and seal it up. You’ll never know where the cut even was.”
“Oh, thank God,” said Tony, slumping forward in his chair and putting his head between his knees. “I feel faint. Bruce, if I start to fall, catch me. I’m even prettier than she is, I can’t go getting head wounds.”
“I’d like to apologize for my colleague,” said Bruce to the doctor.
She waved it away with a faint smile. “At least he’s not drunk.”
“Only on self-importance.”
“Hey!” whined Tony, sitting back up.
“Can we make this about Helen, please?” asked Bruce pointedly. Tony subsided, glaring.
Bruce drove Helen home afterwards. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek as she climbed out of the car.
“Do I get a kiss?” demanded Tony in mock affront.
“You’ll get one tomorrow night, sweetcheeks,” she said, flipped him off again, and went up into her building. Bruce waited until he could see the door close behind her.
“Where am I dropping you off?” he asked Tony.
Tony paused for a long minute. Finally, he gave an address.
Bruce said, “Navigate me there,” and Tony did, sitting up behind him, so close his breath still tickled Bruce’s ear.
The wrap party—well. It fucking sucked.
Bruce was nursing something Natasha had pressed into his hand, a livid and unnatural shade of green; when he sipped it, the overpowering crème de menthe made it clear that this was either an attempted grasshopper or a close relative thereof.
Well. If you couldn’t grimly sip something sugary on your fourth drink when a perfectly good play was closing, when could you.
“This was a good one,” said Clint thoughtfully.
“Jesus,” said Bruce. “I don’t usually see you on the ground.”
“Yeah, well. They get mad if I try to take the drinks up to the rafters.”
“I hope you can at least understand why that is.”
“It’s because they hate fun, I know. It’s cool.”
Bruce sighed, heavily. “It was a good one.”
“I know you thought it was gonna suck—”
“You know no such thing—”
“But look at it. It didn’t suck.”
“It didn’t suck,” Bruce said, and had another sip.
Steve and Bucky were—you could loosely call it dancing, if you felt so inclined. Steve’s head rested gently against Bucky’s chest as they swayed on the impromptu dancefloor. They had at some point gotten over themselves enough to actually date, and now the general consensus was that they were on a fast-track to marriage and suburban bliss. Even money on who was going to end up staying home in an apron. Steve was shorter, but Bucky knew his way around a spatula and might be forced to cook in self-defense. Tony was talking animatedly to Helen, wearing a brown leather bomber jacket that had to be too hot but did, it was true, have a very classic vibe, over an incredibly thin white t-shirt and jeans that sagged a little on his hips.
Thor had Jane, the sweetly beautiful makeup artist, perched on the edge of a table, and he was standing between her knees and talking to her softly.
“People get sentimental at these things,” said Clint. “Good thing we don’t.”
“Nope. No sentiment at all.”
“I’m going to miss this play. I’ve never seen so many people have to duck so many times.”
“If they’d just rehearsed their blocking like they meant it—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Clint, taking another pull off his beer. He’d picked the label off at some point.
“You know what I’m going to miss?” asked Bruce.
“Enlighten me.”
“That moment when the lights go down and then you put the green gel on, you know—”
“Oh, when the fuckin’—”
“Yeah,” said Bruce. “Don’t tell anyone, though.”
“You’re a sap. It’s okay, I figured.”
“Would ruin my reputation.”
“Damn right.”
They stood in silence for a few more minutes before Clint said, “I’m going to check on Nat,” and drifted off.
Bruce made his way over towards a corner that looked like it had a little bit of a breeze. All the people crammed in were making the room hot and sweaty, and it was starting to get on his nerves.
He found a space—it was almost behind a low wall that seemed to serve no purpose, like it was there to shelter the bathroom doors, even though they were behind a glass block wall themselves, so it was just a weird dead-end space. But there was a bench, and he sat down on it heavily.
He tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, letting his shoulders relax. A little bit of air was coming in through a duct, cold and if not sweet at least clean, smelling like rain and pavement.
Of course he hadn’t been there more than five minutes when someone crashed into him. “What the fuck, Tony,” he said, before he’d even fully figured out what had happened; Tony was sprawled, half across the bench and draped back into his lap, blinking up at him in confusion and concern.
“Hey,” said Tony, a little too softly to be conversational. The half-light of the room was making his eyes glitter.
“Hey,” said Bruce, back, looking down at his face.
“Sorry about—”
“It’s fine.”
Tony still wasn’t moving. Bruce didn’t make him.
Tony’s jaw was tensing, working a little, like he was going to say something. Finally he said, “I—look, I get it if this is overstepping, or whatever, but. Look. Why don’t—I get the impression you don’t like me. And I—I’m very likable, generally speaking. Widely well-liked.”
“You’re a little obsessed with being likable,” muttered Bruce.
Tony flinched—just barely, but Bruce saw it, and instantly felt a nasty sensation in the pit of his stomach, readily identifiable as guilt.
“No. Look. It’s not that I—I just—you’re very…” He trailed off, sighing heavily, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Very what? What are you even trying to say here? Why are you squinting like you’re in pain? Do I have spinach in my teeth?”
“Oh my God you never stop talking,” said Bruce in desperation. “Or, or kissing people. And it’s. Well.”
“Wait, wait,” said Tony. He started to grapple towards sitting up, which had all the grace of a water buffalo learning ballet and meant his hands were all over Bruce, gripping his arms, pushing off his knees. Tony was starting to smile. “Are we talking about feelings? Is that what’s happening here?”
Bruce put his hands over his eyes, sliding his fingers under his glasses, and groaned.
“Oh, man, that is what’s happening, that’s exactly what’s happening, this is great! Okay, okay, you know what, I’ll make this easier on you, I’ll go first!”
“Great,” said Bruce without moving his hands. Tony was sitting up, now, basically in Bruce’s lap, and his face was just—much too close for Bruce to be looking directly at him.
“I keep trying to hit on you, and I figure either you know that and you’ve been ignoring it on purpose or you don’t know that and maybe I should tell you, but honestly, I think you do know it. And I was thinking you just weren’t into me but that’s not it, is it? Because you’re jealous when I show up with hickeys, and you think I didn’t see your face when you saw me with Thor? Which, just for the record, I’m not a huge slut or anything, tell me you wouldn’t go there if you had the chance, built like a—okay, okay, yeah, anyway. You do like me but you feel like you shouldn’t? Is that it? Because if that’s it you should let me change your mind.”
“You don’t have to,” Bruce got out, muffled by his hands, pressing his fingers into the hollows of his eyes.
“What—why not? No, I’m telling you, go on a date with me, a real date, somewhere nice, we’ll dress up, I’ll woo you. I’m willing to put in some work here, I think we could be so good. Like, a thing! Not like a making out backstage thing, like a real adult thing! It’ll be fantastic, I woo very effectively. I—”
“I mean you don’t have to,” said Bruce, finally putting his hands down, turning his glasses around and around in one hand, “because I already did.”
“Oh,” said Tony. “Oh. Well. Offer stands. Nice dinner, restaurant of your—”
Bruce kissed him, and if pressed he’d say it was to shut Tony up as much as anything. But really, the way Tony’s hands came up to his shoulders and squeezed, the way Tony gave a muffled little moan into his mouth, didn’t need a justification.
Tony shifted, putting his hands on the wall behind Bruce, until he could get his knees down on either side of Bruce’s legs. That was nice. That put them face-to-face, and the kissing was good, very good, with Tony tilting his face to chase Bruce’s mouth, and he couldn’t quite ignore how Tony’s hips were just barely rocking; sweet Jesus, he thought, he was not going to be able to ignore that. Just brushing up against his cock so he was getting hard and harder by the minute, still kissing, endless and slow and thoughtful and deep. He could feel Tony getting hard, too, until they were both grinding into each other, half-kissing and half-panting.
Tony broke the kiss and said, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh, goody,” said Bruce dryly, and tried to go in for another kiss.
“No, no, hear me out. It’s a good one. I think.”
Bruce sighed heavily. “Okay.”
“So, what I’m going to do is—okay, here—” He pulled his arms out of his jacket, and let them fall over his shoulders as he leaned forward. The satin lining rustled, and smelled like Tony’s cologne, and made a little tent around their bodies. “Okay, good! And then—”
“Oh,” said Bruce, as Tony flipped the button on Bruce’s jeans in one easy gesture, hidden now by the coat.
“Yeah, oh,” said Tony fondly as he pulled down Bruce’s zipper. His right arm was to the wall; nobody was going to see, even if they came around the corner—and nobody had, even.
He wrapped his hand around Bruce’s cock, and Bruce couldn’t help moaning.
“Now, this part is very important,” said Tony. “No thrusting. Dead giveaway.”
“Thought you said you, ah, weren’t a slut,” murmured Bruce as Tony paused to undo his own jeans.
“Not a huge slut,” Tony said almost absent-mindedly. “Oh, wait, okay, here we go.” And he got them both into his hand, and started stroking again.
This was even better. Tony, finally, starting to shake a little, going slow but squeezing so tight; cocks starting to get slick in his hand. Bruce leaned in for another kiss and ran his hand up along Tony’s side, up under his shirt, rubbing his thumb over Tony’s ribs.
Tony had to gasp, and then he murmured softly, just into Bruce’s lips, “Would you like to fuck my mouth sometime? I’ve seen you looking at it.”
“It’s a very nice mouth,” said Bruce. “Yeah. I would. Would you like me to?”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” said Tony, and he dipped back in for another kiss, pushing Bruce’s shirt up his stomach with his free hand, scratching him lightly.
Bruce put his other hand up into Tony’s hair, sliding his fingers through it—still a little stiff from gel—and Tony moaned into his mouth. Bruce tightened his fingers, and Tony moaned louder.
“You like that?” whispered Bruce, and tugged a little. “You want me to do that while I fuck your pretty mouth?”
Tony jerked and came, trembling silently, forehead leaning in against Bruce’s. And that made Bruce come, too, kissing Tony fiercely.
Tony took a minute to gasp, and then wordlessly fumbled in his pocket and came up with a—of fucking course it was a monogrammed handkerchief, but the important thing was that it did a pretty good job of taking care of the mess before Tony got them zipped up again.
“Jesus Christ,” Tony said faintly, “I didn’t realize you, uh, you really go for it when you—decide to go for it.”
“I don’t half-ass anything,” said Bruce, giving Tony’s ass a punishing squeeze to demonstrate.
Tony laughed almost silently. “So, uh,” he said, “I’m thinking, what if you wanted to come home with me tonight? I know we got to the good part here, already, but there’s more good parts, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I think I do,” said Bruce. He was smiling. He was smiling so hard it was almost hurting his cheeks.
“Great! I’ll get a car—do you want to hang around here longer? I didn’t think to ask—”
“Nah. Just escort me back to your place, like the gentleman you are.”
“Great,” said Tony, and he was smiling, too.
Somebody across the wall put on Rent. Of course somebody put on Rent. Bruce slid his hands up under Tony’s shirt again and Tony jumped a little.
Bruce leaned in for more kissing, Tony’s arms looped around his neck, so neither of them saw Natasha come around the corner, but she wasted no time: there was a sudden flash from her camera.
“Nat!” said Tony, scandalized.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, already staring down at her phone again. “Okay, that’s on Facebook.”
Bruce couldn’t help it; he started to laugh. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Tony, ignoring Natasha.
On the way out Steve threw Bruce a sloppy salute, grinning and waving his phone. “Shit, she’s fast,” muttered Tony.
“Yeah, well,” said Bruce, grinning, one arm around Tony’s waist, “she’s just advertising that you have excellent taste.”
The cast was singing along, mostly, drunk and sentimental, and at the top of their lungs. “Measure in love, seasons of love—”
Tony was singing along under his breath as the door shut behind them, and there were little puffs of water vapor in front of his face. He was hilariously off-key; he was never going to play Hamilton. Bruce kissed him again, because he could.