[Avengers x LCF] Home Is Where the Doctor Is

Chapter 4: A Farewell and a Welcome

A/N:

I wrote half of this while having a fever because if I don't attend school, then I guess I need to be productive at something else, so pardon me if the quality drops to something funny because my head too is feeling a little bit funny right now not gonna lie.

And sorry for the long update, school has been messing up with me lately and one of my friends just moved school to Japan because of her parents, so yeah, it's been a lot of hits. I think the AO3 curse gets on to me, but fortunately, no accident has occurred lol.

Oh, and I tweaked Tony's dialogues in every chapter to fit into his canon snarky personality, I hope you won't mind that. Anyway, enjoy your reading!

ii.

Cale wasn't bothered by the sight of the haunting teddy bear gawking from across the floor.

He really wasn't bothered by it. As a mature adult with a mind of his own, he shouldn't be troubled by such a lame joke. But the image of that bastard Sayeru chanting you are my sunshine to him did unnerve Cale much more than he would like to admit.

Sure, if they were put in a juxtaposition—the puny Bear King and the sweet teddy bear—it would be like comparing Hell to Earth. And yeah, they were just about the same for some, but wouldn't that just make the comparison a lot better? Because if Cale was asked to find the similarity, he would point out how their gaze irritated him in the worst way possible.

It was hellish, in both mundane and psyche ways.

Cale had worn headphones, shuffling randomly, whatever music Tony added to his liked songs ("Seriously, Cale, you don't know ACDC?!"). It was a noise-canceling one, Cale swore, but in the end, the feature was in vain in front of the stuffed doll in front of him, as though the interns managed to make a tech to counter it. And Cale believed it wasn't far from the truth, these were Tony's interns he was talking about anyway.

Cale had tried everything, including putting it in a separate room. He had thought it would have worked—that was until the very same unanimated teddy bear chased him full speed across the room, already growing two lightning wheels without his knowing.

Cale didn't need to explain how terrifying it was for people to sympathize with him. He almost considered the idea that being in the same room as the bastard Sayeru and knocking him on the head was better than whatever demon he had summoned from enraging the two interns.

Then while thoughts were whirling violently in his mind, the door opened. He didn't hear it—see, the noise canceling clearly worked—but he saw Tony come in with a knowing grin.

"Tony," he began, taking the half off as he couldn't even discern his own voice among the roaring music, "shut this abomination now."

"Hi, Cale Bear," he greeted, unbothered as if the gross song and the even more foul voices singing it didn't cause any goosebumps to the body. "You don't like the present?"

"I want to set the Tower on fire, so I can get rid of this present," he stressed.

It had been almost half an hour since he received this demonic teddy bear, and he had heard the same song looped twenty times, yet the incurring thought of burning it all together with the whole building had exceeded the hundredth. You know, just casually adding the iconic Iron Man red to the Tower using fucking fire.

Tony tilted his head to the side, giving it a thought.

Tony had done nothing even when he knew. It was either he found the situation amusing or the interns had bribed him—or just both, considering he wouldn't welcome things that didn't entertain him, no matter how mouth-watering the information Theo had fished from the deep sea of the internet was.