better than your dreams//tony stark

♡twelve♡

"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be."

Leo Tolstoy

I head to the lab wanting to see Tony. When I walk in Banner is scanning the scepter with a gamma ray detector. Tony looks at his monitors, shifting and solving algorithms and equations. I walk over to him and wrap my arms around his waist from the back.

"Hi," Tony says without turning to face me.

"Should we talk about you replacing me with Bruce?" I question.

I can hear Banner laugh slightly.

"Sorry, Baby. Banner has more PHDs than you," Tony tells me.

I smile. "That's fair. Haven't really had much time while babysitting you."

Bruce clears his throat. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process."

I let go of Tony so he can work. I look around the lab picking up different bits and pieces.

"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops," Tony says

"All I packed was a toothbrush," Banner says.

I smile at Bruce. "You know, you should come by Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land."

Bruce smiles slightly. "Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke... Harlem."

"Well, I promise a stress-free environment. No tension. No surprises." Suddenly, Tony pokes Banner with a miniature electrical prod.

"OW!" Bruce shouts.

Tony looks at Banner closely.

Steve walks in the door unhappy with the sight in front of him. "Hey!"

"Nothing?" Tony asks.

"Are you nuts?" Steve asks Tony.

"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?" Tony pursues.

Steve glares at Tony. "Is everything a joke to you?"

"Funny things are," Tony states.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," Steve states. He turns to Bruce. "No offense, doctor."

"No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things," Bruce tells us.

"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut," Tony states.

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," Steve states.

"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables," Tony remarks.

"You think Fury's hiding something?" I ask.

"He's a spy. AP, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony points to Bruce. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"

Bruce fumbles over his words, "Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..." Bruce stumbles over his words.

Steve looks at Banner in concern. "Doctor?"

"'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube," Bruce says.

"I heard it," Steve tells him.