Chapter Text
The elevator dinged and its sleek silver doors opened to reveal a carefree-looking Clint Barton, stuffing his face with a mystery-meat burrito. And Steve Rogers, aka Captain America when clad in his red, white and blue Kevlar triple layer bio-weave fiber suit and cowl, briefly looked up from his Starktech laptop and greeted, “hey, Clint.”
“Hiya, Cap! What’s up? Still trying to get a feel for that new laptop of yours, I see,” Clint observed, shooting the last remaining bite of his burrito in his mouth with a slight twitch of the corners of his lips, in imitation of amusement. “It hasn’t died on you, has it?” Clint asked, noticing the slight wrinkle between Steve’s brows as the latter lowered his eyes again to return his unadulterated attention to the laptop’s screen.
“I don’t get it. I keep closing this window that tells me I’ve won the lottery in Maryland, but it keeps flashing back up. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!” Steve looked up to meet Clint’s eyes again, irritation quite plainly evident in the tone of his voice and the flash of his otherwise clear, robin’s egg-blue eyes. “Please don’t poke fun at me… I swear I got this when I was using the SHIELD-issued tablet, but now it’s like I’m back at the starting line,” the blond groaned, vigorously scratching the nape of his neck with a grimace. He looked about thirty seconds away from picking up the god-awful contraption and hurling it against the nearest wall.
Considering that the nearest wall currently showcased Tony Stark’s high-flying coffee machine that looked like it would sooner launch a Mars-bound pod in an explosion of sparks in all shades found in the bloody color wheel than brew coffee, Clint thought a timely intervention was definitely necessary. There was no need to add an apoplectic Tony Stark in the mix—Captain America nearly blowing a gasket over being repeatedly told that he’d won a Maryland lottery was more than enough.
Then again, it was only ten o’clock in the morning. Plenty of time left for things to get horribly wrong in the Avengers Tower. Natasha hasn’t yet found her favorite Sleeping Beauty pajamas that Clint hid in the collapsible wall of the northeast vent, and she looked more than ready to choke someone out with the teabag string that morning when she tried to casually ask the rest of them about it.
Plenty. Of time.
Clint positioned himself behind the Captain to get a full view of what the latter’s concerns were about and leaned forward, bracing himself against the countertop and peeking at the screen by Steve’s right shoulder. “What are you doing at this site anyway? You’re not looking for porn, are you?”
“We eat here! You think I’d pick here to use the internet to look up porn?!” Steve turned to look at him, aghast but the beginnings of embarrassment were obvious in the pink shades of his ears.
The common floor, as the Tower’s peculiar group of residents has fondly begun to call it, housed the kitchen, dining area, gym, recreation room and reading room. The room was where they commonly assembled—not to face some nefarious villain or save ailing citizens by the thousands but to fight over who gets the first pot of fresh coffee, choose the next movie, pop a batch of popcorn, or suggest the next card or board game—when they got bored. The rest of the rooms comprising the common floor were situated off both sides of the wide hallway, the edge of which faced the elevator, bisecting the main space where the recreation room and the kitchen and dining area were located.
The common floor was brightly-lit during the day by the natural light coming in from the floor-to-ceiling tempered glass windows that could be dimmed on command with the help of Stark’s artificial intelligence and butler, JARVIS that everyone has also begun to fondly consider as an unofficial Avenger. By night, the room glowed from the ever-shining lights of the City that Never Sleeps and the dramatic, if at times over-the-top, mood lights scattered all over the critical points of the area. Comfy armchairs, couches and bean bag chairs littered the floor, especially in front of the humongous flat-screen television and home entertainment system right across from the kitchen and dining area.
While every resident of the Tower had their actual sleeping quarters at different floors of the building—and for Bruce, Stark and the former SHIELD operatives who had their personal laboratory, workshop and training space, respectively, in yet other floors, what undeniably made for home for most of them was the common floor.
“Alright, alright! Don’t look at me like that—all defensive and shit! What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for book recommendations. I’ve finished the last ones that Natasha suggested. I thought I’d look up some good recommendations in Google, but when I clicked a link to a—what’s that called—a thread? I keep getting these flashing windows and advertisements fill up half my screen! I keep clicking them off, but they refuse to go away. And then I get error notifications like nobody’s business!” Steve complained, pursing his lips in frustration.
He couldn’t really understand what technology had against him. He thought he was slowly but surely getting a feel for this unfamiliar world he’d woken up to a little over two years ago, but every time he thought he had a pretty good handle on things, a newer version of some cockamamie contraption would be shoved in his hands for him to re-acquaint himself with all over again. And every time he thought he could finally have even the vaguest of grasps of a pop culture reference, some other new fad would come and tweak the pop culture landscape. Steve really didn’t know what was worse: to be the last person to get the reference after looking at people knowingly nodding their heads in understanding for five whole minutes; or to be pointedly informed of the reference because people suspected that he wouldn’t know it for they would further suspect that he’d been sitting in front of a bare concrete wall for the past thirty months, mourning the bygone era; or to have to pretend to get the reference when he really couldn’t make heads or tails of the whole thing just so the conversation would not die a quick and painful death, moving forward.
A lesser man would be moved to tears. To noisy, messy tears.
But like before the time he was injected with the Super Soldier Serum, Steve took the punches and celebrated what little victories he could get. Hey—he did know about Google. At least.
“Know what you need? You need a one-stop, have-it-all website to go to. What do you need—book recommendations, movie recommendations, advanced reading copies of novels from upcoming authors, live streaming of documentaries, songs or virtual classes or online discussions and debates about history, psychology, philosophy, pop culture? What else—video instructional of cooking? Baking? Mixed Martial Arts techniques? Didn’t you once ask me if I know of any sites that announce art exhibits, art showcases or just art shows of up and coming artists? Well—have I got a website for you!” Clint elbowed Steve’s body out of the way to gain control of the keyboard so he could type an address on the web browser.
“www.stem.org?” Steve read off the screen with furrowed eyebrows. “This is not some dirty website with nearly naked da—ladies, is it? Because I can still remember the last website you told me to click, Clint.”
In Clint’s defense, he really didn’t imagine that the website was dirty and the homepage was of a group of scantily-clad girls in various come-hither poses, giving a big-ass dildo the best time of its life that left no ambiguity whatsoever as to the nature of the site. Steve was so angry and so embarrassed that he cracked the LCD of—quite unfortunately—Natasha’s tablet that Steve was borrowing at that time. Clint tried to invoke the defense of plausible deniability but ended up owing Natasha a new tablet and Steve some creative and profuse apologies. How was he to know that BOOKIE’S IDEAS was a porn site and Bookie was the name of the goddamned giant dildo?!
“No matter what ‘stem’ means in your innuendo dictionary, Steve, I assure you this is not another name for a giant dildo. This is a legit site and exactly what you need,” Clint countered. The website’s homepage loaded and Clint relinquished control over the laptop to Steve with a flourish like a magician waiting for applause from a captured crowd.
“’Welcome to Stem—a community that is divided into various points of interest that members and visitors alike may explore. The community is divided into Branches, Stems and Veins for easy navigation. Membership is by invitation. Kindly request for the issuance of an invitation by signing up using your email address. The site administrators send out 1,000 invitations every day to those in the queue. Request for an invitation now and enjoy Stem, your one-stop site for any and all requirements of the human condition!’” Steve read off the homepage description. Clint, with a whoop, further directed his attention to another notification at the bottom of the page. “’The site may contain information, works or products for adult enjoyment, but the same may only be accessed by members after an attestation of their voluntariness and age. Despite this, note that Stem is NOT a site for pornography or prostitution, and any member reported to be in violation of this directive shall have their membership revoked.’”
“You will thank—hell, worship me for introducing you to this site, Steve,” Clint elbowed Steve with an excited smile. “You will love it! You want to get book recommendations? All you have to do is go to the Literature branch, then the Book recommendations stem and various veins for the different genres—sci-fi, classics, popular, YA, fantasy, general, mystery, etcetera. You want music recommendations? Stem has a Music branch. You want art stuff—they’ve got it… locations and dates for art shows and exhibits, works up for sale by up and coming artists; they even have a discussion of the different art styles and new developments in the field. They have the Marketplace branch where you can buy old books, collector’s item books, previously owned Blu-ray DVDs for cheap prices, antiques, anything that money can buy that isn’t otherwise illegal! They have videos of how to cook Nutella cheesecakes, audio files of university lectures and talks and fora of various subjects. Stem even has make-up instructional videos—don’t ask me but Natasha is hugely invested in those,” Clint ticked off, animatedly. “They have poetry readings, they even have virtual raffles for special interest coupons or fashion sales or movie premiere tickets. I think Bruce uses this site to sit in on discussions about genetics or whatever it is he gets up to these days. Universities even make use of Stem to host their virtual classroom lectures which members can sit-in for once in a while. You have virtual walkthroughs of museums and expos—if that’s your thing. Stem even has a speed dating vein where you get to meet all members currently logged-in and accessing the same vein and you are given five minutes to chat exclusively with each of them.”
“Speed dating?” Steve raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Tough to explain, big guy. But why do I have to explain when you can live it?” Clint wiggles his eyebrows with a devious smile, gesturing at the laptop with another flourish. “This is like YouTube, eBay, Facebook, Skype, Goodreads and Amazon all rolled into one. It’s fairly new and it’s currently getting a lot of talk among netizens,” Clint explained, walking towards the fridge, flipping its door open and rooting around for some soda.
“Netizens?” Steve asked, testing the roll of the word in his mouth.
“Come on keep up with me, big guy! Netizens… internet citizens,” the archer answered with a slight roll of his eyes. “You’ve been around in this century—what—almost three years now? You have to remember these things! No wonder Stark doesn’t like talking to you,” Clint said, offhandedly. Steve knew that Clint meant no offense by that, but it still made Steve’s shoulders fall a smidgen. Clint could hardly be faulted for making that observation because he was only stating a fact—after nearly twenty-seven months since he and Stark first encountered each other in that quinjet, transporting Loki from Stuttgart and shortly thereafter, fighting for their lives in the Chitauri invasion, and after two and a half months since Steve decided to move into the Tower after the kind but insistent urging of Ms Potts, he and Stark are still no better than strangers to each other. If strangers could fight side by side in an alien invasion, share a shawarma dinner and the occasional meal, debriefing or movie, that is…
Steve could actually count his notable encounters with Stark since they met using the fingers of just one hand, loath as he was to admit it. He couldn’t understand it—how they could bear to fight bad guys, face life-threatening risks and put their lives on the line or in the hands of each other and not talk. He could imagine two people who truly hated each other’s guts actually talk more than they did. Even if it was only to hurl invectives at each other.
Now that Steve thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time he saw Stark around. Man, people who lived in the same damn house shouldn’t do this!
“Stark doesn’t like talking to me because he thinks I’m self-righteous, and that has nothing to do with my command of the 21st century… at all,” Steve countered, shifting in his seat to put his face closer to the screen so he could better read what he had to do to get a membership to this Stem thing.
“Hey since we’re on the subject of Tony… I thought you were going to lodge that request for your friend’s commitment—how’s that coming along?” Clint, as subtly as he could, steered the conversation to what he thought was a less sensitive topic.
Bucky’s commitment with a view to full rehabilitation.
Ever since Steve and his friend, Sam Wilson, successfully lured James Buchanan Barnes—Bucky—back to New York after a merry chase all over the blasted country that lasted for a couple of months, Steve had been languishing with the remnants of the agency that was SHIELD and Stark Industries—the Avengers’ unofficial sponsor—for any sort of plan or arrangement to have Bucky committed so he could make a full recovery after decades and decades of mind wipes and brain washing by HYDRA or any such nefarious organization that the Red Room—the one that Steve and Sam discovered to have been primarily responsible for turning Bucky into the Winter Soldier—mooched from.
“It’s in red tape hell. I’m trying to figure out the procedure for a request of this magnitude, and all I’ve been able to accomplish so far is irk Ms Potts because of my unrelenting follow-ups on that informal written request I filed. She always lets me down gently by telling me it’s in the agenda but I don’t even know what in blue blazes she talks about most of the time,” Steve said, gnashing his teeth to keep from showing any more of his displeasure over the current state of things. “I know it’s not my place to push this because I don’t know what mountains and oceans need moving for something of this scale, but I really, really want to do something for Buck, and I know he’s not going to get any better in that middling institution where he is right now. The extent of their expertise is to inject Paracetamol in his IV drips,” Steve continued, combing a hand through his blond hair and averting his worry-filled gaze from Clint back to the screen of his laptop.
“All I’ve gleaned from my clipped conversations with Ms Potts is that Stark is the approving authority, and without his signature, Bucky may be waiting for another sixty years before he even sees the hem of a specialist’s lab gown,” Steve mouthed. His finger may have been too hard on the mouse button as he clicked the link to queue his email address for Stem membership invites.
“Well—now is the perfect time to try to get to Tony’s good side then. Maybe you can bond in one of the Stem veins,” Clint jokingly suggested.
“I don’t know. I mean, you get along with Stark—well—better than I do. Maybe I should be taking your advice,” Steve grudgingly admitted. “How do you get along with Stark anyway?”
“I always make a point to talk about his favorite person,” Clint replied, taking another swig of his soda.
“Which is? Ms Potts? Colonel Rhodes?”
“Himself,” Clint provided with a casual shrug. “I never presume to know more about technology or some such shit than he does. And—I hate to admit it—the guy knows his stuff. So I just let him talk and sometimes we debate about the propriety of delayed trigger or EMP arrowheads and I let him humor me. I make one or two negligible suggestions that he can completely ignore. He’s not really as much of an asshole as the tabloids say he is. He is arrogant and sarcastic, but get him talking about stuff he knows like the back of his hand and he’s like a completely different dude. And I guess, the key to Tony is that you shouldn’t—and I mean shouldn’t—try to impose your will on the guy. He’s headstrong and he does get into the defensive if you try to call him out on his bullshit,” Clint explained, tapping the side of his soda can against the edge of the countertop in a staccato beat.
“So we just let him bully us, is that it? So the key to a good relationship with Stark is to let him push us around?” Steve asked, incredulous. He slapped the lid of his laptop closed to give Clint his attention.
“That’s not what I meant,” Clint denied, slightly shaking his head. “Tony considers himself a smart guy. And he is, in some aspects. And what I’m saying is, there is a certain manner of agreeing to disagree with a guy like that without openly throwing shit to his face. You, I’m afraid, have yet to… figure out that technique. So what happens is that you rub each other in all the wrong ways,” Clint concludes. He tilted his head to finish off what was left of his soda and then slammed the can flat on the countertop. “It’s like… instead of saying right out that ‘You’re wrong,’ you should instead say ‘what about if we explore other options?’ Subtlety, Cap. You try to assert yourself without ruffling feathers in the process.”
Steve looked at Clint, perplexed and mildly unconvinced at the concept that the latter was trying to expound on.
“See—you’re the type of person who wants other people to be upfront with you. If they have a problem with you, you want them to say it to your face, right?” Clint prompted, and Steve inclined his head in grudging agreement to the archer’s assessment. “Because you are a straightforward kind of guy. That’s you… that’s who you are. Only you cannot assume that of other people. You especially cannot assume that with Tony. And that’s why there’s this tension between the two of you. Because you want him to do what you do and tell you exactly what he thinks of you, but he doesn’t want to; and he’s the type who doesn’t do anything unless he wants to. So what results is this strange…dance between the two of you, which I must say is occasionally fun to watch.” He bumped a closed fist against the countertop as if to accent the point he wanted to drive home. “Natasha and I are exceedingly entertained. I think—but don’t quote me on this because I will go to my grave with adamant denial on my lips—Natasha may have decided to move into the Tower precisely to bear witness to you and Tony’s enjoyable dynamics. She might have said something about a similar exchange in the helicarrier, but I wouldn’t know about that because I was on my temporary stint as a mindless Loki lackey,” Clint finished with a self-deprecating snort before standing up and mildly stretching.
“I have introduced you to the joys of Stem and tried my best to shed some light in the darkness that is your association with Tony Stark, so I say, my work here is done. And I will see you on the bridge, Captain Kirk!” Clint gave a mock salute before pushing the elevator button. The elevator doors dinged open as if the machine had been waiting for Clint to leave the common floor all that time.
Steve’s only acknowledgement of the archer’s departure was a forceful but otherwise silent exhale through his nose, unsure if any such light was shed at all.
###
The doors to Dr. Bruce Banner’s laboratory hissed open and Tony Stark sauntered in like he owned the place, which technically, he did. He made his way into the lab like someone with a single-minded purpose and looked every inch like the powerful tech magnate that he was if it could be ignored that he was wearing tattered stonewashed denims, loafers darkened by grease and a worse for wear Metallica muscle shirt over a gray long-sleeved shirt, the sleeves of which were about halfway down his forearms, exposing his Girard Perregaux Opera Three watch on his left wrist that Bruce knew for a fact cost roughly the GDP of a small country, and a red and gold elastic loom band on his right that Bruce also knew was a gift from a cancer-surviving kid who proclaimed himself to be Iron Man’s biggest fan in Good Morning America.
Tony Stark always was a walking, breathing contradiction, in Bruce’s genius-level opinion.
“You do know that you are walking into a sterile environment, and you are, in effect, bypassing about four decontamination protocols, don’t you?” Bruce scathingly said, giving Tony the once-over with a severe frown through the top of his eyeglasses. The doctor’s gaze lingered on Tony’s offensively filthy loafers like he wanted to yank them off their owner’s feet and throw them to the nearest fire.
Bruce may have been a nuclear physicist by profession, but he has been known to dabble in many fields of science: genetics, immunology, cellular biology, bio-organics, quantum electrodynamics, thermo-nuclear astrophysics, biochemistry, and medicine, among others. So it was no wonder that his laboratory was an amalgamation of these many fields of interest.
Tony made a cursory sweep of the laboratory space with his ever-twinkling golden brown eyes and took in the bleeping machines, rows after rows of microscopes of varying resolutions atop stainless metal tables, miniaturized particle accelerators, several electron microscopes, a centrifugal compressor, wooden tables half-buried in wads of paper, books, journals, computer print-outs, the huge banks of flat screen computers intermittently situated in different sections of the lab—of which only Bruce would know about, the comfortably convenient walk-in cryo chamber in the far side, what was most likely the incubation chamber a considerable walk across from cryo that was separated from the rest of the space by ominous glass and stainless steel partitions and decontamination pockets with fiber glass panels, an inoculation chamber, lab coats, hazmat suits, aprons, gloves and a baseball mitt in various states of shabbiness, and a fair amount of uncapped pens, pencils, ballpoints, fountain pens and colored Sharpies that made for the familiar—and surprisingly homey—space that was unquestionably Bruce’s.
Tony made a mental note to make a firm refusal should Bruce invite him to the floor where he actually slept—if Bruce even actually slept there and not in the lab.
“Please don’t insult me, Bruce. As if you really have dangerous specimen under culture here that I don’t know about. Besides, as your host, I have a standing and irrevocable invitation to each and every floor, chamber, corner, crevice, compartment, cupboard and cabinet in this entire building at any and all times of the day or night,” Tony retorted by way of greeting, emphasizing his nifty use of alliteration and plucking a rolled-up sheaf of papers from the rear pocket of his jeans and brandishing it to the doctor.
“What’s up?” Bruce inquired, looking at the papers in Tony’s hand that were being held out to him.
“I need you to countersign these.” Tony pulled Bruce’s free hand and shoved the papers in it with a clipped, close-mouthed smile.
Bruce unrolled the papers and gave them a cursory glance, without really discerning what they were about.”Care to tell me what I’m being asked to put my name on here? I wouldn’t want to find out later on how I’ve signed over my soul to the devil or pawned my yet unborn spawn to the fey,” the otherwise meek and unassuming doctor tried the aura of mildly amused but slightly curious.
“Rogers’ request for re-allocation of the budget to provide for his friend’s de-programming,” Tony answered with a slight twitch of an eyebrow, as if daring Bruce to ask another question or provide contrary arguments against what the papers would set out to accomplish.
“You want to finance Barnes’ rehabilitation?” Bruce asked, slightly taken aback by what he thought he’d heard. Narrowing his brows and biting the corner of his lower lip, Bruce crossed his arms over his chest and asked: “why?”
“Why not?”
“Is that really Avengers business that absolutely calls for a re-alignment of the funds? I mean—what’s the justification? Doesn’t that mean, like, a boatload of work for Pepper to be able to sell to the Stark Industries Board to obtain their approval?” Bruce inquired further, casually leafing through the papers in his hands but with a critical eye.
“There’s no need for Board approval. Funds have already been set aside for this kind of eventuality. It just needs to be specifically identified and directed to an end—this end—but the mechanism requires for a countersignature before the approving authority’s sign-off for cogs to start turning,” Tony rattled off. He lazily leaned his hip against Bruce’s messy table while absent-mindedly rifling through the papers, newsprints, blueprints, candy wrappers, pen caps, stress balls and rags on the tabletop. Wrinkling his nose, Tony held up what looked like a wire, about two feet in length and wrapped around an electrical cord that looked like it had been chewed through by god-knows-what. “Do I even want to know?” Tony asked him with an ‘is this for real?’ expression on his face while holding out the wire-and-cord mystery lab implement.
“Don’t give me that look because I’ve seen your shop, Tony, and it looked like a crime scene,” Bruce huffed, yanking the wire thingy from Tony’s grip and stuffing it in the oversized pockets of his lab coat.
“In my own defense, that splatter of blood you saw when you came down to the shop was a one-off because there had been an accident with Dummy,” came the indignant argument.
“And you couldn’t have asked Clint or Tasha to countersign these because...” Bruce prompted the other man so they could get off the topic of who’s the messier genius because with Tony, that conversation could absolutely stretch for days. Days.
“They’re still, technically, affiliated with SHIELD. Anything they sign-off on would still have to be reported and threshed out by what’s left of the agency. There are still some obscure departments of it that are functioning. I don’t want them to have to clear this with some bumbling, low-level clearance idiot that’s still running that place to its very last legs,” Tony argued with an uncharacteristically serene half-smile. “Oh, and Thor’s still in Tulsa with Jane’s team. So—hmm—who else is left then? Come on, genius Bruce. I’m sure you’ve already reached the same conclusion as I have.”
“And you, yourself, couldn’t have signed off on this… Remind me why again?”
“Jesus! Remind me to play twenty questions with you the next time you want to order for pizza,” Tony groaned. But with a pout and teenager-like huff, he deigned to answer, “I am signing as the approving authority on this, but I can’t very well countersign and then approve the same thing now, can I? I am a genius but even geniuses are occasionally subject to the system—for purposes of checks and balances, accountability and some such horseshit. Now, can you please sign it already so I can leave your lab because that very curious smell like fresh warm piss is starting to overwhelm me,” Tony plowed on, daintily making a show of flicking a forefinger on the tip of his nose and making a gagging face.
Bruce plucked his pen from the lapel of his lab coat, bent over the table and affixed his signature in the spaces where he thought it was needed, but as he handed Tony the signed pages, he couldn’t help but needle some more. “You know, you still haven’t answered the question of why you’re pushing for this,” Bruce observed. “I hope you’re not doing this for Steve to start owing you and getting off your back when you bungle stuff during response incidents. Because that’s low even for you, Tony,” the doctor said as offhandedly as he could.
Tony just saw it fit to swallow the no-doubt sarcastic quip that was threatening to spill from his mouth and just smiled wanly. This was a new level of maturity for him—he usually had no qualms about giving people a piece of his mind since—hey!—there was a lot of it to go around with him being a genius and all. Plus he really, really liked the sound of his voice.
But he would sooner gouge out his eyeballs and shave his elegant and trademarked goatee than discuss with Bruce the exasperated complaints and shrill reminders that were getting more and more creative by the day from Pepper or the uncertain but sneaky looks and stares from Rogers that seemed like he had several choice words to tell Tony, but Rogers was just too decorous to say them. Either that or he couldn’t say the cuss words without making himself blush a bright puce.
“Like I said, you’re a genius, Brucie-baby. You’ll figure it out,” Tony, his words dripping with playful sarcasm, answered, snatching the papers back from Bruce before the latter could do anything more with them. “Oh—and if the good Cap asks, don’t make me out to be some kind of bleeding heart martyr that championed his cause because we both know that, as a businessman-slash-industrialist-slash-futurist, I always have ulterior motives with a view to self-preservation, or profit, or both. Let’s try to not give him the wrong idea,” Tony reminded, stuffing the papers back where they came from.
“What—don’t want him to know how deeply you care?” Bruce jested with a dramatic hand over his heart. Needling Tony was always a good pastime especially since Bruce knew that nothing irked Tony more than the emphasis of his apparent and cool indifference towards the rest of the team and towards the Captain, in particular.
“Stop lurking in Stem and get some work done, asswipe…” Tony, by way of parting words, spat with a shit-eating grin while signaling the nearby flat screen with a roll of his golden brown irises and a wiggle of his well-defined, mahogany brown brows.
A computer window was open, showing an active Stem vein with a raging discussion on genetic engineering.
“I was working before you started bugging me. Dick!” Bruce called out at Tony’s retreating back as his way of ‘Catch you later!’ and to conclude their banter for the time being.
Bruce snorted, shook his head with an amused smirk and went back to work.