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Tony noticed the toothbrush on a Wednesday, and that was when everything went to hell.
-
“I have an important question,” Tony said as soon as Rhodey picked up the phone.
“It better be, considering I stepped out of a meeting with the Secretary of Defense to answer it,” Rhodey replied.
It was potentially not as important as Tony had just implied, but what was done was done, so Tony rallied, “Where do you brush your teeth?”
There was the pause of a man who had been dealing with Tony Stark’s shit for more than 30 years and was perhaps about to decide that his shift had been long enough. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean where on your body, the obvious answer is teeth, but when you brush your teeth, where do you do it?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“It’s not a trick question, it’s a very real question.”
“Do you not brush your teeth like a normal person?”
“It’s not about me, it’s about - where do you brush your teeth? Come on, just answer me, please?”
Rhodey sighed. “In the bathroom.”
“Right, sure, normal answer. But I mean, do you brush your teeth on the go, do you brush them at work, do you - ”
“Tony, what’s the actual question here?”
“I’ve been very clear about the question, Rhodey, oh my god, why the resistance? Do you not love me anymore?”
“You gotta stop whipping that out for bullshit like this or one day you’re gonna say it and it’s gonna be true.”
“Okay, fair, but would you say you brush your teeth at home?”
“Yes, Tony,” Rhodey said patiently. “I brush my teeth at home.”
“There, was that so hard?” Tony said. “You can go back to your meeting now. Thank you for your service to this country.”
“You are a curse on my life,” Rhodey said, and hung up.
-
“Do you still have to brush your teeth?”
Bruce looked up at Tony with a bite of his lunch halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“Are you eating salad?” Tony said, horrified.
“Sure,” Bruce said. “Why?”
“Because if I had guaranteed muscles for life and no potential beer belly in sight I’d eat nothing but cheeseburgers.”
“Maybe I just like salad,” Bruce said mildly. “What were you saying about dental hygiene?”
“Is it a thing for you? Do you floss? Do Hulk teeth get cavities?”
“I hope not,” Bruce said. “I wouldn’t want a dentist to drill into them. I think they might be radioactive.”
“Uh, we’re adding that to a future team meeting agenda for sure,” Tony said. “So you do brush?”
“Sure. Why, do I have bad breath?”
“You have Hulk breath,” Tony said noncommittally. “You only brush your teeth in your own bathroom, right?”
“I don’t think my radioactive teeth are a problem for anybody else,” Bruce said.
“No, me neither,” Tony said, though he wasn’t convinced. “Pull back for a second. Macro level. People brush their teeth where they live, right?”
“Uh,” Bruce said. “Yes, I think?”
“So if someone had a toothbrush somewhere, that would imply they lived there, correct?”
“That seems to be a logical conclusion.”
“And people don’t keep toothbrushes in places they don’t live.”
“That’s the corollary, yes. Tony, do you need a toothbrush or something?”
“I can definitively say I do not need a toothbrush,” Tony said. “In fact, my problem is that I have too many toothbrushes. My cup runneth over with toothbrushes.”
“How can you have too many toothbrushes?” Bruce mused, but Tony was already gone.
-
“Are you done with your math homework?”
“Yup.” Morgan barely glanced up as her dad appeared holographically next to her at the dining room table from 150 miles away. Kids these days, honestly.
“And you didn’t need any help?”
Morgan, who was nine going on nineteen, rolled her eyes. “It’s just algebra, Dad. At my age you were doing calculus.”
“And I grew up to be an emotionally stunted adult, be glad we’re keeping you in the general vicinity of grade level. Hey, question. Did you happen to leave a toothbrush in my bathroom this weekend when you were here?”
“In your bathroom?” Morgan said. “No. Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, didn’t we used to brush our teeth together sometimes?”
“Yeah, when I was like five,” Morgan said, as if that had been a literal eternity ago.
“Right,” Tony said. “So the only toothbrush you have at our place is the one in your bathroom?”
“Yup,” Morgan said. “Why, are you experimenting on it?”
“Why would I be experimenting on your toothbrush?”
“I don’t know, some kind of DNA project?” Morgan suggested. “There are a lot of cool applications of very small amounts of DNA. Ooh, are you growing a clone of me?”
“You scare me, and I love you,” Tony said. “See you Friday?”
“Whatever,” Morgan said.
-
“You read minds, right?” Tony said conversationally.
Wanda looked up at him with narrowed eyes. Tony still sometimes got the feeling that she trusted him about as far as she could throw him - which was admittedly pretty far, she was cool like that - but that meant it didn’t surprise him when she said, “It depends.”
“What if I needed some intel?” Tony said. “Nothing dangerous. Very above-board. You free tonight?”
“I don’t read minds on demand.”
“Okay, I can work around your schedule.”
“And I don’t read minds to sort out other people’s interpersonal conflicts.”
“Who said anything about an interpersonal conflict?”
“Nobody had to, it’s you,” Wanda said dryly.
“Ouch, but also, fair.” Tony rapped his knuckles on the table. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“Have you considered having a conversation?”
“Groundbreaking,” Tony said. “If only I’d thought of that first.”
“Good luck,” Wanda said, and rolled her eyes.
-
Tony stared at his phone. He’d typed up and deleted at least twelve texts - different greetings, different wordings, there had even been some emojis in a couple drafts, ugh. Who was he? Why was this happening? He hated everything.
“I give up,” he said, and then, because everything apparently hated him back, he accidentally hit send on a single letter “p”.
Tony thunked his head on the table. All the technology he’d invented and he still couldn’t recall texts on command. What was the point of being a genius if you couldn’t even -
His phone buzzed.
Whatever it is, just ask him yourself, Sam replied, and that was so unfair because Sam couldn’t even read minds!
-
Tony was working (not hiding, thank you very much) in the workshop later that night when Friday murmured, “You have a visitor, boss.”
Tony looked up. Busted.
“Busy?” Steve asked.
“Depends who’s asking.”
Steve smirked. “What if it’s me?”
“I can probably take a break for our fearless leader,” Tony said.
Steve walked up next to him and peered down at his holo-blueprints. “What are you working on?”
“Acceleration for Falcon,” Tony said. “I hear he wants to go faster.”
“Sam always wants to go faster,” Steve said. “He won’t stop asking for more power until he can go as fast as you.”
“Well, that’s a pipe dream,” Tony said. “For one thing, he’d need a full-body suit of armor or he’d turn to jelly, and for another I’d literally never let anyone go faster than me, hello, have you met me?”
“Try telling him that,” Steve said with a snort. “He thinks he can - ”
“Do we live together?” Tony blurted out.
Steve turned to look at him slowly. “Where did that come from?”
“No where,” Tony said. “Nothing. Ignore it. We’re moving on.”
“Oh-kay,” Steve said. “So - ”
“It’s just that you started leaving clean underwear in my middle drawer,” Tony said.
“I leave underwear in your middle drawer because my underwear always disappears when I stay overnight and I have to go back to my floor commando,” Steve said. “Do you hide them? Do you have Dummy sneak in during the night to steal them? It doesn’t make sense - ”
“And there’s a charger on the side of the bed you sleep on - ”
“You had six chargers on your side, I pilfered one, maybe you should design your phones to stay charged for more than a day, how’s that for an idea - ”
“It’s the toothbrush!” Tony yelled. “You left a toothbrush in the bathroom. My bathroom.”
Steve leaned back. “The toothbrush.”
“People brush their teeth at home,” Tony said.
“Oh,” Steve said.
They stared at each other. Tony got the feeling Steve wasn’t understanding the magnitude of the situation.
“We live together and I didn’t realize it,” he clarified.
“And,” Steve said, “is it a problem for you that we live together?”
“I,” Tony said, and stopped. “I haven’t thought about it, really.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“I mean, I knew we were serious,” Tony said.
“Well, I’m glad to hear you didn’t think it was a year-long one night stand. They say you’re smart, after all.”
“You’re being mean,” Tony said. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation and you’re mocking me.”
“Is this what you texted Sam about earlier?”
“Oh my god,” Tony said. “Forget it, forget I said anything - ”
“No, hey,” Steve said, and now he looked uncomfortable, which wasn’t what Tony wanted either, ugh, this was all wrong. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be - I can take the toothbrush away.”
“It’s not about the toothbrush,” Tony said.
“Yeah I know, Tony, so can we talk about whatever it is about?”
“What it’s about is that I’m in love with you and I want you to live with me and I should probably have just said that instead of trying to decode your fucking dental hygiene habits,” Tony said.
Steve blinked. “You… want - ”
“Yes, I do want, not that it matters because apparently we already do live together and I didn’t notice.”
“We don’t live together,” Steve said.
“We don’t?”
“No, because I don’t just move in places without being asked,” Steve said.
“But,” Tony said, “the toothbrush.”
Steve sighed heavily. “Tony, I left the toothbrush there three months ago on accident. It didn’t mean anything.”
“It didn’t?”
“No, it didn’t. I don’t communicate with you via the subtleties of bathroom implement placement. It’s hard enough to communicate with you via totally straightforward conversation.”
“I resent that.”
“I meant it’s hard enough for me,” Steve said. “So... you want to live together?”
“Well,” Tony said, “at this point I kind of thought we already were and I got used to the idea, so.”
“It didn’t freak you out?”
“Nope.”
Steve raised his eyebrows.
“It maybe freaked me out the absolute tiniest bit,” Tony admitted. “But what freaked me out more was that I might have messed up and missed a step somewhere. I don’t want to miss anything with you. I’m kinda trying to get it right.”
“Oh, yeah?” Steve said, sliding a hand around his waist.
“Not that I ever get anything wrong,” Tony said, stretching to press a kiss to Steve’s bottom lip.
“You? Never.”
“So you want to live together too?”
“I’d been trying to figure out a way to ask,” Steve admitted, pulling Tony off balance just so he could catch him. “I figured another month or so of thinking about it really hard might do the trick.”
“Talking’s probably easier.”
“Not by much,” Steve said. “So does this mean I get more than just the middle drawer?”
“Baby, you can have all the drawers you want,” Tony said.
“And space in the closet?”
“That will have to be negotiated,” Tony said. “At length. The UN may need to get involved.”
“I’d rather keep them out of our relationship from now on, if it’s all the same to you,” Steve said. “Oh, and Tony?”
“Mm?”
“Please don’t ask Wanda to read my mind again. She doesn’t appreciate getting put in the middle.”
“Hey,” Tony said, affronted, “how does she know I was going to ask her to read your mind?”
“Uh,” Steve said, “because she can read minds?”
“Oh, goddammit,” Tony said.