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Tony was about to fall asleep when his phone suddenly started to buzz. Groaning, he threw his hand over his face and cursed the day that he’d made his agreement with Natasha. But he had made the deal and there was no going back, for better or for worse.
With another loud groan and a childish kick of his legs, Tony reached for his phone and lifted it to his ear.
“Hello?” he snapped and he didn’t even have to fake the agitation for once. He was genuinely exhausted and he didn’t like to be interrupted on the verge of sleep when it happened so rarely. “Hello?”
“Oh, uh, hi? I - is Nat there?”
“Nat? Who the fuck is this?”
There was a short pause before someone cleared their throat. “Sorry, sorry. I thought... I met Nat tonight? We got chatting in a bar.”
“Well, that’s obviously bullshit,” Tony said, looking up at the ceiling. It made a change, really, that the guy sounded quite unsure of himself. And not at all like the usual shitty men that Natasha seemed to attract, with his questions and his soft tone. “I’ve never heard of a Nat and this number belongs to a family friend who’s been dead for fifteen years.”
“Oh god. Oh god, I’m sorry. I - I only wanted to. Fuck, I’m sorry.” The voice actually sounded it, the man almost tripping over his words in haste to apologise. Tony hadn’t had a call like it before and he found himself oddly curious. “I swear she gave me this number. I only wanted to see if she wanted coffee. She – I’m–”
“Woah. Woah, dude,” Tony said quickly, waving his hand in front of himself as though the stranger would see it, “it’s alright. I’m messing, wow.”
“What?”
“I’m Tony, Nat’s best friend.”
There was a pause before, “what?”
Rolling onto his side, Tony tucked his free hand under his head and bit back a yawn. “It’s a thing we do. Nat isn’t exactly good with guys. No exactly about it, actually, she’s the worst at picking men.” And that included all of Tony’s bad decisions - and he’d made a lot of them in his college youth. And his adulthood, for that matter.
“So you... what is it that you do here?”
“Whenever I don’t go out with her, she gives my number out to the people she can’t get rid of and I answer the phone when they call and give them the dead person’s number speech.”
“Oh. Oh, so, that... That makes me a person that she couldn’t get rid of.”
Whoops. It did, indeed. “Yeah, sorry about that. You sound different to the others, though, if that’s any consolation? There’s a lot less cursing and yelling.”
“People curse at you?”
“Uh, yeah, Romeo. Did you not hear the part about Nat not knowing how to pick guys and having to give out a fake number?”
There was a soft laugh before a cough. “Sorry. That makes sense. I – I’ll let you go, then. It’s late.”
“It is,” Tony mused, biting down on a yawn. He’d been up for a few days writing code for hours until his eyes blurred and his fingers hurt, which was the reason that he’d had to leave Natasha alone at the bar and sign himself up to receive at least one phone call. As tired as he was, there was still something intriguing about the call and he found himself not willing to hang up. “You must have been eager.”
“I was,” the man said and Tony almost jolted with the honesty in his voice. It wasn’t hidden behind bravado or cockiness, or played off as a joke. “You’ve met her, right? Can you blame me?”
“Absolutely not. You forget that this isn’t the first call I’ve had, late-night-Lothario.”
“Oh. Right. Of course not. I just wanted to talk to her, though. She’s clever.”
Tony had been about to agree, when the words hit him and he frowned. “What?”
“Nat? She’s clever.”
“She’s a genius,” Tony said automatically, “but no one ever says that. They only ever talk about how hot she is, or what she was wearing, or what they wanted to do to her.”
“I didn’t want to do anything to her,” was the slightly bemused answer, “she was talking about her work and it was interesting. I used to beg my Ma to take me to museums every weekend and I thought it sounded so fun to be paid to be there.”
Nerd. “You were in a bar and you wanted to talk about museums?”
“Okay, when you put it like that I sound like a nerd.”
Tony snorted. “You said it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the man huffed a short laugh, “I get it. I’m a loser. Maybe that’s why she - well. Who wants to talk about work at a bar, right? She was really cool, though. And seemed super – I don’t know, open? Easy to talk to and I thought she was in to it.”
To be fair to the guy, Natasha had the sort of personality that drew everyone in and she knew how to make use of her sultry gaze, always making whoever she was talking to feel as though they were the centre of the universe; for better or for worse.
“Sorry, dude. You,” Tony sighed and rolled onto his back, “you sound like a nice guy, but Nat’s careful.”
Too careful, sometimes. For a stupid, brief moment, Tony almost contemplated asking for the guy’s name and maybe making Natasha reconsider. It was time for her to meet someone and Tony could vouch for the guy, in a weird sort of way.
“I’ll let you go,” came the quiet voice down the phone before Tony could open his mouth, “I... tell her I’m sorry, please?”
“What?”
“For whatever I did. However I made her uncomfortable. I’ll work on it, I swear. I don’t want anyone else to… I’m glad she had this method. It made me–”
“Woah, hey, uh…”
“Oh. Steve.”
“Listen, Steve,” Tony sat up and ran his hand through his hair, cursing his friend and his tired mind and the way that he seemed to be feeling something other than annoyance towards the asshole who had apparently made his friend uncomfortable. “You’re already miles ahead of the others by even saying sorry. I’m sure that–,” his phone buzzed in his hand before he could finish his thought and he muttered a curse as he pulled it away from his ear. “Steve? Hang on – I, oh. It’s from Nat.”
“What?”
“Nat’s texted,” Tony said, feeling as confused as Steve sounded as he read the text a few times.
“Oh, God. Is it about me? What did I do?”
Tony swallowed. “She, uh, she’s said ‘only gave it out once tonight! He’s a nerd, a gym-buff, and a sweetheart. Definitely your type and caught him looking at my lock screen pic of you more than once. Go for it’.”
“I... what?”
“That about sums it up,” Tony said on a slight chuckle. He ran his hand over his face and his laugh grew stronger. “You’re not an asshole at all, are you?”
Tony could almost feel Steve’s frown through the cell as he lifted it back to his ear and heard Steve’s confused voice. “I – I’m gonna go with no. I hope I’m not and I really, really would like to think this is some giant misunderstanding.”
Falling back onto his mattress, Tony grinned. “Nat’s the asshole tonight, Casanova. I think we’ve been set up.”
A deep sigh sounded in Tony’s ear, the following laugh as throaty as it was relieved. “What?”
“I think I was supposed to get the text before the phone call, in fairness to her. Don’t think she expected you to be so eager, though…”
“Oh, my God,” Steve said. “I’m never going to live that down.”
“You don’t sound all that upset,” Tony mused. He knew he wasn’t a patch on Natasha, but he did actually like the photo someone had taken of the two of them at Natasha’s last work gala. Maybe there was hope.
“I’m not. Not if you’re the guy from her lock screen,” Steve said and Tony laughed loudly at the clearly audible smirk.
“Guilty as charged.” A few more grey hairs, though, and an eye-bag or two, but who was counting?
“There we go then. A win all-round for me. I’m not an asshole and I got the actual number of a gorgeous guy. In all honesty, though, thank you. I thought I was gonna have to call my Ma and make her take me to her book club again.”
“Nope,” Tony said, pulling the comforter over himself again as he got comfortable, Steve’s laughter in his ear. “You’ve lost me.”
“Oh,” Steve said and Tony could really appreciate how nice his voice was when he wasn’t tense, “it’s a long story.”
“A bedtime story? I hear those help people sleep.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that?”
Tony grinned, fingers tightening on the phone when Steve’s voice dropped a little. “I don’t know. Depends what time you go to bed.”
“Alright, alright. I guess I have time for one short story.”
Dammit, but Natasha really did know how to pick them, Tony thought as he settled in to hear about book club.