Work Text:
“Alpine Barnes comes in today,” Tony says as he enters Pepper’s room. “Do you think her dad has a crush on me?”
The word room is a hyperbole. Still, two of them manage to fit in the space, no matter how much Pepper glares at him above her stack of important documents.
“Two things,” she tells him, trying to inconspicuously push him away. “First of all, it’s weird when you pretend that a pet is its owner’s child. It could be cute if you were a kid, but not when you’re a grown-up man.”
“Hurtful and wrong, but continue.”
“Why would you think the owner’s into you?”
Tony scowls.
“He’s here like every other week, but his cat is fine. Why would he be here if not for the exquisite joy of my presence?”
“He’s hypochondriac? Anxious? A first-time cat owner who doesn’t know what he’s doing?”
Tony deflates.
“He’s hot, though.”
That makes Pepper stop whatever she was doing (probably something boring and insignificant, like the paperwork their clinic needs to stay alive) and look at him with more attention.
“Are you talking about that grumpy buff guy who never talks and always seems like he came from a serial killer poster?”
“And walks like he wants to gruesomely dismember you in a back alley,” Tony nods with a dreamy smile. “So hot. He does speak, by the way. He has a nice voice, very contrasting with his appearance. Soft.”
Pepper stares at him for a while, silent and judgmental, and finally hits him with, “I’d say this is something you should talk about with your therapist, not me, but I know you hate therapy.”
“Just because I don’t have any use to it—”
She shakes him off.
“Please don’t hit on the serial killer.”
“He has a cat! You can’t be absolutely evil and have a cat!”
“Of course, you can. You remember Thor’s catsitting emergency? The cat was his brother’s.”
“No fucking way.”
“Yes, and that Cornish— you know what, why do I always find myself going deep in these ridiculous arguments with you? Ugh. Please let me finish this,” she sighs and waves a scary-looking folder at him, “and don’t get murdered, I can’t afford a day off for the funeral.”
“Ms. Potts. Are you saying that you’ll miss me?” he portrays an exaggerated show of strong emotion but leaves her alone, going back to his lab and his waiting for James Barnes’s visit.
It’s a bit of a problem. A hell of it, to be frank, for, left alone without any work to do and Pepper to pester, Tony grows restless and irritated, his brain needing the stimuli, the constant flow of one task after another. Pepper (and Rhodey, and Happy) says it’s anxiety or some other diagnosis she clearly has no qualification to give, but that’s just how Tony’s brain works.
Now, it latches itself on Barnes. Usually? A welcoming subject. Tony can imagine those shoulders for days. But now, with a seed of doubt planted by Pepper’s distracted reaction, Tony can’t but fixate on other matters. Specifically, Barnes’s reasons for coming that often. Tony was— not exactly sure but, let’s say, vaguely confident with the idea of James nursing a crush on him. He didn’t spend much time on it — no matter how enticing the idea is, he’s usually too busy with Alpine to pay it any attention — and his opening words to Pepper were just that, an opening. Now, however, her dismissal is too much for him to ignore.
The stubborn asshole in Tony wants to prove her wrong.
“Of course, he’s into me,” Tony mutters to Dummy. “She just can’t see him when he’s here. You saw it too, right?”
“Dummy,” is the Dummy’s answer.
Unsurprising, considering it’s the only word the parrot knows.
“Yeah, she’s a right dummy,” Tony tells him, snickering, then casts a glance to the door, checking whether she has heard him. Judging by the lack of a shoe currently thrown at him, she has not.
But the thought remains. Tony catalogs the past: all of James’s visits, way too often for him to be a typical regular, Alpine’s usually perfect health. The shy little smiles the man shows from time to time, mainly at one of Tony’s idiotic jokes or something cute that Alpine pulls, a great contrast to his typical threatening demeanor. They transform his face, those smiles, make him tenfold more gorgeous.
Alright, so it’s not like Tony hasn’t noticed the guy and his whole slightly murdery attractiveness. There might be some wistfulness in Tony’s desire to be right, to prove that Barnes has some hidden feelings for him. There might be hope for reciprocity. Only in his head, of course, for it’d be too unprofessional to hit on a client, no matter what the context is.
But maybe it all is in his head. Maybe that’s just Tony, mistaking pleasantries for flirting, unable to understand anyone who isn’t a machine or animal.
When James arrives, Tony has already made himself gloomy enough that his first instinct is to take Alpine in his arms and hide his face in her fur, praying for the cat’s purring to banish all the sadness.
He doesn’t. Obviously. He’s a grown-up and a professional veterinarian to boot.
He may spend full five minutes playing with her and asking who is a good girl. She swats him in the face with her paw as a reply, very lovingly — with only half of her claws out.
James smiles at his antics — a careful, small smile that he tries to hide — and something in Tony’s insides loosens. He goes into work mode. James transforms from the hot guy to the owner of Tony’s patient, helpful only for providing answers; Alpine catches his all attention.
Alpine, who’s perfectly healthy. As usual.
“So,” Tony forces the awkwardness of the topic from his voice, “I have to say, we can find a way to make this more efficient. And, eh, less costly, too.”
James’s head spins round. His face, frozen in a very uncomfortable expression, is perfect proof the matter at hand isn’t coincidental. Oh boy. Tony braces himself.
“Alpine’s fine,” he says, because this is the good news, and you should start the hard conversations with those, right? “She’s always fine. I think I’ve seen her not being fine only, like, once out of all fifty of your biweekly visits.”
Okay, judging by the way James’s face twitches, that was too much good news.
“Which is fine!” Tony interrupts himself quickly, voice just a little panicked. “Not that I don’t love seeing both of you here! And, you know, it’s perfectly normal to worry about your cat, a lot of people do that—”
“It’s Alpine,” James stops Tony, thankfully, before he makes more equally doubtful statements. James’s voice can’t be described as anything but exhausted and long-suffering. “She wants to see you.”
That stops Tony’s brain, too, for a while.
“She wants to see me.”
“Yes,” James confirms, wincing a little. “She keeps yelling, stops eating, bites me when I’m sleeping, and just, y’know. Turns into a demon. I tried different stuff, but she only calms if I take her to you.”
Alpine, sensing they are talking about her, stands up from where she was just curled up, walks to Tony, and starts purring. Then she headbutts him on the shoulder and looks at his face with the most devoted expression. The world feels surreal; it distances and fades around Tony. He tries to remember if he ever saw Alpine being uncomfortable, or scared, or angry, as cats usually do in the vet’s office. He can’t.
He pets her — a gesture of habit. She lovingly bites his hand and starts licking it. In a way cats do with the humans they like.
“You spend a ton of money on appointments because your cat has a crush on me,” Tony says in a dead voice, still not getting how is this his life.
James snorts.
“I mean,” he adds, voice uncharacteristically nervous, almost shy. “I don’t mind the company. So. The master and the pet alike?”
Oh.
Oh.
Tony shuffles around Alpine, still demanding his attention, feeling all kinds of mushy unprofessional feelings, but under that — pure, unadulterated vindication. Suck it, Pepper, the hot guy does like him.
“I’m sorry,” James continues. “I know I take your time with it—”
“Oh, no, it’s fine. Really. I don’t get that many patients. But, yeah, this isn’t going to work, since you, little miss, are perfectly healthy,” he bends to say to Alpine’s face. “Give me your phone number, we’ll schedule some playdates.”
“What? No, Tony, I can’t—”
“Sure you can, I saw you using that phone before.”
James rolls his eyes at him.
“You shouldn’t dedicate your free time to the whims of my cat.”
“Well,” Tony turns to look at him again, wearing a mirroring smile, “I don’t mind the company, too. It’d be a nice bonus, actually.”
“Oh,” James says softly and comes closer.
The distance between them can’t be mistaken for a professional from space, but Tony doesn’t care, doesn’t think of it as an appointment any more, his breath hitching just as he takes all of James in, standing there with an undeniable hunger in his eyes. Tony makes a step closer— and exactly at that moment Alpine jumps on his shoulder, her fur in his face.
“Right,” Tony tells the world faintly, “this is my life now. Hey, how about that— let’s schedule some playdates without Alpine, too, because I think she’d be too jealous otherwise.”
James snickers at him but nods, and, after a short discussion, they figure out their plans. The parting is painful — not because James is leaving, although that is a horrible injustice in its own right — but because Alpine has to be teared up from Tony’s shoulder.
A little bloodied but otherwise happy, he goes to Pepper.
“Oh my god, were you attacked by the serial killer guy?”
“The serial killer guy is a softie and a nerd, and he is taking me to a sci-fi film festival next weekend. His cat parent-trapped us.”
She examines his shoulder and then — his eyes. To check for a potential concussion.
“I never know when you are hurt and when, you know, just being you.”
“I’m always me. But I am hurt you would think that,” Tony tells her, mock-offended, but then grins, unable to slow down his excitement. “And I was right. As I always am, too.”
He stays calm and devoid of a constant stream of anxious thoughts well into the evening, the excitement not fading even a little. He has a hot date soon, after all.