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“Crocs?” he exhaled, exasperated, and stared pointedly in Bruce’s direction. “You finally manage to scrounge up the initiative to take advantage of your situation after countless months of living in this tower, shirking my every offer—astoundingly generous of me, by the way—and the thing you first think to ask me for is a pair of plastic, hole-filled shoes?”
“Well,” Bruce replied, completely unperturbed by the billionaire’s little outburst, “they would be a pretty good asset for me in the lab work. Bench work, you know.” He smiled, in his own clipped way, at Tony’s resulting shake of the head before returning his attentions to the scalding cup of black coffee that idly steamed before him.
“I will not have even one pair of those hideous excuses for footwear in my tower,” Tony declared with a flourish, “and we, my friend, will be going fine shoe shopping sometime in the near future.” Bruce merely looked into his cup, the smooth glassy surface of the liquid within reflecting his tiny smile.
He did, of course, manage to get the crocs.
They were acquired, to Tony’s credit, with notably less of a fuss than anyone would have anticipated; though Bruce never reintroduced it, he found himself greeted about two weeks after his initial request with a large box thrust inches away from his nose by a sulking billionaire philanthropist.
“Purple?” Bruce inquired, sifting through the white tissue paper to gaze at his prize, and Tony's nod was only slightly too covalent for comfort.
“Put 'em to good use.”
Now they’re in Tony's living room, straining against each other as Tony pushes Bruce roughly against the wall, chapped lips and lidded eyes and the purple crocs pressed tightly into the grain of the floor, and he’s counting in spite of himself—or, rather, because of that fact—the number of beats his heart drums out in the intervals where their mouths connect.
“I can tell you’re thinking,” Tony mutters when they break. “You’re aware of how much stock I place in your intellect, but you’ve got to stop doing that at times like these.” Bruce responds with an uttered apology, barely audible and heavy with remorse and so very, very like him.
“I was wondering what the coefficient of static friction between my new crocs and your floor might be.”
“Somewhere around .64,” Tony replies, without preamble. “Not enough to cause a friction fire that would reduce them to ashes, unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately,” Bruce laughs, and kisses him again.