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The lecture hall was already full, when Tony pushed through the door and came face to face with his class.
Monday was never his favorite day of the week--except on the rare long weekends when Monday was greeted with long mornings in bed and a blow job--but Monday morning lectures at nine am was the kind of bullshit he thought he left behind when he got tenure.
And yet, here he was, with an almost empty travel mug in one hand, a full one in the other with his briefcase, and a Starbucks clenched in his teeth.
There’s a distinct lack of something but he can’t figure out what, and there’s a low titter of laughter from the front row, where Peter and Gwen and Riri like to sit clustered together. He shoots them a warning look and lets his briefcase and mug clatter on the table, removing the Starbucks cup from his teeth and taking a quick, bracing swallow.
“So, today we’re going to be talking again about the way learning AI's are coded and--"
A hand popped up and Tony pauses in the middle of his chatter to give Peter a hard stare. He's a good kid, but he takes an almost perverse pride in derailing Tony's lectures, and he's got that gleam in his eye, now, like he's ready to start some shit and make sure Tony's week starts with chaos.
And the thing is--most days Tony wouldn't mind.
Most days he'd take the bait and let Peter, Gwen and Riri tease him into tangents on physics and ethical AIs and the best goddamn breakfast sandwich in the city, but--
He's hungry and he'd spent half the weekend with Chester Phillips and Peggy Carter, unable to touch his husband, because Steve was still hilariously and ridiculously shy about PDA and outright refused to fuck him where they might be overheard.
That he'd woken to an empty bed had been insult on top of injury, and he'd burnt his breakfast, grumbling about Steve and his dedication to running around the goddamn city before the sun came up.
He was hungry, and he was horny and he didn't even want to be here, this morning, was halfway to canceling it, when Steve came jogging home, all sweat slick skin and long bare legs and a blinding smile for Tony that had made him forget the sandwiches he'd been making for their lunches, pushing Steve against the bulk of their fridge and lick into his mouth while Steve groped him shamelessly.
He'd tasted like banana and icy water and a little bit of sweat and Tony had been two seconds away from dropping to his knees to suck him off, when his phone blared Pepper's ringtone and the meeting with the Dean was suddenly all he could remember and he'd run out the front door, half hard, hungry and so grumpy he'd cursed the entire drive to campus.
And now he was here, shivery with caffeine and hunger, and Peter was watching him with big eyes and a wide grin.
"Not today, Parker," he sighs, and there isn't even any force behind it, just a low note of pleading that makes Peter shift in his seat. "We gotta get through these slides, before the exam."
Peter looks vaguely contrite, and nods his head, sinking back in his seat. "Sorry, Professor."
Tony smiles, a thin little thing, and takes a deep breath, keying up the first slide. "So how do we maintain ethics in a learning AI? Because this isn't generative AI, we're not training on other people's work and expecting it to spit out something new, but a learning AI is looking at what happens around it and creating a decision making matrix based on that--"
The door swings open at the back of the class and Tony stutters to a stop as Steve walks in.
Here's the thing about his husband.
He's gorgeous , the kind of beautiful that can and had stopped traffic, that causes double glances when he's in a pair of joggers and a sweaty tshirt, but when he's dressed like this , in a pair of suspenders and fitted dress pants over a pristine white button down, he's enough to break necks and challenge sexuality.
He's private. It's not just the PDA and having people hear them fuck, it's an intense kind of private that never sees their personal and professional lives overlapping. Tony thinks it has something to do with Steve's work, the way he scrutinizes so many details of his client's lives to protect them making him almost fanatically paranoid about the same thing happening to them.
Or maybe its that even now, a decade and more since Tony walked away from SI, left it for academia, he's still followed by the paps every once in a while, especially when SI puts out some new revolutionary piece of tech, something that could have come straight from Howard Stark's workshop and did come from Tony's, even if he refuses to take credit.
He always tells Steve taking the quarterly earning checks is enough.
So he's private, Steve is, and he's beautiful enough that there's a stirring of chatter as he walks into the room, and Tony licks his lips, because--
There's a bright red and gold lunchbox dangling from Steve's fingers, and a grin on his lips, and Tony can smell the rich scent of bacon and fried potatoes and eggs, and he's suddenly painfully aware that he is still both hungry and horny.
"Hey, honey," Steve says, cheerfully and the whole world goes painfully still.
"Honey?" Riri hisses from one side of the front of the lecture hall.
Steve's grin kicks wider.
Oh. Oh, he knows what he's doing, and he's doing it anyway.
He'd noticed. The way that Tony always wilted, when Steve wouldn't touch him, when he didn't quite not claim him in public, but didn't quite claim him, either. He'd noticed the shadows in Tony's gaze and hurt in the tremble of his mouth.
He'd noticed.
"You forgot your lunch," Steve continues, ambling down the hall to stand in front of Tony. He frowns a little at the array of coffee cups and arches a single eyebrow at Tony. "You know. The lunch you finished making two minutes before you left?"
Tony's face burns, because he remembers being distracted, remembers the firm bulk of Steve's body pressed between the fridge and his, and the grasp of big hands wrinkling his shirt and Steve's tongue in his mouth.
"I guess I was distracted," Tony says, lips numb.
Steve grins at him. "Well. Thought I'd drop it off for you."
I can try , he's saying, without saying. I can give you this.
And Tony is still hungry, he's still painfully horny.
And he is so in love with this many he wants to cry.
"Thanks," he manages. Steve's grin kicks wider, like maybe he can hear everything Tony isn't saying.
"I brought you one of those burritos you like. Coffee," he snags the Starbucks cup and drains it in one go and somewhere in the lecture hall, there's a soft feminine sigh.
She's not wrong, Tony thinks.
"Is not a meal," Steve finishes, sternly. Then he dips down and presses a kiss to Tony's slack lips.
He kisses Tony in front of his whole goddamn class.
His mouth is a wicked curve when he pulls away and he straightens up to wave dorkily at the class. "Sorry for interrupting," he says, almost bashfully and Tony wants to reel him back in and give the class a real show, but he doesn't, he just watches Steve retreat.
"See you at home, honey," he calls, just before he vanishes, and Tony blinks as the door slams shut behind him.
The entire lecture hall is deadly quiet, staring at him.
"So." Tony picks up the breakfast burrito, peels the layers of tinfoil and wax paper back and takes a bite. Considers the merits of finishing his lecture and ignoring the million questions he can see in his students' eyes, the whole interruption that is Steve Rogers.
He grins. "So," he says, again and takes a bite of cheesy egg and tortilla goodness. "That's my husband."
The lecture hall erupts in shrieks and questions and Tony grins to himself, and takes another bite of breakfast.