Chapter Text
Tony fished an egg shell out of his mouth with a mumbled curse.
I can weld pipes and solder circuit boards and freaking create a fully functional suit of armor that auto deploys when I need it. How can I still not crack eggs properly?
Today’s attempt at a spinach and cheese omelet wasn’t much better than any of the previous ones, despite not being burned or overly runny or covered in a metric ton of pepper.
Can I invent my way out of this?
He toyed briefly with the idea of an automatic egg cracking machine, and smiled at the thought of the chaos that would happen if he attached it to DUM-E.
Then he frowned again.
Nah. Pepper would give him crap about it. And while he could take it, he didn’t really want to turn their upcoming brunch date into a complete roast fest.
Why hadn’t he just swallowed his pride and booked a date at some upscale place with a penthouse view?
Honestly, it would have been less trouble to just rent out the Space Needle for the day, pay Gordon Ramsey to cook, and fly both himself and Pepper to Seattle for a Michelin Star quality brunch.
I could do that. It would be very Tony of me.
Three days. He had three days left to figure it out. And while he could pay someone enough to not care about the rush, he didn’t think that rushing things was the most considerate move.
And this was for Pepper.
Surely, she would appreciate something more if it had some effort from him behind it, rather that just throwing money at the right people to make it happen.
…okay. Then his path forward was clear.
He stood up and walked towards the trash can.
Who can I ask? Nat? She can crack skulls, surely she can crack eggs. …but I’ve never seen her cook anything except grilled cheese. Also, ew, skulls.
He scraped the Failure Omelet™ into the trash.
Cupid can probably do it, but I don’t wanna give him the satisfaction.
He walked to the sink and started rinsing his plate.
Thor just barely learned to use the toaster. No-go.
He opened the dishwasher.
Maybe Cap? He’ll at least give me less crap than Robin Hood will.
He nudged the dishwasher shut with his foot.
Bruce does most of the cooking. Maybe he’ll know what to do.
-0-O-0-
“—and if we adjust this attachment here, it should fix that issue we’ve been having with connectivity in the simulations. Also, how good are you at cracking eggs?” Tony rambled.
“…where’d the eggs come from?” Bruce asked.
“Usually a chicken’s butt, but I digress,” Tony continued.
Tony didn’t have to look away from the holographic diagram to know the resident Green Bean was rolling his eyes.
They were in Tony’s workshop, working on the specs for Veronica like they usually were. It was fun to have someone around who could keep up with him in the engineering department.
“So why do you want to know about eggs?” Bruce asked.
“Pepper and I are having a brunch date.”
“…and?”
“Do I really need to spell it out for you?”
“Only if you want a satisfying answer.”
Tony rolled his eyes.
His new lab partner was learning the art of snark fast.
“I thought I’d surprise Pepper by doing the cooking myself, okay? Nothing fancy, just a casual couple of omelets and some toasted artisan bread with a fruit cup. Standard brunch stuff.”
“…and?”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“That’s irrelevant, but yeah.”
Bruce was smiling, and Tony finally smiled back.
“I assume you’re running into a problem with the omelet, then,” Bruce said.
“Bingo.”
“Okay. Let’s go to the kitchen and you can walk me through your process.”
“Can we use your apartment kitchen?”
“Tony, no one else will be in the communal one.”
“…please?”
Bruce shook his head and smiled.
“Fine. If you’re that dead-set on being secretive.”
“Hey, no one barges in on you,” Tony said, as they headed to the elevator.
“Only because they’re afraid to.”
“Oh, please, Nat’s scarier than you.”
“…you have a point.”
-0-O-0-
Bruce had warned Tony multiple times that he wasn’t a chef, but as far as Tony was concerned, Bruce was miles better than him at cooking. And between the two of them and some cooking tutorials, Tony had improved enough by the time his brunch date rolled around.
Tony cracked the eggs into a bowl rather than directly into the pan, used chopsticks to carefully remove the few small pieces of shell that made it in, and then started whisking.
By the time Pepper had finished her makeup and come in, brunch was on the table.
She smiled.
“Who’d you hire?” she teased.
Tony put a hand over his arc reactor.
“Excuse me, I’m Iron Man. You think I can’t cook some eggs?”