Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bruce looks over in the lab to see Toni tying her hair back. He blinks. “When’d it get so long?” He asks.

She tenses, like the question was a lot harsher than it was. For all he knows, to her ears, it might be. “Since we started this fucking project and I haven’t had time to get it cut,” she says, and Bruce has gotten good at knowing she’s not snapping at him, but there’s a lot of vehemence behind those words.

“Oh,” he says simply, because sometimes it’s best to let Toni approach you. He doesn’t want to think of her like a wounded animal, but the comparison presents itself too neatly.

Then again, he’s not much of one to talk. Maybe it’s why they’ve come to such a good understanding.

So Toni lets him get back to examining the data results for a moment before she huffs. “Gonna ask, Bruce?”

“Can you explain where this number came from?”

“Can I explain…not that,” she snaps, clearly frustrated, on edge at something he can’t see, now. “The hair. You gonna ask about the hair.”

Bruce pauses for a moment, thinking about it. He thinks he might get where she’s coming from. After all. People do like to talk about her hair.

Bruce doesn’t read tabloids–didn’t have time before the Hulk, and now it can pretty conclusively be said they raise his blood pressure, especially when they deal with Toni–but it’s impossible to miss what other people say about her.

Toni Stark likes a pixie cut. On most women, the cut might be considered trendy, beautiful even, definitely nothing to worry about. On Toni…

It’s considered too masculine to pass. Like she’s not trying, Bruce has heard people say, and it’s only the very last tenuous grip on morality that stops him from agreeing with the Hulk that those people should be smashed to nothing.

“I think your hair is nice however you wear it,” he says as mildly as he can.

“I’m not growing it out,” she says. “I’ll…I’ll schedule an appointment. Get Pepper to schedule one. Whatever.”

“I can do it,” he hears himself saying.

“You can…what?” She asks.

He shrugs. “Lots of places around the world, you’d never think of paying someone else to cut your hair. I learned. It’s not salon-quality, Pepper probably wouldn’t approve, but…”

“Do it,” she says abruptly. “Now?”

“Sure,” he agrees. “If you’re ready. This data can sit.”

“I can explain the numbers while you cut,” she bargains.

She doesn’t explain them, it turns out. She sits very, very still while he grabs an appropriate pair of scissors, and even stiller when he comes closer.

“If you’re worried about me doing this…” He begins.

She snorts. “Bruce, I trust you with my life. You know that.”

“What’s bothering you?” He asks, using his free hand to run gently over her shoulder.

“Is it better longer?”

“It’s better however you like it,” he says immediately.

“It gets in the way long,” she says. “I have to stop, tie it up. Gets tangled. But…” She pauses. “But it would be easier.”

He waits patiently, keeping the scissors well away from her as she works it through.

The thing is, he’s never thought of Toni Stark as anything but a woman. He’d known, yes, the world had known that she’d transitioned, starting when she came out, the newly incumbent CEO for Stark Industries. He’d seen the nasty things the world had said.

He sees the hair, too, too short for their demands, sometimes slick with oil from an engine rather than a bottle. He’s seen the rough hands, the old clothes. The cut of her face, the pitch of her voice. The shape of her breasts. Everything they hound her over.

None of that changes anything, for him. The way she is, it’s perfect. But he could understand if making the world back off was something she needed to do.

Tony turns so she’s looking him in the eye, sharp and challenging. “What do you see, when you look at me?” She demands.

“Toni Stark,” he says. “Antonia. Iron Woman. My science pal, my best friend. Short hair or long, Toni.”

She looks away again. “Cut it,” she says, and so he does.

Chapter Text

Bruce keeps telling her she has to find a new doctor, especially in light of this developing thing between them, but the fact of the matter is is that Toni isn’t very comfortable in a medical setting and he’s never going to turn her away in an emergency.

If he really thinks about it, he’ll probably tear his hair out at how long she’s gone without proper medical care. Mostly he treats burnt hands and superficial cuts, easy things that he can take care of without too much fuss or ethics qualms.

Today she has her shirt off, on his table. “Sorry about this,” she says. “I never would have asked, I do actually listen when you talk about boundaries, even if Pepper is convinced I don’t, but…”

“But you have a metal rod in your shoulder?” Bruce asks wryly, trying to keep his voice as level as possible, because if he doesn’t, all he will think about is Toni being hurt, and the Hulk possibly hates that more than he does.

“Yeah. That.”

Bruce examines the wound, the result of an explosive experiment gone wrong, without touching. “Fortunately for you, I should be able to pull it out without doing any damage,” Bruce says. “Permanent damage,” he correct absently, already gloving up his hands from what he originally assumed was an absurdly large first aid kit from beneath one of the benches.

Toni keeps quiet when he carefully removes the rod, mops up the blood, stitches the wound, only little gasping exhalations escaping every now and then. “Almost done,” he assures.

She’s still covered in dried blood, because he only cleaned the area he needed to work in. It’s spread a fair bit, including down onto her breasts, and he blushes. He hadn’t even been paying attention before, too focused on what Toni calls “Doctor mode,” what he calls professional.

He gets an eyeful now, though, an eyeful Toni probably didn’t intend him to have at this stage. Breasts misshapen from surgery and where the arc was and scars, tissue strikingly white in places, knotted and obvious, stark against her skin. And still, Toni, long and beautiful on his table, bare, under his eyes.

He turns away and blushes a bit, not wanting to be caught staring, not wanting her to think that of him, not when they haven’t defined what they are yet. “Do you…wanna clean yourself up?”

“What?” She asks, looking down. She grabs at her shirt. “Oh. Fuck. Yeah, I’ll…I’ll just go…away, and…” She’s holding the shirt over her, trying to scramble off the bench, and must be stressing her shoulder from the look on her face.

Bruce frowns. He expected her to ask for a wet wipe. Not run off all flustered.

“Are you…okay?”

“You just pulled a metal rod from my shoulder, should I be?” She snaps.

“Not what I meant,” he says calmly. “Something’s bothering you.”

Toni does this thing, Bruce’s noticed, where she goes all tense and then her walls just drop, usually leaving behind an expression that will absolutely wreck Bruce.

Today is no different.

“Look, you obviously don’t want to see them…I get it, okay, I understand, I’m not stupid, so, just let me go clean up and get a shirt on and we can forget we had this whole awkward encounter.”

“Toni,” Bruce calls after her as she turns away again. “If you want space, you know I’ll give it to you. But I…I was trying to respect your privacy. Not tell you I don’t think you’re attractive.”

Toni snorts, but she stops leaving. “My boobs aren’t attractive,” she says defensively.

Toni’s breasts have been a hotly debated invasive tabloid topic for years now. And what Bruce had seen, before he’d had the good sense to look away…

It looks like a poorly done plastic surgery, Bruce thinks, back room and cheap. But Toni has all the money in the world, and that’s not the issue.

The issue is she was vivisected and had tissue sliced and muscles and bones removed, organs shifted. The issue is her sternum is now artificial, the skin over it a mess of thick, knotted scars. The issue is aesthetics were sacrificed, and rightly so, in the interest of keeping her alive.

Bruce wonders if she ever went to a consultation for a second surgery, an attempt to restore what the hasty and necessary field surgery had damaged. Then he thinks it’s not his business, and she’ll tell him, or not, when she’s ready.

“Toni, I know you have scars,” he says. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

“Knowing and seeing are two different things,” Toni says stubbornly.

“Well, I’ve seen, and I’ll tell you, I have no goddamn issues with how you look,” he says bluntly. “Toni, come here. Let me clean you up.”

She hesitates a moment, but then drops the shirt she’s still holding up defensively and steps closer, letting him. He takes the wet wipe and carefully cleans the blood, keeping himself in Doctor mode as much as he can. He doesn’t need to be a creep, after all.

Still, he has a feeling Toni could use a bit more reassurance. “I have the charming physical quirk of turning huge and green and angry sometimes,” he says. “And you accept me anyways. Compared to that, this is nothing. You’re a gorgeous woman, Toni.”

She snorts disbelievingly, but continues to let him clean her. “It’s true,” he protests. “Someday you’ll believe me.”

“I think I would’ve heard it before, if it was true,” she says.

“Forget them,” he says. “No, I’m serious. Forget everything those…those idiots say. C'mon. Listen to me.”

He’s not sure he quite gets through to her. He is sure, though, that he has a new mission in life.

Toni Stark is beautiful. And he’ll get her to believe it.