Such Sweet Nothing

“Tony, if you touch it one more time so help me.” I growled as I kept looking through my microscope. He was poking around some of my latest testing.

“I’m not doing anything to hurt your precious cells.” He pushed away from the counter even though he ‘wasn’t doing anything’.

“Mr. Stark, your appointment is here.” The intercom in the lab clicked off as I saw Tony smile from my right.

“I’ll be right back.” He hopped off the stool he had been sitting and ‘doing nothing’ on and went through the door.

“Finally some peace and freaking quiet.” I muttered. God knows I love Tony Stark, but holy mother of god was he trying to meddle in my life more than usual as of late. I was staring at the cells and noting any abnormalities in my notebook. I was doing some routine testing on cancer cells, the run of the mill ‘I will cure cancer’ bit, but of course I didn’t think I was anywhere close.

“And this is where we will be working. I built it from the ground up with these experiments in mind.” I heard Tony re-enter and another pair of footsteps follow after him. I figured he was showing a new recruit around until he spoke.

“It can withstand the other guy?” I heard Tony knock against the wall.

“Trust me.” I completely froze as they approached my lab bench.

“And this is the other major brain on this project.” Tony didn’t say my name because at that moment Bruce said it for him.

“Kylie?” I had no choice but to look up from the microscope.

“Dr. Banner.” I answered back with a curt nod. His smile grew and then faltered at what I called him.

“Dr. Banner? I thought you guys were old pals.” Tony said slapping Bruce on the left shoulder.

“We were old pals.” I mumbled as I pushed off the lab bench and spun around to the table behind me.

“Ice, ice baby.” Tony said under his breath in my direction.

“How are you?” Bruce set his bag down next to me.

“Fine.” I answered in a finite tone that he knew meant business.

“Well, once you are done being angry with the man that turns into a big, green rage monster maybe we can go over what you came up with.” Tony hopped up on the table to my left and planted his hands firmly on the sides.

“Here.” I brought up a screen in front of me and shoved it in front of him. He motioned for Bruce to stand next to him.

“So you’re thinking looking deep into the genetics and blood when it happens. Right, right.” He flipped through more pages.
“You did all of this last night?” Tony asked as he flipped through more.

“No, I’ve been working on this for years.” I turned my head to look at him. I turned my gaze to Bruce, the look on his face indescribable.

“Now, if you don’t mind I will be taking my lunch break and going shopping with Pepper.” I stood up and took off my lab coat. I just felt like I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I made my way to the elevator and stepped off at the ground floor.

“Your car is outside.” I nodded my head to show I heard the receptionist and pushed through the front door of Stark tower. I spotted the sleek black Audi and Happy standing next to it.

“Hey!” He greeted me with a smile as he put his hand on the back door.

“Happy, how’s it going?”

“Just implemented the new system for security badges, it’s been going pretty good.” It made me smile that he was so excited with his work duties in regards to everyone’s security.

“I’m glad to hear it.” I responded as he opened the back door. Pepper was sitting in the back already, her laptop open in front of her as she was checking something off in her planner.

“So, Bruce is here.” I said as the back door was shut and Happy got behind the steering wheel.

“Yeah, how’d that go?” She closed her laptop and put her planner in the middle seat. The car pulled away from the curb as I could only shrug my shoulders.

“Tony began to sing Vanilla Ice.” She gave me a confused look before finally cracking a smile.

“He is not cute, and you smiling only reinforces his bad behavior.” I retaliated with my finger pointed in her direction.

“So that bad?” She glimpsed over what I said about Tony and tried to jump right back into it.

“Yeah. I don’t know. I thought I would do better but just seeing him, everything came back. Not just the leaving part but also the part right before the leaving part. I thought I was over it.” I stared up at the car’s ceiling as I let my head fall backwards to hit the seat.

“I thought he contacted you after that night.” I looked over at Pepper.
“Once. He contacted me once and it wasn’t even mentioned. Either he regretted it terribly or I really was nothing more than a one night stand to him.” I saw Happy looking at us through the rearview mirror with a raised eyebrow. He caught me looking and quickly looked forward.

“No, that can’t be right. He left because he was concerned with your safety.” I blew a raspberry with my lips.

“Does it really matter though? I still got hurt. I haven’t even been with anyone else.” Her eyebrows raised on her face.

“Really?” I nodded my head.

“Really, really.” I sighed as we pulled up to our favorite shopping strip.

“Pick you girls up in two hours?” Happy asked as I went to open the door.

“Yes please. Thank you Happy.” Pepper answered as we got out of the car and headed to grab some lunch.