Office Hours, All Day Thursday

[screwyoumarvel]

Steve was in his office, staring at his lesson plan book. It was still blank. This shouldn't be this difficult. He was an adult. He'd been in the army. And then he'd spent several years being friends with Tony Stark. He could discuss these things like an adult. And he was confident his students could handle it maturely...most of them, anyway.

So why was he freaking out about it?

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[tyler_gone]

Tyler stopped by after his class was done. "Hey," he greeted from the doorway. "Tony mentioned you were back."

[screwyoumarvel]

"Tyler," Steve said, looking up with a smile. "I didn't know you knew Tony." But then, he'd been gone for a while and it was a small town.

[tyler_gone]

"I don't think I knew him yet last time I saw you," Tyler said, trying to remember. The timeline of the summer was fuzzy in his brain, and it wasn't like meeting Tony was some huge bolt from the blue. "But yeah, we're friends now."

Totally just friends.

"Sorry I didn't save the house for you. I was ready for a little more space."

[screwyoumarvel]

"I wouldn't have expected you to. It's not like I knew I was coming back," Steve said.

[tyler_gone]

"Nah, but I still feel kind of bad. I just moved last month," Tyler informed him. "So are things back home better than they were when you left? I remember things sounded ... sort of crazy."

[screwyoumarvel]

"Things are better politically," Steve said. "My personal life didn't recover well from my death." That was something of an understatement.

[tyler_gone]

" 'Hi, honey, I'm not dead, surprise,'" Tyler tried flatly. "Yeaaaaah. That's usually going to suck. Wait -- Christ, did I know you were supposed to be dead?"

He didn't think he would forget something like that, but his memory had interesting gaps sometimes.

[screwyoumarvel]

"I have no idea," Steve admitted. "I wasn't exactly telling everyone. But, yeah, I'd died. A few people knew it didn't stick. Everyone else thought I was still dead. And then it turned out that there were some unusual circumstances surrounding my burial we didn't know about that made coming back tricky, and...it went downhill from there."

[tyler_gone]

"....yow," Tyler said, deciding that plus his expression about covered it. "So you decided things were going to be better here than there."

[screwyoumarvel]

"No one thinks I'm a shapeshifting alien invader here," Steve said. He figured that about covered it.

[tyler_gone]

"And if you were, we'd accept it until you tried to eat us," Tyler added. Which ... was kind of the Fandom experience, right there. "But that reminds me. You know a guy named Bruce Banner?"

[screwyoumarvel]

"Bruce? Sure," Steve said. "What about him?"

[tyler_gone]

"You'd know why I was asking if the answer was yes," Tyler answered. "So he doesn't, uh, look a whole lot like me?"

[screwyoumarvel]

"I wouldn't say particularly, no," Steve said. "Why do you--oh. Oh. So Tony's universe's Bruce does, I take it."

[tyler_gone]

"Just enough for me to get kidnapped by the U.S. Army, yeah," Tyler said. "There was also a helicopter crash in there, then I got to see Bruce's ... trick. Which I can't do." Just in case Steve was confused about that point. "Parallel worlds are bizarre. Tony was talking about how the Stark in your world's kind of, um, off and it made me curious, is all."

[screwyoumarvel]

"Be glad you can't," Steve said grimly. "My world's Tony used to be my best friend. When I first knew him he was a lot like the Tony who lives here. But uh, we had a incredibly ugly divorce falling out."

[tyler_gone]

That seemed like it might be an understatement. "He said your Tony tried to kill you and take over the world," Tyler said quietly.

[screwyoumarvel]

"Not...exactly," Steve said.

Close, though.

[tyler_gone]

"Something like that, though?"

Of course, Tyler realized, Tony's ego would make him exaggerate whatever Steve had really said about the other him.

[screwyoumarvel]

"Something like that, yeah," Steve said wearily. His universe's Tony made him tired, these days.

[tyler_gone]

Anything more Tyler asked about that would be nosiness, really. He pushed that down and cleared his throat to mark a subject change.

"So, uh, it's good to have you back, anyhow."