“You utterly ridiculous drama queen, what the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, Douchebag, that I was doing just fine until you butted in.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Stephen crossed his arms as they both looked down at the charred cake that Tony had just rescued from the oven.
“How did you know?” Tony sighed and rolled his eyes before he could stop the words from leaving his mouth.
“How did I know? How did I know when your birthday was? Let’s see, could it have been from the numerous times in the last few months I’ve had to sign off on discharges -”
“Doc -”
“When we both knew, even Dr. fucking Seuss would know you were in no shape to leave said hospital?” Stephen growled at the ruined cake, then started laughing and couldn’t stop which alarmed Tony more than any spell he could have cast at him. Finally after a few minutes he was able to catch his breath and he mumbled, “I just wanted to make you a real cake for your birthday, and I forgot to set the timer, and then there was an emergency in one of the more peaceful dimensions…”
“Buttercup.”
“Nope.”
“Honey.” Tony slipped behind the sorcerer and wrapped his arms around him, and as he nuzzled behind his ear, felt him begin to relax. “You know I don’t need anything but you, right?”
“You somehow managed to make it to fifty, and I wanted to do something that would tell you - damn it, Stark, you - hell.”
“All I need is you, sweetness. Why don’t you throw a magical cleaning chant at it, and then we can go upstairs…”
Stephen sighed heavily, and as Tony watched, cleaned away the disaster, with a wave of his fingers, then conjured up a perfectly decorated cake, but with only twenty-nine candles, just enough to brighten the normally dark kitchen. “Make a wish, Stark.”
Tony closed his eyes and was still for a moment, then blew at the candles and let out an amazed gasp as the cake became a red velvet jewelry box.
“How?”
“Maybe after we’re married, you’ll stop asking me that?”