Chapter Text
Tony hears Steve Rogers’ voice faintly through the blaring rock music that is playing over the stereo in Tony’s lab. Tony rolls his eyes. He knew there was a reason he kept that intercom switched off. Tony throws his pliers onto his workbench, lowers the volume of the stereo, and walks over to the intercom to hear what Steve is saying.
“…-ing in the Blue Room in fifteen minutes. Attendance is mandatory. That means you, Stark.”
The Blue Room. That must mean the gang’s getting together, for some “mandatory” meeting, likely devised by Rogers or by Fury himself. Tony is not prepared to deal with this today. Tony has been doing his first honest day’s work in almost a week. He sniffs. “I heard that, Apple Pie,” Tony retorts in the direction of the intercom. “And don’t worry, I’ll be there.”
“I’m glad, Tony,” Steve says, and there is a silence that means Rogers has switched off his intercom. Blue Room in fifteen minutes, huh? Tony guesses it’s time to put on a shirt.
Tony is not, as would have been predicted, the last one to arrive in the Blue Room for the team meeting. Steve is there already, just watching the door with his arms folded. Tony ignores him. Thor is eating something in the small kitchen, but when isn’t he? Natasha sits on a barstool, inspecting her nails with an angry look on her face (as if that’s new information). Next to her, though, is Bruce, leaning back against the bar with his hands in his pockets and that sour look on his face.
“Hey,” Tony says, with eyes only for Bruce.
Bruce shakes his head a little and looks up at Tony, as if Tony’s voice had jerked him out of some deep thoughts. “Hey,” he says.
“Where is Clint?” Steve says. Tony turns around to look at him.
“I don’t know,” says Natasha. “He should be here.”
“I said fifteen minutes,” says Steve.
“He’ll be here, give the man a break,” Tony says coolly.
Steve opens his mouth to argue, but Clint strides into the room before Steve gets the chance. “Sorry,” Clint says. He joins Thor in the kitchen, snatching a handful of what looks to be potato chips from the paper plate the god is holding with one massive hand. All the silverware and dishes in this room had been replaced with disposable ones, since they had realized after the first day that the team couldn’t be trusted not to break proper ceramic ones.
“Great, now that everyone is here, let’s get started,” says Steve. “Fury thinks we ought to be doing some training together. The Tower is a big place and each of us have our own floor, we hardly spend time working as a team. That goes double for Tony and Bruce, since they spend all day locked up in their labs and workshops.”
“We have important work to do, Rogers, that isn’t our fault,” Tony says. Steve ignores him.
“So we should organize a training regimen,” Steve goes on. “I know we all do what we have to on our own but that won’t make us a more cohesive team.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Natasha chimes in. “It’s hard for Tony, Thor, and Bruce to get any training in – they’re so destructive when they fight. Sorry, Banner, but that’s the truth.”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Bruce dismissively.
“That’s the other thing. Tony, have you given any thought as to a contingency plan in case Doctor Banner has an… accident?” Steve says, shrugging his shoulders as if he weren’t falsely accusing a team member of something.
“I have a contingency plan,” says Tony icily. “It’s called letting Banner manage his own shit, so that he doesn’t have an accident.”
“But the damage the Hulk could cause to the Tower – not to mention Manhattan – is, quite frankly, staggering. You’ve got to have a better plan than just… letting him handle it.”
“Oh, please, ‘the damage is staggering’. Do you know how stupid you sound right now? Banner hasn’t broken so much as a test tube in the entire time he’s been here. Thor broke, by my last count, four Xboxes, two televisions, an entire kitchen, the weight room, two ping-pong tables, eight coffee mugs and a staggering fourteen beer glasses of three different styles, this week alone. You, Rogers, managed to break a toaster, a coffee machine, and a hell of a lot of expensive exercise equipment yourself. Hell, even I’ve broken more things in the past months than Bruce has even thought about breaking. So cut the bullshit, Rogers, what’s this really about?”
“I just think there ought to be a few more safety precautions, just in case Bruce can’t handle it,” Steve says, straightening. “Doctor Banner, you might want to consider stepping outside for a breather.”
“Uh, thanks, Steve, but I think – ” Bruce starts to say. Tony is not having any of this.
“You know, I think Bruce is capable of listening to a conversation that might get him thrown out of his home, and my Tower,” Tony snaps.
“I just don’t think it’s a smart idea for Bruce to be in such a high-pressure situation with his condition is all,” Steve says. He acts calm, but Tony watches as he squares his jaw and scowls. “You know what happened last – ”
“Shut up, Rogers, you complete ass,” Tony interrupts hotly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Banner hadn’t had an incident in over a year before the business with Loki. Don’t tell him what he can’t handle, because he knows what he’s capable of. You think Bruce is unstable, well, I’ve got news for you, Captain: each and every person on this team is emotionally unstable. I’m starting to think Bruce is the most sane out of all of us. So just… stop, with your bullshit, telling Bruce what situations he should and shouldn’t be in, because he’s smart enough to know the difference. Don’t tell him he can’t control himself. All he needs is someone who believes he can do it, and you idiots are in a prime position to help him out and you aren’t, you just aren’t. So fuck off, if you’re going to pretend like he’s a four-year-old with no self-control, because he’s the strongest guy here, and you all need to know that.”
There is a heavy silence and Tony is suddenly aware of his fingernails digging into his palms, his shoulders tensed up, bile rising in his throat. Tony glares at Steve, who isn’t exactly looking friendly either. The others sit in awed silence, and Tony knows why. It isn’t often that Tony Stark loses his cool. Tony is the master of cool. He’d perfected cool. He’d raised cool to the level of art. But there is something about Bruce that makes him defensive. Tony really meant what he said when he told Bruce he could be angry enough for the both of them.
After a few tense moments, Bruce clears his throat and says calmly, “Well, if we’re all done arguing over me now, I’d like to actually get something done today, so…”
“I agree with Anthony,” says Thor, standing and striding (in that peculiar way of his, where he seems to cover much more ground with a single step than a person ought to be able to do) over to Tony. He claps a huge, massively strong hand on Tony’s shoulder. Tony tries not to flinch under the sudden weight. “The Doctor is a good man, of strong heart and sound mind. He is to be trusted with our lives.” Thor strides over to Bruce and gives him a heavy-handed pat on the back. Bruce winces at the sudden impact, but forces a smile anyway.
“Thanks, Thor, that means a lot, coming from you,” he says softly.
“You are welcome, Angry One.”
“And in case you’re all really concerned,” snaps Tony, “Doctor Banner has a chip in his chest that syncs to an alarm in his watch. I didn’t hear it go off even once during this conversation, did you? Banner has it under control. Don’t baby him.”
“A chip?” Clint says, “You mean like the kind they put in cats and dogs?” Bruce scowls and opens his mouth to argue.
“Yeah, but much more advanced,” Tony interrupts with a shrug. “Obviously. I made it.”
“How’s it work?”
“Measures his vitals, and the levels of gamma radiation inside and outside of his body. Very efficient. We’ll know if Bruce loses control – which he won’t.”
Tony takes this opportunity to shoot an angry glance at Steve, and Bruce breaks in. “Ah - well - ” he says, “Do we have some other business to discuss or…”
“No,” says Steve icily. “Everyone just think about how we can organize some pair or group work, and maybe we can work out some kind of schedule later. You’re all free to go.”
“Great,” says Tony. He lets the others filter out of the room ahead of him. Tony makes to follow Bruce out the door, but Steve speaks behind him.
“Stark, stay here for a moment,” he says. Tony stops in his tracks and turns to face Steve.
“Is there something you need, Steve?” Tony says. “Because I was told I was free to go.”
“Yeah, what exactly was that?” Steve hisses. “I don’t need you yelling at me in front of the team, and I don’t need your ego, either.”
“I’m sorry, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I recall this team being a democracy, not a dictatorship,” Tony taunts, “I thought Captain Fucking America might remember that. And I don’t remember electing you the President. So why don’t you let me – and all of us, especially Bruce – live our lives?”
Steve narrows his eyes, but doesn’t have anything to say in return. With a smirk, Tony turns and stalks out of the Blue Room. He startles Clint and Natasha, who had obviously hung back to listen by the door to the conversation between him and Steve. Tony glances both ways down the hall and spots Bruce walking away down the corridor to the left. Tony increases his stride to catch up with him.
“Hey,” Tony says, putting a hand on Bruce’s back. “How’s the chest doing?”
“Better,” Bruce replies. “I took off the bandage this morning. Looks like it’s healing fine.”
“Great,” Tony says. For the first time in a long time, Tony Stark doesn’t have anything else to say. There is a thick silence.
“Thanks for, uh,” Bruce mumbles, “Thanks for vouching for me, back there. It’s nice to have someone on your side, you know? Someone who doesn’t think you’re going to lose it at any second.”
“Yeah,” says Tony, “Yeah, no problem.”
“Well… I’ve got to get back to the lab. I’ll see you later, Tony?”
“Yeah. Hey, listen, you should get dinner with me tonight.”
“What?”
“Dinner. Do you want to go out, and get dinner? With me? Tonight?”
“Um. Yeah. I guess. Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Great. I’ll just… I’ll intercom you, okay?”
“Yeah.” Bruce smiles, then turns and walks down the hall towards the elevator that will take him back up to his lab. Tony watches until he’s out of sight, then heads back the other way, towards his own elevator.
* * *
Bruce is a strange and uncomfortable mixture of confused and upset as he closes his lab door gently behind him. Yes, confused, upset, and uncomfortable, but strangely not dangerously close to… the Other Guy. But all this confusion came from Tony. Exceedingly simple yet completely enigmatic Tony Stark. What did he mean by dinner? Lunch was one thing, that was friendly and might not mean anything at all, but dinner? That, Bruce is sure, meant a date, and if it is a date, then why would Tony pick Bruce, out of all the people in the world the famous Tony Stark could have? It isn’t that Bruce doesn’t want to go on a date with Tony Stark, it’s just that… well, it seems so unlikely.
And what had been with all that stuff about not babying Bruce? If Bruce is honest with himself, he is pretty damn sick of everyone, even the people he calls his teammates and his friends, telling him what he can and can’t handle. It isn’t easy for Bruce to stand up for himself without the Other Guy wanting a turn, but that doesn’t mean Bruce can’t stand up for himself, and that doesn’t mean that he necessarily wants Tony to, either….
But that was Tony. Smooth-talking, ultra-confident, in-your-face Tony Stark. Nobody tells Tony Stark what to do. He’s always been his own boss and he doesn’t even let people who are much bigger than he is, in a figurative and a literal sense, push him around. Tony pushes everyone else first, and right off the bat, because he wants them to know who he is and what he will stand for. Tony protects himself in the exact opposite way that Bruce does. Tony puts himself out there, all aggression and belligerence and unflinching wit. He projects these things like a wall, and no one thinks about trying to push past it. So Tony Stark does what he wants, and it always works out for him, because either people are too afraid to challenge him, or the sheer force of his will overcomes them before they can touch him.
All at once, Bruce realizes what’s happened. Tony isn’t just building his wall of super-confidence between himself and the world anymore. He’s building it between them both. Bruce is suddenly and inexplicably sitting comfortably in the eye of the hurricane of protective aggression that is Tony Stark, and it’s really working for him. No one could possibly go wrong with Tony as their buffer between them and the world. Bruce doesn’t ask himself why it’s happened or how it happened. All that matters is that it has happened, and he is, bafflingly, glad about it. At least with Tony fighting on that front, Bruce is sure he has one less thing to worry about.
And that’s another thing. Tony is the first person who’s really believed in him, believed he wasn’t a monster, someone out of control who needs to be sedated or locked up or tiptoed around.
It is with the most extreme peace of mind that he has felt in a long time – not total peace, never total peace, but closer than usual – that Bruce toils on his experiments for the rest of the day.
“Ready for dinner?” says Tony’s voice out of the intercom that evening, toppling the house of cards that silence in Bruce’s lab has seemed to become lately. “Meet me in the garage, by the Maseratis.”
“Tony, I don’t know where the Maseratis are,” says Bruce desperately, trying to cover the exasperation in his voice, “And I didn’t even know you had more than one.”
“What self-respecting billionaire would settle for one Maserati?” Tony muses. “JARVIS can tell you where they are. If you aren’t in the garage in fifteen I’m leaving without you.”
The intercom shuts off, and Bruce sighs into the restored silence. He supposes he ought to put something nicer on – maybe something that’s ironed…
Twenty minutes later, Bruce is wandering the expansive garage, JARVIS’ directions having already slipped out of his head. Bruce is so busy looking at a spectrum of Lamborghinis that an ear-splitting honk from behind him nearly scares him out of his wits. Whipping around, he sees Tony smiling from behind the wheel of a wine-colored Maserati.
“There you are, big guy,” he says, “I was worried you weren’t coming.”
“I sort of got lost in this maze of vehicular splendor,” says Bruce with a small smile. “Is it bigger on the inside, or something?”
“Trust me, it’s big from the outside, too,” Tony says, raising his eyebrows. “Hey, you wanna drive? The thing’s got a built-in nav system, you can’t go wrong.”
“No thanks. I don’t drive. Especially not in crowded cities.”
“What’s the matter, Banner, you get road rage or something? Well, have it your way.”
Bruce climbs carefully into the passenger’s seat, moving gingerly in case he scuffs or scratches something.
“You don’t have to treat her like she’s made of glass, you know,” says Tony, turning the key in the ignition. “You act like I can’t even pay for reupholstering the seats, let alone buy a fleet of new ones.” The engine purrs to life and Bruce tries (unsuccessfully) to hold back a shiver of excitement. However much he pretends he doesn’t, he really does appreciate a nice car.
“I don’t think they call a group of cars a fleet,” he says, to mask his exhilaration.
“A squadron, a herd, a murder, I don’t really care. The point is I could have one if I wanted,” Tony replies. “And for the record they actually do call it a fleet. I ought to know, I have one.” He puts the convertible top of the car down with a press of a button, then zooms out of the garage and onto the streets of Manhattan.
The restaurant they eventually arrive at is much fancier than Bruce had been expecting. Bruce doesn’t know why exactly he had been expecting anything less – possibly because the places Tony had taken him for lunch were much less upscale. This place was dimly-lit, which was a strange social trend Bruce doesn’t really like, and quiet, for a restaurant, since the people who were talking spoke almost exclusively in hushed whispers. The restaurant is comfortably furnished and elaborately decorated, which makes Bruce feel like a clumsy six-year-old in a palace of glass – not that that wasn’t how he’d felt when he’d first come to live at the Tower.
Say what you would about Tony Stark, but the one thing he wasn’t, was cheap. He can afford anything, but he somehow isn’t selfish, and he never expects anything in return. Tony Stark is a man with skin of iron and a heart of gold. Under all that bravado is really just a caring man who wants to make the people he likes happy.
“Reservation for Stark,” Tony says, not especially loudly, but loud enough that the whole restaurant hears him through the hush. Bruce feels intensely awkward and completely out of his element, especially as he and Tony had passed several groups and nervous couples who were waiting in line for tables on the way in. Couples and friends all around the restaurant pointed or whisper to their friends or dates and Bruce catches Tony’s name in their murmurs.
“Ah, of course, sir. Your floor is ready,” says the maître d’, with a voice that was much too posh and much too fake for downtown New York.
“Floor?” Bruce mutters quietly to Tony.
“I called ahead and had them reserve the entire upper floor,” Tony says in reply. He follows the maître d’ with a knowing smile. “Don’t look so surprised. You act like no one has ever rented out an entire floor of a restaurant for you before.”
‘Bemused’ is not a transitory state for someone who spends as much time with Tony as Bruce does. It is a way of life.
The maître d’ leads them up a narrow flight of stairs to a much smaller space. It is nearly silent in this upstairs room, since it’s empty and the people who are talking downstairs are muffled by the distance and the elaborate furniture. Tony picks a small table in a far corner and the maître d’ hands them their menus, pours glasses of mineral water, and quickly disappears. Bruce opens a menu, sighs, and puts on his glasses. The dim light is a trend he hates because it makes it exceptionally difficult to read the tiny, curly writing places like this always used on their menus. He scrutinizes the menu for a minute, then puts it down with an exasperated sigh.
“Too fancy?” says Tony, grimacing playfully. “’Cause if so, I know a great burger place not too far away from here.”
“It’s uh,” Bruce stammers as he tries to read the name of a dish that he thinks is fish-based, though he doesn’t know any French so he can’t be sure, “It’s not too fancy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, you rented out a whole floor.”
Tony has a strange, slightly amused look on his face, but he hides it with his menu. Bruce tries to read the menu again, but gives up and just glances around at the splendor. If this is what it takes to be friends with Tony Stark, he isn’t sure he wants that.
“What’re you gonna have?” says Tony, looking over his menu at Bruce. “I’ve been thinking about the Huîtres en Coquilles Saint Jaques, and I’d ask if you wanted some wine but of course, you don’t drink…”
Bruce pauses for a moment, glancing between Tony with his gloating smile and the unreadable menu. “I changed my mind,” he says suddenly. “I want burgers.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” says Tony eagerly, standing and leaving the menu abandoned on the seat as he does so. Bruce stands up hesitantly, surprised at Tony’s willingness.
“But what about…” he starts.
“The floor? I’ll pay them anyway. Treat all the people waiting for tables to a free meal, on me.”
With just a quick word from Tony to the maître d’ about the reserved floor, the two men are out of the restaurant less than ten minutes after they’d entered it. Soon enough, Tony and Bruce are eating cheeseburgers in the Maserati on the way back to the Tower.
“Tony,” Bruce askes, half of the cheeseburger in his hands still leaking sauce onto its paper wrapper, “If you wanted burgers, why did we go to that French place?”
“I wanted to see what you’d do,” Tony shrugs. “I really do hate those places. Also I might have been showing off, just a little. It really does impress models and it nearly always gets you laid. Sad but true.” He punctuates his statement with a large bite of his second cheeseburger.
“I think you’ve been ‘showing off’ since the minute I met you,” Bruce says, smiling.
“I’ve been showing off since I was old enough to walk,” Tony replies, glancing over to gauge Bruce’s reaction. They grin at each other and Tony accelerates the car a little, and zooms off towards home.
“The fancy French restaurant thing… does it really get you laid?” Bruce asks as Stark Tower – Avengers Tower, he mentally corrects himself – looms on the horizon.
A small sad smile plays at the corners of Tony’s lips. “Only with the sort of people who are impressed by that sort of thing. I hate places like that. I’d rather get Thai or Indian or cheeseburgers. Honestly every time I read the word ‘avec’, I just crave grease instead. I’ve been pulling that stunt since I was nineteen and almost every time I wished my date would say they didn’t want to be there, either.”
Bruce is quiet. He’s good at knowing when to be quiet – it’s better, in his experience, to stay quiet, in case you say something that makes it all worse.
“So I guess congratulations on being the first,” Tony says after a moment. Bruce smiles into his half-eaten cheeseburger as they pull into Tony’s cavernous garage.
* * *
The days pass both slowly and extremely fast for Bruce. The days and nights are filled, as they always were before the accident, with experiments, research, writing; anything to keep his mind occupied. Tony has moved a lot of his equipment – including Dummy, who is Tony’s favorite and most trusted robot despite the verbal coals he heaps on its back – down to Bruce’s lab so that he can tinker and spend time with Bruce at the same time. This way, the two of them are always on hand to help the other out if needed. Tony is a fantastic lab partner. He knows what he’s doing, and never needs to be told twice. He has the abilities of an entire lab full of grad students with none of the incompetency. In his turn, Tony has given Bruce a lot of knowledge about engineering – it was an area he hadn’t really explored before, but he picked it up quickly, as he did most things.
So the two of them spend their time on anything they want. Sometimes Tony takes off for a meeting or an opening or zooms off to some event halfway around the country or the world, but Bruce never minds. The two of them are living the sort of life people like them always want; working among intellectual equals and with unrestrained resources, plenty of time, and constant, unswerving, intuitive companionship. Tony is always back from his jaunts as soon as he can be – he’s eager to return to what has become business as usual.
However, the one drawback is that the quiet of Bruce’s lab has been forever shattered. The way Tony sees it, just because Bruce wants quiet while he works doesn’t mean Tony has to like it, and right now it is much too quiet for Tony’s liking. They’ve finished their experiment for tonight, and nothing else could be done until the computer had run the calculations from the collected data. Tony looks at the progress bar. The computer is running the calculations at its fastest speed, but it has been ten minutes and it’s only 1% done. There’s no way the calculations will be done before morning.
“We can’t do anything else until these calculations are finished, right?” Tony asks, battling fiercely with his boredom and watching Bruce adjust his glasses on his nose as he bends over a ridiculously-boring-looking textbook. “Is this all we’re going to do?”
“I’m not going to do any more experiments tonight,” Bruce says with a sigh, “I think I’ll just head back to my room and finish this…” Tony glances at the book in Bruce’s hands. He is halfway through, but certainly more than 500 pages from the end. Tony has no doubts that Bruce would finish it tonight, given the chance.
“Nope, I don’t want you sleeping in that apartment all alone,” Tony says blithely. “Come sleep in my room, with me. No funny business, I swear.”
“I have work to do, Tony, I can’t – and why – ”
“Hey, don’t argue. You’ve done enough work for today. Just… come hang out with me, okay? Do me a favor, and just, spend some time with me. Not working.”
“But – ”
“Well, have it your way. Bring that awful-looking book you’re reading – what is that, microbiology? We’ll have a quiet night, with your boring books.”
“Microbiology isn’t boring, Tony.”
“Uh, hello, yes it is. Bacteria, hormones – who thinks that stuff is interesting? Anyway, that’s not the point. You’ve got something to say to me and you aren’t ready to say it right now but you will be in a couple of hours and then you’ll wish I was still around so you could give me a piece of your mind. So be thinking about it, and just… come upstairs to the penthouse and spend the night with me. This problem isn’t as hard as all that mental calculus you do, so why is it taking you longer?”
Bruce is biting the inside of his lip, something he does when he is confused because he thinks people won’t notice. But Tony notices – it changes the shape of Bruce’s mouth and it’s always accompanied by a knitting of eyebrows and a strange sort of deer in the headlights look. Bruce thinks he’s so good at hiding his emotions, and he is, to most people, but Tony reads him like an open journal of scientific engineering.
“No, I don’t have anything to say,” says Bruce, and as he does so he successfully manages to suppress whatever thoughts had been glimmering behind his eyes only a moment before. “Yeah, let’s go to the penthouse. I’m sure I’ll be more comfortable on the couch than I am at my lab bench.”
The first thing Tony does when he got back to his penthouse was remove his jeans, though he leaves his boxers and shirt on. He lies down on the couch where Bruce is sitting with his book propped up on his knees and turns the TV on. After flipping through channels for a while Tony eventually gives up and settles on some cooking show – that seems like the sort of thing Bruce would watch, and Bruce doesn’t complain. The woman’s easy chatter about cooking methods bores Tony. Tony stretches and lays his head on Bruce’s lap, almost without thinking.
“What are you doing?” Bruce asks, looking down at him.
“You aren’t using your right hand,” Tony says. “You ought to give me a head massage. I know what you’re thinking, but if that was the case I’d be asking you to massage a different part of me, ha ha ha.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Bruce says, setting his book down on his knees. “A head massage? You mean, like you want me to play with your hair? Are you asking me to pet you, like a dog?”
“I am not asking you to pet me,” says Tony, “I’m asking you to play with my hair. Really get your fingers in it, down to the scalp. This sounds a lot dirtier than I mean it to be.”
“If I scratch your head, will you let me read my book in peace?”
“Your reading will be wholly unimpeded, I swear.” Tony sticks out his lower lip and widens his eyes, pouting. “Please?”
With a tremendous sigh, Bruce runs his fingers through Tony’s hair. Tony smiles – he could practically have purred. Sometimes you just need a good head rub, and Bruce’s long fingers are perfect for the job. Bruce rubs Tony’s scalp, tugging gently at his hair, twisting it, pulling it this way and that. Tony loves it when people play with his hair, and nobody had in far too long – not since Pepper had left. The penthouse is unusually silent – by Tony’s standards, anyway, since Bruce had turned off the TV a while ago since he likes quiet while he reads – and Tony is drifting off. When Bruce looks up from his book and speaks, it almost scares Tony out of his wits.
“What, uh,” Bruce splutters, that sour look on his face again, “What is all this, to you? What are… we? I mean, are we friends or… are we… I don’t know… something more?”
“Jesus, Banner, way to spring that one on me. Is this about the head massage?” Tony says, looking up at him. Bruce frowns a little and glanced away. “I think, though…” Tony continues slowly, realizing that this is probably not a time for jokes, for once, “I think that… if you want us to be something that’s… more-than-friends, then we can be that.”
“But – well – I – yeah,” Bruce stammers. “Yeah. I don’t – yes. I think that we should be more-than-friends.”
“More-than-friends it is then,” Tony says. He watches Bruce and Bruce watches him. More-than-friends is fine, for now. More-than-friends implies a relationship, without either of them saying it. Tony doesn’t like categories. He hates words like “boyfriend” and “partner”. More-than-friends is just vague enough, but also just committed enough, and it suits Tony just fine.
“Yeah,” Bruce says.
There is silence for a long while after that. Tony likes testing Bruce’s limits with his constant chatter and noise, but there are some times – and Tony recognizes it by the set of Bruce’s shoulders, by the deepness of the lines on Bruce’s face, or by gut feeling – that Bruce needs silence to be alone with his thoughts. Tony adjusts his position so that he can read the page Bruce is reading, and his last thought before he falls asleep in Bruce’s lap is that microbiology is just as boring as he’d expected.
* * *
The clattering of dishes in the main room wakes Tony the next morning. He is in his bed – strange, considering he’d fallen asleep on the couch – and… is that Bruce in Tony’s kitchen?
Tony stumbles out of his bedroom, stretching the sleep out of his muscles. “How’d I get in my bed?”
“You walked there,” says Bruce. He’s setting the small table with a set of white dishes. Tony wishes he would use the fancy black ones – those were the ones Tony preferred. “You were pretty out of it, I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
“Are you… are you cooking me breakfast, Banner?” Tony says. It smells like bacon and pancakes.
“Well, I was cooking me breakfast but it just so happens I made enough for two and you can eat with me now that you’re up.” There’s a wicked smile spreading on Bruce’s face that Tony just barely sees before Bruce turns and goes to flip the pancakes.
“What’s so funny, Jolly Green?” snaps Tony.
“You drool when you sleep,” Bruce says, unable to contain his amusement.
“You morning people sicken me. It’s too early for laughter.”
Bruce laughs, almost as if he were trying to spite Tony, but brings him bacon and pancakes anyway. Tony eats them silently, but gratefully, wondering where and when Bruce had learned to cook so well. Tony had probably been very right about Bruce watching cooking shows.
“You ought to spend the night more often, Banner,” Tony says eventually through a mouthful of bacon. “Food’s delicious.”
“Thanks,” says Bruce, smiling.
Tony, finished with his breakfast, stands and paces to the bar. He stretches, then begins pouring himself a glass of whiskey.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” says Bruce softly.
Tony stops mid-pour. He stares at Bruce as he sits the bottle down, then grabs the glass, reaches over, and pours it down the sink. Bruce looks down at his hands and fiddles with the cuticle of his right thumb.
“It’s just… I had a lot of bad experiences with alcohol. With alcoholics,” Bruce mutters. He frowns, trying to keep the memories at bay.
“Bruce, look at me,” Tony says, and Bruce glances up. “That was a very expensive glass of scotch I poured down the drain. If that’s what you want, if that’s what it takes, then so be it. I’ll pour every bottle out.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Bruce says hastily, “I just… I just meant…”
“Stop talking, Bruce. I understand. I get it. It isn’t a problem. I’ll do this for you, because you asked. Just like everything else. Really, I’m not being sarcastic. For once. You want me to stop, I’ll stop.”
“I – uh – ” Bruce stutters, “Thanks, Tony. That uh… that means… A lot more than you think it does.”
Tony watches his more-than-friend carefully, then strides back over and sits down next to him. Without saying anything, without hardly giving it a second thought, Tony pulls Bruce close and hugs him. Tony wasn’t much of a hugger, normally. He was either a back-patter or a kisser or a lover, but rarely a hugger. But a hug is what Bruce needs right now. Not a kiss, not sex, not talking, just silent, comforting human contact. So Tony hugs him, wraps his arms tight but not too tight around him and lets Bruce bury his face in Tony’s neck with Bruce’s arms folded up between the two of them and Tony’s chin resting on Bruce’s head. And they stay that way for as long as Bruce needs, because that’s what Bruce needed, so that’s what Tony gave him. There are times, even for Tony Stark, where plain human contact is better than words, anyway.
* * *
Inevitably, it had happened again – the world in danger, the Avengers had to spring into action. Afterwards, Bruce lies in a Hulk-shaped crater in what had been, a few hours before, a very busy street, groaning from the soreness of his everything. The stretching and shrinking of bones, muscles, and skin would be enough to lay anything low, and the soreness of bruises and scrapes piled on top of that is a special hell that makes Bruce sick every time he wakes up to it. He feels like he’s had a brick building dropped on him – which, if Bruce remembers correctly from the haze of green-tinted Hulk memories buried with the Other Guy deep in his psyche, had actually been part of the problem. Bruce tries lifting his head but decides it isn’t worth it. Now that the danger has passed, one of his teammates will find him and help him. For now, Bruce does his best to cover his bare body with a minimum of movement.
It is Natasha, not Tony or Steve or anyone else, who is first to reach Bruce, toss him a spare pair of boxers, and offer him a petite hand to help him stand up. Natasha is a source of constant puzzlement to Bruce. She has better reason to fear him than anyone else, considering he had almost killed her in the bowels of the helicarrier – yet she is trying harder than anyone else in the team to look past the monster and at the person Bruce is (well, except for Tony, but Tony didn’t have to try to see Bruce as a person – he simply did.) Bruce had spent hours analyzing what had gone wrong, attempting to find the reason he’d lost control so it would never happen again. Bruce had been doing so well, a little over a year without an incident, and he had been sure he had the Other Guy under wraps. He agonized for weeks over it, finally coming to the conclusion that it had been a combination of his bubbling anger in the lab (which he had had under control, or so he thought) and the surprise of the engine explosion and sudden pain of falling through the floor. Bruce had apologized to Natasha endlessly in the few weeks following the business with Loki, and she had accepted his apology without fail but at a certain point told him that he sounded like a broken record and he ought to see if Tony could do anything about that, and Bruce had said that Tony wouldn’t fix a broken record, he would replace it with high-definition audio files stored on a paper-thin touch-screen device capable of storing terabytes of information hooked up to a state-of-the-art surround-sound personal theater, or he would pay the band for a private concert, and Natasha had given him one of her rare laughs and left Bruce in the lab, smiling.
“Need anything, Banner?” Natasha says now in her typical terse, business-like tones.
“Ahhh,” Bruce groans, bending slightly as a sharp pain stabbed through his ribs. “No – no, I’m alright.” He hisses and wipes at a slowly-bleeding and miraculously shallow cut that extends from his left shoulder to his sternum. Natasha takes a small bottle of alcohol and a cotton ball from a small pouch somewhere and sets about dabbing at Bruce’s cuts and scrapes to clean the dust and blood out. That’s the great thing about Natasha – she doesn’t believe you when you say you’re fine and really aren’t.
Behind him Bruce can hear the tell-tale sound of the jets in Tony’s suit. Tony lands with a metallic thud and strides over to Bruce and Natasha.
“Doing okay, Hagrid?” says Tony, clapping an armored hand on Bruce’s shoulder. Tony is always so inexplicably upbeat after fighting, like Bruce’s polar opposite.
Bruce rubs his face exhaustedly with one hand. “How many civilians?”
“It’s hard to tell, Bruce, there’s a lot of damage to the area,” says Natasha diplomatically. “No one blames you, a lot more people would have died if you hadn’t been here.”
“But how many?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Banner,” says Tony. There’s something the two of them aren’t telling him, and he knows what it is. He’d hurt someone, or a lot of people, and they didn’t want him to know how bad it was. “It was an accident. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.”
People died! Bruce wants to yell. It doesn’t matter how many, I ruined people’s lives! Bruce couldn’t find the energy to fight anymore. Whenever the Hulk retreated, he takes Bruce’s anger with him for a little while. Bruce wants to get away, to go somewhere and let his tissues repair themselves and come to grips with whatever it is that he had done. He doesn’t want to talk, he wants to go and sit in his apartment alone with all the lights off to block out his searing headache – but he wouldn’t get far as he was, battered, half-naked, without shoes or any mode of transportation. So Bruce simply sighs and says, “Take me home.”
With a thump, Thor lands on Bruce’s other side.
“Clinton and Steven will return to us shortly,” he says, his booming voice almost physically concussive, like a bass speaker turned up much too high. It makes Bruce’s head pound. Well, at least Bruce hadn’t hurt one of the Avengers…
“We should wait for them, Bruce,” says Natasha softly.
“Fine,” says Bruce. He lets go of Tony, who had been supporting him, and lowers himself carefully onto the ground. Pulling a chunk of rubble under his head, Bruce lies down on the pavement, closes his eyes, shuts out the world, and promptly falls asleep.
When Clint and Steve show up, Clint nods in Bruce’s direction and said, “How long’s he been like that?”
“Oh, about ten minutes,” sighs Tony. “It’s astonishing how easily he can fall asleep if he wants to. I can’t sleep if there’s one car alarm going off, let alone all of them in a five-mile radius.”
Tony and Steve lift Bruce carefully and prepare to get him into the S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft that has come to take them back to the Tower.
* * *
Tony hasn’t seen hide nor hair of Bruce in hours, which is concerning. He hadn’t shown up for the debriefing meeting Fury had called in the Blue Room, and his intercom had been off when Tony had tried calling it to see if he wanted to get Thai food with the rest of the team. Steve had convinced Tony to let Bruce rest, and they had gone without him, though Tony hadn’t wanted to. The point was that Bruce is upset and Tony can’t find him and Tony is scared, and Tony is not easily scared.
“JARVIS, locate Bruce Banner,” says Tony, scowling.
“Bruce Banner is in his apartment on Floor 33, sir.”
“Thanks.” Tony strides quickly to the elevator and navigates his way downstairs to Bruce’s apartment. Tony gives not a thought to Bruce’s privacy as he taps out the override pin on the pad next to Bruce’s door.
“Strike One,” says Bruce hoarsely as he hears Tony step through the door. The room was dark – curtains drawn, no lights on, not even a TV or a sound system or a light on a coffee machine, only the light spilling in from the open door to illuminate the place.
“You don’t get to play by the strike system, I own this whole building,” Tony blusters. He tries to flip on a lamp near the place where Bruce lies stiffly on the floor. “Why are you in here in the dark, Doc?”
“Thinking. What is so wrong about wanting to be alone to think sometimes?”
Bruce looks as if he were about to be sick. Maybe he was. Tony wastes no time finding the apartment’s circuit breaker and flipping the circuits back on. One or two lights flickered on, throwing soft light on Bruce’s features and making him flinch at the sudden change. He’d showered, and most of the cuts and bruises he’d had earlier had disappeared, thanks to the Hulk’s astonishing regenerative properties.
“Hey, sit up, I want to talk to you,” says Tony, squatting next to Bruce.
“What is there to talk about?” Bruce says bitterly, but he sits up anyway. “I killed people today, Tony. It’s that simple. The Hulk is a monster, full stop. I can’t control him, no one can.”
Tony puts a hand on the side of Bruce’s face, and somehow, it isn’t weird like it seemed in movies, like you’d imagine it to be. The thing about Tony is that he can just do things, and it isn’t weird, because Tony makes it alright.
“It was an accident,” he says. “It wasn’t the Hulk’s fault. You were thrown back from an explosion and yes, a couple of people died, but look. Those people that died? There would have been a lot more if the Hulk hadn’t stopped most of the blast. The Hulk isn’t a mindless beast, you know. He can make decisions. He can think. The Hulk is like a trapped animal – desperate, temporarily insane from his own fear and anger, but somewhere under all that is a person. Is you, Bruce. The Hulk lashes out because you never could. So no, the Hulk can’t be controlled, but he can make a choice, and he made the choice to fight with us. To save me. You don’t give him nearly enough credit, Bruce. And I, for one, like him. Don’t be afraid of him anymore, Bruce. You don’t have to be.”
Bruce doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t have to. To Tony’s eternal credit, he recognizes that now is a perfect time to shut up and leave Bruce to his thoughts. Tony stands and walks towards the door of Bruce’s apartment.
“No,” Bruce says, suddenly, standing. “Stay.”
Tony turns and looks back at Bruce. Something in the way Bruce is standing makes him look simultaneously like a five-year-old who has lost his mother and an old man who has seen too much in his long life.
“I wanna ask you one more thing,” Tony says, moving slowly to stand in front of Bruce. “If the Hulk was such a monster, then why did he help us? Why did he – why did you – save me, when I was falling out of space?”
“Because, sometimes,” Bruce says slowly, “When you like someone enough – it bleeds through.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Tony leans in, places his hands on Bruce’s face, and kisses him. Bruce grabs first for Tony’s wrists, then his waist, slipping into the kiss that felt as if it had been brewing for months. One of Tony’s hands slips down to Bruce’s hip and pulls him closer. Bruce likes the tickle of Tony’s goatee on his face, the very faint taste of scotch on Tony’s tongue, and the feel of Tony’s muscles tensed up. Tony is surprised at how muscled and sinewy Bruce’s body feels – he always looked so soft, and folded up, and just – well, Tony hadn’t been expecting it, but it’s nice. Bruce’s heart rate monitor beeps warningly and with a small, frustrated noise Bruce takes his hands off Tony, hastily and clumsily removes the watch, and tosses it away from him. Tony laughs because this, of course, does not stop the beeping, since the watch has to be at least 150 yards away before it’s out of range. One of Bruce’s hands presses into the small of Tony’s back and the other buries itself in Tony’s hair.
“Mmf,” Tony groans. He loves it when people play with his hair. Tony puts a hand on the back of Bruce’s neck and kisses him deeper. Kissing Bruce is different than kissing models or actresses or New York socialites. They kissed like they want something from you; and, of course, they did. They wanted money and fame and Tony has always been a great avenue towards getting both. But Bruce kisses like he’s experimenting, like he’s going to record observations and write a conclusion to sum up his thoughts, like he’s going to write a paper about the practical real-world applications of kissing you. The moment lasts only a little longer, until Bruce pulls away, their foreheads touching as Bruce looks down at his feet.
“What’s the matter?” Tony asks, watching Bruce closely.
“Nothing,” Bruce says, looking back up at Tony. “Nothing, at all.”
“Good, because I saved you some Thai,” Tony says, releasing him. “I got you that fried rice you like so much, with the eggs in it.”
“Thanks, Tony.”
And it’s that simple. All it was ever going to take with Bruce was someone who believed in him, who liked him, who might even love him. And he isn’t okay again, not yet, but it’s a start.