Chapter 4
Tony doesn’t even realize that his feet have carried him to the lab until Bruce’s hand is on his arm.
Which is kind of impressive, considering it’s two floors above the last one he remembers being on.
His head is a little fuzzy as he takes in the concerned features of the other man, but he can make out that the frown between his eyebrows is its usual strange mixture of exasperated and worried, made all the more apparent by the glow of the hard monitors the scientist prefers for his work, coated in a type of science that Tony isn’t yet quite fluent in. He swears he can see some of the equations reflected in the brown eyes that bear into him with intense consideration, and the thought sends an unbidden bubble of laughter up his chest, chased by an eager numbness that claws up his throat.
It isn’t fair.
He’s Iron Man. He’s Iron Man. This was supposed to have stopped.
“Shit,” Bruce huffs, his free hand grabbing Tony’s (it’s shaking. Huh. He hadn’t realized that, either). “You’re supposed to come to me before it gets this bad, Tony.”
“Progress is a slow moving train to perfection, big guy,” he tries to joke over the sluggishly building noise in his head, but the smile that spreads across his face feels strained. Damn it. “Distraction now?”
“Which kind?” The other man murmurs, squeezing his hand. He pushes Tony backwards, and as the staticy numbing something starts constricting his lungs, Tony lets him.
They’ve been doing this for months, probably enough months to equate a year, but after everything Tony’s become pretty shit at keeping track of days and time. While Bruce continues to maintain that he’s not the kind of doctor, Tony has always been a firsthand-experience-over-degrees sort of guy, and he’s relatively sure that there isn’t a doctor on the planet who would alternate between playing Mario Kart at four in the morning after a bad spell and sucking him off in a slow tease that leaves him exhausted and loose enough to sleep, would curl around him every other night just to share the heat.
His fingers begin to go numb too, and if he closes his eyes too long, the darkness breeds the stars of space. “Just, uh, talk to me,” he says. His knees hit the back of the couch Bruce had asked for some time ago, and obediently he falls into it. “Tell me something.” Something not related to New York. It’s on their list of Do Not Broach subjects: New York, the team, the armor, Pepper.
Bruce tsks thoughtfully, crowding him toward the end of the couch and the pillow there. “Tell you something?” He inquires with an almost scientific tone, like Tony’s given him some half-formed formula that needs solved, except it’s not really a question and he doesn’t have to answer. “Want me to tell you about the trip to the zoo I took last weekend? The new baby hippo was awake, cute as hell. Or – I lost twelve games of Mario Kart in a row to JARVIS this morning while I was waiting for my experiment to set. Twelve. He didn’t even blue shell me, mostly because I never got the chance to make it to first place.”
Tony almost smiles at the image that makes, because JARVIS is always humble in victory and Bruce is not the best loser. But a chill sweeps through him in chase of the thought, unbidden and unwanted – his legs are going numb now, too.
(He’d let them pull the arc reactor from his chest; let them drag their scalpels along his skin, let them slip their metal inside of him, let them dig for and pull out every shard of shrapnel that had wanted to inch forward and shred his heart to slivers of meat and blood. He’d discovered himself to the never-ending tune of medical monitors, propped on his hospital bed and under the attention of doctors and nurses. Had discovered what it truly meant, to be a man of iron and purpose. He can feel it claw at his spine, dig into his shoulders – the chill of space, the taste of his final breath on his tongue, the silence, the loneliness of his death. He hadn’t been able to breathe then, like he can’t now – can’t catch a breath. Can’t breathe.
He’d torn out the reactor and ripped open his chest and become a better man, a stronger man, with the armor or without the arm it hadn’t mattered doesn’t matter and they’re out there, armies of enemies he can’t defeat, armies that had almost killed him he’d died alone, he can’t fight these, he’s destroyed the armor there’s nothing out there, nothing he has that can defeat them it isn’t fair.)
“-isten. You know how you’re always wanting to know things about me, Tony – I’m going to tell you something. About me. About the Other Guy. If you want to hear it, you have to listen to me. Do you want to?”
It’s a dirty trick. Of course he wants to fucking hear it. “Y-yeah.”
“Alright. Okay then. But you have to focus on your breathing while I talk, and you have to listen to what I say. Can you do that?” Cautiously, Bruce sits beside him, close enough that they’re near on top of each other. He keeps their hands clasped, and his fingers twitch against the tingling of Tony’s, curls his free arm around Tony’s shoulders as if to buffer the phantom cold. “When I was younger, before things got as bad as they, uh, did, my parents would just fight. “Well, not just fight. They weren’t arguments about taking out the trash or about a bill not getting paid, like normal couples fight over. They were pretty apocalyptic fights, with the yelling and the arm waving and the continual threats of violence that no one actually said out loud but you could like, feel in the air, you know?”
“Where are you,” the words pant out, so sue him, it’s getting a little hard to breathe, “going with this?”
Bruce squeezes his fingers again. “No interrupting. So as I was saying. Whenever the tension would start to near its breaking point, those couple of minutes of silence, my mom would send me outside to play in the front yard. So I’d sit in the grass under the tree, play with my Captain America and Howling Commandos action figures, and pretend that I couldn’t hear my parents screaming at each other, that I couldn’t feel all that suffocating hate just seeping out of my house. The neighbors would look out their windows, and of course I knew I was the only thing they could see, so it made me feel … small. Stupid.”
You’re not stupid, he barely keeps himself from saying, sucks in a breath. ‘Aliens are stupid. I’m stupid. You’re Bruce Banner. Not stupid.’
“They’d always end the same, though, the fights – my dad storming out of the house and to the car, shouting that he was going to work. He’d never even look at me. But my mom; I only knew that the fighting was really over when she’d come out. She’d come up to me, her eyes rimmed red from crying, but she’d come sit on the grass next to me, and she’d be smiling. She’d take my hand and look up at the sky, and after either a few minutes she’d get kinda wistful and say “Sun’s gettin’ real low”. Just like that. I can hear it, clear as day. Sun’s gettin’ real low. I always felt … okay, when she’d say that. Like just her words could make everything that happened go away.”
(His mind dredges up the image of a woman with brown hair and freckled skin, wearing a yellow dress because yellow is a warm color and the spark in his mind drawing up the picture insists that this woman is warm – her smile certainly is, not clearly outlined but still there, radiant, pointed at him. He’s cold, and she’s not. Bruce isn’t, either).
The arm around his shoulder slowly pulls away, instead snaking between them to land on the middle of Tony’s inner thigh. It’s an intimate touch, repeating slow, calming circles, sparks heat in every pass that shoots through his veins. Their heads butt together softly, and any air Tony isn’t getting, Bruce is breathing into him.
“…Changing into the Hulk,” Bruce says slowly, “if it’s a surprise, is like my skin getting caught on meat hooks that tug until I rip, until the muscles tear and the bones pop and I’ve felt every ounce of pain possible. Changing on purpose is half that pain, trudging through knee-deep mud while I slowly bleed out. But coming back, no matter which method, is the same every time – like being in free fall, with that sickening feeling that grabs your stomach when you realize you’re going to hit the ground and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I can’t tell you which is worse, or better, but after every fall, I pull up that memory. Yoga, tea, avoiding “stressful situations”, sure they work. But that specific memory, those words … it’s my anchor.”
“Sun’s gettin’ real low,” Tony hears himself echo, feels the words in his mouth, and the mental image of the woman silent says the words with him, still smiling. Both of the hands on him tighten – he feels more than hears Bruce’s sharp inhale, and he apologizes automatically. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. I’m not-“ another shared breath between them. The touch points are making him calm. “-I’m not mad. That, it, it sounds okay, coming from you.” He laughs a little, then, and it demands Tony’s focus, the way Bruce always does when he gets like this (the reason it works at all, really). He can make out the splinters of gold and warm brown in Bruce’s eyes, as close as they are, like something had shattered inside and hadn’t broken. He finally loosens their hands, letting his skim up Tony’s arm to rest against his neck. “Better,” he says softly.
“Breathing and everything, all on my own,” Tony quips back. There’s still a layer of cold over his skin, but it’s not like … that time. He can feel his legs, with Bruce’s hand on his thigh. He can feel a lot more than he can’t.
The hand on his neck pulls him to the side a little – he doesn’t go lightheaded with the lips that press against his own; it’s not a hard kiss. But it’s soothing, just touching, and the other man puffs the words “Let’s get you to bed” against him.
“I don’t think sleep is a good idea right now,” Tony argues, and the physicist laughs again. The hand on his thigh tickles higher, a teasing brush before it pulls away completely, along with the lips. His friend stands, pulling him along, keeping a steady grip on his hand to keep him from falling to the ground as he does.
“Trust me,” Bruce says solemnly (he understands the fragile line between being better and being okay, how long it takes to cement yourself on the right side of it) and then smirks before Tony can respond. “I promise it’ll be a few hours before I let you sleep.”