Ironbat
Natasha considers Tony for a long moment and its fucking creepy, she doesn’t even blink. It probably doesn’t help that when she first came to America she told him if anyone smiled as much as Americans in Russia she’d punch them in the face but since everyone here does it she keeps that urge to herself. Tony honestly thought smiling was polite but okay.
“What’s he like?” she asks finally.
Oh, she wants to know about Bruce of not the Banner variety. Because they all know what Banner is like. He sighs and Rhodey’s soul dies, Tony sees it, because he knows Tony well enough to know he’s going to say something stupid. “I’m going to give a description and I need you all not to laugh or judge him, okay?” Because Bruce is sweet, and generous, and yeah he’s so dramatic he makes Tony look like an unseasoned chicken breast in comparison but he’s a great guy. He shouldn’t be judged for his dramatics. They don’t judge Tony for his dramatics.
Actually Stephen told him last week that his cars were ostentatious and if Stephen is talking about Tony’s cars being ostentatious they really must be something.
“He’s a damn furry, isn’t he?” Rhodey says and Tony resents that. Mostly because he wonders if the Batman thing constitutes as being a furry but he doesn’t think so. It is, as far as he knows, just a LARPing thing and its fucking hilarious because no one knows its Bruce Wayne under that dramatic ass cape.
“No he isn’t a furry, T’Challa is a furry,” he throws out there just to make Rhodey cringe. Sam and Rhodey basically worshiped the guy only to find out the dude dresses up like a panther on the regular.
“That is a religious thing, it’s exempt,” Sam says, throwing out his shitty rationalization that they all know is fake.
Tony rolls his eyes, “sure, bud. Anyways, Bruce. Don’t judge him okay, he’s a great guy,” he starts but Rhodey cuts him off.
“If you need to preface this with so much ‘don’t judge him’ he probably sucks,” he points out.
Pepper frowns, “we preface Tony with a lot more than this,” she says.
Tony is offended, truly. “Okay you know what, Bruce is the kind of guy who would say ‘hello darkness my old friend’ unironically and yeah that’s needlessly dramatic but we’re all needlessly dramatic here so no one should judge him for it,” he tells them all.
They all start laughing immediately like a bunch of twats. “What the hell, Stark?” Bucky asks and Tony squints at him.
“You texted everyone in our group chat ‘I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory’ when your cat stole your garlic bread. Rhodey, you drove a whole ass tank into a military bunker as a fuck you to your superiors. Stephen had that weird ‘sorcerer supreme’ phase and forced us all to call his cape a cloak. Natasha got memes banned in Russia and North Korea. Steve has told half the members of congress to fuck off to their faces and Sam made an AI he named Redwing because Bucky refused to let him get a falcon. Not a single one of you have a place to judge Bruce,” he tells them.
They all look properly shamed except Pepper, who grins. “I am not needlessly dramatic like the rest of you so I have all the right in the world to judge,” she tells them and Tony snorts.
“Oh hell no you do not. You’ve decided you hate fellow CEOs so much that you refuse to address them, only their wives. You once told Justin Hammer that you would rather drink paint thinner than spend another second with him. You punched Aldrich Killian into a pool because he made me uncomfortable. You once told a reporter that people fear you because you have the energy of a Lovecraftian monster. You are not exempt,” he tells her.
Sam laughs, “I remember the Lovecraft thing. You ended up being a lesbian meme for awhile after that,” he says.
Tony remembers that too, it had been around when the Babadook was a gay meme. Monsters were a thing that week.
“Is Bruce seriously that dramatic? I thought he mostly read to kids and whatever,” Rhodey says and yeah, he does that too. And a lot of charity work in orphanages. It’d been how they met- sometimes when Tony is sad he goes to hospitals and holds babies and Bruce happened o be donating money to that particular hospital and found him crying over a small premie that was so sweet and precious. They hit it off pretty easily but yes, Bruce is so dramatic he may give Stephen a run for his money.
“Yeah, he is one hundred percent that dramatic. You’ll find out,” he says. Granted most of Bruce’s dramatics went to his Batman character- Tony struggled not to laugh out loud when he heard Bruce unironically say ‘I am the night’ but he’s dramatic elsewhere too.
“Find out what?” Bruce asks, coming up behind them, smiling. Tony has never had a thing for classic Hollywood hot- too fifties for his tastes, but Bruce makes it feel different. Maybe its because nothing about him aside from his classic looks remind Tony of the past or maybe its something else, he doesn’t know.
“Holy Christ, are you even in there anymore?” Bucky asks, jabbing him in the side with his finger. Tony smacks his hand away after jumping a little.
“Yes, now keep your fingers away from me,” he tells him. “We were talking about you being dramatic,” he tells Bruce for reference.
Bruce’s eyebrows draw together, “I’m dramatic?” he asks. “Don’t you have a friend who insisted you called him ‘sorcerer supreme’?” he asks.
Right, Tony forgot about that too. “Yeah, Stephen got a little in character and none of us knew what the character was for but he’s mostly okay now, he’s chilled out a little. Come sit,” he says, shooing at Bucky to get out of the spot beside Tony. Bruce tries to move towards the only empty seat that is, for some damn reason, beside Sam but Tony pulls him back and continues to pester Bucky to go sit beside his damn boyfriend.
When he discovers they’re currently in the middle of an argument he’s not surprised, he’s watched the two of them get into it over Steve’s cat that died when he was ten of all things, but he’s damn annoyed to discover that this particular fight is about Sam not finding bats cute. Bruce lets out a small shiver and Tony holds onto him a little tighter, knowing about his fear of bats.
Honestly that only makes Batman that much more dramatic because Bruce fucking dresses up as his worst fear. Jesus, he really does have a talent for finding people who are so dramatic they could blend into a comic book easily. Bucky moves his ass finally and Bruce sits next to him and looks around. He pinpoints Rhodey as the most important at the table easily and Tony will never understand how he does that. It takes him ten seconds flat to find the person at the top of any food chain and he can figure out how to exploit them in another ten seconds. Its actually useful in business and Tony is surprised that Bruce’s success comes from reading people so well. But then Bruce thought he could do that too and had been surprised that Tony was just following math no one else saw. Pepper can do it now too so that’s neat, usually he can’t teach for shit.
“Tony has told me about your military career, you recently got promoted, didn’t you?” Bruce asks and Rhodey leans into it easily, going off on a tangent about his recent promotion and how he got it. Bruce smiles and listens easily, asking all the right questions because he’s freakishly good at people if they weren’t in a relationship with him. If they were, well, Alfred told Tony he has a fear of being close to people thanks to that time his parents got shot right in front of him as a kid. Tony thinks he deals with it well, or at least well enough that Alfred gives him advice and he’s seen how protective the old man is of Bruce. He’d chase Tony out of the mansion without a second thought if he thought he was a bad choice on Bruce’s behalf.
Natasha watches Bruce’s exchanges keenly because she’s as good at people as he is but when he gets to addressing her- right after congratulating Pepper on her recent multimillion dollar deal that no one else thought was a good idea but Bruce did for the exact reasons she did- he manages to find her soft spot too. “I’ve read about your rat rescue- I had no idea you could buy rescue rats but I suppose they might need it more than most. Its not like people care if rats are mistreated- people mostly want them dead,” he says.
She perks up, “and they’re very clean contrary to popular belief,” she says.
Bruce nods, “I used to have rats as a child. They’re smart as hell too, probably a little too smart for their own good actually. They were both escape artists and Alfred, my butler, was not impressed to find them in the kitchen more often than not,” he says and Natasha laughs. With that he somehow manages to win her over too despite the fact that she’s impossible to please and probably wants to punch him because he smiles.
And Bruce thought this was going to go badly.
*
Bruce is sure he’s managed to screw everything up given how utterly silent Tony has been through the whole dinner. Tony isn’t normally silent- he errs more on the side of dominating the conversation if only by accident but through this entire thing he’s said next to nothing. So by the time they leave he’s worried he’s somehow managed to say something wrong but he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is. He did his research- all of Tony’s friends are as impressive as he is in their own right and he made sure to acknowledge that- the fastest way to impress Tony was to recognize worth in others and Bruce finds it both telling and strange.
He’s never met someone who’s so attracted to the ability to recognize talent in others but Tony has a clear... thing for it. Maybe because he recognizes potential in the strangest of ways and in odd areas too- its just part of the way his mind works- and Bruce seems to be the only one who picks up on this aspect of Tony’s personality. And the potential Tony sees. Tony thinks he’s bad at people but he isn’t, he just sees them differently and this isn’t really odd considering he sees everything differently. What Tony is bad at is finding conventional ways to relate to people and Bruce likes that about him. It makes him feel less dangerous, somehow, like maybe if he’s different this relationship will be different too. He’s never been good at relationships, Selena knows that better than most.
“How the hell do you manage to do that?” Tony asks when they leave.
Bruce has no idea what he means and his gut twists a little, worried that he’s managed to botch this too. For the first time since... he hasn’t felt like running and he doesn’t want to do something to make it end. “Do what?” he asks.
Tony frowns, “win people over like that. I’ve never met anyone who managed to make Natasha go from suspicious to smitten like that ever,” he says.
Well, it might help him to know Natasha isn’t smitten, she’s just convinced that Bruce isn’t horrible. Its the best she’ll ever think of him most likely, she’s not the kind of person who would ever fully trust another person, but Bruce already knew that when they met. But he does at least relax because he hasn’t done something wrong, Tony is just impressed with his people skills again. Its an odd trait to hone in on, but its that, his generosity, his love of children, and his ability to disagree with Tony that draws him in. That’s probably the strangest combination Bruce has run into but he doesn’t dislike it either. Those happen to be the traits, minus his ability to manipulate people, that he finds most admirable about himself too.
“I just did my research, Tony,” he says. Its all he’s ever needed to do.
Tony smiles and leans into his side, “yeah well, was ready to write you off and now he thinks I’m lying about how dramatic you are so obviously your research paid off,” he says.
Bruce wraps an arm around Tony’s waist, “Tony he doesn’t think I’m dramatic because he doesn’t know about Batman and you’re not going to tell him. If Cobblepot finds out who I am he’ll use it against me,” he says and Tony bursts out laughing.
“I love you, but this LARPing thing is ridiculous. Endearing, but ridiculous. You do know Cobblepot works in a bank, right? He’s not nearly as impressive as The Penguin even if he sucks at names,” Tony says.
Yes, Bruce knows that already. “I’m aware of all my foes, thank you. Harley Quinn is a psychiatrist who’s real name is Harleen Quinzel and her girlfriend is Poison Ivy,” he says. Pamela a botanist and a very well known environmental activist too, Tony has read her work when considering his green energy projects, actually.
“Jesus Christ, this is so dramatic. How the hell did you get half of Gotham involved in a LARP?” Tony asks.
Well, that’s just an exaggeration. There’s certainly not that many people in the game and frankly Bruce doesn’t care if he’s winning.