Capitals Cubed
1.
In the time since moving into Stark Tower, Bruce had grown accustomed to the peculiar direction his life had taken. The initial offer to move in with Tony was completely unexpected. He barely knew the guy, after all. But in the confusion and chaos that befell New York after the invasion, he didn’t over analyze the offer. Instead, he took it for what it most likely was- an act of kindness by someone who seemed to, somehow, genuinely like him.
The rest of the team followed soon after. Tony had more than enough space for all of them, and Pepper seemed to be nothing but supportive of the engineer using his resources to help out the newly formed team. One by one the heroes found their way into the ridiculously sized building. Floors were claimed and interactions had taken place. And in months since then, dangerous battles and domestic affairs had molded them into a formidable group.
It was unexpected.
It was, honestly, a bit strange.
But Bruce thought of it mostly as one thing now. Nice.
Bruce mulled over all these thoughts as he sat in his lab working on his latest project. Or rather, sat in his and Tony’s lab. Shortly after moving in, the billionaire had escorted him here and explained that the room was open to him anytime, even though Tony himself often had to work in here for anything he couldn’t do in his personal workshop. Tony seemed a bit hesitant saying this, as if having to share the huge space with Tony would be nuisance to the scientist. It was one of the first times Bruce saw something bordering on vulnerability from the other man, so he quickly assured him that it was more than enough. Amazing, actually. And he was unbelievably grateful.
Bruce cursed as he let a vial of orange liquid tip over, spilling it’s contents onto the desk in front of him. He grabbed a rag from the nearest counter and set to work mopping up the non hazardous spill.
“You okay there, buddy?” Tony muttered distractedly. The two had been at work for several hours now. Usually the space was filled with chatter from the philanthropist (he never played music down here in the lab, he saved that for his personal workshop), but today was one of the rare days that he admitted to needing to focus on a particularly difficult coding endeavor. That meant that the last two hours had been spent in a familiar silence, now being broken by Bruce’s frustrated curses.
“Yes. Yes.” Bruce insisted. The biologist pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed at his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Tony asked. Bruce let out a muffled groan and put his glasses back on.
“Nothing. It’s just this stupid equation. My brain is fried,” Bruce glanced half heartedly at the large calculator he had previously been peering into whilst also holding the vial. In his frustration, he had picked it up and began using it as a stress ball, squeezing the glass while trying to work out the numbers staring back at him. He was the first person to admit he had terrible lab safety etiquette, okay?
“That hard?” Tony asked. The quirk of interest in his voice didn’t escape Bruce, who was now nursing a full on headache. It wasn't often that Bruce showed anything beyond reserved interest and mild enthusiasm when working near Tony.
Bruce was a certifiable genius. Everyone knew it. The man had made amazing discoveries and developed advanced theories relating to radiation and a myriad of other things in his field of study over the years. If you asked him for a calculation, he could give you an answer faster than your average person. His picture was hanging up in classrooms next to Einstein and other great contributors to the world.
However, it had never really been that much of a thing to him. In highschool he was the nerdy kid who was carrying around science projects and making good grades with minimal effort. But, that was about it. He was the token strangely smart kid. It wasn’t until university, and learning more and having access to more resources, that he ever did anything remarkable to people outside his hometown.
So, yes, Bruce was a genius. And, usually, wasn’t complaining about an equation of all things to his fellow scientist.
“It’s not hard, its just, ugh.” Bruce was now completely done with this. He knew today would be a more challenging part of this project, but really? Why was there so many small mathematical needs for even the smallest steps? He wished for the umpteenth time that he wasn't working with such unknown variables, so that he could simply ask Jarvis to do all this work for him.
“What is it?” Tony was now swiveling his chair over from his place at the holographic screens and directing his full attention at his lab partner. His voice was the one that he barely used. The soft voice he used when he was undeniably comfortable and sincere. None of the intricate sarcasm and layered pop culture references or playful barbs. It took Bruce by surprise, like it usually did. Having Tony’s full, true, attention on him was an experience that he wasn’t quite used to yet, despite the months of friendly collaboration between them.
Bruce suddenly felt a strike of guilt and mild embarrassment coming over him as he recalled what his friend had said earlier. “ You’re working on something today. Get back to it, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Tony’s mouth took on a lopsided smile (not a smirk, Bruce noted quietly), as he swivelled the chair back to his own holograms and continued typing dutifully. “Really, what? You’ve been working all day, let me give that brain a quick siesta for you.”
“What about your coding?”
The billionaire scoffed. “It’s going well. You said this was an equation, not quantum physics, which I only dabble in on Tuesdays, mind you. Now, enlighten me.” Despite being unable to see his face, Bruce just knew there was a look of poorly concealed eagerness and a warm smile on the other's face. Tony, he had found out a few months ago, loved to please. With some people it was out of habit. Like Pepper Potts. Or the challenge of it all, like Nick Fury. With him, it was a weird familial instinct that the pair never really acknowledged out loud.
Bruce relented. “ I need to balance this,” he typed the scramble of atomic symbols done from his own holograms and slid it over towards Tony’s direction, knowing it would land within his own work station projections. “It’s working with Vibranium and the mercury solution I seperated yesterday so its been-” his words came to a halt as a streamline of atomic symbols, along with their corresponding coefficients, rolled back into his hologram projections. “Wait, what?” He turned to look at Tony, who hadn’t even stopped typing his own coding project.
The engineer spared him a glance back,”Is that good? Can you check it? Sorry, I was trying to do it quick.” The keys continued clicking like energized clock hands.
Flustered, Bruce readjusted his glasses and picked up his calculator. A minute later he said, “Yes, Tony, this is perfect.” The biologist stared at the mess of slightly curly brown hair across the room.
“Great! Part two? Don’t you have to add the correct amount of Erbium that you were saying could offset the erosion of those fibers you synthesized yesterday? Send that over.”
Bruce had already opened the folder and was sending over a table of numbers and the equation Tony had just finished for him again. “If you want the graph version of those results I have them right h-” suddenly his view of the newly opened folder was replaced by an incoming document with five sets of numbers displayed.
“There you go, try those. The tensile strength should get stronger from the top to bottom. Sorry, I didn’t note it on there.” Tony’s voice remarked apologetically. This time Bruce fully turned in his chair to confirm that the other scientist hadn’t even stopped working on his own project. Lines of code (for a new version of the Iron Man visual displays, he remembered) scrolled past consistently. Tony’s hands were moving incredibly fast. The engineer had on an oiled stained T-shirt and loose jeans with black marks marring the fabric. It was at this point that Bruce saw the coffee cups littering his desk and remembered that Tony had mentioned he hadn’t slept last night, instead opting to work through all of yesterday and today.
Finally, he looked back at the sets of numbers his friend had sent him. He’d have to whip out a calculator and set himself to work, but, they made perfect sense at a glance. “What the fu- Tony”.
The typing stopped as his friend looked back in surprise. “Yeah?” Large brown eyes found Bruce’s own, and he saw the confusion in them. Tony was in such an easy going mood right now ( his ‘soft’ mode right now, as Bruce and his fellow teammates had started referring to it), that it was kind of heartbreaking to see the uncertainty there.
“Oh nothing, nothing, thank you. Really, thank you,” Bruce replied quickly. He stood up and started collecting the few materials still on his desk. Tony was still looking at him with that uncertain hesitation. Bruce offered him a small smile as he started moving towards the lab doors.
Apparently deciding that he hadn’t done anything wrong at all, and Bruce was just being a totally weird science bro again, Tony tipped his head to the side and then went back to work. “Okay, see ya later Jolly Green.”
Bruce retreated out the door, a poorly disguised spring in his step.
That night, after going back to the lab while Tony was locked inside his own personal workshop, Bruce finished recording his observations from his most recent experiment. All the tensile strengths were precisely as Tony predicted. He stared resolutely down at the results and then turned his attention up towards the ceiling. “Jarvis? How often does Tony ask for your assistance when working with the more mathematical aspects of his projects?”
“I am programmed to automatically correct any arbitrary mistakes Sir may make in his work, however, I am not linked to any of his personal workstations or documents unless he requests for me to do so.”
“So, essentially, you can correct errors but Tony doesn’t have you linked to any of that stuff anyway?”
“I am a learning intelligence. Sir has not made enough requests of that nature for me to be needed.”
“You’re saying he can literally match whatever math poweress you, as a computer, have.”
The A.I’s voice seemed to take on an amused tone.
“I suppose if that’s how you wish to put it, Dr. Banner”.
The next morning Banner strode into the lab with a special sort of determination. Tony was once again hard at work at his collection of blue holograms and screens. At the mechanical sound of the doors sliding open, he waved a hand in the air as a greeting.
“Tony.” Bruce said. The billionaire made a grunting sort of sound in acknowledgement as he continued working. “What’s 56243 times 9872.339?"
“555249962.” The other man replied easily.
“What’s log base 8 of 952?”
“3.298 at three decimal places.”
“What’s 8694 times 85/4 squared?”
“3925884.375.”
“What’s the capital of Rwanda?”
“Kigali?” This time Tony turned around to level a questioning gaze across the room. With a snort of amusement he asked, “what kind of equation are you working on now? Are you trying to cube capitals?”
Bruce gave him a steely look that he felt must be bordering on a glare by now. Finally, he walked up to his engineer friend and lightly shook one of his shoulders in an uncharacteristic show of affection. “Nothing. You’re genius is just entertaining.”
Tony’s face was stricken with bemusement as he made a jokingly indignant sound. He eventually stuttered out an eloquent, “uhhhh Brucie Bear, you feeling alright today?” Bruce noted how he had his legs tucked up beneath him on the swivel chair and was unconsiously rocking the wheels back and forth across the polished floor.
“Yup.” Bruce kept his hand on Tony’s shoulder, and it seemed to be a welcome gesture as he looked closely at the coding Tony was still dedicated to finishing. “Now explain all this to me, huh?” Tony was a slightly blushing (though he would never admit it) and clearly excited mess of coffee induced energy.
“Sure! Sure.”
Bruce wasn’t sure how he had forgotten something so obvious about his teammate. For all the technological feats and casual upgrades surrounding him, it seemed to slip his mind. He wasn’t the only resident genius staying in this tower, and Tony wasn’t just a billionaire who paid for all their housing. That armour he constantly protected the world in? Not just the result of an inheritance and some privilege. No, all of it was Tony. All that math and number sense that went into any engineering, let alone one of the most advanced forms of it on Earth? All Tony and his constantly whirling mind. Tony Stark, Bruce’s genius science bro.