starkingenuity | The Not So Silent Hill

Despite nearly getting run over and having Bruce puppetted around behind them as they rushed to the sidewalk and finding absolutely none of Bruce's things in the room he tended to use when he came back to the States, Tony was much more distracted by the email and who the sender might be. He'd met Cheryl briefly, he did remember being in a house with a shotgun pointed at his head while his breath crystalized in front of his lips. Could the Order have gotten to her?

And if it did, what did it mean for Nat and Clint undercover? Could this be related?

With his headset on and JARVIS on text-only, Tony set up a workstation in the corner of the room Banner slept in, frowning at the encryptions. It didn't seem possible to have so many layers of coding within each layer of code. He liked the smarts, but when he couldn't break the code in over two hours, he was worried.

How many holes were in his brain?

Alessa briefly considered removing all of Bruce's clothes and toiletries from Tony's room.

Then she figured that they'd need something to start the conversation so she left it as it was.

She flitted around, dragging JARVIS bear with her and telling him about the trip to Asgard. He would probably be able to show Tony recordings of all the memories he missed that took place in the tower, but in a rare moment of tact, she decided to let Bruce talk to him about it before shoving those recordings in his face. Then she got Valtiel to give her body up (that had been annoyingly difficult, since he kept holding and caressing it and he seemed utterly wounded that she had neutralized the piece of goddess inside of her, though he insisted that she was still his goddess) and laid it on her medical cot. It didn't occur to her to put it in the room Tony had given her. It didn't quite feel like hers yet.

Then she nestled JARVIS bear in the crook of her body's arm. She felt his fur. The hardness under the soft that indicated machinery.

She opened the windows to let the sun wash over her hand and stomach. She would never admit it, but her body began to shudder and cry.

In the confusion after the battle, she had gone back to Odin's room and taken the ball that she had found in the magic store. She was fascinated by the woman inside. She put the ball next to the bed on top of a machine that finally didn't have to be attached to her.

Then she went to Bruce's room to see Bruce still dead asleep and Tony fussing with a computer.

"He's still not awake?"

Tapping his fingers on the desk where an LED keyboard had just vanished beneath his hand, Tony shook his head. He had been looking at Bruce, face more expressive now that he was asleep. It took a few long moments to turn his attention to Alessa. It was silly, but he patted the edge of Bruce's bed anyway so that the projection could sit.

"Not yet. I'm not much of an expert on his transformations." No, he just designed the equipment that the government and SHIELD had used for years to spy on him. "It only took an hour after the last time he did that, though." Of course, Bruce hadn't just lost his boyfriend the last time.

He sighed, letting his shoulders relax some.

"I got an email." Yes, he was keeping his voice low. "Your other half will be joining us soon," he said. "I kind of wanted to introduce your body to Extremis before we got visitors but it can't be helped. And I think she's bringing a plus one."

His eyes stole slowly towards Bruce again.

"We use to be friends," he muttered. "I don't know how I finally managed to piss him off."

Alessa wasn't sure how to react to that. She slowly lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, smoothing her skirt as she looked down at Bruce. "I hope she's happy with her life."

It's not something she'd admit to everyone, but Cheryl was special. It meant something to create life, to hold something so small and innocent and vulnerable and yours in your arms, and to leave them by a road and pray that they would have what you never did.

But of course, Cheryl would have suffered. The Order would have seen to it. Alessa's own mistakes would have seen to it.

Hopefully, her 'plus one' wasn't a part of the Order.

But Alessa didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to think about the baby she gave to the man who walked through hell for her other half.

"You're still friends. Bruce isn't mad." She was still smoothing her skirts, but she was more comfortable with this conversation. It was easier to deal with other people's issues than her own. "He's just... really hurt. And he doesn't want to show it."

He was still self centered. Though he had gotten good at reading Alessa, that didn't mean that what was on his mind was entirely her. Well no. That wasn't true. She was the biggest thing on his mind because she was all he could remember of the last few weeks.

It was hard for him to pinpoint anything. His memory just kept fuzzing over with each breath he watched Bruce take.

"Hurt? What did I do?" How do you apologize for something you couldn't even remember? What was the gift for that?

Bruce was still as death, save for the rise and fall of his chest. His face was creased with a slight frown, but otherwise, there were no overt signs of distress.

"You didn't do anything. It's not your fault."

If Tony asked her, she would tell him everything. Tell him what he forgot, tell him how he would stare at Bruce like he was the only person in the room and how Bruce would pretend it didn't make him the happiest he's been in years.

She wouldn't bring it up on her own, though. She didn't understand love. It wasn't something she brought up.

"He just doesn't want to talk about it because he thinks you'll get upset."

"Alessa, let me tell you something." He switched from his chair to the bed beside the girl while Bruce slept on. He couldn't officially take her hand but he tried, just like he always did. "When it comes to friendships, most of them are absolutely worthless. There's just one way you can tell if it isn't... Being able to tell another person absolutely anything and having them accept and love you anyway is the only thing that matters. When you find someone like that, you don't let them go. Banner's not figured out yet that I can be that person for him, but that's okay."

He made a little show of squeezing the bit of heat that represented the girl's hand. His eyes were sincere. Tired. More than a little lost. But though Tony couldn't remember that Bruce had become his everything, it didn't seem to matter.

Tony was still fiercely loyal to Banner.

"I'll just have to make him understand that it doesn't matter, right?"

The corners of Alessa’s lips twitched.

Then they made a tiny, sincere smile. No crooked edge, no malice in her eyes, nothing. Just a smile.

She reached out one hand, miming smoothing his hair out of his face, leaving lingering warmth where she ‘touched.’ She had a feeling the two of them would be okay. “Maybe he just needs a reminder. Ask him about it when he wakes up. Tell him I say he’s being stupid if he tries to dodge it.”

For some reason, he seemed to listen to criticism most when it came from Alessa. From the mouth of babes?

“And try not to freak out if you’re surprised.”

Freak...out? Now he was curious. Well, more curious. Might as well call him Alice at this point. "You're killing me, Lessy, you know that right? I don't do well with all of these secrets."

When Alessa left and his decryption codes were working through JARVIS and a few different programs he cobbled together, Tony flopped down on his back next to Bruce and used holographic lights in the wall to shine all of the details on Extremis over his face. He needed to review notes, not sleep, but just in case he did sleep, he wanted Bruce waking up to wake him up too.

There would be no creeping out of this bed for Banner. Not without some explanations first!

Bruce, all together, slept for six hours. The day, and all it entailed, had thoroughly exhausted him.

When he woke up, he immediately winced at the light on his face and rolled over. He attempted to say something along the lines of ‘Tony, I told you I’m not your desk’, but it came out more like an unhappy, “Mmmph.”

The relatively unfamiliar bed reminded him: he wouldn’t be waking up with Tony anymore.

Then why was he…?

Bruce looked over his shoulder at Tony, fully clothed, and furrowed his brow. “What happened?” His head was fuzzy. It always was after… right, right, he had transformed, and Thor and Alessa and Loki were there, and... “Did I hurt anyone?” Loki notwithstanding.

It was Bruce's standard question and that was why Tony had needed to know that first. He lifted a hand to bookmark his spot in a journal SHIELD had leaked (thanks again, Natasha) and then let his arm lay over his stomach. His smile was soft. Tired. At least being an insomniac allowed him to have a better grip on his exhaustion than most people.

"I heard Thor's not as dead as we all thought brother got readily trounced," Tony grinned. "And there were a few Thor shaped holes in the wall but you did good, kid. Saved the day. Me, on the other hand? I got to hang out with the non-warrior women and kids. Thanks for that by the way."

His smile softened and then faded.

"Made you tea like...five hours ago. I'm gonna go with it being frigid right now. I can make you some more. Don't run away." He gave Bruce what he assumed was a meaningful look before he climbed out of bed and grabbed the mug. Cold, as expected. He needed to invent some sort of tea heat stabilizer that wouldn't cause it to over steep.

Bruce let out a sigh of relief before settling against the pillows. Everything hurt. Everything always hurt after the big guy made an appearance. Bodies were not supposed to contort and change like that, and it left him feeling like he had been hit by a truck.

He considered trying to run when Tony left, but he dismissed the notion quickly as childish. Instead, he forced his achy muscles to work with him to crawl out of bed and get dressed. He didn’t want to talk to Tony while naked. It made him feel vulnerable and brought up far too many memories. He still was reeling from everything ending so suddenly, but he was doing his best to suppress his feelings until he had time to deal with them on his own.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, completely clothed by the time Tony came back. He took the mug Tony offered, giving a soft thanks before giving it a careful sip. He was tempted to just chug it, but it was never a good idea to wolf down things after waking up post-incident. It could make him sick if he drank too fast.

“I’m guessing Loki is put away? Is everyone okay?” He was guessing that it was all dealt with, if they were back on Earth, but he was hoping to get filled in and avoid the topic Tony was probably planning on bringing up.

Yeah, Tony had a question about those clothes. He'd found none in Bruce's usual room and when he'd gone to his own closet to fish out something for the other scientist to wear, he'd noticed a lot of neutral toned jackets and shirts and trousers on the side Pepper's massive collection of business dresses and pant suits use to occupy. And in Pepper's old drawers? Why, there were men's boxers too.

Tony didn't really think much of it and he assumed Bruce's room had been in use by someone else. He couldn't remember but there were reasons for everything.

Armed with a cup of tea, and finding Bruce sitting up, Tony scooted over the rolly chairs towards him, bare feet flung up on the end of the bed by his thigh.

"No one lets me have any fun and no one tells me anything. I've become the old forgotten grandpa of the group. Here, it's hot. From what I can put together, Loki's vanquished and Asgard is safe. I promised Alessa a ship evidently but we were spirited away before I could make good on that."

“For the record, I said no on the ship. And the sword. If she says any different, she’s lying.”

Bruce sipped the tea slowly, using it as an excuse to avoid eye contact. He was less cold than he was before, but he was no less inclined to look directly at Tony. He didn’t know how to proceed. Every time something nice had been taken away, it had been taken away cleanly, with only memories and regret in their wake. He’d never had it dangled in front of him like this, never taunted by the universe with what he had lost.

But here he was, just thinking about himself. Tony had it worse, waking up and realizing someone had tampered with his mind, and there Bruce was, moping. Shameful.

“How are you feeling?” Bruce took another sip of the tea. It burnt his tongue. He liked the pain. It gave him something to concentrate on. “This wasn’t an ideal situation to wake up from amnesia to.”

How was he feeling? Tony gazed at Bruce's face and ignored the lack of eye contact he was being met with. It was disturbing. Bruce had never looked away from him before. From Natasha, yes, he still felt guilty about that, but he and Banner use to be equals. Now that they weren't--

Tony swallowed and then nudged Bruce's leg with his bare foot. "That's not the weirdest thing I've woken up to. But to answer your question, I feel a little out of the loop. I really-- I want to know what you and Alessa are keeping from me." Because it was driving him up a wall. If he were Spider-Man, that might be literally.

He tried to look more earnest than annoyed, but truthfully, he couldn't help the underlying flash of anger and worry to his voice and his face.

"It's twisting me up." But not enough to get a drink...so that was something.

Bruce did his best to not wince at the casual, affectionate contact, immediately trying to hide the motion with another sip of tea. What was he supposed to say? ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s just that our friendship is ruined because I love you and you completely forgot we have a relationship’?

“I’m sorry about that. I just figured… you might not want it thrown in your face so soon after waking up.” And he still had no idea how to explain it.

He paused, staring down at his tea, trying to compose some kind of explanation in his head. “Has Alessa told you anything?” Hopefully, the question would give him just a little more time to think. He himself had had barely any time to process it all.

"No one is telling me a damned thing!" He wanted to give Bruce his space, but enough. "There's a huge whole in my life and whatever you and Alessa are keeping from me, or trying to protect me from, you can just stop it, okay?" He grabbed the tea from Bruce's hands and dropped it somewhat carelessly on the desk.

He was tired of distractions.

He was tired of Bruce treating him like he was a patient.

"Can you please just-- Just tell me. I don't need to be protected. I'm a big boy, Banner."

Bruce resisted the urge to tell Tony it wasn't just him that he was protecting.

Instead, he just took a deep breath, uncomfortably looking anywhere but at Tony.

"We slept together in Silent Hill." He couldn't figure out how to say it tactfully, so he was going to take a leaf from Alessa's book and say it. "And we've been together since then."

He winced, waiting for some reaction. He was too sober for this.

Of all the things it could be, of all the reasons that he and Bruce might have had a falling out or secrets might have been kept, 'we slept together' was very likely the last thing to come to his mind. 'We've been together since.'

Tony wasn't sure what to feel so he let himself feel everything. The disquiet, the cringe factor, the elation, the disbelief, the fear, the amusement, the utter confusion... It was all sort of beautiful when he stepped back from it. And it made the most sense.

Bruce Banner-- Well, he had told him before that he was his soul mate. He hadn't been lying.

"Well," he said, finally having to vocalize it. "So that's why your things are in my closet."

Bruce avoided looking at Tony's face. He didn't want to see what might be there. He didn't want to look, just in case it was something that would break his heart more than it already was.

(How dramatic, he reprimanded himself. You're not a teenager, Banner. You can deal with a breakup.)

"Yeah, I..." He picked up the tea again. He needed something to do with his hands. "I can move all that out."

He didn't expect Tony to want to pick up where they left off, and he understood. It was hard to even want to start something if there wasn't history, and Tony had forgotten their history.

"You don't exactly have a whole walk in closet worth of stuff, Banner. I might but I can give you a little space." It was only half a quip and not all that much in the grand scheme of things. He just wanted Bruce to know that he was all right with it. Maybe not all right completely, sure, but it didn't really gross him out either.

He was mostly trying to picture it. All of it.

"I want to remember," he blurted out suddenly, head tilting back against the wall. "It seems really stupid that everyone else gets to remember all of the juicy bits but-- JARVIS!" Oh ho ho! He might be able to see it yet!

"JARVIS should have recordings of everything that happened in the tower. That includes us." Bruce took a long sip of his tea. He didn't know how to feel about Tony offering to let him keep his clothes there. He wouldn't, of course, because it'd hurt too much to sleep apart and then go to Tony's room to get his clothes in the morning.

"What do you want me to do?" Did Tony want him to go? To stay? To pretend nothing happened? He didn't know how to act in this situation, so he was leaving it in Tony's hands. He was, after all, the one who had had his memory stolen from him.

"Move over." It was an odd request. Tony retrieved the tea from the desk and returned it before climbing into bed beside the other. The AI responded and Tony had him queue up shots from his room when Banner was in there with him. Mostly there was talking, laying together in bed, laughter. Sometimes there were serious discussions, work done half naked, Tony constantly trying to steal Bruce's glasses-- He let it all run through at five times the usual speed, skipping over sleeping, and felt his heart sink into his stomach.

It wasn't always romantic. They didn't have sex, Bruce kept stopping it. Their interactions, however, made him so very sad. He longed for it.

No matter how awkward Bruce felt about watching them digitally enhanced and dancing in some strangely cartoonish, affectionate jive across the holographic screen, Tony ate all of it up no matter how heavily it laid in his chest.

He was angry half an hour later when he told the AI to stop the video.

"You're the doctor, Banner. Tell me there's a way to reverse it." Whatever he use to have, he needed it back. Seeing it all was just a tease.

Bruce moved over, but he didn't watch. He couldn't. Instead, he stared at his tea, keeping his face blank even as the recording showed him smiling and laughing.

"Alessa mentioned something before you went under."

He sipped his tea, his tone and expression both flat to try keeping all the feelings inside under control.

"She said something about you leaving memories everywhere and it just being a matter of giving them back. I don't know how it works, how dangerous it might be, or even if she can do it on this scale. We thought you were only going to be missing a few days at most when she brought it up."

Though Tony got to his feet immediately to seek the little girl out, it was Bruce's blankness that finally ticked that anger up to palpable. He had chosen Bruce, an unknown, a genius with anger issues and no ability for sex over a woman wild in the bedroom who had been his right hand for five years. He'd chosen Bruce and Bruce looked...

Well. Like that.

"There's just one thing that I'm still not getting," Tony barked. His voice was rougher than it ought to have been, he knew. "You... Right now..."

He had no idea that this was how Bruce coped. He really ought to have.

"You don't even seem to care. I don't even remember and it's like I care more about you than you care about me!" Oh. Tony was just so... So selfish.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Wtf icons

They're wonky in some of my other threads, too

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject