starkingenuity | The Not So Silent Hill

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.

Bruce finally looked at Tony, his jaw locking and teeth clenching and eyes dangerously focused.

"You think I don't care?"

His tone regained inflection. It was soft and tense with an explosion he could feel coming.

Mathematical equations. Graphs. Not the way he felt like Tony had just stabbed him.

He stood up from the bed quickly and placed his tea aside, struggling to keep his composure. "I think I should get some air."

Finally. Something. Tony made as if to follow and instead, skirted the bed and stood in front of the door. Cornering a dangerous man wasn't his smartest idea but if he didn't get Bruce to stop-- What would be the point? He might want nothing more than to experience what loving someone like that would be like again but if Bruce just shut down, how could he possibly?

"So...what? I lose my memories of us and you...run away? You plan on never telling me? You just let it go? Are you crazy? Don't you think it might be important to me to know something like that?!"

Tony's heart was pounding, and not just because he was provoking Bruce.

"I wasn't planning on never telling you! In case you didn't notice, we had some other things to deal with up until now!"

Now his voice was rising. He was usually so good at keeping his temper, but god damn if he didn't feel the heat in his face and the hurt in his chest and he just wanted to break something--

"Get out of my way, Tony. I told you I need air."

"Do you want to know what I need?" Yeah, because it always was about him wasn't it? Tony liked to think so.

Though he and Bruce were roughly the same height out of shoes, Tony unconsciously puffed his chest up. Intimidating a man that could grow to ten times his own body weight and was completely indestructible was a laughable matter and yet that was exactly what Tony did, hands on his hips like a superhero from a comic.

"I needed you to look like this, Banner, not like I was just some patient!" He wasn't exactly good at not being the center of everyone's universe.

"God DAMN it, Tony!" Bruce punched the wall, shaking the furniture. He didn't need to puff his chest to be intimidating, his mounting temper was more than enough. "It's not YOU I'm protecting!"

It was him. Him and his broken heart. He could argue that it would have been too distracting and overwhelming to tell Tony about everything while Loki was being deposed, and there was truth in that, but that wasn't his real reason for not saying anything. It was his fear and his rage at the universe and understanding that everything good that happens to him inevitably crashes and burns and he was just sick and tired of being in pain.

"NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!"

There. Finally. He found the breaking point. Tony's face softened as he calculated the cost of fixing that along with the mess Alessa and Thor made of his roof, but he wasn't afraid of Bruce. He might be the only man alive that didn't do as a rampaging bull behind very flimsy glass doors wanted him to.

No. Bruce could control himself. He'd seen it. And okay, he was just a little turned on by the flush to his skin and the anger too after he watched those sped up not quite memories on the floating screen between them and the wall. He couldn't deny that.

"No." Simple. Stupid. To the point. "Not until we fix this."

He had no memory of being in love with Bruce but sometimes emotions didn't just come from memory alone. Tony still felt like he was in love. Bruce still had it.

He wanted to push Tony. Wanted to hit him and shove him and make him go away.

Instead, he reared back, turning away and clasping his hands together so they had something to do besides punch his friend, swearing a blue streak. As long as he lived, he refused to lay his hands on someone he loved, but sometimes he was so tempted that it terrified him.

"What do you want from me?!"

There was a roar in his head and color in his face and he just wanted to be alone. He wanted to punch and kick and smash. Why had he ever believed that this would end in any other way?

Bruce wasn't going to like the answer but Tony gave it anyway. At least he kept his hands to himself. He could be an idiot but he really wasn't that stupid. "I want everything," Tony said, letting his hands fall to his side. "I want everything from you."

He never questioned their relationship. They had had a fairy tale moment on the helicarrier. It was love at first sight. That they had made that physical--

It made sense. They were two sides of an equation.

Didn't Bruce realize that he was losing nothing? Tony hadn't stopped wanting him. He had just forgotten some of the points of it, but none of the reasons why.

"What does that even mean?"

Bruce was too wounded. He was too hurt and scared to think that Tony wanted to stay together despite not remembering any of their history. Too wary of having things snatched away from him to even consider it.

Bruce was a damaged man. He had been ever since his father started hitting his mother. The damage grew and grew over the years until he turned into little more than a cornered, wounded animal.

"What does everything mean?"

Fate as something Tony was incapable of believing of. He made his own fate. He made his own way. It was in his blood. He created everything that surrounded him...everything but Bruce. He'd been smitten on the helicarrier. He'd been enamoured when Bruce came back to see him after his operation. When he had agreed to go on a wild goose chase to a town not on any map following a letter from a dead woman, he'd been sold.

Whatever happened in Silent Hill, whatever let him leap over the boundary they both were keeping, Tony didn't care. If he never remembered their first moments as more than friends, he could even live with that.

But he couldn't deal with a life that didn't include Bruce Banner.

The moment he saw shy, wary brown eyes peeking up at him, even for just a moment, Tony took Bruce by the elbow. He still stared at Bruce as if he was the only thing of value in the room. And that was because, for a man who had everything, Bruce really was.

"Just stay with me, Bruce."

The touch. The way he looked at him, like he was the only person in the world. The words. It was too much.

"Goddamn it."

He reached up, brushing his hand against Tony's cheek before pulling him into a kiss. He didn't know how the man would react. He didn't know if he was ready to pick up where they left off or if he would spook at it or not. He just knew he had to do it, at least once.

Damn it.

Though Tony was not expecting that at all, he'd already been on the way to giving in when he didn't flinch from the touch to his cheek. He'd just spent half an hour watching Bruce do that very thing to him, and along with that, spent the last half an hour craving it. His body remembered how it felt to be touched like that. His body was eager to feel it again.

Tony exhaled seconds before the stubble of Bruce's cheek and upper lip hit him all at once. It was ridiculously hot, not just in temperature (which was intense), but because of the force behind it, because he could feel Bruce's body, harder than he would have thought, tensing and needy and still likely wanting to run.

Once the shock wore off, Tony's eyes closed and he yielded. His body sunk against the other man's. It remembered all of this too.

It was supposed to be a peck. Supposed to be quick, probably followed by an apology, but it felt so natural and Tony was melding perfectly against him and he wanted it so much...

The kiss became more forceful. Bruce threaded his fingers in Tony's hair and snaked one arm around his waist, as if holding him tight could keep him from slipping away or deciding last minute that their lack of history meant he wanted to go back to dating beautiful women with wild sex lives.

It was one of the many things he was afraid of. That Tony would realize that, now that he didn't have all the shared trauma clogging his head, he didn't really want a man, much less an emotionally broken one who couldn't have sex.

Hands freed up, Tony immediately sunk them into almost fly away curls, still warm from Bruce's long nap. He wasn't thinking about anything other than lips and tongue at the moment, though he might dwell later that his penchant for leggy blondes was simply a type for having fun with and not much more. Bruce didn't fit his traditional taste but he tasted good and he fit against his body perfectly.

There was nothing even remotely similar to a peck, no matter Bruce's original intention. Tony never did anything small anyway. He wasn't sure if he shuffled forward or pushed Bruce back but the result was the same. The wall just to the left of the door was a good place to trap him in, at least until they both couldn't breathe and their mouths were deliciously numb.

Learning all over again just how strong Bruce was, however--

It took very little time at all to find enjoyment in that.

All the heat of his rage and fear and want was in there. Teeth and tongue and lips and it felt like they had entirely too many clothes on, but he couldn't tear Tony's clothes off because he didn't trust himself to not lose control.

Bruce, up against the wall, held Tony too tightly, kissed too hard, used touches that were too rough... he just wanted so desperately to keep the good thing that had been given to him. To let just this one good thing, this new family of his, stay intact.

Eventually, he had to break for air, lips red and swollen, chest heaving, and pupils dilated and dark. "...I don't think I'll move my stuff out just yet."

For a moment, Tony looked like more than his breath had been taken from him. He couldn't remember how to think at all. Blinking long lashed eyes, lifting them slightly from half mast, the words sunk in two moments later. The whole situation just made him laugh and, one hand still tangled in Bruce's hair, nodded somewhat numbly.

No one in his life had ever kissed him like that. Never. Tony had never been all that interested in the foreplay of kissing anyway. Oh, he felt as if he had been missing out.

Sucking on his swollen lower lip, still tasting Bruce, Tony lightly patted the other man on the center of his chest and nodded. "Good. My suits would get lonely."

He wanted to go back to kissing. He wanted to take off their clothes and touch and rebuild all the bridges Loki might have burned down. Instead, he just pressed another, far gentler kiss against Tony's mouth.

"Go talk to Alessa. We can figure this out." He let his hands drop to his sides, allowing Tony room to move away. "I'll check and see if we have any updates from everyone else." While Clint and Natasha probably wouldn't have much news quite yet, Steve just might.

Who knows? Maybe Captain America saved the town of Shepherd's Glen while they were busy deposing the king of Asgard. They would probably have to fill everyone in on that bit, come to think of it.

They were on the same page there about the kissing. Tony was a surprisingly gentle man, he's always seemed to enjoy surprisingly gentle things in his personal life but the force and the power behind Bruce Banner literally took his breath away. He wanted that again. He wanted hair pulling and biting and he had no idea at all that their sessions tended to dissolve into that before Bruce but the kibosh on how far it went.

But...right. Alessa.

"I'm not sure how I feel having a forty-something year old astrally projected elementary schooler poking around in my head," Tony admitted. "But yeah, you're right. J-- Banner's got voice activated access to the SH documents," he said and left the room to find Alessa. His hair was ruffled and his lips were scarlet.

He felt...well.. Not whole. But he felt better.

Alessa was looking at a projected screen on the wall of her medical room, keeping her bear in the crook of her body's arm. It seemed she was projecting multiple news articles, all of them detailing the horrific murders of entire households that police thought were connected.

"The Order's on a warpath." Alessa glanced up at Tony before wrinkling her nose at his state. Kissing was still gross to her, even if she was secretly happy that he and Bruce were clearly okay. "I'm guessing you talked to Bruce?"

And tried to eat his face, from the look of it.

"Better. You were right, he doesn't hate me," Tony mentioned, pulling one of the articles closer to him as he sat down beside the girl. He could get to his memory later. This... This looked terrible. Tony narrowed his eyes and flicked his fingers across the document, speed reading to the end. "What the hell--"

This didn't look good. Shepherd's Glen, even Steve Rogers, wasn't exactly mentioned in it but the area it spoke about was just a little too close by.

"We have to go."

Tony's eyes narrowed.

"Can you follow us there, without us taking your body?" His fast could he cobble a suit together anyhow?

"It's not Shepherd's Glen. Killing there will be hidden by the town's power." She pulled a whole array of articles, some in big newspapers and others in local papers, then fanned them all out. "It's everywhere."

Across the US, there were stories of forced entry into homes and the wholesale slaughter of the entire family living there, often with siblings, children, uncles, aunts, and parents living elsewhere being targeted as well.

"They've done this before. They're purging whole bloodlines. They only do it if a member of the family has wronged them enough. The police haven't said anything about it, but the Seal of Metatron was probably left on their door as a warning." Alessa looked up at Tony with one arched eyebrow. "How much do you want to bet that at least one member of every family belongs to HYDRA?"

They believed that HYDRA was the one to take their God. Now they were cutting off heads and burning the stumps left behind.

Tony's face fell. He didn't feel an ounce of pity for these people, it wasn't that, but kids? Kids were innocent of the mess their parents were in. It would be like killing the kids of Nazis (and okay, that sort of was exactly that). Purging bloodlines? It put such a sour taste in his mouth.

There were some hard decisions to make, mostly on the order of operations. The checklist was going to have to be tweaked and they just didn't have a whole lot of time left here.

"We're going to have to introduce you to Extremis sooner rather than later," he decided. He probably should have consulted with Banner first but--

No. Realistically, it was Alessa that had to make the choice. "It will let you move your body again. It's going to be difficult. Maybe even impossible. It might not take. It might kill you. But we have to be able to go places and if you're tied to that body there, I'm not sure what else to do."

Alessa's expression smoothed out. She glanced at her body, quietly breathing on the bed. "I'll never understand why you want to save everyone."

To Alessa, taking out the sins of the parents onto the children is just a part of life, and a completely reasonable response as the children are simply an extension of their parents. It was also completely reasonable to take out grievances with people on their brothers, sisters, parents, spouses, anyone related to them. How else was one to inflict the most pain on the target? Collateral damage was just a given.

But Bruce and Tony cared about collateral damage, so she would do as they wished.

"Extremis is supposed to make me stronger, right?" She began to approach her body, looking it up and down critically. "I'll already be stronger in a body. It could be dangerous if I'm stronger than even that." She could, after all, just wish people dead when she had a perfectly functional body. What about a hyped up one? "I'd have to bind some of it. Do you know any good tattoo artists?"

Tony wouldn't deny that the strength given to a person infected by Extremis would make Alessa entirely too powerful but like any proud father, Tony was sure that she'd be able to handle it. And if not...well. Her other father was the Hulk. He felt only a passing unease about all of that, but with Cheryl and her Plus One on their way, Steve potentially in trouble, Nat and Clint's cover blown and absolutely no protective suit to speak of, he had a lot on his plate.

Prioritizing was just one of those things he'd always been pretty bad at, though. Me-first didn't work when you had a family. So, naturally, he decided Alessa-first would have to be the new and improved method of figuring out what to do.

Alessa-first meant Extremis. And...tattooing a child.

"I can find the best artist in the city," he said and immediately set JARVIS to the task.

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