starkingenuity | (no subject)

“So it’s been a light day,” Tony agrees. “And I see through your deflection. It’s fine. One day you’ll like me enough to share the parts of you that make you so amazing.” Tont ought to write inspirational greeting cards. Most of them would be boozey and terrible of course but sometimes he comes up with a few winner. A selfless Tony Stark is a rarity but Bruce sees more if it than most people.

Tony has never been so open with anyone else. It’s a testament to the other man. Or maybe it says more about where Tony’s mindset is the majority of the time.

He still thinks of himself as a remarkable judge of character. And Bruce is the best person he knows. Better than Cap, that’s for sure.

“And hey. Listen. I was game for alien jar babies. We would make some beautiful and smart kids.”

He doesn't want to laugh, but Tony manages to surprise it out of him. A light day. That's... actually kind of accurate.

Tony is like a battering ram. Lock a door and he's going through it one way or another, and he probably has three other ways to bust through percolating in the back of his head in case the first try doesn't work.

He also treats Bruce like a person. He doesn't flinch when Bruce's temper gets short, he doesn't tiptoe around him as though he's going to bust out the Hulk if a balloon pops nearby. He just pragmatically helps Bruce design Veronica and sets him loose in a lab to follow whatever new idea catches his attention.

He leans away from Tony to look out the window at the Earth passing by beneath them. "I don't even want to think about how that would work. And if your next sentence starts with some variation of 'when a mommy and daddy love each other very much' I'm turning this jet around and going home."

That threat might work a little better if he weren't trying to hide a smile.

Tony can’t help but to laugh. “No. But I think I could probably make an artificial womb and between the two of us, a little X-chromosome splicing shouldn’t be that hard.” And he means it too. They’re both geniuses. If anyone can figure out how to have a baby without a woman, it has to be the two of them. “Unless you want to be the mommy, I’ve probably got dead beat dad written all over my forehead already.”

Like father, like son, yadda yadda. Bruce would make a good dad... if he could get his heart rate to cooperate long enough to ejaculate without going all Hulk on the poor woman.

It’s a really a weird line of thought that Tony decides not to share at this time and instead leans protectively over the controls of the jet.

“You know we have to do something about your wormhole. Who knows what else has gotten sucked up into it. Help a guy out Banner.”

That idea is going to go right up there with making a body for an alien entity at the top of the hell no list in Bruce's head. The problem being that the majority of items on that list are there because they had intrigued him in one way or another. He has other lists, like the things I shouldn't do because they come with a risk of Hulk list and the I regret trying that list, but the hell no list is a big one.

Funny how he so often seems to add new items to it when he hangs around Tony.

"Ethics aside - which they shouldn't be - by the way, I'm pretty sure you're not ready to settle down and I've always been a monogamous kind of guy." He turns the co-pilot's seat to face toward Tony and scrubs a hand over his face.

"They're real big on gladiatorial combat on Sakaar. If I show you the wormhole, you have to promise me that you aren't setting foot on that planet." He doesn't give Tony time to answer before closing an obvious loophole, "If the suit's foot touches, it counts as your foot."

“Rethink everything you just said and add a second stipulation,” Tony grins at Bruce. He can always just say he won’t set foot or boot anywhere but Earth but there’s nothing about flying there. Luckily for everyone, he has absolutely no intention, even if the pay off is cool and unusual gadgets to mess with, of going through another wormhole. Okay, he has a small intention of doing it, but it’s so tiny! He can barely see it! And it’s so little he might ignore it if it tries to tempt him anyway. He offers a little shrug and continues to fly out of the city and over the Atlantic. SHIELD is probably onto them but they won’t respond or tail Stark. They’ve learned better than that.

Tony can joyride for awhile until Banner corrects himself. They can head there, take some readings, toss Kiara through the worm hole and maybe stop for a picnic? You know, really made a date of it.

To his conscious mind he hasn't really had time to miss Tony, or anyone for that matter, but there's a part of himself that is still aware of the passage of time and his answering smile is fueled by that subconscious awareness. He's really missed Tony and that's messing with his head.

"If I stipulate that you stay on this side of the wormhole will you do it?" He's hoping, but he has to admit to himself that most of his thinking about Tony and wormhole involve Tony barreling on through because it's cool.

“One wormhole a lifetime is enough,” Tony says, suddenly a little too serious. “But I am absolutely sending a probe.” At least he’s honest? Right? That’s got to make Bruce feel a little better about this entire situation?

Tony is quiet for a moment as he glances back towards the locker where Kiara is being held and once Bruce gives him the coordinates, it’s not like he really has to fly the quinjet himself. It leaves more time for conversation.

Such as: “Are you going to tell me what happened? You and Thor show up out of no where with a nightmare diplomatic situation and it’s just oh hello? I spent two years looking for you.” And doing other things too but all of his downtime was Banner focused.

[Big wigs are still in the office. Today might be another super slow day.]

After a moment's thought, Bruce shrugs and decides this isn't a battle he wants to pick. Besides, he wants to see the data, too. "Knock yourself out."

Are there reasons this could be a bad idea? Of course. Is that going to stop either of them? Past history indicates that both Bruce and Tony have a bad track record for letting common sense stop them when intellectual curiosity is engaged.

That's the easy part. The less easy part is Tony's question and all that's going to follow it. He's known this was coming, but it doesn't stop his gaze from sliding away from Tony toward the view out the front windscreen.

"My last clear memory of Earth is Sokovia," he says at last, slowly, shaking his head a little while he strains for a better answer than that.

"Nat...." Had been in danger from him then and could be again. Had needed Hulk more than she'd needed him. Hadn't really understood what she'd been asking of him. Had better have moved on. All of that, and none of it feels good.

"I don't know what happened. Hulk got us to Sakaar, don't ask me how. I got the wormhole coordinates from the quinjet's records a few days ago." Before the quinjet was no longer a viable option for getting home.

He finally drags his eyes back over to Tony and he looks... He's terrified in a way that a man who is a twisted kind of indestructible shouldn't be. "He was running the show for two years and he didn't want to let go."

That kind of leaves off the whole destruction of Asgard, Ragnarok, the goddess of death, and Bruce jumping onto the Bifrost (ouch, by the way) despite his certainty at the time that he was killing himself to let Hulk out for good.

[ooc: No worries. Had a project dropped back in my lap that of course is needed before the company shuts down for a week at the end of the month. RL > RP even if RP is more fun.]

Tony can’t imagine what it would be like to be stuck for year years like that. Banner never remembers what happens after a Code Green. He’s got some vague sense of movement, he’s got a headache, and his entire soul is half shattered, but his memory isn’t in tact at all. Going to sleep for two years I had got to be the worst. For a guy like Tony with his fear of missing out on everything, it would have been unbearable.

He chooses to focus on that instead of the Natasha issue, instead of asking about Thor and his oh so delightful brother (and all of Asgard) are in the process of negotiating for land with Norway.

These are strange times they live in.

“Did Scarlet Witch show you something bad?” Because he’s gonna refuse that you chose to run away over a girl.

What’s worse is when he does remember, because what he remembers is never good; it’s flashbacks of fear and pain and fury without context. Everyone thinks he’s afraid of Code Greens because he loses himself, and that’s certainly the largest portion of his fear, but not the whole picture. Now he has two years of Hulk that could come crashing in on him triggered by who knows what? Being hit by shower water has been enough to trigger flashbacks of rains of bullets, and that was a relatively isolated event.

There’s nothing innocuous in Bruce’s life, and Hulk spent two years killing people for sport.

Unbearable’s one word for it. What the witch showed him pales in comparison.

His hands are restless in his lap, rubbing together as though he can wash away some psychic stain, but he's just tired. “She didn't show me anything that wasn't already in my head. If you're asking why I left..."

He shakes his head and looks away again, out and down. "I think it was because Hulk and I could both agree that we're a danger to everyone around us."

“And what? You’ve changed your mind?” Tony knows the moment he’s said it that it’s come out wrong. His charming sarcasm doesn’t work here, nor should it. What he’s saying is awful. What he’s implying is that maybe Bruce shouldn’t have come back.

The engineer is the least touchiest person on the planet, bar for maybe Banner, but he reaches out to out a hand on what used to be his own t-shirt and squeezes Bruce’s shoulder lightly. The touch lasts a moment but the warmth, as always, lingers.

“I’m not telling you to go. You’re not allowed to go. You can be trusted when you’re alone so you have to stay with me.”

And that sounds bad too but Tony’s possessiveness is legendary.

Bruce knows Tony well enough to know what he's trying to say. He doesn't know what's happened to Tony in the past two years, but he hasn't changed that much. He's still a mess.

He answers the question of why he's back with two words meant to derail Tony from pursuing the answer. "Asgard's gone."

Bruce is better at changing the subject than Tony is but don’t think that Tony isn’t well aware of what just happened. He glances at Bruce with both eyebrows up and then nods. “Why else would a ship full of Asgardians fly over to Norway? I bet the why is pretty bizarre but I’m going to strike a guess that some big bad showed up and Loki had a hand in both saving people and blowing the planet up?”

Just knowing that guy’s around makes him feel pretty sick to his stomach honestly.

“Listen. I don’t really care. Before you give me disapproving mom eyes, I’ve just had too much to worry about here and with the World Council to deal with Thor and Loki right now. That’s Norway’s problem. Not mine.”

And the World Council should be Steve’s problem but. You know. Criminal.

Norway's part of the world, Tony.

"Tell me about this World Council. That's new." He doesn't have to tell Tony how right he was about the end of Asgard scenario. Is it better or worse that Tony can't pull the whole Champion Hulk thing out of his ass, too?

Better, probably. Psychic Stark sounds like a nightmare.

Psychic Stark is everyone’s ultimate nightmare. Thankfully, he’s not psychic. He’s just a genius and putting together the arrival of the Asgardians with Loki on board and a bunch of weird aliens with them is easier to deduce than Hulk becoming a gladiator and killing at least one person per day for two years or so in order to appease the crowd and his master. That’s a little far fetched and Tony’s imagination can only go so far without prompts.

“Ah, okay so you’re... wow. Two years out of the loop. It’s like the UN. But with an oversight component for the Avengers and anyone with super abilities. To keep people safe. I helped them write legislation after the Sokovia incident. I’ll get you a copy. I was pretty proud of it.”

Was is the operative word here Banner.

"How does that oversight work?" Bruce is already dubious. Was there a database and licenses to live? Or was it looser?

Unfortunately, he's also seen Tony's zealot's approach to saving the world, and it's worrying. He's really not good at nuance.

"And why are you speaking past tense?"

“Because I made a mistake.” He’s gotten very good at saying those words. “And I hurt someone I didn’t hate. A few someones. Listen. It’s complicated and my head already hurts from having an alien in my body trying to score with you. Reader’s Digest version is that the law is supposed to keep the little people safe by putting leashes on the rest of us. It doesn’t work right. There are some pretty bad loopholes. Cap, Barton, various others I don’t care too much about are all wanted criminals. I was left with a shattered breast bone and a dinosaur of a burner phone to show for it and now let’s all just focus on present day.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. A lot of fat to chew. Being the current defacto leader of the Avengers in hard work already and he really doesn’t need your disapproval, Banner. So please. Please don’t give it.

“How close are we getting?”

“About twenty miles Northeast, Boss. And twelve thousand feet,” FRIDAY cheerfully answers.

Bruce is visibly surprised by how readily Tony admits the mistake. It takes him a few seconds to sift through the infodump and pull out the parts that he thinks are most immediately salient. Tony's shattered breastbone is clearly healed or healed enough. The burner phone is a detail to pick at later

He's pretty sure that if Steve and Barton are wanted criminals, things aren't going to be looking all that good for old Dr. Banner, either. Funny, he's the one with the most practice with that.

"That's a lot." He's holding his disapproval for now, but he does look a lot like he just got punched in the gut. Tony may still get it, but something else he's getting from the infodump is that his friends - not just Tony, but clearly Tony - are hurting. A lot.

"Is that why the tower's mostly a ghost town?"

“Oh. That.” No. There’s even more things to say about that. Tony huffs. Why does Bruce always have to ask the really hard questions? Why can’t he just sit back with his feet on the dash and enjoy the ride?

Tony still holds the throttle though it’s FRIDAY doing the navigating. It gives his hands something to do. He’s always needed that, not because he fidgets but because his mind wanders. And when his mind wanders, people get hurt.

“Dad had this facility in Upstate New York. Rogers opened it up as sort of a compound for everyone. Living quarters, training rooms, and recently, some of SHIELD and the Accords staff. And me and Pep for awhile.”

But stuff never seems to work out with Pepper for long anymore. She’s hot and she’s cold. Literally.

“Technically, still Ms. Potts. Me less so. We should swing by after this. You’ve got a lab there. Did my best tracking all of your stuff down. You know. For when we found you.”

Why does Tony always have to go charging headlong at things? Why have neither of them figured out that just because they have ideas doesn't mean they're always good ideas?

"A compound?" The images that come to mind aren't homey, particularly not with the world turning upside down to make Steve freakin' Rogers out as a criminal. Barton? He can buy Barton as a criminal, but not Steve.

"Where Pepper lives and you don't," he says slowly as bricks finish falling into line to make a nice big wall between Tony and Pepper. Ouch. "I'm sorry."

He's just going to get that out of the way so they can both get back to the Emotional Repression Olympics.

“What did you do?” Other than leave? Tony smirks but doesn’t say it out loud. “She’s having a lot of trouble controlling Extremis. And evidently my mind is always on something else.” Like finding Banner or trying to mentor a kid he can’t decide if he wants to mentor or not. “She’s where she needs to be. And I’m where she needs me to be.”

Far away.

“She told me I’m too fixated on nearly getting hurt and she doesn’t want to be part of the reason why.” There’s always something. Women have always been like that and maybe that’s why Tony’s never been so devoted.

And probably why he doesn’t think he’s going to bother to be anymore.

“Boss? The wormhole is straight above us,” FRIDAY claims and Tony swivels out of his chair to get the drone ready. Conversation over.

Bruce has left two women he cared about because he's just too dangerous for them. Okay, if he's honest with himself, he left Betty because he loved her too much to drag her into his fucked up life. Natasha... It's complicated. It's a mish-mash of fear of himself, fear for her, anger at himself, anger at her, anger at the world that made her who and what she is, anger at Hulk... yeah, there's a whole lot of anger in there, and whether any of it's fair or not doesn't matter when It's. Still. There.

So he doesn't answer the question because Tony isn't waiting for one anyway. He peers up through the window at the wormhole that's somehow hidden from the world all this time, then gets up to follow Tony off the flight deck.

"Are you sending Kiara through now or doing a first pass for data?" Let's hear it for science, where both of them can escape and just be friends for a while. Man, they would have destroyed school science fairs together.

They would have destroyed schools together, honestly. Maybe the city that the school was in too. Actually, a teenage Bruce and Tony might really be too terrifying for words so it’s best to stop even thinking about it.

“I was thinking the drone first. Just to see what we’ve got. This is probably just one way right? I don’t want to chuck her into the middle of no where if that’s the case.”

He’s killed enough people lately. He’s pretty sure Banner feels the same.

With the quinjet hovering over the ocean, back ramp open, two middle aged men launch a drone. One is holding a tablet with a video feed, the other is holding a remote control.

Both might be grinning.

It’s hard not to have fun with Tony.

At least a teenage Bruce couldn't Hulk out. They'd have had to destroy their town the old fashioned way: mad science.

"There's only one way to find out." The video feed might get cut off, but Bruce had a couple of ideas that he was already tapping into the tablet, setting the feed to a wavelength that might be able to keep hold of for longer. "Sakaar is a wormhole nexus. The sky's full of them and most of them keep dumping trash from all over the universe onto the planet's surface."

He switches from the tweaking he's been doing to quickly drawing up a model of what he remembers from his brief period of not being Hulk on Sakaar, illustrating the almost inconceivable number of wormholes feeding into the atmosphere.

"Some of the wormholes have to be two-way. We didn't test the one back to Earth to see if it was one of them."

“There was just one back to Asgard? Thor’s always been selfish,” Tony grumbles, making the drone weave between the two of them even if he wasn’t paying attention to it. His perception had always been good but Iron Man forced it to be better than food and he could adaptively predict where to tap the joystick to keep it from hitting either of them, even the generally shifting Banner as he programmed and sketched. Tony nods with appreciation at what was shown to him, however.

As a scientist and a designer, he knows that there’s a particular artistic side that has to come with it. Some of his combustion engines and arc reactor specs have won awards for technical skill in the preliminary sketches he’d made on cocktail napkins at boring functions.

As the drone hovered over, Tony lightly patted it. This, like DUM-E and JARVIS and U is one of his children or pets and though sometimes things have to blow up, it’s always sad to see it happen.

Even to the things he hadn’t given AI or a high-tech feel. I mean honestly. The guy is using a remote control box out of the eighties. It might have a lot more bells and whistles but it’s still analog to his usual digital preference!

“Okay. Time to go.” Tony touches his ear and a clear plastic plate unfolds from behind it, wrapping around his eyes, so that he can mirror what’s on the table directly in front of him, like the Iron Man HUD.