starkingenuity | (no subject)

“Well,” Tony says as he thinks, scratching at the underside of his chin. “It’s pretty obvious that you’re rusty and you got me really high and wandered off before hand, but I’m having a good time. Maybe we can go on a second date if you play your cards right.”

Tony still has some blood smeared on his upper lip, they are a little sticky from the pollen that the flowering acrobats have covered them in, but Tony is the happiest he’s been in a long while. Sakaar has been crazy and dangerous and wonderful. It’s just been so unbelievably wonderful.

So he offers Bruce his arm.

“Can I walk you back, Doctor Banner?”

"I got you high?" He manages about a second and a half of affront before taking Tony's arm. "I'm not that kind of guy."

He can get back to identity crisis about what kind of guy he is later. He's not used to being a happy guy, but this unfamiliar mood might just be that. It's been an extremely eventful whirlwind since the moment he and Tony reunited, and just then some down time sounds miraculous.

"Second date's got to be on Earth. I'm not cut out for cosmopolitan Sakaar." He waves the feather he's clutching at Tony as they start their meandering stroll back. "It's just too weird for me, and that's saying a lot. You saw that guy on stage when we left, right? That wasn't just a hallucination?"

“Do you think the female of the species has three vaginas?” Tony’s once again tapped into Bruce’s thought process. They don’t need to have a telepathic connection to be connected. That’s what has always made them work. Maybe the hot tub pushed them into exploring this bond between them more robustly, but Tony will never deny that it’s there. And that it’s real. And that he does feel a giddy sort of contentment thinking that they can have a date back on Earth. “We’re leaving tomorrow. The stress test on the armor should be done by then. I’m thinking we go for a little Thai, maybe play some mini golf, get some ice cream?”

It’s almost mundane. If Tony doesn’t come down off of this weird high soon, the whole thing might get almost domestic.

“Doctor Banner,” Tony says as they enter the hacked elevator a few minutes later, Sakaar slowly dropping away from them, “I just want to say that... out of all the things we’ve done that have been morally questionable, this is by far my favorite. And you can quote me on that. Now go clean up so we can make out and dry hunk like teenagers.”

Tony just gets him. Not many people in his life have, and at most there's been one other who got him and accepted even the ugly parts. It's really damn nice.

"Why else does he need three penises?" Three very small females with one vagina each? He really didn't need his chemically-enhanced imagination taking him there.

"I'm thinking we go and I get to sleep in a bed where no one butts in and throws us off a roof. Then I'll think about Thai and mini golf." Of course that's all predicated on the idea that nothing on Earth is going to blow up, but he's keeping his worst case scenario vision turned off for a while longer.

Once they achieve their goal of getting to the elevator without making any more of a mess, he braces himself in a corner and tips his head back, looking a little drowsy until Tony gives him his marching orders. "What about you, Mr. Stark? You're covered in so much pollen we're lucky we didn't get swarmed by bees on our way back."

He snickers and shoves himself out of the corner as the elevator slows and the doors slide open. "They might make you their queen."

“Why am I always the woman?” Tony scoffs. It’s a good thing that he’s very secure with himself and open-minded (to a degree) or else they might have some problems here. “What part of this,” he gestures to the scruff on his face, which has lost much of its definition in the last few days, “makes me look like a girl?”

With an exaggerated huff of exasperation, Tony follows Bruce into the ruins of the room that had been pristine before their arrival and pauses as he glimpses himself in the mirror. He takes a step back and turns to face it, pink pollen caked to his shoulders and chest thick enough for him to wipe his fingers through it to reveal the small scar where the reactor had spent years. He glances at his hands and then upwards, before he seeks FRIDAY out for a scan.

For all he knows, this is cancer inducing. Or stroke inducing. Everything on Sakaar is dangerous to touch or eat so it’s certainly an understandable worry. Of course, it’s also compounded by his standard set of neuroses, so that doesn’t help at all.

“Scan. Full body scan,” he demands of the AI in the armor but she can easily reassure him that the protein in that pollen is actually a moisturizing compound and might be fairly good for his skin.

And that doesn’t help matters at all.

Tony is getting first dibs on the shower.

“The pollen is jizz. We were jizzed on, Banner,” he says while rushing through the hall around the other scientist.

"According to someone--" It feels a little weird directly talking about Kiara. Maybe because Tony has already characterized Bruce's having sex with her as cheating, which was probably 95% joking, but that leaves 5% that isn't. "--it's that beard."

He skips Tony's need for a scan and is already mid-meander toward the bathroom when Tony decides to jump the queue, an outrage that Bruce responds to with raised eyebrows and a vague, discontented wave of his hands before remembering one thing. There's more than room enough for two. Everything in the Grandmaster's quarters seems to be on orgy scale.

"Good thing we left before that last guy finished his act." Should he be restraining a laugh at Tony's reaction? No, definitely not. Please forgive that soft laugh at Tony's expense. Yes, he's covered in jizz pollen, too, and it isn't something he'll be signing on for again, but it's too late to freak out now.

He strips and tosses his stolen clothes in a pile in a corner, giving zero thought to nudity at this point. He's not as high as he was down in the dance party, nor is he under the influence of alien hot tub vibrations; he's just not going to start playing modest after everything that's gone down with them recently.

"Make room and I'll make sure your back's thoroughly depollinated."

“Scrub deep,” he says nonsensically, letting Bruce butt in on his shower time. He’s much more concerned with decontaminating himself than any untoward hanky panky at the moment, and Bruce needs to take care of the residual toxicity from his blood smeared on his skin, but Bruce won’t be safe from Tony for long.

Scrubbing off the clumpy pollen is somewhat therapeutic, and not just for Tony’s inconsistent bouts of germaphobia. The heat from the water is relaxing and the memory of the last time they were in this shower together does bring a childish grin to Tony’s face as he turns his back to the other man to slosh the grime from his skin.

At least FRIDAY is right. It does make him feel moisturized and somewhat more youthful. That doesn’t mean he intends to market alien jizz the same way he hopes to give world leaders sonic hot tubs to chill out.

It's fortunate for them both that Bruce hadn't been the shirtless one. It's hard enough to get all of the pollen off of Tony's upper body without adding in Bruce's more extensive body hair as a pollen catcher. Offering to scrub Tony's back wasn't even some kind of come-on; he honestly needs the help.

For him the relaxation comes from the opportunity to finally decompress from the sensory overload of an alien city. He can stand under the hot water, scrub at Tony's back with his hands and blunt fingernails, and let the white noise of water bring him closer to sobriety and calm than he's been in hours.

"We need to work on getting all of humanity's eggs out of one basket. The universe is starting to come to us faster and faster, I think they need a good dose of homo sapiens in return."

“I will be long dead before anyone gets humanity to even identify what eggs are,” Tony says, the high leaving him and his aching muscles catching up after that much too long day. He’s really got to take it easy for awhile after this, he decides, eyes closed and chin nodding briefly with each circular press of Bruce’s hand into his back. It feels great, soothing in a way that it has no business being. Tony’s gotten massages by people that have made it their whole livelihood and yet this one more be the best.

Talking shop while they shower together is just one of the benefits to this relationship, and Tony is sticking to it. If he doesn’t talk Banner into the codification of what they’ve become, no one will. He certainly can’t be trusted to get that way on his own after all.

There’s the faintest snort before the other man glances over his shoulder. There’s just some pink swirl there to keep it interesting.

“You and I are pretty good at being accountable for our actions—“ Ha! “But the rest of humanity? I don’t think so, Banner.”

"You think the rest of the universe is better than we are? You do remember Loki, right?" Only the fact that he still needs to give himself a good scrub to get off both blood and pollen keeps him from wrapping his arms around Tony and holding him there. "Or the arena here?"

He gets the last of the pink that he can see and reach off of Tony and turns away to start cleaning himself up without splashing Tony. "Asgard thought one island in space was enough and now they're stuck asking humans for refuge. Whether it's a crazy giant or the sun's death, Earth isn't going to be enough forever."

“I’ve just seen the best and the worst we have to offer and the worst— That’s the whole problem.” Now was the time for munchies and maybe clumbsy sex but instead they’re here, talking about is humanity is ready to meet the Vulcans and join the Federation. With the oversight they all seem to need at all times, Tony is really going to guess that no. No one is ready to try to stay out of red and set phasers to stun.

He soaps himself up again to make sure that he’s good and clean and then scrubs at his hair to clean that too. It looks less gray when it’s wet and Tony looks more youthful all together. So does Bruce too, really. The water seems restorative, or at least awakening? Maybe it’s full of caffeine.

The asparagus jizz is absolutely not making them younger.

Tony picks the last bit of pink from under his nails, biting on the corner of his lip as if deciding on the right kind of pasta to have with dinner. “How can you still have so much faith in the little guy?”

Why on Earth would asparagus jizz make them younger? No one remind Bruce that they're not on Earth.

He's face first in one of the water jets just then and only shakes his head, taking his time to give himself a thorough scrub before turning around to continue. "Maybe because I have more experience with the little guy than you do, and I don't think we have the right to tell them that they aren't grown up enough to leave the nursery."

If Earth goes the way of Asgard, Bruce wants humanity to have family out in the stars who'll take them in.

How the heck does an asparagus jizz? That’s the real question here, Bruce. That, alone, is the real question.

Tony shakes his head to clear the hair from his forehead, and splash a man already standing under one of the many jets of water. “Know what people would do on Sakaar? Get high all the time. There’s no law here and you know what human beings doing when they aren’t organized. They kill each other. And I’m not talking for sport. I’m talking Zombie Apocalypse.” He’s got to sit Bruce down and make him watch Walking Dead. It will make him understand that people are the worst things ever.

Hence why Tony lives alone. He might hate it and crave human contact but all they do is try to eat his brains.

“We can bring this up to SHIELD. Or better yet, the Accords team. And then let the counsel decide.”

"Yeah, without laws, who knows what humans will do on Sakaar. God forbid they get high, have sex, go see a sex show. Who does that except people in need of supervision?" He just wipes the water from Tony's hair spatter off his face.

The Walking Dead is fiction, Tony.

He snorts at the mention of SHIELD and the Accords team. "Who are you? A question comes up and you just want to hand it over to the authorities?"

“In case you’ve failed to notice in the last four days, I make really bad decisions,” Tony says without thinking for the repercussions. Being with Bruce isn’t a mistake. He’s sure of that. But he can’t actually figure out how Bruce is going to take it. He just hopes, pressing his lips together, that Banner isn’t as sensitive as a teenage girl.

He turns his eyes away, shoulder pressing to cold, iridescent purple and gold tiles.

“I lost my cricket. He’s hanging out with some other technological genius who also happens to be a prince. Can’t compete with that.”

Bruce takes the statement with little more than a twist of his lips that's as close as he's going to get to expressing that ouch. Not only does Tony make bad decisions, but he's tactless as hell, neither of which are revelations to Bruce.

It's talk of his cricket that he finds necessary to remark on as he gets out of the shower. "Keep talking like that and I'm going to feel like a third wheel in your breakup with Steve." And he won't even be able to get mad about it.

“Hey, you can’t be jealous of my friends—. Former friends. It’s never been— Sodomy was literally illegal when he grew up!” Tony calls after Bruce, which is followed for a lower, softer, “Damn it.” He’s quick to finish rinsing off and he shuffles around in the shower to hit all of the jets with his elbows before he grabs a towel and follows Bruce.

He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to push him away. He doesn’t want him to get his panties in a twist either though, and he doesn’t like being wrong.

So he’s focusing on Steve here, his lack of relationship with Steve, and that he is almost amused by the jealousy thing even if it bothers him.

“You know I—“ Not Love, not love, not love, “you know you mean more to me that some loser art class drop out, right?”

Bruce hasn't gone far. He's drying off and pulling a face at a few spots of pink that are coming off on the towel where he didn't get all of the pollen. That he can tolerate, but it does concern him enough to find a mirror and check his face to ensure that no trace of blood remains.

Alien plant jizz? Fine. Banner blood? No go.

"I don't need reassurance. I'd rather just see my friends get their shit together." Whether it loses gravity when he says it while he's tilting his head back to look up his own nose is not his problem.

If the word "love" gets dropped, he's heading back out into the city to find whoever has mind-controlled and/or kidnapped Tony.

Satisfied that he's properly cleaned up, he frowns a little at his reflection. He's been having some trouble reconciling who he sees in the mirror lately, so that's no change. It would be great if he could just stop wondering where the years went when he looks at himself.

Tony’s learned his lesson about loving people. They always try to kill you and leave you anyway. He’s not making that mistake again. Getting himself nearly killed is just par for the course of his life but that doesn’t mean that he wants to carry that any further into his relationships than they already are.

He’s not looking into the mirror. He’s just watching Bruce test the safety of his nasal passages, arms crossed over his chest after he tucks the towel around his waist.

“You weren’t here. It got complicated really fast. And I don’t have time to lay out exactly how much of an idiot I will gladly admit to being. This case only.” He isn’t losing something good over something toxic either.

Rogers can suck it.

He picked his side anyway and that side doesn’t contain Tony Stark.

“Listen. If you want to write a paper, I’ll back you up. If you want to give presentations on how good it might be to start some sort of exchange program with Sakaar, that’s fine! But after that shit with the Chitauri... I just don’t have the faith in humanity that you do.”

He’ll leave Bruce to finish his night time routine and shimmy into his last pair of clean boxer briefs before he drops into bed.

None of his joints creek for once. It’s nice.

Yet another place where Bruce and Tony can see eye to eye. Loving people is dangerous, although in Bruce's experience the danger isn't just to himself, but to them.

"I can tell it got complicated. All I have to do is try to wrap my head around Steve Rogers, internationally wanted criminal. That's about as easy to grasp as your admitting to being wrong about anything."

He's all out of wearable clothes at this point; when he follows Tony out of the bathroom, he hasn't even brought the towel with him. If Tony gets squeamish, he can stay on top of the blanket that Bruce is getting under. He'll raid the Grandmaster's wardrobe for something to wear for the trip home.

"We're outliers. That puts us on a collision course with other outliers, both good and bad. If you start judging the whole species by those anomalies, you might as well write us off altogether, and I didn't come back to Earth to do that."

Squeamish? Hardly. Tony’s been initiating just about everything. It’s Bruce that has operation of the hand break here. Tony has decided not to bother learning how to use it. That’s pretty much a metaphor for his entire life though. One thing can be said about him, he’s never stagnant. Today might be the only day in the last two years that he hadn’t tried to fiddle with metal or wires. At all. Today is an anomaly.

He tucks himself under the covers but he doesn’t try to cuddle Bruce. The high has worn off and Tony isn’t a cuddler. He’s grown up being too alone to find the need for it, except maybe an occasional arm around the person next to him in sleep. And usually that’s because of alcohol or hot tubs or drug laced food triangles.

“I guess we have to have a different opinion on some things,” Tony says. “To keep it interesting. And if you can figure out a way to save us from ourselves and make everyone like each other again, you’ll have my appreciation. And make me wonder where you learned sorcery. And don’t say Loki. I really hate that guy.”

Bruce could be a cuddler, would be a cuddler, but he's out of the habit and still not sure what the boundaries and expectations are for whatever this thing is he's doing with Tony. A little space is almost definitely a good idea.

"The last time I tried to save us from ourselves it didn't go so well." He snorts, though, at mention of Loki. "You probably don't want to hear about how he's currently in his brother's good graces. King Thor, of the planet formerly known as Asgard, currently known as space debris."

“It’s hard to hate family,” Tony says before he rolls his eyes at himself and pulls the covers up over his shoulder. “I think I should probably just stop talking for tonight.” At least he realizes that he’s saying pretty asshole-y things. That has to be a first. Then again, his mouth is what got him into trouble with Rogers. And with Pepper. And with half of the team.

He can’t seem to stop. And he knows that it’s his own fault that he’s like that. He’s very well aware of how dangerous he is to his own relationships. He just can’t manage a disconnect.

“But I just think that when we get back we need to sit Thor down and watch the Lion King with him. You be Pumba. I’ll be Timon.”

"Aren't we already going to be that Spider kid's adoptive parents? I'm not taking on Thor, too."

After a second to think, he pushes up on his elbow and leans across the no man's land between them. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow you're taking me back to a planet that has my clothes and take-out that won't get us high."

The part that had taken thinking about is leaning in to kiss Tony goodnight. What they're doing is almost certainly a terrible idea, but neither of them halfass anything, not even their terrible ideas.

There’s just this way about Bruce that is simultaneously charming and maddening all at the same time. The lights are out and Tony can only see the glimmer of light from the city so far below reflected in them. His own eyes close as their lips touch, but it’s brief and he looks back up at Bruce the moment he leans back again.

He’s stopped thinking that this is a bad idea. Maybe if other people find out, it could get awkward, but when they’re alone, this is absolutely the best idea.

He lifts one bare arm up, the muscles of his bicep well defined, and cards his fingers through Bruce’s hair. His thumb lightly runs across his cheek. The skin is so much more supple than it had been before, though maybe that’s mostly because he’s still a little wired from the drugs and hyper focused. Tony exhales slowly, the corners of his lips lifting.

“So demanding.”