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[starkingenuity]

[Tony volunteers for the worst sort of body take over ever: here.]

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[hulkbusted]

Bruce is trying really damn hard, and this hot tub is going a long way toward keeping him from throwing up a white flag and packing it in.

"Okay, so only you can beat the shit out of your friends. Tell me you wouldn't put on that armor and go butt in if someone else was doing it without you." Sorry, but he doesn't believe it.

If this is going to be a light vacation that actually feels like a vacation and not an extended therapy session that Bruce is entirely unqualified to conduct, he's going to have to get Tony sobered up and take him out among the extremely varied population of the city.

Just the thought of going back out into the city is enough to make Bruce want to sink entirely under the water, and his thoughts are on how they can navigate the masses without getting their asses handed to them when Tony's words draw his attention over to him.

So yes, he ends up too surprised to dodge a kiss and caught in a momentary overload of are there hallucinogens in this hot tub? or maybe how drunk is Tony? with a cherry on top of so he wasn't kidding?

It doesn't make for an enthusiastic response to the sudden press of lips against his. That's got to be for the best, but damn does this remind Bruce of how lonely he is.

[starkingenuity]

Tony is constantly reminded of his own loneliness. And that’s part of the reason that he does really dumb things despite how smart he is. He pushes the envelope to be noticed, to keep people to close, to make people hate him (because it’s better than apathy!) or any of the other things he does. He wants to be with people because he’s nothing like them but the world tells him constantly (and it’s right) that money can’t buy happiness. Only connection with other people can.

He’s just run out of those connections. The best and easiest way to gain something of them is through intimacy. Even with someone that can barely stand it without physically erupting into something else.

The hand that had brushed Bruce’s shoulder now cups the back of his neck. The other crosses his chest to gently rub a thumb across his cheek.

Once the analyzing is over, Bruce can get right down to brass tacks here. Tony is a fantastic kisser. He’s present and he’s real and he’s there. He knows about the Hulk, too, and about the heart rate trigger.

And that’s why his hands are where they are. He’s not just kissing his absenteeism friend, he’s also monitoring him to make sure it doesn’t go too far.

If it hasn’t already.

[hulkbusted]

The last person who kissed him pushed him into a pit because she didn't need him, she needed Hulk, and he lost two years because of it. That one's still pretty raw, too, thanks to Hulk-based time travel.

He has a lot of wants bubbling up but oddly, not the usual smorgasbord of fears. He's definitely going to have to get FRIDAY to do some more analysis on this hot tub and its surroundings, but hey there's a few seconds there where he doesn't care about that and his lips are just as plush as Tony has been imagining, softening and returning that kiss.

Then the seconds have ticked by and he's pulling back enough to see Tony's expression and give a slow, confused shake of his head. He should be pissed off at himself and at Tony, but he's not; he should be furious at the situation, but he's not; he should be afraid of calling Hulk back somewhere he'd consider his stomping grounds, and he is. Not even the magically relaxing alien hot tub can completely quash that integral part of his nature. "You know that's probably the worst idea you've ever had, right?"

His heart rate has barely ticked up at all.

[starkingenuity]

Water drips back to the pool from where Tony’s arms are still extended. Bruce hasn’t gone far, he hasn’t retreated enough to make Tony think that he ought to stop touching him now. Or now. Or even now. His words make the other man smirk, his eyes a different shade of brown, his voice just a note or two higher in pitch than the confused but still on point gravel that Bruce uses when he’s trying to verbally puzzle something out.

Tony loves that. The drawn out syllables. He can’t stop himself from that even if he wants to. Truthfully, though, he doesn’t want to do anything but this.

“I warned you,” he says, as helpful as it truly isn’t. “But that probably doesn’t matter.” There’s a smacking sound as he bites the fat on the inside of his lower lip and lets it go.

There hasn’t been one abnormal jump on Bruce’s pulse. Not one.

“Guess I just don’t do it for you, huh?”

[hulkbusted]

"Tony..." Tony's chest is suddenly very interesting because it isn't those brown eyes or his lips or that damned smirk. Ten minutes ago Tony wasn't anywhere on his sexual radar because Bruce has boundaries. Now Tony's very much on the radar because Tony doesn't have boundaries.

"Where do you think this is going?" He can't seem to stop his head from shaking minutely, tiny sweeps of his chin from left to right and back again, over and over. No, no, no.

Coming back up to read Tony's expression is no improvement. He wants his demeanor to be calm, firm, but what he gets with that little head shake and the pucker between his eyebrows is closer to yearning and fear. "This isn't Vegas and I'm not a fling."

[starkingenuity]

“I’ve been to Vegas. The rooms are nicer,” Tony says as if it’s a complaint, making a sort of ‘sheesh’ face as his fingers stealthily smooth the damp naps of Banner’s neck. He has a favorite part of people, a part that doesn’t translate well in his armor or in robotics in general but that everyone has. The triangular shaped area from neck to shoulders, where all of the important muscles attach, happens to be it. His wrists rests on Bruce’s shoulder but his fingers linger there and will continue to do so until Banner recalls that he’s as capable of moving away from him as Tony is to cease a potentially unwanted touch.

He wets his lips with his tongue, an unconscious but thoroughly and bafflingly sensual gesture, and lets ridiculously long lashes touch his cheeks for a moment.

Or two.

Before he speaks, he breaths in the air between them. It’s warm and damp from the hot tub and from the moment they had shared where Bruce had so nearly missed him back.

“There’s no where this can go. I’m not an idiot. I get it. And you’re not a fling... you’re... important. I don’t have a lot of people like that to overstep with.”

[hulkbusted]

He can't think of a single better way to ruin his friendship with Tony than to let this go any farther than it already has. Everything outside this tub is cracked and hanging on by a thread, and it's still going to be there when they get out.

"This would have made for a hell of a honeymoon." It's the best he can offer.

The second best he can offer. On a split second's impulse he decides to offer the best, too. He twists and catches Tony's face between his palms to hold him while Bruce leans in to set the balance teetering crazily between them. He kisses Tony knowing that they can't go anywhere with this, and knowing that if he doesn't do this, they'll both have different, uglier regrets later. At least with Bruce's mouth on his, teeth lightly grazing Tony's lip where Tony had been biting it earlier, he'll know that Bruce is about to get out of the hot tub for Tony's safety, and not because Tony had overstepped where he's unwelcome.

[starkingenuity]

Tony has never been concerned for his own safety, as really ought to be evident by forty odd years of near suicidal genius. He’s still taken by surprise when the cooling space between them translates into absolutely no space between them. There’s just wet skin against wet skin, droplets clinging to Bruce’s chest hair squeezing to the nearly invisible scar where the arc reactor had once been and now artificial bone replaced the smashed area where Cap’s shield had cracked his chest plate.

Tony can’t even get in a breath but he doesn’t need one. Those light touches to the back of Bruce’s neck strength to a desperate, clinging desire to hold onto something real. Bruce is about as real as they get.

He’s never been kissed quite like this before. Women are more demure and on his brief dalliances with men, he’s tended to go for those that might behave a bit more like women than err towards dominant.

Save for Rhodey. But that was a very one sided kiss that each decided to chalk up to Tony’s drinking because Rhodey very definitely didn’t ‘chill’ that way and each still wanted a friendship with the other.

Tony doesn’t feel for a pulse. He doesn’t melt and he doesn’t yield and there’s a click of teeth from two men getting all they can out of a situation that is irresponsible and unsustainable. Tony will have bruised lips and a knowing, pleased smile when Bruce finally retreats.

“I think I like alien hot tubs.”

[hulkbusted]

Bruce has had far fewer "dalliances" with men: one, in the name of "science" (and horniness but science sounds better.) He kisses Tony like he would kiss anyone he cares deeply about for the first time after more years of abstinence than he wants to think about.

He even lets himself imagine, for a split-second, that they don't stop with a kiss. It's a nice thought until the screaming starts in his imagination.

It is a retreat. He allows himself a moment of satisfaction for the sight of Tony's smile, knowing they'll both be feeling this for the rest of the day, then he boosts himself out of the tub and stands up, looking for something to use as a towel. He's naked, wet, and well aware of Tony's attention, which is why a towel is an urgent priority. He's old enough not to have the physical responses of a teenager to a couple of kisses, but it's been a long time and it's better safe than having to listen to Tony talk about how he really is a grower.

The hot tub's relaxation doesn't disappear all at once, but he can feel it draining away. "We have got to figure out how it does that," he mutters while he pounces on a basket near the hot tub and pulls out a rectangle of cloth that shows that they might be on an alien world, but towels are universal.

"Are you sobering up?" He tosses another towel in Tony's direction and gets to drying off. "Because you were three sheets to the wind when we got in."

[starkingenuity]

Bruce’s retreat probably is not helped along by the fact that Tony turns to watch him go, arms folded over the lip of whatever alien stone this is keeping the water in with him instead of spreading out after the man it so recently lost its grip of. He is open about his appreciation. Bruce is lovely in ways that coeds on college campuses across America would call him so. He’s mousy, older, he has brooding eyes and a pouting mouth. His voice is fit for long, drawn out lectures or, for the more romantic, poetry readings with glasses of fine wine on a balcony.

There are many sides of Tony Stark. One of those sides is the too young kid in college who never got the have the experience of a crush on a professor because his professors all hated and resented him. Bruce fills a strange fantasy just as he fills any holes in Tony’s intellectual needs regular human beings simply can not.

“You gave me a sip of Hulk’s secret stash. You got me drunk and lured me into a hot tub, Dr. Banner. Don’t go blaming my inebriation on my own poor judgements.” Hes teasing and it’s irreverent, not because they are forgetting what just happened, but because there’s a pin there for later. If Bruce thinks Tony will let it go without a cease and desist letter, he’s got another thing coming. “But yeah. I think I’m at acceptable levels of drunkenness now. Are those towels clean? I think I’ll just drip dry.”

And force his teenage wet dream to watch him prance around.

Poor Bruce.

[hulkbusted]

If only Bruce could hear Tony's inner monologue about him; he'd be terribly uncomfortable, but it would be revelatory as well. He certainly doesn't see himself the way Tony does. Being watched doesn't surprise him, though; he'd brought that on himself by playing Tony's game.

The problem is, if he tries to return the favor by staring at Tony, he'll still be playing Tony's game. "They were folded. No one folds dirty towels, but if you want to walk around like me after a Code Green have at it."

He offers a smile that's all Bruce, a mix of sarcastic and self-deprecatory, but when he turns his back to Tony, he rubs a hand over his mouth. The faint ache of a bruise is a reminder of kissing him that he can't quite manage to regret.

"If you can walk without being held up by a suit, we could try going down to do a little mingling."

[starkingenuity]

“I might be able to walk around but I’m pretty sure whatever is left of my liver is shot,” Tony says, accepting a towel only because drip drying will take too long and he really does want to explore. Unlike Banner, he’s never been to an alien planet before and he’s filled with kiss-fueled excitement mixed with all of the desires of a ten year old kid wanting to play Indiana Jones or Buck Rogers (as awkward as that name may now be).

He’s irreverent to the towel when he’s finished, tossing it aside like DUM-E is here to clean up after him and dresses in the same jeans and t-shirt he’d taken off. Normally he’d put on a suit but he looks all right in this, once he musses up his hair and glances over his shoulder to make sure that Banner was either watching all of that or trying to make it a point not to watch him.

Yes. It had just been a kiss. But it was some kiss. And Tony has designs on ways to get more of that. Even if it means being patient. He hates being patient. Once he’s ready, for example, he’s very ready, waiting for Banner like an overly excited puppy. The suits can stay here. For now.

[hulkbusted]

"That isn't as reassuring as you think it is." Bruce isn't trying not to look at Tony or watching him parade around naked, he's just intensely focused on getting dressed. It's like a men's locker room or the YMCA. Just keep your eyes on your own business and all is fine.

There's nothing like life on the run to get a guy acquainted with the finer points of communal living and how to mind your own business. Not that he's always succeeded at the latter, but it's working for this specific moment in time.

He doesn't make Tony wait for him. He's dressed and hopping to pull on his shoe when Tony finishes up. "Let's go see how the revolution's going."

[starkingenuity]

“What happened anyway? I’m all for opposed people coming into their own but this seems different than the usual coups that happen back on Earth,” Tony says as he and Bruce stand in a strange elevator, rumbling from side to side at times. His back is to the doors and he watches the world move closer and closer as they descend. It’s strangely beautiful, familiar and exotic at the same time.

And he’s dying to get out into those streets, right after they take in the Tower itself.

The doors open with a familiar ping (elevators are elevators no matter where you are) and Tony feels hands on his shoulders before he can even turn around. He’s yanked out of the cab and crumples against the wall in front of the doors with a groan. The woman that stand between him and Banner is familiar, even from the backside.

“Doctor Banner.” Her smile is wide but awkward. She hasn’t gotten used to this body yet.

[hulkbusted]

"You're stuck on a strange planet that enslaves people as gladiators, you need to get off that planet, and you really need a fighting force to distract from stealing the planetary leader's spaceship." Bruce isn't watching the streets below them. He's seen them and he's very much hoping that they're over that whole dancing around with Hulk heads thing.

He has his back to the windows watching alien characters shift on the interface and committing them to memory. There's a certain pleasure to being as big of a pain in the ass at doling out a clear narrative as Tony is. "Who do--"

The elevator doors open and he has enough time to register green woman = Kiara before Tony's taking a short flight.

"Kiara." There is nothing about his expression, posture, or tone that doesn't scream, Oh shit. "Nice to see you?"

[starkingenuity]

“It’s so good to see you too,” Kiara exclaims, her volume control about as good as her ability to smile convincingly. “Thank you so much for this body... I had been hoping you would come to see it in person.”

She ignores the groan from poor Tony Stark, trying to pick himself up, and straightens the row of buttons on Banner’s cardigan. Her purple tinted nails lightly scrape against the rounded edges.

Perhaps this hadn’t been the best idea. Her new host is very strong and Bruce doesn’t have her tied down.

“Is this more pleasing than my last body?”

[hulkbusted]

This is just one worst idea in a long history of worst ideas, conceived both on his own and in cahoots with Tony. It's definitely the worst idea of the day at the very least.

"I'm thinking the green makes you pretty popular around here," he says with all the care of someone facing down a rottweiler that might want to pounce on him for the kill or to lick him to death. The problem is not knowing which way it's going to go.

She's also tall, which means he has to raise up on his tiptoes to see past her to ensure Tony's not irretrievably broken. "How, uh... How'd you know how to find us?"

[starkingenuity]

Tony is always broken and has been for as long as he could spell the word. But each little break brings new meaning to his life. The aches he feeling right now much too. Eventually. After he’s done nursing the wounds to check and see if he’s come through it with some new and interesting scar. At least he’s moving though? That’s a big plus. Kiara seems hell bent on killing him, though.

The woman moved her hand from buttons to shirt. Her skin is somewhat chilled, noticeable even through the fabric. Her sharp nails are just as noticeable.

“I will always be able to find you,” she says, her voice now a bit too soft. “You’re destined for me. I knew it the moment I possessed that awkward body.”

Bruce has a handle on biology. He can probably put two and two together. Kiara, it seems, has imprinted on him, and probably psychically too. For a guy to have so many love interests in so short s period of time, Bruce sure is a lucky guy.

[hulkbusted]

Bad luck is still luck, so there's that.

Bruce is really having trouble with this sudden development. He'd told Thor that Sakaar was designed to stress him and damned it isn't living up to that.

Before Kiara can get much farther - oh like, trying to get him out of his shirt and sweater - he lightly puts both of his hands around her hers. "Your destiny is with someone who can give you what you want and need, and I'm not that person."

Where's FRIDAY when he and Tony both really need her?

[starkingenuity]

Well Bruce. FRIDAY is upstairs. Tony’s got shit on him to alert her what’s happening. Someone should have made sure he brought his phone but there had been too much kissing and then dressing and then trying to pretend that there was nothing going on has caused Tony to leave said phone about where he left the chips. Upstairs. Far away. And without embedding sensors all over the place, as this isn’t his home, the AI is doing her job and monitoring the chips.

It’s not a good look when two geniuses can’t remember a phone. Then again, on this whole planet who would have expected that an imprinted psychic alien would find them and try to toss out her competition?

“Why would you say that? You’re perfectly virile!”

[hulkbusted]

They had been a bit distracted and Bruce had thought that it was a good idea for them to get out of the room before Tony made any suggestions about giving the bed the same kind of test run that the hot tub had gotten. It honestly hadn't occurred to him that Tony would step out on an alien planet with no 911 available.

So he's still hoping for a suit intervention as he tries to dissuade Kiara from any thoughts of making more little jar aliens together.

"I'm not." He's back to shaking his head and there's a real question to whether he'll ever be able to stop, considering how this day's been going. "I'm really not. I'm genetically nonviable, my bodily secretions are toxic, and you need to trust me that I absolutely cannot engage physically."

He leans past her to check on Tony, then gives her a firm look. "And you hurt my best friend. I don't find that a turnon."

[starkingenuity]

Kiara gives Bruce an unexpected sort of look, one that is actually a mirror of his own, but without the precision. Her brow creases in tension. Her lips are poised and her eyes narrow slightly. She tilts her head like a bird might (or like a raptor in Jurassic Park), and for a moment, it’s like she might strike him.

“The creature that swells within you is so easily nullified, Doctor Banner,” Kiara says, which likely will get all of Bruce’s attention despite Tony struggling to stand up. He’s fine, just bruised, carry on with your lady friend, his eyes definitely do not say as he scowls at her lovely behind in purple leather pants.

Kiara’s eyes flash.

“We should go somewhere more private. I have learned it is the civilized thing to do.”

[hulkbusted]

She already had his attention, but what she says makes the rest of the world just completely go away. Even Tony. His hands tighten their hold on her hand before he relaxes his grip, though he can't quite hide the speculative look in his eyes. To be free of Hulk - what would he do to see that dream realized?

He says nothing for an infinity that lasts a full minute, then asks, "Nullified as in gone completely or temporarily?"

If he hadn't asked, the question would torture him for life.

[starkingenuity]

“It would be your choice. Sometimes you view this other you as a boon. You wish to control it. And that is what I would give you. He would, in many ways, be as my host is now. Asleep. Unaware. Not dead, for I can draw upon her knowledge and her strengths, but she will never again wake up. This is what I can give you.”

Her free hand lightly brushes against his cheek—. Okay, she tries to lightly brush his cheek but it’s more rough than she’s intended and she frowns.

“You will need practice when you become him. As I need practice with this body.”

“Banner—“ Tony’s finally on his feet. Wary. Hands out. Kiara rolls her pretty eyes and leans into Bruce for his trouble.

“Mind over matter. That is a saying I pulled from your best friend’s mind. And it is truth. You can be whole. You can use his strength. But you will never lose control again.”

[hulkbusted]

Everything he's wanted since the accident handed to him on a silver platter held by a beautiful woman. Anything Tony has to say is irrelevant to what he's being offered.

To be free of Hulk, but not the strength that helped save New York and Asgard's people? To be able to have a stable life? He tries to be a good man, but this is something more powerful than his will to be good.

He can't look away from Kiara to Tony. If Tony would deny him a real life, is he really his best friend? "And in return? Nothing like that comes for free."