(no subject)

[starkingenuity]

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

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[hulkbusted]

Bruce trails in Tony's wake and ends up pacing the room rather than trying to find a place to sit or joining Tony on the bed. He's both surprised and not by Tony's attitude, just as he's both surprised and not by his own level of guilt for this situation.

"Con: she was literally born yesterday." Looking for a distraction, all he's got is picking up the towel Tony just tossed away earlier. "Pro: not living a nightmare where one wrong step could mean I'm the one locked in the trunk while Hulk takes the driver's seat for good."

Okay, now what's he supposed to do with this wet towel? Good call, Banner.

[starkingenuity]

He’s being selfish. He’s always selfish with people he loves but he’s being more selfish than even he thinks he has any right to be. That bothers him. That’s what drive people further away than anything else. Tony sucks on his lower lip, in thought but not thinking about the earlier kiss, and sits up.

“Erase the cons. They don’t matter.” Bruce will have his life back. That life might be raising a family with a body stealing alien and having children with her that will eventually do exactly what she is doing. It might mean that he is eternally tied to her, but would that be so bad in the grand scheme of things?

Objective Tony doesn’t think so.

Subjective Tony wants Bruce to be happy no matter what, though obviously he’d prefer it if Bruce was happy with him.

“Congratulations on your upcoming Nuptuals, Doctor Banner.”

[hulkbusted]

He gives up on the towel and tosses it over the back of the chair where his is draped and goes to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Nuptials." The word is like bile in his throat. "Con: I'm not a fling and I'm not doing so well wrapping my head around the reality of screwing my way out of having to worry about Hulk."

What happens if he can't get it up? That probably won't be a problem, but the way his life has gone, it could happen.

[starkingenuity]

“That sounds like the best way to get rid of him,” Tony says softly. “Pretty fun, not much effort. No one’s asking you to get off—. Uh. Well you might want to figure out how that species does the nasty. Maybe all you have to do is rub butts.” The thought was pretty hilarious. And then grew dark. “Or maybe she has to eat you. But if it’s just bumping uglies Banner... do it. It’s a way out.”

Tony would do it in a heartbeat. He’d do a whole lot of things in a heartbeat but this, specifically, was an important step in the right direction for Banner to go.

“Just don’t forget too much about me. I get it. She’s got a nicer rack than I do. But I have a cool lab and barely notice any consequences to my actions.” He's meaning that to be funny. So laugh, Banner, and then go and get that alien loving!

So long as there’s no cannibalism involved of course.

[hulkbusted]

"I'd try to make you uncomfortable by telling you I'll be thinking of you, but I don't think it would make you uncomfortable." His laugh is weak and a little forced, but there's a thread of genuine humor to it because dark is his forte.

"Promise me if you go out while I'm off doing..." Doing Kiara. While he's off doing the hot, green alien. "Take a suit with you if you go out there." Because he can't imagine Tony staying up here and just waiting unless he gets hold of more Hulk juice, and if he gets hold of more Hulk juice, he'd probably still stagger his way out into the city.

"Do you have something I can use to get in touch with you if I need a rescue? You know if it turns out she needs to bite my head off or she didn't mention that her host is going to need me to host the eggs or something?"

[starkingenuity]

“I don’t have a vagina, Banner. But hey. Maybe she doesn’t either,” Tony joked, climbing out of bed as if he wasn’t sending the guy he just made out with to someone else. This felt so weird, almost forced, like a really bad movie. But again. No handheld cameras or college age would be directors anywhere in sight smoking clove cigarettes.

He prepared one of the suits, having it drop all of the snacks first, and then cannibalizes (whoops, bad phrasing) pieces of one of the joints and some electrodes in the helmet to twist together an ear-worn comm.

It’s the best he can do on short notice. And like a thousand times better than most people can do when given a manual, a pre-made kit and YouTube videos.

He stands in front of the other scientist as he fits it into his ear, touch lingering. “Don’t have too much fun, Doctor.”

[hulkbusted]

It is absolutely weird and forced. Bruce is so not a casual sex kind of guy. Granted, there's nothing casual about this, but it's not the right kind of not casual.

While Tony almost literally pulls a comm out of his ass, Bruce has some quiet words for FRIDAY. "Don't leave him alone. I want to see him in one piece when I get back."

The comm is a lifeline that Bruce intends to cling to (and hope that Tony doesn't decide to eavesdrop.) He let's Tony put it in, watching him solemnly, as though he's on his way to a battlefield. "If I wake up and this was a dream, I just want you to know that you're missing out." No alien hot tub, no Hulk juice, no strange sexual tension and kisses. "I'll have only as much fun as I need to. If it works as promised, I'd kinda like to have some left for someone--" I actually have feelings for. "--important."

That's it. That's all he's got. Any longer and he's going to find some damn way to talk himself out of his greatest wish. He gives Tony a tight smile and a squeeze on his shoulder, then turns away, heading for the hall and the elevator.

Kiara. Kiara!

[starkingenuity]

It’s such a weird thing to say and Tony just blinks his ridiculously massive eyes at the other scientist for a moment before he watches him leave, a bemused expression on his face. Bruce might be thinking hard about his soon to be baby-mama, but the buzz in his ear is from someone who couldn’t be further from her. “You’re oddly romantic when you want to be.” Tony let’s it go from there and decides that if he’s going to be round number two, he’s just going to let FRIDAY monitor the process. And he’s going to cause some mischief. Not by leaving the room, but by tapping into the wires.

What else is a genius on an alien world waiting for his bestie to finish having sex supposed to do?

Kiara isn’t too far away and once more meets Bruce as he steps off of the elevator, glancing at the walking, headless suit of armor that steps out with him.

She isn’t too concerned about that and lays a hand on Bruce’s chest once more. “Thank you for this, Doctor Banner. I will tell our children about you.”

[hulkbusted]

At his age, a literal round two with Tony isn't exactly on his agenda, but now that he's aware that all the flirtation and innuendo isn't just joking habit, a little balm for Tony's jealousy isn't amiss. There will be plenty more to work out if this succeeds.

He huffs at the voice in his ear. "Don't eavesdrop, okay? Exhibitionism isn't really my thing."

The elevator ride gives him just enough time for his nerves to start jitterbugging, and it shows in his uncomfortable shuffle. "Bruce. If we're going to--" He gestures vaguely between himself and Kiara. "If we're going to that up close and personal, just call me Bruce."

He covers her hand with his. "Tell me you have somewhere private we can go? Your host's quarters?" After a quick look over his shoulder, he adds. "Don't mind the suit. It won't cause any trouble."

[starkingenuity]

“My quarters,” Kiara says. Her host is no longer a host. They are the same, though the woman she used to be sleeps. And will continue to sleep in perpetude. This doesn’t bother her. It shouldn’t bother Bruce.

It bothers Tony just a little, not because he’s silently promising not to eavesdrop, but because he doesn’t get to make the final joke that Bruce doesn’t seem to have a lot of ‘things’. He’s already told FRIDAY to silently monitor the earpiece but she’s gone ahead to tell him if that last bit of information as it was directed at him. He hates not getting the last word in.

Kiara and Bruce go up to a room that is much lower than the Hulk’s, but the view is lovely just the same. She doesn’t seem to notice. She is focused on retrieving a small box from under her bed. Setting it in the table, she flips up the lid and removes two vials and a long silver dagger from it and lays all three in a row.

“Let us remove the beast from your head first. You will need lay down and be very still.”

[hulkbusted]

It bothers Bruce - he's consigned some stranger to the fate he's fighting - but it doesn't bother Bruce enough to not follow Kiara and it definitely doesn't bother him enough to want to spare Hulk from the same fate.

What also bothers him is to think that his "children" will do the same thing to some sentients an unknown number of years or centuries or millennia from now.

His curiosity draws him in to examine the vials and dagger. "My blood's a mutagen. I have no idea how it might affect your body. For that matter I have no idea if my genetic material is going to be compatible with yours. What if you can't--" He turns his hands palm up, showing them empty. "--conceive?"

[starkingenuity]

“I do not need your blood. You may keep all of that inside of your body, where it belongs,” Kiara says as if he ought to have known better. “You did me a great service, Bruce. This species is far more compatible to me than my initial body.” AKA, Tony Stark. “Now come. Lie down.”

But of course Bruce will likely protest and do Kiara instructs him on what they will be doing as she undresses him and maneuvers him back to the mattress.

“I will place a block in your mind. A switch. It will allow you a great deal of control over the beast within you. It will sleep. You will be able to use it at your leisure to whatever degree you desire. After that, we will couple. The mutation in your blood that makes it damaging to others of your species will have no effect upon me or our children. It will take many hours. You will then remove our children from my nesting cavity and place them in their jars. I will see to it that they grow from that point forward. Do you understand your role in this?”

At least she’s thorough with her explanation. And Bruce can lightly guess with the knife is for now. Sleeping with and then cutting into a woman he doesn’t know? All in a day’s work, right?

[hulkbusted]

This is where Bruce is definitely going to hope that Tony is respecting his request not to listen in.

"Nesting cavity." He can't help the speculative drift of his gaze down her body to her abdomen, interrupted by having his pants and underwear unceremoniously pulled down. "That's something, but this sounds like an unanesthetized Cesarean section. Does your body lack pain receptors for that kind of procedure?"

So far this is about as sexy as a trip to the proctologist, which is actually kind of comforting to him as he kicks out of his shoes and steps out of his pants and underwear. If he had gotten so warped by his bizarre life that this kind of thing was a turn-on, he shouldn't ever go back to Earth.

Apparently not an issue to Kiara, since she's gotten him naked and he's backed up until the mattress catches him behind his knees and he sits heavily.

"You know you're probably only doing this because I was the first man you saw once you got a body." He scoots the rest of the way onto the bed before she can scruff him and drag him there. "Does that bother you at all?"

[starkingenuity]

“It’s how it should always be. I should know my intended the moment my eyes set upon him,” Kiara says. She’s managed to dodge the pain issue, thankfully, since the doctor has just kept on speaking. He is nervous, she can tell. It doesn’t bother her. Nothing much does. This is what her life is about. Spawning children is a need bred deep inside of her.

What she does next is hardly as shocking as it might seem. Her forehead touches his and suddenly Bruce is alone. Very alone. There’s no hum of a monster inside of his mind. There’s no press of anger and rage flaring within him. Kiara has not lied to him at all in this process. She had put the Hulk forever to sleep in the span of a few moments.

Perhaps it ought to worry him how strong her psychic ability was... but then again Bruce may well worry about nothing for the many hours Kiara has warned him that they would be coupling. As easily as she had removed the Hulk from his mind, so too did she remove any willingness to fight her. Bruce would want her and only her until she was sure she was sure she had conceived by him.

And maybe after that too.

[hulkbusted]

When has he not marinated in anger? When has calm ever come without an effort of will? These things predate even Hulk, and the silence is jarring for the space of a breath before there is nothing important in his world beyond Kiara and the children he'll father with her.

It's an easy enough switch to flip when the other noise is gone, and more than a decade of celibacy brings with it an intensity that Kiara doesn't even need to stoke. He has wanted children, and while he has some very big buts to that, they're even more easily subdued than Hulk.

He has no idea how many hours pass before he can think again after the most vigorous and protracted sex of his life. He's shaky and drained, both literally and figuratively, and oddly calm about getting up to retrieve the knife and vials to complete their devil's deal.

This definitely isn't how he pictured fatherhood.

[starkingenuity]

Kiara lays back as Bruce cuts her open. There’s very little blood, just clear abdominal fluids that rush down her sides to stain the already stained bedsheets. It’s not a life threatening wound, more like a puncture to a sack that has, for several hours now, steadily grown.

Her children — their children really — resemble tadpoles that Bruce must carefully scoop up and into the jars, two in each. He won’t have to be told that each jar will force a fight to the death for two of his offspring. It is the way of their mother’s host biology and the only way to allow them to complete their lifecycle.

This isn’t birth, after all. And the same concept as fetal twinning that comes and goes with popularity in the science and pseudo science communities.

In the end, Bruce will have twins, though it will take many months yet for the tadpoles to become children such as Bruce would understand them to be.

Kiara carefully presses a hand over the ragged edges of her embryonic sack and beckons Bruce back to bed with her once he sets the jars in a cool, dark place.

“There will be a girl and a boy. Each will have three voices inside of them. Our offspring will number six in total. A large litter indeed.” Two mortal children. Four to go into urns to wait for new bodies.

Such an odd thing.

[hulkbusted]

He returns to bed and despite the mess and stains, lies down with Kiara and puts his arms around her as best he can without jarring the wound he's made. Her biology's clearly meant to support what he's done, the tissue thin enough to part easily and lacking the vascularity to bleed excessively, but he's human and it's disconcerting at best.

A girl and a boy. His eyes drift in the direction of where he's put the jars away. And four children like Kiara. He should feel something other than hollow.

"Will they be safe here?" The window may not be as high as Hulk's but the sky above Sakaar provides a glimpse of debris falling from holes in the sky no matter where one looks. "Will you after all this?"

[starkingenuity]

“You need not worry about our offspring. Your role has been completed.” It probably hasn’t occurred to Kiara that Bruce might want to stay in the lives of his children. She won’t allow it anyway. He provided genetic material, yes. He is her mate and she will mate again with no other, this is true. But there will always be a psychic connection to be had and for that reason, she can not allow him to help her raise the children. They must imprint only on her and she alone must teach them what they are. Their biology doesn’t matter, after all. It’s just their minds, or more specifically, the minds that will await their own hosts and mates in urns, that will be vital to carry on the species.

Kiara does place an arm around him, however. She is feeling maternal, a biological response she had not anticipated, and she strokes his hair carefully from the base of his sweaty nape. Her fingers do what Tony’s had done before.

“We will leave this place in several months. Once four become two and I can transfer them safely, we will find a new place to explore. This really is a remarkable body, Bruce. I can not thank you enough.”

Upstairs, Tony’s grown bored. It’s been hours now. FRIDAY assured him that Banner is fine and won’t let him listen in, and that annoys him too.

“Fine. Tell him I’m going out. Don’t give me that look.”

“I have no look to give you, Boss,” FRIDAY complains but Tony has already strolled out with what he hopes to sell to make some money. Let Banner have his fun but Tony is aiming for a little fun too. Mostly to sate his nagging jealousy. And to bait Banner to find him.

[hulkbusted]

So that's it - hours of energetic sex and he gets to go on with his life scot-free with some of his own biological imperative fulfilled, Hulk gone, and a new life ahead of him. It all feels too easy, and there's something missing.

He's close to letting it slide until after he's had some sleep. A nap sounds good before he leaves Kiara to the plans for their brood that don't include him. His eyes are slipping closed, his breathing slowing, and sleep is beckoning when a voice in his ear startles him fully awake.

"Doctor Banner, Boss wanted me to tell you he's going out."

He'd completely forgotten about the comm in his ear and frankly he's pretty surprised it's still there after the past hours. Sleep is going to have to wait.

"I think it's time for me to go. I just have two more things - first, do you have a shower? And second--" He doesn't have to ask the second part. His lips thin, caught between his teeth before he pushes through with his decision. "--if you can put the anger back without letting Hulk out, put it back. Please."

[starkingenuity]

Kiara hadn’t been ready for her mate to just yet but he’s done as she requested and she’s gifted him freedom from the anger in his mind— well, until it seems that he wishes it to return. One deep red, almost brown eye opens and she smiles up at him oddly. Use of her body has given him better motor skills with her facial muscles, at least.

“The anger is your switch,” she says simply. Their telepathy is basic, and one way. She can not read his mind and he can not project his emotions to her but she can feel some sort of tugging from him. “Too much will rupture that hold, Bruce. The creature sleeps within you, yes. But what is sleeping can still awake. Is it not better to feel as you do now?”

So that was the hidden price. She’s changed him. She’s stunted him in many ways. She’s meddled with his emotions, but only as asked. And she did tell him exactly what she had been doing. He just, as Tony mentioned earlier, neglected to ask all the questions.

“Enjoy the shower. Do not wake the young. And after, tell me again how you feel.”

Not that he would get the chance. Kiara means to leave him while he’s cleaning himself off. She’s a mother now. And even her mate means nothing compared to her young.

[hulkbusted]

Bruce had known deep in his gut that there would be a hidden cost, but as with so many of Earth's cautionary tales of being careful what you wish for, he'd been blinded by his desire, even when he'd tried to see what he was missing.

Is it better to feel as he does now? He gives a little shake of his head, but he also can't argue with her when it's not an unreasonable request to shower before they revisit the matter of his anger.

He leaves her in the soiled bed, doesn't disturb his children in their jars, and goes to scrub away the hours of sex. It takes time to get thoroughly cleaned up, and he barely remembers to remove the comm from his ear before stepping under the stinging hard spray, but it does give him time to take a mental inventory and restore some measure of vigor to his exhausted body.

In the end, by the time he steps out of the shower and dries off, he hasn't changed his mind. Without his anger, he feels as though a color has been removed from the world. Nothing has changed, but there's a vibrance to his responses to the world, to Kiara, to Tony going out into the city, that has gone flat. He knows there should be more, but looking for that missing emotion is like walking into an empty room and hearing his footsteps echoed back at him by walls that are too close.

"I've thought about it," he's saying as he emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wiping the last beads of water out of his chest hair with a towel. "I haven't changed--" His words trail off in volume as he takes in the utter lack of Kiara. "--my mind."

All he has to do is check on the children and find the jars gone to know that she's gone for good. Where he should be pissed at her for ditching him without that last resolution or even the courtesy of a good-bye, there's nothing there to give. All he can do is get dressed and get moving.

"FRIDAY." The comm back in his ear, he calls out the AI while he shoves an arm into the suit to pull out a bag of chips that Tony hadn't gotten to. "Can you help me find Tony or has he gone completely off the reservation?"

He's ready to go, and discovering one bright side to the loss of the simmering stratum of anger upon which he's built his life - anger comes from fear, and without fear, going out into Sakaar just looks like an interesting challenge.

[starkingenuity]

FRIDAY doesn't need to answer. Where Tony Stark is, there's likely to be smoke. Literally. An explosion rocks a building covered in neon lime streamers visible across the square from the window Bruce glances out of almost in time to his question and FRIDAY confirms that her Boss is having a hard time selling his wares.

He is a student of culture, but also a man who completely ignores cultural norms and it's gotten him into trouble here the way it likely would not have done at home.

He has no reputation here. He's just some rude outsider whose gadgets have accidentally blown up. Technically, all of Tony's early prototypes tend to do that at some point or another due to his severe lack of safety precautions, but whoops? It probably shouldn't when he's trying to sell them.

FRIDAY has already scooped Tony up into his suit and the one following Bruce questions in FRIDAY's voice if he might not like to step inside as well.

[hulkbusted]

He blinks at the explosion and shakes his head in a certain bemused humor before turning back to look at the suit, as though eye contact makes any bit of difference in the circumstances, particularly when there are no eyes to contact.

"Do I need to?" In truth, his sense of self-preservation atrophied years ago. The only reason he agrees after a moment is because it'll be the best way to keep up with Tony.

Once he's cocooned in the suit's embrace he asks FRIDAY to connect him to Tony, and he makes no effort to hide his amusement. "Pretty sure local customs didn't include blowing up shopkeepers. How's that working out for you?"

[starkingenuity]

"Pretty badly, actually," Tony's voice comes through before FRIDAY throws his face up in a corner of the panoramic screen to show Bruce what might lie outside of the helmet in all directions he could turn his eyes. His nose and eyebrows look a little sooty, almost cartoonishly so. "How'd the baby making go? Did anything blow up?"

He actually doesn't want to know, despite the easy euphemisms and innuendo that comes with it. What he's really wondering is if Bruce is free of obligation and if the Hulk has gone away. He can be spared the details.

Funny thing, jealousy. He really does not like it at all.

[hulkbusted]

Seeing Tony in that condition but otherwise whole is worth a faint, amused huff and a wash of relief that at least the affection he feels for his friend hasn't been affected by the loss of part of his emotional range.

"She left with the kids, so it's just you and me against Sakaar." How's that for condensing a whole lot of information into a single sentence? "Sorry about derailing our vacation. Can I make it up to you?"

Other than by blowing up shops and getting the population after their heads. He's not particularly afraid of that, but it would cut into any possible R&R.