(no subject)

[starkingenuity]

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

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[hulkbusted]

"You probably don't want to know." Bruce steps out of the suit and shakes out his arms and legs and straightens his sweater while he looks around. "I wonder if he got some 80s MTV through the wormhole."

No, actually, over against the wall looks more like the ice control panel out of the 80s Superman movie's Fortress of Solitude. Bruce wanders over to it and starts pushing and pulling at the cylinders. The lights go down, go up, change to flashing blue and purple, and back to white. Another cylinder pushes a massive clothing rack out of one wall.

"Huh. Heavy on the lamé. I'm seeing a Ming the Merciless aesthetic."

[starkingenuity]

Any Flash Gordon reference is bound to get him to stop thinking about tadpoles, thankfully, and Tony decides to rifle through some drawers and have FRIDAY do some scans to make sure that they were secure, that this place was clean, and that there was a hot tub to enjoy before they took it apart.

The penthouse takes up the entire floor and FRIDAY guides the Iron Man armor out of the room to take inventory, more or less leaving the two scientists alone.

Tony’s arms cross over his chest.

“How do you feel? More than having busted a decade’s old nut.”

[hulkbusted]

Bruce isn't too interested in the wardrobe, and with Tony going through drawers, he pushes the cylinder back in to have the clothing rack retreat into the wall before he wanders off to pick at a bowl of something that might be fruit, mostly curious about texture and scent rather than looking for a snack.

"I, uh..." The question was pretty much inevitable. He stops to break something that looks like a kiwi-sized grape open and sniff it, wrinkling his nose at the odor. It gives him a few seconds to do an internal inventory before answering. "I feel pretty good, but I think that I probably shouldn't feel that way about having a substantial portion of my emotional range suppressed."

From a distance he can see where he could be angry and even afraid. The anger just isn't there, and the fear of a hurting, abused child is pushed under, asleep with Hulk where it can't fertilize more rage. What fear he has left seems to be too tightly keyed in to his survival instinct to be put to sleep with the rest.

"Other than that, I've probably got some bruises in interesting places."

[starkingenuity]

Tony is not an idiot, though he has a terrible lack of general empathy and has trouble understanding another person’s emotional context when he himself isn’t effected by something similar. He’s a selfish sort of man, but as Bruce describes his current lack of rage, and lack of ability to even feel that rage, he puts together a probable way that Kiara had been able to lock away the Hulk.

To take away a person’s ability to feel anger is not as therapeutic as it might seem. She said that Banner would be able to bring out the Hulk’s physical transformation when needed but— Uh. Isn’t the Hulk just rage incarnate? Tony isn’t sure he should be asking those questions though.

He just looks thoughtfully at Bruce for a moment before kicking piles of clothing towards the corners of the room.

“Now you’re just trying to make me jealous. My questionable bruises are more from kinetic explosions than biological ones.”

[hulkbusted]

The questions have occurred to him. That lingering hook of fear may be where he has to pull to get at Hulk, but he's really not in the place to test it out without potentially hurting people who've done nothing to deserve it. He has time to live with the vacant halls of rage in his psyche for a while before deciding if they can ever house anything else.

It's not like he has a lot of choice at the moment anyway; his motivation to resolve this would have come from fear and anger. In other words, his urgency's on vacation.

"It's not my fault the hot alien fixated on me." He gives Tony a wry smile that fails to cover his teasing amusement. "Is that why you were blowing things up down in the city?"

[starkingenuity]

“I was trying to get some money, not over reacting to the fact that you forbade me from having sex so you could.” Tony mostly struts around, making as if he is much more interested in everything else. “And honestly, there’s no accounting for taste.”

He can hear the armor moving around, scanning and cataloging so he knows if he has to bust out his supply of hand sanitizer before he glances over his shoulder at stupid Banner being extra stupid.

Tony’s never seen the anger. He’s never doubted that it’s there but the guy is just so damned patient with him. This really isn’t any different. Tony has no reason to act weird around him. One hot tub kiss under the influence of alcohol and sonic vibration means pretty much nothing. Even if it does.

Tony sets down what he’s holding and crosses the room to the weird fruit bowl before he leans over and sets a hand on his shoulder.

“We should do something you haven’t been able to do in awhile. Ever think about CrossFit?” He teases and pokes his belly. “Or we can try blowing more things up?”

[hulkbusted]

"You were trying to get money by blowing things up?" Humor to cover the hollow is much the same as humor to cover the anger - a little dry, a little pointed, not really meant to hurt. "How'd that work out for you?"

He's holding something that looks almost exactly like a crookneck gourd that's making his stomach grumble a little just looking at it when Tony comes over. He takes the poking with a bit of a grin and waggles the not-a-gourd at Tony. "CrossFit's too cultish for me, and blowing things up has always been more your forte. I'd rather just give critiques."

One hot tub kiss means a lot to Bruce, but he's more than willing to let Tony let it slide if sobriety is introducing the regret that alcohol numbed in the first place.

[starkingenuity]

It’s not regret. It’s the polar opposite of regret. The trouble with explosion induced sobriety and sex with aliens is that he’s second guessing himself and his reasons for wanting what he does now. Still. The whole thing is more confusing to him than the ability to make alcohol as potent as Hulk Juice and hot tubs as amazing as the ones here.

Tony’s back to watching Bruce, hand slipped from his shoulder to rest in his pocket with the other.

“So what are you critiquing now? Vegetables that look like dicks? Because that one is pretty convincing for someone suffering from syphillus. I’d guess.” He gestures briefly with his eyebrows to indicate that he might have once had to look up what such a thing might look like.

[hulkbusted]

Alien tech and chemistry are just elements of science that they don't understand yet, but which they both know the steps to take to eventually understand. People? People don't follow rules nearly as well.

"I can't critique it until I taste it." Whether it looks like a syphilitic dick or not. "Have you seen a knife around here?"

That grin is entirely inappropriate for talking about knives and phallic objects. He's had a long life and probably needs some slack.

No knife, no gourd. It goes back in the bowl and Bruce tables the matter of alien fruit eating for the moment.

"If you want to give getting money another shot, there's probably more than a few things in here to sell. The Grandmaster owes me back pay, and we can get back on track with the vacation idea."

[starkingenuity]

“Listen, I was trying not to plunder. We aren’t pirates. I was just being a little crafty,” Tony is trying to explain because he isn’t sure what to make of Bruce and dick-and-knife jokes right now. He rubs a hand through the back of his hair to the front as FRIDAY marches the armor back in with her report and instead reminds her Boss that she’s tried a few times to get him to follow tried and true safety procedures when pulling wiring out of the wall.

He gives her the kill sign but she switches instead to telling him that everything in the room had been sanitized for their use. “They use sonic energy to sterilize the surfaces,” she explains.

“Good thing we didn’t figure that out before Banner got his jollies going, huh? But we don’t have any reason to sell anything. We have everything we need here. Unless you want to run out and pick up some alien space pizza?”

Tony doesn’t want to go out right now. He would rather destroy some things. It makes him feel better to expand his personal knowledge.

[hulkbusted]

"You always end up with AIs with a bit of sass," Bruce observes with a soft huff that fades a little thinking of JARVIS' recent (to him) death. He can't say it's good to know that sorrow still has a home in his head, but he's lost enough already today, he'll even take a bit of sadness.

He puts that aside. Right now he's got an open pit that could all too easily fill with things he doesn't want. Better to stay on track with inappropriate humor and sarcasm. The world's funny, and this world's even funnier in its entirely fucked up way.

"You didn't, um... see any kind of festival going on down there?" Of course he hadn't. If Tony had seen people dancing around with Hulk heads, Bruce would have heard all about it and would probably still be hearing about it. "Then let's stay up here until you get bored."

[starkingenuity]

“Festival? No, I’ve been to enough street festivals to know that they’re just chess pools of diarrhea waiting to happen.” He has no intention of going down there to go to a festival. Bruce was in India far too long, Tony thinks, if he finds that stuff enjoyable.

Time here works weird anyway. It’s been a long time since the Hulk was favored in the arena and a long time since anyone’s been dancing around celebrating him.

It’s a wonder that no one from below has come up here to do more looting, though. Somehow, it’s still seen as off limits. Tony can’t fathom how this place exists anyway. It’s insane. And beautiful. And more luxury than even he had.

It’s not a good place to be when billionaires get jealous of someone else’s wealth.

“I can deal with staying in. That dick fruit is making me hungry. FRIDAY, bust out the snacks!”

[hulkbusted]

Good news for Bruce that Tony has little interest in going out and even less interest in street festivals. The fact that the fruit hasn’t rotted and this suite hasn’t been looted serves to bolster his false impression that time has passed in a similar fashion on Sakaar as it has in Bruce’s perception.

While Friday marches the suits over to deliver their offerings of junk food and canned tuna, Bruce continues his search for a knife, eventually finding one on a wheeled cart that holds what looks like an iceless chamagne bucket with a bottle of some liquid held in its chilly grip. There’s more homey tech to take back to Earth than just the hot tub and alcohol.

He returns to the bowl of fruit after giving a little, triumphant ah! upon finding the knife. “I’m sorry that I have to say this in any kind of company, but the dick fruit’s making me hungry, too.”

Unlike Tony, though, he has no motivation to stress about bacteria or viruses. The only thing he physically has in common with Hulk is a hardy constitution that owes as much to the serum changes to his immune system as to the fact that his blood is inimical to foreign invaders.

Which is why he takes the fruit back out of the bowl and slices into it, cutting a few discs from the neck without offering any to Tony. “We need to work out how to get you an ‘I went to Sakaar and all I got was this stupid shirt’ souvenir.” (And only blew up one building.)

[starkingenuity]

(And for my best friend laid after we made out in a hot tub?) None of that sounds inherently good to him so Tony smirks at Bruce with all of the bitch-please sass he can muster and busted into the pop top tuna can. He’s not going to ask after weird alien fruit. Tony is pick about anything that touches him and that includes food. He’s not a snob by any means when it comes to eating but he would really rather have cheeseburgers and pizza to trying something new.

So weird dick fruit for Bruce. Tuna on crackers for Tony.

“I have so many things to say about why that thing is making you hungry. But how about you keep the t-shirt and I’ll keep my comments to myself. So how about we work out what all of this stuff here is and how it does what it does. Then many more hot tubbing and we see if we can get some movies or video games going.”

Tony’s never been anything but a frat boy at heart. Even if he was never old enough to join a frat at college.

[hulkbusted]

Fine, now Bruce has something for his Christmas list to give to the man who has everything.

The fruit's pretty good and tastes strangely familiar, as though he's had it before when he's definitely never had fruit that tastes like nutty lemons. It occurs to him that Hulk may have eaten it while he lived here, and he unconsciously braces himself for a wash of angry self-recrimination that just doesn't come.

Huh. That's actually refreshing. He chomps on the fruit and distractedly waves off the inevitable innuendo from Tony about what makes him hungry.

"I think this guy was more into watching real people kill each other." And if they find videos, Bruce honestly wouldn't be surprised to find that it's homemade orgy porn. Which... could be interesting for purposes of studying alien biology and anatomy, but possibly really uncomfortable.

He cuts a few more slices and leaves the rest of the fruit behind while he wanders over to the door where FRIDAY had taken the suit to give the place a once over. The first sign of a bed is going to pull him in like a magnet. "Are you going to tell me that you loaded FRIDAY up with Call of Duty?"

[starkingenuity]

“I have over two hundred Xbox and PlayStation titles as well as over ten thousand movies,” FRIDAY tells him. “Would you care to watch any now?” Polite as always, even if she is currently a suit of armor pulling out bags and cans from inside another suit of armor right now and carefully setting each up in rows on one of the long tables like a buffet.

Tony snatches a bag of freeze dried bananas and follows after Bruce. “Something with explosions,” he suggests to the AI and once again, it’s as if he and Bruce have a sort of hive mind directive going off because they both wander over to a ridiculously huge round bed with mirrored ceilings and metallic gold sheets. Tony wastes no time stepping on the heels of his shoes to kick them off before he crawls into the FRIDAY-assured sanitized bed. He takes the left side, propping himself up on pillows to enjoy his tuna and crackers...

While watching himself in his peripheral vision do the same.

“This is almost like a guy after my own heart. Minus the forcing people to fight to the death for him,” Tony says, nodding appreciatively.

[hulkbusted]

“Not too many explosions, okay, FRIDAY? And released within the past two years. Might as well start catching up on what I’ve missed.”

Bruce leaves his shoes next to the bed and takes off his sweater before crawling onto the bed and stretching out on his back to watch Tony in the mirror. There’s something about a mirror that gives permission to look at someone for longer than he would otherwise. A little trick of the brain that says you aren’t staring at them, you’re staring at their reflection, so it’s okay.

“Orgies aren’t too messy for you? All those bodies and fluids?” He munches on a bit of the siced gourd he brought along. “Or did you just mean the bed the size of Texas and the mirrors?”

[starkingenuity]

Tony turns his head slightly to look at Bruce, hair mussed up on the pillow as he watches the other man watch him. The trajectory of a reflection is easy to figure out, even if you’re not really into engineering and physics like a certain someone. He’s partially laying on his shoulder, arm bent away from his body slightly and Bruce just out of reach of his curled out fingertips. The other man is more rigid than he is in posture, relaxed but not relaxing. He’s never been able to relax, Tony thinks to himself. Except for now. Now he’s got nothing to worry about. Not at all.

And that’s just so refreshing. He wonders if Bruce finds it odd or if he’s pleased by it. They haven’t really spoken about it but the Hulk’s departure has only happened a few hours ago. It’s fresh. Maybe it’s raw.

“Despite popular opinion of me, I’m not like that. Threesomes are too messy. Anything more than that and I would have to bathe in hand sanitizer. That can’t be too healthy. I think I’m too possessive to worry about whose doing what to whom. In my bed, there’s only two leads and no room for supporting characters.”

Why did he find Bruce so exciting? It’s not the Hulk. It can’t be. The Hulk is a thing if the past and Tony still wants Banner. Badly.

He’s not traditionally beautiful. He’s not feminine. He’s just smart. Too smart. He gets everything about him. But that usually would translate into good friendship for most people. Tony just blurs lines. It’s like his sole purpose in life to erase the boundaries that should exist.

“How do you feel about a staring role?”

[hulkbusted]

While he purses his lips into a faintly apologetic moue when Tony catches him staring, he doesn't look away. This is probably exactly the right kind of conversation to have with indirect eye contact, and it really is refreshing to be able to hold eye contact without constantly monitoring himself against any rise in aggression.

To be fair, he's still constantly monitoring himself; it's a habit that won't fade easily, and which he isn't sure he should allow to fade. Hulk's still there, and that which sleeps could someday wake. Until then, this is weird and refreshing and odd and raw and it should probably be frightening how much he isn't frightened.

He wishes he could say he's surprised by the proposition, but after the hot tub earlier, he'd have be even worse at people than he is for it to be a surprise. Even so his eyebrows do go up, more for the timing than anything else.

The mirror isn't going to do the trick now. He rolls onto his side, putting Tony's outstretched hand against his chest with the motion. He leaves it there and pushes up onto an elbow to get a clear, eye to eye look at Tony, keeping a solemn expression before it breaks into a hinted smile that matches the mild humor in his question, "Are you asking me to go steady?"

It's almost guaranteed to be a bad idea to say yes. Tony is one of his favorite people on the planet, but to call him high maintenance is to ignore the fact that one of Tony's primary hobbies is breaking himself, leaving him in need of even more maintenance.

Of course, Bruce has a long track record of bad ideas, with quite of few of them coming up in Tony's company.

[starkingenuity]

Bruce is always warm. He’s that guy that just gives out heat, and while Tony knows that’s from the serum, from how irradiated his cells are, he can’t help but find it comforting. Rogers runs just as hot, but there’s nothing about that blond idiot that is comforting at all. With Bruce looking directly at him now, Tony hooks his fingertips ever so slightly into the edge of fabric between the buttons of his shirt where it peeks from under his rumpled cardigan.

“I’ve actually never asked anyone that. So you’d be my first.” There’s not a whole lot of firsts that Tony hasn’t already had, which might make the process of asking someone ‘to go steady’ could be seen as a ridiculous one. It’s from a time that happened before either of them even started dating too, and again, Tony has a thought about Rogers that does not belong in this moment.

Two in a row? Jesus, that man is infuriating even if he isn’t here!

“If I say yes, will you ditch Johnny and be my date for the sock hop too?”

[hulkbusted]

Bruce mimes pushing up glasses that he isn't wearing and quirks an eyebrow at Tony. "You're going to screw up your chances at Homecoming King if this gets out."

If he knew how much Tony's mind was wandering to Steve, he'd definitely be rethinking the offhand way he'd characterized the end of their friendship as a breakup. He also wouldn't really enjoy feeling like a double rebound.

He lets the humor slide away, now all seriousness. "I thought you'd have second and third thoughts about you and me once you sobered up and we got out of the hot tub."

[starkingenuity]

Steve Rogers, unfortunately, is inextricably linked to him and has been since before he was born. His father, genius and idiot that he had been, sort of made that inevitable, and not just because of the patent on his genetic makeup thanks to the serum, but because he’d spent his life comparing his son to the blond he dedicated the majority of his time and energy to finding and resurrecting. Their relationship is and will always be one-sidedly complicated.

As for Pepper-- Okay yeah. It’d be fair to say that Bruce is a too-soon rebound there. Tony doesn’t want to be alone. He knows what happens when he’s alone. It’s usually bad.

When he’s with someone, it’s also pretty bad, but the margin for error decreases just a little. He’s compared notes. Being a bachelor doesn’t suit him.

Tony’s fingers curl more dramatically inside the other man’s shirt. Possessive, yes, but maybe a little worried too. “Yeah so my thoughts about you and me have been happening for way too long. But if yours had been entirely hot tub induced, you don’t have to humor me.” He sort of gets that twinge from time to time that Pepper had been doing just that.

[hulkbusted]

"I don't really get thoughts about me and anyone until I get hit over the head with it." Which is half true. He has thoughts, but he suppresses them as soon as he realizes they're there. "Up until a few hours ago, it would have been dangerously unfair to both sides of the equation." And that is entirely true.

Last time - not counting Kiara - had been very recently on his personal timeline and Steve had had to be the one to hit him over the head with the truth. It had gone off the rails so hard that even Hulk had known they had to go. Would that make Tony his rebound, too?

"So you're getting over someone and I'm finally in a place where I can think about being with someone who gets me." He glances down at the hand fisted in his shirt and reaches up to wrap his fingers around Tony's wrist, holding him there. "We're probably crazy if we go anywhere with that."

Because that's one thing about Bruce - he's not a no strings attached kind of guy.

[starkingenuity]

Tony has never had to pursue someone this much, though it had only been an afternoon. Two days? Three? He can’t keep track of the time. Bruce was out of his life for so long that now that he’s come back, he almost can’t fathom that he’d ever left. And over a woman of all things! This is probably different territory for the both of them. They’re not young men. They’ve got the majority of their experience with women. And they’ve got the same sort of wit and genius. There’s got to be a flashpoint here that neither are seeing, or don’t want to see, though

Tony’s become the poster boy, despite how the media sees him, for monogamy over the last seven years. Bruce has been the poster boy for celibacy. Their connection shouldn’t exist, but it does. It has for years, overcoming long bouts of absenteeism.

“I’ve been called worse,” he offers, not sure if Bruce is trying to keep him from unbuttoning his shirt next or if he’s egging him on to see if he’s in it for the long haul. The guy is maddeningly hard to read, even for someone who has had to become very good at reading people (even if he doesn’t care about them or what he gets off of them). “But this, or the hot tub, aren’t deal breakers. It’s not one thing or nothing. You’ve got the wheel here. I laid out my cards. All of them, the whole spectrum. You can pick your hand.”

Friendship. Romance. A little of each. It’s up to Bruce.

[hulkbusted]

Bruce isn't really sure if he's holding Tony back or egging him on. He's well aware that all he has to do is say no and it's be mostly no harm, no foul. There might be some hurt feelings, but they're big boys; they can take it and move on.

He just doesn't really want to move on, and with Hulk and everything that fueled Hulk stuffed away where Bruce can't currently reach them, he's not feeling a compelling reason to deny himself.

"Let's leave most of the cards on the table for now." There is no graceful way, lying on your side, to inch your way closer to another person on a bed. The best Bruce can manage is to brace himself on his elbow and shimmy closer, releasing his hold on Tony's hand to grab one of Tony's belt loops and give it a tug toward him. "We need to figure out what game we're playing first."