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[starkingenuity]

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

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[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."

[starkingenuity]

Having only known Bruce as a mousy sort of man that tries to stick clear of being obvious or intrusive, the fact that Tony is yanked towards him by the belt loops is (probably) unintentionally hot. He grunts a little, pulling his lips back from his teeth in a show of surprise.

He gets that they’re finding their way right now. Tony has had enough one night stands to know that the first few minutes are usually just a heated up version of what a regular relationship that you see on TV might be like, so he’s pretty sure that he’s clued in on how these negotiations work work (though the fact that he’s never had a relationship that started out quite this way and is equating his life with fiction is probably a bad sign).

They have to play the game. This game. Even if it feels so serious.

“You already said no on Call of Duty,” Tony says, moving his hand to Bruce’s shoulder. “And not too many explosions. You’re no fun, doctor, but I want to fix that.”

[hulkbusted]

It's unintentional. It's also entirely possible that if he hadn't been primed, so to speak, by some exceedingly athletic sex earlier in the day, he would have been significantly less assertive. Still, Tony had wanted to see him strut, and here they are.

There will be more negotiations if this whatever it is makes it off of Sakaar. Possibly fewer than might be needed with anyone else simply because they already know each other so well, and Bruce at least knows well enough that there's little about Tony that can or will be changed unless Tony wants to make the change.

"You've wanted to fix that from the first time we met." It's an observation, not a complaint. Life with Tony had been good right up until they'd nearly destroyed the world. That's going to be one of his top negotiating priorities if they get to a point of negotiations. "I should probably warn you now that I'm going to need some sleep before I can be as fun as I'd like to be."

[starkingenuity]

“And then a few more showers. Before the hot tub. And a fly around the planet to see if they have pizza here,” Tony says. He’s not going to just fall into bed with Banner. Okay. Yes. They are already in bed together but the people that matter aren’t a hot and heavy loving and leaving kind of thing for him. He ruffles up Bruce’s hair and stretches out like a cat, shifting so that his arm pillows under his head.

He hasn’t slept in a long time. Cat naps here and there (pun intended at this point) dont exactly help the brain repair itself. He’s just used to running until he passes out.

And he’s not ready for that just yet.

“Settle in. But if you snore or drool on me, all bets are off,” he says, knowing he’ll just have FRIDAY project a movie for him and he’ll read it subtitled so Bruce can nap away his sex romp.

[hulkbusted]

"Pretty sure I don't snore, but all bets are off on the drooling." But he rolls over, turning away from Tony and throwing an arm over his eyes to block the light. Can't drool on someone if your mouth's nowhere near them.

"Maybe you should just have me ultrasonically sterilized if you can't trust my showering skills." Unlike Tony, Bruce tries to keep a reasonable sleep schedule most of the time. Disrupted sleep patterns do little to help with emotional stability, and up until today, Bruce has needed every advantage he could manage.

"You could trade bringing pizza to Sakaar for the tech we take away. Pizza for hot tubs - fair's fair."

[starkingenuity]

Tony just laughs. There’s something about how easy Bruce is with him that just makes him relax. They’ve been talking about (and doing) some pretty life changing things but that’s what this particular place seems to be all about. It changed Bruce once and it’s doing it again. Right here. And Tony gets to watch (and have a hand in it) this time.

He doesn’t even have to zap him or try to get him to admit to the weed!

They’re halfways through Transformers 2, Bruce asleep for all but the first five minutes, when Tony lets his eyelids droop and his cheek press into the pillow. He means to sleep for all of a few minutes and maybe go zipping around Sakaar for a little while longer as Bruce naps, but he gravitates towards the overly warm man and ends up with an arm across his chest and his head pressed into his bicep.

FRIDAY turns the movie off.

And sonicly sanitizes them both. Just in case.

[hulkbusted]

He sleeps easily, a skill hard won during years on the run. He'd learned to sleep when it was possible, though never too deeply. Any change in his environment is enough to pull him toward consciousness enough to quickly assess risk and either fall back asleep or snap to full wakefulness.

The change in his environment now is the warmth of another human being actually right up against him. He wakes up enough for that and shifts around to get an arm around Tony and a face full of stiff, product-hardened hair.

It's weird, but after twisting his face away from Tony's hair and wrinkling his nose at the guardian suit, he closes his eyes again and dozes while the daylight wanes and the city outside lights up to chase the night back.

Eventually he has to try to extricate himself from Tony's hold on him, trying to do so without waking him so he can walk out onto the balcony and watch the city lights and the flying craft that zip among the skyscrapers. This city's far less stressful now. It's hard to believe that relative days ago, he'd been struggling to find some equilibrium here, stressed out and teetering on the brink of losing control.

He toys with the idea of learning to control the Hulk form and coming back here. He could rule this city if he were in control of that body with his mind. Does he want that?

A glance back inside and he has to shake his head at himself. No, he doesn't want to rule anywhere, especially not wearing Hulk's face. It has nothing to do with anger or fear; he just wants to leave a positive mark on his own world now that the mark might not look like a fist. That, and he's not leaving Tony alone on Earth to slowly kill himself with self-doubt and alcohol.

He leaves the balcony and goes in search of the shower, solely for Tony's sake rather than his own.

[starkingenuity]

It’s probably not fair to let Bruce shower twice for the same reason but he has to admit that he feels a lot better with a very clean (and lavender scented) physicist joins him at the table after his shower. Tony had woken when Bruce pulled away, his own sleeping habits a little too shallow for the amount of sleep he allows himself. He’s not about to complain however. It is what it is.

Eating peanutbutter frkm the jar with some celery he’d cut up to add to the Banner-sack, he arches an eyebrow knowingly at the damp man and holds out the jar.

“I’d say I have no diseases but that doesn’t really matter to you huh?” The serum keeps Banner more or less healthy after all. “And my cooties are worth millions.”

[hulkbusted]

"Your cooties aren't going to survive ten seconds in my body." He grabs a stalk of celery and dips it in the peanut butter without hesitation. "Bright side for you is that I have no diseases, either."

He doesn't mind the double shower. He's had enough times in his life where a shower was just a fond wish that he can enjoy the luxury of a long, hot shower, regardless of repetition.

Tony could use one himself - that and a toothbrush.

Once he finishes his piece of celery, he grabs another one and taps it against the peanut butter jar. "I'm going to give you a free pass to ask me about what happened with Kiara, but it expires once we leave Sakaar. Once we're back on Earth, I don't want to think about her." Or the tadpoles.

[starkingenuity]

Sanitizing evidently doesn’t help with peanutbutter breath, or morning breath really. There’s only so much a sonic blast can do it seems and Tony has found the limit of that technology. Currently too busy munching away on his celery to do anything but continue to munch on that celery, he thinks about the proposition.

His answer, at least, is more carefully worded than it might have otherwise offered. Bruce is in luck. Tony is rarely without some sort of wit (appropriate or otherwise) when he opens his mouth.

“I don’t need to know.” He’s curious, he’s human after all, but he doesn’t think he wants to know about the alien that had invaded his body shacking up with Banner to give her some kids. He frowns for a moment and leans back. “Unless you want to tell me about it. I’ll listen. And try not to judge you. And your...uh. Tadpoles.”

[hulkbusted]

"As much as there might be some value in dispelling any ideas that it had been romantic, I don't really need to talk about it. In retrospect, there were parts that are kind of scary."

Kiara had made herself the only important thing in his universe for those hours they'd spent together. It's terrifying how easy it had been for her and how fully he'd fallen into it, and it's nightmarish that there may be a link between them for life. Best not to even think about the four tadpoles who will be two, but also six.

"Let's look forward instead. I'm guessing there's still a place for me, but I don't know where I fall in this new world order. What happens when it becomes common knowledge that I'm back? Who's got first dibs on arresting me?"

[starkingenuity]

Forward is the only place Tony tells himself is important. And the only place he has trouble looking towards outside of his word. He’s a futurist who lives in his own past. It’s not healthy. He knows it’s not healthy. He can’t manage to get out of that rut.

And he’s about to find himself in another as Brice plows on ahead and asks him a question that could probably get him in a lot of trouble and dash apart their fledging tryst. It shatters before his eyes, tumbling end over end, and he can’t catch it. He won’t be able to put it back together. So it’s best to break them before they even start. That ten minute cuddle had been so nice, though...

“Technically, I’ve got dibs,” he says carefully, watching Bruce’s face. “I’m not about to let Ross encroach on my friends.”

[hulkbusted]

"You've got dibs?" It doesn't sound too terrible, but there's been a shift in Tony's demeanor that says that he's missing something important, and he's immediately wary. They both live in a minefield, and he can feel something hard under his foot.

"Because I'm an Avenger and you're the boss, or..." What has he just tripped over, Tony?

[starkingenuity]

Aw fuck.

“Because I inherited and then renewed the patent on the super soldier serum,” Tony says, not quite looking at Banner. He rarely does. He’s always too interested in his mouth.

The reasoning is simple. The moment hat patent slips, someone else can own or do with Banner and Rogers anything they want. And that includes using them to make more. AIM doesn’t really operate in the daylight and there will always be people trying to replicate the serum. But this is to keep it out of the Army’s hands.

[hulkbusted]

Bruce's mouth isn't really where the action's at just then. His brows draw down while he runs through the implications, calculating and considering before he shakes his head and shrugs. Yesterday there might have been more reaction than that, but yesterday he'd been kind of a different guy.

"You own the patent on the serum but that clearly hasn't kept Steve off of any arrest lists. You can't rescind it from either of us. The only real threat here with your owning the patent is if you do something incredibly stupid like try to make more of either of us, and you aren't going to do that, right?" That serum is like Pandora's Box. The world had gotten lucky the first time it had been used; they'd gotten Hope in the form of one genuinely good man.

Then they'd gotten Hulk.

"And it would have been nice if you'd told me this years ago when I was trying everything to undo what I did to myself." And there's the sticking point where Tony's very lucky he told Bruce today and not yesterday.