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[starkingenuity]

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

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[hulkbusted]

The green blur yells, "Shit!" as soon as he recognizes that he got far more force behind that jump than he anticipated. From there, he's out of luck because he isn't flying; he's just on the upward swing of falling with style, which is a debatable term when he spends an unpleasantly long quarter of a second calculating whether he can even hope to hit the roof.

He can. He hits it with the force of a thousand pound mass that's thankfully not up to terminal velocity just yet and miscalculates his next jump somewhat less drastically, even if he does send a chunk of the balcony railing hurtling down toward the ground as it completely fails to hold him when he grabs for something to stop him from ping ponging back over the building.

He slides to a stop several stories below with his fingers dug into the structure of the building.

"This is ridiculous." Forget jumping this time, he just climbs back up hand over hand and pulls himself up onto this balcony to shoot Tony an embarrassed look that's only magnified by the sheer size of his face.

Tiny is, excuse the phrase, shitting bricks when the Champion shows up on the balcony. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know it was going to go this far."

"What? You mean the part where you and your pal threw a couple of guys to their deaths?" Bruce takes a heavy step off the balcony and Tiny throws up both hands in surrender. "Where'd Zero go?"

Tiny points at the purple dust coating a fair bit of the floor and some of the furniture and Bruce looks back at Tony, eyebrows raised.

[starkingenuity]

Though Tony calculated the time it took for Banner to figure out how to Bambi himself up without falling on an ice pond, he’s not going to waste time taking him across the coals about it now. He will. And soon. But not now.

Instead, the Man of Iron shrugs at Bruce. “I didn’t know that the molecular composition of his body would literally dissolve when I shot at him, okay? Maybe you can just add a little water? Get him back up to snuff?”

He shouldn’t find this funny enough to make puns about. He shouldn’t. But he does.

“You sort of destroyed my friend’s ride anyway. Purple powder is the least of your worries.”

Tiny glances from Hulk to the suit and frowns.

“It’s bigger on the inside. It’s like a TARDIS,” Tony explains. “Listen. We don’t have time for this. Take your powdered friend and climb out through the window and leave us alone for another—. Day? Two?” He looks to Banner for the correct length of stay but decides on two anyway. “Two more days. Then you can have at it. Sakaaran style.”

[I just spit cackled my coffee everywhere!]

[hulkbusted]

Considering Zero threw them both off that balcony with no expectation that they'd survive it, Bruce doesn't have enough sympathy for Zero to find the levity in poor taste.

"Sakaaran Roomba, maybe?" he suggests before turning back to Tiny. "You, whatever your name is, put the word out that what's up here is a lot worse than the Grandmaster, but all we want is to be left alone for a couple of days and then we'll be gone."

He hopes so at least. It's not 100% when it's predicated both on repairing the suit enough for a safe return to Earth, and on Bruce being better at getting his old body back than he is at using this one.

Tiny's ready to make a break for his ship when he gets that instruction, but Bruce blocks his path with a foot. He'd feel bad about the size difference if he hadn't seen the kind of casual destruction this little guy was capable of. If he were Hulk-sized, Bruce might even find him worrying. "We weren't kidding about cleaning up Zero."

[Hah! My evil plan bears fruit.]

[starkingenuity]

Tiny complains the entire time about how awful and disgusting it is to sweep Zero up and take him away, but Tony isn’t letting up. Not even when the guy mentions how much fun it used to be watching the Champion in the arena. Evidently he hadn’t spoken much. Or at least not the way he was now. And he certainly never had anyone clean anything up!

He resists the urge to kick Tiny through the window and stands guard there as the ship flies away. Good enough. No one follows and so he has Bruce help him roll one of the crazy pieces of wall art over the hole to give them some privacy.

After that, he’s out of the suit, hands on his hips to survey the damage left behind. Their snacks are gone and while he laments this, he’s more upset over the armor that Bruce had come here in.

“FRIDAY, pick up the pieces. We’ll go into the shop in a little while. After Banner here stops looking like he’ll squeeze everything to death if he tries to help.” Tony pats Bruce-Hulk on the arm and grins. “So how about that aim?”

[hulkbusted]

Bruce spends a few minutes shuffling his feet and trying to get out of the way without making a bigger mess before calling it a wash and sitting down in a spot that's clear of both furniture and Zero debris. He actually shows his teeth at Tiny when he mentions the arena before he catches himself and shakes his head.

This is really messing with his head.

Once Tiny's gone and they have some measure of privacy, he gingerly lowers himself to the floor, putting himself more on Tony's level and avoiding doing more damage to the room. "Give me a break, there's a steep learning curve."

He inhales deeply and lets it out in a rush. "Let me tell you, my sense of smell is off the charts, too. Can I suggest a toothbrush?"

[starkingenuity]

“Rude. Between the hot tub rooms and the explosions, I haven’t had a lot of time for personal hygiene.” It’s just an excuse and Tony knows it enough to send him to the bathroom with a packaged toothbrush he’d brought with him and a parting remark, said under his breath, that Bruce doesn’t smell like roses either.

Tony takes some time to get himself right, which requires a lot more than just s teeth cleaning and that will provide Bruce some time alone with his new body.

Tony can’t break with his amusement of the whole thing, though.

Having a genuine conversation with the Hulk-body thst ends with a suggestion of being more liberal with his toothcare just tickles him pink.

So if Bruce hears him laughing to himself over the water? Well. He is.

[hulkbusted]

"Uh huh." They both know it's an excuse. It does leave Bruce wondering how to brush Hulk-sized teeth.

One of the best choices Bruce has made today was picking a pair of Hulk-resistant pants. If he'd been wearing that pair of Tony's he'd gotten back to Earth in, they wouldn't have survived the fall and he'd have been showing the city a lot more of the Champion than they'd ever needed to see.

He doesn't even want to think about whether they'd want to see.

The longer Tony's away in the bathroom, the more restless Bruce gets, finally getting up to rearrange the room to clear more space for him to pace in, stopping to cock his head toward the bathroom and the sound of laughter. He's about 99.9% sure it's about him, and if he gives Tony a bit of a break, he can admit that this is just ridiculous enough to be funny.

Yes, he does take a moment to actually look inside those stretchy pants, give a low whistle, and seriously consider going downstairs to Hulk's old room for some of his booze.

When Tony finally emerges from the bathroom, Bruce is once again sitting on the floor in the closest thing to lotus position his overmuscled legs will allow, trying to meditate himself back into a body he actually knows how to properly use.

So far it's not working and he opens his eyes looking a little frustrated with the situation. "I don't know how to get back. Sleep or unconsciousness might do it, but I can't find a hook to pull the Bruce suit up on."

[starkingenuity]

“I’m not secure enough with myself to attempt the Lullaby,” Tony remarks, hair a bit neater, breath much fresher, and a little more deodorant under his arms applied. Just in case. He’s changed too, back into soft black yoga pants and a tank top that shows off his arms. They might not be a match for Barton’s or Thor’s but he has some nice arms.

Tony settles himself dkwn across from Bruce, feeling incredibly small, and sets his chin on his palm.

“Actually, that might not do anything. That’s supposed to soothe a savage beast, and he’s asleep. I hope we don’t have to try to crack you on the head to get you to change back. Instead of meditating, how about you just uh... do the opposite of what you were doing when you kicked the Bruce suit into the corner?”

[hulkbusted]

It's pretty weird seeing Tony as so comparatively small, particularly when Bruce is used to being the shortest guy in the room nine times out of ten.

"Literally going to sleep may be more productive."

He casts a glance in the direction of the balcony they'd been thrown off of. "I was falling toward a whole lot of pain. I've done the falling from a height thing and hitting before transforming is always the lowlight of my day. I can't unfall."

[starkingenuity]

Tilting his head to the side, Tony glances over Bruce’s shoulder to the bed. “Good thing that’s current-you sized, huh? I hope that body doesn’t miss sleeping in a skull. I have to draw the line somewhere.” Not that Tony will sleep. He’s gotten a dozen hours in the last three days and that should hold him over pretty nicely for another day or so.

There’s a scattering of parts just about everywhere. He can’t sleep in messy places. Not even the hole in the ground if Afghanistan could be messy. Every rock and pile of gravel had a place, after all.

“I’ll get to fixing my stuff and you take both sides of the bed,” he says, because although he had liked very much to nap next to Bruce, he doesn’t want to get squished if he rolls over.

[hulkbusted]

"Considering some of the places I've woken up, I don't think this body cares where it sleeps."

He stretches out an arm to snag one of the pieces and pull it in, but everything looks so small and delicate in his hands, he can't imagine what kind of help he can offer until he gets back to normal. "What are the odds that you actually can repair the suit to the point that it'll get me back to Earth without my exploding out of it?"

[starkingenuity]

Tony gives Bruce a ‘what the fuck’ bug eye expression that is impossible to define but looks sort of like he’s seallowed a bee, is drowning, and might have just shit his pants, all at the same time. “Probably better than the odds of me happening to get myself kidnapped by terrorists with the one guy that remembered my dad had this unfinished near-infinite clean energy device he just couldn’t get right, and who worked with me to steal the parts of weapons of mass destruction so I could built one while there was a car battery stuck to my chest.”

Bruce Banner, the nerve of you asking Tony if he can fix something! He can crash land in a hot air balloon in a desert and McGuyver a twin jet engine plane out of cactus needles and sand to fly himself to safety.

And he knows it too. That’s why he’s so horribly insufferable.

“Put down the good. Let me get to work on my thing and you just work on shrinking. Try a little cold water. That works for a lot of people. Don’t know by experience of course.”

[hulkbusted]

A Hulk eye roll is a magnificently huge eye roll. Bruce very, very carefully lays the piece on the floor in front of Tony and stands up.

Seriously, if he didn't do that carefully, too, he'd probably launch himself through the roof. He has to give Hulk some credit for some of the facility he's shown. Okay, all of the facility he's shown.

"I don't think the Arctic Ocean would provide enough shrinkage." Trust him; he's looked.

"Go on, be a miracle worker. I'll... try to convince this body it wants a nap. Just as a spoiler - it doesn't want a nap." It wants to do something. "If I can't get to sleep, I might try another soak. If that works, you're building me a hot tub when we get home."

[starkingenuity]

“I’m already building you a hot tub when we get home,” Tony reminds him as he bends to collect that oh so carefully laid down piece and kicks a bunch of other ones in front of himself before FRIDAY can follow along and get the rest.

He misses DUM-E. DUM-E is really excellent for all of this menial labor.

While Bruce tries to nap and Tony welds with part of FRIDAY’s arm for the welding apparatus, his AI becomes his sounding board as she (and JARVIS before her) so often have been. “I still don’t know if it’s the hot tub or not. On his end. On my end, I’m—“

“Open. You’ve said that a few times now, Boss,” FRIDAY interjects as she holds part of the suit together with only the one arm Tony’s left her.

“He’s just special. I knew it the first time I watched the tapes of him destroying Harlem. And his papers? People don’t write like that anymore.”

“You skimmed those papers. And you don’t tend to do that for most scientists.”

Tony frowns at her and the mask she’s wearing to cover a bunch of air. “So you know it’s gotts mean something if I’ve read all of his stuff.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, Boss, you sound s bit smitten.”

Tony glances over his safety goggles (in place on because she’s gotten it through her head that it’s now part of mandatory safety protocols) and arches an eyebrow. “I don’t sound anything. I am.”

He’s not shouting. The repulsors aren’t loud enough for him to have to do that. But he’s forgotten one thing. Super soldier serum does more than increase sense of smell. It also increases ability to hear really well too.

“I think I have been since I met him. Shit. You know what, you’re distracting me,” he complains before he drops the arm all together. “But what if it’s the hot tub that’s making him feel anything for me?”

“You’re not usually this easily distracted by potential rejection.”

“I’m just tired of losing people I like.”

[hulkbusted]

"If it works, you're building me a Hulk-sized hot tub when we get home," he amends, then goes to lie down and try to sleep.

Things he learns: 1.) The bed can support him, but something creaks worryingly when he isn't careful. 2.) His bulk makes sleeping on his side cumbersome, leaving him sprawled on his back. 3.) He can hear much more than he wants to.

He isn't trying to eavesdrop. Hell, he'd really rather not listen to Tony's thought process about him. It's invasive. It's unfair. It's making it impossible for him to calm his mind enough to try to sleep.

Finally he sighs and sits up and he doesn't care if this is going to be weird coming from a cranky green giant. "Do I need to get up and kiss you and remind you that this body shakes off pretty much everything to get you to stop this? I'll do it, you know, and that'll be on your head."

[starkingenuity]

Tony’s head snaps up and for a minute, he almost tries to look for something to cover up what he’s doing. Sometimes he’s still that ten year old kid who knows that no matter what he does, he’s getting yelled at. All he’s doing is fixing something but he feels a hot flash of shame down his back.

It’s a ridiculous thought. Thankfully, it passes pretty quickly and Tony pulls himself up from the mess he’s trying to clean up and put back together.

Sauntering into view in the doorway, Tony crosses his arms over his chest and leans a hip against the wall. Sassy is one of usual modes of being and so this part is easy.

“I’m having a private conversation with FRIDAY, Doctor Banner, though I will take your expertise into consideration as I deliberate.” There is a plush Hulk doll in the corner, thrown on its head, and Tony moves to retrieve it. “It’s not sexy to have the guy you’re into having insight into your insecurities. And I’d rather talk about this when you’re less green—. Actually. Let’s skip the talking all together. Talking gets messy. I say too much, you get scared away, and I’m back to pizza with myself on Friday nights.”

[hulkbusted]

"I wasn't trying to eavesdrop." He slides to the edge of the bed and drops his feet to the floor with a thud while he watches Tony retrieving the doll. "You'd think the guy who owns the patent would remember the serum's effects."

It's an entirely valid desire to have this talk with human Bruce and not Hulk Bruce, but they're here now and a few things need to be said now because neither of them are big on talking through their feelings and if this window closes it might not open again.

"We can skip most of the talking, but I've got two points for you." He holds up a finger and has to pause for a moment to look at it like he's never seen it before. "This body hasn't been in the hot tub with you and I'm still signed on to the plan we made earlier."

He holds up a second finger. "That plan includes ongoing Call of Duty and pizza if it turns out we're better as friends without benefits. You're not reneging on our agreement, are you?"

[starkingenuity]

Tony can’t be sure anymore when the people closest to him are just fluffing him up. He’s gotten burned s lot lately, and not just because Pepper sometimes has trouble controlling Extremis when she gets mad. At him. And his lack of likesbility when he’s all work (or all play... sometimes those are the same things).

He’s not a trusting guy. He’s tried that approach and it always ends poorly. He’s insular. He’s withdrawn himself away from a lot of things he used to lose himself in. And part of that is because he started to care when he was used to not caring at all.

It’s a little confusing to understand him when no one has the pace of his inner monologues or knows what it’s like to be equal parts insecure and carefree.

Bruce had gotten under his skin more times than he wants to admit. He’s talked up their relationship a lot but now that it’s more than just half joking entreaties, now that it’s real, he’s worried he’s pushing too much. And he probably is. He’s good at pushing people to their limits.

“I do my best not to break deals.” Not complete truth. His word isn’t his bond. “But you’ve got to know that my trust capacitors aren’t really running on full all the time. I’m pretty good at pissing people off and making them leave.”

[hulkbusted]

Relationship is a charged word and neither of them are the poster children for good mental health. Bruce has literally had to have an alien suppress the background noise of anger and its underlying fear. Now his head feels like a stadium that for his entire life had been filled to overflowing with screaming football hooligans until less than a day ago when all at once they were just gone, and now the rest of his emotions are standing out on the field wondering what the hell to do with themselves.

Why did he think it was a good idea to make relationship decisions right now? Tony's on the rebound from a six year committed relationship with Pepper; Bruce is on the rebound from a forty year committed relationship with rage.

He rubs his forehead to ease a headache that is entirely psychological. "And I'm pretty good at leaving, but I think you've noticed I'm not so good at getting pissed off lately."

It's easier in this body, but even now his stadium of rage has gone from jam-packed to having only a few seats occupied by an audience of marginally incensed croquet enthusiasts.

"We're going to have to work on trusting each other, and if we can't make that work, the rest won't either. If that's how it works out, I'm going to call that a no harm no foul, because face it, we were both fucked up long before we met."

[starkingenuity]

Everything that Bruce says is comforting, even if it’s not in the voice that Tony remembers hearing. Bruce has always had a kind, but disused gravel to his voice but the Hulk is pure muscle building upon muscle.

“You should be very glad that I’m not a size queen,” Tony quips, Hulk doll still under his arm, “or I might join you in bed right now.” He won’t. Of course he won’t. He’s in mechanic mode and that mode has absolutely no room at all for sexual escapes or bedsports of any kind. “And I really think you should go into psychiatry. You’d make a good therapist.”

Tony will leave Bruce to roll his eyes again and he’ll keep his talking to the innocuous. FRIDAY is happy to oblige.

Even if she catches her Boss nodding off someone consistently over the next few hours. The armor is mostly finished, the connections complete, but it needs a good remolding that will take a lot of heat and effort on Tony’s part and that will require rest.

So she cuts him off for the night, or at least for five hours. He needs approximately thst amount of rest. Tony isn’t sure if he’s going to find Banner in bed or if he’ll be cuddling up to the Hulk. He’s hoping for the former.

[hulkbusted]

"The last thing I want is to listen to strangers' problems." He barely listens to his friends' problems. Dr. Bruce Banner, shrink to the world's superheroes, maybe? He'd rather be homeless in South America again.

He waves Tony off and sprawls out on the bed again. It takes time to get to sleep, but eventually he does, lulled by the familiar rhythms of Tony's voice from the other room, even if he still misses the counterpoint of JARVIS's replies. FRIDAY's clearly competent, but JARVIS had been, in his way, a friend, and he was closely linked to Bruce's experience of Tony.

Once he sinks into slow-wave sleep, his body fully relaxes and Kiara's block reasserts itself on the anger that Bruce had been forced to pull past it in the name of survival. He barely groans as his body reshapes itself, leaving him lying in a Hulk-shaped depression in the mattress that slowly decompresses without the weight on it.

The moment that Tony makes any sound in the bedroom or gets onto the bed, he'll wake and lie there silently while he tries to remember where he is and whether there's any immediate risk.

[starkingenuity]

It’s hard to be an immediate risk when there’s a person willing (and able) to wrap their arm completely around you. Tony isn’t a cuddler and when he falls asleep, he’ll drift over towards an edge of the bed, but it’s amusinf for him to lay with Bruce now in the Bedsheet Hulk-Angel and he’s pretty sure that Bruce might like the comfort of knowing he’s back to normal size in some way.

He sets his head between shoulder and neck, cradled by a shared pillow above and let’s exhaustion take its toll. He’s been fighting real sleep for awhile now. Cat naps help but Tony is more cat than he realizes and naps aren’t so great for either. Not when the animal can sleep for as many hours a day as Tony is awake.

His breath is soft and even, but he’s too self aware to notice when other people have woken up and he says and does nothing to indicate that he’s aware of Bruce’s change in state. There’s just that breath. And the arm. And the scratch of the beard.

It might not be enough to lull Bruce back to sleep but it ushers Tony to the land of Nod easily enough.

For an insomniac to feel comfortable enough to sleep this close to him, Tony either feels very secure, or he’s just really dumb. Both are debatable.

[hulkbusted]

The arm across him serves as a welcome reassurance that he's back to whatever passes for normal for him. He's appreciated his human body for a long time, but having literally walked around in Hulk's body for a few hours, he wants nothing more than to stay squishy and puny and so very human, regardless of whether he can be the one driving the Hulk bus or not.

Bruce is comfortably familiar with the idea of obsession trumping sleep. He and Tony are far too alike in some ways - too smart for their own good, too driven to leave a better legacy than they think they deserve, too willing to try the thing that has caught their imaginations because they have to see what happens. That's exactly why what they're trying is a bad idea, and probably why they're going to try the thing anyway.

They aren't the happiest of thoughts to follow Bruce back down into sleep, but he's had worse. He pulls Tony's arm over him a little more and sleeps until the sun is up and Tony has migrated off into his own zone, then gets up and go in search of clothes.

His backup shoes didn't survive the destruction of the suit and Tiny had carelessly shredded Bruce's clothes in his search for valuables. That leaves Bruce wearing a pair of stretched out stretchy pants or...

...enlisting FRIDAY to help him pull out the Grandmaster's pop-out closet that isn't doing much popping with the power cut off.

When his pants fall off for the third time while he's trying to find something he can tolerate wearing, it's entirely likely that Tony will find Bruce, naked, trying to choose between a robe or a jumpsuit, both of which are clearly from the early Flash Gordon era of fashion and made for someone eight inches taller than he is.

[starkingenuity]

“When in doubt, go with red,” Tony calls from behind him, utterly amused. “Or purple. Actually go with purple.” He probably should be making jokes about complimentary colors but there’s never been a time when joking about the Hulk has not been on the table. No one can stop Tony. He’ll do whatever the hell he wants, thank you.

He moves to stand beside Banner and flicks the fingers of the hand not currently holding a cup of coffee (he brought it and took a few minutes of his time to jury rig a keurig) through the presenting clothing. The material is soft, like silk but more capable of holding its shape. Needless to say, Tony is a fan.

“Just get FRIDAY to shorten a robe into a shirt, or knot it like high school do with this big stupid shirts they all seek to want to wear.” He’s never understood female fashion. Why wear a dress when you can put on a waistcoat? Oh well.

[hulkbusted]

One of the things that had initially endeared Tony to him was that he didn't tiptoe around Bruce as though he'd erupt into a mindlessly destructive beast at any moment. Hell, Tony's the only person who will literally and figuratively poke at him, not despite of Hulk, but almost because of Hulk.

In other words Tony's obnoxiousness is part of what endears him to Bruce.

"I just want something that I don't have to hitch up every ten seconds." He manages to find a pair of lounging pajamas (he thinks they're lounging pajamas? what does he know about alien fashion?) with a drawstring waist, and with a little help from Friday to shorten sleeves and pants legs, he ends up wearing purple alien silk pjs that make him look like a low rent Hugh Hefner wannabe.

"Did you make me some coffee while you were at it?"