Who: Bruce and Tony What: Just a couple of bros doing science Where: Tony's underwater lab...Yep. When: Before Tony went to DC land. Warnings: None that I can tell except for maybe too much awesome
Bruce waited patiently on the street outside of his apartment, not unlike a kid waiting for the school bus. He was always just a bit unsure of what to do with himself when he was just standing still. He looked up and down both sides of the street a few times as if he knew what the car would actually look like. He put his hands in his pockets and then took them back out, and fiddled with his phone for a minute. He shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was pretty sure that everyone was staring at him (no one was) and he hoped Tony’s car showed up sooner rather than later.
There was something about taking a ride from a stranger that had him nervous, his experiences weren’t great in this area, but he was taking a chance. It was all he could do if he wanted to check on Tony. He got in, a bit hesitantly and stared out the window the entire time half for something to do and half to keep an eye on where they were going. He had no real idea, and as much as he didn’t relish being “under water” (whatever that meant) he couldn’t lie. He was curious.
The car went into the tunnel like it was going to end up on the island, but it never came out again. It turned into some yellow lights, passed a construction zone, and dropped Bruce off at an electric maintenance panel door barely big enough to admit Spider-man. Tony was puttering around in a huge space that resembled an underground cavern, except he had lit it with angular glittering lights, and even bare it was acquiring an unmistakable quicksilver shine that credited most of Tony’s inventions.
Tony was sitting on a rolling stool that didn’t put pressure on his back, but he was working on a massive console that didn’t really do much for keeping the stitches intact. He looked up from what he was doing, pushed aside one of his robots that was holding extra screwdrivers, and rolled toward the door. He spread his arms--well, one, really, the other side didn’t like that--when he saw Bruce. “Hey, doc, you made it. Great, right? Do you feel Charlie’s Angels? Super secret? No trickster gods?”
Bruce walked in and looked around, suitably impressed, and slightly concerned that Tony was moving the operation underground. Not that he didn’t see the benefit to it but if the new plan was to run and hide, he was more than a bit concerned.
When Tony greeted him he looked him over clearly displeased that Tony wasn’t exactly taking it easy. Sure he wasn’t up and running around in the suit but he was up and around. Sort of. “Does that make you Bosley?” he asked with a small smile and a shake of his head. “How are you feeling?” May as well cut right to the chase. “No bullshit.” He added.
Tony was not in full light, and he hadn’t been since his injury. He didn’t think that Pepper had a chance to really get a good look at him in the hotel, and he certainly hoped it stayed that way. He’d seen his reflection in some of the pieces he was working with, and he hadn’t aged so fast since the cave in the desert. Some of his grin and humor faded, and he tapped the screwdriver on his palm for a few seconds: tap tap, tap tap. Then he said, “Fine, mostly. I’m running a little fever but the antibiotics will take care of it, I think. The stitches look pretty good, but I can’t see my back.” He tipped his chin over his shoulder to indicate what he meant.
Bruce tilted his head a bit as he walked closer and continued taking stock of what he was observing. “How little?” he asked clearly not pleased at the idea of him running a fever. And continuously becoming less of a fan of him doing any work at all. “Can I take a look?” he asked as he chewed the inside of his lip; trying, and failing, to keep the look of disappointment from taking over his entire face.
Tony gave a very short nod, managing to look chastised--for maybe about a tenth of a second. He swiveled on the stool to present his back to Bruce, facing the console again; he was wearing a very expensive tailored white shirt unbuttoned down the front, not his usual t-shirt fare. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to lift his arm over his head to deal with the t-shirt, so that explained it. “Jarvis?” he suggested.
The polite British voice said, “Mr. Stark is currently running a temperature of 99.2, Doctor Banner, and has been for the last four hours since his arrival.”
Bruce smiled and shook his head a bit when Jarvis spoke up. It was something, at least someone was here looking after him. “Are you taking a fever reducer? Or anything else?” He crouched down and balanced on the balls of his feet when presented with Tony’s back and lifted up his shirt just to look at his back for now. Shoulder was next. “How’s the pain? And the mobility?” He asked as the hand that wasn’t holding his shirt up moved over his spine just slightly, not manipulating but feeling around.
“Aspirin.” And, from the smell of it, some expensive and no doubt medicinal brandy. He didn’t look drunk and there wasn’t a bottle in sight, but it explained how he was so readily upright. His lower back was not pretty, still a mass of half-healed scars that clearly represented what happened when metal melted on bare skin. Nothing seemed inflamed, however. “Feel better, but I can’t twist far.” Not a surprise, considering the state of the scars. Tony was finding it extremely inconvenient, and it explained the swiveling stool. When Bruce looked at his face Tony was studying him. “What about you? Get your nerves back post-green?”
“Try Tylenol,” he said, “If you want I can give you something stronger for pain that has the Tylenol in it. If you think you need it,” he said as he looked at his back because there was no way what he was looking at didn’t hurt. It was better, but it wasn’t healed either. “Don’t try to twist, don’t push it you’ll run the risk of doing serious damage. We’ll work on range of motion when it starts looking better on the surface.”
He was a bit surprised to look up from Tony’s back and see Tony looking at him and he nodded with a sigh at the question. “The guy on the other side got the real brunt of it I’m afraid, there’s always some twitchiness and aches and pains you feel like you aged a decade for a while. I didn’t have much of that myself.”
He stood up then, and moved Tony’s shirt out of the way on his shoulder, “How is this feeling?” he asked.
“Strong pain stuff is good.” SHIELD surgeons had done a good job with skin grafts and other repair surgery on the shoulder, and it even looked like Tony was going to get full range of motion back, given time. He was supposed to be taking care of it, and while he was the worst in-patient ever, he was doing a decent job out, applying creams and changing the bandages and whatnot. It looked like he had refused to ask anyone to help him with his back, but his back also didn’t have damage as deep. “Stiff,” Tony admitted. “It doesn’t hurt like it used to.” He watched Banner’s face to see if there was any bad news, knowing the man to have a soft heart and therefore assuming he’d be any easy read. “...The green guy gets hurt, you get hurt?” he asked, only seconds later.
“I’ll get you something strong, don’t drink while you take it,” he said about as sternly as Bruce could manage it. He looked over his shoulder and nodded, stiff was better than the alternative. He wasn’t altogether pleased with Tony not taking it as easy as he should be, but for now he was satisfied that he wasn’t causing himself more harm than already had been done. He shook his head at Tony’s question and then stopped himself as he thought it over. “There’s not a lot I’ve found that can hurt him,” he answered, “He’s been through it all just about. But the act of turning into him and coming back is tiresome. And I’m tired and sore for a while after. It’s a bit disorienting but nothing serious. I imagine if something DID happen to him he would stick around until it was all healed up and then let me come back,” it was an odd relationship that Bruce had with that other part of him. And vice versa.
Tony’s eyebrows jumped up. “I didn’t know he did that much thinking.” He reached up and replaced his shirt on his shoulders as best as he was able, shaking his head slightly without even realizing he was doing it. Tony didn’t stop drinking for anything, much less medicine, and he couldn’t imagine why a glass of something would hurt him when he was trying not to hurt. As long as he was still thinking and not armed with anything nuclear, why not? The screwdriver bounced up and down on his palm a couple more times before rolling the stool back toward the console. He peeled a few wires off a bouquet hanging from the massive machine’s guts.
Bruce was torn between defending the monster on instinct or trying as best he could to explain it. It didn’t make much sense to anyone who wasn’t Bruce, who didn’t live with it every day. “He won’t let me die, he knows enough to know what happens then. It’s not so much that he doesn’t think, he’s capable of thinking, more it’s just easier for him not to. He’s,” he paused because he didn’t necessarily think that he wanted to air all of his dirty laundry and past mental problems all over Tony’s new lab. He’d explained it before of course, but here he never knew just how far to take it. What incident would be the straw that broke the proverbial camel in this instance, and with these Avengers? “Kind of like the physical embodiment of a defense mechanism. Things don’t just pop out of nowhere, as much time as I spent assuming this was just something that had happened because of the gamma rays, that wasn’t the case. If he hadn’t already been in there...” he trailed off. He hadn’t come here to talk about Hulk, in fact he very much wanted to avoid it. “Have you talked to Steve at all?” Subject change. Best plan yet.
Tony had lowered the fist full of multicolored cords and copper leads to give Bruce his full attention while he listened to this somewhat rambling psychological evaluation. He was fascinated by Bruce’s personality, the blandly optimistic bumbling nature that was undeniably a shield for a really sexy scientific mind and a mildly terrifying rage monster. Tony kind of thought of him as an especially complex seven-layer dip, only without the sour cream. He wasn’t fond of sour cream. Nobody should be fond of sour cream. He let the subject change go. “Steve... no. Not since the dragon. Why?”
Bruce, obviously grateful that Tony let the subject change pass right on by eased some of the tension out of his shoulders and crossed his arms over his midsection once again trying to find something to do with himself while he just stood there. “He’s a little concerned about the lack of communication between everyone,” that was putting it lightly. “I want to see if there’s a way I can step in and help. I don’t think we all need to spend every waking minute together and go on camp outs and trust building retreats, but staying in touch might not be a bad thing.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, unfolded his arms and chewed on his lip for a minute again before he took his glasses off and cleaned them (unnecessarily) on his shirttail.
Tony made a neutral sound that could have meant almost anything. He was good at dismissing things out of hand, and he could have done it, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “I can see how that might be a good thing.” If he’d thought to call for help earlier, maybe Loki wouldn’t have gotten away with a piece of his tech. It rankled, like a burr in his sock, and the idea of losing anything set Tony’s teeth on edge. “The communicators were a good start, maybe. Something for both sides of the door, or just here?” Tony started twisting a lead while he raised one eyebrow at Bruce with the question.
Bruce waited patiently for a reaction and was pleasantly surprised with the reaction he got. Everything was a bit of a mess right now but he’d take what he could get. “I don’t know who everyone is on the other side, I know my guy on the other side wouldn’t mind. It gets a little complicated and I guess depends on everyone’s individual situation, mine isn’t terrible.”
“Silver doesn’t need the help,” Tony said, grinning a somewhat dangerous grin that he wore when he knew something no one else did. “Pepper suggested something like communicators that worked on both sides, but so far I’ve only seen the journals work that way. We could take it over there and build it, maybe, but it doesn’t work the same way. My satellites aren’t there, for example.” Tony neatened the cords he’d been working on with a few clips, too good of an engineer to shove them back in higgledy piggledy when he wasn’t in a hurry to get it done.
Bruce didn’t necessarily know, or want to know, what that grin meant. So he just did what he did best and one corner of his mouth turned up a bit as if he didn’t quite get the joke but didn’t necessarily need to. “We were trying for the same thing, Anton might be able to set something up so they work on the other side, and between me, you, and Spider-Man we can probably more than work it out on this side.”
Tony showed enthusiasm for the first time. “We might be able to get something to work on a switch, so that once it crosses over it functions on the new network. That’s not going to help us do cross contact, though,” He surmised, chewing on a bit of wire insulation he’d torn off one of the cords. He spat it out to one side, obviously still thinking, and then rolled to one side to attempt to lift a panel frame into place over the cords on the console.
Bruce nodded, he never stopped fidgeting, but his brain was working overtime now so he didn’t overthink where his hands were for long. He settled on just using them to help him talk. “I think the journals might be our only shot at cross contact, and that still doesn’t solve the problem of whether or not there would be cooperating from the other side of the door. I don’t know that I’d have a cooperation problem. He was pretty pissed about what happened in Vegas but he let me come back so that’s something,” he said with a soft chuckle. Honestly he couldn’t imagine having to deal with himself and the Hulk and being as busy as Anton was. And vice versa. It wasn’t a terrible relationship but Bruce wondered if it was possible for him to overstay his welcome.
Tony got the panel up about two inches and then pulled some flesh that hadn’t quite grown back together. He dropped it with a clang and rolled back out of the way so it could fall back onto the floor entirely, wincing and then scowling as soon as he could get away with it. He decided to leave it and swiveled around, sticking his elbow down toward his hip. “Silver and I are still working out the kinks, but we agree on most things. Except women,” he added, after a split-second of thought.
Bruce raised both of his eyebrows and waited for just a moment before giving Tony a somewhat annoyed look (well as annoyed as he managed to look on any given day). “Take it easy,” he repeated and wondered if those words were actually coming out in some foreign language. “Do you want some help?” he asked after stepping a bit closer half to make sure Tony didn’t fall over and half to offer assistance.
“Anton and I don’t have that problem, but he is pretty easy going, he doesn’t really like being terribly inconvenienced but I don’t think he minds the break. The only disagreements he has are with the green side of things. He hasn’t quite figured out that arguing with him is pretty pointless.”
Tony made a little movement with his chin toward a panel, choosing to take the offer as professional and not personal. “We’re not at the point yet where I’ve got the lab up, doctor, but you can take a look at the light fixtures. I haven’t got them all going. They’re argon plasma.” The ceiling didn’t actually glitter; the tiny light bulbs were about the size of the antibiotic pills that Tony was taking, and he’d set them in a randomized star-like array into the arched ceiling, which seemed to interlace in solid concrete stretches. The result was a steady spread of light that made the cavern bright as day, for each bulb emitted the same amount of light as your average New York City street light. It was the movement of the water beyond the solid transparent ceiling, blackly green, that made the light seem to twinkle. Tony looked up and smiled. “You’re looking at New York Harbor.”
“‘The green side of things,’” Tony echoed a second later, returning again to his panel. “Man, you really got that whole ‘I acknowledge and accept my pain’ thing going on there, don’t you?” He was impressed, and flashed another media-worthy smile.
Bruce gave Tony a flat and mildly unimpressed look at being told to do something else, when what he really wanted was to tell Tony to stop doing what he was doing and he sighed. But he couldn’t help but look up. It was pretty fantastic and if he had the ways and the means to make an underwater cave of wonders he’d do similarly. “Usually one tries to avoid being under water in the Hudson, but if you have to do it, you seem to have done it right.”
Bruce shrugged, taking his glasses off again and cleaning them before replacing them on his face, and while he wasn’t very superstitious he was a bit too superstitious to assume or admit that he was accepting anything. “I acknowledge and accept my lot in life, I don’t like it but I’m not convinced you’re supposed to.” Pain is something he’d long understood. And while Hulk was not stable, and he was volatile and dangerous, Bruce had come to accept that he would take that option over the other. Which was apparently a terrible mental affliction that had been inside of him probably his entire life. Hulk was an outlet for it, and while it was dangerous, he had to think it beat the alternative. And maybe if he accepted it Hulk wouldn’t take over completely. He’d been down that road before already. He wasn’t anxious to visit it again.
Tony made everybody nervous when he was cavalier about the Hulk and the potential time bomb the big green represented. I mean, he had just invited Bruce into his little bubble under water, hadn’t he? Some people might argue that was verging on suicidal. He didn’t say anything to Bruce’s reply, which didn’t really address anything Tony had said. Instead he tinkered a little more with the panel and finally got it where he wanted it. Something like a miniaturized robotic crane slowly rolled out of one corner, where it had been nearly motionless up until this point. “Bring over that extension cable while you’re there,” Tony told it, as if it was a particularly precocious small child. To Bruce he said, “So I’m thinking a lab with all the fixings in that chamber over there, but I need to get some manufacturing equipment in here quickly to start on some new versions of the suit, ideally before I need them and not, you know, after I’m dead.”
Bruce shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he looked up at the lighting again and contemplated on what he should be doing. For a minute he thought Tony was talking to him when he asked for the extension cord so when he went for it he was a bit shocked to see he’d been beaten to it. Naturally. “I...” he paused and chuckled. “Have an abandoned warehouse in New Jersey. There’s a couch in it that’s a science experiment in and of itself, but it does the trick.” Sort of. “Do you know yet what he took? Any idea why?”
Dummy, a robot that Tony had built when he was just a kid at MIT (literally just a kid), hadn’t seen any upgrades since that time. The best Tony had done was give him better treads to make it easier to roll over the floor of this cavern as opposed to the slick tile of other labs. Some might argue it was sentimental value. Tony said he was never sentimental about anything. The robot had three eye-like screws set into a round claw like end to his crane, which seemed to function as a face. It directed the crane in Bruce’s direction and then rolled forward with the extension.
Tony looked around and then picked up a black brick the size of a child’s lego piece. He tossed it at Bruce. It was a USB for less than able computers, but it had a display in Tony’s distinctive blue light. A torn off piece of a robotic arm came up in full view and rotated there. The display could be manipulated to inspect the different components that made it up. “That’s it, but I don’t know what for. Could be the alloy I used to make that particular model, I’m just not sure.” Tony smiled. “Maybe you can take a look.”
Bruce’s brows furrowed he was in deep thought, he was getting more comfortable the longer he was here (meaning he wasn’t in as much of a hurry to leave) and was actually resigned to the fact that he wanted to stay. That was new. At least as far as enclosed spaces went. “I’ll have a look.” He said sounding more confident than he had since he’d gotten there.