Work Text:
In his deepest meditative state, Bruce had twice (he thought) managed to transform to the Other Guy and back while remaining conscious. Well, at least a partial transformation. Probably. He hadn't managed to catch it on camera since he was living far from civilization or infrastructure at the time, and battery juice was too precious to spend hours of it recording himself sitting still. But he'd broken his watch band and torn the seams of a shirt, so something must have happened.
He knew how it felt to make the change, both voluntarily and not. The flare of rage was only the first step; next was the rage becoming flesh, the sensation of his body turning into pure destruction. And after that his memories would go white except for occasional flashes: an image here, a sensation there.
He had never before been conscious when returning to human form from a full Incident, smashing included. It was not quite what he'd expected. The physical change, shrinking into vulnerability, was a simple inverse of the more familiar transformation. And he had imagined the way his emotions would still and turn inward instead of outward; he tried to impose a similar calm when he was struggling not to turn in the first place. But he had never guessed at the sensation of his mind expanding even while his body contracted, the pure elemental reactions fractaling into complex analytical thoughts.
For a moment it felt as if he and the Other Guy were one, able to share ideas. He felt a few particular memories coming to the forefront of their attention - memories that were colored with a tinge of confusion over the pure joyful destructive fury - as if his counterpart wanted Bruce's intellect to provide explanations for the mysteries. And then the moment of contact ended, and Bruce was left gasping on his hands and knees in a half-destroyed room. It was strange to know which signs of damage were his doing (or his alter ego's) and which must have been done by someone else. Normally he just assumed it was all his own fault.
A red-anodized foot shifted a few feet away, and Bruce looked up to find Tony Stark watching him. He looked battered and exhausted, the faceplate missing from his suit - and that matched a new memory; had he really snatched the faceplate off and thrown it away? And roared?
But Tony was grinning. "That... was... awesome!" he proclaimed, only a few notches subdued below his usual manic level.
"Uh..." Bruce managed, his mouth dry as usual after a change, but not as bad as when he slept for several hours wherever the Other Guy had run out of steam. He wasn't aching too badly, either. Apparently there was something to be said for conscious changing. He settled back on his haunches and only then realized how many other people were in the room.
And watching him.
Bruce fumbled for the scraps of cloth around his hips, but anything that had survived such a massive expansion wasn't going to cling to a normal pelvis.
"Are you all right, Dr. Banner?" said Steve Rogers gravely, as he stepped forward and incidentally blocked everyone's view of Bruce with his shield. He was even more battered than Tony, and more bloody.
"Uh, yeah, I guess..." Bruce looked around some more. Natasha was there, and Thor, and a couple of men he didn't recognize. They all looked much worse than Bruce felt, covered in dust and sweat and multi-species gore.
And Loki. His eyes were every bit as sharp as Tony's with interest in the details of Bruce's transformation, even though he was disheveled and dusty and lying back on the steps with several people looming over him threateningly. Something stirred in the back of Bruce's brain, but the hatred carried a hint of satisfaction with it, and green memories matched Loki's injuries with some of the craters in the floor.
"We won, in case you missed it," said Tony smugly.
"Yeah, I remember - a little, anyway." Bruce got to his feet cautiously, half-reaching for Captain America's shield before he considered that would be even more rude, so he settled for positioning himself strategically and hoping Steve wouldn't move.
"Up," Thor barked, and Bruce startled for a moment until he realized the sharp command was directed at Loki. Thor pushed his brother to a sitting position and pulled the scorched cape from his shoulders, then passed the cloth to Steve, who passed it to Bruce.
"Thanks," said Bruce. "I guess I should, uh..."
"Yeah, we're all going to clean up a little, and then shawarma," said Tony obscurely. "Right guys? Jarvis, is the carwash working?"
Bruce glanced toward the two men he didn't recognize, but neither of them were answering the baffling question. Tony's face had an odd expression as he reached up toward his ear, eyes darting around the airy room as if he expected someone to appear from midair.
Natasha's voice carried her usual nonchalance. "Jarvis says he brought the building power back up, but this floor had too much damage so his speakers are out." She paused, listening to her own ear unit. "The lab is ready if you need help with the suit, and the rest of us are invited to clean up in the guest residence area on the thirtieth floor."
Tony cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Right. Come on, Bruce, we'll get you some clothes. The rest of you, I'll meet you on the ground floor in ten, okay?"
"I'm not leaving Loki unguarded," said one of the unfamiliar men, holding a complicated recurve bow with an arrow pointed at Loki's head.
Thor started to respond, but Tony was already dragging Bruce toward the elevator as the discussion continued behind them.
"If the power's out, shouldn't we take -" Bruce began, but the elevator opened smoothly and was lit inside.
"Separate circuit," said Tony, following him in. "Extra backups for the elevators - I didn't get them extended to the penthouse yet." The doors closed and the elevator began to move without any buttons being pressed. In fact, there were no buttons.
"Welcome back, sir, and may I say how relieved I am at your continued existence?" came a cultured voice from the vicinity of the ceiling.
"Well, you know who to thank for that," said Tony. "Bruce, this is Jarvis, my AI. Jarvis, Bruce."
Bruce's eyes widened. "Uh... pleased to meet you, Jarvis?"
"The pleasure is all mine, and you have the profound gratitude of all of us at Stark Industries." The elevator came to a smooth stop.
Bruce followed Tony out into a beautiful, well-lit, enticingly cluttered machine shop. "'All of us?' Are there lots of AIs here?"
"Just the one," said Tony. "Unless you count them." He waved to a couple of crane-arm robots that were whirring across the lab toward them. "These were my early prototypes. Dum-E and Yue. They don't talk. Or think, much."
Bruce stood blinking, clutching Loki's cape around his middle, while the robots flanked Tony and started working on the suit.
"There is a locker with spare clothing against the wall to your left, Dr. Banner," said Jarvis from somewhere above. It was taking Bruce a while to pick out the speakers and cameras from among the other equipment on the ceiling and walls. He itched to explore the lab more fully.
The clothes in the locker were casual, which suited Bruce, and all black, which didn't really but he wasn't in a position to be picky. He glanced over his shoulder at Tony (cursing at his robots) before dropping the cape and pulling on a pair of black jeans. They were loose on him, but not bad enough to fall down, and the length was good. The black T-shirt with a diagram of a caffeine molecule was also a little large, but the white sneakers fit perfectly and appeared to be brand new.
"We'll get you some better clothes after we eat," said Tony, batting at a claw tugging on his own black shirt. "That's not part of the suit, Dum-E, work on my legs. Yue, just pry the shoulder piece away. The projectiles are all gone, anyway."
Bruce drifted closer to watch the process and offer to help if he could, but the robots seemed to be doing all right despite Tony's scolding. Within a few minutes the armor had been peeled away in pieces, some of them looking like they were meant to come apart and other joins apparently broken.
Tony straightened his Black Sabbath T-shirt and ran a hand through helmet-plastered hair. "Right, dinnertime!"
Jarvis made a throat-clearing noise. "Sir..."
Yue was holding out a tray with something that glowed.
"Aw, c'mon Jarvis, I'm starving to death here!"
"Your reactor has only recharged to zero point three percent since it lost power completely."
Bruce frowned, sorting through memories of a broken-doll suit of armor with a dark circle on its chest. Tony glanced his way, and Bruce began to study the mass spectrograph on the other side of the room. The second robot - Dummy? - had bustled over to pick up Loki's cape from the floor.
"I don't want to keep everyone waiting," Tony said with what seemed uncharacteristic consideration for others.
"They will require several minutes to be ready for dinner."
"Have they, ah, come up with a solution for keeping Loki secure?" Bruce asked with genuine interest, studying the robot that seemed to be studying him in return, its arm and attached camera-eye whirring slowly up and down. Perhaps it was trying to compute how to clean him away.
"Thor suggests leaving Mjollnir on his brother's chest. Loki does not like this idea, so Ms. Romanoff is inclined to accept it. Mr. Barton is less sanguine, but might be willing to trust Dr. Selvig, myself, and Mjollnir as sufficient guardians for an hour or so."
Bruce recognized the names from his briefing and matched them with the two men he hadn't recognized. He bit his lip and pretended not to watch Tony pulling up his shirt. "Mjollnir is..."
"Thor's hammer."
"Yeah, I got that, it's just -" Bruce rubbed his forehead at the roil of memories. This was one that had confused the Other Guy. "The thing is impossibly heavy. I couldn't lift it. When I was, ah, on the helicarrier."
"According to legend, no one may lift it who is not deemed worthy."
Tony clanged something sharply onto Yue's tray and picked up the small glowing reactor instead. There was a wire sticking out, which made Bruce frown in puzzlement.
Jarvis continued, "When Mjollnir was found in the New Mexico desert, even heavy machinery could not lift it from its resting place until Thor reclaimed it."
Bruce blinked. "New Mexico? I must have missed the headlines on that one."
"The incident was kept quiet, and the details protected in SHIELD's secure files."
"Which you and Tony hacked into, right." Bruce was starting to get a feel for how Tony could be so prolific an engineer, with this kind of help at hand. He did not, however, understand what Tony was doing with the arc reactor in his chest. Why would he need to attach wires?
And then Tony was done, shirt pulled down, robots shooed away, beckoning Bruce to join him in the elevator again.
Manhattan looked like a war zone, which it was, at least for a few blocks around Stark Tower. Cops and firemen were herding people away or sending them to impromptu first aid stations - there was one set up in the lobby of Stark Tower, and Bruce was almost drawn to see if he could help, until Tony dragged him away. At least the shawarma joint still had gas, if not electricity or a front window, and the owner was willing to accept a generous donation toward his repairs in return for getting rid of some stock he couldn't refrigerate anyway.
It was another first for Bruce to have enough to eat - really enough - so soon after a transformation. He matched Thor bite for bite. Steve Rogers was not far behind them, but interestingly, Tony was nearly even with Steve.
"So how's it feel to be the face for a change, instead of the heel?" Tony asked when they were waiting for refills. Natasha was done, just nursing a tepid glass of kefir. Barton looked like he wanted to get back to the tower and beat on Loki some more.
Bruce hesitated, not certain if the question was really directed at him. Tony's body language could confuse even when his terminology was clear - which it wasn't, this time.
Thor was also puzzled. "I do not understand. Surely Dr. Banner is an entire man, not one or the other anatomical part."
"A heel is a bad guy," Steve put in. "But even in my day that term was dated. I suppose a face is a good guy?"
"Yeah yeah, it's from wrestling," Tony corrected impatiently, head twisting to see if their next round of wraps was on the way. "Villain, hero, whatever you want to call it. Bruce is on the side of the angels this time, and what's more, everyone knows it."
"They do?" said Bruce blankly.
"All over the news feeds, Jarvis says."
"But I tore up a couple of buildings. Didn't I?"
"Jarvis estimates you're responsible for two percent of the property damage around here." Tony paused. "Maybe two and a half. But you took out one of those flying centipedes with one punch, and you helped Thor with another - that's a half for him, one for me, one and a half for you. That puts you way up on the right side of the account books."
"And you saved our damsel in distress from a fatal fall," Natasha pointed out with a sarcastic wave at Tony. "That was pretty impressive - I bet a few cameras caught that one. Everybody was looking up."
Bruce glanced back at Tony in time to catch a strange, pale expression on his face, before he turned away to grab another shawarma wrap from the tray that had just arrived.
"I... don't usually think of the Other Guy as saving anyone except himself. Me," Bruce faltered. "Usually the best I can hope is no one I care about gets in the way."
"You're too hard on him," Steve put in. "He's a good guy to have around in a fight."
Thor rubbed his jaw, but he was grinning, if a little ruefully. "Your Hulk subdued my brother, when even I had failed in the attempt."
"There, you see?" said Tony, his composure restored by food, although he still wouldn't met Bruce's eyes. "Just like Shrek taught us - the big green ogre's not so evil after all."
Thor blinked. "There is no such lesson in our schooling on Asgard."
Bruce caught some of those news feeds later that night, on the wide-screen TV in one of the guest suites of Tony's tower. Jarvis (who was apparently JARVIS, an acronym rather than a name) helped him search all the video available on news and net, so within minutes Bruce had four different angles of grainy footage showing an enormous green monster snatching a falling Iron Man from the sky. His eyes widened and he looked around the room for pen and paper. Not finding any, he went over the videos again, lips moving and fingers tracing arcs over the couch cushions as he calculated vectors in his head.
A knock on the door made him turn off the TV. It was Tony, leaning disheveled in the doorframe. "Whatcha doin'?"
"I was about to get ready for bed." Bruce frowned at the billionaire; the bruises on his face were standing out more sharply now, and his eyes were too bright. "Are you okay?"
"I'm great." Tony swayed in through the doorway, grabbed Bruce by the shirt, and joined their lips together. His mouth was hot and alcoholic and too damn good at finding hot spots Bruce had forgotten he had.
Bruce pulled free and paused a moment to catch his breath, then gently disentangled Tony's fingers from his collar. "Are you high?"
Tony scoffed. "No. Little drunk, maybe. Shouldn't have tried to keep up with Thor."
Bruce blinked. "Is Thor drunk? I thought he was watching his brother."
"He is. Selvig is trying to stay up, too, but that won't last. Cap is sleeping the sleep of the virtuous and disgustingly healthy, and the super-spies are screwing each other's brains out."
Bruce frowned; he hadn't pegged the relationship between Barton and Romanov that way. In fact, he suspected that Natasha rarely had sex with people she liked and trusted. But Tony knew both of them better than Bruce did. His thoughts were interrupted when Tony leaned in for another kiss.
Bruce splayed a hand against Tony's hard-edged chest and pushed firmly.
Tony hung there, inches away from Bruce's mouth, still moving his lips just a little in promise or plea.
"Ah... no," said Bruce softly. "That's not going to work."
"Why not?" Tony demanded, like a reflex of contradiction. "I want it, you want it - you do want it, right?"
Bruce rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe, but... the other guy might not like it so much."
Tony quirked his eyebrows. "Sex makes you angry?"
"It lowers my inhibitions. I'm pretty much dependent on inhibitions, these days."
"Okay, fine. So, invite the big guy along. We'll make a party out of it."
"Jesus, no!" Bruce exclaimed, horrified at the thought of what he might find when he came back to consciousness. He groped around for a reason he could use without getting explicit. "What about Pepper? Doesn't she have a say in this?"
"Pepper's... not really with me anymore."
Bruce crossed his arms skeptically. That wasn't how it had looked when she had met them returning from the shawarma joint and hugged Tony as if she wanted to weld them together.
"She still cares about me, yeah, but a long time ago my crazy got to be too much for her and we broke it off. So if that's all you got -" Tony leaned in again.
Bruce backed up two steps. "I might be toxic. Contact with me could... One drop of my blood made a guy deathly ill. Other, um, fluids... I don't know what could happen."
"I'm willing to take that chance."
"I'm not," Bruce said as firmly as he could without touching the well of fury that lurked inside him. "Find someone else to work off your post-adrenaline high. For me, it's time to crash. Good night, Tony." He didn't shut the door on him, since this was Tony's building after all, but he turned his back decisively and headed for the bedroom. And Tony didn't follow.
The next morning, after seeing Thor and Loki off to what promised to be much more secure confinement, the rest of them went their separate ways - mostly. Bruce settled into the convertible and glanced over at Tony, who was spending just a little too long in adjusting the side mirror.
Bruce looked over his shoulder to where Steve was starting up the vintage motorcycle that Tony had casually given him. Steve's broad, muscular shoulders tapering to a trim waist were as appealing as ever, but the addition of a piece of throbbing machinery between his legs gave him a double impact, very nearly as mesmerizing as the sway of Natasha's hips.
"Pretty sure he's straight," Bruce muttered, just as the motorcycle took off with a roar.
"Hmm? What's that?" Tony asked, pulling out into traffic with sublime confidence that everyone would naturally move out of his way. To be fair, Tony must also have fantastic reflexes, if he could maneuver that suit of his at such high speeds. Bruce sighed; his own alter ego never bothered about niceties like avoiding collisions.
"Steve. I think he's straight." Bruce grimaced an apologetic smile.
"Yeah, well, it was my dad who really needed to hear that." Tony slung his left arm casually over the door as the convertible picked up speed.
Bruce blinked, mentally reviewing what had been in the briefing packet about Howard Stark. Not very much. "Your dad?"
"Obsessed," said Tony, with a jerk of his finger back in the direction Steve had gone. "He thought Captain America was, y'know, bee's knees, cat's pajamas, whatever they called it back then."
"'It?'" Hero worship? Obsession? Homoeroticism?
"Yeah, Dad was peripherally involved in the early phases of the experiment, a lot more involved later with good ol' Steve. I don't suppose Cap recognized Dad's attempts at flirting, though. Something along the lines of pigtail-pulling or boasting about his... machinery." Tony wrinkled his nose. "Not too sophisticated."
"So that's why you're so... um... prickly around Steve?"
Tony gave an elaborate shrug. "Cap's alright, I guess. Kinda boring though, don't you think?"
Bruce thought that Tony didn't really think that at all. But whatever had Tony's attention riveted on Steve Rogers, it wasn't sexual attraction. Or mostly not.
Bruce looked up some older videos of Iron Man in action and frowned over them, this time with pen and paper in hand. He was especially interested in the footage that showed Iron Man and War Machine together, comparing flight profiles and turning radii.
He didn't notice Tony approaching until a hand dropped onto his shoulder. Bruce's hands spasmed reflexively in surprise, and Tony gave his shoulder a squeeze as he bent forward to look at the vector calculations Bruce had scribbled down. "You know, you could be doing that on a holographic writing pad." Striding to one of the lab's special tables, he opened a window in the air with his hands and plucked the image of Bruce's equations off the page to hang there, glowing.
"Oh! I was just, uh... scribbling." Bruce tried to figure out how to wipe the virtual page clean.
"Don't worry about hurting my feelings. HammerTech really fucked up Rhodey's suit, adding all that mass to it. I told him I'm not giving him another unless he can take care of it better."
"Extra mass," Bruce muttered. "Yeah, that... could explain it." It didn't explain the news camera footage of a brand new un-altered War Machine leaving Tony's Malibu Dream House with an acceleration profile clearly slower than the other suits, but he didn't mention that. He figured out how to close the window Tony had opened, then swiveled away from the lab table and eyed the ring of light glowing through Tony's shirt.
"Hey, is it true your father did some experiments with, um -" Bruce forced his eyes back up to Tony's face "- the super-soldier serum?"
"Yeah. How come?" Tony's light tone belied his stony expression.
"Well, uh, that's what, you know..." Bruce waved a hand up and down his own body and, by extension, the Other Guy's. "Or, anyway it was a variant of the serum. Not that I knew that, at the time. I was told it was an experiment in radiation resistance, and I was brought in halfway through. I even got false data on previous tests, and I was told the schedule was tight, so no point in repeating earlier work -"
"Active voice, Mr. Strunk." Tony waved a hand airily, like a choreographer demanding a pirouette.
Bruce swallowed and bobbed his head. There was no point in trying to conceal facts from Tony, of course; it was his own emotions he was trying to shield by avoiding mention of the guilty party. "General Ross. Lied to me. So, um... ever since then I've been trying to reconstruct what really happened. What he gave me, that I injected myself with. If you have any, you know, archival data on the early trials of the serum, that could help fill in some gaps."
Tony stared at him for long seconds, until Bruce wondered if he was about to be on the receiving end of a rant like the ones that had been aimed at Steve on the helicarrier. But then Tony flung his arms wide and said bracingly, "Sure, why not. JARVIS, make sure Dr. Banner has access to all my father's files."
"All of them, sir? The -"
"You know my methods, Watson. Make it so."
"May I request that you do not refer to me by pet names, sir?"
For himself, Bruce could never decide if Tony's pop-culture references were more charming or annoying, but he held his tongue. JARVIS's voice moved to more distant speakers as he continued remonstrating with the departing Tony.
Tony showed Bruce his production line for the Iron Man suits. "I actually have a better setup in Malibu, but when I'm stuck in New York, like now, I can at least get some work done."
Much of the 'work,' it turned out, was done by JARVIS. Tony would come up with the ideas, sketch up an outline, and JARVIS would fill in most of the details, producing complete and accurate schematics from a few basic suggestions, then programming the robots that would be cutting and assembling the parts.
Bruce shook his head in amazement. "I'm more of a theorist than an engineer, but this is incredible. I wouldn't know where to start with this stuff." He bent to peer more closely at one of the schematics, his eyebrows rising.
"Not your thing? Okay, try this, then." Tony closed the suit views and instead called up a breakaway view of an arc reactor. "This more your speed?"
Bruce was lost in the beauty of the design for several minutes, scarcely aware of the questions he asked but incorporating Tony's answers seamlessly into his understanding. "This is a revolution, right here," he breathed. "You're going to completely overturn the energy industry with this. Or you could, if it weren't so hard to synthesize vibranium." He scratched his jaw thoughtfully.
"The earlier models used palladium," Tony pointed out, "but it's poisonous."
"Only if someone's inhaling or ingesting it," Bruce dismissed. Then he glanced sideways at Tony's chest. Or injecting? Why would it need to have contact with... anyone's bloodstream?
"I suppose the palladium version might be easier to upscale," Tony admitted.
Bruce grabbed the edges of the hologram and zoomed it in - still a little clumsily, since he was just getting used to the display interface. "But the vibranium provides opportunities for improved efficiency, because of its molecular structure. It likes to bond in these dodecahedral patterns, right? So here, if you adjust the geometry of the nodes around the torus to match..."
"You'd get a resonance from the vibrational modes of the molecular bonds..." Tony took over the display control, rotating it to show different angles.
"And that would feed back into the power pulse, boosting efficiency. It's not going to be a big change on the small arc units like you have in the suit repulsors. But the reactor powering this building, or anything bigger..."
"We could get another twenty-five, thirty percent out of it just from changing the spacing." Tony slapped Bruce on the shoulder. "I knew I was going to like working with you!"
Bruce felt a warm flush spreading from the hand on his shoulder, and his gaze inadvertently dropped to Tony's lips.
Tony picked up on it right away, of course. He turned to face Bruce directly, hip propped against the table with the display glowing above it. "Really? Now? What changed?"
Bruce glanced nervously to the side, where Dum-E waited in hope of a command. "I'm not exhausted?"
"Try again."
Bruce sighed. "Okay, fine. You took 'No' for an answer."
Tony rolled his eyes. "You weren't expecting that? Why does everyone think I'm an asshole?"
"It isn't that. I just think... you like to be in charge."
"Well sometimes, but I can catch with the best of them."
Bruce glared. "That's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
"Well... maybe we could give it a try, but you would have to be willing to accept some limits."
"Safewords?"
"More like safety precautions."
Tony's eyes narrowed. "If you're going to insist on having sex in lead-lined suits -"
"Not that bad."
"Lead-lined condoms?"
"The ordinary kind will be okay. But for both of us."
Tony's mouth rippled fascinatingly as he considered this. "Okay."
"And you're on top. If we go that far. No exceptions."
"If that's the way you like it."
"That part isn't about preferences, Tony. It's about... the odds of a problem may be very small, but the consequences would be catastrophic."
"I can have a suit ready to go on a signal, if you're really worried."
"That would help."
"Okay. How about some details then?" Tony lifted a hand to catch Bruce's chin. "Kissing. Is kissing in?"
Bruce bit his lip nervously, but nodded, and Tony bent in to claim that lip with his own teeth.
"Blowjobs?"
Bruce shivered. "Uh..."
"Your place or mine?"
Bruce glanced around; it was all Tony's place.
"Or you wanna do it in the lab?"
"Maybe later. For now..." Bruce took a deep breath. "Bring a suit to my room."
"Aye-aye, cap'n."
In the bedroom, Bruce paced back and forth a few times, considering his approach. Tony, normally Mr. Manic Energy, lounged casually in the doorway to the lounge area and waited for him to make up his mind.
"Right, first things first," Bruce decided. "Just how resistant are you to radiation?"
Tony blinked. "Same as everybody else? Not counting you. Or Cap. Or Thor..."
"C'mon, Tony, I know you have some enhancements. Radiation resistance ought to be one of them."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Tony was upright now, jaw tight, nothing casual about him.
"Your father. That test subject described in his research - it's you, right? It has to be."
Tony just stared, his eyes cold and hard. "JARVIS, I thought you scrubbed all identifiable references from those files?"
"It seems I underestimated Dr. Banner's deductive skills, sir."
Bruce stopped his pacing to stare. "You mean I wasn't supposed to pick up on that? I thought you left it in there on purpose."
There was another long pause, and Tony blew out his breath. "You know, most people, when they read about an unnamed test subject, they don't jump straight to father experimenting on son."
"Yeah, well, you're talking to a guy who - let's just say everything I know about anger I learned from my father." Bruce ran a hand through his hair and focused on a calming mantra. He really didn't like to talk about his father.
"Looks like you still walked away with the wrong impressions, though. Okay, sure, my father did try a version of the serum on me, but the effects weren't physical. It just made me super-smart. That's why I was designing motorcycles before my baby teeth fell out."
Bruce was effectively distracted from his own worries. "You think the serum was responsible for that? But... no, you do have physical enhancements. The accelerations you pull in that suit - normal people can't handle that."
Tony scoffed. "It's in the top range of g-forces for fighter pilots and astronauts. Nothing superhuman."
"Maybe for the powered acceleration, but I've seen you hit the ground, hit walls - even when the Other Guy caught you out of that uncontrolled fall. Your aorta should have been ripped away from your spine. Your brain should be jelly smeared on the back of your skull."
"You're a helluva sweet-talker." Tony scrubbed his face nervously. "You really think that's outside the normal human range?"
"I know it is. I did the calculations. And then there's that." Bruce came close enough to tap Tony on the chest, making him jump.
Tony glanced down. "You know what that's for."
"I know it's sure as hell more than an electromagnet. You wouldn't need that kind of power just to keep shrapnel from moving."
"So, I'm a big fan of overkill, what can I say?"
"You can say why you have wires actually going into your body. What's such a big deal you risked palladium poisoning?"
"Jesus!" Tony threw up his hands. "You're not going to rest until you bring out every one of my secrets, are you?"
"Just the ones that matter. I know you're different, Tony. The question is, how different?"
"Why? Why does it matter?"
"Because I'm radioactive! You want to have sex, I need to know I'm not going to poison you!"
Tony turned away, quick steps taking him as far as the door of the suite. He stood there for a long minute, forehead pressed to the wood.
Bruce slowed his breaths, bringing his heart rate down, both hands at his temples. "I'm sorry, Tony. I shouldn't have - I'm sorry I pushed. I just don't want to be responsible for you getting hurt."
"I don't know," Tony mumbled.
"What?"
"I don't know what I am!" This came out as a yell, and Tony turned around, sinking down with his back against the door. "I never put it together like that. My dad always said I was no Captain America. I didn't think the serum had any physical effects on me. Yeah, my heart is screwy, but that's hardly a superpower - even before Afghanistan, I was looking for a cardiologist who could think outside the box. This -" He thumped the arc reactor "- is basically just a high-voltage pacemaker. Because lithium batteries aren't going to cut it for me."
Bruce squatted on his heels. "But you can withstand impossible accelerations. You have rapid healing of bruises," he continued, brushing a finger over Tony's cheek, "and I think if you break bones those heal pretty fast, too? Just guessing there - JARVIS wouldn't let me see your medical files. I can help you figure it out if you want me to, but from what I know already, you got a lot more out of that serum than just a high IQ with a specialization in engineering."
Tony sighed and caught Bruce's hand in his. "But what if it doesn't include radiation resistance? Does that mean this is off? Or we need to break out the lead-lined condoms?"
"I already told you what precautions we need to take."
"Yeah, but somehow I got the sense you hate to be fucked." Now it was Tony's turn to trace his thumb along Bruce's jaw, pausing at the corner of his mouth to dip in just a little.
Bruce nipped the pad of the thumb gently. "Try me."
Tony shook his head slowly. "You want to be careful with challenges, Big Guy. 'Cause we haven't even started discussing the enhancements to my sexual prowess."
A smile spreading across Bruce's face, he stood up and pulled Tony back towards the bedroom.
Tony pushed in slowly. They had argued about positions, but Bruce's paranoia insisted on keeping Tony behind him.
"You okay?" Tony asked carefully.
Bruce was counting breaths now, making sure each exhalation lasted twice as long as the inhalations. "I'm fine. I told you, I've done this before."
"Yeah, why did I get the impression that was in trade for food or shelter?"
Bruce shrugged. "Well, you've given me that and lab access, so we're good, right?"
A forehead pressed against his shoulder blade. "Bruce..."
"I'm joking, Tony. We wouldn't be here if I didn't want this."
"That's not what this says." Tony's hand had moved around to the front, brushing silkily over Bruce's tender flesh. He wasn't entirely flaccid, but he also wasn't hard enough for a condom at this point.
"That's just - oh! - a reflex." Bruce lost count and his breath went shaky as Tony's fingers found that spot on the underside of his cock, and traced down to an even nicer spot on his balls that he hadn't found by himself. He reached for the condom.
"Wait. Just a minute." Tony's hips moved cautiously, warm thighs flexing behind Bruce's butt. "Is that okay?"
"Yes - fine - Tony!" Bruce honestly hadn't expected to enjoy it this much. He'd thought it would be nice, but this was quickly heading for something far beyond 'nice.' Something that scared him, a little.
"Tell me how you like it," Tony purred as his movements found a rhythm. "Slow? Fast? How about size?"
"Wha...?"
"However you like it, big guy, I can provide."
"That's not... oh!" Bruce's eyes widened as he felt his opening stretch further. "You mean you really do have sexual superpowers?"
"Just a little party trick." Tony ran a finger down the muscles beside Bruce's spine, and apparently he could read when the stretch got to be too much because he stilled, and the choking fullness eased to a sweet burn before he began to move again, slowly.
Bruce's tight gasps shifted to a lush groan.
"Now the rest of it - angle, and pacing, and... extras -" Tony's hand slipped up Bruce's torso to pinch a nipple, just exactly hard enough to make Bruce whine. "That's just a matter of genius."
Bruce wasn't really in control of the noises coming out of his mouth right now, as he arched and moved his knees further apart to make the penetration deeper, as he braced himself with one hand on the headboard.
"That's it. Relax for me, big guy, just feel it..." Tony's voice was going ragged as well, his breath on Bruce's neck puffing faster.
Bruce couldn't coordinate his fingers enough for the condom, but he had enough presence of mind to displace Tony's hand on his cock, squeezing and pulling his own flesh while Tony's touch wandered upward, bracing his chest and digging into his muscles.
"Come on," Tony breathed. "Let go, Bruce. Come for me."
Bruce's shout had a too-deep bass note in it and for a moment he could feel the world trying to shrink around him, but Tony didn't recoil. He held onto Bruce's hips and rode any physical changes that might have come, and his own cries echoed only seconds later.
There was silence for a minute. Head down, panting for control, Bruce peeled his fingers one at a time from the depressions they had left in the headboard. He felt a hand trace soothingly along his spine again, and wondered what Tony read there now.
"All right there, big guy?"
Bruce swallowed. "Yeah. I... we need to clean up. I never did get the condom on." He'd captured most of the mess in his hand, but now he was seized with a fear that it wasn't enough. They should change the sheets. They should get a Geiger counter...
Tony, unalarmed, pressed a kiss to his shoulder before carefully, slowly pulling free. "And then afterglow, right? I think I earned a cuddle."
Bruce's shaky breath came out as a near-sob, but he turned around and pulled Tony close with his cleaner hand, sealing their mouths in a hot kiss. Then he broke away and staggered toward the bathroom. "You better be as tough as you think you are, Tony. I'm going to figure out how to test you for radiation resistance."
"Isn't that what we just did?"
Tony waited patiently as Bruce indulged his paranoia, but in the end he had his way: both of them curled in bed, Tony's arm over Bruce's chest. "I think that went pretty well, don't you?"
Bruce's chuckle was still just a little too fast and too high. "No hospital visits, anyway. Minimal property damage." He glanced up at the headboard.
"And I didn't even need the suit." Tony paused, considering. "We'll do better next time."
As Tony's breaths deepened towards sleep, Bruce was left to wonder what Tony thought could get better. And how much property damage that would involve.
Epilogue
"I just sent the Mark Twelve upstairs," Tony announced, his tone trying to be casual but with an edge to it.
"Hmm?" Bruce glanced up from his schematics, tipping his glasses down to look over the rims.
"Mark Twelve. On the carwash line. Ready to go. You want to come up and watch the maiden flight?"
"Oh..." Bruce looked around abstractedly. "I can't see very much from the balcony. I can get more info from the telemetry in here." He grabbed a hologram out of the air and enlarged it to show his readiness.
Tony frowned, as if suspecting that Bruce would in fact be watching something else instead of admiring his aerial prowess. "Fine. Have it your way." He stomped out of the lab.
Bruce did in fact keep an eye on Tony's movements, including the initial smooth takeoff and series of showy maneuvers that Tony called 'testing.' He was waiting for the right moment, when Tony would pause in flight as if considering what to do next.
"You gonna stick to the script, JARVIS?" Bruce asked as he watched Tony's arcs turn into a series of long bounces as if Tony were on a super-trampoline instead of a collection of barely stabilized repulsors. Gauging by eye the accelerations involved, Bruce winced and shook his head.
"I will choose my own words, Dr. Banner. While I cannot fail to be aware of Mr. Stark's sexual activities, I have no wish to participate. In any way."
"Great. You just tell him that. Can I hear what he's saying?" Bruce tapped a quick code into the interface to open up the hidden controls he had built into the suit.
"Mr. Stark has not requested a connection..." said JARVIS doubtfully.
"I won't talk to him unless he asks for it. I just want to keep an ear on him and make sure he's okay."
Very well. But I will cut the connection at once if I have reason to believe he prefers privacy."
"Fair enough." On the screen, Bruce saw Tony stop his bouncing and turn in a slow circle as if deciding which horizon to speed toward. That was the cue; Bruce pressed the first control.
Tony's flight bobbled for a moment and then his voice came through Bruce's earbud, staccato and slightly higher than normal. "I didn't ask for plumbing, JARVIS. This flight's not gonna be that long."
"The matter is out of my control, sir," said JARVIS silkily.
"What? What do you mean? This thing decided to catheterize me all by itself? I don't write bugs like that."
"The control interface was designed by Dr. Banner, sir."
"What? Wait, that's... uh, JARVIS? Normal catheters don't vibrate."
"No, sir."
Bruce grinned wickedly and touched a second button on the screen, then reached down and undid the button on his fly.
Tony gasped. "And that... is definitely not a normal part of the plumbing."
"More of Dr. Banner's work, I believe."
"Put me through to him, then."
Bruce leaned back a little in his chair and cupped a hand over his crotch. "Give us video as well as two-way audio, please, JARVIS." He swiveled strategically towards one of the cameras on the ceiling, while keeping his attention on the holographic image. "Hey Tony, how's the flight going?"
"You - oh my god -" Even in the dim and distorted image taken from a tiny lens inside his helmet, Tony's pupils were blown, his cheeks coloring.
"Like the alterations I made? Self-lubricating. Self-cleaning, too, for afterward."
"Catheterization is not sexy, Bruce!" Tony spat.
"No? It's not painful either, for someone with as much practice as you've had. Does this help?" Bruce varied the frequency and intensity of the vibration until Tony made an involuntary noise, and then he set it to pulse at that rate.
"You... bas-" Tony gasped.
Bruce's eyes flicked to Tony's flight path, still safe and steady. "Now, as for the other end of things, I had something else in mind."
"I can feel what you have in mind, you underhanded -"
"This -" Bruce beckoned Dum-E over to him and took a silvery tube from the robot's claw. "Is the other half of the design. I incorporated some of the newest ideas in teledildonics." He pulled down his fly slowly, telegraphing every move to the camera. After all, the image in Tony's HUD couldn't be very large, and he was distracted by flying at the same time. He waved Dum-E out of the camera's field.
"Tele... what?"
"Oh come on, Tony, you must have googled it, haven't you? Well, plenty of time later. So anyway, I apply this to myself..." Bruce twitched his hips upward to free his hips from the loosened jeans, then slid the robotic sheath over his growing shaft. "And at the same time, the converse is happening to you."
"Jesus, Bruce!" Tony's eyes darted back and forth on the small image, and then the telemetry showed him zipping off towards a less-populated area of Long Island Sound.
"I made it adjustable, Tony, just for you. Size..." With his left hand, Bruce moved a slider on the hologram - not too large, but enough so that Tony could feel it. "And curvature." Another slider, but this time Tony's gasp sounded slightly pained so Bruce backed it off halfway. "All that can be however you like it, but the motion -" Bruce jerked his hips up against the sheath in his right hand. "That comes from me."
Tony's mouth hung open now, his panting audible over the mic. His eyes kept rolling back and half-closing in pleasure before he would force them open and look around again.
"You in a safe place, Tony?" Bruce kept one eye on the telemetry in the corner of the screen as he pushed gently against the silver sheath.
"I... uh... yeah. Hover mode. Over water. Not a problem."
"Good." Bruce gave a harder push into the tube and was rewarded with a moan, but Tony's position didn't wobble. "Because if you can keep your legs still for this, I'm not doing my job right." Another thrust, and Bruce started to set up a rhythm.
"Bruce, you... oh my god. I don't know if this is the craziest thing I've seen you do, or the most brilliant."
"Probably both." Bruce stood up from his chair and let the camera show him thrusting hard into his cupped hands. He wasn't sure if he would be able to come this way, but from Tony's rhythmic moans that wouldn't be a problem. Bruce freed one hand for a moment to touch the holographic interface for the vibrating catheter, and then he added the last bulge of curvature that would press firmly behind Tony's balls. "How many people on those ships do you think are watching you right now?"
Tony sobbed.
"They're wondering what Iron Man is doing, just hanging in the air like that. But inside the suit, it's just you and me, Tony. And none of those people have any idea what's going on, what we're doing or how good it feels..."
"Bruce - god yes, YES!"
Hearing Tony come, Bruce eased back the vibrations, but he tweaked the curvature a couple of times, each move wringing another cry out of Tony. When he heard the edge of too-much coming into Tony's cries he stopped moving and dialed down the size. But he locked the appendages in place for Tony while pulling off the silver sheath, ready to finish off with his hand. It wouldn't take much.
"Bruce, aw c'mon... I wanted to do that."
Bruce panted for breath. "You are doing it, Tony. With your voice and, and..."
Suddenly Dum-E was there, retrieving the sheath and moving towards Bruce's crotch. Bruce backpedaled quickly, tripped over his pants and fell onto his ass. "No, no!" he yelped. "Dum-E, you're not programmed for - back off! Back!"
Tony was laughing into the earbud. "Not so funny from the other side, is it?"
"It's a delicate operation. Dum-E, get in your corner. I mean it!" Bruce recovered his feet on the third try and glanced at the camera, which must have caught the whole thing. "It was supposed to be sexy, not slapstick." Disgruntled, he pulled up his jeans again, though he was still too hard to close the fly.
"I'll be back in five minutes and we can take up where we left off, big guy. I'm good for another round." Sure enough, the telemetry display showed the suit zipping back towards Manhattan.
Bruce cleared his throat self-consciously, rubbing his hands on his butt. "Was that okay? I wasn't sure, if, uh..."
"That was awesome. I can't believe you kept it secret, though! Didn't think you had it in you, Bruce."
"You did say I needed to learn to stop tiptoeing."
"And I was right. But I didn't guess what a fast learner you'd be."
It wasn't until a few hours later, when they were both thoroughly wrung out, that Bruce began to wonder what Dum-E had done with the teledildonic sheath.