Chapter Text
After three days of suffering as Stark’s lab assistant, Bruce needed a shower, a cup of good tea, and some solid sleep—and not necessarily in that order.
So much of Tony’s cavalier reputation came from his supposed lack of work ethic, but after living in the Tower on and off for the better part of a year, Bruce was finding quite the opposite in reality. Sure, Tony shrugged off business meetings as if they were nothing but telemarketing calls, but he was a taskmaster in the lab. He gave orders to bots and Bruce alike in a brusque, direct voice that Bruce had never heard before, even when they had worked together on the Helicarrier. Of course, Bruce mused, he had never before worked with Tony in his own territory. He demanded the same perfection from his bots as he expected from himself—which often earned the bots rather colorful threats and criticisms. At first, Bruce had been nervous that Tony would soon be just as exasperated with him once he realized that Bruce didn’t really have a lot of practical knowledge or skill in engineering. Sure, he had a working understanding of mechanics and electronics, but he really couldn’t do much beyond building crude appliances and fixing basic machinery.
It didn’t take long before Tony asked him to assist with tasks that he had never done before, but instead of being impatient or condescending, the engineer had simply smiled, dropped whatever he was doing, and showed Bruce the procedure. It made him feel in the way—at least Dum-E, Butterfingers, and You seemed to know the names of all the tools, unlike Bruce, who had to surreptitiously ask JARVIS more than once.
Then again, when they finally parted ways, Tony had clapped him on the back and said, “You should have a doctorate in biomedical engineering to go with your collection.” Bruce felt a flush of warmth at the memory.
But, Bruce thought, the three days were worth the anxiety. They had finalized a redesign on the intramuscular fluid delivery system in the suit and JARVIS was already fabricating the prototype. Tony said that he had the idea for a while, but he didn’t have the background in bioengineering or the time do the research it would take to build it. Between the two of them, though, it was surprisingly easy to design. The new system would allow JARVIS to administer precise doses of painkillers, antibiotics, and stimulants. If Tony was ever seriously injured in the suit, it may just save his life. Or, Bruce’s mind wandered, allow him to fight until his last breath. “No need to be morbid, Banner,” he muttered to himself.
Bruce dragged himself across the threshold of his apartment, toed off his loafers, and left them by the door. Judging by the stiffness of his socks on the bamboo floor, he decided that his first priority should be a shower.
After the shower, Bruce stood in the kitchenette, brewing tea in his boxers and bathrobe. “Doctor Banner,” JARVIS said with a slight edge in his voice, “Mister Stark says there is an emergency situation in the penthouse, and he requires your presence immediately.”
Bruce’s pulse leapt, and he had to take a deep breath before answering. “I’m on my way!” he said, racing out the door—though he did double-back to make sure he had turned off the stove.
Bruce rushed through the Tower to Tony’s penthouse suite. All was quiet in the living room and the bar. “Tony!” Bruce called. “Hey, Stark, where are you?”
“In here!” Tony’s voice came from his bedroom.
Bruce hurried in to see Tony standing at the foot of his bed, dressed in pinstripe pants and a crisp burgundy shirt. A bowtie hung loose around his collar. “What’s the emergency?” Bruce asked, confused by Tony’s easy posture and formal appearance.
“The emergency is that you have only twenty minutes until we have to be downstairs for the gala!”
“That’s today? How long were we in the lab? And since when are you on time for anything?”
“It started two hours ago!”
“Oh.” Bruce sat down on the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. “I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. You know it’s not a good idea for me to be in a crowd like that.”
“Why?” Tony scoffed. “Because you might actually have a good time around living, breathing people?”
“Tony, JARVIS is far more human than most people I’ve met, but you still have to admit your best friends are all robots. You don’t like people either.”
“That’s not true. I am a philanthropist. As long as they don’t touch me. Or hand me things. Or call me by my full name. Anyway, you’re not getting out of this. Everyone is going to be there, so people in the wrong places are going to get suspicious if you’re not there.”
Damn Tony using his own paranoia against him, but he was right. The gala was in honor of the anniversary of the Battle of Manhattan—a fundraiser hosted by Stark for the people who were still suffering from the effects of the battle. All the Avengers would be there, even Natasha and Clint, so his absence would be reported back to SHIELD, and he would probably have to explain to Fury why he wasn’t attending high-profile events when his team needed all the publicity it could get. He tried to picture himself explaining to the Director that he was simply too tired to hold a smile, and he was afraid of saying too much or too little, or the wrong thing at the wrong time. Somehow, saying “I’m shy,” didn’t seem like an excuse Fury would accept. And, really, the less contact he had with SHIELD, the better.
Bruce sighed in defeat.
“Good, it’s decided, then,” Tony said. He pulled Bruce to his feet. “But, my dear Cinderella cannot go to the ball in such rags. There’s a suit for you in the closet.”
Bruce was wary of Tony’s gleeful smile as he stepped into the billionaire’s closet, which was actually a small apartment in and of itself. It had entire rooms for different types of clothes, and a central dressing area with drawers of watch cases, ties, and sunglasses, and a smooth wooden bench. Bruce expected to go in and find one of Tony’s cast-off suits from the back of the closet, but a black garment bag, monogrammed BB, hung from a peg on the wall. Bruce’s breath caught as he brushed his hand over the fine embroidery. He unzipped the bag and his stomach dropped when he saw the exquisite tuxedo tucked neatly away. Though he had traveled the world, Bruce would never call himself sophisticated, but even he could tell that this suit screamed class.
For a minute, Bruce considered not accepting the gift and promptly locking himself in his room for a few days. “Don’t be ungrateful, Banner,” he muttered to himself as he started to dress. “This is normal…for Tony.”
“Bruuucie!” Tony called from the bedroom beyond. “Do you need help in there? My services are totally available!”
Bruce cautiously emerged from the closet. “Uh…I’ve never really tied a bowtie before,” he stammered.
Tony’s didn’t answer immediately, and something inside Bruce dropped a little. Tony’s face could be so expressive, his dark eyes sparkling with humor or scorn, depending on his mood. He knew exactly how to quirk an eyebrow or crinkle the corner of his mouth in just the right suggestive way that it seemed like he was holding two or three conversations all at once. But, he could also shield himself with a mask of bored indifference when he chose. Bruce fiddled with the button, not sure if it should be buttoned or not and suddenly feeling self-conscious in the engineer’s enigmatic gaze.
“What’s the matter?” Bruce asked after a moment. “Is it too ‘Socially Awkward Penguin’?”
Tony swallowed harshly, the sound of his throat clicking audible across the room. “No. 100% James Bond. 007. Pierce Brosnan, not George Lazenby.” Tony took two quick steps to Bruce and batted his hands away from the button. “Buttoned when you’re standing, unbuttoned when you’re sitting down,” he explained. Bruce nodded gravely, as if some great universal mystery had just been revealed to him. “How cute,” Tony said, “you don’t even know how to wear a proper suit.”
Bruce ran his fingers through his greying curls. “Yeah, I’m not exactly Bond material. I think he can at least tie his own tie,” he said sheepishly.
Tony smiled, one of his genuine smiles that made his eyes and nose scrunch up in an odd way that he would never let happen in front of a camera. He stood in front of Bruce and his deft fingers made quick work of the bowtie. But he tugged at the knot and frowned before untying it again. “Come here,” he pulled Bruce over to the mirror and stood behind him, looking over Bruce’s shoulder. “I’m used to doing it like this,” he said.
Bruce met Tony’s eyes for a moment in the mirror, his own so full of doubt and apprehension. Tony rested his hands on Bruce’s shoulders.
“We’re going to go downstairs and celebrate our breakthrough in the suit. We’re going to celebrate the anniversary of our victory over inter-dimensional aliens. We’re going to celebrate that we’re still alive, even though the universe seems pretty dead set against the idea.” Tony shook Bruce a little, which made the corners of his mouth turn up.
“Hey, watch the tux,” Bruce murmured.
“There, that’s the spirit!” Tony spun Bruce around and gave his bowtie one last tug. Tony fished in his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses.
“Why do I need new glasses? I have glasses.” He got them from a street vendor in India, but he was pretty sure they were the right prescription.
Tony slid the gold wire frames onto Bruce’s nose. “Sure, but you don’t have Stark Glasses.” As he tucked the earpiece behind Bruce’s ear, he pressed a tiny switch and Bruce’s peripheral vision was flooded with information on his environment. The exits of the room were highlighted in yellow, and a full schematic map of the Tower hovered in the bottom right.
“They’re connected to JARVIS, so you can see whatever he sees. They don’t have any sensors, so they’re pretty useless outside of the range of the Tower or the suit, but it’s just the first prototype.”
“And I bet they have a tracking device?”
“Doctor Banner, I would never put a tracking device in your glasses,” JARVIS’s smooth voice intoned in his left ear. “A subcutaneous device would be far superior.”
“No tracking device,” Tony assured. “But I thought that they might make it easier to make a quick escape. And there’s voice recognition and a speaker in the earpiece, so you can talk to JARVIS whenever you want.”
“Because talking to myself in the corner is going to make me seem a little less weird?”
Tony’s smile faltered a little, and Bruce regretted his comment. Bruce knew that Tony was incomplete without his virtual counterpart. Giving Bruce a direct, private link to JARVIS was like giving him access to part of his psyche. But Tony gave him a funny look before saying, “You do know that you talk to yourself all the time anyway, right? If anything, this is less sociopathic.”
Bruce’s mouth quirked up a bit more and he pushed the glasses farther up his nose. “Hey, Tony, that’s really thoughtful. Thank you.”
“You still don’t want to go, do you?” Tony asked.
“No. Not at all.”
Tony raised both hands in the universal “stay there” signal and stepped over to his nightstand. He took a box from the drawer—please don’t be condoms, Bruce thought—and opened it in front of him to reveal a stunning watch nestled in black velvet. Before Bruce could protest, Tony caught his left wrist, unbuckled his cheap plastic heart rate monitor, and fastened the sleek watchband. Bruce looked at it closer. “Is this gold?”
“Of course,” Tony said, mildly affronted. “Gold is an excellent conductor.”
“Conductor?”
Tony leaned in and pressed a button flush with the side of the watch. Immediately, a little heart and a digital number popped up in the upper corner of Bruce’s glasses.
“It’s a heart rate monitor,” Bruce realized.
“James Bond has to have some cool undercover toys, doesn’t he?”
“If you’re going to resort to bribery, there’s a list of new lab equipment in your inbox,” Bruce said.
“Consider it taken care of. Anything else?”
Bruce sighed and let his eyes drop from Tony’s. He felt like he was collapsing in on himself. He wanted to go to the gala, but whenever he pictured himself in the grand Stark Tower ballroom, surrounded by so many people he didn’t know, always on guard for the wrong moment, the wrong question—it was draining. He always made some mistake at any kind of social gathering, and it had nothing to do with the Other Guy and 100% with being dorky, awkward Bruce Banner. And to do that next to Tony Stark, and Captain Rogers, and elegant, beautiful Natasha…well, how could he ever hope to belong in their circle.
Bruce wanted to stay home, drink tea, and sleep for at least a week. But Bruce never really got what he wanted.
“Ok, I’ll go,” he said.
Tony crossed his arms. “I want you to want to go.”
“Don’t push it,” Bruce warned.
“Fair enough.” Tony pulled Bruce in front of the mirror again. “Believe it or not, my introverted science soul mate, I do understand how you feel.” Bruce raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Like you’re out of your league? Everyone is watching far too closely and judging your every subconscious move? Life under a microscope can do that to a person.” Tony folded an ivory silk pocket square and artfully tucked it into place in Bruce’s coat.
“But,” he continued, “there’s more than one kind of suit of armor. This is the kind of armor I first learned how to wear. A good suit can make you look good, but a great suit is a shield against the enemy. It’s a shell you can use to hide yourself away and pretend to be someone else for a while. Besides, you look powerful, and smart, and sexy as hell.”
Bruce shied and ducked his head into his hands. “Tony…I can’t be you.”
“Of course you can’t. That would create some space-time-identity clusterfuck paradox. But you can be Doctor Bruce Banner, scientific consultant and Stark R&D superstar.”
Bruce looked back into the mirror for a moment, then into the reflection of Tony’s eyes.
“I guess I could be a paradox…just for one night.”
“My dear doctor, you are always a paradox.”
“I am not.”
“Exactly.”
Bruce sat on the bench in the dressing room and watched Tony finish with his own attire while he toyed with his new heart rate monitor. Tony shrugged on a pinstripe jacket, knotted his tie, and added a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses.
“Sunglasses? It’s dark outside.”
“I’m going to run the paparazzi gauntlet and come in through the front. Sunglasses help with the camera flashes.”
Bruce paled noticeably.
“I’m sending you down through the private elevator,” Tony reassured him. “I don’t think you want to deal with the press.”
“No, not all.” The public had no idea that the giant green monster was his alter ego, so he probably wouldn’t be looked at twice, but the idea of so many loud voices and bright lights made him cringe.
“I didn’t think so. I’ll meet you inside. I’m taking Happy with me, and Pepper is probably already waiting, but you’re going to get inside before I do, so I’ve arranged for an escort.”
“You got me a date?” Bruce asked, incredulous, but Tony just smirked in return.
“I thought of everything. She should be here already. Go see if she’s in the bedroom.”
Bruce shot Tony a highly disapproving expression, which only earned him a twitch of an eyebrow to go with the smirk.
“Paid for or not, you’re being rude: rude to her to keep her waiting and rude to me for going out of my way to make sure you—“
“Tony!” Bruce cut him off.
“Well, don’t thank me until you see her,” Tony turned back to the mirror to adjust the patch of gauze he used to hide the glow of the arc reactor and promptly ignored Bruce’s continued protests.
“Fine! I’m sending her home.”
“Yeah, good luck with that one.”
Bruce took a deep breath and peeked around the edge of the dressing room door. There was no one on the bed, so he continued out into the living room of Tony’s suite.
Natasha, dressed in a sequined green and black gown, was waiting patiently in Tony’s favorite arm chair. Her eyes went wide for just a moment as Bruce came around the corner—for her, it was an extreme expression of surprise—before her red mouth bloomed into a wide smile.
“Doctor Banner,” she said as she rose in one fluid movement, “I don’t believe I’m looking at the same man I met in India a year ago.”
Bruce ducked his head a little. “You’re beautiful,” he mumbled a little, “but you’re always beautiful. But tonight you’re beautiful in a more…shiny…way, I guess.” He winced at the sound of his own words.
Natasha lowered her head to catch his gaze. “Thank you,” she said, and Bruce thought it sounded genuine, but Natasha was good at that.
Tony appeared beside them and pressed his hand on Bruce’s lower back. “Ok, kids, let’s get the show on the road. I can just feel Pepper planning horrible retribution for skipping the first three hours of her party.”