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ROUND FOUR
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He’s sketching a possible improvement to his suit when it hits him. The Hulk brought him a Dr. Becker like a cat would bring its owner a dead bird.
This, hands down, means that he’s the Hulk’s favorite. He would cue up the Black Sabbath in celebration if he were anywhere else, because the fact that he is the Hulk’s favorite absolutely means that he is Bruce’s secret favorite. Maybe he’ll never admit it. Maybe he doesn’t even know it. But it’s true.
He is in such a good mood for the rest of the meeting that he actually participates a little bit, which might be so alarming for some of the shareholders that it actually does more harm than good, but it doesn’t matter.
(It’s not like he was insecure or anything. Of course not. Tony knows that everyone likes him, even if they don’t admit it. He’s handsome. He’s charming. He’s rich and famous. The people who don’t like him don’t like him because they like him and don’t like liking him. If Bruce didn’t like him at all, even after, what, two months of living in the Stark Tower, he would be the first. But then again, if there were someone too smart to be at least a little dazzled by Tony, it would be Bruce, who is smart and possibly bullshit proof. And maybe Tony had begun to think that, a little bit. But he wasn’t worried. Not at all. Tony never worried about people not liking him. Ever.)
*
The next day he interrupts Bruce in the middle of something that is probably very important with sandwiches. He does this by strolling into the lab and saying, “I have sandwiches.”
“Oh,” Bruce says.
“Take a break. Eat with me,” Tony says. “Don’t look at me like that. Your secret is out and you can’t keep being all mysterious. I know you secretly like me.”
“You say that with such confidence,” Bruce says, but he’s already putting his playthings up, so Tony isn’t that worried.
“Yeah, well, the other guy gave me a half-dead bad guy, so the jig is up.”
“Did he? Maybe he meant it as a threat,” Bruce says. He looks confused.
“I don’t think so.”
“I think so. That seems like something he’d do.”
“How would you know?” Tony demands. “You weren’t there.”
Bruce kind of cracks a smile at that. “That’s not…really how it works.”
They’re halfway through lunch and an friendly debate on the relative value of the Large Hadron Particle Collider when Bruce nearly chokes.
“You alright?”
“I just remembered,” he said, and he sounds horrified. “He did give you Becker when he was done.”
“Very impressive handiwork. I was very flattered,” Tony says, as smugly as he can.
Maybe when Bruce gets up to leave Tony uses the opportunity to ogle his ass, but maybe not. Who can say?
*
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you have won the internet
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you have already won the internet
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This is everything I ever wanted, right here. Thank you!
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"Maybe when Bruce gets up to leave Tony uses the opportunity to ogle his ass, but maybe not. Who can say?"
is just case in point. You are epic, my dear
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He’s actually a little worried until he spins around to see the Hulk coming out of nowhere to land on the robot that’s kind of after his skin. The robot meets the pavement. The Hulk stomps on it twice.
Tony flips in the air to face the next onslaught, only to see the Hulk already bounding towards them. Great. Tony tries to catch up.
The Hulk turns around. There are robots firing at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Or care. “No,” the Hulk says.
“Um, excuse me?”
“You,” Hulk says, “stay. Hulk fight.”
“That is not how this works,” Tony says.
The Hulk looks cross.
“See, I have the whole metal suit thing going on. You don’t even have that.”
One of the robots fires at Tony. The Hulk whirls around and bats it into the ground so savagely that the asphalt craters. The robot twitches and at that, the Hulk reaches down and crushes what’s left of it in his palm. The noise it makes is weirdly high, more like crumpled up tinfoil than anything substantial.
Tony sighs.
“Hulk problems? Everything alright?” Natasha asks over the mic.
“Everything’s fine,” Tony says, trying to loop around to get a shot in. Thing is, as soon as he really locks in on a target, that target locks in on him, at which point the Hulk freaks out and demolishes the thing. “But the Hulk is not letting me have any fun whatsoever.”
“What do you mean?” She actually sounds amused.
Tony tries to communicate how much he hates her in that moment by ignoring her entirely.
“The fact that you haven’t responded betrays how funny I’m probably going to find this, doesn’t it,” Natasha says.
Instead of replying, he decides to get the attention of as many of the robots as possible. Fuck it, if the Hulk won’t let him fight, he’ll do his best to speed things up. Because quite frankly, this is a little embarrassing. There’s not even anything he can do. He’s stuck between two rows of office buildings and behind a Hulk; that doesn’t really give him a lot of room to maneuver.
This means that he doesn’t really have a lot to do besides complain. “How close are you to knocking this fucker out? Shouldn’t you be done by now? Are you taking a scenic route?!”
“It’ll be another ten minutes until we’re even there,” Clint says. He doesn’t sound impatient or angry or anything. Just amused. “So wait, what’s going on with you and the Hulk? Nothing dangerous?”
“No, I think he’s just…” Tony grits his teeth as the Hulk glances back over his shoulder to confirm that Tony is still there and safe. “Over protective, I think.”
Natasha’s laugh bounces off the inside of his helmet.
Granted, an hour later, when the biggest of the ‘bots is menacing towards him and the Hulk suddenly places himself between Tony and the weapons-heavy tank-with-feet, Tony isn’t feeling so irritated with the Hulk anymore. Just with Natasha and Clint taking their sweet time to disable the computer system running these things. Really not that hard. They just have to blow it up, right?
The Hulk absorbs fire like he doesn’t even notice. He just picks up a car and hurls it at the thing - weird, ‘cause his usual M.O. is to just launch himself at the enemy.
Of course, he does seem to be in protector-mode, so there’s that.
Tony takes a few minutes hidden behind the Hulk to remotely hack one of the auxiliary fighters and uses it to kamikaze the main honcho. Pretty clever, he thinks, but still less awesome than fighting in his normal capacity.
He thanks the Hulk afterwards anyways.
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Can't wait for more!
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