GRATUITOUS FICCERY
Fic: Cardio-Pulmonary Respiration
Fandoms: Marvel Movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Words: 5789
Warnings: Possible triggers for semi-graphic violence and mild torture (including drug use).
Pairing: Bruce/Tony
Notes: Set some time post-Avengers! With techspeak from JJ and a crapload of beta-ing from the best Eric.
Summary: Bruce and Tony go undercover on a mission from SHIELD. It all works out very nearly as badly as Bruce tells them all it will... But, to be fair, there are certain compensations to getting the chance to play James Bond.
"So, let me get this straight." Bruce pushes up his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, the way he gets at the end of a long day when the math stops working and Tony won't stop making smartass remarks. "You want me and Tony to go undercover and find these terrorists? Me? Really?"
It's quite a long speech, by his standards, at least for something that doesn't relate to science, and Tony feels compelled to pitch in. (Although he totally would anyway, but pissing off Fury in defence of Bruce is even more fun than just doing so for shits and giggles.)
"So am I now officially no longer considered, what was it, volatile, self-obsessed and incapable of playing well with others?" he enquires. "Because I've gotta say, I kinda liked it back when I was all that."
Coulson gives a cough that he's fairly certain translates as 'You were never all that'. Bruce just throws out a hand, demanding Fury recognise both Tony's point and his unspeakable... Tony-ness, which personally Tony's always been pretty proud of. "I'm sorry, Director, but are you high?"
Fury's lone good eye glowers back at him over the man's steepled fingers, like he's seriously rethinking allowing him shore leave enough to get infected by all of Tony Stark's worst personality traits (which is basically all of them). Tony himself, meanwhile, is doing his level best not to giggle and not entirely succeeding.
"Only in the sense that we're fifty thousand feet up right now," Fury informs them both gruffly. "Doctor Banner, I have invested a hell of a lot of money, agents and time in this investigation, and everything we have indicates that our primary suspects are gonna be at this conference on--"
He glances at Coulson, who recites obediently, "The development and potential capabilities of high-strength phasic weaponry for national defence" like he's reading it from a teleprompter, which is probably his superpower or something.
"--Right, yeah. Look, all we need is for you to identify which of these guys is capable of what we believe they're planning. If you'd like to get some incriminating statements on tape, too, then that would be a bonus, but it's not absolutely necessary."
Fury has acquired the sort of slow, quiet shark's grin beloved of the better action-movie stars and successful poker-players, both of which he's probably been at some point in his life and which Tony correctly interprets to mean that once SHIELD's interrogators get through with them, incriminating statements will be thrown around as freely as beads at a Mardi Gras. Bruce, though, is plainly still unconvinced - not that Tony can blame him; even with the best will in the world and the fact that he has never knowingly talked himself down, he really couldn't imagine two less likely secret-agents if he tried.
"There has to be someone else you can send." Bruce sounds quietly desperate, as if he already knows that whatever he says will not make a blind bit of difference, which in all probably it won't.
Fury gives them an irritably ironic look, which is probably the nearest the guy ever gets to humour - who knows. Maybe he cracks up at Saturday morning cartoons, which is an image worth treasuring although personally Tony doubts it. "If there were, Doc, you'd still be holed up in your lab and we wouldn't be having this conversation." His tone of voice leaves nobody in any doubt as to which state of events he'd prefer. "Anyone I send, they have to cancel everything they're doing and spend the next fortnight reading up on advanced nuclear physics. And maybe they pass, or maybe a vitally important four-year mission goes down the tube and I'm a couple agents worse off. You know all of this stuff already, and for Stark it maybe means an evening doing the background reading."
Tony takes Fury's point, although he doesn't have to like being corralled into doing SHIELD's dirty work for them. But hey, maybe it'll be fun; it might even give him the chance to bug the hell out of Coulson in a situation in which the agent categorically cannot taser him, which is not an opportunity that comes along very often these days.
"Well, hey, I always fancied myself as Bond, James Bond," he lets himself muse in a passable Sean Connery imitation, and throws his arm around Bruce's shoulders - a gesture he knows damn well the man hates. (Or possibly just hates whenever it's done by anyone other than Tony Stark; he hasn't yet been able to control for all variables). "C'mon, big guy: you'd look amazing in a suit and bow tie, you know you would. What can go wrong?"
Bruce is still wearing his patented 'stressed professor' look, an expression which is pretty much his default. (Tony keeps trying to change that, but so far with only limited success.) "I wish you hadn't said that," he tells Tony wryly, displaying both an impressive grasp of classic movie tropes for a guy who once accidentally irradiated himself half to death and the surest sign yet that he's on the cusp of giving in. "Director Fury, I don't suppose there's anything I could say to convince you of what an epically bad idea this is?"
"Not especially," Fury answers, tone very dry. "Primarily because I'm already aware of what a bad idea it is. It just happens to be a hell of a lot better than all our other bad ideas."
"That's reassuring." Bruce crosses his arms defensively, matching him glare for glare. "In that case, I'll only point out that whatever eventually goes wrong is entirely on your own head."
(This, of course, is a lie: if anything does go wrong - and Tony has more faith in Bruce than Bruce does, so he doesn't think it's a certainty - Bruce will most definitely blame himself for it, even if it's not his fault. For him, self-recrimination is not so much a hobby as the vocation of a lifetime, and it’s one he's pursued with the same single-mindedness he's shown in everything else he's ever done.)
"Believe me, Doc: it always is." Fury gives them both one of those x-ray glares he's so good at and which would probably save airport security a hell of a lot of money if Tony could only figure out a way to clone him effectively. "Coulson? Brief 'em."
Coulson looks as though he has about as many doubts about this as Bruce does, but he follows orders anyway. It turns out Fury's right: it really won't take Tony long to do the background reading.
~*~
The conference on the development and potential capabilities of high-strength phasic weaponry for national defence turns out to be basically what Tony thought it would be, albeit substantially more boring. Although he and Bruce do both look unbelievably hot in the tuxedos he insisted they have made, there's a disappointing lack of opportunities to wear them, and whilst there are a lot of people wanting autographs there are remarkably few with even trace signs of a personality. He sees both Natasha and Coulson in the background, Coulson looking unusually uncomfortable as a waiter and Natasha dazzling as the trophy girlfriend of a senior researcher at Princeton University who is making it very clear that he cannot believe his luck. Tony tries to speak to both of them, but waiter-Coulson proves spectacularly resistant to catching his eye and Natasha, on his only attempt, makes it very clear that she will emasculate him with her stilettos if he tries again. Therefore (because he does have some sense of self-preservation, even if that fact would come as news to Pepper) he basically confines his attentions entirely to Bruce for the first day and a half, a feat which is made even less difficult by the way Bruce persists in looking enchantingly bemused at why he bothers with him.
All of that changes, however, at after-dinner drinks on the second night of the conference. They're at the bar, tuxedos finally in an attractive state of disarray, Tony holding court to a rapt audience on the subject of sub-atomic binding and the possibilities of real-life warp speed; Bruce is at his side, occasionally making quiet, amused suggestions from behind a glass of sadly teetotal orange juice. About halfway through, he's really getting into his stride about how Scotty really wasn't using half-bad science at all when he notices two newcomers drift with studied nonchalance into the fringes of their little group. One is male, mid-forties, swarthy as a cartoon Italian outside a cheap diner (Tony strongly suspects he fake tans), with a strong jaw and thoughtful eyes; the other is female, early fifties, with iron-grey hair and a hawklike face which her expensive designer glasses do absolutely nothing to soften. Both of them are easily recognisable from amongst the notes Coulson first showed them a couple weeks ago and which, Tony was highly disappointed to find, did not come with a warning that they would self-destruct in sixty seconds. He glances at Bruce, who has clearly also recognised the pair and who is equally clearly much less comfortable than he had been, and sighs internally. The guy had finally begun to relax - probably it was all the science-nerding - to the point where Tony had almost hoped to have another shot at flirting him into bed, but it's pretty obvious that once again those hopes have been dashed.
He's been trying to sleep with him for months, as a matter of fact, because Bruce is amused and patient and intelligent as hell, entertainingly bad at X-Box and good at understanding how damn lonely it is, being the smartest guy in the room and always waiting futilely for the rest of the world to catch up. He's also unspeakably hot, of course, which is actually more of a nice bonus rather than a requirement when it's on top of all those other qualities (although Tony will never, ever stop finding the 'sexy professor' thing a turn-on), and has somehow managed to share Stark Towers with both Tony and Pepper for a good four months and not fuck either of them, which would be horrifying if Tony didn't so enjoy challenges. Still, in a little over four months of acquaintance he's become an extremely adept Bruce-watcher, and as soon as he recognises their new fans from the notes and sees Bruce recognise them too he knows that his chances of success are shot - for tonight, at any rate. Which (given how hot they both look in those tuxedos) is frankly a hell of a tragedy, and he's always been much more of a fan of sins than tragedies, to borrow from Ozzie Wilde, for whom Tony's always had a lot of sympathy.
Show over, their little audience reluctantly disperses in a flutter of adoration and requests for (amongst other things) autographs, most of which Tony charmingly grants. Only the two latecomers remain behind, so casual Tony bets they learnt the technique straight out of a book. He feels absurdly protective of Bruce just now, which is ridiculous - of all the people in the world who need protecting, a stocky polymath with three PhDs and, oh yeah, the ability to become a fifteen-foot unstoppable rage-monster is so far from the bottom of the list that even Fury's morals haven't seen such depths. Nevertheless, he wonders suddenly just how very definitely the scientific community really believes that Bruce Banner is dead: they're generally a hotbed of conspiracy theories and it's already a minor miracle (probably a SHIELD-engineered one, quite frankly) that they haven't yet run into any of his ex-colleagues. And where the hell is Natasha right now, anyway? Or Coulson, for that matter. Well, too late for any of that now.
Their new friends introduce themselves as Professor Helen Wickham and Doctor Leon Scalzi, which are the names on their SHIELD notes and possibly even their real ones, with tenures at Calvin and flawless US accents (Wickham is Texas, Scalzi Ohio) that very slightly throw Tony off: he's been accustomed to thinking of Bond villains with Iron Curtain accents, or at the very least having the decency to be English. Instead they're affable and open: Scalzi makes a Star Trek crack; Wickham admits she prefers Star Wars and laughs when Tony feigns disgust. He buys them both drinks to make sure they stick around, though they're acting as though they will be anyway, and after a few minutes of small-talk he suggests they move somewhere more out of the way before he can attract any more autograph-hunters to them.
"You must hate these conventions," Wickham says sympathetically; he chuckles and shrugs.
"I've been to worse - and honestly, I can live with anything so long as there's a decent bar. Did I introduce my buddy here, by the way? Robert Hogan - he's running my labs these days."
Bruce shakes hands with them both before they head for the elevators but clearly has to struggle to meet their eyes, which Tony hopes they'll both both write off as the natural shyness it actually mostly is.
"So, where are we headed?" Scalzi asks cheerfully, as Tony jabs for the elevator call button.
"Well, actually I thought my suite," he says, because obviously he booked the penthouse - he cannot be James Bond without James Bond's sense of style. "It's plenty big enough, it's comfortable, and it has a phenomenally well-stocked bar that I've been meaning to investigate more thoroughly."
It's also quite astonishingly well-bugged, which is just one more reason why he had absolutely no chance of sleeping with Bruce this weekend - the Big Guy may well be the world's biggest exhibitionist (hold onto that thought, Stark - it may come in useful later) but his more interesting alter-ego most definitely is not.
"Plus, I've been meaning to ask: you guys are the Wickham and Scalzi who published that study into the real-time detection of explosives using Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry, right? 'Cause I honestly thought that was breath-taking, but I had a couple questions about the background research that I was hoping you could answer."
Wickham frowns. "Where did you see that?" she demands, with a sharpness that makes Scalzi give her a Look. "It's still in peer-review."
"He gets pre-publication copies of all the major journals," Bruce explains, saving Tony's ass with gentle good humour. "And a couple less major ones, too. Probably mildly unethical, but you know what money can do."
Scalzi laughs, and the sudden tension lightens considerably as the elevator finally arrives and they all step into it. "Of course. Well, our sponsors have laid on a few conditions regarding what we can discuss without an NDA, but we'll certainly try to answer all the questions we can."
"You may regret making that promise," Bruce warns him amusedly, and this time even Wickham laughs - which Tony hopes means that they're safely out of danger, at least for the moment.
The penthouse suite is as large and comfortable as Tony had assured them it would be- and the mini-bar is just as well-stocked, although he calls room service for a second one, just in case. Getting your target drunk and voluble seems to work pretty well in the spy novels, and between Bruce's enforced teetotalism and his own famously cast-iron liver he sees no reason not to give it one hell of a shot. If they succeed, it occurs to him, his dad would be proud - SHIELD's less-official records are full of stories about how the old man fought Nazis by getting them drunk. It's a very odd thought, especially right now: he hasn't thought much about Howard Stark in years. Scalzi and Wickham themselves definitely don't seem to have much objection to the strategem: Wickham, in particular, finds a bottle of half-decent Laphroaig in the cooler and greets it like an old friend, cuddling it to herself protectively. The whole evening is shortly going swimmingly, in fact: they're all science-nerding with some fervour - Bruce has even laughed at least once - Scalzi has started telling particularly bad Star Trek jokes and Tony is well onto his sixth Scotch and is contemplating whether or not he should make a pass at Wickham, Scalzi, or both when he feels something kicking into his system which is very definitely not the demon drink.
"Oh, fuck," he thinks out loud, which is approximately the last coherent thing he manages to process before he hits the floor.
~*~
When Tony comes to, his first thought is more or less the same as his last, give or take an expletive or three; his second thought is that he can't move his arms, which he initially thinks is the drugs before realising that it's actually because he's been tied to his chair. His head is pounding like he's coming down from the worst trip he's ever had - and he's had some bad ones in his time - and his thoughts are sluggish and muddled, the way he imagines 'normal' people think. They're in a small, boxy room filled with junk and uncertain lighting; to judge by the mingling smells of must and damp Tony's betting on it being a cellar, so maybe there's at least some booze down here as well.
The first thing he says is "Look, guys, this is not exactly the the first Saturday night I've spent tied up - you could've just bought me a drink," which is clearly the wrong thing to say, at least insofar as it gets him a punch to the face.
For all his shenanigans as Tony Stark and escapades as Iron Man, he hasn't actually been punched in the face all that often, if you don't count that one time Thor got drunk and forgot they weren't all Asgardians. There's a very odd moment where his vision and thoughts go blank, like the wiring in the suit's malfunctioned, and then his brain reboots and all his thoughts come back online at once to the accompaniment of the merry ringing in his ears. It doesn't actually hurt all that much, although maybe that's just because his jaw's going numb - apparently it did quite hurt Scalzi, who is now rubbing his knuckles with a pained expression which has got to be the actual definition of 'this will hurt me more than it will hurt you'.
"Well, I've had worse wake-up calls," he notes - which is actually true, although only just - then follows up with a "The hell?" in hopes of getting some answers before anyone hits him again.
"What, did you think we were completely stupid?" enquires Wickham from over the top of her iPad. "The great Tony Stark wants to talk science in private with a couple of nobodies, and we weren't supposed to be suspicious?"
"Hey, you talked to us first," Tony points out, nettled at how un-James-Bondy his great scheme apparently was (he made Bruce watch all the Connery movies in preparation, and this definitely never happened to him), adding "Well, actually I was kinda planning to make a pass at you" because otherwise he'd have no choice but to respond to her first question and that would definitely get him punched again. (Which is almost certainly the first time he's managed to keep his mouth shut in a crisis - note to self: never tell Pepper that the trick is apparently punching him really hard in the face.) "Seriously, though, do you both do this every Saturday night, or am I just a special case?"
"We don't get SHIELD spies trying to get us drunk every weekend, if that's what you mean," Scalzi returns, looking rather as if he plans on hitting him again, although Tony is suddenly way too hung up on his use of 'spies' in the plural - and the solid warm presence at his back - to give a damn. He manages to twist enough to look awkwardly behind himself, and for several reasons immediately wishes he hadn't: Bruce is making tiny little groans and whimpers, as if even unconscious he is trying not to draw attention to himself and which, under any other circumstances, Tony would probably find bizarrely adorable. Right now, however, he's mostly just hoping that they mean the drugs their new friends used on Bruce were a lot stronger than those they used on himself, because frankly the longer Bruce stays knocked out the better -- although he has very little hope he'll stay out for long enough for him to figure out how the hell to get them both out of this mess.
Great.
So not only do these two morons have him tied up in a location unknown and apparently have no plan other than to hit him occasionally, but in so doing they've also tied him to the one guy in the known multiverse who becomes an unstoppable green rage-monster when he freaks out. He may have to take it back: he actually can't remember a worse wake-up call, although possibly that one time in Pasadena may still just have the edge.
(He gets slightly stuck on the image of a dishevelled, tuxedoed, tied-up Bruce Banner for a moment, but sternly reminds himself that the guy is almost certainly also all drooly and gross - oh, and most likely about five minutes away from wigging out and killing them all - in an attempt to regain what passes with him for concentration.)
The groaning at his back gets louder and more defined (focus, Stark, focus), which Tony correctly interprets to mean that, despite all his devout hopes to the contrary, Bruce is waking up or coming to or whatever it is you do when knock-out drugs wear off.
"And then people wonder why I'm an atheist," he mutters, but painfully marshals what little bodily autonomy he's got left to him enough to give Bruce what he hopes is a reassuring nudge. (The effort involved certainly hurts enough that it had better have been reassuring, anyway: Tony is okay with 'no pain, no gain' as a truism, but 'pain, no gain' would just be way, way too unfair at this stage in the proceedings.)
"Okay, Greensleeves, relax," he mutters, more out of hope than confidence, and then adds "It's all right," which must rank right up there with 'I am a responsible member of society' and 'of course I'm not going to get myself killed, Pepper' as amongst the most outrageously flagrant lies he's ever told.
"Mrgh." Bruce's eyes flicker. "Where are we?"
It's an eminently reasonable question, and one which Tony himself would very much like the answer to as well, but it earns Bruce a ringing blow to the face.
In the aftershock of the punch Tony's world goes white and still, as if he'd been hit and not Bruce. He can feel the micro-seconds tick past, feel capillaries ebb and flow with blood, the way he remembers he could waiting in the hospital for Mom and Dad, high almost out of his mind and forcing himself to stay in place as his thoughts bounced frantically off the walls like a trapped fly.
And then Bruce exhales, and is still Bruce and not the other guy, and Tony exhales with him, as if the world has resumed its spinning on its axis. So Bruce can apparently handle a higher (if relatively brief) level of pain than he'd calculated; that needs to be factored in to the equations he's got running, if only he could stop adding two and two quantum variables and making four.
Bruce's eyes open more fully; he squints painfully at their captors, as he tends to do when he has no glasses and the beginnings of a black eye. "The fuck?"
"See, that's what I said, too," Tony says cheerfully. "But then I got hit, so apparently that's the answer."
He manages, with careful effort, to nudge Bruce again: he's hoping that reminding him he's not alone will help him not to freak out. It makes himself feel better, anyway. "You all right, big guy?"
"Just peachy," Bruce grumbles, keeping a wary eye on Wickham and Scalzi. "Sleepy, I guess - at the moment. Do you do this every Saturday night, Stark?"
"You've been reading the tabloids again," Tony says severely, because it's either that or 'for you, I'd give it serious consideration', but he takes Bruce's point: specifically, that he's got until the drugs wear off completely to get them both out of here or the Hulk will leave the smartest, richest, most effortlessly charismatic smear in existence on the floor. No pressure, then...
He plays for time, because letting his mouth take over whilst his mind buzzes is a tried-and-tested method and he'll live with a couple punches if it takes their attention off of Bruce. In any case, with any luck keeping Bruce talking will also keep him calm, and given the big green elephant in the room that's at least an equal priority with escaping right now. This is clearly on Bruce's mind as well (hah. When is it not?) because he says "I'm all right," and repeats it a couple times, as if trying to convince himself as much as to convince Tony.
"I'm sorry," Tony himself snipes at Wickham (Scalzi is now off in the background, somewhere out of his field of vision), "But did you actually have any plans - or, hell, an explanation - for tonight? I kind of have somewhere to be."
"On-board the SHIELD helicarrier to report everything you got out of those two idiot scientists who couldn't hold their drink, I know." She gives him the politest social smile Tony's ever seen; Pepper, who has elevated meaningless social niceties to an art form, would weep to manage a smile that venomously bland. (Pepper, it occurs to him, is also going to kill him if he gets out of this alive. Oh well, it won't be the first time.) "I wouldn't worry about a rescue attempt, either," Wickham adds, one gloved hand holding up a horribly familiar mess of technology. "We found your wires before we moved you. And acid-bathed them."
Which still doesn't entirely discount the possibility of rescue, but Natasha gets very inventively pissed when he talks about her in public, so Tony changes the subject - that being the only form of keeping his mouth shut that he's ever been capable of. "Look, like I said: if you wanted to spend the night with me, you could've just asked nicely."
Scalzi appears out of nowhere with another punch; as his ears ring, Tony notes sourly that Wickham shows an impressive ability not to flinch at excessive violence. No point in appealing to her for help, then - not that he'd really considered it as a viable possibility. Bruce grits his teeth, forcing himself to breathe deeply; Tony has to do something soon or they're all fucked. His hands are still not co-operating with the ropes, but that at least provides a rough gauge of how far the drugs have worn off.
"You're really getting into the swing of this now," he remarks. "Remind me to buy you a punchbag for Christmas - I bet cheekbones like mine must be hell on the knuckles."
"Well, he hasn't got long to practice." Wickham sounds disgustingly cheerful, with a smile that Tony is really looking forward to seeing wiped off her face. "We just need to find out how much SHIELD already knows, then we'll kill your sidekick-" "Sidekick?" Bruce echoes incredulously - "-Sell you back to your own company, and use the money to finish our work. Neat, don't you think?"
God, she really is a psycho: Loki would just love her, he's sure.
"Great incentive for us to be good boys and answer her questions, don't you think?" Bruce growls. "I know I feel like being really co-operative now."
This time, it's Wickham who hits him; she's got a mean swing on her but she doesn't properly follow through the way Tony's seen Thor or Natasha do, and Bruce just shakes his head to clear it and takes a few deep slow breaths like he's trying to meditate - his preferred way of staving off a visit from the Hulk, but not necessarily a bad sign. Tony now has an actual plan, of sorts, although he's pretty certain that it's one Bruce will have come up with independently: it's not nearly as original or as stylish as he'd like - frankly, it's about as sophisticated as carrying a nuke into space, although in his defence that did also work out - and after all the guy does have three PhDs, but tying himself to an enraged Hulk definitely plays no part in it. So he says, brightly, "Your third PhD. What was your thesis title?"
Bruce blinks, but plays along. "The effects of low-level gamma radiation on deep-cell ageing and its potential use in muscular regeneration." His voice is rough and a little belaboured, with long pauses as he forces himself to breathe slow and deep, but it still retains that classic, incredibly attractive Bruce Banner drawl. "Why?"
"Just curious." He twists his head enough to give Bruce a flash of a grin, although it probably isn't anywhere near as megawatt as normal. "God, you are nearly as hot a geek as I am."
Bruce manages half a smile in return, which by his standards is pretty much a grin. "Better be careful, Stark. Pepper'll kick you out of the corporation again if she hears you."
"Are you kidding me?" Tony is genuinely a little shocked at the discovery that Bruce still hasn't figured out how utterly monotonous he and Pepp find monogamy. "She can't believe you and I haven't had sex yet."
"--What?"
"I think her exact words were 'if you don't sleep with him soon, Tony, then I will'. Which, you know, is also an option, if you want..."
To Tony's intense surprise, Bruce goes faintly pink but huffs a laugh. "Could be tricky, Stark. But, we'll see."
"Fascinating." Wickham is staring at them both like they're bugs who're almost too entertaining to swat. "We could make so much money from the tabloids if we left you both alive... But, the greater scientific purpose awaits."
She gestures to Scalzi, who crouches in front of Tony so that they're eye-to-eye, and Tony always thought he could eyeball like a pro but he's got nothing on this guy. "So. How much does SHIELD know, Mr Stark? Tell me easy and I won't mess up your pretty face too much." A smirk. "Well, not too much more, anyway."
Tony gives the guy his very best glare, the kind he normally reserves for contract attorneys and people who fail to recognise the inherent awesome of red and gold as a superhero colour scheme. "Do you mind? Trying to work here."
Something about this seems to really hit a nerve because Scalzi now goes absolutely bug-nuts crazy, raining blows on Tony's face and shoulders, and Tony's lucky the man conforms to stereotype insofar as he hits like a nerd or otherwise his pretty face really would be a lot more Stallone than Clooney by now. As it is it still hurts like hell: he gasps for breath and tastes blood and phlegm; his ears ring like he spent the night at an AC/DC gig and his brain stutters with static. He starts mentally listing each Maxim covergirl he slept with that one year according to month and underwear colour, anything to stop himself from thinking about the pain; it doesn't work, so he starts listing each vintage car in his collection in chronological order by date of origin and purchase; that doesn't work, either, and nor does anything else until Bruce's fingers worry through the ropes at his back to find his own fingers and squeeze tight, and suddenly it doesn't matter so much that he can't breathe but fuck, it still hurts.
At which point, to Tony's infinite relief, Natasha kicks the door in.
~*~
The clean up is short but not as sweet as Tony would like, and he and Bruce are sitting outside the hotel being patched up by a SHIELD field medic who gives Tony drill-sergeant glares in response to being called a nurse when Barton finally turns up, still wearing half his hotel porter's uniform.
"Shit, Stark," he says when he sees Tony's face, and Tony notes sourly that if a seasoned pro like Clint Barton is impressed then his face must be frigging spectacular. "Looks like Rogers is gonna be the prettiest Avenger for a while."
"You should see the other guy," Tony responds, which is unoriginal but better than nothing, and Barton exhales half a laugh.
"How many times did you get hit, anyway?"
Tony shrugs painfully, but then right now everything is painful, including blinking. "A couple, I guess. Why keep track when you're having that much fun?"
"Thirteen times," Bruce states, with absolute, frightening finality: it's the first sound he's made since a grunt when Coulson cut the ties on his wrists. "He hit you thirteen times."
"Spoken like a born statistician," Tony notes, but he isn't laughing and nor is Bruce; they just look at each other in silence for so long that finally Clint wanders off to go help Natasha with the tidy up. "Sorry," he adds eventually, and God knows he hasn't used that word very often but it's the truth. "I shouldn't have gotten you into this."
"Are you kidding me?" Bruce gives him the oddest look, though that may be just the blooming back eye. "I made my own damn choices, Stark. Fury fucked this up, not you." He pauses, and it's only as he inhales and Tony draws breath along with him that Tony realises that they will be okay, in a while. "But I am still never, ever getting tied up recreationally ever again."
Tony looks down and ignores the screaming pains in his back to snort with laughter. "Well, you say that now..."
Fandoms: Marvel Movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Words: 5789
Warnings: Possible triggers for semi-graphic violence and mild torture (including drug use).
Pairing: Bruce/Tony
Notes: Set some time post-Avengers! With techspeak from JJ and a crapload of beta-ing from the best Eric.
Summary: Bruce and Tony go undercover on a mission from SHIELD. It all works out very nearly as badly as Bruce tells them all it will... But, to be fair, there are certain compensations to getting the chance to play James Bond.
"So, let me get this straight." Bruce pushes up his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, the way he gets at the end of a long day when the math stops working and Tony won't stop making smartass remarks. "You want me and Tony to go undercover and find these terrorists? Me? Really?"
It's quite a long speech, by his standards, at least for something that doesn't relate to science, and Tony feels compelled to pitch in. (Although he totally would anyway, but pissing off Fury in defence of Bruce is even more fun than just doing so for shits and giggles.)
"So am I now officially no longer considered, what was it, volatile, self-obsessed and incapable of playing well with others?" he enquires. "Because I've gotta say, I kinda liked it back when I was all that."
Coulson gives a cough that he's fairly certain translates as 'You were never all that'. Bruce just throws out a hand, demanding Fury recognise both Tony's point and his unspeakable... Tony-ness, which personally Tony's always been pretty proud of. "I'm sorry, Director, but are you high?"
Fury's lone good eye glowers back at him over the man's steepled fingers, like he's seriously rethinking allowing him shore leave enough to get infected by all of Tony Stark's worst personality traits (which is basically all of them). Tony himself, meanwhile, is doing his level best not to giggle and not entirely succeeding.
"Only in the sense that we're fifty thousand feet up right now," Fury informs them both gruffly. "Doctor Banner, I have invested a hell of a lot of money, agents and time in this investigation, and everything we have indicates that our primary suspects are gonna be at this conference on--"
He glances at Coulson, who recites obediently, "The development and potential capabilities of high-strength phasic weaponry for national defence" like he's reading it from a teleprompter, which is probably his superpower or something.
"--Right, yeah. Look, all we need is for you to identify which of these guys is capable of what we believe they're planning. If you'd like to get some incriminating statements on tape, too, then that would be a bonus, but it's not absolutely necessary."
Fury has acquired the sort of slow, quiet shark's grin beloved of the better action-movie stars and successful poker-players, both of which he's probably been at some point in his life and which Tony correctly interprets to mean that once SHIELD's interrogators get through with them, incriminating statements will be thrown around as freely as beads at a Mardi Gras. Bruce, though, is plainly still unconvinced - not that Tony can blame him; even with the best will in the world and the fact that he has never knowingly talked himself down, he really couldn't imagine two less likely secret-agents if he tried.
"There has to be someone else you can send." Bruce sounds quietly desperate, as if he already knows that whatever he says will not make a blind bit of difference, which in all probably it won't.
Fury gives them an irritably ironic look, which is probably the nearest the guy ever gets to humour - who knows. Maybe he cracks up at Saturday morning cartoons, which is an image worth treasuring although personally Tony doubts it. "If there were, Doc, you'd still be holed up in your lab and we wouldn't be having this conversation." His tone of voice leaves nobody in any doubt as to which state of events he'd prefer. "Anyone I send, they have to cancel everything they're doing and spend the next fortnight reading up on advanced nuclear physics. And maybe they pass, or maybe a vitally important four-year mission goes down the tube and I'm a couple agents worse off. You know all of this stuff already, and for Stark it maybe means an evening doing the background reading."
Tony takes Fury's point, although he doesn't have to like being corralled into doing SHIELD's dirty work for them. But hey, maybe it'll be fun; it might even give him the chance to bug the hell out of Coulson in a situation in which the agent categorically cannot taser him, which is not an opportunity that comes along very often these days.
"Well, hey, I always fancied myself as Bond, James Bond," he lets himself muse in a passable Sean Connery imitation, and throws his arm around Bruce's shoulders - a gesture he knows damn well the man hates. (Or possibly just hates whenever it's done by anyone other than Tony Stark; he hasn't yet been able to control for all variables). "C'mon, big guy: you'd look amazing in a suit and bow tie, you know you would. What can go wrong?"
Bruce is still wearing his patented 'stressed professor' look, an expression which is pretty much his default. (Tony keeps trying to change that, but so far with only limited success.) "I wish you hadn't said that," he tells Tony wryly, displaying both an impressive grasp of classic movie tropes for a guy who once accidentally irradiated himself half to death and the surest sign yet that he's on the cusp of giving in. "Director Fury, I don't suppose there's anything I could say to convince you of what an epically bad idea this is?"
"Not especially," Fury answers, tone very dry. "Primarily because I'm already aware of what a bad idea it is. It just happens to be a hell of a lot better than all our other bad ideas."
"That's reassuring." Bruce crosses his arms defensively, matching him glare for glare. "In that case, I'll only point out that whatever eventually goes wrong is entirely on your own head."
(This, of course, is a lie: if anything does go wrong - and Tony has more faith in Bruce than Bruce does, so he doesn't think it's a certainty - Bruce will most definitely blame himself for it, even if it's not his fault. For him, self-recrimination is not so much a hobby as the vocation of a lifetime, and it’s one he's pursued with the same single-mindedness he's shown in everything else he's ever done.)
"Believe me, Doc: it always is." Fury gives them both one of those x-ray glares he's so good at and which would probably save airport security a hell of a lot of money if Tony could only figure out a way to clone him effectively. "Coulson? Brief 'em."
Coulson looks as though he has about as many doubts about this as Bruce does, but he follows orders anyway. It turns out Fury's right: it really won't take Tony long to do the background reading.
~*~
The conference on the development and potential capabilities of high-strength phasic weaponry for national defence turns out to be basically what Tony thought it would be, albeit substantially more boring. Although he and Bruce do both look unbelievably hot in the tuxedos he insisted they have made, there's a disappointing lack of opportunities to wear them, and whilst there are a lot of people wanting autographs there are remarkably few with even trace signs of a personality. He sees both Natasha and Coulson in the background, Coulson looking unusually uncomfortable as a waiter and Natasha dazzling as the trophy girlfriend of a senior researcher at Princeton University who is making it very clear that he cannot believe his luck. Tony tries to speak to both of them, but waiter-Coulson proves spectacularly resistant to catching his eye and Natasha, on his only attempt, makes it very clear that she will emasculate him with her stilettos if he tries again. Therefore (because he does have some sense of self-preservation, even if that fact would come as news to Pepper) he basically confines his attentions entirely to Bruce for the first day and a half, a feat which is made even less difficult by the way Bruce persists in looking enchantingly bemused at why he bothers with him.
All of that changes, however, at after-dinner drinks on the second night of the conference. They're at the bar, tuxedos finally in an attractive state of disarray, Tony holding court to a rapt audience on the subject of sub-atomic binding and the possibilities of real-life warp speed; Bruce is at his side, occasionally making quiet, amused suggestions from behind a glass of sadly teetotal orange juice. About halfway through, he's really getting into his stride about how Scotty really wasn't using half-bad science at all when he notices two newcomers drift with studied nonchalance into the fringes of their little group. One is male, mid-forties, swarthy as a cartoon Italian outside a cheap diner (Tony strongly suspects he fake tans), with a strong jaw and thoughtful eyes; the other is female, early fifties, with iron-grey hair and a hawklike face which her expensive designer glasses do absolutely nothing to soften. Both of them are easily recognisable from amongst the notes Coulson first showed them a couple weeks ago and which, Tony was highly disappointed to find, did not come with a warning that they would self-destruct in sixty seconds. He glances at Bruce, who has clearly also recognised the pair and who is equally clearly much less comfortable than he had been, and sighs internally. The guy had finally begun to relax - probably it was all the science-nerding - to the point where Tony had almost hoped to have another shot at flirting him into bed, but it's pretty obvious that once again those hopes have been dashed.
He's been trying to sleep with him for months, as a matter of fact, because Bruce is amused and patient and intelligent as hell, entertainingly bad at X-Box and good at understanding how damn lonely it is, being the smartest guy in the room and always waiting futilely for the rest of the world to catch up. He's also unspeakably hot, of course, which is actually more of a nice bonus rather than a requirement when it's on top of all those other qualities (although Tony will never, ever stop finding the 'sexy professor' thing a turn-on), and has somehow managed to share Stark Towers with both Tony and Pepper for a good four months and not fuck either of them, which would be horrifying if Tony didn't so enjoy challenges. Still, in a little over four months of acquaintance he's become an extremely adept Bruce-watcher, and as soon as he recognises their new fans from the notes and sees Bruce recognise them too he knows that his chances of success are shot - for tonight, at any rate. Which (given how hot they both look in those tuxedos) is frankly a hell of a tragedy, and he's always been much more of a fan of sins than tragedies, to borrow from Ozzie Wilde, for whom Tony's always had a lot of sympathy.
Show over, their little audience reluctantly disperses in a flutter of adoration and requests for (amongst other things) autographs, most of which Tony charmingly grants. Only the two latecomers remain behind, so casual Tony bets they learnt the technique straight out of a book. He feels absurdly protective of Bruce just now, which is ridiculous - of all the people in the world who need protecting, a stocky polymath with three PhDs and, oh yeah, the ability to become a fifteen-foot unstoppable rage-monster is so far from the bottom of the list that even Fury's morals haven't seen such depths. Nevertheless, he wonders suddenly just how very definitely the scientific community really believes that Bruce Banner is dead: they're generally a hotbed of conspiracy theories and it's already a minor miracle (probably a SHIELD-engineered one, quite frankly) that they haven't yet run into any of his ex-colleagues. And where the hell is Natasha right now, anyway? Or Coulson, for that matter. Well, too late for any of that now.
Their new friends introduce themselves as Professor Helen Wickham and Doctor Leon Scalzi, which are the names on their SHIELD notes and possibly even their real ones, with tenures at Calvin and flawless US accents (Wickham is Texas, Scalzi Ohio) that very slightly throw Tony off: he's been accustomed to thinking of Bond villains with Iron Curtain accents, or at the very least having the decency to be English. Instead they're affable and open: Scalzi makes a Star Trek crack; Wickham admits she prefers Star Wars and laughs when Tony feigns disgust. He buys them both drinks to make sure they stick around, though they're acting as though they will be anyway, and after a few minutes of small-talk he suggests they move somewhere more out of the way before he can attract any more autograph-hunters to them.
"You must hate these conventions," Wickham says sympathetically; he chuckles and shrugs.
"I've been to worse - and honestly, I can live with anything so long as there's a decent bar. Did I introduce my buddy here, by the way? Robert Hogan - he's running my labs these days."
Bruce shakes hands with them both before they head for the elevators but clearly has to struggle to meet their eyes, which Tony hopes they'll both both write off as the natural shyness it actually mostly is.
"So, where are we headed?" Scalzi asks cheerfully, as Tony jabs for the elevator call button.
"Well, actually I thought my suite," he says, because obviously he booked the penthouse - he cannot be James Bond without James Bond's sense of style. "It's plenty big enough, it's comfortable, and it has a phenomenally well-stocked bar that I've been meaning to investigate more thoroughly."
It's also quite astonishingly well-bugged, which is just one more reason why he had absolutely no chance of sleeping with Bruce this weekend - the Big Guy may well be the world's biggest exhibitionist (hold onto that thought, Stark - it may come in useful later) but his more interesting alter-ego most definitely is not.
"Plus, I've been meaning to ask: you guys are the Wickham and Scalzi who published that study into the real-time detection of explosives using Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry, right? 'Cause I honestly thought that was breath-taking, but I had a couple questions about the background research that I was hoping you could answer."
Wickham frowns. "Where did you see that?" she demands, with a sharpness that makes Scalzi give her a Look. "It's still in peer-review."
"He gets pre-publication copies of all the major journals," Bruce explains, saving Tony's ass with gentle good humour. "And a couple less major ones, too. Probably mildly unethical, but you know what money can do."
Scalzi laughs, and the sudden tension lightens considerably as the elevator finally arrives and they all step into it. "Of course. Well, our sponsors have laid on a few conditions regarding what we can discuss without an NDA, but we'll certainly try to answer all the questions we can."
"You may regret making that promise," Bruce warns him amusedly, and this time even Wickham laughs - which Tony hopes means that they're safely out of danger, at least for the moment.
The penthouse suite is as large and comfortable as Tony had assured them it would be- and the mini-bar is just as well-stocked, although he calls room service for a second one, just in case. Getting your target drunk and voluble seems to work pretty well in the spy novels, and between Bruce's enforced teetotalism and his own famously cast-iron liver he sees no reason not to give it one hell of a shot. If they succeed, it occurs to him, his dad would be proud - SHIELD's less-official records are full of stories about how the old man fought Nazis by getting them drunk. It's a very odd thought, especially right now: he hasn't thought much about Howard Stark in years. Scalzi and Wickham themselves definitely don't seem to have much objection to the strategem: Wickham, in particular, finds a bottle of half-decent Laphroaig in the cooler and greets it like an old friend, cuddling it to herself protectively. The whole evening is shortly going swimmingly, in fact: they're all science-nerding with some fervour - Bruce has even laughed at least once - Scalzi has started telling particularly bad Star Trek jokes and Tony is well onto his sixth Scotch and is contemplating whether or not he should make a pass at Wickham, Scalzi, or both when he feels something kicking into his system which is very definitely not the demon drink.
"Oh, fuck," he thinks out loud, which is approximately the last coherent thing he manages to process before he hits the floor.
~*~
When Tony comes to, his first thought is more or less the same as his last, give or take an expletive or three; his second thought is that he can't move his arms, which he initially thinks is the drugs before realising that it's actually because he's been tied to his chair. His head is pounding like he's coming down from the worst trip he's ever had - and he's had some bad ones in his time - and his thoughts are sluggish and muddled, the way he imagines 'normal' people think. They're in a small, boxy room filled with junk and uncertain lighting; to judge by the mingling smells of must and damp Tony's betting on it being a cellar, so maybe there's at least some booze down here as well.
The first thing he says is "Look, guys, this is not exactly the the first Saturday night I've spent tied up - you could've just bought me a drink," which is clearly the wrong thing to say, at least insofar as it gets him a punch to the face.
For all his shenanigans as Tony Stark and escapades as Iron Man, he hasn't actually been punched in the face all that often, if you don't count that one time Thor got drunk and forgot they weren't all Asgardians. There's a very odd moment where his vision and thoughts go blank, like the wiring in the suit's malfunctioned, and then his brain reboots and all his thoughts come back online at once to the accompaniment of the merry ringing in his ears. It doesn't actually hurt all that much, although maybe that's just because his jaw's going numb - apparently it did quite hurt Scalzi, who is now rubbing his knuckles with a pained expression which has got to be the actual definition of 'this will hurt me more than it will hurt you'.
"Well, I've had worse wake-up calls," he notes - which is actually true, although only just - then follows up with a "The hell?" in hopes of getting some answers before anyone hits him again.
"What, did you think we were completely stupid?" enquires Wickham from over the top of her iPad. "The great Tony Stark wants to talk science in private with a couple of nobodies, and we weren't supposed to be suspicious?"
"Hey, you talked to us first," Tony points out, nettled at how un-James-Bondy his great scheme apparently was (he made Bruce watch all the Connery movies in preparation, and this definitely never happened to him), adding "Well, actually I was kinda planning to make a pass at you" because otherwise he'd have no choice but to respond to her first question and that would definitely get him punched again. (Which is almost certainly the first time he's managed to keep his mouth shut in a crisis - note to self: never tell Pepper that the trick is apparently punching him really hard in the face.) "Seriously, though, do you both do this every Saturday night, or am I just a special case?"
"We don't get SHIELD spies trying to get us drunk every weekend, if that's what you mean," Scalzi returns, looking rather as if he plans on hitting him again, although Tony is suddenly way too hung up on his use of 'spies' in the plural - and the solid warm presence at his back - to give a damn. He manages to twist enough to look awkwardly behind himself, and for several reasons immediately wishes he hadn't: Bruce is making tiny little groans and whimpers, as if even unconscious he is trying not to draw attention to himself and which, under any other circumstances, Tony would probably find bizarrely adorable. Right now, however, he's mostly just hoping that they mean the drugs their new friends used on Bruce were a lot stronger than those they used on himself, because frankly the longer Bruce stays knocked out the better -- although he has very little hope he'll stay out for long enough for him to figure out how the hell to get them both out of this mess.
Great.
So not only do these two morons have him tied up in a location unknown and apparently have no plan other than to hit him occasionally, but in so doing they've also tied him to the one guy in the known multiverse who becomes an unstoppable green rage-monster when he freaks out. He may have to take it back: he actually can't remember a worse wake-up call, although possibly that one time in Pasadena may still just have the edge.
(He gets slightly stuck on the image of a dishevelled, tuxedoed, tied-up Bruce Banner for a moment, but sternly reminds himself that the guy is almost certainly also all drooly and gross - oh, and most likely about five minutes away from wigging out and killing them all - in an attempt to regain what passes with him for concentration.)
The groaning at his back gets louder and more defined (focus, Stark, focus), which Tony correctly interprets to mean that, despite all his devout hopes to the contrary, Bruce is waking up or coming to or whatever it is you do when knock-out drugs wear off.
"And then people wonder why I'm an atheist," he mutters, but painfully marshals what little bodily autonomy he's got left to him enough to give Bruce what he hopes is a reassuring nudge. (The effort involved certainly hurts enough that it had better have been reassuring, anyway: Tony is okay with 'no pain, no gain' as a truism, but 'pain, no gain' would just be way, way too unfair at this stage in the proceedings.)
"Okay, Greensleeves, relax," he mutters, more out of hope than confidence, and then adds "It's all right," which must rank right up there with 'I am a responsible member of society' and 'of course I'm not going to get myself killed, Pepper' as amongst the most outrageously flagrant lies he's ever told.
"Mrgh." Bruce's eyes flicker. "Where are we?"
It's an eminently reasonable question, and one which Tony himself would very much like the answer to as well, but it earns Bruce a ringing blow to the face.
In the aftershock of the punch Tony's world goes white and still, as if he'd been hit and not Bruce. He can feel the micro-seconds tick past, feel capillaries ebb and flow with blood, the way he remembers he could waiting in the hospital for Mom and Dad, high almost out of his mind and forcing himself to stay in place as his thoughts bounced frantically off the walls like a trapped fly.
And then Bruce exhales, and is still Bruce and not the other guy, and Tony exhales with him, as if the world has resumed its spinning on its axis. So Bruce can apparently handle a higher (if relatively brief) level of pain than he'd calculated; that needs to be factored in to the equations he's got running, if only he could stop adding two and two quantum variables and making four.
Bruce's eyes open more fully; he squints painfully at their captors, as he tends to do when he has no glasses and the beginnings of a black eye. "The fuck?"
"See, that's what I said, too," Tony says cheerfully. "But then I got hit, so apparently that's the answer."
He manages, with careful effort, to nudge Bruce again: he's hoping that reminding him he's not alone will help him not to freak out. It makes himself feel better, anyway. "You all right, big guy?"
"Just peachy," Bruce grumbles, keeping a wary eye on Wickham and Scalzi. "Sleepy, I guess - at the moment. Do you do this every Saturday night, Stark?"
"You've been reading the tabloids again," Tony says severely, because it's either that or 'for you, I'd give it serious consideration', but he takes Bruce's point: specifically, that he's got until the drugs wear off completely to get them both out of here or the Hulk will leave the smartest, richest, most effortlessly charismatic smear in existence on the floor. No pressure, then...
He plays for time, because letting his mouth take over whilst his mind buzzes is a tried-and-tested method and he'll live with a couple punches if it takes their attention off of Bruce. In any case, with any luck keeping Bruce talking will also keep him calm, and given the big green elephant in the room that's at least an equal priority with escaping right now. This is clearly on Bruce's mind as well (hah. When is it not?) because he says "I'm all right," and repeats it a couple times, as if trying to convince himself as much as to convince Tony.
"I'm sorry," Tony himself snipes at Wickham (Scalzi is now off in the background, somewhere out of his field of vision), "But did you actually have any plans - or, hell, an explanation - for tonight? I kind of have somewhere to be."
"On-board the SHIELD helicarrier to report everything you got out of those two idiot scientists who couldn't hold their drink, I know." She gives him the politest social smile Tony's ever seen; Pepper, who has elevated meaningless social niceties to an art form, would weep to manage a smile that venomously bland. (Pepper, it occurs to him, is also going to kill him if he gets out of this alive. Oh well, it won't be the first time.) "I wouldn't worry about a rescue attempt, either," Wickham adds, one gloved hand holding up a horribly familiar mess of technology. "We found your wires before we moved you. And acid-bathed them."
Which still doesn't entirely discount the possibility of rescue, but Natasha gets very inventively pissed when he talks about her in public, so Tony changes the subject - that being the only form of keeping his mouth shut that he's ever been capable of. "Look, like I said: if you wanted to spend the night with me, you could've just asked nicely."
Scalzi appears out of nowhere with another punch; as his ears ring, Tony notes sourly that Wickham shows an impressive ability not to flinch at excessive violence. No point in appealing to her for help, then - not that he'd really considered it as a viable possibility. Bruce grits his teeth, forcing himself to breathe deeply; Tony has to do something soon or they're all fucked. His hands are still not co-operating with the ropes, but that at least provides a rough gauge of how far the drugs have worn off.
"You're really getting into the swing of this now," he remarks. "Remind me to buy you a punchbag for Christmas - I bet cheekbones like mine must be hell on the knuckles."
"Well, he hasn't got long to practice." Wickham sounds disgustingly cheerful, with a smile that Tony is really looking forward to seeing wiped off her face. "We just need to find out how much SHIELD already knows, then we'll kill your sidekick-" "Sidekick?" Bruce echoes incredulously - "-Sell you back to your own company, and use the money to finish our work. Neat, don't you think?"
God, she really is a psycho: Loki would just love her, he's sure.
"Great incentive for us to be good boys and answer her questions, don't you think?" Bruce growls. "I know I feel like being really co-operative now."
This time, it's Wickham who hits him; she's got a mean swing on her but she doesn't properly follow through the way Tony's seen Thor or Natasha do, and Bruce just shakes his head to clear it and takes a few deep slow breaths like he's trying to meditate - his preferred way of staving off a visit from the Hulk, but not necessarily a bad sign. Tony now has an actual plan, of sorts, although he's pretty certain that it's one Bruce will have come up with independently: it's not nearly as original or as stylish as he'd like - frankly, it's about as sophisticated as carrying a nuke into space, although in his defence that did also work out - and after all the guy does have three PhDs, but tying himself to an enraged Hulk definitely plays no part in it. So he says, brightly, "Your third PhD. What was your thesis title?"
Bruce blinks, but plays along. "The effects of low-level gamma radiation on deep-cell ageing and its potential use in muscular regeneration." His voice is rough and a little belaboured, with long pauses as he forces himself to breathe slow and deep, but it still retains that classic, incredibly attractive Bruce Banner drawl. "Why?"
"Just curious." He twists his head enough to give Bruce a flash of a grin, although it probably isn't anywhere near as megawatt as normal. "God, you are nearly as hot a geek as I am."
Bruce manages half a smile in return, which by his standards is pretty much a grin. "Better be careful, Stark. Pepper'll kick you out of the corporation again if she hears you."
"Are you kidding me?" Tony is genuinely a little shocked at the discovery that Bruce still hasn't figured out how utterly monotonous he and Pepp find monogamy. "She can't believe you and I haven't had sex yet."
"--What?"
"I think her exact words were 'if you don't sleep with him soon, Tony, then I will'. Which, you know, is also an option, if you want..."
To Tony's intense surprise, Bruce goes faintly pink but huffs a laugh. "Could be tricky, Stark. But, we'll see."
"Fascinating." Wickham is staring at them both like they're bugs who're almost too entertaining to swat. "We could make so much money from the tabloids if we left you both alive... But, the greater scientific purpose awaits."
She gestures to Scalzi, who crouches in front of Tony so that they're eye-to-eye, and Tony always thought he could eyeball like a pro but he's got nothing on this guy. "So. How much does SHIELD know, Mr Stark? Tell me easy and I won't mess up your pretty face too much." A smirk. "Well, not too much more, anyway."
Tony gives the guy his very best glare, the kind he normally reserves for contract attorneys and people who fail to recognise the inherent awesome of red and gold as a superhero colour scheme. "Do you mind? Trying to work here."
Something about this seems to really hit a nerve because Scalzi now goes absolutely bug-nuts crazy, raining blows on Tony's face and shoulders, and Tony's lucky the man conforms to stereotype insofar as he hits like a nerd or otherwise his pretty face really would be a lot more Stallone than Clooney by now. As it is it still hurts like hell: he gasps for breath and tastes blood and phlegm; his ears ring like he spent the night at an AC/DC gig and his brain stutters with static. He starts mentally listing each Maxim covergirl he slept with that one year according to month and underwear colour, anything to stop himself from thinking about the pain; it doesn't work, so he starts listing each vintage car in his collection in chronological order by date of origin and purchase; that doesn't work, either, and nor does anything else until Bruce's fingers worry through the ropes at his back to find his own fingers and squeeze tight, and suddenly it doesn't matter so much that he can't breathe but fuck, it still hurts.
At which point, to Tony's infinite relief, Natasha kicks the door in.
~*~
The clean up is short but not as sweet as Tony would like, and he and Bruce are sitting outside the hotel being patched up by a SHIELD field medic who gives Tony drill-sergeant glares in response to being called a nurse when Barton finally turns up, still wearing half his hotel porter's uniform.
"Shit, Stark," he says when he sees Tony's face, and Tony notes sourly that if a seasoned pro like Clint Barton is impressed then his face must be frigging spectacular. "Looks like Rogers is gonna be the prettiest Avenger for a while."
"You should see the other guy," Tony responds, which is unoriginal but better than nothing, and Barton exhales half a laugh.
"How many times did you get hit, anyway?"
Tony shrugs painfully, but then right now everything is painful, including blinking. "A couple, I guess. Why keep track when you're having that much fun?"
"Thirteen times," Bruce states, with absolute, frightening finality: it's the first sound he's made since a grunt when Coulson cut the ties on his wrists. "He hit you thirteen times."
"Spoken like a born statistician," Tony notes, but he isn't laughing and nor is Bruce; they just look at each other in silence for so long that finally Clint wanders off to go help Natasha with the tidy up. "Sorry," he adds eventually, and God knows he hasn't used that word very often but it's the truth. "I shouldn't have gotten you into this."
"Are you kidding me?" Bruce gives him the oddest look, though that may be just the blooming back eye. "I made my own damn choices, Stark. Fury fucked this up, not you." He pauses, and it's only as he inhales and Tony draws breath along with him that Tony realises that they will be okay, in a while. "But I am still never, ever getting tied up recreationally ever again."
Tony looks down and ignores the screaming pains in his back to snort with laughter. "Well, you say that now..."