Forfeiture
Title: Forfeiture
Fandom: Iron Man movie/Incredible Hulk movie AU
Characters: Bruce/Tony, Pepper
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit.
Summary: Tony Stark has known Bruce Banner most of his life, but that doesn’t mean he has ever wanted to. Begins when both of them are fourteen and continues on into their adult lives.
Warning: This is very much a Marvel movie What-if. This is not a happy story.
Rating: R - Depressing themes and dub con
Word Count: 4,923 words
Author's Note: Quite a few liberties have been taken with Bruce Banner’s character. This isn’t necessarily how either Tony or Bruce’s parents are in canon. I went off of what I’ve noticed in the comics and what worked for the purposes of furthering this story. I have nothing against Betty Ross, but she’s been sort of overlooked in this.
Thank you, th_esaurus for beta-ing it the first time ‘round, and hedonisticated for being willing to read it.
-
Bruce Banner at age fourteen was not a lot of fun to be around. He wouldn’t start conversations. He wouldn’t contribute much to them. He would always look to other people for direction, and he seemed to constantly be waiting for Tony to say something neat for him to dwell on. It made Tony furious they older they got. He started to wish the Banners would not come over because he spent half of the time grinding his teeth together and trying not to smack Bruce upside the head.
Back in those days, Tony didn’t know where the anger came from. When they were younger and seeing Bruce was a more frequent thing, it hadn’t been so bad. They would play games and do whatever Tony wanted because Bruce just didn’t seem to come up with ideas of his own. He would follow along like a lost baby duck imprinting on some other woodland creature, copying motions and repeating catchphrases. Maybe less like a lost baby duck and more like a space creature. Some being that had just come down to Earth and was really smart, but playing a game of catch-up all the time. Some creature always looking for a way to express itself, but never being sure enough of what it was to do anything with more than half of the expressions it picked up.
Anyone could tell Bruce was bright because there was a lot of physical proof to back up that statement. Thank goodness for that, because otherwise no one would have known. Obviously the kid was born thinking. His room was full of projects and experiments. He spoke in formulas and code that Tony could decipher but most other people couldn’t and frankly Tony was sure most people wouldn’t bother. Why would they? Bruce was shy and awkward and feeble. He had brilliant ideas, but how the hell was he going to defend them or stop some other charismatic person from snatching them? Having a healthy ego, Tony didn’t see the point in stealing someone else’s ideas, but he was positive others could and would do it. It would be so easy. Bruce wouldn’t even know what hit him.
There was also another reason Tony felt an irritating bit of pity every time he was about Bruce, and it wasn’t anything the other teen could prevent or do anything about. The fact was simply this: Bruce’s parents sucked.
This wasn’t to say Maria and Howard Stark didn’t have a ton of their own. Howard was often blinded by his own cleverness and didn’t want to be overshadowed by his son. Tony knew that. At age twelve he knew that. Every photo shoot he was ever allowed on was about father-and-son bonding. The wise benevolent older Stark passing down wisdom and knowledge to his boy. No one really talked to his mother about anything and Tony was glad because that meant they could do normal things. She would take him to the zoo during the day and stay up til odd hours at night helping him adjust his robots. Something Howard Stark couldn’t be bothered to do most of the time.
Stark Industries wasn’t going to run itself and obviously Howard Stark preferred hanging out with Obadiah Stane. Golf was more enjoyable than watching your six year-old put together an engine. Something Howard probably hadn’t managed until he was a teenager. But that wasn’t resentment, or at least not pure resentment. Sure, it hurt a lot when his father barely glanced at his designs or Obie ruffled his hair and told him to go play with his toys so they could get back to business. But one day the company would be his. And then the only thing Stane would be doing was all the work Tony didn’t want to do.
The Banners were not successful. They were scientists doing government research and getting nowhere because the government kept taking their work and slapping patents on it or locking it up somewhere or handing it off to other people in different agencies. No one knew who they were outside of their colleagues. No one cared. The same thing would have been true for Bruce is his IQ wasn’t completely off the charts. His parents claimed they wanted him to still be normal. To go to regular schools and then blow everyone’s socks off once he got to college, but they were holding him back. They weren’t helping him with anything. He was their kid, but he was mostly left all alone with his formulas, figures and theories.
Well, all alone most of the time unless his folks could be bothered to find a use for him. Apparently he liked being around Tony. His parents and Bruce’s parents thought this was great. Tony remained skeptical and a little confused about the whole situation. He was nice to Bruce, sure, but not that nice. How was sitting around every other week watching Tony do stuff helping matters at all? How was that making it any easier for Bruce to blend in and find a way to interact with people less intelligent than he was?
“MIT probably wouldn’t be a good fit for you anyway,” fourteen year-old Tony pointed out. He wasn’t going to be fourteen for long though, and the acceptance letter had just arrived. He could hear his father going on and on about it in the next room. It should have excited him, but instead it made him feel sort of sick to his stomach and annoyed because Bruce seemed genuinely happy for him. Bruce had been happy to see him too as always, and Tony couldn’t help resenting that simple act of being happy for no readily apparent reason. What the hell did Bruce Banner have to be happy about?
“I don’t mind,” Bruce said, looking down at the carpet. He was still clutching at one of the spanners, but not even looking at the robot. As usual, he tended to focus his attention Tony. “I can wait.”
It was sort of a pile of junk on wheels at the moment, but Tony was thinking of calling his first fully functional robot Dummy. Or calling Bruce one. Decisions, decisions. “You should mind. You’re smarter than I am.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe. Anyway, what are you going to wait for? You want to end up at some state school with people cheating off your tests and copying your answers?”
“It might be better. I mean, it’s more n-”
“Nothing about you is normal,” Tony blurted out before feeling bad about it because Bruce cringed. “Oh, knock it off. You’re not normal and it’s a good thing. You don’t want to be normal. No one wants to be normal.” You wouldn’t know how to be normal either, he thought to himself, but wisely chose not say.
“Mutants do.”
“Well, then they’re stupid too. If I had the power to fly around and save people, I’d do it. I wouldn’t complain and bitch and moan. I’d go do it and then enjoy the fame it would bring me.”
“You don’t have powers,” Bruce shrewdly pointed out.
“Most of the time I don’t complain about that either. Hand me the screwdriver again.”
The comment earned him a ghost of a smile and the request earned him the screwdriver.
“You should get into a school and get away from them as soon as you can,” Tony muttered. “Seriously, Bruce.”
“Is that why you’re going?”
No, of course not. “Some of it,” he lied easily. Sometimes Tony couldn’t help cushioning the truth. “My father’s a one man show and Obie’s already got the sidekick position filled.”
Bruce made a face. He didn’t like Stane, and Tony noticed he made no effort to pretend he didn’t. Maybe it was the hair ruffling or the condescension. Bruce was a painfully honest person too. Another shortcoming. He was never going to make a name for himself or be able to run a business until he learned to lie properly, but then Tony doubted Bruce would have wanted that.
“So what’s your dad’s big news?” The Starks saw the Banners pretty irregularly, but it was a constant irregularity. The Banners never had anything much to say, but David had made it pretty clear that this time was different.
“We’re moving. My dad finally got that grant.”
“Where to?”
“South. Texas, I think.”
Christ. “That’s cool, I guess.”
“My mom’s going to teach. I think it’s what they want.”
Bruce didn’t seem to want anything though. Tony couldn’t understand that. Everyone wanted something and Bruce just seemed to want to be a lump. No one was going to be able to make him want things. You couldn’t make decisions for other people. You couldn’t bitch-slap them with a hearty dose of reality when they were smart enough to know it already.
“Sounds good,” Tony muttered, picking up some needle-nose pliers and adjusting more of the wiring. He found it hard to think of anything to say after that.
He just thought about the future where Bruce would grow up and maybe, just maybe, he would be normal then. He would find himself a girl and teach at some university and keep all the intelligence bottled up inside of himself. And maybe he would never resent his parents or the world for not understanding him. And maybe they’d all develop wings and mutant powers and save the world together. Yeah, right.
Something about Bruce was always going to be off. Maybe Bruce thought he’d end up happy with a house with a white picket fence and his best girl and their two and a half kids, but it wasn’t going to happen like that. The world wouldn’t be such a great place for Bruce no matter where he went. He was more likely to get a PHD in nuclear physics and blow it all up than anything else.
“I guess I won’t see much of you,” Tony added after bit, secretly thinking this was a good thing.
“Probably not.”
He wanted to say he was sorry even if he wasn’t. He wanted to say that maybe someday it’ll be different and being around Bruce won’t be such a required burden he endured so his parents could have a meal with people their own age.
Instead, he said, “You can, uh, write me if you want though. I mean, I’ll be at school anyway and I never had a pen pal.”
Tony didn’t know why he said it. He instantly wished he hadn’t. The way Bruce looked at him was a little hard to bear. He’d never seen the other kid look so hopeful and relieved before. He was probably reading too much into it. Probably thinking somewhere this made them good friends or solidified some bond between them. Tony didn’t think it had and he knew that the writing thing would be a disaster. Similarly he knew somehow that it probably wasn’t a smart decision, but he let Bruce hug him before the Banners left.
*
Months later, Tony even remembered to send Bruce his address. He just couldn’t stop himself from doing it.
At school in Cambridge, the letters kept coming. He would reply irregularly, but Bruce was the most punctual pen pal in existence. Banner wrote about… everything, really. It was hard to compare the intelligent teen on paper to the kid that rarely spoke up about anything. Sometimes the letters were only about how much he missed Tony and seeing him. Sometimes it was only about something new he’d discovered or someone else had found and how much he wished Tony was around to witness whatever it was firsthand. Bruce seemed to be interested in everything and nothing all at once when it came to the sciences, but every letter seemed to indicate one thing: that he was very interested in Tony and moreover Tony’s opinion.
Tony wasn’t sure how to take that or what to do with that information. It was one thing for a college professor, a fellow student or a journalist or his father to want to know what was on his mind, but he wasn’t sure what opinion he was supposed to have or why it mattered when it came to Bruce. He tried not to say much in his letters, but regardless of what he did end up committing to paper, the other boy seemed thrilled.
The letters kept coming and coming on a frequent basis. Every Monday and Wednesday he’d get one. Sometimes Friday too. Hank Pym teased him about it mercilessly, but Tony would just tell him to shut the hell up and bring back a lot of girls to the apartment they were renting. Having loud sex and banging on the paper-thin walls separating their rooms. But the letters kept coming. He eventually wrote telling Bruce he was graduating in a couple of months and moving back to California. That he was busy and he wasn’t sure he’d have time for responding. Bruce didn’t seem to mind.
After school, the plethora of weekly letters either stopped or kept going to his old address. He never asked to have them forwarded. It took awhile, but slowly but surely letters found him. Or postcards. Or just cards. Every once in awhile Pepper would bring one to his attention.
“How weird is that? Who sends letters anymore?” Tony would ask her instead of answering her questions. He’d pretend that he’d read it and when she left the room, he’d shove it in a drawer along with the others. When the pile got unwieldy, he would take took them home and recycled them there.
Then they stopped. He didn’t notice right away, but a few months after there were no more cards to chuck, he looked in the lower drawer of his desk feeling a little shocked to discover there was nothing there but a few fountain pens and post-it notes. Maybe it was that Betty girl Bruce mentioned sometimes, and God, Tony really hoped so. He wanted to believe that somehow this obsession had found a new target. Selfishly, Tony didn’t care who it was as long as it wasn’t himself.
This comforting self-delusion remained in tact for only a day or so. Pepper being the overqualified, overly industrious assistant that she was clipped out the articles and set them ones of his desks in his workroom after it happened. The Hulk incident or whatever it was being called when it first happened.
At least it wasn’t the world, Tony unkindly thought, telling Dummy to clear everything off his desk. And then he went out to see about getting naked with some Maxim models.
He knew Pepper thought he was a bastard. He knew she assumed that some weekend, some year, some month, or some decade, he’d slept with this poor Bruce Banner guy. That he’d seduced him and strung him along with all kinds of empty promises. That the long letters -some of which he was positive Potts sometimes opened and sealed shut again-- were a result of Tony Stark being a liar as well as a genius. So much of what she was thinking or what she knew about the situation was so close to the truth that Tony wasn’t sure he would have been able to explain that there had never been any sex. He just had been a bad friend. But the worst thing he’d ever done was he had pretended that eventually he’d prove to be a good one.
Bruce was missing or dead somewhere, infected by gamma radiation and hubris. And Tony didn’t want to get involved. For years, he avoided getting involved until a little hubris of his own made that impossible. A superhero working for S.H.I.E.L.D. got handed a lot of responsibilities. Recruiting Banner seemed to be one of them.
Finding him wasn’t going to be easy, and it shouldn’t have been, but one particularly rainy night in June, Bruce showed up on his doorstep.
Tony couldn’t decide why, but he didn’t want to call for reinforcements. And he had Jarvis power down right before he opened the door.
There he was, the not-so-green-at-the-moment monster that Tony had been trying to find for weeks. Dripping, practically naked, and staring at him intensely like a wounded animal. When he got tired of that, Tony chucked a towel at him and smirked. “Never would have pegged you for a fan of sweatpants.”
“Can I come in? I know you… I know you work for them, but it’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure, come on in. You want some clothes?”
“That would be good,” Bruce admitted, before grabbing Tony’s arm and his grip was vice-like, desperate. Tony wanted to shake it off real bad. “But I need you to help me.”
“You need money?”
“No, I need you to help me with this. I can’t control it. I’ll join your team if you help me.”
Which would make everyone happy except Tony. He couldn’t decide what would be worse. Letting Bruce slip away again or getting saddled with him until Tony devised even a temporary solution. “Bruce-”
“I know what happened to you, and I’m not mad about the letters.” He chuckled quietly. Sadly. “I can’t be mad about anything, but you have to do this. I can’t and there’s no one else smart enough.”
“Reed-”
“I’m not talking to Richards about this,” Bruce snapped before turning away to breath in and out deeply. He still hadn’t let got of Tony’s arm. “It has to be you.”
“Will you let me say something?”
“I don’t have time. You have to do it.”
“Let go,” Tony demanded before hastily adding “All right.” Because what else could he do? Bruce was some kind of crazed force no one was meant to reckon with. If Tony made him angry, no one was going to like it least of all Tony. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
*
The first few attempts with the collar had been failures. Tony had the back injuries and dislocated shoulder to prove it. Maybe Bruce wasn’t angry about the lack of communication over the years, but Hulk sure was.
Tony tried to get Bruce to stay in a hotel while they sorted things out, but Bruce seemed determined to stay. Trying to talk about it just made Bruce’s eyes go green. Pepper, who still didn’t understand the situation, was taking Bruce’s side.
“Besides, do you really think he should be around a lot of other people given his… current condition?”
What he wanted to say was this wasn’t his problem. Unlike the weapons. Unlike what Stark Industries had done over the years. Unlike everything else going on, Bruce Banner was not his problem.
What he said to Pepper was, “You don’t understand. I haven’t seen this guy in years.”
“He wrote to you,” she replied, lips set in a firm line. “You never wrote back and somehow he still trusts you enough to come here.”
“He’s not well and he’s friendless,” Tony pointed out, which only made him seem like a bigger asshole than before.
She didn’t have to say anything after that. He knew what she wanted him to do. The result was he was stuck with Bruce and stuck keeping mum about his opinions so he didn’t lose Pepper too.
“All right, let’s try this again,” he muttered to no one in particular, after setting up the camera for Butterfingers. Months of adjustments. Months of grinning and bearing it. Months of having to care about what happened to Bruce, and looking at the stupid device, you couldn’t even tell.
When Bruce didn’t take it from him, he was forced to put it around the man’s neck instead. Bruce just nodded somewhat grimly.
“Okay, so… get angry, I guess.”
“You should really go somewhere else.”
“The thing is it’s my house. If anyone should go somewhere else, it’s you. I’m serious. It’s getting on my nerves and you never take a hint.”
Normally that was all it took. That day though… That day all it did was make Bruce’s eyes go green and before Tony could tell the robot to zoom in on the test subject, he was pinned up against a wall with Bruce’s tongue down his throat.
*
The gamma radiation still was affecting Bruce. That much was obvious even if it was slighter than before. His strength had increased. His speed. It was hard to tell how articulate he would be. Around the third, mind-boggingly unexpected kiss, Tony started shoving at Bruce’s shoulders, not caring if he got mad or not.
“It works,” was what Bruce ended up growling out.
“Yeah, I can see that…” Tony looked down and Bruce’s hands were pretty much all over him. Cupping him through his trousers, groping and growling until Tony was half-hard in spite of himself. Then Bruce began working on unbuttoning his shirt.
If this had been any other time or place with virtually anyone else, Tony might have even appreciated the attention. “Okay, stop recording,” he snapped at the robots before tugging on Bruce’s hair. “Knock it off. What do you think you’re you doing?”
“Five years. What do you think? I’m doing you.”
“I think the Hulk’s still, you know, determining what you do.” Which was actually the most disturbing thought Tony could have allowed himself to come up with.
“I’m making the decisions. He’s just-”
“Helping?”
“There. It’s all still there. But I couldn’t do this until it was contained.”
Couldn’t do this? What planet did Bruce’s brain live on? Tony tried shoving him away again. “No, listen, okay? Listen to me, Bruce. You still have to get off me.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Tony protested, sighing a bit when his shirt came off, pleased to see that Bruce wasn’t going to rip it. The other man wasn’t wearing much outside of a pair of blue pajama bottoms, because they’d both been expecting him to Hulk out again. Or, okay, at least Tony had.
“What are you worried about?” Bruce asked, looking sympathetic as if he just thought Tony was nervous for any other reason besides the whole situation being pretty crazy and weird. “You like sex, don’t you?”
“Uh, well…”
“You have it all the time, so why not now? You can have it with me, can’t you?”
Full sentences and questions. All right, Bruce was in control of the thing, but the collar wasn’t a permanent solution. They’d already talked about that. It would work for isolated incidences, but it couldn’t be worn at all times.
Bruce’s lips covered his again and then tongue slid back into his mouth. Tony tried moving away, but all Bruce did was push him further back against the wall, grabbing his wrists.
“I don’t… Bruce, I don’t think you understand.” No one seemed to understand and Tony was beginning to wonder why he was the only one that did. To Pepper’s credit, she only lacked a clue because Tony wouldn’t and couldn’t explain things to her. And if Tony was honest with himself, Bruce didn’t know what was going on for pretty much the exact same damn reason. “This isn’t okay with me. It’s not what I want.”
Bruce regarded him steadily enough, but didn’t let go of him. If anything, he held on tighter and his eyes looked greener. He didn’t seem angry exactly so much as determined. “Why?”
“Look, I don’t… I don’t really have any feelings for you. I mean, you have to know that, right?”
“I don’t think you know what to do with feelings.”
“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not what’s going on with me in regards to you, Bruce. I don’t have any feelings for you. At least, not romantically.”
His nostrils flared and his eyes were pretty much on fire they were so acid green, but he took a deep breath and leaned in to kiss Tony’s neck. And then he kept kissing him and Tony found himself trying not to panic. “We can still do this. I want this anyway.”
Tony took a deep breath too, trying to think about what to do, but the kissing kept happening and Bruce’s hands were fingering every part of his chest. And he wasn’t getting laid as often as he had been before the arc reactor or before Bruce started staying at his place. So fine. Fine. They could have the one experiment.
“I can give you just sex. I can understand that five years…” Hell, he’d barely lasted three months without anything but his left hand for company. “We ought to test this out anyway, but not-”
Goddammit, Bruce. Nothing is going to come of this.
But Bruce was just not letting him talk at all. He wanted to set some ground rules, some rules about kissing, but he couldn’t get a word out after that. Seconds later, he found himself before shoved roughly to his knees and then he was sucking Bruce off. His wrists ached a bit when Bruce went back to holding them.
Everything lasted too long and while he appreciated Bruce giving as good as he got in terms of the blowjob, Tony was worn out long before the other man was. The sex itself was fine, but it was Bruce’s hands that were driving him nuts. Coaxing his dick back to life and then clinging to him some more over and over. Or clamping down over his mouth as Bruce took him from behind.
When it was finally over and he felt vaguely sated if still a little on edge from the whole experience, he couldn’t pry Bruce off of him. They lay there, Tony feeling spent and Bruce nibbling on his neck and ears in ways Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever enjoy again.
“Okay, enough,” he murmured, but all Bruce did was chuckle because he really just didn’t get it, did he?
“You don’t like to shut up,” Bruce calmly observed, sticky hands wandering back over Tony’s thighs. “But I can tell you liked this.”
“I like sex,” Tony replied. “It’s nothing personal.” But already he could tell Bruce thought it was.
*
In spite of working with Bruce in close corners and the other man continually trying to get Tony to tell him what was wrong, Tony kept quiet most of the day. He managed to avoid being caressed and kissed more than once, but he wasn’t sure that had done much good.
He tried to put the whole mess out of his mind when they sat down to eat dinner, but it didn’t work. Pepper was there and thrilled that the project had been a success. Bruce kept eying him intently, wearing the collar like some kind of demented S&M slave. For someone so fucking bright, he was so incredibly dense. There he was hoping the same old hope that something would happen to bond them together, to make Tony his something. Friend, lover, pet… Tony had no idea. Tony just wanted to crawl under the table and eat his steak down there.
“Well, that’s great. Now you can hide a little less,” Pepper was saying to Bruce when Tony started tuning back into the conversation.
“It’ll help at least. It’s a start, but it’s not a bad one,” Bruce admitted, offering her a little smile.
“Yeah, and you can probably find somewhere to live,” Tony pointed out. They both turned to look at him. Bruce mostly stared while Pepper gave him a warning look. “What?”
“He can’t do that yet,” Pepper pointed out. “This is just a start.”
“A good start,” Tony corrected.
“It’s not completely right though,” Bruce chimed in. “My eyes still change. And I sort of like being here.”
“Well…” Whatever. He was a superhero, but that didn’t mean he had to be nice to people just because Pepper was sitting there with them. “You can’t stay here forever. It’s my house. You should have your own place.”
“I don’t mind staying here.”
“What if I mind? What if I wished you would just take your stuff and that stupid collar and get the hell away from me?”
There was a hint of extreme displeasure in his eyes and then it was gone. Pepper missed it. Right after that, Bruce’s eyes shuttered a bit and he looked down.
“Tony-”
“Pepper, this isn’t any of your business.” The instant he said it, Tony knew it had been another mistake because since when was his life not Pepper’s business?
He couldn’t think of even a clumsy way to apologize. She’d forgive him later, sure, but at that moment she had nothing else to say to him, and so she was the one who left. Not Bruce. Bruce who kept his head down like a kid trying to stay out of his parents’ way, but Tony suspected there was more to it than that. Sadly, there seemed to be a lot more to Banner than he wanted to deal with.
Once she was gone, Bruce did look up. His eyes were a violent green and Tony knew what was going to happen because he’d made it possible for Bruce to do things with him instead of destroying cities, cars, homes airplanes and other people’s lives. Maybe that was the price people were expected to pay for trying and failing to be someone else’s hero, but it wasn’t a price Tony was all that willing to pay. He just wished he could think of a way out of it.
Fandom: Iron Man movie/Incredible Hulk movie AU
Characters: Bruce/Tony, Pepper
Disclaimer: This is for fun, not profit.
Summary: Tony Stark has known Bruce Banner most of his life, but that doesn’t mean he has ever wanted to. Begins when both of them are fourteen and continues on into their adult lives.
Warning: This is very much a Marvel movie What-if. This is not a happy story.
Rating: R - Depressing themes and dub con
Word Count: 4,923 words
Author's Note: Quite a few liberties have been taken with Bruce Banner’s character. This isn’t necessarily how either Tony or Bruce’s parents are in canon. I went off of what I’ve noticed in the comics and what worked for the purposes of furthering this story. I have nothing against Betty Ross, but she’s been sort of overlooked in this.
Thank you, th_esaurus for beta-ing it the first time ‘round, and hedonisticated for being willing to read it.
-
Bruce Banner at age fourteen was not a lot of fun to be around. He wouldn’t start conversations. He wouldn’t contribute much to them. He would always look to other people for direction, and he seemed to constantly be waiting for Tony to say something neat for him to dwell on. It made Tony furious they older they got. He started to wish the Banners would not come over because he spent half of the time grinding his teeth together and trying not to smack Bruce upside the head.
Back in those days, Tony didn’t know where the anger came from. When they were younger and seeing Bruce was a more frequent thing, it hadn’t been so bad. They would play games and do whatever Tony wanted because Bruce just didn’t seem to come up with ideas of his own. He would follow along like a lost baby duck imprinting on some other woodland creature, copying motions and repeating catchphrases. Maybe less like a lost baby duck and more like a space creature. Some being that had just come down to Earth and was really smart, but playing a game of catch-up all the time. Some creature always looking for a way to express itself, but never being sure enough of what it was to do anything with more than half of the expressions it picked up.
Anyone could tell Bruce was bright because there was a lot of physical proof to back up that statement. Thank goodness for that, because otherwise no one would have known. Obviously the kid was born thinking. His room was full of projects and experiments. He spoke in formulas and code that Tony could decipher but most other people couldn’t and frankly Tony was sure most people wouldn’t bother. Why would they? Bruce was shy and awkward and feeble. He had brilliant ideas, but how the hell was he going to defend them or stop some other charismatic person from snatching them? Having a healthy ego, Tony didn’t see the point in stealing someone else’s ideas, but he was positive others could and would do it. It would be so easy. Bruce wouldn’t even know what hit him.
There was also another reason Tony felt an irritating bit of pity every time he was about Bruce, and it wasn’t anything the other teen could prevent or do anything about. The fact was simply this: Bruce’s parents sucked.
This wasn’t to say Maria and Howard Stark didn’t have a ton of their own. Howard was often blinded by his own cleverness and didn’t want to be overshadowed by his son. Tony knew that. At age twelve he knew that. Every photo shoot he was ever allowed on was about father-and-son bonding. The wise benevolent older Stark passing down wisdom and knowledge to his boy. No one really talked to his mother about anything and Tony was glad because that meant they could do normal things. She would take him to the zoo during the day and stay up til odd hours at night helping him adjust his robots. Something Howard Stark couldn’t be bothered to do most of the time.
Stark Industries wasn’t going to run itself and obviously Howard Stark preferred hanging out with Obadiah Stane. Golf was more enjoyable than watching your six year-old put together an engine. Something Howard probably hadn’t managed until he was a teenager. But that wasn’t resentment, or at least not pure resentment. Sure, it hurt a lot when his father barely glanced at his designs or Obie ruffled his hair and told him to go play with his toys so they could get back to business. But one day the company would be his. And then the only thing Stane would be doing was all the work Tony didn’t want to do.
The Banners were not successful. They were scientists doing government research and getting nowhere because the government kept taking their work and slapping patents on it or locking it up somewhere or handing it off to other people in different agencies. No one knew who they were outside of their colleagues. No one cared. The same thing would have been true for Bruce is his IQ wasn’t completely off the charts. His parents claimed they wanted him to still be normal. To go to regular schools and then blow everyone’s socks off once he got to college, but they were holding him back. They weren’t helping him with anything. He was their kid, but he was mostly left all alone with his formulas, figures and theories.
Well, all alone most of the time unless his folks could be bothered to find a use for him. Apparently he liked being around Tony. His parents and Bruce’s parents thought this was great. Tony remained skeptical and a little confused about the whole situation. He was nice to Bruce, sure, but not that nice. How was sitting around every other week watching Tony do stuff helping matters at all? How was that making it any easier for Bruce to blend in and find a way to interact with people less intelligent than he was?
“MIT probably wouldn’t be a good fit for you anyway,” fourteen year-old Tony pointed out. He wasn’t going to be fourteen for long though, and the acceptance letter had just arrived. He could hear his father going on and on about it in the next room. It should have excited him, but instead it made him feel sort of sick to his stomach and annoyed because Bruce seemed genuinely happy for him. Bruce had been happy to see him too as always, and Tony couldn’t help resenting that simple act of being happy for no readily apparent reason. What the hell did Bruce Banner have to be happy about?
“I don’t mind,” Bruce said, looking down at the carpet. He was still clutching at one of the spanners, but not even looking at the robot. As usual, he tended to focus his attention Tony. “I can wait.”
It was sort of a pile of junk on wheels at the moment, but Tony was thinking of calling his first fully functional robot Dummy. Or calling Bruce one. Decisions, decisions. “You should mind. You’re smarter than I am.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe. Anyway, what are you going to wait for? You want to end up at some state school with people cheating off your tests and copying your answers?”
“It might be better. I mean, it’s more n-”
“Nothing about you is normal,” Tony blurted out before feeling bad about it because Bruce cringed. “Oh, knock it off. You’re not normal and it’s a good thing. You don’t want to be normal. No one wants to be normal.” You wouldn’t know how to be normal either, he thought to himself, but wisely chose not say.
“Mutants do.”
“Well, then they’re stupid too. If I had the power to fly around and save people, I’d do it. I wouldn’t complain and bitch and moan. I’d go do it and then enjoy the fame it would bring me.”
“You don’t have powers,” Bruce shrewdly pointed out.
“Most of the time I don’t complain about that either. Hand me the screwdriver again.”
The comment earned him a ghost of a smile and the request earned him the screwdriver.
“You should get into a school and get away from them as soon as you can,” Tony muttered. “Seriously, Bruce.”
“Is that why you’re going?”
No, of course not. “Some of it,” he lied easily. Sometimes Tony couldn’t help cushioning the truth. “My father’s a one man show and Obie’s already got the sidekick position filled.”
Bruce made a face. He didn’t like Stane, and Tony noticed he made no effort to pretend he didn’t. Maybe it was the hair ruffling or the condescension. Bruce was a painfully honest person too. Another shortcoming. He was never going to make a name for himself or be able to run a business until he learned to lie properly, but then Tony doubted Bruce would have wanted that.
“So what’s your dad’s big news?” The Starks saw the Banners pretty irregularly, but it was a constant irregularity. The Banners never had anything much to say, but David had made it pretty clear that this time was different.
“We’re moving. My dad finally got that grant.”
“Where to?”
“South. Texas, I think.”
Christ. “That’s cool, I guess.”
“My mom’s going to teach. I think it’s what they want.”
Bruce didn’t seem to want anything though. Tony couldn’t understand that. Everyone wanted something and Bruce just seemed to want to be a lump. No one was going to be able to make him want things. You couldn’t make decisions for other people. You couldn’t bitch-slap them with a hearty dose of reality when they were smart enough to know it already.
“Sounds good,” Tony muttered, picking up some needle-nose pliers and adjusting more of the wiring. He found it hard to think of anything to say after that.
He just thought about the future where Bruce would grow up and maybe, just maybe, he would be normal then. He would find himself a girl and teach at some university and keep all the intelligence bottled up inside of himself. And maybe he would never resent his parents or the world for not understanding him. And maybe they’d all develop wings and mutant powers and save the world together. Yeah, right.
Something about Bruce was always going to be off. Maybe Bruce thought he’d end up happy with a house with a white picket fence and his best girl and their two and a half kids, but it wasn’t going to happen like that. The world wouldn’t be such a great place for Bruce no matter where he went. He was more likely to get a PHD in nuclear physics and blow it all up than anything else.
“I guess I won’t see much of you,” Tony added after bit, secretly thinking this was a good thing.
“Probably not.”
He wanted to say he was sorry even if he wasn’t. He wanted to say that maybe someday it’ll be different and being around Bruce won’t be such a required burden he endured so his parents could have a meal with people their own age.
Instead, he said, “You can, uh, write me if you want though. I mean, I’ll be at school anyway and I never had a pen pal.”
Tony didn’t know why he said it. He instantly wished he hadn’t. The way Bruce looked at him was a little hard to bear. He’d never seen the other kid look so hopeful and relieved before. He was probably reading too much into it. Probably thinking somewhere this made them good friends or solidified some bond between them. Tony didn’t think it had and he knew that the writing thing would be a disaster. Similarly he knew somehow that it probably wasn’t a smart decision, but he let Bruce hug him before the Banners left.
*
Months later, Tony even remembered to send Bruce his address. He just couldn’t stop himself from doing it.
At school in Cambridge, the letters kept coming. He would reply irregularly, but Bruce was the most punctual pen pal in existence. Banner wrote about… everything, really. It was hard to compare the intelligent teen on paper to the kid that rarely spoke up about anything. Sometimes the letters were only about how much he missed Tony and seeing him. Sometimes it was only about something new he’d discovered or someone else had found and how much he wished Tony was around to witness whatever it was firsthand. Bruce seemed to be interested in everything and nothing all at once when it came to the sciences, but every letter seemed to indicate one thing: that he was very interested in Tony and moreover Tony’s opinion.
Tony wasn’t sure how to take that or what to do with that information. It was one thing for a college professor, a fellow student or a journalist or his father to want to know what was on his mind, but he wasn’t sure what opinion he was supposed to have or why it mattered when it came to Bruce. He tried not to say much in his letters, but regardless of what he did end up committing to paper, the other boy seemed thrilled.
The letters kept coming and coming on a frequent basis. Every Monday and Wednesday he’d get one. Sometimes Friday too. Hank Pym teased him about it mercilessly, but Tony would just tell him to shut the hell up and bring back a lot of girls to the apartment they were renting. Having loud sex and banging on the paper-thin walls separating their rooms. But the letters kept coming. He eventually wrote telling Bruce he was graduating in a couple of months and moving back to California. That he was busy and he wasn’t sure he’d have time for responding. Bruce didn’t seem to mind.
After school, the plethora of weekly letters either stopped or kept going to his old address. He never asked to have them forwarded. It took awhile, but slowly but surely letters found him. Or postcards. Or just cards. Every once in awhile Pepper would bring one to his attention.
“How weird is that? Who sends letters anymore?” Tony would ask her instead of answering her questions. He’d pretend that he’d read it and when she left the room, he’d shove it in a drawer along with the others. When the pile got unwieldy, he would take took them home and recycled them there.
Then they stopped. He didn’t notice right away, but a few months after there were no more cards to chuck, he looked in the lower drawer of his desk feeling a little shocked to discover there was nothing there but a few fountain pens and post-it notes. Maybe it was that Betty girl Bruce mentioned sometimes, and God, Tony really hoped so. He wanted to believe that somehow this obsession had found a new target. Selfishly, Tony didn’t care who it was as long as it wasn’t himself.
This comforting self-delusion remained in tact for only a day or so. Pepper being the overqualified, overly industrious assistant that she was clipped out the articles and set them ones of his desks in his workroom after it happened. The Hulk incident or whatever it was being called when it first happened.
At least it wasn’t the world, Tony unkindly thought, telling Dummy to clear everything off his desk. And then he went out to see about getting naked with some Maxim models.
He knew Pepper thought he was a bastard. He knew she assumed that some weekend, some year, some month, or some decade, he’d slept with this poor Bruce Banner guy. That he’d seduced him and strung him along with all kinds of empty promises. That the long letters -some of which he was positive Potts sometimes opened and sealed shut again-- were a result of Tony Stark being a liar as well as a genius. So much of what she was thinking or what she knew about the situation was so close to the truth that Tony wasn’t sure he would have been able to explain that there had never been any sex. He just had been a bad friend. But the worst thing he’d ever done was he had pretended that eventually he’d prove to be a good one.
Bruce was missing or dead somewhere, infected by gamma radiation and hubris. And Tony didn’t want to get involved. For years, he avoided getting involved until a little hubris of his own made that impossible. A superhero working for S.H.I.E.L.D. got handed a lot of responsibilities. Recruiting Banner seemed to be one of them.
Finding him wasn’t going to be easy, and it shouldn’t have been, but one particularly rainy night in June, Bruce showed up on his doorstep.
Tony couldn’t decide why, but he didn’t want to call for reinforcements. And he had Jarvis power down right before he opened the door.
There he was, the not-so-green-at-the-moment monster that Tony had been trying to find for weeks. Dripping, practically naked, and staring at him intensely like a wounded animal. When he got tired of that, Tony chucked a towel at him and smirked. “Never would have pegged you for a fan of sweatpants.”
“Can I come in? I know you… I know you work for them, but it’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure, come on in. You want some clothes?”
“That would be good,” Bruce admitted, before grabbing Tony’s arm and his grip was vice-like, desperate. Tony wanted to shake it off real bad. “But I need you to help me.”
“You need money?”
“No, I need you to help me with this. I can’t control it. I’ll join your team if you help me.”
Which would make everyone happy except Tony. He couldn’t decide what would be worse. Letting Bruce slip away again or getting saddled with him until Tony devised even a temporary solution. “Bruce-”
“I know what happened to you, and I’m not mad about the letters.” He chuckled quietly. Sadly. “I can’t be mad about anything, but you have to do this. I can’t and there’s no one else smart enough.”
“Reed-”
“I’m not talking to Richards about this,” Bruce snapped before turning away to breath in and out deeply. He still hadn’t let got of Tony’s arm. “It has to be you.”
“Will you let me say something?”
“I don’t have time. You have to do it.”
“Let go,” Tony demanded before hastily adding “All right.” Because what else could he do? Bruce was some kind of crazed force no one was meant to reckon with. If Tony made him angry, no one was going to like it least of all Tony. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”
*
The first few attempts with the collar had been failures. Tony had the back injuries and dislocated shoulder to prove it. Maybe Bruce wasn’t angry about the lack of communication over the years, but Hulk sure was.
Tony tried to get Bruce to stay in a hotel while they sorted things out, but Bruce seemed determined to stay. Trying to talk about it just made Bruce’s eyes go green. Pepper, who still didn’t understand the situation, was taking Bruce’s side.
“Besides, do you really think he should be around a lot of other people given his… current condition?”
What he wanted to say was this wasn’t his problem. Unlike the weapons. Unlike what Stark Industries had done over the years. Unlike everything else going on, Bruce Banner was not his problem.
What he said to Pepper was, “You don’t understand. I haven’t seen this guy in years.”
“He wrote to you,” she replied, lips set in a firm line. “You never wrote back and somehow he still trusts you enough to come here.”
“He’s not well and he’s friendless,” Tony pointed out, which only made him seem like a bigger asshole than before.
She didn’t have to say anything after that. He knew what she wanted him to do. The result was he was stuck with Bruce and stuck keeping mum about his opinions so he didn’t lose Pepper too.
“All right, let’s try this again,” he muttered to no one in particular, after setting up the camera for Butterfingers. Months of adjustments. Months of grinning and bearing it. Months of having to care about what happened to Bruce, and looking at the stupid device, you couldn’t even tell.
When Bruce didn’t take it from him, he was forced to put it around the man’s neck instead. Bruce just nodded somewhat grimly.
“Okay, so… get angry, I guess.”
“You should really go somewhere else.”
“The thing is it’s my house. If anyone should go somewhere else, it’s you. I’m serious. It’s getting on my nerves and you never take a hint.”
Normally that was all it took. That day though… That day all it did was make Bruce’s eyes go green and before Tony could tell the robot to zoom in on the test subject, he was pinned up against a wall with Bruce’s tongue down his throat.
*
The gamma radiation still was affecting Bruce. That much was obvious even if it was slighter than before. His strength had increased. His speed. It was hard to tell how articulate he would be. Around the third, mind-boggingly unexpected kiss, Tony started shoving at Bruce’s shoulders, not caring if he got mad or not.
“It works,” was what Bruce ended up growling out.
“Yeah, I can see that…” Tony looked down and Bruce’s hands were pretty much all over him. Cupping him through his trousers, groping and growling until Tony was half-hard in spite of himself. Then Bruce began working on unbuttoning his shirt.
If this had been any other time or place with virtually anyone else, Tony might have even appreciated the attention. “Okay, stop recording,” he snapped at the robots before tugging on Bruce’s hair. “Knock it off. What do you think you’re you doing?”
“Five years. What do you think? I’m doing you.”
“I think the Hulk’s still, you know, determining what you do.” Which was actually the most disturbing thought Tony could have allowed himself to come up with.
“I’m making the decisions. He’s just-”
“Helping?”
“There. It’s all still there. But I couldn’t do this until it was contained.”
Couldn’t do this? What planet did Bruce’s brain live on? Tony tried shoving him away again. “No, listen, okay? Listen to me, Bruce. You still have to get off me.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Tony protested, sighing a bit when his shirt came off, pleased to see that Bruce wasn’t going to rip it. The other man wasn’t wearing much outside of a pair of blue pajama bottoms, because they’d both been expecting him to Hulk out again. Or, okay, at least Tony had.
“What are you worried about?” Bruce asked, looking sympathetic as if he just thought Tony was nervous for any other reason besides the whole situation being pretty crazy and weird. “You like sex, don’t you?”
“Uh, well…”
“You have it all the time, so why not now? You can have it with me, can’t you?”
Full sentences and questions. All right, Bruce was in control of the thing, but the collar wasn’t a permanent solution. They’d already talked about that. It would work for isolated incidences, but it couldn’t be worn at all times.
Bruce’s lips covered his again and then tongue slid back into his mouth. Tony tried moving away, but all Bruce did was push him further back against the wall, grabbing his wrists.
“I don’t… Bruce, I don’t think you understand.” No one seemed to understand and Tony was beginning to wonder why he was the only one that did. To Pepper’s credit, she only lacked a clue because Tony wouldn’t and couldn’t explain things to her. And if Tony was honest with himself, Bruce didn’t know what was going on for pretty much the exact same damn reason. “This isn’t okay with me. It’s not what I want.”
Bruce regarded him steadily enough, but didn’t let go of him. If anything, he held on tighter and his eyes looked greener. He didn’t seem angry exactly so much as determined. “Why?”
“Look, I don’t… I don’t really have any feelings for you. I mean, you have to know that, right?”
“I don’t think you know what to do with feelings.”
“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not what’s going on with me in regards to you, Bruce. I don’t have any feelings for you. At least, not romantically.”
His nostrils flared and his eyes were pretty much on fire they were so acid green, but he took a deep breath and leaned in to kiss Tony’s neck. And then he kept kissing him and Tony found himself trying not to panic. “We can still do this. I want this anyway.”
Tony took a deep breath too, trying to think about what to do, but the kissing kept happening and Bruce’s hands were fingering every part of his chest. And he wasn’t getting laid as often as he had been before the arc reactor or before Bruce started staying at his place. So fine. Fine. They could have the one experiment.
“I can give you just sex. I can understand that five years…” Hell, he’d barely lasted three months without anything but his left hand for company. “We ought to test this out anyway, but not-”
Goddammit, Bruce. Nothing is going to come of this.
But Bruce was just not letting him talk at all. He wanted to set some ground rules, some rules about kissing, but he couldn’t get a word out after that. Seconds later, he found himself before shoved roughly to his knees and then he was sucking Bruce off. His wrists ached a bit when Bruce went back to holding them.
Everything lasted too long and while he appreciated Bruce giving as good as he got in terms of the blowjob, Tony was worn out long before the other man was. The sex itself was fine, but it was Bruce’s hands that were driving him nuts. Coaxing his dick back to life and then clinging to him some more over and over. Or clamping down over his mouth as Bruce took him from behind.
When it was finally over and he felt vaguely sated if still a little on edge from the whole experience, he couldn’t pry Bruce off of him. They lay there, Tony feeling spent and Bruce nibbling on his neck and ears in ways Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever enjoy again.
“Okay, enough,” he murmured, but all Bruce did was chuckle because he really just didn’t get it, did he?
“You don’t like to shut up,” Bruce calmly observed, sticky hands wandering back over Tony’s thighs. “But I can tell you liked this.”
“I like sex,” Tony replied. “It’s nothing personal.” But already he could tell Bruce thought it was.
*
In spite of working with Bruce in close corners and the other man continually trying to get Tony to tell him what was wrong, Tony kept quiet most of the day. He managed to avoid being caressed and kissed more than once, but he wasn’t sure that had done much good.
He tried to put the whole mess out of his mind when they sat down to eat dinner, but it didn’t work. Pepper was there and thrilled that the project had been a success. Bruce kept eying him intently, wearing the collar like some kind of demented S&M slave. For someone so fucking bright, he was so incredibly dense. There he was hoping the same old hope that something would happen to bond them together, to make Tony his something. Friend, lover, pet… Tony had no idea. Tony just wanted to crawl under the table and eat his steak down there.
“Well, that’s great. Now you can hide a little less,” Pepper was saying to Bruce when Tony started tuning back into the conversation.
“It’ll help at least. It’s a start, but it’s not a bad one,” Bruce admitted, offering her a little smile.
“Yeah, and you can probably find somewhere to live,” Tony pointed out. They both turned to look at him. Bruce mostly stared while Pepper gave him a warning look. “What?”
“He can’t do that yet,” Pepper pointed out. “This is just a start.”
“A good start,” Tony corrected.
“It’s not completely right though,” Bruce chimed in. “My eyes still change. And I sort of like being here.”
“Well…” Whatever. He was a superhero, but that didn’t mean he had to be nice to people just because Pepper was sitting there with them. “You can’t stay here forever. It’s my house. You should have your own place.”
“I don’t mind staying here.”
“What if I mind? What if I wished you would just take your stuff and that stupid collar and get the hell away from me?”
There was a hint of extreme displeasure in his eyes and then it was gone. Pepper missed it. Right after that, Bruce’s eyes shuttered a bit and he looked down.
“Tony-”
“Pepper, this isn’t any of your business.” The instant he said it, Tony knew it had been another mistake because since when was his life not Pepper’s business?
He couldn’t think of even a clumsy way to apologize. She’d forgive him later, sure, but at that moment she had nothing else to say to him, and so she was the one who left. Not Bruce. Bruce who kept his head down like a kid trying to stay out of his parents’ way, but Tony suspected there was more to it than that. Sadly, there seemed to be a lot more to Banner than he wanted to deal with.
Once she was gone, Bruce did look up. His eyes were a violent green and Tony knew what was going to happen because he’d made it possible for Bruce to do things with him instead of destroying cities, cars, homes airplanes and other people’s lives. Maybe that was the price people were expected to pay for trying and failing to be someone else’s hero, but it wasn’t a price Tony was all that willing to pay. He just wished he could think of a way out of it.