Bruce/Tony - Oblivious Bruce
Title: 5 Times He. Just. Didn’t. Get. It.
Author: illezabeth
Pairing: Tony/Bruce
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read "I'm a physicist; flirt harder." In honour of this wise bumper sticker, give me five times Tony flirted with or came on to Bruce and he. Just. Didn't. Get. It.
+The 1st time Tony figured out how blatant he had to be.
Attempt 1
“Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I’m huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous, green, rage monster.”
“…Thanks.”
*
Attempt 2
“You should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top 10 floors, all R&D, you'd love it. It's candy-land.”
“Thanks, but the last time I was in New York, I kind of broke... Harlem.”
*
Attempt 3
He chose a small resturant, with barely enough room for six tables and a shop-front made entirely of glass. It was also the best Chinese in a five-block radius and so the perfect place to reintroduce the scientist to the delights of chow mein, prawn crackers and dim sum. Bruce had been reticent at first, but once Tony had convinced Bruce that he wasn’t dragging them to a gaudy celebrity haunt, he’d been relatively easy to bundle into a car.
He'd still worn that tight, uncomfortable smile that Tony had come to associate with Bruce-Banner-in-public, which had taken a while to dissipate but luckily, Tony's ability to put people at ease was almost as good as his talent for unsettling them, (though the latter was arguably the more entertaining option). By the time dinner arrived, the table’s napkins had been saturated with molecular diagrams, scrawled formulae and theoretical constructs and Tony was forced to request extra. Fortunately, the restaurant was apparently accustomed to eccentric patrons because the waiter brought them a stack.
He had coaxed Bruce into explaining his current attempts to accommodate recent breakthroughs into his theories on gamma radiation. With only limited access to the scientific community, Bruce's knowledge of developments outside of his field was limited and mostly outdated, which Tony would have found extremely frustrating if Bruce hadn’t been so eager to absorb everything he’d missed. Instead, Tony’s new favourite pastime was trawling through the latest research for something he knew would spark Bruce’s interest.
He hadn’t stuck to core sciences either, not after Tony had stumbled across an article on palaeontology. (Bruce’s eyes had lit up and the scientist had spent the next two days reading everything he could find on feathered dinosaurs.) After that, Tony had expanded his searches to include medicine, pharmacology, psychology, mathematics, computing, even philosophy, and the effect had been utterly breathtaking. His fascination with the scientist, sparked the first time Tony had hacked the SHEILD database and fanned by his first meeting with the quiet, unassuming man with wild, streaked hair and a soft, self-deprecating mouth, had become a full-blown blaze.
As they ate, he watched the world unravel beneath Bruce’s strong square fingers, his pen sketching out its blueprints, outlining its grounds, rooms and secret passages, as he explained why the subtle shifts in his theorem related to the article on the ionisation behaviour of alpha particles under contextual radioactive variants that Tony had showed him yesterday morning. It was one of the sexiest things Tony had seen in his life.
So, he let Bruce do most of the talking, allowed their hands to brush as they passed the pen between them and made geeky science innuendos just to watch Bruce smile. He settled the bill at the end of the dinner, drove Bruce home and broke protocol by asking to be asked in for coffee. He wasn’t surprised when Bruce didn’t take him seriously.
*
Attempt 4
“Face it, Tony, you haven’t had to work for it this hard in a very long time,” Tony muttered, staring at a hologram screen that had turned to standby about five minutes ago. Across the room, Bruce glanced up; glasses sliding down his nose and hair fluffed up like a kitten after playtime.
“Did you say something?”
“I said, how’s it going?” Tony lied smoothly, pushing away from the desk and striding over to stand behind Bruce’s chair. Bruce twisted round to look at him.
“Fine, fine, I’m just trying to… erm, what are you doing?” Bruce asked, perplexed and trying to peer above his own hairline.
“Your hair’s a mess.” Tony answered, running a hand through the soft curls that tumbled over one another haphazardly, “I’m fixing it for you.” He leaned in deliberately and caught Bruce’s eye.
“Err… thanks?”
“My pleasure.” Tony turned Bruce’s chair back round to face the desk, bent down as if to read his notes over his shoulder and murmured “Anything I can help you with?” His mouth was deliberately millimetres away from Bruce’s ear and he could smell the mint shampoo the man had used that morning. It was the one Tony stocked all his bathrooms with and there was something strangely attractive about knowing Bruce was wearing his smell.
“No, I’m good thanks.” Bruce replied absently, his pen already beginning to make fresh scrawls. There wasn’t so much as a hitch in his breathing; there wasn’t even that awkward, what-the-hell tone of someone whose personal space was being invaded. Tony may as well have been on the other side of the room.
“You sure?” Tony pushed, leaning a little closer, just in case Bruce had momentarily forgotten Tony was barely a hair’s breadth away.
“Yeah, I’m fine. No need to stop your work for me.”
Tony pulled away and chewed his lip in frustration, unsure what to do next. (After all, people tended to notice when the world’s biggest playboy came onto them.) He tried to make a quip, but it lacked his usual swagger. “The scientific community does await my work with bated breath…”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to be responsible for any oxygen deficiency,” Bruce replied with his usual dryness.
Tony resisted the urge to ask about his stance on blue balls.
*
Attempt 5
Pepper was still typing out a message on her phone as she entered the lab, “Tony, I need you to sign some papers.” she informed him primly.
“Hmm…? Oh, yeah, whatever. Sure.”
His response made Pepper glance up from her phone warily but Tony ignored her in favour of staring across the lab, chin in hand, at the scientist currently making use of Tony’s computerised microscope. “Sure?” She reiterated.
Tony looked up at her, “Yeah. Sure. Sure; it’s a good word. Means ok, I’ll do it, no problem...”
“I know what it means, Tony.” Pepper replied, a smile playing around her mouth, “Especially when you say it.”
Tony shot her a perturbed expression, “Why, what does it mean when I say it?”
“It means something isn’t going your way.” She glanced over to where Bruce was muttering to himself, fiddling with the settings of the microscope to get a closer image, and then back to Tony knowingly. “…I did try to warn you.”
“It’s not that; he just… didn’t even notice.” His mouth pursed into a pout, “The guy’s been out in the middle of nowhere for so long he’s forgotten what flirting is.” When he looked back, Pepper was laughing, her sniggers muffled behind her hand. He glared at her.
“Don’t you have some kind of super secret assassin chick to play with?" He asked snarkily, turning his full attention to her. He narrowed his eyes and raised an eyebrow, "Why haven’t I got any of those videos yet, by the way? I thought that was the deal?”
“No, Tony, that wasn’t the deal.”
“Sure it was. You run away with a stunning, female secret agent, and I get videos. Sounds like a fair exchange to me. Banner!” He called across the lab, “I should get the tapes right? Now that Romanoff and Pepper are playing house without me, it’s the least they could do, don’t you think?” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper “Say yes, and I’ll let you watch them with me.”
Bruce gave them an uncomfortable and slightly irritated look, “I’d rather keep all my appendages in the places they were designed to be, thank you.” He replied and turned back to his work, tapping out a command on his computer and checking his notes.
Tony pouted but Pepper had no sympathy for him. “Seriously, that was the best you could come up with?”
“I’m grasping here.”
Pepper fixed him with a flat look, “Clearly.”
*
Attempt 6
The scotch was good, with a perfect burn as it slid down his throat. Tony moaned his appreciation, opening his eyes to watch Bruce pour a dram of his own. He grinned when Bruce’s eyebrows rose at its potency.
“50 year old Scotch, one of the benefits of being ridiculously wealthy.” Tony informed him. Bruce hummed in approval, or agreement, possibly both, and took another swig.
“To sex, booze and science, without which life would not be worth living.” Tony declared suddenly, raising his glass to toast an imaginary audience.
Bruce snorted softly, “Well, two out of three ain’t bad,” he drawled and Tony quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Been awhile?”
“Oddly, there’s not many people queuing up to sleep with a guy who turns into a, ‘enormous, green, rage monster’ at really inconvenient moments.”
Tony fixed him with a calculating stare, measuring out the pros and cons of saying what he wanted. On the one hand, subtlety was clearly lost on the man and, to be honest, Tony was fed up with waiting for the penny to drop. On the other, Tony had no idea if Bruce was even interested; whether he had been actively (and expertly) ignoring Tony’s advances, or whether he’d just convinced himself that no-one could possibly interested in him anymore. They were both scenarios that would require a certain amount of tact.
“I would.”
Well, tact never had been one of his strong points.
Tony leaned back in his seat, settling into a relaxed facade that belied the knot of worry in his stomach, and watched Bruce react to the statement carefully. A few, slightly amusing, seconds of confused blinking to register the comment, a brief flash of consternation and confusion, followed by a long moment of bewildered disbelief that eventually accumulated in a less-than-eloquent response, “…What?”
Considering the possibilities (of which, one included Bruce Hulking-out and laying waste to Stark Tower), it was a fairly promising reaction.
“I’m not really sure if it’s just the genius thing, which as a genius I can reliably inform you is extremely sexy; whether it’s the whole ‘uncontrollable-rage-burning-beneath-the-calm-unassuming-demeanour’ thing; or whether it’s just the brooding good looks. To be honest, I think it might be all three.”
“Erm…” Bruce’s mouth opened and closed a few times, and his expression shifted through several emotions before he finally settled for what could only be described as a flabbergasted stare. Tony decided to take pity on him.
“If you’re not interested, it’s fine.” He assured him, resting his chin in his hand in as nonchalant way that he could.
“I didn’t even… I mean, I didn’t know you were… I thought you were, err… straight.” Bruce admitted, his frown adorably confused.
“Yeah. That’s been painfully obvious.”
“I don’t even know if I can - you know - do that, without the Other Guy…” he made a vague gesture, “…making an appearance.”
“That’s… not a no.” Tony responded carefully and tried to ignore the feeling bubbling up in his chest. Except, the longer the silence stretched out for, the more vivacious it became because silence wasn’t a ‘no’ either. He watched the emotions twist across Bruce’s face with a tense anticipation and resisted his natural urge to push. He licked his lips purely for something to do.
He didn’t expect the action to grab Bruce’s attention, to make his expression suddenly intent or make his eyes go dark and hungry. A hot shiver tingled down Tony’s spine, his breath catching in his throat even as the expression vanished.
“Do you have any idea how much of a bad idea this could be?” Bruce spoke softly, his eyes still trained on Tony’s mouth.
Tony raised his empty glass and nodded to the bottle on the table in front of Bruce. “Best get me another drink then; I get all my best ideas under the influence.”
“I’m serious, Tony.” Bruce replied reproachfully.
“So am I,” Tony informed him, and licked his lips deliberately, relishing Bruce’s fascination with the action. “You want this; I want this; we’re all consenting adults. And, if the Big Guy gets restless, we can stop, no harm done.”
“You’re crazy,” Bruce drawled, smiling crookedly. He stood slowly and ran a hand through his hair, his eyes flicking between Tony and the door. Tony found himself holding his breath, as if even the slightest sound would somehow scare Bruce off, and his eyes still widened in surprise when Bruce snagged the bottle from the table and covered the whole two steps’ distance between them. “We do this; we do it on my terms.”
A sweet, long-overdue victory settled into his mind and Tony didn’t even try to stop the smirk as it spread across his face; just enjoyed the slow, comfortable stretch of it, “Of course.”
Bruce rolled his eyes and sighed as he obligingly poured them both a large measure of whiskey, but the effect was ruined by the upward tug of his lips. Tony clinked their glasses together and curled a hand around the inside of Bruce’s knee. He leered up at the scientist, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Bruce repeated, the beginnings of a laugh crinkling around his eyes and pressing against his mouth. He sipped his drink slowly, smirking around the rim of his glass as Tony took the bottle and set it on the coffee table behind him.
“How’s it going?” Tony asked, his own grin spreading wider as he slid a hand up Bruce’s thigh, and then laughed at Bruce’s raised eyebrows.
“Aren’t we a little old for this?” Bruce asked with an amused smile.
“Not at all,” Tony asserted, tugging away Bruce’s glass and placing that on the table too, “And I hear there’s this new fad going round; all the cool kids are doing it. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I think they’re calling it kissing? Necking? Making -out? It might have been making-out…”
“Tony?”
“Yes, Bruce?” Tony replied, eyes suspiciously wide and earnest.
“Shut up.”
*
Epilogue
“What’s this?”
“It’s a present, people give them to people they like. Open it.”
“Is there any particular reason for this present?”
“I just told you-”
“Tony.”
“Well, it’s been a month… and you haven’t hulked out on me yet… so, I figured that was worth something.”
“It’s been two months.”
“Is it August, already?”
“It’s been August for two weeks.”
“Really? Hmm, maybe I should change my calendar.”
“…”
“Well, are you going to open it?”
“Yeah, I’m opening it… err, it’s…?… oh… stop laughing, it’s not that funny.”
“Yes it is… see, you’re laughing too.”
“…No, I’m not.”
“Can we put it on the door?”
“No.”
*
When Bruce returned to the lab the next day, a bumper sticker was glued across the door to the lab.
I’m a physist. Flirt harder.