Avengers fic | Promise in the Days Ahead | Chapter One - Breaking the News
Title: Promise in the Days Ahead | Part Two of Every Road Has Two Directions series, and a continuation of Walking the Path Between Welcome and Exile. The earlier story can be found with my LJ tags or at at AO3
Fandom: Avengers Movie Verse
Author: Laurie
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Violence in later chapters
Word Count WIP. Chapter One - 2,753 words.
Pairings and Relationships: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts; Tony Stark/BruceBanner; Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov; Clint Barton/Phil Coulson; Steve Rogers/Bruce Banner; Thor Odinson/Jane Foster; Betty Ross/Leonard Samson; Bruce Banner & Avengers; Clint Barton & Avengers; Steve Rogers & Avengers; Tony Stark & Avengers; Thor & Avengers
Characters: Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson, Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Leonard Samsom, Betty Ross, Thaddeus Ross, Samuel Sterns, Serpent Society.
Author's notes: Beta'ed by sparrowhawk17. She's a star.
This story in rough draft is 53,000 words and is currently a WIP with thirteen chapters. I'm going to start posting one chapter a week while I continue to write the story.
Summary: Banner's gone. The Avengers on Earth will do what they can to protect their missing teammate and pave the way for his return. To do so, they're going to have to learn as much as they can about Bruce Banner. Along the way they find themselves learning about each other as well, and the people that were thrown together to stop an alien invasion become a team.
Promise in the Days Ahead
Every Road Has Two Directions
Russian Proverb
Chapter One. Breaking the News
“I keep looking at the sky, cause it's getting me high. No, no, not the 10mm ratchet, give me the 12mm one,” Tony yelled, interrupting his AC/DC sing-along session to set Dum-E straight. It felt great to be spending time in his workshop. He'd get Bruce down here, too. Bruce wasn't an engineer, but the boy knew his way around a toolbox, according to a footnote on Bruce's S.H.I.E.L.D. file.
Tony held out one hand imperviously, and wiggled his other one inside the gauntlet of what would someday be the Mark IX. He loved all of his Iron Man suits, but there was always room for improvement and specialization.
Dropping the correct ratchet into Tony's hand, Dum-E made a whirring, inquisitive sound. “Good job, Dum-E. We'll make a grease monkey out of you yet,” and he smiled fondly when Dum-E chirped happily at the praise. Tony pushed off hard against his worktable and his chair rolled to a new work station.
Tony tightened up a connection and moved the glove through various motions, returning to humming along and occasionally chiming back in with an occasional line from a song as he finished the preliminary tests on the left gauntlet.
“If I go there will be trouble. An if I stay it will be double,” he sang. Hah. That was Bruce's theme song at the moment. Bruce worried too much. Tony's lawyers, plus calling in a few favors, would take of Bruce's legal problems.
Humming along to the Clash, he decided to add that song to the Banner/Stark list that he was throwing together. He wanted to listen to it whenever he and Bruce were both working in the Chitauri research lab. He didn't know if Bruce had figured out yet that he'd inspired some of the music on that list. Probably not. Bruce got a faraway look in those brown eyes of his when he started doing research. Although he would talk to Tony and follow along with the conversation, he was mostly on autopilot while that big, beautiful brain of his was figuring out the secrets to the universe.
Since he'd gone about as far with testing as he could on the designs on the Mark IX, he decided that playtime was over. He planned on heading back up to the alien tech lab after Bruce was awake and he'd drag Bruce along. He wanted to consult about the amazing theories that Bruce was coming up with before Tony dove back into understanding the Chitauri and their tech.
He collapsed his files, ending the volumetric display, locked up the gauntlets, and ordered Butterfingers and Dum-E to put away his tools in his deluxe Snap-on tool chests. Snap-on execs would fall over themselves wanting to pay him for endorsements if they knew how much he used their products. Hmm.
“JARVIS.”
“Sir?”
“Make a note, oh, and send a copy to Pepper. File: Snap-on. Subfolder: Endorsements. Folders: Avengers funding; Avengers Cleanup Costs.”
He paused, attention wandering as he estimated just how much the cleanup bill for Manhattan was going to be, until JARVIS gave a discrete cough.
“Hold your programming. I was thinking.”
“Of course you were, Sir,” JARVIS said dryly.
Tony grinned. He fucking loved it when JARVIS was sassy.
“Record: Snap-on tools are used by Tony Stark. No, really, I use them. They're good tools. Send out feelers to Snap-on about endorsing them and having the money donated to funding the Avengers and contributing to the clean up cost from Loki's turning the city into his battle ground. End recording.”
“Noted, Sir.”
Tony got himself a bottle of water and rolled back to the computer station. Pulling up his music lists, he threw them into the air intending to have something mindless to do with his hands while he thought about Fury and his devious ways. The one-eyed bastard said he'd gotten orders from the Council to put the Avengers back on ice. The same bunch of talking heads that had ordered a fucking missile strike on Manhattan. Fury had disobeyed those orders, bless his bald head and one bloodshot eye.
Fury must have figured he could have his cake and eat it, too. He'd told them they were disbanded, and Banner should go into voluntary protective custody with S.H.I.E.L.D. He'd followed his orders, but oh, look, the Avengers staged a mutiny with Cap at the helm and they're still the fucking Avengers. What's a director of a super-sekrit-spy agency to do.
He chugged the water as he flicked through some classic rock, shooting a few appropriate tunes to the Banner/Stark list. Walsh's Life's Been Good and I Can't Drive 55 by Hagar, those were for him. Bruce, for God's sake, had said he'd walked a lot to get to wherever he was going. That, and hitchhiking. Okay, he'd look for a hitchhiking tune for Bruce.
He found Hitch Hike by the Stones and with a flick of his finger sent it spinning over to join his playlist. Cool. He'd grab a couple more Bruce tunes, then go and wake him up and fix him a sandwich. Twelve hours was long enough to sleep. He found more Bruce songs to add, Carry On Wayward Son and Ramble On, decided he'd look for one more and quit.
He was debating adding Free Bird when Steve opened the lab door.
“Hey, Cap, what's up?” Tony said, looking over but only half paying attention, as he decided Free Bird worked as a Bruce song and pushed it over with one finger to the playlist.
Then he glanced again at Steve and shut everything down because it didn't seem likely Steve had dropped by to hang out with Tony. Steve was being Captain America, and that meant something really was up.
“Tony, I need to talk to you.” Steve was walking fast towards him and Tony quickly riffled through his
memory for anything he'd done recently that might have put that expression on Captain America's face.
Maybe his brilliant ability to break into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computers, er, no, his brilliant testing of S.H.I.E.L.D's systems was going to be an issue. Tony thought of his hacking as coming under his arrangement to be a consultant. He was helping S.H.I.E.L.D. with tightening up their cyber security. Fury was paying him to do this shit.
Steve stopped in front of him, serious and intent. Tony stared up at him and decided he'd just spill the beans now to avoid the interrogation. Steve wouldn't approve of Tony's somewhat fluid ethics when it came to dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D., but it was S.H.I.E.L.D. They needed Tony to prod at them and keep them sharp.
“Okay, Cap, I know what you're going to say.”
“Tony--”
“But really, I'm doing S.H.I.E.L.D. a service by testing their computer security. I wiggle my way in, have some fun, they act like an embarrassed girl whose boyfriend's nimble fingers whisked her bra off while making out, they get their tits covered back up, and I go back to testing. I'm a consultant, you know. I can totally do this kind of shit and as a bonus, I get paid.”
Steve narrowed his eyes. “Is what you're doing with your nimble fingers called hacking? Where you can monitor or take information from somebody else's computer?”
“Uh, yes?” Tony gave him one of his most charming smiles, but, of course, Captain America seemed immune to it.
“Can you do it and not let the lady know you've been disturbing her clothes?” Steve asked thoughtfully.
“Well, sure. But me hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems has been more in the line of light entertainment.”
“By that you mean?”
“Cap, they know I'm doing it; they like to catch me. It's educational for them. I'm hoping to spot Fury taking a nap in his underwear in his office and post it to all the baby agents' monitors. Cheer the poor little darlings right up.” Tony tried smiling again at Steve. Steve was not smiling back.
“Tony, why are you telling me this?” Steve was eying him like he was a jack-in-the-box that had popped open and might bop him with his long springy arms.
“Because of the look on your face when you came in here and said you needed to talk to me. I'm a busy man. I figured I'd save both of us some time and admit to the only thing I could come up with that you would disapprove of this week.”
Tony wasn't joking about saving time. He'd actually done an experiment when he was fourteen, and the results clearly had proved that just confessing and getting the disappointment in him stage over quickly freed up So Much Time.
Steve said, “I'm not your Jiminy Cricket, Tony.”
“You tend to radiate disapproval, though. So, you a Disney fan?”
“ I saw Pinocchio in 1940. The animation was fantastic.”
“You went for the art?”
“Sure. I was an artist before I became a soldier, Tony. Guess people don't remember that about me. Let's get back to hacking, though. It's against the law.”
“It's just a hobby now.”
“You're not a juvenile delinquent. So you must have good reasons to do it.”
“II hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D's files on the helicarrier and found out about the plans for weapons based on that giant robot Loki sent to whip Thor's ass, remember?”
“I do. I think we'll need to talk more about your nimble fingers later. We're going to want to listen in to what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing when it comes to our team.”
“Wait. Captain America is suggesting that I--”
“But you should do it quietly, Tony. You can still be loud to draw their attention away from what you're really doing, though.” Steve said, then he looked very serious again. “But I came to talk to you about Bruce.”
“Bruce? Why aren't you calling him Doctor Banner? Don't you respect him anymore?”
“I respect Bruce.”
“I dunno. You're being awfully familiar by using his first name.” Tony was just kidding, but Steve's declaration the other day that he would call Bruce by his title to show his respect had been kind of sweet and old-fashioned. So of course Tony wanted to mess with him about it.
Steve's face pinked up. That was interesting. Captain America was blushing. Maybe he had a crush on Bruce. Well, who didn't? Bruce was so damn smart and so casual about his brilliance. He was a bundle of contradictions - how cool was it that he actually changed mass and height to become the Hulk - and had expressive, beautiful eyes. Tony was sure Bruce had no idea how much he gave away with his brown eyes. When he wore his glasses he looked uber cute. His hair was inviting. Tony personally had a hard time keeping his hands out of Bruce's curls. He'd gotten away with it a couple of times, once when Bruce was sleeping and once when he was teasing him.
Yep, Banner was a cutie, and maybe Steve had enjoyed carrying the good doctor up to bed a lot more than Tony had realized. He'd helped Tony undress Bruce, after all. Still, Steve hadn't blushed then, so something must have changed.
“Do you have anything to confess, Steven Rogers?” Tony said, assuming a stern tone.
“This isn't the time, Tony,” Steve said, the flush fading from his face. “I need to tell you about Bruce.”
“So Captain America doesn't kiss and tell?” He caught the small startled expression that Steve made before he smothered it, and Tony started to laugh.
“Really, Rogers? Have you and Bruce been kissing? I think I'm jealous.” If Tony hadn't had his Pepper, he'd have been all over Bruce. It was fascinating that Steve had the same thoughts. Tony was going to owe Clint money now.
“How do you do-- Never mind.” Steve took Tony by the shoulders. “Just stop talking and listen. Bruce is gone. He left this morning to go back into hiding.”
Damn it, he should have told JARVIS to let him know if Bruce left the building.
“JARVIS, can you confirm that Bruce is not in the building?” Maybe Steve was wrong. Bruce was probably still sacked out. He was just catching up on rest from changing into the big guy and beating the snot out of Loki and his space pals four days ago. JARVIS kept Tony informed about Bruce's sleep habits and Tony made no excuses for invading Bruce's privacy. Bruce, and the team, would assume it was because Bruce might change into the Hulk. Bruce and the other guys would be wrong about that.
“Captain Rogers is correct; Doctor Banner is no longer within Stark Tower.”
Tony jumped up from the stool, shrugging off Steve's hands. “Well, let's go get him and bring him back. I know Fury spooked him, but he doesn't have to run. Not any more.”
“Tony.” Steve said it like he was breaking bad news gently; and no. Fuck that shit.
“Do you know where he went? I can get there fast in the suit, talk him down off the ledge.”
“I don't know where he went, Tony.”
JARVIS announced, “Sir, he left the Avengers a video message and instructed me to play it six hours after he departed.”
Steve put a hand on Tony's shoulder again. “JARVIS, ask Clint and Natasha to join us in... Tony, what room? Somewhere where we can watch Bruce's message and maybe use your computers?”
Tony shook off Steve's hand. “How the fuck did you find out about this, Rogers?”
“Tony, calm down.” Tony hated that reasonable tone in Steve's voice. He narrowed his eyes at Captain fucking America.
“Did he tell you he was leaving and you kept that to yourself?” He used the tone of voice he saved for members of the Armed Services Senate committee.
“Not directly. He wanted me to have plausible deniability.”
Tony exploded. “Son of a bitch! Fuck you and your plausible deniability. I could have helped him, talked him out of his panic attack, for God's sake. You should have called me!”
“It's not about what you want, Stark. I didn't want him to leave, but it wasn't my decision. I'm sorry, Tony. It's not your decision either.” Steve had lifted that adamant chin of his, but his voice was caring, concerned. Tony wanted him to yell back, to make himself a target for Tony to aim his rage towards. But damn it, Steve was just absorbing Tony's anger, siphoning it away from him. But Bruce. . . a fucking fugitive again? Tony just wasn't having that.
He poked Steve in the chest. “I'm going to find him and bring him back here. He's a genius; he belongs in the best labs money can buy, not out there washing dishes for a living. The sheer waste of that man's talents-- I'm furious.”
“I need to update the others, Tony. What room?”
Tony scowled. “JARVIS, have our two spies meet us at Conference Room Sixty. And ask Pepper to join us there. Tell her I need her. Are you going to help me get him back, Rogers?”
Steve slowly shook his head. “I want to hear what Bruce has to say. I don't know his exact reasons for leaving, but I do know he believed he had no choice.”
Tony frowned again. “He should have talked to me. My lawyers can take care of the legal stuff.”
“He didn't leave for himself, Tony. I think he left for us. I'm sorry, he knew this would be hard on you.”
Tony fisted a hand and drove it into his other palm. “You should have let me know what he was doing. He's got no money, nothing, really. Even the clothes on his back are probably mine.”
The first flush of anger was fading now. Tony felt like his emotions had been tossed in a dryer; they were all tumbled together and still spinning around and around. “All right, all right. Let's go watch his farewell speech. Maybe I can figure out where he's going from what he says.”
Steve put his hand on Tony's shoulder and squeezed. This time, Tony didn't shrug him off.
* * *
Chapter Two - Bruce's Message
Fandom: Avengers Movie Verse
Author: Laurie
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Violence in later chapters
Word Count WIP. Chapter One - 2,753 words.
Pairings and Relationships: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts; Tony Stark/BruceBanner; Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov; Clint Barton/Phil Coulson; Steve Rogers/Bruce Banner; Thor Odinson/Jane Foster; Betty Ross/Leonard Samson; Bruce Banner & Avengers; Clint Barton & Avengers; Steve Rogers & Avengers; Tony Stark & Avengers; Thor & Avengers
Characters: Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Thor Odinson, Natasha Romanov, Phil Coulson, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Leonard Samsom, Betty Ross, Thaddeus Ross, Samuel Sterns, Serpent Society.
Author's notes: Beta'ed by sparrowhawk17. She's a star.
This story in rough draft is 53,000 words and is currently a WIP with thirteen chapters. I'm going to start posting one chapter a week while I continue to write the story.
Summary: Banner's gone. The Avengers on Earth will do what they can to protect their missing teammate and pave the way for his return. To do so, they're going to have to learn as much as they can about Bruce Banner. Along the way they find themselves learning about each other as well, and the people that were thrown together to stop an alien invasion become a team.
Promise in the Days Ahead
Every Road Has Two Directions
Russian Proverb
Chapter One. Breaking the News
“I keep looking at the sky, cause it's getting me high. No, no, not the 10mm ratchet, give me the 12mm one,” Tony yelled, interrupting his AC/DC sing-along session to set Dum-E straight. It felt great to be spending time in his workshop. He'd get Bruce down here, too. Bruce wasn't an engineer, but the boy knew his way around a toolbox, according to a footnote on Bruce's S.H.I.E.L.D. file.
Tony held out one hand imperviously, and wiggled his other one inside the gauntlet of what would someday be the Mark IX. He loved all of his Iron Man suits, but there was always room for improvement and specialization.
Dropping the correct ratchet into Tony's hand, Dum-E made a whirring, inquisitive sound. “Good job, Dum-E. We'll make a grease monkey out of you yet,” and he smiled fondly when Dum-E chirped happily at the praise. Tony pushed off hard against his worktable and his chair rolled to a new work station.
Tony tightened up a connection and moved the glove through various motions, returning to humming along and occasionally chiming back in with an occasional line from a song as he finished the preliminary tests on the left gauntlet.
“If I go there will be trouble. An if I stay it will be double,” he sang. Hah. That was Bruce's theme song at the moment. Bruce worried too much. Tony's lawyers, plus calling in a few favors, would take of Bruce's legal problems.
Humming along to the Clash, he decided to add that song to the Banner/Stark list that he was throwing together. He wanted to listen to it whenever he and Bruce were both working in the Chitauri research lab. He didn't know if Bruce had figured out yet that he'd inspired some of the music on that list. Probably not. Bruce got a faraway look in those brown eyes of his when he started doing research. Although he would talk to Tony and follow along with the conversation, he was mostly on autopilot while that big, beautiful brain of his was figuring out the secrets to the universe.
Since he'd gone about as far with testing as he could on the designs on the Mark IX, he decided that playtime was over. He planned on heading back up to the alien tech lab after Bruce was awake and he'd drag Bruce along. He wanted to consult about the amazing theories that Bruce was coming up with before Tony dove back into understanding the Chitauri and their tech.
He collapsed his files, ending the volumetric display, locked up the gauntlets, and ordered Butterfingers and Dum-E to put away his tools in his deluxe Snap-on tool chests. Snap-on execs would fall over themselves wanting to pay him for endorsements if they knew how much he used their products. Hmm.
“JARVIS.”
“Sir?”
“Make a note, oh, and send a copy to Pepper. File: Snap-on. Subfolder: Endorsements. Folders: Avengers funding; Avengers Cleanup Costs.”
He paused, attention wandering as he estimated just how much the cleanup bill for Manhattan was going to be, until JARVIS gave a discrete cough.
“Hold your programming. I was thinking.”
“Of course you were, Sir,” JARVIS said dryly.
Tony grinned. He fucking loved it when JARVIS was sassy.
“Record: Snap-on tools are used by Tony Stark. No, really, I use them. They're good tools. Send out feelers to Snap-on about endorsing them and having the money donated to funding the Avengers and contributing to the clean up cost from Loki's turning the city into his battle ground. End recording.”
“Noted, Sir.”
Tony got himself a bottle of water and rolled back to the computer station. Pulling up his music lists, he threw them into the air intending to have something mindless to do with his hands while he thought about Fury and his devious ways. The one-eyed bastard said he'd gotten orders from the Council to put the Avengers back on ice. The same bunch of talking heads that had ordered a fucking missile strike on Manhattan. Fury had disobeyed those orders, bless his bald head and one bloodshot eye.
Fury must have figured he could have his cake and eat it, too. He'd told them they were disbanded, and Banner should go into voluntary protective custody with S.H.I.E.L.D. He'd followed his orders, but oh, look, the Avengers staged a mutiny with Cap at the helm and they're still the fucking Avengers. What's a director of a super-sekrit-spy agency to do.
He chugged the water as he flicked through some classic rock, shooting a few appropriate tunes to the Banner/Stark list. Walsh's Life's Been Good and I Can't Drive 55 by Hagar, those were for him. Bruce, for God's sake, had said he'd walked a lot to get to wherever he was going. That, and hitchhiking. Okay, he'd look for a hitchhiking tune for Bruce.
He found Hitch Hike by the Stones and with a flick of his finger sent it spinning over to join his playlist. Cool. He'd grab a couple more Bruce tunes, then go and wake him up and fix him a sandwich. Twelve hours was long enough to sleep. He found more Bruce songs to add, Carry On Wayward Son and Ramble On, decided he'd look for one more and quit.
He was debating adding Free Bird when Steve opened the lab door.
“Hey, Cap, what's up?” Tony said, looking over but only half paying attention, as he decided Free Bird worked as a Bruce song and pushed it over with one finger to the playlist.
Then he glanced again at Steve and shut everything down because it didn't seem likely Steve had dropped by to hang out with Tony. Steve was being Captain America, and that meant something really was up.
“Tony, I need to talk to you.” Steve was walking fast towards him and Tony quickly riffled through his
memory for anything he'd done recently that might have put that expression on Captain America's face.
Maybe his brilliant ability to break into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computers, er, no, his brilliant testing of S.H.I.E.L.D's systems was going to be an issue. Tony thought of his hacking as coming under his arrangement to be a consultant. He was helping S.H.I.E.L.D. with tightening up their cyber security. Fury was paying him to do this shit.
Steve stopped in front of him, serious and intent. Tony stared up at him and decided he'd just spill the beans now to avoid the interrogation. Steve wouldn't approve of Tony's somewhat fluid ethics when it came to dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D., but it was S.H.I.E.L.D. They needed Tony to prod at them and keep them sharp.
“Okay, Cap, I know what you're going to say.”
“Tony--”
“But really, I'm doing S.H.I.E.L.D. a service by testing their computer security. I wiggle my way in, have some fun, they act like an embarrassed girl whose boyfriend's nimble fingers whisked her bra off while making out, they get their tits covered back up, and I go back to testing. I'm a consultant, you know. I can totally do this kind of shit and as a bonus, I get paid.”
Steve narrowed his eyes. “Is what you're doing with your nimble fingers called hacking? Where you can monitor or take information from somebody else's computer?”
“Uh, yes?” Tony gave him one of his most charming smiles, but, of course, Captain America seemed immune to it.
“Can you do it and not let the lady know you've been disturbing her clothes?” Steve asked thoughtfully.
“Well, sure. But me hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems has been more in the line of light entertainment.”
“By that you mean?”
“Cap, they know I'm doing it; they like to catch me. It's educational for them. I'm hoping to spot Fury taking a nap in his underwear in his office and post it to all the baby agents' monitors. Cheer the poor little darlings right up.” Tony tried smiling again at Steve. Steve was not smiling back.
“Tony, why are you telling me this?” Steve was eying him like he was a jack-in-the-box that had popped open and might bop him with his long springy arms.
“Because of the look on your face when you came in here and said you needed to talk to me. I'm a busy man. I figured I'd save both of us some time and admit to the only thing I could come up with that you would disapprove of this week.”
Tony wasn't joking about saving time. He'd actually done an experiment when he was fourteen, and the results clearly had proved that just confessing and getting the disappointment in him stage over quickly freed up So Much Time.
Steve said, “I'm not your Jiminy Cricket, Tony.”
“You tend to radiate disapproval, though. So, you a Disney fan?”
“ I saw Pinocchio in 1940. The animation was fantastic.”
“You went for the art?”
“Sure. I was an artist before I became a soldier, Tony. Guess people don't remember that about me. Let's get back to hacking, though. It's against the law.”
“It's just a hobby now.”
“You're not a juvenile delinquent. So you must have good reasons to do it.”
“II hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D's files on the helicarrier and found out about the plans for weapons based on that giant robot Loki sent to whip Thor's ass, remember?”
“I do. I think we'll need to talk more about your nimble fingers later. We're going to want to listen in to what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing when it comes to our team.”
“Wait. Captain America is suggesting that I--”
“But you should do it quietly, Tony. You can still be loud to draw their attention away from what you're really doing, though.” Steve said, then he looked very serious again. “But I came to talk to you about Bruce.”
“Bruce? Why aren't you calling him Doctor Banner? Don't you respect him anymore?”
“I respect Bruce.”
“I dunno. You're being awfully familiar by using his first name.” Tony was just kidding, but Steve's declaration the other day that he would call Bruce by his title to show his respect had been kind of sweet and old-fashioned. So of course Tony wanted to mess with him about it.
Steve's face pinked up. That was interesting. Captain America was blushing. Maybe he had a crush on Bruce. Well, who didn't? Bruce was so damn smart and so casual about his brilliance. He was a bundle of contradictions - how cool was it that he actually changed mass and height to become the Hulk - and had expressive, beautiful eyes. Tony was sure Bruce had no idea how much he gave away with his brown eyes. When he wore his glasses he looked uber cute. His hair was inviting. Tony personally had a hard time keeping his hands out of Bruce's curls. He'd gotten away with it a couple of times, once when Bruce was sleeping and once when he was teasing him.
Yep, Banner was a cutie, and maybe Steve had enjoyed carrying the good doctor up to bed a lot more than Tony had realized. He'd helped Tony undress Bruce, after all. Still, Steve hadn't blushed then, so something must have changed.
“Do you have anything to confess, Steven Rogers?” Tony said, assuming a stern tone.
“This isn't the time, Tony,” Steve said, the flush fading from his face. “I need to tell you about Bruce.”
“So Captain America doesn't kiss and tell?” He caught the small startled expression that Steve made before he smothered it, and Tony started to laugh.
“Really, Rogers? Have you and Bruce been kissing? I think I'm jealous.” If Tony hadn't had his Pepper, he'd have been all over Bruce. It was fascinating that Steve had the same thoughts. Tony was going to owe Clint money now.
“How do you do-- Never mind.” Steve took Tony by the shoulders. “Just stop talking and listen. Bruce is gone. He left this morning to go back into hiding.”
Damn it, he should have told JARVIS to let him know if Bruce left the building.
“JARVIS, can you confirm that Bruce is not in the building?” Maybe Steve was wrong. Bruce was probably still sacked out. He was just catching up on rest from changing into the big guy and beating the snot out of Loki and his space pals four days ago. JARVIS kept Tony informed about Bruce's sleep habits and Tony made no excuses for invading Bruce's privacy. Bruce, and the team, would assume it was because Bruce might change into the Hulk. Bruce and the other guys would be wrong about that.
“Captain Rogers is correct; Doctor Banner is no longer within Stark Tower.”
Tony jumped up from the stool, shrugging off Steve's hands. “Well, let's go get him and bring him back. I know Fury spooked him, but he doesn't have to run. Not any more.”
“Tony.” Steve said it like he was breaking bad news gently; and no. Fuck that shit.
“Do you know where he went? I can get there fast in the suit, talk him down off the ledge.”
“I don't know where he went, Tony.”
JARVIS announced, “Sir, he left the Avengers a video message and instructed me to play it six hours after he departed.”
Steve put a hand on Tony's shoulder again. “JARVIS, ask Clint and Natasha to join us in... Tony, what room? Somewhere where we can watch Bruce's message and maybe use your computers?”
Tony shook off Steve's hand. “How the fuck did you find out about this, Rogers?”
“Tony, calm down.” Tony hated that reasonable tone in Steve's voice. He narrowed his eyes at Captain fucking America.
“Did he tell you he was leaving and you kept that to yourself?” He used the tone of voice he saved for members of the Armed Services Senate committee.
“Not directly. He wanted me to have plausible deniability.”
Tony exploded. “Son of a bitch! Fuck you and your plausible deniability. I could have helped him, talked him out of his panic attack, for God's sake. You should have called me!”
“It's not about what you want, Stark. I didn't want him to leave, but it wasn't my decision. I'm sorry, Tony. It's not your decision either.” Steve had lifted that adamant chin of his, but his voice was caring, concerned. Tony wanted him to yell back, to make himself a target for Tony to aim his rage towards. But damn it, Steve was just absorbing Tony's anger, siphoning it away from him. But Bruce. . . a fucking fugitive again? Tony just wasn't having that.
He poked Steve in the chest. “I'm going to find him and bring him back here. He's a genius; he belongs in the best labs money can buy, not out there washing dishes for a living. The sheer waste of that man's talents-- I'm furious.”
“I need to update the others, Tony. What room?”
Tony scowled. “JARVIS, have our two spies meet us at Conference Room Sixty. And ask Pepper to join us there. Tell her I need her. Are you going to help me get him back, Rogers?”
Steve slowly shook his head. “I want to hear what Bruce has to say. I don't know his exact reasons for leaving, but I do know he believed he had no choice.”
Tony frowned again. “He should have talked to me. My lawyers can take care of the legal stuff.”
“He didn't leave for himself, Tony. I think he left for us. I'm sorry, he knew this would be hard on you.”
Tony fisted a hand and drove it into his other palm. “You should have let me know what he was doing. He's got no money, nothing, really. Even the clothes on his back are probably mine.”
The first flush of anger was fading now. Tony felt like his emotions had been tossed in a dryer; they were all tumbled together and still spinning around and around. “All right, all right. Let's go watch his farewell speech. Maybe I can figure out where he's going from what he says.”
Steve put his hand on Tony's shoulder and squeezed. This time, Tony didn't shrug him off.
* * *
Chapter Two - Bruce's Message