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Tony knew how quickly things could change between people. He'd loved and lost so many people a hundred times over that he was surprised he hadn't broken his neck in the whiplash. (His heart, though, was another story.) He's had enough one-night stands and drunken Vegas almost-weddings to know that two people can go from being strangers to thinking they were soulmates in the same day.
It's feeling the same way in the morning after that he still struggles with. He knows his relationships with Rhodey and Pepper are an anomaly in his own life, seeing as he's known them both for over a decade and, for some reason, were still around. Tony didn't do well with constants. Outside of those two, he's not used to stability or love that lasts more than a few months at most before things start falling apart.
So he really didn't know what the fuck happened with Bruce and Thor in four years.
After Sokovia, Thor had gone back to space to whatever alien princes did, but none of them knew where Bruce had gone. Tony looked for him as much as he could, but it was no use; the man had literally fallen off the face of the Earth. In his desperation, he turned to Natasha, who he'd hoped would help him out with her whole life's worth of espionage experience. She turned out not to want anything to do with it.
He left for a reason, Tony, she'd said, cutting off the argument on his tongue. She sounded tired. He never wanted this life, fighting all the time. He ran away. Maybe we should just... let him. Let him do what he wants, for once.
He couldn't help but think that she was projecting a little bit, especially with how she and Bruce had been in an intense will-they-won't-they situation before he ran off. Tony decided to keep that little thought to himself. He didn't have time to help Natasha with her problems and he knew she didn't want him to. Besides, he had his own issues; the Avengers were fracturing slowly after the whole Ultron mess, his public image had taken a nasty beating, and - to top it all off - he and Pepper took a break when his behavior during an eventual breakdown went a few degrees too far to be excusable. Half of the Avengers becoming fugitives and being manipulated by Ross just made the last year the perfect example of why Tony Stark didn't believe in relationships.
It wasn't all bad, he guessed. When Tony finally started talking about his feelings again and started looking for help, Pepper gave him another chance. Peter, somehow, became almost like the son Tony never had. Rhodey was walking again, even if it was with a cane and not for very long.
So of course the Earth had be threatened by aliens for the second time, forcing the Avengers to get the band back together for one last attempt to save the world. Which also happened to be when Bruce and Thor decided to beam down in a ray of light with matching wedding rings and Thor's eye patch to seal the deal.
Tony was just glad everyone else was as stunned as he was. The two of them had briefly explained what they'd been up to: Thor, of course, had gone on an intergalactic adventure for two years while Bruce was in a Hulk-induced coma. Then Thor had talked about how Loki was alive and they had a long lost sister who was also evil and very dead now, but so was his father, which apparently made him a king. He went into way more detail than that, obviously, though the only thing Tony really got out of it was that his hammer was gone and space was way too stressful. Tony needed to be very drunk for this, but - tragically - he'd been sober again for about year.
He did listen to the part where Asgard would've been dead, too, if it weren't for Bruce being there. Then the two of them had looked at each other and it started freaking him out.
Luckily, there was enough to talk about to keep him from lingering on it for very long, though he couldn't not notice how casually they held each other's hands or wrapped their arms around each other. It was weird, to say the least.
(After a sleepless night of listening to the steady thump-thump-thump on the wall beside him and a series of disturbing sounds he never wanted to hear from his friends ever again, Tony wondered what he'd done in his life to deserve this kind of punishment.)
Still. They had a job to do, so he sucked it up and focused on getting ready for their meeting with Ross. Then Bruce had his whole meltdown because (as Tony quickly found out about once F.R.I.D.A.Y. found the right S.H.I.E.L.D. file) Ross was a monster who definitely deserved the trauma of Thor nearly frying him to death. Tony had apologized to Bruce as soon as he knew, but he'd simply been waved off.
"It's fine. I mean, it's not fine-fine, obviously, it's Ross, but- You didn't know. It's okay." He sounded so calm that Tony wanted to fight him. Indirectly causing one of his only friends on the Avengers to relive his trauma out of carelessness was far from okay, but then Thor had come over to wrap his arm around Bruce's waist and told them that they were all heading to a nearby lounge as they waited for more intel. Tony took one look at Bruce's face as he smiled up at Thor and dropped the issue.
So, here they were, with everyone spread around the room as the awkward tension hung over them. Well, everyone except Bruce and Thor.
They were sharing a couch in the corner of the room. That wording was a little misleading; they were both on a couch that had more than enough space for two people, but Bruce seemed happy enough to sit on Thor's lap instead. They talked to each other, too quietly for Tony to hear, so he didn't know what Thor said to make Bruce throw his head back in laughter. He blushed a little when a few heads turned to stare. Thor watched him with the softest look Tony had ever seen.
Tony saw, but he didn't understand. He couldn't remember them being remotely close the last time he'd seen them. Sure, he'd caught Bruce checking Thor out a few times when the guy thought no one was looking while Thor sometimes lingered a little too long after Bruce transformed, but even that was a stretch. A couple looks and simple concern didn't explain why they were married.
He tried wrapping his head around it until they got another debriefing. The Chitauri had sent an actual message, promising death and destruction unless they got their hand on an Infinity Stone, whatever-the-fuck that meant. Thor seemed to know, though; he only waited a minute after the meeting to announce that he was going back to Asgard to gather reinforcements. With a kiss to Bruce and a nod to the rest of them, Thor stepped into the parking lot, called on Heimdall to pick him up, and was gone again.
"Did you guys see that?" shouted Lang as he lost his damn mind. Bruce just sighed, looking at the symbol burned onto the ground where Thor just stood.
While he was a little mopey, Bruce was also alone, which finally gave Tony the chance to corner him back in the hallway and ask him what was up with him and Thor.
"Tony-" said Bruce, but then he stopped, rubbing at his eyes. "Look, I... I don't know what to tell you."
"Then just tell me something." Tony knew he sounded whiny. He didn't care. "You two barely even spoke four years ago. Hell, you were barely ever in the same room together. How did you get from that to this?" He punctuated the question by pointing to Bruce's wedding ring.
It was impossible not to notice. The ring was a bright gold band with what looked like Old Norse engraved around it. The thing that really made it so remarkable - besides it just being on Bruce's hand - was the weird crystal-thing embedded into it. A brief glance made it look like a simple, smoky quartz. However, after he stared at it the day before for a good fifteen minutes, Tony realized that the clouds inside it were twinkling and moving. It was like there was a whole little galaxy in that stone. He couldn't even begin to understand what kind of magic was inside that thing.
As Tony pointed, Bruce looked down at the ring with a quirk to his lips, leaning back against the wall.
"I really don't know. When we escaped Sakaar together and saved Asgard I guess we just... bonded?"
"But we all fought together. If that were it, Natasha and Clint would be the ones having two-point-five kids while Steve and I would maybe be decent with each other."
Bruce frowned. "I don't think that's the same, though. When we all fought as a team, it was just that: a team. Those were missions. We were doing a job. That's a lot different than getting stuck in a place you have to save yourself and the person next to you from. It's more... personal."
"I guess that makes sense," said Tony, though it wasn't as satisfying as he'd hoped.
"But it's not just that, though. Thor and me..." Bruce hesitated. "When I decided to stay on Asgard, it was only ever gonna be temporary. I needed to get back in sync with the other guy before coming back here, y'know? I needed to rebuild my bearings. Thor wanted to help, I let him, and we got close. We got really close."
He was smiling near the end. Tony was still very confused because that just brought on more questions. "What do you mean?" he said, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall next to Bruce.
"We just talked, I guess. The usual stuff - our childhoods, families, likes and dislikes. We were getting to actually know each other. And we found out that we had a lot more in common than we thought, I think, and we... We clicked. Just like that. I couldn't leave after that, not when we got so close that fast." He chucked a little to himself. "Thor even begged me to stay, you know, before I could tell him I wasn't planning on it."
Tony blinked at that. That made sense; he could imagine, hazily, Bruce and Thor just talking about themselves like blind dates. He still didn't know how they had anything in common - Bruce was the stereotypical, quiet, socially awkward scientist with an intense dislike for confrontation, whereas Thor was more of a Roman gladiator than anything else - but he nodded anyway.
Bruce either saw through it or just wanted to talk about it more because he went on to say, "I know he doesn't act like it, but Thor... He's a lot like me. Sure, he's way more extroverted and louder than I am, but we really think alike. He's a warrior from an alien planet that is just millions of years ahead of us in every conceivable way. He knows a lot more than you'd think, and he even talks like a scientist every once and a while. You should hear him go on about the physics of the Nine Realms, it's like he's a textbook, and he's always devouring stories about other worlds or technologies that he's never known before. He just... He loves to learn anything he can.
"And that's me, isn't it? We're both curious. We just want to know anything we can about everything to see how it all works. He even wanted to be one of the royal researchers before realizing a king can't be both. Beyond that? I'm a lot more like him than you'd think. More than even I thought, at first."
"...How so?" prodded Tony when Bruce trailed off.
Whatever state he was in, he snapped himself out of it. "Well, for one thing- We're both really stubborn. Ridiculously stubborn. Like, the only reason we never fight is because we're on the same side whenever something comes up and no one's gonna change our minds, especially because we're backing each other up. And I know it sounds dramatic and really pretentious, I know it does, but I think that... we're both warriors, in a way. Thor's always told me I was, but it took the past two years to realize why. We're fighters. We choose what we think is right and don't back down, even if the world is against us. We always choose the same side, too. That's how we fit. Also... "
Then he turned toward Tony, who - as Bruce went on - felt something come together in his brain. "We both have our dark sides. I don't talk about it, but... I've been through some shit. Even before I became what I am. It's not just the other guy I have to deal with in here." He tapped at his temple. "But Thor's had to deal with stuff, too. He's been through so much, Tony." His face looked pained, suddenly. Tony felt a little scared of whatever had happened to Thor for Bruce to feel so strongly about it. "But, somehow... we can actually talk about it with each other. I've never been able to do that before. I don't open up like I should, not with anyone, but he makes it so easy, and... I think I make it easy for him, too. We can be sad, we can be scared, we can be angry, and the other person just accepts it. We can just be. I- I've never been able to just exist with someone, before. Not like this."
Tony felt like he was beginning to understand it. "You compliment each other," he said, thinking of all the ways Pepper and Rhodey complimented him.
Bruce nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, we do. And- Thor, he... He makes me happy." His smile came back. "He makes me so happy, it's hard to describe. Even being in the same room as him is enough. He always knows just what to say, or maybe he just... does and says things and they happen to be what I need. I think..." He trailed off again, eyes widening a little like he was having an epiphany. "He's naturally who I need him to be without even trying." He laughed, then, soft and so, so happy. "And he loves me. He loves me. All of me, not just the Bruce parts, but the Hulk parts, too. The scary and the pretty and the ugly parts. He loves it all because that's who I am. He's the first person to ever accept me, all of me, and love me even more for it. You have no idea how freeing that feels."
I know a little more about that than you think, Tony wanted to say. He listened to Bruce instead.
"And I love him back." Bruce looked back down at his ring. "I love him back, so much, for all the same reasons. I love him because he is who he is and he's just amazing and I don't even think I deserve someone so perfect for me, sometimes, but he's given himself to me, anyway." He rubbed at his eyes and Tony knew it wasn't because he was tired.
"Bruce," said Tony. He pushed off the wall to get in Bruce's space, needing him to hear his next words carefully. "Listen. You do deserve him. You deserve him because, if what you've been telling me during this whole conversation is true, you two work. You keep saying he's perfect for you, but that kind of relationship goes both ways, buddy. Hell- If I asked Thor why he loves you, you can bet your ass that he'd say the same thing. I may not totally get you two, but if he makes you feel that loved, then you're making him feel like that a hundred times over. If anyone doesn't deserve somebody, I'd say it's him, because you're one of the greatest people I know."
There was a beat where Bruce just stared at him. For a second, Tony thought he'd gone a little too far into dangerous emotional territory, but then Bruce was reaching out to pull him into a hug.
"Thanks." His voice was muffled against Tony's shoulder.
Tony froze. He still wasn't used to this new, tactile Bruce, but... What the heck. A hug was a hug. "Don't mention it," he said, and wrapped his arms around his friend.
He didn't know how long they stayed like that, just hugging each other in the hallway. What he did know was that a loud boom outside startled them both. They separated just in time for Lang and Clint to run over.
"Your husband's back!" called Lang, while Clint stared out the nearest window and said, "There's, like, fifty Xena Warrior Princesses out there, what the hell."
Tony followed Bruce outside, but hung back as he rushed to Thor. As the two of them kissed, Tony watched as Thor cupped Bruce's face with an almost painful gentleness. There was a brief moment after they pulled back where they just stared into each other's eyes, smiling, not saying a word.
Then, one of the warriors walked up to them, grinning from ear to ear. "You better not be planning to wear that into battle, little guy," she said, in reference to his dress shirt and slacks. Bruce laughed and hugged her.
As she called over one of the other warriors and started talking with Bruce about something, Tony's eyes went back to Thor, who was simply standing to the side. That's when Tony saw it: the way that Thor just watched Bruce, like he was committing every smile and word to memory, as if everything Bruce did was worth commemoration. Eventually, Thor slipped his arm around Bruce's waist. Bruce didn't even blink. He just leaned against Thor's side with no resistance. Continuing the conversation, he did the same to Thor, who was practically beaming at this point.
Bruce just looked at peace.
Tony saw. He saw not just them, but also how much they clearly loved each other to death, and...
Well. He had a very late wedding gift to buy.