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Bruce didn't like bars. He was already somewhat reclusive in college, and his incident only made him more prone to avoid places where there were a large number of people. But he was invited by Natasha and Clint, who were celebrating the anniversary of the day she changed sides, so he couldn't say no. Besides, they needed a bit of cheering up.
He was alone in a corner table now. Steve and Sam were dancing, Natasha and Pepper were playing pool, Clint was making a fortune betting in darts, and Tony was messing around with the speakers, convinced that letting any place work with such outdated technology was a personal affront against him. Therefore, Bruce was alone. He tried not to resent Tony for leaving him without company, after all, just because he wasn't enjoying the party didn't mean the others had to suffer with him.
He had been alone for no more than 15 minutes before a strange moved a chair and sat next to him.
"Is this seat taken?" He asked with a smile, leaning against the table towards Bruce.
Bruce looked up for a moment from the book he was reading. "More or less. My friends are around here somewhere."
"And they left you here alone? If I brought you to a place such as this, I wouldn't take my eyes off you for a second."
"I don't need surveillance, and don't mind staying here reading while they have fun."
The man laughed and put a hand on his arm, which was still holding the open book. "I think I can come up with a way for us to have fun together. I'm Eric, by the way."
Bruce made a doubtful expression. "I'm Bruce and I find that hard to believe, I don't really like bars, lots of people, lots of noise."
"Well, I can always take you home."
Bruce smiled back slightly, not wanting to be rude. "Thanks, but Tony is my ride and I can't abandon my friends."
"If you come with me, it's less work for this Tony."
"We live together, so he has to go there anyway."
The mysterious stranger was discouraged by the new information, but only for a moment. "I see, and that Tony, he's yours?"
Bruce looked up from the book again, trying to define his relationship with Tony. Friend didn't sound enough after everything they had gone through together, the same was true for the other avengers, but he also disliked the term brothers-in-arms. Finally, he decided that the most important thing about his relationship with Tony was that he was his lab partner. "I guess you could say he's my partner, it's tricky to define."
That seemed to disappoint Eric further, but he wouldn't give up so easily. "I see. You know, for your partner leave you alone in a place like this, he might not like you all that much, I know that if I had you at home, here would be the last place I would bring you."
Bruce frowned, trying not to be disturbed by what he heard. Tony certainly liked him, he had said so several times, and he wouldn't simply lie, would he? All of them were good friends and that was why he was there, if they didn't want his company it would be easy to leave him at home, as he had insisted they did, so that stranger didn't know what he was talking about. "What do you mean by that? What's wrong with this place?"
Eric was almost laying over the table, and touched him with both hands now, but Bruce kept the book open almost like a barrier between them. "Too many predators, too much competition."
If Bruce was already confused before, now he had no idea what was happening. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"If you won't go home with me, how about going with me to the back? We can have a good time and Tony doesn't even need to know."
"Why would I ...?"
But before he could complete the thought, Tony appeared, pulling Eric's shoulders and forcing him to stand up and take his hands off Bruce. "He's not interested, back off now."
"Hey, man, this is a free country, I have the right to talk to whomever I wish. And who are you to tell me what to do?"
"I'm Tony Stark. You know, of the Stark Industries? Also, Iron Man, of The Avengers. So if you don't want problems with me, with our buddy Bruce Banner who is protected by the Hulk, with Captain America and the Falcon who are dancing around here somewhere, with the Black Widow and Hawkeye who used to be professional assassins, and with Pepper that is probably the most dangerous of all of us since it was she who defeated all the villains who fought me, disappear before we decide that you're a threat to national security."
Now Eric was terrified. "You never told me that your boyfriend was Tony fucking Stark, you're hot, but not worth crossing this maniac." And with that he ran before Bruce could think of a response.
Tony raised an eyebrow and turned to Bruce. "You told him that I was your boyfriend?"
Bruce blushed slightly. "Of course not, I don't know where he got that idea. Why did you treat him like that? He was just being nice and offering me a ride."
Tony rolled his eyes and sat down next to Bruce. "He wasn't offering you a ride."
"He was, he offered to take me home before you arrived."
"No Bruce, what I mean is that he had a reason to want to take you out of here. Believe me, I was protecting you when I got rid of him."
"Do you think he was an enemy? But he didn't even know who we were!"
Tony was sure that if he rolled his eyes any more, they jump out of their sockets. "You were about to leave for gay sex behind a bar with that guy! There's no way you haven't realized that he was flirting with you!"
Bruce was in shock for a moment. It wouldn't be possible that something like that happened without him noticing, right? "I think I would know if someone was flirting with me."
Tony laughed bitterly. "No, you wouldn't know, believe me. You wouldn't know that someone was flirting with you if it were the most obvious thing in the world."
The rest of what Tony had said finally got to Bruce. "Wait a minute, you said gay bar?"
"It isn't possible that you haven't noticed, no one is this distracted." Tony took the book from Bruce's hands and closed it on the table. "You were so concentrated in this book that you didn't even notice what was around you. You're a scientist, observe."
Bruce looked around. Most people there were there male. Perhaps two-thirds of couples dancing were male, a third female and only one was a mixed couple. It was not a stereotypical gay bar, it didn't have too many lights or too much noise, but he had to recognize that statistically the number of same-sex couples was too large to be a coincidence. "Why would Natasha and Clint would choose a gay bar to celebrate?"
"They said it had something to do with a mission that went wrong and she dressed Clint as woman and they were hidden in a gay bar until they were clear to go. And then they say I don't listen to what others have to say."
"I guess I really was a bit distracted, thank you for rescuing me."
"To be honest, I had my own selfish reasons." He said looking down.
"Such as?"
"I was jealous, of course."
"Of me?" He asked with the surprise in his voice clear.
"No, of another scientist that I am trying to seduce for months. That equation that I asked you to review and the part that was causing the error was the equation for a heart in a vector graphic? That program that wasn't working because it had a line of code that was causing the computer to crash and had the message 'I love you so much that I can't work right'? The flowers I sent to your room and you returned saying that it must have been a mistake?"
Bruce frowned, trying to remember these occasions. "I never would have thought to put the equation in a graph, I wasn't the one who corrected the code, it was Natasha, she's better with computers, and I thought that the flowers were for Pepper because of something you did."
Tony stared at him in disbelief, but decided that Bruce had no reason to lie. "Well, now you know." Now he faced Bruce with a challenge in his eyes, like 'what are you going to do now'.
"You should have been more direct."
"More direct? That guy was thrown in your lap and you didn't notice anything. What do you mean by more direct?"
Bruce leaned over the table, pulling Tony's neck towards him and meeting his lips. The position was extremely uncomfortable, the high table hurt their ribs and they had to be careful with the drinks that were on the table, but they were so focused on each other that they simply didn't care.