Work Text:
The glass-and-steel workshop of the Avengers Tower, suspended hundreds of feet above the bustle of midtown Manhattan, was a marvel of modern engineering. The transparent walls gave the illusion of one big space, though each panel could be darkened for privacy. Even the floors were made of the same clear polymer, so he could look straight down into the lab below and watch Bruce working.
Though Bruce was spending more and more time in Tony’s space than his own, which was fine with him. Whatever kept the rage monster happy was excellent in Tony’s book.
Right now, the rage monster was looking decidedly calm and un-monsterly, half-perched on a rolling stool and pushing his glasses up when they slid down his nose every few seconds.
Then again, Bruce wasn’t the only one who frequented his work space. It was, after all, a beautiful place to be and it had the added benefit of being in close proximity of Tony himself. Though Steve inexplicably preferred the company of his motorcycle collection, and Clint preferred either the satellite television or the grand piano, and Natasha kind of just hung around Bruce, and Thor just loved the view. Still, it was a beautiful workshop.
Unlike the previous design was based on a lot of heavy metal and stone and sharp angles. This time, he went for sweeping curves and beveled edges which fit seamlessly together. It felt more like a perfectly tailored suit than a reinforced laboratory. That was, in part, Bruce’s influence. He had a hard time in traditional labs when he got too tired.
One major advantage of the design was that the curves of the walls carried sound around corners so he could hear anyone coming before he even needed JARVIS to alert him.
Tony had come to a lull in his work and he looked up absently, just as Thor passed around the bend with Steve in tow. Thor’s booming accent combined with the curvature of the wall and a slight Doppler effect so that Tony heard only a snippet of a sentence, but in full stereoscopic volume:
“…so it is the size of the…!”
So many horrible, dirty comments of every shape and size competed for attention in Tony’s brain that they bottlenecked at his larynx and his entire speech center flooded with crashing waves of dick jokes. All he could do is look at Bruce with wide, helpless eyes as his mouth opened like a drowning fish and hope that he, too, heard the same piece of Thor’s sentence.
And Bruce, sensing Tony’s distress, looked up and met his eyes and said, “So it’s not the effect of lunar gravity on the orbital motion of a large body of water.” His face was straight, and his voice, far too innocent to be his own, sounded disappointed.
But then he cracked a smile, just at the corner of his lips, and shot another look up at Tony to see if he was paying attention. His smile broadened when he saw that he was.
And, right then, Tony knew he and Bruce were going to be very good friends.