Work Text:
It started with the blueberries in the lab.
Tony was snacking, and snarking, and Bruce had known him all of two hours so he didn’t really think much of it. It felt kind of like the rest of his prevalent banter, over the top and playful, even if it did kind of hit him like a fist to the gut. Everything Tony did hit him that way, natural as breathing, easy as a smile…dangerous for a man who didn’t, couldn’t have friends.
Bruce wrote it off as no more than that: no more weighty than a high five or a fistbump. He had to, and Tony seemed the type: joking, sniping, always making sure he was the cleverest guy in the room. He wrote it off, and tried not to pay too much attention to anything else. Not how Tony both worked and hovered, not to how he provided a warm and frenetic buffer against the rest of the world, strangely benign for all his poking and prodding, and especially avoided noticing Tony’s strange brand of fearlessness, even eagerness to see the Other Guy in all his destructive glory. For whatever reason, Tony believed in both halves of Bruce’s shattered psyche, and while he was temporarily grateful for that, he didn’t let it go beyond that: temporary gratitude. Anything else was a risk.
Bruce was on Tony’s side. He respected him, found it alarmingly easy to work with him, and even though admitting it was hazardous, Bruce liked him. So they worked together, even talked as friends might…and when Tony offered food, Bruce took it. Somehow, that act pierced the barrier of the id, reached the lizard brain remnants of his most primal instincts where the Other Guy lay dormant until adrenaline, blood-oxygen levels, and pulse rate activated his self-inflicted mutation.
The extended hand with a bag of blueberries found its way into the core of Bruce’s psyche and cells, and the Hulk nearly split a building in two breaking Tony’s fall from the sky.
Later, when they went out for shawarma at Tony’s insistence after the big fight, Tony ended up in some kind of heated debate with Steve and Clint about baseball, something Bruce was only minimally familiar with. Still, it was enough that, when he threw in a comment about the Mets that supported the rather vehement opinion Tony had expressed about New York teams, he was rewarded with another extended hand, holding french fries Tony was having with his chicken shawarma.
It meant nothing. Tony was right, Tony was...being Tony. Bruce took the french fry, and maybe a little bit of a risk by smiling and relaxing just a touch. He warmed himself for just a second with that dangerously bright kernel of hope, accepted Tony’s invitation to Stark Tower, and went right back to not noticing.
Two weeks after the shawarma incident, there was a retaliatory incursion from the frost giants of Jotunheim, and between the team as well as the broken shards of dream that were the Other Guy’s memories, he knew he had crushed a frost giant’s skull between his bare hands after it nearly knocked Tony out of the air.
Bruce became relentlessly focused on not paying attention to the fact that six weeks at Stark Tower had become six months. He didn’t notice that a convertible Bruce had admired in passing had its license plate swapped out from STARK 8 to BANNER 1. He didn’t notice the fact that Tony had a particle accelerator in his workshop to bait Bruce into spending more time with him there, and he didn’t notice that Tony was adding a new wing to his basement workshop at the Malibu house so Bruce could spend time there, working on research into his condition.
He worked so hard to distance himself, to be only passingly grateful or fond of Tony that he never noticed how, between battles, Tony took to always having food in his hands, especially in the lab. Dried fruit, trail mix, potato chips…when Bruce did something or said something he approved of, he offered food. It got to where Bruce took it without that hesitation, without thinking, startled to have the sweetness and chewy texture of mango or the slick, fatty salt of fresh peanuts in his mouth without realizing he’d eaten them.
It soon became a greeting between friends, Tony’s hand darting out the second Bruce came into the lab or arrived at a team meeting. The Hulk became increasingly attached to Tony in battle, at his most dangerous when Tony barreled into trouble or some enemy of SHIELD dared to put his life in jeopardy. For Bruce, the broken shards of the dream became clearer in some places with every battle, flashes of bright red and blinding gold, primal waves of panic and, on one occasion, a high five that brought such fierce and simple feelings of belonging and possession that it left Bruce strangely embarrassed to think about it.
Towards the end, Bruce began to get nervous because he began to feel safe. With Tony’s hand always out to him, his scathing wit and sharp remarks saved in meetings and critical situations for Bruce’s protection, and the broken shards of red and gold in his fractured memories seen through gamma radiation and primal rage, something had happened that he didn’t want to name, didn’t want to identify. If it was spoken, it became permanent, and if it became permanent…
Rodgers was the first one to start calling Tony “Banner’s handler.” It was after a fight that was so blinding, so full of glittering shards in various shades of red and gold and green, Bruce could almost construct a full memory of standing back to back with Tony, feeling strong and warm and suffused with well-being as he lost himself in the throes of simple, gleeful destruction.
At first, it came across as a jab at the pair of them, mocking Bruce’s actions as the Hulk to make Tony’s life miserable. Bruce was annoyed, until he saw Tony’s face…his smirking, cheerful, self-confident face.
“Why?” he asked him later in the lab, just before they sat down to start working on a new prototype for the helicarrier’s engines.
“Why what?” Tony asked, his hand already outstretched as Bruce entered the lab, a bag of raisins this time.
“Why…did you…how did you know?” he asked, walking over to Tony. His hand moved with a mind of it’s own. The sweet yet tart flavor was on his tongue before he realized what he was doing. For one irrational second, he thought of Pavlov and his dog...Tony ringing the bell and Bruce drooling in anticipation of reward...
He caught Tony watching with a smile at the shock and outrage he could feel on his face, a smile that ended almost before it began as he shrugged and set the bag aside.
“Relax, big man, it’s not like that.” He replied, as if reading Bruce’s mind. “You may be smart, but men are animals. You just happen to be two for the price of one, and talking to the Other Guy face to face can be hazardous to public property values. Figured after Loki, it couldn’t hurt to keep making nice with the big green lummox...just on the down-low.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t I just clarify that?”
“No, I mean…”
Tony met his gaze instead of poring over his holographic monitor, finally looking at Bruce with some semblance of seriousness.
“We all need friends, Bruce. Even the Other Guy.” He cleared his throat, going back to the projection of the helicarrier and exploding one of the turbines for a better view.
“And…you know…more than friends, too. If you’re into that sorta thing.”
Bruce wasn’t sure what to make of that. Well…he was sure what to do with it, he just didn’t want to. It was a bad idea, getting attached, forming any sort of relationship that he’d regret losing later. He couldn’t afford to be that weak. And this was friendship Tony was offering…maybe something bigger, deeper, something he could keep…
“You don’t have to say anything, just…get back to work.” Tony finally muttered, sweeping an image of the turbine over to Bruce’s work station monitor. “And keep in mind that I have eyes. I know when I’m being ignored, and I don’t like being ignored.”
Bruce didn’t say a word…just did his best not to notice the fact that Tony was aware of how hard Bruce was trying to do just that: not notice.
It worked, too…until the next team meeting with Tony on his left at the conference table and Natasha on his right.
“Want one?”
Bruce looked up from the briefing packet he’d been given to find Natasha extending a hand to him, offering a small bag of dried strawberries she’d been eating.
That son of a bitch...
Looking from her to Tony, he watched the other man focus far too intently on his own paperwork, ignoring Bruce as hard as he could as he frowned and pretended that Fury had his undivided attention…pretending he hadn’t told the whole team all about his little psychological experiment on the renegade monster living in the core of Bruce Banner’s cellular structure.
That son of a bitch...
Turning back to Natasha, Bruce took a deep breath, stuck his hand in the bag, and finally let himself start noticing.