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There's a wet snap and Tony chokes on a howl. He thanks a god he's never believed in for soundproof walls as he digs his fingers in hard, feels for the shards of bone pressing up against the fleshy bruise that looks nothing like his other thigh anymore. He squeezes and pulls and twists until the skin splits under the pressure, opening around beads of blood until it turns into the gush of a small geyser. He sees no reason to muffle his animal sounds of pain and lets his body shake through the shock.
His free hand curls and the clump of somanymetals from the gate surrounding the mansion heats and heats and fire light burning melts. He steels himself -literally where his teeth and tongue are concerned and he wouldn't recommend it, it tastes horrid- and shoves his fingers deep inside with one quick jerk of his arm. He bites down around a scream as the pain thrums through his bones, setting fire to flesh and breath and his entire existence.
The molten metal, caught deep in perpetual fusion, crawls along the shatters of his femur, burning and burning and burning and burning burning burning burningburningburningburnibrun seeps into the spaces. His muscles are fiery and spasmodic but the metal plating in his chest is cold and his mind is colder, a landscape of endless ice and everything bad hanging thick in the meager amount of oxygen he sucks in and-
tony's choking and bleeding so much blood still hot and wet stains his fingers with red and green and he roils and they roil and twist and twist and they touch a mangled thigh and he pushes and screams screams until he feels he's made up for not noticing tony not being by his side like a twin because parasite isn't the word for when you like it right and he lets himself fall back and they twist and roil and he thought he'd gotten over crying after a week at the mansion
-when he wakes up he's hazy but not in pain. It takes a second for it to snap into place and panic lumps in his throat as he looks around for Bruce, hands shaking and jaw working as he dissolves the metallic armor in his mouth down into his blood. A flash of green at the corner of his vision and there he is and oh is that anger or fear or hatred in those eyes?
Bruce's voice is caught somewhere between deep and infrasonic as he digs deep into the details of what Tony did to himself and his only regret is that his best friend had to feel what he'd felt, searing heat completely destroy flesh and any fragment of bone separated from the rest before before it cooled into cold tingles grafting to bone. But he felt it worse and heavier, Tony knows, fighting to merge the alloy with organic tissue, recreating tendon and ligament and muscle that would accept the substitute.
He'd purposefully started this when Bruce was melding with Natasha to help with her powers so that he wouldn't follow, wouldn't heal and feel and destroy and rebuild himself to rebuild Tony.
Tony refuses to tell him the why because-
(maybe making himself one with what he loves and controls will help him not hate himself if only he could do that with Bruce)
-it's no one's business, hardly even his own. He can't tell him his ideas because they involve chopping and slicing into himself and painpainsomuchpain and that's too much like Bruce's torture at the hands of General Ross -whose eyes are mostly melted from even the small amount of venom that got in them and the blackness of his glee surges through him like wildfire- for Bruce to be at all comfortable. He would go red and then green and be disgusted and not let Tony touch and breath the same air and have these feelings he never wanted or expected to have.
But he obviously doesn't know Bruce like he thought and wishes he did -and that hurts, a vibrating ache in his heart that is so much worse than any purely physical pain he's ever endured- because he grinds out a huffing growl and in a split second there are arms around him and a foreign wetness itching his scalp.
He hears more than feels Bruce's words -infrasonic, yes and yes and he pushes down the urge to ask if he can take a peek at his vocal chords because in what universe is that not exactly like the torture he was subjected to for months- and he feels like exploding from the intensity of the emotion growing between vibranium plating and is it cheesy if he likes to think about how Bruce built him a new heart with an element they created together might actually be a possibility.
The only words he'll remember later are tell me , medical experience , know what you're thinking Tony I could never hate you and I'll help you and maybe something about one or both of their hearts.
(But it won't make him love himself and maybe he doesn't mind because why should he matter when Bruce is breathing and breathing and not leaving?)
(Maybe Bruce is what will make him stop hating himself.)
Coulson rubs the hollow between floating ribs and knows that the feeling isn't hunger.