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Bruce's surprise party wasn't really a surprise. He'd seen it coming miles away--talk to Tony for five seconds and you knew he loved to throw surprise parties. Bruce carefully mentioned that he hated surprise parties whenever they came up in the (forlorn) hope that Tony would listen, but as his birthday neared, Tony's valiant and obvious attempts to pretend nothing was in the works destroyed his last shreds of optimism.
He could tell Tony outright, of course. He could say, I know you're planning a surprise party for me, and I don't want it. Even more effectively, he could tell Pepper. But he didn't. Maybe he didn't want to disappoint Tony. Maybe he didn't want to start an argument. Or maybe he was so attention-starved that the idea sounded a little bit appealing after all. He honestly wasn't sure which it was, and the uncertainty covered the subject in just enough faint embarrassment that he couldn't bring himself to broach it.
Watching Tony desperately try to play it cool was adorable enough that it almost cancelled out Bruce's frustration that Tony knew he didn't want this party (Bruce was 85% sure he didn't want it) and was throwing it anyway.
When his birthday finally came, and Tony dragged him up to the penthouse on some elaborately unconvincing pretext, Bruce steeled himself to act surprised. In the end, all he could manage was a lame eyebrow raise and a grimace. "Hi guys."
Tony glared accusingly. "You knew, didn't you?"
Bruce shrugged and smiled at him. "You're not exactly...well, Natasha, for example." But it wasn't as bad as he expected: just the Avengers, plus Loki and Pepper. He'd been queasily, irrationally convinced that there'd be people there from S.H.I.E.L.D., or that Tony would do something really awful and invite Betty without warning him.
Tony ducked in and bit his earlobe. "You like it though, right?"
Bruce made himself smile again. "It's great. Thanks, Tony."
But it really wasn't that bad. There was pizza, and it was nice seeing everyone in their civvies and party hats, just hanging out like they were friends. Bruce wanted the team to gel, so he should encourage stuff like this, really.
Tony brought out ten different flavors of fancy popcorn and showed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which everyone knew was the best Star Trek movie (Steve and Clint agreed with Bruce, anyway, and no one else in the room had an opinion, unless Natasha just wasn't sharing). Tony explained all the jokes to Thor and Loki, which should have been annoying but wasn't, maybe because Bruce had already done the same thing to Steve a couple of months ago, or maybe because Tony trying to explain LSD while sprawled on a couch with his head in Bruce's lap was one of the funnier things Bruce had seen recently.
The credits hadn't even finished rolling before Tony was pushing at Bruce and demanding he open his presents. To Bruce's surprise, the American collective unconscious within him rose up in protest. "You can't open presents before cake."
Loki sprang up like a jack-in-the-box from where he was whispering something to Thor. His green eyes fixing piercingly on Bruce. "Yes, let's have cake."
"Loki made the cake," Tony said, somewhat unnecessarily.
Loki fidgeted. "It's an ice-cream cake. I read that they're traditional at birthday parties."
There were two cakes, actually, each as big as could be fit on a freezer shelf. They were delicately, obsessively piped in shades of brown, gold dragees swirling across the surface. Each read with a flourish, Happy Birthday, Bruce!
"They are splendid, brother," Thor boomed.
Loki gave him the evil eye. "It doesn't matter how they look," he snapped, shamelessly ignoring the obvious fact that he'd spent hours on their appearance. "It just matters how they taste." If you had asked Bruce a year ago, "sensitive artist" was not how he would have described Loki, but there it was.
"I wanted a candle for every year you've been alive just to drive home how ancient you are," Tony said, "but Loki said it would mess up his cake so I got these instead." He put two candles in the cake, a 4 and a 5, and then one small twisted birthday candle. It was amazing, the continuity of birthday candles. They hadn't changed at all since Bruce was a kid. "One to grow on," Tony said, and lit them with a flourish. Everyone sang. It was embarrassing, but their voices were surprisingly sweet, even Thor who sang far too loudly and lost the tune partway through.
Tony snickered to himself as Loki cut into the cake, and Bruce realized with a sense of inevitability that the cake would be green inside. He took a deep breath through his nose. He could laugh at that.
The cake was brown and brown. Tony did a double-take next to him and looked at Loki. "Salted caramel ice cream, chocolate cake, and chocolate whipped cream," Loki said blandly.
"I thought we agreed on mint chip."
Loki winked at Bruce.
Bruce was unexpectedly touched. Loki "Mischief" Odinson giving up an opportunity to do something he knew Bruce would really hate--that was a birthday present, all right. "Thanks, Loki," he said, his mouth full of probably the best cake he'd ever eaten. "It's amazing. I mean it." Loki smiled, but it wasn't until Thor crammed half a piece into his mouth and mumbled something wildly enthusiastic that Loki beamed and took a piece himself.
Bruce looked around. Pepper and Steve were chatting about art while Steve sketched something in his notepad, and Clint and Natasha were chowing down cake and talking too quietly to hear. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.
"Now presents," Tony said the second Bruce swallowed his last bite of cake. Everyone came to attention. "Mine first." Tony shoved something at him off the pile. "Oh God, tell me you're not one of those guys that saves the wrapping paper."
"Sorry." Bruce refolded the paper carefully before looking at his gift. It was...bike shorts? In a weird fabric, with..."You didn't really get me bike shorts with 'Property of Tony Stark' written across the ass, did you?"
Tony rolled his eyes. "No genius is appreciated in his own lifetime. It's a prototype, you can design the finished product yourself. Although you should seriously consider keeping this one, I think it really fires the imagination, speaks to the power of the human spirit, et cetera. I invented them. They're stretchy. Like, really stretchy. So you can have a suit."
Bruce blinked. Tony remembered he'd said that?
He didn't even really want a suit. Well, he did, but he knew it would only get ripped to shreds every time someone decided that okay, the Hulk hadn't felt it the last time someone shot him with a machine gun, so maybe the trick was bigger bullets. He just hated being naked. He knew it was the smallest possible thing to worry about, but he hated that everyone could see him. He hated that cellphone pictures of the Hulk's private parts were a viral internet phemenon. He hated that moment when he woke up as Bruce and couldn't quite remember what he'd done and there was nothing, nothing at all, between him and the world.
"You..." He didn't know what to say.
"Hank helped me test it, so there won't be any unforeseen consequences to your junk," Tony said. "That was my number one priority. For totally unselfish reasons."
Bruce leapt on Tony and kissed him, and Tony laughed breathlessly and tried to dip him and they almost ended up falling over. "I love you," Bruce whispered in his ear, and Tony lit up like Stark Tower at night.
Pepper gave him a printout of weekend reservations for two at a B&B in Cape Cod. "I thought we could sail up there when the weather gets nicer," she said. They'd gone out sailing a few times last summer in Pepper's 20-footer and it had been great. Bruce used to have a Hobie cat before the accident, and he'd missed it. She'd nixed his suggestion they invite Tony. Apparently small boats made him feel out of control and she had to talk him out of flying them to safety every time it got a little windy. "We can change the dates if these don't work for you, I just wanted to have something to give you." She always did that, acted as if he might have other plans when he'd never had any plans the entire time he'd known her.
He smiled at her gratefully, ignoring Tony making theatrically left-out noises behind him. "I'd love to."
Thor gave him a gift certificate for a spa ("It is most relaxing"), Clint gave him two nice purple-accented button-downs ("I figure you go through more clothing than most guys"), and Natasha gave him some fancy soap (no comment).
"Give me another minute," Steve said, sketching furiously. "I'm not done yet."
"Oh, wow, is that for me?" Bruce asked. "You didn't have to--"
Natasha rolled her eyes and pulled him into the corner with her and Clint. "Listen," she said, quietly enough the rest of the team couldn't hear her, "you know we work for S.H.I.E.L.D."
He never forgot it. He nodded. "Thanks for the soap."
She laughed. "We just want you to know, we talked it over, and...the Hulkbuster units are supposed to be disbanded. But if they aren't...we're on your side."
The two of them eyed him seriously, exaggeratedly normal-looking and deadlier than rattlesnakes. Bruce opened his mouth and shut it a few times. "Thanks," he said finally. "That's good, because my money's on you two in that fight." They smiled at each other as if they agreed.
In any fight S.H.I.E.L.D. called out the Hulkbusters for, he might be out of control. He might need to be taken down. Clint and Natasha probably had a better chance of doing that than anybody Fury had in the Hulkbuster units. He should say that. He should say he hoped they'd do whatever needed doing.
He resisted the urge to say thank you again.
"I'm done," Steve announced, carefully cutting a sheet of paper out of his pad with his pocketknife.
"Happy birthday," Clint said, clapped him on the arm, and headed over to Steve, Natasha in tow. Steve handed Bruce a drawing. It showed the party, the eight of them eating cake. Tony was feeding Bruce a piece of cake, actually.
Bruce noticed his own shadow first. It was hard to miss. His shadow was in the shape of the Hulk. Then he saw that everyone's shadows looked like their superhero counterparts. Tony's suited shadow hovered several feet off the ground to feed the Hulk his piece of cake. Bruce in the drawing was smiling sheepishly, but the Hulk's head was turned enough that even in silhouette, it was clear he was laughing up at Tony.
Tears pricked at his eyes.
Steve had been up close and personal with the Hulk a bunch of times in the last few months during the training exercises (that's what Steve called them, anyway) they'd been doing on Tony's island. That after that, he could still draw him like this, that he could see him like this...
"Is it okay?" Steve asked. "Maybe I shouldn't have--"
"No, it's fine," Bruce said. "I'm just taking it in." Thor and Loki stood close together on the left. Their shadows wore armor, the horns of Loki's helmet curving darkly up the wall in place of his real self's party hat. Thor's shadowy arm was slung across Loki's shadow's shoulders. Steve in the drawing was smiling a lot wider than Bruce had ever seen him do in real life, which gave Bruce a pang (although to be fair it was a cartoon, a mouth couldn't physically stretch that far anyway), his shadow upright and wide-stanced and carrying his shield. Clint and Natasha were snickering about something on the right while their suited shadows kept watch with drawn weapons.
And Pepper stood by Bruce and Tony, watching them with a smile. Her shadow was crisp and elegant and immutably Pepper in the midst of everything.
"Oh Steve, it's lovely," Pepper said. "I can have it framed if you'd like, Bruce."
Tony put his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. "He didn't make you beautiful enough. Not nearly." She laughed, but Bruce was inclined to agree. "But other than that, it's perfect," Tony said to Steve. "Look at that, it's the Mark VII! See," he explained to Bruce, "you can tell by these ridges here that it's got the backpack thrusters. Steve, you ever want to do a show, Pepper knows some people."
"I do," Pepper confirmed.
"Thor isn't that much larger than me," Loki said. There was an awkward silence.
"I love it," Bruce said. "Thanks, Steve. It's wonderful. Definitely have it framed, Pepper. I, uh--I'll be right back." He pulled his phone out of his pocket and headed for the bathroom.
"Is he okay?" he heard Steve ask.
"He's just going to watch the news for a minute," Tony said, his eyeroll plain in his voice. "He does that sometimes. It freaks him out when he gets too happy."
Bruce hit the shortcut to Fox News on his phone. Bill O'Reilly's face gave him an immediate jolt of anger. Normally, Tony would have been right. But today, Bruce breathed and let the Other Guy rise slowly, hovering just below the surface, so he could enjoy the party too.
The last few years, Bruce's birthdays hadn't seemed like much of a reason to celebrate. One more year done, another chunk of his life ruined, and more of the same to look forward to. Just great. But today he felt...hopeful. Excited, even. Like maybe this would be his year, finally.
Tony asked the obligatory birthday question when he got back. "So? Do you feel older?"
Bruce grinned at him. "Yeah, actually. I do."