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The scar is pink and purple in a long warped line down the centre of Tony’s chest, still swollen up a bit even after so many months. Bruce drags his lips over its length, lets them rest up at the upper edge, tucks his nose into the hollow of Tony’s throat. Tony starts to speak, then, and Bruce feels it all over, vibrating through his bones and into his marrow, splashing brightness into his core.
Tony tells him how it felt when he woke up, the deepset ache in his ribs with only the thin barrier of morphine shielding him against the full force of the pain. Tells him about scratching the itch of healing flesh despite warnings not to, the tearing of stitches, the vivid red staining his skin and sticking under his nails. Bruce kisses the little scars from stitching and restitching, presses his hands flat to the bed beneath Tony’s back.
He listens to Tony babble, touches the scar with every part of his face, imagines what it would be like to see Tony with his body split open, to have his body split open, ribs cracked apart and splayed wide, hands poking and prodding, metal bits inside him. A shiver runs down his back and Tony scratches at his shoulders, grins dark like he knows what Bruce is thinking.
He presses another flurry of kisses to the line of scar tissue, buries his face in Tony’s chest, lets the feel and sound of breath and heartbeat lull him to sleep.