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Honestly? At first Bruce thought he'd been rick rolled.
When he'd finally decided to follow the others' leads and part ways with Manhattan, Tony had insisted he take with him a phone he'd designed just for him. It was for in case he needed to make an emergency call to him or in case he was "bored" and just wanted to chat or listen to music or surf the internet. Well, actually, Tony had insisted if he needed to get away from Manhattan he just tag along with him back to Malibu instead, but that had been decidedly out of the question so Bruce had accepted the lesser of two evils.
He'd taken it, but Bruce hadn't used it right away, hadn't even kept it anywhere in plain sight for him to think of using it. He hoped there wouldn't be any need for an emergency call. Parting ways meant parting ways so he had no plans of calling Tony to chat. He didn't really need the internet as he preferred to be as disconnected from the rest of the world as possible. It was the music that finally got to him. He'd been feeling ill-at-ease for too many reasons, many of which he was in no mood to analyze, so he'd decided maybe a little music would take his mind off of things.
He'd gone into the phone's music player and found two playlists already available. One was entitled It's Not Easy Being Green, which Bruce had pointedly ignored knowing full well it would be only that song since Tony had liked to play it at random back at the tower. The other playlist was entitled Blues. He'd shrugged, assuming Tony must have pegged him as a blues man (or meant it as a joke about his disposition) and created it for him.
What he'd first gotten upon clicking play was Rick Astley's iconic pop hit. Bruce was so sure he'd been rick rolled he'd assumed that the entirety of the playlist would be nothing but this one song - like the other playlist - and he'd have to search for more music on his own. He'd been wrong.
Not only were there other songs, Bruce was fairly certain Tony, for all his profession of infinite love for music, didn't comprehend the genre. There were maybe one or two true blues hits included in the playlist, but the playlist was a hodgepodge of things from Elvis to Journey to Richard Marx. And, frankly, he wasn't even going to ask about the Justin Bieber. It was… well, it was somehow a fitting reminder of Tony and Bruce couldn't help but listen to the eclectic playlist for that reason. Even if some of them were a bit on the depressing side.
Eventually he stopped thinking of it as a blues playlist anyhow. He just listened to it on occasion. It wasn't until he found himself on a simple mission with Clint, part of his deal with SHIELD to come in when they needed him in exchange for protection, that he considered it again.
"Not that the silence is, you know, awkward or anything, Doc, but you got any music on your phone?" Clint asked while they sat in a nondescript SHIELD car. Bruce felt something like a character in a bad cop movie. He looked at the man in the driver's seat. "I don't have my personal one on me or else I'd just turn it on. And we can't turn on the car."
Bruce sighed as he stopped reading through the SHIELD file about their target on said phone and opened the Blues playlist. He handed it over to Clint.
"All I've got on here," he said with a shrug and looked out his window.
"Cool," Clint said. "By the way, I don't understand why you didn't just let Stark take this one," he then said and Bruce looked back sharply. "Sitwell said they were going to send him in to assist you on this, but you requested either me or Steve. Just curious why when you would have had a better time sitting in a stake out with him than me."
Bruce licked his dry lips. He hadn't known anything about this stake out being a part of the mission until after he'd already requested somebody other than Tony – or Natasha since, friends or not now, their working relationship still needed a little work after the incident on board the Helicarrier – but now he was grateful for his foresight.
"Could you imagine Tony on a stake out like this?" he reasoned. "You and Steve are more professional. Tony would have probably said to hell with it and went in guns blazing an hour ago," he said with a fond chuckle at the absent man.
Clint snorted. "Guess that's true." He then gave a considering sound. "Interesting playlist you got here, Banner. Missing anyone in particular or just lonely in general?"
Bruce furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
"Your playlist," he said, turning to look at him with a raised brow. "Save for the random Rick Astley, it's all post-break up pining. What's that about?"
"I…" He blinked a few times. "I hadn't noticed."
"Right," Clint said in a sarcastic tone, "because you named it Blues for the genre."
"I didn't name it anything. Tony gave me the phone and it was already—" Bruce's eyes widened. Oh. Not for the genre. Well, so much for being a genius, he thought.
"Ah," Clint gave a small nod, "gotcha. Didn't want Stark here being a pest and putting the moves on you, that it?" Bruce opened his mouth and nothing came out. "I'd wondered why you'd left Stark Tower at all. Now I get it."
"You left too," Bruce found his voice again and countered quickly. "Everyone did."
"Well, yeah," Clint said with a shrug, "but we have lives and places to go. Natasha and I had missions to handle. Steve's trying to, I don't know, find himself a little bit before committing to SHIELD. But you don't really have a place to go so why not take up the offer for indefinite free room and board? Unless the company was too terrible to handle," he finished.
"You…" Bruce stuttered. "You've got it all wrong," he mumbled.
Clint seemed confused for a moment and then his eyebrows shot up. He glanced down at the phone and then back at him.
"Well, this is just sad." He shook his head. "Don't tell me I'm just here because you two clowns are doing the mutual pining thing."
"Uh… Mutual?" He'd been pining. First, they'd been friends. Then, he'd gone and gotten attached. After that, he'd realized it was actual pining for the billionaire. So, naturally, he'd hightailed it out of there before he gave himself away to the notorious playboy and once again bachelor. Logic told him it would go nowhere good if he confessed his ridiculous feelings, the feelings he didn't even want to analyze and admit to in the first place.
"Shit. Wow. You are, aren't you?" Clint selected one of the songs and then tossed the phone back toward him. "Guess it's your lucky day, Doc." Bruce caught it and looked down at the playlist of songs that suddenly made sense as a running theme: all about lovers torn apart because one of them had called it quits or run off. "No grown man is going to put Bieber on a playlist unless it's to make a point; not even Tony Stark. You've got him like baby, baby, baby, oh," he drawled with a smirk.
***
Tony was in his workshop, running a prehensile test on his new suit when the sound of Peter Gabriel filled the space. He furrowed his brow and looked around. He wasn't sure if he should step out of the unfinished suit or stay in it just in case.
"JARVIS, what's the deal?" He decided to step out of the suit. He moved across the room and snapped on his bracelets instead.
"I assure you, sir it is not me that is doing this."
"So, essentially, what you're telling me is somebody else just randomly accessed the home system to blast Peter Gabriel? Really?" Tony raised an eyebrow at the AI even if he couldn't technically see it. "Next you'll be telling me it's John Cusack."
"Actually, now that you mention it, there is a man standing on your lawn. It is not Mr. Cusack, however."
Tony's other eyebrow shot up. "Okay, that's it. Suit time."
In a matter of seconds he had the suit on. He took off out of his workshop and into the air above his mansion. He scanned his property for the supposed man and then his eyes locked on him. Faster than he'd gotten into the suit Tony was back on the ground and out of it. He stared unblinkingly at the man playing the iconic song from the phone he held up in his hands.
When he was finally convinced he wasn't dreaming and Bruce wasn't going to up and disappear if he blinked, Tony smiled wide. "I don't remember adding that song," he said, taking a few steps forward.
"And I don't remember us ever dating," Bruce responded evenly as he lowered the phone. "None of these songs make any sense. Kind of need to be together to break up."
"I don't know. It kind of felt like we were dating," Tony replied with a hitch of his shoulder and tentatively wry smile. Then it fell again. "Hurt like a breakup when you left." He searched Bruce's face and waited for him to respond to that. It felt like an eternity, all while that blasted Peter Gabriel song played in the background.
"Huh." Bruce looked down at the phone. "You're right. It did hurt like a breakup." He looked back up. "So why didn't you tell me we were dating? I feel like I've been cheated out of a few things at least."
Tony didn't need any other hint. He closed the gap, moving into Bruce's space. Their eyes locked.
"Hey, Bruce, I think we're dating," he said in a tone somewhere between playful and filled with serious longing.
Bruce gave a small, and if it wasn't Tony's imagination, relieved smile. He then chucked the phone over his shoulder. Tony would maybe worry about any damage to the phone he'd gone through so much trouble to make especially for Bruce's need on the run, if not for the look in Bruce's eyes or the hope that this meant Bruce wouldn't need a special phone for that purpose anymore.
"Then kiss me already, damn it," Bruce said and brought their lips together.