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Central Park was alive and blooming with the full force of spring. Beyond the flowering trees, the sky was painted in a picturesque collage of pinks and purples. A gentle breeze danced lightly across the city, which in turn upset a few of the looser petals on the trees to create a light rain of flower petals, cascading downward like confetti.
It all seemed a little too Hallmark to Tony, but it strangely captured the mood of the evening. With Bruce’s hand in his, they had left the restaurant and decided to take a walk in the park before heading back to the Tower. It was the first time that the pair had been out on a date in public, and all-in-all, the evening had gone extremely well. The food had been wonderful, and they had been able to side-step the media.
It was a quiet evening in the park; just a few couples and the stray jogger putting in a run with the remaining light of the day. Tony and Bruce had been discussing some of their experiments (who said that romance and work didn’t mix?), their fingers still entwined together.
Their conversation came to an abrupt halt when raised voices from another path shattered the calm of the evening. Tony broke off mid-sentence when Bruce’s hand tightened around his for a moment. They both came to a stop and remained silent as one of the unknown voices grew angrier.
At the sound that was clearly knuckles against bare skin, followed by a surprised cry of pain, their hands immediately detached. Before Tony could react, Bruce was off like a shot, bolting toward where another painful noise of clashing flesh sounded. Tony instantly followed.
The engineer turned the corner just in time to see Bruce push a twenty-something young man aside, who had been previously about to strike who could only be his girlfriend for a third time. As the attacker regained his footing, he turned an infuriated look on the man who had intervened. Bruce firmly planted himself between the two, fists at his sides and eyes on the boyfriend.
The girl, roughly the same age, stood frozen with a hand on her face. In the spaces between her fingers, her skin was already beginning to darken into a nasty bruise. Her wide eyes moved between the two men standing before her.
“Back off, old man,” the fellow all but snarled. “I’m just making my girl understand something. No concern of yours.”
“There are better ways of reaching an understanding,” Bruce answered in a low and eerily calm voice. Tony, however, who had known him for months now, could hear the underlying layer of rage. “I’m sure it would come across more clearly to your girl if it was not so physical.”
The offender had obviously not expected further challenge from the physicist, but quickly recovered. He took an aggressive step forward to shove Bruce out of the way. “It ain’t your business, you—”
Tony was about to rush in when the imbecile roughly grabbed Bruce’s shoulder, but came to a sharp halt when his lover’s hand flew forward and seized the guy’s wrist in an rock-hard grip. Bruce jerked the man’s arm around until the guy had to move with how his limb was being pulled to avoid a broken bone. In the same movement, a swift kick was placed on the backs of the guy’s knees, and a moment later, the man was lying on the ground, cradling his arm against his chest and staring up at Bruce with round eyes. The girl let out a small peep of surprise and fear when her boyfriend hit the path, but otherwise remained motionless and did nothing to help him up.
Bruce glowered down at the boy on the ground, fists shaking with repressed fury. “I’ll say this once, and only once,” he began in a soft, vicious growl. “Laying a hand on another person, let alone your significant other, will never help you get a point across. What did she do? Not punctual enough to your standards? Did she speak out of turn? Did she not greet you properly after your hard day at work? Did she forget to be the perfect, little trophy that you feel yourself entitled to?” He paused for only a moment, and his voice took on a dangerous edge as his volume lowered. “Or did she stand up to you?”
Tony stood transfixed, not at all sure what he was witnessing or how to help. His eyes remained plastered on the physicist, noting the small shakes in his fists and shoulders. It became evident in the man’s final inquiry that he wasn’t really talking to the man as much as he was talking at the man, venting out something that had been held within for far too long.
“It’s monsters like you that don’t deserve love,” Bruce continued in the previously calm, low, and frightening voice. “Until you learn to behave like a human being, you don’t deserve the love of another human being. Until you reach an understanding of that, your existence will look bleak and lonely. So you either apologize to this young woman and swear to her upon your life that you will never lay another hand upon her, or remove yourself from her life until you can behave like a civilized human being.” His head ticked to the side minutely. “Understood?”
The silence between the four of them was smothering. It felt like the world had shrunk into a tiny sphere that contained only them; time seemed to have come to a complete halt, and the world was lending its focus solely to Dr. Banner’s outburst.
Finally, the guy on the ground scooted back a little bit before climbing to his feet. He exchanged a harsh glare with the physicist, which was returned with equal veracity. When he didn’t get anywhere with that, he shifted his glare to the young woman standing behind Bruce before he turned and walked off with as much dignity he could muster.
Tony’s eyes followed the jerk as he moved past him before he looked back to where Bruce was still standing, glaring after the guy. He noted that Bruce’s eyes were completely his own, and not an inkling of the Hulk could be seen.
Suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, all of the righteous anger that had been present just a moment ago vanished. Bruce took a shaky breath and ran a quivering hand over his face, before he turned around and looked at the young woman. “Are you alright?” he asked softly, a certain tightness to his voice lingering beneath the weariness.
The woman’s eyes had followed her boyfriend out of the park, but at the sound of the question, she looked at her protector. She gave an uneasy nod and looked back after her boyfriend. “H-He’s not usually…”
A spark of torment flashed across Bruce’s face and he swallowed painfully. “Miss, if they do it once, they’ll keep doing it if you don’t make them stop. Once it starts, it will never stop.” The words were delivered in such a melancholy manner, Tony finally stepped forward.
Bruce flinched a little when Tony slipped a hand into his. Tony’s heart ached to see the lost look in his lover’s eye. He gave Bruce’s hand a comforting squeeze and looked at the young woman. “Do you have a way to get home?” the engineer asked softly.
She looked between the two of them for a moment before she nodded her head. “Thank you,” she replied. She gave the doctor a lingering gaze before she turned and walked off.
With both of them finally gone, Tony turned and fully embraced his beloved. Bruce went rigid for a moment, and then finally sagged and buried his face into the crook of Tony’s shoulder. Tony held him close, running a hand along his back to help ease out some of the tension.
Before he had an opportunity to ask what exactly had just happened, Bruce took a shaky breath. “She went after him, didn’t she?” he asked, his voice muffled by Tony’s shirt.
The engineer looked up to see that she had gone off in the same direction as the jerk that had beaten her.
The silence was answer enough. Bruce’s hold on Tony tightened and another bout of quivering ran through the physicist’s body. “Damn it,” he whispered.
Tony remained silent for a moment, and then began to lead Bruce to a nearby park bench. “I’m calling Happy for a ride, okay?” he asked once they had settled.
Bruce leaned forward and buried his face into his hands. “Yeah…” he replied absently.
The physicist remained completely silent in the duration of the wait for Happy and through the car ride back to the Tower. Tony kept up what he was hoping to be comforting and reassuring touches, be it hand-holding, the gentle circular motions on the man’s back, or outright embraces. They weren’t rejected, so he kept at it.
The elevator ride was quiet. They completely bypassed the communal level, where the other Avengers were, and headed straight for their floor. In a matter of minutes, Tony had slipped off their shoes and gotten Bruce into bed, simply lying on the covers and holding the silent, trembling man in his arms.
He knew he shouldn’t push, but he didn’t know how to get his lover reactive again. “Bruce…” he began with a clear amount of uncertainty.
Bruce tensed again and curled more into Tony’s form, seeking shelter within the arms that encircled him. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he began in a voice so soft it would have gone unnoticed, had Tony not been listening for it.
Tony glanced down at the top of Bruce’s head. “You have nothing to apologize for, Bruce,” he said. “You did a good thing.”
“It makes no difference,” Bruce mumbled. “It never changed.”
That made the engineer pause. “…you’re not just talking about the kids in the park, are you?”
Another length of silence passed before Bruce carefully pulled himself up out of Tony’s arms. He merely resituated himself so he was leaning against the headboard. Tony mimicked his position so they were seated side by side. The engineer opened the arm closest to the physicist, and Bruce slumped back into Tony’s body, seeking comfort.
Once they had stopped moving, Bruce took a careful breath. “…I don’t know how many times I saw my Dad hit my Mom,” he began quietly. His voice was a torrent of emotions; beneath the melancholy was anger. Where that anger was directed was anyone’s guess. “I heard it more than I actually saw it. Got to hear—” he paused to swallow with no small amount of difficulty “—hear him screaming at her about just about anything. ‘Learn your place, woman.’ ‘I don’t know why I put up with you.’ ‘What would you be without me?’ ‘You good-for-nothing slut.’ ‘How dare you defend that monster.’”
A deep shudder ran through Bruce, and his eyes closed involuntarily at that last remembered piece of dialogue. Tony fully embraced his lover again and remained silent, allowing his beloved the chance to regain his composure and to continue.
When Bruce opened his eyes, there was a sheen in them. As Tony curled himself more around the man in his arms, Bruce drew a quavering breath. “It went on for years, Tony,” he began again. “Years, she put up with it. She only ever stood up to him when he turned his anger on me. She stood up for me, and I was never strong enough to stand up for her. Lord knows I tried, but what can an eight-year-old do to a grown man?” His eyes slipped shut once more and he sniffed before attempting to swallow painfully again. “It went on for years, Tony, and when finally, finally, she decided enough was enough, it…it was too late.” He curled against his lover’s body and felt a few stray tears escape from behind his closed lids. “We were getting ready to leave, and he found out, and—a-and he killed her.” Tony’s hold around him tightened. “Bashed her h-head in on the driveway, blood everywhere. And I couldn’t do anything. I watched her die. I watched as my father murdered my Mom. Because she finally stood up to him, not just for my sake, but for her own.”
Bruce lapsed into a silence after that, trying to reel in his emotions and not lose control more so than he had already let happen. He went to brush away the tears, but Tony found them first.
The pads of his lover’s thumbs gently caressed his face, delicately swiping away the wetness, and his lips pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. The kindness, the warmth, and the sheer tenderness in those small actions by his lover sent Bruce over the edge. He turned his face into Tony’s body and finally let himself cry.
Neither of them was sure how long they stayed like that, curled up into each other, but neither of them really cared. All that mattered was the other, that they were there, real and solid and there. The tears had stopped somewhere along the way, but neither had the heart to pull away, nor the inclination. The embrace never lost its intensity or security, even if it did loosen minutely. It could have been minutes or hours later when Tony carefully shifted them so they were lying down again. It didn’t matter that they were still dressed in the same clothes they went out on their date in. This was all that mattered.
Somewhere in the midst of things, JARVIS had dimmed the lights respectably. Just when they were on the threshold of slumber, Bruce shifted just enough to place a light kiss on Tony’s neck. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Tony glanced down at him momentarily and brushed his fingers through Bruce’s hair in response. A few minutes later, they were asleep, safe in each other’s arms.