Chapter Text
He’s woken up in craters, with his legs tangled in wire and crushed cinderblocks for a pillow. He’s woken in caves and on shorelines, in the deepest part of the forest with a trail of trees broken behind him, smashed to tinder, torn up at the root. He’s woken to blazing sun and pouring rain and the cold, piercing snowfall of a blizzard in the loneliest parts of the world.
This time is different.
He’s entirely cocooned in warmth, and there are no hard edges to dig painfully into his now-tender skin. He can tell he’s naked from the way he can feel softness under and all around, but that’s no surprise, he’s always naked afterwards. It’s just that nudity usually adds to the discomfort on every level, but this time it makes the experience better, almost blissful.
He rolls a little and hums with pleasure at how good it feels, his body tangling in the sheets and the gentle weight of the blanket, mattress crinkling softly under his weight, the edge of the pillow obscuring his vision as he opens his eyes and blinks into the sunlight.
“Hey big guy.” There’s a hand in his hair, gently ruffling before drifting down to scritch at the nape of his neck. “Welcome back.”
He pushes himself up a little on his elbows, enough that he can see Tony lounging next to him, his left hand flicking over reactor schematics on his tablet while his right wanders idly down to Bruce’s shoulderblade.
“How long was I out?” Bruce asks, and it comes out as little more than a croak in his dry throat.
Tony reaches out to the bedside table and comes back with a metal water bottle, which he hands over. “Since yesterday evening. Sometime around seven o’clock.”
Bruce sits up completely, unscrews the top and takes a long sip. The insulation has kept the water cool, and there’s a tangy hint of lemon. “And what time is it now?”
Tony checks the tablet. “A little after eleven thirty.”
Fifteen hours. It’s not the shortest amount of time he’s ever been out, but it’s not bad. He blinks and shakes his head a few times to clear it, then keeps working on the water until there’s none left. He’s long since learned that rehydrating is one of the easiest and most effective ways to ease back into normalcy after a transformation, and he feels a rush of gratitude at coming to someplace where water is so easy to access.
Tony has lapsed back into Schematics Mode, fingertips tracing absentmindedly down Bruce’s back as he modifies, zooms out, zooms in, modifies again. It strikes him that Tony hasn’t changed clothes since he saw him last, that he’s got the same battered MIT-logo t-shirt from when they went into the lab together last night, although for the life of him he can’t remember what happened after the door to the confinement chamber sealed and he willfully made the change.
“Tony,” he says, and his voice is stronger now. Has Tony been here the whole time, here in Bruce’s bed, waiting for him to wake up? Did he sleep, too, as the night wore on, or did he stay up answering e-mails and price comparing for parts and reworking miniature arc models? “How did I get here?”
“Pepper and I carried you,” Tony answers as if being carried naked and unconscious to your bed by your partner and your partner’s partner is all routine. “By which I mean of course Pepper carried you, and I held open doors and pushed buttons.”
So now Pepper has seen him naked. It shouldn’t be a big deal – it seems like a quarter of the fucking global population has seen him in all his unholy glory at this point – but the thought makes his cheeks go a little warm. He scratches his neck and casts his eyes down to the blanket covering him.
“Tony…what happened?”
“You really don’t remember?”
He pinches his bottom lip between his fingers and shakes his head.
“No kidding? I’m surprised. You…went on quite the tour, last night. Been cooped up in the tower too long, I guess, and decided to see the sights.” Tony’s eyes never leave his tablet, fingers still skimming in intricate patterns over the screen. “You took a run through Times Square, knocked over a few street signs but no major damage. Scared the shit out of the Naked Cowboy. We tracked you over to the theater district – you made a good impression over there, I think, probably all the Wicked fans, y’know.”
Bruce moves his fingers to the bridge of his nose and sighs deeply.
“By the time we finally caught up with you, you were in the reflecting pool at the Met. Must’ve taken a shine to it because it’s just big enough for you, you’d gone straight through the glass-”
“Tony,” Bruce interrupts, and it comes out a bit muffled because at this point his face is more or less buried in his hand. “In what possible universe would this be funny?”
Tony stills for a second, then closes the schematics with an inward swipe of his fingers and sets the tablet on the bedside table with a light thwack. He half-turns towards Bruce and meets his eyes.
“We got a blood sample, doc. That’s what happened.”
Bruce stares blankly at him in sleepy stupor as the statement sinks in.
“We – we did?”
“Yup. You, me, Dr. Cho, we have more than enough.”
“That’s – my god, Tony, that’s amazing! Why didn’t you just tell me?” He gives Tony a light punch to the chest, which is still enough to make the other man wince and squeeze the offended area.
It’s coming back to him in bits and pieces now, shaking Helen’s hand just before going into containment, watching her face as she seemed to be trying to decide between excitement and abject terror.
He’s even getting a few flashes from after the change. Mainly pain. It’s a rare thing for the Other Guy to feel anything close to pain – even a rain of bullets does little more than tickle and agitate, like a large batch of fresh mosquito bites. Anything tough enough to break that skin, then, couldn’t help but hurt. Bruce isn’t overly fond of needles on the best of days, and the ultimate hypodermic they’d built for the job out of adamantium and diamond would’ve been nightmarish at any size.
The memory of pain from that body immediately begs the questions – “Did he hurt anyone? Are you and Helen ok?” He sits up straighter, scanning Tony’s body for any signs of bruising or bandages. God, if Helen got hurt, Helen who’s been so generous with her time and talents, who’s finally made him believe some good can come out of SHIELD after all, he’ll never forgive himself.
“We’re fine. We’re both just fine.” Tony takes both of Bruce’s hands in his and his eyes get so serious for a moment that it’s a complete surprise when the next thing that comes out of his mouth is, “You deserve all the balloons and lollipops.” He gives Bruce’s hand an uncharacteristically clumsy pat. “You were very brave.”
If he weren’t so tired, he might try to pursue whatever it is that Tony just decided to self-censor. Instead he lets fly a barrage of questions about amount, methods, preservation, has any been sent back with Helen to Seoul? Did Pepper agree the paperwork was air-tight, none of this is going to get sold and end up in the military’s hands? Were the in-house samples stored properly?
“Yes, yes, yes,” Tony promises with an exasperated sigh. “Do you think Dr. Cho would’ve let me fuck anything up?” She insists on the full title from Tony just as firmly as she insists that Bruce call her simply Helen. “Everything’s sealed away and temperature-controlled exactly as you specified, waiting for you to wake up. And we’ve got quarts of the stuff.” He squeezes Bruce’s hands almost hard enough to hurt and turns the full intensity of his smile on him. “We’re gonna figure you out from top to bottom, Bruce. Hell, we’ve done a blood draw from your massive beefy green arm. Everything after that’ll be a cakewalk.”
Bruce smiles back, a tidal wave of affection for the man next to him blossoming up in his chest. He leans forward to go in for a kiss, and his stomach growls with unnecessary dramatics.
“I kinda figured,” Tony says. “So there’s a vegetarian combination dinner and an order of today’s naan – ginger I think? – on the way from Maharana’s. I mean, that’s what I got for you, I have my own stuff coming.”
He wraps his arms around Tony’s neck and rubs the spot at the base that will result in maximum shivers. “How long until it gets here?”
“I put the order through when I saw your eyes open. So, historically speaking, about forty minutes?”
Bruce pulls Tony down until he can throw the blanket over him, bringing their bodies hard against each other in the perfect, warm world under the covers.