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“Come in, come in,” Tony made his grand, sweeping gestures of dramatics. Spry and springy, that’s how he liked to keep it. You’d hardly think he had just been through a wormhole and about to perish in outer space. No sir-ee. “Make yourself at home.”
“Me casa, su casa?” Bruce joked, but his body language literally told a different story to any one in the room – the tight grip of his duffle, the hunched over shoulders. There was a confidence there that hadn’t been before, but his own strange ways seemed so ingrained into him.
No doubt, that strange was all he could be, some days.
“Exact-o-mundo, my friend,” Tony pointed winning fingers at him. “Jarvis, you got the guest room set up?” He asked to the ceiling, and Bruce looked up with curious eyes.
Probably finding the more obvious speakers about, as everyone did. They didn’t know though: Jarvis was in the very marrow of Stark tower itself. Not that it wasn’t worse for wear right now anyways…
The Loki-sized craters in the floor made Bruce wince at the sight as his eyes caught it in the milli-second that Jarvis took to respond.
“Afraid not, sir,” he said in that charming british butler of a cold upper lip voice of his, “as there are no guest rooms.”
“Ah.” Tony faltered, recovering with a dramatic frown coming upon his face as he put his hand to his chin.
“Sir did not intend for any guest bedroom to have been of use, I believe, during construction,” Jarvis added unhelpfully.
“Thank you, thank you, peanut gallery,” Tony waved a hand. He turned to Bruce, and narrowed his eyes at his already trying to escape through the elevator door that Jarvis helpfully closed off. “And where do you think you’re going?”
“I appreciate the offer, Tony, I really do,” Bruce hit the elevator button with the impatient speed of an office worker, “but no candy store is worth having to sleep with the cashier for.”
“Hey!” Tony protested, half a whine. “I was never suggesting that you’d sleep with me to stay here. Literally or figuratively. You don’t think I got the spare dough to get you another mattress?”
Pointedly, Bruce jerked his head out to the ruins of New York City as it were right then. “You think a mattress store opening is going to be anyone’s concern right now?”
Tony pursed his lips. “You’re not going to the backwards of nowhere when you could be sleeping on my bajillion-count sheets, Banner.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow.
“We can have a slumber party," Tony cheerfully jaunted over, reaching over to hook an arm around Bruce’s neck. “I can whip out the cucumbers and chick flicks and green, ooey gooey masks.”
“Wouldn’t need a mask to go green at that rate,” Bruce grumbled, bowing under Tony’s elbow.
Nonetheless for all his quips he did still make his way into Tony’s bed. Score 1 - Tony. Score 0 - small combustible missile.
Bruce stays to help with the clean up.
“I’m always angry,” he whispers in the dead of night, back-to-back with Tony on his massive bed. Still hadn’t gotten around to getting that second mattress, yet. “I can always feel him in here, in me, and one day…” he audibly swallows. “One day I’m going to lose myself into my anger forever.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Tony says into the dark, closing his eyes in the words and feeling himself losing time. “We won’t let that happen. Didn’t you hear? There’s a whole band of people who could worm all the way through to you.”
Bruce sighs. “That only works so much as I let you guys in. As much as you let me in.”
“I’m tetchy,” Tony says. If sleep weren’t dragging down his limbs in an iron grip, he’d wave a hand through the stars his eyes conjure in the air. “I’ll let you in as much as I want.”
That wasn’t exactly a no.
So Bruce stays to help with a clean up: invents a few (basically) giant roombas with the spare parts lying around in Tony’s garage and Jarvis and Dumb-ee’s cranes and arms. The streets of New York get their first wash since the history of their establishment. The streets through to 39th (where the police blockage seemed to have managed to miraculously hold some ground against the Chitauri; Tony suspects the Hulk-sized holes through the buildings) all generally smell nicer too.
Hey – Tony’s a New Yorker, but he’s never had his feet on the ground enough to smell the piss-stained air. Pretty rich boy philanthropist privileges at all.
The Hulk gets a few appearances when Iron Man’s around too.
A gentle giant, Banner’s other form turns out to be when given the chance. Tony feels better about coaxing out Banner to the decision when the children that had been crawling all over the big green form eventually tire and need to be handed back to their very bemused parents.
Parents, unafraid entirely of the fact that Hulk could have literally smashed their children into gory little bits for any second of that interaction. Still could, too.
If that isn’t supposed to persuade Bruce to let down a few guards, then Tony will eat his own shoe.
He’ll do it. He’ll really do it. One time he managed a whole toe of some brand-new leathers his bad-taste college self had bought before Rhodey had found him and stared in horror and made him gag up all the polished-to-perfection boiled leather he had swallowed.
The crowd had all called Rhodey a ninny for stopping Tony, but really Tony had been grateful. Those loafers were seriously over salted.
And no one makes fun of his Rhodey but him. The crowd had all seen that reality quickly when the 14 year old Tony Stark went up to the loft and sprayed-canned cheese onto them all.
Pepper questions him about it. Of course she does, when Tony tells her of his plan over the phone the first real chance he gets. He was wary of the fact that Bruce might have enhanced hearing, too. Or maybe he was somehow really good at reading Tony.
She would be in New York right now, but with all the destruction around, it’s more than a bit ill-advised – besides that, Fury or whoever had wisely put a temporary border to all people from coming in to New York for a day or so while the remaining people, or those who had been evacuated, or the typical disaster relief people sorted themselves out.
“So you’ve brought a stray home,” she surmises, not meanly, after Tony finishes his meandering little story that she already mostly-knows from the news with the fact that Bruce was currently in the shower. The single shower on the floor, because of course. “To shelter or to house train?”
Neither had exactly brought up going downstairs, but there’s a reason this is a penthouse and the rest is not apartments.
“You know me toots,” Tony says, playing along in a swarmy put-on accent, “I can never leave a job half finished. Gonna have to have him and hold him on this one.”
“And you’ll have to hold him, literally,” Pepper’s voice is quite amused on the other side.
“You know me, if there’s an ass, I have to grab it,” Tony joked. Though Tony was not shy in the fact of his attraction to all hot people, it was obvious (or at least, thankfully obvious to the whip-smart Pepper) that there was none there for Bruce. Or, maybe some, if he titled his head to the right and spun around three times.
“You have fun with your bro-cuddling while I figure out a way into New York then,” Pepper drily departs as another voice sounds like a murmur on her side, asking if she’d like some peanuts or the sort.
“Hi?” Bruce’s startled voice echoes from the kitchen-slash-bar, and Tony pops his head up from where he’d been lounging around on the couch to see Rhodey standing at the entrance.
“My love!” He cries, half joking, half launching himself across the room to wrap Rhodey in an octopus-hug.
“Tony,” Rhodey seamlessly catches him, well used to the antics, and also well-toned enough to support a grown man latching onto him as looks around the still-ruined penthouse.
The dangerous debris and the sort had been cleared away, but obviously known of it had been exactly fixed yet – two days after, and Tony’s bruises still had bruises. He did not have the superhuman healing or whatever the hell the others had.
“Your place is a mess,” Rhodey frowns into Tony’s hair. “And you still smell a bit like blood.”
“Didn’t exactly have the time to get the jacuzzi jets going.”
“Right, I heard you’re a super-super hero now,” Rhodey audibly rolls his eyes, and the comment makes him turn to wherever Bruce is still standing. “Hello, I’m Colonel Rhodes, Tony’s friend. You can call me Rhodey.” Despite the human octopus tucking himself into his neck, Rhodey still manages a polite hand out to shake. He’s good like that.
“I’m Bruce, Bruce Banner” he says, in a nervous voice as ever, “but I’m sure you already know that.”
“I like to keep track of the people this baby’s getting himself into trouble with,” Rhodey shucks Tony a little, which makes him squawk and slide off to the floor.
Tony pouts.
"It's great to meet such a good friend of Tony's. I hope you're here to help with the New York relief?"
"Yep, since I'm the only one this baby will listen to."
"Hey! It's not my fault we mind melded in college and have had the ol' trusty unbreakable since then."
"Doing weed together is not quite mind melding," Rhodey raises an eyebrow.
Bruce laughs softly, and Tony perks up at the sound. "I need to hear all about this, I think."