Zen and the Art of Anger Maintenance - Avengers story, Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

[petra]

Title: Zen and the Art of Anger Maintenance (12,800 words)
Fandom: The Avengers (2012)
Summary: Bruce doesn't trust himself as far as an unenhanced human could throw him, but his new employers, or rather teammates, or--possibly--friends want to help him work on that.
Pairing: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Notes: Consensual, explicit m/m/f sex; all the mental gymnastics that come with Bruce's POV
Amazing alphas: dira, jamjar, liviapenn, samjohnsson
Betas beyond price: theleaveswant, giglet

Text at AO3


"Come with me. It'll be fine," Tony says, and that's bullshit. He amends it to, "It'll be great," and somehow Bruce finds that easier to believe.

It will be great, at least part of the time. Spending time with Tony Stark and his huge toy box of technical wonders can't be anything but great. Sometimes it will be absolutely terrible--when the toys don't work, when the driving genius muse of Tony's forward momentum runs out for a day that feels like an eternity, when, when the worst happens--but that's easier to take than believing it'll be fine. Bruce doesn't know Tony, except by reputation, but the man has enough of a reputation for mercurial behavior that he makes international headlines with it. He's as predictable as hurricane season and about as clement.

Weather is fine for a minute at a time. Sometimes it's terrible.

The causes of terrible weather are harder to pinpoint, most of the time, than the cause of Bruce's terrible days. At least if he has things to focus on, things to work with, things to build, it's easier to keep his superego online.

"What's my budget?" he asks Tony.

Tony laughs at him. "You just tell me what you need, big guy, and we'll see whether Pepper can spare the pin money."

Pepper is the CEO of a huge corporation; Bruce assumes that Tony talking out of his ass about making her deal with it when the bean counters can handle a problem. The lady in charge doesn't have to look in to all the labs. She has her one-man R&D department and everything else might as well be QA, assuring that Tony's wild ideas won't blow up in anybody's face.

She comes into Bruce's lab the second day, her heels clicking on the floor with a smooth, confident stride like she owns the place. "Doctor Banner, how nice to meet you," she says, and smiles at him as if she was in on the whole interview process.

There wasn't an interview process, there was Tony the force of nature.

There is a faint worried look in Pepper Potts' eyes when she looks at Bruce, but that's only natural, and maybe it's projection at this point. Bruce has only seen a few people who were honestly not afraid of him since, well, since, and he's used to it the same way beautiful women like Pepper have to be used to having people look at them for a few seconds longer than they would otherwise. "Ms. Potts," he says, and nods to her.

"Please, call me Pepper."

Not Ms. Potts then, and definitely not Mrs. Stark. Probably never Mrs. Stark, no matter how much Tony talked about her while he was convincing Bruce to take his largesse and lab space and everything else that the NIH isn't about to offer someone with Bruce's unique OSHA hazards these days. Pepper seems to be as much a part of Tony as his suit: technically detachable, not required for his continued existence, but contributing to the enormous strength he needs to play at the Avengers' level.

If they're still the Avengers, now. Whatever the others are, without the hardware and the strength of his friends, Tony's just some guy.

Without the strength of his character and, hopefully, a bunch of people who are willing to be counted as his friends, Bruce wouldn't be some guy, most of the time. He'd be That Guy, that guy everyone runs from and with good damn reason.

Pepper doesn't run. She probably knows as much about the security measures Tony had installed into the lab as Tony does. That's more than Bruce knows, on the simple principle that if they give him forewarning, he might somehow get some of that information across the blood-brain-id barrier. Everything delicate in the lab is toast if things go funky.

Which Tony knows, and Pepper has to know.

Otherwise she wouldn't be standing there, looking at him as calmly as if he was just some new scientist her boyfriend brought home like a stray puppy and installed in a multi-million-dollar laboratory that has a few Post-its on the wall where there are blank spaces. "Nanopore apparatus backordered, en route," says one, and a chemical hood has a pink label with the same scrawled handwriting reading, "Complete nutrition but come over for dinner tomorrow." There are military issue MREs under the hood, protected from whatever chemicals get used around them and similarly not about to leak on the lab outside.

Somewhere in the ceiling there must be some kind of gas outlets or drop-down tasers or something Bruce hasn't thought of yet, the kind of containment system he'd have to be a mechanical genius instead of a biological used-to-think-he-was-a-genius to come up with. If Bruce gets a little green around the gills, all hell will stop him from breaking loose.

"Was the dinner invitation your idea?" he asks her, glancing at the pink note on the chemical hood.

"Partially," she says. "It will get Tony out of the lab, I hope."

Of course he's her first concern, no matter who else she's talking to. "It'd better. I mean--" He used to think he could smile disarmingly at beautiful women, but he was never actually good at that, just smoother than a lot of lab geeks, and humbler, these days. Closer to the idea of his own failure. "Not that I'd mind having dinner with you alone, but I think Tony might object to the idea."

She has a devastating smile, all the worse when it reaches her eyes. The myriad facial movements that go into making an expression that effective run through Bruce's mind, none of them lessening the effect of looking at her and having her seem like she's glad to talk to him, however briefly. "We'll both be glad to spend more time with you. But I'll have to bring along the quarterly report so I have something to read when you get polysyllabic at each other."

The thermal cycler behind Bruce beeps. He ignores it, at least for the moment. Pepper, the expression of vast strands of DNA, is more interesting than the short sequences he can work with right now. "I'm sure you'll be able to follow the conversation."

"Quite possibly, but the question is whether I'd want to." Pepper looks at the beeping machine, then back at him. "You might have a grasp of the macroeconomic implications of Stark Industries' latest acquisitions and the domino effect we expect them to have in the Nikkei Average and beyond, but would you rather think about those or spend your time with whatever just went 'ping' over there?"

Bruce nods, accepting her deflection. "With the right teachers, I can understand almost anything, but I'm a failure as a capitalist."

There is a light knock at the door, somehow more demanding than the machine's alarm. The machine knows no better. It reaches the end of its time and it goes off, but the woman who opens the door and gives Pepper an apologetic look is clearly aware that she's intruding. "I'm sorry, Ms. Potts, but your ten-thirty is here."

Pepper says, "Thank you, Sarah." She extends her hand to Bruce with all the confidence in the world that she'll get it back in the same shape as she offers it. He shakes her hand carefully, wishing he didn't have to think about it every second. "Welcome aboard, Doctor. Does seven-o'clock work for you?"

By seven, there will be fewer MREs sitting in the fume hood. Bruce's metabolism has its quirks, and while he can keep his rage at a slow boil, he can't keep his cellular respiration down to the same churn. "That would be great," he says.

Pepper's assistant makes a note and they leave, heels clicking out the door.

Bruce buries himself in his work. When he needs to eat, he opens the MRE with one hand and juggles pipettes with the other. To make up for the times when he cannot walk down the sidewalk without having it splinter underfoot--not under his feet, not quite--he has a disturbing amount of dexterity.

He finds a sequence that might mean something, might, if he can just see the connection.

Time ceases to mean anything.

The phone rings, which is when he realizes that there is a phone in the lab. Bruce has to search for a moment before he finds it and tucks it under his ear so he can keep working. "Hello?"

"It's seven-ten," Tony says. "Are you standing us up?"

"Damn." The worst fury is the kind that shoves against himself, stupid, stupid Bruce who loses track of time. "Give me--" Bruce takes stock of his bits and pieces, the fragments he's starting to accomplish, and what needs to be done next. "Give me five minutes. Where are you?"

"There's a car at street level. Leave your lab coat at work, and all the shop talk, too." Tony hangs up as someone, a woman, Pepper laughs.

It's seven minutes before Bruce gets out of the building. He realizes in the elevator that he's a mess, his glasses smeared with something and his hair standing up every which way from the times he runs his fingers through it without thinking. His clothes are presentable enough for wearing under a lab coat, but they're not up to the standards of the people he's having dinner with.

Nothing he's ever owned has been up to Tony Stark's standards.

No one seems to notice him when he leaves the building, looking around for a car, but as soon as Tony steps out of a stately black limousine, cameras flash around them. However late Tony normally works, he stopped early enough to put on a tailored suit this evening, and someone somewhere irons his shirts so they hang just right. "You're going to be in the news again," Tony says, and waves him into the car like he's the chauffeur.

He's not, this time. Pepper smiles at Bruce again as he gets into the car. "Good evening," she says, and there is less fear in her eyes than before, though the car is infinitely more dangerous than visiting the lab.

Unless Tony has retrofitted the limousine with the same kind of safety measures that have to be in the lab, which is entirely possible. It wouldn't be right to leave that kind of thing up to chance. "Evening," Bruce says, and chooses to believe that any car belonging to Tony Stark is capable of containing its inhabitants long enough to subdue them, at least if Tony knows in advance who's going to be in there with him and his exquisitely vulnerable girlfriend. "Sorry I'm late."

"Are you?" Pepper glances at her phone as Tony climbs back in on Bruce's other side. "It's not morning, so I didn't notice."

"Thanks a lot," Tony says and gives Bruce a conspiratorial look. "Pepper used to be as punctual as a cesium clock, but she's losing her touch now that she's got more on her plate than looking after me. The day before the big guns called, she was five minutes late to lunch."

Bruce gives Pepper a sympathetic look. "It must be difficult, running an entire company."

"I was negotiating the charges for a building Iron Man damaged," she says dryly.

The words make Bruce's blood run cold. "If I'm your employee, that doesn't make you liable for any damage I cause, does it?" He hasn't had wages to garnish in over a year, and when he did, they could never cover a significant fraction of what he's done when he wasn't exactly doing it all himself. No one has come after him waving a bill for damages. They wouldn't get much if they tried.

But now he's not entirely his own man, things could be different.

"We're working on that with the lawyers," Pepper says. "Essentially, in any case where you are working as an SI employee, then what you do under the terms of that employment are our responsibility. However, when you are not working as an employee, we're not liable for your actions."

Bruce thinks that one through. "It's not about being on the clock."

"Hell no." Tony punches him in the shoulder. "Stark Industries is an equal opportunity employer, but we don't hire green people. Unless it's a proven congenital mutation, that kind of thing."

"So when things get out of hand, I'm not your employee. Legally." If Bruce were an optimist, he'd say "if," but he's a realist. It's always a matter of "when."

"Yeah, we'll disavow any relationship with the not-so-Jolly Green Giant," Tony says, like it's no big deal. Like he hires people with a proven track record of destruction. "And we'll do our best to make sure you're all right, afterward, but you're not going to need much help with that part, right?"

Bruce shakes his head. "It's not me I'm worried about. It's everybody else."

Pepper gives Tony a sidelong look. "You two need to spend more time together."

"That's what I keep telling him," Tony says, meeting Bruce's eyes and giving him the kind of charismatic grin that's made the Stark name famous around the world. Without that smile and the apparent complete lack of regard for his own safety, Tony wouldn't be who he is.

Bruce never had strong self-preservation instincts. Now they're pointless, he wishes he'd learned something about the point of being careful. Someone needs to explain to Tony that there's a reason people don't dive into danger wearing an electrified tin can.

And if he calls the Iron Man armor that out loud, there will be more tension than Bruce wants to deal with on an empty stomach.

Thinking the word "stomach" makes his rumble. "Sorry, psychosomatic borborygmus," Bruce says.

He could get used to the way Tony smiles when he uses the kind of vocabulary that makes anyone without at least a pre-med education look at him like he's making all of it up. What surprises him more is that Pepper has the same kind of expression, not quite understanding, but not admitting that she's confused.

She's tapping at her phone as she looks at him, so it's entirely possible that she's googling the terms she doesn't know as they speak.

"I get that when I haven't been paying attention to my relaxation regime," Tony says, leaning toward Bruce as if he's telling a secret Pepper doesn't know.

Any secret too secret for Ms. Potts involves some level of SHIELD clearance beyond Bruce's wide-ranging ken. "You have a relaxation regime? What, you break out the Lego when you need some downtime?"

"It's more hands-on than that," Tony says, and waggles his eyebrows once in an expression broad enough that even Captain America would recognize its intent.

Pepper smacks him in the arm, one hand still typing on her phone. "We can arrange any kind of employee compensation and destressing package you need," she says, looking up at Bruce. Her eyes are briefly luminous in the most human way as they refract the streetlights back at him.

"I'm fine," Bruce says, which is as much of a lie as Tony's promise that things will be fine if Bruce hangs out with him for any length of time.

Tony rolls his eyes at Bruce and Pepper presses her beautifully painted lips together tightly, neither of them believing him for a second. "Anything you want, basically," Tony says. "Not just need. We're not giving out science grants here, we're funding a possible source of income." He points at Bruce like Uncle Sam on a recruiting poster. "We want you to be happy, healthy, and productive."

"Two out of three ain't bad," Bruce says.

"A sixty-six percent survival rate for our personnel is not good enough long-term." Pepper gives him a look that makes him realize on a gut level that she's his boss now, however many levels of management she is above him. If she expects that kind of success out of experimental properties, she's further from reality than any of the people he's ever fought. "If you think of anything that would help, let me know."

Bruce looks out the window, watching the city go by. It's not safe from him, and he's not safe from it. Someone will know his face, sooner or later, and then people will hate him. It's a big city, but no city is big enough to hide his other self. Nothing Pepper can provide will make up for that. "I'm a simple guy," he says, and he's lying through his teeth except for how he's also telling the truth. "You know Maslow's hierarchy?"

Pepper nods; Tony sighs. "Where are we falling down?"

"The physiological stuff--as much as you can--well, I'm all right there." He's better than all right. If he had a bad incident in the bed Tony provided for him, he's sure it would survive the sudden mass change. He could practically survive a shift in the shower stall, which takes up half the spacious bathroom. "But you can't be responsible for my safety, and the safety of everyone I deal with."

"I can," Tony says, with a sincerity in his tone that doesn't dim when he touches the arc reactor in his chest. "I'm not going out on the town with you naked, here."

He may not be naked, but there's no way he has full armor under his clothes. Bruce gives him a sad smile that shouldn't feel as sickly as it does. "I can handle it if some waiter spits on my steak, but if, if. If things go bad."

Pepper pats a suitcase that's recessed into the seat behind her legs. "We're prepared."

"Well, I am," Tony says. He leans back, looking as nonchalant as it is possible to look while he's sitting on top of a mobile version of the Iron Man armor embedded in a car seat. "You'll just have to contain yourself, Pepper."

She gives Bruce a sweet smile with a conspiratorial tinge, though they don't know each other well enough to have secrets. "I'm sure I can get through the evening only insulting you."

Bruce sighs. "What I meant is," and they're both staring at Bruce instead of bantering with each other, ready for some hyper-professorial explanation that should mean he's wearing tweed and elbow patches. He looks like crap in tweed and he'd tear out elbow patches in a heartbeat under the wrong conditions. He needs everywhere patches. And to stay focused. "What I meant is, Maslow, right, it's hard to feel friendship, family, that level of needs being fulfilled if I'm worried about safety."

Tony pats Pepper's knee, then gets up in a moving car like he's some kind of immortal superhero instead of a guy with good balance and a bank account that can swing any number of self-propelled suits. He sits next to Bruce in his back-facing limo seat, moving as easily in the confined space of the car as a sailor on his own deck. "You let me worry about safety for a while, all right?"

Bruce stares at him, and at his hand, which has gone from being on Pepper's knee in a smooth, natural, possessive gesture to being on Bruce's and that means what, exactly? Something concrete, something awful, something that Tony Stark seems to think is perfectly fine to express in front of his girlfriend. "Right," Bruce says, and does not breathe deeply enough to feel anything till he's gone over the barest facts.

Tony is gorgeous and brilliant, the kind of guy who'd never have time for Doctor Bruce Banner if that was all he was. Maybe they'd talk at a conference or something if Bruce had a great presentation, if Tony stuck around after he delivered some flashy keynote speech and charmed the pants off of everyone there. But that's not who or what they are now.

Tony is a new teammate, inasmuch as the Avengers are a team. They haven't known each other long enough for anything except a little bonding about science and.

And they told Bruce, afterward, that the other guy did a form of highly specialized resuscitation on Tony, through the suit and through all the layers of the ways that would never work because he doesn't think that way.

What that means, at the root of everything, is that Bruce wants him. Friend, teammate, captivating gaze, and dirty jokes. Everything that makes the soft, squishy center inside of Iron Man, barely protected from the other guy by his armor, the brilliant bastard who pushes and pokes and prods till he gets what he wants, whether that's Bruce or something much worse--Tony.

"Tony," Pepper says, and Bruce takes a breath while he's looking at her, smells her perfume and the sweet scent of her skin. She smells better than any lab in the world. But she's his boss, and there's no way he's messing things up with his perfect new lab. Fighting aliens with Iron Man is enough--he tells himself it's enough, and tries to start believing it. It's not fair for Tony to flirt with him, but Tony's an asshole. It's easy to be annoyed as hell with him.

That's why he's so easy to be around: Bruce can't imagine spending five seconds in his presence without wanting to smack him and ask him questions at the same time. Tony is predictably chaotic.

"Sorry," Bruce says to Pepper, and brushes Tony's hand away. He needs the chaos and the pushing, he needs his teammate.

Everything else, he can get by without.

"What are you sorry for?" Pepper asks.

The car comes to a stop and the engine turns off before Bruce can put it into words. He's sorry that Tony thinks it's all right to flirt with him, which isn't his fault. He's sorry that Tony's doing it in front of her, and that he's thinking wistful, filthy thoughts about Tony that will never come to anything. It's the kind of flirting Tony seems to do in the same way that he breathes. "Being a fifth wheel."

Pepper grins at him, not the tidy smile she used earlier but a wilder expression, one that makes her seem like the kind of woman who deserves all the parts of Tony Stark, not just the admirable ones. "Oh, Doctor Banner, you have no idea."

Tony gives Bruce a once-over, not even bothering to pretend to be the slightest bit subtle. "So if we tell you you're welcome here, you're not going to apologize anymore?" He rests two fingers on Bruce's knee again. He's formed his hypothesis and he's testing again.

There's no control here. There's nothing but control here, or--Bruce will be the control, controlled as long as he can. It's Tony's job to be variable. "No, no more apologizing until I do something to merit it." Bruce clears his throat. "We're there, aren't we?"

Pepper sits forward on the seat. "Is this your first time in one of these traveling hotel rooms? However long we want to sit here, thinking about whether or not we're getting out of the car, Stark Industries can cover the parking tickets."

"Or I can sign the meter maid's breasts," Tony says easily. "That worked the last time."

Bruce shakes his head, bracing himself for the rush of incredulity that anyone could be so brash. "And if it's a guy--"

Tony pats his knee. "Tickets to the gun show normally work, but I guess you won't be that impressed by normal human-level muscle mass."

"I'd rather see your military-grade armaments."

Pepper bites her lower lip, not quite concealing a smile. "I admire your taste, Doctor--"

"Bruce." Bruce knows he earned his title, but it grates at his nerves. A doctor who hurts more than he heals is no true doctor, he's a liability. The word reminds him to hate himself.

If he's going to take Tony at his word and let himself feel safe with him and with Pepper, he can skip the constant hair shirt of his title. Pepper says, "Bruce," as easily as if she's been waiting for him to offer. "As I was saying, you have excellent taste in technology, and possibly more conservative taste than I do when it comes to romantic partners."

"Hey," Tony says before Bruce is sure what she's saying. "I didn't wreck the tower, you know that, and I brought you home a certified genius to work on the biological parts I'm not as good at as I could be. What else do I have to do to apologize?"

"I have forgiven you twelve percent worth," Pepper says, whatever that's supposed to mean.

Tony buries his face in his hands and scrubs at his face, looking up at Bruce with mischief in his eyes. "If Pepper's tired of me, that means I'm single. Does that change your mind about sleeping with me?"

If Bruce answers that question truthfully and lets himself pretend that Tony's not lying, he'll hurt Pepper. The fear of hurting someone is the emotion he knows best, followed swiftly by the rage at himself for daring to put himself in front of anyone else's needs. "Ms. Potts, are you tired of him?" he asks, not meeting Tony's eyes any longer than he can help.

Pepper presses one finger to her lips and considers it, or makes a show of considering it, for a long time, seconds ticking by in silence until Tony says, "Banner, you get me dumped and I'm canceling your contract with SI."

"You can't," Pepper says with a small smile. "Remember?"

"I'll denounce you in the press," Tony says, dead serious for all of a second until he breaks, grins, and thumps Bruce on the arm again. "Okay, I wouldn't do that, but way to throw yourself in the deep end."

Sometimes Bruce envies the arc reactor in Tony's chest because it's an indefatigable source of energy that took an amazing feat to create. Sometimes he envies it for smaller reasons; it marks him as not quite human, something built, the product of his own work. Bruce can pass unnoticed in any crowd until, of course, he can't. He should have something glowing in his chest, something shining in his eyes that reminds people constantly that when he lets himself get away without asking all the hardest questions, people die. "I'm in," he says, pitching his voice as low as he can. He knows he only sounds like himself a little more bass. He wants to shake the truth into Tony until he stops having to ask.

And he's only known Tony a few days. How Pepper can stand him after however many years she's put up with him--

"Good," Pepper says, and offers him her hand, not as if she wants him to shake it, but with a more delicate grasp. She might need a hand up, or she might be asking to hold his hand, if anyone asked that of Bruce. Ever. "Next hard question, Bruce: do you want to skip dinner and have sex with both of us, or just with Tony?"

He might be squeezing her hand tighter than a baseline human can stand, but she doesn't even gasp. It's the best kind of blindsiding Bruce can imagine, throwing him off balance and off every script he has heard of outside of porn. For one bright second, he's too startled to be angry, and then his heart starts again and the shock filters into incredulous shame. He doesn't deserve this kind of offer from anyone, least of all from people who know how dangerous he really is. He says, "You're out of your goddamn mind," which is the most gracious response he can come up with under the circumstances.

"That's a premature diagnosis, don't you think?" Pepper hasn't snatched her hand back. "There aren't any explicit rules in your contract about fraternization, not least because there was no way to phrase it that would allow for you working with Tony's other little friends in an extracurricular sense while still being an employee. You're free to have whatever relationships you want with anyone except for our direct competitors."

"I don't do relationships," Bruce says.

"Then you'd better start." Tony's leg is pressing against his, lean and warm through his pants. "How else are you going to get all those needs fulfilled?"

Pepper laughs once, as much an intake of breath as an expression of humor. "Since when do you know this hierarchy?"

"You're not the only manager around here," Tony says.

She loses it, going pink in the cheeks, laughing loudly and joyfully as if they're alone, as if Bruce isn't still holding onto her hand. He could let her go any time now.

He could jump out of the car and run down the street, losing his clothes and his sanity as he goes.

He won't.

"All right," Tony says, when Pepper's struggling for breath and diaphragm control. "So you're the only decent manager in the car. Happy now?"

"Thank you," she says. "Bruce, I know Tony's psychic landscape pretty well, and I know I'm as stable as anyone could be expected to be and still tolerate both him and the workload I've taken on. However."

He can feel her pulse in her thumb, a little elevated from what should be normal for a woman in her condition at her age. He could crush her hand without trying, without thinking. That would show her how foolish she is to trust him enough to touch him like this, and it would scare off anyone else who's dumb enough to give it a try. Bruce wouldn't hurt her for the world. "However?" he asks.

"It's not a marriage proposal," Tony says. "Not a big deal, like joining a team of people who are supposed to save the world whenever Colonel One-Eye snaps his fingers. It's a one-off if you want it to be. Call it a housewarming party."

Bruce chokes on a laugh. "Ms. Potts."

Pepper squeezes his fingers tightly. It doesn't hurt, it couldn't, but it's almost as though she knows how frightening Bruce could be and wants to show him that she's got her own strength. She knows, she has to know; Tony has to have told her everything she needs to know to be safe. "Pepper," she says. "I thought we'd established that."
"I thought a lot of things, but I was wrong." Bruce stares at her for a moment. "A one-off?"

Tony takes a quick breath. "Sure," he says lightly.

"I'd better eat dinner, whatever else happens." Bruce doesn't look toward the windows. He has no idea where they're parked and right now he doesn't care whether it's a McDonald's or one of the restaurants that makes its name half by creating delicious food and half by making it a challenge to get a table.

"Is that a yes or a no?" Tony asks.

Bruce shrugs, though he's not noncommittal about this. He's always been afraid of commitment, now more than--before--but if this is what they want for one night, he's not going to spend much time arguing. Only enough time to be sure they know what they're asking and what they want. The only relevant questions are the ones that get them closer to crucial data. "Pepper, when was the last time Tony talked you into something you thought was a bad idea?"

She raises her eyebrows and considers her answer for a long enough time that Bruce starts to doubt his read of their relationship. "Tony's more of a beg-forgiveness than ask-permission sort of guy. He doesn't spend the time doing the groundwork to get me on his side before he jumps if he thinks he can prove he had a good idea after the fact."

That fits all of Bruce's observations of them thus far, limited though they are. "So you're on board with this?"

"You're intelligent, attractive, and trustworthy." Pepper licks her bottom lip, possibly thinking, possibly flirting on some level almost deep enough to be unconscious. It doesn't counter the way Bruce's stomach drops when she calls him "trustworthy," but then this is a woman who trusts Tony Stark. Her criteria are idiosyncratic. "If you're interested too, that puts you ahead of most of the people we've propositioned."

The "We" in that sentence stops Bruce's internal free fall more than Tony's, "Would you believe people have turned us down? Seriously, the world has no taste." This is normal for them, then, or what passes for normal in a life so far from every average that the concept of standard deviations becomes a joke. Normal for them. Whatever he says, whatever they do, it won't throw her life out of whack any farther than it already is.

And if they've done it before, with whomever they've propositioned, they'll do it again.

There is no sane universe in which the thought of Tony and Pepper with someone else should make him jealous. He hasn't kissed either of them yet and has about as much claim on them as he does on the oxygen molecules in his lungs. It's a comfortable sort of jealousy and envy, though, the green-eyed monster that will keep the green-skinned monster at bay.

The last thing he wants to do is hurt them. If he can have them, he wants to keep them, and the disappointed parts of him that know, going in, that he won't be allowed to keep them no matter what happens--they'll sulk and fume.

Sulking is fine. Bruce spends most of his time sulking, somewhere in his mind.

It's a controlled burn, forestry management that keeps the towering inferno of a catastrophic fire at bay.

"All right," Bruce says, though in his experience nothing is ever all one way or another unless it's all fucked up. "Dinner, first."

Tony has his phone out before he finishes the sentence and he hits the intercom button to talk to the driver. "Take us home." It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to drive around town, stop for the length of a discussion, and drive right back, but Bruce doesn't want to face a restaurant, let alone one where he's sitting with Tony Stark and Pepper Potts in full view of the public while thinking about them naked. As soon as Tony's off the intercom, he asks, "What do you want for dinner?"

Bruce spreads his hands. "You know what's good and available better than I do."

"Oh, come on," Tony says.

Pepper holds up her hand and he stops complaining. "We'll keep it simple this time." She types a brief message into her phone, barely long enough to give an ETA. "Dinner will be waiting."

"Sounds good," Bruce says.

Tony's half on top of him a second later, one knee between Bruce's thighs. Whatever the local seatbelt laws are, he's violating them. There's no way a grown man is a useful restraining device. "We can start before dinner," he says.

If Tony knew how to back off, he wouldn't be Tony, and Bruce wouldn't be reaching up to cradle the back of his head with conscious gentleness, kissing him and trying not to hold on while he's holding on, not letting their teeth clash as the car goes over a bump. Just tongues and lips, for now, the kind of simple human touch that he hasn't had with someone who knows the salient things about him in too long.

Tony groans into Bruce's mouth and tugs at his hair, about as shy as anyone can expect Iron Man to be. "God, yeah," he says.

Pepper clears her throat primly after a few moments. "If you keep going like that, we'll be home before you let me touch him."

"We've got time," Tony says. He winks at Bruce, putting them into some kind of conspiracy against Pepper with the barest muscle twitch. "Besides, this way you have something better to look at than the scenery."

Bruce looks past Tony's shoulder and regrets it sharply. They're on the fringes of the area of the city that was most heavily hit. His fingerprints, or his fistprints, are all over the buildings to his right, interspersed with worse ravages from the aliens.

"Hey," Pepper says. "Tony, you're going to have to teach him a lesson about keeping his mind on the job.

That refocuses Bruce's attention on her, at least partially. He can't block out the images of the damaged buildings and he doesn't want to. If he forgets them, it'll be too easy to do it again. "I don't like that kind of thing," he says, while the half-crushed skyscrapers fight for space in his mind's eye with Pepper in a black patent leather corset and matching boots. He doesn't particularly need anyone else to punish him for what he's done, though if she wanted to dress up, it would be pretty in an aesthetic sense.

"Nobody's going to spank you unless you ask," Pepper says. She moves onto the seat next to Bruce, squishing into the space Tony left behind and nuzzling his ear, her lips soft, her teeth sharp, and her breath warm. "Tony's good at keeping his mind in his pants when he's trying to get laid. You could use a little of that, don't you think?"

"Mm," Bruce says. They're doing this once, probably just once. He doesn't need to learn life lessons along the way, especially not ones that could be dangerous.

The problem isn't the part when he's happy, it's the part when he stops being happy. It's like being on strong painkillers and having them wear off all at once, dropping him off a cliff. Being at the bottom of the cliff is no picnic, but it's consistent.

"Okay, okay," Tony says, and backs off far enough that Pepper can kiss Bruce, but not so far that Tony's not touching him too. For the moment, he's part of Tony's orbit, drawn into his personal gravity. If it only lasts a night, so be it.

Pepper tastes like lipstick, like Pepper, and not like pepper at all. She scratches at his scalp with her nails, not hard enough to hurt but enough of a tingle to ground him in the moment. The feeling of her pressing against his chest, so close, so fragile, makes him hyperaware of his own strength, human though it is at the moment. "All right?" he asks her when she breaks the kiss, begging with his eyes for the simplest lie.

"Mm, yes." She runs her thumb along his skin, tracing the edge of his lower lip. "You're a little smudged."

"Do you have a lot of staff?" Bruce asks. He has a vague idea of Tony's home like the castle in Beauty and the Beast, crammed with dancing candlesticks and obsequious ottomans dancing attendance on everyone who comes to call, but the idea of a living cleaning staff is harder. The clearance checks alone would be prohibitive.

"Just JARVIS, most of the time," Tony says. There's space for three on the bench seat if they're pressing in against each other. Really, there's space for at least five, but Bruce doesn't have any of it with Pepper against one side and Tony holding him on the other. And Tony's hand is sitting in his lap as if it's some kind of afterthought, not moving, just claiming space on his upper thigh. "You'll like JARVIS."

Bruce can't imagine what kind of person would tolerate being Tony's only household staff. Whatever personality traits it requires, the willingness to engage in impromptu orgies is probably among them. "I don't have sex with people whose full names I've never heard," he says. It's a lie, but it's the kind of lie that he wishes were always true, so it's not too bad.

Tony laughs like a little boy with a great secret. "He's an AI."

No physical description could have galvanized Bruce the way that does. "Oh, god," he says, and stares at Tony. "Can I see his code?"

"If you ask him nicely, he might show you some of it." Tony nips at his ear and grinds the heel of his hand down against Bruce, making him lift his hips up. If the limo crashes, the forensics will be fascinating.

The possibility that he's been captured by megalomaniacs bent on embarrassing him into furious destruction occurs to him as Pepper kisses him again. He's lost track of how far they've come on the route back, how long they've been in the car, everything farther away than the surface of his skin brushing against theirs and the weight of their bodies. The gravity of them, if he's being metaphorical. Physically, he could escape any second. Practically, it would be nearly impossible, not least because they feel amazing.

"Be nice," Pepper says.

Tony huffs in his ear. "I am."

"Are not." She clucks her tongue. "Embarrassing your newest employee with a charge of public lewdness is not a good way to build morale."

"My morale's higher than it's been in a while," Bruce offers, in case that changes her mind.

"Good." Pepper kisses him again, a quick peck, and catches Tony's wrist. "Keep your hands to yourself till we're home."

"You're five degrees C above normal," Tony says, almost covering the pathetic noise Bruce makes as the chilled ambient air hits his overheated crotch. "Is that five on average, or systemic? The files didn't specify."

Bruce takes longer than he'd like to catch up with Tony when the topic is one as intimate as his own homeostasis. "Average," he says. "Some cell types are more affected than others and the body adjusts to compensate."

"Hm." Tony sounds satisfied with that answer, vague as it is. "I didn't think you felt that warm. Not--" he pats the outside of Bruce's thigh. "Not where it counts."

There's no way Tony hasn't seen the full lab reports, all of the effects of poking, prodding, and probing that SHIELD has put Bruce through. Still, rattling off the numbers is as soothing as any meditation practice Bruce knows, like naming bones.

Sometimes he gets through all 206 more than once before he can sleep.

This time, the distinctions between one number and the next are subtler and more personal. To anyone else they would be boring, but they are a chant of reclamation. If he can quantify every part of his traitorous body, then right now it is his. No one has been able to measure anything about the other guy beyond his mass and size. He wouldn't hold still the way Bruce did for a resting heartbeat and a rectal temperature that had the medics swearing.

"How much of the difference between your, ah, distal temperature and core temperature is significant?" Pepper asks.

Bruce gives her a thankful smile. She probably doesn't care, since she's not involved in any projects that require her to know this stuff, but she's still listening. "None of it, as far as I can tell. There's a temperature spike when my metabolism kicks up."

If he was smart enough, clever enough, careful enough, he could figure out the causal relationship there and short circuit the transformation every time, he's sure of it. Even if it meant wearing a cooling apparatus all the time, it would be worthwhile.

Tony tilts his head to one side. "They didn't note that."

"They didn't get the data directly and they weren't going to take my word for it." Bruce shakes his head. "You know feds. They only believe what they see."

Tony kicks the box that apparently contains an entire Iron Man suit with his toe. "And what they steal from you, if they get that pushy."

Bruce takes a deep breath that doesn't steady him at all. The only good part about reliving the moments in the lab--the days of the absolute grinding terror of whether he'd ever be allowed out again, or whether he'd spend the rest of his life on Thorazine and vitamin D supplements--is that it killed his erection and replaced it with the familiar feeling of loathing the government and everything it stands for. "Yeah, that," he says, and doesn't specify. If Tony read all the files, he knows and doesn't need to hear it.

Pepper sighs softly. "Well, that was efficient," she says. "Thanks."

"Anytime," Tony says, as if he knows exactly what she's talking about.

Bruce is about to ask what's on her mind when the car pulls into an underground garage he doesn't remember seeing yet. "Is this thing still structurally sound?" he asks. He's not claustrophobic, but the concept of a collapsing section of road and buildings falling in on his head is enough to make him wonder how long he'll be himself.

"Ninety-five point seven percent chance we'll be fine," Tony says. "And rising. I've got a couple of robots down here shoring everything up."

It's not perfect, but it's good enough that Bruce relaxes. "Warn me next time," he says, trying to keep his voice light enough that it sounds like he's not frightened.

"Trust me," Tony says.

Bruce laughs at him. "Yeah, sure," he says, and the car stops.

"At least no one's going to take our picture down here," Pepper says. "Are they?"

"No, Ms. Potts," says a voice outside the car, mid-Atlantic and male.

"Great," Tony says. "Say hi, Bruce."

"Hello," Bruce says, and tries, "JARVIS?"

"Welcome, Dr. Banner," JARVIS says.

Bruce decides that if he's going to have Tony and Pepper going easy on him, he can use the reminder of who he really is from JARVIS the AI. "Thanks," he says. "Is it safe to get out of the car?"

"The structural repairs are continuing," JARVIS says. "At this point, the risk of collapse in the time it will take you to reach the next secure area is one point four percent."

Tony gets out first with his suitcase and gives Pepper a hand up she doesn't need, even with her towering heels. Then he gives Bruce a hand he needs even less and holds onto him. If JARVIS was a real butler, he'd be averting his eyes or taking pictures to sell to the press. "Where are we headed?" Bruce asks.

"The two pizzas you ordered should arrive in the next three minutes based on the delivery person's normal lag time," JARVIS says.

"I'll get those." Tony swings their joined hands like a little kid walking in the park. He doesn't stop till they're at the elevator to ground level. "And then bed, unless you have something against eating in bed."

Bruce is getting better at confined spaces. He's not good at them, but at least with Tony and Pepper there, he's distracted from the elevator doors closing. Mostly. "Whatever you want."

"All that cornmeal," Pepper says.

"Oh--hey." Tony gives Bruce a sidelong look. "How's your skin sensitivity? You're not going to go all Princess and the Pea on us, here, are you?"

Bruce laughs helplessly until the elevator doors open, when he's too busy looking at the cathedral ceilings and trying to guess how much the whole place costs to heat to laugh anymore. "I'll be fine unless you've got a bed of poison ivy and barbed wire." He grins at Pepper. "You wouldn't let him do that, would you?"

"Only metaphorically." She strides across the floor, avoiding a patch of fallen ceiling tile, and opens a wooden door. "Where's the hot water still hooked up?" she asks the air.

"The master bathroom in this story is fully functional, and there is neither poison ivy nor barbed wire in the bed, Dr. Banner," JARVIS says.

"There's enough shrapnel in Tony's chest to scare anyone away," Bruce says. "Barbed wire only seems natural after that."

Tony's not the only person who can find confidential medical files when he needs to.

Tony kisses him instead of chewing him out for reading things he has no right to. There's nothing sharp about it other than the prickling of his mustache, and Bruce can handle that.

"Pizza," Pepper says after long enough that Bruce's head is starting to spin and it's a good thing someone else knows where the bedroom is.

"Oh," Tony says, and lets him go with a last lingering kiss as if they're going to be apart for more than five minutes, max. They could be, but only if the pizza delivery person is a supervillain in disguise.

Pepper gestures Bruce toward the bedroom door, the least proper hostess he's ever seen being so polite. Inside, it's nothing special, less impressive than he would've expected from somewhere Tony Stark lives, but the bed is wider than any king size Bruce has ever seen and the print over the bed looks like a Dalí, warped and strange with its own internal illogic, showcasing the full rump of a twisted figure. "Is this your room?" Bruce asks Pepper.

"Till the penthouse is back together, anyway." She sits down on the bed and kicks off her shoes, flexing her toes at him in their stockings. "I should take a shower if you don't mind."

"Don't let me keep you." Bruce takes out the phone that's part of the employee compensation package, the latest Stark design with full internet access and all the bells and whistles he'd never spend money on in such a fragile form factor. He knows how to keep his cool with recalcitrant technology, but when he loses his shirt, he tends to lose everything in his pockets at the same time. The cutting-edge phones can't be insured against acts of the other guy.

Pepper kisses him before she goes into the bathroom and promises, "We have enough hot water to go around if you need it."

Bruce takes his shoes off and props himself against the headboard while he reads the latest news about the reconstruction efforts and all the different forces for and against funding it. There's an email from Fury asking him to register his new legal address formally that includes his address. Things haven't begun to settle down by the time Tony comes in with the pizza and a thin stack of paper plates balanced on top, his suit-suitcase in his other hand. "White noise generator?" Tony asks, glancing toward the bathroom.

"No, but it might be a good idea." Bruce gets up to help him with the pizzas and to help himself to several slices. "Broccoli, pepperoni, and onion?"

"There are spare toothbrushes in the bathroom." Tony takes Bruce's phone instead of serving himself pizza. It's his, but only just barely. He hasn't downloaded anything questionable on it and wouldn't, not on a work phone. Still, Tony's concept of "someone else's things" seems to be as permeable as his concept of "personal space." "When do you want white noise?"

"When I need to focus." Bruce's stomach rumbles again. "Do you mind if--"

"Go ahead," Tony says absently, bending over the phone while Bruce eats. Whatever modifications he uses to make it start being a white noise generator, the crackle of static starts well before Pepper is done in the shower, and Tony tosses the phone to Bruce. "Genuine grade-A Big Bang radiation, there."

"Not white noise, then." The fuzz of the background radiation of the universe is as close to random as Bruce needs it to be.

Tony shrugs and picks up a slice of pizza. "This way, if you listen long enough, you might get to the guy saying, 'Fiat lux,' right?" He shoves half the pizza in his mouth before Bruce can answer him.

It's a vexed question at the best of times, and since the Asgardians first came to earth, it hasn't gotten any clearer. "I hope not."

"It'd be good for a Nobel," Tony says through his pizza.

Bruce shakes his head and hears the shower go off in the bathroom. He jerks his chin toward the door. "Should I--"

"No." Tony's down to the crust of his pizza already. "I'm somewhere between Woody Allen and Napoleon on that one."

Neither allusion suits him at all. Bruce blinks, searching for the right reference. "You date your stepdaughter?"

"No, man, no. Sex is dirty if you're doing it right."

"And Napoleon?" Bruce asks, at a loss.

"He liked his women filthy," Pepper says as she opens the bathroom door, a towel around her chest and another wrapped turban-style around her hair. "He'd write to Josephine with things like, 'I'll be home in two weeks. Don't bathe.'"

Bruce stares at Tony, who shrugs. "Unscented soap is almost as good. Have some dinner, Pep."

While she eats a piece of pizza, Tony takes the cornmeal-dusted plate out of Bruce's hands and sets it aside. "You're done, right?"

Even if he wasn't, he wouldn't argue with the obvious offer of sex. "Sure," he says easily, and kisses Tony. Pepper makes an appreciative noise when Tony grabs his ass.

"Don't ogle with your mouth full," Tony tells her, half-muffled against Bruce's mouth.

"Just keep going," Pepper says, not smothered at all. She has better manners than both of them put together, or she's better at pretending she does.

After Tony's Napoleon comment, Bruce is braced for the worst, week-old underwear or socks that haven't seen a washing machine in a year. Tony smells fine and looks better, fully dressed or stripped down to his skivvies. "God, are these SHIELD issue?" he asks, plucking at Bruce's briefs.

They're a long way from the worst things Bruce has ever ended up wearing, and he's never planning on telling anyone about the effects of a road trip in borrowed, grungy jeans with no underwear. The other guy healed all of that, which proves he's good for something, but it doesn't bear thinking about. "You try moving continents in the middle of a global disaster and the destruction of half a city, and see how many shorts you bring with you."

"Pepper," Tony says, a warning note in his voice.

"I'll get a personal shopper for you tomorrow," Pepper says, and pats Bruce's shoulder as if he needs reassurance.

"Tonight," Tony says.

"If I'm still awake, yes, tonight." Pepper sets her plate aside and moves so she can kiss Tony's forehead. She looks Bruce over and shakes her head sadly. "I know SHIELD isn't a signatory of the Geneva Convention, but I thought they had limits."

"Not many." Bruce takes her hand and kisses the back, as she wanted him to do before.

Tony sighs. "This once--just this once--I'll touch them. Lift up a second."

It's not the most erotic come-on Bruce has ever heard, but he's not going to argue, especially not when Pepper kisses him in the middle of it. "Better than nothing," he says.

"No." Tony laughs once, breathily. "No, nothing looks much better on you."

Bruce chokes back the urge to laugh with him. They're going to such an effort to make him comfortable, but he can't relax as much as they want him to. He doesn't dare. "Can I help you with those towels?" he asks Pepper, trying to be more polite than Tony is.

He can't resent Tony's banter; it's too well-meant. He can envy the hell out of him, though, and that's easier than anything else when Pepper undoes her towels and hands them to him. "Thanks," she says, without a flicker of shame that she's sitting on the bed, naked from head to foot.

It's a moment that deserves to be an oil painting. Bruce tears his eyes away, telling himself he doesn't deserve to see her like that--which is true, whatever she says and whatever Tony says--and takes her towels into the bathroom.

She gets Tony the rest of the way naked in the few seconds it takes him to make sure the towels are spread out enough to dry efficiently. His bright red underwear are at the bottom of the bed, looking comfortable and ridiculously expensive. "Microfiber?" Bruce asks.

"Do you know how well that suit breathes?" Tony asks. "If I don't wear wicking fabrics, I'll drown in my own perspiration."

"How stretchy are they?" Bruce picks them up and tests the give.

Tony chokes on a laugh. "Get over here."

"If I'm not doing my own shopping, it's an important question," Bruce says, savoring the sting of annoyance.

"How much stretch do you need?" Pepper asks.

Bruce hesitates. He's woken up in plenty of other-guy-sized holes in the ground, but he hasn't managed to do decent volumetric calculations based on any of them. "A lot," he says, and gestures vaguely with his hands. He doesn't have precise proprioceptive memories of his other self, and most of the time he's glad about that.

"You're a grower, not a shower, huh?" Tony asks, looking him over with a leer that matches his tone.

"I hate waking up naked when I don't know how I got there," he says to Pepper, pretending to ignore Tony's comment. It's one more reason to roll his eyes, one more prick of irritation. Soon enough he won't be able to tolerate Tony.

That will make it easier to leave.

"I'll see what I can find," she says solemnly, and pats the bed next to herself.

"There must be some kind of polymer that would solve that problem," Tony says, going straight from sophomoric to abstract. If he wasn't running his hand over Bruce's back as he said it, Bruce would wonder whether he knew there were other people in the room. "Something with superior elasticity."

"You don't have to do this now," Bruce says.

"Just let him." Pepper buries her face in his neck for a long moment, nuzzling him.

Tony's still talking. Pepper kisses Bruce as if she's used to this kind of behavior. Most people would find it a buzzkill to have someone saying, "JARVIS, record--project BB Gamma 2--improved textile options with sufficient smoothness of nap and enough stretch in the weave--knit--whatever--to accommodate a volume increase of three hundred percent." He nips Bruce's ear. "That should be enough, right?"

Between Pepper pressed against him, the soft give of her breasts and the drowning heat of her mouth, and the way Tony's petting him, Bruce has a hell of a time coming up with a number. "Probably. Yeah." He realizes he's on the recording sounding rough-voiced and probably gasping a few times. Pepper's not shy with her hands and it has been too long. "Delete this part. Please."

"It's encrypted and voice-locked to me anyway," Tony says, and tugs his hair. "Cotton-like? Silk-like? How slippery do you want your knickers?"

"Damn it." Bruce grabs Tony's wrist and holds him till Tony meets his eyes, then a second longer till Tony sees him. There's no fear in Tony's grin, so there can't be any green in Bruce's face. "Delete anything I've said in this recording, or I'm leaving now."

"You got it," Tony says.

"Cotton." There's no way any cotton plant in the world could produce something that would stretch that far, but if Tony puts his mind to it, he'll probably come up with something. It has to be better to charge across the beleaguered countryside in boxers than in shiny Speedos.

Tony nods once. "I'll work on it. Later."

"Thanks," Bruce says, as he should have said to start with. Tony's offering a huge favor, a project that can't apply to many people in the world, not really, and Bruce doesn't have the manners to thank him. Good thing they were never going to have a romantic relationship. Bruce lets him go, or tries to.

Tony puts his free hand over Bruce's, holding his fingers in place. "We could make some of those volume measurements here if you wanted."

Bruce looks from Tony, who has the same daring grin he used to make rude remarks, to Pepper, who's vulnerable and perfect and not even breathing hard. "Is that what you really want from me?" he asks.

It's almost entirely his voice for the entire sentence. He'd be proud of himself if that was anything to be proud of, but instead it shows that he's failing all three of them.

"Maybe not this time." Tony kisses him before he can question "this time," and then they're both touching him everywhere, hands and arms and chests and legs stroking against his skin so it feels like he's surrounded.

They're tender and careful and brisk by turns, and Bruce starts to lose track of how many times he's kissed each of them. It would be a problem if the observation was good for anything but balance. He doesn't need that kind of balance, not really. Not if they've done this before.

Leave it to the experts--not that he's ever been any good at doing that.

"God," he says, gasping for breath as Tony strokes him, long, lingering rubs that make his toes curl, and Pepper kisses him. He breaks the kiss long enough, just long enough, to ask, "What do you want?"

"Mm," Tony says, and squeezes him. "Some of this. You'd feel so good in me."

The possibility--it's a flap of a butterfly's wings that spirals into a hurricane in his head.

Bruce hasn't let himself go with anyone, inside anyone, since. He won't, not until he trusts himself, and he doesn't expect to trust himself anytime soon. No matter how many times Tony and Pepper claim he's safe, they're all safe, they don't know what happens in his head and everywhere else when things go sour. He can't, won't risk someone else that way. "No, not that," Bruce says, clinging to the vestiges of calm and sanity. "I don't--"

"Okay, okay." Tony pats his cheek and Bruce realizes he's got his eyes squeezed shut. When he looks up at Tony, he's expecting another "I just made a dirty joke" grin, but Tony looks worried about him. "We're not doing anything you don't want, big guy."

"I know." Bruce takes a conscious breath, then another. "Not that. Sorry."

"If it's not your kink, no problem." Tony sits up, moving his hands to Bruce's hips. "What works for you?"

Bruce has had all the time in the world to put words to it. "Nothing that involves penetration. I mean. You can, can fuck me if you want, but I'm not. I won't--sorry."

"It's fine," Pepper says, kissing him between his eyebrows. He makes his muscles relax there for her.

Tony looks sulkier than she does. "The old Princeton rub work for you?"

"Not if it doesn't work for you." Bruce closes his eyes again. "Look, if you expected this to be simple, you propositioned the wrong guy, okay?"

"We knew exactly what we were doing," Pepper says. She kisses him--light, soft, and then she deepens it, her hands on his shoulders, easing him into something more like relaxation before he can hide from her. "Tony gets pushy, that's all."

"No shit," Bruce says, some of the tension leaving, though his trapezius is still tighter than he'd like. "I'll ask you again. What can I do for you, now you know what I can't?"

Tony has managed to get the pout under control. "There's a dildo in the bottom drawer," he says. "The harness should fit well enough."

Pepper kneels up and reaches for it. "Sounds like a plan."

Bruce pushes himself up on his elbows so he doesn't feel like he's laid out in front of two functioning people. He's had enough of that vantage point of the world to last him a long time. "I'll get out of your way if you want," he offers.

They both look at him blankly for a moment, Tony with his head on one side and Pepper with the toy in her hand, leather straps dangling. "Not what I meant," Tony says. "I'm thinking we'll use a little technology--something that doesn't expand no matter how much fun you're having--and go from there."

Despite a nerdy youth and a long period of abstinence after a certain point, Bruce hadn't thought he had any virginities left to lose, but this is a new one on him. Affixing the harness is awkward and makes him feel overendowed in new and strange ways, the silicone cock bobbing at a different angle than his own from an unnatural angle high on his pelvis. Putting a condom on the dildo and leaving his skin bare seems like missing the point in a spectacular fashion, enough that when he's finished he laughs at himself. "This is going to be a mess, serum side effects or no serum side effects." He doesn't miss having colds and he knows Tony knows his medical records, but it's still counterintuitive.

"What'd I tell you?" Tony says. "Get your Woody Allen on."

Pepper groans. "No. Don't. Please."

Bruce shakes his head. "I wouldn't dare try. What do you want?"

"A floor show for right now." Pepper pats his hip. "This is going to be complicated enough without worrying about me until you get started."

"Still." Bruce knows how horrible it is to be left out, and he hates the thought of making Pepper feel excluded from her own bed, however temporarily this will be her bed.

"It'll work out," Pepper says, and kisses him again with enough fervor that Bruce is inclined to believe her, or at least to believe that she wants him to believe her.

Tony makes an appreciative noise. "I knew you'd look good together."

Bruce doesn't want to know exactly how long Tony's been planning this evening or what plans went by the wayside when he lay down his veto. "How do you want to do this?" he asks.

"Knees, to start with." Tony assumes the position with a grace that makes Bruce wonder with a stir of lust how often he ends up kneeling in bed, for whom--Pepper, naturally, but who else gets a chance at him when he's like this, all skin and no shielding?

Envy is hideous, but then, so is Bruce, and with two erections he's ludicrous, too. Tony's not laughing, but there's a flush in Pepper's cheeks that doesn't look like arousal. "Where do you keep your skin-safe lubricant?" he asks, thinking of Tony tweaking his phone in a few moments' work and deciding that overspecifying is better than risking any kind of incident.

"Here." Pepper picks up a tube that's lying next to her leg. It's tepid, tolerable without being body temperature.

Bruce says, "Thanks," automatically and puts some on his fingers.

He doesn't quite know what to expect, but the way Tony arches his back at the first touch is captivating. "Fuck," Tony says. He looks back at Bruce, his mouth twisting. "Not a request. Well, it is, but, you know."

"Got it." It's easy as finding a rhythm in the middle of a fight, something that comes from the base of the spine and bypasses everything more advanced than the medulla oblongata. Tony needs, Tony gets, rocking and spreading and open in what seems like no time at all.

Pepper tousles Tony's already mussed hair. "Is this what you wanted?"

"Close," he says, and wriggles.

Bruce catches himself losing focus, losing thoughts, and slams awake with a tinge of panic. Not too much panic, not too much fear, not quite, but enough that he's glad he set a boundary. However goofy he looks, it's worth it, and it's not going to be the upper limit of how foolish he can be, not when the other guy will walk off a cliff without thinking. Without being able to think. "Ready?" he asks Tony, afraid for one dizzy moment that if he uses the word "dilated," he'll mispronounce it like his high school biology teacher who was brilliant but who'd learned most of her vocabulary from seeing the words, not hearing them. It's not the word he wants in this scenario in any case, not quite, but he can't find the terms.

Go for it," Tony says.

There's a level of detachment at first, a sense of using a tool to do a job that doesn't need a tool at all, only the basic human equipment that's throbbing with every heartbeat. But that goes away as soon as Tony groans and shoves himself back onto the toy because the detachment goes with it as soon as Bruce's hands are out of the way. There's no detachment, not with his erection nudging Tony's perineum, not with the way Tony pushes his thighs together so there's real friction there. And the words are back, all the blessed words he could want, with the curve of Tony's iliac crest under his fingers. He says, "Fuck."

Tony laughs. "Hell yeah. C'mere, Pep."

"Already?"

"I'm fine. You okay, Bruce?"

"Yes" comes out more like a plea than an agreement, but it's agreement anyway.

Pepper grins at him, and at the way he moans when Tony does something ungodly and wonderful with his hips. "Do me one favor, Bruce."

He won't say "Anything" because he doesn't mean it. "Name it."

"Promise me you won't let Tony go to sleep covered in that stuff."

Bruce doesn't have the strength to drag Tony anywhere he doesn't want to go, but it's water soluble. He checked. He always checks. "No. All that coagulation," and that, at least, he knows how to pronounce. "It'd be uncomfortable in the morning."

"Worth it," Tony says.

"How?"

"You ever--nn--you ever just need someone to hold the hell on?" Tony asks, his voice hoarse.

Bruce doesn't want to think about the people he wished would hold him who wanted him gone, not like this, not here. He pushes the thought aside as firmly as he can. "Sometimes," he admits.

"Well," Tony says, and apparently he thinks that explains everything. "Pep--"

"God, you're demanding," she says, but the tone of her voice suggests that this is a term of endearment as precious as anything. "Lay off a second, Bruce."

"Don't," Tony says. "Please--"

"Hang on." Pepper pats his neck and moves so she's sitting leaning against the headboard with Tony's head between her thighs. It's not the most dignified pose in the world, but it shows off the long, lean lines of her body. Bruce wants to touch her, to take her in all the ways he's promised himself he can't. He wants to taste her, to bury his face in her clean, trimmed curls as Tony is. "Can you balance?" she asks.

"I'm fine," Tony says between clenched teeth. "Pretty please may I?"

Pepper laughs. "Since you ask so sweetly."

"Ah--" Tony sounds like a man at a banquet with wonderful food around him and perfect company. It's close to that, as far as Bruce is concerned.

The level of discourse has dropped off sharply, but part of that's Bruce's fault. He's no smarter than the other guy when all his blood's flowing south and he's actually touching another human being for the first time in so long it seems like it should have exclamation points. It's news, it's beautiful, it's the most wonderful thing that's happened to his body in much, much too long.

It's not perfect, this half-parody of anal sex that does exactly what Tony wants and exactly what Bruce said he wanted, but it's better than a perfect fantasy would be. The next time he has to imagine something, the next time reality betrays him, he'll have this image, the muscles cording in Tony's shoulders and Pepper tilting her head back, gasping for air. "Again," she says, "god, there, yes--"

"Beautiful," Bruce says, his breath knocked out of him and his thoughts draining out, too.

If he could touch her.

If he was buried in Tony, instead of resorting to a toy.

It could be just right, but he has to undermine himself, to ask for things that keep everyone at arm's length. Or something's length. His own worst enemy, always.

Bruce grinds against Tony. "I--oh, fuck--"

"Oh," Pepper says, as if she's surprised, her eyes shut tight and her mouth open, wide and lovely.

No one sane hopes for simultaneous orgasms even with an established partner, let alone in the middle of a threesome, but Bruce feels cheated. He's too late, Tony's too late. He strokes Tony's erection as if it's all both of them need and feels him writhe, the press and clench of his thighs. Tony hums, then shakes, jerking in Bruce's hand as he comes.

"It's all right," Pepper says as Tony finds his muscle control and arches back against him, grinding in a more insistent rhythm.

It never, ever is, but it's right enough in this moment that he can let go enough to come, teeth gritted in silence and a last burst of terror. If anything happens, if it goes wrong, if SHIELD has left his defenses weaker than they were--but when he opens his eyes, things haven't changed. Tony is still there, his back slick with sweat, and Pepper is watching Bruce's face avidly, without any apparent apprehension. "I'm okay," Bruce says, and only realizes how discouraging that sounds as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

"Good," Tony says. He pats Bruce's hip. "Think you could get off me, big guy? My legs are starting to cramp."

"Sorry." It takes a moment for him to find his feet and a moment longer to be able to balance well enough to walk, but he promised Pepper he'd take care of Tony, and he will. Tony's curled up with his head in Pepper's lap in a much more sustainable way than it was before. "Are there washcloths in the bathroom?" Bruce asks.

"Under the sink, Doctor Banner," a voice says. JARVIS's voice, but it takes long enough for Bruce to remember that there's an AI listening that the thought of someone watching drives away the post-coital glow.

Bruce takes a steadying breath. His hands are still his hands. Everything is not all right, but he is as right as he can be in that moment. "Thanks."

Cleaning up is easier after the jolt of adrenaline JARVIS gave him, and with a few more helpful pointers, including, "The washcloth belongs in the sink," when the adrenaline is easing off.

Pepper says, "Lights to ten percent until we're asleep, please." Tony and Pepper settle into the bed in what looks like their normal pattern, Pepper on the left, Tony taking up two-thirds of the bed on the right, never mind that it's a huge expanse of mattress.

Bruce ducks into the bathroom again and asks JARVIS, "Is there a guest room?"

"Unfortunately, all the guest rooms suffered considerable damage."

Bruce doesn't want to face the ordeal of getting his clothes on and going home at this hour of the night. In most places, it wouldn't be so intimidating, but Stark Tower was the center of the damage. Getting out of the alien attack zone won't be easy no matter how badly he needs to be somewhere else. "Can you call me a cab?" he asks.

JARVIS says, "The nearest point any of the taxi companies are willing to meet residents of this tower is seven blocks away."

In the intervening blocks, he could meet anyone. It would take a specific and improbable subset of "anyone" to do him any damage, but the last thing the city needs right now is a sleepy, grouchy rampage that Bruce can prevent by accepting the implicit offer of a bed for the night. "Where would I find a toothbrush?" he asks.

"To the left of the sink."

"Thank you."

"I am merely fulfilling my function, Doctor Banner. There is no need to thank me."

Bruce takes a white toothbrush with a blue handle, making himself ignore the bright green one. Someone else, if there is someone else, is welcome to it. "I'd love to hear about your functions," he says, then realizes that sounds nearly as flirtatious as Tony and Pepper's proposition. Besides that, he's too tired to keep it all straight tonight. "Over breakfast, maybe. And--" he remembers Tony's offer of more complex details. "--And a schematic of your code. Whatever Tony's willing to share."

"Very good, Doctor Banner."

Bruce hides his wince at the title, all the more inappropriate when he's standing in his friend, his teammate, his employer's bathroom in the nude. He finishes cleaning up and crosses the bedroom making enough noise that if either Tony or Pepper is still awake, they'll be aware of him.

As soon as he's in the bed, Tony puts an arm around his waist with an incoherent but pleased noise. Pepper says, "Good night, Bruce."

He says, "Good night." On the whole, it was.

And in the morning, he gets to explore an AI that will never soften the way humans do and be kinder to him than he deserves. Things are looking up.

Comments

[petra]

Bruce is *looking* for his happy place, but he's not sure where it is. He'll get there eventually, inasmuch as he's capable of it.