He can’t remember if he’s ever heard the Hulk call him by his first name. It’s usually some form of variation on the Iron Man suit. It makes him smile, one of those genuine, thousand watt smiles that the press would kill to get photos of and never will because of it. And when the Hulk pulls him closer, he throws his arms around the big guy’s huge shoulders like it’s no big deal and gives him the kind of hug that would make a normal person breathless and probably doesn’t feel like a damn thing to him.

“You bet, buddy. You bet.” He gives him a moment, just holding on and being there, solid and real and very much not vanishing into the night. Tony has abandonment issues, he understands what it’s like.

“And hey, I know this is probably kind of boring, standing around talking when maybe you want to stretch your legs. Raise some hell.” Good humor infuses his voice when he says that, like he’s not suggesting massive destruction to someone potentially strong enough to crack the world. But there’s no elephant in the room to Tony, not topic too sacred to mention, and he doesn’t have the temperament to handle people with kid gloves.

“So I was thinking. Wanna help me catch a saber-tooth cat? I saw some of them in the woods the last time we tried to make an escape run and thought, in this place, maybe having one around as like a guard cat – weird, I know, don’t ask, I might’ve been drunk at the time, I can’t remember – might be a good idea.”