kore_logs | i must live with my quiet rage

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i must live with my quiet rage

Who: The Hulk and Tony // Bruce and Tony
Where: Out by the woods. // Their house
When: Day 46
What: Tony wants to talk to the Hulk and then also ask his help to catch a saber-tooth cat thanks to an ill-advised bet with Party. // After successfully catching the cat, Bruce and Tony regroup at their house.

Note: You're welcome to have your character hear/notice the Hulk from a distance, but he won't be bothering anyone but Tony (and the log is closed).

Bruce needs to stay calm, but trying to stay calm when he's about to let the Hulk out for something as mundane as a chat isn't easy. He can barely wrap his mind around the concept of letting him out just to... let him out. The cat thing after the talk is weirdly comforting even though it shouldn't be, but it seems like if he's letting the Hulk out, it should be for something... well, Hulk-worthy. That seems like the responsible thing to do, to keep a monster like that concealed as often as possible -- that's been Bruce's life since it happened, his number one goal. Right behind that was keeping out of the hands of the military.

He can accept throwing that away for the sake of saving people, but this... This is so different. He keeps sliding back in his conviction and willingness to do this, but maybe... maybe Tony's right. Maybe the Hulk is... more than a monster. Or not a monster at all.

By the time they get to the woods, he's almost relieved he doesn't have to think about this anymore. He takes a breath and then tugs his shirt off, toes out of his shoes. He's actually wearing the pants Sharon got him for Fake Christmas because they are, indeed, extra-estrechi. He starts to reach to take his watch off, but stops once his fingers slide too much and he realizes there's no fastening because it isn't a watch. Ha. Good. He hopes these bracelets are expensive. Screw you, scientists.

There's a thought to end on. He needs some anger to tug him out, but not too much, so he teases that thought out and then he's changing slowly, his skin turning green and his body reshaping itself, bones growing and muscles expanding. It's still not pleasant, but it's a far cry from acid being poured on his brain, and far more fluid than when he's fighting it off the whole time.

And then Bruce stops having conscious thoughts, and the Hulk raises his head, taking in a lungful of air. Oh, this place still. The woods have metal Hulks in them that aren't better than him no matter what they might've been made out of, so there. He turns and spots Metal-less Man, and no one else. There's no sense of urgency, no smell of a fight in the air, no tension.

"What's going on?"

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And that, right there? That's a blow of a different kind, different from feeling as if he's pushing someone he cares for away, or he's disappointing that person. This cuts straight through to what he usually keeps private. People aren't supposed to see how angry the Hulk makes him, no matter how silly that notion might be; he doesn't like it when people see him angry at all. It's embarrassing.

His hands come together in front of him, and he starts wringing them without even noticing.

"And I'm supposed to accept a timeshare life with him?" he asks softly, shrinking in further on himself.

“What? No. I’m not—It’s your life, Bruce. It’s always been your life. I’m not talking about hammering out a joint-custody agreement. That would be—No.” Now isn’t the time to bring up kissing the Hulk. That much, at least, he knows.

Floundering for half a second, trying to figure out what to do with the bowl that isn’t just dropping it on the floor, he finally sets it on the counter and crosses over to Bruce. There’s too much hand-wringing for his liking and if his shoulders hunch a little further, Tony’s afraid he’ll disappear.

Reaching out to cover Bruce’s hands with his own, Tony tries to catch his eye. “I’m saying maybe you don’t have to be in pieces forever. He came from you. That accident didn’t meld some outside creature to your body. It turned some piece of you into him, right? So maybe that piece can get fitted back in with the rest of you.”

You don't have to be in pieces forever. Bruce has spent around seven years like this, and he's never thought of himself and the Hulk like that. Not once, not ever. He doesn't make Tony chase him for eye contact, especially not after that, and he looks up, but there's a pain and an uncertainty in his eyes that he can't begin to hide.

"How do you do this? You know us both so well." He could leave it at that and he almost does, but he closes his eyes and draws up his nerve and gets the words out. "You have so much faith in us. I don't know what I ever did to earn any of that, Tony."

Tony doesn’t think he’s doing anything special. He’s just talking. He’s being honest in a way he usually isn’t, and he’s making an effort to be more coherent than usual, but overall, he doesn’t think it’s special. It’s just observation.

“Bruce, it made you green. It didn’t make your personality do a one-eighty.” If there’s one thing he hates right now, it’s the pain in Bruce’s eyes. But he hasn’t the first idea how to get rid of it. “I don’t need to have faith in the fact that you’re a good man. I see that plain as day. You’re proof of that. So how’s it any different for him? So he’s green and he’s like, eight feet tall, so what? He’s just sexy green exotic you. Like if you were an alien on some sci-fi show.”

Is that too flippant? That might be too flippant. “And okay, yes, he did a lot of bad things. But Bruce, so have I, when I was younger and dumber and didn’t understand the way the world works. So if the first thing you see in your life is some asshole shooting at you, what’re you going to do? Try to talk to him? Or are you going to be so hurt and scared that you lash out?” Which is a fair description of what he thinks the Hulk’s initial moments were like, after having viewed SHIELD’s file on him.

“We don’t change, we don’t get better, until we learn better. Give yourself a chance here, Bruce. Stop listening to the people who keep telling you that you’re a monster. They’re idiots. And obviously they don’t know you if they’re going to say shit like that in the first place.”

Yeah, but the number one person Bruce has had to deal with calling him a monster post-incident has been... Bruce. He shakes his head when Tony starts trying to compare the things he's done, the person he's been, to the Hulk, and he slips a hand free of Tony's so he can hold their hands together in a pile, squeezing them together gently, but then he can't argue with Tony's last point. People don't grow until they learn; he knows that pretty well, doesn't he?

"It isn't as easy for me to see him... me, us, the way you do, Tony." He drops his eyes and bites his lip, trying to figure out how to answer, trying to find where it fits in Bruce's philosophy of himself, of life. In a way it's kind of like Tetris, he's realizing. He thought he only needed straight pieces and was trying to cram those in, waiting desperately for something that's probably never going to come to complete him, when there's a slightly different shape coming in that could work instead, if only he could accept it.

And who said Tetris was a waste of time?

"We're lucky to have you," he says quietly. "He and I both. I'm pretty sure he and I hate each other and I'm not sure how that could ever be resolved, but you're brave to want to stand between us."

This is inching precariously close to Tony’s own tangle of personal issues, but he’s just stomped all over Bruce’s without so much as an apology. He can’t, in good faith, derail the conversation now just because it makes him a little uncomfortable.

“I’m not trying to speak for him. I have hard enough time with my own feelings, I’m not going to try to tell other people what to feel. But I just…” He thinks about what the Hulk has said, what he hasn’t said, and the things that Bruce has. Quietly, as gently as he can, he continues. “Sometimes, Bruce, it’s easier to hate someone than it is to admit that you’re not good enough. Because hate and anger are a hell of a lot easier to deal with than the hurt that comes from the rejection of the one person you want most in the world to accept you.”

The Hulk isn’t Howard Stark. The acceptance of a father isn’t like the acceptance of the self. But Tony has long since accepted himself and his laundry list of flaws. Equating his feelings toward his father to the Hulk’s feelings toward Bruce aren’t the same at all, but it’s the closest thing he has for a comparison.

“And before you start handing out the medals,” he adds, because he needs a moment of levity. “It’s not bravery. That implies that I’m terrified but I’m doing it anyway. I’m not scared of either one of you. And I’m not ever going to be."

Bruce frowns when Tony gets serious because he's trying to see where Tony's talking about him, but he mostly just sees Tony. It clicks for him where Tony might be pulling all his faithful determination from; maybe he wants a place to heap it, since he can't heap it on himself, and Tony's full of so much faith and idealism that it's breathtaking. And it must be exhausting for him.

"Oh, and that somehow makes you unexceptional?" He almost rolls his eyes but catches himself. "Because you're one of only two people in the world who I could really believe have felt that way, the entire time they've known me."

He knows there are people here who are accepting of him, but honestly he doesn't know if he can count them in this when they don't really know what the Hulk is capable of.

But if Tony's going to dig deep enough to compare his relationship with his father to the Hulk's relationship with Bruce -- it takes Bruce a few seconds to see how Tony's framing his argument, but he eventually gets here -- then he can at least pay him the respect of listening to it and not just brushing it off.

"You think the Hulk needs my approval?" he asks, confusion clear. "Why would he care?"

Tony is not a qualified mental health professional and he’s starting to think he’s wandering into territory that requires it. Sure, he can read up on it, or could if he was back at home, but that doesn’t make him qualified to dispense advice. All he has, he thinks, is the benefit of perspective, and that perspective exists because he knows Bruce and he knows the Hulk and he doesn’t have either one’s poor opinion of the other.

He’s also not a simpering idiot who’s afraid of something that’s different from the norm.

“Why wouldn’t he care? Half the time, we can’t stand it when people we don’t even know don’t like us. But people who do know us? People who live with us? We can pretend we don’t care all we like, but you know we do. And for him, it’s got to be a thousand times more important. You’re a part of him, Bruce. Not in some New Age, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo bullshit way. Really a part of him.”

How many times has he heard the saying you’re your own worst enemy? Tony can’t possibly begin to count it. But it’s a lot. He knows that. And he thinks that in Bruce and the Hulk’s case, it couldn’t be truer.

“That whole ‘you can’t say anything worse than what I’ve already said to myself’ line we give people who try to insult us? In your case, that’s probably more poignant than it could be from anyone else.”

Everything Tony's saying makes sense, but Bruce has never... thought it, or said it to himself, or even let himself believe it for a second. The Hulk might hate Bruce as much as Bruce hates him -- that makes a lot of sense, but the idea that the Hulk might just want Bruce to accept him? He's compared himself to the scientist who poisons himself and spawns an evil alternate identity, but -- well -- the one where the scientist makes the monster has never seemed as apt. Because that story, the real story, is about the monster being the one with the feelings and the scientist being the mad one.

Bruce's eyes drift past Tony as he reconsiders his role in all of this. He doesn't think he's wrong or crazy; the Hulk does hurt people. But if he accepted him? Would that lessen... anything?

"Okay," he says, nodding, coming back into the moment. "Okay. I see what you mean. I'll try." And he finds a smile for him as he tries to shake off the discomfort of the realization that maybe he really has been more of a monster than he even knew.

"And he told you all this? You must've had some conversation."

It would be easier if he could just say yes. Yes, the Hulk said all of those things earlier, just in his own terse way, and that would be that, all wrapped up in a nice, neat little package. But he can’t say that without lying and he’s not going to lie.

“Not all at once. Not just today. It’s like, every time I talk to him, I get a little more of the story. The loneliness and the desire to protect people, that happened today. But I guess it’s been happening more than just now, since he’s been helping people and giving them rides – which I’m still jealous about since he isn’t giving me rides, by the way – since that day he brought you back.”

He inches closer, ever so carefully sliding an arm around Bruce’s waist, not knowing if he wants space or not but refusing not to make the effort. “That was pretty much all it was today. We hugged, I kissed him – not like what you’re thinking, there weren’t any tongues, it wasn’t like the way I kiss you, it was like kissing family, and I told you I was going to do it weeks ago, don’t be mad at me, I wasn’t cheating on you, I was just trying to make a point – and then we went and caught the tiger. Not by his tail. That would’ve been animal cruelty. I don’t go in for that.”

Bruce doesn't know if he needs space or not; see, the weird thing is that the main person he needs space from is himself, or the Hulk, or both, but he can't actually split himself into two. That would be strangely convenient, actually, but no, for the moment he's just in this one body. So when Tony holds him again, Bruce tenses but relaxes into it after a moment. He's not comfortable in his own body, but he's comfortable around Tony.

He's relaxed all the way until Tony says he kissed the Hulk, and then he tenses again, but Tony rambles his way through enough of an explanation that Bruce looks less indignant by the end of it.

"That was pretty much all, and by the way I kissed him?" Bruce summarizes, eyebrows raising, but he doesn't actually look upset. Or any less sick than he's looked for this entire conversation, but. He settles his hands on Tony's arms and squeezes lightly before he pulls him closer. He's quiet, thinking, and when he finally speaks up, his voice is soft.

"Tony, when you look at me -- when you looked at me, when we first met. It was me you saw first, right? Not him?"

He feels that tension and thinks that maybe he's gone too far, but then it fades and he thinks maybe disaster has been averted. He can't know for sure, but that doesn't stop him from answering Bruce the same way he would if he hadn't just confessed to kissing the Hulk.

“Actually, no,” he says thoughtfully, expression as serious as his voice. “The first time I saw you, I thought I was looking at Elvis. Like, right there, in the flesh. It was shocking, I thought he was dead, but there he was! Only, it was actually some guy named Bruce, not the King. And I mean, yeah, sometimes I still get confused, I think it’s the hair, either that or you’re possessed, but for the most part, I’m pretty sure it’s you I’m seeing.”

Rolling his eyes, he lets go of Bruce long enough to cup his face between both of his hands and hold him there so that he can look at him. Really look at him. Right in the eyes, like he could see into his soul if he tries.

“Bruce. Who else would I see but you? Even when he’s standing in front of me, I’m still looking at you. Green and bigger and with a sort of flatter nose than right now, but all I see is you.”

His smile fades a little at the end, and he reaches up to hold Tony's wrists; before he pulls his hands away, he kisses each of his palms.

"You know what I mean, Tony. Back home to anyone who knows, Bruce Banner doesn't count for anything except as a kind of pre-state for the Hulk."

He's still holding Tony's hands in his, and he lets one go to turn the other one over, palm-up, so he can trace the lines as he talks.

"I was trying to ask if I mean more to you than he does, if you like me more, but I think I can guess your answer, now that I'm thinking about it." He looks up finally, and he doesn't look upset; maybe a little sad, but this is all so new for him.

"You care for every part of me equally, right?"

Tony doesn’t have much experience with relationships that aren’t screwed up. He’s had a few of those, each more destructive and horrible than the last. It’s part of the reason he swore off getting involved in the first place. It never ends well.

Bruce is worth it, though. He thinks so, anyway. Just like he thinks that if the conversation was going well, Bruce wouldn’t look as sad as he does right now. He wouldn’t look sad at all.

“I’m saying that I care about you. And sometimes you get man-PMS and turn green, but that doesn’t make me care any less. Would I rather you were like this all the time? Yeah. And not just because we can have sex when it’s not your time of the month.” Trying to make it a joke is probably a bad idea. He knows that. But he doesn’t know how to combat the sadness and joking is the only thing he can think to do.

“I just—I don’t know why you’re not happy. I would’ve thought the fact that I accepted the Hulk wouldn’t be a problem. Why is it?”

Bruce smiles at that even if it isn't funny at all. Sometimes Tony's view of things can be so... innocent? Childlike? Not in a bad way, but just, it's like he thinks he really can kiss Bruce and make it all better, like he really believes in that. Bruce almost hates to ruin it.

"Because I hate him and resent him and you're supposed to be on my side of wanting to find a way to get rid of him," he says, and then wrinkles his nose. "Or that's how I felt before. You've changed my mind today I think, Tony, but I'm going to need a while to absorb that." Not to mention the idea that if what Tony's saying is true -- and despite Tony's vision of the world, he does believe him here -- then Bruce needs to think about he's been treating the Hulk.

"When you cut the infection out of something, it hurts, doesn't it?" He shrugs and then wraps his arms around Tony this time. "I'm not saying I'm on the road to healing, but I'm better because of today. Because of you."

He gets it. He really does, however simplistic he tries to make it sound. And he knows what it’s like to want someone on his side. Watching his father continually choose a ghost over him, finding out that Rhodey was working with Hammer behind his back, knowing that Steve would rather have Howard at his side in a fight than Tony, he gets it. But the thing that Bruce doesn’t get is that Tony is on his side.

He has been since the day he met him.

“I have a hard time hating the guy who saved your life,” he says quietly, settling his arms around him again. Bruce’s life. Not his own. The Hulk’s saved it quite a few times now, not just in New York, but it isn’t his life that matters to him. It’s Bruce’s, and the Hulk’s been protecting – from other gamma experiments, aliens, bullets, mad scientists, and everything else in between – him for years.

“But if you want me to stop talking about it now, I can. Give you some time alone with your thoughts. I mean, I don't know. You’re the doctor here, not me. You know what’s best. I brought home a sabertooth cat. Clearly I don't know what's best for anything.”

How the Hulk goes about saving Bruce's life is something he's still afraid of. What's going to happen when his body gives out? Because he doesn't think the Hulk's aging. That's not something he wants to worry about now, so he lets Tony make him laugh, and he gives him a quick kiss.

"I might argue with that." He smiles warmly and a touch shyly at Tony before he backs away, letting him out of his embrace. "But a change of topic is good. We need to take care of this cat before it eats our living room. Or, you know, us."

Smiling still, he brushes past Tony to finish bringing their new pet its water dish.

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i must live with my quiet rage

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