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Who: Bruce Banner and Tony Stark
Where: House 6
When: Day 58, early morning
What: Tony wakes up dead
Warnings: Sparklepires

It’s the absence of light, instead of its constant presence, that wakes him, though he doesn’t immediately realize it. For over two years, the blue glow of the arc reactor has been a steady, grudgingly accepted companion. At night, it always seems brighter, almost blindingly so, though even Tony’s aware that that’s more of a psychological side-effect of the issues he refuses to deal with than legitimate fact. It’s taken him some time, but he’s finally gotten to the point where he can ignore it and sleep.

This night – or perhaps more accurately, morning – he wakes abruptly, eyes snapping open to a room shrouded in heavy darkness. He can hear the rush rise and fall of what sounds like waves and a deep, low thrumming sound that he’s never heard before. Yet he knows that those noises, however odd, aren’t what has woken him.

He glances around, quick darts of his eyes, but all he can see is the same room he’s been sleeping in for weeks. When he does sleep. It’s not uncommon for him to pull all-nighters even here. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the shadowed shapes of…

Shadows.

With a gasp that sounds abnormally loud to him, Tony jerks upright and slaps a hand to his chest. There’s no blue glow. Looking down, the light of the arc reactor’s gone. Even the current of energy that’s been going through it since he installed it in his chest is gone. It’s dead. It’s dead and he’s going to be dead in minutes.

“Bruce!”

In his haste to get up, he gets tangled up in the sheets and nearly pitches over the side of the bed. He catches himself at the last minute, works himself free of them, and makes a lunge for the lamp on the nightstand. Bruce can’t fix it. Only he can fix it. But he doesn’t have the tools and it might blow up and they’re all going to die unless he does something. And if he fails, which seems pretty likely, the Hulk can take the thing as far away from the town as he can before it detonates.

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Bruce has two kinds of sleep. When he's on edge, he can sleep lightly, ready to jump up at a moment's notice. When he's comfortable or not planning to have to run away in the middle of the night, he sleeps fine. More than fine, he sleeps hard. The rest is important because he needs to be as in control of himself as possible when he's awake, so he doesn't think that's a problem, unless of course he needs to get out of bed, and he's so deep into sleep that it takes him a while to come out of it.

When Tony calls his name, Bruce grunts and almost keeps sleeping, but the tug on the blankets pulls him to the surface enough for him to realize the urgency in Tony's voice. Is this real? Then the light comes on, and he's sure this is happening, not just some dream. He rolls onto his back and rubs at his eyes as he sits up, squinting in the light as he locates Tony.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

Tony’s eyes are momentarily dazzled by the light, which is so much brighter than he remembers and he automatically attributes it to not having been in real darkness since Afghanistan. Hearing Bruce’s voice, he turns to him, eyes so squinted they’re almost closed.

“The reactor isn’t working. I don’t know how long it’s been dead. But I’ve got—Usually I’ve got about twenty minutes.” Inside, he’s panicking. He doesn’t know what to do and he doesn’t want to die. More than that, he doesn’t want to kill everyone else by tampering too much with the reactor. Outwardly, his voice is mostly steady, though the words come slightly faster than usual.

“I need you to—You have to take it. The Hulk needs to take it away and destroy it. I’m not going to get very far on my own. After about ten minutes I have trouble walking, I can’t be in the middle of town when I die if it goes off. They said they rigged it to blow but I don't know and I can't take the chance that they're lying.”

That wakes him up.

He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, and really pays attention this time; the reactor is dead, and Bruce's heart drops to his stomach. What Tony's saying about destroying it registers, but Bruce is thinking about what this means for Tony, and he says things like twenty minutes and ten minutes and Bruce feels like he can't breathe.

Crawling over, he skips past Tony's panicked ramble and reaches for his throat, sliding quickly and silently into doctor mode. It's easier than figuring out what he ought to say, than planning what they're going to do to keep the town from dying even as Tony dies.

He checks the pulse in Tony's throat, and his eyes widen fractionally before he lays a hand on his chest too, pressing into his skin. Then he picks up his hand and presses his thumb against his wrist, feeling for a pulse there with increasing desperation. His breathing is turning shallow, and his face is pale when he meets Tony's gaze again.

"I can't find your pulse," he says quietly.

Something’s wrong. He can see it on Bruce’s face as he touches his neck. It finally clicks that he’s checking his pulse when he presses a hand against his chest, but that doesn’t explain the way he’s getting pale and panicked looking himself. On some level, Bruce’s reaction is more alarming than the darkness of the arc reactor, and Tony feels an icy chill of fear slide down his spine even before he delivers his diagnosis. And once he does, his eyes – the irises blood red, though he doesn’t know it yet - widen too, despite the light.

“What? That’s not possible.” Of course, Bruce is the best doctor he knows. If he’s telling him something, there’s no reason not to believe it. He brings a hand up to his throat without thinking about it, unconsciously feeling for a pulse that he can’t find either. “I’m dead? How am I dead and still talking to you?”

Maybe he’s dreaming? Is it possible he’s dreaming? The reactor won’t work if his heart stops, he figured that out in Manhattan, but he can’t be talking and dead at the same time. “Am I dreaming? Is this a dream?”

Edited 2013-04-05 22:25 (UTC)

"It's not a dream." That's a ramble he can take the time to answer because it seems a valid option given where they are and what's happened to them, what's happening to them. "Or maybe it is, but in that case, we're sharing one."

He still sounds distracted even when he elaborates because he's distracted by Tony's eyes, and he's staring hard at them until he cups Tony's face and gently tilts his head toward the light, just so Bruce can make sure he's seeing things properly.

"Your eyes are red," he murmurs, frowning in confusion. "And I don't mean -- I mean, your irises are solid red. You have red eyes."

As he brushes his thumbs along Tony's cheekbones, some fear creeps in.

"And you're cold."

Waking up to find out that the reactor had failed seemed like the worst thing that could happen to him. But now, as Bruce starts listing off things that shouldn’t be possible but apparently are, he realizes that there’s something a hell of a lot worse than reactor failure. There’s being undead.

“Am I a zombie?” Although it might not sound like he’s taking it seriously, he is. He’s taking it very seriously, and he looks from Bruce’s eyes to his throat and back again like he’s waiting for the all-consuming desire to eat him to take over. It doesn’t. “I don’t want to be a zombie.”

Shaking his head, he wraps his fingers around Bruce’s forearm. All he’s feeling right now is fear and the irrational desire to run like hell, like maybe if he runs fast enough, he can outrun whatever the fuck’s happened to him and he can go back to being normal again.

“Fix me. You can fix me, right? Restart the… I don’t know. CPR? Get a crash cart from the clinic? Something?”

"I think the reactor's part of it, but I don't think it could've caused all this. The result of that shutting off is you going into cardiac arrest, not being mostly fine except for having a slight chill and some colored contacts." He doesn't let go of his face, even if Tony's potential zombism should make him want to back off. If he tries to kill Bruce or make him into a zombie, what would that do to him? What would that do to Bruce or the Hulk?

He strokes Tony's face with his thumbs again lightly, his touch far more comforting now than the clinical thing it was before.

"How do you feel? Let's talk about that next. Is anything different? Other than the reactor and your heart."

And he'll also ignore the suggestion that Bruce can fix him because he can't lie to Tony.

“Um…” He wonders if he looks as scared as he feels. If he does, admitting it won’t make him look like a coward. If he doesn’t, denying it will make him a liar and he doesn’t want to lie to Bruce. Temporizing, then, seems like the best option. “Physically?”

Maybe he can just ignore the emotional side of it. Unlikely, but he’s going to try.

“Uh, well, physically I feel fine. I mean, I’m hearing things that I don’t usually—Like your heartbeat.” Taking his hand off of Bruce’s arm, he sets it against his chest, over the heart he knows he shouldn’t be able to hear beating from where he’s standing. “And I can hear Stanley downstairs. He just turned over in his sleep and his tail hit the coffee table.”

His eyes focus on Bruce, then slip to the side when he remembers that there’s something wrong with them. “Sorry. I’m—I don’t want to freak you out.”

He did mean physically; he can tell Tony's afraid, and discussing his emotions is a little further down the medical checklist that Bruce is putting together in his mind. Heightened senses, cold to the touch, no heartbeat... He's starting to put the pieces together, but then Tony gets insecure, and Bruce firms up his hold on his face, trying to refocus Tony's attention on him.

"I'm not freaked out by whatever you are now. Am I freaked that these scientists probably did something to you? Yes because I'm worried about you and keeping you safe. But I still love you."

That taken care of, he slides his hands down to Tony's shoulders, and his checks his neck out subtly. No bite marks.

"Are you hungry for anything? Blood maybe?"

It works. Not that he ever would have doubted that Bruce could talk him down from a panic, but he does it with an effortlessness that immediately bleeds some of the tension from Tony’s body. His eyes find Bruce’s again, this time without that foreign sense of shame, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

Until he mentions being hungry for blood.

“What?” Tony flinches at the suggestion, recoiling slightly and grimacing in disgust. He’s not stupid, even if he’s emotionally unstable at the moment, and he’s seen too many movies not to make the connection. Vampire. Bruce thinks he’s a vampire. Which is ludicrous and stupid and impossible since he hasn’t been bitten by something that doesn’t actually exist.

His body missed that memo, though, and even if Tony consciously has no clue what’s going on, the rest of him recognizes the action of lips skimming back from teeth and fangs he never had before lengthen his canines into sharp points. He feels it, though he doesn’t know what prompts it, and slaps a hand over his mouth in horror.

“Oh no. No, no no. No, this isn’t happening.” Or at least, that’s what he tries to say behind the palm muffling his mouth.

The flinching is a good start, but then Tony's fangs slide out, and Bruce's reality concerns kick in again. If Tony's a vampire, he's going to want blood, and aren't fresh vampires especially hungry? Isn't that always the case? He lets go of Tony's shoulders and lays one on his thigh instead.

"It is happening though, apparently." It's important that he remind Tony that he can't drink from Bruce. What about Steve? Maybe Steve. He could probably take it, though Bruce doesn't know what his blood might be like. Ooh, Logan...

He's getting ahead of himself. Tony's panicking, and Bruce needs to stop his own brand of panicking -- i.e., planning -- to pay attention to him. He gently pulls on Tony's wrists.

"It's alright, Tony. We can deal with this. We can figure it out. You're not alone."

Oh god, what if he eats Bruce? It was just a joke, something he’d meant as a goofy attempt to divert attention away from his panic. But now it’s apparently real, though not in the brain-eating way, and that’s just not okay. He can’t eat Bruce. Eating Bruce is bad. He’s not thinking about potential gamma radiation and becoming a hulked-out vampire, though, he’s just thinking that eating his boyfriend would be terrible and tragic and he’s not going to do it.

“Uh uh. No.” He shakes his head so vigorously he wonders if it’s possible to give himself whiplash. “No. It’s not okay. It’s not okay that I’m some kind of monster thing that’s going to eat the town!”

There’s hysteria entering his voice and fuck, now he’s turning into a hysterical vampire. Taking a deep breath, he lets Bruce pull his hands away from his mouth. “How about removing them? Can you do that? Surgery? Just cut them out. My teeth. I can’t eat the town if I don’t have teeth, right?”

No, no, Tony can't get hysterical, not only because Bruce doesn't want him to get that upset but also because he thinks it might be best if Tony kept a cap on his negative emotions. He decides to take a risk and pull Tony into a hug, hugging him tight and close. If Tony wasn't lunging for him yet, maybe he won't lunge for him now, long enough for them to hug anyway.

"You're not going to eat the town," he says quietly, calmly, trying to transport some of his confidence into Tony. "I know two other vampires here, and they haven't eaten anyone." He squeezes him again before he sits back, still holding onto his shoulders.

"And I'm not going to pull your teeth out. I can get blood donated; you won't starve, and you won't eat anyone."

He believes they can succeed at that, but he is sympathetic about Tony finding himself suddenly capable of killing people against his will.

He probably shouldn’t be hugging him. If anything, he should be pushing him away, and there’s a large, rational part of Tony that wants to do it for him. Just grab him by the shoulders and push him back and out the door and as far away from the mindless killing machine that the movies say that he is as he can get him. But the weak, scared, lonely part of him won’t let him be a good man and do it. That part of him wraps his arms around Bruce and hugs back. Not hard, he doesn’t know how strong he is and he knows that movie vampires generally are stronger than people, but enough to let him know that he isn’t just phoning it in.

It’s okay. Bruce is right. They’ll be fine. They survived aliens. They can survive this. He nods, feeling more of the tension start to ease away.

And then what Bruce has actually said filters through the morning’s upset.

Pulling back, he eyes him with equal parts disbelief, surprise, and some kind of uneasy discomfort. “There are vampires here? Real, actual vampires? Seriously? Vampires? Here? And you never told me?”

Oh, whoops? Bruce looks a little abashed as he sits back and tries to figure out where to start.

"Um... Yes? It's not really in my nature to go around exposing peoples' secret identities. And they told me in confidence." As did a few others, and is he supposed to tell Tony about them now? "One of them actually messaged me the other day to ask for my help in setting him up with some blood donors, which is why I know I can help you like this too."

And he'll smile to hopefully smooth that over, but smoothing things over is more Tony's area than Bruce's.

“You know there’s a difference between breaking doctor-patient confidentiality and letting the guy you’re supposed to be in love with know that vampires are real, right?”

He understands secrecy. He doesn’t go around advertising the arc reactor. He never told anyone about the connection between Bruce and the Hulk. He gets it. He really does. But that doesn’t prevent him from feeling hurt that Bruce apparently doesn’t trust him enough to keep his mouth shut. A simple hey, did you know vampires were real, because one came into the clinic today would have gone a long way.

“Is that a thing we’re going to do now? Keep secrets from each other? Because that really works out well for me. The last guy I trusted not to lie to me tried to kill me and left me with this.” His finger knocks once against the now useless arc reactor as he stands up and heads over to glare moodily out of the window. That he can see for miles would be fascinating if he wasn’t upset. “Or maybe that’s something I shouldn’t mention. I don’t know, see, I’m not big on lying to people, so I don’t really have much practice with it.”

Supposed to be in love with?

That hurts, enough that it leaves Bruce in a kind of shock as he watches Tony walk away from him, as he brings in what happened to him in the past, and Bruce, for the first time since they woke up together, doesn't know what to do or say.

And then anger moves into the empty space.

"How is there a difference between those two? When you're under the radar, you're under the radar, off the grid. And protecting other people who don't have a choice over what kind of creature they are is a little different from the last guy who lied to you." Frowning deeper, he slides off the bed so he can stand up and put his hands on his hips.

"I would've thought you'd understand wanting to make sure they feel safe."

“So I’m a danger? That’s what you’re saying?” He spins around, feeling like he’s just been slapped and not liking it in the least. “Because what, the papers are true? I’m unreliable and untrustworthy? You can’t tell me anything because I’ll just tell everybody, right?”

Sometimes, he regrets the reputation he’s made for himself. It has served its purpose, which means that it hasn’t been a waste of his time, but it also erodes the relationships he actually wants to cultivate. Because here he is again, the loose cannon that can’t be trusted and the depressing part is that he actually can be.

“I wouldn’t have asked for names, Bruce. It just would’ve been nice to know they existed at all. You know, before I woke up dead.”

Shaking his head, he turns back to the window. Whatever. Bruce wants to keep secrets from each other, fine. Tony can dish out what he takes in, and if that’s the kind of relationship Bruce wants, well, that’s the kind he’s going to give him.

"No, I'm not saying any of that." Where is this even coming from? Is it because Tony couldn't see the point of a secret identity? Not everyone has that luxury, which is another thing Tony sometimes has a hard time understanding. Maybe Bruce should find a way to make him see what he's implying, what he's suggesting, and how little sense it makes, especially when compared to things he's told Bruce.

"So because they're not human, because they can hurt people, they're automatically dangerous and are going to kill you?" He lifts his eyebrows, and his anger is still there, though slightly more dangerous now as it's turning into the low simmer that he can maintain for longer than he should and that ends in disaster. He'll have to walk away from this at some point.

"We should lock up anything that's not 100% human, anything that has a..." He won't say monster. "A wild side. Is that what you're saying?"

“Seriously?” Somewhere in the middle of this, the fangs disappeared back to wherever impossible place they go, but Tony hasn’t noticed. He’s too busy turning back around to glare at Bruce. “You’re going to say that to me? After everything we’ve been through, you really think I’m what, an advocate of persecuting people who are different?”

What the hell is going on here? He wakes up a vampire. Bruce wakes up a pod person. It’s a thought borne of aggravation, but once he thinks it, he can’t stop thinking about it. Obviously vampires are real. And apparently he is one for no reason whatsoever. So who’s to say that Bruce hasn’t been replaced by some kind of doppelganger in the night?

“I’m a scientist, Bruce. Did you forget that when the pod people apparently stole you? I’ve spent my entire life discounting all of that shit as not real because it wasn’t and now it’s here under my nose and you don’t think that that’s something I’d like to know? That maybe there’s something else out there, something like, I don’t know, magical and unexplained and fucking fictional things are real? That’s something I’d like to know.”

Because now he’s evidently a vampire and he has to start reevaluating the universe and his place in it as he tries to hide from the sunlight and sleep in a coffin.

"No, I don't think you really mean that, which is why I'm trying to tell you what you sound like right now. What would you have done if I told you? If you're curious about these things for science reasons? Every one of the people who opened up to me about their very personal and private... species state did it because they knew I wasn't going to want to dissect them or study them."

He doesn't understand, still, why Tony is so upset about this. Bruce keeps secrets for people who are different; how is that a surprise?

"And I thought their existence was their secret to tell. Because I sure as hell wouldn't have liked it if someone told everyone there were gamma monsters around, even if they didn't attach my name to it, because it would've sounded like the start of a countdown clock."

“I don’t want to dissect them. I’m not that kind of a scientist. That’s not even what I’m talking about.”

What he is talking about is complicated to put into words, and his feelings are too hurt to try. Once, long ago, he believed in things he’d never seen, but life had beaten that out of him. His only belief now is in science. He’s an atheist and a skeptic who rolls his eyes at people who talk about psychic abilities and seeing ghosts. It’s not for science that he cares about the existence of what amounts to supernatural creatures. It’s for him. To believe that maybe there is a little bit of mystery left in the world after all.

There’s no winning this fight. He knows why Bruce did what he did. He understands it. So he shakes his head and lifts a hand in dismissive gesture.

“But yeah, you know what, fine. You’re right. It is their secret to tell. I won’t say anything else about it.”

When Tony gives up is when Bruce's anger abates, and he always feels guilty when it moves back to where it usually sits, a constant presence but one he's learned to work around. He sighs and drops the tension from his body, letting his arms hang and his shoulders relax as he moves back through their argument in his mind.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I thought of it as lying for them, not lying to you, but I see where that was wrong too." He brings his hands together in front of him, tangling his fingers together and then squeezing them.

"Do you really think I love you less because of this?"

“I don’t know what it’s like to have a private life, so I can’t really imagine having secrets I’m afraid of everyone knowing.” None of this is news, or anything but the status quo for him, so there’s no emotion in Tony’s voice as he talks about it. “So I can’t relate, but you’re probably right. I doubt they’d really want someone spreading the word they were in town when they never did anything wrong to begin with. Doctors base their lives on reputations of trustworthiness and you can’t be very effective if you’re known as the guy who blabs. I get it.”

He doesn’t have it in him to keep being angry about it. Tony’s anger is fast, like a lightning strike that’s there and gone in an instant. It can do spectacular damage if it hits the right place at the right time, but it doesn’t last and burns up quickly. In its wake is a kind of sad exhaustion that a nice whiskey can clear right up. If it affects him anymore.

Rubbing at his face, he turns to look morosely out the window again. It won’t work. He knows it won’t work. Alcohol’s going to be useless to him now. Who ever heard of a drunk vampire?

“You did the right thing, Bruce. I’m sorry I made a big deal out it.” There’s still the question he’s not answering, and after a moment spent toying with it, he settles on the truth. “I’m not an easy person to love, so when someone actually finds something about me worth loving, I don’t think I’m really in a position to judge more or less.”

He notices how long it takes for Tony to get around to the question, and Bruce reads it as a yes. Tony doesn't trust him, or thinks Bruce doesn't love him, and this time, the gutted feeling sticks around, not being replaced by anger. What does he do with that? He can't go back in time, and Tony sees where Bruce was coming from, and Bruce sees where Tony was coming from. There's no real in between, is there?

He still thinks this mood swing is random, but Tony's in a sensitive place right now. He rubs over his face, and then steps up behind him, reaching out to touch his shoulder again.

"I don't find it hard to love you, and that's coming from someone who hasn't had any significant emotional attachments for like, six years. And then you shook my hand."

And that was literally it, the start of it, the whole thing.