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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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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.

More than once in his life, Tony’s felt like he was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He recognizes it now, this overwhelming sense of powerlessness, of being out of control with everything and drowning in too much. Too much emotion. Too much discord. Too much pain and disappointment, too much fear and uncertainty. And tonight has been a clusterfuck of too many emotions too fast.

His eyes close when Bruce’s hand touches his shoulder, and slowly, as he exhales a breath he’s starting to think he doesn’t need to take, Tony lifts a hand and tentatively touches cold fingers to his warm ones.

“I don’t really know how to lie to people about myself. Even when it’s scripted for me, I don’t do very well with it. The few things I keep to myself, I’ve shared with you. It’s all I have to give you that the rest of the world hasn’t already taken from me. And it’s shit, I know.” He laughs a little. It’s not funny, but it’s true. “The only good secret I have is JARVIS. So I don’t know how to…”

Talk about this. Or anything, really. Story of his stupid life. “How to feel, I guess. How to process and deal with knowing that there are things you can’t share with me. I know it’s normal. I just, I don’t know… how to be normal.”

Well, this is heartbreaking. Now that he knows for sure that he's welcome, he steps up the rest of the way and presses himself against Tony's back. It doesn't matter how cold he is; Bruce can adjust. He wraps his other arm around Tony's waist and makes sure he's flush against him, and then he sets his mouth near Tony's ear. The position is familiar, and maybe the following conversation will be as helpful as the one he and Tony had like this before, only reversed.

"My paranoia about secrecy probably isn't what someone would call normal, but fuck normal. That's normal for me; being an open book is normal for you, no matter what unfortunate and damaging life experiences brought us here."

He pauses, resting his mouth against Tony's shoulder in a kind of kiss, when really he needs to draw some strength from him for a second.

"Nothing you've given me is shit. That you chose to tell me the things you do hold close is a gift."

“Well, now I’m going to give you pneumonia. Or bronchitis. Or the flu. I know that’s not how viruses work, but my heart’s not beating and rigor mortis isn’t setting in, so I don’t know if I can really rely on biology right now.” He’s also apparently going through menopause, because his mood swings are starting to give him emotional whiplash.

Trying to be funny isn’t working. Mostly because he keeps coming around to the fact that he’s dead. After everything, the shrapnel, the arc reactor, the palladium poisoning, countless near-misses while drunk and doing stupid things, being Iron Man, he dies in his sleep and turns into the undead and the only benefit to it is the fact that his flesh isn’t rotting off.

Leaning his head back against Bruce’s shoulder, he tries to imagine this new unlife that’s waiting for him and he wants to start screaming. Clearly, he can’t think about that right now. He drops his hands to Bruce’s arms, giving them a light squeeze. “I’m sorry about picking a fight with you. That wasn’t fair. And if I said anything that insulted you or hurt you, I’m sorry. That, I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

"I don't really get sick." Because he hasn't been human -- just human -- for a while now either, and he knows it sucks and it's hard to relearn your body, but it's not the end of the world. Rich, coming from him, who once had to accept that the world wasn't ending because it couldn't end, because the Hulk would bring it right back, but he's gotten used to the relentless beating back against the rocks that life's started to feel like.

It's not like that as much with Tony, though. Tony makes him glad he'll see tomorrow.

Turning his head, he slowly and steadily kisses every bit of Tony's skin he can reach -- cheek, jaw, neck -- he doesn't stop until he covers it all.

"Right back at you. I hope you do know how much I love you. I mean, look at us. You wake up a vampire and we have a domestic squabble about something mostly unrelated."

Being kissed as a vampire feels a bit different than it does to be kissed as a human. He’s more aware of the warmth of Bruce’s lips and their texture as they move over his skin. He can feel the variance in temperature from his breath and without really thinking about it, tilts his head just slightly to give him the room to do it.

It’s completely inappropriate to the moment, but he finds himself wondering if vampires can have sex. And if they can’t, how easy it will be to stake himself, especially if he doesn’t have a functional heart in the first place.

Silent for a moment, Tony processes Bruce’s words before slowly turning around, careful not to break the hold he has on him. He needs to look at him for this, and it’s only once he can that he seeks his eyes and asks quietly, “Do you trust me, Bruce?”

The question surprises him because he thought that would be obvious -- but, of course. Obvious to him, and only him. Bruce feels like he's let Tony in way more than he's let most people go already, and Tony's gotten through to him on levels no one else has ever been able to reach before. To Tony, of course, Bruce has been keeping secrets; what else is he keeping from him?

"I do, Tony. More than anyone." And he feels bad saying that because he also cares for Lydia and Jesse, but that's different; he'd never lean on them the way he feels like he can lean on Tony.

He searches his eyes, but it’s less because he’s trying to ferret out lies and more because he’s working up the nerve to do what he means to do. He’s never been a vampire, never talked to one that he’s aware of. He doesn’t know the rules, only knows what the movies say about them. But the bloodlust seems to be universal and he knows that if that’s the case, he’s going to be tempting fate in the most dangerous of ways. But although he’s a vampire, he’s still Tony Stark, and pushing back against limitations and common sense is what he does.

Licking his lips, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that asks where the saliva’s coming from, he leans forward to kiss Bruce’s throat. It’s only what Bruce has just done to him, but it’s also in some ways a test, both of himself and what he has become and of Bruce’s conviction.

Bruce can tell what's coming as soon as Tony licks his lips, and he wars with himself briefly. Does he trust Tony? Of course he does. Does he trust Tony's impulse control, especially when he's a new vampire who's never fed? Not so much. It'd be easier if his blood wasn't so potentially dangerous -- not that he's ever tested it on a vampire; maybe it wouldn't hurt anything -- but that's what makes this extra frightening.

Still, he doesn't move. He closes his eyes and stays tuned into everything Tony does, but he stays perfectly still.

Bruce aces his part of the test. And when a little knot of something hard and painful in his chest unravels, Tony realizes it’s because he didn’t know if he would. But he does, and that means he isn’t lying. He trusts him even when he doesn’t know if he’s going to turn into an insane, fangy monster and rip out his throat, and that means something. It means everything.

And Tony? The jury’s still out. Bruce’s skin feels like silk under his lips, and smells like something he’s never smelled before. It’s intoxicating and heady and he thinks that if he never smells anything else but this scent, he could die – again – happily. So he kisses him again, and parts his lips to lick the skin he’s just kissed. There’s no itch in his teeth, no uncontrollable urge to bite down. Third time’s the charm, and when even that doesn’t provoke a slavering beast, Tony lifts his head.

“I didn’t want to bite you. I mean, more than I ever do.” That still sounds wrong. “I mean, you know what I mean.” His eyes track back to his throat, but there’s no hunger on his face, just a kind of fascination. “I just… I think I know how cats feel.”

Honestly, Bruce is a little scared the whole time, but he's determined to wait it out. He knows Tony, given the choice, would never hurt him, but he also knows how easy it is to give yourself over to uncontrollable, primal urges. His breath hitches when he feels Tony's tongue, but he still doesn't move away, even if a small bit of fear leaps up. In some nightmare part of his mind, he wonders if Tony forgot that he can't feed off Bruce; did Bruce agree to that?

But then Tony stands up again and Bruce relaxes. He smooths his hands up Tony's back, and leans in for a brief kiss, brief only because they should actually talk instead of get distracted.

"How cats feel?"

That kiss tastes like more, and enough like the scent that Bruce is giving off that it’s everything Tony has not to ignore the question and lean in for another one. Are there such things as sex vampires? Maybe he’s a sex vampire. Because he’s really not so interested in eating Bruce as he is with getting his mouth on him for purposes that don’t involve breaking the skin.

“Hm? Oh. Because of the…” It takes some effort to yank his eyes upward, but he does it and waves a hand at Bruce in a wide, flappy gesture meant to encompass his entire body. “Have you always smelled like this? I don’t remember. I think I’d remember, because it’s very distracting.”

Somewhat belatedly, he adds, “It’s not a bad—It’s not like BO or anything. I mean, it’s a good smell. It’s a really good smell. Is that a normal vampire thing?” Between the two of them, Bruce is the vampire expert here. “Because I’ve seen cats act stupid over catnip and that’s what it feels like is going on inside my nose right now.”

He can't tell if Tony wants to eat him or have sex with him, and before that would've been a joke and he would've known the answer, but now, you know, it could really go either way. Bruce isn't really an expert on vampires so much as two of them told him they were vampires, and then they pretty much never spoke of it again. That's the way Bruce rolls.

"Probably this is a new thing, but... Tony, you know you can't drink my blood, right? I wish I could offer it to you, and maybe I can run some tests, figure out if it would actually work, but I'm not on the menu."

“What?” Again his nose wrinkles and he flinches backward slightly, as though the idea is anathema to him. In a lot of ways, it is. He doesn’t want to hurt Bruce. He’s never wanted to hurt Bruce, and drinking his blood sounds like hurting him.

To say nothing of the fact that Tony finds the whole concept repulsive.

“No, I don’t want to drink your blood. I don’t want to drink anyone’s blood. That’s—I—No. No one is one the menu. There isn't a menu. Period.”

The thing about that is, he believes Tony. Nothing about it seems like he's in denial about his hunger. There's the possibility that he's reading himself wrong, but Bruce is ready to believe what Tony says for now, anyway. Eventually, he's going to get hungry, but that time isn't now.

"Okay, I just couldn't tell. The way you were looking at me and smelling me..." He already thought this joke to himself, but Tony didn't hear it, which means he can repeat it. "You were either thinking of eating me or having sex with me, and both are now possible in ways they weren't before."