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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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If Tony can't have sex, Bruce will be disappointed, but it isn't the end of the world, nor is it a reason to end a relationship. He's only just barely been able to have sex at all, and he enjoys it, he missed it, but he could go back to abstaining again. The real fulfillment he needs comes from just being close with Tony, no matter what form that comes in.

Tony's insecurity over this is worrying him, and he assumes it has to do with how much Tony likes having sex, but he's also having a really insecure moment in general right now. Bruce is just getting concerned until Tony says the words dating an actual freakshow, and then he stops them both in their tracks.

"What? Did you -- hear yourself just then? 'Dating an actual freakshow'?" He lifts his eyebrows. "How many times have I said something like that to you? And what do you say?"

Tipping his head, Tony fixes him with a stare and a crooked frown. “Okay, I know where you’re going to try to go with that, but it’s not going to get there. It’s like trying to compare apples and shoelaces. You just can’t.”

Being a vampire isn’t anything like the Hulk. The Hulk is Bruce. The Hulk is a thinking, rational, feeling part of Bruce who’s just had a really shitty run of life and doesn’t always know his own strength. He’s not a bloodthirsty killer who preys on other people to survive.

“The Hulk’s alive. The Hulk doesn’t eat people. He’s a part of you. He cares about you and me and people I don’t know who he’s talking about because he doesn’t use their names. He’s also not dead. I’m dead. I don’t have a heartbeat. My skin’s cold. You said my eyes aren’t the right color. I have pointy teeth. That’s not natural.” He can hear the whine entering his voice, but damn it, if there’s ever been a reason to whine, this is it. “I’m going to catch fire in the sun. I’ll probably turn into a bat. The only way this could possibly be any worse is if I was one of those stupid Twilight vampires.”

And those are so much worse than the Hulk. Please.

Bruce rolls his eyes, but then tries to abort the action. He should be sensitive. Suddenly finding yourself drastically altered from what you were before is traumatic, and he needs to be more understanding. He cups Tony's face again, trying to find the right words, but then he decides to start with a demonstration.

Pulling Tony in, he kisses him hard and loving and hungry and it's just like how he's been kissing him. No change. No reason to change. Sure, Tony's lips are cold, but Bruce can adjust to that. He breaks the kiss and steps back again, sliding his hands into Tony's hair.

"You'll figure out how to adjust, and I'll help you. So you're cold and have a new diet. You care about people, and you're not dead. You're undead, which might as well be alive with a few differences."

If a kiss was enough to warm his cold body, this one would do it, judging from the way he melts against him. This is what he wants; even more now than he’s wanted it before, he wants, needs, Bruce’s acceptance. Maybe he’s uncomfortably chilly now, and maybe he feels vaguely guilty about inching closer to Bruce now that, for all intents and purposes, he’s one big cold foot beneath the blankets, but that doesn’t quite stop him from doing it.

“So what? When you catch me doing the Thriller in the middle of the night, you’ll be okay with that?” It’s another joke, just as bad as the first one, but it comes easier now. Other things come easier too, like the way he lifts a hand to brush his fingers over Bruce’s cheek.

“I finally have someone I don’t want to lose,” he admits quietly. “I’m just—You didn’t sign up for Interview with the Vampire. I wouldn’t hold it against you if you wanted to leave, but I don’t want you to. And that’s selfish, I know, but I don’t.”

"It's not selfish to want the person you love to stay." He leans forward until their foreheads can touch, and he closes his eyes, gently running his fingers through Tony's hair and onto the back of his neck. Bruce doesn't think his words get through to Tony so much as his actions do, so here he is, in Tony's embrace, not running, and honestly, no longer that afraid that Tony's going to bite him. They've gotten over that hurdle, and maybe sex will be a different one in terms of Tony and his urges, but Bruce is confident they'll get through that one too.

"You're not losing me. I'm here, and I love you just as much as when we went to bed. I signed up for you, and you're still you, just a little different." He kisses him softly and pulls back.

"Thriller dance and all. We'll work through this."

It’s true that Tony responds better to touch than to words. Strange, perhaps, since he uses words so much and touches people more infrequently than he rambles at them, but words are limited and get easily tangled in others of their kind. Touch is simple. Even a genius can understand it.

He leans into the press of Bruce’s forehead and closes his eyes, letting himself feel the warmth of his body and breathing in the scent that is as exhilarating as it is captivating and calming. This is a mess. It’s a huge, impossible mess. But they can do this. Somehow. Maybe. If there has ever been someone to put his money on, it’s Bruce.

A smile curves Tony’s lips as Bruce pulls back. “I’m still me, huh? Okay. We can do this.”

But he doesn’t stop there. He draws away from Bruce and heads back toward the bed. As he goes, he kind of hunkers down, stance too wide, and starts doing his own rendition of the Thriller dance, complete with wavey arm motions, as he sings to a completely different beat,

“I look up to
Everything you are
In my eyes you do no wrong
I've loved you for so long
And after all is said and done
You're still you”

Bruce watches the display utterly flabbergasted and charmed. What's he supposed to do with a sappy love song combined with the Thriller dance?

"See? You haven't changed at all."

What a bizarre night, from the vampirism to their strange fight, to how fragile Tony is now, or was, but Bruce is definitely putting his money on the idea that he still is. Bruce doesn't think there's much he can do other than persist in being here that'll convince Tony that he's not going to leave him. Granted, it's easier to promise him that here when Bruce has no escape routes; at home, he wonders how or if things might be different. That's a cruel train of thought, but Bruce has a streak of cruelty he doesn't like to acknowledge, so he puts it aside.

Tony needs him now, and he needs Tony, he knows that. They are better together; Tony makes him a better person, and Bruce hopes he can make Tony see what a good person he is too.

He comes forward and catches him in a kiss.

"I would be just fine waking up to that at 3 AM. Should we add that to our band's repertoire?"

Inwardly, he can agree with that. He’s still the same guy he was when he went to sleep. A little rawer around the edges, maybe. A little more prone to jumping on the emotional rollercoaster. He feels more than he did before, sharper and harder, so much so that it’s difficult to ignore it the way he did when he was alive. It’s not a problem with the positive emotions, he doesn’t mind being deliriously happy or extraordinarily turned-on. But the darker ones, the negative ones, already Tony can see that that might be a problem.

Unless he learns how to control it. With time, maybe he will. He just has to hope that he has that time before he ruins everything with his quicksilver mood swings.

Outwardly, though, he’s hardly the same. It’s a difference emphasized when Bruce touches him again and he feels how warm he is.

“Maybe that should be our gimmick,” he suggests, hooking an arm around Bruce’s waist and walking backward toward the bed. “Setting various rock and pop songs to inappropriate dance numbers. The Mister Roboto dance to Enrique Iglesias’s Hero. That kind of thing.” When he’s close enough, he leans backwards, precursor to falling onto the bed, and tugs at Bruce to follow him down.

He follows him easily, and though Tony's on an emotional rollercoaster that's related to his new vampiric nature, Bruce just thinks he's having a hard time adjusting. It makes sense; it isn't easy finding yourself to be something completely different, something you've always thought of as demonic. So he went into shock and had a freakout, that's normal. Bruce is committed to doing whatever he needs to do to make Tony feel better, as much as he can.

"The Macarena to that Celine Dion song," he offers, smiling, as he settles himself on top of Tony.

Admittedly, the coldness is something Bruce is going to need to adjust to somehow. He's breaking out in goosebumps, but he's refusing to move away; he'll get used to it. Bruce just runs hot.

To prove to Tony that nothing fundamental about their relationship needs to change, he dips his head and kisses along his neck, nuzzling, playful kisses.

Celine Dion’s got a discography half a mile long. Not that Tony would know; he doesn’t actively listen to her music, it’s more of a case that it finds him than the other way around. But he doesn’t need to ask which song Bruce means. It’s that kind of song. One just knows.

He’s tempted to break into the chorus just for the fun of it, but as Bruce settles in on top of him, he thinks that maybe there are better things to do with his mouth than waste it belting out trite, overused schmoopy love songs.

Bruce is so warm that the heat radiating off of him gives Tony an idea of just how cold he must feel. The goosebumps he finds when he runs his hands up his arms are another clue, and he resolves to figure out a way to do something about it. Not at the moment, there’s nothing he can do. But later, surely there’s something he can make. A heat blanket, a thermal shirt of some kind that can subtly warm his body to at least room temperature, something.

Silently, he apologizes to Bruce as he curls around him, recognizing that it’s selfish but wanting to be close to him too much to pull away. He ducks his head to kiss Bruce’s shoulder. He’ll fix this. Somehow, some way, he’ll fix this. That he promises to Bruce, even if he doesn't say the words out loud.

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