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Who: Bruce and Tony
When: Morning of Day 64
What: Catching up on current events
Where: House 6

Unlike the first transformation, this one happens without a great deal of fuss.

He’s awake, as he has been since he woke to find his heart a still, dead thing in his chest. Having so often wished to forsake sleep entirely for the sake of work, he finds the lack of it now ironically amusing. Just when it’s the least helpful, he finds himself capable of achieving it. These days, it seems like the story of his life.

It’s a subtle change, one that creeps over him as he slouches in an armchair, jotting down a number of equations and specifications for the construction of his newest prototype. Not that it’s much use here, where his work isn’t, but if they ever go home again, he intends to take his notes with him. He’s just scrawling an inverted A shape onto the paper when an unexpected tremor shakes his body. Half expecting an earthquake, he lifts his head, only to realize that it isn’t the ground shaking. It’s his heart beating.

With a flicker, the cool blue light of the arc reactor shudders to life as the sharpness and far-seeing ability of his eyes grows dim and weak. Tony shivers then, dropping the pencil to his lap and pressing that hand to his chest, as his body, so cold these past few days, heats up again. It itches, like the tingling of limbs long since asleep, and he forces himself to breathe through it until it passes.

Because he’s alive. He’s human.

He can’t hear the beating of the hearts in the rest of the house. He can’t see great distances. He knows, without even trying to test it, that the inhuman strength is gone. He’s back. He’s ordinary. And for the first time, he’s actually glad to see the awkward, oft-annoying light of the reactor. His heart may be broken, but it’s beating again.

Rising to his feet – so slow now after being able to move so fast – he turns toward the stairs leading to the bedrooms, intent on sharing his newfound humanity with Bruce. He only makes it a step before his stomach twists and knots in pain, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten in days. Casting one last glance in the direction of the rest of the house, he spins around and heads for the kitchen.

The good news can wait. For now, he needs to eat. Pancakes, he thinks. There aren’t many ingredients, a batch of batter makes a ton, and he should be able to make them with ease. No problem, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bruce spent the last few days changing back and forth between being the Hulk and being himself, and he has to say, the frequency of the changes concerns him somewhat. What if he's wearing down the wall between them so much that he's turning the mechanism into more of a hair trigger than something carefully controlled? He is supposed to be trying to bring himself and the Hulk closer together in the sense that he can remember what happens when he's the Hulk, but what if there are other side effects?

He's been trying to keep from sleeping, so as not to leave Tony alone, but he's realized that he can't avoid sleep that way, so he's been sleeping in their room. He misses being able to sleep with Tony in the actual sleeping sense, and when he wakes up to find the room empty, not even Tony somewhere watching him sleep, it's kind of lonely. He rolls out of bed and doesn't change out of his pajamas as he goes to find Tony. The noise in the kitchen makes him think Steve, but he stops when he sees Tony.

"Hey. What're you doing?" Even when he wasn't undead, cooking and Tony didn't really go together.

Over the noise of the spoon he’s using to try to smooth out the batter hitting the side of the bowl, and the fact that his mind is racing in a dozen different directions, he doesn’t hear Bruce approaching the kitchen. He would have heard him if he’d still been a vampire, but he’s not and he only hears himself and the sizzle of the pan on the stove. The sound of Bruce’s voice startles him enough that he twitches in surprise and, stilling the spoon, he looks up at him.

“Making pancakes.” He gives him a wobbly smile that quickly twists into a frown. “Trying to make pancakes. I think I managed to make burned batter soup on my first attempt, though, so this is try number two.”

He can create new elements and devise an object that can power an entire city for free, but he can’t cook. It doesn’t make sense, but he keeps trying in the hopes that one day, eventually, he’ll figure it out.

“I’m starving. Like, literally starving enough that I almost don’t care that batter soup is disgusting looking.” Realizing belatedly that he jumped ahead too far, he rewinds to the point of all of this. “I’m a person again. Human. Living, breathing, beating heart human. How’s your day?”

Bruce isn't even sure what Tony is trying to make until he gives it a name; his first thought is that Tony's trying to make pancakes for Bruce, because that seems like a thing he might think of doing while Bruce slept, but then when he finds out the real reason, he's even happier about the development. Tension he didn't even know he was holding onto relaxes out of his shoulders, and he smiles tentatively, coming into the kitchen.

"Not half bad." He ducks his head to kiss Tony's neck, near his pulse. "I'd say things are looking up. Pancakes are going to be easier to get into you than vampire food. And more appetizing... in theory." He looks over Tony's shoulder doubtfully and then taps his arm.

"Let me do that. How're you feeling? Other than starving?"

Yesterday, a kiss like that would have caused a pang of guilt and self-loathing at Bruce having to touch his too cold skin. Now, he lets out a relieved breath and bites back the smile he can feel tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“What, you don’t want some of my special lumpy oatmeal looking supposed-to-be pancakes?” He’s a terrible cook and he knows it, there’s no disguising it. Relinquishing the spoon, he steps out of the way and leans against the stove in a show of helpful solidarity.

“I feel okay. Stable. Kinda bummed I didn’t get to keep the superpowers, but glad I lost the burning desire to eat people. That was a… bitch.” That’s also an understatement, but he’s not getting into woe is me, I was a vampire issues right now. “How about you? How do you feel? Any side-effects from being green and jolly for so long?”

No, Bruce doesn't want any of Tony's maybe-not pancakes, and as he starts to mix the batter, he checks the ingredients on the counter to see if they have enough batter for a new batch. They do, so he gets started on dumping what Tony, bless him, attempted. Cooking is basic chemistry and rule-following, but Tony's good at one of those and somewhat inclined to resist the other, so he supposes that's where the problems arise.

It was a bitch? He snorts and looks over at Tony, knowing he's understating just what that felt like. Bruce wouldn't wish troubling and horrible issues dealing with a sudden supernatural side, but he wonders now if Tony will look at how Bruce relates to the Hulk a different way. Probably not.

"Mm," he hums, mixing the batter. "I thought sleeping would take care of this headache, but it's still hanging around. I might have..." He stops, his gaze drifting to the side, and then he closes his eyes, focusing on the memory. "The smell of fruit and flowers. And... of wolves."

He opens his eyes and looks back at Tony. "That's it. More than usual. I've never gotten smells before."

“Fruit and flowers?” Tony’s brow furrows as he tries to place that smell and what it might mean in the context of the Hulk’s memories. It’s a failed attempt; he has no idea, and eventually, he shakes his head. “I don’t know what that means. I’d say the forest, since he’s smelling wolves, wolves and plants seem to go together, but I don’t really remember anything noteworthy.”

Still, that’s something, isn’t it? Bruce is remembering smells and he’s apparently never done that before. That’s progress. Or at least, Tony thinks that it’s progress. Unless smells are all he remembers.

“Are you sure that’s it? I mean, not that that isn’t good. That’s great. I guess. Wolves don’t really smell all that nice so maybe in that case, it’s not really great. But.” He makes a sharp, negating gesture with his hand, trying to cut off the rambling before it goes too far. “No feelings or images or anything? Or don’t you ever really get those?”

The fruit and flowers had been Ned, or Flower Man, who the Hulk had run into one day, and he'd felt so at ease, so happy that he declared him his second favorite person. Bruce glances over his shoulder at Tony's slight disappointment over what Bruce remembers, so he stops stirring and closes his eyes. He doesn't usually chase down the bits and pieces he gets from the Hulk either, but then they're usually things like explosions, so he's not very eager to explore.

He focuses on the flowers first. The smell makes everything more vivid, and where before he might have seen flashes of the man under the tree in his dream, now the pieces fall into place more neatly and brightly.

"Ned. The fruits and flowers." He's pretty sure that's the Hulk's arm cradling Ned to his side like a teddy bear. "I guess he and the Hulk made up."

Closing his eyes again, he focuses on the wolves, which he knows must be Tony. Maybe the knowing helps; it tugs him into the images of the forest at night, blurry and disconnected before, but now he sees Tony. The signal jams, though; too much information at once. The Hulk goes from shoving a wolf in Tony's face to the both of them cuddling -- who knew the Hulk was so big on cuddling? -- and then Bruce decides he doesn't want to see any more.

"He was trying to take care of you like I hoped he would." He starts stirring again, feeling slightly unsettled, like he'd just had an out of body experience.

"It's still fuzzy. It's hard to remember specific things from what he did with you I think because he spent more time with you, so more memories. It's like... like there's too many to come through the funnel from his mind to mine. I get a lot of pieces, but it's harder to sort them out."

At the mention of Ned, Tony rolls his eyes. Wonderful. Another convert to the ‘Ned’s the Best Guy in the Universe and How Dare You Try to Bite Him’ club. He doesn’t even know the guy and already he’s tired of him. Hearing that he and the Hulk are now apparently such great friends – of all the people in the town, of course it would be him - that some kind of memory of the guy filters through the divide between Bruce and the Hulk doesn’t help, and it puts a dent in Tony’s otherwise good mood.

“Is the part where I wasn’t kissing the Hulk fuzzy too or somewhere in amidst all the butterflies and rainbows, do you see that I’m not a slut?”

That comes out much harsher than he means it to. It’s likely that with anyone else, Tony would let it go at that, aggressively volleying the conversation back into another’s court with the underlying sense that the other person had done something wrong and he himself was blameless of any misdoing where the perceived insult was concerned. He doesn’t want to do it with Bruce and immediately holds up his hand, shaking his head.

“Sorry. Out of line. That was misplaced anger that I don’t want to take out on you. Also tactless, but in case you were wondering, I didn’t.” Which leads him to what he did do, and since Bruce is going to hear about it eventually, Tony figures he may as well hear it from him. “What I did do - because I always have to do something, right? – is attack your buddy Ned. I didn’t want to, but he was bleeding and I couldn’t help myself. Something stopped me, I don’t know what it was, before I could do anything to him. Pulled me off, tossed me away so that I was far enough that the smell didn’t reach me.”

He smiles, but it isn’t a pleasant one. “Seems like it makes me the town’s most wanted, though, so I thought I’d give you first crack at lynching the monster.”

Tony has a rather negative reaction to the mention of Ned, and then it seems to set the tone for everything else he says. Bruce has to admit that it all stings, but he's not going to rise to any of it. He isn't. So breathe, once, in and out, and remember that Tony's had a very stressful and life-changing few days. Almost a week, wasn't it? All his days blurred together at some point.

"I never thought you were a slut for kissing the Hulk, and I never will think of you as a slut. And that attack sounds completely unsurprising. Did you ever eat once when you were a vampire? And even if you had, it's not like those kinds of urges are easy to control. Sharon almost killed Natasha, Jesse attacked me. There was craziness everywhere."

He sets the bowl down and comes closer, stopping in front of Tony.

"We need to do better about keeping the m word out of this house."

Sharon almost kills a teammate, he assumes with sex. Jesse bites Bruce. But Tony looms over a guy who falls over on his own and suddenly he’s the villain of the story? It’s par for the course, really. And he’s fine with taking the blame for what he’s done. He’s been taking the blame for decades, and for much larger infractions than simply scaring a guy. It’s the miniscule size of the crime, and the plethora of crimes committed on an almost daily basis in the town that no one seems to mind, that irks him.

Watching Bruce approach, he gives him a mulish glare, not angry at him so much as he’s angry at the world in general. He wants to go home. There are plenty of problems there, too many, but at least there no one randomly turns into a vampire.

“I’m allowed to use it when I’m parroting others,” he says, finally relenting with the glare and shrugging as if it really doesn’t matter. In the long run, it probably doesn’t. “In fact, the only one expressly forbidden from using it is you. You used up your lifetime quota. I haven’t yet.”

It’s not the best of jokes, but it’s an attempt at one nonetheless.

Bruce agrees that it's pretty ridiculous to hound Tony for what sounds like a perfectly understandable consequence of suddenly being a vampire presented with someone's blood. No one was hurt; if someone had been hurt, he'd expect Tony to take responsibility, but that's different from being angry at him.

"Just so long as you don't think of yourself as one. And I get how that's hypocritical. I just don't want you to get stuck where I am." He runs his hand down Tony's arm and squeezes lightly before he steps away again to get the pan ready to cook.

"Probably it'll blow over. Have you spoken to Ned?"

That is hypocritical. Extremely, ridiculously hypocritical, and so wrong Tony doesn’t even know where to start pointing out where the flaws are. But down that road is an argument and he doesn’t want to have it. If refraining from using the M-word means that Bruce won’t use it either, he can get behind dropping it from his lexicon.

He waits until Bruce’s attention is on the pan before wrinkling his nose in disgust at the suggestion, making sure to smooth it out again before he looks back at him. “No.” There’s a finality in his voice that suggests that he doesn’t plan on it either. As far as Tony’s concerned, there’s nothing to say.

“Where’d you learn to make pancakes?” Better just to head off further discussion of how he needs to go apologize or whatever bullshit by changing the subject.

Nope. He knows how to speak Tony's deflection language.

"My aunt taught me. If people are making a big deal out of something that sounds relatively harmless, wouldn't you want to talk to the other person in the middle of what happened?" He looks over at him, eyebrow raising. "If Ned's fine with it, then there's no reason for you to be the town's most wanted."

"Look, can we stop talking about it? That's all I heard about when I was a vampire, now that's all I'm hearing about when I'm finally back to normal. The guy's an ass, I fucked up, nobody got hurt, end of story. I told you because I wanted you to hear it from me first, not because I needed to get another lecture."

And because he missed Bruce. He missed having someone to talk to and turn to when it felt like the world was turning on him. It's a far cry from the way he used to feel, when it was him against the world and he'd had himself convinced that he didn't care. Now, he wonders if maybe he'd been on to something there.

"Can't we just be happy that things are back to normal?"

Bruce just wants to help, and he'd think it'd be obvious whose interests he has at heart. Ned's a nice guy and he likes him, and he thinks the Hulk does too, but a lot of people are nice people. That doesn't make them his favorite people, and if anyone is capable of not being sentimental, then it's Bruce. Tony pretended like he didn't care; Bruce actually hasn't spoken to anyone in his family or Betty in years, and he's chosen not to have friends. He's hardened himself, and he's pretty okay with it. He cut himself off from Tony not too long ago, actually, but he's made up his mind not to do that again -- and that is pretty huge.

He's attached to a lot of people here, and those attachments affect him a lot more now because he hasn't had any in so long, and he hasn't had so many that are so accepting of him. They're mostly all young, too, and that tugs on Bruce, makes him want to be there for them. But Tony is different. Tony is a choice. The feelings aren't, of course, but that Bruce isn't running from them and is instead fully embracing them -- that's the big part.

So, Ned and Tony, Tony and Ned? Bruce isn't trying to lecture him or judge him or even be angry at him; he isn't upset at all, not about the attack. He lifts his hands in surrender when Tony wants to call the conversation off. Maybe Bruce can take it up now, talk to Ned. He knows Ned isn't an ass; he was really very nice to Bruce even after the Hulk gave him a concussion and injured his ribs. He's sure this is some big misunderstanding.

"Would it make you feel better if we talked about all the people I've attacked? We could do that." He's teasing though, and he reaches for Tony.

"I'm sorry. I guess I'm hardened to these kinds of conversations now. Come here; let me smell you again. You smell different when you're a vampire. I missed you."

Equating a mindless, bloodthirsty, out of a control vampire to a guy who just wants to do good and doesn’t know how to go about it is like comparing trees and 7-Up. It doesn’t work, and Tony meets that joke with a squinty stare that isn’t quite a narrow-eyed frown.

No, he thinks. It won’t make him feel better. But it will probably start a completely different fight if they travel down that road too long. He isn’t trying to be special, doesn’t want to corner the market in the no one understands me flavor of angst. But the Hulk isn’t a monster and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to accept with good grace Bruce insinuating that he is.

He doesn’t want to fight, though. Not about the Hulk. Not about their neighbors. Not about anything. If Bruce is willing to let it go, Tony sure as hell doesn’t want to pursue it.

“I smell different?” The not-frown dissolves into a look of disbelieving confusion. “Excuse you, but you’re the one with the smell.” He leans in to take a sniff, making it as exaggerated as possible. “Except I can’t smell it anymore. The weird vampire aphrodisiac smell.” That would be mildly disappointing were it not for the fact that he suspects it had something to do with the impulse to watch Bruce when he slept.

“Why? How do I smell? Do I stink? Are you not-so-subtly telling me to take a shower?”

It really was a joke, less about the Hulk and more about how Bruce has had to deal with waking up and finding out that he's hurt people, or attacked people, or come close to doing both. He's definitely done that more often than he's, say, saved New York. Even against Abomination, people got in the way, got hurt, or he couldn't save them in time. It's less about the motivation behind the attack and more about having to live with himself the next day because whatever the Hulk intended, sometimes good people got hurt.

He doesn't want to fight about it either or, honestly, even talk about the Hulk. He's been splitting his life with him the past few days, and he really needs to sit and figure out what he's managed to pull from the experience, but he'd also like to just be in his own head for a little while. The memories will bleed through if they're there.

"I smelled like an aphrodisiac?" he says with a small laugh, and then he grabs Tony by his waist and pulls him in for a warm, tight hug, with his nose tucked against his shoulder. He doesn't answer right away, just holding him close and feeling how warm he is.

"You smell like you. Can't explain it. But you didn't smell this way when you were a vampire. Mm." He nuzzles Tony and cracks an eye to check on the pancakes, which will need his attention soon.

"Once we get some food in you, sometime today, can we do a lot more of this?"

His heightened senses may have disappeared with the rest of his vampirism, but Tony finds that he likes touching Bruce, and being touched by him, better this way. There’s no undercurrent of guilt accompanying the act of putting his arms around him, no concern over whether he’s so cold that he’s making Bruce uncomfortable. Although he never said anything to the contrary, Tony knows that it can’t have been pleasant for him, and he knows that being undead made him pathetically needy for physical contact.

For that alone, Tony knows that he owes Bruce an apology. He owes him a lot of apologies for the way he behaved, but for the moment, he contents himself with simply returning the hug. Bruce probably needs it, and even if Tony won’t admit it, he definitely does.

“Do what? More smelling?” It’s a joke; even if Bruce can’t see his smile, directed as it is toward his shoulder, he can probably hear it in his voice. “You want to make the pancakes to go? Maybe put them on a paper towel? We could go sit down in the living room, you can smell me while I eat.”

He gives him a light squeeze, tightening the grip he has around his shoulders as he sobers slightly. “Yeah,” he says softly. “We can do more of this today.”

He wouldn't want to tell Tony about how it seems like the constant flipping back and forth is catching up with him, but he thinks it is, and having a moment to really relax is making that all the more noticeable. The faint headache, the exhaustion creeping in -- it all makes him really glad that wanting to spend some quiet time with Tony doesn't have to look like anything more than just being glad he's back. Granted, that quiet time probably won't be quiet for long, but he'll get through it. He smiles and kisses his neck again before he pulls back and goes back to the pancakes, flipping them over.

"How do you feel about blueberry pancakes? Because we have some blueberries in the fridge. Also I think a lemon. I'm definitely going to need the lemon, but the blueberries are up to you. Could you get them for me?"

“You’re the chef, Chef. I’m just the guy who’s going to eat your masterpiece.” He plays it off with nonchalance, but Tony likes blueberries. He always has, and as he heads over to the fridge to get them out, he thinks it’s probably a good thing that he didn’t know they were in there. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any for pancakes now.

Delivering both requested items to Bruce, he swipes a handful of the berries to eat while he waits for the pancakes to be finished. Manners prevent him from talking with his mouth full, giving Bruce a moment’s respite from his yammering until after he’s chewed and swallowed the things.

“Do you want me to cut that lemon for you? Or are you just going to… What are you going to do with it?”

With the pancakes flipped well enough -- he's no expert, but he didn't make a mess -- he can turn around and start putting berries in the batter.

"I need about a tablespoonish of lemon juice because I'm going to teach you how to make the best pancakes." They both need to not think about the past few days, and maybe a domestic scene like this can cheer them both up. When he'd brought up the blueberries, it's really only because he put them in there when he was harvesting fruit from all the trees and plants around, but seeing Tony eat them reminds him of their first day together on the helicarrier.

"Cooking's just chemistry you can eat, and you're good at chemistry. You came up with a new element that one time. Pancakes should be a breeze."

“New elements don’t get burned because you put the stove on six instead of four.” If that’s even why they burned at all. Maybe it’s because of the setting. Maybe it’s because they were left on there too long. Tony doesn’t know. It’s a mystery.

A tablespoon of lemon juice he can manage, though. He thinks. Peeling it isn’t a problem. That he does without a hitch. Squeezing the juice out onto the tablespoon, however, is, and while he does get it, he also ends up with juice dripping from his hands, spattered on his shirt and his face, and all over the counter, too.

He hopes, no doubt in vain, that Bruce has been paying too much attention to putting the berries in the pancake batter to notice the result of the lemon battle. “Here. Tablespoon of lemon juice.” He makes a face, halfway between a wince and a rueful smile. “I hope that’s all you needed, because I don’t think the lemon has much left in it.”

Like it's the lemon's fault.

That was pretty embarrassing. Bruce had to split his time between folding in the berries and taking care of the pancakes on the stove, but he saw enough and even got some lemon juice on himself, and he could've said something to Tony in the process, but then he'd gotten started and it was maybe more worthwhile to watch the trainwreck than help get him back on course. He comes back with a towel for Tony and dumps the juice in.

"Next time, you can just poke it with something and squeeze the juice out into the bowl." He's trying not to smile too much, but it's not working as he mixes up the batter again.

The look Tony gives him is a little flat, but there’s no true anger or disgruntlement in it. “Really? Poke it? That isn’t something you should’ve told me before I wrung it out?”

What’s left of the lemon resembles a wrung-out washcloth more than a piece of fruit. Judging by his previous attempts at cooking, however, this is more like a triumph than a defeat.

“Okay, then, Mister I Know Everything, now what?”

Edited 2013-05-03 23:25 (UTC)

"You started wringing it out before I could say anything; I thought I'd let you finish." He brings the batter over to the pan and gestures with his head for Tony to follow.

"Okay, you want to start with less batter when you start pouring it into the pan. Let it settle, then add more until you get to a size you want." He demonstrates, settling on a decently sized pancake but not one that's going to be hard for Tony to flip.

"After a few minutes, you'll see bubbles along the top, and along the edges. When the bubbles along the edges start popping and the holes don't get filled in, then you know it's ready to flip." He lifts his eyebrows at Tony. "Got it? Think of it like building a machine, but the machine's pancakes."

“Does that make you Pancake JARVIS?”

Tony can build things without JARVIS. He doesn’t need his AI peanut gallery offering commentary on everything he does. But he misses him. Save for his stint in Afghanistan, he hasn’t been without him this long since he created him and sometimes, more often than he cares to admit, he misses his dry sarcasm.

Joking aside, he is taking this impromptu cooking lesson seriously. It would be nice to know how to make more than just cold-cut sandwiches, smoothies, and burgers. “Flip ‘em when they bubble and don’t fill in. Got it.”

"I can be your Chef JARVIS." He smiles and then moves over, passing Tony the spatula when the pancake seems ready.

"Now turn it over gently. This is your Pancake Mach 1, so no tricky maneuvers, just the basics." Because he can so see Tony trying to make this into pancake acrobatics and getting batter all over the both of them. He already smells lemon fresh; they don't need batter mixed into that too.

It’s like getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar; surreptitiously, Tony glances at Bruce out of the corner of his eye, seeing if he’s watching him as he extends the spatula toward the pancakes.

“Tricky maneuvers are kind of like my thing,” he points out unnecessarily. By this point, anyone who knows him knows that he can’t do anything the easy way. “It’s what I do.”

But just this once, he slides the plastic utensil under a pancake and deftly turns it over onto its other side, no muss, no fuss. Eyebrows rising, he turns to him expectantly. “There. Pancake flipped.”

He's definitely watching, and he wouldn't be surprised if Tony went ahead and tried some kind of grand gesture anyway. Some day he's sure he'll wake up to find Tony having made pancakes, and he's got batter in his hair to prove it.

"And you can try them out all you want some other day, but now I'm hungry too and we already have to clean up that lemonsplosion over there." He gently nudges Tony's side and grins, and then starts pouring out another pancake onto the pan.

"I'll finish up here. You start getting the toppings ready. Do we have syrup?"

Wake up to pancakes? Please. Some morning, and some morning soon or else he might forget how to do it properly, Bruce is going to wake up to find not just pancakes being served to him in bed, but eggs and possibly bacon or sausage. Or whatever is the equivalent of breakfast type foods they have at the time. It will probably take him four hours to do it, but by all the aliens on all the planets in the universe, he’ll do it.

Somehow, he’ll do it.

“Syrup?” He looks around, shuffling out of the way to go poke through the cabinets. It doesn’t take him long to pull out a bottle of the stuff. “Uh… Yeah. Syrup we have. What else do you want?”

"They're your pancakes. What do you want?" Bruce is fine with butter and syrup; he doesn't have that much of a sweet tooth and the blueberries will take care of anything else he might want.

There's enough batter left for a few more pancakes, and Bruce gets those started and on their way to finishing up while Tony hunts around in the kitchen. He starts getting their plates ready, and he also starts smiling to himself just... just because. He's not thinking about the Hulk -- well, he wasn't until just now, but for right now, there's only him and Tony and pancakes that they made together. He hadn't realized how much he needed that.

When he said he was fine with Tony and the Hulk, he meant it. He's fine with it. He's not happy about it, but he's fine with a lot of things he's not happy about, to the point where he wouldn't want them to change. But since he found out, it's felt like he's been sitting in the room every time they were together, and right now he's not here.

Tony isn’t thinking about the Hulk either. Contrary to how it might sometimes seem, Bruce is the one who takes center stage in his thoughts. Not the Hulk. And right now, were it not for the ugly kitchen, the lack of helpful AI input, and the California sun, he could convince himself that they were back home. That this was his house, Bruce was in his kitchen, and they were going to have an ordinary day just like ordinary people.

Stepping up behind Bruce on his way back from dropping the syrup off on the counter, Tony slides his arms around his waist and leans in to kiss the back of his neck. “How about you?” he asks, propping his chin on Bruce’s shoulder and trying not to hamper his range of movement too much. “Can I have you with the pancakes? Not like covered in pancakes, that’s not—Syrup’s sticky and—Right.”

Turning his head, he takes a deep breath, exaggerating sniffing at Bruce’s hair. “There. That’s your sniff for the next fifteen minutes. Think it’ll tide you over until we get settled?”

His smile only gets bigger when Tony comes up behind him. He knows Tony loves him and cares about him, he knows that Tony will do ridiculously sappy things for him, but something as simple as Can I have you with the pancakes? cuts right through to Bruce to remind him of what they have. He doesn't need the rambling afterward to know what Tony meant. The exaggerated sniffing tickles, and he laughs, gently and playfully nudging Tony out of the way.

"Maybe. I guess it'll have to do." He finishes up and breaks free of Tony so he can bring everything over to the table.

"So you're feeling all better now? No symptoms, no weird after effects?"

The prospect of finally getting something to eat makes him more amenable to being elbowed out of the way, though he follows close on Bruce’s heels as he heads over to the table. He may be hungry, but he reminds himself that he’s not going to devour the pancakes like some kind of rabid animal. He’s going to use the silverware, take small bites, and behave like the civilized person he is. And he reminds himself again when he sits down so that he doesn’t knock anything over trying to get to his plate.

“I don’t know. Would you call still wanting to stare at you while you sleep a symptom?” He’s teasing and follows that question up with a grin to let Bruce know that. “I feel fine. Normal. I mean, I can’t—My senses are back to normal. I think the super strength and the speed’s gone. I’m not cold anymore. Well, not colder than usual. I still feel a little…” Shrugging, he taps a finger against the arc reactor, trying to say that the symptoms of having the device in his chest haven’t abated.

“I think it might add a new dimension to the nightmares.” He grimaces as he says it. It’s not a subject he likes talking about, but he’s more open with Bruce about it than he is anyone else. “At least until I forget about it. Uh, but other than that, I think I’m fine.”

Tony's no doubt noticed Bruce's nightmares or vivid dreams that bother him for a few nights after he's Hulked out, and Bruce can only imagine what his sleep's going to be like for the next little while. So Tony talking about his nightmares? The space couldn't get any safer. Bruce's dreams are nothing like Tony's PTSD, more his brain filtering out what's going on and spitting images at him, but still.

He'd give Tony something to help him sleep, but his personality is mildly... addictive, so he bites that back; he'll look into other methods, and in the meantime, just be there to help him.

"I'll give you a checkup a little later, run your blood work as much as I can, all the fun stuff." He smiles over at him, and then reaches out to touch his arm.

"Do you want to talk about any of it?"

He’s noticed the dreams; sometimes when his own sleep is too shallow, he’s woken up to see Bruce struggling with his own. Understanding prevents him from asking, but concern keeps him there, awake at his side if the moment comes when it looks like he needs help. It’s for that reason that he doesn’t want to add to Bruce’s difficulty with sleep with his own problems. Being a burden’s the first step in driving people away from him.

But Bruce is asking about it now, and to not talk about it seems like it would convey the message that he doesn’t feel comfortable opening up to him. He does. He just doesn’t know where to start. While he figures it out, he eats a bite of his pancakes, makes himself chew slowly so that he doesn’t fall upon it like a ravenous wolf.

“It was kind of neat,” he begins once he’s swallowed, giving Bruce an apologetic smile before he continues. “Not the whole—The strength. The speed. I jumped off the top of the lighthouse. Just right over the edge, didn’t even faze me. I raced Steve. I was—It was nice.”

He has to pause on the next bit to formulate a way to say it that doesn’t sound like he wants pity. “I’m just a guy in a tin can. And it came with a whole bunch of undesirable problems, I know, but for a little while it was—I was like the rest of you.” He shrugs, smiles again, and looks down to start picking at his pancakes. "I think I'm going to miss that."

Bruce looks at himself, especially, but Steve too, and he doesn't see what Tony sees. He sees manufactured science, human bodies manipulated, twisted into something else. Steve got a pretty happy ending, but what makes Steve isn't how fast he can run or how many hits he can take. And Bruce... Bruce is a mess, he barely counts himself a superhero because in the end, he isn't, not really. He's half of a superhero, but he doesn't do anything except... disappear. He hoped Tony's stint as a vampire might've helped him to understand that, but not as much as he would've liked, it seems.

"I know it must be hard for a guy who had several degrees by the time most people were still getting the Freshman 15 to see how sometimes putting in the effort can make you... better than letting things come to you effortlessly. Tony, you work to be a superhero. You chose this, you keep making yourself new and better suits, and you work hard for it. Steve and me, we're along for the ride, but you -- you're driving."

He shrugs and goes back to his pancakes, sure that won't really help, but he wishes he could make Tony understand that Bruce thinks he's better than all of them.

"It's fair to miss being able to do that stuff, though. Did you arm wrestle Steve too?"

That sounds both like a compliment and like Bruce is trying to say that Tony’s in some way better than he and Steve are. Which is so ridiculously laughable that it almost succeeds in making him laugh. It’s like comparing diamonds to a piece of chipped glass. With someone else, he would make a show of agreeing, because how could anyone be better than the great Tony Stark? With Bruce, who he wants to never have to deal with the person, Tony feels compelled to be brutally honest about his defects.

“I have three DUIs and about fifteen accidents on my driving record.” And a veritable parade of smashed sports cars in his past. True, most of those accidents and arrests had come in his twenties, when he’d been rebelling against everything, but he’d still had them. “I really don’t think you want me driving anyone anywhere. Or starring on the wrestling team. I didn’t arm wrestle him. Just raced him. And then I tried to avoid him.”

He makes a face, managing to look a little sheepish while he rolls his eyes. “The temptation to bite him was a little too strong. I mean, not that I wanted his blood, I didn’t. I just figured the Ninety Year Old Virgin wouldn’t know what hit him if I bit him. And that might’ve been kind of—” Holding out his hand, he wobbled it back and forth for a second. “So I just didn’t.”

Tony is more resistant to the idea that he's worth something than Bruce is, and that's... pretty profoundly sad. Bruce is honest about defects to a fault, but he can't help but be taken in by Tony because he's such a life raft for Bruce. And it's because he's made mistakes, he isn't always the nicest guy around, that Bruce thinks what he's doing is amazing. It comes from a place of genuine caring.

"Good choice. It's what I would've recommended. I'm sort of the king of abstention though." Which, again, makes Tony's resolve not to hurt anyone or drink any blood all the more impressive.

"I'm proud of you, you know. What you went through isn't easy to deal with all of a sudden." Tony was setting himself up for some pretty bad falls and was being really stubborn, but he made it. That's worth being proud.

Hearing Bruce say that he’s proud of him shouldn’t make him as pleased as it does, but he can’t suppress the way it makes him feel. There’s a part of him that strives so hard for approval, completely at odds with the way he is and acts on a daily basis, and even though he sabotages himself so often, he still wants to know that someone’s proud of him. His parents will never be, although even if they weren’t dead he wouldn’t believe otherwise. And Bruce is one of the most important people in his life. Knowing that he’s proud of him matters a great deal.

Turns out, he has no idea what to do with that kind of praise. So Tony waves it off and acts like what he’s done isn’t anything at all.

“It was what, a week? Two? Something like that. I got off easy. Other people have to deal with that kind of stuff forever.” There’s one thing he won’t dismiss, though. “I’m just glad I didn’t kill anyone. For a while, I don’t know. It felt like I could’ve.”

Would it help if he said he probably could've? No, probably not. Bruce, shut up. Keep your pessimism to yourself. He can't tell if telling Tony that he's proud actually helped at all, but he's made a decision to give him more positive reinforcement for a while to see what kind of effect that has. Tony brushes off so much that pertains to him that it's hard to tell, but it's bound to yield a result in time if he keeps at it enough.

"A weaker person would've." There, that's the less pessimistic version of what he was trying to say. He gives Tony a smile and reaches out to squeeze his arm. "You held it together where it really mattered, and that's hard." Bruce should know. "However long it lasted doesn't matter because you did it. You got through to the other side without killing or seriously harming anyone, and that's worth celebrating."

It’ll take some time, he knows, but he’ll come to terms with the way he behaved eventually. Maybe he’ll dream about it, maybe a few of those dreams will wake him in a panic, but in time, it won’t seem quite so bad as it does now. Logically, he knows that, and he’s willing to take Bruce’s words at face value and not argue the point.

“Celebrate, huh?” Smiling, he sets his fork down long enough to cover Bruce’s hand with his own. It’s a brief touch, and soon he’s picking up his fork again and gesturing to the pancakes. “I like the sound of that. Let’s finish up and get to all that celebratory sniffing I promised. That seems like a pretty good way to kick it off. At least, I think so. I might be biased.”

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