kore_logs | (no subject)

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

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.”