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He’s surrounded by people, the floors beneath Tony are bustling with employees and the apartments above are occupied by his teammates, so he doesn’t know why the lab suddenly feels like a vacuum. Then he notices the empty table to his left, the only surface in the space that isn’t littered with scraps of metal and discarded tech.
He asks Jarvis to bring up a calendar and Tony realizes Bruce has been in South America for three weeks.
And Tony misses him.
It’s a curious, foreign ache, because Tony doesn’t miss things, and he certainly doesn’t miss people.
(As Bruce was throwing his bag together, Tony slipped a phone into the pocket, just so he could have Jarvis keep a silent eye on his location, in case Bruce decided to pull another disappearing act.
Tony knew that Bruce wouldn’t keep it on, would never call, but he wanted to keep track of him, just in case.)
The time is displayed in the corner of the itinerary Jarvis has pulled out, and it’s already four in the morning, eastern standard time, and Tony’s run the numbers on his equation half a dozen times and the specs are still coming up wrong.
Before he knows he’s even asked Jarvis to call, Tony hears Bruce on the other end of the line, sounding bleary and rough and the slightest bit panicked.
And Tony can hear that edge in his voice, the one that’s on the verge, so he’s quick to keep the conversation casual and make the call seem accidental.
"Oh, you have it on," he says lightly.
Tony can just imagine the way Bruce is shaking his head on the other end of the line, running a hand through his hair and nodding even though he knows (or probably hopes, because if Tony could legally activate a remote video feed without making the receiver aware of it, he would in a heartbeat) that Tony can’t see him.
The image is enough to evaporate the empty feeling like the air out of a balloon, and Tony feels the tightness in his chest ease up a little. Switching to his phone, he starts with “how’s Tierra del Fuego?”
And even though Bruce never says a thing about it, Tony knows that Bruce knows why Tony called, which is why, despite it being the middle of the night, Bruce spends the next two hours on the phone with him. He’s telling Tony about the antibacterial properties of a root he found in Brazil last week, and it should be boring, but Bruce has that way of soothing him, smoothing out all the barbs and knots in Tony’s system without even trying. (Except he is totally trying, and that makes it even better.)
Bruce can recognize when Tony goes a little slack, starts to nod off, so he switches over to the assortment of teas he’s acquired to add to his collection at the tower, because he knows that will put Tony to sleep. (That, and it’s been at least 34 hours since Tony’s seen daylight, a glass of water, or thought about getting horizontal on any surface that wasn’t the floor of his lab.)
When Bruce hears deep, even breathing on the other end of the line, he asks Jarvis to disconnect them.
"Certainly, Dr Banner, Enjoy the remainder of your trip."
In seven hours, Tony wakes up with his head pillowed on his arm and something hard and square under his ear.
It takes him a minute to shake off the fog of sleep, and he runs the thumb over the screen of his phone to check the time. There’s a message from Guy, Big and Green blinking in the corner.
It’s a picture of Bruce that he’s taken of himself in the mirror, looking decidedly less rumpled than he sounded the night before.
Miss you too, Tony.