Work Text:
So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad
That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad
– Noah Kahan, "Stick Season"
Bruce is naked when Tony arrives, just as expected.
He's walking slowly along the shore. Salt water laps at his feet. Tony observes for a moment from his landing spot. His arrival wasn't quiet–he knows that Bruce knows that he's there–but he watches from afar for whatever Bruce will willingly reveal to him.
One foot creates broad splashes around itself every time it lands, the other brief ones that reach higher up the ankle. He's favoring his left leg, posture slumped. No blood, not that Tony had expected any. Other than the slight limp, Bruce seems alright.
Tony heaves a breath and starts clomping his way over in the Iron Man suit. It's faster than trying to manage the sand in street shoes, but once he's walking side-by-side with Bruce he changes to something closer to beach attire. Nanobots take it down to hidden pieces and he's left in a different kind of suit: vintage black t-shirt, broken-in denim jeans. He chooses not to think about his sneakers getting microscopically shredded by the sand.
"You kind of gave us a scare, buddy," he says quietly. Softly.
He's looking straight ahead, but Bruce's flinch is strong enough to catch in his peripheral. "I think the whole village got a real scare."
"They knew the Avengers were handling it," Tony says with a wave.
Bruce laughs mirthlessly, still dragging himself towards the horizon. The sound of it is a lower echo of the gulls around them. "Yeah, they knew an Avenger was destroying their–"
"You ran away." He's not sure if he kept all of the hurt out of his voice. He has been trying to build on the connection he thinks he senses between them, but it's so difficult when Bruce isn't even ready to see himself as a human being. You can't force someone to love himself, he knows that, he does.
Bruce doesn't acknowledge his words, only speeds up, but then Tony places a hand on his shoulder and Bruce trips over his own feet and is on all fours on the sand fighting to keep his arms steady.
"Sorry," Tony says, and he does mean it.
Bruce grunts before lifting and rolling himself back onto his heels. Tony wants him to say something, anything, but he doesn't seem inclined to.
It feels odd to literally speak down to his friend. "Why is your first instinct to run away?"
The other man's hands curl into loose fists. "Leaving is easier than watching everything fall apart in slow motion." It's not an unfamiliar sentiment. "I shouldn't even–but if I'm gone, it's over."
Tony frowns. "Things don't always have to fall apart."
Bruce looks at him like he's being naïve. Which, yeah, Tony is, a little, but that's not really the point.
"Have you always felt this way? Or is it only since the Hulk showed up?"
Bruce's gaze moves back down to the sand. He settles back off his heels into an easier sitting position. Tony strains to hear him mumbling and catches the words dad and hurt and killed. They reach directly into a part of him that he thought was hollow.
He doesn't know the details, but he knows that he'd go back and swap places with Bruce in a heartbeat if it meant that he would never have to see him looking this broken on this beach.
And so Tony tells him so, in fewer words. It earns something that's almost a laugh and might be a sob.
"I thought that I could–could cancel out the darkness I inherited from him if I just worked hard to do good things." Bruce's voice is rough in a way Tony has only rarely heard. "But the Hulk comes from the anger inside me. He's its manifestation." The last word nearly cracks in Bruce's throat. "I'm not safe to be around, to get close to."
Tony asks if he really thinks that's true, and when Bruce nods helplessly, Tony tells him, "For a genius, you're a complete idiot." He takes a few steps closer to Bruce just to prove the point.
"No!" Bruce looks scared, eyes wide and palms up, warning Tony to stop. But he doesn't look even green-tinged. "I'm supposed to keep people at arm's length. Further. And I do," he stresses, looking and sounding as though he desperately needs Tony to understand this. He looks beautiful, one cheek caught in the setting sun, the other cast in shadow. "Except you." A halo glows around his head, the frizz of his curls angelic in the light of golden hour.
"Of course I'd be the exception," Tony says briskly. He needs Bruce to know that this doesn't bother him, that this isn't going to drive him away. "My understanding is that I'm quite exceptional."
Bruce's face drops back to his palms. "Exceptionally pig-headed." His elbows are resting on his knees and he's curled up into himself, bare ass flat on the sand, but he isn't running away. Probably couldn't, now, with all that sand everywhere. It's going to chafe like hell when he gets up.
Tony does not think about all the places, exactly, that the sand gets to touch that he does not. He's fantasized about it, of course, but–
Now is not the time.
He saunters the few remaining steps over to Bruce and plops down next to him, cross-legged and attempting to project an aura of peace. By the way Bruce's shoulders cringe, he doesn't think he's succeeding. He grimaces at the wet sand already soaking through his jeans and knows that it will end up somewhere he doesn't want it.
Focus.
"Please come home," Tony says, fighting the urge to whisper it.
He is not ashamed to want Bruce back at the tower. He built Bruce a bedroom made of zen and a state-of-the-art lab and he even stocked the kitchen with all the weird herbal tea the guy could possibly need.
Bruce doesn't seem moved, so Tony shifts gears. "You can even get some of that anger out first." He grabs the first rock he sees, one cream-colored and worn smooth from years of erosion, and offers it to Bruce in his palm. "Throw it as hard as you can. Let's see what you've got."
Bruce doesn't take the rock. He glances down at it, though, and then finally looks up and meets Tony's eyes. "What?" The confusion in his eyes and his furrowed brow are so novel that it nearly makes Tony laugh.
"It's anger management." Bruce's eyes seem to twitch. "I make stuff explode. Cap hits a punching bag. You–" he pokes Bruce in the chest with his other hand– "can throw a rock into the ocean. Nobody's gonna get hurt if you throw a rock."
Bruce looks back down to the rock. Tony wonders what he sees there that makes it read as a threat. "Alright."
It's hard for him to get a good angle, sitting as he is in the sand, but when he lobs it it's kind of impressive. For a guy who never works out.
Tony claps politely. "Feel any better?"
Bruce looks at him sidelong. He's fighting the beginning of a smile. "A little." Tony feels like maybe he's laid a few bricks to solidify the bridge between them.
"You're part of this team, you know? You do do good," Tony says, and Bruce's eyes flit back to the ocean and he starts to wonder if his masonry isn't as good as his welding. "We'll pay for repairs–"
"You'll pay for repairs–"
"–and invest in some local businesses while we're at it. Build a community center," he adds, searching for the right words to keep Bruce close, "whatever they want."
Bruce takes a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Tony recognizes the technique. Watches him do it a few more times, watches as the tension starts to calm in his shoulders. He marvels at the way his friend's cheekbones almost seem to glimmer in the sunset. Who said sweaty wasn't a good look? He looks almost relaxed here, eyes closed, bathed in golden-orange light, his arms behind him supporting his weight while he seems to bask. He decides that he's going to build Bruce a tropical villa. "You make it sound so simple. You can't throw money at every problem." Right.
Tony knows this. If Tony could pay to build Bruce a life, a sense of self beyond monster, he'd spend every dollar he had, but he can't. Maybe the villa, though.
"Yeah." He feels the urge to place one hand on Bruce's, but Bruce is skittish. Instead he lets him breathe in that deep meditative way for a little longer.
He can't bring himself to close his eyes, but lets his breathing join Bruce's, lets his lids grow a little heavier. Rolls the crick out of his neck. Small waves crest on the shore. With the changing tide, they come closer than before to lapping at Bruce's naked feet.
Bruce's everything is naked, he muses. Kind of dangerous. For both of them.
"So." Bruce doesn't actually move but the tension is visible again. Tony lets the ocean speak for him for a moment, calming Bruce where Tony can't. "Will you come home?"
He breathes manually while he waits for Bruce to answer. "Yeah," he finally says. His eyes are open, but he isn't looking at Tony.
"Okay." Tony doesn't want to celebrate out loud and drive him away. "Wanna rinse in the water before we head out? That sand's gonna hurt."
"Yeah." Bruce is in single-word response mode, but at least he's responding. Tony has to hold onto that because there is nothing else about Bruce that he can hold.
He watches the back of Bruce, very respectfully, as he walks out to waist-deep water.
The edges of the orange sunset have begun to fade into indigo.
After Bruce finishes shuffling himself around to remove sand, he falls back and begins floating on his back under the darkening sky.
Tony hopes it's peaceful.
If not a villa, maybe a spa with a warm pool. And one of those indoor sunlight ceiling systems.
He's most of the way through planning for the lighting to change to emulate different times of day when Bruce draws him out of his mind by taking his hand.
He doesn't jump out of his skin, but it's a close thing. Bruce looks amused. "Ready to go home?"
"Yeah. Let's go." Tony tells himself he's imagining Bruce's hand tightening around his own, but he can't pretend away that small, radiant smile. It feels like coming home.