'Okay, Banner, if you set the megatron dial to eight point four, we should be ready to go.' Stark smiled. He and Banner had their moments but deep down they were really good friends.
'Okay, Stark, dial's ready.'
'Great,' Tony replied, 'now get behind the screen or you'll get blown to pieces.' Bruce nodded and moved behind what looked like a glass screen but was actually a screen made of an alien element called rugarium. Bruce had discovered that it was the only thing that would protect them from such high levels of radiation, not that he needed it. Tony began to press things,
'Here we go.' Tony smiled as he pushed the big, red button.
Half an hour and six cups of coffee later the experiment had worked fantastically. Tony and Bruce had spent hours working on the relative actions and reactions for every possible thing that could go wrong and it had turned out that they didn't need to. They were both stupidly excited at the success and it had reduced them to hyper school children, Bruce had even knocked over his coffee. Then, totally out of the blue, Tony kissed him. The atmosphere changed completely. It wasn't that Bruce minded the sudden display of affection he just wasn't expecting it. He looked at Tony and Tony looked back at him.
'I'm sorry; I don't know what came over me.' Tony apologised.
'I don't mind, I just didn't expect it.' Tony kissed him again but this time it was slower, more deliberate. When Tony pulled away Bruce couldn't stop himself looking slightly disappointed.
Tony laughed, 'You're cute. Don't worry, you get used to the random guys hitting on you. Me and Clint had this whole thing a while ago, well, until Natasha stole him from me.'
'So everyone does this?' Queried Bruce.
'Well, on some level, yeah. Natasha will fuck anything that moves and is capable of putting up a decent fight, Clint is most definitely bi, I'm not sure about Steve but he's from the 1940s and probably doesn't know what it is, Thor comes from a different world where the shag aliens for fun so he doesn't care.' Bruce raised his eyebrows. Tony smiled at him in a way that made Bruce go weak at the knees before walking out of the lab.
'I've got to find Thor, need to do some heavy lifting.'
That night all Bruce could think about was Tony. The things that had passed between them had hung in the air all day. Bruce was less concerned about what had happened and more concerned that it wouldn't happen again. He wanted to be with Tony, he was just so awkward that he didn't think he would know how to ask Tony something like that. He also knew that Tony wouldn't want to be with someone like him. He was a perfect guy with his pick of anybody he wanted, male or female. Bruce was just a guy he worked with that he had kissed in a rush of emotion. Tony didn't want to risk his life being with someone as dangerous as the Other Guy. Never mind someone as plain, as ordinary and frankly boring as Bruce. Bruce sometimes hated that the only thing people cared about when they met him was the he was a monster, or part of one and it wasn't something that he could change. He wanted to, but he couldn't do anything. He remembered the time that Tony had told him that he just had to 'learn how to control' the Other Guy. Bruce had to refrain from laughing at that, he already employed so many techniques to stop himself getting angry at things other people didn't even think about. The world was lucky that he wasn't an angry person by nature and that was all he had to say on the matter. Maybe Tony was the answer, he was actually far too flippant to care about any sort of danger involved. Bruce was starting to wonder, he and Tony were completely opposite. Like two sides of a coin, but opposites attract right? Protons and electrons? Surely they could make it work. Bruce didn't know what he would do if they couldn't...