Author Notes:

This is loosely based off the song "Come on Home," by the Indigo Girls. I wrote this because I've read a lot of stories about Tony and Bruce, but not very many that convey how beautifully messed up they are, and how being in love doesn't change that. I want a story not where Tony and Bruce fall in love, but where they start to deserve each other.

Let me know if you think I succeeded.

Tony didn't trust very many people. He trusted Jarvis, but since Jarvis wasn't technically human, he probably didn't count. He trusted Pepper. He trusted Fury, in the sense that he trusted that Fury would work within his own best interests. And really, that was it.

He didn't trust Bruce.

The Hulk wasn't the problem. From a scientific standpoint, Tony found the Hulk fascinating. Tony wasn't worried about Bruce's transformations, and they certainly didn't make him less trustful of Bruce.

What Tony didn't trust Bruce to do was to stick around. So when he woke up in the morning and Bruce wasn't there, he could hardly say that it was a surprise. Hoping that this was just like the other times, and he would find Bruce at work in the lab, he slid out of the warmth of his bed. "Jarvis? Is Bruce in the tower?"

"Yes, sir. He's in the lobby, and he seems anxious."

"Thank you." Tony took the elevator down the stairs, wondering what was going on that would have Bruce in the lobby. He never sat down there; he hated large empty spaces. When Tony was waiting for someone to show up for meetings, Bruce refused to sit in the lobby with him.

When he got off the elevator, Bruce looked up. He was sitting on the couch and wringing his hands.

"I was hoping you wouldn't wake up."

Tony strode across the room and sat down on the couch. "What's going on?" he asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.

"I'm leaving."

Tony's chest tightened. "That's what you've been saying since you got here."

"Today." Bruce's voice was firm. "I'm leaving today."

"Why?"

"Tony, you know why."

"No, I mean it. I want to know. Why today? Why now?"

"Because if I don't leave now, I won't do it at all."

"I see no problem with that."

"This was only ever supposed to be temporary. I need to get back to the real world."

They'd had this argument before, dozens of times, but it felt different this morning. Tony frowned. "Some of us think this is the real world."

"It's not safe for me to stay here. I could hurt somebody."

Tony rolled his eyes. "You need to write a new script, Bruce. This one's getting old. Besides, no matter where you go you could hurt somebody. It comes with the territory. Are you telling me that it's okay with you if you destroy Calcutta? Because I think a lot of people there would be quite put out with you if they knew you felt that way."

"I can't be somewhere with this many people." There was a silence as they both mulled this over. When Bruce spoke again, his voice was pleading. "I've already packed. My flight has been booked for weeks."

"Wait, you booked a flight? How did I miss that? I expressly told Jarvis to tell me if you did anything to suggest you were leaving."

"I called the airport from a payphone. By the way, has anyone ever told you that it's kind of creepy how hard it is to keep a secret from you?"

That stung. "I need a drink," he said, leaving the room. He wasn't sure why he left, except that he couldn't just sit there and argue with Bruce. A small (okay, large) part of him hoped that Bruce would follow him. They'd played out this scene dozens of times. There was nothing to suggest that Bruce would follow through on his intentions this time. With that in mind, he went to his favorite living room, knowing that Bruce would expect him to go there.

Two drinks later, the situation hadn't improved. Bruce was showing no signs of coming upstairs, and Jarvis said that he hadn't moved from the couch. Tony had thought of several arguments he could make, but none that would convince Bruce to stay now that his mind was made up. In the end, Bruce would do what he wanted to, and for some reason, he seemed to think he didn't deserve to be happy.

Or maybe, as Tony's less-than-sober mind pointed out, he wasn't making Bruce happy. Maybe Bruce wanted someone who wasn't so broken. Maybe he didn't want someone who was still drinking far too heavily and didn't really know how to treat people like they deserved.

With that in mind, he closed the bottle of vodka, right as Jarvis made an announcement. "Dr. Banner is coming up in the elevator."

A few seconds later, the door opened. Bruce stood there, holding a suitcase that Tony hadn't noticed earlier. Since when did Bruce even own a suitcase? Had Tony bought it for him? It was hard to remember. He bought Bruce a lot of things.

"My cab's here." Bruce took two steps out of the elevator and stopped.

"I'd have driven you." Tony got up from his stool and stood awkwardly.

Tony, just— it'll be easier this way. I'll call you when I'm settled in."

"You still haven't told me where you're going."

"I don't want you to come after me."

They stood, neither quite sure what to do. Finally, Bruce said, "My cab will leave if I don't go now."

"Okay." Tony strode towards Bruce and shook his hand. "Have a safe trip, Dr. Banner."

"Tony—"

"I have to go to the lab. I'm working on a very sensitive project right now."

The first time they kissed, Tony felt like his lips were on fire. It was almost too much, and he cursed himself for feeling things so strongly.

Bruce tasted like blueberries.

For the next several weeks, Tony alternated between numbing himself with drink and punishing himself with sobriety. As time went on, he began to lean towards punishment. A constant reminder that he and his addictions hadn't been good enough to make Bruce stay.

When he got coffee with Pepper to go over accounts, she noticed that something was off. He tried to hide it, but he wasn't any good at hiding things, and Pepper knew him better than anyone. She waited to mention it until after they ordered pancakes, strawberries for him, none for her.

"I've never seen you this quiet," she said. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine. Why, does it seem like something's wrong?"

"Well, you remembered that I'm allergic to strawberries, for a start. In the entire time we dated, you never once remembered."

"Sure I did."

"No, you didn't."

Tony didn't know how to respond to that, so he ignored it. That was how he dealt with things he didn't understand. After a few seconds, he leaned forwards, elbows on the table. "Pepper, can I ask you a serious question?"

She looked surprised. "Okay."

"Why did we break up?"

"You mean you don't remember?"

"No, I do remember, but I don't know what it was like on your end of things."

Pepper took a sip of coffee and raised an eyebrow. "Okay, now I know something's wrong. You're asking for someone else's point of view on something? Tony Stark, the textbook narcissist, wants to know what something was like for me?"

"I'm serious, I want to know."

"Okay." She took another sip of coffee, and appeared to be thinking about the question. "I suppose I never really expected our relationship to last. I don't know if this has ever occurred to you, but you're not the most stable person I've met. So, it hurt, but it's not like I wasn't expecting it."

"Hey, hold up. I'm stable."

Pepper rolled her eyes. "Sleeping with a different woman every week? Blowing off meetings because you didn't feel like going? You may have improved in the past couple of months, but look up stable in the dictionary and it says 'The opposite of what Tony Stark is.'" She looked at him closer. "I notice that you're not drunk or hungover today, though. I suppose for you, that's pretty close to stable."

"Bruce left."

Pepper smiled sadly. "You're used to being the one leaving, aren't you?"

The morning after he and Bruce first had sex, Tony woke up alone. This threw him off; he was used to Pepper, who liked to cuddle every morning, or before that, the endless line of women he had to shake off so that he could get up and have a cup of coffee. When he later found Bruce working in the lab, he said nothing about how hurt he was.

Two weeks and three days after Bruce left, the rest of the Avengers staged an intervention. Except for Bruce, naturally, and Thor, who was bad in Asgaard. They hadn't heard from him since his flight up with Loki.

"Tony, we're worried about you," Steve said. He was sitting at the head of the conference table, and spoke the way a boss would to one of his employees.

"You haven't been the same since Bruce left," Clint said. He didn't appear to be paying much attention, but instead was checking the tips of his arrows. Even when he was supposed to be incognito, he couldn't help but bring his bow and arrow with him. Then again, Tony couldn't talk; of all the people in this room, he was probably the worst at going incognito.

"That's funny. You know, people normally stage interventions when people start drinking heavily, not when they cut back."

"It's not the drinking," Steve said. Good God, that man was earnest. "We're all glad you're drinking less. What's worrying us is the moping around your tower all by yourself. We can tell you're not happy."

"What do you mean, moping? I just built an Iron Man suit that can transform into a jet. How many of you have built a jet in a week?"

"When have you ever been that productive in one week?" Steve demanded.

Tony gave this some thought. "Well, there was the week when—what's your point again? So what if I'm being productive? I thought that was supposed to be a good thing."

"What Steve is trying to say is that you're using your work to avoid dealing with your feelings," Clint said.

Tony stood up. "So what you're trying to tell me is that you're worried about me because I'm not drinking and I am working?"

"They're explaining it wrong," Natasha said, rolling her eyes. "They think you're lonely."

"Well, yeah, I am. I miss having Bruce around. So what? Isn't that what people do when friends leave, miss them?"

"Tony, we all know that you and Bruce weren't just friends," Steve said levelly.

"Again, so what? So I miss having him in to tower. I think I'm handling the situation pretty well, personally. I've been sober for six days now." He threw that last remark out to get Steve off his back. It was his way of saying that everything was fine, and would they please just leave him alone.

Natasha turned to Clint. "See! I told you he just missed having people in the tower."

"Yes! Thank you! So, I guess we're done here," Tony said, standing up.

"Yes, we are. So that's settled. You miss having people in the tower, that's all. Not a problem. We'll move in tomorrow," Natasha said sweetly.

That was the moment Tony realized that he'd been set up.

The first night after Stark Tower was rebuilt, Bruce said that he was leaving. They argued for hours, but eventually, Tony managed to convince him to stay one more night.
And then another. That was how things went, one night at a time, until Bruce stopped saying he was going to leave. Tony thought that he wouldn't be able to keep going if Bruce left.

Having the other Avengers in his house complicated things. With the size of Stark Tower, all logic dictated that he would rarely, if ever, see them. But of course, if that had been their intention, they never would have moved in to begin with. To complicate matters, Natasha invited Pepper to visit with alarming frequency. When Tony asked her about it, she snorted and said something about there being "too much testosterone here."

Steve insisted on them eating together every night. They took turns cooking, which for everyone except Steve and Natasha meant ordering takeout. At first, Steve complained about this, but after one night of Clint's cooking, he relented.

Clint liked to watch Tony work, which should have bothered him, except that it didn't. Tony found himself explaining things like Quantum Leaps and the Boson Higgs particle, and Clint would nod stoically and make arrows.

After a while, Tony kind of got used to the others being there.

"Jarvis?" he called, the morning of the 41st day after Bruce left.

"Yes, sir?"

"Can you pull up everything Bruce looked up while he was here and tell me the names of any places he seemed interested in?" Tony told himself that he just wanted to know where Bruce was, but he also knew that if he found out, he would definitely go looking for him. Bruce had called when he arrived wherever he arrived, but Tony ignored it, unwilling to deal with anything at the time. That was one of the nights when he returned to the bottle.

After rifling through meaningless information for two hours, Tony realized that he was going about this the wrong way. "Jarvis, I need you to hack into the airport's database of scheduled flights. Use the code I developed last month so that they don't realize they've been hacked."

"Very well, sir. Newark or JFK?"

"Both."

"I'll take the liberty of assuming that you want to search for Dr. Banner's flight.

"Obviously." Tony tapped on the desk impatiently, wondering if his increased fidgeting was a result of staying sober. More likely, he was just nervous. There was no telling how Bruce would react when he saw him.

"Dr. Banner flew out of Newark on their nonstop flight to Greenland at 7:30 AM Eastern Standard Time."

"Thanks, Jarvis. Start up my fastest jet and set coordinates for Greenland."

Sometimes when Bruce kissed him, Tony forgot that there i/wasi anything else they could be doing. It was sloppy and harsh, as though any minute Bruce might pick up and leave, and Tony savored every moment of it.

Tony walked into the dilapidated house to the sight of Bruce asleep on the couch. He strode towards him. "Found you, doc."

Bruce sat up immediately. Tony knew that all it would take was one sound for Bruce to be awake, but he was still hall surprised when it worked. It was like he remembered Bruce's habit from a dream, and didn't expect it to be true in real life.

"It took you this long?" Bruce picked up his blanket and folded it neatly, setting it on the edge of the couch.

"I was giving you space, respecting your boundaries, you know, all that good stuff. Gave up on that idea, though. It's been 41 days,Bruce."

"42."

"No, 41. I've been keeping track."

"So have I. Tony, it's one in the morning. That makes it the 42nd day."

"Okay, 42 then. Can I sit down?" Without waiting for an answer, he sat next to Bruce, probably closer than Bruce was comfortable with.

"I called you when I got here, you know," Bruce said.

"I know. I chose to ignore it."

"I'm not going back."

"That's fine. I'll stay here. Or we can go somewhere else. Did you know there's a town in Kansas with only 400 people in it? I looked it up. You wouldn't be able to hurt very many people there. There's tornadoes, though, so be sure to pack your ruby slippers. And—"

"Tony, you're babbling."

"True, but that doesn't make my point less valid."

"And what is your point, exactly?"

"That I love you, and I want you to stay with me." Tony knew that he was coming dangerously close to pleading, but he didn't care. He didn't go through all of this not to bring back Bruce, and he was willing to swallow some of his pride if that was what it took.

"Well, you can't always get what you want." Bruce stood and moved to a tall stool, clearly trying to remove himself from Tony's touch.

"That's not a response. That's a Rolling Stones song, and not even a particularly good one." He walked over to Bruce and looked him in the eye. "Do you love me?"

"Yes." Bruce sounded angry.

"Then give me one good reason why we can't be together!"

"Because love doesn't change anything! It doesn't change what I am, and I could still hurt you!" He grabbed Tony's shoulders. "Don't you understand? I couldn't live with myself if I did that."

He kissed Tony angrily, and Tony leaned up into it, sliding his arms around Bruce's neck. Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over, and Bruce was shoving him away.

Tony said the only thing that he could think of. "I've been sober for eleven days now. It would be twenty seven, but the first few days after the others moved in were impossible. Did you know that Natasha snores?"

"Why are you telling me this?"

Tony sat down on the stool and put his head in his hands. "I don't know." Only—that wasn't true. It was because he'd gotten alcohol all mixed up with Bruce leaving, and he'd thought if he could just be good, just deny himself hard enough, Bruce would come back. "I should go."

Bruce didn't say anything, just watched him as he walked out the door.

Tony cried about Bruce once, after a major fight. He had made a room, for Bruce to transform in, and Bruce had hated it, saying that Tony was putting them both in danger, when all Tony had been trying to do was give Bruce a space where he was allowed to feel. Bruce apologized later, but Tony had always been upset about it, always resented that Bruce had been the person to finally make him cry.

When Tony got back to New York, the first thing he did was call Pepper.

"Can you come over? Right now?"

"Tony, it's three in the morning."

"I know. Just—stay with me, okay?"

"Okay, but if you're just trying to get me into bed—"

"Pepper, Bruce isn't coming back. Now will you please come over, dammit, so that I can cry?"

End of Part One