"Got everything?"
"I didn't come with much."
The trunk of the Acura slams shut. A taxi horn blares at another slow driver and a bus headed for the long-term parking lot releases the air from its brakes as its door clatters open to the people gathered on the sidewalk. The small plastic wheels of their rolling baggage click over the concrete seams as they board.
"Leaving with more than you came with though."
A meaningful pause. A stretching silence that conveys more than words could have if they'd been in its place. There's the low rush of air that accompanies a 747 lifting off from the runway and into the sky, bound for a faraway destination across the Atlantic.
"Yeah. Guess I am."
"Keep in touch, big guy." A click-click of the billionaire's tongue is the last he hears of him before the sounds of the airport swallow him in.
His teapot was almost to boiling. There was the perceivable scent of warming copper from where the bottom of the pot was sitting on the stove's spiral heating element, and the echoing rumble of vapor bubbles forming and rising within the teakettle had reached a certain rapidity that told him soon the steam would have to force its way through the little whistle covering the spout. He had maybe six seconds more. A deep in-breath… filling his lungs enough to force his body upright and all the vertebrae of his spine straight from third lumbar to first thoracic-
Ringing disturbed his meditation before the teakettle.
Bruce's eyes popped open, pupils dilating quickly to adjust to the light in the room. They honed in on the source of the sound, a recording of the real thing emitted from the stereo speakers of his laptop sitting on his workdesk. A small telephone icon was bouncing enthusiastically in the Skype window, and above it a profile picture of the arc reactor.
It was a disturbance he didn't mind. The teakettle began to whistle. Bruce stood from the mat he'd been seated on cross-legged and hastened over to his computer, clicking to 'pick up' the phone call. An indicator spun for a couple of seconds before the connection was established and Tony Stark appeared in all his fuzzy, pixelated glory on his screen.
"Hey," Bruce greeted quickly, "Give me a second."
"My God, what an opener," the innovator's brown eyes rolled dramatically as Bruce turned and hurried to the kitchen to grab the pot off the stove. He took a lot longer than his 'estimated' second in removing a teabag from its pouch and carefully pouring steaming water into the cup with it. Bruce went ahead and carried it with him back over to the workdesk, setting it aside to steep as he settled into the wicker chair in front of his laptop.
"Finally," Tony said with undue exaggeration, "I had half a mind to hang up."
"Did you?" Bruce challenged with interest. He pulled his reading glasses out of his front pocket to perch them on his nose.
"No, but I said it anyway. Who are you to call me out on it? Maybe I'm really busy."
Bruce took a short moment to study the amount of cluttered workspace currently surrounding the man on the other side of the globe. "You look like you've been busy."
The engineer leaned back in his swivel chair and let out a groan befitting a teenager told to get out of bed for school- though the audio blipped for a fraction of a second in the middle. "Beyond busy," Tony answered, "but for the love of integrated circuits, let's not talk about that. How've you been?" he diverted with a tired smile, and only then did the feed give the doctor a clear enough picture to see the dark circles under the other man's eyes.
Bruce hummed softly, turning his attention away from the screen less to dip the teabag up and down in the hot water and more to avoid Tony's gaze for the moment. "Warm."
"Well no duh," Tony snarked, "It's Kolkata at the onset of summer. Tell me something I don't know. Or at least something I can't make an educated guess about." He skipped half a beat and sat forward in his seat once again. "You are still in Kolkata, aren't you?"
"I am," Bruce nodded. All of Tony's gadgetry should have been able to pinpoint his exact global coordinates down to the fourth decimal place, so either the billionaire was being coy or he actually hadn't checked in a bow of respect to the physicist's admittedly veneered privacy. He brought his drink to his lips to blow on the surface, the steam fogging his lenses somewhat.
Tony's hands shot out to either side in exasperated gesture, "And yet you're drinking hot tea. I will never understand you."
"I'm glad you don't," the physicist replied candidly, "You lose interest in things you completely understand."
The innovator gave a scoff, but it was a tickled scoff that wasn't followed immediately by the smart comebacks that so typically ran off the sharp-witted tongue. "It's been too long since we last talked, doc…" Tony said, and Bruce heard the hollow note of longing in his voice that heightened the sincerity of the statement.
It was either that or the scalding of his throat that kept Bruce from responding immediately. He grimaced and set the cup down to give it more time to cool and for the spices to permeate the liquid. "Sorry," he expressed softly.
"No, no!" Tony hurried to retract the implication, waving both his palms out in front of him fast enough to blur them since the visuals couldn't keep up, "We're both busy guys, I understand. And you… what with the uh… lack of technology out there…" he began to mutter under his breath, "…probably lucky to have electricity…"
"It's Kolkata, not 'Outer Mongolia'," Bruce chuckled. Still, he was connected to the internet via a satellite set-up he'd rigged and calibrated himself. The parts weren't readily available.
"Then why not set up central air conditioning?" Tony asked without a hint of seriousness. "You'd have the coolest shack in the village." Bruce just shook his head and tried very hard not to laugh. Eventually Tony's jokester grin evaporated, replaced with a difficult half-sided smirk that also tugged inward on the space between his eyebrows. "So you still haven't actually told me how you've been," the engineer pressed.
Bruce's lips pursed worriedly a moment. One thing he'd noticed about talking to people over the years was that often when someone asked 'How are you?', it wasn't so much that they wanted to know how you were as they wanted to be asked the question back. Often times it wasn't even intentional, a subconscious plea to be heard being expressed under the guise of 'small talk'.
Bruce took this into account as he phrased his response. "Well enough. A new strain of Typhoid fever recently swept through the populace, though the outbreak is nearly contained now. It's difficult to see people suffering despite the fact that if no one ever came down with anything, I wouldn't be able to support myself." Tony seemed to nod to this; the doctor went on. "But at least they know they can come to me and I can help them get better."
Tony blinked. The sort of blink that said the man got the idea Bruce wasn't just talking about the locals. Despite it, he forged on. "Well that's good. That you're there for them, not that they're getting sick," Tony corrected, and he immediately reversed gears a second time, "But not that you don't have income if they're not getting sick- you know what I mean."
The innovator obviously wasn't going to say it himself, so Bruce would have to take the initiative himself. "And what about you, Tony?" he asked, interrupting the engineer's would-be babble.
"I what? Oh," Tony cleared his throat at the sudden switch in topic, "Well, like you surmised: busy."
"Yeah?" Bruce made a show of glancing at the analog watch on his wrist. "It's what, 5:48 AM over there?" he made the guess without needing confirmation- he already knew Malibu was twelve and a half hours behind. "You're dressed and I don't see any coffee," he observed, "so I don't think you woke up to call me."
The engineer's shoulders slumped as if he'd been caught and, now that the cat was out of the bag, the man allowed himself to aggressively rub his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. "Yeah, I've been up a little late. I was gonna turn in once we got off the phone," he tried as if Bruce would buy into that lie, and at the doctor's gradually broadening frown, Tony only sought to add on in attempt to allieviate his concern, "I caught a couple hour nap earlier around noon and um… before that…" he tapped absently at his thigh, "three AM…"
"So you didn't sleep last night either," Bruce deciphered in a deadpan.
Tony's eyes winced shut. "Fine. Yes, I can't sleep, okay? But there's a good goddamn reason I can't sleep, alright?" the engineer's tone turned to an almost accusing one.
"And what is it?" the physicist asked simply, not deterred by the snappishness of the reply.
The short burst of anger siphoned right out of the other scientist, like the energy that had been there that split second was already depleted. His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, bringing Bruce's attention to the scruff that was cropping up all over Tony's neck and cheeks, almost obscuring the Van Dyke he ordinarily sported- he'd probably showered and shaved as recently as he'd had a full night's sleep if the doctor had to guess. "Work…" Tony answered with the dullness of a man over-burdened nearly beyond his limits. "That's all. Just work."
Bruce leaned back in his chair, pushing his glasses up his nose. He picked his cup back up and took a long sip. "What kind of work?" he inquired with all the air of curiousness a fellow scientist would display.
"Prototypes, mostly," Tony's face was still a grimace, pinching at the bridge of his nose as he motioned with his other hand. "New models, different versions, modifications, fixes…"
"The suit," Bruce questioned seriously.
The engineer on the other end shut his eyes. "Yeah. The suit," he sighed, sagging into his own arms defeatedly.
No wonder Tony hadn't wanted to talk about this. The battle in New York had rattled all of them significantly. Just knowing there were things out there that had dangerous weaponry and powers… Internal global conflicts between nations and their peoples was enough without the unknown 'threats' of worlds beyond their own. It was all variables and no constants, impossible to account for them all. For a physicist, such as himself, he could handle having to make a few assumptions where there weren't exact answers. But Tony was an engineer. Engineers were, by nature, problem-solvers, and one thing they couldn't do was ignore a problem.
Bruce spoke to the man bluntly, "Tony, if you keep this up, you're going to kill yourself."
Tony shook his head and jabbed the desk in front of him. "If I don't keep this up, a lot of people are going to get killed," he corrected, his eyes hard.
"So a few more people die. A lot of people die meaningless deaths every day," Bruce continued to be firm. The words seemed to stun Tony for a moment, since they were being used by the humanitarianist of the two of them. "From starvation, from disease, natural disasters, stupid accidents," he listed off with a shrug, "and there's nothing you or I can do about it." Tony's mouth opened but Bruce continued before he could start, "And even in the off-chance we can, what, we save them now so they can die some other way later?"
Tony's eyes shut again, looking pained. The computer display shuddered.
"Listen…" Bruce's voice softened slightly, "I know it's difficult to accept, but it's not worth killing yourself over. You're no good to anyone dead."
"It's just a few extra hours a night," Tony protested.
"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?" the physicist asked. The other scientist's unkempt appearance had to be even more glaring in the flesh than it was on his monitor.
Tony's eyes wandered briefly over to his own picture in the bottom right corner of the Skype window. He gave a laugh. "No offense, big guy, but you're about the last person on earth who I'm gonna take grooming advice from."
Considering his curls were saturated with sweat from an afternoon spent working in a poorly-ventilated, too-crowded building of feverish patients, Bruce couldn't hardly blame him on that count. "Then take this advice instead: go to bed and don't get out of bed until you've gotten at least six hours of rest. Time spent tossing and turning or lying awake doesn't count. And when you do get up, take a long shower, get cleaned up and put on some fresh clothes. Eat a solid, healthy breakfast. Take tomorrow off," he stressed.
The innovator's jaw set like he wanted to argue but he gave a tight nod.
Bruce paused to think a moment. Even if Tony did as he said, it was nothing more than a quick fix, a reset before Tony went and trashed himself all over again. He addressed him again through the built-in camera on his laptop, "Is there anything you can think of that would get you to stop working so much?"
The answer came a lot quicker than Bruce expected. "Well you could come visit," Tony said, and it seemed the words surprised him too for the way his vision flinched away for a split instant.
There was a long pause between both men before the doctor chased away the silence, "Would that really get you to sleep?"
The billionaire lifted his arm to rub the back of his neck. "…Well, it might distract me enough I could…" he gave off an aura of guilt, like he felt bad for even asking.
Bruce took a deep, almost meditative breath in through his nostrils. A trip out to the States was never his safest bet, nor could he be of much use there. Though the latter of those two truths might be compromisable in this instance… considering the state of the man he was talking to. Tony caught his line of sight again through the long-distance connection- he looked like he was steeling himself for the inevitable 'No'.
Bruce let his gaze fall as he made the difficult decision. "If you buy me a ticket out of Netaji Subhas, I'll come visit," he said.
Tony's already wide eyes bugged wider. "You're serious?"
"I can't really afford a flight myself right now-" the doctor began to explain.
"No, no!" Tony cut him off, almost jumping out of his chair with renewed exuberance, "I mean, you're serious? You'll really come?"
The physicist nodded, "Yeah, I'll come."
Tony was already on the move, eyes darting to another screen beside him. "JARVIS, find me the soonest flight out of CCU that's headed to LAX."
"Tony," Bruce was the one to interrupt this time and the engineer gave him a confused, worried look that said he was afraid Bruce was about to take his promise right back. "There's some things I have to get in order here first before I can go. I'm going to need a couple of days…"
"Forty-eight hours it is," Tony settled with an agreeable grin. "No need to worry about booking a hotel- we've got a guestroom with your name on it." He pointed with his index finger, thumb extended. "I'll shoot your travel information over to you right in the morning- after I sleep, of course," he tacked on. "Nighty night, Brucie!"
The physicist chuckled at the other man's antics and his very literal interpretation of time frame. "Goodnight, Tony," he returned with a smile. The connection was cut and the other scientist dropped off being set to 'online'.
Bruce closed his laptop and spent the next few minutes consuming his tea with his legs crossed over one another. He'd need to pack a few things and get someone to look after his place while he was gone… however long he was going to be gone for… that part of the bargain hadn't been struck- Tony had hung up too fast to discuss it, whether intentionally or not.
Regardless, Bruce couldn't help but feel an inkling of the enthusiasm displayed by the man. It would be good to finally see his friend again.