I love Bruce Banner with a passion, so I decided to do a little series of one-shots, all pairing Bruce with a different person. None of the one-shots will be connected in any way. At the top of each, I will label it with one of its shipping names (or a name I find appropriate, if I can't find a shipping name for the pairing), followed by the characters involved in said pairing in parentheses.

Stanner (TonyXBruce)

Bruce had fully expected to leave as soon as the Avengers no longer needed him to fight Loki (well, first he had expected to leave after the Tesseract had been tracked down). But somehow or other, Tony had managed to convince him to come to Stark Tower (as a visit, he'd claimed), and suddenly Bruce was staying in New York.

He wasn't honestly sure how it had happened. Under normal circumstances, he'd be gone by now, fleeing back to some obscure third-world country. But, Bruce figured, normal circumstances didn't usually include Tony Stark.

Working in the labs with Tony was one of the few things Bruce actually enjoyed about being at Stark Tower. This list was very, very short, with protection from the military not even making the top three. Those slots all were filled by Tony, which worried Bruce. He knew full well what Tony was like, and as far as Tony was concerned, Bruce was someone who could speak genius with him in the lab, and nothing else.

The opinion was not mutual. Bruce would absolutely love to be able to call Tony his boyfriend, which was something he denied even to himself, because that was not how this type is friendship worked. Bruce enjoyed all the time he got to spend alone with Tony, working on various science projects, and he was not going to screw that up because of a crush. Or, at least, that's what he told himself.

Pepper, surprisingly, had served as the sort of counseling Bruce had always suspected he needed. Sometimes, when he was feeling seriously down on himself (and those days happened more often than he'd like to admit), he'd just sit in her office, enjoying the peace and quiet, until Pepper had a break, during which she would talk to Bruce (unnecessarily) about what was bothering him on that particular day. This covered a wide variety of topics, and since Pepper was one of the few people who didn't freak out when he mentioned the Hulk, several of them had to do with his alter-ego, and how Bruce felt about him and what he did. Pepper was surprisingly good at helping him through these kinds of things.

Several of their other conversations had to do with Tony. According to Pepper, she couldn't believe that no one else had noticed Bruce's infatuation with the billionaire (Bruce had blushed at her wording). She told him point blank that as one of Tony's exes, she was going to naturally be a little bias against the man, but Bruce could still talk to her about it if he wanted to. Bruce wasn't sure if he really did want to, or if Pepper was doing some sort of subconscious mind trick on him, because Tony came up often anyway.

On one particularly bad day, Bruce had slipped into her office and half-curled up on the couch, running his fingers through his hair in agitation. Pepper had taken one look at him, gotten up from her computer, and came over to sit next to him, "you okay?"

"Not really," Bruce mumbled before pointing out, "you should be working."

"I think it can wait for a few minutes," Pepper said in her 'tell me or face my wrath' tone; the one that even the other guy would have backed down from.

Bruce sighed, before groaning in annoyance, "I'm sick of it. I'm sick of dancing around this subject with Tony. I'm sick of being afraid of how he'll react if I tell him how I feel about him."

Pepper gave him a long, calculating look, "then why don't you tell him? I hate seeing you so upset over this."

"You don't have to, you know. You could always kick me out of your office and not have to deal with me anymore," Bruce told her.

"You didn't answer me," Pepper said, "I know you like Tony, and maybe I didn't do well with him, but you very well might. But you won't even try, and it's ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?" Bruce asked, expecting his temper to flare up. It didn't, probably because, even if he wouldn't admit it, Pepper was right. He was being ridiculous.

"Yes, ridiculous," Pepper told him, "Bruce, sweetie, if you aren't going to tell him how you feel about him, then I will. I know for a fact that you've spent more than half your life blocking out other people. You need to stop it."

Bruce sighed, "You're right."

"Of course I'm right," Pepper grinned, "I'm always right." She put a hand on his shoulder, "now go and talk to him, or I'm making a phone call right now."

"Okay, okay!" Bruce raised his hands in a gesture of surrender as he stood, walking backwards out of the room, "thanks, Pepper."

She just waved at him, going back over to her computer. Bruce was nervous enough about confronting Tony, so he was almost relieved when the "assemble" alarm rang out. He hurried to meet up with the others, wondering what sort of mission they would be going on this time.

The fighting was horrible. Bruce didn't need to see through the other guy's eyes to know that. He kept tabs during the battle, making sure everyone was okay while his alter-ego smashed through lines of enemies.

But when the battle was over, and Bruce shrank back down to himself, he was surprised to find that he felt…not sleepy or in pain, like he usually did after a transformation. He just felt sort of numb. And that wasn't good.

Bruce could see his vision blurring, and then there was just blackness. When his eyes finally opened again, the only thing he could make out was the ceiling of the infirmary, which he was only able to recognize because of how much time he spent there, usually following a Hulk out, although never like this.

Bruce groaned, his head throbbing. He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn't cooperate. Sighing, he turned his head, his eyes flicking over the monitors he was hooked up to. That worried him, but not nearly as much as it should have. Since his head seemed to be the only part of his body responding, he lifted his head to glance around the room.

Pepper was sitting in a chair at the end of his bed, slouched, with her head and arms resting next to his currently immobile body, evidently asleep. "Pepper?" Bruce asked softly, and the redhead looked up, blinking her eyes sleepily.

Then they widened, "Bruce! You're awake!" She stood up, coming over and hugging him, "we've all been worried sick about you."

"Why?" Bruce asked, confused, "how long have I been out?"

"You were in a coma for almost a week," Pepper told him. Bruce went rigid with shock (well, his mind did, his body already was) as she continued, "everyone was worried you wouldn't wake up. They've all been in and out of here."

That was comforting, the fact that the team cared enough about him to worry about him dying. "Does anyone know what happened?" he asked, "I mean, why I was in a coma?"

Pepper bit her lip, "we're not sure. It might have had something to do with the battle, but I personally think it's because of stress. That can happen, you know."

Bruce was about to answer when a voice in the doorway interrupted him, "JARVIS told me he's awake."

Bruce's heart missed a beat. From what he could see, Tony was standing there, looking like he had just woken up. Pepper backed away from the hospital bed, winking discretely at Bruce as she left the room, leaving him to do his best to keep the blush from spreading across his cheeks. "Hey," he muttered, for lack of anything better to say.

Tony pulled the chair Pepper had been sleeping in closer to the head of the bed, "you feeling better?"

"No," Bruce answered truthfully, "I think I liked the numbness better."

Tony stifled a chuckle, "did you really do this just to get out of lab duty with me? I thought we were science bros!"

Bruce felt a smile spread across his face as he teased, "desperate times call for desperate measures."

Tony sobered up a little, "I was scared. I thought…I thought that you might not make it, which, of course, reminded me of when you admitted that you'd tried to kill yourself before. I kept thinking of everything I would have wanted to say to you, what we could have done, that it wasn't fair that you were being taken away from me." Bruce liked the way that sounded (sort of), but he was also acutely aware that Tony didn't show his feelings very often. Finally, Tony admitted, "Pepper came to talk to me yesterday. The doctors were pretty sure that you weren't going to make it. She said that in case you didn't, she wanted to tell me something that you were supposed to."

Bruce's heart nearly did stop this time, but he couldn't find it in himself to be mad at Pepper, "and?" He struggled to keep emotion out of his voice, but didn't really succeed in banishing the hope.

Tony looked away, "she told me about how you kept coming to her with your problems. And about how I was one of them." Now his eyes met Bruce's again, "why didn't you just tell me?"

"I didn't want you to react badly," Bruce admitted, "your friendship means more to me than anything. I didn't want to lose that."

"You can be so stupid sometimes," Tony mumbled. Then the billionaire leaned over and pressed his lips firmly against Bruce's.