A/N - Another introspective oneshot, this time about those little gestures you saw between Bruce and Tony in The Avengers. You know, little stuff, like Tony zapping Bruce to see if the Hulk would come out, and Steve nearly having a heart attack over it.
Steve went back to New York to protect it.
Thor went to New York to find his brother.
Tony went back to New York to stop Loki.
Natasha went back to New York because it was her job. At least, that's what she'll say if you ask. It was probably also because Clint.
Clint, of course, just wanted to punch Loki in the face for what he did.
But it was Bruce who almost didn't show up at all, who rolled into the fight on a little motorcycle and could only stammer out that it all seemed "very horrible." He almost didn't go, and honestly, only one person would have been surprised if he had never appeared.
Bruce went to the Battle of New York because he knew, for the first time, that a man who was practically a stranger was honestly expecting him to save the day.
When Steve saw him, his first instinct was to call Tony. It was half a confused "how the hell did you know that?" and half "okay, I give up, you're the Bruce Guy now. I'll stop questioning it."
They had fought over the way to handle the Hulk's alter ego since the beginning. The whole Helicarrier crew danced around the subject, as did the Avengers.
And then there was Tony, purposefully prodding at Bruce, and Steve thought, this man is insane, he's trying to get the Hulk out! But that wasn't it at all. Tony didn't want the Hulk to make an appearance any more than the rest of them did.
But it was only Tony who realized the Hulk wasn't always at the surface, constantly threatening to make an appearance. The Hulk was always there, but Bruce had the control, he had something that nobody was recognizing. And while everyone else danced around Bruce because of the monster inside him, Tony walked right up and offered something Bruce hadn't had since the accident.
He offered to take the chance. The chance that he would forget, be careless, and accidentally come face-to-face with something many times larger than him, many, many times stronger, something that might kill him.
And it wasn't even that Tony didn't care about the risk. Bruce recognized the look the first time they met. It was just trust, as plain and simple as that. I trust you not to accidentally kill me. Because they all trusted Clint not to miss and accidentally send one of his arrows their way. All the Avengers trusted Steve not to ricochet a blast the wrong way off his shield and kill someone, they trusted Natasha not to pull a fatal double-cross, and they trusted Thor not to pull down enough lightning to incinerate the good guys along with the bad.
Everyone trusted that Tony wouldn't crash into them in the middle of a battle, that his technology wouldn't overload the safeties and electricity wouldn't arc out from the glowing blue circle in his chest. So Tony, in turn, trusted that a sideways glance or an elbow to the ribs wouldn't cause his destruction.
Bruce got a little insulted every time someone said something remotely mean around him and everyone shushed them, every time he stubbed his toe and someone panicked. Tony had walked up to him and shocked him, and his voice had changed, and Tony had leaned closer. He had casually grinned and cracked a joke, and sure, Steve had acted like the apocalypse was happening, but Tony understood. Nothing had happened. Bruce Banner could get zapped in the side, and the Hulk would not make an appearance, and Tony just acted like that was cool and he wanted to know how it worked.
And that was why Bruce Banner rode a motorcycle around debris and alien soldiers. Because he knew that while the battle would cause him to unleash the Hulk, that wouldn't change how Tony acted around him. And from Tony's actions, things started to change. Steve including the Hulk in his breakdown of the battle, nobody dashing to get out of his way (except aliens and civilians, of course), the Hulk and Thor working together after a fashion with the Hulk jamming a piece of sheet metal into a leviathan and Thor's hammer slamming it home.
Tony couldn't have known what would happen because of a simple act of not being scared, but Bruce considered it one of the universe's best acts of karma: the Hulk catching a falling, unresponsive Iron Man, because even the Other Guy's small brain understood.
Tony Stark was, to both sides of him, an absolute necessity.
No, Bruce never understood exactly why Tony had made the questionable decision to zap Bruce in the side to see what would happen.
But he was damned glad the man hadn't flinched.
That was why Bruce Banner went to New York.