June 28, 2012
"Tony, come to bed. Now."
Pepper was standing in the doorway of Tony's lab, out of his way, like she knew she should.
He'd been there working on only God-knows-what for the past four nights. She knew he hadn't slept for the past four days, and probably even more than that, since she hadn't seen him for a week before that. She also knew that she was stretching her luck trying to get him to move, because ever since had gotten back from his trip, something had been very off about Tony. Her guess was as good as anyone else's, but she had guessed it was about Bruce not showing up.
"No can do. I think I'm finally getting something here…"
"What exactly are you doing, anyways? Please don't tell me it's something with your reactor again and you're not telling me something-"
"It's not my reactor. IT's nothing. Just go to bed, I'll be there soon."
"No, you won't, Tony. That's what you said last night. And the night before that."
"I just need to get a little more work done, okay? Just leave me alone."
"I've left you alone about as much as I can, can't you just tell me what the hell is going on with you?"
"Everything…" Tony muttered under his breath.
"Well, whenever you plan on acting like an adult and want to tell me something, just call me."
She turned around and slammed the door on her way out.
Tony looked over his shoulder to make sure she was gone, then he slammed his head into his desk. Multiple times.
When he had gotten off his plane, he went straight to the terminal Bruce was supposed to be getting in from and waited. And waited longer. And waited after every plane that day had finally arrived, and Bruce never showed up. Not one delayed or canceled flight. No explanation as to why Bruce didn't show up. He just wasn't there. And that was a huge problem to Tony, who spent lots of time planning it.
He had spent the rest of the week in the hotel he planned on staying in with Bruce, hopeful every day that he would show up. Of course, he didn't, and that didn't surprise Tony. It just felt like a big punch in the balls.
Instead of having fun and talking about science and catching up with his friend, one of the very few he could actually call a friend, he did what he does best: drank. There were tons of local bars who didn't know about Tony's drinking problem and happily served him round after round of alcohol a night. He didn't go overboard, but he did enough damage to have to pay some hefty fines and buy his way out of some bad publicity.
Once Pepper had found out Tony wasn't with Bruce, who she was hoping would keep Tony at his best behavior, she made sure he came home right away and stopped drinking so much. He went home.
Once home, he simply told Pepper that Bruce couldn't make it to their little vacation, and she accepted that as-is. Tony tip-toed around the subject and when he was alone, he started trying to figure out why Bruce really didn't make it.
Even though he was Tony freaking Stark and had more technology than almost anyone on the planet, plus having his connections with S.H.I.E.L.D., you would think Tony could easily track down a giant green man.
But Dr. Bruce Banner was also the most secretive man out there, and if he wanted to stay hidden, he sure as hell was impossible to find.
So Tony had to start doing things the hard way, so instead of just easily asking JARVIS to search for a person, like he would do for Pepper, he had to start from scratch with Bruce. And that task was promising multiple days of intense searching.
Finally, Tony had found out where Bruce was after four days of non-stop research.
Bruce was in a small town in Missouri called Camdenton. He planned on flying from St. Louis to meet Tony, but that was a three hour drive from where Bruce was staying. So somewhere between Tony calling him and his flight leaving, something must've happened to Bruce.
Was he in a car crash? Did he Hulk out and destroy a city? Did he just plain not want to see Tony?
These questions couldn't simply be answered through searching on the internet, and Bruce hadn't answered his phone in over two weeks, so Tony decided he needed to find out for himself.
He was going to Missouri.
