Disclaimer: I own squat.
Chapter Nine: "Don't put it back in!"
Bruce entered his code into the keypad just outside the door to Tony's lab. Walking in, he noticed the shirtless genius lying back in a chair that made him think of the dentist, monitoring wires running from his chest to a few portable machines behind him.
"Hey," he greeted Bruce, twisting the brighter glowing arc in his hand.
"Let's see them, show me your hands."
When Bruce was still too confused to do what was asked, Tony repeated, "let me see them," accompanied with a hand gesture of raising his own hand not currently occupied with the new arc.
Bruce raised his hands for Tony to inspect, before the man muttered "Oh wow, they are small... very petite..." he trailed off. It was probably the most awkward anyone had ever seen the great Tony Stark act.
"I just, uh, I need your help for a sec," Tony glanced at the arc in his hand.
"Tony... What the Hell is that thing?"
"Before I was captured, I got a chest full of shrapnel from one of my very own bombs. Most of them were taken out, but not all of them could be safely reached. Yins-" Tony cleared his throat. "Yinsen put an electromagnet into my chest to keep the rest of the shrapnel from reaching my heart and tearing it to pieces."
Tony shook the old arc. "This was the thing that was keeping me alive. It is now an antique. This" Tony gestured to the arc in his hand, "is what will be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future. I'm swapping it out for an upgrade. I just ran into a little speed bump."
"Speed bump? What do you- what does that mean?" Bruce asked as Tony's hand moved to his current arc and started twisting it.
"Nothing, its just a little snag. There's an exposed wire under this device and its contacting the socket wall and its causing a little bit of a shortage," with this, Tony finished pulling the arc from his chest. Tony handed the arc to Bruce, who was unsure where to hold such a delicate piece of machinery.
"I just want you to reach in and you're just going to gently lift the wire out."
"Is it safe?"
"Yeah, its fine. Its just like Operation, you don't let it touch the socket wall," Tony gestured to the according piece of metal.
"What is- what do you mean 'Operation'?"
"Nothing, its just a game," Tony said, not bothering to explain himself. "Just gently lift the wire, okay?"
Bruce nodded. He pushed back the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows and reached his hand slowly into Tony's chest cavity.
"The copper wire," Tony said simply after Bruce had let his hand slowly sink deeper in Tony's chest.
"You got it?" Tony asked calmly.
"I got it," was his almost breathless reply.
"Now, don't let it touch- Ahh!" Tony yelled as his reminder turned into a shocked gasp.
"Okay, now. Make sure when you pull it out, you don't pull out the," Tony's words were cut short as Bruce's hand pulled the end of the wire out, along with the attached piece of metal.
"You just pulled out the-"
"Okay, okay-"
"Don't put it back in!" Tony exclaimed as Bruce made a move to place the wire back where it was.
"What do I do? What do I do?" Bruce asked, turning and placing the wire on a nearby desk. "What's wrong?"
"Ah, nothing. I'm just going into cardiac arrest because you yanked it out," Tony said in reference to the wire on the table.
"What? I thought you said this was safe?" Bruce exclaimed, his calm doctor voice being replaced by that of a very worried man.
"We've got to hurry, we've got to switch it out."
Bruce picked up Tony's new arc, one hand holding the main piece and his other ready to attach it to Tony. "Okay, you're going to attach that to the base plate, and make sure you..." Tony's instructions trailed off.
Bruce's face twisted in concentration as he attached the wire to the directed location, surprised when the other man let out another shocked yell.
"Was that so hard? That was fun, right?" the man asked jokingly as Bruce panted, the adrenalin quickly leaving his system and leaving him drained.
"I got it," he continued, pushing Bruce's inexperienced hands away and securing the arc himself.
Bruce simply stood there; hands held out a little ways from his body, and his mouth hanging slightly open.
"Are you okay?" Bruce whispered.
"Yeah, I feel great."
Bruce sighed, lowering his hands just a bit.
"Are you okay?" Tony asked, cracking a grin before laughing at the scared man in front of him.
"Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again" Bruce pleaded, eyes still wide.
"Aww, come on. It wasn't that bad," Tony replied, grinning.
Bruce simply glared at Tony with fading green eyes.
* STONY FOREVER *
It was about an hour later, and both men were silent at work. Tony was sitting in a rolling chair, feet propped up on his work desk, tinkering with a metal object in his lap. Bruce sat in a similar chair a few feet away at work with, well, with some sort off calming yoga slash breathing stuff.
Bruce believed his heart was still beating a mile a minute. He wasn't sure how someone could be doing so well so soon after what he had been through. After he had calmed down, Bruce had demanded that Tony explained everything to him in detail in case something ever happened again and Tony was unable to explain it then. Tony had started telling him about the bomb, the surgery, and the electromagnet, but seeing as everything was so interwoven with the arc, Tony had simple told Bruce everything from his time in Afghanistan.
Bruce could tell that Tony felt alone; it was in the way he spoke, he moved, and it was in his eyes. Bruce rolled his own, wondering why on Earth Tony seemed so oblivious to how Steve so clearly felt for him.
"Shut up."
Bruce startled, not expecting the man to speak so suddenly. "I didn't say anyth-"
"You were thinking. It's annoying."
Bruce stared at his pain in the ass friend.
"How about we focus on something else besides my problems for once. Why don't you pick anything else to rant slash talk about, we hardly know one another still."
"What would I rant about?" Tony already knew his story, so it's not like he had any more deep feelings to bring to the surface or anything. Besides that, Bruce had always been an open book to everyone he trusted, which had now expanded to include each of the Avengers.
"Oh come on, there has to be something you want to talk about. This may be the only time I ever talk about something besides how awesome my inventions and I are. Ask anyone who knows me, it's a very rare occurrence," Tony said, trying to lighten the mood a bit.
"I've never seen a girl around you besides Pepper," Bruce said, referring to the maybe two seconds he had ever scene the woman as she left the tower, yelling something at Tony.
"We used to be a thing, but she ended it a while ago."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, oh well. What about you?"
"You already know that I had to leave Betty so I could protect her."
Tony snorted. "Yeah, whatever you say. You know she could stay here. Hell, after the Chitauri incident, you're a hero, Bruce. I'm sure it'd be safe for you to go and stay with her if you'd rather."
"And what if it wasn't? I'd wake up to army tanks surrounding our house one morning... No, it's for the best," Bruce muttered quietly.
"Love sucks," Tony said decidedly.
A/N: Any thoughts? Please send me a review or any suggestions you may have. Thanks! -A
