Two very IMPORTANT things right off the bat. First, I am so extraordinarily sorry for the delay but three day week means three days of testing and studying. Second, I went with Tony's POV versus Loki's because it revealed more but it screwed with the pattern I had going so I apologize in advance for any confusion.
Not mine, never mine, usual disclaimers
"It's time for you to meet the doctor. Your appointment is long overdue."
o~*+*~o
Tony watched as the blood drained from Loki's face, making the pale god somehow paler than before. Tony savored this moment as much as he could because he knew that it would be one of the few things he would be able to hold over a magic filled Loki later. That, of course, was only if he somehow convinced Loki to stay with him after the god regained his powers. It was that melancholy thought that brought Tony back to the present.
"Don't worry! Nothing bad should happen-"
"-Should!" Loki exclaimed as he cut Tony off and took a large step back towards the cases of suits behind him.
"-and it would be reassuring for Bruce if he met you without your intimidating," Tony gestured wildly with his hand and completely ignored Loki's interjection, "magicalness."
Loki gave his an odd look of confusion after that statement but the slight confusion was nothing compared to the fear and anger it morphed into. "And where is my reassurance!" Loki exclaimed tightly, fear winning out against the anger with his powers conspicuously absent.
"That the more pitiful you look the more likely you are to get a new ally." Tony's upbeat suggestion seemed to help assuage none of the raven haired man's fears. Though it was spoken in a joking manner, Tony really did mean it.
Especially when the god was this broken down, powerless, and injured, there needed to be someone other than just him to help. Tony knew that he could accomplish anything he put his mind to, with time, but that didn't mean he was the best person to get for understanding how to help a healing alien. Magic he could deal with and work with science but healing was just different.
"So you are my ally in this madness? Can't my ally simply leave me in peace?" Tony had to force back a smile at how oddly normal this was, despite Loki's panic. The sarcastic tone in the raven haired man's voice seemed to lose some of it's bite for Tony because it seemed Loki was just putting up a front now. The man, or god, was an incredible actor and it made sense him being the god of lies and deception.
"Of course I'm you ally, who else is going to keep my unnaturally hot body cool?" Tony couldn't resist the slightly flirtation and definitely sarcastic tone he put into his words. It was his nature as a genius, billionaire, philanthropist, playboy to flirt with everything, especially death, even if nothing came of it. Loki took it all in stride, still refusing to move closer from his spot on the wall but relaxing into the conversation none the less.
"I don't know if you are being nice or simply complimenting yourself but you still haven't answered my question." Tony had to stop himself from giving his instinctive, sarcastic reply because he knew fear enough to know that Loki was really starting to feel it and that is not what Tony wanted.
"You want the truth? You are the only person who has answers and the only person who I can talk to without being sent to a psychologist or possibly an insane asylum," Tony said in the calmest voice he could muster, both to placate Loki and to rectify it with himself. He had always found that speaking his thoughts aloud made his ideas come quicker or come to an epiphany more rapidly and now it was helping him come to terms with something he didn't want to accept.
His answer and the calmness of his tone seemed to both surprise Loki and give the raven haired man the answer that he had been looking for because he relaxed and actually took a few legitimate steps forward. "There is also the added bonus of you being interesting, genuinely smart, and not too hard on the eyes," Tony continued as Loki's long legs are up the space between them until Loki's emerald eyes vote right into his chocolate ones.
"Thank you." Struck by both the words and the sincerity, Tony took pity on the obviously confused man. Yes, there was a small part of him that reveled in being able to make a god fear him but he didn't really want Loki to be scared of him or of his intentions.
"But I really do think you need another person to help you other than me, I'm an engineer not a doctor, and Bruce can surpass even me in some areas of science, especially the ones involving the body. His quest to rid himself of the hulk has taught him a lot about the human genome, mutations, and even non-human characteristics."
Tony really did want Bruce's help even as he loathed to expose his newest and best form of entertainment and information. The god was truly a godsend. Before Loki's arrival he had slept a maximum of seven hours that week and with the raven haired man, and the subsequent knowledge and reconciliation that he brought, he was able to sleep through an entire night.
"Are you positive that this is a good idea, Stark?" Loki asked, confidence saturating his tone with the slightest hint of deference dipped in as well. Tony supposed it only made sense that, without his powers, Loki would have enough sense to let the one with the knowledge lead.
"Relatively," Tony started off just to tease Loki the tiniest bit more but when he managed to gain a small smirk on Loki's face he turned serious. "Maybe you should take off your shirt so your injuries are more visible." It would hurt to work the more vulnerable part of the image Tony wanted to create for Bruce, a deterrent to any hulk-like tendencies.
"Don't mess up the bandage though, I worked hard on that!" The fake hurt look that Tony threw onto his face elicited a sharp laugh from the raven haired man that made Tony grin widely in turn before he turned and made his escape before Loki's good mood was lost.
"Have fun with the bots while I'm gone!"
The parting shot called over his shoulder met a startled Loki who's head twisted sharply only to see the door of the elevator close in front of a waving Tony. The expression of both amusement and (half) faked betrayal that graced Loki's face had the engineer in stitches as he gasped out for JARVIS to lockdown the lab. It wasn't that he thought Loki would try to get out of the meeting, he only sort of did, but it was meant to keep the spies out. Even the vents would not be safe for Clint if he tried that route.
It wasn't long until the elevator reached the correct floor and, because this was the special elevator, it bypassed the whole having to knock or have a code to get inside and opened a hidden door that was cleverly concealed inside one of the reinforced pillars scattered through the room. All of the pillars, excluding the one hollowed out into an elevator, were meant to reinforce both the lab space and the floor above and below if the Hulk came out to play.
Tony trusted both the Hulk and Bruce with his life but what he didn't trust was that someone else would be stupid enough to try and stop the Hulk and scare him in the process. The Big Guy knew Tony well enough but he genius had the feeling that the two spies would not be nearly as welcome.
The first thing Tony saw after he jumped out of the elevator was the sight of a snoring scientist who was slumped over one of the nearby lab tables. The child inside of Tony could not help but be disappointed that all of the ninja skills he had used to keep the elevator hidden was all for naught. The disappointment, however, was nothing compared to the enthusiasm that filled his voice as he shouted wake the other man up.
"Brucie!" It was probably years of living on the run that allowed Bruce to straighten up and pull off a beautiful facade of consciousness that would have fooled Tony is not for the glaring fact of how unfocused the doctor's eyes were.
"Where have you been?" Bruce mumbled as he slid smoothly off of his seat and stumbled over to where Tony stood, his impatience rolling off of him in waves and coalescing in the form of the incessant tapping of his foot.
"Helping someone." Tony really should have guessed that kicking Bruce's doctoring mindset into gear would be the best way to wake him up. As soon as Tony mentioned helping someone, the doctor's eyes instantly cleared as the man shook himself to wake up.
"Is someone hurt?" Bruce asked quickly as he quickly looked over Tony for blood or contusions to try and weigh the unknown situation ahead. Tony merely chuckled quietly as he watched the sleepy man quickly change into the concerned doctor.
"Yes, but before we go down I need you to promise you will walk in with an open mind." As much as Tony tried to put as little weight on his words Bruce was still able to sense the hidden depth. The origin of the uncanny ability was unknown but Tony thought that maybe, just maybe, it had to do with the Hulk. Either way, the other man tensed and narrowed his eyes at the comment, take the smallest of steps back.
"Tony," Bruce began in a wary tone, "what did you do?" Tony knew the other man well enough to read that it was not Tony that Bruce feared but the loss of the safeness Tony and his assets represented. Sure, the man had only been at the tower a couple of hours, but Tony had spent months trying to convince the man to come in the first place. Now that he had it, Tony would give anything and everything to keep the trust and respect they cultivated. Unfortunately that also meant, to keep and nurture this trust, he had to tell Bruce the truth. Loki was not a secret one could keep for very long.
"Nothing too horrible, promise." The unbelieving look that Bruce shot Tony didn't just bounce off of him like everything else because Bruce was different and the disbelief actually hurt him. There were very few who could do that and Tony hoped that the meeting between Bruce and Loki would help Bruce trust him, or at least believe him, a bit more.
The hurt that Bruce had inflicted was slightly mitigated by the softness in the other man's eyes, revealing care and a spark of trust. Tony needed to fan that flame because he had already lost one of the people closest to him and he wasn't willing to lose Bruce as well. He would much rather bring him closer because he knew how much help allies ment in a war.
"Honestly!" Tony yelped indignantly. "He just showed up at the tower, bleeding, and so I helped him but I'm not a doctor so I want you to look over him."
Bruce nodded, pushed his glasses up, and massaged the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger. This brief display of exhaustion and tension struck Tony as being oddly normal. He was not the best person to set the bar line for a normal human; his sleep schedule was erratic, his IQ rivaled Einstein, and he had trust issues so severe that had learned to act like a narcissist to cover it up; but Bruce was normal.
With the notable exception of the Hulk living inside of him.
"Just promise me you will stay calm," Tony pleaded softly as he looked into Bruce's eyes but actually speaking to the creature that lived inside. It was a good thing that Bruce didn't take offense to the statement and simply wandered back over to the lab table he had been lounging on and started collecting various implements.
"You won't need any supplies or anything, my lab is pretty well stocked." Tony might even go so far to say that his laboratory was filled with better medical devices than a hospital but most to all of them were modified specifically so that the arc reactor would not mess with the scans of his body or built to fix damage to the reactor and the casing. Not things that an everyday hospital would require.
Tony then took Bruce's shoulder and led the man to the hidden elevator. He wanted to surprise the man with it later by showing up randomly to get some time to bond with Golly Green but this would be the quickest way and the spies would never know. There were a few perks to being able to design your own tower and have enough money and smarts to install a lift on your own. Having a suit that could carry a couple tons definitely helped. Not even Mrs. Potts knew about the installation.
As the seamless doors to the elevator slid soundlessly open, Bruce's sleepy eyes widened in surprise. "I didn't know that you had an elevator around here." The admiration and approval in the other scientist's voice warmed a cold and neglected place in Tony's heart. Howard Stark had never looked at his son in approval and Stane's had been a ploy for power but Bruce was genuine and it was (one of the best things Tony would never admit to feeling) nice.
"Are you kidding? I have them everywhere, along with my suits." The joking tone played off the paranoia in the message.
In reality, Tony had begun placing suits around the tower after he had made the bands to call them to him. Before that there been various guns and even knives placed in various places that no one ever knew about. He was a weapons designer; he designed, created, and tested each of the weapons he made and knew how to use them. Too bad he hadn't thought to put something, anything, close to the couch but the paralysis would have made it moot anyways.
"Hold the lift, J," Tony requested quietly, internally lingered over the memories of inevitabilities, as he turned to the man beside him.
"I need you to promise me to let me and him explain before you do anything rash in there. I have projects in progress so no damage is necessary." Bruce nodded in reply but the tightening around his eyes hinted at the frustration he felt. Then came the question that Tony knew was coming.
"If you're so worried then why are we even doing this?"
"Because I do trust you, more than anyone else," Tony said with a shrug, hopping the casualness and the truth in his words would call the man beside him as well as the significantly larger one within.
"Plus, this is more for my guest's benefit," Tony gestured to one of the corners of the elevator where a camera about the size of a pinhead rested, "than anyone else." The feed from it and the ones in Bruce's lab had been relayed down to the lab to relax the anxious god below, courtesy of JARVIS.
Recognition alighted upon the good doctor and he relied back into his original position, comfortably leaning against the back wall of the lift. "Okay, if you are sure."
Tony made sure to be standing directly in front of Bruce when the doors opened, just for cautionary purposes, but there was nothing there. Loki was no where to be seen but with all the cars, suits, and other machinery it wouldn't be that hard to hide. Tony carefully relaxed his posture, hoping his countable would influence the other men's, and walked slowly towards the center of the room.
"Come on out Loki, it's just me and Bruciekins here," Tony coaxed and watched out of the corner of his eye as Bruce flinched at the name, froze in place, and immediately clenched his eyes shut and took a couple of deep breaths.
"Tony," Bruce whispered as he opened his eyes that, Tony noticed, were completely brown and lacked even the tiniest hint of green. Bruce's control was really something.
"What, exactly, is Loki doing in your laboratory?" The words were not as tight as Tony had anticipated but hinted at Tony's possible lack of all sanity and self-preservation. Which was completely false because he did have some of his sanity or else none of his inventions would be feasible.
Tony turned and took a step closer to Bruce with his hands out and his mouth open to explain the chaos was two days ago because it was past midnight and the start of a new day when what came out was not the explanation he had carefully crafted just minutes earlier. His words, however, were muddled and mixed with another's as he and Loki spoke at the same time.
"Saving me."
"Being saved."
The tone of the next chapter I am making up to my reviewers! I can either make it really funny or I can make it serious. Im leaning towards serious because of all the crack I'm going to have later but I am going to let my FIRST FIVE REVIEWERS choose. Choose wisely.
Again, I apologize for the delay and I hope that the extra thousand words helped make up for the time lost!
Please review!