thoughtformed | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Bruce and Tony
Where: Roof of the Avenger Tower
What: Feelings
When: After Zim's attack on the Tower
Warnings: FEELINGS?

Tony had actually intended to be alone when he headed up to the roof of the Tower. He had not expected to find Bruce up there. If he had, he would have brought something other than the very hard drink in his hand. It didn't stop him, though, from taking his seat next next to Bruce. He didn't say anything at first, looking up at the slowly growing familiarity of different stars.

He was still sore and stiff from the attack. Pissed too, not that it showed. Benefits of being known to have a taste for alcohol was that no one noticed when you picked up a glass.

"Hey, there, Ptolemy. Doing a bit of recreational star gazing? " He took a drink, leaning back on his other arm.

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Bruce was looking more haggard than usual, which was to be expected considering Hulk had just made an appearance in the lab. He'd even blacked out for a while, but he had no idea how long that had been for and wasn't particularly concerned, seeing as that was normal as well. His own anger was back to being locked up tight; boiling a bit hotter than usual perhaps, with a frustration that was entirely new.

At this point, after having come so close to killing someone he cared about, he would have picked up and left. It was easy to fall back into that mindset.

The thing about New Moore, of course, was that running away was a physical impossibility. There was literally nowhere to go, and so there he was, feeling as utterly trapped as he ever had and shrugging in response to Tony's question like he wasn't wishing he were somewhere else. "Yeah... something like that."

Tony could read Bruce, some of it, at least. He was not an expert on reading people, and had been tricked plenty of times. Fooled, conned, the like, by all manner of people. But it was not hard to notice certain things. Like how rough around the edges Bruce was tonight. The extra bit of wear and stress on his face.

Tony wondered if that sort of sign was visible on him, and even in his own head his brain made a crack about gray hairs and crows feet.

He had not come up here prepared for his usual bantering and jokes. But when had he ever needed time to come up with flash responses when he could drop them on a dime in nearly any social encounter or fight?

He struggled a bit longer for words, and when nothing came, felt a bit like he was back to being trapped in the suit. The silence that fell between them felt stiff, awkward, like a wall was going up where Tony had been fighting so hard to tear it down. He didn't want Bruce to pull away from him- from the team.

"Maybe I should put a sky-light in. Easy exit access, too." Now he was just speaking to keep the silence from crushing him. Anything to try and get Bruce to talk to him.

Tony wasn't the easiest person to read, either, but if there was anything there on his face that was out of place, Bruce wouldn't have noticed it just then. What clued him in that the other man was probably just as frazzled as himself was the gaping silence that hung in the air. Since when did Tony ever find himself at a loss for words? Bruce peered sideways at him for a moment, before turning his gaze back to the sky.

"Easier exit means easier entry for someone looking to break in." As if they needed to give anyone the opportunity for that.

Tony makes a sound in the back of his throat, aborted and rough edged, and drowns it with the rest of his cocktail. He should have grabbed the whole bottle.

JARVIS was still shut down. Tony used the excuse that the system needed time to flush Zim's virus out, but in reality he just... could not deal with doing the necessary work right then. It was also, unfortunately, Tony's outlet. What he buried himself in when he needed to escape his own brain. And not having that work, forcing himself to take a step back from JARVIS and Iron Man and everything else for even just a few hours was maddening and a lot harder than he had expected.

He was going to have to rework JARVIS' coding from the bottom up, find all the back doors and replace them with walls. Pour over millions of lines of code and weave it back together in ever increasingly more complicated ways than he had ever had before. Anything he could do to try and find a way to keep all these interlopers and hackers out.

And finish that kill switch to sever the suits from JARVIS if none of that was enough.

"I'll get anti-air lasers and we'll station Barton with hot water balloons up top. What could go wrong?" He closed his eyes, lying flat on the roof. The tower below them eerily silent. None of Tony's blaring music or the sound of lab work. Just quiet, like the black sky above them.

Edited (This edit was hacked) 2012-10-02 06:31 (UTC)

"That won't keep what's already inside from becoming the problem." After a beat, he realized that could be taken another way, and added, "And I don't mean JARVIS. You can't predict what kind of alien technology might be out there and how it can get past its defenses."

Both instances were nothing they could have prepared for, as far as Bruce was concerned. Their experience with alien tech was limited, and from what he had seen on the island and through the people he had met; he was starting to get an idea of what might be in store for them the longer they were stuck here.

"There is nothing inside this tower we can't handle. I think that's been tested and proven by this point." Tony tilted his head to glance over at Bruce after a moment and then back up at the sky, his arm draped over his chest where he could feel the reactor beneath it, the steady, inaudible thrum of the magnet keeping the shrapnel from piercing his heart.

"I'm not worried about what's inside," It was only true in the context of Bruce. Twice now he had been forced to face a hi-jacked Tony, now, and both times he had not killed Tony. He didn't understand why Bruce could not see that he had a much better lid on it than anyone else seemed to know.

Tony could see it. He had seen it a long while before anyone even caught a glimpse.

And he wasn't worried about Bruce getting hacked.

"I'll be finished with the kill switch before the sun even comes up. Piece of cake, problem solved." Not solved at all, but at least it would but him some more security and some time.

His scoff was accompanied by something of a humourless smile as he shook his head. "I almost had myself convinced of that." To be honest, Hulk did finally show some recognition after he had battered Iron Man around some and gone after the alien instead. That was why the damage was contained mostly to the lab and he hadn't gone on a rampage across the entire island. It was something, but not enough to keep Bruce from reminding himself that he had nearly killed Tony.

"Where will the switch be? I wasn't able to get to the console to shut down JARVIS last time..." he reminded him. It was hard to get to one fixed point in the tower when JARVIS didn't want you to be there.

"Keeping it on me, this time. Seems like a safer bet. I'll rig the other one up this evening." While JARVIS was still down. The wiring and the coding was going to take all of Tony's attention for at least a good 6 or 7 hours. He needed to get it done, and fast. Then he would worry about the repairs to the lab. But for now, the highest task on his docket was keeping JARVIS from being a tool for their enemies to use against them. If he could not keep them out of the coding, he would just find a way to knock the coding out of JARVIS.

He hated the feeling that came with the knowledge that his most secure system, the very core of the Avenger Tower seemed to have been taken over twice as though it were little more than child's play.

"Haven't decided how it should go yet. Thought we might have a team discussion." Because this was their home. All of them. And they should be able to be secure in their own home.

He glanced over at Bruce and then backup at the sky, slipping further back until he was completely sprawled on his back, his hands behind his head.

"Still have me convinced. Everyone is in one piece, besides our vertically challenged new friend." Tony had made sure no one knew the extent of his bruises. He had played the entire thing off, afterwards, as though it had just been a new night time activity. Like watching a movie as a team. Even now, laying on the bruises that colored his skin in about as many places as he could cover with his clothes, he looked as if he didn't feel a thing. And that was exactly what he wanted people to think. For all they knew, the suit had taken the damage and he'd just been knocked about a little. Roughed up a bit on the edges and little more.

"That's probably for the best, yeah.. as well as bouncing ideas off of the others." Along the lines of safety measures that were up for group discussion, Bruce was entertaining the idea of finding a place of his own, without roommates to endanger. If the others wanted him gone, he wouldn't argue. He might not have been able to put a continent between them and himself, but there were other parts of the island that would be less of a risk.

The fact that Iron Man had taken a beating did not escape him, even if Tony was trying to pretend that nothing was physically wrong. Bruce was a doctor, after all. He could spot the stiffness in the other man's movements that he tried to hide. To be honest, Bruce should have taken him to the hospital.. or at least checked him out himself, if Tony would have allowed either of those things to happen. "Tony, you're lucky to still be in one piece."

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