Title: space and time
Fandom: Marvel Avengers
Rating:PG
Length: 800
Content notes: Talk of canon Hulk-related issues, hypothetical speculation about future character deaths.
Author notes: For fan-flashworks for the Relative challenge. Also for comment-fic for the prompt “Bruce Banner/Tony Stark(/any), (651): Of all the kinds of relationships I've had in my life, I'd have to say, lab-partner-with-benefits takes the fuckin cake”
Summary: Bruce/Tony discuss the theory of relativity, retirement plans, and the Other Guy.



Bruce and Tony were sitting on the old couch at the side of the lab, enjoying their pancakes and coffee. It was ten o’clock at night, and JARVIS had insisted Tony and Bruce take a break from working on nano-accelerators to eat dinner.

“How old were you when you heard about relativity?” Tony asked.

“Eight. You?” Bruce answered.

“Seven. Wasn’t it like--” Tony made a gesture and sound effect of a mind exploding, “--when you first found out.”

Bruce grinned. “Totally. It’s like someone says spacetime is curved and then bam, you see everything differently.”

“I loved the idea of travelling so fast that you would age slower than everyone else too. For about a week I kept putting watches in my model airplanes to see if I could get them go fast enough to make the watches slow.”

Bruce laughed. “You must have been adorable.”

“I was pretty insufferable too.”

“So you’re the same now as when you were seven. So very surprised.”

“Whatever,” Tony said, flicking a crumb of pancake at him. “Hey, you know what I used to think about for my retirement plan?”

“That you would never retire and SI’s board would literally drag you out kicking and screaming?”

“Sure. But my other plan? Was to create a super fast spaceship and go on a one-way journey, farther than anyone has ever gone in space. Like an astronaut. But with cooler spacesuits. Since I’d design them myself. And I’d send back data from different places in the galaxy. I figured if I left when I was 75 and lived to 90, and I aged half a fast due to the speed, I could collect 30 years of data on parts of space that no human being has ever come close to seeing, even with telescopes. I figured that would be a hell of a way to go.”

“It does sound nice,” Bruce said.

Tony shrugged. “But now with rainbow bridges and space portals, it kind of seems silly to go all that way in a ship I guess.”

“Nah,” Bruce said, poking lightly at Tony’s knee, “Sometimes an old school road trip is still the best way to travel.”

Tony smiled, nodded. He looked down before adding, “But sometimes I figured it would too lonely doing that for years. So I thought I’d only go if there were another scientist who wanted to collect data like that too.”

Bruce paused. “Yeah, well, that’s a nice idea.”

“Would you be up for something like that? Hypothetically?” Tony was intentionally making his face blank, unreadable.

“Tony,” Bruce said softly, “You know that putting me in a confined spaceship with another person is a recipe for disaster.”

“I trust him.” The Other Guy.

“Yeah, that’s sweet,” Bruce said, edge in his voice.

“We could Hulk-proof the spaceship.”

“Make it heavier but also fast enough to slow aging? Really?”

“Who says heavier is stronger? We could find a way.”

“Tony. Best case scenario, I don’t kill you, and you die of old age. And then I hulk out, destroy the spaceship in grief, and drift through space, possibly still alive, for thousands of years or more. Best case.”

“Oh.”

Bruce sighed. “Sorry, Tony.”

Tony shrugged. “Okay, new retirement plan. We keep doing science until we’re 90. Then we go to an island, sit on a beach, and drink cocktails from coconut shells all day. And there are lots of exotic dancers. The stripper kind, not the kind that appropriates traditional culture for tourists, since I know preserving local cultures is important to you. How does that sound?”

Bruce let out a small laugh. “Ask me when we’re 90, I guess.”

Tony grinned like it was a yes. “I knew it was an awesome plan.”

They finished up their coffee then, and Tony took his and Bruce’s cups to get refills.

“Hey, Tony?” Bruce said.

“Yeah?”

“The spaceship thing. Let me think about it. Maybe we can find a way – I mean we have a while before we have to decide.”

Tony looked back, then nodded. He didn’t smile or laugh; he just looked thoughtful. “Okay. We’ll work on it.”

“Sure.”

Tony paused, then added, “Thanks.” He handed Bruce his coffee and took a sip of his own.

“So… I was thinking about phase loops for the nano-accelerators.”

“Totally!” Tony said, as they started walking back to the lab table. “That’s perfect. We can test out the berrenium loop stabilizers I made last week too,” he added, continuing to talk a mile a minute, thoughts of the near future crowding out worries of the distant.

Bruce listened to it, responded, the sharp rhythms of ideas, the push and pull of possible and not, a lullaby, a calm escape.

Time and pressure, slowing, stretching, with the speed of Tony’s voice.