p • r • e • s • s • u • r • e

Truth or Dare

Bruce sighs.

"Please don't let me leave her."

"What?"

The broken man's words were dripping with sadness like a leaky tap, just steadily plinking on and on in the cracks of his voice.

"Morgan. Don't let me leave her. She's so young..."

Bruce's eyes start leaking rivers, Tony still calm. He'd been thinking about this.

"Tony, I-"

He moves away from the scientist and watches him, his heart twinging with guilt at tears glittering in the moonlight.

"Promise me. Promise you won't let me go."

"I won't. Never. But Tony-"

"You might fail, and that's okay. If you do...just step in for me, yeah?"

"Tony, you're not going to-"

"But I don't know that, Bruce! I don't know what I'm going to do! I don't-I don't know..."

He shakes his head and buries his hands in his hair, burning pain in his scalp.

"Tony stop. Tony!"

Bruce grabs his wrists and pulls them away from his head, strands of hair in his palms and on the sheets.

The scientist wraps his arms around him protectively and leans into the pillows.

"I don't want to hurt her."

"I don't want you to either."

Tony composes himself, shaking the wetness from his voice.

"But if I do, I need you to fill in for me. It's a lot to ask, but...it's also a lot to take from her. From either of them."

"Yeah, of course. But I don't want it to come to that."

"I know."

"You're not planning on dying, are you?"

"No, Bruce. I'm not. But I just want to be sure."

They stay like that for the rest of the night, Bruce wrapped around him like armour. If Tony was being honest, it was probably the most uncomfortable night of his life. But it made Bruce feel better, and so he stayed, worried if he breathed the wrong way he'd freak out.

~Time skip~

Bruce is sprawled out across the bed and Tony cautiously detangles himself from him before grabbing his glasses and sneaking downstairs. He turns on the coffee machine and puts in the filter and beans, before leaning against the fridge and grabbing his phone from his pocket. It's dead, and he turns it off with surprising patience. The coffee drips steadily into the pot behind him, and Tony absentmindedly runs his thumb over his phone's cracked screen, the glass splintering into his thumb. He doesn't bother taking his eyes off the floor when he grabs a mug from where he remembers the cabinet being, or when he pours the coffee into said mug. By some miracle, he doesn't spill any on himself. Tony leans against the counter again, concluding that he hates miracles and drip coffee will always be gross. He sips the scalding hot brew, jumping just a little at the burn. The knife drawer opposite him eyes him, and the engineer squints back.

"No," he says out loud.

The sciencebros had been in the lab, working on Tony's suit for the past few hours.

Bruce sat with a screwdriver jammed into the mechanical torso, listening intently to the engineer's instructions. Since it was his dominant hand he was missing, it was virtually impossible for Tony to use his left hand without stabbing the delicate wiring.