Glass Houses
VIII.
On the way back to the penthouse, they talked about the suit.
Bruce wasn’t really interested in the guns and the rockets. What interested him were two things: the impervious quality of the metal that came coupled with immense functionality and flexibility, and the AI system that helped him assess his surroundings so quickly. Plus the actual flight capabilities would be a benefit. Like most inventors, Tony was happy to talk about his creation.
“I’d let you try it,” he said at one point, “but you’re too tall for it.”
Once back at the penthouse, they each had several more shots of Scotch.
“You really think it’ll help?” Bruce asked Tony. “Blowing up everyone who’s misusing your weapons?”
“They wouldn’t have those weapons if I hadn’t designed and made them,” Tony said.
“No, they’d have weapons somebody else designed and made. You can’t – you can’t fight evil like that,” Bruce said.
“It’s better than sitting on my ass, watching the news.”
“Yeah, but it won’t work,” Bruce said. “I once knew a man who thought that the solution to a broken city like Gotham was to wipe it off the face of the map. Just destroy everyone there. I mean, yeah, that’d get rid of the evil. But it would also kill all the innocent people.”
“The innocent people who were sitting by and doing nothing?”
“Being afraid isn’t a crime. And not everyone has a gold titanium suit.”
“I didn’t make the suit because I was afraid. I made the suit because I knew I couldn’t do what I needed to do without it. That’s just logic; it’s not emotionality. Besides, are you saying that Gotham’s really improved?”
“Yes. It has.”
“We’re talking about the same city, right? The city that’s now crucifying their own superhero to make themselves feel better.”
“He killed people.”
Tony gave Bruce a long, assessing look.
“If some group of thugs were going around robbing and killing innocent people wearing bat masks,” Tony said, “don’t you think the real Batman would go out and stop him?”
Bruce considered it, which was difficult given how much liquor he had consumed. And how had that happened, anyway? He was normally much more careful. “I guess so.”
“Then I’m doing the same thing. I won’t apologize for it.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Good.”
“Okay.”
“How many more of those arc reactors do you want?”
Bruce blinked, taken off guard. “Excuse me?”
“You bought three, right? But that’s just set-up, it’s to open trade routes, so to speak, so next time you want one, you can just have your boys call me boys and get a few more put in the mail. So you have plans for those three. Right?”
“Right,” Bruce said.
“So, how many more have you got plans for?”
Bruce thought it over and counted on his fingers. “Six.”
“All right. I’ll send you seven. That last one can be off the books.”
Bruce looked at him.
“Thanks,” he said.
After that, somehow, they were friends.
IX.
Whether or not Tony Stark knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman was something that Bruce was never quite sure about. He thought of him sort of like how he had thought of Lucius Fox at first – he probably knew, but that didn’t mean Bruce was about to go out and announce it, either.
Tony was good for his word. A week after his visit to Gotham, seven more arc reactors arrived. Six were in one box and went to Fox’s attention. The last came directly to Bruce’s penthouse, without an invoice. Bruce and Fox examined it within an inch of its life before Fox began to play with how it could be used with the Batsuit or the new Batmobile he was building.
A few months passed. Tony visited occasionally, if he was in the area – once dropping down in his Iron Man suit to say hello on a trip back from Afghanistan. He was too tired to fly any further without getting some rest, and apparently, Bruce was the only person he trusted to look out for him and his suit while he did so.
Bruce went out to California a few times, but it was usually on other business, and oddly, Tony was harder to track down on his home turf. He was always doing something. Bruce watched the news, and had to admit that he found himself nervous whenever Tony Stark’s face was splashed across the front page. It made him even more uneasy than the varying articles about Batman, who was still eluding the authorities.
He was startled one night by his phone ringing. Alfred had long since gone to bed, though Bruce was still up working. He fumbled around on the table until he found it. “Yeah,” he said into it.
“Hey, Bruce,” Tony said, as if it weren’t nearly midnight. “I was, uh, wondering if I could get a hand with something.”
“Can it wait until morning?” Bruce asked.
“Well, sort of. I mean, it might take you until morning to get here, but I’d really rather you sort of left now.”
“Get there?” Bruce rubbed a hand over his face. “What?”
“It’s like this,” Tony said. “I kinda got caught in this explosion – ”
“Oh, great.”
“ – and part of my suit has melted shut and I can’t get out – ”
“Even better, go on.”
“ – and I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding in here somewhere – ”
“Of course you are.”
“ – and if Pepper finds me like this, she’ll never let me leave the house again – ”
“Understandable.”
“ – and normally I’d call Rhodey but he’s doing training maneuvers in some God awful desert somewhere, so you’re closer.”
Bruce felt the familiar Stark-induced-migraine surfacing. He made a quick calculation. “I’ll be there in a couple hours.”
“Thanks.”
Bruce got up, called the airport to get his jet ready to take off, and called the helicopter to have it come pick him up off the roof of the penthouse. The helicopter would be about ten minutes, so he packed an overnight bag and got dressed. Then he took great pleasure in waking Alfred.
“Yes, Master Wayne?” Alfred asked, half-awake.
“I’m going to California.”
“Now, sir?”
“Yeah. Tony’s stuck in his suit.”
“Ah. He must trust you very much, then.”
Bruce stared, wondering where that comment had come from, and then chalked it up to Alfred being half-conscious, and left the room. He grabbed some work he could keep himself occupied with, and went up to the roof. Twenty minutes later, he was on the jet, and went back to his work.
He hadn’t thought ahead to the other end of the trip, but Tony apparently had; a man in a dark suit and limousine was waiting to pick him up. He had a cup of strong coffee waiting as well and introduced himself by the unlikely name of Happy Hogan. Bruce wondered why he couldn’t have a chauffeur with a fun name like that. Happy dropped him off at the front door.
“You’re expected,” he said.
“Thanks.” Bruce grabbed his bag, wondered what Stark had told the man, and jogged up the front step.
The moment he opened the front door, a mellow voice said, “Good morning, sir. Might you be Mr. Wayne?”
Bruce was startled. “Uh, yes. Hello.”
“Thank you. Your voice matches the print that Mr. Stark gave me. My name is Jarvis. I run the house. Mr. Stark is in his lab down the stairs just to your left.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“I am now going to turn on the house’s security system again, so if you need to leave for any reason, please alert me before you open any of the doors. If you need anything, I will do my best to provide it.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said again, and jogged down the stairs, wondering what would have happened if his voice hadn’t matched the print that Tony had given the AI.
Tony was waiting for him, looking rather nonchalant about the fact that he was draped over a workbench with part of his suit melted together and possibly melted to him, at two o’clock in the morning. “Hi,” he said, “thanks for coming. There’s a, uhm, set of tools over on the table.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “You owe me big time for this,” he said, picking up a crowbar, but then giving consideration to the blowtorch. He decided to try the crowbar first.
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Okay, see, it’s the back pieces that have welded together. I was facing away from the explosion. That’s why the front plate is cracked, from where I hit the building wall. Helmet ruined, it’s very sad. Anyway, if you wedge the crowbar under the back piece, you should be able to pop it free. None of the ‘bots can get enough strength or leverage.”
“I’ve known you three months and you’re asking me to shove a crowbar somewhere very indecent, you know,” Bruce said.
Tony smirked. “Now you see why I couldn’t do it myself?”
“No comment.”
Bruce wedged the crowbar under the back piece – which really did look rather euphemistic, with the other end coming out – and applied considerable force. It didn’t budge. “Huh,” he muttered.
“What?” Tony asked, leaning over the workbench to give Bruce better leverage.
“Nothing. Shut up for a minute.” Bruce closed his eyes and centered himself. Strength was about concentration, about focus, not about muscles. He took several deep breaths. Tony actually stayed quiet for a few minutes while Bruce did this. Then Bruce opened his eyes and slammed both hands down on the crowbar. There was a horrible screeching noise, and the back panel popped off.
“Hah!” Tony said. “I knew you could do it.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. He put the plate down on the table and helped Tony out of the rest of the suit. He very carefully did not look at the thin black bodysuit Tony wore underneath it. That was just a bad idea no matter how he thought about it. So he was a little discomfited a minute later, when Tony peeled the bodysuit off altogether, so he was standing there in nothing but a pair of underwear. Fortunately, there was plenty to distract him from Stark’s attractive body. “I thought you were impervious,” Bruce said, studying the dark bruises on Tony’s chest and the front of his legs, then the angry red marks on his back.
“Uh, no,” Tony said. “I’m about as close as you can get, but when a small bomb goes off right behind me, the suit can’t handle all the damage. Considering what would have happened to me if I hadn’t been wearing it, I think I got off pretty light.”
“True.” Bruce inspected the gash across his collarbone and down onto his chest. He let out a low whistle. “That came pretty close to the – ”
“Yeah, I know,” Tony said, clearly not wanting to talk about what might have happened if the arc reactor in his chest had been damaged.
“Where do you keep the first aid kit in this place?” Bruce asked, and Tony directed him to it. Bruce worked in silence as he cleaned out the wound with antiseptic. Tony’s jaw was set firmly and he stared off into space, either trying to ignore the pain or somewhere else entirely. Bruce pressed a pad of gauze down over the injury and then taped it down. “You’re gonna lose some chest hair when you take that off,” he said.
“I can grow more.”
“Yeah.” Bruce circled him to examine the burns on his back. They were light, fortunately, really no worse than a very bad sunburn. But they had to hurt like hell, and he was willing to bet that Tony had a fever and just wasn’t admitting it. He rustled through the first aid kit. “You got any lidocaine cream?”
“Any what?”
“For the burns.”
Tony frowned. “Hey, Jarvis? We got any lidocaine cream?”
“Yes, sir, in the upstairs bathroom cabinet. Actually, it’s gel, not cream. Miss Potts purchased it last time you were sunburned on the beach.”
“Thanks.”
Tony insisted on cleaning up the remnants of his suit and putting everything away before they went upstairs. He was clearly tired. Bruce was preoccupied, trying to figure out how he was going to rub lidocaine gel on Tony’s back without this turning into something from a porno.
“You should call Pepper for this,” he said.
“Seriously?” Tony asked. “You shoved a crowbar up my ass but you won’t rub a little gel on my back? Pretend I’m a Russian ballet star.”
“Why are you so dead set against Pepper finding out about this?” Bruce asked, reluctantly following Tony up the stairs and into his bedroom. He flung himself down on his stomach; apparently the burns hurt a lot worse than the bruises. Or maybe he was just trying to shield the arc reactor in his chest from the world.
“She doesn’t need to, that’s all.”
Bruce sighed. He decided that this would go better if it were over with quickly, and tried to keep things as brisk and businesslike as possible without actually hurting the other man. “Did you at least finish what you went there for?” he asked.
Tony had his face turned to one side and was staring off into the distance. Bruce wondered what he was thinking. “Yeah,” he finally said.
“Well. There’s that, at least.”
“Yeah,” Tony said again, and closed his eyes, clearly exhausted.
Bruce finished up and left the room, then washed his hands. He stood in the hallway and hesitated, not sure of where to go from here.
“Might I be of some assistance, sir?” Jarvis asked, his phrasing so reminiscent of Alfred that for a moment, Bruce looked around for the other man.
“Uh, yeah, I was gonna get some sleep but I’m not sure where to do it,” he said.
“Of course. Two doors down past Mr. Stark’s room, there is a guest suite. Please make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said. The guest suite was quite large and had an adjoining bathroom. He took a quick shower before collapsing into bed.
X.
Bruce had barely been asleep for an hour when he woke up. He couldn’t say exactly why he had woken. Some instinct had pulled him from the depths of sleep. He lay in bed silently for a few minutes, then got up, moving softly on his bare feet.
He had once said to Tony that the danger of his public identity being known was that, while he was damn near indestructible as ‘Iron Man’, his regular self was nowhere near as indestructible. Plenty of people would be willing to try to assassinate him while he was out of the suit. Tony just shrugged. For some reason, people trying to kill him didn’t bother him.
It bothered Bruce.
“Jarvis?” he said, and got no answer. “Okay, that’s bad.”
He left the room, moving silently through the spacious house. He encountered the first assassin on the stairs. Since they clearly hadn’t expected anyone else to be home, he easily knocked aside the gun and made him drop it with a quick jab to the wrist, then wrenched him around and quietly strangled him until he lost consciousness.
Bruce eased into Tony’s room to find the other man still sound asleep. He looked around and saw what he was looking for – a small earpiece sitting on the bedside table. He picked it up and slid it into his ear. “Jarvis?” he whispered.
“Yes, Mr. Wayne,” Jarvis said. “Something appears to have malfunctioned in my security system. They seem to believe they have disabled me totally, so I did not want to answer you aloud earlier.”
“How many?”
“Six total, including the one you have already taken care of. I’ve phoned the police. They’ll be here in approximately three minutes.”
“Okay.”
More than enough time.
The men were well-trained; he would give them that. But they had nothing on Bruce Wayne, even without his suit and his toys. He had been taught by the league of shadows. Even in this setting, he was unstoppable.
As he finished off the last man, in the living room, he heard someone clapping. He whirled around – having flashbacks to the Joker – to see Tony sitting on the stairs.
“It would’ve been better in the suit,” Tony said, “but I can’t say that I don’t like the view.”
“What?” Bruce said, trying to catch his breath. “Weren’t you asleep?”
“You try sleeping with second degree burns all over your back,” Tony said. “I got up to get some Scotch. The more, the better. Jarvis told me to wait until you were done. Hey, why a bat, anyway? I’ve been holding off on asking you that; I think I deserve some real rewards for my self-control.”
They heard a car door slam outside.
“Hey, here’s the police,” Tony said, and went to greet them, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was wearing nothing but underwear and a bandage across his collarbone. Bruce wasn’t much better, wearing only a pair of pajama pants. He sighed and put up with it when the police came in and questioned them. Bruce and Tony managed to make it sound like some good luck had been a large factor when taking their opponents down, and the police seemed to accept that, and carted the men away.
“How long have you known?” Bruce asked.
“Since right after you came for your first visit,” Tony said. “Come on, I do my research. I’m thorough.”
“You never said anything,” Bruce said.
“Well, I figured you knew I knew,” Tony said. “Didn’t you?”
“I was pretty sure, but I didn’t know,” Bruce said. He sighed as Tony crossed the room and got out the bottle of Scotch. “It would have made some of our conversations easier.”
“Hey, you could’ve come clean at any time,” Tony said. “Not my fault that you didn’t. Though I can see it. There’s disadvantages to the public persona thing. Makes your friends easier to target. Plus I’ve got that bastard Nick Fury giving me grief over the Avengers Initiative all the time. You should be glad that you’re missing out on that.”
“You say that like he hasn’t approached me while I’m Batman,” Bruce muttered.
Tony let out a snort and downed his shot glass full of Scotch. “Anyway, yeah, so I know. You do good work. Let’s get some more sleep.”
“Sir,” Jarvis said, “might I bother you to repair my security system before you retire?”
“Oh, yeah. Good idea.”
As far as Bruce could tell, the conversation about his real identity was over. He sighed and went up the stairs, going back to bed. When he woke up the next morning, he could smell coffee brewing downstairs. He went down to find Pepper in the kitchen. “Oh. Good morning,” he said.
“Mr. Wayne,” she said, clearly surprised. “Jarvis didn’t tell me that you were here.”
“Oh, yeah, I got here late last night . . .” Bruce realized, a bit belatedly, how that sounded. He saw the tiniest bit of color raising in Pepper’s cheeks. He opened his mouth to protest, feeling somewhat mortified, but she interrupted him.
“Coffee?” she asked, offering him a mug.
“Thanks,” he muttered, accepting it. “Uhm, Pepper, it’s not – ”
“Good morning!” Tony bounded down the stairs with all the energy and dignity of a puppy. “Miss Potts,” he said with a nod. She handed him his coffee without comment, now studying some text on her PDA. He nudged Bruce in the ribs with his elbow. “You didn’t tell me you were getting up,” he said, with a sly smile.
Bruce ground his teeth. “I didn’t – ”
“What’s this about assassins in the middle of the night?” Pepper asked, her voice raising as she looked up from the information she had received.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Tony said. “Bruce took care of it. He’s Batman, you know.”
Bruce choked on his coffee.
Pepper seemed unimpressed. “Just because he’s Batman doesn’t mean he should take on six trained assassins with his bare hands. And don’t tell me anything else happened because I already got the full story from Jarvis. As glad as I am that Mr. Wayne was here to protect you – ”
“Miss Potts – ” Bruce tried.
“ – that’s no excuse for foolhardy behavior,” Pepper said, her temper flaring up. “From either of you.”
“Yes, ma’m.” Tony snapped off a salute. Then he elbowed Bruce.
“Sorry,” Bruce managed weakly.
“Hmph,” Pepper said. She picked up the newspaper and left the room.
Bruce turned to Tony and hissed, “This is not what I signed up for. Would you seriously rather she believe we slept together than she know that you got a little burnt in your suit?”
“Uh, yes,” Tony said. “A million times, yes.”
Bruce fumed into his coffee.
“Besides,” Tony said, with a wink, “would it really be that bad?”
Bruce set his mug down with a thump. “I’m going back to Gotham.”
XI.
Bruce wasn’t sure what was worse – that Pepper had assumed he was banging her boss, or that she seemed to have known he was Batman for longer than Tony did. He puzzled over this dilemma on the way home on the jet. Once he got home, the question was definitively answered: there was something worse than both those things.
Alfred was waiting for him. “Miss Potts called ahead to say you would be returning,” he said.
“Uh huh,” Bruce said. “Did she say anything about the assassins?”
“She gave them a mention.”
“So, you knew that she knew I was Batman.”
Alfred drew himself up straight. “For your information, I have known the Potts family almost as long as I have known the Wayne family. She is a fine young lady with whom I correspond on a regular basis. Of course, I never mentioned anything about Batman to her, but she’s very keen.”
“Not about everything,” Bruce muttered to himself.
“And I do say, sir, that I think your friendship with Mr. Stark has been very good for you.”
Bruce stopped walking. “Alfred . . . we’re not . . .”
“Of course not. It’s none of my business, sir. But you have been a great deal happier, and I have no argument with that.”
Alfred kept walking.
Bruce resolved to beat the shit out of Tony next time he saw the insufferable genius.
XII.
“Hey, Bruce, how big are your hands?”
“What?” Bruce looked down the staircase that Tony had disappeared down some half hour ago, muttering something about an upgrade. He had been wasting time ever since, staring out at the ocean. It was peaceful, somehow. The more time he spent at Tony’s place, the more he found himself liking it.
“Never mind, they’re way too big.”
“What?”