“Oh man, crowds are the worst, don’t even tell me about it,” Matt chuckled back, poking fun at his own blindness as he always did. Bruce kept shifting from a relaxed state to a stressed state, and he wasn’t sure what was causing it. Could he know that they already knew? It was going to be hard to find an opening to bring up the topic if he wasn’t able to relax completely for a moment, “Although we know this one here loves them.” He added, turning his head towards Tony.
He sipped from his glass of wine, not daring yet to grab a sandwich. Hard to think about eating while he was thinking and analyzing the situation so much, “Eh, you know, just Law school being Law school. Tony being Tony, he’s also a lot of work too,” He said with a grin, amused at what Tony’s reaction would be, “What kind of experiments have you been doing? Tony was telling me a bit about your work the other day since we never talk about science. Something about gamma rays?” Maybe that could be their opening.
Tony wasn’t even hearing most of the concentration. All he could hear was the sound of his heartbeat in his own ears, uncharacteristically quiet as he watched his two friends. His eyes flickered back and forth between them, analyzing both their body language. He smiled when it felt appropriate, completely missing the joke as he formulated different escape plans should Bruce go green. It felt like they were in a Mexican stand-off, all three of them acutely aware of the palpable tenseness surrounding them.
As soon as Matt mentioned gamma rays, Tony tuned back in, watching Bruce’s face change for a flicker of a moment, before smoothing over again. “Yeah, Bruce,” he said, his voice sounding off to his own ears. It lacked the smoothness it normally did. “Any new developments? You know I’m gonna support your work no matter what.” He tried not to wince. Okay, maybe that one was a little on the nose, but they had to try and steer Bruce into telling them about the big hulking dude himself or this could end very badly.
Bruce smiled a little at the joke Matt made towards himself, and felt relaxed enough again that he could start eating. He took a bite from the sandwich as Matt mentioned law school and Tony, but the piece he’d chewed stuck in his throat as Matt had managed to turn the conversation around back to Bruce’s experiments. Shit. Bruce caught himself holding in his breath and forced the air out as quiet as he could, hoping Matt’s sensitive hearing wouldn’t pick up any of his abnormal breathing that could tell him he was feeling off about this topic.
He realized after a second that he’d let his expression fix into something uncomfortable, and adjusted accordingly into something in between a deadpan and a pleasant expression--he wasn’t sure if he could manage to fake any sort of smile right now. He turned the sandwich over in his hand, not wanting to answer Matt and Tony’s pushy questions regarding his experiments.
“Yeah, just trying to... recreate the data I’d lost from the explosion that had... happened...” Bruce was talking too slowly, and he knew he had to fake better than that. Especially when talking about the explosion--the one that had fucked him up and made him into a monster. Shit. Stop thinking about it. You’re stressing yourself out.
“It’s going alright. Nothing really new, though. Hoping I’ll have some substantial progress soon...” He set his sandwich down carefully and fidgeted, bringing his hand up to pretend to scratch his neck, while actually taking his pulse. Too fast. He took a few breaths to regulate his breathing pattern, hoping to calm himself again. He was just overreacting. They were just curious. Science had always been something Tony and Bruce had in common, so of course his experiments would be a topic of conversation. Everything is fine.
