Title: Electrolyte Mind

Author: piranabo

Rating: M

Pairings/Characters: Bruce Banner/Tony Stark, most Avengers characters

Warning(s): language; mentions of suicide and self-harm;

Summary: (High school AU) The first time Tony Stark talks to Bruce Banner is the same day Bruce Banner first tries to kill himself. Tony Stark doesn't realize he is the reason that Bruce fails. Bruce doesn't realize he repays the favor three years later.

Word Count (this chapter): approx. 2000 words

A/N: First chapter is more dark and serious, but the tone switches to something lighter relatively quickly. Also, first chapter is a lot shorter than the others. I am thinking around 3000 words per chapter, on average. Either way, I really loved writing this, and hope you'll enjoy it too!

-Chapter 1: Polished Sides- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It's at the party Tony throws freshman year. Tony has just moved to New York and into new high school, and wants people to like him without him really trying. He's rich; a party happens. Everyone's invited. There are drugs because Tony can afford them, and drinks for the ambience of it. His dad's away at business in a lab fifty miles away.

Fourteen's too young to throw parties, but Tony hit puberty early, and isn't bothered to care. He has the maids set it up. There's enough food for three hundred people, though only a hundred show up. Tony lives in a mansion, and his dad is famous. People want to meet him. Tony obliges them.

Bruce Banner, meanwhile, has the worst day of his life (he keeps track) for no particular reason. It's a week into high school, and the day starts off with no food in the mini fridge which is also the only fridge in his mom's three-room apartment. In school, a girl bumps into him by mistake. Bruce yells at her for no reason, and everyone within twenty feet looks at him like he is a sociopath. Bruce agrees with them.

He's on edge. Every sound is too loud; every light is too bright. His new science teacher has a voice like an arthropod, and her passion for the subject is limited by whatever Howard Stark's latest Teacher Edition textbook has on the agenda for the day. She pronounces something wrong, making Bruce's eye twitch. She is talking about human biology, and pronounces 'human' as 'yuman.' It's the dumbest thing. It makes Bruce want to punch something.

He is stabbing his pen into the nook between two of his fingers, and surprises himself when he notices it is bleeding. Bruce asks to go to the nurse. His teacher says 'in a minute,' and writes him a pass after forty-two more. The really strong urge to punch her is back.

Bruce goes into the bathroom and punches his arm instead. A few times, just so it's throbbing worse than his head is. Deep breaths, and he washes his face. A curl of hair gets caught on his eyelash. He pushes it away, and it falls back in his eye. His arm might be bruising. He wisps the strand away.

It slips down.

Bruce yells out a groan, and a boy who just walked in turns around and promptly leaves Bruce alone. Bruce sinks into the floor and buries his forehead in his hands. It's too loud, again.

By lunch his first day, Tony has a group of six or so girls begging him to sit with them. Tony likes girls; Boys usually can't stand him.

They're popular girls by how perfectly their eyeliner is put on and the number of lone kids sitting spaced out from each other at a table in the corner staring viciously at them. Tony asks them to spread word about his party that Friday, and by that Friday, it's all anyone in the freshmen class is talking about.

He's just going to slit his neck with his pocket knife. The wrist will take too long, and he doesn't want to give the impression of being some uninformed teenage moron in his death. To Bruce, it's not an ordeal, his suicide. He'll see if they have food in the fridge, eat if they do, be irritated if they don't, then end himself.

The pocket knife was a gift from an old friend of his. It has Bruce's initials engraved on it and three different blades. If he was going to die, it would have to be from that knife. Any others just wouldn't work right. It's kept safe in a velvet baggie he keeps tied to his belt.

The rest of the day goes by slowly. Bruce apologizes to the girl when she slips against him again, and even helps her pick up her things. She's still scared of him. Bruce has no reaction to this. He's in a state of total apathy. His pulse is beating in metronomic.

Bruce stays at the library, lets himself breathe in the adult literature section, grabs a book at random, and reads it all before leaving. It's dark out, or would be. New York is always lit up, Howard Stark's mansion seeming brighter than all of them that night. Bruce rubs his neck right along the carotid artery he'll slice. The way New York is illuminated makes it look kind of like stars, he thinks at random. The sight was probably beautiful if he hadn't grown up with it.

Tony had enough food for everyone, but apparently the only people allowed in Stark mansion are alcoholics because they run out of drinks in roughly an hour. He sighs, melodramatic, and declares himself a brave night who shall venture into the unforgiving night in search of drink. Everyone laughs except for a muscular blond kid with a lightning bolt shirt, who simply wishes Tony the best in his 'valiant quest for mead'. Tony decides to interpret that as a joke.

Bruce is going to leave a note. Probably telling mom to stop buying food for him, and that life got boring if any of the three people Bruce cares about would want to know why.

When he's walking down the street, Bruce sees some kid from either his science or Spanish class on the latest iPhone, laughing as he walks and texts. The kid passes him. Bruce wonders what was so funny.

Like clockwork, the kid stops. Bruce pauses with him.

Tony turns around, having caught a somewhat familiar face from his texting peripheral. He is right. It's Bruce Flag or Banner or Tapestry or who-knows from him science and Spanish classes.

"Oh, hey, Bruce, right?" Bruce looks at him. "Little late to be walking to my party, huh? Tony, from science and Spanish, by the way." Tony extends his hand and Bruce stares at it a minute before taking it.

"Bruce Banner. And I'm afraid I can't make it."

"Why's that? Too good for rich-boy parties where everything is free and the girls all look like they hit puberty at six?"

Bruce laughs, slightly bitter. "No. I have plans, unfortunately."

"Cancel them! I'm getting alcohol. Illegally, also. Don't tell anyone."

Bruce makes a zipping motion over his lips. "I'll take it to my grave." Tonight, actually. "I still can't come, though."

"Right. Did I mention my dad is Howard Stark? In case you have been living under a rock the last week and don't know my full name is Tony Stark, I mean."

"I know your dad. His textbooks legally qualify as a form of torture in Korea and select areas of Northern China." Bruce squinted. "Japan, too, but only on the third Tuesday of each month and the weekends."

Tony's eyebrows go up and then he laughs. "Ha! You, Bruce Tapestry, aren't half awful."

"It's Banner."

"They're synonyms. Well, Bruce Banner, if you manage to find a surgeon good enough to get that stick out your ass by my next party, do come. I need more people to snark with."

"Try ' '. I hear they offer discounts if your family is rich enough to buy their entire ancestry into slavery."

"Oh. Well, I must get twenty percent off, at least."

Bruce exhales a laugh. "Yeah, do look into that. Well, till then. It was nice meeting you, Tony."

Tony smirks. "Pleasure's all mine, Bruce."

And they nod at each other and walk away in opposite directions.

Bruce goes into his apartment. There are new bullet holes in a door a few floors down. He is glad there aren't any on his. After locking the door, Bruce checks the fridge: empty. His mom is sleeping in her room, enjoying the few hours she has between her jobs. Bruce writes a note to remind her to buy more food (for just herself) and signs his full name on it with heart over each 'B' because he loves his mom.

He walks into his room and closes the door. The lone lightbulb in it is old and flickers slightly from dim to dimmer. Bruce sighs. He lies down on his bed and stares at the ceiling for ten minutes, then lazes up on his shoulders.

Showtime, Bruce thinks.

Tony walks back the way he came with a shopping cart full of something really cheap that probably tastes awful because those jerks deserve it for making him walk, even if he volunteered, and most of those jerks are perfectly charming, nice, and B-cups, minimum. On his way there, he sees a little pouch on the sidewalk, and picks it up. He may be rich, but finders keepers, he says.

Bruce wonders if it would be inappropriate to jack off one more time before killing himself. Probably, and he doesn't want to have to walk all the way outside and downstairs to the hose to shower off afterwards, so he decides the answer is yes, and forgoes cumming one last time. It never was that amazing, anyway.

His glasses are off and neat in their case on his nightstand. Bruce's fingers trace the soft bags under his eyes. They drift to the artery in his neck, him closing his eyelids and not planning on opening them again, ever.

His pulse is smooth; it's relaxing, peaceful. The shaky ceiling fan squeaks a bit. It doesn't bother him, for once. It's the perfect moment to die.

Bruce gropes for the small pouch with his knife, absolutely content.

He can't feel it.

His eyes open, and he looks.

It isn't there.

Tony Stark, two more hours into the party after his return with new drinks, decides to open the little baggie he found. He pulls open the drawstring and takes out an object from it.

It's a knife with polished wood sides and 'B.B.' professionally engraved into the side.

Tony Stark wonders just what the hell 'B.B.' stands for.

Bruce Banner finishes his freshman year valedictorian. When he gets home, the fridge is stocked with food. He eats three meals a day for a week like an absolute boss.

Tony Stark, meanwhile, doesn't remember talking to any jerk-off named 'Bruce Banner' before, but when it's announced first period, last day, that the prick beat him by a hundredth of a point on being valedictorian, he is seriously tempted to.

Bruce getting top of their class is absolute shit, Tony thinks, because Tony lost those points in gym class. Not because he wasn't fit or didn't test well, but because he didn't want to change one day with the gay kid who just came out in their class. No offense to gay people, but Tony's dick is reserved especially for the eyes of woman suitors only, thank you very much.

But with the shenanigans of the last day, Tony forgets about Bruce Banner until he's already walking up the stairs of Stark mansion.

Well, first day of sophomore year, he decides, Tony Stark is giving Bruce Banner hell. Then an idea strikes him.

Why wait?