The first time Bruce meets him, they're in the old Avengers tower at a party. After everything that happened, everyone deserves to let loose a bit. They're alive. They had been through hell and back a million times over, but after all was said and done, they're all finally back. Still, though everyone is talking again, after everything that went down with the Sokovia accords, things are tense. Everyone is tired, few forgot who had turned on them during the battle at the airport, and most were taking their fair share of shots for the night.

Bruce wasn't there, though, and can't help but feel awkward and weirdly left out. And so, he resigns himself to playing bartender for the night so that Natasha can get the chance to mingle with the others (though she chooses to stay with him, much to his pleasure). He offers a drink to Peter as a drink as he walks by, a strange mix of chattiness and awkwardness.

Peter looks like a deer in the headlights and doesn't even a get a word out before Tony slides in, seemingly materializing out of nowhere.

"No giving drinks to the kid, Bruce!"

Bruce raises his eyebrows. "Kid?" Sure, he looked young, but Bruce figured his eyes were just playing tricks on him, that this was just one of those people who could be mistaken for a high-schooler a decade or so past their teen years. He wouldn't have thought that Tony would actually recruit a child. Something about it doesn't sit right with him and he has to suppress a grimace.

"Yeah," Tony replies in the must 'duh' tone he can muster. "Can you not tell? Look at him. What are you, twelve or something?" He's joking, but the sarcasm is lost on Peter.

"Fifteen," Peter corrects.

"Same difference. Just know- if I see you with a drink in your hand, you're out. Kapish?"

"Got it," Peter mumbles, cheeks glowing a flaming red.

"Good." And with that, Tony ducks out, seeking Pepper out through the crowd and trying to show off such a raunchy display of PDA that both Peter and Pepper have to turn away from him.

"Don't mind him," Bruce chuckles. "Here, I'll get you something else to drink."

"Thanks," Peter huffs. Then it hits him. "Wait. Did he just say you were Bruce? As in- Bruce Banner?"

Bruce grins and looks down at his shoes. "Uh, yeah… that would be me."

"Whoa." Peter's eyes go wide. "So you're- you turn into?"

"The Hulk, yes." Bruce tries his best to remain pleasant and force a smile, but it comes out more like a grimace. Even after all these years, he's not sure how to respond to this sort of thing. Should he be thankful? Insulted? Guilty? Maybe that would depend on how he himself thought of the Hulk, and he doesn't know he feels about the other guy most of the time. How could he expect anyone else to?

Peter steps back when he realizes his mistake and color rises up in his cheeks again. "S-sorry Dr. Banner. I- I didn't mean to-"

"Don't worry about it." Bruce slides him a gold colored drink and Peter takes a sip. Apple juice. Bruce poured him a cup of apple juice as if he were a toddler. Nonetheless, Peter can't deny that it has a certain sweetness and nostalgia ,and takes another sip.

"Sorry, I didn't get your name?"

"Oh!" Peter nearly chokes on his drink and coughs violently in his rush to extend a hand. "Peter. Parker. I'm Peter Parker. Spiderman."

Bruce reaches out to shake it and nearly winces at the strength of the handshake. "Spiderman. I like it. I'm Br- well. I guess you already know who I am."

Peter releases his hand and Bruce looks down and flexes it. His knuckles pop but it does little to ease the soreness. "Super strength?"

"Oh. Um, yeah. Sorry… just a little excited, I guess." Peter almost wishes he'd just come wearing blush so that it wouldn't be so obvious when he flushed down to his neck. It might be worth the endless teasing from Tony.

"That's neat." Bruce nods. "Heard a bit about you. Didn't realize that all of your abilities were innate. Thought you built them into a suit. Think I even heard Tony call you his mini-me"

Peter beams at that. "Uh, well, only some of them are. Some of them I built. And some of them Mr. Stark built. Mr. Stark built the suit. I made these web-shooters." Peter extends his wrists towards Bruce so that he can see. "And then I got the ability to climb up walls and super strength when I was bitten by a radioactive spider. That's how Mr. Stark found me."

Bruce freezes in the middle of pouring a drink and it overflows, spilling over the edge of the counter and onto Peter's lap.

"Oh sh-" Peter clenches his mouth shut before he can finish swearing, but Bruce finishes it for him.

"Shit."

"Sorry, uh- here." He hands Peter a towel to clean himself up, but Peter instead leans over and cleans up the counter.

Bruce shakes his head. "You- you said radiation?"

"Yeah," Peter smiles. He still can't believe his luck- that he of all people was lucky enough to be bestowed with these powers. To become a part of all this. He looks around: Wanda nuzzling into Vision, Tony and Cap talking, hesitantly, but still smiling, and Natasha looking on curiously. The excitement courses through him and he feels giddy, almost dizzy.

"Hey, I guess we have that in common, don't we?"

Bruce wants to be nice- has to be nice. It's a fifteen-year-old kid after all. But, he can't. All he can feel is his head swimming and heart racing. His fumbles with the glass and accidentally drops it. Shards of glass and alcohol go in every direction, and his vision flickers.

"Dr. Banner? Are you okay?" Peter reaches a hand out and Bruce steps backwards. He needs to get out of here. Now. Before something bad happens.

He clears his throat with a muffled "excuse me," and makes his way towards the bathroom, leaving Peter small and confused behind him.

The sound of somebody dropping a bottle of his alcohol finally pulls Tony's attention from Pepper where he sees Bruce stumbling out of the room, and oh God, Tony knows that look on Bruce's face, and he knows what follows.

He jogs after him and finds Bruce gripping the edges of the sink, hunched over and heaving.

"Hey. Bud. What happened?"

Bruce can't talk and merely shakes his head as he spits into the sink. His whole mouth suddenly tastes like metal.

"Here." Tony takes a paper towel and wets it in the cold water of the sink. "How about this?" He presses it to Bruce's forehead, who flinches away with a grunt. A grunt that's still very Bruce, but with an unmistakable tinge of Hulk.

There's a heavy knock at the door and Tony doesn't even get a chance to open his mouth to tell whoever it is that now isn't the time before Natasha barges in. "What's going on? Is he okay?"

Tony steps aside to let Natasha see Bruce in all of his glory.

"Shit," she whispers, and Tony can't do anything but idly nod in agreement.

"Yeah, I'd say 'shit' is a pretty fair assessment."

Natasha shoots him a pointed glare but says nothing as she pushes past him towards Bruce, gently lying a hand on his back. This time, he doesn't flinch away.

"It's okay. It'll all be okay, alright?" She turns to Tony and silently mouths 'what happened?'

'I have no idea,' he mouths back. "Just… just calm down, Bruce, okay? Do I get everyone out of here?"

Bruce heaves again and Natasha slaps Tony's arm.

"Ow!"

"You're not helping!" she hisses, and turns her attention back to Bruce. "It's okay. Whatever it is, it's alright to be upset about it. Alright? There's no need to be hard on yourself. You told me yourself. It's okay to let yourself get angry sometimes."

"Say what now?" This time, Tony barely has time to jump back before Natasha swings at him. When Bruce called out the Hulk himself, things usually went just fine, but when the Hulk came out due to Bruce's temper… it was a bit iffy.

"It's okay," Natasha continues. "Whatever it is, it's okay."

Bruce clenches the sides of the sink harder and for just a moment, Tony swears he can see just a hint of green in his skin, but the spell ultimately breaks, and Bruce slides down to sit on the floor and puts his hands over his face. "Sorry."

"Don't be," Natasha says, offering a sympathetic smile. "What happened out there?"

"The kid," Bruce groans, his face still in his hands.

"Peter?" Tony takes a step back and furrows his eyebrows at Bruce, almost personally insulted. "What in God's name did Peter do?"

"No, no, Peter didn't do anything." Bruce finally looks up and shakes his head. "He just… I asked him about his powers and he started telling me about how he got them. A radioactive spider bite or something."

Natasha shakes her head. "I… don't follow."

"I do." Tony says, and Natasha turns to look at him. "They both got radiation. Pete got some cool superpowers. Bruce turns into a monster."

Tony braces himself for her punch for that comment, but it never comes. Instead, all her attention is on Bruce.

"Oh." Natasha tries to get Bruce to meet her eyes, but he looks away every time. "Is that it? Just… jealousy?"

"More or less. I don't know. I guess I just got upset. And then I got even more upset for getting upset. I don't want anyone else to go through what I did. He's a kid for Christ's sake. I should be happy for him."

He rambles on, working himself up all over again until Natasha puts her hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. I'd be upset, too."

It's clear he doesn't fully believe her, but he dusts himself off, stands, and decides that he's ready to rejoin the party.

Everyone tenses as they open the bathroom door to find Peter waiting in line outside, but Bruce steels himself and walks past.

"Sorry," Peter says as he slips past them, muttering something about apple juice going right through him.

Tony has always been rather filampant about the fact that Bruce turns into , as he so delicately put it, a "giant green rage monster." So, when a look of slight terror comes across Tony every time he and Peter were in the same room, and Tony not so subtly always directs Peter to do something, anything, away from Bruce, it stings. A lot.

There were very few times Bruce had ever felt more like a monster.

Tony looks like he nearly has a heart attack when, while his back is turned, Peter takes the opportunity to leap over to Bruce and chat him up, asking all about the Hulk and how it worked.

"Peter, get away from him!" he barks, as if scolding a puppy that used the bathroom in the house. Bruce raises an eyebrow at him and by the time Tony realizes how overt he's being, it's too late. He sputters and tries to correct himself, but he's not fooling anyone.

Bruce gets up wordlessly and leaves.

Tony can't keep them apart forever, though. Sooner or later, there's another potential world-destroying event (there's always another potential world-destroying event sooner or later) and Peter is called into battle, right alongside the Hulk.

Bruce doesn't know why it happens. He hadn't even been mad at the kid when he'd hulked out for battle. He and Hulk have a tense and interesting relationship that he can't even begin to describe. Sometimes Hulk looks out for Bruce. Sometimes they share a bit of the same headspace. Sometimes they share none of it and the Hulk rebels truly and fully. Maybe Hulk knows how much Bruce, deep down, resents the kid a bit. Maybe it's because Hulk knows how much, deep down, Bruce cares about the kid's safety and wants to stick it to Bruce once and for all for using him just as an attack dog all these years.

But, whatever the reason, when Bruce Hulks out, it's not the alien invader of the day that Hulk has his sights set on. It's Peter.

Peter is totally unprepared for Hulk's fist pummeling into him. He flies across the street, back hitting a building, and doesn't get up. Peter always gets up. Always.

Hulk strides over for a second attack and the rest of the Avengers freeze, all trying to make a split second decision on who to stop: Hulk, or the enemy?

All except for Tony. He acts on instinct and strikes back at Hulk with a force that Hulk couldn't even dream to overcome, and if he thinks for even a second that Tony won't kill him, he's sorely mistaken. Tony extends a palm, firing up a blaster. He's about to fire it when Hulk gives him a look. A distinctly Bruce look, and his facial features begin to morph into something far more recognizable. Tony doesn't see it, though. All he sees is red. The suit emits a high pitched shriek at it prepares to shoot.

And it would have been over if Steve didn't crash into Tony at the last second. Tony falls to the side and the shot careens off into a parking deck behind Hulk.

"That's enough!" Steve yells, but his hand squeezes Tony's shoulder supportively as he pulls him back to his feet. "That's enough. Look. It's over right now."

Tony catches his breath and looks past Steve. It's not quite Hulk and not quite Bruce rolling on the ground behind him. It's some sort of in-between- the two both fighting for control.

"Just try to save the kid. We've got it from here. There's no need for that."

Tony almost doesn't listen, but the sight of the kid- his kid, injured (please let it just be injured) behind him pulls him away and he dashes towards Peter's limp form without another look at the invasion before them.

When he gets to Peter, he's staring straight up, unblinking. Tony's heart drops into his stomach for a horrifying second before Peter closes his eyes and groans.

"Oh thank God."

He hooks an arm underneath his back and knees and Peter protests weakly. Tony knows that he probably shouldn't be moving him in this condition, but it's even more dangerous to keep him here.

"Did we win?" Peter slurs.

"Yeah," Tony says, looking down at him. "We won. You did great, kid. You did great. Just hang in there."

The flight back feels like it goes on forever and is only made longer by Karen rattling off everything wrong with Peter.

Broken ribs.

A broken collar bone.

Internal bleeding.

Tony patches him up as best as he can when he gets back to the compound, and Peter starts coming around, even cracking the odd joke here and there. But, Tony isn't a doctor. And, as Peter starts getting loopy and not making sense again with Karen rattling off more and more things that are going wrong in the background, it becomes quickly apparent that what Peter needs is a doctor, and Tony knows that moving him again to get him to a hospital is a bad idea.

So, it's with a mixture of dread and relief when there's a knock at the door of Peter's room in the compound and Bruce strides in without waiting for an answer.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Tony sneers.

"Steve said you needed me and to come back here."

"And why on earth would he tell you that?"

Bruce covers his face with his hands. "Look, Tony. I know. Is he okay?"

"Thanks to you? No."

Bruce cranes his neck to get a look at Peter, over Tony's shoulder, but Tony steps in front of him and blocks his view. "Not a chance."

"Tony, be reasonable."

"I am! You hurt him when you had no reason to! Why should I trust that you won't now when you're already mad at yourself?"

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut. "He needs help, Tony. I can do that. Just let me do that for him. Please?"

Tony looks over his shoulder at Peter, eyes barely open during the whole exchange. "Fine. But I stay right here. The whole time."

"Deal."

The procedure is simple, at least by Bruce's standards: stopping the bleeding, making sure the bones didn't need to be set, putting his arm in a sling, and hooking him up on some pain meds, all with Tony watching over the whole thing, eventually taking a seat rather than hovering over Bruce's shoulder.

"He's gonna be okay?" Tony asks.

"Yeah. He will."

Tony lowers his head into his hands. "This is all my fault."

Bruce does a double take. "Your fault? How is this your fault? This is one hundred percent my fault."

Tony cranes his neck to check to make sure that Peter is still knocked out. "He's just a kid. I- this wasn't supposed to happen. He was just supposed to take Cap by surprise a bit back in Germany. He was never even supposed to fight, but… I don't know. He couldn't stay away after that."

"He couldn't, or you couldn't?"

Tony shoots him a look. "I thought you weren't that kind of doctor."

Bruce merely shrugs in response.

"I don't know. Maybe a little bit of both."

Bruce thinks in silence for a moment. "He's a lot like you."

"Don't say that."

"He is, though."

Tony shakes his head. "He's… well, he's nice, for starters."

"And a technical prodigy, and persistent, and stubborn, and has every ounce of your hero complex."

Tony ignores him. "Why… why exactly do you hate him so much?"

"I don't hate him! I just… we went though such similar situations, with such different outcomes. And his doesn't make him a danger."

"So Natasha was right? You're just jealous. All of this," he gestures to Peter's unconscious form, "is just because of some petty jealousy?" It's a statement rather than a question.

"I don't know. I guess so. It's not even all the outcome of the radiation. Even if I still had the other guy, if I could just take life as smoothly as him… I don't think I'd ever have to worry. It just… comes so easily to him. I could never."

Tony ponders it for a moment. "Well. I guess you're half right. You're wrong about him not being a danger."

"Peter?" Bruce almost rolls his eyes.

"Yeah. I mean, not in the same way, but he just gets… so overexcited that he just acts and doesn't think. Good God, I love the kid, but he has no common sense sometimes. Usually he only gets himself hurt, not that that's good either. But, there have been some close calls. Too many." He thinks back to the ferry incident, to Peter stowing away on the ship, to Peter almost dying taking down Vulture. The thought makes his stomach churn- almost makes him wish he'd never recruited Peter. Almost. "Trust me, he'd be better off with some of your self control."

He looks over at the kid. "You two might be good for each other."

Bruce raises an eyebrow.

"Y'know," Tony goes on. "Learn something from each other. All that junk."

"Yeah." Bruce looks down at his shoes. "Maybe one day…"

Across from Tony, Peter suddenly groans and blinks his eyes.

"Speak of the devil."

"Wha' happened? Did we win?" Peter asks, groggy.

"Yeah, already told you. You did great."

He tries to push himself up, but Tony pushes him back down again.

"Why does everything hurt? What'd I do this time?"

Bruce lowers his head into hands. This is the moment he'd been dreading for the past several hours. Peter had to be the last person who didn't think of him as a monster after this and it was all about to go downhill.

"Just got a little beat up. Bruce patched you up."

"He did?"

"Yep. He's right here. Say thank you."

"Thanks." The words are slurred and it's clear that Peter's still fairly out of it.

"What?" Bruce opens his mouth to object but Tony quickly shushes him. Bruce can't believe it. Tony is letting him off the hook.

"You know what?" Tony pauses and tenses. "I'm going to leave you two here to… catch up. I don't believe you've ever really been… allowed to formally get to know each other."

Bruce sits straight up, looking a bit green in a totally not-Hulk kind of way. "Tony, I don't know if-"

"You've got this." He gives Bruce a supportive squeeze of the shoulder and makes his way towards the door.

"No, Tony, I really don't know if I do."

Tony pauses in the doorway, purses his lips, and turns back to Bruce. "Fine then. You need this. For both of your sakes."

Bruce isn't sure if Tony means that they need to learn from each other, or if he means that Bruce needs to get over his issues with Peter so that they can all fight as a team again, but either way, he know deep down that Tony is right.

Slowly, Bruce nods, and Tony takes that as his signal to go.

Bruce turns back towards Peter. He's blinking up at the ceiling as if it's the meds make it the most magical thing in the world.

"So… " Bruce doesn't know where to start and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Spiders. Those are… cool."

Peter blinks several times and finally manages to focus his eyes on Bruce. "Wanna know a secret?"

"Uh. Sure."

"I actually hate spiders. They're awful. And creepy. Should have told people that I was bitten by a radioactive gecko and that's why I can stick to walls or something.

Bruce can't help but chuckle. "Did you know that I actually hate big green monsters?"

Peter's eyes go wide and it's only Bruce's quick hand on his shoulder that keeps him from bolting up. "No way, but Hulk so cool!"

Bruce sits back in his chair and lets his muscles relax. Maybe this could work.

A/N: Just a little drabble, hope you enjoy! Please leave a review if you have the time, they really make my day! Also feel free to PM and chat. Love getting to know fellow fandom followers!