Bruce rarely slept but he had just managed to fall asleep when Tony's texts buzzed at him. If it was anyone else he might have hesitated before replying or agreeing to go out, mostly because this is the first time Bruce experienced any side effects from the moon himself. He knew something was wrong since his eyesight was off. He has more than a little startled at his appearance; large deer ears stretched up, a set of simple antlers at the top of his head, and his eyes seemed permanently widened to the 'deer in the headlights' size and black. He could see normally out of them, somehow, but it was different.
And there was no way to put on his glasses. He waited anxiously to see if anything else would happen to him, and thankfully, this seemed like the extent of it. Bruce still wasn't thrilled; bodily changes forced upon him weren't new. He still disliked it. So he planned on keeping quiet and withdrawn until it was past, but then his friend started texted him gibberish, so here he was, tired and perhaps a little on the grumpy side.
He had a key to the apartment that they were both using as a research/work space and stepped in. His antlers were thankfully taller than they were wide so he managed to slide into the doorway without banging against anything. "Tony?" Bruce wanders around for a moment, those ears of his very sharp (an upside at least) and listening for where he might be.
For a second, there's nothing but silence from the apartment. Metal frames and notes from unfinished projects lay on the worktables, quiet and dark. The only sign of life is the soft whirr and blinking lights from a small bank of servers in the corner, cobbled together by Tony from spare parts -- his first true breakthrough in making something from scratch from this universe's weird amalgamation of science and magic.
Otherwise, nothing. If Bruce's new deer eyes scan the apartment as they adjust to the darkness, they'll find a half-eaten sandwich on the counter, an empty bed down the hallway, and...
Is... the bath running?
The faucet isn't full-blown pouring water into the tub, but Bruce's new ears would be able to detect a small trickle hitting a pool -- like someone tried turning it off but couldn't get it all the way. If Bruce approaches closer, he'll see that the darkness in the hallway hid something a little more alarming -- a small but steady overflow of water, seeping out from under the ajar bathroom floor and slowly creating a wet patch on the hallway carpet.
And then, a quiet splash. Like someone -- or something -- is in there.
The silence is unnerving. Bruce is immediately on alert. Usually by now if Tony was drunk and that's why he texted, he would be loudly stumbling around. It could mean he was passed out or exhausted, or maybe he was Chroma depleted, or something else was happening. Whatever it is, Bruce is worried now and cautiously walks toward the bathroom. He does hear the difference in it and there's the start of dread in his stomach, his deer ears moving forward and then going flat behind him, showing nerves in a different way. That's new.
Bruce steps inside and hurriedly grabs a towel, putting it on the floor, his antlers hitting the side of the door as he did it and ringing out. It doesn't hurt but it's irritating. He lets his feet get wet as he moves to immediately shut off the tub before even looking inside, mostly because he saw no human-shaped body within it that would make him focus on that first. Instead he spots an octopus, which frankly he would ordinarily be very confused about but not question, except he literally keeps knocking antlers against everything.
Still, this is the first time he's seen anything resembling a full transformation, so his eyes widen ... which is saying a lot as they are already giant Bambi eyes. "Tony?"
Water drips down the sides of the bathtub, like a less glamorous, more landlord-horrifying version of an infinity pool. The flooded linoleum floor soaks Bruce's dropped towel in seconds, and as he turns the faucet, the sound of water hitting the surface of the bathtub slows to a tiny trickle, then stops altogether.
It's only when the surface stills entirely that the small, tightly-packed ball in the bottom corner of the bathtub begins to move.
One tentacle extends outward, toward the edge of the tub. Then another. Slowly, the vaguely guinea-pig-sized creature shifts from a light beige to a warmer red as one tendril rises out of the surface of the water to curl over the edge of the tub.
Light glistens off its skin from the sole source of light in the room -- a Lunatian device, sitting on the closed toilet seat, spared the worst of the room's flooding.
Eyes break the surface soon after. They seem to stare out for a second -- maybe at Bruce, maybe at something else -- before a second tentacle rises into the air and flops back and forth in a pantomime of a wave.
Bruce heard that people change form to extreme levels occasionally, but he really thought the extent was less than this. He assumed that some parts would still be human, and now he has to sit with the fact that he might fully become a deer at some point, and that's a thing to obsess over at a different time. He doesn't question whether or not this is Tony, especially not after that tentacle attempts to wave at him.
"Wow." Understatement. It's a good thing the Lunatian device didn't end up electrocuting him in the water or something. Bruce doesn't think twice before slogging through the puddle and getting down on his knees; he'll dry off. He is much more concerned about his friend-opus. He puts his hand into the water and offers it toward Tony so he can hold on if he wants or gain chroma for it, if that's necessary. Or if he just wants some kind of comforting gesture.
"I have about a hundred questions and you can't answer any of them." That must be torture for Tony, who likes to talk more than anyone he knows. Bruce tries to think about how he can help in this situation. He can't take him out of the water, as far as he knows, and he's already thinking about what octopus eat and how he can get it to him. "I'll handle the water problem. Um. I'm not sure what to do to help you with the boredom."
The octopus -- Tony -- turns its horizontal-slitted eyes toward Bruce's arm. They stare at it for a handful of seconds before one long, lithe arm reaches out under the water and gently presses against his skin, like it's testing the texture of it. Then, all at once, the arm wraps around Bruce's wrist as the octopus sinks down from the edge of the tub and into the water. It wriggles and writhes as it fastens the rest of its tentacles around Bruce's arm and tightens them, though not to the point of pain.
It stays there for a few seconds, latched on like a more soft-bodied barnacle. Water pumps slowly through the siphon funnels at the top of its head. Then--
One arm detaches from Bruce's arm and stretches out -- far, with more range than one would expect from the size of the creature. Slow and ungainly, it flops onto the seat of the toilet next to the bathtub, near the tablet sitting on top of it. It tries once, twice, before the tentacle finally plops and rests on top of the screen.
The rest of the octopus' arms loosen their grip on Bruce's arm just slightly, enough for its head to rise to the surface of the water, and for its alien eyes to poke up over the surface and peer up at him, or -- around him, anyway.
Bruce doesn't flinch when Octo-Tony holds onto him as that's why he offered in the first place, although it is absolutely a very weird feeling to be wrapped up in small tentacles for a moment. He's glad to be there for Tony either way though, he can't imagine how much he'd panic in the situation. Definitely a lot of panicking. He follows Tony's movement to try and understand what he's doing and then reaches over to pick up the tablet himself.
Bruce brings the tablet to them and offers the screen to Tony to make it easier, ignoring how much water he's currently soaking up in his clothes so he's going to need to dry out later on. He's very careful with the tablet; if it gets wet it might short out. He tips it so the screen can be seen clearly by Octo-Tony and he can much more easily poke at it. This definitely explains how his gibberish came through, that must have been difficult to get to Bruce on its own!
"If this doesn't work, you can always Morse Code at me." Hopefully, he'll be able to use the screen, as his mind is clearly still working otherwise he'd just have stayed in the water until he transformed back. But that is one way for them to communicate that doesn't require talking. "What can I do for you?"
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industries) wrote2019-05-15 09:19 pm
October 16th, post text
And there was no way to put on his glasses. He waited anxiously to see if anything else would happen to him, and thankfully, this seemed like the extent of it. Bruce still wasn't thrilled; bodily changes forced upon him weren't new. He still disliked it. So he planned on keeping quiet and withdrawn until it was past, but then his friend started texted him gibberish, so here he was, tired and perhaps a little on the grumpy side.
He had a key to the apartment that they were both using as a research/work space and stepped in. His antlers were thankfully taller than they were wide so he managed to slide into the doorway without banging against anything. "Tony?" Bruce wanders around for a moment, those ears of his very sharp (an upside at least) and listening for where he might be.
no subject
Otherwise, nothing. If Bruce's new deer eyes scan the apartment as they adjust to the darkness, they'll find a half-eaten sandwich on the counter, an empty bed down the hallway, and...
Is... the bath running?
The faucet isn't full-blown pouring water into the tub, but Bruce's new ears would be able to detect a small trickle hitting a pool -- like someone tried turning it off but couldn't get it all the way. If Bruce approaches closer, he'll see that the darkness in the hallway hid something a little more alarming -- a small but steady overflow of water, seeping out from under the ajar bathroom floor and slowly creating a wet patch on the hallway carpet.
And then, a quiet splash. Like someone -- or something -- is in there.
no subject
Bruce steps inside and hurriedly grabs a towel, putting it on the floor, his antlers hitting the side of the door as he did it and ringing out. It doesn't hurt but it's irritating. He lets his feet get wet as he moves to immediately shut off the tub before even looking inside, mostly because he saw no human-shaped body within it that would make him focus on that first. Instead he spots an octopus, which frankly he would ordinarily be very confused about but not question, except he literally keeps knocking antlers against everything.
Still, this is the first time he's seen anything resembling a full transformation, so his eyes widen ... which is saying a lot as they are already giant Bambi eyes. "Tony?"
no subject
It's only when the surface stills entirely that the small, tightly-packed ball in the bottom corner of the bathtub begins to move.
One tentacle extends outward, toward the edge of the tub. Then another. Slowly, the vaguely guinea-pig-sized creature shifts from a light beige to a warmer red as one tendril rises out of the surface of the water to curl over the edge of the tub.
Light glistens off its skin from the sole source of light in the room -- a Lunatian device, sitting on the closed toilet seat, spared the worst of the room's flooding.
Eyes break the surface soon after. They seem to stare out for a second -- maybe at Bruce, maybe at something else -- before a second tentacle rises into the air and flops back and forth in a pantomime of a wave.
"Hi," basically.
no subject
"Wow." Understatement. It's a good thing the Lunatian device didn't end up electrocuting him in the water or something. Bruce doesn't think twice before slogging through the puddle and getting down on his knees; he'll dry off. He is much more concerned about his friend-opus. He puts his hand into the water and offers it toward Tony so he can hold on if he wants or gain chroma for it, if that's necessary. Or if he just wants some kind of comforting gesture.
"I have about a hundred questions and you can't answer any of them." That must be torture for Tony, who likes to talk more than anyone he knows. Bruce tries to think about how he can help in this situation. He can't take him out of the water, as far as he knows, and he's already thinking about what octopus eat and how he can get it to him. "I'll handle the water problem. Um. I'm not sure what to do to help you with the boredom."
no subject
It stays there for a few seconds, latched on like a more soft-bodied barnacle. Water pumps slowly through the siphon funnels at the top of its head. Then--
One arm detaches from Bruce's arm and stretches out -- far, with more range than one would expect from the size of the creature. Slow and ungainly, it flops onto the seat of the toilet next to the bathtub, near the tablet sitting on top of it. It tries once, twice, before the tentacle finally plops and rests on top of the screen.
The rest of the octopus' arms loosen their grip on Bruce's arm just slightly, enough for its head to rise to the surface of the water, and for its alien eyes to poke up over the surface and peer up at him, or -- around him, anyway.
Either way, they look pretty expectant. Pleading?
no subject
Bruce brings the tablet to them and offers the screen to Tony to make it easier, ignoring how much water he's currently soaking up in his clothes so he's going to need to dry out later on. He's very careful with the tablet; if it gets wet it might short out. He tips it so the screen can be seen clearly by Octo-Tony and he can much more easily poke at it. This definitely explains how his gibberish came through, that must have been difficult to get to Bruce on its own!
"If this doesn't work, you can always Morse Code at me." Hopefully, he'll be able to use the screen, as his mind is clearly still working otherwise he'd just have stayed in the water until he transformed back. But that is one way for them to communicate that doesn't require talking. "What can I do for you?"