Chapter Text
It is a tug, at the back of your head. A small, almost unnoticeable push to go one way or the other, looking for someone out there, who is also being pushed in the same direction.
Most people follow it without a second thought. Society itself rewards those who do, since the push always ends with two people meeting, after being pushed in the same direction. One person who would become your partner and best friend; the one that complements your life in all senses.
Tony Stark was not most people.
As many other children, he had been taught about the 'Pull' and the wonderful reward when one followed it since he could speak. But he was very smart, and he saw his parents. Howard and Maria Stark were bonded, everyone knew that thanks to the press that constantly followed the rich and famous, but Tony knew that they were very unhappy. His mother drank to forget that her husband was never there and Howard... Howard was far happier with his inventions and his company than with his family. So Tony never saw the appeal on finding his own bondmate to be forever unhappy with like his parents.
At first, he kept trying to ignore the Pull. If his heart told him to go right, he would stubbornly go left. When everything in his heart told him to go to Arizona, he would fly to New York. When his instinct told him that Harvard could be a place to run away from the shadow of his father, he chose to go to MIT and follow the old man's steps. He ran from the Pull so much that it became instinct and when his parents had the car accident, he added alcohol to his many ways to ignore it. Until it was nothing more than a whisper that Tony could easily forget.
Except for that night, fifteen years after the accident, when he woke up from a nightmare experiment. He hadn't felt that scared angry in his whole life and he was almost ready to bolt from his house jail before JARVIS's voice stopped him, reminding him where he was safe.
It wasn't until Afghanistan when he felt the pull again. As he flew away from the Ten Rings base, he had no idea of where he was and his only guide was that feeling, the Pull calling him in one direction: south.
* * *
When Bruce Banner met Betty Ross, she was surprised to find out that he didn't know what a bondmate was, and had patiently explained to him everything about the ‘Pull’.
But Bruce never believed her. Not because he couldn't feel that Pull, a feeling that made him want to go to Malibu most of the time and at other times made him look at the possibility of moving to New York.
No, the reason why Bruce never believed her was because he remembered his father's words very clearly. He wasn't worthy of being loved. He was a monster who would die alone.
And he loved Betty, even when a small part of his mind kept dreaming about beaches and mansions, about engineering and not biology. So he stayed with her, and accepted the project that her father was working on, praying not that she wouldn't find her bondmate, but that she would never find out about the monster that lurked in his brain.
Until the accident that proved his father right. Until the Other Guy came to be.
Then, Bruce was always on the run, always hiding, and his second priority was to run as far away from the pull as he could. As far away from civilization as he could.
Unfortunately, the Other Guy had other ideas, and every time there was an incident, Bruce would wake up closer to California, the Pull tugging in his mind with almost as much urgency as the Other Guy.
Three years after the Other Guy came to be, Bruce woke up with a horrible pain in his chest, only to see his skin already turning green. And for the first time since the Other Guy appeared, Bruce didn't fight the change. He needed to run; he needed to protect him something, before it was too late. And they ran, from Italy and right into the African Desert, and they would've kept on going if exhaustion hadn't set in.
After too many nights of waking up drenched in sweat, feeling as if his heart had been carved out, Bruce decided to contact Dr. Stern. Because he was sure that the Pull was getting stronger thanks to the Other Guy. And the only way to stop him from destroying his future bondmate's life was to get rid of his green rage problem.