fic: Flew Away or Started Sinking (2/2)
Flew Away or Started Sinking (Bruce/Jane | NC-17) - Part 1
Bruce and Jane bicker sometimes. There's no other word for it, they just bicker until one of them acquiesces (normally Bruce), or they both go home grumpy and come back the next day embarrassed.
“There is no way that a wormhole connected to nine separate points simultaneously would ever be stable. The lack of gravity alone!”
“It's already happened, that's how Yggdrasil works,” Jane says, sliding a book across the table to him. Erik has wisely ducked out to get food.
Bruce glances down at the book. “That's mythology, not science.”
“It's mythology and science,” she argues. “I mean, really, you fought alongside a Norse god and you don't think that maybe there's something to this stuff?”
“I don't think Thor's a god. He's an alien. Which is slightly less ridiculous.”
Jane purses her lips. “Don't be pedantic. The myth of Yggdrasil is still based in fact, the fact of Thor's alien world.”
He shrugs. “I just think it's a stretch.”
“Well, I'll tell Thor that you think he's wrong about his own realm's science, next time I see him,” she says, bending over her notebook.
“He told you this personally?” Bruce asks, tone hovering somewhere between joking and honestly curious.
“Yes,” Jane says, not looking up.
Bruce opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “Oh, I didn't realise that you knew him that well.”
“I knew him better than Erik did,” she mutters.
“Oh...”
Jane's tapping out a tattoo with her pen on the table, and it's apparent to Bruce that he's stumbled into some kind of misstep that he was previously completely unaware of. He scratches at the back of his head and frowns. “Did you--”
“Look who I found,” Erik's voice drifts in, sounding less than pleased. Bruce turns his attention from Jane to the door, as Erik comes in, trailed by Tony. “He was hanging around outside when I got back.”
“You never write and you never call,” Tony says, throwing his arms wide. Bruce rolls his eyes and Tony zeroes in on Jane. “Dr Foster, I'm a big fan. That paper on Raychaudhuri's theorem should have got you a PECASE, you were robbed.”
She smiles thinly. “Thanks.”
“Yikes, tough crowd,” Tony mutters. “Bruce, you wanna grab a beer, or something? Catch up?”
“Uh, I was kinda working on something with Jane...” he says, glancing at Jane.
She shrugs. “It's fine, we can finish this later.”
“You're sure?”
“She's sure, c'mon, before you disappear on me again,” Tony says, grabbing Bruce by the arm and dragging him out of his seat.
“Okay, well, see you later,” he says to Jane and Erik as he's pulled from the room.
-
“You've been adopted,” Tony observes as he drives them away from the lab. “It's not fair, I was going to adopt you, but then you had to go strike out on your own.”
“What?”
“Your little PhD-having science club you've got going on. I didn't realise that I wasn't good enough for you with just my lowly Masters in Electrical Engineering.”
Bruce sighs and settles in to the very comfortable passenger seat of Tony's convertible. “What?”
“God, you really can't take a joke, can you?”
“I can take funny ones,” he says, and watches the passing road.
“Uh huh.” Tony drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “So, where do you want to go?”
Bruce shrugs. “I don't mind. I'm not going to be drinking anything, though. I had kind of a bad experience with alcohol recently.”
“Well, this is gonna be fun,” Tony mutters.
“Sorry,” Bruce murmurs. “How'd you even know that I was at the lab?”
Tony looks at him incredulously. “You gotta know that S.H.I.E.L.D. has you under round the clock surveillance, right? They know that you're staying with Dr Selvig, they know that Dr Foster bought you that sweater...” His eyes linger on it for a moment, corners of his mouth pursed. Bruce tugs the sleeve of the brown fleece sweater over his hands. He likes it. “They even know that Crest is your mouthwash of choice.”
“Oh.” It's not like he thought he was living in perfect secrecy, but all laid out like that... It kind of sucks.
“You gonna freak out on me there, buddy?”
Bruce shakes his head. “No, I'm good. So, what's everyone doing these days?”
“Everyone? Oh, you mean The Avengers?” He grins. “I'm never getting over how awesome that is. Well, Steve is on a voyage of self-discovery around America, Natasha and Barton are doing spy stuff, Thor is doing space god stuff, I would assume, and you're doing whatever you're doing with Foster and Selvig. Exactly what are you doing with them?”
“Just helping out.”
“Uh huh. Unpaid.”
“They're not getting paid either, they've only got a research grant from S.H.I.E.L.D.”
Tony shrugs. “I just don't agree with doing work if you're not getting paid for it.”
“Oh, you capitalist,” Bruce murmurs.
“You can joke, but I have a very good relationship with Stark Industries workers' union. You could find out for yourself, you know.”
“Huh?”
“I thought it was obvious in the helicarrier: I'd totally pay you to sit in a lab all day and create lots of hideously expensive, ground-breaking medicines and stuff. You could cure cancer! Or the common cold. People would have to like me after that.”
“How did you get people liking you out of me curing cancer?”
“It's my name on the door, don't get above yourself.”
Bruce leans back more in his seat. It's hard to be irritated when he's so damn comfortable. “Right. Well, thanks for the offer, but I'm good.”
“Whatever, just trying to be a good friend,” Tony mutters. “Are you planning on sticking around, then?”
“I don't really know. Maybe?”
“You need money?”
“What?”
“Money, Bruce. I know you've been living out in the bush for the last few years, but I assume you're still familiar with the concept.”
“I am. I don't need money.” He does actually, he could really do with being able to buy his own food and clothes, but Tony already gave him the equivalent of a couple of thousand dollars, and somehow he managed to blow through it all, which doesn't make him feel very good about himself. He used to be pretty good at managing his money.
“Well, okay, but Pepper told me I could give you as much money as I wanted. She's pretty grateful about the whole 'Hulk roar shock to the heart' thing.”
“Pepper?”
“My, uh...” Tony's eyebrows draw together for a moment. “My wife.”
“I didn't know you were married.”
“I wasn't,” he says, and glances over at Bruce, smiling. “I guess when you have a near death experience in another spacial dimension, from which your loved ones would never get your corpse back, some things get put into perspective a little.”
“When you put it like that...” Bruce murmurs.
Tony takes him back to Stark Tower, where Bruce feels some small satisfaction at getting up to the private floors despite his still sloppy appearance. Tony shows him around with barely restrained excitement, pointing out cutting edge gadgets and tech that none of his 'Luddite friends' are interested in.
“I love Pep more than scotch,” he says, “but she never wants to talk about Moore's law.”
Bruce smiles vaguely. “This place is incredible.”
“It's pretty nice,” Tony agrees. “If you want out of Selvig's spare room, you're welcome to a floor.”
“I think I've graduated from sleeping on floors,” he replies. Tony arches an eyebrow. “Oh, you meant...? No, I'm good.”
“You need to learn how to accept help,” Tony says.
If someone had told Bruce a year ago that he'd be offered help from Tony Stark, he'd have laughed in their face. Ross used Stark tech to hunt him down, and although Bruce had no illusions at the time that Tony worked closely enough with his company to actually know what was going on - even out in South American slums, people knew Tony's reputation - he still would never have thought that Tony would have cared, and certainly not cared about him.
“Why break the habit of a lifetime?” he settles on, and picks up a stray gauntlet, studying the scratches and grooves carefully.
“Lots of reasons. You don't want to get stuck not trusting people. There's always someone on your side. Trust me, I learnt that from personal experience.”
Tony's already turned away by the time Bruce looks back up, pulling up holographic images out of the air, striking up a one-sided argument with one of his robots.
“Trust... isn't something I'm so good at,” Bruce replies. “Never has been.”
“It's never too late for a change,” Tony says lightly, glancing over his shoulder for moment. Bruce shrugs and runs his fingers along a particularly deep scratch. He wonders what could have damaged the metal so badly.
“Hey,” Tony adds, “if you're gonna fondle my tech, you could at least buy me a drink first, you know.”
-
Jane's still at the lab when Tony drops him back, denouncing him as a wet blanket and a bore. She doesn't even register Bruce coming in until he's at her side.
“Hey,” he murmurs, patting her on the shoulder.
“Oh! Oh, hey,” she says, smiling self-consciously. “How was your day out with Tony Stark?”
“Surprisingly sedate,” he says, and drags a chair around to sit down beside her. “How's it going?” he adds, nodding to her notebook.
“Still can't find a workaround for the trans-Planckian problem,” she says.
“You'll get it,” he says, and leans his elbows on the table, cradling his head in one hand. “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“What happened with Thor?”
She meets his eyes properly for the first time since he's come into the room, and drops her pencil. His immediate instinct is to apologise and let it go, but he bites it back and waits.
“Oh,” she says, “well.”
“Well?” he repeats.
She clicks her tongue. “Well, we had a... brief fling.”
“A brief fling with a god?”
“Alien,” she says. “And I mean, it wasn't really even fling. I hit him with my car and then we kissed once. I've spent more time with you than I did with him.”
“You hit him with your car?”
“It was a whole thing,” Jane says, shrugging.
“Okay.” Aside from vehicular assault, he can't imagine that anyone could just have a 'brief fling' with Thor, but he'd be willing to let it lie if it weren't for Jane's tense shoulders and downcast eyes. “And that's it?”
“That's... not it.” She sighs and scrubs her fingers through her hair. “He said he'd be back, and then... he wasn't. I waited a week for him, and then I started working on going to him. And then he comes back two years later, and I don't hear a word from him. In fact, they sent me away to Tromsø for my 'safety' and let Erik get brainwashed.” She shakes her head. “It's not okay.”
“No,” he agrees. “I'm sorry.”
She nods slowly, and looks at him again. “I think you should go see Dr Ross.”
He blinks in surprise. “What?”
“I wasn't going to say anything, but... I only got to see Thor on news coverage of the invasion; nobody told me what was going on, he didn't come to see me... It hurt like hell. And you did the same thing to Dr Ross.”
“I didn't... mean to,” he mumbles.
“And I hope Thor didn't, either, but that doesn't change how I feel, does it?”
He bites his lips. “No, I guess not. But... it's different for me and Betty.”
“No, it isn't.”
“Yes, it is,” he argues, the beginnings of irritation growing in his chest.
Jane just shrugs.
“It is,” he pushes, “I'm too dangerous, she's better off without me.”
Jane doesn't look convinced. “That's not your decision to make.”
“Yes, it is,” he says, aware that he's starting to sound really whiny. “I won't let her get hurt again.”
“Oh, grow up,” she snaps, and Bruce rocks back a little in his chair. “You're hurting her worse right now.”
He blinks a couple of times, the itch of irritation in his chest rolling over and dying. He never has been any good with verbal arguments; he normally always backs down if someone pushes back.
When he doesn't answer, Jane sighs and shakes her head. “I'm going home,” she says, and flips her notebook closed with an audible smack of paper on paper.
“Oh... okay,” he says as she strides over to the door. “Bye?”
“Yeah,” she says, grabbing her coat off the hook, and then she's out the door.
-
The next day is full of awkward apologies, Jane for taking her bad mood out on him, and Bruce for asking questions that were too personal - in hindsight he's kind of appalled that he felt it was okay to pry like that. Erik eyes them suspiciously as they uncomfortably orbit each other for the rest of the day.
It weighs on his mind though, what she said, even after she tells him that she didn't have business dictating how he lives his life. He told himself when he left that it had been too long, that he'd changed too much since he last saw Betty, that he was emotionally unstable and borderline suicidal and who needed that in their life? But if their positions were reversed and he saw her on the television after so long and then didn't hear a word from her, he would have been devastated.
He hesitantly looks her up on one of the lab's computer, and discovers that she's working at Princeton now, doing research into the effects of radiation. Probably not a coincidence, he thinks.
He sits on this knowledge for a week, looking up the various papers she's published, finding an address for her in Edison, and the room number of her office. He makes and unmakes his decision to go see her five, six times, before he finally grabs his bag and tells Jane and Erik that he's going over to see Tony.
It takes a couple of hours, several subway trains, and one shuttle ride to get to Princeton, all done with Bruce's heart firmly in his throat.
He's been to Princeton before, for some long forgotten conference, but it still takes him some time to get his bearings, searching for Betty's office.
When he finds it, she isn't there, but it's only one in the afternoon, he tells himself, no reason to think that he's had a wasted trip. He grabs an abandoned newspaper, tugs his baseball cap low, and sits down on a nearby bench to wait for her. He waits for an hour, then two, then starts to feel that the security guard is getting a little interested in him, sitting there, reading the same page over and over. He turns a couple of pages and keeps the guard in his peripheral vision, ready to take off if he approaches him.
It's her laugh that he recognises first. He forgets all about pretending to read the paper, and drops it to his lap, fixing his gaze on her. Betty's on the phone, smiling at whatever's being said, door key in hand. She walks straight by him.
She walks straight by and doesn't even glance his way.
The newspaper crumples in his hands as he watches the door close behind her. He stands up, the newspaper falling forgotten to the ground, and the guard starts forward, but before either of them can do anything, someone jogs up to Betty's door and knocks, and she greets him with a 'come in!' that makes Bruce's heart clench. He takes one look at the guard, then turns around and leaves.
If the trip to New Jersey made him nervous, then the trip back just makes him fucking angry. Everything seems louder, people crush in closer, trains take longer to arrive. He has to force it back, squash the panic-laced anger and pain as far as it'll go, force his heart rate to slow before he makes it back to the lab.
He takes the elevator up, squeezing his eyes tightly closed until he reaches the eighth floor, and steps out. He swipes his card through the reader, steps into the lab, closes the door behind him gently.
“Bruce?” Jane calls.
“Yeah, just getting coffee,” he calls back, heading straight for the kitchen.
His hands are shaking as he switches on the coffee maker. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and tells himself to stop it, stop it stop it stop it, and only removes them when the coffee is ready. His hands are still fluttering as he pours - his aim goes wide of the mug, scalding all over the back of his hand and his forearm.
“Ah!” he yelps, dropping the coffee pot. “Fuck!”
“Bruce?” Jane calls again.
“Goddamnit,” he growls, shoving the mug off the counter. It explodes into hot liquid and shards of ceramic across the tiled floor.
“Bruce!” Jane shouts from the lab, and everything seems to tilt sideways, bleeding green. He can't control the shaking in his hands at all any more.
He bolts straight past her as she comes into the room to check on him. “Bruce?” she says as he runs out the door, heading as fast as he can for the fire escape.
Eight fucking floors up, why did he never think about what a problem this would be? His balance is shot to hell, and he slams into walls and railings as he takes the stairs as fast as he can. He can feel his skin ripple and his muscles stretch and swell, and isn't even halfway down yet.
“Bruce!” Jane yells, her voice reverberating around the stairwell.
He spins around, slamming his hand into the wall to steady himself. The concrete crumbles around his fingers as he looks up at her, a couple of flights up. Her mouth is moving, but his mind is already starting to close in on itself, and he can't process the words properly. He takes off down the stairs, ever faster with the added power forcing its way out of him.
He makes it to the door out into the parking lot as his hands start to distort and distend; the door comes clean off in his hands as he rips it open, and he tosses the crumpled metal aside.
His vision blurs as he looks around, but he can't make out any people. In fact, its almost completely silent, except for his laboured breathing and the roar that he knows is coming from inside his head.
“Bruce!” Jane yells again, with an undertone that cuts through enough for him to hear it.
He turns around and backs up. “Go away,” he tells her, his voice likes rocks scraping against each other.
She looks... scared. Terrified. Horrified. His skin is twisting and swelling, his bones are breaking and rebuilding themselves, his clothes are ripping at their seams; he's hideous like this, the in-between state of Bruce Banner and the... the Hulk, more hideous than either on their own. An aberration.
Pain lances under his skin like fire, and his knees buckle as his kneecaps slide and break. “Go!” he roars at her, and that's the last thing he remembers before he's ripped apart.
-
He comes to on his back. He aches all over, like going a round with Ali and having the worst hangover combined, and that doesn't even really begin to describe how his bones ache. It's cold, the concrete against his back - it is March, after all - but his front feels warm and covered. He moves his hands as much as they'll allow him, his joints still swollen like an arthritic old man's, and something soft glides over them. There's a pressure on his head, too, he realises as he comes back to himself more. He forces his eyes open, past the weights on his eyelids, and squints against the winter sun.
“Hey,” Jane says, and he realises that the pressure is her hand in his hair, stroking back and forth.
“He--” he says through sandpaper, and turns his head to cough. “Hello.”
“Feeling better?” she asks.
“Uh. I don't...” He frowns. She seems to be in one piece, even being affectionate with him, so he can't have done anything so bad. “Can you help me up?”
“Sure,” she says, and slides her hand to his back to help push him up. His shoulder blades pop back into place. He curls in on himself for a moment, coughing at the shock to his lungs, then looks at her.
“What did I do?” he asks.
“Mostly roared,” she says, smiling. She's touching his hair again, running her fingers through where it's starting to go grey and white at his temples. “You stomped your feet a little bit, too.” She nods to a radial pattern of cracks in the concrete a few feet away from them. “I think you were having a temper tantrum.”
“Oh,” he says, hugging his knees to his chest. “And that's it?”
“Well, and when you were done you came over to me and said 'Bruce sad', and sat down in front of me.”
“Oh,” he says again. Well, that's embarrassing.
“So, what happened?”
“What happened?” he repeats. “Well... I went to see Betty.”
Jane winces in sympathy.
“And... I was waiting outside her office, and, long story short, she didn't recognise me.”
“Oh, Bruce,” she says, and moves her hand to the back of his neck.
“I was too, uh... I was too frightened to say anything. And then I came back, and I was just really angry with myself, and your coffee maker was the last straw.”
“Okay,” she says, “good to know why there's coffee all over the kitchen floor, I guess.”
“Sorry.”
“Don't worry about it. I do think that you need to find a better way to express your emotions, though.”
“I really do,” he agrees. He shifts on the concrete and frowns. His ass is really cold. He lifts the blanket up an inch and peers down. “Did, uh...”
“Those pants didn't stand a chance,” she says, grinning. “I saw everything.”
He hides his face in his hands, laughing softly. “Wow, I'm sorry, I normally wear looser clothes,” he says, muffled by his palms.
“Don't be. You don't, you know, you don't... have anything to be sorry for,” she says, and starts laughing too, cheeks turning pink.
“Oh God,” he mumbles. She puts her arm around him and gives him a one-armed hug.
-
It takes him a few days to find his equilibrium again; it always does after one of his 'incidents'. He sleeps for twelve hours solid immediately afterwards, back on the lab's couch, then spends the day after both hungry and nauseous. Erik, who thankfully wasn't in the lab when Bruce had his big green temper tantrum, watches him with even more suspicion. Jane quietly informs Bruce that S.H.I.E.L.D. have already dealt with the mess in the parking lot.
“I'm going to go see Betty again,” Bruce tells Jane, four days later.
Her eyebrows go high. “Is that a good idea?”
“I don't know, but I think I've got to do it. I'll try not to freak out this time, though.”
She twists her mouth. “Do you want me to come with you?”
He considers it for a second, having someone to keep him focused on the task, but he instinctively feels that he needs to keep these two parts of his life separate from one another.
“That's really nice of you, but I'll be okay.”
“Well...” She reaches out and squeezes his arm. “Good luck.”
He does the trip to New Jersey again, retracing the path he took, walks up to Betty's floor, passes the same security guard, and knocks on her door.
“Come in,” she calls.
Last chance to run, Bruce. He shakes the thought away and opens the door.
“My offices hours are about to end, I'm afraid,” Betty says, eyes on her computer screen.
“Betty,” he says. His voice cracks on the last syllable.
She doesn't move anything but her eyes, sliding over to him slowly. Her face twitches. “Lock the door,” she says quietly.
He fumbles behind himself, twisting the bolt closed, never taking his eyes off her. “Betty, I...”
She shakes her head and gets up from her desk. He clenches his hands to fists at his side as he approaches him. She reaches out and cups a hand around his jaw, stroking her thumb over his cheek, and he starts crying. Just a little bit, and he is, at least, aware that he's doing it this time. Her eyes are red-rimmed too as she leans over and hugs him.
He clings onto her, buries his face in her neck, and cries. He's not sure how long he hangs on for before Betty gives him an extra hard squeeze and steps back.
“Oh, wow,” he mumbles, wiping at his face. “Sorry about that.”
Betty's answering smile looks pained. “Bruce, where have you been? I saw you... on the TV in May. That was almost a year ago.”
“I know, I know.” He shakes his head. “I was scared. I ran away again.”
She nods. “Sit down,” she says, and leads him to her couch. She keeps her hands on him, as if he'll disappear if she isn't touching him, which is a fear that's well-grounded for her, he's sure. She strokes his arms and flicks her eyes over his face. He stays still for her inspection. “You look good,” she says finally.
“I look old,” he replies, running his fingers through his greying hair. Three years ago, his hair was the solid dark brown it had always been and he had almost perfect vision; now his hair is shot through all over with grey and white, and he can't always see right even with his glasses on. His working theory is that the antidote Sterns gave him put such an intense strain on his body, that it accelerated the ageing process. Then again, maybe he just can't come to terms with the inexorable slide towards death.
“It makes you look distinguished,” she says.
“That's one way of putting it.”
She smiles briefly and drops her hands to his hands, folding their palms together. “Where are you staying?”
“Do you remember Dr Selvig?”
“From Culver?”
“Yeah. I'm staying in his spare room and helping out with a project he's working on.”
She frowns a little. “Is it okay?”
“Yeah, he and Jane - that's his colleague - they're being very good to me, especially considering that I don't have any money and they're paying for everything.”
“If you need money...” she starts, and he shakes his head.
“God, no, I'm... I'm fine. I've got Tony Stark trying to push wads of cash on me, I'll be fine.”
“Tony Stark?”
“I kind of saved his life,” he says, and shrugs.
“Okay,” she says, eyebrows, high. “So...”
He clutches tighter at her hands. “I'm sorry, Betty, for everything.”
“It's okay.”
“No, it's not.”
“Maybe not,” she concedes, “but you're here now.”
“Yeah... Are you okay? How have you been? You're still so beautiful, you know.”
She smiles. “I'm okay, I've got a teaching position here, it pays pretty well, and a research grant. It feels good to have a fresh start away from Culver.”
“Has your dad...?”
“I haven't seen or heard from him in three years,” she says. Her grip on his hands tighten. “And I don't intend to again.”
“Are you... are you seeing anyone?”
“Not at the moment. Are you?”
“No, not... not really.” He frowns, then looks up at her. It feels like something's come free inside of him, jangling around nervously. “We're over, aren't we?”
“I think so, yeah.”
He ducks his head and breaths out, feeling hot tears threatening to spill again. It's like a weight he didn't know was there being lifted off his chest. It doesn't exactly feel good, it leaves behind the shock of a crushing pain, but it is a relief.
“Bruce?” she asks, and cups her hand around his cheek. “Are you okay?”
He closes his eyes and savours her touch, maybe for the last time, he thinks, at least like this. “I just really needed to hear that.”
“I still love you, you know,” she says,
“I love you too,” he replies, leaning into her hand. “God, so much.”
She smiles beautifully, a smile he's known since he was a teenager, one that felt like it was just for him in those early days when he didn't know how to be touched and touch back in return. He was an emotional train wreck when she first met him, and continued to bounce between highs and lows until his internalised anger issues took physical form, and hadn't that turned out well for both of them? He was a difficult person to love long before the other guy, but he's so glad that she took the time.
Betty runs a thumb over his stubbly chin and drops her hand. “So, what's going on with this person that you're 'not really' seeing?”
“Oh,” he says, “ha, um, she's just a friend.”
“Who is she?”
“Uh, she's, uhhh,” he stammers, to Betty's barely contained amusement. “I'm working with her.”
“Okay...” she says, raising her eyebrows. “And...?”
“And... I don't know. I told her about Brian.”
“Wow.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “I was drunk.”
“You were drunk when you told me, too.”
“I was?”
Betty nods. “On wine coolers.”
“I don't remember that.”
“I'm not surprised.” She lets go of his hands and pats him on the knee. “Have you eaten, do you want to go get lunch? If it's safe for you, I mean.”
“It's safe.” He's almost got used to his shadowy S.H.I.E.L.D. buddy. He or she is actually becoming a comforting presence. “I'd love to have lunch with you, Betty.”
-
They linger over lunch, spending a good two hours or more eating and talking about the past. It takes turns for the painful and the utterly heart-wrenching, but he feels so much lighter by the end of it. Betty walks with him back to the station, gives him her number, insists on getting the lab's number from him, since he doesn't have a cell phone, and they promise not to lose touch with each other again. He isn't sure whether it's an empty promise or not on his part, but he's willing to give it a shot.
He gets back to the lab in the late afternoon, half hoping that Jane and Erik might be gone already and he'll be able to crash out on the couch. No such luck, of course.
“Hey,” Jane says as he drags himself in.
He feels absolutely drained and wrung out from the afternoon, and it's all he can do to collapse on the couch. He closes his eyes, and a couple of seconds later he can hear her soft footsteps padding over to him.
“Bruce?” she says.
“I'm fine,” he murmurs. Evidently she doesn't believe him, because a moment later the couch cushion dips. He opens his eyes and looks at her.
“What happened with Dr Ross?” she asks.
“Nothing. I mean, not nothing, but... it was good. There was a lot of tears, mostly mine. It was very... cathartic.”
She nods slowly. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn't come back tonight, you know.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Thanks.”
She blushes a little. “Not like that. I just mean, I hoped that you two would make up, and that you'd have somewhere else to stay tonight.”
“No,” he says. “It's over between us. Definitely over.”
“Oh, Bruce,” she sighs, and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “I'm sorry.”
“No, no, it's okay, really. Me and Betty were together on and off - and more on than off - for fifteen years, since I was eighteen, and it was amazing when I was able to...” He shakes his head and sighs. “But something always got in the way, even before the other guy.” He looks back at Jane. “I know people say that good things don't come easy, but I don't think they're meant to be this hard, either.”
The corners of her mouth turn down and she curls her arm around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair, and tipping his head against her shoulder. “I'm still sorry,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says, slumping into her. “Me too.”
Erik comes through a couple of minutes later, and doesn't even bother to say anything.
-
He tries to make himself as unobtrusive as he can at Erik's. Which is pretty unobtrusive, actually: he shared a suite with three football players his sophmore year, and they expressed surprise at finding him in the kitchenette during finals, because they were sure he'd moved out at the beginning of the semester.
His welcome is definitely getting worn out, though. He's eating Erik's food, admittedly not very much of it, and sleeping in his spare bed, and Erik is a grumpy bastard at the best of times, and these aren't the best of times. Bruce just tries to keep out of his way until he can figure out how to earn some real money and afford to rent somewhere himself.
“Bruce,” Erik greets him early in the morning, a few days after seeing Betty. It's very early, no more than five fifteen, which is normally when Bruce squirrels his breakfast away, washes everything up, and heads out soon afterwards.
“Hey...” he says, glancing at his bowl of cereal, and the empty carton of milk in his hand. “Uh, I was going to go out and get more milk before you got up... Do you want my cereal?”
“I'll have toast,” Erik says.
“Okay,” Bruce says, shuffling to one side as Erik goes over to the fridge. “You're up early.”
“Couldn't sleep. Bruce,” he adds, grabbing the butter from the fridge.
“Yeah?”
“Don't you think you're a little old for Jane?”
“Oh,” he says. No point in denying anything, really, even though everything has been completely innocent, if a little oddly affectionate. “I hadn't really thought about it.”
'Old' is code for 'big green rage monster', he's aware of this. His cereal is getting soggy.
“Mm, maybe you should,” Erik says without looking at him.
“Maybe,” Bruce echoes.
-
Jane has a huge map of the nine realms that she plotted out from a sketch Thor did for her. It's made up of dozens of pieces of paper taped together, until it's too large for the drafting table and hangs over the sides when she spreads it out. Bruce has caught her looking at it before, her eyes travelling up to the hastily scribbled 'Asgard' at the top before sighing and rolling it up again.
He finds her plotting more of it out in the evening. Erik's gone home already, and Bruce is just trying to stay out of his way some - it's becoming a little bit unbearably awkward at his apartment. Bruce thinks maybe he should take Tony up on that job offer.
“Hey,” he says, coming up beside Jane.
“Oh, hi,” she says, stepping back from the constellation she was adding to the map.
“It's beautiful,” he says, nodding to it.
“Yeah, I'm an artist,” she replies flippantly.
“It is beautiful,” he insists. “Your work is beautiful.”
“Oh, well, uh, thanks,” she says, pushing her hand through her hair and smiling sheepishly.
“It's just that...” He frowns. “It's just so good, like, uh... I'm not explaining myself very well. It's like, my work only ever destroyed people and relationships and stuff. You're building something amazing. It's beautiful,” he repeats.
Her hand finds his and she curls her fingers against his palm. They smile at each other for a moment, and it feels so inevitable. He leans forward slowly, biting the inside of his cheek, and kisses her, closed mouth, just for a second.
“Sorry,” he says, pulling away a little.
“Sorry for what?”
“I don't know, pre-emptive strike?”
She laughs, and tugs him in again. Her hands clasp around his waist, and he tentatively touches her hair, which is as soft and silky as it looks, while she urges his mouth open with her tongue. He's a little rusty, but he's been told that he's a good kisser. Betty used to say that he had the lips for it. He tips his head to one side and scrunches her hair in his hand, pressing his nose to her cheek.
After a couple of minutes, she leans back a couple of inches, and looks at his half-lidded eyes. “Okay,” she breathes, cheeks pink. “So, do you, do you want to... come back to mine?”
He licks his lips. “Yeah... yeah, okay.”
-
When he went home for the first time with Betty, knowing that they were going to have sex, he was nervous wreck, blushing and babbling and saying all the stupidest things that floated across his brain.
When he and Jane take the subway back to her apartment, he's calm, if a touch awkward. They keep looking at each other and smiling, and she takes his hand when they get to her building, leading him up to her apartment.
“Do you want to have sex?” she asks, once she's got the front door closed.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yes.”
She kicks off her shoes and strips her coat and t-shirt off without preamble, then starts helping him with his. She is, he realises anew as he looks at the dip of her waist, tiny, and he says as much.
“You're not exactly huge yourself,” she says, trailing her fingers up and down his bare sides.
“No, but...” He shakes his head. She's so breakable. “What if I hurt you?”
“I'm not that small, Bruce,” she says shortly.
“Well... you kind of are,” he says. It's the wrong thing to say. Her mouth sets into a flat line. “Sorry?” he says carefully.
She sighs heavily. “Look, it's okay, I just, I don't like being called 'tiny', okay? My ex used to call me his 'pocket rocket'.”
Bruce frowns. That actually sounds kind of cute.
“I hated it,” she adds.
He puts his hands up. “I will never call you 'pocket rocket'. In fact, I probably won't use endearments of any kind.”
She nods decisively, then grins at him. “You're very hairy.”
He looks down at his chest. “I am.”
She spreads her hands over his chest. “I like it.”
“Thank you,” he says, and she laughs, tugging him into her bedroom by the waist band of his pants.
They get as far as some serious heavy petting: Jane climbs into his lap, getting a couple of inches on him, tips his head back, and goes to town on his neck. He's going to be covered in love bites tomorrow, which is going to be embarrassing, but his quiet, steady panting probably isn't dissuading her any.
He is achingly hard against her thigh, almost desperately so. He lets Jane take her time, though, savouring how she touches him, knowing that the pay off will be that much sweeter for the run up.
“Okay,” she says against the juncture of his jaw and ear. There's nothing especially special about it, but he flushes with arousal all the same. She sits back, carefully avoiding his erection. “I guess we should have the sex talk.”
“I'm not a virgin,” he says quickly.
“No, I guessed,” she says, grinning. “I mean, sexual health and things. I guess it's a little different with you, though. So, uh, I'm just going to ask it: can you have sex?”
“Oh. Yeah, I can. I thought for a while that a raised heartbeat would trigger the transformation, but there's a huge emotional component. Actually, generally during and after orgasm I can't transform at all. Endorphins and stuff.”
“Good endorphins,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“And your, um, your sperm is...”
“Not irradiated,” he finishes. “I tested it.”
“Okay, good, I just, you know, I had to ask.”
He nods and pushes himself up to sit a bit more easily. “Oh, sure. The gamma radiation did render me infertile, though.” And what a relief that was when he found out. “You don't want kids, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Good, me either. We should probably use a condom just to be really safe, though.”
Jane nods, pressing her thumbs lightly against his hip bones. “Yeah, okay. So, how's long it been for you?”
He does a quick calculation in his head. “About.... seven years? I mean, I guess it depends what you mean: I haven't penetrated anyone in that long, but I've got people off and stuff.”
He's always found it pretty easy to talk about sex in purely objective terms - consequence of being a biologist. Jane's blushing pretty hard, but she's holding up well, too.
“Three years for me,” she says.
“I win.”
She tuts. “It's not a competition.”
“So, was it Thor, because there's no way I'm gonna measure up to that,” he asks.
“No, I never got that far with him,” she says, and shrugs. She looks a little sad. Bruce isn't the only one with unresolved issues in this room.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asks.
She takes a deep breath and kisses him. “Yes. Are you?”
“Yes,” he says with a vehemence that makes her laugh.
She slips out of his lap and roots around in her night stand for one lonely condom. “My last one,” she says, holding it up between her fingers.
“So, I only have one shot at this?”
“Pretty much,” she says, and tosses it to him. He tears the foil open and tugs his pants down. Jane raises her eyebrows. “Doesn't look like you're going to have any performance anxiety,” she says, then giggles. “I can't believe I just said that.”
“I don't mind,” he says, “compliment my dick all you like, it doesn't get enough love.” And he can't believe he just said that. He shakes his head and grins. “Okay, let's stop talking about my dick. How should we... do this?”
Jane frowns.
“I mean, is there a particular position that you prefer? Do you want to be on top?”
She scratches at the back of her head. “I don't really have a preference, to be honest. I haven't really, you know... I studied a lot in college. Let's just, uh, see where it goes?”
He shrugs. “Okay.”
It's a little awkward at first, with the added awareness of each other's now totally naked bodies, but after a couple of minutes they fall into a rhythm, slow and steady and grinding against each other. They stay mostly sitting up, Bruce slinging his arm around her waist to keep her in his lap. It's a bit of a novel experience for him: Betty's a couple inches taller than him already and for most of their relationship they were practically the same weight (and he, of course, had the noodly arms of a basement dweller), so there wasn't really any opportunities for him to show off any masculine prowess. Of which he was sorely lacking in, anyway.
Jane digs her fingers in his hair and tightens her thighs around him, rocking her hips in ever smaller circles, until he has to fight to keep his eyes open.
“Ahhh, slow down,” he groans, loosening his grip on her waist a little.
“Are you gonna...?” she asks, looking faintly alarmed.
He chuckles breathlessly. “I'm gonna do the other thing,” he says.
“Oh,” she says, and then she looks a little sly. She slows down all right, drops her mouth to his jaw and sucks, until it feels like he's going to go fucking crazy. And it's so sweetly frustrating, the sensation, and such a relief to be able to feel it, to lose himself in pounding hearts and sticky skin and tangled limbs.
It's not fair for him to have all the fun, though. He slides his free hand down to cup the crease of her leg for a moment, giving Jane time to react, then presses his thumb into her carefully.
“Oh,” she says in surprise as he finds her clit, then again. “Oh. Oh oh.” It's all very polite at first, until she clenches around his hand and grips onto his hair like a vice. She rocks her hips into him with quick snapping motions, and he rubs faster and harder, until he can feel her muscles twitch and tighten. “Ah,” she huffs, pushing down against him. She wraps her other arm around his waist and curls into him, shuddering.
He's pleased with himself, he always was good at getting girls off and it's nice to see that some things haven't changed, but it all just serves to make him even harder, the kind of hard that pushes out all other thoughts except pumping into something and getting some relief. His self-control feels like an elastic band stretched beyond its breaking point, about to snap in spectacular fashion.
Jane sits back and cups his face in her hands, crushing their mouths together again, and sucks his bottom lip between her teeth. She bites at it a little, in rhythm with the slow rocking of her hips, and he just loses it, coming hard enough that the insides of his eyelids are speckled with light. He buries his face in her chest and rides it out with jerky movements, while she scratches her fingernails gently over his hair and back.
It takes him a while to get himself back together again. He's so intimately aware of the sensation of being torn apart from the inside, of his body being the constant enemy, he'd almost forgotten how good it could make him feel.
“Oh,” he murmurs, uncurling a little. “Okay, wow.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, and kisses him softly.
They untangle their limbs, clean themselves up, and fall back into her bed by nine. He's exhausted, could fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, but Jane seems pretty bright-eyed, and he doesn't want to be one of those, 'orgasm then roll over and go to sleep' clichés.
“You're pretty good at that,” Jane says.
He smiles sleepily, pillowing his cheek on his hand. “Lot of female biology classes in college.”
“Everyone should take those,” she says, mirroring him, lying on her side. “Don was a doctor, though, and he never did anything like that.”
“Don?”
“My ex.”
“What did he look like?”
She frowns, but gives it some thought. “Um, blond? I lent Thor some of his clothes, so I guess they're about the same size?”
He nods. “Well, good looking people don't have to make so much of an effort.”
She huffs and pushes him lightly in the shoulder. “You're good looking!”
“I'm okay. I was kind of cute when I was younger.”
She rolls her eyes and shifts in closer. “You're cute now.”
“Sure,” he murmurs, eyelids drooping.
“You're not listening to me,” Jane says, with a laugh in her voice as he drifts off. He smiles into pillow, and Jane pats him on the head before he falls asleep.
-
He wakes up with his knees against his chest, and his head tucked down, with the blanket wrapped tightly around him like a cocoon. It's surprisingly hard to pull himself out of sleep; he feels so peaceful, for once, completely aware of where he is and what's going on that it feels safe enough to just lie there with his eyes closed for a little while longer. The only reason he does get up is because his stomach insists on it.
The other side of the bed is a rumpled pile of sheets and blankets. An empty pile. Bruce scoots to the edge of the bed and checks the clock: ten-thirty am. Maybe she's gone to work already. He doesn't think this was a one time deal. He hopes not, at least.
He snags his boxers and fleece sweater from where they've migrated from the floor to the back of a chair, and puts them on, then grabs his socks, too, because it's damn cold, and steps out into the hall. He pads into the kitchen and peers his head around the doorway carefully. It's empty. His chews on his lip, wondering if it's okay to raid her fridge a little.
“Hey,” Jane says from behind him.
He starts and turns around. “Oh, hey, I thought that you might...” he trails off and smiles. He feels suddenly, inexplicably shy.
“Have gone out and left my conquest to wake up alone?” she finishes.
He grins nervously and tugs his sleeves over his hands. “It's cold in here.”
“Yeah, the heating only works when it wants to. Coffee?”
“Okay,” he says, and follows her into the kitchen. He tries to help out, but gets swiftly directed to the table to sit down.
“So,” she says, and smiles at him over her shoulder. He smiles back, twisting his fingers together. “Do you always sleep like that?”
“Like...? Oh, like a dormouse? Yeah.”
“That's not exactly how I was going to put it...” she says, bringing over two cups of coffee.
“That's what one of my college room mates used to call it, I guess it kind of stuck. I'm generally quite a mousy person, though, so...”
“That's not true,” Jane says disapprovingly, but she lets it go. “Isn't it uncomfortable?”
He lifts his hands in a shrug. “I guess I've just been doing it for so long that... Sometimes when, uh, when Brian was really drunk, Mom used to sleep in my bed with me, and my bed was really small. And sometimes I used to sleep outside their bedroom door to try and stop...” He lifts the corner of his mouth and huffs. “This is a depressing morning after conversation. Let's talk about something else.”
Jane turns the big eyes she had on him down to her coffee. “Yeah, sorry. So... we had sex.”
“Yes, we did.”
“We should do it again sometime.”
“Yes, we should.”
She grins and pushes his leg with her foot. “Then it's settled.”
They sip their coffees in companionable silence, and Bruce likes to think of himself as somewhat highly evolved (ha) but there's a strong undercurrent to all his thoughts of: 'just had sex'. Sex sex sex.
“I'm gonna ask Tony for a job,” he blurts out, before he devolves entirely back into a teenager.
Jane looks caught off guard. “Uh, okay? Aren't you happy working with us?”
“No, no, I am, but... I need to start paying my way.”
“If you need money, we can pay you,” she says.
“No, you're not getting paid for doing the research, there's no reason I should. I just... literally have nothing to my name, and I think I should probably do something about that before I burn all my bridges.”
“You're not going to burn your bridges.”
“Well, Erik's is smouldering.”
She sits forward, frowning. “Has he said something?”
“No... I mean, sort of? He suggested that I might be too old for you.”
Her nostrils flare. “Oh, did he? You know, he vetted my high school boyfriends because he figured that's what dads did, even though my father would never have threatened to run top secret experiments on greasy teenage boys.”
“Well, that is a bit overkill, but I can't blame him for being irritated with me. I'm eating his food, I'm creeping around his apartment, I'm not paying for anything. He's getting pissed. Tony offered me a job a while ago and it's nepotism, but I'm gonna take what I can get. And then maybe I'll be able to pay for my own food and rent somewhere like a real boy.”
“Well, okay, I guess I get that, but...” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then does it again when it falls forward, then just gives up. “Apartment-hunting sucks. You could just, you know, you could move in with me. At least while you're looking. I liked having you here before. You're very... tidy.”
“Um.” He drums his fingertips on his cup and bites the inside of his lip. “I liked being here. Um. You're sure you want a sometimes rage monster living with you?”
She grins. “I'm a rage monster too, when I don't get the grants that I need.”
He can't help it: he smiles back, which pretty much seals the deal. “I'm paying rent, though, I'm not going to keep living off you.”
“Hey, I'm not going complain about someone paying half the rent,” she says.
“I don't know about half,” he murmurs, arching an eyebrow.
“You'll be paying all of it, if you're not careful,” she says, and stands up, crossing the short distance to him. She bends at the waist, tucks another strand of hair behind her ear that's fallen forward, and gives him a light kiss on the lips before going back for her coffee. “I've got a ton of work to go over, you want to come help me?”
“Sure,” he says, getting up to follow her out.
“Oh,” she adds, already out the door, “grab a couple bags of chips, we're gonna work out the trans-Planckian problem.”
“In a day?”
She leans back round the doorframe. “In a morning,” she says, grinning.
Bruce and Jane bicker sometimes. There's no other word for it, they just bicker until one of them acquiesces (normally Bruce), or they both go home grumpy and come back the next day embarrassed.
“There is no way that a wormhole connected to nine separate points simultaneously would ever be stable. The lack of gravity alone!”
“It's already happened, that's how Yggdrasil works,” Jane says, sliding a book across the table to him. Erik has wisely ducked out to get food.
Bruce glances down at the book. “That's mythology, not science.”
“It's mythology and science,” she argues. “I mean, really, you fought alongside a Norse god and you don't think that maybe there's something to this stuff?”
“I don't think Thor's a god. He's an alien. Which is slightly less ridiculous.”
Jane purses her lips. “Don't be pedantic. The myth of Yggdrasil is still based in fact, the fact of Thor's alien world.”
He shrugs. “I just think it's a stretch.”
“Well, I'll tell Thor that you think he's wrong about his own realm's science, next time I see him,” she says, bending over her notebook.
“He told you this personally?” Bruce asks, tone hovering somewhere between joking and honestly curious.
“Yes,” Jane says, not looking up.
Bruce opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “Oh, I didn't realise that you knew him that well.”
“I knew him better than Erik did,” she mutters.
“Oh...”
Jane's tapping out a tattoo with her pen on the table, and it's apparent to Bruce that he's stumbled into some kind of misstep that he was previously completely unaware of. He scratches at the back of his head and frowns. “Did you--”
“Look who I found,” Erik's voice drifts in, sounding less than pleased. Bruce turns his attention from Jane to the door, as Erik comes in, trailed by Tony. “He was hanging around outside when I got back.”
“You never write and you never call,” Tony says, throwing his arms wide. Bruce rolls his eyes and Tony zeroes in on Jane. “Dr Foster, I'm a big fan. That paper on Raychaudhuri's theorem should have got you a PECASE, you were robbed.”
She smiles thinly. “Thanks.”
“Yikes, tough crowd,” Tony mutters. “Bruce, you wanna grab a beer, or something? Catch up?”
“Uh, I was kinda working on something with Jane...” he says, glancing at Jane.
She shrugs. “It's fine, we can finish this later.”
“You're sure?”
“She's sure, c'mon, before you disappear on me again,” Tony says, grabbing Bruce by the arm and dragging him out of his seat.
“Okay, well, see you later,” he says to Jane and Erik as he's pulled from the room.
-
“You've been adopted,” Tony observes as he drives them away from the lab. “It's not fair, I was going to adopt you, but then you had to go strike out on your own.”
“What?”
“Your little PhD-having science club you've got going on. I didn't realise that I wasn't good enough for you with just my lowly Masters in Electrical Engineering.”
Bruce sighs and settles in to the very comfortable passenger seat of Tony's convertible. “What?”
“God, you really can't take a joke, can you?”
“I can take funny ones,” he says, and watches the passing road.
“Uh huh.” Tony drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “So, where do you want to go?”
Bruce shrugs. “I don't mind. I'm not going to be drinking anything, though. I had kind of a bad experience with alcohol recently.”
“Well, this is gonna be fun,” Tony mutters.
“Sorry,” Bruce murmurs. “How'd you even know that I was at the lab?”
Tony looks at him incredulously. “You gotta know that S.H.I.E.L.D. has you under round the clock surveillance, right? They know that you're staying with Dr Selvig, they know that Dr Foster bought you that sweater...” His eyes linger on it for a moment, corners of his mouth pursed. Bruce tugs the sleeve of the brown fleece sweater over his hands. He likes it. “They even know that Crest is your mouthwash of choice.”
“Oh.” It's not like he thought he was living in perfect secrecy, but all laid out like that... It kind of sucks.
“You gonna freak out on me there, buddy?”
Bruce shakes his head. “No, I'm good. So, what's everyone doing these days?”
“Everyone? Oh, you mean The Avengers?” He grins. “I'm never getting over how awesome that is. Well, Steve is on a voyage of self-discovery around America, Natasha and Barton are doing spy stuff, Thor is doing space god stuff, I would assume, and you're doing whatever you're doing with Foster and Selvig. Exactly what are you doing with them?”
“Just helping out.”
“Uh huh. Unpaid.”
“They're not getting paid either, they've only got a research grant from S.H.I.E.L.D.”
Tony shrugs. “I just don't agree with doing work if you're not getting paid for it.”
“Oh, you capitalist,” Bruce murmurs.
“You can joke, but I have a very good relationship with Stark Industries workers' union. You could find out for yourself, you know.”
“Huh?”
“I thought it was obvious in the helicarrier: I'd totally pay you to sit in a lab all day and create lots of hideously expensive, ground-breaking medicines and stuff. You could cure cancer! Or the common cold. People would have to like me after that.”
“How did you get people liking you out of me curing cancer?”
“It's my name on the door, don't get above yourself.”
Bruce leans back more in his seat. It's hard to be irritated when he's so damn comfortable. “Right. Well, thanks for the offer, but I'm good.”
“Whatever, just trying to be a good friend,” Tony mutters. “Are you planning on sticking around, then?”
“I don't really know. Maybe?”
“You need money?”
“What?”
“Money, Bruce. I know you've been living out in the bush for the last few years, but I assume you're still familiar with the concept.”
“I am. I don't need money.” He does actually, he could really do with being able to buy his own food and clothes, but Tony already gave him the equivalent of a couple of thousand dollars, and somehow he managed to blow through it all, which doesn't make him feel very good about himself. He used to be pretty good at managing his money.
“Well, okay, but Pepper told me I could give you as much money as I wanted. She's pretty grateful about the whole 'Hulk roar shock to the heart' thing.”
“Pepper?”
“My, uh...” Tony's eyebrows draw together for a moment. “My wife.”
“I didn't know you were married.”
“I wasn't,” he says, and glances over at Bruce, smiling. “I guess when you have a near death experience in another spacial dimension, from which your loved ones would never get your corpse back, some things get put into perspective a little.”
“When you put it like that...” Bruce murmurs.
Tony takes him back to Stark Tower, where Bruce feels some small satisfaction at getting up to the private floors despite his still sloppy appearance. Tony shows him around with barely restrained excitement, pointing out cutting edge gadgets and tech that none of his 'Luddite friends' are interested in.
“I love Pep more than scotch,” he says, “but she never wants to talk about Moore's law.”
Bruce smiles vaguely. “This place is incredible.”
“It's pretty nice,” Tony agrees. “If you want out of Selvig's spare room, you're welcome to a floor.”
“I think I've graduated from sleeping on floors,” he replies. Tony arches an eyebrow. “Oh, you meant...? No, I'm good.”
“You need to learn how to accept help,” Tony says.
If someone had told Bruce a year ago that he'd be offered help from Tony Stark, he'd have laughed in their face. Ross used Stark tech to hunt him down, and although Bruce had no illusions at the time that Tony worked closely enough with his company to actually know what was going on - even out in South American slums, people knew Tony's reputation - he still would never have thought that Tony would have cared, and certainly not cared about him.
“Why break the habit of a lifetime?” he settles on, and picks up a stray gauntlet, studying the scratches and grooves carefully.
“Lots of reasons. You don't want to get stuck not trusting people. There's always someone on your side. Trust me, I learnt that from personal experience.”
Tony's already turned away by the time Bruce looks back up, pulling up holographic images out of the air, striking up a one-sided argument with one of his robots.
“Trust... isn't something I'm so good at,” Bruce replies. “Never has been.”
“It's never too late for a change,” Tony says lightly, glancing over his shoulder for moment. Bruce shrugs and runs his fingers along a particularly deep scratch. He wonders what could have damaged the metal so badly.
“Hey,” Tony adds, “if you're gonna fondle my tech, you could at least buy me a drink first, you know.”
-
Jane's still at the lab when Tony drops him back, denouncing him as a wet blanket and a bore. She doesn't even register Bruce coming in until he's at her side.
“Hey,” he murmurs, patting her on the shoulder.
“Oh! Oh, hey,” she says, smiling self-consciously. “How was your day out with Tony Stark?”
“Surprisingly sedate,” he says, and drags a chair around to sit down beside her. “How's it going?” he adds, nodding to her notebook.
“Still can't find a workaround for the trans-Planckian problem,” she says.
“You'll get it,” he says, and leans his elbows on the table, cradling his head in one hand. “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“What happened with Thor?”
She meets his eyes properly for the first time since he's come into the room, and drops her pencil. His immediate instinct is to apologise and let it go, but he bites it back and waits.
“Oh,” she says, “well.”
“Well?” he repeats.
She clicks her tongue. “Well, we had a... brief fling.”
“A brief fling with a god?”
“Alien,” she says. “And I mean, it wasn't really even fling. I hit him with my car and then we kissed once. I've spent more time with you than I did with him.”
“You hit him with your car?”
“It was a whole thing,” Jane says, shrugging.
“Okay.” Aside from vehicular assault, he can't imagine that anyone could just have a 'brief fling' with Thor, but he'd be willing to let it lie if it weren't for Jane's tense shoulders and downcast eyes. “And that's it?”
“That's... not it.” She sighs and scrubs her fingers through her hair. “He said he'd be back, and then... he wasn't. I waited a week for him, and then I started working on going to him. And then he comes back two years later, and I don't hear a word from him. In fact, they sent me away to Tromsø for my 'safety' and let Erik get brainwashed.” She shakes her head. “It's not okay.”
“No,” he agrees. “I'm sorry.”
She nods slowly, and looks at him again. “I think you should go see Dr Ross.”
He blinks in surprise. “What?”
“I wasn't going to say anything, but... I only got to see Thor on news coverage of the invasion; nobody told me what was going on, he didn't come to see me... It hurt like hell. And you did the same thing to Dr Ross.”
“I didn't... mean to,” he mumbles.
“And I hope Thor didn't, either, but that doesn't change how I feel, does it?”
He bites his lips. “No, I guess not. But... it's different for me and Betty.”
“No, it isn't.”
“Yes, it is,” he argues, the beginnings of irritation growing in his chest.
Jane just shrugs.
“It is,” he pushes, “I'm too dangerous, she's better off without me.”
Jane doesn't look convinced. “That's not your decision to make.”
“Yes, it is,” he says, aware that he's starting to sound really whiny. “I won't let her get hurt again.”
“Oh, grow up,” she snaps, and Bruce rocks back a little in his chair. “You're hurting her worse right now.”
He blinks a couple of times, the itch of irritation in his chest rolling over and dying. He never has been any good with verbal arguments; he normally always backs down if someone pushes back.
When he doesn't answer, Jane sighs and shakes her head. “I'm going home,” she says, and flips her notebook closed with an audible smack of paper on paper.
“Oh... okay,” he says as she strides over to the door. “Bye?”
“Yeah,” she says, grabbing her coat off the hook, and then she's out the door.
-
The next day is full of awkward apologies, Jane for taking her bad mood out on him, and Bruce for asking questions that were too personal - in hindsight he's kind of appalled that he felt it was okay to pry like that. Erik eyes them suspiciously as they uncomfortably orbit each other for the rest of the day.
It weighs on his mind though, what she said, even after she tells him that she didn't have business dictating how he lives his life. He told himself when he left that it had been too long, that he'd changed too much since he last saw Betty, that he was emotionally unstable and borderline suicidal and who needed that in their life? But if their positions were reversed and he saw her on the television after so long and then didn't hear a word from her, he would have been devastated.
He hesitantly looks her up on one of the lab's computer, and discovers that she's working at Princeton now, doing research into the effects of radiation. Probably not a coincidence, he thinks.
He sits on this knowledge for a week, looking up the various papers she's published, finding an address for her in Edison, and the room number of her office. He makes and unmakes his decision to go see her five, six times, before he finally grabs his bag and tells Jane and Erik that he's going over to see Tony.
It takes a couple of hours, several subway trains, and one shuttle ride to get to Princeton, all done with Bruce's heart firmly in his throat.
He's been to Princeton before, for some long forgotten conference, but it still takes him some time to get his bearings, searching for Betty's office.
When he finds it, she isn't there, but it's only one in the afternoon, he tells himself, no reason to think that he's had a wasted trip. He grabs an abandoned newspaper, tugs his baseball cap low, and sits down on a nearby bench to wait for her. He waits for an hour, then two, then starts to feel that the security guard is getting a little interested in him, sitting there, reading the same page over and over. He turns a couple of pages and keeps the guard in his peripheral vision, ready to take off if he approaches him.
It's her laugh that he recognises first. He forgets all about pretending to read the paper, and drops it to his lap, fixing his gaze on her. Betty's on the phone, smiling at whatever's being said, door key in hand. She walks straight by him.
She walks straight by and doesn't even glance his way.
The newspaper crumples in his hands as he watches the door close behind her. He stands up, the newspaper falling forgotten to the ground, and the guard starts forward, but before either of them can do anything, someone jogs up to Betty's door and knocks, and she greets him with a 'come in!' that makes Bruce's heart clench. He takes one look at the guard, then turns around and leaves.
If the trip to New Jersey made him nervous, then the trip back just makes him fucking angry. Everything seems louder, people crush in closer, trains take longer to arrive. He has to force it back, squash the panic-laced anger and pain as far as it'll go, force his heart rate to slow before he makes it back to the lab.
He takes the elevator up, squeezing his eyes tightly closed until he reaches the eighth floor, and steps out. He swipes his card through the reader, steps into the lab, closes the door behind him gently.
“Bruce?” Jane calls.
“Yeah, just getting coffee,” he calls back, heading straight for the kitchen.
His hands are shaking as he switches on the coffee maker. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and tells himself to stop it, stop it stop it stop it, and only removes them when the coffee is ready. His hands are still fluttering as he pours - his aim goes wide of the mug, scalding all over the back of his hand and his forearm.
“Ah!” he yelps, dropping the coffee pot. “Fuck!”
“Bruce?” Jane calls again.
“Goddamnit,” he growls, shoving the mug off the counter. It explodes into hot liquid and shards of ceramic across the tiled floor.
“Bruce!” Jane shouts from the lab, and everything seems to tilt sideways, bleeding green. He can't control the shaking in his hands at all any more.
He bolts straight past her as she comes into the room to check on him. “Bruce?” she says as he runs out the door, heading as fast as he can for the fire escape.
Eight fucking floors up, why did he never think about what a problem this would be? His balance is shot to hell, and he slams into walls and railings as he takes the stairs as fast as he can. He can feel his skin ripple and his muscles stretch and swell, and isn't even halfway down yet.
“Bruce!” Jane yells, her voice reverberating around the stairwell.
He spins around, slamming his hand into the wall to steady himself. The concrete crumbles around his fingers as he looks up at her, a couple of flights up. Her mouth is moving, but his mind is already starting to close in on itself, and he can't process the words properly. He takes off down the stairs, ever faster with the added power forcing its way out of him.
He makes it to the door out into the parking lot as his hands start to distort and distend; the door comes clean off in his hands as he rips it open, and he tosses the crumpled metal aside.
His vision blurs as he looks around, but he can't make out any people. In fact, its almost completely silent, except for his laboured breathing and the roar that he knows is coming from inside his head.
“Bruce!” Jane yells again, with an undertone that cuts through enough for him to hear it.
He turns around and backs up. “Go away,” he tells her, his voice likes rocks scraping against each other.
She looks... scared. Terrified. Horrified. His skin is twisting and swelling, his bones are breaking and rebuilding themselves, his clothes are ripping at their seams; he's hideous like this, the in-between state of Bruce Banner and the... the Hulk, more hideous than either on their own. An aberration.
Pain lances under his skin like fire, and his knees buckle as his kneecaps slide and break. “Go!” he roars at her, and that's the last thing he remembers before he's ripped apart.
-
He comes to on his back. He aches all over, like going a round with Ali and having the worst hangover combined, and that doesn't even really begin to describe how his bones ache. It's cold, the concrete against his back - it is March, after all - but his front feels warm and covered. He moves his hands as much as they'll allow him, his joints still swollen like an arthritic old man's, and something soft glides over them. There's a pressure on his head, too, he realises as he comes back to himself more. He forces his eyes open, past the weights on his eyelids, and squints against the winter sun.
“Hey,” Jane says, and he realises that the pressure is her hand in his hair, stroking back and forth.
“He--” he says through sandpaper, and turns his head to cough. “Hello.”
“Feeling better?” she asks.
“Uh. I don't...” He frowns. She seems to be in one piece, even being affectionate with him, so he can't have done anything so bad. “Can you help me up?”
“Sure,” she says, and slides her hand to his back to help push him up. His shoulder blades pop back into place. He curls in on himself for a moment, coughing at the shock to his lungs, then looks at her.
“What did I do?” he asks.
“Mostly roared,” she says, smiling. She's touching his hair again, running her fingers through where it's starting to go grey and white at his temples. “You stomped your feet a little bit, too.” She nods to a radial pattern of cracks in the concrete a few feet away from them. “I think you were having a temper tantrum.”
“Oh,” he says, hugging his knees to his chest. “And that's it?”
“Well, and when you were done you came over to me and said 'Bruce sad', and sat down in front of me.”
“Oh,” he says again. Well, that's embarrassing.
“So, what happened?”
“What happened?” he repeats. “Well... I went to see Betty.”
Jane winces in sympathy.
“And... I was waiting outside her office, and, long story short, she didn't recognise me.”
“Oh, Bruce,” she says, and moves her hand to the back of his neck.
“I was too, uh... I was too frightened to say anything. And then I came back, and I was just really angry with myself, and your coffee maker was the last straw.”
“Okay,” she says, “good to know why there's coffee all over the kitchen floor, I guess.”
“Sorry.”
“Don't worry about it. I do think that you need to find a better way to express your emotions, though.”
“I really do,” he agrees. He shifts on the concrete and frowns. His ass is really cold. He lifts the blanket up an inch and peers down. “Did, uh...”
“Those pants didn't stand a chance,” she says, grinning. “I saw everything.”
He hides his face in his hands, laughing softly. “Wow, I'm sorry, I normally wear looser clothes,” he says, muffled by his palms.
“Don't be. You don't, you know, you don't... have anything to be sorry for,” she says, and starts laughing too, cheeks turning pink.
“Oh God,” he mumbles. She puts her arm around him and gives him a one-armed hug.
-
It takes him a few days to find his equilibrium again; it always does after one of his 'incidents'. He sleeps for twelve hours solid immediately afterwards, back on the lab's couch, then spends the day after both hungry and nauseous. Erik, who thankfully wasn't in the lab when Bruce had his big green temper tantrum, watches him with even more suspicion. Jane quietly informs Bruce that S.H.I.E.L.D. have already dealt with the mess in the parking lot.
“I'm going to go see Betty again,” Bruce tells Jane, four days later.
Her eyebrows go high. “Is that a good idea?”
“I don't know, but I think I've got to do it. I'll try not to freak out this time, though.”
She twists her mouth. “Do you want me to come with you?”
He considers it for a second, having someone to keep him focused on the task, but he instinctively feels that he needs to keep these two parts of his life separate from one another.
“That's really nice of you, but I'll be okay.”
“Well...” She reaches out and squeezes his arm. “Good luck.”
He does the trip to New Jersey again, retracing the path he took, walks up to Betty's floor, passes the same security guard, and knocks on her door.
“Come in,” she calls.
Last chance to run, Bruce. He shakes the thought away and opens the door.
“My offices hours are about to end, I'm afraid,” Betty says, eyes on her computer screen.
“Betty,” he says. His voice cracks on the last syllable.
She doesn't move anything but her eyes, sliding over to him slowly. Her face twitches. “Lock the door,” she says quietly.
He fumbles behind himself, twisting the bolt closed, never taking his eyes off her. “Betty, I...”
She shakes her head and gets up from her desk. He clenches his hands to fists at his side as he approaches him. She reaches out and cups a hand around his jaw, stroking her thumb over his cheek, and he starts crying. Just a little bit, and he is, at least, aware that he's doing it this time. Her eyes are red-rimmed too as she leans over and hugs him.
He clings onto her, buries his face in her neck, and cries. He's not sure how long he hangs on for before Betty gives him an extra hard squeeze and steps back.
“Oh, wow,” he mumbles, wiping at his face. “Sorry about that.”
Betty's answering smile looks pained. “Bruce, where have you been? I saw you... on the TV in May. That was almost a year ago.”
“I know, I know.” He shakes his head. “I was scared. I ran away again.”
She nods. “Sit down,” she says, and leads him to her couch. She keeps her hands on him, as if he'll disappear if she isn't touching him, which is a fear that's well-grounded for her, he's sure. She strokes his arms and flicks her eyes over his face. He stays still for her inspection. “You look good,” she says finally.
“I look old,” he replies, running his fingers through his greying hair. Three years ago, his hair was the solid dark brown it had always been and he had almost perfect vision; now his hair is shot through all over with grey and white, and he can't always see right even with his glasses on. His working theory is that the antidote Sterns gave him put such an intense strain on his body, that it accelerated the ageing process. Then again, maybe he just can't come to terms with the inexorable slide towards death.
“It makes you look distinguished,” she says.
“That's one way of putting it.”
She smiles briefly and drops her hands to his hands, folding their palms together. “Where are you staying?”
“Do you remember Dr Selvig?”
“From Culver?”
“Yeah. I'm staying in his spare room and helping out with a project he's working on.”
She frowns a little. “Is it okay?”
“Yeah, he and Jane - that's his colleague - they're being very good to me, especially considering that I don't have any money and they're paying for everything.”
“If you need money...” she starts, and he shakes his head.
“God, no, I'm... I'm fine. I've got Tony Stark trying to push wads of cash on me, I'll be fine.”
“Tony Stark?”
“I kind of saved his life,” he says, and shrugs.
“Okay,” she says, eyebrows, high. “So...”
He clutches tighter at her hands. “I'm sorry, Betty, for everything.”
“It's okay.”
“No, it's not.”
“Maybe not,” she concedes, “but you're here now.”
“Yeah... Are you okay? How have you been? You're still so beautiful, you know.”
She smiles. “I'm okay, I've got a teaching position here, it pays pretty well, and a research grant. It feels good to have a fresh start away from Culver.”
“Has your dad...?”
“I haven't seen or heard from him in three years,” she says. Her grip on his hands tighten. “And I don't intend to again.”
“Are you... are you seeing anyone?”
“Not at the moment. Are you?”
“No, not... not really.” He frowns, then looks up at her. It feels like something's come free inside of him, jangling around nervously. “We're over, aren't we?”
“I think so, yeah.”
He ducks his head and breaths out, feeling hot tears threatening to spill again. It's like a weight he didn't know was there being lifted off his chest. It doesn't exactly feel good, it leaves behind the shock of a crushing pain, but it is a relief.
“Bruce?” she asks, and cups her hand around his cheek. “Are you okay?”
He closes his eyes and savours her touch, maybe for the last time, he thinks, at least like this. “I just really needed to hear that.”
“I still love you, you know,” she says,
“I love you too,” he replies, leaning into her hand. “God, so much.”
She smiles beautifully, a smile he's known since he was a teenager, one that felt like it was just for him in those early days when he didn't know how to be touched and touch back in return. He was an emotional train wreck when she first met him, and continued to bounce between highs and lows until his internalised anger issues took physical form, and hadn't that turned out well for both of them? He was a difficult person to love long before the other guy, but he's so glad that she took the time.
Betty runs a thumb over his stubbly chin and drops her hand. “So, what's going on with this person that you're 'not really' seeing?”
“Oh,” he says, “ha, um, she's just a friend.”
“Who is she?”
“Uh, she's, uhhh,” he stammers, to Betty's barely contained amusement. “I'm working with her.”
“Okay...” she says, raising her eyebrows. “And...?”
“And... I don't know. I told her about Brian.”
“Wow.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “I was drunk.”
“You were drunk when you told me, too.”
“I was?”
Betty nods. “On wine coolers.”
“I don't remember that.”
“I'm not surprised.” She lets go of his hands and pats him on the knee. “Have you eaten, do you want to go get lunch? If it's safe for you, I mean.”
“It's safe.” He's almost got used to his shadowy S.H.I.E.L.D. buddy. He or she is actually becoming a comforting presence. “I'd love to have lunch with you, Betty.”
-
They linger over lunch, spending a good two hours or more eating and talking about the past. It takes turns for the painful and the utterly heart-wrenching, but he feels so much lighter by the end of it. Betty walks with him back to the station, gives him her number, insists on getting the lab's number from him, since he doesn't have a cell phone, and they promise not to lose touch with each other again. He isn't sure whether it's an empty promise or not on his part, but he's willing to give it a shot.
He gets back to the lab in the late afternoon, half hoping that Jane and Erik might be gone already and he'll be able to crash out on the couch. No such luck, of course.
“Hey,” Jane says as he drags himself in.
He feels absolutely drained and wrung out from the afternoon, and it's all he can do to collapse on the couch. He closes his eyes, and a couple of seconds later he can hear her soft footsteps padding over to him.
“Bruce?” she says.
“I'm fine,” he murmurs. Evidently she doesn't believe him, because a moment later the couch cushion dips. He opens his eyes and looks at her.
“What happened with Dr Ross?” she asks.
“Nothing. I mean, not nothing, but... it was good. There was a lot of tears, mostly mine. It was very... cathartic.”
She nods slowly. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn't come back tonight, you know.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Thanks.”
She blushes a little. “Not like that. I just mean, I hoped that you two would make up, and that you'd have somewhere else to stay tonight.”
“No,” he says. “It's over between us. Definitely over.”
“Oh, Bruce,” she sighs, and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “I'm sorry.”
“No, no, it's okay, really. Me and Betty were together on and off - and more on than off - for fifteen years, since I was eighteen, and it was amazing when I was able to...” He shakes his head and sighs. “But something always got in the way, even before the other guy.” He looks back at Jane. “I know people say that good things don't come easy, but I don't think they're meant to be this hard, either.”
The corners of her mouth turn down and she curls her arm around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair, and tipping his head against her shoulder. “I'm still sorry,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says, slumping into her. “Me too.”
Erik comes through a couple of minutes later, and doesn't even bother to say anything.
-
He tries to make himself as unobtrusive as he can at Erik's. Which is pretty unobtrusive, actually: he shared a suite with three football players his sophmore year, and they expressed surprise at finding him in the kitchenette during finals, because they were sure he'd moved out at the beginning of the semester.
His welcome is definitely getting worn out, though. He's eating Erik's food, admittedly not very much of it, and sleeping in his spare bed, and Erik is a grumpy bastard at the best of times, and these aren't the best of times. Bruce just tries to keep out of his way until he can figure out how to earn some real money and afford to rent somewhere himself.
“Bruce,” Erik greets him early in the morning, a few days after seeing Betty. It's very early, no more than five fifteen, which is normally when Bruce squirrels his breakfast away, washes everything up, and heads out soon afterwards.
“Hey...” he says, glancing at his bowl of cereal, and the empty carton of milk in his hand. “Uh, I was going to go out and get more milk before you got up... Do you want my cereal?”
“I'll have toast,” Erik says.
“Okay,” Bruce says, shuffling to one side as Erik goes over to the fridge. “You're up early.”
“Couldn't sleep. Bruce,” he adds, grabbing the butter from the fridge.
“Yeah?”
“Don't you think you're a little old for Jane?”
“Oh,” he says. No point in denying anything, really, even though everything has been completely innocent, if a little oddly affectionate. “I hadn't really thought about it.”
'Old' is code for 'big green rage monster', he's aware of this. His cereal is getting soggy.
“Mm, maybe you should,” Erik says without looking at him.
“Maybe,” Bruce echoes.
-
Jane has a huge map of the nine realms that she plotted out from a sketch Thor did for her. It's made up of dozens of pieces of paper taped together, until it's too large for the drafting table and hangs over the sides when she spreads it out. Bruce has caught her looking at it before, her eyes travelling up to the hastily scribbled 'Asgard' at the top before sighing and rolling it up again.
He finds her plotting more of it out in the evening. Erik's gone home already, and Bruce is just trying to stay out of his way some - it's becoming a little bit unbearably awkward at his apartment. Bruce thinks maybe he should take Tony up on that job offer.
“Hey,” he says, coming up beside Jane.
“Oh, hi,” she says, stepping back from the constellation she was adding to the map.
“It's beautiful,” he says, nodding to it.
“Yeah, I'm an artist,” she replies flippantly.
“It is beautiful,” he insists. “Your work is beautiful.”
“Oh, well, uh, thanks,” she says, pushing her hand through her hair and smiling sheepishly.
“It's just that...” He frowns. “It's just so good, like, uh... I'm not explaining myself very well. It's like, my work only ever destroyed people and relationships and stuff. You're building something amazing. It's beautiful,” he repeats.
Her hand finds his and she curls her fingers against his palm. They smile at each other for a moment, and it feels so inevitable. He leans forward slowly, biting the inside of his cheek, and kisses her, closed mouth, just for a second.
“Sorry,” he says, pulling away a little.
“Sorry for what?”
“I don't know, pre-emptive strike?”
She laughs, and tugs him in again. Her hands clasp around his waist, and he tentatively touches her hair, which is as soft and silky as it looks, while she urges his mouth open with her tongue. He's a little rusty, but he's been told that he's a good kisser. Betty used to say that he had the lips for it. He tips his head to one side and scrunches her hair in his hand, pressing his nose to her cheek.
After a couple of minutes, she leans back a couple of inches, and looks at his half-lidded eyes. “Okay,” she breathes, cheeks pink. “So, do you, do you want to... come back to mine?”
He licks his lips. “Yeah... yeah, okay.”
-
When he went home for the first time with Betty, knowing that they were going to have sex, he was nervous wreck, blushing and babbling and saying all the stupidest things that floated across his brain.
When he and Jane take the subway back to her apartment, he's calm, if a touch awkward. They keep looking at each other and smiling, and she takes his hand when they get to her building, leading him up to her apartment.
“Do you want to have sex?” she asks, once she's got the front door closed.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yes.”
She kicks off her shoes and strips her coat and t-shirt off without preamble, then starts helping him with his. She is, he realises anew as he looks at the dip of her waist, tiny, and he says as much.
“You're not exactly huge yourself,” she says, trailing her fingers up and down his bare sides.
“No, but...” He shakes his head. She's so breakable. “What if I hurt you?”
“I'm not that small, Bruce,” she says shortly.
“Well... you kind of are,” he says. It's the wrong thing to say. Her mouth sets into a flat line. “Sorry?” he says carefully.
She sighs heavily. “Look, it's okay, I just, I don't like being called 'tiny', okay? My ex used to call me his 'pocket rocket'.”
Bruce frowns. That actually sounds kind of cute.
“I hated it,” she adds.
He puts his hands up. “I will never call you 'pocket rocket'. In fact, I probably won't use endearments of any kind.”
She nods decisively, then grins at him. “You're very hairy.”
He looks down at his chest. “I am.”
She spreads her hands over his chest. “I like it.”
“Thank you,” he says, and she laughs, tugging him into her bedroom by the waist band of his pants.
They get as far as some serious heavy petting: Jane climbs into his lap, getting a couple of inches on him, tips his head back, and goes to town on his neck. He's going to be covered in love bites tomorrow, which is going to be embarrassing, but his quiet, steady panting probably isn't dissuading her any.
He is achingly hard against her thigh, almost desperately so. He lets Jane take her time, though, savouring how she touches him, knowing that the pay off will be that much sweeter for the run up.
“Okay,” she says against the juncture of his jaw and ear. There's nothing especially special about it, but he flushes with arousal all the same. She sits back, carefully avoiding his erection. “I guess we should have the sex talk.”
“I'm not a virgin,” he says quickly.
“No, I guessed,” she says, grinning. “I mean, sexual health and things. I guess it's a little different with you, though. So, uh, I'm just going to ask it: can you have sex?”
“Oh. Yeah, I can. I thought for a while that a raised heartbeat would trigger the transformation, but there's a huge emotional component. Actually, generally during and after orgasm I can't transform at all. Endorphins and stuff.”
“Good endorphins,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“And your, um, your sperm is...”
“Not irradiated,” he finishes. “I tested it.”
“Okay, good, I just, you know, I had to ask.”
He nods and pushes himself up to sit a bit more easily. “Oh, sure. The gamma radiation did render me infertile, though.” And what a relief that was when he found out. “You don't want kids, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Good, me either. We should probably use a condom just to be really safe, though.”
Jane nods, pressing her thumbs lightly against his hip bones. “Yeah, okay. So, how's long it been for you?”
He does a quick calculation in his head. “About.... seven years? I mean, I guess it depends what you mean: I haven't penetrated anyone in that long, but I've got people off and stuff.”
He's always found it pretty easy to talk about sex in purely objective terms - consequence of being a biologist. Jane's blushing pretty hard, but she's holding up well, too.
“Three years for me,” she says.
“I win.”
She tuts. “It's not a competition.”
“So, was it Thor, because there's no way I'm gonna measure up to that,” he asks.
“No, I never got that far with him,” she says, and shrugs. She looks a little sad. Bruce isn't the only one with unresolved issues in this room.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asks.
She takes a deep breath and kisses him. “Yes. Are you?”
“Yes,” he says with a vehemence that makes her laugh.
She slips out of his lap and roots around in her night stand for one lonely condom. “My last one,” she says, holding it up between her fingers.
“So, I only have one shot at this?”
“Pretty much,” she says, and tosses it to him. He tears the foil open and tugs his pants down. Jane raises her eyebrows. “Doesn't look like you're going to have any performance anxiety,” she says, then giggles. “I can't believe I just said that.”
“I don't mind,” he says, “compliment my dick all you like, it doesn't get enough love.” And he can't believe he just said that. He shakes his head and grins. “Okay, let's stop talking about my dick. How should we... do this?”
Jane frowns.
“I mean, is there a particular position that you prefer? Do you want to be on top?”
She scratches at the back of her head. “I don't really have a preference, to be honest. I haven't really, you know... I studied a lot in college. Let's just, uh, see where it goes?”
He shrugs. “Okay.”
It's a little awkward at first, with the added awareness of each other's now totally naked bodies, but after a couple of minutes they fall into a rhythm, slow and steady and grinding against each other. They stay mostly sitting up, Bruce slinging his arm around her waist to keep her in his lap. It's a bit of a novel experience for him: Betty's a couple inches taller than him already and for most of their relationship they were practically the same weight (and he, of course, had the noodly arms of a basement dweller), so there wasn't really any opportunities for him to show off any masculine prowess. Of which he was sorely lacking in, anyway.
Jane digs her fingers in his hair and tightens her thighs around him, rocking her hips in ever smaller circles, until he has to fight to keep his eyes open.
“Ahhh, slow down,” he groans, loosening his grip on her waist a little.
“Are you gonna...?” she asks, looking faintly alarmed.
He chuckles breathlessly. “I'm gonna do the other thing,” he says.
“Oh,” she says, and then she looks a little sly. She slows down all right, drops her mouth to his jaw and sucks, until it feels like he's going to go fucking crazy. And it's so sweetly frustrating, the sensation, and such a relief to be able to feel it, to lose himself in pounding hearts and sticky skin and tangled limbs.
It's not fair for him to have all the fun, though. He slides his free hand down to cup the crease of her leg for a moment, giving Jane time to react, then presses his thumb into her carefully.
“Oh,” she says in surprise as he finds her clit, then again. “Oh. Oh oh.” It's all very polite at first, until she clenches around his hand and grips onto his hair like a vice. She rocks her hips into him with quick snapping motions, and he rubs faster and harder, until he can feel her muscles twitch and tighten. “Ah,” she huffs, pushing down against him. She wraps her other arm around his waist and curls into him, shuddering.
He's pleased with himself, he always was good at getting girls off and it's nice to see that some things haven't changed, but it all just serves to make him even harder, the kind of hard that pushes out all other thoughts except pumping into something and getting some relief. His self-control feels like an elastic band stretched beyond its breaking point, about to snap in spectacular fashion.
Jane sits back and cups his face in her hands, crushing their mouths together again, and sucks his bottom lip between her teeth. She bites at it a little, in rhythm with the slow rocking of her hips, and he just loses it, coming hard enough that the insides of his eyelids are speckled with light. He buries his face in her chest and rides it out with jerky movements, while she scratches her fingernails gently over his hair and back.
It takes him a while to get himself back together again. He's so intimately aware of the sensation of being torn apart from the inside, of his body being the constant enemy, he'd almost forgotten how good it could make him feel.
“Oh,” he murmurs, uncurling a little. “Okay, wow.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, and kisses him softly.
They untangle their limbs, clean themselves up, and fall back into her bed by nine. He's exhausted, could fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, but Jane seems pretty bright-eyed, and he doesn't want to be one of those, 'orgasm then roll over and go to sleep' clichés.
“You're pretty good at that,” Jane says.
He smiles sleepily, pillowing his cheek on his hand. “Lot of female biology classes in college.”
“Everyone should take those,” she says, mirroring him, lying on her side. “Don was a doctor, though, and he never did anything like that.”
“Don?”
“My ex.”
“What did he look like?”
She frowns, but gives it some thought. “Um, blond? I lent Thor some of his clothes, so I guess they're about the same size?”
He nods. “Well, good looking people don't have to make so much of an effort.”
She huffs and pushes him lightly in the shoulder. “You're good looking!”
“I'm okay. I was kind of cute when I was younger.”
She rolls her eyes and shifts in closer. “You're cute now.”
“Sure,” he murmurs, eyelids drooping.
“You're not listening to me,” Jane says, with a laugh in her voice as he drifts off. He smiles into pillow, and Jane pats him on the head before he falls asleep.
-
He wakes up with his knees against his chest, and his head tucked down, with the blanket wrapped tightly around him like a cocoon. It's surprisingly hard to pull himself out of sleep; he feels so peaceful, for once, completely aware of where he is and what's going on that it feels safe enough to just lie there with his eyes closed for a little while longer. The only reason he does get up is because his stomach insists on it.
The other side of the bed is a rumpled pile of sheets and blankets. An empty pile. Bruce scoots to the edge of the bed and checks the clock: ten-thirty am. Maybe she's gone to work already. He doesn't think this was a one time deal. He hopes not, at least.
He snags his boxers and fleece sweater from where they've migrated from the floor to the back of a chair, and puts them on, then grabs his socks, too, because it's damn cold, and steps out into the hall. He pads into the kitchen and peers his head around the doorway carefully. It's empty. His chews on his lip, wondering if it's okay to raid her fridge a little.
“Hey,” Jane says from behind him.
He starts and turns around. “Oh, hey, I thought that you might...” he trails off and smiles. He feels suddenly, inexplicably shy.
“Have gone out and left my conquest to wake up alone?” she finishes.
He grins nervously and tugs his sleeves over his hands. “It's cold in here.”
“Yeah, the heating only works when it wants to. Coffee?”
“Okay,” he says, and follows her into the kitchen. He tries to help out, but gets swiftly directed to the table to sit down.
“So,” she says, and smiles at him over her shoulder. He smiles back, twisting his fingers together. “Do you always sleep like that?”
“Like...? Oh, like a dormouse? Yeah.”
“That's not exactly how I was going to put it...” she says, bringing over two cups of coffee.
“That's what one of my college room mates used to call it, I guess it kind of stuck. I'm generally quite a mousy person, though, so...”
“That's not true,” Jane says disapprovingly, but she lets it go. “Isn't it uncomfortable?”
He lifts his hands in a shrug. “I guess I've just been doing it for so long that... Sometimes when, uh, when Brian was really drunk, Mom used to sleep in my bed with me, and my bed was really small. And sometimes I used to sleep outside their bedroom door to try and stop...” He lifts the corner of his mouth and huffs. “This is a depressing morning after conversation. Let's talk about something else.”
Jane turns the big eyes she had on him down to her coffee. “Yeah, sorry. So... we had sex.”
“Yes, we did.”
“We should do it again sometime.”
“Yes, we should.”
She grins and pushes his leg with her foot. “Then it's settled.”
They sip their coffees in companionable silence, and Bruce likes to think of himself as somewhat highly evolved (ha) but there's a strong undercurrent to all his thoughts of: 'just had sex'. Sex sex sex.
“I'm gonna ask Tony for a job,” he blurts out, before he devolves entirely back into a teenager.
Jane looks caught off guard. “Uh, okay? Aren't you happy working with us?”
“No, no, I am, but... I need to start paying my way.”
“If you need money, we can pay you,” she says.
“No, you're not getting paid for doing the research, there's no reason I should. I just... literally have nothing to my name, and I think I should probably do something about that before I burn all my bridges.”
“You're not going to burn your bridges.”
“Well, Erik's is smouldering.”
She sits forward, frowning. “Has he said something?”
“No... I mean, sort of? He suggested that I might be too old for you.”
Her nostrils flare. “Oh, did he? You know, he vetted my high school boyfriends because he figured that's what dads did, even though my father would never have threatened to run top secret experiments on greasy teenage boys.”
“Well, that is a bit overkill, but I can't blame him for being irritated with me. I'm eating his food, I'm creeping around his apartment, I'm not paying for anything. He's getting pissed. Tony offered me a job a while ago and it's nepotism, but I'm gonna take what I can get. And then maybe I'll be able to pay for my own food and rent somewhere like a real boy.”
“Well, okay, I guess I get that, but...” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then does it again when it falls forward, then just gives up. “Apartment-hunting sucks. You could just, you know, you could move in with me. At least while you're looking. I liked having you here before. You're very... tidy.”
“Um.” He drums his fingertips on his cup and bites the inside of his lip. “I liked being here. Um. You're sure you want a sometimes rage monster living with you?”
She grins. “I'm a rage monster too, when I don't get the grants that I need.”
He can't help it: he smiles back, which pretty much seals the deal. “I'm paying rent, though, I'm not going to keep living off you.”
“Hey, I'm not going complain about someone paying half the rent,” she says.
“I don't know about half,” he murmurs, arching an eyebrow.
“You'll be paying all of it, if you're not careful,” she says, and stands up, crossing the short distance to him. She bends at the waist, tucks another strand of hair behind her ear that's fallen forward, and gives him a light kiss on the lips before going back for her coffee. “I've got a ton of work to go over, you want to come help me?”
“Sure,” he says, getting up to follow her out.
“Oh,” she adds, already out the door, “grab a couple bags of chips, we're gonna work out the trans-Planckian problem.”
“In a day?”
She leans back round the doorframe. “In a morning,” she says, grinning.