33 Apocalypse Avenue, Sunday Morning

[gotacondition]

Bruce felt weird about this moving arrangement for a lot of reasons. One of the smallest factors was the fact that, as he walked the last few steps to his new house with just a medium-sized backpack on his shoulders and a coffee thermos in one hand, he realized that this probably wasn't how most forty-two-year-olds did things, and he was pretty

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[professor_lyman]

Josh gave him a friendly smile--a forty something with a backpack was what he'd been ten years ago. Now he was in his fifties and still used a backpack. Backpacks were awesome.

"Need some more coffee?" he offered.

[professor_lyman]

"They're just so wrong, Bruce!" Josh replied.

[gotacondition]

Bruce barked a laugh. "I think my version of that happens mostly at conventions," he said. "The flame-wars there are much more passive-aggressively polite."

[professor_lyman]

Josh ran his fingers through his hands and laughed. "Been to those too," he said. "The Democratic National Convention is a nightmare of people who think I owe them more money for their doomed campaigns."

[gotacondition]

"I'm lucky I've never been anyone's go-to source of funding," Bruce laughed. He was a guy whose entire life fit into a backpack, after all. "But I've seen people get accosted at conferences and it doesn't look pretty." Remembering the first five minutes of a story he'd been told not long ago, he added, "I actually have a... colleague who turned someone down for funding on his project and the guy held a pretty violent grudge for over a decade."

[professor_lyman]

"Most of the people involved in politics are out-of-shape weenies," Josh said. "I could take 'em."

This was not really true.

[gotacondition]

"I guess that's true," Bruce granted. "You'd expect scientists to be about the same, but..."

But Marvel scientists were exceptions.

[professor_lyman]

What with the superpowers and occasional evil-doing, yeah.

"Well, there are only so many grants," Josh allowed.

[gotacondition]

"It brings out people's bad sides," Bruce agreed. Like, really bad. Come on, Killian.

"Well," he said with a swing of his arms, "as long as we're not all going to compete for, I don't know, the last cup of coffee in the morning, we should be free of that drama here. So in a way, I'm helping you."

Because tea.

[professor_lyman]

Eww tea.

"I like helpful roommates," Josh said. "As long as you don't mind me watching CSPAN--" obsessively, with color commentary, "--we'll do fine."

[gotacondition]

"Hey, I've always wanted an excuse to follow domestic politics more," Bruce said agreeably. Or, well, no he hadn't, but he'd take it anyway. "You don't mind if I commandeer the TV during the off-hours for Discovery documentaries, do you?"

[professor_lyman]

"Not at all," Josh said. "That one about North America has been great."

Josh: Major Nerd.