The Devil You Know 15
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A/N: Sorry for the late update! Life happened. :P
So. Just finished teaching a course on Norse Myth and loved it! I got some great feedback about my students talking about my class in other classes and at home, so I've already been asked back to teach it next year. CONVERTING FOLLOWERS AWWW YISSS.
And now, your feature presentation!
Just Fine
"Hey, Bruce."
Bruce smiled and nodded at Natasha as he passed her, answered with a soft-spoken, demure "good morning". He was looking worse for the wear, he knew, could see it reflected in her eyes, if only for a fraction of a second. It had been a tough year. The... other guy had been coming out to play more, and he had tried to escape him all the way to the other side of the world (again).
But things had calmed - he had calmed - and now he thought he'd give the Avengers another go. It had been three months and five days since his last incident, he was proud to say, but that didn't keep the SHIELD operative who escorted him from keeping a smile on her face and a hand on her holster.
Clint passed him in the hallway, munching on a bag of chips. "Hey, Bruce," he said with a crooked smile, and Bruce nodded and smiled in reply, said nothing about the politeness of speaking with one's mouth full.
Before stopping at his - old, abandoned, dusty - room, Bruce stopped by the workshop. He poked his head in but was too distracted by the amount of new equipment, gizmos, and gadgets for his eyes to land anywhere.
"Hey, Bruce," Tony called from the other side of the room, and Bruce swiveled to greet him, another polite smile on his face when -
"Yes, hello, Bruce."
Another face much, much closer, with green eyes and a wicked, too-familiar grin.
It had been sixteen minutes since his last incident, and Bruce still ran his hands through his soot-dusted hair and paced. His clothes were in tatters at his feet, but Natasha had wordlessly handed him a pair of pants, old and worn in the knees and crotch but still better quality than he was used to.
Tony had told him not to touch anything, had smiled widely but brokenly as he stared out at "his babies" and tried to salvage what he could from the wreckage. Loki sat at Tony's desk, booted feet propped up next to the keyboard. He had the gall to look amused by the whole situation, unconcerned by the mess, but he schooled his face into something almost like guilt whenever Tony looked at him.
Bruce wasn't sure whether he wanted to help, to apologize, or to shout and rage about a certain god of mischief being here and-
Oh, wait. He'd already done that last part, hadn't he?
"A little help here would be nice," Tony groused at Loki as he fiddled with a broken table leg.
Loki's eyes were wide and innocent as he said, "But, Tony, darling, you said I was not to touch anything in here under any circumstances."
Tony cursed and shoved aside some debris, looking close to tears. "Fine!" he snapped. "I take it back!"
Loki's smile was slow and devious and sent a shiver down Bruce's spine. The god leaned forward and swung his feet to the floor in one smooth motion. "Very well," he said, and then he closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and murmured soft nonsense under his breath. The furniture started to shift and knit itself back together, and within minutes, the room was exactly as it had been before Bruce's incident.
Tony made a sound somewhere between a sigh and whimper, jumped to his feet and pulled Loki to him in a kiss.
Bruce had to take deep, calming breaths to keep from freaking out.
"Okay," he growled, "what the hell? What the hell?"
"Easy, Bruce," Tony said, palms out in a placating gesture.
Bruce looked down at his hands to see them clenched and shaking. He closed his eyes, uncurled his fingers, and focused on his breathing: in, out. In, out. In, , out.
In, out.
In.
Out.
Bruce opened his eyes to see Loki wrap long, spidery arms around Tony's shoulders, and he closed his eyes to start the process over again.
"Guess you've missed a few things while you were gone," Tony said with a shaky laugh.
Bruce shook his head, pursed his lips and walked out the door before he ended up killing someone.
"You get used to it."
"Uh huh."
Steve and Bruce sat side by side on the roof, staring out at nothing, holding drinks that wouldn't get Steve drunk and that Bruce was too wary to drink. Mostly for the feel of the bottles in their hands, Steve had said. For nostalgia, for the remembrance of something that used to be calming and so, by association, must be calming itself.
Instead, Bruce had to keep reminding himself not to drink from the bottle in his hand, or at least to only sip where Steve guzzled. He was beginning to understand what it was like to be a pregnant woman.
"It's weird at first."
"Uh huh."
More awkward silence, more staring into nothing, more pretending to drink booze that both of them wanted but couldn't really have.
Finally, Bruce shook himself, became more aware of everything, of the condensation on the bottle in his hands, the wet label starting to peel under his nails, the warmth and solidity of Steve Rogers by his side, and the stir of a breeze that made an otherwise pleasant night just this side of uncomfortable.
Bruce shivered and hugged himself, pulled his legs up close to his body. Steve continued to stare, sip, and not notice anything around him.
"How long?" Bruce asked. Steve blinked as though just coming to and broke the pattern by looking at Bruce and then down at the bottle his hands were fiddling with.
"Almost a year," he answered with a small shake of his head. He hadn't expected that.
"And no incidents?" Bruce asked.
Steve chuffed. "I wouldn't say no incidents," he replied. "A few. One or two big ones, but. They've mended it each time."
Bruce shook his head, wiped a hand down his face. "SHIELD's okay with it?"
"They're keeping an eye on things."
Bruce nodded, frowned. "And you?"
Steve shifted his weight, tensing just enough for Bruce to read his unease and uncertainty in his posture. "I think," he said, only to shake his head and trail off. "I don't know what to think."
Bruce nodded and went back to pretending to drink his beer.
After dinner, Bruce liked to relax in front of the TV (a sinfully large contraption that hurt his eyes if he stared at it too long) and read the newspaper. He usually put on the news for background noise, though he changed the channel if he saw something that made him depressed or angry. He knew the world had problems and didn't need to be reminded.
It was more the routine of it that he found soothing than anything else, the mindlessness, the normality. So when Bruce put up his feet and started to thumb through the paper, he was jolted out of his sense of ease when the channel changed to reruns of Seinfeld. The newspaper in hand rustled as he folded it down to peer over the top. On the other end of the couch sat Loki, looking eerily normal in jeans and a t-shirt, bare feet propped up on the coffee table and remote in hand. He turned to meet Bruce's stare with an innocent smile.
Bruce cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly, pausing to breathe to keep the Other Guy from making an appearance.
"Um," he said softly, "if you don't mind, Loki, I sort of have this routine -"
"Well, this is my routine," Loki replied with a friendly smile.
"Your...?" Bruce furrowed his brow. He pursed his lips, closed his eyes to take a deep breath. "No, it isn't! I've been here at this time every day for a week and haven't seen you here once!"
"Well, maybe I'm just starting a routine."
"Oh dear Lord." Bruce wiped a hand over his face and prayed for patience.
"But you misunderstand," Loki said oh-so-sweetly. "My routine is to not have a routine. Though I do enjoy this mortal Seinfeld here. He is rather amusing, if self-obsessed."
Bruce remembered when he used to watch Seinfeld religiously, back when it was still fresh. It occurred to him that these episodes would be new to Loki.
"Fine," he sighed. "I suppose there are worse things you could do."
"Careful," Loki murmured, though his eyes remained on the screen, "I might see that as a challenge." His lips quirked up in a smirk.
Bruce shook his head and set down the paper, sat back to enjoy the reruns. He watched and chuckled at the familiar lines, found it had been long enough since he'd last seen this particular episode for him to still enjoy it.
"Is it customary," Loki asked at one point, "to deny people soup in such a fashion?"
"No," Bruce laughed. "No, that's... that's the joke, see." Loki nodded but still looked deep in throught.
During a commercial break, Bruce glanced at Loki in his non-threatening t-shirt and bare feet and asked, "Is this your way of trying to win me over?"
"Please," Loki scoffed. "Like I care what you think of me. If I were 'trying', you'd already be my lap dog. Besides, you're far more entertaining when you're green and angry and smashing things."
"Things like your face," Bruce said without thinking. Eyes wide and smile almost guilty, he said, "Sorry."
Loki, on the other hand, merely laughed. "No, no," he said. "You went up in my estimation for that. Cheeky."
That struck Bruce as the sort of thing Tony would say, and he stared at Loki for a long moment, wondering.
He heard footsteps approaching from the kitchen, and then-
"Hey, guys," Tony called as he walked through the door. And then Bruce saw it, though just barely since it was there and gone in a flash: Loki's eyes lit up when he saw Tony. That smile was gone quicker than Bruce could blink, but it was there, the type of micro-expression, of reflex, that he doubted even Loki could fake.
Tony plopped down onto the couch in between them, pressed up against Loki who now looked indifferent, staring at the television screen.
"Everything alright?" Tony asked Bruce. Bruce realized that he had been staring at them, blinked and smiled in apology.
"Just fine," he answered with a private smile as he turned back to his paper. "Everything's just fine."