Who: Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers Where: Marvel Door - New York City - Coffee Shop When: THE OTHER DAY What: Introductions! Warnings: None!
Hair slightly unkempt, glasses a bit crooked, skin on the pale side, eyes more tired than bright, but he was out and about. Bruce Banner was out and about and feeling alright, if not a bit lost. No one seemed to know him, except Natasha. And Natasha was all kinds of wrong herself. He supposed it was only a matter of time before they did their research as well and learned all about him and his...Situation. It always seemed much easier to say ‘I’m Tony Stark and I have a squillion dollars and a flying suit. Want to see my Jet Pack?’ than it was to say ‘Hello, I’m Dr. Bruce Banner and turn into a great green Hulk with impulse control problems. Want to see my psych eval?’ The fact that he was here, on this side of the door was the result of Anton Sparke unilaterally deciding to give the door another visit. He tried to be understanding, he knew what it was like having the Hulk aching to break out. Bruce was used to it, Anton seemed like a decent enough person and he didn’t deserve to put up with the likes of Bruce Banner and the Hulk running around in his head.
Bruce tried to be quiet and unassuming, but Anton was a scientist! Bruce was always paying attention and making suggestions here and there. Then again, there was the situation between their worlds and the science of both places...Some things just didn’t exist in Anton’s world. And some things were moot points in Bruce’s. In any case, Anton decided to cross over for a bit of a break and Bruce was half scared as soon as he did the Hulk would just start raging and tear apart where ever they happened to wind up. That wasn’t the case, and Bruce found himself able to comfortably walk down the street, research in hand, Anton mostly checked out which he assumed was for a nap of some kind (however that worked), and he was going to try and be as calm as possible.
Naturally, having found himself in this strange position he did as much research as he could. And Anton helped, Anton gave him the intel on the Vegas world. Fictional characters...It didn’t make a lot of sense to Bruce that the Hulk would be the figment of someone’s imagination. It didn’t seem fair that he got handed that because someone “thought it up.” He also didn’t like what he found out as he dug deeper. Everything that went bad in his life, everything that went bad in Hulk’s life, it happened because of his friends. The closest thing to friends he had. He wasn’t social, and he was withdrawn and a nervous sort. But so many terrible things had already happened, and it seemed so many were yet to come (space, Tony? Seriously?). Bruce was good at taking responsibility for Hulk’s actions. Even though he had no reason to, he understood that if Bruce Banner was neutralized, Hulk was neutralized. Hulk did a lot of good in the world, but he did even more damage. He was volatile and unpredictable. It wasn’t fair, but life wasn’t fair. Bruce had accepted that, and he hoped that for a while at least, he’d be able to keep things less destructive and more productive. Just to meet the rest of the team and see where they were in their lives.
Bruce was a human being, he liked the connections he had, even if he didn’t always know how to react to them. He wanted to know about his “friends.” He just half hoped what they knew about him wouldn’t keep them away while they found their feet in this world. And more than that, he hoped that Hulk took a rest for a bit until they all learned how they fit. So for now there was coffee, in a darkish corner of a coffee shop that was situated on a darkish corner of a darkish street. Coffee and a donut and a redweld folder full of notes that Bruce was scribbling all over. If he had the whole place to himself he’d probably have every bit of information taped to the walls with arrows and timelines all over them. He wanted to see where things crossed and came back together. He had been a founding member of the Avengers, but Hulk didn’t always work well with others so he didn’t feel right staying around all that long. But now they were all back...And seemingly unsure about each other as they all had been back then. Maybe things were different this time around, for whatever reason Bruce knew more than they did, but he still knew them. It was all he had to go on and he’d take it for now.
Steve was in the coffee shop for reasons that weren’t very different than Bruce. He wanted to give New York another try, which really meant he missed it. It wasn’t his New York, but the geography was still the same, and it was bittersweet and painful, but he couldn’t stay away. He figured it was a good turn, anyway, getting Maren out of Las Vegas every once in awhile. The little gal was a problem, but he didn’t have answers to that problem yet. He talked at her, but she didn’t listen, and he knew she heard him. He didn’t have any luck controlling her either, so New York was his best bet to keep her from getting even further tangled up in the mess she was making for herself.
The coffee shop stood on the spot a diner had once. He’d gone there with Bucky plenty of times after a night out - and nights out with Bucky generally resulted in Steve sitting on a couch alone, while Bucky got all the pretty girls. Back then, Steve had wanted to be Bucky so bad that he could taste it. These days, he’d give just about anything to have Bucky back. He’d never been the kind of guy to feel sorry for himself, and so it was new, this feeling that had come with the anger of learning he’d lost everything.
He ordered a coffee, black, ma’am, and he had to repeat the order three times. No, he didn’t want a caramelwhatever, and a regular size was just fine, and thanks, but no pump of anything. He took the drink in his hand, and he found a seat by the window. He was dressed in khakis and a white, button down shirt, and he stared out at the strange world beyond the pane of glass. If he saw Bruce Banner, he didn’t react to it, because he didn’t know Bruce Banner. Bruce, like everyone else in New York, was just a face. The faces he cared about weren’t there, and he was a soldier without a war, and man he needed to stop feeling sorry for himself.
Tripping over oneself to get to Captain Rogers wasn’t unheard of, but it certainly was by Bruce’s standards. As soon as he saw him sit down he gathered up the stack of papers he was working on with a bit of a crumple and as he grabbed his coffee cup some of it sloshed over the edge onto his fingers and leaving a few splashes on his pant leg, but he scarcely noticed at that moment. He’d figured out earlier on that Steve was here and not dead. Which, was odd enough. But Steve wasn’t just here and not dead, Steve was here.
So it was with an armful of disorganized papers, a muffled “damn” under his breath when his knee hit the bottom of the table as he stood up, that he made his way (sloshy coffee and all) over to Steve’s table and stood there for a moment realizing he hadn’t come up with anything clever to say. At all. So he was stuck with what blurted out first, “Steve?” and a very perplexed look because well...Steve was here. And not dead. “It’s Bruce. Bruce Banner.”
Steve had gotten used to people stopping him for autographs before, in his own time. Got to admit, he’d even grown to like it, because he liked people. But this was different, now was different. No one had stopped to ask him for an autograph since he’d woken up. Kids weren’t running along New York’s streets with trashcan lids painted red, white and blue. Dames didn’t intentionally bump into him in foot traffic. Nah, those days were over for Captain America, replaced by things like video games and books that guys and gals read on square things with glowing screens. He wasn’t even bigger than most of the guys out there now, and so he had gotten used to melting into the crowd. It surprised him, then, that someone would come up and know his name. He didn’t immediately recognize Bruce’s name from the journals, but he held out a respectful hand anyway, a habit from his time. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Banner. Unless... Do we know each other?”
It took a bit of a disorganized shuffle to get things moved to one hand but he shook Steve’s when offered and without being asked he set his stuff down with a bit of a kerfuffle and sat down opposite him. “We do. Where I come from we do. And it’s nice to meet you as well. I don’t really know how all of this is supposed to work,” he even started looking through his papers for any notes he’d jotted down about what he’d had Anton research about Steve, but it was all over the place. He paused what he was doing and sat back a bit, straightening his glasses and gave a bit of a frazzled smile. “Sorry, it’s been a bit jarring.”
Steve started out watching the other man politely, and then the politeness turned into something warmer, that unguarded smile that was all Steve and no filters or walls. “It’s alright. You gotta do what you gotta do,” he said, letting Bruce spread out whatever he needed to spread out on the small coffee shop table. “What’d’ya got there?” he asked, motioning to the papers. He was pretty sure this guy was a scientist, and Steve was of two minds about science and technology, but there was something about the man sitting across from him that Steve liked, and he was willing to trust that gut instinct.
Bruce straightened his glasses and smiled a bit crookedly and nervously, but warmly. “What?” he asked when Steve asked what he had, “Oh. Right. Well...Most people here don’t know me at all, but I know everyone else. I’ve been doing a lot of research and having my uh-” he paused, what did one call Anton? “helper on the other side look into some things for me too. I’m just trying to find out where and when we might all have a common ground,” before Hulk showed his face and ruined everything. Or worse, reminded them all what he already knew. Hulk was dangerous. Not evil. But dangerous. “Trying to draw on similarities across genres and timelines. I’m afraid it’s not my strong suit, but research, research I can do.” As a gesture of good faith he handed Steve a folder with “Bruce Banner” written on the tab. “This is me,” he said mostly as a segue to the scribbled pages of notes he had that he was thumbing through, “There is some stuff in here about Tony, and you, not to sound like a complete creepy something or other, I’m just...Trying to piece things together.” Lovely first impression as usual, Dr. Banner. Though to be fair, anyone who met the Hulk first...They got the really bad first impression.
Every time the other man spoke, Steve liked him more. There was something familiar about the way the guy rambled, something honest in his lack of pretense. Steve liked that, honest guys, people. Honesty, Steve corrected in his own mind. He liked honesty. He took the folder labeled Bruce Banner, and he began to thumb through it idly, the way you look through something to be polite. But, almost immediately, he stopped.
A what?
Steve was born July 4th, 1920. Warren G Harding was president, the tommy gun had just been patented and the band-aid had been invented. He “died” in 1945, when everything was World War II and Adolf Hitler was the boogeyman in the closet. Nowhere in those 25 years had he seen a... He paged back in the file... A Hulk?
It took a second, but Steve got over the surprise, and he just shined that little boy’s smile at Bruce. He held the folder back. “Are you just a different kind of Super Soldier, Dr. Banner?” he asked. “I already met the one we got in a metal suit.”
Bruce chewed the inside of his cheek while Steve went through the file. Experience had taught him to know exactly when someone came across Hulk, and he held his breath momentarily. He let himself become a bit more comfortable when Steve smiled at him and thought about how to answer that question. “You’ve met Tony?” he decided to stick to that instead. “Tony’s...Different,” he said though it was just a bit fondly. There was a terse history with Bruce and the rest of the Avengers. Well...There was a terse history with Hulk and the rest of the Avengers. Bruce had no place except using his brain when it was deemed necessary. “Brilliant. But different.”
He couldn’t avoid the question forever, so he just shook his head slightly. “Not really no, Hulk is um,” pause, “Well Hulk is,” pause, chew on cheek, repeat, “Hulk is a part of me that I don’t quite know how to control. Hulk is pure adrenaline and emotion. I’m none of those things. Hulk kind of,” he smiled almost fondly. Anton Sparke interjected in his mind with his assessment of the situation and Bruce went with it, “Kind of lets his freak flag fly, and gets into a lot of trouble doing it.” He wasn’t about to go into the psychological part of things, that was enough to make his own head spin. The protective nature of the Hulk was something he was still getting used to, the fact that it was a mechanism to protect himself from daddy issues was enough to make Freud retire young and Bruce didn’t buy it. Not all of it. “I’m nuclear scientist, he’s kind of a side effect of a laboratory accident. He comes in handy in a fight but there’s a learning curve there.” And there was the hope, that this learning curve, now that Bruce had access to his entire life story, including the future, that maybe it was something that could be controlled. Or at least toned down when Hulk was in destructo mode.
“I knew his dad,” Steve said of Tony. It wasn’t said with fondness, like Bruce’s own tone when he talked about Tony; it was said with respect, a soldier’s respect, which is what he felt for Howard Stark - had felt. If there was a team he’d always be on, it was Howard’s, and it showed in his unguarded features. “He was good man.” He smiled, all crooked and boy. “Different, but a good man, even though I wouldn’t trust him around a dame.” He took a sip of his coffee, and he tried to find the right words for his first impression of Tony. Steve was willing to be slow like that, to think it through. He saved hurry for the battlefield, and he kept it out of the coffee shop. “Tony’s a risk taker, maybe too much, and I gotta say that I’m pretty sure we’d clash in a fight, but I’d still want him at my back.” It was, for Steve, high praise.
Steve wasn’t exactly sure what letting a freak flag fly included, but he got the general picture. A big green thing that was all that emotional stuff everyone kept hidden out of sight. He was guessing Hulk was strong too, or he wouldn’t be included in whatever this crazy team everyone kept talking about was. “Just a different kind of Super Soldier,” he finally said, and it was the kind of definitive decision that - once made - never changed. It was acceptance, and once Steve accepted someone he never looked back. Maybe it wasn’t what he was supposed to do, and he was pretty sure one of those files Bruce was holding was about him. Maybe the file would say he hated the big green thing, and maybe it would say he hated Tony Stark, but Steve wasn’t willing to fall into line for a file with his name on it.
Decision made, Steve turned his attention to something that had been worrying him. “I think we got to join together, the group of us on the journals, but the others are insisting on following someone who isn’t here. What are your thoughts on that? Because I think we should join up on our own. If Director Fury shows up, then we join his infantry, but until then? I’d rather we form a team, than follow something that isn’t here.”
Bruce waited for the inevitable barrage of questions and he couldn’t help but smile when they didn’t come. It was a bit weird getting used to someone he’d known for so long, but he was glad that Steve didn’t seem like he was all that much different after all. “Something like that,” he said with a chuckle.
When Steve started talking about everyone teaming up he chuckled again, quite fondly, and nodded his head. “I can’t say we always play nicely together, but I do think you’re right. I think logically it makes sense for us to team up. And frankly, following Director Fury when he’s not here sounds like something he’d smack us all down for because it doesn’t make any sense. If he shows up I imagine he’ll want us all to mellow out and listen to his words of wisdom, but for now I think you’re right.”
It was easy to agree with Steve most of the time, he’d always been rather sensible. They all had their moments, but there was a part of Bruce that rather hoped this might be more of a “fresh start” than anything else. With everything he’d been through with these men (and women), he hoped he’d have them in his corner once again. At least for a little while.