Chapter Text
So, the road trip continues.
And it’s nice.
They get photos with the world’s largest ketchup bottle, a giant pink elephant and a massive blue whale sculpture languishing in the water near Catoosa, Oklahoma.
Loki breaks up with Jeff via Skype, gets back together with Jeff via Skype, and then breaks up with him again via a massive screaming argument over the phone at 2am in the morning in Tulsa.
Thor eats some fries so salty that he has to lie down in the back of the van for a full twenty minutes, heart thudding painfully in his chest, before he can drive again.
They visit Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona - historical shops, giant statues, and the Grand Canyon.
It is all delightfully, bearably normal.
They don’t quite follow Route 66, but they come pretty close. Korg delights in the wonders of American cuisine - “Bro if I served milkshakes like this to my whānau back home they’d disown me,” - and Brunnhilde teaches Thor some really cool hand-to-hand fighting moves.
He likes all of them a lot.
But perhaps, Bruce most of all.
Thor’s a pretty scholarly guy. You’d never know it, considering his kind of puppy dog-like golden haired aesthetic - someone once described him as a ‘himbo’, which he took as a compliment, but he does like to hit the books occasionally.
Bruce knows so much. He’s intelligent, and cool, and has this incredible snarky sense of humor that Thor really enjoys. He seems grounded in his world, in a way that Thor’s never been able to achieve, despite the whole ‘being held in a prison medical experimentation thing’.
Thor likes him So Much.
“So, stop me if I’m wrong.” Bruce says, a little bit of a laugh in his voice. They’re sitting on a log, a few miles hike into one of the forests along their road trip route. It’s sunset, there’s a picnic, there’s resolutely no Loki - it’s all very nice. “ You got pranked at med school? You. Of all people?”
“Can’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” Thor shrugs, and bites down on a raspberry. “In that case, I definitely knocked it. Got a concussion. Never again.”
“From slime.”
“From the bucket within which the slime was contained. And my subsequent impact with the floor. It was a time, Bruce, you should have been there.”
“You’ve had quite the life.” Bruce is staring at him, almost a little wistfully.
“ You’ve had quite the life, seven PhDs. What were you thinking?”
“Overcompensating?”
Thor just raises an eyebrow at him. “If I knew we were going to get into such scandalous talk I would have brought wine.”
Bruce blushes, just faintly. “That’s not- It’s not what I meant.”
“Even so.” Thor settles a little more comfortably on the log and reaches out for Bruce’s hand, which Bruce lets him take, albeit a little hesitantly. He rubs his fingers over his knuckles as he speaks. “I think - and take my ‘definitely not a psychiatrist’ opinion with a grain of salt here - that you’ve been through a lot.”
“Not disagreeing.” Bruce says, quietly. He’s still watching Thor with a bemused, though not upset eye.
“You were in that place for gods knows how long. Now you’re out here, everything’s real weird and you’re stuck with a bunch of chaotic people who want different things from you. I just-” Thor takes a deep breath. “I like you a lot. Not just platonically. I’d like to know more about you. Anything at all. But I’m not going to push you for it. You’ve had enough of that already. So, as slow as you want. Hell, I’d take emails or anything. Is that… acceptable?”
Bruce ponders for a moment, still looking a little shy. With what seems like concentrated effort, he flips his hand over and laces their fingers together. He looks up and smiles at Thor. “You don’t need to treat me like I’m made of glass. I’m not going to break. But spending more time with you? I’d like that. A lot.” And with those words, he leans in and kisses Thor.
It’s on the cheek, not on the lips, but he feels his skin tingle with feeling all the same.
Thor grins. “Me too.”
It’s the end of this story, but the beginning of theirs.
This road could take them anywhere.
Fin.