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You wanna teach but not be taught,
And I wanna sell but not be bought.
So let us not be lonesome,
So let us not be lonesome,
Lost in between our needs and wants.
Thor appears on the battlefield.
No, that isn’t a strong enough verb. Thor barges onto the battlefield. Thor crashes into the battlefield. Thor thunders onto the battlefield, eyes flashing, electricity crackling along his arms and up to his new axe. His clothing looks faintly charred and his face is hardened, as though he’s been across the galaxy and through two wars before coming here.
Bruce is wearing several hundred pounds of metal suit, but he’s never felt lighter in his entire goddamned life.
He wants to shed his armor like a snake peeling back old skin, wants to jump to the ground and sprint towards Thor. He wants to grab Thor’s arms, pinch him until it’s certain that he’s really here, not drifting in space somewhere past the remains of Asgard. He wants to feel sold ground beneath him again.
But there isn’t time, there isn’t space, and Bruce isn’t sure he could get out of this suit without being immediately decimated by an alien lizard.
And so instead, he throws back his helmet and shouts to anyone within earshot.
“YOU GUYS ARE SO SCREWED!”
Bruce can’t sleep.
Each time he closes his eyes, he sees something – Wanda screaming as she blasts the life from Vision, Bucky Barnes tumbling into dust, the first spaceship rippling through New York like an engineered hurricane. Thor in the remains of Asgard’s ship, thisclose to blasted to pieces by Thanos.
Hulk memories don’t usually stick, after, but this one is burned in.
Bruce thinks about it now – this self-righteous titan, this plague, this cosmic rhinoceros trampling half the galaxy just because he thinks it will bring some kind of twisted balance – the raccoon had told them all this after the battle, when the remains of the Avengers gathered in new Queen Shuri’s lab and tried to figure out what the fuck they were going to do next – and Bruce can’t stop thinking about it. How selfish it is, to take half the universe just because you want so desperately to be right. To take and take and take, just because you won’t accept that all energy tends towards chaos.
Bruce watches that mad mountain loom large beneath his guest room’s unfamiliar ceiling, watches Thor scream as his life is sucked out, watches wizards and demons dance across the ruins of New York until he can’t take it anymore.
Thor, lying on top of his own guest bed with his armor still on, is no more thunder and lightning. He is the mist after the storm, when the world is shrouded and people pass in the night like forgotten ghosts. He is burnt iron, new wrinkles, hands still clenched into fists.
Thor is burnt iron, but he listens when Bruce talks out his anger. He is steady when Bruce fears he might shake apart.
He is gravity, anchoring Bruce to the earth.
“I think even if there were a bottleneck,” Thor says, “with Thanos wiping out half the possibilities for evolution, between you and me and the rest of the Avengers, we’ve got a lot of good genes left. Or at least, enough of them to make sure that asshole gets what he deserves.”
Bruce isn’t certain he believes it, isn’t even certain Thor believes it. But as they curl into bed together, solid and still and safe, at least for the moment, Bruce thinks he will believe it soon enough.
When Bruce wakes the next morning, Thor is gone.
He spends five minutes drinking in the soft gray sunlight whispering in through the blinds, then ten minutes stretching, re-cataloguing the length of his limbs, the short fuzz of his hair, cast through with dirt and sweat and ash. This body is tiny, old and tired compared to the Hulk, but after two years of the big guy it feels almost new. Bruce tries to remember how often human skin cells are regenerated. Is it every six weeks? Ten?
He decides he’ll look it up later, then goes in search of Thor. This building – the Wakanda royal family’s palace, although they don’t call it that – reminds him of a modern lab, all glass and smooth metal and so clean he thinks there must be an autoclave somewhere. It’s as easy to get lost in as a lab, too. Bruce stumbles into three closets, two kitchens, and a very impressive weaponry before he finds his way out onto the balcony, where Thor is watching the sun rise.
“Hey,” Bruce says.
Thor is quiet – doesn’t seem to register Bruce’s presence. Then Bruce steps closer, and Thor turns. Smiles, brighter than the sun climbing behind him, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s back in his clothes from the day before, though the armor and cape are still back in the bedroom.
“I brought coffee,” Bruce says. The mugs he found are sleek black and slightly slippery, but he’s made it safely this far from kitchen number two and easily closes the distance to Thor. Rests the mugs on the balcony’s edge.
Thor picks one up, tilts his head back, and throws the whole cup back, as though taking a shot. He doesn’t even flinch at what Bruce knows is steaming hot.
“Thank you,” he says.
Bruce takes a sip of his own mug, then rests his elbows on the balcony. It’s cool and smooth in the summer heat. And the landscape stretches out before them – long plains of grass and shrubs, tinted faintly yellow in the sunlight.
Bruce shifts closer until his elbow is touching the curve of Thor’s right arm. Thor lifts that arm and drapes it around Bruce’s shoulders, letting Bruce relax into him.
Warm, solid, still.
“What are you thinking about?” Bruce asks him.
“Thanos said I should’ve gone for the head,” Thor replies. “I went for the chest. I know he had all the stones, I could see them – but still I went for the chest. I let him win.”
“You weren’t thinking,” Bruce says.
Thor slumps. Leans his head against the top of Bruce’s. He smells like ash, and rain, and freeze-dried meat.
“I know,” he says. “I didn’t stop to consider – I was too focused on hurting him – and I failed my people. What kind of king am I? I destroy our world, I let half of us die, and I don’t even avenge them properly.”
“Okay, first of all, you will,” Bruce says. “You won’t make the same mistake twice. And second – you can’t blame yourself for not thinking. You’re all anger right now, Thor. And it’s hard to be smart when you’re angry.”
“I guess you’d know.” Thor glances down at Bruce over the curve of his shoulder, half-smiling. “Although if anyone can be both smart and angry, it’d be you, Banner. Like all that stuff you were saying last night about bottlenecks and conservation strategies and peer review.”
Bruce grins at that – but it turns bitter as he thinks back to the past couple of days.
“You’d be surprised,” he says. “If Thanos had shown up on that battlefield before you, I…”
“You what?” Thor steps back, dropping his arms to grab Bruce by the wrists.
“I don’t know,” Bruce admits. “The big guy isn’t very cooperative these days, but Banner can still do some damage. Especially when he thinks his friend was blasted to pieces by a crazy eugenics-obsessed warlord.”
“Wait, you thought –” Thor searches Bruce’s face, blue eyes piercing.
“The last I saw of you was chained up on that ship,” Bruce says. “I don’t usually get Hulk’s memories, but that… that stuck with both of us.”
“Banner, I’m sorry,” Thor says. “I didn’t realize… “ He’s running his hands up and down Bruce’s arms now, tracing patterns, as though he could conjure up sheets of armor beneath his fingertips.
“Bruce,” Bruce corrects him. “We’ve been through enough shit at this point. No need for formalities.”
“Bruce.”
Thor drops his forehead to Bruce’s. He’s burning – and Bruce wonders if all Asgardians run hot like this, or it’s only Thor that touching him feels like leaning into the sun.
Bruce raises his arms. Reaches to trace the sides of Thor’s face, his rough stubble, the skin beside his eyes. Thor’s eyelids flutter closed at the touch.
“You’ve got new wrinkles,” Bruce says, quiet.
“Yeah, well. Taking the full force of a star tends to do that.”
“Taking the full force of a what –”
But Bruce will have to ask again later, because Thor is kissing him.
It’s strange, at first – a bit wet, slippery, both of them out of practice and going slopping just to stay connected. Bruce slides his hands into Thor’s hair, helps him get a better angle – then opens his mouth and licks into Thor’s. Thor tastes like the morning after a thunderstorm, and he kisses like he embraces – a natural disaster, all-encompassing and magnetic, never pretending to be anything he isn’t. Bruce is out of practice, sure, but once they find a rhythm and begin to move together – it’s all sparks.
Bruce pulls back, finally, when his lungs start to protest. Thor follows, but Bruce stalls him with a hand to Thor’s cheek, rubbing the stubble there. Thor turns his head just enough to press a kiss to Bruce’s palm – still not breaking eye contact.
Bruce feels something burning. Crackling. He’s a power line during an electrical storm, and the thunder just reached five seconds away.
“Is this okay?” Thor asks. He rests his forehead against Bruce’s again, lifting one hand to sit in the curve of Bruce’s collarbone. “I’m sorry, I should have asked first, I just –”
“No, it’s fine, more than fine,” Bruce reassures him. “I just… I think the big guy is a bit jealous.”
“Well.” Thor smiles – really smiles this time, all the way up to his bright blue eyes. “I guess I’ll just have to make sure he gets a similar experience, the next time I see him.”
“You would –” Bruce starts. Then sorts through his few Hulk memories, all of which seem to involve Thor. “Okay.”
Thor takes that as an invitation to lean in again, and Bruce is far from complaining.
That night – after long arguments and longer meals and still longer memorial services – Bruce goes to Thor’s room again.
When he pushes the door open, Thor sits upright in bed. His silhouette is dark but silvery around the edges, framed in moonlight.
“Bruce,” Thor says, smile bright in the shadows.
Bruce takes a step into the room, shuts the door behind him.
“You said to Rocket,” he says, “that you had nothing left to lose. You were wrong. You have half of your people. You have the legacies of those you lost. You have the rest of the Avengers. And… you have me.”
For a moment, Thor is silent. Still. Then he extends one arm, palm open.
Bruce crosses the room in a few steps, sheds his shoes, and climbs into bed. Thor pulls Bruce against him, presses his cheek to the top of Bruce’s head.
“You make a convincing argument,” he says, his voice quiet as distant thunder.
Bruce smiles. “I know.”
Bruce falls asleep like that, easy. Thor is warm and solid beside him, strong as the gravitational pull of any planet.