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It was a Friday afternoon when it started.
Phrasing it like that might make it sound more dramatic than what it actually was, and Tony would probably laugh at how he put it, but according to Bruce, it's just the right amount of drama. And anyway, listen. Tony was just a supporting character to the last couple of weeks that were basically a rollercoaster of ridiculousness for Bruce, so if anyone has any right in making it sound dramatic it's him.
So, yeah. It started.
He had just finished his last physics lesson and was cleaning up the blackboard, dreaming of finally being able to go home and throw himself on the sofa and sleep for ten years, when he asked his pupils if they had any questions. The only hand to be raised was Peter Parker's, one of his (objectively) smartest students, and he couldn't help but smile by reflex. He really liked that kid, always making bright comments and asking just the right questions. He reminded Bruce of a smaller and younger Tony, in a way.
"Yes, Parker?"
"Are you single?" the kid asked without missing a beat, pulling his arm down and onto his desk with innocent, curious eyes, as if he had just asked him if he could please explain the laws of thermodynamics again, he didn't quite get them the first time around.
A couple of students snickered, and Peter's friend, Ned, hid his face between his large hands in embarrassment, but they mostly seemed... curious? He couldn't be sure, but they almost seemed like they had been waiting for someone to muster the courage to ask him that question, and like they really wanted to hear his answer, which- well that's pretty off-putting, to be honest.
"I'm flattered, Parker," he replied, choosing to be cocky, as he put his books away without looking up at the class to hide his light blush, "But I'm a bit too old for you. Anyways remember to study chapter 5 for next week and-"
"Aw, come on, sir," a second kid whined, a couple of rows behind Peter. He immediately recognised him as Hailey, a kid he has seen floating around Tony in multiple occasions- Probably another one of his interns, "We're not gonna judge you if you are. We're just curious"
Bruce closed his bag with a quick snap, then looked up at his overly excited students. He tried to look severe, a poor imitation of the look he has seen way too often on Steve's squared face, but he knew he had failed miserably when a couple of girls in the first row had to lower their heads as not to laugh right in his face.
"Chapter 5," he repeated, pointing at the class at large, then at Parker in particular, "And chapter 6 too, for good measure"
He ignored the whines and groans as he left the room, hoping to at least have put an end to the weird and uncalled for curiosities about his personal life.
The weird and uncalled for curiosities about his personal life didn't end.
They only got worse.
On Monday morning- also known as god's worst invention after mosquitos, according to Bruce- he was approached by Stephen, Tony's husband, on his way to the university.
He has always had a feline-like attitude- Stephen, that is- that made him particularly graceful, dignified, and often unnerving, and that allowed him to sneak up on people with a quick but silent pace that always managed to scare the shit out of Bruce. That morning wasn't any different.
"Son of a-" he exclaimed when he finally noticed the medicine professor walking at his side, trembling hands in his pockets and a casual smirk on his lips, as he flailed around trying not to drop his freshly made and much-needed coffee, "You gotta stop doing that, dude. At least wear a bell or something"
Stephen smirked even more, and he knew that was the closest he was going to get to an apology.
"How was your weekend, Bruce?" he casually asked, lifting his head and closing his eyes to embrace the cold March breeze with a tiny smile, like a wolf who had just woken up and was ready to face a day of hunting in the freezing snow. Bruce only snuggled further into his scarf.
"Fine, fine," he replied, pausing a moment to take a sip of his coffee, "Definitely better than the rest of the week"
"Why? What happened?" asked Stephen, opening his eyes again to look at him intensely. Like he was waiting for a specific shoe to drop.
Odd.
"Just- lots of stress," he shrugged, "I had a midterm on Thursday and four kids cried on me, Thompson bragged about his physics project for a good half an hour to me on Wednesday, oh, and Parker asked me some weird personal questions on Friday, it was unsettling, to say the least"
"Tony's intern?" asked Stephen, probably just to fill the silence and keep the conversation going. Tony loved that kid and had him at his and Stephen's place in more than one occasion, there was no way his husband didn't know who he was.
"Yeah, he asked me if I was single," he laughed softly, expecting his friend to do the same. Except Stephen wasn't laughing at all, and was instead looking at him with the same intense gaze as before.
"Well, are you?"
"Am I what?" asked Bruce, feeling utterly confused. It was way too early to deal with Stephen's usual cryptic behaviour.
"Single," he clarified, and Bruce frowned at him. Why was everyone so interested in his love life?
Fortunately, he was kept from answering when Wanda, one of the youngest teachers and new member of their friends' group, walked right into him, too busy reading the book she was holding to notice her surroundings.
Various apologies and offers to replace the coffee the girl just knocked out of his hands ensued, and the conversation was lost.
"Hey Bruce, are you busy on Friday night?"
Bruce looked up from the book he was reading- Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe, more specifically- to look at Steve from across the break room. He was wearing his reading glasses, a tool he had started to need recently (damn his age), and that made his eyes look abnormally big. Steve smiled fondly at the sight, leaning back against the counter.
"Um, I haven't gotten that far in planning my life," he admitted, taking the glasses off and putting them on top of his head to rub at his tired eyes. When he removed his hands he noticed Tony filling a cup of coffee on Steve's left, clearly listening to the conversation even if he tried to act like he wasn't, "But I don't think so. Why? Do you have some kids I need to tutor?"
"Not quite," replied his friend, unfurling his arms from his thick chest and putting his hands in his pockets, trying to look casual. It didn't work perfectly, so Bruce had a feeling this conversation wasn't something Steve had started by his own will and accord, but rather something he was forced to do, "One of the teachers from the law department- Sharon, her name is- asked me out on a date. Poor girl didn't notice the wedding ring. I said I'm not available but I got her number anyway in case I found a match for her, I thought you might be interested?"
If Tony had been a dog, his ears would've been completely turned towards Bruce at this point, waiting for his reaction.
Bruce set his book on the table in front of him a bit too violently and folded his arms, annoyed. He didn't look remotely as assertive as Steve did, but it was a start.
"What's the matter with you guys?" he asked, addressing Tony as well as his friend, "Why are you all so interested in my love life?"
"It's just-" Steve rubbed at the back of his head, looking uncomfortable, which only confirmed Bruce's suspicions that he didn't want to have anything to do with this conversation, "You haven't shown interest in anybody since we've known you and we thought-"
"You know, Tony," said Bruce, effectively cutting Steve off- who looked immensely relieved- in favour of sizing up his other friend, who was still stubbornly acting like he was minding his own business, "If you wanted to ask about who I'm dating you could've done it yourself instead of sending your interns, your husband, and your ex after me"
Steve looked insulted by being reduced to Tony's ex instead of his own person but he was kept from replying when Tony turned around on his heels to finally address Bruce.
"Alright, you caught me," he admitted defeat by holding his hands up and revealing a t-shirt with a tiny kitten with a lab coat and glasses on it. It made Bruce a tiny bit less annoyed at him, and he had to fight back a smile, "It's just that everyone is pairing off and you never wanted to share your love life with me so I thought you might be more open with someone else?"
He said it like a question, like even he wasn't sure of what he was doing.
"You thought I might be more open about my personal life with a 19-year-old than I am with my best friend?" he asked, dumbfounded. He couldn't believe this man was classified as the smartest teacher in the state along with Hank Pym.
"Yeah that wasn't a good plan was it," Tony murmured, rubbing the back of his head as Steve had done not long before.
"Well why don't you make things easy for us and help us out?" asked Steve, grinning encouragingly, "Why don't you let us set you up with someone?"
"I'm not going on any blind date with anybody, and I'm certainly not going on a double date with you and Bucky or with Tony and Stephen," he cut him off again- which was starting to seem rude, actually. Steve was his friend but he was also the vice dean. Tony and Steve looked like they were ready to argue so he continued, "And anyway I have a boyfriend"
That shut them up immediately.
"You do?" Tony's tone was too surprised for Bruce's likes.
"Yeah, I told you!" he cried, surprised that his friends didn't remember him telling them about his tall, broad-shouldered, loving, blonde boyfriend, "Thor and I have been together for almost six months don't you guys remember?"
The mood in the room shifted immediately as Steve and Tony looked at each other and let out two simultaneous "Oh."
"Oh?" he replied, standing up and folding his arms more resolutely, tired of looking up at them from a sitting position, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, we always assumed this ‘Thor'," Tony didn't just utter those quotation marks, he also mimicked them with his fingers, a pair of which was still wrapped around his cup of coffee, "Was just an excuse to not hang out with us"
"What?"
"Well, I mean," interjected Steve, paradoxically calm in the face of a shocked- and frankly, a little hurt- Bruce, "You only mentioned him when we wanted to go out together, we never saw him, you never described him to us-"
"That's because I'm introverted!" he cried, acutely aware of the open door on his right, "I don't like talking about my personal life in public, but that doesn't mean I made up a whole boyfriend! He is very much real"
"Is he, though?" commented Tony, his voice a couple octaves higher than usual before taking a knowing sip out of his coffee.
Bruce shook his head. He loved his friends but they could really be the biggest assholes from time to time, "Unbelievable"
Steve laughed softly as his friend grabbed his book and stormed off towards the exit, his physical size making his angry attitude look inappropriately cute, "Wait, Bruce, come on-"
"Unbelievable!"
The rest of the week wasn't any better.
Apparently, Tony and Steve weren't the only ones who thought Thor was an extension of Bruce's imagination, instead, his whole group of friends thought the exact same thing, and Bruce deliberately acknowledging his love life gave them an opening to try and set him up with people.
On Tuesday, Clint sat him down during their free period and created a Tinder account for him, ignoring all of Bruce's attempts of pointing out that he was, as a matter of fact, in a loving relationship that he planned to continue for the rest of his life, then even had the audacity to be annoyed when Bruce swiped left on every single stranger he offered him.
On Wednesday, Natasha stopped him in the middle of the hallway and started messing around with his hair and his clothes, trying to make him look sexier, allegedly.
Some of the students that saw them standing so close in the corridor started giggling, some boys from the third year even stared at him with a mix of envy and rage, and Bruce rolled his eyes. He'd witnessed countless boys, girls, and every nuance in the middle try to court Natasha, and apart from it being extremely inappropriate since she was a teacher in her early 30s, nobody ever seemed to pick up on the fact that she was aromantic and asexual.
Natasha never bothered to point it out to them so he had a feeling she liked to let them suffer.
"Leave these two buttons open, if you can," she said as she unbuttoned his shirt, and Bruce couldn't help but blush, pointedly avoiding the gaze of a brunette that almost choked on her sandwich at the sight, "It makes all the ladies swoon, believe me"
He thought about telling her that he always kept his shirt very much buttoned up all day because Thor loved to pop the first two buttons as soon as he got home after a welcoming kiss, but he guessed that was only gonna cause an amused gaze and a sarcastic, "right, Thor, of course", so he just kept his mouth shut.
On Thursday, he felt someone watching him all morning during his 9am lecture- someone who wasn't a student, of course- and when he finally wrapped up the lesson he saw Sam walk down from one of the upper rows and approach him with his usual swagger as students skedaddled all around them.
"Mythomania is a bitch, man," he said as a form of greeting, doing a weird thing with his mouth as he tried not to burst out laughing in his face.
"Have you been standing up there all lesson like some weird bird of prey?" he asked, trying to ignore that accusation as he packed up his books.
Sam just shrugged in a ‘what can you do', kind of gesture, and leaned down to put his elbows on the desk, looking up at Bruce in a way that made him look like a deer. A very annoying and asshole-y deer.
"Fun fact, I minored in couple counselling," he said, completely unprompted, and Bruce was fairly certain that wasn't an actual thing normal people could minor in, not even psychologists, "I could help, y'know?"
Bruce sighed loudly and patted Sam's head good-naturedly.
"You guys are the ones that need help."
On Friday, he was approached by a student while he skateboarded to class. That was a usual habit of his that seemed to make all students immediately take a liking to him, instead of making fun of the middle-aged teacher with greying hair at his temples trying to look hip and cool. The student was walking with a quick but apparently normal pace that allowed her to keep up with him with no effort, and he had to admit he was rather impressed.
He recognized her from one of his lessons, and if he remembered correctly her name was Jones. She was one of Parker's closest friends so he cringed, awaiting another uncomfortable question about his love life by one of Tony's minions.
"I believe you," she said, out of the blue, like she and Bruce had been talking for a while. Bruce almost fell off his skateboard.
"You do?" he asked despite himself. He shouldn't encourage such invading behaviours but let's be real here, he was damn grateful if he had found an ally in that university of misbelievers.
She just shrugged, looking straight up at the sky with a pensive gaze. She didn't seem to be bothered by the burning sunlight.
"You better not disappoint me, though," she continued, same nonchalant tone as before, "We have bets going on and it would be a bummer to lose. The whole university joined in and the stakes aren't exactly in your favour, you know?"
Bruce didn't know, he was just hearing about this and was quite pissed at his friends- and students!- for betting on his love life- and against him, no less!- but Michelle didn't elaborate any further. She nodded at him with such seriousness that it was almost comical before turning right, towards the university's library.
God, he hated his life.
"Netflix at my place tonight?" asked Sam as he rummaged through one of the cupboards in the professors break room, probably looking for some snacks before his afternoon counselling sessions.
"Only if we manage to find something we all agree on watching, though," was Natasha's response from across the room, where she was sitting quite impolitely with her feet popped up on the table "I don't want a repeat of last time."
"Yeah, Clint," huffed Bucky, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, a cup of coffee held in his metallic hand "You weirdo"
"You guys said you had never watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine!" cried the accused, watching his friends with exasperated eyes, "How is a fella supposed to react to such news?"
"Count Steph and I in," cut in Tony, playing with one of his new devices, one that didn't seem to be in immediate danger of exploding, thankfully, "We'll bring popcorn"
"What about you, Bruce?" asked Steve, and Bruce involuntarily jumped at being so suddenly addressed, "You coming?"
He scratched the back of his head, setting his coffee on the table. He loved his friends, he really did, and he loved spending time with them- those moments and the time he spent with Thor were the highlights of his week, really- but since they admitted that they thought he used his allegedly imaginary boyfriend as an excuse to not meet up with them he had been quite a bit anxious about refusing any invite he might get. And unfortunately, this was one of the times when he was forced to use his ‘fake' boyfriend as a justification.
And anyway, why did everyone even think that he made Thor up? Was he such a bad looking guy that it was so improbable for him to have a boyfriend?
"I'd love to come, guys, I really would," he started, and everyone immediately deflated, already feeling the upcoming ‘but', "But not this weekend. Thor and I promised to take his brother on a road trip up north, and I would hate to miss it"
"I didn't know Thor had a brother," commented Wanda from her cross-legged position on one of the chairs, and he ignored the air-quotes he could feel her say along with his boyfriend's name, "What's his name?"
He cringed.
"Loki."
The break room was silent for an uncomfortable amount of time.
"Loki," deadpanned Steve, raising an eyebrow. It was one thing to get an eyebrow raise from Clint, or from Tony, or Stephen, even, but getting it from Steve was a completely different matter. You can't have such a strong of an eyebrow lifted at you without feeling at least mildly unsettled.
That was probably why Steve had been promoted to vice dean by Director Fury. Just a look from him could make you confess every single mistake you have ever done in your life.
"Loki," he parroted back, playing with his hands for lack of a better thing to do.
"Your boyfriend is named Thor," said Tony, gesticulating as though he was working through a particularly difficult math problem- which he probably was, "And his brother's name's Loki."
He nodded.
"What," said Bucky before interrupting himself to cough, as though he was trying to hide a laugh. Sam took a sip of coffee beside him like he was trying to do the same thing, "What's their ethnicity?"
If his friends didn't believe him before they surely weren't going to believe him any more now.
"They have Norse origins," he explained quickly, wanting to get over the subject as quickly as possible, "But they were raised in the UK. Thor, in particular, was born in Australia"
"Right," Bucky and Sam said in unison, looking at each other with a knowing gaze before taking another sip of their coffees.
"You know, you can say you don't want to hang out with us, Bruce," said Natasha quite straightforwardly, and a couple of people in the room snickered in agreement, "We're not going to be offended by that"
"But that's not true!" he cried, but it was too late now. The damage had been done.
Tony let out an involuntarily laugh, and it wasn't one of the anxiety-induced ones.
"Yeah, Bruce," interjected Wanda, with a cute little frown. He could see that none of them was seriously annoyed with him, just brutally teasing him for his supposedly imaginary boyfriend, "This is getting ridiculous"
"What, you can't believe that I have a boyfriend?" he asked the younger professor with his hands on his hips, hyperaware of looking like an exasperated grandma, "You? The professor of magic and legends?"
"Intercultural studies," she corrected him, and he was happy to have annoyed her a bit too, "With a minor in folklore and subcultures. You would need a medium to believe you"
Clint laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair, consequently almost making Natasha fall as well as they were sharing the same seat. The redhead pulled the giggling man back up without effort, and he fixed his hearing aids back in his ears- he had laughed so hard they had come out.
"To be fair, we didn't believe Wanda's boyfriend was real, either," commented Sam, and Bruce looked at him like he was a lifeline, before being struck by the following comment, "Too bad Tony knew who the dude was and could prove his physical existence"
"Lovely fella, by the way," interjected Tony, and he raised the device in his hands like a champagne glass to a grinning Wanda.
"Alright," Bruce stopped them all with raised hands, aware that all of their classes were about to begin, "What if I asked him to come to pick me up so that you can meet him? Would you believe me then?"
Bucky blew a long whistle, and Steve stepped forwards with a laugh to clasp him on his back. He almost fell over with the enthusiasm of it.
"That's the spirit."
During the following week, the teasing subsided in favour of impatient anticipation. Thor had told him that he was going to come and pick him up sometimes during the week, he didn't know which day, exactly (which made his boyfriend feel as much anticipation as his friends), and Bruce didn't care what day it was, as long as it was within the week. If Thor failed to show up he was afraid his friends were never going to let him live it down.
Thor reassured him, promising to show up on time after one of his afternoon jogs, and Bruce couldn't be more excited. He couldn't wait to see his friends' faces when his fit Australian boyfriend showed up in front of his university.
As it turned out, the fatal day happened to be a Wednesday, one of the most relaxing days of the week- if anything related to university could be defined as ‘relaxing'. Bruce, Tony and Stephen were sitting in the break room, doing their respective works and correcting their last midterms, waiting for their friends to finish their afternoon lessons, and regardless of the teasing he had undergone the last week, Bruce felt as content as he could be sitting along with his friends.
Stephen and Tony were sitting closely, their bodies pressed together from hips to shoulders and the back of their hands touching on the table. That was the peak of their PDA, just casual touches and brushes of hands. They didn't like to show off their relationship too much- although a drunk Tony had once declared his undying love for his husband on the university intercoms, something nobody planned on ever letting him forget- which unnerved most of the female students who inappropriately thought they were ‘cute'. Wanda had once been one of those female students, but they only pointed it out when they wanted to annoy her.
They were both staring intensely at their work but every once in a while one of them would move his finger to poke at his partner's hand, and the other would smile softly and give an answering poke without looking up. It had been five years since they've been together, one since they've been married, and they seemed as in love as the first day, and call him a hopeless romantic all you want, but he hoped to have the same kind of relationship with Thor, one day.
His romantic daydreaming was interrupted quite rudely when Steve grimily marched into the room towards the coffee machine, groaning unhappily the whole way.
"Why are they so fucking stupid," he muttered with a long-suffered sigh, watching the coffee machine so intensely that it was probably panicking and trying to speed up its process as much as it could.
"Language," Bruce, Tony and Stephen said in unison, without pausing their work. It was such a recurring inside joke of theirs that at this point they reacted to it unconsciously.
Steve turned around and stared at them with a frown. Probably. Nobody bothered to check, but they could feel it burning against their skin.
"I apologise, let me rephrase it," he cleared his throat with his hands pressed together on his mouth, then dropped them until they were parallel to the floor, "Why, in the motherfucking heaven, are they so fucking stupid"
Stephen looked up at him with a smirk, "It's philosophy, Steve. I would be surprised if they understood it on the first try"
"It's Schopenhauer!" he cried, picking up his coffee, and drinking it in one go, not even taking a breath after it, "If they're struggling with fucking Schopenhauer how are they going to survive Kant or Hegel"
Bruce had no idea who either of those people was but he was more worried about the velocity with which Steve had drunk his boiling coffee, like it was a glass of water. Being a philosophy major really changes a person, he thought idly.
Steve's bad mood didn't last long, however, because as soon as his husband entered the room he was all big smiles and hugs once again.
"Has anyone seen Natasha yet?" asked Bucky as Steve draped an arm around his shoulders in an almost unconscious gesture, "One of her students made a sexist comment during one of her lectures and I'm afraid she's hiding his dead body as we speak"
"Is it bad that I wouldn't be remotely fazed by that?" Steve asked nobody in particular, and everyone in the room replied with various sounds of denial.
"If it's Rumlow he would deserve it," Bruce commented drily, staking up his finished papers and putting them away in his bag, "He's such an ass, he was a brat with Sam, too"
"You talking about Rumlow?" asked the addressed as he entered the room, his brown satchel in one hand and his jacket in the other, "That kid is the epitome of ‘like father like son'"
They kept talking about how much they hated Rumlow Jr- the fact that Steve, Nat, Sam, Clint and Bucky went to college with his father didn't make them feel any bit of empathy towards the kid- until every last one of their friends had finished their lessons and joined them. They were all surprised to notice that Natasha's hands weren't covered in blood- but again, that wouldn't exclude the possibility of her having actually murdered the brat.
"Nah, it would be a waste of time," she dismissed Clint's snarky comment about the boy with a shrug, "And anyway some of my admirers took care of him. Kid's not gonna talk shit in front of me for a long while, hopefully,"
"Damn," commented Tony, amazed, as they all made their way through the university hallway towards the exit, "I wish I had admirers too"
"You do," was Stephen's dry reply, which only made his husband tease him for his jealous tone.
Bruce was only barely listening to the conversation, juggling his bag and his skateboard as he walked automatically, too worried with his own thoughts to actually take part in it. Thor had texted him that he was waiting outside and he was basically trembling with anticipation, part of it due to being excited about seeing his boyfriends, part of it due to a mad desire of proving all his friends wrong.
Good lord, Tony really had a bad influence on him.
He was so busy daydreaming that when his friends came to a halt immediately outside the exit doors he ran straight into Steve's broad back. The guy didn't even seem to notice him so he made his way around him to see what had caught his friends' attention. His gaze fell on a sturdy figure leaning against the library's external wall and he smirked almost maniacally.
Thor was wearing a pair of black sports shorts and an equally black tank top that was a size too big for him, and consequently put his arms and chest muscles on proud display. His short hair was standing up in all directions, a sign that meant that he must've run his wet hands through it once he reached the university' square's fountain, and a small toothy smile was plastered on his face as he looked at his phone with interest. His gaze suggested that he was probably looking at some cat video.
Thor's love for cat videos and his general look at that moment almost made Bruce's heart burst through his shirt and onto the pavement, but he was glad it didn't because it allowed him to witness his dumfounded friends' reactions.
"Damn," was all Sam had to say, peeking around his sunglasses quite un-subtly.
"I'd tap that, and coming from me it says a lot," commented Natasha, leaning almost dreamily against Clint, whose mouth was hanging open like a dissociated bird.
Tony and Stephen and Bucky and Steve were trying very hard not to seem impressed by his boyfriend, what with them being married and all, and they were trying to look anywhere except in Thor's direction but it was working poorly.
"What is a guy like him doing in a place like this?" asked Wanda with the tone of someone who had just found a Monet painting in a Hot Topic, and Bruce felt as though he had been summoned.
Trying to hide his shit-eating grin, he casually made his way towards Thor, and he couldn't help the flip his heart made when Thor looked up towards him and beamed as if he had just seen the sun.
"Hello, love," he greeted softly, pocketing his phone and headphones and leaning down to kiss Bruce on the cheek- a fair middle group they had found between Thor's effusiveness and Bruce's dislike for PDA.
Letting his skateboard down, he grabbed his boyfriend's hand and dragged him towards his shocked friends.
"Guys, this is Thor," he introduced, his love for that man making his ‘I told you so' moment a bit less vindictive, "Thor, these are the guys"
"I know all of your names," Thor said happily, scanning all of his audience with his bright blue eyes. Clint's jaw seemed to have been dislocated, "Bruce talks a lot about you at home"
They all stood in silence for a solid three seconds, trying to understand what the fuck had just happened. Tony was the first one to break the awkwardness.
"We-" he cleared his throat when all that came out of it was a squeak, "We owe you some apologises, Bruce"
"Yeah, man," agreed Sam, tilting his head while looking at Thor, like he was trying to make sure he wasn't a hallucination, "He really is real"
Bruce waved them off with a smile. Making them realise that his boyfriend was an actual living person and that he wasn't making him up as an excuse was all he cared about.
That and showing his gorgeous boyfriend off, of course.
"It's understandable, though," interfered Thor, crossing his muscular arms on his chest. Steve mirrored him, probably unconsciously, and Bucky lifted an eyebrow at his husband, "My colleagues didn't believe Bruce was an actual person, either. It's kind of hard to believe that someone with seven PhDs really exists, who does that?"
Bruce lightly hit him on the arm at the tease, and Thor smiled as if he had just kissed him.
"Wh- where do you work?" asked Wanda, who seemed undecided on what to do with her hands.
"The same university as you, just in the astronomy department," he replied good-naturedly, before clapping his hands loud enough to make Clint snap out of his trance, "Anyway, it was nice knowing you guys, we should totally hang out sometime"
"Totally," parroted Stephen, probably the least dumbfounded of the group. He had seemed particularly intrigued in discovering that Thor was an astronomy major and a warm fuzzy feeling of pride settled itself in Bruce's heart.
"See you guys tomorrow!" he waved at them happily before skateboarding away, his boyfriend jogging beside him while he commented on how nice his friends seemed to be and how much he couldn't wait to see them again.
Said friends, in the meanwhile, stayed where they were for another half a minute, shocked, perplexed, and yes, even a bit proud of their friend. They had always assumed that he was a lonely Stakhanovite, and instead, he was in a loving relationship.
Their trance was interrupted when a girl approached them with a knowing smirk, holding a kazoo between her fingers like it was a cigarette.
"You guys owe me ten dollars each.”