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So this was kind of weird, John Sheppard acknowledged to himself. And, really, that was saying something when you considered his day job routinely included self-replicating evil robots, life sucking alien Wraiths, and oh, yeah, the not so lost City of Atlantis.
But this? This wasn’t the Pegasus Galaxy where weird was normal. This was New York City. Okay, yes, New York had more than its average share of weird but John just hadn’t been expecting to find this level of it on earth. And he really hadn’t been looking for it.
All he’d wanted after spending a coma inducing day trapped in meetings with the brass was a beer. And maybe some pretzels.
Seriously, was that too much to ask?
Apparently, yes. Yes, it was.
The day had started normally enough. He’d shown up for the first meeting at half past ‘too fucking early for this shit’. He’d even followed O’Neill’s deadpan morning advice of “No smirking, Sheppard.” John had thought of everything and everyone that was his to protect and gritted his way through over six hours of meetings, sometimes tense but mostly brain numbingly dull, behaving himself the entire time.
And then, since his team had been spared from this particular set of meetings and O’Neill had gotten trapped in post-meeting meetings—poor bastard—John had gone back to the hotel alone and wandered into the cavernous bar/club adjacent to it.
It was too early for the night club scene and he’d sat at the bar, trading a few remarks with Sebastian the goateed bartender and enjoying the game on one of the massive flat screen TV’s. The pretzels may have been fancied up by a dusting of wasabi and furikake but they had been pretzels.
Life had been good.
And then a huge green guy had crashed through a wall of the bar, bellowing deafening roars of outrage and proceeded to tear the place apart.
Sebastian and the wait staff had done the smart thing and run away with various levels of shrieking terror. John had scrambled over the bar top and dropped behind it out of sight, fully intending to follow Sebastian’s exit path until a giant table had sailed over the bar and crashed into the back doorway, effectively blocking it. Which meant his only exit was to the front, right past the not so jolly green giant.
John just knew Rodney was going to find a way to say that this was his fault.
Which it wasn’t. Because he’d just wanted a beer.
He heard another loud crash and grunt and inched up to peer over the bar top. Yep, massive green guy was still there and still breaking things. Sighing he slid back down to a sitting position, automatically avoiding the shattered glass littering the floor and considered his options.
The smart thing to do would be to sit tight. The Hulk had been all over the press along with the rest of the Avengers ever since the battle of New York. Even from across the galaxy they’d been briefed about it. So the Hulk was apparently one of the good guys now and odds were his teammates would show up any minute to keep him from demolishing half of New York.
This was so absolutely not John’s problem and all he had to do was stay here and…he heard the scream. Female and terrified and piercing, it was followed by a wall shaking bellow of outrage.
Well, shit.
Crouching up, John took in the scene. One of the waitresses must have been hiding under a table that the Hulk had just picked up. Having been discovered she was not surprisingly, but also really not helpfully, cowering on the floor and screaming bloody murder. This in turn appeared to be pissing the Hulk off even more as he shook his head and growled down at the woman which just caused her to shriek in ever higher decibels. It was a rage-fest Catch 22.
Dammit, he really should have just gone up to his room, dialed up some porn and ordered room service.
The path not fucking taken.
John inhaled the deep breath he usually took before doing something—in Rodney’s words, ‘monumentally suicidal’—and then stood and scaled the bar top, heading into more open space to give him room to move.
“Hey there, big guy. How’s it going?”
The huge green giant turned to look at him, frowned, focused on John and then tensed up, seeming to grow in size as he let out a roar of pure rage that John felt down to his bones.
Whoa, even the screaming waitress hadn’t gotten that kind of reaction. Why the hell was the Hulk reacting to him so badly? Maybe he reacted worse to men? Or maybe…John looked down at his uniform. Ah, crap. The U.S. military had chased the Hulk for years. Odds were the uniform was a trigger.
John raised a hand in a calming gesture. “Whoa, whoa there, big fella. You don’t like my uniform, is that it?”
He took the answering bellow along with the lifted table as an affirmative and nodded. “You know what? I’m not too fond of it these days either. Not used to it anymore, you know?” As John talked he calmly unbuttoned his jacket, shrugging out of it in smooth, unhurried motions and then started on his tie. “And, ties? Never liked ties. What moron invented a way for guys everywhere to be strangled, I’ll never know.” The tie dropped to the floor as John gauged the mood of his companion. And the size. Because, holy shit, the Hulk was big. But he hadn’t thrown the massive slab of table he was holding at John yet so that was a significant plus.
Instead the Hulk seemed confused, tilting his head to the side as he watched John disrobe, the table held effortlessly in the air with one hand.
John started on his shirt. “Y’know what I do like? Football. That’s my sport. How about you? You a football guy in your down time? Hockey’s fun too, but football? It’s my thing…” he tossed the shirt onto the floor and stood there, stripped down to his pants. “…or surfing. That’s my favorite actual ‘doing’ sport. Something about the waves and the sun and you’re a part of something so much bigger than you…”
As John kept rambling the Hulk huffed out another growl but it was definitely softer this time. Half-hearted even. Progress. It probably didn’t hurt that the waitress had gathered enough of her wits to scramble away as soon as the Hulk’s attention had turned to John, taking her high pitched screams with her to leave them alone in peaceful silence.
“So, y’know, all I really wanted tonight was a beer and maybe some pretzels. I sure wasn’t expecting to meet you. Do you like pretzels? They have really good ones here.” John looked back at the huge pretzel refill container the bartender had set out on the counter once John devoured three of the small bowls. It had miraculously survived flying furniture and sat there unscathed.
John slowly leaned backwards to snag the container, the Hulk watching him suspiciously the entire time.
Maybe this was a dumb idea but…John hugged the tub to his chest with one hand and dipped the other in to grab a few pretzels, slowly bringing them back up to his mouth. “Mmm, tasty. Have to admit, the spicy stuff they put on this? Really adds to the flavor. Yum, yum, y…” John blinked in surprise when the Hulk put out a hand, palm up.
“Really?” He hadn’t actually expected that to work.
“Hrargh.”
“Sure, okay.” John took the container and carefully shook a handful of pretzels out onto the massive green palm.
The Hulk raised the pretzels to his enormous maw and tipped the pretzels in.
Munched. Swallowed.
And thrust out his hand again. “Hrargh.”
So, apparently the Hulk liked pretzels. Who knew?
As John shook pretzels out onto the Hulk’s insistently outstretched palm for the fifth time he noticed that said hand was smaller and less green. Fascinated, he watched as the Hulk seemed to shudder, contract, and then suddenly there was a regular man maybe about John’s age sitting there, seemingly tiny after the contrast of the Hulk, although actually he was probably average sized.
The other guy, Bruce Banner per the classified files John had seen, blinked in bemusement at the pretzels he was holding and then looked up at John. “Uhm, hi.”
“Hey.”
Banner looked around the partially destroyed building with a carefully blank expression. “Did I, uh, was anyone…”
“Nah, no one’s hurt. You didn’t even do that much damage.” John pointed to the large hole in the wall. “That’s the biggest deal and it looked like you were thrown through the wall so…probably not your fault.”
Some of the tension left Banner’s frame. “Good. That’s really good.” He focused on John, assessing. “You seem pretty calm for having just been front and center with the Other Guy.”
John shrugged. “Actually not the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Banner’s brows rose in surprise. “I…see.”
“Does anyone have eyes on the Hulk?” Cap’s voice came through Tony’s headset for the third time, increasingly worried.
“Negative,” came responses from Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thor.
Tony was about to respond the same way when he spotted the Hulk-sized hole in a nearby building and checked himself with a “Maybe got something. Stand by.” Adjusting his flight path, Tony slowed as he neared the opening. “Jarvis, scan the building for life signs.”
There are currently two life signatures in the building. One appears to be Dr. Banner. The other is an unidentified male. No abnormalities noted.
Okay, then. Tony flew through the hole and rose up, eyeing the scene. No dead bodies. Check. Substantial damage. Check and situation normal. Bruce sitting cross-legged in his signature purple pants on the floor laughing with another guy, also shirtless, eating pretzels. Uh, what the fuck?
Tony hovered over them, crossing his arms. “Okay, seriously? A Doom-bot invasion and you’re hooking up with a guy in a bar? I…applaud. Really. Good job.”
Bruce turned to give him his wry ‘all okay’ smile with an eye roll tossed in for good measure.
The other guy, who was pretty hot—go Bruce—turned to look at him with a, “Huh, flying robot. Cool.”
Okay, this guy? Was interesting.
End