Work Text:
So. You want me to talk. Not sure what you want me to say. This whole thing was supposed to be you and the egghead. You’re not my shrink.
But alright. You’ve kept your end of the bargain and you haven’t told him about me so I’ll play. My story, my side of things.
There’s no point in starting at the beginning. There’s nothing back there worth talking about. The old man was a bastard. You know that. Bruce can’t remember shit but he wasn’t even really around then. The big guy’ll never admit it but he's just a kid and stubborn as a damn mule so I doubt you got all the details from him either. Only one of us really knows everything and that’s You-know-who. From the looks of you, you’ve met him but be glad you haven’t met him more than once.
I’ll just say this. We had to get the hell out of that house. I tried on more than one occasion only to wake up back in that damned room. Eventually, the egghead managed to get into college on a scholarship thank god. But then what?
Picture this; you’re a skinny little nerd with no social skills and no personal life who just jumped outta the frying pan and into the fire. Almost sixteen. Knew the professors textbooks front to back, sure, but “Bruce”, and you’ll pardon the expression here, didn’t know ass from tits. This was the real world and it was all a bit much for him. But me? I was finally free to start living.
I let him go to class. Do his homework. All the boring shit that he likes so much. Then it was my turn. I’d go crash a party, have a few drinks, a few smokes, go make out with some girls, get into a few fights with their boyfriends. I’d get my ass kicked of course. If you think Banner is puny now, back then hoo boy. But chicks dig confidence more than muscles so these fights would usually be a little too late so to speak.
Oh, wonderboy could never make it with his girl huh? Not surprised. The big guy doesn’t like that kinda shit. You gotta set him up with a distraction first. Toys, an old tv episode, whatever. It’s not hard to do if you know how but again, Bruce may be the smart one but he isn’t exactly wise.
Even back then. ‘Oh I’m so clumsy, I don’t remember this bruise’ ‘My head hurts, I must have a migraine’ ‘I was up all night studying’ just endless excuses because he couldn’t handle the truth if it bit him on the ass.
Those were good years. There was the occasional night time problem that spilled into a daytime one, true. But nothing got too far out of hand. Not until that night.
Some of the fraternity guys had been messing with me right? Rich kids, most of them. I wait until they're passed out and take a leak on their clothes. Too far I guess because that's when it got serious. They started spreading the word that I was just coming up on my eighteenth birthday. Naturally this made me persona non grata around campus. None of the girls wanted to be near me, none of the parties wanted to let me in, it was worse than an STD. Everybody who wasn’t stupid already knew I was a little young but now, Johnny Whatsisface was gonna tell the dean if anybody so much as sneezed in my direction.
I didn’t have a car and stealing one might be the one thing to get me in trouble with Our Host the Honorable Wet Blanket so I had nowhere to go. Months of getting turned away. Every avenue to have a good time, shut down. He even went around to the local bars within walking distance and threatened them. I was furious. I had to get him back good.
The only thing worth more to these guys than their trust fund, is their ability to call and mommy and daddy big bucks to bail them out of trouble. And that good grace is dependent on the only rule these people really care about; ‘don’t embarrass me.’ Nothing says embarrassment like getting caught in a scandal on page one of the college paper.
I’ll spare you the details of how. All you need to know is the next morning, Bozo wakes up hungover, covered in puke, in the seat of his convertible which has made a whole new entrance in the east wall of the library. Front page picture the next day, next to words like ‘suspended’ and ‘damages’. It was a riot.
Three weeks from graduation and now he won’t be able to walk across the stage. It was beautiful and the best part is, nothing pointed back to me. He tried telling everybody he was being framed but there was no evidence and he was too stupid to figure it out. And in three weeks I’d be out of there and on to greener pastures.
It was almost perfect except for one thing. I forgot how angry and stupid are one bad combo. You see where it’s gotten Greenie. Well a couple of days later, he pulls up on us on the sidewalk with a couple of his buddies. Suffice to say they were not in the mood to talk. Now, a fight is a fight and I’m no wuss but one of them must have pulled some kinda weapon on us. After that it’s not my jurisdiction anymore. You-know-who got woken up, probably by the kid.
Don’t ask me how he does it. I especially don’t know how he did it back then before all the gamma and shit went into us. But that’s his thing. And he doesn’t let anybody watch when he does his thing. By the end of the night we were back at the dorm, sore and bruised up but obviously alive. We were sitting on the bottom of the steps so that when Bruce woke up he’d come up with some cockamamie story about sleepwalking and falling down some stairs. And he was telling me that this was it.
The drinking, the smoking, everything I was doing was ‘too much’. I had nearly gotten us killed, he said. I knew what this talk was. He only ever gives it when somebody is about to get screwed. The basement. The fucking green door. I tried to run but I couldn’t move. I was getting lightheaded and losing my grip on the outside world.
Do you know what happens down there? Has anyone ever told you what it’s like? When he grabs you by the wrist and drags you down the stairs and opens that door, the one only he has the keys to. The basement is worse than death. It’s hell. Why do you think they call him the Devil?
Some of us never come back from there. What I did…was almost suicide and suicide’s a mortal sin. The big guy has his faults, right? But he’s not totally stupid. He knows where we go when we try that and he’s always trying to stop Banner. Always bargaining with You-know-who to let him out in the morning. Somehow it always works. He’s got a real soft spot for Banner. Too soft, if you ask me.
I didn’t come back for years. Not until the bomb. Not until I became the Hulk.
Does that about catch you up, Doc?