A/N: So, as promised this is the long university AU story that we've been working on. The next chapter might be a little while in coming, but until then, we hope you enjoy this first one!
Rated T for language. Mostly from Darcy and Clint.
By the way, we call it a 'university' AU because college means something different in Britain: your college is the place where you live within your university, and the entire establishment is the university. Got it? Good. Also, university is frequently shortened to just 'uni' by the young people of today.
Please read and review!
Darcy looked at her suitcase and sighed.
When she'd first found out she was coming, she hadn't stopped to think about silly little things like what to pack and what not to pack and if that giant inflatable porpoise was really necessary. She'd just sort of been caught up in the post-results euphoria (and drinking. Lots and lots of drinking). And now it was coming back to haunt her.
There was absolutely no way she was getting it up that deathtrap that she presumed other people called stairs.
She peered up the cavernous climb and shrunk back, too scared to look any further. Great. Now what was she supposed to do? Jane wasn't due to arrive for another – she checked her watch – hour or so, and it was bucketing down outside. Welcome to England. What do you mean, why is it raining? This is a nice day!
She couldn't just stay there until someone came to help. Pull yourself together, Darcy. You're not some damsel in distress waiting for her handsome prince to come and rescue her –
"Um, excuse me? Miss?"
A handsome young man with a soft American accent had popped his head around one of the doors lining the corridor and was staring at her with a mixture of concern and earnest… well, chivalry shining in his face. Huh. She never thought she'd use that word about someone from this century, let alone a Yank. The rest of his body quickly followed him out onto the landing.
Darcy took a moment to look him up and down. Begin as you mean to go on, that was what her mother always said. He was attractive, in a kind of typically American way – wavy blonde hair, blue eyes, built like a sportsman. This in itself was enough to make Darcy predisposed to dislike him, but there was something different about this one; he had the air of an excitable puppy, always ready to do anything and everything for anyone. Hmm. That could come in useful.
"Hi, I'm Steve Rogers. I think you're in the room next to mine? Do you want some help with that, Miss…?"
"Darcy. Darcy Lewis. And yes, I would. Thank you." She promptly dumped her bags at the foot of the stairs and smiled up at him as he descended. Mmm. Quite tall. And those muscles… She had to drag her eyes away from his arms as he bent to pick up her luggage.
He bid her farewell once all her stuff was safely located in her room, with a hopeful, "I'll see you at dinner, then?" She was more surprised than she expected to see him go, but at least the view of his backsidewas… interesting, to say the least.
Darcy flopped down on her new bed and sighed deeply. Barely an hour into her new life, and she was already checking out guys! Hopefully when Jane got here she would set her straight. Jane was probably the most prudish teenager ever to live. Darcy sometimes called her "Jane Eyre", but she didn't get the joke. Stupid physicists and their lack of a sense of humour. She hoped that not everyone at this place would be a complete prat.
Why does this building have to have so many stairs? Bruce lamented silently as he dragged his bags up to the next floor. His parents' house didn't have this many stairs. Well… that would be because he and his parents lived in a tiny apartment because they couldn't afford anything bigger, but that wasn't the point! Stupid stairs.
Ah, here was his room. He hoped his roommate wasn't a complete prat, that would be just his luck. But he mustn't judge. His mother had raised him better than that.
He fumbled for the key in his pockets. His mother had told him not to keep so much rubbish in there, but had he listened? No he hadn't. And now he was paying the price. Looking like an idiot: standing in the corridor rifling through his pockets. Wire, screwdriver tip, toothpick, drawing pin (that definitely should not be in such a dangerous place), button, an OXO cube (what the hell was that doing there?), string, something mysteriously squishy and…there. Key.
He shoved it into the lock, which had a rather interesting looking digital pad next to it with wires tumbling out which he would like to have a look at later, and pushed the door open. It was halted by something on the inside, but it gave way with a little push.
Bruce's jaw dropped.
He blinked several times and reached up to rub his eyes, depositing one of his bags on his foot in the process. He was too out of it to notice.
Had he taken a wrong turn and accidentally wandered into the million-pound apartment of a billionaire genius?
Because that was what it looked like from where he was standing.
All of the furniture had been pushed to the very outer perimeter of the room, leaving space for the huge workspace in the centre. There were at least six top-of-the-range computer screens showing a range of displays from some kind of machine blueprint to tomorrow's weather. They were perched in various degrees of perilousness on top of a big glass desk, which was covered in a thick layer of sheets of what looked like designs for some sort of flying contraption. Over by the window was a chemistry workbench, positively groaning under the weight of test tubes, Bunsen burners, blowtorches, hammers, tongs and all manner of scientific equipment. And was that a suit of armour hanging on the bathroom door?
The room was like a cross between a laboratory and a blacksmith's forge. In short, it was pretty much Bruce's idea of heaven.
And sitting in the middle of it all, dark brown hair sticking up all over the place, was a stocky young man wearing a pair of black safety goggles cheerfully dismantling what looked like a CCTV camera.
Bruce stood there in silence for a couple of minutes before he finally managed to reconnect his tongue to his brain. "Um...excuse me?"
His new roommate looked up and abruptly pushed the goggles up onto his forehead, revealing a patch of clean skin where they had protected his eyes from the soot covering the rest of his face. He grinned widely and bounced out of his ergonomically-designed office chair to shake Bruce's hand.
"Hello! You must be the other inhabitant of this..." He looked around the room, obviously trying not to say something insulting about it. "...cosy little place. Of course, it's a bit on the small side, but I think there's room for everything."
Bruce stared at him, trying not to show that his new dwelling was half as big again as his bedroom at home.
"Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners? The name's Stark. Tony Stark."
"I'm Bruce. Banner. B-Bruce Banner." Way to go, Bruce. Now he thinks you're some kind of retard who can't even say their own name right.
"It's great to meet you, Bruce. I hope you don't mind all my mess..."
"Oh, no, that's quite alright. I'm kind of into science too."
"Really?" Tony Stark's dark brown eyes lit up in what could only be described as pure joy. "That's so weird! Who knew that us two science geeks would get paired up? Strange, doncha think?"
Bruce shrugged and kept his eyes firmly fixed on his worn Converse, which suddenly looked very old and grubby next to all this fancy equipment. "I guess."
"But we're gonna have lots of fun together, I can tell. What are you reading, then?"
"N-Natural Sciences." Bruce rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, just like he did when anyone asked about his subject. "I kinda...want to be a doctor." He winced internally as soon as the words left his mouth - he sounded so stupid, as if he'd ever get into medical school -
But, to his surprise, Tony smiled and nodded encouragingly. "That's cool. I'm an engineer myself. All about the nuts and bolts. And the equations, of course. God forbid we forget the all-important equations."
"Do you...design stuff, then?" Bruce gestured at the piles of blueprints on the desk.
"Yup. I'm working on a kind of flying machine at the moment."
"Really? Does it work?"
"Nah, not yet. I'm still working on the prototype. I'll probably jump off the cathedral with it or something."
Bruce nods, then stops to think for a moment. "Wouldn't that be really dangerous? It's like fifty feet high!"
Tony shrugged. "We build but to tear down. Come on, I'll show you the design."
And as his new roomie led him over to the bank of computers that he'd only ever dreamed of looking at, let alone using, Bruce knew that they were going to get along just fine. The man'd quoted Nikola Tesla, for God's sake. Anyone who even recognised the name had to be a good guy in Bruce's book.
Clint's first two days at uni could be going worse.
Actually, that was a lie. He really could not imagine anything going more wrong.
First, the train was late, so by the time he arrived it was already dark and he tripped over his suitcase in the dim glow from the streetlamps. Then, he got lost and had to ask a really scary-looking third-year the way to Midgard College. And then he fell down the stairs. Luckily his reflexes were quick enough that he avoided serious injury, but his dignity was severely bruised, especially as he heard vaguely feminine giggles coming from the room next to his. Great. Now his floormates thought he was an idiot.
By the time he finally battled his way through the door and into his room, he was way too tired to do anything but flop into bed. He didn't even stop to unpack – something that came back to haunt him the following morning, when he couldn't find a clean pair of jeans, let alone his favourite purple t-shirt.
And then there was that encounter with the massive second-year. The guy was genuinely huge – must've been a rower or something. He'd shouted, "Low-key!" (or something like that), and Clint had wondered if perhaps he thought everyone was being too subtle. He was certainly less than tactful, clamping a huge hand down on Clint's shoulder and spinning him around, grinning like Christmas had come early. Clint felt quite guilty when the guy properly looked at him and realised he wasn't what he was looking for.
"You're not low-key…"
"No…" The guy's fingers were kind of hurting now.
"Why are you not low-key? Low-key!" And with a yell that nearly burst Clint's eardrums, the giant was gone.
So that was his first impression of the place. Confusing windy streets and scary rower-dudes. Clint hoped the rest of his time here would be less… perplexing.
After Darcy finally got her suitcases up the stairs and into her room (well, it was mostly Steve, really), she spent the rest of the morning unpacking and admiring the view. Midgard was situated on the top of a gently sloping hill that rose far above the rest of the town, and from her window she could see everything spread out before her like a map. There was the station, with trains that looked like toys from up here, and the little shops sitting comfortably on the cobbled streets, and the miniature people winding their way to wherever it was they were going, and in the middle of it all the great cathedral, its spire standing tall and proud against the sheeting rain.
Knockeddy-knock-knock. Darcy smiled and ran to open the door to her extremely wet best friend.
"Oh my God! What is with all this rain?" Jane dropped her bags and went to hug Darcy.
"I know, right? I mean, it is October, but still! It's like a flood."
"Well, if it does actually flood, at least we'll be safe up on our little hill."
"Yeah, us and the Asgardians next door."
"Really? That's Asgard? It looks more like an actual house."
"I think that's supposed to be the point." Darcy fished around in the pocket of her hoody and produced a rather sodden university leaflet. Bifrost University, it read in large, friendly letters. The gateway to success! "Look at those happy people having fun in the sun. Surely someone must've sued Bifrost by now for leading unsuspecting freshers astray. I doubt we'll get that much sunshine in a year, let alone a day."
"I'm sure it'll get better come the summer. And we might get snow in the winter!"
Stupid Jane, always being optimistic and ruining Darcy's rants.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and both girls jumped.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Darcy! Language."
"Sorry, let me rephrase that. What the frick was that?"
"I don't know. I think it came from the ceiling." Darcy tipped her head back and glared furiously upwards, as if she could murder the occupant of the room above theirs with a mere look. "Well, should we go and take a look?"
"Good God, no. We have no idea what could be up there. It might be a bomb… or a dragon."
"I highly doubt that it's a dragon, Darcy."
"You never know."
"I think I'm going to go and see what's up there." Jane moved to open the door, which swung slowly open to reveal Steve standing outside looking vaguely guilty.
"Um… Hi."
"What the fu…" Jane looked daggers at Darcy. "…fug are you doing here? Were you listening at the door?"
"No…"
Darcy and Jane gave him identical withering looks.
"I swear, I didn't mean to! The walls are just really thin, and I overheard you talking about the noises from the attic…"
"Wait, you know about those?" Darcy's expression turned to one of almost insane curiosity.
"Well, yeah. Everyone in Midgard does. They started a couple of days ago, at the very beginning of freshers' week, and they haven't stopped since."
"Do you know what's causing them?"
Steve looked around furtively, as if he was about to let out some great secret. He cupped his hand around his mouth and whispered, "It's the guy upstairs."
"You mean," Darcy too checked to make sure the coast was clear before copying Steve's hand movement, "God?"
"No! The guy in the top room." Darcy and Jane looked blank. Steve looked like he was fighting an urge to roll his eyes. "No one knows when he arrived. He was just there. One minute the attic was empty, the next – boom."
"Who is he?" Jane said quietly, almost reverently, and Darcy could tell her romantically-minded brain was going into overdrive.
Steve shrugged. "Dunno. All I know is he's called Loki or something."
Darcy vowed there and then to garner as much information on this 'Loki' as she could, even if it meant asking every single member of the student body. She was determined to find out exactly why he felt the need to make weird explosion-y noises at three o'clock in the afternoon. And once Darcy set her mind on something, she didn't let it go for anything. The guy wouldn't know what had hit him before it was too late.