Hello and welcome to the next project I'm probably going to abandon.

Warnings: child/spousal abuse, drug use.

My beta, bequirk, is the best as per usual.

Please note that I know nothing at all about being a rockstar, I just like writing silly stories.

He could see the headlines already: "Rockstar trashes third hotel room in a year."

He wondered if this would be the straw that broke the camel's back, the incident that got them dropped from the tour and probably their record label.

Strangely...right now, he didn't care if it was.

With a sigh, Bruce picked himself up off the floor, ignoring the throbbing pain in his shoulders, ignoring the scrapes and bruises on his knuckles. He looked around, taking note of the broken lamp, the busted furniture. The blankets had been torn off the bed, the pillows ripped apart, the mattress left askew on the bed frame. The wallpaper had seen better days; before it had been neutral, clean, and neat, and now it was ripped and smeared with...

Blood, probably, Bruce thought with a glance at his hands.

The floor was littered with broken beer bottles and feathers, and Bruce stepped around the detritus carefully, making his way to the bathroom. There, at least, the chaos was minimal. The towels had found their way onto the floor, and there was vomit in the bathtub, and all the little orange pill bottles that he'd lined up so neatly on the vanity had been knocked into the sink, but overall? Not so bad.

After a moment of searching, he grabbed one of the bottles out the sink, opened it, and popped one of the pills in his mouth. With a rueful shake of his head, he swallowed it dry before setting the bottle down and clearing the rest of them out of the sink. Then, he splashed water on his face.

Finally, he had the courage to look in the mirror.

The damage wasn't so bad. The circles under his eyes were about as prominent as they always were. He had a bruise forming above his left eyebrow, and his hair was...terrible, but he'd seen worse.

Not since he'd been a kid, sure, but he'd seen worse.

With another sigh, Bruce turned and went back into the main part of the room. He dug around, gingerly avoiding broken glass, until he unearthed his phone. He wasn't surprised to see that it was well after noon, and that he had four missed phone calls. The most recent one had only been fifteen minutes ago, and Bruce looked at his phone for a solid minute before he pressed the "call" button.

"Hey," he said, as soon as the line was picked up. Then, "It happened again." He paused. "I think it's getting worse."

Bruce Banner had the distinction of being the first person in his family to fail out of college.

His father, Brian Banner, had been a prominent professor of physics. His mother, Rebecca, had been an English teacher, at least before she'd gotten married. She'd been a good one, too, if the dusty awards in the den had been anything to go by.

But Bruce and college didn't mesh.

If anyone had asked (which no one had), Bruce would have told them he suspected that it had probably had something to do with the fact his dad had murdered his mom in front of him, an unfortunate event that had occurred after years of steadily worsening abuse.

Not that he had proof that was it; he just had a feeling. In fact, Bruce felt that most of his issues in life had stemmed from this event.

In the case of college (as in the case of all his other issues, really), it was a reasonable assumption. His failure at college certainly hadn't been due to a lack of ability. When he was six, Bruce had scored in the 99th percentile on the IQ test the state had given all the kids in his grade. And while IQ tests certainly weren't always correlated with grades, in Bruce's case, he'd been very good at school.

For a short while, anyway.

After the results of the IQ test came in, though, things changed. Because Brian, who had always been distant at best and absent at worst, became suddenly hostile.

Violently so.

Bruce didn't understand it as a young child. In fact, he never got a good answer about why Brian was like he was. He asked his mother, but if she knew, she took the answer to her grave. It was one of many things that Bruce never understood, like why his parents had gotten married or why they had stayed together.

But all Bruce had known as a kid was that when he came home with gold stars and stickers, Brian didn't like it.

So Bruce stopped bringing them home.

That didn't have the desired effect, though; it was like a switch had been flipped, and from that point on, Brian always found a reason to criticize Bruce, and the criticism occasionally escalated to violence.

Eventually, "occasionally" became "sometimes," and "sometimes" became "often."

Rebecca did what she could to stop it, but that just got her hurt, too. And as the years passed, and Brian slowly became more unstable, more unbalanced, more angry, Bruce became adept at hiding bruises or explaining them away. And as Brian took things farther and farther, Bruce and Rebecca adapted to the new normal.

It was the adaptation, the normalization, Bruce thought, that eventually ruined them. The habit of bearing the unbearable leads to complacency.

So while it shouldn't have been a surprise that Brian would one day go too far, it was.

It was.

It had started with the usual stuff. Brian had been tearing into Bruce for being a "freak" and a "weirdo." Bruce had just gotten his SAT scores, and he'd managed a perfect score. Despite years of carefully maintaining a C average, Bruce hadn't wanted to blow the SAT, so he'd actually done his best for once. Unfortunately, his father had opened the envelope before Bruce had gotten home from school.

When Brian had started slapping and hitting Bruce, though, Rebecca had stepped in.

She did, usually, as much as Bruce tried to get her to stay out of it. She was too protective, though. And so she'd come out of her bedroom, frowning, and walked down the hall to the pair facing off at the top of the stairs. "Brian," she'd said, coming up behind them. "Brian, don't—"

Those had been her last words. Without even looking at her, Brian had turned and backhanded her roughly, casually, something he'd done a thousand times before. This time, though, the blow had caught her by surprise and she stumbled a single step backwards...and down the stairs.

She'd broken her neck.

Brian had gone to jail and, eventually, prison. Bruce had spent his senior year of high school in foster care. He'd applied to Harvard, partly as a joke, partly as a 'how far can I get away from here,' and even though his grades had been subpar, his shining, fucking perfect SAT score had gotten him in.

He lasted until his junior year.

The problem had been a combination of things. Years of deliberately slacking off had left Bruce without the ability to apply himself. Having no familial support meant he was on his own in terms of housing and living expenses, a hard burden for any young adult to bear, even with the the help of financial aid.

But mostly, Bruce had always thought, it was the fact that his father had killed his mother in front of him.

Or rather, that years of abuse culminating in massive trauma had left him emotionally broken and mentally unstable.

Bruce had...a small problem.

The first blackout had actually been during his senior year of high school, but Bruce hadn't known it was a blackout until much later, when he'd had a couple more. He'd been drinking with a couple of kids at some lame party that he'd managed to get invited to (doing people's homework made you pretty popular, apparently) and then...he'd been at home, in bed.

The second blackout was during his sophomore year of college. Bruce had been having a few illicit beers with some of the kids from his Chem 298 class and then...he'd been lying in someone's front yard, covered in vomit.

That one scared him, and he'd cut out all alcohol at that point.

But it wasn't the alcohol. He wasn't getting blackout drunk. It was something else.

He had two more blackouts before he put it together. It wasn't alcohol. It was anxiety.

It was stress. And at that point, Bruce decided he needed to stay calm at all costs. Because he couldn't keep blacking out, couldn't deal with that kind of blatant evidence of his own broken mind. He didn't want to think about it.

As a young adult with a history of trauma and no emotional support whatsoever, he'd done what anyone would do.

He'd found himself a dealer.

The first semester of his junior year of college, Bruce spent most of his time in a pleasant haze of Xanax and, when he could get it, Vicodin.

He failed all his classes and earned an impressive 0.00 GPA.

The winter semester of that year, Bruce had just stopped attending classes sometime around the end of February.

At that point, Harvard had decided that, perfect SAT or not, it was time that they and Bruce Banner parted ways.

So then, at 21 years old, Bruce had found himself adrift.

He got by for a while doing odd jobs, wandering up and down the East Coast, and eventually, when he was 23, he landed himself a job at a New York karaoke bar of all places.

One night, one of his coworkers was sick with what Bruce suspected was a norovirus, and Bruce was given the unpleasant task of warming up the crowd. This mostly entailed cajoling people into singing, and, if no one was jumping onstage, taking the mic himself.

That night, no one seemed eager so sing, so Bruce, resigned, had hopped up on stage.

The first song he ever sang was a stupid power ballad he'd heard done about 45243 times before. He didn't even like the song, really; he'd just heard it enough that he thought he could pull it off.

And pull it off he did. He was, as one member of the stunned crowd had said, "fucking amazing."

At the insistence of the audience, Bruce had done an encore. Then another one. All told, he performed five songs before he insisted that someone else take over.

That night, he went home to his shitty apartment and he laid on his bed. He'd spent hours thinking. Music was something he'd never considered, something he'd never had the time or opportunity to think about. But he was good. That was apparent. He was good...and he liked it.

He liked it a lot.

The next day, Bruce had gathered what meager savings he had and he'd gone to the nearest music store. He'd picked up the cheapest guitar they had and slowly, he'd learned to play it.

Within a year, he was in a band.

He'd been performing a gig at a facsimile of an Irish pub when he'd met Tony Stark.

Or rather, been accosted by him.

In between sets, Bruce like to step out and get some water and, if he needed it, a little something extra. He'd been in the process of swallowing a sip of water when someone had punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow—" Bruce had started, turning around, but he'd been interrupted.

"Oh my god, your voice in perfect," said a voice. "Can I have you?"

Bruce had turned around and found himself face-to-face with a guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a molecule of caffeine on it and sporting the most pretentious goatee Bruce had ever seen.

Bruce liked him immediately.

"Excuse me?" Bruce had asked.

"Can I have you?" the man repeated. Then he'd stuck out his hand. "Tony Stark. Guitar god and music scout. I need you."

"Um," Bruce had said. "Thanks, but I'm already in a band."

"Your band sucks," Tony had replied factually. "My band is awesome, and needs someone like you. In fact, we need you specifically. Come on. With you, we can make it big."

Bruce had been somewhat taken aback by Tony's brash confidence, and to be honest, he'd also been somewhat charmed by it. Additionally, what Tony was saying was unfortunately right; his band did suck. They were a shitty cover band, the likes of which were a dime a dozen. So Bruce had shrugged, awkward. "Er, I guess I could check you guys out."

"Great!" Tony had replied. He'd handed Bruce a piece of paper. "Here's where we practice. Come by around 8 tomorrow night and we'll be there." He paused, then added, "Also, we're called 'The Avengers.' The name is non-negotiable."

And that had been that. Tony had simply bounded away, and Bruce had gone back to perform his second set.

Not wanting to be rude, Bruce had, indeed, stopped by the next night and he'd found that Tony hadn't been lying. His band was amazing.

It was a five piece set, consisting of some of the most talented musicians Bruce had ever heard. On guitar were Tony and his friend Steve Rogers. Bass was a huge blond guy named Thor. Drums was a guy named Clint Barton whose short, spiked blonde hair was dyed half purple. On keyboards/violin/just about any instrument imaginable was a beautiful redheaded woman named Natasha Romanoff.

Together, they sounded tight and clean, working together seamlessly as a team. When they finished performing a song—Natasha sang, with a beautiful alto—all Bruce could say was, "What do you need me for, exactly?"

"Natasha doesn't want to sing forever," Tony said, shrugging his guitar off and setting it on a stand.

Natasha had nodded, stepping away from her keyboards. "Not really my thing, you know?"

Bruce didn't—her voice was amazing—but he'd just nodded. "I guess. If you really want me, I can join."

With that, he'd been in.

Not just in the band, either; he'd suddenly found himself a group of friends. They didn't just practice together; Tony insisted on Mandatory Group Fun Time. And the more they hung out and practiced together, the more Bruce found that he liked these people.

There was Tony, whose irreverence and confidence was matched only by his intelligence and musical talent. There was Clint, who was partially deaf and had, no shit, been in the circus. There was Thor, whose family problems rivaled Bruce's. Steve was an amazing guitar player, an accomplished artist, and the kindest, mostly loyal person Bruce had ever met. Natasha was a bit of a mystery, reluctant to talk about her past but more than willing to listen, to tease the others, and she was probably the most amazingly talented musician Bruce had ever met.

It was new to him. He'd never had friends before, having isolated himself as a child and kept the habit going once he'd gotten to college, and subsequently kicked out. Liking people was a genuinely strange experience, and opening up to them was even weirder.

But he did.

At first, they'd performed mostly songs that Tony had written, but Tony encouraged the others to write, too, and after a while, Bruce did. He wrote like he was dying, like it was his lifeline, and he sang.

The band listened. They processed. And no one judged. Instead, they offered sympathy, best summarized by Tony's, "Dude, that sucks."

Soon, they were doing songs Bruce had written. He found the writing process cathartic. There was something about putting himself out there, about spreading his past out so the whole world could see it, that let him finally start to process it.

Their music proved fairly popular; it blended several different elements for a unique sound, and combined with the lyrics that explored topics ranging from politics to relationships to family drama to trauma and drug use, there was something for everyone to relate to. Soon they had gathered quite the local following, regularly drawing crowds of several hundred people at their gigs.

Then, they'd gotten signed.

It had been something of a surprise.

They'd been performing a gig opening for a much bigger act. It was pretty common for more popular artists to pull some local talent for opening acts, and somehow this semi-famous band had heard of The Avengers.

It ended up being their biggest gig to date, and a few days later, they'd been contacted by Phil Coulson, a talent scout who worked for SHIELD Records.

After that, it had been a whirlwind. They'd gone into the studio and they'd started laying down tracks. They'd started getting some publicity, getting television spots and the like.

For Bruce, that's when it had started to unravel.

He'd been blackout free for years, mostly, he thought, because of his self-medication habit. But with the band's popularity, he was under more stress.

Too much stress.

The first blackout had been after The Avengers' first television spot. Bruce could remember going backstage, getting cleaned up, and then...nothing. Nothing until the next morning, when he'd found himself back at his (new, somewhat nicer) apartment, standing in what had once been his neat, orderly bedroom.

The mess wasn't bad. There were clothes strewn around and a few things had been knocked off the dresser, but the room wasn't destroyed. Just messy.

But Bruce didn't remember doing it. And he didn't know why he had.

He'd called Natasha, first, because it felt right. Bruce had thought that if there was a problem that needed to be solved, Natasha would be the one to do it. She was the one who handled the day to day workings of the band, the logistics, the specifics. Tony was the big picture thinker, Natasha managed the minutiae. She was always ready for anything.

And if nothing else, Bruce knew she was a good listener.

She had listened, quietly, without interruption, while Bruce rattled off everything he hadn't told anyone. The anxiety, the blackouts, the drugs. The parts he'd left out of his narrative, the parts no one knew.

When Bruce was finished, Natasha had offered him calm, rational advice. "You need to talk to someone."

"I just did," Bruce had snorted, running a hand through his hair.

"You know what I mean," Natasha had replied evenly.

And Bruce did. But he didn't take her advice. He knew it was good advice. But he couldn't do it, not yet.

When it happened again, he'd again gone to Natasha. Bruce trusted her.

Natasha had said, "I'm telling the band." Up front, nothing behind his back. Bruce appreciated that. And he didn't blame her.

The general consensus, at their meeting, was that Bruce needed to talk to someone.

He still didn't. It was one thing to face his past through his music. It was something else entirely to face his own instability.

Then they'd gone on tour to promote the new album.

The new album which was, surprisingly, climbing the charts.

The album, which contained the #1 single in America.

Almost overnight, The Avengers were rockstars, selling out auditoriums and the occasional arena.

And Bruce Banner, age 27, socially awkward introvert and abuse survivor, was not prepared for that.

The first leg of the tour, which lasted almost a year, went...okay. Fame had its benefits, one of which was easy access to the things Bruce though he needed to keep himself sane. He kept himself medicated to the gills, and if he slurred a word or two while he was onstage, no one seemed to notice. He still had women throwing their underwear at him, still had his face plastered on magazine covers, still had paparazzi trying to follow him to the bathroom.

He didn't have a problem.

Still, even with chemical help, Bruce blacked out once, after a particularly huge show. That had been the first time he'd trashed his hotel room. The media chalked it up to a "rockstar hissy fit," and Bruce was too ashamed to correct them.

But the rest of the band knew what it was.

After that, the band took a break. Six months off, in fact, because Tony had insisted that Bruce needed to get his shit together. Exact phrase, in fact.

Bruce had tried to get his shit together. He'd tried to stop using. He looked up reputable psychiatrists. But in the end, he couldn't do it.

He'd failed, utterly.

The second leg of the tour did not go well..

Bruce's drug use flared back up almost immediately. And in addition to the drugs, Bruce started drinking again, desperate to prevent what he knew could happen. He was willing to do anything to disconnect, to stay calm.

But the stress of touring was too much, and he blacked out again. Another hotel room ripped apart. And this time, Bruce had found himself injured. Bruised hands, a knot on his head.

Their record label had started threatening them then. With Bruce in the band, they were a liability. Even if they were insanely popular, SHIELD Records couldn't keep them on if Bruce couldn't exercise some self-control.

If only it were so easy.

Bruce didn't know why he was so angry when he was blacked out, why he was so violent. He wished he remembered, wished he knew what set himself off. All he knew, though, was that he had enough sense to get away from the rest of the world when he was in an episode.

He thanked god for that.

This time, it had only been a couple of weeks since his last blackout. Despite the pills, despite the booze, it was getting worse.

"I see," said the calm voice on the other end of the line. Natasha, unflappable as always. "What do you want to do about it?"

That, Bruce thought, was a good question.

Thanks for reading! Chapter 2 is underway.