"Bruce," she stopped in the doorway and dried her eyes, "what are you doing here?" She didn't want him to see that she had been crying, that she had finally let him get to her.
She sniffed up her sadness only to find that he had the same panic in his eyes, that look of almost getting caught letting go of what little control he had left. His face was green, a tinge she thought she was imagining until she blinked the tears away completely. Maybe he was about to be sick, maybe he was coming down with something, maybe…
The green tone faded away as soon as it had appeared, causing her to question her sanity along with her hardiness. She shook the thought from her head and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I thought I was the only one who came up here anymore," she laughed, glancing over at him casually.
"It's not just you." His voice was shaky as he turned toward her, a vulnerability in his tone. "You're crying."
"Am I?" She wiped her cheeks one more time as she looked at her feet, wishing she hadn't come up here at all.
"Your face is…" Bruce tilted his head to get a better look at her. "May I?" He took a pen light from his jacket pocket and pointed at her face.
"Y...yeah, I guess." She let him approach with his torch, his handsome face coming closer to hers as his fingers palpated her cheek. He pressed down on her orbital bone as he checked her pupils for responsiveness. "Ah!" She hissed, turning away.
Bruce frowned and took his hand back, clicking off his light before tucking it away in the pocket of his white coat. He took in a slow deep breath and removed his glasses, taking his time to look back up at her.
"How long has he been hitting you?" He started cleaning his lenses with the tail of his shirt.
"What?!" She stepped back.
"You've been wearing a lot of makeup lately," he started. "More turtlenecks, apologizing for no reason, and you check your phone like it's got your death certificate on it." He put his glasses back on his face, holding her with a stern yet comforting gaze. "Do you have somewhere safe to stay?"
"How did you…" She thought she had covered up her bruises well enough at work, that no one would suspect anything.
Bruce walked over to an old shipment box people used as a bench when they went up there to smoke. It was splintered and burnt, moldy in places from the rain that had fallen last week, but it was sturdy. He sat down and looked up at the stars as they twinkled above them, their light eternal and undeniable against the blackness of their universe. His hands fidgeted against each other as he continued to stare, trying his best not to look back at her.
"My mother used to do the same thing, you know," he laughed under his breath. "She'd cower under my father, pile on the makeup as if I didn't see her bruises." He bit his lip and dropped his head. "She tried everything. She tried making him happy, did whatever he said, but that wasn't enough. He was always angry."
She blinked a few times, in awe at Bruce actually sharing a personal story with her. They had worked together for awhile now, but never got past discussing curry recipes or the works of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. She was beginning to think he didn't have a personal life at all.
She sat down next to him, hoping he had some sage advice for her.
"She went into the ER dozens of time for fractures and internal bleeding, each time with him looming over her shoulder only to get an even worse beating when she got home." He took his glasses off again, pointing them up at the stars and wincing as if to see a speck of dust on them more clearly. He must not have gotten them as clean as he'd wanted the first time. "She tried to leave one night, with me in her arms; packed her bags and got as far as the car." He looked at her to make sure she was paying attention.
She already knew how this story was going to end by the way his voice trembled with each word, his eyes welling with tears as he held his glasses limply between his fingers.
"I was six years old when my father bashed her head against the car window." He sniffed. "He called her an ungrateful bitch as she bled out on the street outside our apartment." He stared blankly into the night, trying not to relive every emotion from that memory.
"Jesus," she whispered, imagining a young Bruce having to see all of that.
"Yeah, Jesus wasn't there that night. And after that, it's hard for me to believe he ever existed." He put his glasses back on and bit his lip nervously, looking at her like the expiration date on her forehead was fast approaching.
"I'm sorry." She didn't know what else to say. She knew he was trying to help in his own Bruce Banner kind of way, but his story made her feel a thousand times worse.
"You don't have to end up like her." His voice dropped down an octave, his eyes finding hers. "Not while I'm around."
"I couldn't ask you to..." She didn't want Mike to find her with another man, even if it was someone like Bruce. She couldn't risk getting someone as sweet and innocent as him mixed up in all of her drama.
"You wouldn't have to." He stared at her in silence until they both felt awkward enough to look up at the stars again, sighing in unison over their shared trauma.
"Your shift's been over for a while now, hasn't it?" He tried to lighten the mood.
"About an hour ago." She took in a deep breath, the cool autumn air waking up her lungs. "He called again, screaming this time because I didn't fold the laundry before, I left for work. He's left me..." She pulled her phone out of her jacket and scrolled through her recent activity. "Twenty-three voicemails." She wrapped her arms around her torso, unable to stop the images of herself lying dead in the street in Mrs. Banner's place. "What about you, don't you have to get back to work?"
Bruce smiled and shook his head. "I'm not going to leave. I'll stay here as long as you need me to."