Bruce Banner knew that he was accident-prone, it was something that he'd known since he was barely out of the womb. He had learned to avoid the inevitable accidents, but when he moved into Avengers Tower he found himself letting his guard down. That was how he found himself in the lab one morning trying to reach a stack of blueprints that were on the top of Tony's shelf. Sure he could've called Steve, Tony, Thor or even Clint to come and get them down for him, but he didn't want to bother them so early in the morning. So instead he snatched up a lab stool and deposited under the shelf, before climbing up on it to try and grab the stack of prints. He stretched for the stack, lifting one foot off the stool in the process of lunging for it. Now, Bruce knew that his shoes didn't have a ton of hold on the stool but he didn't care, he was so close to getting the stack down. His fingertips were brushing it but he was still a half-inch away, so he gave a mighty shove and scooped the stack awkwardly into his arms. He stood there triumphantly for a moment, basking in the glory of beating the stupid stack. Then the stool wobbled sickeningly as he tried to step off of it, the stack balanced awkwardly in his arms. But he proceeded to try and step down anyway. So when the stool toppled backwards with a clatter and sent him toppling forwards, stack still clenched in his arms.

It was if the world was saying, 'I told you so.'

His shoulders wrenched painfully as he fell and landed sharply on his left arm, there was a muffled 'pop' and a cruel sounding 'snap' as the thirty-one year old landed in a heap. The blueprints fluttering to the ground around him like a banner of true shame. He let out a low involuntary moan and curled into himself, dreading having to move his left arm. He knew that there was something broken, he couldn't move his fingers or even the arm itself. The arm fracture didn't cause much pain, it was his shoulder, it honestly felt as though someone had shoved a white hot poker into his joint and had twisted it sickeningly over and over. It made hot tears squeeze out of the corners of his eyes as he moaned.

"Mister Banner, should I tell Sir and the others that you require immediate medical attention?"

Bruce blinked owlishly at the ceiling as he heard JARVIS' calming British voice and he cleared his throat quietly, steeling himself against the overwhelming pain before speaking. "T-That wont be necessary, JARVIS. I'm alright." There was a kind of disbelieving silence from the AI that appeared right after Bruce spoke, only broken as the AI spoke in a quite sarcastic tone of voice. "Yes, you appear to be doing quite fine Mister Banner. I shall be alerting Sir and the others accordingly." Bruce then shifted, trying to move himself into a sitting position. Whine after pitiful whine slipped past his clenched teeth until he managed to prop himself up, one-armed against the shelf of utter doom and misery.

Steve was the one who arrived first, Tony just half a foot behind him. Both men noticed the half toppled over shelf at first, looking around suspiciously before seeing Bruce. He was pale, sweaty and shaky. His eyes glassy with pain and something else neither man could identify. He was cradling his left arm to his chest and it was obvious to both that it was bent in a very unnatural angle and that his shirt sleeve seemed to be shorter than his right. Tony reasoned that there was no way Bruce's arm had grow so much longer from the last time that he'd seen him, but it was Steve who ultimately figured out the problem and he winced in empathy for his friend.

"He's dislocated his shoulder."

"Oh Shit, is he okay..what should we do?"

"...'He' is still conscious..."

Bruce sighed and weakly raised an eyebrow at the both men who were speaking over him as if he were a child, that's when he voiced his displeasure, both men turning to him in surprise, anger and a ton of concern. "Bruce, what happened? What did you do?" Steve whispered worriedly, his big blue doe-eyes looking Bruce over with teary concern.

"Fell..." Bruce sighed once again, pointedly avoiding looking either man in the eyes. He had to keep breathing evenly, the Hulk was growling under the shield in his mind, probably pissed off at Bruce for being so stupidly careless. They both had to share this body that Bruce kept fucking up with his accident-proneness. "Yeah, we gathered that. But how and what do we do?" Tony's sarcastic tones seemed to mirror his AI's and it wasn't too much of a stretch to think that one had programmed the other.

"You could try and pop my shoulder back into its socket but if I have a Proximal Humerus Fracture, that could make it a lot worse so I would avoid doing that."

Bruce wheezed, the pallor on his face was growing more and more prominent by the moment and there were bullets of sweat coursing down his face. His vision was getting more and more blurry and the pain was just getting stronger as the initial adrenaline wore off. He shuddered and his stomach churned nauseatingly, he really wanted to vomit but he forced the feeling downwards and groaned, leaning into the shelf of doom with all his might. He was dimly aware of Clint and Natasha arriving then, both assassins were carrying something, for Clint it was a pillow and for Natasha it was a cellphone and some gauze.

They both slid to a stop in front of them and Clint blinked in shock at Bruce's poor state of being. Clint gently pressed his pillow against Bruce's throbbing arm, causing him to let out a howl of immense pain, tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. Natasha quickly moved in to wrap the gauze around the pillow to keep it in place.

"This is what the 911 operator told us to do."

Clint explained as Natasha finished informing them of the situation. "The paramedics will be here soon."

"I don't need paramedics, really guys I'm fine." Bruce whispered shallowly, his words breathy and hurtful as he whined. All the Avengers present gave him a glare in response and he shut his mouth with a muffled 'clap'.

"Shut up, Bruce." They all seemed to snarl in unison as Thor led the paramedics down and into the lab. They strapped Bruce to a gurney and had to carry him up the stairs into order to reach the waiting ambulance, the physicist griping the whole way that he was fine and that everybody was just over-reacting. Later that day, when the doctors had pronounced the physicist of having a green stick fracture of his elbow, a Proximal Humerus Fracture and a dislocated shoulder...all the Avengers started referring to their physicist as 'Murphy', something that the man found very annoying, but very true.

"Murphy's Law-Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong in the most horrible of ways."