Chapter 36: Ice Cream and Understanding
Summary: An archer, an engineer, and a physicist walk into an ice cream parlor . . .
"Slow down a bit if you want me to keep up with you, Adam," Bruce thought in as firm and calm of a voice as he could project. He was walking across the street with Tony and Clint, so they could cross the plaza and reach Graeter's Ice Cream Parlor on the far side of Fountain Square. There was at least one visible bodyguard following them, but Bruce was betting there were at least a half dozen more on the ground level and a couple taking the high ground on the rooftops. Since they left the suite, Adam had kept up an almost nonstop barrage of questions, which had started with ice cream flavors and soon veered off into elevator engineering, baseball, and visiting the Bartons again. Bruce was trying to keep up, "Adam, I don't know enough about historic elevators to answer that first question. The Reds used to be called the 'Red Legs' because of their uniforms; it has nothing to do with communism or the Soviet Union. The new stadium is down on the riverfront, and we'll see it tomorrow. I'm sure it won't be that long till we see all the Bartons again. Yes, Nate is probably walking by now, but I'll ask Clint when we get a chance. Okay, Adam, may I have a break now? We're almost there, and I'm going to need to talk."
"I'm sorry, Bruce. There's just so much here to take in and understand."
"Believe me, I know. You're so much like, well, like me. I get it. Let's just take it one step, one question at a time."
"I can do that."
"Good, just focus and let me know what you want to try." As they entered the brightly lit store, Bruce was glad to see they'd managed to hit a lull in customers. The three employees behind the counter wasted no time before plying them with ice cream samples using small plastic spoons. Adam was perfectly quiet as Bruce read down the menu: "Black Cherry Chocolate Chip, Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, Buckeye Blitz, Butter Pecan, Original Salted Caramel, Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, . . . Are you getting these?" Bruce finally asked.
"If you just focus your eyes, I can read them with you," Adam replied.
"No kidding?" Bruce was a little surprised at that. "I knew you could read in my head, but you've been so far behind when you manifest that I was a little worried."
"Overloads block most of my cognitive functions so everything is impaired or compromised. Now without any overloads, it seems I'm not blocked from doing complex functions like reading and math. I don't think I'm close to as proficient as you, but I can read the boards here and add up the numbers."
"Wow, you've been able to keep up with me when we've formulated theorems before, so maybe that's still possible. We're going to have to study this in detail later. Okay, right now it's back to reality. Where do you want to start? Vanilla is sort of the default flavor."
"What's Madagascar Vanilla?"
"That's where the vanilla beans are from." Bruce asked to try the Madagascar Vanilla and took his time tasting the unusually dense ice cream for which the company was famous. He was a bit surprised at how the taste, smell, and feel of it evoked a rich montage of childhood memories. "That's really good for plain vanilla, Adam. What do you think?"
"It's good, but I want to try the Mint Chip. It's whiter."
"Why does 'whiter' matter?"
"I want to work up to the purple and dark brown ones."
"Okay, but you might want to limit yourself to six so I don't get overloaded. I can probably eat quite a bit, but we do have to go to this dinner and eat more actual food later." Bruce asked to try the Mint Chip. "Are you sure you want to try this, Bud? You didn't like the toothpaste earlier and it was mint."
Adam laughed at that. "I'm ready, Bruce. Shovel it in."
Bruce fought to keep his face straight and popped the whole spoonful into his mouth. The mint was pretty brisk, but he'd forgotten how good the large flakes of slightly bitter dark chocolate were. Unfortunately, Adam picked an odd moment to develop control over Bruce's gag reflex. Bruce winced and fought hard to swallow. He retreated to the water fountain at the back of the store before things got really embarrassing. Tony and Clint were too engrossed in picking flavors to pay much attention to his coughing fit.
"Sorry, I wasn't expecting the mint and that strong of a chocolate on top of it," Adam apologized.
"Well, we better skip the ones with chips then unless they're milk chocolate. That's milder. The Strawberry Milk Chocolate Chip is good. They've had that since I was first here as a kid."
"How about the Coffee without the chips?"
"You know coffee is a little bitter."
"It's one of the few things I think I know what it tastes like though since you drink it all the time."
Bruce asked to taste the plain Coffee. "Well?"
"No."
Bruce did not comment, but the I-told-you-so vibe hung in the air. "My turn," Bruce thought and asked for a sample of the Original Salted Caramel, which may have been the original, but he didn't remember it from his childhood. As he chased the pale ice cream around the inside of his mouth with his tongue, he had an unexpected flood of memories that involved Natasha and a shiver of pleasure ran up his spine that seemed out of place here in public. Something was definitely up with these associations. "Wow, that was almost as good as sex," he blurted out to his own surprise.
"You know," said the older male employee behind the counter who'd handed him the sample, "we get comments like that a lot with this flavor."
Tony snorted out a laugh and so did Clint. "Damn, let's try that next, Barton. I want to have what Banner is having," Tony said, not even trying to keep a straight face. He stuck the sample in his mouth and made some exaggerated pleasurable "nom-nom-nom" sounds before he removed the spoon, "Sorry, just not doing it for me, Bruce, but it is good stuff."
"It's excellent, but not exactly orgasmic," Clint said with a giggle.
"I think it's the salt," suggested the guy behind the counter.
Tony and Clint had made up their minds, so they moved down the counter to order. "I knew you'd pick the Bourbon Pecan Chip, Stark," Clint said. "That one just had you written all over it."
"You think? I'm going to have to send some of this back home before we leave town."
"The sign says they do ship," Clint said, pointing to a display beside a large freezer along part of the interior walls. Clint had settled on the store's signature Black Raspberry Chip, joking that the colors matched his uniform well enough to blend in if any ended up on it rather than in him. Once they got their orders, they sat down at a corner table to enjoy their ice cream and wait for Bruce to get done.
Right about then Bruce was looking down into the freezer with the open containers, and Adam spotted a pale blue variety of ice cream. Bruce signed heavily. Among all the natural flavors and colors, that one stood out even if it wasn't chemically bright and obnoxious.
"I would like to try the blue one . . . pleeeease!" pleaded Adam.
"Oh, you would want to do the Cotton Candy," Bruce groaned inwardly. He went ahead, sensing with a kind of confectionary fatalism that he was doomed to eat more than just this one sample. The baby blue stuff had never been his favorite, but his cousin Jennifer had always picked it. The one good thing Bruce remembered was it didn't turn his tongue blue. Much to his current chagrin, Adam almost purred with contentment at the taste, and Bruce had a flash of memories from riding the Junior Scrambler with his cousins at the nearby Coney Island Amusement Park on a summer evening. They were all between seven and ten years old with skinned knees and sunburnt noses. He'd wished that day would never end.
Bruce shook himself back to the present. He had thought he was going to use his next pick on Bananas Foster, but he chose Dutch Milk Chocolate instead. It was mild and comforting, and Adam liked it, so that made it worthwhile.
"Okay, Big Guy, it's decision time. Got your mind made up? Give me two that you like, and I'll pick the third."
"Could we do a Banana Split? That has three ice cream flavors and a bunch of other stuff," Adam negotiated. Bruce was vaguely aware he'd helped create this monster.
"Okay, we might as well," Bruce thought with another mental sigh and placed the order.
Tony and Clint were still seated at the table enjoying the last of their ice cream while puzzling over Bruce's behavior. He'd been making a variety of faces and seemed to be having a difficult time deciding.
"What's up with Bruce?" Clint asked under his breath to Tony.
"I'm not completely sure, but maybe he's feeling some nostalgic vibe or rehashing something from his childhood?" Tony speculated. He was used to seeing Bruce completely absorbed in his thought processes, but that was always in the lab. In public, he was usually much better at covering up that particular AS quirk.
Now that the order was in, Bruce relaxed a bit. He leaned against the counter and grinned at his colleagues. Normally, he'd have been happy with a single scoop, but having Hulked-out earlier, he could afford the calories. If it made Adam's day, he wasn't going to complain. When he brought over his Banana Split, there was so much whipped cream and other toppings that he couldn't say if there were bananas in it or not. "I hope you two still have your spoons," Bruce said as he carefully set the loaded tureen down on the table.
"Wow," said Tony, "that is impressive, and it's going to be even more impressive watching you eat it."
Clint grinned, "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're the one who's pregnant and not Nat." As soon as the statement was out of his mouth, Clint cringed. "I am so sorry! I did not mean to say that out loud. Shit! Nat is going to kill me."
"It's okay," said Bruce laughing ruefully. "We kind of had it figured it out, so you might as well confirm it."
"I'm still sorry though," Clint continued, running his hands down his face and covering his mouth a bit too late. "She was really looking forward to telling you."
"So spill it, Barton," said Tony leaning forward across the small table. "I bet Nat or Laura sent you the goods. We want pictures or whatever you've got."
Clint looked at Bruce, "I have stills and a video of the sonogram if you want to see them."
Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose and forehead in thought. "Just tell me if the baby looks healthy, that's all I really want to know right this minute."
"Laura and the obstetrician both said everything looks perfect so far," Clint reported as he pulled out his phone and scrolled to the right screen before handing it over to Tony who seemed to have no qualms about looking at everything.
"That's good," said Bruce smiling to himself. "I'd kind of been holding my breath about that."
"'Rushman'?" Tony said as he looked at the label on the sonogram stills. "Now that name brings back some memories. I guess she wanted to stay off the radar a bit?"
"She probably thought that the alias was safer," Clint reasoned.
"Well, maybe after this evening she'll have a reason to use a different one," Tony sniffed.
"Hey, it's a promise ring, not an engagement ring, so don't jinx it," Bruce said between bites. "Get your spoon over here and help me out."
"Is that like ice cream on the ice cream?" Clint asked.
"It's the whipped cream," Bruce explained. "Somewhere under here are bananas, but I've not found one yet."
Tony got quiet as he played the video from the sonogram over several times. He could barely tell one thing from another in the shadowy images, but he recognized there was a little being there who was tenacious of life. He passed Clint back his phone because otherwise he was going to get all sloppy and embarrassing. "Okay, what's the blue stuff?" asked Tony, pointing to Bruce's dish.
"That is my cousin Jennifer's all time favorite. Try it and see what you think."
Both Clint and Tony tried it. Clint grinned, "I know what it is."
Tony looked puzzled, "No innocent fruit was harmed in the making of this. It's not bubble gum, but it's candy-ish."
Clint looked at Bruce with his eyebrows raised. "Do you think he's ever had the real thing?"
"Surely they have fairs and carnivals and circuses in California," teased Bruce, "but maybe he's used to the pink stuff?"
"Sugar floss?" asked Tony.
"Right, cotton candy," corrected Clint.
"That's what Aunt Peggy called it, and Dir. Carter is always right," Tony said as if that settled everything. "So if it's Jenn who likes this blue stuff, why did you pick it?" Tony asked Bruce.
"I didn't. Ad... uh, Hulk picked it out," Bruce said matter-of-factly. "I picked the orgasmic Salted Caramel, and we compromised on the Dutch Milk Chocolate. That's it under the marshmallow topping," He said pointing it out. "I wasn't kidding. Help me eat this before the Hot Fudge melts everything."
"Hold it," said Clint, "when did this start? Nat usually has more communication with the Big Guy than you do." He took a big spoonful of the chocolate and continued to study Bruce.
"It's recent," Bruce said. "We're still working things out."
"You know, I thought something was a little different. I've not seen you flash any green at all this afternoon," observed Clint.
"Come to think of it, I've not seen any green since the doctor's office this morning," said Tony. "Pardon me," he said as he reached over and touched the back of his hand to Bruce's forehead.
"Hey," said Bruce flinching away, "I thought you had an app for that now."
"You're right!" Tony said pulling out his phone.
"So, what did you think of the Black Raspberry Chip?" Bruce asked Clint.
"If I had to stick with one, I'd still pick it, but this chocolate is amazing stuff."
"The seasonal flavors are just as good." Bruce looked over at Tony who was still flipping through screens. "Well, did you find something or not, Tony?"
Tony held up a finger to signal for Bruce to wait a moment, "Here, take a look at this," he said handing the phone to Bruce. The physicist found himself looking at a simple graph that showed his body temperature had dropped two degrees since they had been in Clifton that morning. It had been elevated while he was the Big Guy, but it had come back down again. That still left him running warmer than average, but not at such an extreme as he had been since the episode when he collapsed back in August. This also left him with yet more questions than answers when it came to explaining where the missing energy went much less how this connected to the trigger from Dr. Strange and his closer connection to Adam. Bruce handed the phone back to Tony. "That confirms the drop in temperature, but I couldn't find anything earlier when I looked through the software that would indicate or measure my Liminal shifts."
"If there is, I've not been able to find it either and I looked for it specifically," Tony shook his head. "That may not be a bad thing in the long run."
"Looks like you're stuck eyeballing it like the rest of us, guys," Clint said with a shrug.
Bruce shook his head in agreement with the archer. "Right now I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. The Big Guy is cooperative and my control is otherwise in good shape," he said as he prodded the mostly liquid mixture left in the bottom of the dish. "If we can get through the rest of the trip without me changing color and scaring the academics, I would consider this a success, no matter how the rest of the conference goes over."
Tony ran his spoon along the bottom of the dish and fished out the last chunk of fudge-covered banana. "If I were you, I'd be more concerned about fitting into that monkey suit this evening after eating all this ice cream than showing a little green."
"Well, let's go walk a little of it off before we have to go get cleaned up then," said Bruce as he pushed himself back from the table.
"By God, it's a plan," said Clint. "Get me out of here before I eat anymore of this even if I don't have to fit in a monkey suit."
They took a several block stroll in the mild afternoon weather before heading back to the hotel. Adam had been extremely quiet and simply responded with a mumbled, "Nap . . . ," when Bruce mentally prodded him. Bruce wondered if this was going to be the pattern—intense interactions followed by crashes. He reasoned things would even out over time, but so far he had no complaints. With time on his hands, once they arrived back, Bruce unpacked what little Kayla and left for him to do then arranged his lineup of suits and other clothing along with his shoes. After that he got his electronics out and made sure the pad and the laptop were charged up and connected. He even went through part of his presentation. It only took him about five minutes to make sure he'd scraped off his afternoon shadow, so he took a completely unnecessary shower where he finally broke down and started sobbing with relief. She was going to be okay. They both were going to be okay. He let himself have a hundred counts of really ugly tears and rough breathing with the water running at full force down his back as he pressed his forehead to the tiled wall. Logically, he knew Natasha and the baby were going to be fine. They'd made it through the roughest part of the first trimester. It was all going to be okay. After that he straightened up, turned off the water, and was ready to move on.
Joseph picked Tony and Bruce up in front of the hotel and drove them back up the hill to the university where the conference's opening activities were scheduled in the University Ballroom. Mal had gone over the itinerary and locations with them earlier, and this was simply a meet-and-greet cocktail hour with a not-so-formal dinner afterward. They were arriving about halfway through the cocktails to cut back on the exposure time. There would be a dozen security people already there and in place, so all they had to do was show up and do some schmoosing without starting any fights. That sounded easy, but things were never that clear cut once they got rolling.
"All right, Cinderellas," Joseph said as he pulled the Hummer up at the drop-off point nearest the University Center where the evening's events were housed, "I will be right here waiting for you at 7:15pm, so don't be late."
"No problem," Tony said.
"Thanks, we'll see you then, Joseph," Bruce said, and they headed off down a walk in the cooling twilight to the brightly lit building that had to be their destination. Bruce felt a bit over dressed, despite having won the suit vs. tux argument with Mal. There were several other academic types headed in the same direction, and Bruce caught a few barely audible exclamations of recognition as they neared the building. Tony was accustomed to being spotted and even approached, but Bruce much preferred being completely in the background where he didn't have to worry about interactions or confrontations.
As they approached the front of the building, a couple arrived at the same time from another angle, and Bruce held the door open for them.
"I don't believe it," said a warm female voice that made Bruce's head snap to attention.
"Betty?" he asked.
"Bruce, it is so good to see you," she said stepping forward to take his hand. "It's been a long time."
Notes: My deepest thanks to Autumn_Froste for her beta skills and keeping me on the straight and narrow.
Yah, I'm a terrible person for cutting it off right there. (Btw, the last mention of Betty is back in Ch. 30 if you want any hints at where the relationship stands and whom she's with now.) I'm hoping I will be able to post on time next week because grades will be due-not because I'm a horrible tease. I'm also working on a piece for HulkWidow Week on Tumblr, so keep your fingers crossed.
Hope you enjoyed the three guys together. Clint is a fun character to throw into the mix because these three have several common background elements that don't get any time spent on them in the movies. He's basically like a brother in law to Bruce and Bruce admires him a great deal.
I could go on, but what do you think? Please let me know. I do live for your comments and love the conversations.
Graeter's is all this and then some. Check them out if you make it to this part of the world or can find them in a store: www. graeters. com