Chapter Twenty-Three: Like Real People Do
"I knew that I loved you so much it was like I was practically crying out." -Qiu Miaojin
January 24, 2013 - Avengers Tower Residential Units - Manhattan, NY
Audrey had known Bruce long enough to know his protocol following a Code Green. Three days alone in his room, a week of half-days at work, and then he'd be back to normal. The formula felt easy and comfortable to her even though the context was anything but.
For the three days following Oksana's arrest and reassignment, she'd been swamped with paperwork and kicking herself. It wasn't like Bruce was sitting around waiting for her; she couldn't blame him if he didn't want to see her at all. How often did someone get a second chance after three weeks of avoidance and then a sudden confession that had only been made to avoid mass property damage?
It wasn't like she'd lied; Audrey had just planned on keeping that bit of information to herself, if she could. The stinging rejection on New Year's Eve had been enough of an indicator to her of his feelings, and she would get over it. What other choice did she have?
But that didn't mean they had to hate each other. Audrey could love Bruce the same way she loved the rest of the team; more, even, though it wasn't in the way she wanted to. After all they'd been through in the last few months, and all he'd seen her through, he'd become one of her best friends. Which was how she reasoned taking the elevator up to his floor and knocking on his door on the third day of his self-imposed exile, a bag of Chinese takeout in one hand and his sweatshirt in the other.
He was fresh from a shower when he answered, his hair messy and damp. She had seen Bruce in sweats before during the times she slept over at his apartment, but he seemed particularly fragile today. She held up the bag.
"Hi," she said. "Are you hungry?"
The timid smile he offered set waves of relief washing over her. He didn't hate her, even if he had a right to. "Read my mind."
Bruce opened the door wider and Audrey kicked off her shoes, nudging them over until they were lined up neatly with the rest of his. He took the bag from her and set it down on the table in his kitchen, pulling out the cartons and inspecting the contents of each as Audrey hovered nervously in the entryway, before depositing his hoodie on the entry table. "How are you?" she asked, testing the waters.
"Been better," he answered honestly. "But I've been a lot worse, too. So, uh, thank you. For what you did."
She nodded slowly. "Of course." After a beat, she added, "How's your stomach?"
He waved her away. "It's fine. It didn't even scar. Guess that's the upside of this whole thing."
"You also lived," Audrey pointed out. His half-hearted shrug wasn't quite enthusiastic enough to comfort her, but it was a start. Approaching the table slowly, she asked, "Can I sit? Or—I can just leave the food with you, if that's better."
"No, you're welcome to stay," Bruce assured her.
She pulled the chair out and settled in it, her spine ramrod straight and stiff. Bruce retrieved two plates from the cabinet and sat down across from her, sliding one over. As he started shaking the carton of brown rice over his plate, Audrey said, "We should talk."
Bruce's hands stilled for a moment, but he nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "We probably should."
Taking a deep breath, she began, "I just want to say I'm sorry for disappearing, first of all. My pride was hurt, but I shouldn't have—I shouldn't have pushed it on New Year's Eve. And I'm sorry for putting you in a position where you were uncomfortable. That was horrible of me."
For a long, aching moment, he didn't say anything, just reached for the box of kung pao chicken and scooped a few pieces onto the plate. After setting it back down on the table, he put his hand over hers. Light, but still sturdy. "You weren't horrible."
"I feel horrible about it. It was just—" She squeezed her eyes shut. "It was just embarrassing."
Growing up, Peggy had always reminded her that nothing was embarrassing unless she decided she felt that way; admitting it was just adding insult to injury, but she didn't care. She'd had enough with lying. She didn't want it to be part of her friendship with Bruce, too. "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I just—" He stopped short, taking a bite of his food. Realizing that she hadn't taken any, Audrey reached over for the container of dumplings and put two on her plate, shoving one into her mouth to keep from saying anything stupid. "You shouldn't be apologizing to me. I almost got you killed."
"No, you didn't," she objected, after she'd managed to chew threw her mouthful of dumpling. "You didn't touch me. You didn't hurt anyone."
"But I could've."
"Well, we could all hurt someone, Bruce. That's why we're here."
For a moment, he was quiet, his face pensive as he chewed another bite of food and Audrey willed herself to be patient even when all she wanted in the world right now was to understand this thing between them. "You stopped me," he said. "I think."
She felt selfish taking the credit, but it had been true, hadn't it? Something had snapped him back into control, and that thing had been her confession. "About what I said," Audrey started.
Bruce looked breathtakingly uncomfortable from his spot across the table. "Look, it's okay, you don't have to pretend—"
"I meant it," Audrey interrupted. "When I said I was in love with you. I meant it." The room seemed to still, down to the hands of the clock on the wall. Audrey trudged forward anyway, through thick and heavy silence, and continued, "I already put it out there. I might as well say it again. I mean. It's not what I'm here to tell you, but I'm not going to take it back."
"What are you here to tell me, then?" he asked. His brushing past her confession felt like a blow to the stomach, but she steeled herself.
"I just wanted to see if you're okay. And figure out if we can be okay—um, ever."
"We're okay," Bruce insisted.
"But we aren't," she disagreed. "Not really. Not until we figure this all out."
He sighed and set his chopsticks down. "Look, Audrey."
"I know you said no," she rushed to interrupt. "I'm not trying to change your mind, I promise."
His eyes dragged to his hands, where he was running his thumb in arcs over the tip of his index finger. "I'm just not made like that," he confessed quietly. "Not anymore." Audrey put her right hand over her left wrist, tightening her grip to restrain herself from reaching out for him. "How do you know?"
"How do I know?" she repeated.
"That you…" He trailed off, like saying it out loud was too much for him to stand.
"Love you," she finished. It didn't get easier to admit, but she thought back to what he'd told her about bravery. It's about what you do when you're scared. "That I love you." He nodded. How did she know that she loved him? Because she could sleep well when he was close by. Because she wanted to tell him first when her world changed and shifted. Because the house of her body seemed to stop shaking when he was around. "You're the only person I can stand when the world is falling to pieces."
Bruce raked a hand through his hair and looked out the window. "The world is always falling to pieces."
She took a shaky breath. "I know, Bruce," she said. "I know what I'm saying."
For a long moment, he said nothing. Audrey tried to discern from the creases on his face whether he was stunned and processing or if he wanted this conversation to end. After all this time trying to memorize his expressions and gestures, she still didn't know him as well as she wanted to. She didn't know if she ever could—it felt like a rope around her heart was yanking her always towards him, and it wouldn't give until she collided with him, full-bodied and unrestrained, which she couldn't. Which they couldn't.
He stood very suddenly, excusing himself from the table so quickly that, had it not been his apartment, Audrey would've worried that he was leaving. She watched him as he retrieved his bag and produced a file folder from inside, which he then handed to her on his way back to his chair.
"My research is getting published," he said.
Even despite everything, her face split into a grin. "Of course it is," she said. "Congratulations, Bruce."
She flipped the report open, where the lengthy title claimed real estate of the first half of the page. But it wasn't the title she was focused on. Audrey was too busy reading the acknowledgements.
There were the typical expressions of academic gratitude; some thanks to grants and previous experts who loaned their expertise or research. Below, though, he'd written:
None of this research would be possible without the help of Darcy Lewis, for keeping us on track; to Tony Stark for the very generous funding and unsolicited input; and finally, to the girl in the lab.
Audrey gawked at it hopelessly, as if the letters were going to rearrange themselves if she looked away. The girl in the lab. "Oh," she said. As far as reactions went, it was pretty terrible. "Thank you," she added, as a courtesy, as she searched for something better to say. "You didn't have to."
"I meant it," he said, echoing her words from earlier. It wasn't reciprocation, but it was honesty, and she could learn to accept that as enough. "If you hadn't—if you hadn't helped me talk things through I would've gotten in my head about it and the process would've taken much longer."
"I really don't think I can take credit for any of this," she admitted. "I can't pronounce half of these words."
Bruce waved her away. "You don't need to. Scientists made these words up just to be assholes."
She made a show of rolling her eyes at him. The banter, no matter how sudden, felt like a peace offering. "I'm sure they had other reasons."
"Scrabble, maybe."
Audrey watched his face turn up into a whole, real smile and the rope around her heart tightened. She wished she could tell him again that she loved him. She wished she could go ten seconds without muddying the already murky waters of their relationship. She bit her tongue.
"How have you been?" he asked, his smile now faded and replaced by a wince at the quiet. "How was—San Francisco?"
"San Francisco was terrible," Audrey said honestly. "We got double-crossed, as you know. Natasha was held hostage." She considered telling him about her suspicions of a S.H.I.E.L.D. mole, but elected against it. It wasn't that she suspected him; it just wasn't the right time to break the news. And even despite Fury's warning—TRUST NO ONE—she still wanted to believe that she could trust Bruce.
"Is she okay?" Bruce asked.
Audrey hesitated, but nodded. "She's okay," she answered. And Natasha was, on the surface. Below, Audrey wasn't so sure, but what else was new?
"Are you okay?"
"Yes," she said. "It was bad, but I've seen worse." At his wince, she clarified, "Loki. And the Chitauri. Also, the Soldier."
He nodded, slowly.
"I missed you a lot," she said. "I mean—just. Just talking to you. And I know it's my fault, but I still missed you."
The sun through the window caught the face of his watch and bounced over onto the wall across the room, where it trembled against the wall. Audrey followed it back to the source and realized that he was shaking, just the slightest bit. Without thinking, she covered her hand with his. He didn't pull away.
"Are you—tell me how you feel," she said. "Not about me. Just...now. How do you feel now?"
"Honestly?" he asked. She nodded. "Worried."
"...Worried?"
"You promised to bring him back," Bruce said. "He hasn't forgotten."
Audrey nodded, swallowing hard. "I know," she said. When she'd promised to bring the Hulk back, it wasn't like she'd taken the time to unpack the full implications of the deal. Kicking the can further down the road had been the best option at the time, but what did that mean for them now? What did it mean for Bruce now? "So—um, how does he feel?"
He tilted his head back and forth, as if weighing his answer. "He's waiting," he said eventually. "But, I mean—he'll get more impatient. Sooner or later, it's gonna get harder to control."
"Right," Audrey said, tapping her index finger on the table anxiously. "Well, we can talk to Tony, maybe. And see if there's a way to have him come out in a controlled environment."
The look he gave her was a cross of amusement and pity. She grimaced at it. "He's not the kind of thing you can control."
"Maybe he is," she disagreed, even if she didn't entirely believe it. "Maybe...with practice, and a friend. He could be persuaded to share more often." When Bruce opened her mouth to disagree, she rushed to add, "I talked to him. It's not a surefire sign of anything, but he was willing to have a conversation instead of throwing me out the window." Maybe her optimism was misplaced, but she couldn't help but hope.
Bruce sighed. "What happened?"
"You don't remember?" she asked.
"I remember...parts of it," Bruce replied. "The bullet kind of knocked me out, though, if I'm being honest. He had to wake me up."
"Wait," Audrey said. "So he did wake you up. He chose to surrender control."
He eyed her warily. "I guess, yeah, he did."
"So," she said. "Maybe we were too quick to dismiss him. I mean—he accepted negotiations. He woke you up when he could've chosen to, like, eat New York." Bruce's expression soured, and she backtracked. "Not that he would've, but my point is that he accepted peace when we had no actual way to stop him from doing what he wanted. That's—I mean, that's maturity. It's growth."
"What did you say to him?" Bruce asked.
She thought back to their conversation, to the look of horror on Tony's face over the Hulk's shoulder. "I told him I was his friend, and he said he didn't have any. Um, he said you hate him."
"He's not wrong," Bruce said.
"Well," she reasoned. "If you had to share a body with someone who hated you, and you could see their dreams, and they never let you out wouldn't you—I don't know, wouldn't you be upset too?"
"So you think he needs to blow off some steam?"
It wasn't that simple. He knew it, and she knew too, even if she wished that anything could be that easy. But having seen the Hulk in battle, she knew that his anger was self-consuming; it just grew the more he gave in. Still, it was clear that Bruce had written him off too easily as a mindless ball of rage. Complex wasn't the right word, but something like it seemed appropriate.
"We could experiment," she suggested. "Like–okay, Tony owns some land upstate. Let's say I make good on my deal, Hulk comes out, and we're all there so that he can be introduced to us as friends. His friends. He can be around people who don't want to hurt him, for once."
Bruce rubbed his eyes. "I don't know, Aud."
"It could be worth trying," she insisted. "And if it doesn't work, what's the worst that could happen?"
"He could kill somebody," Bruce reminded her.
"Well, sure," she said. "But he also might choose not to. And isn't it—well, wouldn't it be better to let him out sooner? So that he doesn't think I've lied?"
He leaned back in his chair, letting his eyes slide shut. To her, the ideas made sense, even with the risk they posed to her. It was like she'd told herself when confronting Oksana in the stairwell—if anybody should get benched, or hurt, or killed in battle, it was probably her. What would one more Hulk confrontation be?
"You shouldn't take that risk," he said simply, eyes still closed.
"I don't mind," Audrey pressed. She was feeling bolder now, knowing he was drowning out the sight of her.
"Well, you should." His eyes flipped open. "He sees my dreams, but I see his too, and they're—God, they're awful, Audrey. You don't understand."
"So tell me," she said. "Tell me what you see."
Bruce shoved his chair back suddenly, and she jumped at the screeching of the chair legs against the tile floor. He took a deep breath and went to the counter, bracing himself against it with both hands. The line of his shoulders crumpled, defeated, and she swallowed and struggled to figure out what she was supposed to do with herself right now. If he wanted to be near her, he wouldn't have left, but sitting around and watching him hurt sent a pang of guilt through her.
"Bruce?" she asked, after the time stretched out between them for what felt like miles. It was like he was burrowing into his own body to get away from her.
"I can't tell you," he muttered, his back still to her. Audrey looked down at her hands, and then interlaced her fingers together and traced the paths of the U-shaped curves they made with her eyes.
"Okay," she said. "Do you want me to go?"
The pit of misery in her stomach only seemed to grow, and she felt emotionally seasick about it. Bruce didn't say anything for a long time, and then he opened his cupboard and retrieved a bag of tea. As he filled his kettle with water from the sink, he turned back to her.
"I don't want you to go," he said. She waited for the conditional that followed, but it didn't come. "Do you want tea?"
This conversation seemed to be taking on so many loops and shapes that Audrey was losing track of what everything meant. It seemed that they had gone back to talking around things to keep them from becoming real. Tea was the last thing she wanted, but it seemed like it was all he was offering her, and if that was the case she didn't understand why he was letting her stick around in the first place.
"I don't like tea," she said.
"Aren't you half English?" he joked, turning on the range and sending a puff of flames out under his kettle.
"It reminds me of being locked up in a house," she explained. "I used to drink it a lot before I was allowed to leave."
"Right," Bruce said, joining her back at the table.
"Are you sure you don't want me to go?" Audrey blurted out. "You seem busy, and I know this conversation must be miserable for you, and I don't blame you for that, because I know I messed everything up but I don't need to be here if you don't want me to be. It's okay if you ask me to leave."
An eternity seemed to pass where nothing moved, and she began to worry that the earth had actually frozen on its axis. There was nothing but this: nothing but him and her and the table between them, their abandoned plates, her desperate question casting a shadow over them. Then, the kettle began to whistle. "Do you want to stay?"
"I want you to tell me what you want," Audrey said. "And what you don't want. I just—I want to know where we stand."
The kettle behind him whistled louder, the water bubbling over and hissing as it met the flames. No longer able to ignore it, Bruce stood up and switched the stove off, moving the pot over to one of the dormant corners of the range. He turned around to face her, but stayed leaning back against the counter.
"I think we stand where we've always stood," he said slowly. Cautiously.
"What does that mean, though?" Audrey asked. "Like—we haven't always stood in the same place. And you know how I feel."
He nodded. "I do."
"So can you tell me if you want me to stay?" she asked, trying and failing to keep the pleading edge out of her voice. "Because I would. I would stay if you asked."
"You know I want you to," Bruce answered, but he flinched as he said it.
"You do?" she challenged.
Bruce laughed. "Audrey."
She narrowed her eyes, dead serious. "What?"
"You really don't know?" The bewilderment in his eyes nearly caused her to look over her shoulder and check that he was, in fact, talking to her. It felt like she didn't know anything, and so she stayed quiet, waiting for him to explain. He blew out a hopeless breath, half a laugh. Then, "I'm in love with you. Of course I want you to stay."
The words hit her like a punch to the gut. And maybe that was wrong—she should've felt relieved, or happy, or excited. Maybe that was how she felt, under the initial shock, but all she could manage right now was repeating his words back to herself. I'm in love with you. Of course I want you to stay. "Excuse me?" she said. "You—" Where was she going with this?
"When you slept over in December," he told her. "In my bed, and I was tracing your tattoo. I thought you knew then."
She shook her head. "I don't know anything," she answered. "I really, really don't know anything." Beat. "I wish you had told me. I'm bad at reading signs."
"How am I supposed to say something like that?" Bruce asked her. "How do I tell you that I love you but that we can never do anything about it? That I want to be with you even though I know that being with me could get you killed."
"Anything could get me killed," she said. "I'm—I'm a secret agent who picks up occasional superhero gigs, my life has never not been in danger."
"I'm not going to make that any worse," Bruce insisted firmly. "I'm not going to endanger you more, just because things are bad already."
"But you don't make things worse," she insisted. He flinched, wringing his wrists nervously. "Bruce, please. Please just listen." She stood from the table and approached him slowly, trying her best not to reach out for him. "The world is always falling apart, and you and I—we could die at any second. And I hate the thought of dying, and I'm so, so scared of the things that happen and keep happening, but I'm not scared of you."
Audrey eyed his expression carefully, but she still couldn't tell if his silence was the result of being stunned or just wanting this conversation to end. Either way, she needed to explain while she still could.
"I'm not sure about anything, okay? Nothing is how I expected it to be and—and mostly, that's just been trouble. But you, Bruce." Audrey took a long, shaky breath, and reached for his hand in a feeble attempt to make him understand the things she could find words for. To her surprise, he let her. She pressed his hand to her heart and squeezed. "You're the one good thing in all of it."
He was trembling in her hands, and she wanted to kiss him and knew that she couldn't, and somehow, knowing that he wanted it too just made the hurt even worse.
"So what do we do?" he asked. His confession hung heavily over them, like a neon sign blinking miserably in Audrey's direction. I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU. Something unreckonable, like seeing into the future and knowing that nothing she did would stop it. They loved each other; she knew that now, but it was a dead end. There was nowhere for them to go.
"I guess we'll just be like this," she answered, releasing his hand gently.
"Like this?"
"Like, you and me," Audrey said, gesturing between the two of them. "We'll just love each other like this, with some space between us, and hope that it's enough."
Bruce made a pained face. "What if it's not enough?"
She considered her words carefully. "I would rather have half of it with you than all of it with anybody else."
"You don't want something normal?" he asked.
"I'm not normal," she reminded him. "I don't know when I'm going to die. I don't know if I can die. And then there's the fact that I'm an adult woman with six roommates and we all have superpowers, and I'm a part time spy who was made a ritual sacrifice and a legend by my childhood kidnappers."
"Wait, what?" Bruce asked. "Ritual sacrifice?"
Audrey cringed and looked down at the floor. "Oksana knew about me. She said I was chosen to fulfill a higher purpose." If she worried about what she was capable of before, what was that supposed to mean now? She leaned against the counter halfway, still carrying some of her weight to avoid shouldering Bruce's toaster.
"And you don't—you don't happen to know what that means, do you?" Bruce asked.
She shook her head. "No. I don't. And considering her bad intentions with all of us, I doubt that whatever higher purpose I'm supposed to fulfill is anything good." She shook her head. "That's not the point. The point is that—I want you, Bruce. I want what you can give me."
The skepticism on his face was evident, and she wondered if it was her proposition or if it was the way she'd swept the apparent prophecy under the rug so haphazardly. Maybe a combination of both. "I just want you to be happy," Bruce said.
"I am happy," she promised. "Or—I'm as happy as I can be, given the circumstances."
He shrugged.
"Would you be happy?" Audrey asked, suddenly feeling insecure. "Would you be happy with me?"
Bruce nodded slowly, taking her hands in his and bringing them to his chest, and then higher. He placed a kiss on each of her knuckles, and Audrey wanted to cry at the way the warmth of his mouth felt like a forgiveness for all the things her body had done and been made to do. "Yes," he murmured, his lips moving against the back of her left hand.
"So can we be happy?" she asked. "I think—I think we deserve it."
Bruce lowered her hands, but didn't let go of them, and she felt the rope around her heart tightening. "We can try," he agreed.
"Okay," Audrey said, closing her eyes and focusing on the feeling of his hands around hers. "Okay."
A/N: good god I am so sorry this chapter took me over a month….I was very Stumped by how to proceed but I've finally figured out the emotional line that this next arc is going to take and I'm very excited about it! and I promise to update more regularly in the future, I think I just needed to figure this bit out.
thank you to RavenSkill, i am cloud, Daddy's LiL Heartbreaker, TheLokiExperience, ocfairygodmother, and Thunderstrike16 for reviewing ! please let me know what you thought of this chapter as well :-)
Chapter Twenty-Four: Road to Nowhere
"You and Banner seem to be getting close," Steve remarked.
Audrey felt her face turn bright red. "Um."