At first he thinks that he knocked himself out. He remembers jumping at a crash behind him and feeling his head connect painfully with the corner of a shelf. Now he's lying on the floor of the workshop and Tony is leaning over him holding gauze and a blissfully cold ice pack against his throbbing temple, first aid kit open on the ground. He pushes himself up, tentatively, taking over the holding of the ice pack with a weak half-smile of thanks to his teammate. He really ought to be more aware of his surroundings. It being him, a few days of headache is a very minor price to pay for allowing himself to be startled.
He catches sight of his surroundings and freezes halfway to upright. The workshop looks like a tornado hit it. Or a Hulk.
Tony lunges forward to grab at him, and he spooks like a wild animal, scrambling unsteadily to his feet and bolting. To his panicked mind, the gesture is one of attack rather than concern. This can't be happening. He can't have lost control and wrecked Tony's lab. He told them he wasn't fit for civilization. Now they'll see him for the monster he really is, and turn on him. Like everybody does. He'll lose the people who he almost dared to think might be his friends.
Barricaded in his room, his mind reels. It's over, everything is over. He surely has only minutes, if that, before his former friends attack him and stuff him in a cage. He can't stand the thought. Can't stand himself. He's ruined everything. Again.
He glances at the window. That won't work. The Other Guy will break the fall. He already knows a gun doesn't work. His medical supplies, wide range of drugs included, are five floors below him. The superheroes will be on him long before he can reach them.
A droplet of blood falls from his bowed head, and he remembers that he has a pocket knife. That will have to suffice.
The blade has barely broken his skin when his door flies open so hard it rebounds off the wall and he is slammed to the ground, his knife sent flying across the room.
"Just what the fuck are you thinking." Natasha snarls, all but sitting on his chest. A few steps behind her, the rest of the Avengers are sprinting into his room.
"Come to cage me like the monster I am?" He's seeing stars and there's a note of hysteria in his voice.
"What? Of course not! Why the hell would you think we'd do that?" At the back of the pack Clint sounds offended, but there is a tranquilizer dart in his hand.
"I'm a danger to everyone."
"No, you're a danger to yourself." Steve kneels and firmly presses a clean handkerchief to his bleeding wrist. "And we will do whatever we deem necessary to keep you safe, including from yourself, because we care about you."
"Yeah right."
Tony kneels on his other side, abandoned ice pack in hand. "You're not a monster, Bruce, and suicide is not the answer. You may have had it rough before, but you're one of us now and that's not going to change. Don't worry about my lab. It was kind of my fault for startling you when you were already stressed. Material things are replaceable, but you're not."
That does it. He starts crying, and then they're all crying and pulling him into a group hug and telling him never to scare them like that again. And maybe, just maybe, things might be okay this time. Because this time, he's not alone.
I felt like the first vignette needed a follow up of some sort. I wanted him to hit another low spot and this time have his teammates show him that he's not alone anymore and people care and people would miss him.
I didn't know how to make it happen, just that I wanted it to, and then I slammed my head on the corner of a shelf and realized that stressed + startled + pain = hulking out, and he's got so few friends and such bad past experiences that he'd probably really panic if he hulked out in the tower and damaged something important to one of his teammates.
And how'd they know? JARVIS of course.
