When Bruce woke up he found himself in the lab. Rubbing his eyes he looked around to find no spunky redhead in sight. He ran his hands through his hair and looked in front of him. After their little chat last night, he and Aida had spent a few hours modifying an old iPhone for Thor to use. Aida had even managed to awaken Erik Selvig in the wee hours of the morning and get Jane Foster's phone number. On the cell phone was a note. He lifted it to his face and put on his glasses, he always fell asleep with his glasses on so he assumed Aida must have taken them off for him after he fell asleep.

Hey handsome!

Just reading the first sentence made heat rise to his cheeks. I'm blushing? Bruce shook his head. He wasn't a teenager in high school, he had no reason to blush at a mere sentence. With a sigh, he continued to read the young woman's note to him.

Hey handsome! Sorry to bail out on you before you woke up, but I got a phone call from my dad. He's decided to come visit me for some crazy reason, so I had to go pick him up from the airport. Anyway, have fun later, let Thor know I'll miss him and DON'T forget to give him that phone! Remember, hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn. I'll make the other guy piss your pants if it's still here when I get back.

I'll see you later!
 Aida

ps. Don't fall asleep in your glasses, Bruce. You'll break them or something. Didn't anyone ever tell you that?

He chuckled and shook his head. He smiled at the note. She had nice handwriting. It was almost like rushed Catholic school handwriting. It was still legible, her letters were well formed and wispy; some of them connecting. Her signature was equally wispy, her D curved above her I. She wrote in a purple pen. He read her note over again, paying attention to last comment.

No one had taken his glasses off for him. He had fallen asleep reading in bed with Betty before and she would never remove his glasses. When you worked in the lab when no one was ever around, obviously no one was there to take his glasses off. Then again, Aida also had glasses so it seemed only normal that she knew to take your glasses off before falling asleep. Still, it was a kind gesture all the same.

It wasn't long before he heard the door to the lab open, he stuffed the note in his pocket and looked over. It was Tony, decked out in a grey suit with a purple dress shirt, hands in his pockets.

"Oh uh, hey Tony."

"Thought you'd be in here." He looked around momentarily before turning his attention to Bruce, "Hey listen, we gotta head out soon to meet up with Fury so we can watch Thor and Reindeer Games leave for the homelands. Get changed, I'll meet in the lobby, I'm driving." He turned to walk out, but he turned back to face Bruce, pointed at him with a look that said 'I know what you're hiding' and grinned, that was all he did before he left the room.

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head before heading up his room to change.

Once Thor and Loki departed, Natasha had given Bruce a bag of his things before getting into a car with Clint and leaving. Cap had also gone off on his motorcycle somewhere. He could only guess that Clint and Tasha had some form of date planned and Steve just wanted to explore the city. This left him to get back into Tony's shiny red convertible and drive back toward Stark Tower. Out of all of the people he met recently, he was probably closest with Tony.

"So what do you think of Aida?" Prior to Tony's question, they had just been joking back and forth and making plans. This was very out of the blue, not to mention this was the first time Bruce had heard Tony pronounce the girl's name correctly, with a long A instead of a long I.

"Uh, well," Bruce rubbed the back of the head, "She's certainly something."

"C'mon Banner, you practically came right there when she started going on about the irresistible force paradox yesterday."

"I'm sorry I find intelligence attractive?"

"You were up all night with her in the lab, weren't you?"

"May I ask why you're so concerned, Tony?" Bruce adjusted himself to turn in his seat and look at Tony, a questioning look on his face. Whatever he had or wanted to have with Aida was his own business. Tony didn't need to get involved.

"Whoa, whoa, easy there tiger. No need to hulk out on me." Tony joked, a smirk on his lips. With a heavy sigh Bruce just went back to sitting normally in the passenger's seat. "I think she'd be good for you. That's all I'm saying. I know she's attractive. Why do you think I hired her? She's hot, she's smart, she wears shorts practically every day so I get to look at her legs and ass and she's got fight in her."

"I noticed." Everything you just mentioned.

"Not to mention she tries not to fangirl every time you're around." Bruce raised and eyebrow and looked at Tony, a look of disbelief plastered across his face.

"What?"

"Yeah, she probably would've dropped her panties right there when you hulked down if you were conscious."

Bruce snorted and shook his head, trying not to smile, "You're a liar."

"I wouldn't lie to you, Banner, not about that anyway."

The two sat in silence until Jarvis' voice came through the speakers, interrupting Tony's ACDC's Shoot To Thrill.

"Mr Stark."

"Hey now, Jarvis. What did we talk about with my music?"

"My apologies, Mr Stark, but it appears Dr Agar has a guest."

"Oh, okay. Bring up audio."

Bruce shifted uncomfortably, "Tony, this is a-" Bruce stopped speaking when he heard a voice come through the radio.

"So you're tellin' me that you were saved by the Hulk?" The voice was fairly deep, sprinkled with a bit of a southern accent.

Tony glanced to his radio, "Who the hell is that?"

Bruce shrugged, "My guess would be her father."

They reached a red light, Tony looked at Bruce, confused, "How would you know?"

"Yeah, Dad." That voice was Aida's.

"And you're all right?"

"Perfectly fine, Daddy. Never better."

There was a sigh, "Aida, sweetheart, I'm not too sure I'm all right with you working with such...a hostile personality."

Tony groaned, "This man sounds like he's Bill Compton or whatever from that damn vampire show." Bruce simply clenched his fists, his knuckles going white.

"Bruce isn't a hostile personality." They could hear the edge in her voice.

"You've known him for a week, darlin'."

"Personally, yes."

"Aida, you don't know what he's capable of."

Aida turned to look at her father. For a man in his late 60s he was doing well. He was a tall man, broad shoulders, short, dirty blonde hair that he fashioned in a manner very similar to their own Captain America, and green eyes. Her father was a southern gentleman and always would be. Aida was his only child, his daughter, she couldn't blame him for being concerned for her well being.

"Daddy." She stepped toward him, "You can know Erik Selvig, you can know Howard Stark, shit - you can even know Nick Fury, but you do not know Bruce Banner." Aida knew Bruce was friends with Selvig, but just because Selvig knew someone that didn't mean her father would.

"Aida-"

"No. Bruce Banner is a man of great intelligence and has work unparalleled in numerous fields, I'm thrilled to have been given the opportunity to work with him on anything and everything. Now can you please show me what you were so concerned about?" Aida directed her father toward the computer where he brought up various notes, diagrams and equations. The redhead crossed her arms and continued, "I'm more than thrilled to have been given the opportunity to work with Bruce Banner despite his condition. Whether it be working toward taking Stark Industries another step further in providing medical aide toward the people or maybe even skipping through fields, I couldn't be happier to work with him."

She watched as the notes her father brought up floated around the room on various screens and his flat diagrams turned into holograms. A few of them she recognized as Tetranitratoxycarbon.

Completely unconcerned with what her father was about to tell her, she kept going as she examined all of her father's information.

"Despite your feelings, Dad, I could care less about Bruce's condition. No one's perfect. Hulk or no Hulk, he is a sweet man. The Hulk is nothing to be concerned with, I am most certainly not afraid of him. I'm thankful because he saved me. The Hulk is not a mindless beast, he is not a weapon; he is a hero and beyond misunderstood."

"You're fond of this fella, aren't you sweetheart?" Aida caught her dad smiling at her as he asked her that soft question. She brushed his comment to the side.

"This equation is wrong." She looked at him, all she did was smile. "All I'm saying is that as soon as Dr Banner walks into this lab you better treat him as if he's the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow."

"You can cut audio Jarvis."

"Yes, Mr Stark."

Tony looked Bruce with a large grin as he parked his car in the garage. "Do you need any more evidence, Banner? Go jump her bones." Tony got out of the car, while Bruce remained there for a minute. Smiling, he got out of the vehicle and made his way to the lab.

Upon Bruce's entrance, Aida smiled brightly, "Bruce! How did everything go?"

Bruce smiled a bit, "Well, Thor liked his phone. We showed him how to text and make phone calls before he left."

She smiled again, her nose scrunching up a bit as she did so, Aida looked at her dad and grabbed his arm, "Bruce, this is my dad. Dad, this is Dr Banner."

Aida's father held out his hand to shake, a large smile on his face. "It's a pleasure to meet you Dr Banner, my daughter's said a lotta good things about you. I'm Jasper Agar."

Bruce was never good with meeting parents, his ex-fiancee's father wasn't exactly his biggest fan. Nonetheless, the physicist smiled shook the older man's hand, "Pleasure is all mine, sir. Your daughter is a brilliant young woman, I'm happy to work with her."

Aida smiled at the two before going to back to working on fixing her father's equations.

The rest of the evening seemed to pass by quickly. Aida's father had left, stating that he was going to go back to Aida's home and get some sleep, this left Bruce and Aida alone together in the lab.

"So what did your dad come for?" Bruce asked, stealing one of Aida's green grapes.

Aida yawned slightly, stretching her arms above her head. Bruce heard one of her shoulders pop and he cringed lightly. "He came to tell me he had some kind of break through with tetranitratoxycarbon. He was trying to tell me that he thought it might be capable of storing energy found in the ionosphere and the magnetosphere, his calculations were off though."

Bruce nodded, "I see. " He ate another grape, "Question." Aida looked at him, raising her perfectly shaped eyebrows in curiosity. "Why do you like green grapes? You're the only person I've noticed who prefers the green ones over the red ones."

Aida smiled a bit and shrugged, stepping toward him and reaching into her bag of grapes to grab a few. "The green ones are sweeter." She popped one into her mouth and played with a computer screen, deciding to bring up a game of mahjong. Apparently it was time for a break. She swallowed her grape and turned back to Dr Banner, finger on his chest, "Question." He nodded for her to continue. "Do you always dress like this?" She was referring to his yellow button down shirt with rolled up sleeves and undone top button, tucked into grey slacks.

Bruce put on a small half smile before he retaliated. He raised a teasing eyebrow, "Do you always dress like that?" Once again Aida was dressed in a pair of shorts and a v-neck t-shirt. Aida smirked and pulled on one of his chest hairs, causing Bruce to shout an 'ow' and grab Aida's arm. He looked at her with some kind of amused confusion, "What was that for?"

Aida grinned as she looked up at him through her purple framed glasses, "I wanted to see how you'd react." He chuckled and she just smiled up at him. Bruce hadn't let go of her arm and she just looked up at him. He didn't have a rough hold on her, she could've slid out of his grasp if she wanted, but who said she did.

Bruce looked at her, small smile on his face, "Question." He said softly.

"Yes, Dr Banner?" She had a sly grin on her face as she responded.

"Why?" His voice still soft, his honey brown eyes gentle and peering into her earthy ones.

"I already told you Doc." Aida just smiled, "The green ones are sweeter."

Bruce chuckled, looking at her through his glasses. "I'm kind of a lot older than you, Aida..."

"My father is a little less than 20 years older than my mother. My mom was about your age when you were my age. I don't really care about age, Bruce. The closer men get to my age the more I disgust them."

Bruce smiled lightly, sliding his hand down her arm to her hand, "I haven't actually been in a relationship since before...you know." He looked at her. He was looking for all of the excuses he could find.

Aida let out a small snort, almost reverting back to her snarky self, "That was what, less than 2 or 3 years ago?" Aida stepped closer to Bruce and took hold of his hand, "Bruce, I probably have you beat. I can't even remember the last time I was actually with my last boyfriend."

He laughed, though his eyes concerned. "Aida, I'm not exactly...safe, to be around."

Aida grinned, "I'm not sure you've heard or anything, but I kind of have this body guard. He's an enormous green rage monster and he's promised to keep me safe. I don't really think I have a lot to worry about with him on my side."

Bruce smiled at her, she found ways to walk around all of his excuses. She was willing to do this. He reached up and brushed some of her mahogany colored hair behind her ear with his free hand, his index finger trailing lightly down her jawline. The entirely time he was taking small steadily breaths to keep himself calm. "I think I'm gonna need sometime to think about this... To figure out if I'm able to do this..."

Aida smiled softly, "I understand, Bruce. Take all the time you need." She squeezed his hand lightly, "Now, lets play some mahjong."

A/N: Thanks for everything guys! I really appreciate all your motivation. The next chapter is probably going to be where things start to overlap with my other story Exceeding Expectations, the next chapter especially since there is a lot of essential communication going on between both Aida and the group as well as Aida and Bruce within that particular chapter.

Amber-Jade James Haha, I know! I can only do so much before it feels repetitive. And thank you! I've been waiting to have her interact with Thor ever since I first started writing for Aida. They'll be working on a lot more little projects like that in the future :) Hope you liked the chapter!

ThoughtlessRage Hahaha I see what you did there! Thank you, I probably would've forgotten all about that! It's taken care of now though. Thanks for letting me know! I hope you enjoyed the chapter!