The Lights of Stars and The Glitter in Your Eyes Chp 4
I am SO sorry for how long this took. I went from ear infection to cold to stomach flu one right after another and could hardly do more than lay in bed and watch Schitt's Creek.
I will try to be more consistent with updates from now on.
But y'all, this shit is cute. Really cute. FLUFF WARNING
Enjoy!
(songs that I liked while writing this: Mine by Bazzi, Somethin Stupid by Frank Sinatra, Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis and the ramblings of my own mind by me)
“That system is one of the most massive in the universe. Over thirty planets. You see how big the star is?” Thor said as Bruce leaned over to where his finger was pointing at. Bruce jotted down a scribble of something.
“What’s the name? And, uh, um, what are our coordinates right now? Do you know that? Is it inhabited?” Bruce rambled, eyes darting in bright flashes between Thor, the twinkle of the Galbacus system, and his notepad. The side of Thor’s lips ticked up into a pleased smile, and gave all the details he could.
Stargazing, though not as frequent an occurrence as their other rituals, was becoming part of their shared traditions. Bruce was the push behind every extended trip to the window. Thor had learned that his seven PhDs were in Nuclear Physics, Computer Science, Biochemistry, Radiobiology, Medicine, Particle Physics, and, apparently, Astronomy, which he had explained to Thor he had pursued due to his intense and undying love of the stars. Bruce approached space with a mix of the analytical and passion, coming in with a million questions of metrics as well as younger eyes than Thor had ever seen on him. Thor always tried to answer, to the best of his abilities, the questions that Bruce sped-spoke to him. He hoped that maybe one day this could go into another one of Bruce’s papers and he would have helped with that and done a service to Midgardian science as a whole, though, secretly, he knew, as he watched Bruce’s teeth tug in a corner of lip while he gave him the details of Galbacus’s fourth planet from its star, that he did not really love star charting for any educational purpose.
“How do you know all this, by the way? All the systems?” Bruce asked.
“Asgardian education is very broad, Bruce. I know much about astronomy, as well as other sciences.” Thor’s grin inched out further as a warmth spread under Bruce’s cheeks along with a steady glow permeating from under his irises.
“Asgard has science? That’s . . . like, sorry this is kinda lame, but can you explain it to me, how that works? This sorta stuff is, well, my thing,” Bruce beamed and his mouth pulled open a smidge to show a glint of white teeth. He was genuinely excited about this, almost to the point of wonder, and the smile Bruce was sending his way, a real, true, indulgent smile, hit Thor in his core, melting that solid ball of grit inside him to some moldable mush.
“I, yes, I’m realizing that it is,” he replied. He went on, expanding on the manners of Asgardian science, the overlap of magic with the technical, and followed the motions of Bruce’s speedy fingers flicking around his notepad.
He wrote with a fire that sprung from the tip of his pencil and resulted in half-readable scratches across his page. Note taking and research were the only times Bruce, outside of Hulk form, moved with speed. His hands, which were normally kept braced around each other at his midsection in a silent state of waiting, moves rare and planned, woke themselves when the notion of science floated by them. They ignited first, those hands, though the rest of the body always followed close behind, alive with the idea of gaining knowledge. Thor didn’t think he should be blamed for staring.
Thor did stop his eyes from locking, though, when he caught himself stuck on the twitch of Bruce’s pinky as it tapped its own secret code on the notepad. Thor’s chest went hot, like an ember pushing its way through him from his back, and he had to actually shake himself to remove the tension of it. As he did, the hand which seemed to be causing the trouble moved up towards Bruce’s face and pressed against his temple.
“Agh, Christ, the big guy’s aggressive today.”
Thor’s everything fell, because Bruce had been saying that too often, because Thor knew why.
“Oh,” Thor was plummeting. He could see Hulk, see all the pain and fury spiking right under Bruce’s eyes and he hated himself for it, “What does it feel like? With him, trying to get out?”
Bruce dropped his hands down, connecting them together at his waist, and his mouth fell open at its center. His face became hard for Thor to interpret, changing too much too quickly, but Thor could see one thing for certain, two voices in one mind.
“It’s . . . ah, sort of like. Um, brainfreeze?” Bruce tried, but shook that off, “No, not like that, actually. More like, I can hear this noise, this mumble or . . . fuzz sort of thing, at the back of my head. And sometimes, like, um, right now, it’s super loud and . . . I, it’s hard to think, you know?”
“I . . . yes,” Thor said through his teeth. He paused, eyes not on Bruce but down on himself and the toes of his boots, and then raised both hands up to the sides of his head. He shoved against himself till he felt static at the corners of his sight. This felt necessary, somewhat, an atonement for his sins against Bruce, to feel the pressure he inflicted, but he couldn’t get a good traction with his knuckles, and he was sure, just from the fight that radiated out from under Bruce’s skin, that whatever Thor was trying was nothing compared to that.
“Hey, geez, don’t do that,” Bruce’s hand covered one of Thor’s and slipped it down. Thor allowed himself one curl around Bruce’s pinky with his index finger and uncoiled it as soon as he saw Bruce’s eyes drift to it.
“I . . . wanted to know how it felt for you.”
Bruce went into a wide eyed silence and took a pace away from Thor, left foot catching on his right.
“No, you-you shouldn’t want that,” Bruce said to the floor and Thor’s shoulders squared around his ears. He was certain, that if he was making Bruce’s head shake with rumbles, that if Bruce couldn’t meet his eyes, he must be truly awful.
“I-uh, Loki, I have to go meet Loki,” Thor shot at Bruce, turning as he spoke to the door and just missing seeing what Bruce’s eyes would have looked like when they returned to him.
His lunch with Loki was actually not for another thirty minutes or so but he really couldn’t look at Bruce right now, and he was fairly certain his presence was giving Bruce crippling migraines, so he took himself over to the cafeteria, flicked dirt out from under his nails, and waited.
“Why are you all twitchy, and stuff? What’s happening?” Loki settled across from Thor with a cup of something steaming. His brow was dipping into the skin of his eyelid as he scanned over the stretch of Thor, vaguely judgemental, as per usual.
“Ah, am I?” Thor checked himself. There was a tremble shimmying from his shoulder and through his thigh to his foot. He stopped, but the tension was still there, transmitting from his head in rolling waves as he thought about the situation he had screwed himself into.
“Yes, you are. Is it the politics overwhelming your very blond head?”
“No!” Thor replied, overly defensive, but, well, his head was a bit too blond for politics and he didn’t want to be reminded of the fact. He corrected his tone, “No, it is not-well, I do have a political query for you of sorts.”
“You can’t change your official title to Thor: King, Strongest Avenger, and National Asskicker,” Loki drawled, a smirk growing around his spoon as he ate his soup.
“Um, I am the only king so I think I can-wait, no, not what I was asking. I want you to be my foreign minister,” Thor whipped out a big grin on issuing on what he had hoped would be a joyous announcement. He was met with Loki’s smirk working away into a scathing frown.
“You are truly an idiot.”
“Excuse me?” Thor balked. Loki tossed his head back with a pull of a grimace across his face.
“I will absolutely not be doing that.” Loki was starting to look near disgusted and it was making Thor wonder if he had somehow insulted him. Maybe foreign minister hadn’t been big enough. Probably that.
“Now, I know foreign minister might not seem so grand, brother, but it’s perfect for you. All, ah, the cunning and strategy and being mean to other dignitaries,” Thor explained. Loki didn’t soften.
“No one here on this ship wants me anywhere near government,” he huffed back. Thor pulled his lips taut and shook his head.
“Uh, I do? Why aren’t you happy? You should be happy.” He sort of hated this act Loki put on of self pity, digging himself so firmly into the place of social pariah, which, well, maybe he was now after all he’d done. It was a chicken and egg deal with that, though, because Thor couldn’t remember when Loki was ever not whining about acceptance and lamenting his lot in life.
“I, wow, I can’t believe you’re actually this naive. You’re going to piss off all your councils, and, of course, Heimdall, if you make me anything. I mean, for Odin’s sake, you’ve already elected the beast as-”
“Do not,” Thor bellowed, a determined finger swinging out and attracting the attention of a couple two tables behind them, “call Bruce a beast.”
“Ah,” Loki said and his smirk returned with a fervor, like he had solved it. Thor groaned, because Loki had somehow turned this into a display of Thor’s complicated hang ups.
“What would you do if, in a theoretical situation, you really enjoyed someone’s company very much, but your company caused them pain?” Thor asked after he had decided he had been manipulated. Loki stared for a long moment, vacant face, before he spoke.
“Could you, theoretically, be caught for this?”
“Yes,” Thor answered, sweat brimming on the brink of his neck. He wasn’t sure exactly what the extent of Hulk and Bruce’s communication was, and his secret felt like it was wafting closer to the surface every day.
“Then I’d leave them the fuck alone,” Loki said, and Thor deflated.
Avoiding Bruce became easier as Thor went on with it. The ship had many areas to escape to, like the gym, that had bags and people to punch, the cafeteria, with meat to feast upon and people who were not Bruce to converse with, and occasionally, Loki’s quarters, which mostly resulted in both him and Thor becoming increasingly aggravated and was consequently low on Thor’s list of visiting spots. And though Bruce was up late most nights with his work on his paper, Thor could feign sleep well enough and their talking was minimalized.
Thor didn’t know if he liked the ease with which he was able to avoid Bruce.
He couldn’t, however, avoid Bruce in the council meetings. Bruce, as direct chancellor to the king, was at every one of them, sitting right next to Thor over piles of haphazard notes.
“No, no, we are going with Ariagana’s policy, not Haldier’s,” Bruce mumbled, only for Thor, slipping a page out from the others. Thor skimmed the lines on trade laws.
“We want the one with . . . ah, more safety checks on imported goods.” His eyes wandered over Bruce’s way, who gave him a small nod. Thor warmed as a curl stumbled over onto Bruce forehead with the motion. He brought his mind back to the meeting.
Bruce was a mighty distraction, though. This was the only long stretch Thor allowed himself to have of Bruce and it was hard not to fall down the coiled trap of watching all the quirks and fidgets Bruce was prone to. At that moment, Thor was getting a side-eyed view of how Bruce looped his pencil over and under his fingers in idle seconds. This, he supposed, creepily observing his private movements and ministrations, would have to fill the gaps left by their star charting and movie marathons and late night talks.
The meeting ended when a debate between two members of the agriculture committee got violent, where Thor decided with Bruce he was very clearly on Einar’s side.
“Hey.” Bruce grabbed Thor in the rush of people exiting the meeting room. Thor couldn’t help but notice that Bruce’s eyes were ghosted with the dull gray of stress.
“Hi, uh, hey, Banner,” Thor said, with an edge, with a border. Bruce’s lip ticked down, but he didn’t correct it, “Thanks for . . . you’re really good with the notes, thanks.”
“Course, bud,” Bruce said with a sigh and Thor could feel the sense of more underneath it. Despite himself, Thor didn’t leave. It had been four days without real conversation between the two. He had been craving.
“Can I ask you a question?” Thor offered. Bruce lit up.
“Sure.”
“With that film we watched, the one about the mean alien and the really badass lady warrior, is that cat okay in the end? I know the xenomorph doesn’t eat him but-” Bruce’s laugh bustled in and Thor’s brow bunched up, “What?”
“You are so precious,” Bruce said, face going soft in the edges of his mouth and the wrinkles of his eyes. Somewhere in between the muscles of Thor’s abs and his gut, a match was lit and as it sparked, his lungs burned. He took in two large gulps of air.
Bruce broke the fuzz, though, as he groaned and pressed fingertips to his temple. Thor caught himself, and guilt dredged out the fire.
“Have to go,” he shot before Bruce could say anymore. And Thor ran, fast, fast, fast.
He landed in the gym by riding his foggy wave of remorse and worry. The punching bag in the far left of the room became his venting for his anger at himself and the sparks that glinted across him when Bruce’s lips split open across his teeth. As fists flew and Thor’s vision blurred, time sped and dragged in equal portions, and Thor wasn’t sure, when someone pulled him off the crumbling bag, if he had been there for thirty minutes or five hours.
“Shit, that bag owe you money?” Valkyrie asked as Thor stumbled away from the bag. He huffed at it, then looked back over to Valkyrie, who looked like a solution.
“Spar with me?” he asked. Valkyrie’s mouth quirked up fast.
“Yeah,” she replied, followed closely by a fist zooming for Thor’s head. Thor ducked it and hooked Valkyrie’s waist until she was dipping with him.
“You’re upsetting Bruce,” Valkyrie said from under Thor’s hold. Thor gave her a long look and a puff of a ‘huh’. Valkyrie took the moment to loop her thighs around Thor’s neck and tumble them both back.
“How . . . do . . . you know?” stumbled Thor. Valkyrie laughed, but with a sigh, loosened her legs.
“He told me. Cause I talk to Bruce, unlike you, apparently?” she explained, and the legs fell. She leaned on her elbows on the rubber-ish mat below them, “Why is that?”
Thor flipped her forward as an objection to replying. She hissed out as her back slammed the floor with a might. Thor winced for her.
“Sorry.” Thor looked away as Valkyrie rolled her eyes. She started up and took a run towards him. Thor tossed his arms up as a counter.
“So what’s up?” Valkyrie asked around swings.
“What’s what?”
“You and Bruce? Are you, like, obsessed, or something? Because you are very, very freaky about him, whether or not you’re flirting with him.”
“Flirting? I, no, no, you-” Thor staggered. His hands were antsy with the allegation and they found traction in careful placement on Valkyrie’s shoulder and hip. His leg got a hit in at her gut, “I-look, flirting, no, and obsession, no. I’m not. I don’t get obsessed, please. That’s below me.”
“Ha! Okay, King, excuse me. Forgot how excellent and above us all you are,” Valkyrie said with an elbow to Thor’s chin. He took a stumble back, finishing it with a spit of whatever she had hit out of him. With a step forward and a toss of a fist, they were crashing blows again.
“Okay, so, well, I’m not saying I’m above you. I just, not obsessed. Bruce is-he . . . just, I just enjoy conversation with him because he is funny and a genius at Midgard science and has good Midgardian films to watch and listens to me and turns into a really cool green guy and makes jokes about things I don’t get but I’m trying to and-and . . . oh, oh. Oh.”
Thor was huffing hot air out into the room and on Valkyrie at that point, the fight only half to blame.
The air room in his head was being sucked out. He was dumb, very dumb. He was made a fool by Bruce in shirts that were too big, with his damned curls and wrinkles and smiles and olive skin. Thor didn’t know how he could only find this from pain and utter Bruce Banner starvation. Despite this, despite being a giant idiot who couldn’t even understand the workings of his own self, Thor felt a smile bubble up on his red face. He didn’t fully snap out of it when a foot knocked him in the chest and he fell to the floor. Instead, warm with electricity and blood rushing everywhere at once, Thor rolled his head up to Valkyrie.
“Oh Gods, I’m in love with Bruce.”
Okay so if you're wondering why they watch so many 80's movies, Bruce Banner, if going based on Mark Ruffallo, should be like 48 or 49, so, a total 80's baby. He also loves Sixteen Candles, Queen, and the Cure.
