King Midas in Reverse

Tilting his head to one side, considering his – friend? Where they friends? This was a very friend thing to do, wasn’t it? Hang in their dorm room? - well, considering his professor technically, he sucked his bottom lip into his mouth to worry upon. “I mean, yeah, sure?” 

That wasn’t meant to sound like a question. 

“I mean sure. Yeah, totally. Do you want me to come with? Or stay here? Wait, what kind of drink? I have drinks,” he nodded his head towards the mini fridge, “there’s soda and alcohol and water, ignore the petri dishes, they’ve been there for months, wet sciences, I get too bored too quickly.” Stop. Talking. “Aaaah… simple answer. Yes. Yes you can get something to drink and if you want, I can come with, or I can stay here, but yeah. Yes. To, er, clear that up.”

And this was why he had a grand total of one friend: Rhodey. Who wasn’t even here (but fuck, surely he qualified?) And why did the ground never open up and swallow him whole when he wanted it to?

Bruce listened quietly to the answer. All the extra words and the additional information he didn’t need. The words were heard but the information wasn’t registered. After the ‘yes’ Bruce had all he needed. 

When it seemed like Tony was finished, Bruce nodded his head. Afraid that if he opened his mouth he’d say something stupid, offer up too much information, or worse, his voice would do that awful cracking thing it did when he was nervous.  With that, he left. No idea where he was going or where he’d find something to drink, Bruce headed out for fresh air and time to think.

“Right, sorry,” Virginia quickly apologized. “I love chess, but I haven’t played it since high school. Boy, wouldn’t the team captain be pissed at me?” she chuckled before realizing she was rambling. This person looked like he wanted to get wherever his destination was, was probably already irritated with her, and could care less about her extracurricular activities during her adolescent.

She awkwardly cleared her throat. “Um, sorry. Anyway, I’ll stop blocking your way. You go first.”

It was starting to be that this job was biting his tongue as much as the last one. Something Bruce wasn’t good at but recognized as a skill he needed in talking to people. How this woman could claim to “love chess” and not know the terminology was mind-blowing to Bruce but he faked a smile. Nodding like he somehow understands forgetting what stalemate meant. It wasn’t a convincing gesture but he was trying. 

Frowning at the ‘he’s not’, he thought back to their earlier conversation – he was positive Bruce had said he was, right? And then he started to question himself, maybe he hadn’t? He’d had a lot to drink after all, so who knew. At the ‘he is’, Tony frowned even more – clearly he needed to stay the fuck away from this, because this was obviously a bag of do not fucking touch. 

He knew all about carrying baggage. His was designer after all. 

He wasn’t sure what Bruce’s would count as. 

Sitting up at the flurry of movement, his stomach sank to his toes. Oh well fucking done, Stark. Without his contacts in, and with his glasses hiding wherever he’d discarded them last, Bruce’s outline was soft around the edges, his facial expression muted. “Hey–hey, no, you don’t have to. I’m sorry. My mouth,” he tried to go for a smile, “it doesn’t listen to my brain all that often. I’m sorry, look–hey, we can talk about something else, right? DUM-E?” He ignored how his ‘bot perked up at the sound of his name. “You were interested in him before. I can tell you how he works. Show you some of his code.”

Bruce’s wasn’t just baggage, he was that room at the airport where they kept all the unclaimed bags. Dusty, forgotten, and locked away so no one could access it. But also filled to the point of barely being able to move. Tony was breezing through the room, picking locks, and rifling through belongs to see there was anything worth selling and Bruce had given him the keys. A choice he was no regretting as he stood frozen, wishing to be anywhere but here. 

Even after Tony’s offer to look at DUM-E, Bruce stood there saying nothing more than the occasional mumble. Finally putting his hands over his face, a very childlike I-can’t-see-you-so-you-can’t-see-me moment. (in many ways Bruce was still a child but trauma did that to you) 

It seemed like the situation was just about hopeless. Surely if Jen and/or James actually came here, they were lost in the massive crowd and Virginia was never going to find them, or they already came and left. So, there was no point in staying out there, waiting around with a cup of hot cocoa that was either going to get too cool before she finished drinking it or get spilled on someone (probably herself).

She sighed and took a sip of the sweet drink before shoving her phone back into her purse. Well, she supposed it was still worth a try anyway. She was fixing to head back towards her dorm when she came face-to-face with a man with dark hair.

He seemed to be about her age, so she guessed he would be about twenty, maybe nineteen or a little older. However, he didn’t seem to carry himself like the typical college student. His face was almost a bit harsher as if he had seen much more or was forced to grow up quicker.

She tried to move out of his way, but it seemed each movement she planned, he did as well, since they both kept moving in the same directions. She stopped when he did, fixing to apologize when he spoke up. “Heh, yeah, it’s almost looking like a rook checking a king,” Virginia shyly joked, then cleared her throat. “I’m, um, I’m sorry,” she apologized both for unintentionally blocking him and for the bad joke.

Bruce hadn’t been in the mood for socialization today, but there were few days he was. It was an unfortunate side effect of the planet they were on. Rather than snap or say something mean or worse, walk away without answering, Bruce took in a big breath and held it for a few seconds. 

The question had upset him and he’d know it would, but he still felt like shit for it – but not enough to tell Bruce that he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to, because he wanted to hear it. He ignored the sounds of Bruce pulling himself together and when he spoke, he ignored the slight tremor in his voice, eyes half-lidded as he traced patten on his sheet and followed the movement of the fabric. 

Bruce couldn’t see it but at the first uttered response, his lips twitched up in a half-smile, soft around the edges, because yeah. He got that. 

He lay his hand flat against the sheet when Bruce went quiet and only moved to slowly press his leg against his a little firmer and left it there when Bruce didn’t haul ass out of bed; it wasn’t quite a hug, but Tony hadn’t ever known what to do around upset people - he didn’t know how to offer comfort, not really. 

“I’m sorry he was such a shit. I’m glad he’s dead.” A beat. “What was her name?”

“He’s not,” Bruce’s mouth moved before his brain had a chance to stop it. For years Bruce had been telling everyone Brian was dead, living like he was but in the back of his mind knowing the man was still roaming the earth. And not in prison. Instantly he tried to cover up but there wasn’t a clever way to undo that truth. “I mean, he is. He’s, um.....yeah.” 

[Closed with @betterthaneinstein]

Finals were OVER!

Oh, Virginia was so happy. Granted, she studied well and believed she did well on her exams, but it was a gleeful feeling to just be done. And the hot chocolate bar could not have come at a better time for the redhead.

In fact, she was hoping to find James or Jenn there. Maybe Tony. She wanted to ask how they did, see if maybe either of them were staying during the break, too. Perhaps it was selfish, but it’d go a long way to making her Christmas stuck on the island not suck.

And wow, there were a lot of people here, she thought, surveying the crowd. Honestly, Jenn and James could be standing like ten feet away from her, and Virginia wasn’t sure if she’d still be able to spot them in the crowd. It was almost overwhelming. After retrieving her hot chocolate (and telling the sorority girl three times, “No really, I don’t want any peppermint”), she was wandering the crowd slightly, trying to see if she could spot her friends.

Bruce felt like an old man as he traversed the sidewalks in an attempt to get back to his office. Grumbling to himself about kids and how when he was in college people didn’t just congregate on the sidewalk. Mad because he was inconvenienced and faced with the possibility of social interactions, Bruce pushed his way through. 

He’d made his way out to the frat houses to drop stuff off for Tony. Most of his hang-ups about being a professor spending any amount of time with students had dwindled. He didn’t want to kill Tony, which was high praise, so Bruce went with it. After dropping off his research, he was heading back to the office (no concern for whether Tony was there or not) and found himself faced with this crowd. 

Running over his bottom lip with his tongue, he did have one question he wanted to ask - something that had been there since he’d sloppily confessed that he missed his mom, but he didn’t know if that would be crossing some arbitrary line he’d never been good at seeing when it came to people. 

“One,” he admitted after a while, picking at a loose thread on his bed, “but you don’t have to answer it. You can tell me t’go t’hell.” He’d never met someone else who’d lost their mom, or if he had, they hadn’t ever told him. He’d met Rhodey’s mom before - and god, he adored that woman - so it wasn’t like he had any need to ask Rhodey this. But he wanted to know. Data. How did other families compare to his. Rhodey’s, well, Rhodey’s just didn’t, but was he an anomaly? 

“What was she like? Your mom. You said you missed her.”

Bruce tensed when Tony said he had one. He wasn’t sure what it could be but his mind raced with the worst. Landing on the fact that Tony was going to ask if it was okay if they never spoke to each other again. 

Instead, the question made his heart race in a completely different way, he could feel the way the pieces of it had shattered on that day as he sat there too numb to even comprehend death. His eyes lined with tears and his chin trembled as he allowed himself, for the first time in too long, to think about his mother. 

The way she smelled, the fact that she didn’t move but floated, and that blasted calm voice she seemed to always have. No matter what Brian was doing. Squeezing his eyes together to stop himself from any other emotions, sniffing his nose, Bruce collected himself enough to tremble out “Amazing.” 

A few more controlled breaths and he was able to find a few more words. “I didn’t get to see much of her, he made sure of it. But she was a light in a very, very dark place. The world is duller now because of him.”