Imagine Bruce Banner

He doesn’t know how it starts.

He doesn’t realize that he’s putting less and less food onhis plate, that more and more is being left.

He’s always hungry once he comes back to himself, but tiredenough that it’s easier to just collapse into bed than consume calories.

He knows the Other Guy needs more food- significantly morefood- and with the amount he’s been changing lately, he really should be eatingmore, but he’s so tired of this andhonestly, he just wants to sleep and forget about the people he hurt.

He starts working through meals, making excuses about hisweight loss and pretending that he doesn’t feel hungry every goddamn day.

Clint leaves a plate of food in front of his door once-roast pork and mashed potatoes, the s cent mind-numbingly good- and Brucerealizes he has a problem when he almost throws the plate across the room.

He eats five bites and nearly throws up.

If he’s okay, then the Other Guy will be okay.

If he doesn’t have enough to eat, the Other Guy won’t.

If he doesn’t have the energy to transform, then no one getshurt.

He doesn’t realize he’s hurting himself until he nearlycollapses during a briefing, arms wrapped loosely around his stomach.

“Bruce? Hey, big guy. Come on, I hate briefs as much as youdo, but we can’t just fall asleep.” Tony’s trying to make jokes, but he looksworried, and Bruce can see that the rest of the team isn’t too far behind.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” He manages to argue, pulling himselfto his feet shakily. “Just didn’t sleep enough last night.”

“More like didn’t eat enough.” Clint murmurs to Natasha, andBruce feels himself fill with rage. How dare they insinuate that he’s nottaking care of himself? They don’t understand,they don’t know why he’s trying to stop the monster that he is-

-

Bruce wakes up two days later in SHIELD Medical, hooked toan IV and significantly less pale than he had been previously. Clint islounging by his bedside, polishing some arrows and half-watching something onhis laptop.

“What happened?” Bruce asks as he tries to sit up, startspulling at the wires around him.

“Whoa there. Could you think of anything less cliché to say?Or do, for that matter? Stop pulling at the IV, you need it.” Clint settles hishands on top of Bruce’s with a smile. “You haven’t been eating enough. We’reworried. You- um- you passed out during the briefing, and then got angry. Youwere mid-change when you collapsed.”

“Did I hurt anyone?” He mumbles, instinctively wanting toknow how many deaths to blame himself for tonight.

“Just yourself, Bruce. Tony’s set up a few appointments. Youneed to start eating.”

“If I eat, I hurt people.”

-

“If I eat, I hurt people.”

This is the best way he can explain it, his rationale fornot taking care of himself properly, that one life is not more important thanthousands.

“You know that’s not true. You can help people, so many morethan you hurt, but that’s hard to do when you don’t eat.” His therapist,surprisingly a SHIELD employee that Bruce had taking a liking to, says calmly. “You’vehelped everyone on your team. You’ve saved lives with your discoveries. Do youthink you could do that now, when you’re starving yourself?”

Bruce shakes his head.

-

“It’s good to see you.” Clint grins across the table as hepiles a plate full of steak, potatoes, gravy, and green beans. Bruce takes asmall spoonful of mashed potatoes and some green beans, trying very, very hardto not let his hands shake.

Natasha eats delicately, almost over proper, until Clintputs a hand on her back and whispers something into her ear. She relaxesslightly and slumps, exhaustion seeping into her features almost instantaneously.

Tony eats quickly, talking in between bites with his handsflying around. Silverware clatters around him as he tries to show off hisnewest invention using only cutlery, and Bruce grins at his enthusiasm.

Thor is almost as rambunctious as Tony, shoveling food intohis mouth and laughing at everything, but somehow never spilling.

Bruce realizes that he’s overanalyzing and tries to bringhis fork to his mouth, but the only thought he has is that they don’t havemonsters inside them.

Natasha isn’t feeding death.

Steve isn’t causing harm by helping himself to more dessert.

Tony doesn’t have to worry about choosing between his ownlife and everyone else’s.

“Bruce.” Natasha’s voice catches him by surprise, and herealizes that she and Clint are the only two people left in the room. “Feedingyourself doesn’t harm others. I know you think that taking care of yourselfmeans that you let other people get hurt. I still think that sometimes. But weneed you alive, and we want you to be okay.” She runs a hand through his hair,briefly, and then leaves with Clint.

Ze is a prounoun used by non-binary people who don’t feel comfortable with pronouns like he or she! It is used like this:

Ze went to the store to buy zyr groceries. Ze went by zyrself because zyrs friends were busy.

I know that it’s pretty hard to use, especially when you’re not used to it, so my auxiliary pronoun is they/them, which I am just as comfortable with!

trying to have a community and be proud of our identities. I personally see Bruce as Autistic, although I wouldn’t try to make you incorporate my headcanon into your version of the character. (I wouldn’t mind if you did if you like it, but I don’t expect you to.) Anyway, the ask I was going to send was “Imagine Bruce being super good with a young Autistic fan (who has faced the “Autistics are violent” stereotype) because he knows what to be different have people be afraid of you for it.” but (c)if that’s not acceptable then I won’t. (If it is, I’ll resubmit it on it’s own so you don’t have the rest of the message around it when you post it.) I’ll also be a bit nervous about following you, but I still probably will. -Ellie

By romanticizing disability, I mean submissions like “Imagine Bruce having an anxiety attack, but Tony is there for him, so he realizes the anxiety attack was worth becoming close with Tony” or something like that, in which a disability or neurodivergent behavior is used as a plot device and doesn’t actually affect the character. That example is using something that affects many people as a romantic subplot, and I don’t think that’s appropriate. However, most disability/neurodiversity asks are fine; I would just like to have a rule easily accessible in case we get an inappropriate one and someone complains about not having their prompt answered.

That prompt is perfect (and I’m already getting ideas), so feel free to submit it.

Pretty much, I want to have a rule in place in case we get an ask romanticizing disability, but I don’t want that to hinder anyone from submitting. As a neurodivergent person myself, I find a lot of comfort in my favorite characters going through similar struggles that I do, but I want those struggles to be explored, as opposed to thrown away after they’ve fulfilled their role as a plot device.

Also, if you’re afraid of following, feel free to shoot me a message about how I can make IDB more accessible to you! As well, if you don’t want to follow the blog itself, we do have an AO3 with all our prompts and responses compiled, if you would rather see the material on another site.

Thanks for the message, and feel free to send us another one if something wasn’t explained properly!

Natasha has a very wide skill set, but apparently “cooking anything that’s not pasta” is not on that list.

Tony is a goddamn genius, and yet, when asked to prepare dinner, he made toast.

Clint is not allowed in the kitchen after the Lasagna Incident of 2013.

Thor’s knowledge of Midgardian cooking is enough to make himself breakfast every day, but it stops there.

And Steve- well, Steve can cook, but he can cook like he’s in the 40s.

So that’s how Bruce finds himself cooking dinner every night for two weeks, as various assassins and superheroes rave about how fantastic he is.

After another night of not being able to find anything to make in the fridge, he sighs and lays his forehead against the cool plastic.

"I am enrolling all of you in cooking classes tomorrow." He groans, locating the take-out menus in a drawer and choosing one at random.

Within three months, everyone cooks dinner at least once a week.

"Natasha, have you seen my purple button down?" Bruce wanders into the common living area to see Natasha spread over the couch, the shirt in question wrapped around a shivering Russian assassin. Bruce sighs and grabs the blanket on the armchair to drape over her. "You’ve got to stop stealing my clothes, Romanoff."

"Only when they’re not comfortable anymore, Banner."

—-

Natasha walks into breakfast one morning, her eyes bloodshot and her nose the same color as her hair. She’s wrapped in a clearly-too-large blue hoodie and the sleeves dangle off the table as she puts her head down.

"Well, there’s the jacket I’ve been looking for. Come on, Nat, I need that." Bruce sighs good-naturedly until Nat looks up at him, mouth slightly open from congestion. "Shit. You feeling okay?" Nat glares at him miserably, then lies back down on the table. He sneaks a hand into the fabric to check her temperature, and then decides he’ll bother her about his jacket later.

—-

"Nat. Nat. Natasha. Romanoff!" He bangs loudly on her door; he has a presentation with Tony in less than an hour and he can’t find his dress shirt.

As he expected, Natasha answered her door in the exact shirt he wanted, sans pants. Her eyes are lined with red, and she sighs when she sees him. 

"Here you go." She mumbles, unbuttoning the shirt and handing it to him, leaving Bruce in front of her door, dumbstruck, as she crawls back into her bed in only her bra and underwear.

"Nat? What’s going on, Romanoff?" He sits on the corner of her bed, unsure of where, exactly, their boundaries were.

"Clint." She mumbles into the pillow. "Three gunshots, they don’t know if he’s gonna make it, and I’m not allowed in." He places a hand on her head, hoping its comforting.

"I’m sorry, Nat." He leaves quietly, but places the blue shirt next to her.

—-

"Natasha, I’m serious, let me in." The redhead answers the door in his green button down, her hair a mess, arms wrapped around her stomach. He immediately feels bad for waking her, but he has a paper talk in half an hour.

"I need that shirt, Nat." She sulks at him. "I mean it. I’ve got a paper talk in thirty minutes. You can have it when I come back." He can feel himself growing angry and tries to push it down.

"C’mon Bruce." She says, leaning against the doorframe for support, and the fact that she feels comfortable asking should make him happy- she’s opening up- but today, he just has to go.

"No, Nat. I really have to go." God, why is he angry? He’s pushing her away and he knows it, but he’s anxious and he needs to go.

"Plea-" The rest of her request is cut off as she coughs, leaning heavily against the door.

"Nat, you have to stop taking my clothes. I have to go, okay!" His voice reaches a shout and she cringes, stepping back.

"They’re not yours! Just- please, just give me my damn shirt." His breathing is labored and she looks scared, and oh god, he hates that he did this.

She slowly takes off the shirt and hands it to him.

He takes a deep breath, tries to calm himself, but that look is still in her eyes.

He walks out of the doorway, hating himself.

—-

A few months later, while having one of their communal dinners, Natasha turns a very peculiar shade of green and excuses herself. Clint and Bruce both get up to follow, but at Clint’s glare, Bruce sits back down.

About ten minutes later, Clint returns, a troubled look on his face.

"Nat’s got food poisoning. Some weird dish she had to eat on a mission." He mumbles.

"I’m going to go check on her." Bruce says softly. He ignores Clint’s look of anger and knocks gently on the bathroom door.

"Nat?"

"Go away, Bruce." He can hear the heaving between her words.

"Nat, I need to make sure you’re okay. Can I come in?"

"Fine."

She is pale, her forehead resting against the toilet seat. She’s sweating, her t-shirt and jeans in a corner of the bathtub.

"What’s going on, Nat?" He kneels next to her and presses a hand to her forehead. No fever, even though she was sweating more than normal.

"Nothing. ‘m fine." She mumbles, turning away from him. He is about to protest when she turns her head downwards again and empties her stomach.

Without a word, Bruce unbuttons his shirt- maroon, this time- and wraps it around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Bruce feels utterly disgusting. He’s been coughing all day, he’s congested, and his head hurts from the amount he’s been sneezing.

Tony walks into the lab around 10 in the morning, takes one look at the miserable scientist, and nearly drags him to bed. Well, the couch in the corner, but it’s the closest Bruce will get to bed.

"Bruce?" Natasha comes down to the lab around 1, looking for Tony, and sees a small pile of blankets. "Hey. What’s going on?"

She receives a sneeze as an answer.

"Allergies bothering you too? You know, we do have medicine for that." She mutters.

"Doesn’t work." He says glumly, looking up at her over the blanket.

What most people don’t understand is how calming hot chocolate is. Despite the caffeine (which is actually helpful, because usually he doesn’t want to go to sleep after a nightmare), it helps to lower his pulse and just makes him feel better. As he learns this, Bruce starts to lean away from powdered hot chocolate and starts to make his own, experimenting with different ingredients like cinnamon, nutmeg, and nutella.

So, when Tony comes down to the lab, voice hitched and breathing labored, mumbling something about alien portals, Bruce doesn’t say anything. But he does return with a blanket and two mugs full of steaming cocoa.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asks gently. Tony shakes his head.

"Okay. I’ll be right here if you want to talk." They pass the rest of the night in peaceful silence, Tony’s breathing slowing as he drinks.

Yes, we are! I've been super busy (it's my senior year) and had a lot of personal issues, but I'm starting to work myself back into this blog. I'm so sorry!

Bucky needs quiet, initially. He needs somewhere devoid of the chaos and ruckus that follow superheroes everywhere. 

Bucky, really, just needs somewhere to exist, and someone to exist with him in that space, in case something goes wrong.

He ends up finding that space (and that person) in Bruce’s lab. It’s not silent- the quiet whirring of machinery and mumbles of the scientist contribute to that- but it’s relaxing and calm, and it’s what Bucky needs.

For months, he will come in quietly and curl up on the couch, watching Bruce work.

Bruce doesn’t mind- in fact, he’s happy that Bucky feels safe here. He never presses Bucky for information or asks him to talk, but usually explains what he’s doing quietly.

Bruce is honored that Bucky feels safe in his company.

After a few months, the visits become less and less frequent, and though Bruce likes that Bucky is healing, he does miss the company.

Until he realizes that the rest of the Avengers have found the beauty in his lab too.

At least twice a week, one of his friends- usually Clint or Bucky, ocassionally Natasha- will lie on his old couch and tinker with something.