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In rare form Hulk was both off duty — not actively avenging — and allowed “free range”. And as demeaning as that sounds, it’s closer to the truth than you’ve ever liked.

It’s only the existence of the Avengers, and what everyone outside of the team (and some within) view as their leash on him, that allows him any semblance of a peaceful life.

Of a heroic path.

Finally he looks down at you in full, gaze stalling for a brief moment for him to no doubt look over your brown skinned and bathing suit clad form.

Colorful braids that fall past your ass when you stand pool both around your head and cascade in purple vines down Hulk’s inner thighs — whether the braiding hair is caught around your hair or the braids are a wig, doesn’t matter, they were yours regardless.

Then Hulk meets you gaze, large green eyes alight with far more intelligence than people gave him credit for.

His nose scrunches with his displeasure.

“Sunset,” he says, the bass of his voice quiet. “I’ll see if he wants to come out then. No earlier.”

“Of course.” You draw an invisible ‘X’ over your heart, crossing it, just to hear him huff. The bunched muscles beneath you relax in tandem. “No earlier,” you agree, “and thank you, Hulk.”

“Hm,” he grumbles, looking away from you, a hand swooping up to scratch at his nape, “you’re welcome. And this isn’t for Banner either, it’s only because you asked.”

You nod and Hulk finally drops his hand. Going back to leaning on it, fingers burrowing into the sand, like he was before. More relaxed than he typically gets to be.

It’s a good sight.

The caveat he tacked on at the end about Bruce was less good, however. But it wasn’t something you wanted to get too involved in either; this was something they’d have to work out on their own. Sharing a body and both having individual lives and active wants for the first time in their life.

Ever since they’d been framed and locked up by General Ross, both Hulk and Bruce have changed. Hulk is more resolved than ever to be a hero, and forcing people to actively confront his humanity has become a major part of that. Bruce’s zeal for existing and actually living life again has steadily come back to him too, and with it the desire to front has undoubtedly increased. Finding equilibrium now that Bruce wanted back out more often and Hulk had even more of a lease on life was certainly winding up to be a Herculean task for both of them.

Which means you’ve had to insert yourself more than you think is…beneficial in the long term. Even if seeing them struggle made your heart hurt and itched at your nerves.

None the wiser to your fleeting spiral, Hulk clears his throat. Starts chatting about bird watching of all things, and updating you on how sparring with Thor has been going.

Settled on top of him, you listen avidly. Angling your head so the sun’s glare is blocked by his larger one, and leaning back so you’re propped up onto your elbows, legs curled lazily closer to his torso.

Hulk gestures broadly with one hand, speaking for you alone. The corners of his eyes crinkling fondly as he recounts throwing Thor through three walls in the training room after successfully outmaneuvering the God of Thunder.

He calls him a punk the whole time, and isn’t that something?

It’s a level of conversation he wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to engage in even several months back. Too enraged, too attacked. Too unconsidered to bother.

Now he’s a far cry from having to lash out despite himself, to protect himself. To protect Bruce. Still angry, he was always angry, but smiling with you nonetheless. Snorting at his own jokes. Dressed in a pair of purple swim trunks that you don’t bother trying to hide the appreciative way you eye him up in, and little else. It’s a good look for him. And usually his only look, but still.

It was purposeful this time; the trunks at least made for him and not torn out of Bruce’s pants.

You could appreciate the autonomy exercised in him slowly amassing a wardrobe of his own.

Minutes pass before anyone disrupts your small pocket of beach bound contentment.

All because you catch Wasp’s eye midway through a gut-clenching bout of laughter. Lulled by the off kilter, slightly caustic humor Hulk’s long begun to develop and the thumb he’s been absently rubbing against your side. Rubbing over the heat warming your skin and pressing carefully, so very delicately, into the softness of your body.

Eyes going wide, Janet smiles big even after your smile dulls and you shake your head. Trying to dispel her.

When she starts coming over anyway, you relax fully across your coveted spot. Strings cut like a tangled mirrorette.

Turning your face into Hulk’s leg, you groan into green skin.

“We’re about to start water polo!” she chirps just as you pop your head back up. Your expression fixed to not look rude, you give her a wane smile. Shifting all the while so that you’re sitting up, facing away from Hulk, as she closes in. “We could totally do girls against boys?”

Nevermind the fact that you’d be outnumbered by at least one — if Natasha didn’t flat out reject Janet’s offer, that is — and that even while you didn’t dislike Janet, you didn’t consider her a friend either.

Sometimes being attached to one hero — mentally two — was enough for a working woman.

“I‘m sorry, Girl. I might’ve another day, but I can’t get my hair wet.” You gesture to your hair with a flourish and a toss; can feel the way Hulk’s body vibrates with poorly concealed laughter beneath your ass at the theatrics. “This hair is just too new, you know?”

Braids knock against your back and land quickly over your shoulder to rock with the breeze against the side of your face and Janet watches them like she’s mesmerized. The loud, passionate woman blinks, shakes her head.

You don’t mention that you also just don’t feel like getting in the water and doing all that actively— nevermind that you’d probably end up in the water later, hair protected, because either of your partner’s overheated bodies needed cooling, but Hulk gives you a look like he sees right through your lying ass anyway.

Big Green doesn’t give you away though, just snorts lowly and turns his head away to watch where a bunch of pelicans are flocking around a startled looking Clint. Plus, you knew his game just as well and Hulk certainly didn’t want you off his lap anytime soon either. If he called you out he’d be jeopardizing that based on your sheer pettiness alone, let alone Janet’s pestering.

Janet ignores him anyway and takes to giving you her best puppy dog eyes. You don’t throw your head back to groan, but you kind of want to.

“Aw, really.” She looks over you, nose crinkling cutely. “The water can’t be that bad for your braids. It’s just hair.”

Tell that to the salt buildup you’ll have to scrub out if you get into the water.

‘To you,’ you think, fighting back a frown.

On the outside you don’t even bother talking out loud anymore, since her lil, shrinking ass wasn’t listening anyway, and just stare at her blankly. A mantra of ‘fix your face, fix your face’ zipping through your mind all the while.

Even if you didn’t want to hang with them (and their finicky acceptance of Hulk’s humanity) at the moment, that didn’t mean you wanted to end up alienating Hulk from the Avengers even a bit by being too much of a bitch. Not with how hard he was still trying to come to terms with their persisting uncertainty of him.

“So you’re really not going to go in, huh?”

“That’s…what I said,” you respond, your smile growing smaller and fingers twitching in your lap.

Pushy.

Pushy would overwhelm and then piss you off if she kept bothering you.

Hulk seems to know it too because he perks up, shifting under your easily taken weight. His big hand flashes in a jade blur in your periphery as he talks.

“Janet,” he grunts; just enough warning in his voice to be admonishing. “Stop pestering.”

You watch Janet flush and can’t even be happy, you just want her to take your answer and go.

“Alright, alright. I got it, Big Guy.” The brunette grins at him, winking. “Janet leave Hulk’s girl alone,” she grumbles out in a too light and too breathy mimicry of his own stilted speech from a few years ago.

The muscles in Hulk’s leg bulge as he tenses — physically shifting you up a bit where you’re sat on his thigh. Janet gives him two thumbs up before finally turning to bounce back to the others, and you yearn for the peace you both had not five goddamn minutes ago.

“…Your teammates,” you start, searching for the most tactful way to get your point across as you go.

“Can be too much?” Hulk’s low base finishes for you.

“Yeah that.” You knock your head up to grin at him, his head haloed by the sky’s now setting fire, and he gives a broad laugh.

“Now,” you say lightly, “about what we were discussing earlier…”

Hulk huffs and the air from it blows your braids around for a moment, but he nudges the beach bag you’d brought with you closer to your legs where you’ve moved them to hang off his own.

“Yeah, I’ll see about taking you to watch the birds in Nevada, but only because you asked nicely.”

“And because I’m me, and you can’t resist me?” You flutter your lashes at him, wiggling in his lap, and by the way his lips twitch you know he’s fighting back a smile.

“Don’t push it,” he grunts, losing the battle with his grin.

─────

When Bruce comes back to you he’s…lucid.

He only stumbles a little at the sight of you in your swimsuit, at least.

The brunette man doesn’t fall, but you shift to stabilize him anyway. Hands curling around his forearms, like you’re scared he’ll collapse.

That he’ll wither away in your arms and you’ll never have a chance to bask in the fragile, earnest way he smiles at you again.

“I got you,” you mutter, brown eyes greedily taking him in. For once Bruce actually looks well rested, the bags under his eyes just a little less severe and his gaze alert without exhaustion along the edges.

Bruce hardly teeters for more than a second, only scrambling to grab Hulk’s trunks before they fall off his hips, but he doesn’t pull away from you or your hold on him.

“Sorry,” he stutters, deep set eyes wide on your face, “I’m fine. I— just— distracted.”

Oh, you could tell.

“Regardless,” you say, grinning and squeezing a bit at his arms to help reiterate your statement, “I got you, Banner.”

For the first time since you grabbed ahold of him Bruce seems to actively register your positions. He flushes.

“Yeah,” he says, looking you in the eyes, “I can— uh— I can see that.”

“Mm,” you hum, acknowledging. You start to rub your thumbs along the edges of his rough elbows. “Hello, Handsome.”

Bruce smiles that vibrant, gentle way he always does for you. He rocks a little closer.

In the secluded area you’ve tucked yourselves into, just behind the shower building, you guys exist in your own little bubble of the world.

“Hello, Beautiful,” he murmurs back, voice only cracking a little. “How are things? The weather seems nice.”

“Oh it is, for sure,” you agree, playing along. “That’s why I just had to convince a certain big green Goliath to let you out to see.”

“Well I’m seeing,” Bruce says, but he certainly isn’t looking out at the gorgeous expanse of bright blue ocean and warmed, litter free, sand at you guys’ disposal.

The hand he isn’t using to hold up his pants moves, careful not to jostle your hold on him, and curls lightly around your bicep. Just to touch any part of you.

Longing, deep and hard won, eases and settles out of you at the feel of him against your skin, warming your insides and filling you with connection.

When you brandish a slim pair of plum swim trunks in his size, waving it around as the sea breeze brushes over your braided coils, tossing your braids around your body in a flurry and sweeping his hair to the side, Bruce snorts.

Winking, you hold them just a bit out of reach when he lets go of you to grab them, however.

“What did I just say,” you murmur, leaning in close to him and smiling a little wider at the way your plump lips glide just a little against his thinner grin.

“Oh,” Bruce grunts, but there’s little of the surprise the exclamation would suggest in his tone.

Ever used to finding himself in compromising positions — and far more eager than he’s ever been to be in one with you now you’ve sorted things out — Bruce doesn’t do so much as stutter in his movement as he lets go of his grip on Hulk’s pants.

The way they look pooled at his ankles is comical, and you giggle even as you lean into him more. Bruce chuckles himself, but it doesn’t last quite so long once you’re pressed to him, and he quickly makes use of his having both hands free to wrap his arms around you.

You let him, hands bracing themselves against pale hips, and lips locking with his in a long awaited kiss.

Fuck, but you missed this. Even with his lips slightly chapped, kissing Bruce is electric, sending tingles up your body and down your spine. You the conduit of his wily, gamma edged electricity.

Still kissing, Bruce starts to explore your body intermixed with his slight breaks from your mouth to allow you both the chance to breathe. You're happy to let him do it, letting him take even more of your weight— and despite his outward appearance you know he can.

Calloused hands, tinkering, scheming hands, drag up and down your body with reverence. Refamilarizing with every dip and scar and stretch mark, old and new. No stone is unturned as he rubs his palm across your belly and over your ass, feeling up your thighs and squeezing at your hips and your waist.

Hands brush across your breasts so quickly, but make your breath hitch anyway, drag up your arms like he’s trying to commit them to memory through touch alone, and over your shoulders and up your neck until he can cup your face between his balms with open heartache.

Unlike his bigger other half, Bruce seems to more actively appreciate your new hair.

After about five minutes with you on his lap Hulk had complained about the braiding hair being itchy but, despite you offering to move, he’d promptly refused to even let you get up with a giant jade anvil of a hand pressed lightly to your abdomen. Then proceeded to absently twirl his pinkie around a few braids (after asking permission, of course).

By comparison, Bruce twists scarred, slender fingers through the mixture of black and purple braids wound through your kinky hair. He takes a second to hum to himself and really look at them, confirms what he remembers, and says he loves them. Complimenting the color and the different way they frame your face.

Eventually you have to pull away completely for full gulps of air, but you’re both laughing while you do it.

Bruce was still in the nude after all. Shameless though he was in front of you, and too used to having to throw shame out the window when Hulk could drop him into any manner of precarious situation without warning, you still needed to get him dressed.

Tony could only rent a small stretch of the beach after all, and only for so long. Money didn’t talk loud enough every time, no matter the amount he could throw around.

Shortly thereafter you hold out Bruce’s swim trunks for him to step into. He hesitates for all of one second, brow raising, before indulging you and you pull them securely up his legs in a singular motion once he’s fully stepped in.

If you brush your nails across his bare thighs and flatten a hand to his newly covered ass for a second while you do, then that’s your business.

Bruce mutters nonsense at every stray touch, head bent into your neck as he presses kisses to your brown skin and the little hitches of his warm breath curl over your veins.

Fingers curl into your hair and blunt nails scratch softly, pleasantly at your scalp. You let out a deep sigh across his skin and skim your palms over his stomach and up to his abdomen, curbing the urge to drag the pads of your fingers over his nipples with a bite of your lip.

When you pull him in to tighten and then tie the laces around his waist, he gasps and you shiver as his eyes go lidded.

“You’re teasing me,” he accuses, like you're not just returning the favor, his voice low only for its lack of use and Bruce’s own general tendency towards the monotone.

“A little, yeah,” you say, snickering and leaning in to peck him on the lips before continuing, “but we won’t be able to do shit until we’re alone so it’s all either of us is getting.”

“If both of us have to wait, then why do I feel like I’m getting the shorter end of the stick here for some reason?”

“Feel however you want, Honey,” you pull away from him then, reaching down to grasp his hand in yours and starting to drag him along. “I’m getting what I want regardless,” you finish, cackling at the way he scoffs even while still actively letting you lead him wherever without question.

That he takes the time to fold up and tuck Hulk’s disregarded trunks under his arm in your rush, makes your smile soften.

Still, you had a very blue, very cool ocean to enjoy with your man, you both needed to get a move on if you wanted in the water before nightfall. You just needed to find the sunscreen first.

“There’s popsicles?” he exclaims along the way, delivery almost dry despite himself.

A weight sloughs its slimy tendrils from your shoulders as you laugh and tell him to grab you another while digging for your SPF and a large scrunchie to put your hair up.

Both your guys in one day, after months without either, was one hell of a gift.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!

I suppose (even when considering Hulk’s characterization in EMH) that I’m writing my version of EMH Hulk closer to a Gravage/Green Scar more than any other alter. If anyone was curious. “Gravage” is my favorite Hulk, though, (even if I do love them all) so that makes sense.

I’d like to point out that I started writing this months before the 2025 Marvel Swimsuit Special came out (but it was nice to actually see Hulk drawn in purple swim trunks; or the remains of Bruce’s, at least).

This little series was also prompted by the premise from the Hulk/Bruce storyline that I’ve read would’ve happened in season three of EMH between Bruce, Hulk, and Betty Ross if the show had continued. I disrespected Hulk and Janet’s canon EMH relationship a bit too here, but during the arc when he was framed I vaguely remember her getting on my nerves so…