#protegerex

  FINGERTIP TAPS AGAINST his shoulder, rosy cheeks dimpled sweetly at the corners of her grin. it’s been too long since she last crossed paths with this familiar stranger. she hopes that he will be as happy to see her as she is to see him.  “  excuse me, is this seat taken ?  ”        /      @protegerex

       Science, it is said, is built on the late night revelations of those with too little sleep and too much inspiration. But that's not quite true, not really. Not when time is subjective and math theoretical, the clock an invention of the human mind. Because there are late nights, and then there are Late Nights.        The kind of late nights that don't even feel like evening. Where Bruce forgets the hour, the position of a sun or moon, even the world beyond the four comforting walls of his laboratories. Where all that matters, however briefly, are the numbers and schematics on his digital displays, the prototypes generated in his holographic testing environment, the results reflected in his black rimmed spectacles. Results are like lifeblood, like caffeine. A better endorphin-high than any hit from heroine or cocaine. And Bruce would know.        On nights like that, nights that turn into days and days again, the physicist found it all too easy to ignore the needs of his (still very human) body. At least, he found it easy until it wasn't. And that crash came hard.       Which put Bruce in the here and now, holding a marker halfway lifted to the digital whiteboard before him, quite literally having forgotten what he was about to write. He blinked blearily, flickered his gaze from the blank patch of board to the near illegible scrawl he'd written previously.                                                                  Oh dear.        What time was it? What... what day? As though emerging from a particularly jarring carnival ride, Banner stumbled back from the whiteboard. He palmed a jaw darkened with bristle and winced, knowing it meant more than just a day's passing. Turning with a ruffled sort of hopelessness, the scientist thought of the Avenger's kitchen one floor down and murmured. "....coffee?... coffee."

     “Captain. Everything going all right?” 

     Yes he has a birthday cake and it isn't his birthday,      what of it? Maybe he's trying to make someone      happy today because god knows his attention span      for studying right now is in the pits and he can't do      much more.      So yes, he will go up to each person he sees that looks      remotely like they need maybe a tiny little bit of cheering      up.           "Happy Birthday----?"

    [ Bruce looked.... desperate.]

         "--Missed you."

     ❛ I look bloody ridiculous. ❜

cAP