labcoatgirl | Reunion with brokeharlem

Reunion with brokeharlem

[follows this]

It was a long trip, almost six hours before she was in New York. Betty hadn't driven much in big city like this so she was grateful for the turn by turn directions of her GPS. Stark tower loomed in the center of town, the glowing sign lighting up the dark. It was still a wreck here, she had to avoid multiple construction sites, passing huge holes in the road and businesses smashed to pieces.

She parked in a lot a short distance away from the tower, who's sign was reduced to just a single A glowing overhead. Betty got out of the car and started walking, thumbing her phone as she posted on twitter, to make sure Bruce knew she was there.

@drbanner I'm here, walking towards the tower.

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"I'd like to meet him." He seemed like quite a character. Especially if he was able to help Bruce in this way, Betty would like to give him her heartfelt thanks for being such a good friend to Bruce.

She had let go for a bit, just holding his hand now. "I'm sure it will take awhile to settle in." There might be a few things he left behind that she brought in the car too. She's still wearing her mother's necklace he had sent back to her in the mail after they pawned it, never taking it off since she received it.

Betty isn't sure how to say what she wanted to say next, looking down at his hand in both of hers. "...it's been a long time and...I probably shouldn't assume you and I..." If there was someone else in his life, she wouldn't think less of him at all. But she did want to know.

"JARVIS probably told him you're here. I doubt you could avoid him for very long even if you wanted to."

Really, he's amazed Tony hadn't shown up to stick his nose in already. Maybe JARVIS hasn't told him yet, figuring he and Betty deserved a few minutes of privacy for so long. Or maybe Tony himself had decided that. It was hard to tell, though regardless, he can't say he's not grateful for it, especially with that unspoken question.

Frowning, he follows her gaze down to their hands, his own tightening around one of hers. "There's -- I haven't -- I don't trust anyone else."

Not like that. And, more importantly, he's not sure he could love anyone else like that. Not like he loves Betty.

"Jarvis...the elevator?" He'd only mentioned him when talking to the elevator after all.

Betty closes her eyes with a relieved smile. She still loved him too, nobody else had been able to compete with that for her. But she had been willing to give him up if he was happy with someone else.

She leans her head and face into his shoulder, glad to have that huge question answered. "I haven't seen anyone either...Samson and I broke up after you disappeared." She feels she owes him that much explanation after all. Samson knew it was the right thing after seeing how her father had treated Bruce.

Bruce gets the sense that JARVIS is tactfully refraining from explaining, if only to avoid startling or upsetting Betty, and he's silently grateful for that. He'll have to thank the AI later; for now, though, he just shrugs. "JARVIS is more than just the elevator. He runs the Tower. He's kind of like ... "

Calling JARVIS Tony's butler feels like a disservice, somehow. Referring to him as one of Tony's friends seems like something both man and AI would rather avoid, if only because people seem to get a little touchy about sentient computers before they get the opportunity to know them, and so he pops one shoulder in another shrug, letting Betty finish that sentence on her own. He'll let Tony and JARVIS explain JARVIS' functions, when they're ready.

"You didn't have to," he continues, switching tracks back to their current relationship statuses. He brushes a thumb over the back of her hand. "I mean, if he made you happy ... you deserve that."

"...an all purpose computer?" Now that was impressive.

She looks up at him, a determined look on her face. "It was a mutual decision. He...wasn't you." That was the easiest way to explain it.

"Something like that, yeah."

He looks up, too, meeting her eyes for an instant before looking away. When he does, a small, self-depreciating smile springs to his lips. "Some people might tell you that's a good thing."

She reaches and turns his face carefully to look back at her, a smile that says I know better than that. "Then they're wrong. We work well together." Always have, always will.

"And I don't think I could give you up completely if I tried." She has a hunch it's the same with him.

The smile turning a little more genuine -- the same, almost shy one he was wearing earlier -- he tilts his head into her hand slowly. "That sounds disturbingly familiar."

He's more than definitely in the same boat.

Her smile just about reaches up to her eyes back at him. There's the Bruce she knows.

She leans up and kisses him softly. "So I'm afraid you're stuck with me." Metaphorically and literally, it would seem.

He tenses when she kisses him, not used to much in the way of intimate, physical contact. It's familiar, his response the same the first time she'd touched him when they'd been alone together two years ago, and thankfully brief, and then he's returning the kiss, his shoulders slumping in something like relief. He's still afraid -- afraid that he'll hurt her, that she'll change her mind, something, anything to ruin him finally getting his way after something like six years -- but he can't back away. He can't lose her again because of something he did.

"I'll try and keep that in mind," he tells her as he breaks the kiss finally, his forehead resting against hers.

She knows after so much time alone, it's going to take time to settle into a routine again. Betty can't imagine what it's been like, living from moment to moment on the run all the time.

Betty enjoys the moment, keeping her forehead to his as well and straightening his lapels to his shirt absently. A faint smile, "Your shirt could use ironing." Something normal to talk about.

Without moving and from the corners of his eyes, he glances down at his shirt. "If you think this is bad, you should have seen me a few months ago."

Now, and thanks to Tony, he at least has more than one or two worn, rumpled suits.

She would love to see him in a suit. Rumpled or otherwise. Betty sighs, still fingering his lapels. "I don't know how you managed for so long." Keeping his sanity, staying ahead of the army, finding food and clothing with next to nothing.

It's not hard to recognize that they're not talking about the state of his clothing anymore, and he sobers a little, breathing out a sigh along with her.

"It's been rough," he says, eyes drifting back down to her fingers at his shirt, his attentions as fixed on them as they had been on the floor earlier. "I got pretty good at begging for charity and day labor before I started with the whole street doctor thing. And I like to think I could almost keep up with Miss Romanoff when it comes to sneaking around."

She smiles, listening to him talk. Remembering when they had run together for a bit and he was saying she couldn't bring anything they could track...and she asked if her lipstick was safe.

"You're turning into quite the renaissance man." That would be the optimistic way of looking at it.

"...I should probably bring my stuff in." She really didn't want to break the moment but it was still dark outside. And Betty wasn't sure if looting was still going on in New York after all of the problems beforehand.

"If by Renaissance Man, you mean most likely to end up on Cops or whatever, then sure," he shoots back, flashing her a thin smile. A glance over her shoulder, back at the door follows, and then he returns his attentions to her properly. "I can come down with you, if you want."

Most people wouldn't come near the Stark Tower, even in the aftermath of the mess Loki made, but he thinks he'll feel better if he goes with her anyway, just in case. Plus, well, keeping an eye on her will make sure she doesn't evaporate into thin air and give her peace of mind that he won't do the same the second she's out of the room.

She almost says, no she can handle it. But they both seem to worry that the other one is going to disappear once their back was turned. It might take awhile to get over that.

"Sure. I have a few boxes...and I'm not entirely sure I can find my way back up here by myself anyway." She smiles and pulls back so they can walk back to the elevators.

Nerves churning in his stomach, he thinks briefly about reaching for her hand as they make their way back to the elevator. Something makes him think better of it, though -- his fear of physical contact, his fear of moving too fast and frightening her away, even if they've been beyond the hand-holding stage before, something -- and he settles for wringing his hands hopelessly, instead. It's become something of a nervous habit over the course of the last few years.

"JARVIS, ground floor, please?" he says to the open air, once they're back in the elevator.

"As you wish, Doctor Banner," the AI answers as the doors slide shut.

A moment of silence follows, and then Bruce clears his throat. "So, uh ... "

He has no idea where he's going with that.

She looks up at the ceiling at the vaguely british voice. "So that's Jarvis?" He must be one big computer to run the entire tower.

"Yes, Dr. Ross."

Betty's a little surprised at the address. "...that's a little scary." Probably found her out from facial recognition and her teaching ID at the college.

"He's got an internet connection, just the same as the rest of the world," Bruce answers, shrugging. He's not afraid of JAVRIS, despite the fact that he's more or less the very thing science fiction has been teaching people to fear for decades now. He figures he's scarier, when he wants to be, and as weird as it sounds, he doubts JARVIS would try to pull a SkyNet on the Tower and its inhabitants. He trusts him, just as much as he trusts Tony, and it's likely one of the reasons why he and Tony get along so well. He's coming to understand the billionaire's reasons on some level, just as Tony's working to understand his. "He probably ran your picture on Google."

"Big brother at work..." she comments with a smile. Betty always did have a touch of hippie blood in her. But she didn't mind so much, Jarvis seemed like an okay computer so far.

Once they get to the car, she starts pulling out a couple of suitcases. There are two boxes in the back, one of research papers she had tossed in there quickly...and the other was a few personal items of Bruce's she'd kept. A few clothes, extra set of glasses he forgot once at her place, a stress ball with Culver Tech on it, and a novel he'd been in the middle of when the incident happened. "I think this is it."

"You get used to him," he promises, following her out of the elevator to her car.

He watches her momentarily, trying to figure out where to jump in to help, and decides on the boxes, figuring it's better than being underfoot as she unloads her suitcases from the front of the car. The thought of bringing them inside evaporates as soon as he sees the contents of the one box, though -- his box -- and he reaches into it, his expression almost rapt, pulling out the dog-eared copy of Stranger in a Strange Land he'd been reading years ago.

Dragging a thumb over the spine of the book, he turns back to Betty. " ... you know, I never got the chance to go back to this after everything."

He could have gotten another copy of the book, the story not exactly a new one, but he just hadn't. It had been a combination of, well, running from Ross and his squadron and the fact that the book was poisoned, tainted with the memories of what had happened to him. He hadn't wanted to touch any printing of the thing after that. He's not sure how he feels about it now.

Betty watches him re-finding his things, giving him a sad smile back. "If you don't want them, I'll just take them back when I leave. But I figured you deserved something from home." Even if Bruce didn't have a physical home anymore.

She had almost brought the framed picture of herself and him from their college days but decided against it...in case things went south during this trip. Less drama, the better.

Betty locks up the car and picks up the suitcases, following back to the tower.

"I'll think I'll keep them," he decides after a moment's pause. He may not be sure how he feels about the book, but the other things have meaning, value, however muddied by time and experience. "I mean, if you don't mind ... "

"I don't mind at all," she reassures him with a smile. His past was a touchy thing, Bruce needed better memories for the future.

And she hopes he doesn't mind when she does his ironing when he's preoccupied at some point.

Though she's not sure where to stay but in a tower this big, there's probably lots of guest bedrooms. Somewhere.

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Reunion with brokeharlem

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I'd seriously sell my left arm for a Ruffalo!Bruce / Tyler!Betty icon.

:/ I wish I had one to give you, though I have screencapped the snot out of TIH

If I had skills of an artist, I'd make one. As it is, I'm probably gonna end up poking a friend.

looping around, it's too small to read down there :S

Works for me! And thanks for offering your caps. :)

y/w

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