2014.03.24 - Red Light, Green Light

This takes place immediately following: http://heromux.com/2014.03.24_-_The_Crucible:_The_Return_Of_Tony_Stark

Bruce is hunkered down in an abandoned building, shivering from the cold, huddled under a rotten old coat he'd grabbed from somewhere. His clothing shredded and his pants in ruins, the scientist shivers uncontrollably for a variety of reasons- the damp cold, the shock of transformation, his uncontrolled anxiety. He fumbles with a cell phone, stolen from a booth, and trembling, dials numbers.

"y-y-y-es. Banner h-here," he shivers. "Need... extraction. Code g-g-reen. Send Black." He hangs the phone up and goes back to huddling under the coat, shaking uncontrollably.

Six-and-a-half-minutes. That’s how long it takes her, which means either she wasn’t that far away to begin with or she went all out with her driving, complete with sirens and brief detours up onto sidewalks to shoot past those who don’t move out of her way fast enough. And maybe once or twice she forgets which side of the road Americans favor, but that’s neither here nor there. She arrives a hundred feet or so away with a screech of brakes, leaping out of the black SUV and not even spending the fraction of a second it would take to shut the door.

”Bruce!” She calls out, bounding towards him in black SHEILD issue tactical body armor, looking down at her phone and orienting her running on the signal from his. She’s quite zippy when she’s not teetering about in her high heels.

"Here!" Bruce struggles to his feet, shedding the coat, and shambles towards the doorframe- the door itself long since gone. He waves and stumbles, nearly falling, then as Henrietta finds him, collapses the moment she gets her arms around him, shaking uncontrollably. "Gotta get... home," he mumbles.

"Need.... meds. C-c-old," he shivers, clearly suffering from some hysterical aphasia as a result of his transformation into the beast.

She digs her heels into the rubble-strewn ground reflexively when he goes limp and trembling in her arms. She squeezes her eyes shut tight, huffing out a deep breath of relief at the solid feeling of him and murmuring, “Oh darling... I’ve got you. Let’s go home, yes. This night is quite, quite over.”

She twists against him, guiding one of his arms across the tops of her shoulders and slipping an arm around his waist. “Can you help? I can’t quite manage you all on my own, much as I’d like to scoop you up in my arms like a kitten. The car’s close and it has lovely heated seats.” She promises, trying to keep her voice light and reassuring, though there’s an audible tremble running through the words that betrays her own distress quite clearly if he were ‘with-it’ enough to notice.

Bruce seems barely coherent, but his feet scrap on the ground as he struggles to support some fraction of his own weight. It's an effort, but the two of them make it to the car, Bruce crawling into the backseat and collapsing into it.

The seats /are/ heated, to his infinite relief, and he slumps over atop them as if embracing warmth itself, still shivering, albeit much less severely. He moans as if a great weight and been taken from his shoulders and almost passes out right there, still twitching.

She dallies just long enough to retrieve a blanket from the trunk and tuck it around him. And a fraction of a second longer to look down at him, curled into a drained little ball, and bend forward to smooth a hand across his masonry-dust-coated hair and press a kiss to his brow. Her lips are as warm as the seats beneath him and she murmurs just before withdrawing, “I’ve got you.”

The rest of the trip doesn’t require much of him. A short trip to where the helicopter has landed, another couple agents to help her get him on board and keep him cocooned and modest in the wool blanket and, from there, back to his quarters on the Argus. It all passes in a haze.

”Put him in the tub, I’d like to get his body temperature back up.” Her voice reaches him through a fog, accompanied by a brief return of the bone-chilling cold that’s quickly replaced by the liquid embrace of warmth so intense that his nerves don’t know what to do with it for a moment.

”I’ve got it from here. Thank you Agent Stone, Agent Wallace.”

The sound of the door shutting. The smell of her violet soap, laced with the faint coppery hint of blood. The light press of her damp fingers on his brow as the water warms his abused blood.

Bruce slowly relaxes as his body temperature comes back up, though he continues to shiver and shake. It takes about an hour for his medications- in the little pill bottle he keeps next to his desk- to kick in, a cocktail of drugs designed to help reduce his blood pressure and the various chemicals that generate his rage-fueled rampages. It leaves him semi-comatose for some time.

After a while, his eyes open a crack, and then he squints into the room, looking for Henrietta. "'etta? What happened?" he croaks, sounding confused and muffled. "...and why am I in the tub?"

She’s sitting there when he wakes up, having rolled his desk chair into his bathroom to sit right next to the tub and... well, he’s not going to drown, but still, keep him upright so that this remains a hopefully relaxing and restorative thing instead of a new trigger. She has her hand loosely curled around his, the pad of her thumb lightly stroking the backs of his fingers. A small, slightly fragile smile of utter relief lights her face as his eyes open and he looks over at her groggily.

”I’m not sure about the first bit. I confess I didn’t stay to hear any of the situation briefings on the bridge. But the bath is my doing. You were too cold and I wasn’t sure how long you’d been...”

She gives a little shake of her head, aware that her tongue is getting away from her and the rest really doesn’t matter. “Feeling a bit better?”

Bruce shakes his head, sitting upright in the tub as water sluices across his shoulders. "Yeah. That... thanks." He starts trying to assemble his thoughts, and it looks like a laborious process from the way he squints and rubs his forehead. He looks down, realizing he is naked. "Oh, please tell me you undressed me," he says with a moan. "I really don't need another gaggle of SHIELD agents telling me I dropped out of the sky blue-clad and naked."

The tiniest of winces that pinches her fair face is the first hint of an answer to the question of how he got here. She gives his hand another soothing little stroke with her fingers before she says, “I had a blanket ‘round you for most of it.” She says by way of consolation. And, as said blanket is obviously not in the bath with him she adds in a murmur, “...And it’s nothing that I presume Agent Stone hasn’t seen before. Or me for that matter.” She adds with a brief flicker of a smile.

She just looks over at him for a moment before shaking her head, “It’s ridiculous to say, considering, but you scared the life out of me Doctor Banner. “

"Sorry," Bruce mumbles, turning his face back to the water. "I... it's coming back to me. I texted you, didn't I?" he guesses, not quite looking at the woman next to him. "That's the last thing I remember. You didn't... see... him," he says cautiously, his voice low and hoarse. He sounds almost afraid of her answer, as if she were about to tell him that he'd done something unforgiveable in his moment of madness.

A worried little thought shows in her blue-green eyes for an instant as he asks her about, as he would put it, ‘the other guy’. “No.” She says in a quiet, even voice, using her light grip on his hand to pull her chair an inch or two closer. “...but if we’re going to make a habit of this, then it seems likely that, eventually, I will.” The thought is softly articulated, but her face is unshrinking, only tempered slightly at the end by the faintest of smiles before she says, “It wouldn’t have changed anything if I had seen ‘him’. I’d still be here when you woke up, holding your hand and trying to reassure you that the entire crew hadn’t seen your delightful backside on the way into the tub.”

The humor is meant to lighten the more weighty bits of her answer, clearly. She leaves off for the moment and instead asks, “Do you want to dry off and get in bed now? And do you need something to eat?”

"Yeah, I'm... god, I'm famished," he says, with another shiver. He rises from the tub a bit unsteadily, clearly under the effect of the sedatives, and leaning heavily on 'etta's hand for assistance, more than he ought to be. He takes a few staggering steps, then lands heavily on the large bed, crawling under the covers. "I... think there's some leftover sandwich from the galley in my fridge," he says weakly, nodding at the little mini-fridge under his desk. True to his word, there's a sandwich, as well as a bunch of caffeine-free soda and bottled water.

She helps him into bed, taking a few fitful passes at him with a towel on the way before mostly abandoning the idea. If ‘a bit damp’ is the extent of his problems by the end of the day, it’s probably gone as well as it possibly could.

She clucks her tongue against her teeth chidingly a few times before saying, “It’s like you’re completely unacquainted with my efficient side, Doctor Banner. I had them bring a tray up. Not that I’m sure your carefully aged turkey sandwich isn’t delightful...” And, in fact, there’s a side table that’s overflowing with enough food to feed... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but to feed a Hulk. She may have overdone it a touch.

She uncovers a few dishes, settling on a bowl of creamy looking potato-leek soup that wafts a trickle of steam upwards, adding bread and cheese and a few slices of roast chicken to the plate besides and pouring out a cup of cocoa – the British answer to tragedies that occur after 9 PM. A few hours earlier and it would have been Earl Grey tea. She carries it over and sets it on the nightstand beside him, sitting to perch on the edge of the bed in the general vicinity of his knees. “If anything’s not to your taste, I have some other options. I think there’s some sort of pasta for carbs. I expect you’re a bit depleted.”

"Oh my god you're amazing," Bruce mumbles, sitting up in bed. He grabs a throw blanket and puts it over his shoulders, then reaches for the tray and brings it to his lap, digging in with abandon and with a complete lack of regard for propriety. He fairly chugs the soup down, disdaining the spoon in order to drink from the bowl, then starts systematically breaking the food down one item at a time.

He finishes about half of the platter- easily three thousand calories, in a matter of minutes, then stretches, his back popping several times.

"How did you know?" he asks Henrietta. "God, that was... perfect. And how did you talk them into making me real food?" he asks, sounding dumbfounded. "This isn't the usual galley slop- I'd swear this was cooked in someone's kitchen."

“I wish I could say that I had the foresight to have broken in your little officer’s kitchen but.... “ A faint smile and she says, “I wasn’t really inclined to leave you and run off to cook. So, it was a combination of sounding stern and knowing their limits. Not everything is bad, but if you order the Beef Wellington here, you’re bound to be disappointed. Also I think the promotion helps. I’m the Assistant to the Assistant Director. It’s like being something like 7th in line for the Black-ops crown, which is a step up for me, as I’ve previously only been 428th in line to sit on the throne of England.”

She gathers his decimated tray, pressing a kiss to his brow as she goes, and carries the remains off to his sink. “But one night, I’ll have to actually try and cook for you here. It’s not exactly suited for gourmet cookery, but still... all I have is my little kettle. I think I could manage something simple here.”

Bruce gestures at his miniature laboratory. "Well... I've got a sink, a few hotplates, my toaster oven and some bunsen burners," he says, still sounding a bit reedy. "Not exactly a professional kitchen, but I've whipped up some grilled cheese and stuff in here." Bruce's suite isn't lavish, but it is large, as he said- it's clearly one of the sub-laboratories on the Labs level that he's simply repurposed into habitation, as it still contains large storage boxes and lockers, as well as an array of equipment and so on. He's clearly taken to treating this as his private lab, as there is equipment that /really/ shouldn't be taken outside the lab laying about the place, including a laser diffractor and a box labelled 'DANGER: RADIOACTIVE' in big letters.

...Because of /course/ there are. She’s probably lucky he has a bed at all and not some hyperbaric irradiation platform with a few dingy pillows tossed atop it. She refills his mug with a second helping of cocoa and carries it back over to his nightstand before summarily starting to peel off the array of weaponry and armor that Agents don for their more vigorous field outings. The latter of which being so tight and rigid that it is a process of several minutes and a lot of wriggling before she’s free of its embrace.

”I’m going to sleep here.” She says just a little shyly and quietly, though it’s notably not phrased as a question. She avoids catching his eyes for a moment, busying herself with leaving all her guns and gadgets neatly arranged atop her folded cat suit atop a box with some unsettlingly indecipherable markings. And when she’s done she slips under his covers, curling against his back and muttering, “I’m sorry. I mean you can kick me out if you really want to but... It’s been a difficult night and I’d much prefer to wake up to immediate reassurance that you’re here and safe and fine.” She pauses a beat before asking, “...is that alright?”

"Of course that's fine," Bruce says, turning in place as she presses against his back. "Why wouldn't it be?" He takes her fingertips and brings them up to his lips, kissing them once, and then curls up tight, pulling Henrietta gently against his back and making a contented sound. The food, company, and bath all seem to have gone a long way towards calming and strengthening him, and the drowsy, contented noise he makes seems to indicate that he's at last found some respite from the weariness and fallout from his transformation.

That seems to help. The kissing of her fingers even elicits a little smile, and by the time he’s turned around she’s fitted flush against his back with one armed curled around his waist. “We’re still new, and I don’t want to hover. I know you’re a big boy... in every sense.” She reasons with a warm wash of breath against the nape of his neck. And while she may not have endured the level of stress that he has this evening, it feels like heaven to cast off the last of her tension and worry and bask in the warm press of his skin against hers. “But this is just... exactly what I want most in the world right now.”

She presses a kiss to his shoulder, the tip of her nose brushing against his skin before she lets her coppery head settle against his pillow. And when the Sandman comes to claim her a few minutes later, her dreams are much better than one could really expect after the day she’s had.