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Bruce Banner x Original Female Character | Avengers AU
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The scattered golden sunlight crept through the thick leaves of the old oak tree, throwing calming rays of warmth onto Laussa’s skin as she lounged in the dewy, summer-green grass beneath. A few culms were brushing against the naked skin of her lower leg, but she didn’t feel the tickling sensation, too absorbed in the view of the world around her, enveloped in the incomparable golden glow she’d only ever experienced here on Asgard.
A slight breeze brushed her soft, blonde curls into her face, making her turn her head away from the draft, surprisedly laying eyes on her teenage brother leaning against the ancient tree behind her. ‘What are you doing, sister?’ His voice was calm as his dark hair was blown out of his face by a gust of wind, his green cape flowing behind him as he stepped closer to her.
‘Just thinking.’ His leather boots squeaked against the ground as he crouched down next to her. ‘Aren’t you a bit young for that?’ She gave him an offended look. ‘That’s mean, I’m already 6!’ Laussa hit his shoulder playfully. Loki, however, let himself fall over and roll down the hill, his cape wrapping around him in the process, making her laugh almost hysterically as he struggled to get up.
‘You dare to attack me? You have no idea who you’re dealing with!’ He rose his arms, conjuring up a bunch of toy knives, sending them soaring towards her. She rose her hands as well, snapping her fingers together, all of the knives promptly turning into small, shiny bubbles, rising up into the golden sky. Loki faked a scared expression as Laussa got up to run towards him, fleeing back towards the tree. ‘Where did you get those powers? You can’t be stronger than me!’ He ran around the tree, still shouting, her right on his heels. ‘Have mercy, little girl!’ As she rounded the tree, the dark-haired god had vanished, and she stopped to listen for any movement around her except the lush leaves above her faintly rustling in the wind.
‘You’d have mercy with me, wouldn’t you?’ The voice of her oldest brother surprised her as he stepped out from behind the tree. His straight, blond hair barely reached his shoulders, stands of it blowing into his eyes, his red cloak waving behind him dramatically.
Now, Laussa might have been 6 years old, but she wasn’t easily fooled, especially not with a brother that was the god of mischief. Taking a small breath, she cocked her head to the side slightly, looking her oldest brother deep in the eyes ‘What do you think, Loki?’
He let go of the green facade immediately, running off again. She tried to get him, but this time she had to stop after a while, out of breath, leaning forward while propping her hands on her knees, as she slowly gained control of her erratic breathing again.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him, his black hair now falling into his face as he peeked out from the other side of the oak tree, also breathing heavily. She saw him shudder slightly as he tried to calm down and took a deep breath before talking.
‘I know father told you, not to play with me anymore. He thinks I’m a bad influence on you.’ His voice was bitter, and she breathed in once more, standing up straight again. ‘Well, he’s wrong then.’ Loki’s frown turned into a smile, one of his rarer, genuine smiles, and he vanished behind the tree again. Suddenly, Odin’s head appeared on the other side of the tree, an angry expression on his face as he shouted: ‘How dare you speak the truth, girl!’ She laughed at Loki’s illusion, shouting back at ‘her father’: ‘Well, what are you gonna do, send me back into that box again?’
Her own laughter distracted her from the transformation, but all of a sudden, Loki was himself again, his features overcome with a sad expression. She was by his side in the blink of an eye, hugging his torso as tightly as she could. He hesitated, his sorrowful eyes now on her, laying his hand on her back gently.
‘Not so tough now, warrior.’ she laughed, observing his facial expression change back from sad to smiling, then a wicked smirk taking over. She felt him transforming right under her hands before she could see it, green light enveloping him as he shrunk out of his humanoid shape. When Laussa could see through the blinding light again, she just barely saw the long, green snake on the ground in front of her before letting out a shriek of terror. ‘Eek! Stop it, you know I hate snakes!’ He hissed at her, his slick body then quickly slithering into the high grass next to them, effectively vanishing completely.
The atmosphere shifted quickly when suddenly, dark clouds gathered under the golden sky and a distant thunder dove everything into a darker mood. Slightly scared, she started calling out for her brother. ‘Loki?’ The rain started just seconds afterwards, big, heavy drops of cold water hitting her and the environment around her. ‘Loki, where are you?’ The high grass rustled around her, but she couldn’t spot him anywhere. ‘This isn’t funny, Loki.’ She shouted now, the fear clutching her tightly as she frantically looked around her.
Then, there it was. An ear-splitting scream of pain in the distance. She felt a sharp pain shoot through her heart immediately. Loki. She raced back to the oak tree, knowing instinctively the scream had come from here. ‘Loki! Where are - ’
Loki stood there, right next to the tree. He looked older, an adult, his longer, wet hair and clothes were clinging to his body, his posture rigid, as his hand dipped down to his chest. She looked down in shock as she saw the blood pooling on the front of his tunic, running down his torso, and he collapsed onto the ground. ‘Loki!’ She ran to his side, taking his hand into hers, her other hand brushing the wet hair out of his pale face. ‘No no no no no, Loki, what happened?.’ Her hands sought out the wound intuitively, pushing down onto the long stab wound with all the pressure, she could muster up. ‘Stay with me, Loki.’ she whispered, trying to stay calm as her heart beat out of her chest in panic.
He pulled her bloodstained hands away from his chest, taking them into his. As tears streamed down her face, he rose his other hand to her cheek, his cold, shaking fingers brushing over her skin softly, forcing her to look up at his face, clearly contorted in pain. ‘Please don’t, Loki, please don’t leave me alone.’ She whispered frantically, his hand gripping onto her face tighter, using all his remaining strength to pull himself up to her, face to face, then turning to her ear.
‘Then why didn’t you save me?’
Laussa woke up, panting, feeling the tears that covered her face, soaking the thin shirt she was wearing. In an attempt to calm down, she tried opening her eyes, but her body didn’t move, didn’t respond to her cues. Oh no. Sleep paralysis was nothing entirely new to her, but it had certainly become a rarer occasion over the past year.
After slightly calming down her irregular breathing, she finally managed to open her eyes, looking up at the dark ceiling, lit only by the faint moonlight coming through the window to her side. The panic of her nightmare still enveloped her, making it more difficult to try to move in any way, so she tried her breathing exercises. Slow, deliberate breaths, slowing down her heartbeat in the process. Then she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye.
Her eyes snapped towards the right side of the bed, where she’d registered the motion, her breathing stopping altogether abruptly.
There he was. There was Loki, sitting right beside her bed, dressed only in a withered black suit, his hair long and messy, his eyes tired, but focused on her with concern. She let out a shriek, her breathing suddenly erratic, her body now twitching wildly, desperately trying to move.
‘Shhhhhhh.’ he whispered, now leaning forward, his black hair falling in his face as he did. ‘Breathe, slowly.’ He rose his hand to her cheek, letting his fingers brush the hair out of her face as she whimpered. ‘In, and out.’ She could see the scarred, dark burn marks on his arm, perfectly shaped in a handprint - her handprint. He was so close, she could smell him, feel the coldness he always radiated. Looking back up at him once more, he smiled at her sadly, almost exactly as he had in her dream, and, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
As she splashed the cold water on her face, she could already tell it wasn’t going to help. The images of her dream were still so vivid in her mind, so lifelike as if it had really just happened to her. She dried her face, turning to look at her phone. 3:51 am. Thor had returned to New Asgard a few days ago, and she had half in mind to go there now, just to not be alone after a dream like that. But what would she even tell him? That she had had a nightmare? That she had seen Loki sitting by her bed? No, that was not an option. She wasn’t a child anymore.
She left her room to go to the kitchen, quietly making herself a cup of coffee, her mind drifting back to the doctor. What if she went to see him? He would understand, wouldn’t he? It had been almost three weeks since that incident down in the lab where he’d helped her. He would listen, she knew. Taking her cup and warming her hands on it, she entered the elevator, her finger hovering over the button to Banner’s floor for a while.
She couldn’t burden him with her problems, he had enough to bear on his own.
Laussa let out a sigh of relief as the metal doors opened to the now familiar view of the lab. The lights around her switched on automatically as she walked in, but she quickly noticed that some of them hadn’t been turned off, as bright lights were emitting from Banner’s area. Was he still here? Trying to be as silent as she could, she snuck over towards his desk, and sure enough, there he was.
He was sitting in his chair, slouched forward, his head lying on his arms, fast asleep on the table. She stepped closer, an affectionate smile on her face as she regarded the attractive man in such a vulnerable position.
He was wearing a thin, wrinkled grey sweater, and his dark curls moved with every breath he took, brushing over his forehead. He probably hadn’t slept for days, as usual…
Laussa hurried to her desk, picking up the soft fleece blanket she kept there for long nights, rushing back to Banner. Slowly, she walked closer to him, wrapping the blanket around him gently. He stirred, his eyes flickering open and up to meet hers. His voice was raspy as he spoke, and Laussa felt her heart beat faster. ‘What are you doing?’ She smiled at him, fighting the urge to brush the loose curl out of his face. ‘I think you should go to bed, Dr. Banner, it is very late.’ He shook his head sleepily. ‘No, no, I was working on something here.’ He sat up quickly, motioning to get back to work, only groggily pushing his keyboard to the side and knocking a mug off his desk. She moved quickly, her reflexes sharp, catching it before it hit the ground. She put it back on the desk as she suppressed a peal of laughter. ‘Come on, Dr. Banner, I’ll get you up to your room.’
He was shaky on his legs, clearly still half asleep as they reached the elevator. She waited, but when it seemed like he couldn’t hold himself up anymore, she wrapped her arm around his back supporting him. She inhaled sharply as she felt the taut muscles of his back through his shirt, only gripping tighter onto him as he drowsily lifted his arm around her shoulders, automatically pulling her closer to him.
It felt almost intimate, standing so close next to each other, their limbs entangled, enjoying each other’s company, but she knew he was barely conscious anymore. She couldn’t help herself and let her hand wander upwards from his waist to his pronounced shoulder blades and the firm muscles surrounding them, only snapping out of it when the elevator stopped abruptly.
The doors opened to virtual darkness, no lights turning on in the room, as they entered. Her free hand fumbled for a light switch unsuccessfully for a moment, until she gave up. She imagined this floor would be essentially the same as hers, and they found their way to his room quickly with the help of her phone’s flashlight.
She let him fall off of her shoulder onto his unmade bed, then let her eyes wander around his room. It was bare, pretty much like hers, no personal belongings anywhere except for a few books on one of the tables and a few candles. Not wanting to turn on the main light, she walked over to the table, snapping her fingers above the candlesticks, igniting them immediately, illuminating the room in a dim, pleasant light.
Turning back around to the man on the bed, she noticed he hadn’t moved at all. As she had let him fall onto the bed, his thin, grey sweater had ridden up his torso, his trained body and the faint line of dark hair continuing down under his dress pants now clearly visible in the faint light. She shook off the urge to stare longer, quickly walking back to the bed, to nudge his legs up onto the soft mattress, taking off his shoes in the process. She had just pushed him to lie on the bed completely now, as he groaned softly. She couldn’t suppress her laughter this time. ‘It’s like you’re drunk.’ Her words made him chuckle as well. ‘I feel drunk, too.’ He opened his eyes now, slowly, his golden brown eyes looking even more captivating in the warm candlelight. ‘You’ll be fine, doctor.’ she said, breaking free from their eye contact to grab the blanket she had brought with her, gently throwing it over him. As she turned to leave the room, he grabbed her wrist, his touch sending tingles through her body. ‘Laussa.’ She turned her head back around to him, his eyes back open, looking at her, his curls falling back onto his forehead. ‘Yes?’ He took a shuddered breath, talking slowly, but sincerely.
‘I’m really happy you’re here. I like… I like having you around.’ She smiled, her heart suddenly beating much faster as she felt butterflies in her stomach. ‘Thank you, Dr. Banner.’ she said and nodded, now once more turning to leave as he softly let go of her arm. ‘Call me Bruce, please. I should have said that much earlier.’ Her smile grew wider. ‘Okay, Bruce, have a good rest.’ His delicate snoring filled the room mere seconds afterwards, and she only turned back around to him when she’d reached the door.
He looked incredibly peaceful right here in the soft candlelight, and she was overwhelmed by the overbearing desire to stay, just lay next to him, maybe cuddle up against him. She shook her head again, closing the door gently behind her, her subconscious still hard at work.
Maybe one day.
Bruce Banner x Original Female Character | Avengers AU
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Laussa pressed the button to the lab with her elbow as she entered the elevator, the steaming hot cups in her hand fogging up the closing metal doors right in front of her. Slightly worried, she let her eyes roam over her reflection in the mirror-wall, now holding both cups by their handle in her left hand to use the other to fix her messy ponytail that had come loose.
The gray shirt she wore was fitting, but not too tight to not look casual, her black pants sitting tightly around the curves of her body. She let the green shield around her dissolve momentarily, her dark ponytail vanishing to reveal the dark blonde, curly bun she wore her natural hair in, small strands of curls falling onto her forehead around the dark, round scars her brother had seen only yesterday, and the bumpy scarred wound on the side of her neck, where she had stabbed herself yet again just the day before.
Slowly, Laussa let her fingers hover over the half-open wound, feeling the heat pool just underneath the surface. She could see the fire move like lava underneath her skin, glowing all over her neck and chest. Shit. The stress of the changing environment and new people all around her would make it necessary to use the stone more often again.
The powerful ring of the elevator yanked her out of her thoughts, and she instinctively let the green magic envelop her once again before taking a quick breath, entering the lab.
The loud sound the elevator had made reverberated through the large, open laboratory with the high ceilings, echoing back from the glass instruments on the table next to her. She looked around in awe once more, this time seeing the lab in natural sunlight that was streaming in through another one of the usual giant windows of the house.
The mostly metal and glass instruments shone in the warm morning sunlight, casting long shadows on the surfaces behind them. Laussa slowly strode forwards, admiring the craftsmanship on the machines and inventions around just the entrance of one of the floors in this building, that was dedicated to science.
"I’m busy, Tony!“ Banner’s raspy voice broke through the serene silence of the room, making her jump, almost spilling some of the hot coffee on herself. He wasn’t expecting her, she thought to herself with a smile.
Laussa quickly made her way over to where she now knew his desk to be, her footsteps also echoing loudly, as everything did down here.
As she turned the corner to his area, she locked her eyes on him immediately. He was sat in a swivel chair in front of his large desk, monitors all around him, most of them showing different versions of what seemed like a blueprint, others showing texts and documents she couldn’t decipher from her distance.
He was leaning forward onto the table, his right hand rubbing his face, pinching the bridge of his nose, as his other hand was holding his glasses, absentmindedly opening and closing the sides in a slow rhythm. He seemed to be wearing the same clothes she saw him in yesterday, his blue button-down no longer tucked into his pants, but loosely peeking from under his wrinkled lab-coat, his hair now messy and ruffled as it spilled over his forehead.
"I didn’t mean to disturb you, Dr. Banner.”
Bruce flinched, immediately turning around to her, his eyes now wide open, staring at her like a deer in the headlights. Her breath hitched in her throat as she saw him from a different angle, noticing his shirt that was not only no longer tucked into the brown dress pants, but also had more buttons undone, revealing his pale, trained chest. She got a quick glance at the dark brown curls of chest hair before he hastily brought up his hands to button up his shirt again and fix his hair as best he could.
“No, no, you didn’t, I just… I wasn’t expecting you,” he said nervously, quickly tucking his shirt back into his pants and pulling his coat back on completely.
"I brought you something, Clint told me this is how you like your coffee? Be careful, though, it’s hot.“ He looked at her in confusion and surprise as she walked closer and set down one of the cups on his desk carefully.
"Th-thank you, that’s very kind.” His smile was honest, giving her a chance to marvel over his deep brown eyes again, memorising the bright, little flickers of gold behind the overpowering exhaustion he was radiating.
"Are you alright? You look as if you haven’t slept at all.“ The doctor quickly shook his head, now breaking the eye contact, looking back down onto the glasses in his hand, reaching his other hand out to grab the steaming cup of coffee.
"I’m all right, no reason for concerns, nothing unusual. Thank you.”
Still concerned, but aware he didn’t want her to prod further she nodded at him, moving over to her work station.
▪
It took her a while to get acquainted with everything, the technology being so much more advanced than anything she’d ever handled before, but she was able to set up everything she needed to transfer all of her research over to this side of the earth. Hacking had never been her strong suit, especially not hacking through her own security system, but in the hurry that Thor had made her leave in, she had been forced to leave her lab without transferring her data into the cloud, as she usually did, so she had to hack back into her other computer to access all of her files.
It took a long time, but when she finally had found an access point to her old desktop, she gave a sigh of content, immediately freezing to hope the doctor hadn’t heard it.
She had been down in the lab for a couple of hours at this point, sitting only about 15 feet away from where he was working, hearing only the occasional clanking or typing noise, sometimes a little groan as if he was in pain.
Laussa was sure he hadn’t slept the night before, given his looks as she had first seen him today, so he was probably suffering from a splitting headache.
Why was she thinking about him so much?
Shaking her head, she decided to get on with work.
She had now copied most of her files onto the new device, only her ‘highly confidential’ ones were yet to come. As she finished her last lines of input to transfer those as well, suddenly, all of the screens around her started flashing red, some of them having a big ‘Access Denied’-texts written on them, as an alarm started going off. In a panic, she quickly tried to fix her mistake, then, as she gave up on that tried to just cancel the transfer, but nothing worked as she frantically started to manually override security, again and again, the blaring alarm still going off in the background.
"You need some help?“ Laussa heard Bruce’s voice shout over the loud signal.
"No, thanks, I totally have this under control.” The confidence in her voice faltered and she heard him step closer almost immediately, felt him watch over her actions, apparently understanding, what she was doing.
“Laussa, hey, you don’t need to do all that manually, Tony’s got this all handled automatically.” He stepped right next to her, crouching down, now speaking at a normal volume since he was right next to her ear. “May I? You just have to…”
She visibly shuddered, feeling his warm breath on her ear as he leaned over her, his fingers brushing against hers as he took control of the keyboard. Little jolts of electricity shot through her body at the feel of his skin on hers, and with a few shortcuts, he had cut off the blaring alarm.
Suddenly, there was a small progress bar, all of the confidential files now flowing onto the new device. He retreated, taking a small step back and Laussa turned around to him.
"Wow, th-thank you! I had no idea, thanks, doctor.“ He smiled at her and her chest suddenly felt heavy, her heart stuttering as she took him in again, his undoubtedly attractive experience, the kindness in his eyes as he looked at her, a faint blush on his cheeks.
"Oh, no problem…” His voice was quiet, his gaze now distracted, focused on something behind her.
Laussa spun back around, the newly copied files of research, experiments and analyses opening on different parts of the screen, big enough so he had definitely seen parts of it. Shit. She focussed on him out of the corner of her eye, his posture was now rigid, his head averted.
“I’m gonna go back to work, just call, if you need any help.” With that, he left, not even a glance back in her direction as he practically fled the scene.
She turned her attention back to the screens, now completely filled up with the files she had most recently worked on, prominently featuring research on Asgardian afterlife, wormholes and time travel…
…which Banner had definitely seen.
