A PINK COMFORTER
WHEN OLIVIA GETS BACK TO HER APARTMENT, TONY IS ALREADY THERE. She thanks the stars above that she thought to move her personal items into a rented storage unit the second she woke up. Lord knows Stark is nosy enough to try and peek.
Next to him is a slightly uncomfortable-looking Bruce, and on the curb is parked a moving van. If Tony hired fucking professional movers, Olivia is going to—
“Hey, welcome back, Dolittle,” he greets, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Where have you been?”
She holds up the Starbucks she picked up on the way back for him to see.
“Coffee,” she replies shortly. “I hope you didn’t hire any movers, because they’re not stepping a toe into my apartment.”
Tony shakes his head.
“No, no,” he denies quickly, “Dr. Jekyll over here warned me you wouldn’t like that much; so I just brought Happy. Have you met Happy? Happy, come here a minute!”
A sort of stern-looking guy comes around the corner holding a pair of sodas (probably from the machine). He passes them to Tony and Bruce, as the former grins.
“Uh, Happy this is Olivia. Olivia, this is Happy, my bodyguard,” Tony introduces. Olivia raises her eyebrows.
“Wow, bodyguard? Sounds taxing,” she comments politely. Happy stares back, face cold as stone.
“I manage,” he replies shortly. Olivia supposes she’s going to have to get to know him if she wants pleasantry; she can respect that.
“Well,” she sighs, “come in, I guess; I already packed up most of my stuff.” She brushes past Bruce and Tony to unlock her apartment door. It swings open, revealing… well, exactly what she said.
The apartment looks pretty bare, most of her things put away into neat stacks of plastic storage containers. She walks straight through the living room, opening the only closed door.
It reveals her bedroom, with rubble and concrete dust all over the place. About half of her wall is missing (or rather, some is in her room and some is on the concrete below), and the room above is missing its whole wall, as well as some of the floor. In fact, if you look hard enough, you can even sort of see into the room above that.
“I get that this room is structurally compromised,” she sighs, “but I’m going in for a few things.”
“That’s nuts,” Bruce protests, “that ceiling could collapse any second.” She waves her hand dismissively. Truthfully, she ducked in there for a minute this morning to grab some of those personal items.
Instead of trying to reassure her brother, she just ducks straight into the room, picking up her dusty pink comforter from the floor and a cracked picture frame from her bedside table.
When Olivia comes back into the apartment, shutting the bedroom door behind her, she notices her brother looks a little green. She drops her comforter at once, giving him a glare.
“Bruce, if you wreck this apartment, so help me God,” she warns, almost threateningly. “Here, just take this and sit down or something.” She tosses him the picture frame, and he catches it, taking deep breaths.
A glance down at the frame has the green on his face receding. Satisfied, Olivia turns her attention to the storage containers, popping open the one on top to toss in her comforter.
She notices Tony and Happy staring blankly at her, and raises her eyebrows at them.
“I’m sorry, did you come to help or not?” she prompts sarcastically. “Because if not, I’m gonna have to ask you to take a seat somewhere you’re not gonna be in my way.” This spurs the two into motion.
“That was reckless,” Happy accuses flatly, picking up a stack of storage containers a few feet from Olivia. She snorts.
“Your boss used a shock pen on him while we were in a glorified plane. Besides, he’s my brother. I’ve stressed him out way harder than that before,” she states. Happy turns his attention to Tony with raised eyebrows, and Olivia grabs a stack to haul.
She walks out the front door just as Happy starts his lecture, reveling in the chaos she caused.
***
Finally, the last of Olivia’s personal effects has been put into the moving van. It only took three hours, which was hard enough on her sanity.
Now she’s driving herself andBruce to Stark Tower, since Tony decided it would be great fun to take off without him.
The silence is incredibly awkward, but in a cruel twist of fate, Olivia’s car radio is completely busted. She hasn’t had the time or the money to get it fixed just yet, but after this, it’s going to become her top priority.
“So,” Bruce sighs, glancing at his younger sister while she stops at a red light. “Uh, read any good books lately?” Her mind flashes briefly back to last night, when she got to reread her favorite book— or half of it, anyways.
“No,” she lies flatly, keeping her eyes on the light as she waits for it to turn green. He falls silent; sure, the silence is awkward, but she prefers it to whatever sad attempt at conversation he was trying to start.
A long silence passes, and the light turns green. The car starts forward, and Bruce alternates between looking at Olivia and looking out the window. He hesitates, but only briefly.
“I don’t know what I did, but—,” he starts, only to be cut off halfway into his sentence.
“Don’t start this,” Olivia sighs. “I’m not mad at you. ‘Read any good books lately’ is the shittiest conversation starter I've ever heard; don’t act like it’s not.” As she turns a corner, she is fully aware that only half of that was in any way true.
“I know,” Bruce acquiesces. “I know that. I’m sorry, I just— I don’t really know how to talk to you right now.” She huffs slightly in amusement.
“How about ‘how are you holding up, Olivia’ or ‘has your landlady said anything about the wall’ or ‘how did you keep looters out of your apartment with a missing wall’? It— literally anything is better than ‘read any good books lately’,” she suggests, a little sarcastically.
“Two of those are about the wall,” her brother reminds her. She keeps her eyes on the road, but makes a slightly incredulous face.
“So not the point, Bruce,” she reminds him as she hangs a right. He raises his hands in surrender, affronted by how right she is.
“Okay, okay,” he relents. “I get it. I’m sorry. I will never ask you about books again.”
A very long silence passes.
“How did you keep the looters out?” he wonders suddenly, turning to her with interest. She offers him a cheeky half-smirk as she puts the car in park.
“Guess we’ll never know,” she replies, turning off the car and getting out. He groans quietly, a little annoyed, and climbs out after her. As soon as the door shuts, the car beeps to signify being locked.
Olivia tucks her car remote away as she walks ahead of Bruce towards Stark Tower, leaving him to jog if he wants to catch up.
“Wait— Olivia!” he complains, a little tired of his sister constantly dunking on him.