Whoops!
The sharp buzzing of the electric alarm on the nightstand continued to echo off the walls of the small apartment. Bruce had been lying completely still listening to the sound of the alarm ever since it woke him up five minutes. Because Thor’s gone off, for a week or two, to do...whatever it is that he needs to do to save the planet. Because Bruce realizes that he doesn’t actually know what to do with himself without Thor. Quietly, he tries to remember what he did when he WASN’T dating Thor, but he can’t remember, not right now, anyway.
The daily routine around the apartment has always been the same, ever since they moved in together. Bruce gets up, drinks tea and waits for Thor to get up so he can do the laundry without waking him up. Does the dishes, listens to Thor explain something to him that every child on Earth has already learned by fourth grade and tries his best to act surprised. And then repeat the last step until he goes to sleep. Not that he minds that Thor tries to explain dinosaurs to Bruce every day, it’s fun to see dinosaurs and basic math through an alien’s eyes. It’s just that he doesn’t know what to do without Thor and his antics in this apartment.
Finally, Bruce gets up and turns off the alarm. And he realizes that it probably would have helped his mental state more if he turned the jarring beeping noises off. Too late now. He gets up and starts to go through the motions, making Earl Grey and reading a book, waiting. It takes him a chapter or two to realize that he doesn’t need to wait for Thor to wake up to do the laundry. The rush of independence that he gets from this concept lasts long enough for Bruce to stomp down the hall and noisily grab the laundry, trying to make as much noise as possible to make up for the months of...perhaps an unhealthy amount of time spent with Thor and only Thor.
“This is good. This is good, get back to the basics. You can do it..” Becomes Bruce’s mantra for the day. And after the laundry, dishes, and vacuuming is done hours before he could have done it with Thor in the house, he stops in his tracks and wonders again what to do next.
The local newspaper sits on the table, untouched since Thor left. Weren’t local newspapers supposed to have free events you could go mess around at when your boyfriend leaves for a work excursion? And you don’t have a job?
For a while, he cycles through all the people on the Avengers and considers carefully how much he would mind hanging out with each of them while leafing through the events section. The section for today is pretty barren, with only two events: a bluegrass music fan club, and a pottery class. He decides that the pottery class would be a better use of his time. Grabbing the nearest bag and twenty dollars, he practically runs out of the building, high on independence.
He almost reaches his car, too, before he’s stopped in his tracks.
“Where are you going?” A young voice echoes across the parking lot.
Bruce turns on his heels so fast that he almost falls over. There’s only one other person in the parking lot, a child. He’s bouncing a red ball off the side of the building and catching it, over and over. And he’s not looking at Bruce, so he checks on all sides for another possible source. The boy stops throwing his ball and turns toward Bruce. “Yes, I’m talking to you. I said, where are you going?”
Bruce squints, the sun blinding him too much to see clearly. He puts his hand in front of his eyes. “Uh, what? Do I know you?”
“Maybe.” He tosses the ball up and down in his hands now, smirking.
“What, are you like someone’s kid?”
“Sure, why not? Would you come over here, please? You’re squinting, you look weird.”
“Uh...sorry?” Bruce glances around once more for a possible parent to this little British kid but sees only a barren parking lot. Hesitantly, he walks over to the shade.
The kid looks like a normal twelve-year-old, the only thing jarring is the accent. His long...ish black hair strikes Bruce as weird too, not many mothers let their sons grow their hair out that long.
“I forgive you. But you didn’t answer my question.” The kid throws the ball at the side of the building hard, and it rattles some of the windows. A few residents on the inside groan. He catches it with ease.
A pause.“What?” Bruce has never been more confused in his life.
The kid squeezes the ball tightly, and his left eye twitches. In an attempt to calm himself down he clears his throat and cocks his head to the right. “I asked you where you were going, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I mean, I’m going to a pottery-wait, who are you? What’s your name?” Bruce isn’t yet sure what this child wants with him, and for all he knows it could be an enemy in disguise, so he tries to conceal at least SOME things about where he’s going, but he supposes it doesn’t matter much anyways; if the kid really wanted to know where he was going, he could just follow him all the way there. In his head, Bruce runs through a scenario in which this kid follows him to the place he’s going, and he gets a little anxious at the possibility of it. He does his best to bring himself back to this reality.
“My name’s, like, Kevin, or something.” He squints at Bruce as he bounces the ball off the ground. “What’s YOUR name, then?”
“Uh, I..Bruce?”
“Just Bruce?” The kid seems fond of smirking.
“Just Kevin?” Bruce surprises himself with his snappy remark. He makes a mental note to try it more often, a note that he will never return to again. But, it’s fun to pretend.
Kevin pauses a bit to consider. “Touché.” Bruce wonders where this child learned how to say ‘touché.’
“Ok, well, I mean, I’m running late for my, uh...thing that I’m doing. No offense, but it’s Monday, shouldn’t you be in class? I want to say middle school?”
“Oh, but look how sick I am.” Kevin mimics a coughing fit, almost convincingly. Bruce shames himself for ever thinking that this kid was anything other than a normal twelve-year-old boy playing hooky on a Monday. He smiles.
“Ok, well have fun with your sick day, Kevin.” Bruce starts toward his car and starts to worry about what might happen if he does end up being late. The cycle of anxiety continues.
“You too,” Kevin smirked, hands in his jacket pocket as he watched Bruce drive away. Sucker.
With Bruce gone, “Kevin” turned to examine the building that he left. Is this really all his brother could afford? Or, maybe Banner is paying. Still….pretty shabby living quarters for two Avengers. Isn’t Tony Stark supposed to be a billionaire? He sighs and looks around for something else to do.
Well, that was the whole plan. Guess I should leave now? He was only supposed to mess with Bruce for a bit, maybe egg their window or something. Leave a note. And then skip town and join a circus or something. It took him long enough to find the place, he must have gone to about fifteen Thor and/or Bruce Banner fan clubs before he found a guy who somehow, suspiciously, knew where they lived. He had to keep watch on their apartment forever before Thor finally fucking left. Might as well make it worth all the trouble...right?
A thought worms its way into Loki’s brain, against his will. Mostly. It’s just that Banner didn’t unlock the door to his car before he opened it, which means he doesn’t lock his car. Which also means that he also may have neglected to...lock the door to their apartment. Once that realization enters his brain, it’s not coming out again. Just a peek inside and then leave. Just a peek.
Hours later, Loki looks around his brother’s apartment in distress. He’s made an uncleanable mess and now he’s stuck here, Banner is going to be home within an hour or two. The thought has not and will not dawn on him that he could just...leave before Banner gets home. How was he supposed to resist, anyway? Oh, how easy it was to get the doorman to give him the exact apartment number and floor his brother lived on.
“Hi, I’m looking for my brother’s apartment, I-”
“Oh, you’re such a cutie!” The man attempted to tussle his hair, but Loki dodged smoothly. “I know who your brother is. British, huh?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. We got that accent from being from...Britain.”
The man laughed and didn’t hesitate to give him Thor’s exact apartment address. “Second floor, door twelve. Tell your brother hi for me, huh? Or, what do you say in England?”
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
And then he got into the place and sat down on their couch for about five minutes before the adrenaline wore off, and he was overcome with the irresistible urge to mess with his brother’s stuff. Loki spent about half an hour frantically searching for a photo of himself anywhere in the apartment, and to his offense, he found none. In retaliation, he ate all of their cereal. That lead to another thirty minute period of him lying motionless on the couch, stomach hurting from the cereal revenge move. And thirty minutes after that, he woke up from his post-cereal nap to find that the sun was almost done with its daily trip west.
Panic is starting to set in as he looks at the mess, so he shakes himself out of it. He knows what he has to do, and he has barely enough time to do it. Thankfully, the apartment is barren enough to clean up in that amount of time.
Loki is just straightening the last of the little snake figurines that Thor has placed all around his apartment when he hears footsteps coming down the hall, fast. Loki runs so fast to the nearest closet that he knocks over one of the figurines, which shatters. No time to remedy that now. He sits completely still in the dark closet, praying to whatever gods still like him that Bruce is too tired to notice the broken figurine. The footsteps stop in their path.
“Hello? Who’s there?” Oh, shit. The footsteps continue, but now they sound cautious. Loki can hear the door to the apartment open, slowly. Bruce grabs a metal-tipped cane from the umbrella case that they have near the door and holds it in batter’s position while he scans the apartment.
“Whoever’s in here, show yourself, right now, or you won’t like what I’ll do next.” Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Loki prays faster when he realizes how horrible it would be if the Hulk came out right now. Horrible for just about all the members involved. Part of him realizes that he should probably come out of the closet right now, to get the best results for himself, but he’s frozen. Luckily for “Kevin,” he doesn’t have to wait for long since the first door Banner opens is the closet he’s in.
“Bruce, I know what it looks like, but I swear it’s not personal. Calm down and drop the cane, I’m on my way out, alright? And you don’t have to mention this to Thor, either. That’ll only make things worse.” -Is what he would have said if Loki was not currently a twelve-year-old boy.
It comes out a bit differently than he imagined he would say it in his head, but it’s close enough.“BRUCEISWEARITWASANACCIDENT And I cleaned it up but I knocked that thingy over andthenIhid ‘cuz I knew you would know and then you found me and I didn’t know Don’t hit me with the stick, Mr. Bruce.”
Bruce drops the stick and looks with concern at the boy he thinks is named Kevin, and kneels down to his level. “Kevin, Jesus Christ almighty, what the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”
Kevin runs his hand through his hair and attempts to act nonchalant about the whole freaking out in front of someone thing. He hugs his knees. “Um, I didn’t steal anything if that’s what you’re thinking. I kinda got, uh...lonely.?” Not even Loki knows whether that’s a lie or not, so he doesn’t think about it too long.
“How long have you been in here, Kevin?” Bruce scratches his chin. “I mean, c’mon buddy. Don’t you have friends or something? Did you have to break into ou-my apartment?”
Kevin neglects to answer the first question for some reason. “I don’t. And I uh...well, I didn’t break in actually, so you can’t hold that against me. Did you know you don’t lock your door?” Kevin looks proud.
“That’s actually still breaking and entering, buddy.”
“Is it, though?” Kevin squints and taps his chin.
Bruce only nods.
“Oh, cool, well, how about this: you don’t press charges on that one, and then I leave, and you’ll never see me again.” Kevin gets up, brushes himself off, and attempts to walk to the door. Bruce holds out his arm to keep him from leaving.
“No, buddy, actually, you’re gonna tell me who your parents are, and I’m gonna call them and have them pick you up.”
Kevin sighs. “Right. That would work so well if I had parents, but it turns out I, actually, am a homeless, sad little orphan boy that just wants to leave and go join the circus.”
Bruce is facing an internal conflict. Deep in his heart, he wants to take this little, misguided orphan boy under his wing and then adopt him. But also, somewhere deep in the law of the United States of America, it says that you can’t force children to stay in your apartment. So: “You can go, but please, Kevin, please do not break into my apartment ever again. Just knock, next time?”
Kevin smiles. “I think it’s sweet that you assume you’ll see me again.” His sneakers squeak against the hardwood floor as he rushes out of the small apartment and slams the door, leaving Bruce to process what happened just now. He closes the closet door gently and leaves the cane on the ground while he slowly moves himself to the couch. So, this is what happens when Thor leaves, huh? Bruce smirks to himself.
He decides that he could use some coffee right now and rips himself away from the couch, which still smells like Thor, and that shouldn’t surprise Bruce as much as it does. He was on that couch less than twenty-four hours ago. God, it’s only been a day and already things have gone to shit. Bruce is hit with a wave of sadness as he realizes that he’s not as independent and fun-loving as he thought he was.
Someone knocks against the door gently, and for a moment, Bruce is sure it’s Thor coming back early. Except, he opens it, and it’s really not.
“Actually, I know I said you’d never see me again, but here’s the thing: can I sleep on your couch?”