kore_logs | avon calling

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avon calling

Who: Bruce and Veronica
When: Day 25
Where: Veronica's house (4)
What: Delivering presents, being super awkward!

When Veronica doesn't turn up for the party, Bruce tells himself to be medium-levels of worry. He saw her network post the other day, and he saw that Mina had told her to come talk to him; she hadn't yet, but that doesn't mean anything one way or the other. Maybe she's okay now, or maybe she's putting it off. Her absence at the party just means he has an even less threatening reason to visit the next day, with her package in one hand and his medical bag casually in the other.

"Veronica?" he calls, friendly and light. He doesn't think that he has any reason to be otherwise, in the end. "Hi, it's Bruce. Are you in?"

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Aw, crap.

Her first instinct is to look over the couch, but since she can't actually see, it doesn't really work.

Okay, well... yes. Okay. He'd been a giant green monster with anger issues. And could be again. And sure, she'd been avoiding him.

But her ankle also hurts, and Clint hasn't been by since the day before. She could talk to Mina, but she hadn't been sure if Mina would talk to Bruce or not.

Something of a moot point, really.

"Hey." Her voice lacks its usual conviction. "What's up?"

Oh, sure, Veronica. That sounded convincing.

He checks the door and finds it unlocked, so he heads in, sliding his bag onto his wrist.

"I'm realizing belatedly I should've found a Santa hat to wear, since I'm here to deliver your present." He finds her on the couch, and his expression flickers to concerned as he looks her over. He's not sure what's wrong, but he's still looking for why she needed a doctor. He can't remember what her message said exactly.

"Missed you at the party yesterday. How are you?"

She tries her best to track him by the sound of his voice. She hears something else, too, almost like a crinkling. The present he'd mentioned? "I'm... good."

Wait, what present? Were they friendly enough to do presents?

They certainly weren't on her end. And oh, hey. Guilt. She hasn't felt that in a couple hours now. Good to have it back again.

"Apparently something's going around, so I'm blind." She hesitated. "And I fell out of the attic, so... Olympics-bound, I am not."

She wants to ask him. So, you're a giant green monster that carries around wounded scientists?

Instead, though, she just leans against the couch. To say this place has been boring lately would be an understatement.

She hopes boredom doesn't bring out the not-so-jolly green giant.

Oh, shit. His concern blooms in full force, and he deflates, looking her over.

"I've looked at a few people for that. I can look at you too, if you like. Did anything weird happen? Did you get a strange package?"

He sets the present down, almost forgetting about it, and then kneels down at the foot of the couch. "Want me to take a look at it?"

"Strange package, check. Opened it, there was a bright light, then nothing. I thought a fuse blew." She prattles the information off as she would a police report, even describing the package and where it had been by her mattress when she'd woken up.

"And one of us might as well look at it." She lifts her leg faintly, even though the effort makes her hiss.

A bright light. Blaine hadn't mentioned one, but then he'd been pretty panicked. Bruce doesn't bother schooling his reaction -- he's gotten used to being around someone blind, already -- and turns his attention to her ankle. He slides on his reading glasses, and then rubs his hands together quickly to warm them up, before he starts feeling her ankle.

"You're not the only one receiving the gift of blindness for Maybe Christmas," he tells her, looking up over his glasses. "Has anyone else touched it?"

She hisses at his touch, but the pain isn't unbearable. It's more that she expects it to hurt worse than it does. It isn't as if she can see him being careful, after all.

"The ankle? Clint. The box? Nobody, as far as I know. I don't even know where it is. Maybe still in the attic."

She hesitates. There are so many questions she should be asking. So many she shouldn't, too.

"So... You were that green yell-y thing before."

That one was on the "shouldn't ask" list, Veronica.

Bruce stops what he's doing, stilling once she asks the question -- she phrases it like a statement, but it's a question, and the answer she wants is more involved than she really asked for.

"I was. Technically, I was more mentally in the backseat." He tries to sound casual about it, but he gets the sense from her hesitation before the question that this won't really be like when Kenzi found out.

"Do you... have any questions about that? I'd like to answer them." Better that than rampant rumor or suspicion (Suzette).

He'd like to answer them? Like to? No one ever likes to answer her questions. It just... doesn't happen.

It doesn't help that she has to judge his honesty by his voice. She's used to seeing how fucked up people are and how they're screwing up.

Still, the guy's officially in her house. And Veronica has experience with how far some people are willing to go to protect a secret. Just because his secret's out doesn't mean he's any safer, does it?

"What are the odds you're going to kill me or anyone else before we get home?" She manages to force a weak grin, but she means it. Superheroes don't exist where she's from. Comic books are just... comic books. She wants to know if she's dealing with a hero, a villain, or an antihero.

The answer is more complicated than either of those three options; hero, villain, or antihero, Bruce and the Hulk could fit into any of them, depending on the person you ask and depending on the situation, the day, the reason for his transformation. He knows he ought to be honest, but at the same time, he doesn't want to be too honest; that's hardly in his best interest.

"I'm not a murderer, if that's what you mean. Neither is he." He doesn't kill people intentionally. Bruce readjusts on the floor, getting off his knees to sit on the floor instead.

"He doesn't respond well to being attacked. Sometimes he's reasonable. Sometimes he's... not." He rubs his hand over the back of his neck, searching for the right way to phrase this. "If I change accidentally, he's more dangerous than if I change intentionally. There are people here who can keep him busy when he's like that, people who can calm him down."

She can't see his face to know if he's lying. She wants to believe him by his tone, but the truth is, Veronica isn't likely to trust him anyway. People have lied to her face before. That's just how people are. They lie. They cheat. They whine about getting busted.

But she knows that some of what he's said is a lie. She may just have suspicions about the rest, but some of it, she knows.

"How reasonable was he when he was playing with those men and throwing them around?"

Her voice is accusatory. She can't help it. Veronica is accusatory. Worse, without being able to see his reaction, she doesn't know how close she is to pissing him off. All she knows is that she probably should have waited for him to fix her ankle before bringing up the green thing.

That she's accusing him of something doesn't bother him too much; by all rights she probably should, and if she doesn't want to trust him, Bruce would probably just walk out of here, and try not to let her damage his whole image here. What does bother him is what she's accusing him of; killing people isn't a way to solve anything, and he regrets that those scientists died, but he'd checked. It looks like they died from the fall, not from the Hulk. Granted, it's hard to tell, but.

"You mean the men who captured me and were most likely experimenting on me?" He lets his own bitterness and anger over what they did to him come through because in his opinion, it's merited.

"They must have taken me in my sleep. When I woke up, I was strapped to a table in some place that definitely felt like a hospital or a lab, and I didn't want to stick around any longer. So yeah, he was pretty reasonable as he was fighting his way out of that lab and bringing a hostage back for questioning."

He should sound more apologetic, but there's an edge to his voice that he can't drop. The violation of being studied -- and you couldn't get him to think that they didn't catch on to Bruce's quirks pretty fast -- is second only to the fear of what they managed to find out, how or if they might use that against them. Yeah, he wanted to get out of there.

She doesn't answer right away. She doesn't like that edge in his voice, and she doesn't have a taser. Nor does she have a gun. If he gets angry and she has to defend herself, she's got some pillows and some sass. She doesn't think either of these have ever killed anyone. Well, pillows have, but she doubts Bruce will stay still long enough for her to smother him.

She's quiet as she lets him mess with her ankle, only moving to flinch when something hurts.

After a while, though, she does manage to speak.

"If you got out before they got what they wanted from you, do you think they'll take you again?"

And then the villagers might have to deal with the Hulk again. Awesome.

He isn't going to Hulk out. If he Hulked out every time he thought about a person or a group of people being jerks to him, he'd be in sorry shape. Her question is one he's thought of, but he can tell the slant to her question; it isn't so much that she's upset that Bruce might be captured and tested, but rather it's that they might have to deal with the Hulk.

That hurts. He should be used to being reduced to a nonentity, and only the collateral damage he causes is important, but somehow it stings. Maybe he'd just gotten used to people treating him as a person, a whole person.

He's glad she's blind and can't see his face.

"They might. Or they might have gotten enough from me when they had me the first time. They probably did. I was gone what, a week? That's enough time." He sounds as casual as he can when he's talking about being farmed for his own blood, blood that could be turned into monsters like him or Blonsky and set to attack them all.

"You should rest your ankle. Don't try to do too much until it's had a chance to heal properly. I'll be around to check on it again." He can and should send someone else, but right now the always angry part vindictively wants to be her doctor, to nurse her back to health.

She wishes she weren't blind. She wishes she could see him. She wishes she could see his expression, get a read on him. She wishes she could see how close he might be to snapping.

She wishes he weren't the Hulk.

She wishes she could handle it better. Or that she knew what to do.

She wants to ask if that means she doesn't need a cast but stops herself. She's probably pushed him far enough, even if he still sounds calm. "Right. Um. Thanks."

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avon calling

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