Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 3

Mr. Brightside (Banner x reader)

Coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this?
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss

"Deep down, he's all fluff."

"Banner?" Tony gasped in feigned shock. "Banner's fluffy? The last thing I would ever call the Hulk is fluffy."

"Did you hear me say Hulk? I said Banner," you sighed, slapping him playfully on the arm. "Hulk is squishy."

All Tony could do was to shake his head in disbelief, laughing loudly enough that he could be heard even from the far side of the room standing opposite of the topic of your current discussion. "Honey, do me a favor and never tell me why you think that, okay? I'm conjuring up enough of my own scenarios to keep me entertained for weeks. It's not just anyone who gets to poke around at the Hulk to know his various textures and I don't want to know how it turned out to be you."

"You're dumb."

"You knew that."

"You're lucky that you're cute."

"And I knew that."

From the large bank of windows of the top floor of the tower, the lights of New York City reflected in his glasses as he stared off and into the distance, Bruce did his best to not listen, but even in a crowded room filled with voices and loud music your tone was the only one he could hear. He could hear the change of every individual note within your laugh, and the shift in your volume as the laughter calmed and Tony had inched ever closer to you to leave a trail of kisses along your neck. He swore that he could hear your heartbeat begin to race and your breaths turn shallow before he could suddenly hear no more. When he finally willed himself to turn around and look for you, he berated himself in silence for being fool enough to think that his intuition was wrong.

It was never wrong.

The two of you were gone, and he had no desire to give a moment of thought as to where you and Tony went even though he knew well enough. He wasn't stupid, no matter how true he felt it to be.

But that's all that his genius mind could do; torture him with imagination and rumination and fill his senses with a coldness that only you could warm. He knew that it would never happen for him, and that he had nothing real that he could offer you for a life together, but dammit if he didn't want to try anyway.

He would never tell you any of this, instead doing his best to make you believe that he was happy for you and happy that you were the one to make his friend smile like no one else had. Bruce had spent his share of late nights in the lab, unable to sleep when his mind wouldn't stop. He had watched Tony stumble in at all hours during the dark, wordlessly working on some idea born within a dream until it had reached its limit, only to turn and leave just as quickly without so much as acknowledging that Bruce was there. The first few times it had happened it shocked him a bit, but he was used to it now. He had become so used to Tony's wanderings that he missed them now that they weren't happening anymore.

They weren't happening because he knew that Tony felt safe with you and that you were next to him to give him no reason to walk away for even the greatest ideas he ever had.

Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest now
He takes off her dress now
Let me go