soulthatwanders | [for Bruce]

It's fair to say that he's given the events of New Year's Eve a small amount of thought even as he tries to distract himself with the greater project at hand - continuing to build the addition onto his hut in order to complete his working lab. He hasn't enlisted any help because he prefers to work alone, and even though this endeavor has taken several months given the island's recent change, he likes a long-term project to keep his mind off of other things.

This time, however, there seems to be only one thing lingering on his mind, and no matter how many nails he hammers into wood or how many thatches he attempts to put in as insulation, the heat of a kiss still lingers in his recent memory.

He's outside working now, stripped down to his undershirt as he hammers away on the perch of the extending roof, occasionally pausing to wipe sweat off his brow. He's almost positive he's heard a voice in the middle of his hammering, and pauses to listen again, waiting for a sound, an indication of someone there.

"Helloooo," she called at the sudden cessation of noise, taking a few steps back from the door to try and see up onto the roof. "Bruce?"

He glances over the edge, leaning forward slightly, his expression shifting into one of recognition.

"Hey." There's a ladder just to the left of him, and he eases over to it, slowly climbing down and tossing the hammer into the box of tools he's borrowed from the Compound. "Guess you knew where to find me."

"So it seems," Wanda replied, wry but a little distracted as she watched him descend, which... yeah, that was a little weird, that was precisely the sort of behavious that she was going to have to knock off if she wanted to fix this.

"I, uh, I brought your coat back," she said quickly, her smile just a little too bright as she held it out. "Sorry it took so long. I had it dry cleaned back in New York, though, if that helps."

He's been using a towel to mop himself off periodically, and he reaches for it now, scrubbing it over his face and then idly tossing it over a shoulder as he rounds the lab extension to stand in front of her, squinting slightly in the sunlight.

"Oh, thanks. Although I probably shouldn't take it now, I'd hate to ruin the dry cleaning job. We could put it inside? I was going to grab some water - did you, uh, want something to drink?"

"Yes, right, because you're all... yeah," Wanda said, smiling self-consciously and gesturing vaguely toward him with one hand. She almost turned down the offer, but she was going inside anyway, and it occurred to her that it was exactly the sort of thing she would have gladly said yes to a week earlier. And since returning to that was the goal here...

"Sure, sounds good. Hot day out."

"You can say that again," he agrees, nodding toward the front door of the hut before he moves to open it for her first, stepping to one side to allow her in. It's not exactly clean inside, but it isn't a pigsty either - more like the hut of an absent-minded professor, with books from the Compound scattered around and the table in the center of the dining area covered in papers and notations. The sliding door leading into the bedroom is partly ajar, but the bed itself is made despite it being a mattress only and no frame.

Bruce, meanwhile, moves to grab two clean glasses and the water pitcher, offering Wanda's to her first before taking a sip from his own. He tries not to guzzle too noticeably, but he might be a little more dehydrated than he'd originally let on, and the majority of the water is gone when he sets the glass on the counter, exhaling sharply.

"So, uh, how's it going?"

"It's going good," she replied with a nod, both hands wrapped around her glass once she'd set the coat down on a chair. Mostly, Wanda just really needed to stop watching him do things, because between the work outside and the water and the lack of a proper shirt, the whole thing was taking on a vaguely Cinemax sort of feel in her eyes. God, she was repressed.

"No major catastrophes yet, anyway, so I'd say the new year's going swimmingly so far."

"Swimmingly, huh?" he echoes, considering another sip from his glass before he decides to just focus on cooling off instead for a while. It's easier to do that inside, the open windows providing a cross-breeze, and pretty soon all residual sweat is evaporating in no time. He glances over at her, studies her silver hair, and the flicker of a memory of what it had felt like to the touch pushes its way to the forefront of his consciousness.

"Well, how long has it been since the - you know, the New Year's party? Guess we can only take it one day at a time on our catastrophe counter."

"I'm sure it's only one a matter of waiting before something goes wrong," Wanda joked, but in spite of her ongoing dilemmas, her opinion on what could all come next hadn't really soured. So she hadn't gotten off to the greatest of starts (as nice as it had been at the time), things were turning around already. "No, maybe a week's not quite enough to judge properly, but I don't care, I'm staying confident about this one."

"You have confidence," Bruce agrees, inclining his head in her direction in the form of a slight nod, absently picking his glass back up from the counter. "No one would ever say it's something you're lacking in."

He, on the other hand, is practically kicking himself now for barely possessing a shadow of the courage he'd miraculously summoned up on New Year's. He's not even sure what necessarily gave him the final nudge to reach out and touch her, but it had happened, and he'd be lying if he said he'd been able to stop thinking about it. "Maybe I need you to give me a few continuing pointers."

"It's just a matter of knowing how awesome you are," Wanda grinned before she shrugged and had a sip of water. "Or at least being able to fake it. Myself, I have plenty of confidence in. It turns out to be misplaced a lot of the time, but that's not the point. It's having confidence in everything else that's the problem."

"Maybe you're all I need. You can have enough confidence in me for the both of us combined," Bruce answers, shrugging in turn as he glances down into the contents of his glass, finishing off his water.

"Come on. Tell me when you've ever faltered."

Wanda had to laugh at that, almost surprising herself with the sound. "I have... not led a charmed life, believe me. I died at 36, generally that indicates a wrong turn or two was taken somewhere."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Bruce shrugs again, his hands idly gripping the edge of the counter behind him, a tendon twitching in his forearm as he tenses and then relaxes.

"We play the cards we're dealt, even if it's an unfortunate hand. But - death? I don't think you can go back and try to calculate the exact moment, the turning point when that was what would happen." He straightens up. "That being said, you look pretty alive to me."

"Yeah, well, you weren't there," Wanda said, rolling her eyes in a move that was more self-deprecating than anything else. This particular incarnation of the man wasn't there, anyway, and that had become a pretty important distinction for her to make if she wanted to stay sane.

Assuming that was even still an option for her.

"And I got better. Happens a lot more often than you'd think."

"You're right," Bruce replies, slowly crossing his arms over his front. "I wasn't there." If anything, he's still occasionally reminded of the fact that he's not the Bruce Banner she knows from her world, and it makes him wonder how much he's being sized up to another version of - well, himself.

"I've learned not to be too surprised when it comes to the stories I've heard," he adds. "Just when you think you've seen it all."

"There's always something new coming right around corner that you never could have anticipated," Wanda agreed, shaking her head. Hell, one of the last things she remembered from right before that final fight was discussing Mac with the others, and how it only ever seemed to be the A-listers, the Captain Americas and the Thors who seemed to get those second chances. And now she'd proved herself wrong several times over, as had most of the other members of the team. There were never any certainties.

"At least that's the same all over, though."

"I can think of at least one thing in recent days," Bruce eventually confesses, bracing his hands renewed against the counter's edge. He's more of a fan of dancing around a potentially uncomfortable subject, but something tells him he'll be avoiding it forever if he goes that route.

"One thing I didn't exactly anticipate happening."

Here we go.

Wanda bit her lip on a cautious smile, fidgeting a bit with the glass in her hands. It would be easy enough to play it off, treat it like less than it was (which already wasn't really that much, she reminded herself), but he deserved better than that. Besides, she wasn't that good an actress.

"Yeah, that was... a hell of a thing."

A part of him wonders if this isn't the best time to bring up the subject, but it has been pressing on his mind since the night itself. She's here now, they're talking, and if the stories about people disappearing all the time are true, he isn't certain if this chance will come again.

"That's one way of putting it," he admits, unconsciously shifting his weight. "What I felt - I'm not really sure how to explain it."

She didn't say it, but Wanda was definitely thinking it. Boy, was she ever thinking it.

So don't.

She wasn't being fair and she knew it, so she held her tongue and just watched him carefully. If she should have to deal with all kinds of surprise revelations about feelings she'd apparently developed on the sly, then he should get the same crappy chance, too.

"Wh- what do you mean?" she asked, her voice softer than usual.

"I - I don't know," he replies, shaking his head. "I don't even think I really have a solid explanation. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it all. What happened - a few months ago, I never would've even thought - let alone attempted to - "

He pauses, breaking off to rake fingers through his hair, leaving it more mussed than before. "I'm positive I'm not making any sense right now."

"Not really," Wanda replied with a smirk, but it was pretty much a lie. She was fairly sure she understood exactly where he was coming from, the only difference being that she seemed perpetually stuck in that nebulous 'a few months ago' place. "But that's okay."

"I just had never been able to convince myself that it was anything resembling safe for me to - get that close to someone," he finally adds, uttering the words slowly and evenly. "My track record in that area was less than ideal."

He pushes away from the counter as he's speaking, his voice hushed. "I touched you and it was like - something finally clicked into place."

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