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apocalypse-shuffle · 3 months ago

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BRUCE BANNER & THE HULK (mcu)

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How Bruce / Hulk reacts to being given a Hulk plush (Bruce Banner x Fem!Reader) and (Hulk & Fem!Reader)

Headcanons

SFW, established relationship, fluff, crack treated seriously, hints at canon divergence

Picture source: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

2k+ words (some of which are from one Spurt - or mini fic - w/ Bruce and another w/ Hulk)

BRUCE BANNER

Bruce stares at you like you’re insane when you come up to him brandishing the plushie Hulk like a trophy.

Of course a second later he fixes his face to smile at you in greeting, even with his hair fluffier than usual from him having been running his hands through it so much and his smile tinged with fatigue, but his initial opinion of the plush itself still doesn’t actually improve.

For your part you remain unphased, making sure he’s not handling anything sensitive as you study the little Hulk in your hands some more before slipping behind his desk and shaking it at Bruce with a proclamation of: “It’s you!”

Bruce laughs at your antics despite the way both his brows have started furrowing, and finally reaches out for the plush.

❤︎

“And people, what? They buy these?”

“They did,” you shrug, you’re not going to sugarcoat it for Bruce. He’s likely to go looking for the distributor on his own time anyway.

Bruce goes quiet then, but it’s the type of silence from him that only half worries you. He was thinking, certainly, but not in a way that would make him spiral. At least not immediately.

“Right,” Bruce hums. He turns the little green plush over in his hands — both having come off his keyboard where he was inputting notes into his computer the moment you walked into his office. “No parent wants their child playing with a toy modeled after a proverbial natural disaster on legs, huh?��

He cracks a small lopsided grin at that, scoffing to himself. You give him a long look in response and Bruce only offers a shrug, ducking his head and reaching up to squeeze the back of his neck for a moment.

Your lips purse.

“I didn’t say that, B.”

He nods, “It’s the truth though, Y/n, I’m well aware of that.” The scientist stands from his stool, leaving the plush beside his keyboard, moving closer to you and wrapping you up in his arms. Softly, he nudges his nose with your broader one and you smile. “Plus, you’re far nicer than me. Of course you wouldn’t have said that.”

The soft, pale inside of his palm presses to your darker skin as he brings up his hand to cup over your cheek. Before you let yourself lean into his touch you give him a measured look, eyes narrowed, but Bruce doesn’t budge despite the apologetic look he’s giving you.

“Goddamnit, Bruce,” you grumble, giving into his touch after pressing a kiss to the inside of his wrist.

The corners of Bruce’s eyes crinkle. He snorts.

“For what it’s worth it’s actually pretty cute,” he looks over the Hulk plushie with a more critical eye before shrugging, “even if it’s likeness is off.”

You heave a sigh.

“It’s too cute,” you guess.

Bruce nods.

“It’s way too cute,” he confirms, the arm he still has around your waist squeezing playfully at you.

Laughing, you shake your head at him, throwing your arms around his shoulders and pressing a quick peck of a kiss to his lips.

The hand he had on your face drops from your dewy skin to join the other around your waist like a moth drawn to flame, and you grin as he shifts fast to kiss you back, his grip on you tightening.

You put a finger over his lips to keep him from chasing your mouth for more, staring at him with lidded eyes and a sly curve to your lips.

“I feel it pertinent to remind you that Hulk and you share a face, Honey.” Bruce’s eyes widen and he looks about two seconds away from pressing a hand to his chest and acting wounded. “And,” you say before he can take his hands off you, “that I happen to think you’re both plenty cute. In my humble opinion that is.”

“Oh in your ‘humble’ opinion? Is that what we’re calling it?” Bruce snorts again, but when he kisses you next it’s sweeter than it needs to be.

❤︎

Overall, Bruce doesn’t hate the plush toy, which is nice, he just doesn’t particularly care for it. Though he does raise an amused brow once he tracks down the small Brazilian factory that used to make the plushies, a small fond smile curling his lips.

In general his relationship with Hulk is a lot better than it’s been even before everything with Wanda, but post The Avengers forming (hell, after having helped create Ultron with Tony his relationship with himself is the best it’s been since), so he isn’t disgusted like he once would’ve been by the prospect of a company making Hulk plushies.

The Hulk protected him on Sakaar (even if he did a lot of other things Bruce likes less too), and saved his life during The Battle of Wakanda. Bruce could give the Big Guy his props now. Especially after he himself got to kick ass in the HulkBuster, but could still admit to himself that fighting droves of bad guys wasn’t the type of challenge he particularly enjoyed.

Bruce largely disregards the plush after your initial conversation about it. Forgets about the thing, really. When he finds you one night — after he’s been away with the team for a few days on a particularly grueling mission — curled up on the couch with the plush against your chest and your arms wrapped tight around it he finds a kind of fondness for the little Hulk, though.

Cuddling with the plush like that you cut both the most adorable and the most heartbreakingly sweet figure he’s ever seen.

When Bruce scoops you up to carry you off to y’all’s shared bedroom it’s with a small groan (Hulk’s been in charge for the better part of 72 hours, his body was all bruise and still in the process of completely healing from the prolonged transformation, his ass is exhausted), but it’s completely worth it to feel the brush of your soft kinky hair over his cheek and to have you subconsciously curl into him — Hulk plush still held tightly and smushed between both of your bodies — in your sleep.

By the time you’re both in bed you’ve started to stir awake and give him the ‘welcome home’ he always looks forward to, insistent arms locked tight around his shoulders in a hug as he squeezes you flush to him from around your waist. He still makes sure the Hulk plush doesn’t tumble to the floor in your excitement though, handing it back to you and watching with fond russet eyes as you curl up with it again while he spoons you from behind and presses sweet, longing kisses into the brown expanse of your skin.

THE HULK

Hulk is borderline insulted at first until you explain what it is.

When you first come up to him brandishing his plush lookalike you’re not expecting him to both simultaneously respond like you’re about to burn him in effigy and as if you’re betraying him by trying to replace his big green ass with a plushie, of all things, but you suppose that with his reputation and general possessiveness towards you that you should’ve expected his reaction on both accounts.

After a quick explanation, and a pat of your tiny hand over his giant one in reassurance, you’re good to go though.

Once Hulk’s certain you're not trying to replace him or hurt and piss him off, though….

…Hulk immediately hits you with a “But…people hate Hulk,” and you're so caught off guard that you just blink up at him for a few silent moments.

Hulk has your mind going haywire as you think of an answer for him — vetoing “not everyone,” as an acceptable response almost immediately at the impatient grumble he lets out at you taking so long to answer.

Hulk hears your eventual answer of: “Some people still do, yeah, but a few people definitely don’t. I don’t,” and deflates.

The Big Guy slumps forward, resting his elbow onto his thigh where he’s sitting criss-cross in front of you, so he can prop his head up with his fist as he effectively pouts. You feel horrible that you can’t give him any other answer, but that was the truth and you wouldn’t lie to him; especially when you’d be so easily disproved if the Big Guy actually showed his face anywhere.

Hulk’s public perception wasn’t completely in the gutter, with a ton of work and a good deal of care it could be salvaged some, but he definitely wasn’t trusted by the majority of the public anymore (and the trust he and Bruce did have before the incident in South Africa had been faint at best even back in the day).

❤︎

“Fine.” Hulk gives a great big huff that makes your lips quirk. “Hulk look.” He holds out his hand, and you promptly rise on the tips of your toes to place the Hulk plushie delicately in his palm.

Plush now in his free hand; he doesn’t actually move it from where you placed it, just moves his hand this way and that and gives the toy a grave amount of inspection.

“Hulk never wore purple,” he grunts after a few moments, and you laugh.

Hulk wasn’t exactly wrong though. Bruce certainly wore a lot of purple, it was his favorite color after all, but Hulk didn’t touch the color if he could help it outside of the short block of purple that lined the top sides of his uniform pants.

Hulk’s completely unphased when you lean over his thigh opposite from where he’s propping his head up so you can inspect the plush with him. Even drops his hand enough for you to be able to see it at eye level.

After a few of your own silent seconds you nod and solemnly agree that you’ve never actually seen him wear full-on purple, yes, but guess that the color is for color theory purposes as the plush was made for children and would need appealing color coding to match.

“That’s dumb,” Hulk grunts, but he leaves it at that.

He goes right back to staring at the thing in silence again and you’re perfectly content to let him, humming softly and letting yourself rest your upper body over his muscled thigh.

Hulk runs hot so you won’t stay pressed to him for too long (unless it’s cold, then you’re stuck to him like glue) but his jade skin is surprisingly soft for such a force of nature and he’s never once objected to you climbing all over him.

❤︎

Eventually you reach up to take the plush back (mostly bcs Hulk’s had enough of it and is twisting his hand sideways, so if you don’t take it, it’ll fall) and keep talking lightly with Hulk about Avengers shit and whatnot. Absentmindedly, though, you take to running your thumbs softly over the plush’s head area or through its short tufts of fake black “hair”, self soothing with the feel of the plush.

Hulk notices. Hell, Hulk points it out to you.

❤︎

“Y/n not touch Hulk like that.”

A blink.

Freezing, you pause to look down at your fidgeting hands and the soft colorful fabric beneath the pads of your fingers. Your brows furrow.

Another blink— still from you.

Only after a few more beats of silence — only broken by a grumble from the Big Guy as he shifts restlessly — do you look up and turn your blank stare onto Hulk.

Hulk, whose lips are downturned into a frown and who's also watching you like he’s half expecting you to catch a whole conniption over his words.

What you finally, eloquently, settle on saying is: “What?”

❤︎

And that’s how you end up finding out Hulk likes when you run your nails along his scalp as hard as you can (he’s got some tough ass skin, there’s no other way; and if you wear acrylics or gels they’re gonna need to be strong) and when you run gentle hands over his face. Likes it so much he falls asleep, in fact.

It’s also how you end up with literal tons worth of jade green giant lying flat on his back with his head inches away from your lap while you sit criss-cross on the plush carpet behind him with your back leant against his shoulder and hands working overtime as you essentially pet him.

Call him “handsome” while you brush his hair behind his ears and he’ll crack an eye open to drop large eyes down to look at you then grin hard enough to have you cracking up. Press kisses all over his giant cheeks and forehead and over his closed eyelids and he’ll be eating out of your palm for a week— this shit is dangerous.

Overall, after any misunderstandings have been corrected, he’s more readily forgiving of the plush than Bruce, but that’s mostly because he has the benefit of feeling flattered that you’re so eagerly snuggling with a green plushie made in his likeness even as you’re curled up by his side.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!!!

Bonus scrapped scene: “Hulk not grey either” “I know, Big Guy, but copyright. The distributors probably didn’t want to get sued for using your likeness.” “Still not grey,” he grumbles, expression turning mulish and petulant. You pat him on the arm in solidarity.

I am in a fucking mood I can’t help myself, the Bruce/Hulk stuff just keeps coming.

So, yeah, I went for the alternate version of Endgame (ie: one of the deleted Hulk/Bruce scenes) and changed the story a bit so that I don’t have to deal with MCU “Smart Hulk” and so that I could have Hulk smash from the HulkBuster armor after Bruce and his back and forth where they come to an understanding (also a deleted scene), but instead of kind of erasing Hulk I’m just making it so now he and Bruce have come to an equilibrium together. I’ve also technically retconned the fuck out of Ragnarok, but I don’t go into that here.

btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!

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Bonus(+)Banner —

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Also, honestly, it bothers me (to a fictional extent) that Wanda never had to own up to or make up for what she did to Bruce and her making the conscious decision to set the Hulk off in that area of South Africa bcs she was irritated and as a distraction. We know that once Bruce came back to earth and did that ridiculous “Smart Hulk” thing that he had to rebuild his image and public perception of him and that even by She-Hulk: Attorney at Law it’s not stable enough for him to just be around the regular public as a Hulk. Even when in Endgame we see that he’s regained trust and has some amount of celebrity, his position on earth is still clearly tentative. And that’s despite being a big factor in helping save the world.

Bruce had to build himself out of that hole that Wanda dug for him and whatever legal mess and guilt that would’ve naturally followed, Hulk had to sit with that guilt and that confusion (you can see the emotions on his face right before Tony — using Veronica — knocks him out and he’s the one who leaves on the quinjet) then was subsequently erased by the narrative because the writers didn’t want to actually write a Hulk redemption arc, and Wanda got off completely scot free without having to make up for or let herself be rightfully prosecuted for destroying those South Africans’ lives, because the Hulk might not have murdered anyone but Hulk’s rampage (by its very nature) is tantamount to an impromptu natural disaster having torn through that city. A city that Wanda purposely targeted because she was mad at one man, and an infraction that she never made up for or is even seriously mentioned after AOU.

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Bonus(+)Pic —

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