#walnutsask

[walnutsthings]

Your artwork is amazing. I was just going through your tag for it and wow. it’s beautiful, calming, and magical. 💛

wow you spending time with it! haha i really glad to see you like my artwork. thank you so so much!😍

[walnutsthings]

just here to say that your Virgil drawing is truly amazing! 😍

omg this means a lot to me! thank you ❤❤

[walnutsthings]

your drawing is so beautiful 💗 I love it so much

oh im really happy rn thank you so much! 🥰

[walnutsthings]

i just found your blog and i just wanted to say that i'm obessed with your art

Thank you so much! baby-winksy, this honestly means the world to me 🥰❤️

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

That face is against hers before she can take another breath. He doesn’t even give his apology time to form before he drowns it in her lips, broad hands shaking as they come to tangle in her hair. Somewhere there is music playing and somewhere someone is shouting but for once he doesn’t care. He just doesn’t care.

So much for taking a few breaths and chilling.

If a heart is just the size of a clenched fist, Darcy doesn’t understand why she can feel her’s expanding until all she knows is the pounding of it in it’s cage. The air is sucked from the room and all she knows is the breath he gives her between his lips and, wow, she had never expected to like kissing someone so close to her own height so much but there’s no concern about falling over or losing balance and she can focus solely on the way his lips feel against hers.

(And how long had she wondered about that? How long had she laid in bed after telling him goodnight at the door and wound herself tight in bedsheets, unable to sleep because all she can do is suck in breath and want?Darcy had never known want before he smashed into her life with a background cast of aliens. She had never known the power of waiting, of patience)

It’s not like the last kiss, so mercurial and done before she even noticed it was happening, and she wants this one to last, she wants this so bad that she’s already mourning it’s end.(Will he let her do this again? Will he end this as abruptly as the last time? Will he leave? Has this ruined everything?)

He’s trembling and she’s trembling and they’re a mess but she presses herself against him and prays as her hands cup the soft angles of his hips.

Just let this work out. Please let this work.

(If he pulls away from her this time, she’s not sure she could keep it together again.)

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

His heart almost stops when she closes in, certain for just that moment that she’s going to kiss him and it’s like those few seconds between a blow of a burn before you feel the pain of it and all there is is the numb drop and the weight of absolute gravity and- she doesn’t. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and almost laughs. “If you need stitching up after that kind of thing, y’know, I can definitely lend a hand.” Banner, what the hell are you doing?

Darcy is oblivious, washed up in the tidal wave of her own feelings, her own awareness of her own world. She has no idea that he has already broken their promise, that there are already swirls of secrets about her and from her taking place behind those eyes, and when he nearly laughs, she does, breaking her hands from his and scooting out from the table they share.

“I didn’t think you were that kind of doctor?”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

[sms] Okay [sms] I trust you [sms] Yeah we were kind of a thing for a while... can we talk about this in person? I feel like a sniper is probably going to get me if there’s any kind of written record of this convo [sms] I can purge both our phones

[TEXT: BB Green] That’s your first mistake[TEXT: BB Green] I mean uhhhh besides accidentally texting me sexual content meant for Tony S/tark in the first place[TEXT: BB Green] I can purge my own phone thanks I am a smart people tooShe hesitates, here. He’s offering to be open, in person, and that is, afterall, what she wanted, but…

[TEXT: BB Green] It doesn’t need to be now. Like, I’m gonna need atleast 3 beers before you spill the goss

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

“Who’s gonna be scared of a dog that size?” He’s crouching, ruffling Tuna’s ears. “Seriously, that’s such a load of- listen. If you want me to have a word with your landlord. I will.”

For just a moment, watching Bruce pet her dog so affectionately, hearing him offer to defend Tuna’s place in her little shit apartment – for just that moment, Darcy falls completely, utterly, and pathetically in love with him.No matter the age difference or the other being that lurks beneath his skin, always ready and eager to make an appearance, or the fact that, really, he’s her only non-alien, non-Jane friend for hundreds of miles. Her heart pounds so hard she can hear it in her ears, her cheeks blossoming with a natural blush that made Darcy seem almost bashful.

It’s gone as quickly as it comes, though, leaving her feeling more than a little stupid, but still giddy, still euphoric.What a fucking rush.“For real? You would?”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

“I never meant to fall for you. I tried not to, Christ, I tried. But that’s the thing about me, right?” He chuckles mirthlessly, a little wetly. Is he crying? “Always doomed to failure. I shouldn’t even be saying... but if I don’t. If I don’t, something in me keeps screaming that I’ll die. I have nothing in this world to offer you, but I had to say it.”

Send “I never meant to fall in love with you.” for my Muse’s reaction.

When the person you’ve been secretly (or not so secretly as Thor had made it clear that it was obvious) pining over confesses to feeling the same way, it’s not supposed to crack your insides open like a walnut shell between a nut cracker.Darcy’s pretty sure that if there’s anything that’s true in this backwards state, that should have remained a fact. 

Her pulse has slowed and that,too, goes against everything she’s read, everything she’s heard on the radio talk shows and the movies and, alright, like, she’s not stupid enough to think that’s real but her only experiences with being in love had resulted in a fling that was forgotten to the point that the other partner was gone forever and nobody would tell her why (she still hasn’t let herself mourn Fandral because she doesn’t know if she has it in her body to admit that she loved him more than he loved her and now he’s gone forever, just like her dad, and that’s real, and how does she reconcile that with how she feels about Bruce?) and her former boss being in a weird on-again-off-again serious thing with a beefcake of a Norse god (not that Darcy held it against either of them. She gets it, honestly, and good for Jane).

That old, comforting friend anger flares up (how dare he take this from her? how dare he confess when she’s been harboring these feelings silently for fear of scaring him off?) and she wants to lean into it, wants to embrace it like she did when he’d kissed her and then immediately regretted it (and, wow, is that something to unpack with this newest development).

Darcy doesn’t want to share her softest parts with him.But he is so much more vulnerable than her in this moment and there’s a saying around those country parts.The first hog to the trough gets the best slop.

Bruce had buried his nose into it before she’d even realized it’d been slopped.So it’s Darcy’s job, for once, to do the comforting.

“Doctor Banner. Bruce.” She tries to reach for his hands with hers, wants to pull them up close to her chest and feel the heat of his skin against the exposed V of her collar bone and chest.

“Stop. Just…just stop for a second, okay? You have to know. You can’t be this oblivious.” Good job, Lewis, this is real comforting.

“You know that…that I do, too, right? Like you’ve gotta know. Thor knows and I never even told him. Jane knows and she never notices anything unless it’s big and buff and blonde, or, like, science. 

Stop talking about yourself like that, jeez. You feed me, you help with the clinic, you’re helping a whole alien race survive on a planet they’re not native to. You’re funny in this, like, totally accidental way that actually kills me. You’ve got these soft hips that drive me mad in yoga, which, by the way? You’re great at. Jane likes talking all that science shit with you and it makes me happy she has somebody who understands what she’s going on about even if sometimes I think you guys are just making stuff up to confuse me. You are so endlessly thoughtful I wonder if you ever just do something selfish…like…ever. 

And this face. Even if you weren’t all those other things, this face?” She releases his hands to gesture up at him.“This face is enough, my dude. I like this face. A lot. –You’re not going to die. It’s gonna be okay. I promise. I’ll pinkie swear on it again if I have to. Just…take a few breaths and chill out, okay?”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

“Small places-“ The giant huffs a frustrated sigh, before spreading out a massive hand on the ground. With the other, he points to each finger, each the width of a beer bottle. “Banner and Hulk were this many. This many years. Five.”

His frustration grows anxiety in Darcy, almost seems to nurture it, and the pressure to understand him makes her start to sweat, underneath that Oklahoma summer sun. Come on, Lewis, you got this. Don’t be a baby.

“You were…” Mouth fuzzy with something not quite fear, but bordering on it, Darcy leans forward, forces herself physically closer to the outstretched arm to watch him count off his fingers.“You were five? Am I…am I understanding that you were five?”

It’s a revelation. One that seems impossible, if true, like a child trying to reconcile for the first time that their parents were once children, too.

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

It is much too late and with abject horror that he realizes that his royal foot is lodged firmly in his mouth, at which he scrubs with a rough hand as if to brush it out when Darcy’s head hits the bar. Thor grimaces, grasps her back. “I didn’t know. Truly, I didn’t. That it was so- complicated. I’m a fool, Darcy, I assumed too much from how Banner had been speaking of you, and I thought... I’m sorry. This was my fault. I search too desperately for scraps of happiness and do not stop to think.”

The bartop is polished, shiny enough that she can almost see her reflection staring back at her, the place where her nose is pressed against the solid wood, even with her arms blocking so much of the unnatural light. Inside the shell of her arms, she takes several deep breaths, trying to collect her thoughts and emotions-- a real task, what with the alcohol content flowing through her veins.

She pulls back from the bar with an awkward grin plastered on her smeared lips, swatting at his hands playfully.

“It’s fine. It’s fine. This is fine, Thor, like....it’s fine. You didn’t know and, like -- wait, did you say he talks about me?”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

“Okay.” The word is leaving him in a soft helpless shudder before he can even think about it, before he can even fully process the silently screaming scraped-out cavity of his chest, hollowed mercilessly from navel to sternum. He nods, and the center of his palm aches, empty. How many times had he touched her since they’d met? A dozen or so over the course of months? Less? And every time... every time. He’d been petrified to his core of what he’d been doing to her all along. (1)

A wordless cry of something approaching loss, low and wild and mournful, reaching out and coming up fatally short, echoes through the space inside his skull. “Okay,” he breathes, and even from the beginning, from bandages and blue fearful eyes full of mistrust he’s been Bruce to her, but not now. For all he knew, not again. “Whatever you need.” Or don’t.

This is wrong and bad and not the way it’s supposed to go but Darcy is already on the track and it’s too late to jump off. She, too, has an accurate count of the times he’s touched her – casual and soft, timid and gentle unlike the kiss that has left him painted red, just like her.

Two open wounds spreading.

She can count and number each time he has patted her arm or shoulder or gently moved her aside so he could pass her, the times his hand has made solid contact with hers in a way that stuck but until this moment, until this day, it has all been neutral, even if she’d been replaying the moments over and over in her thoughts, looking for some kind of sign that…

What? What had she wanted out of this moment, in all those soft daydreams?

She wants to tell him or–

Or touch me more. Or don’t stop touching me. Or lets just be like we were in that moment when you weren’t overthinking and I wasn’t dreading and lets be a thing. Not a couple or whatever but something more than friends.

“Or.”

It takes her a moment to realize she has said that one word rolling around inside of her outloud. That it has life and she has started another sentence she’s not sure she can finish right now.

“Or I’m being a big baby.” She slumps into the cheap chair at the kitchen island, and the metal creaks under her weight. 

“And I’m not being fair and I’m being shitty.” Fingers delve into her hair, unkempt nails massaging at her scalp as she eases herself through this nightmare of a situation. Being angry is easy – the adrenaline is leaving her system now as she calms and she misses it, but she doesn’t want to hear Bruce’s voice sound like it does right now, not anymore, and that requires something harder from Darcy than that good, righteous fury.

“I don’t..” Fuck, here comes the tears again, her throat raw like a knife trailing up along inside of it. “I don’t want you to stop. Or this to stop.” The upper half of her body is curled over the counter top of the kitchen island, her hair creating a curtain to hide her face, to give her an illusion of still being hidden while she guts herself for him, so that she doesn’t have to hear him hurt because she can’t keep her own disappointment at bay.

“I didn’t want you to stop and I– I flipped. I lost my actual shit ‘cause I was so scared you were just gonna… I don’t know. I don’t know. I just didn’t want things to change, but I also,” Her voice catches, that blade of emotion pointing it’s deadly tip at the back of her throat, making it hurt to swallow, to breath. Darcy can only manage more strangled words.

“I also did?

But only in the way I wanted it to. And I’m…  punishing you for not, uh, conforming with my wants and expectations or whatever. And that’s– that’s the really shitty thing.” 

She is more out of breath now than when he’d kissed her and it’s so hard not to let a sob break through, to play like she’s the adult she should be at twenty-eight years of age, as if it broke some part of her to admit that he is in the precarious position of choosing to acknowledge or not acknowledge what she’s trying to say without saying.

“So I’m sorry. For being shitty.”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

“I... I really don’t want to be the guy who delegitimizes your feelings. Especially when I’m the one who got us into. This. Right now. But I don’t think it’s whatever, and I don’t.” His breath is a quick, painful hiss into his lungs, a bracing before opening up a wound. Two, three devastating beats of silence pass, and his hand, so slowly that she almost can’t see how it’s shaking, comes at last to rest on her shoulder. It stays there, solid and heavy. (1)

His mouth is a red wound too, a mirror of hers, and it doesn’t even register to him. It doesn’t matter. “If you can’t get into it now, I understand that. That’s okay. But. I need you to know that we, that you don’t have to pretend… you know? We made a promise. And I wouldn’t know how to even begin to tell you how much that means to me.”

In a different context, Darcy would laugh at the haphazard smear of crimson on his lips, would reach up and run her thumb across that mess of lipstick, a pass from the soft, plush round of his lower lip (called the teardrop in the makeup community) to the corner and around atop to the cupid’s bow.All before she leaned in to kiss him herself, fully and deeply, until breathing was a thing they’d have to force themselves to remember in between the gaps. 

But that was impossible here, now, like this.

Darcy lets him rest his hand on her shoulder, the weight and warmth achingly comforting… for a moment. But then something bubbles up inside of her – something ugly and unforgiving and she knows, she knows this is a diversion tactic, that she would, in this moment, do anything to avoid spilling her guts for him to inspect and summarily reject. Her shoulder shrugs out from underneath his hold and she turns away, her boot heels scuffing against the cheap linoleum of her apartment’s kitchen.

Words spill from her mess of a mouth, mixed with a bitter poison to rival the radiation in his veins.

“You wanna talk about it? Fine. Fine. Don’t touch me anymore. Don’t play cute with me anymore. We can be friends and do things and I can deal with my own–”

Feelings. Emotions. Romantic interests. Inexplicable urges to touch you. Compulsive want to fluff your hair between my fingers. Drive to get closer to the Green Guy.

“Shit. But I can’t keep doing that if you keep– touching me. It’s not fair and it’s shitty, Doctor Banner, it’s really shitty.”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

He huffs a quiet laugh, tonguing the inside of his cheek, turning away for a moment before his eyes meet hers again. Grey as ash, grey as a dying streetlight against a sidewalk at three AM. “Don’t you worry about it, peaches. I’m headin’ over to Texas. Back in, what, less than a week. Tops. It’s a job for your egghead, too, good cause an’ all that. Whaddaya say? Pretty please, mommy, can I go?”

Blue eyes flash – he makes her uneasy. Not scared like Hulk, but like the ground underneath her is moving and Darcy’s unsure when it might buck too much and she’d lose her footing.

It’s not a fun feeling and Darcy’s jawline twitches, she clenches it so hard. Slowly, she manages a smile, cold and unlike her usual saucy expression.

Her fingers unfurl from fists, one hand moving up to pat his cheek in a satire of an affectionate gesture. Underneath her fingers, it still feels like Bruce – that stubble, that bone structure, and she’s aware on a very real level that this is and isn’t the man she…knows.

“I guess if it’s for a good cause. Remember to change your underwear daily and eat enough vegetables and give mommy a kiss goodbye.”

And she steps to the side for him – perhaps a little more dramatically than necessary, her body in some approximation of a Vanna White impression, hands out to illuminate the cleared hallway.

“Don’t get them hurt, Grey. I’m legit serious.”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

“Get outta my way, dollface. I’m askin’ you nicely, before I gotta move you myself.” His voice is... different. It comes from somewhere between his teeth, or from the back of his throat, and it doesn’t sound anything like the painfully reticent Ohioan she’s come to know and- well, know, anyway. He even holds himself differently, like he’s never been afraid of the deadly power thrumming through his blood. He looks taller. Bigger. Who is this?

She’s piecing together all the bits of Bruce that make him him and that means slowly accepting that Hulk was him, too, if more affectionate and bigger and also somebody that sends shivers of fear down Darcy’s spine – that’s not Hulk’s fault, not anymore, anyways, and she’s working on it, but for now sheer terror and soaring adoration live side by side in Darcy’s mind when it comes to the shamrock colored behemoth who is as much Bruce as Bruce is.

But not…not this. Whoever this is, it’s not that dry-humored, restrained, fluffy man who dropped his fondness for her at her feet like it was a burden he regretted having to lay upon Darcy. It’s not her audacious, playful monster, either, and he doesn’t need to not be green for that to be obvious, not with the brash way he spoke, the aggressive way he held himself.

Darcy’s hands find homes on her hips, fisted, her feet spread shoulder-width apart. Anyil had once told her about something called horse stance and this wasn’t it, but Darcy couldn’t sacrifice more inches to this guy. For some reason, it felt important to stand as tall as she could manage with him.

“Nicely usually incorporates the word please and not thinly veiled physical threats, my guy.”

[zzapzzaptasers-a]

Ben’s mug fills, bubbling and steaming, almost up to the brim; in the place of light and shadow where he sits, he’s joined by a second figure that sets down a pot. It, too, is a relic of another place, another time- a diner, maybe. She brushes something from an old apron, and quirks her mouth at him in a wry, dry half-smile. “I’d apologize for Brian, but he’s not my husband anymore. And even if he were... well. D’you take cream?”

A genuine grin spreads across his face, and Ben turns it upwards towards the newcomer, blue eyes sparkling with clear gratitude.

“Much obliged, ma’am, but you can’t control other people. Even if you could, would you wanna? Makes them less them and more you, and would you ever wanna be responsible for that mess of a man?”

His fingers hook through the worn, chipped handle of his old coffee mug, and he brings its closer but doesn’t lift it to taste it. Instead, he lets one finger tip rub up and down the side, feeling the warmth from the black liquid.

“Nah, I drink it black. Used to be I was at risk for diabetes, you know, but then I just got used to no sugar, no cream.”

His thoughts are elsewhere again, though he gestures for her to sit down opposite him, rather than stand as if she were still serving him, even after death.

“S’what I’m worried about with Darcy and your son, see. Fear like she might feel responsible for him, for the way he feels, like she can straighten out all the bumps in him that’ve been part of him since before she was born.Girl is a fixer, you know? Did it for that scientist gal, although that was less the lady’s emotional mindscape and more her unorganized research material and notes and, uh, personal needs like eating. Does it for her patients. Think she’s gonna go for it with your boy, but, boy is she gonna be disappointed. Couldn’t get that into her head as hard as I tried.

She can’t be medicine.”