Elspeth

[nola_buckybarnes]

Joel spent a couple hours wandering around campus and the surrounding area, practicing being normal. It turned out not to be so hard—now he just needed to be a little more deliberate about it. Keep the walk casual, nondescript, not look alert and on edge. Got it.

Once he felt more confident, he ran his appointed errands and took the familiar walk to Elspeth's apartment. He was holding out his bounty, a large milkshake, when the front door opened for him.

"Your favorite," he said, holding out the cup. "Except I don't actually know your favorite, so I guessed. Surprises are fun, right?"

Comments

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Tae-ri's as good as I could hope for, but...yeah, sometimes being alone feels really, really nice." Joel sat at the foot of her bed, unsure where she wanted him. "But you'd be fun to have around, at least. Even when you're not up for adventures."

[nola_eleanor]

"I'm basically a gift." Not that she actually believed that right now. (Or ever.) Elspeth crawled in under the covers and scooted over to make room for Joel. Not for the first time she wished she had a bigger bed, though then she'd probably never leave it. The grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were an inspiration, okay? "Find a food you want and get up here. I want snuggles from a snack while I snack."

[nola_buckybarnes]

Joel wasn't really hungry, but he grabbed something in case eating alone made her feel self-conscious, then took off his shoes and crawled up next to her. He curled an arm around her shoulders and said, "I can't be a snack, because I know you've had me between meals."

[nola_eleanor]

Elspeth snorted and tucked her head against him, getting comfortable. "It's so true." Curled up against a cute person really was the best place to eat mozzarella sticks. "Tell me things. It's been forever since I saw you." And all her stuff was bleh.

[nola_buckybarnes]

He hesitated. Well, he did have big news! But instead he said, "I'd rather hear about you" and gave her a little squeeze.

[nola_eleanor]

"Talking about my crap just makes me feel worse, and if I feel any worse I'm going to cause a localized famine." She'd already started trying to figure out how she could kidnap Irene and make her Elspeth's own personal misery cook. The plans usually ended up being comically intricate, like a Wile E Coyote and Road Runner episode, both because Elspeth's brain was a weird place and because she knew Irene could totally take her in a fair fight (and probably an unfair one).

[nola_buckybarnes]

Joel could relate. "Well, okay," he said, thinking of how he could spin this so it didn't sound like a complete breakdown. "Since I was sick, I went ahead and sort of took some time off classes for a few days. Mental health break, you know? Me time."

[nola_eleanor]

"Understandable. Granted, most of my mental health breaks have been due to prolonged hangovers, sex marathons, or kidnappings, but I've heard of people who use them for reasonable things!" For her, going to work could be the mental health break. But Elspeth was not most people.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Some of those sound better than others," he said wryly, and decided to put a pin in the "kidnappings" option for later. "I mostly just watched a lot of movies."

[nola_eleanor]

"Anything good? In this house, we stan the Fast and the Furious franchise." Most people would never guess that Lucy and Elspeth had a lot of overlapping tastes, and Elspeth kind of enjoyed that this made them a low-level enigma.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"I went with the Marvel movies." He tried to keep his voice light.

[nola_eleanor]

"Also a good choice for attractive people doing improbable things. I need Netflix to make that one of my genre recommendations."

[nola_buckybarnes]

Oh, hey, this might be an interesting diversion. "How are your favorite attractive Marvel people?"

[nola_eleanor]

"They're all gorgeous and can destroy me. The fact that there isn't going to be a movie called Avengers: Orgy is personally offensive to me, the living embodiment of the greedy bisexual trope."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Okay, but if you could only pick one or two," Joel said cajolingly. Come on, some had to be hotter than the others, right?

[nola_eleanor]

"Well Nebula probably has a vibrating attachment somewhere and I'd sell my kidney to be in a Thor and Valkyrie sandwich. But really, it depends on what kind of mood I'm in. That's the whole point of the smorgasbord! It's easier to rule out the few who couldn't get it." The best answer was always "all of the above."

[nola_buckybarnes]

Hmmmm. "Well, who are the unlucky few?"

[nola_eleanor]

"Banner when he's not the Hulk, Stephen Strange when he's being particularly obnoxious, and Hank Pym because it would probably weird Hope out and I definitely want to hit that. Oh, and Rocket because he's a raccoon, but I'd probably let him watch."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Wait, wait, hold up," Joel said. "Are you saying you'd get down with Hulk but not Banner?"

[nola_eleanor]

"Obviously," Elspeth replied confidently, gesturing with a half-eaten mozzarella stick. "Banner is anxiety-ridden and breakable and he has so many PhDs he probably barely knows how to masturbate, let alone fuck. Also he turned down the chance to get with a hot Russian assassin and that's just poor life decisions right there."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"He could have killed her," Joel pointed out. "He almost killed her once before."

[nola_eleanor]

"As if it takes super powers to kill someone. Besides, I've seen what that woman can do with her thighs; she's way more likely to kill him, and also it would be totally worth it."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"No one's killing the Hulk with their thighs," Joel said dryly.

[nola_eleanor]

"You have just issued a mighty challenge to the universe and I hope I live long enough to see someone meet it," Elspeth replied delightedly.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"If it didn't happen in Ragnarok, I don't think it's happening."

[nola_eleanor]

"Maybe it's the real Endgame."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Thanos and Hulk challenge each other to a wrestling match, thighs get involved?" He shouldn't be smiling at the idea, but he was.

[nola_eleanor]

"No. That Thanos douchebag doesn't get any sexy fun times, with Hulk or anyone else. Not least because the green-on-purple action would make me think of Barney porn, and I don't need any more issues." Elspeth's brain worked in weird and mysterious ways. "Maybe Thanos' not-a-purple-nutsack mom comes and kicks his ass for thinking he's the shit after taking half a philosophy class and then she and Hulk live happily ever after."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Hulk's in love with Natasha, though. I think?" Joel—or rather Bucky—didn't actually know Banner very well, aside from meeting him once briefly before the big battle in Africa. Before disintegrating into ash. He shivered hard, remembering that.

[nola_eleanor]

Elspeth arched her eyebrow skeptically. "Okay one of us is trying to save the world via Hulk sex, and one of us is a nerd who is taking this too seriously. Guess which one is which?"

[nola_buckybarnes]

"I'm just trying to work within the scope of the Marvel universe," Joel protested. "Besides, Earth needs Banner more than ever, right?"

[nola_eleanor]

"...like I said, one of us is taking this too seriously. Is this a cry for help because your college friends have peer pressured you into becoming a tumblr discourse fanboy, or have you always been kinda nerdy and I was just too distracted by your abs to notice?"

[nola_buckybarnes]

"It's become more important to me recently," he said wryly. "I hadn't even seen most of them before now."

[nola_eleanor]

"The true danger of getting sick. I usually just rewatch entire seasons of Grey's Anatomy. If I'm going to be surrounded by unpleasant bodily fluids anyway..."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"You didn't tell me that..." He made a show of looking under the blankets and inspecting the mattress.

[nola_eleanor]

She elbowed him in the side with a playful roll of the eyes. "I'm not sick now, butthead. My current patheticness isn't physical, just existential."

[nola_buckybarnes]

Joel could relate. "Any idea of where the existential crisis is coming from?"

[nola_eleanor]

"Yeah, from things not going the way I want them to. Which is why it's being treated with food and distractions."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"And I'm not being a very good distraction," he said with a grimace. All he could think of recently was busting into places, getting a job done, and getting out. Distraction was the opposite of his (old) game.

[nola_eleanor]

She couldn't disagree. "Why don't we watch a movie or something? It can be one of your Marvel ones as long as you don't nerd out the whole time."

[nola_buckybarnes]

The idea of watching a Marvel movie—and being way too invested in characters he knew he knew—while in someone's presence felt like it'd be too much. "Actually, Fast and the Furious sounds pretty good right now. Would you mind?"

[nola_eleanor]

"Joel, the day I mind watching Vin Diesel be awesome is the day you know that body-snatching aliens are real." She moved just long enough to get her laptop and queue up one of the movies before settling back and against him once more.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"I'll keep that in mind." He put his arm back around her and kissed the top of her head. "And hey, I don't want you to ever think I'm just in this for the hookups, okay? I like being your friend more than anything else."