Title: This Wallpaper Is Dreadful, One of Us Will Have to Go

Paring: Bruce Banner X Reader

Warnings: divorce and fluff, basically a University Professor AU! Where Dr. Bruce Banner is still Dr. Bruce Banner. 

Spoilers: Nope!

Author's Note: mERRY CHRISTMAS MY READERS AND FRIENDS! AND IF YOU DON'T CELEBRATE THAT, HAPPY HANUKKAH, OR HAVE A LOVELY SUNDAY!

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Perhaps falling in love was something you did on a whim. In love with the coffee at Sandro's, it is to die for. In love with the hardcover book with the pretty end papers and the binding that smelt like heaven. In love with the idea of love, since everyone who came your way with interest in falling in love felt put off at the saturation of your emotions, at the amounts of joy you felt. In short, you believed that maybe because of your life as a naturalist, and a romanticist, that you saw too much good in everything for anyone to see good in you.

Perhaps.

But that was until you happened upon the fourth room from the stairs in the history sector of the professor's lounge. It was a normal day; you wore flats and a bow in your hair, and drank dollar coffee from a paper cup, and were moving your things into an office. It was your first day as a casual assistant, well, as a casual temping for the natural history professor at the university downtown. But it was on the fourth room, with the door ajar, you baulked.

Maybe it was because the door revealed a swathe of dirty carpet, bookshelves in disarray in the unlit room, or maybe that the number on the door itself matched that the front office gave you as your office to share with another historian.

Maybe both.

Slowly, you pushed the door open, fumbling for the light switch on the wall. The posters on the walls were mall-bought, framed with glass to give the idea that they were worth more than they truly were. The wallpaper was peeling at odd places, the glue beneath it finished its time, past its prime, and was a hideous shade of brown and blue pinstripes that reminded you of hideous old men's pyjama pants. Plants were on the windowsill, dying, their leaves turning to sludge from perhaps over-watering and lack of sunlight.

Your heart fell through your shoes. How could you last here?

"You're not Dr. Rogers," a male voice noticed, and rightly so. You were most certainly not Dr. Steven Rogers, married to Margaret Carter, the dietitian and world-renowned athlete. "Oh! Shit. You're – uh, the – the –,"

"The temp," you finish. You turn to see a head of brown curls, barely managing to not tumble from the top of the man's head, and away in the breeze. His glasses are pushed high upon the bridge of his nose, and wears a tweed suit that looks as uncomfortable as it is unstylish.

"Here for his paternity leave." You free one hand of the nearly-empty coffee cup, and hold it out to shake. "I'm __________, and you are...?"

His face flushes, and upon shaking your hand, he stammers, "Dr, Banner. Leading professor of the history of anthropology here." His palms are sweaty, and as he releases your hand, you wipe yours upon your trouser leg. "I suppose you want a place to shack up before running off to class."

"I suppose I do," you glance at the plant on the sill, and add, "Please tell me that's not Dr. Roger's plant, it looks very nearly dead."

Dr. Banner chuckles. "It's not his, that's my desk. My, uh, wife, I mean, ex-wife gave me that when we were, well, still living together. I'm not the greatest with things outside of my head," he confesses, leading the way over the messes on the floor to the adjacent room. You can tell. "This is where you'll be."

You thank him, place your folders down, and checking the clock on the wall, note the fact that you should be at the study hall you're filling in for in ten minutes, and are on your way. It isn't until you're in the room that you realise that the man you had been disgusted by was the Dr. Banner, the historical anthropologist you'd read books and whole webpages dedicated to his methods and discoveries about humankind. But that was just the fangirl side of you, who lived for knowledge and a nice scone every now and again. You loved nature, how it was the prime force on earth.

"All right! I know you're wondering who I am – I'm not Dr. Rogers; call me Miss ________. I know it's midterm, and the testing is behind us, but guys, you've made it this far, and hey, I get it, you're tired, but we're all fans of nature here, and let's get learning," you announce. "Any questions?"

A small voice piped up from the front, "How long will he be gone again?"

You picked up the textbook and the notes he left, and glancing above them to the one who asked the query, you beam, "Two weeks. Now, before we veer off-topic, the notes here say you were on chapter eleven's subject of the Graeco-Roman wildlife and diet..."

In the staff room, Bruce Banner eats an egg and lettuce sandwich by himself on the table closest to the window. It isn't the neatest of sandwiches, going by how much has spilled onto his vest, and it isn't the nicest, going by how this is the two hundredth day of eating egg and lettuce sandwiches. From the boiler, the killer hot lecturer Natasha Romanov (who used to date Dr. Banner in high school, until she came to her senses and fell for the American-born Russian-speaking fitness trainer James Barnes) pours water into her tea. 

She'd much rather be drinking coffee spiked with enough vodka to drown out the frat boys and whinging youths who complain that college is nothing like high school, and their trust funds that follow suite. But Nat is three years sober, and now thanks to Pilates and a solid diet, can run a marathon alongside her husband Bucky without any complications. She sighs, blowing steam from her Styrofoam cup, watching the wildly unkempt and newly-made cuckolded bachelor fail at life once more. 

"You're a mess, Bruce Banner," she notes, and not in a nice way. Nat is a razor-like woman; she is smooth, shiny, petite; but catch her on another way, and she'd slice you to smithereens. "I hear you're into the temp filling in for Rogers."

Bruce would have fallen off his chair if he hadn't had it parked carefully under the table, and scooting back to regard the fiery red-head, he felt a blush rush across his face. "How - how do you know? She only just came in four days ago!" He protested, trying to swipe the egg from the front of his shirt. "Don't tell me you're spying on me, Natasha."

She scoffs. "You? Never. That ship sailed fifteen years ago, Banner, but as for Little Miss Dryad here...I think I know a thing or two that can get you a date. Maybe, maybe not. Depends if you can take my shift for study hall." Nat manipulates. "I loathe that Bishop girl, and Chavez. They talk too much."

Bruce rolls his eyes. He knows Nat is only slagging them to get him to agree to whatever she has planned. But it has been a long two hundred days, and many more long days before he discovered egg and lettuce sandwiches after the divorce, and while there was no more Betty Ross in his life, there was the smiling new temp whose eyes would turn sad at the appearance of his office, his pot plant, and well, Bruce couldn't help it. He was like any other reasonable, single man out there; he wanted to be liked. Even if he was too shy to initiate it. 

"Deal." He stretches his hand out, but she isn't near him to shake it. Instead, she nods, and beckons him forward, to forfeit his sandwich and listen to her plan. It's common knowledge: Nat Romanov always has a plan. 

Two weeks pass like leaves falling in autumn. Before you know it, you're welcoming Dr. Rogers back into his office, holding a box of your few things in your arms. But before you can jump out and back to the studio apartment downtown above the pizza joint, there's a figure haunting the doorway. 

"Do you have to go?" he asks you. 

He's wearing a suit, a new suit, rather than the one which made him look like an outdated Professor Moriarty paper-cutout, and his glasses look cleaned, without fingerprint smudges and there isn't a thing out of place on the floor. When had his office transformed? You'd been too busy teaching to notice. Even the plant had been replaced, with a fresher, greener pot. 

For a moment, you aren't lusting after greasy pizza and the next job that comes after the never-ending process of writing your own soon-to-be-published pictorial naturalist dictionary. For a moment, you aren't seeing the prestigious Dr. Banner, but just a guy, who's just doing his best, and probably, most likely, has as much trouble as you do making friends.

"I don't really want to," you murmur, shuffling the box in your arms. "But, ah, it's the wallpaper, Dr. Banner, not you, or the fact Dr. Rogers is a new dad; this wallpaper is dreadful. One of us will have to go." You quote, glancing to the hideous walls.

He crosses his arms. "I think that can be arranged. But, how about a date first?" Bruce suggests. 

You smile. "I'd love that."