Summary: Bruce generally equated sleepless night with severe cravings for coffee and naps, but after meeting up with the Captain in Tony's decimated lounge after the Battle for Midtown, Bruce began to think that sleepless nights were also about discovering whole new sides to his teammates. Rated for language.
Disclaimer: Not mine.

Conversations in the Dark

Bruce groaned, silently cursing the pounding in his head. The Other Guy was suspiciously quiet in the recesses of his mind, and if Bruce didn't know better, he'd say the Hulk was tired. After tossing and turning for a few minutes more, he finally gave up on any chance of sleep. He slipped out of his room, Bruce padded down the hallway to what remained of Tony's lounge. It was nearing three in the morning, and he presumed the room would be empty with everyone else shut up in their appropriated rooms. Tony had retired immediately, to no one's surprise, and the SHIELD agents were quick to follow. Thor had taken Loki into another room and firmly shut the door. He and the Captain had traded drowsy "good nights" before drifting off to bed themselves, so he had to bite back a gasp of surprise when he spotted a lone figure leaning against the bar.

Bruce froze, his heart hammering as he squinted in the low light. The set of the broad shoulders and the moonlight gleaming off his burnished blonde locks told Bruce that their Captain was also awake at the ungodly hour. Ducking behind the wall, Bruce turned to leave, but some unknown force made him glance back. While not in possession of such legendary eyesight as Hawkeye, it was clear that not all was well with Captain Rogers.

His shoulders were slumped slightly as he sat against the wall, still clad in his bloodied and torn uniform, long legs splayed out before him without the natural grace that Bruce had come to expect. The Captain moved, and Bruce tracked the trembling hand that rose to pinch the bridge of his nose. He looked saddened and exhausted and young, so very young, that Bruce had to stop and calculate his actual age.

Twenty five, his still throbbing brain supplied. Twenty five and maybe two months out of the most hellish war in history, tossed haphazardly into another that was literally otherworldly, and given a team to lead that could only be described as a herd of feral cats. With superpowers. Bruce winced, sincerely feeling for the kid.

Because that's what their Captain really was - a kid. For Pete's sake, at twenty five, he was spending his nights in the lab and his weekends studying for graduate school exams, not fighting wars against aliens and trying reconcile being cryogenically frozen against his will. Then again, Bruce mused, soldiers were trained to handle scenarios somewhat like this, to be able to acclimate to different situations. Bruce was a scientist, not a soldier.

"Are you going to stand there all night, Dr. Banner," the tired voice sliced through his thoughts, startling him. "Or are you going to come and take a seat?"

Somewhat guiltily, Bruce stepped out from the shadows. Captain Rogers was smiling slightly, indicating a somewhat wry amusement with his lips that did nothing to dispel the dark circles beneath his eyes. Bruce eased himself down, carefully avoiding the broken glass and debris littering the floor.

"I wasn't meaning to lurk," he offered, apologetic, and the Captain held up a hand.

"I'm not upset," he assured. "I just figured you had to be avoiding bed like I am. There's no need for you to stand in the doorway when there's a perfectly good spot of floor to be had."

"You prefer the floor to the couch?"

The Captain shrugged, picking at one of the scabs on his knuckles. "I'm not really used to all this -," he waved a hand vaguely at the destroyed but still opulent lounge. "This."

Bruce nodded. "Must be tough." At the Captain's glance, he elaborated. "This century, I mean. Everything had been kind of sprung on you, so far."

The Captain let out the ghost of a laugh. "You could say that," he replied in a voice drier than the Sahara. Bruce bit his lip, chewing absentmindedly as he desperately tried to think of something to say that would wipe the pained look from the Captain's face. He was beginning to cycle through things that Betty might have said, if she were in his place, when the Captain spoke quietly, somewhat resigned. "It doesn't really matter, though. You adapt, or you don't survive. Isn't that right, Dr. Banner?"

He smiled then, a slight quirk of his lips, and Bruce simply contemplated him for a moment. It would be so easy to hate him, Bruce mused, with his unadulterated perfection. Captain Rogers was the epitome of everything that Bruce had been trying to recreate and that alone should have had the Other Guy smashing his way through the Tower in a fit. But Bruce couldn't hate him, because the guy was just so damned nice. It had to be a product of the decade, he thought, because Bruce didn't know a single person as genuinely kind as the Captain.

Finally realizing that the Captain was staring at him, waiting for an answer, he shook himself. "That is Darwin's theory," he admitted, before the conversation caught up with him. "How do you know about Darwin? Did they teach you that in school?"

The soldier chuckled, continuing to relentlessly pick at his knuckles. "Not really. The Depression wasn't really a good time to be in school, you know," he murmured. "Half the time, our textbooks were used to heat the classrooms while our teachers taught from memory."

Bruce gaped at him, astounded. "It really must be a product of the times," he mumbled, still trying to get over his shock.

The Captain furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"It's just, uh," Bruce felt himself blush slightly. "You're just a nice, guy, you know? I wasn't really expecting that. Must be a forties thing." The Captain's demeanor shifted, his fingers finally stilling as he shook his head and Bruce realized that he'd triggered some deeper emotion than he'd planned on.

"Dr. Erskine said that it wasn't just the serum," he said softly, his eyes far away. "He said he'd tried it once before, on Johann Schmidt. He told me that the serum wasn't ready, but that the man wasn't ready either. It amplifies everything, everything that you are, the serum triples, at least."

Bruce was silent, thinking, and he must have looked upset, because the Captain sat up straight and faced him. "That's not to say that's why it didn't work for you, Doctor." The words spilled from his lips in a rush, as he gestured loosely at Bruce. "I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why -,"

Bruce smiled wryly, unoffended. "But that's why it worked for you."

The Captain sighed, returning to picking at his quickly healing scabs. "I'm still just a kid from Brooklyn. There's nothing special about me."

His tone was light, but Bruce read into it like it was a textbook. "Tony didn't mean that," Bruce began to say, thinking back to the heated exchange of words in the helicarrier.

"Yes he did," Steve replied with a hint of firmness. "And that's fine. He's right. I was just a kid who didn't like bullies and impressed a scientist. I'm not a genius and I'm not a god and I wasn't trained from the time I could walk."

There was such flatness and finality to his tone that Bruce felt the need to cheer him up. "But you're Captain America," he said lamely.

It was clearly the wrong approach. The Captain's eyes narrowed, his face contorting harshly with remembered frustration. "Captain America was the star of half a dozen movies and the number one reason why war bonds flew off the shelves. He was a face for the people when they needed a hero." He sighed, his shoulders slumping further as he spoke. "But Captain America wasn't the guy who went thirty miles behind the lines to free war prisoners. That was Steve Rogers, looking for his best friend."

Bruce suddenly speechless, his aching brain struggling to process the new information. He was silent for a few moments, sitting companionably beside the Captain, before he finally realized what he wanted to say.

"My father," Bruce licked his lips, eyes steadily on his clasped hands. "My father beat my mother. He was an angry drunk and he took it out on her." The Captain quietly sat beside him, offering a calm, steady presence. Bruce shifted his shoulders against the bar. "Honestly, going into that procedure, I kept thinking that I was finally going to be strong enough." He smirked wryly at the Captain. "That's probably less noble than your reasons."

The Captain crossed his arms, leaning his head back. "I wouldn't say that," he murmured. "I joined the army to fight bullies. Wanting to protect your mother from your drunken father is pretty much the same thing isn't it?"

"You're a lot smarter than anyone gave you credit for, you know," Bruce managed to say as the Captain, once again, forced him to reconsider any previous notions he'd formed from his research and the helicarrier incident. Judging from the slight smirk on the younger man's face, he was finding a little enjoyment in shocking the scientist.

The Captain laughed lightly. "It's just a bit of common sense, really. Something that seems to have gone by the wayside, like five and ten stores and basic human interactions."

Bruce shifted, letting his body finally relax. "Meaning?"

The Captain shrugged, a movement that Bruce was coming to equate with nervousness rather than a lack of knowledge, and wrinkled his nose. "Cellphones," he stated. "Everyone is always on their cellphones. Fury would send out orders by electronic mail rather than just walking down off the podium and telling someone what he wanted them to do. And outside, the civilians are even worse. They walk around with technology in their hands and they never stop to see who they're walking with. The only person I've met here that isn't like that is you."

"I haven't really had the chance to form a strong attachment to new technology," Bruce reminded him gently. "I try to stay off the grid."

"Why is that?"

Bruce uncrossed his legs, moving to face the Captain better. "Did they not tell you about it?"

"Well, I saw the footage from your file," he replied uncertainly, rubbing his fingers over his newly healed knuckles. "The military was there, but I thought that it was a response to, you know."

"The Super Soldier program was always under military jurisdiction. They consider me government property too." That, if nothing else, was something that the Captain would be able to understand. Bruce flashed him a grin. "You don't have to skirt around the Other Guy," he pointed out dryly. "I've finally gotten to the point in my life where I can talk about him in polite conversation without feeling the need to unleash him. I haven't given up on finding a cure, but I've accepted that it's not strictly necessary at the moment."

"So you've adapted too," the Captain nodded thoughtfully. He smirked slightly. "Seems to be a recurring theme."

"It's life, I suppose," Bruce agreed.

Captain Rogers was quiet for a moment, before shifting to face Bruce. "You said you were always angry?"

Bruce hummed an affirmative, pensive. "The anger is there, always there, in much the same way that lava is always beneath a volcano, but it has lessened to a degree." Arching a brow at the Captain, Bruce felt the lack of sleep lower his conversational inhibitions. "You aren't afraid of him?"

"Speaking freely?" he asked, and Bruce nodded. It seemed that sleep was also loosening the Captain's tongue. "I was a little concerned, when I first saw him," he admitted, inclining his head sheepishly. "But then I remembered something that my mother used to tell me. I was sickly as a kid and always frustrated that I couldn't go outside and play like the other kids. Mother told me to channel my frustration into something productive. That's how I picked up art." He glanced up at Bruce, who was listening intently. "So I thought that if you could channel his anger towards something, like that flying alien, he wouldn't be mindless anymore."

The Other Guy shifted in the back of Bruce's mind, coiling. "You saw him as a tool."

The Captain frowned immediately, shaking his head before Bruce finished speaking. "I saw him as a person. That's not the same thing."

"He's not a person," Bruce retorted, incredulous at both the Captain's observation and the fact that they were having the conversation at all.

Captain Rogers cocked his head questioningly, a confused furrow between his brows. "How can he not be a person? He has a different name, a different body, a completely different mind than you."

Bruce stared at the Captain. "I've seen what he can do."

"So have I," Captain Rogers replied staunchly. "He saved Mr. Stark today. I watched it with my own eyes."

Bruce fidgeted, uncomfortable with the line of the conversation. It was sounding remarkably like what Tony had said to him on the helicarrier, though, enlightening the Captain to that fact was probably not one of his better ideas. In the end, Bruce deflected the entire argument. "I think this might be something that we have to agree to disagree on."

"That's fine," the Captain replied with equanimity, turning his head to eye the bit of skyline that still had power. "I'm just stating my opinion. You don't have to agree."

Bruce nodded, simply to have some kind of response for the quietly surprising man beside him. The blackness in the sky lightened to navy, and then to the palest of pinks as the sun reached the horizon. He heard the Captain sigh lightly, and turn to him.

"We should probably pretend that we slept," he ventured, his voice tinged with amusement.

"Agreed," Bruce chuckled, picking himself gingerly up off the floor. "Oof," he grimaced, stretching tense and aching muscles. The Captain simply rose, his trademark grace having returned, and Bruce eyed the ease of his movements with a slight envy. The Captain shot him a vaguely apologetic grin, seemingly aware of his thoughts, and watched as Bruce finished popping the vertebrae in his back.

"I'm glad we talked," the Captain said suddenly, and Bruce looked up at him. His face was young again and earnest, reminding Bruce that the Captain was probably as lonely as he was. Bruce couldn't help but smile back at him reassuringly.

"Me too," he murmured. As the Captain began to walk away, the unknown force struck again. "If you have any problems," he called out gently. The Captain turned, brows raised in question. "With adapting," he clarified. "Feel free to ask."

Captain Rogers smiled softly, and though his face appeared young, his eyes were wise. "If you'll do the same."

There was a moment when Bruce waited for the sense of shock to overwhelm him again, as it had so many times over the course of the night, but it never came. The realization spread through his mind, mimicking the genuine smile on his face. "Sure."

Fin.