#thunderscience headcannon

[ao3-hipster-fangirl-trash]

Presence

Pairing: Thorbruce 

Summary: Bruce wonders why Thor seems to vanish. And not just randomly, every single Tuesday at 3:30 exactly. Though he has some theories, none of them are confirmed until he goes looking for his glasses one day.

Word count: 998

Warnings: Depression, PTSD, mentions of mental illness

A/N: Anyway, here’s an angsty Thorbruce fic! Quick word, if any of you are dealing with any mental illnesses, please don’t think that having a partner will heal you instantly, professional help is the best way to improve yourself.

Bruce knew something was up. He knew that Thor somehow, every single Tuesday at 3:30pm, would manage to sneak off somewhere. He wasn’t sure where, or even why, but he just knew that by the time the half hour had struck, Thor, the constant hovering presence by his side, had somehow vanished. There were times when Bruce thought he had managed to figure out what was going on, but then Thor would do something to completely turn him on his head.

His mind went to affair first, thinking that maybe the literal god he was with had decided to move on to someone else. But after the most minimal amount of digging needed, and a quick root through Thor’s contacts, his suspicions were alleviated.

Then there was the punctuality of it. Maybe a sort of class he was going to? Something for people who didn’t quite understand technology and things like that? He had been told Steve had sometimes attended some of those to adjust to the normality of technology everywhere. It had been a pretty solid theory for about a month, and then Thor asked Bruce the name for the ‘computer rodent that clicks’ and that theory was completely flushed down the toilet.

It was when Bruce walked into Thor’s room, looking for the reading glasses he had left in there the night before, that he finally understood what was going on.

He was searching under the bed, through a clutter of general mess, including small drawings done by children that Thor inevitably chose to keep. He was reaching under a particularly narrow gap between the bed and the floor, when his hand brushed against what felt like a small stack of papers, like a small book or a magazine.

He gently grabbed it, pulling it from under the bed with a sort of hesitance. He wasn’t sure why he was hesitant. It wasn’t like he had any reason to be afraid, and yet when he was pulling the stack of papers his heart was in his mouth.

As the small magazine came into view, he found himself relaxing. Instead of finding some playboy magazine or whatever else he might had expected, he found a booklet, advertising a clinic. There was a woman on the front who was dressed like a stereotypical lawyer, with a pencil skirt and a suit. She was wearing glasses and looking and the reader sympathetically.

On the front page there was a slogan; “Help for when its needed.”

Bruce opened the booklet, and flipped through the other, clearly worn pages, catching sight of talk of therapy, Psychiatrists and self help. Even group counselling sessions where you could meet up with abuse survivors, sufferers of PTSD and those who had lost loved ones. There was nothing really extraordinary, or personal about the booklet, except the wearing of the pages where a certain thumb had run along certain treatments, where a phone number had been scrawled into the corner of pages, and where the paper had crinkled slightly from where moisture had hit it.

Bruce sat there for over an hour, scanning the pages and going over every single mark that had been left. It was clear, just from the overuse of the booklet, that Thor was attending some sort of therapy, but the more he looked, the more he could see why he was.

He hadn’t seen it before, but the loss of loved one’s section had been faintly underlined in blue pen, and there were small words, like nightmares, panic attacks, depressive mood swings and so on that had small dashes next to them, as if an identifier of what was the problem. He was so absorbed in the reading of the pamphlet that he didn’t hear the heavy footfalls coming into the room.

“Bruce?”

Bruce instantly twisted round to greet a somewhat confused Thor. He dropped the pamphlet and stood quickly.

Trying to explain to your boyfriend that you aren’t actually rooting though their stuff but just trying to find your glasses doesn’t usually work, but somehow Thor just smiled it off. That was until he saw the therapy pamphlet sitting innocently on the floor, with the pages sprawled open.

The ensuing conversation was heartbreaking. It was hard enough to ask your boyfriend if he had gone to therapy, but it was harder to hear that he had been dealing with a severe PTSD and depression diagnosis by himself. About how there were moments were he didn’t want to get out of bed because there was nothing left for him to stand up for, but he tried because people couldn’t know. About how all he could see when he closed his eyes were Frigga and Loki, both their bodies in the twisted and mangled positions he had seen them in last. How every time he was just reminded by how helpless he had been.

“I may come out off as powerful but I’m not, I’m weak.” He choked out, trying to wipe away the tears quickly enough that Bruce couldn’t see them.

Of course, Bruce saw them.

The rest of the day was spent in assurances that seeking help was never weak in any way, and describing just how helpful therapy was to people. Thor spoke of how he sometimes had panic attacks, and about how in the sessions, he could sometimes get overemotional and scared when some questions got too intense, and all Bruce did was sit patiently and listen.

They didn’t go to dinner with everyone else that night, instead they sat together on the bed, talking about how to understand more about what was happening to the other, and how to accommodate for what Thor saw as a burden, but Bruce saw as improvement.

No, the conversation didn’t make Thor better. Yes he still had panic attacks, nightmares and depressive moods. No, having a significant other doesn’t cure mental illness, but having them there, and having them support you will always help, even in their simple presence.