Imagine If You Assembled the Avengers: Volume 1

Why Didn't You Try Harder? (Stark/Banner x reader)

"Shitshitshitshitshit," you mumbled to yourself, trying desperately to fix the incredibly intricate and incredibly expensive looking tool that you had just broken. "Bruce, do you know how to fix this? Please tell me you know how to fix this." You hurried to his side and showed him the two pieces in your hand, watching as he inspected each of them.

"Well," he sighed, sliding on his glasses to take a closer look, "I think this might go here...wait, maybe here...no...there..." He fumbled with it a few more minutes, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth in deep concentration. "Well, as far as I can tell, you broke it."

You stood still and stared at him blankly as he tried to hand the pieces back to you, disbelieving what he was saying. "You're supposed to be one of the great minds of the century, and that's all you've got?"

"I'm not wrong," he smirked.

"Why didn't you try harder?"

"I could say the same to you." The doctor cleared his throat and nodded towards the door behind you, signaling that Tony had arrived for the day. "Watch your back."

"Morning, children," Tony greeted you both as he settled into his workstation, "daddy's home."

"Tony," you replied quietly, turning to face him and pushing the broken pieces across the table behind you. "No coffee today?"

He quickly looked around the table, now realizing that he had forgotten his mug in the kitchen. "Well, dammit. I guess not."

"You can't start your day without it. Maybe you should go grab it before you get too far along?" You shot a quick glance at Bruce when you heard him snicker quietly from across the room, sensing immediately what you were trying to do to buy time to hide your mistake. "Or maybe Bruce wants to go get it for you?" you hissed through clenched teeth.

"What's behind your back, (Y/N)?" Tony asked, slowly moving towards you with a worried look on his face. You tried to grab the pieces before he reached you, but you didn't move fast enough. "Gimme," he commanded, holding out his hand.

You took a deep breath and grimaced, "you might need both hands." When you brought the pieces around for him to see, his eyes widened and you could've sworn that he actually got a little pale. "Sorry, Tony.

"Um, (Y/N)?" he began quietly, "do you know how much this cost?"

"I'm going to say more than I'll make in my lifetime?"

"Times a hundred, give or take." He took the tool in his hands and flipped it around slowly, groaning under his breath as he inspected it. "Do you know why it was so expensive?"

You paused for a moment, finding the answer fairly quickly and to be pretty obvious. "Because you invented it, using rare materials and it's one of a kind?"

"For someone as smart as you, you'd think you wouldn't break things so easily," he snapped, throwing the tool with a slam into the nearby garbage.

"Well for someone as smart as you, you'd think you would make more than one when you had the chance." You followed behind him as he returned to his table, not willing to back down so quickly. "Or better yet, if you're going to make a one of a kind and irreplaceable thing, just put it up for display instead so we can all bask in the magnificence that is your genius. Why make something that we could actually use?"

He turned quickly to face you and held his hand up to keep you at a distance. "Wait, how is this now about me?"

"Isn't everything?"

"Oh, that's how we're gonna play?" he said in a sarcastic tone. "Okay, so if this is all about me, who broke the Photovoltaic Intermediate?"

"Me," Bruce mumbled from his station, almost too quietly to hear. Tony looked at him quizzically, not sure if he had heard him right, but continued on.

"Alright then, how about the Electron Diffraction Tube?"

"Yeah, that was still me," Bruce replied again, keeping his hands and eyes on his work, not looking up at either of you as you stared at him.

Tony crossed his arms over his chest, now starting to wonder if his friend had been the problem all this time and allowed you to take the blame. "Ok, big green, what about the Biconvex Lenses that I had in the drawer over there?" he all but yelled, pointing to a cabinet next to his own table.

"Sorry," Bruce mumbled, coughing slightly. "I did that almost three months ago."

Between the look of surprise on Tony's face and your silence at the revelation that Bruce was more of a hazard to the equipment than you were, both you and Tony separated and proceeded to your individual work in silence for the rest of the day. Standing at a table directly across from the doctor, you waited for him to look up at you, and when he did you shook your head with both disapproval surprise.

"Well, I wasn't expecting that."