how i met stephen strange

2x2: A Day and A Half

"In May, your uncle Thor had planned a little getaway for our group to celebrate my birthday. It was originally just going to be me, Thor, Val and Jessica, which none of us were opposed to. But Thor felt weird about leaving Matt out since he was my boyfriend and it was my birthday, plus he didn't feel right about purposely avoiding the topic of our camping trip when Matt comes to the bar with us all the time, so he invited him. It was alright, though, because Matt wasn't free due to school. So it was going to continue being just the four of us, but then Val accidentally mentioned it to Bruce, and invited him in a panic. Bruce was free, unlike Matt, so he came. Then the 28th of May finally came, and we were all setting up our tents in the woods. What we didn't know was that day would be one of the most happening days. It ended up being known as The Day And A Half in 2000."

MAY, 2000

Jessica finishes her tent first, adjusting her sleeveless shirt and looking around, "You guys aren't done yet?"

"Almost done!" Val calls out. "We can go looking for firewood after I'm finished with setting mine up."

"Sure," Jessica nods, squinting at Thor and Bruce who were setting up their tent. Their tent was bigger than Tony's, Val's and Jessica's since they two people instead of one, so of course their tent were taking a little more effort to set up. Jessica asks, "You boys need any help?"

"All good!" Thor replies, taking a bunch of tent poles from Bruce's hand and stepping away from him to figure it out. "Just need to get these in order and the rest will be easy."

"Do they seem a little weird to you?" Tony asks, tilting his head in Thor and Bruce's direction. Jessica looks back at them. Tony can see the P.I. gears in her brain turning as she tries to figure out something about them.

She finally nods, "Yeah. Probably the heat getting to them, Thor definitely didn't think this through. Maybe they'll be better in the evening when it's cooler."

Tony sits down in the dirt, setting up some tent poles, "Do you think Thor's annoyed because he didn't invite Bruce in the first place? Because I'm fine with him being here, Bruce is a good friend."

Jessica replies, helping him with some remaining tent poles, "Could be... But if Bruce is your friend and you didn't mind him being here, then why is Thor so bothered about his boyfriend being here?" Before Tony can answer, Jessica changes the subject, "Bruce said earlier that we didn't pack enough food for all of us, so I'm gonna go to that convenience store we passed and get some stuff from there. You want anything? Val said earlier that she just wants sandwiches and I'm getting cheap beer."

"Maybe some double A batteries, my electric fan's running low," Tony says. "Drive safe."

"Yeah, yeah," Jessica says dismissively. She says something to Thor before he passes his car keys to her and she leaves the campsite.

"About an hour later, I got a call from the local police, saying Jessica asked for me. Apparently, she'd gotten into a fight with someone at the convenience store and needed someone to bail her out. Obviously, I went. Since Thor's car was with Jessica, I didn't want us to bring two cars back, so I walked instead of taking Bruce's. It was a long walk and nothing really happened on the way to the police station, so I'll tell you what happened at the campsite while I was gone before I talk about Jessica at the police station."

"You're doing that wrong," Bruce sighs in frustration, taking down the tarp and rearranging it. "It goes here. Not there. Why would it go there?"

Thor rolls his eyes and Val pauses in her organising of inventory. Since she'd finished up her tent and was waiting on Jessica to return to find firewood, she decided to go through the stuff they brought for the day and a half. She was mentally splitting the things up between the five of them until she'd heard Bruce get annoyed and looked up in time to see Thor himself getting annoyed, which was a rarity on his own.