°⋆｡brother’s best friend
🇧🇷🇺🇨🇪 🇾🇦🇲🇦🇩🇦
✦ synopsis: in which bruce is very, very awkward
⟡ content warnings: none just fluff and awkwardness!
✦ word count: 970
✮⋆ a/n: this is not proofread at all ⋆✮
The doorbell rings. And then again. And then again, again. And then—
“Oh my god, I’m going!” you groan, walking down the hallway, only slightly crooked. A heavy sigh as you open the door, face muscles tensing as you hold your eyes in that bored way you do and twist your lips to keep from mouthing off—and then you stop.
Bruce.
Bruce Yamada.
Bruce Yamada at your door.
“Oh,” you say.
He pauses too. He was slumping against the doorway, and now he straightens up when he sees you. A quick look up and down: you’ve only got one shoe on, and one of your socks is scrunched down to your ankle and the other is halfway up your calf. Your dress shirt is off now, and your undershirt is untucked from your skirt. Your hair is out of that fancy do your mom does and is now thrown up haphazardly with a claw clip.
He blushes. You think you should be the one blushing.
“Hi,” he says. He smacks his lips. His mouth feels dry.
“Hi.” You hid your shoe-less foot behind the other. Your heart feels like it’s beating erratically. It doesn’t feel like it beats, and then beats, and then beats. It beats, and then doesn’t, and then beats twice, and then doesn’t, and then beats three times, and then skips two. It doesn’t, really. It just feels like it does. “Tommy’s showering,” you say dumbly.
Tommy is your older brother and Bruce’s best friend. You’re not usually the one who greets him at the door—and when you do, you’re not usually dressed like this.
But it is usually awkward.
Not always this awkward, but awkward.
“Oh, ok,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looks around aimlessly, avoiding eye contact.
You have the urge to do something. You’ve had the biggest crush on Bruce ever since you were little but you’re sure it’ll never result in anything because how are you meant to have a relationship when you both just stare at each other for ten seconds before doing anything?
You open your mouth to speak, then close it. You step back and stumble over your own two feet, cuss yourself out in your head, and hold the door open wider for Bruce once you’re out of the way. “Um, you wanna wait inside?” It comes out half a mumble.
The little twitch Bruce makes tells you he jumped on the inside. “Yeah—Yeah, sure.” He ducks his head unnecessarily on the way in, scratching the back of his neck.
You slip you one shoe off as you close the door, then give him a tight-lipped smile. “I’m in the kitchen if you …” You let the sentence trail off and just walk past him, down the hall to the kitchen. He follows.
He notices, as soon as he’s in the kitchen, your other shoe by the counter and your dress shirt on top of the counter as you hop onto it. A bowl of dry cereal you were snacking on; you hug it to your chest now and eat it with your hands. Bruce leans against the side of the fridge, his head on it.
Silence.
You blink at him. He blinks at you.
“How long is Tommy go—”
“Another ten minutes, more or less,” you answer.
He nods.
Silence.
You crunch on your cereal, then stiffly hold the bowl out. “Want some?”“ you ask with cereal in your mouth.
He shakes his head. "No, thanks.”
He wants to say something so bad he could bang his head against the fridge right now.
He puts his hand in his pocket and pulls at his skin through the fabric. “How’s, um … how’s school?” he asks lamely. Then he cringes, turning to press his forehead into the side of the fridge as hard as he can.
You nod, swinging your feet in small circles. “Yeah, it's—yeah, it’s good.”
“That’s good.”
Quiet again, mostly. Your cereal crunching as you it. But quiet, mostly. You just watch him as he keeps his face against the refrigerator like he’s trying to push his head through it. He is, probably.
You sigh like you’re about so speak, then bite your lip. Your heart is beating all fast and you second-guess everything you wanna say. Ask him about school, baseball, his family—?
“This is really awkward,” you finally say timidly, putting another handful of dry cereal in your mouth
He gives you a little smile, face still pressed there, eyes still closed. “Yeah,” he responds, strained. “It is.”
You set your bowl down. It’s only got crumbs now, anyway. “How do we make it … less awkward?”
He turns to face you and finally opens his eyes, shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Tommy still hugs his stuffed animals at night. Can’t sleep otherwise, unless he’s with someone,” you find yourself blurting out suddenly, eyes all wide.
Bruce tilts his head at you and you swallow. You think, for a moment, that that was too weird to mention—but then he starts laughing. A small one at first, then when he starts laughing more and more, so do you. He’s got one of those sweet, contagious laughs.
Tension defused.
The laughter is dying down and you’re both catching your breaths when your brother finally comes into the kitchen, looking for Bruce. He glances between the both of you, making a face. “Everything ok … ?” he asks.
Bruce nods, wiping tears. “Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine,” he pants.
Tommy snorts. “All right. Anyway, I’ve got the Magnavox set up already. Wanna go play?”
He’s still all breathless. “Sure, let’s go.” He turns to you before he leaves and gives you a little smile and wave. “Later, Y/N.”
“Bye,” you say, practically a whisper.
Maybe there is a chance for a relationship after all.
