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“Why so glum, stranger? Didn’t anybody tell you you’re a superhero?”

“Ehhh? What in the…” Ben looked around, suddenly realizing he was in the Baxter Building—riding the elevator, even. It’d just stopped and opened up its doors. He’d walked back from Alicia’s apartment, cleared Four Freedoms Plaza’s security, and punched in the code to his floor, all on autopilot as he brooded about his trouble. Just like spacing out while on a long-range flight. And if he’d bumped into someone mistakenly, it could’ve been as bad as a plane crash…

The woman who’d spoken to him was Jen, looking as good as ever in a sweatsuit. The pants—maybe it was his predicament, but the drawstring seemed to draw his eye to her crotch—were laid over her well-muscled legs like those marble sculptures whose artist had been good enough to render tissue-thin silk in his work. It was loose enough to give her some motion, but in other places it strained to cover her shapely thighs and strong calves. He had to think that pretty soon she’d have those pants worn out.

Her sweatshirt was the same story, hoodie up, a purple sweatband holding her hair out of her eyes. With the gray fabric covering her from limb to limb, her jade skin flared even brighter, like it was catching all the light her sweatsuit disdained. The jacket was partially unzipped, revealing some of the cleavage of the white shirt she wore under it, and how hard-pressed it was to hold in her breasts. They pushed out far through both the shirt and the jacket, so that even though the jacket was loose enough to take the strain, it sloped steeply down into an indistinguishable mass of dangling folds instead of really covering her diamond-hard abs. He could see a swath of damp green flesh at her navel when she walked, and her jiggling cleavage jostled her clothing up from her waist.

Ben had, of course, seen her in the skintight spandex that served as her costume, as well as any number of clothes that looked more fashionable on her muscular, seven-foot-tall frame than they had any right to. But something about these work-out clothes—nice and tight, but thick and modest enough to be disarming—sent a powerful surge of lust through Ben. He tugged on the collar of his shirt, and heard a seam rip. Yeesh.

“Oh, it’s you, Jen.” Covering up his boner—his accident—was enough to finally prompt him to speak. “What are ya doin’ here? Ain’t there enough lawyering in New York for ya?”

“Plenty, but all of it’s boring. I have associates for boring. Thought I’d come by the good ol’ Baxter, see if there’s any good mad science on. Just the thing for a lame-ass Sunday, right?”

“Yeah. Haha. Right.” The doors started to close and Ben stopped them, stepping off the elevator before it had to stand his weight anymore. He thought he heard a groan of relief as it rocked back on its brakes. 

His long strides put him closer to She-Hulk, so much so that he could smell her sweat, strong but not unpleasant, and impossible for a mook like him to describe.

She’d run her way here. “I’m sorry, Jen, it’s not you. I’ve just gotten myself in a fix. Maybe ya oughta come back tomorrow, see if Reed can scare you up some weird science then.”

Jen crossed her arms, and it was impossible not to notice how far away she had to hold them from her chest to avoid crushing her breasts. Really, she had to set them on top of her cleavage, like a shelf—“Well, why don’t you tell me about it? Believe me, lawyers make great listeners. And I won’t even bill you.”

“Nah, it’s pretty personal.” Ben pushed past her. “Just some annoying stuff I gotta deal with, y’know. Hafta psyche myself up for it. Means I’m not much good for anything else.”

“Well, speaking not as a lawyer, but as a law student, have you ever tried procrastination?”

“And I thought you was a grade-A nerd. Got all your assignments turned in early with the extra credit done.”

“Yeah, that was me, alright. Means I’ve got a lot of productive time to make up for. So how ‘bout it, Grimm? Let’s step into the sparring room and go a few rounds. Could cheer you up.”

There was a slight rattle of stone, like pebbles rubbing together, as the Thing’s rocky brows knitted together. He didn’t really feel like mixing it up, and he always felt like mixing it up, but maybe he should fake it till he made it. He did have a lot of anxiety to burn off, and Jen knew him better than he knew himself, for Christ’s sake. If she thought it was a good idea, surely he had time to indulge her before he got on with lying back and thinking of England.

They went into the sparring room, a wide, tall gymnasium that was not made of tiles or floorboards, but of a concentric pattern of squares. Each one was equipped with a sophisticated mini-computer and some gravitational doohickey that was pretty much a spring. When it detected a mass incoming—say, a robot Ben had thrown, or less frequently, Ben himself—it loaded the targeted square up with potential energy that would counteract their momentum, checking them instead of letting them continue on to burst through the wall and damage the rest of the building. So the whole room was a million-dollar-gym-mat, only worth a lot more than one million dollars.

“Alright, Ben,” Jen said challengingly. “So’s see if you can take me.” She unzipped her sweatshirt. “And if I can take you.”

“Course ya can take me,” Ben replied, himself stripping off his outer layer of garments. There weren’t many tailors who sold clothes in his size. He preferred keeping them intact as long as possible, even if it was a doomed proposition. The baddies loved blasting him while he was in his nice, spiffy clothes way too much to ever be gents about it and let him change into his playsuit first. 

“But not today,” he finished, kicking his boots off for good measure. He wore no socks, and when one of the boots fell over instead of landing upright, some motes of sediment fell out. Looked like he was due for a power-washing of the ol’ wardrobe.

With his stuff put away in one of the lockers that bordered the door—that whole, necessarily bared section of the room about to have a forcefield covering it—he turned to face Jen. 

And got the shock of his life.