Story: "Touching Moments" (Part 7 of 8)
Mar. 31st, 2013 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis story is a sequel to "Love Is for Children," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys," and "Turnabout Is Fair Play."
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, JARVIS, Betty Ross.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: No standard warnings apply.
Summary: Clint messes up his back while testing some new archery equipment. Bruce offers to fix his back for him.
Notes: Asexual character (Clint). Aromantic character (Natasha). Asexual relationship. Teamwork. Flangst. Fear of vulnerability. Trust issues. Skin hunger. Hurt/comfort. Non-sexual touching and intimacy. Non-sexual ageplay. Cuteness. Personal growth. Family of choice.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
"Touching Moments" Part 7
Game night found Clint in a languid sprawl on the couch. Bruce sat on the far end, while Uncle Phil leaned against the side of the couch near Clint's head. Natka curled up in a chair. Steve was already rummaging in the toy cabinet. Clint didn't even look up when Tony and Betty came into the common room.
"Any luck fixing Clint's equipment?" Phil asked Tony.
Tony shook his head. "No, I got the note from Bruce and it pretty much means I need to scrap the old design and start from scratch," he said.
"I can wait," Clint said lazily. "Don't feel like moving much today."
Tony took one look at him and said, "Wow, who deboned you?"
Clint lifted a fingertip in Bruce's direction.
"I had help," Bruce said modestly, looking at Phil.
"You did all the hard work, Bruce," said Phil. He didn't worry about Tony's lack of progress. If the usual pattern held, Tony would sleep on it and wake up before dawn with half a dozen new ideas, each more brilliant than the last.
"Do my feet too?" Clint asked, waving them at Bruce.
"Sure," Bruce said. He lifted one foot into his lap.
"Clint, don't be greedy," Phil chided. "Game night is a time to relax, not to work. Bruce already spent half the afternoon on you."
"I don't mind," Bruce said. "I started learning this when I was two. Keeps people ... happy."
Phil considered that. On one hand, he didn't want any kind of work intruding into game night. He also didn't want Bruce to feel obligated to "keep people happy," particularly if that tied into his feelings of safety, sustenance, or self-worth as it probably had during childhood. Then again, here was little-Bruce talking and sitting with people, instead of keeping mostly to himself. That's an improvement worth encouraging, Phil decided. I'll just have to keep an eye on it to make sure nothing gets out of hand.
"All right, go ahead," Phil said aloud.
Bruce looked at Natka. "Watch," he said. He placed his thumb just under Clint's big toe and moved down to where the ball of foot gave way to the arch, then pressed carefully.
Clint's toes curled.
Natka's jaw dropped. "How did you do that?" she exclaimed. "Show me how to do that." She scrambled out of the chair and wedged herself onto the couch.
Phil smiled. He'd take a three-way interaction gladly, whatever form it took. He also made a mental note that teaching seemed to draw Bruce out of his shell. Maybe I can find something else he remembers from this age, and coax him into sharing with the rest of the class, Phil mused.
Bruce showed Natka some of the pressure points on Clint's feet that matched other places in his body where he tended to store tension. She stared intently, mapping them to what she had already memorized for other purposes. Bruce taught her how to make a loop with her hands to run along the whole foot at once. Natka pointed out the one ticklish spot that Clint had, just where the undersides of his toes met the balls of his feet. They worked around that.
Phil let his hand drift down to stroke through Clint's hair. Clint gave him a big sloppy grin, his head lolling against the arm of the couch. "Love you all so much," Clint said lazily. Phil petted him again. Clint's eyes rolled up and then slowly closed. He made the soft chirring sound that Phil remembered from the earlier session.
"I think he's going to fall asleep on us," Natka said. "I heard that Clint hurt his back on the range. What on earth did you give him to make him this loopy?"
"A backrub," Bruce said.
Natka's eyebrows went up. "Oh really?"
"Yes, really," Phil assured her. "I was there. I even helped."
Then Phil glanced around the room to check the rest of his "kids." Tony, Betty, and Steve had arranged themselves on the floor with the set of Concentration cards that featured hand-drawn elements from the periodic table. They were just about an even match for each other, all with a keen eye and reliable memory for what they'd seen. Their hands danced over the cards, turning over pair after pair.
"That game looks awfully easy for you," Phil observed. "Why don't you make it more of a challenge? Draw another set of cards and aim for trios instead of pairs."
"I'll get the paper and crayons," Tony said.
"I want colored pencils. Crayons are too clunky for this," Steve said.
"I can't draw that well. I'll just watch," Betty said.
Tony and Steve spread out their art supplies on the coffee table, tugging it farther away from the couch. "JARVIS, show us diagrams of the elements," Tony said, and a periodic table popped into view in front of him. Moving slowly so that Steve could follow what he did, Tony broke off the column of noble gasses from the right end and passed it to him. "Look, Steve, you can take this apart. Pick the piece you want." Tony separated hydrogen from the elements still in front of him. He caged the little cube loosely in his fingers. "Then you just --" Tony flicked his hand open, and the cube expanded into a diagram of one electron orbiting one proton. "-- and it pops out a picture for you to copy."
Steve gazed dubiously at the little stack of cubes before him. So far, he was willing to look at holograms but hesitated to manipulate them much more than moving a single picture or block of text around as if it were a solid object.
"Steve, give it a try," Phil coaxed. "Then if you still don't feel comfortable with it, you can do something else instead."
"I have books," Bruce said, looking up from Clint's feet. "Paper ones."
"... okay," Steve said. Taking a deep breath, he closed his fingers over the helium cube and tugged on it. Phil watched closely as JARVIS adapted from Tony's gracile motion to Steve's far clumsier version. The cube came free easily, following Steve's hand. He grinned.
"Now blow it up to see the picture," Tony prompted. He balled his hand and flicked it open again. Phil remembered how Tony had invented a whole new element with just such motions, yet here he was playing with someone whose computer knowledge would fit into a bottlecap with room left over.
Steve fumbled the little cube of light into his palm and closed his fist. It was a tighter grip than Tony had used, and if Phil was reading things right, that would normally have dismissed the hologram. But JARVIS already knew what Steve intended, so when Steve slowly opened his hand, the picture sprang into existence just as it was meant to do. Two electrons orbited a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons.
"I did it!" Steve exclaimed.
Phil clapped softly. "Well done," he said. He knew how hard it was for Steve to wrap his mind around the bewildering array of modern technology. Every step forward was deserving of praise.
* * *
Notes:
Sleep facilitates insight, making it easier to solve problems. Sleep changes the energy and chemistry patterns of the brain in ways that affect data handling. Tony's drunken engineering may take advantage of similar effects.
Abused children often try to be pleasing and compliant to other people. Male survivors can have issues with gender identity/expression. Working with abuse survivors to overcome the aftereffects is tricky and complicated. Phil does a lot of work on boundary maintenance because most of the Avengers have trouble recognizing appropriate boundaries.
Foot reflexology is a way of mapping the whole body in miniature; here's a sample map. For some people it seems to work really well, although others don't find that it does anything for them.
Concentration is a card-matching game.
See the periodic table of elements.
Uncle Phil uses praise liberally to encourage personal growth and other good behavior. While most often applied to children, this approach works with adults too -- especially those from a deprived childhood. Most of the Avengers are starving for praise. All Phil has to do is watch for opportunities to build esteem.
[To be concluded in Part 8 ...]
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, JARVIS, Betty Ross.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: No standard warnings apply.
Summary: Clint messes up his back while testing some new archery equipment. Bruce offers to fix his back for him.
Notes: Asexual character (Clint). Aromantic character (Natasha). Asexual relationship. Teamwork. Flangst. Fear of vulnerability. Trust issues. Skin hunger. Hurt/comfort. Non-sexual touching and intimacy. Non-sexual ageplay. Cuteness. Personal growth. Family of choice.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
"Touching Moments" Part 7
Game night found Clint in a languid sprawl on the couch. Bruce sat on the far end, while Uncle Phil leaned against the side of the couch near Clint's head. Natka curled up in a chair. Steve was already rummaging in the toy cabinet. Clint didn't even look up when Tony and Betty came into the common room.
"Any luck fixing Clint's equipment?" Phil asked Tony.
Tony shook his head. "No, I got the note from Bruce and it pretty much means I need to scrap the old design and start from scratch," he said.
"I can wait," Clint said lazily. "Don't feel like moving much today."
Tony took one look at him and said, "Wow, who deboned you?"
Clint lifted a fingertip in Bruce's direction.
"I had help," Bruce said modestly, looking at Phil.
"You did all the hard work, Bruce," said Phil. He didn't worry about Tony's lack of progress. If the usual pattern held, Tony would sleep on it and wake up before dawn with half a dozen new ideas, each more brilliant than the last.
"Do my feet too?" Clint asked, waving them at Bruce.
"Sure," Bruce said. He lifted one foot into his lap.
"Clint, don't be greedy," Phil chided. "Game night is a time to relax, not to work. Bruce already spent half the afternoon on you."
"I don't mind," Bruce said. "I started learning this when I was two. Keeps people ... happy."
Phil considered that. On one hand, he didn't want any kind of work intruding into game night. He also didn't want Bruce to feel obligated to "keep people happy," particularly if that tied into his feelings of safety, sustenance, or self-worth as it probably had during childhood. Then again, here was little-Bruce talking and sitting with people, instead of keeping mostly to himself. That's an improvement worth encouraging, Phil decided. I'll just have to keep an eye on it to make sure nothing gets out of hand.
"All right, go ahead," Phil said aloud.
Bruce looked at Natka. "Watch," he said. He placed his thumb just under Clint's big toe and moved down to where the ball of foot gave way to the arch, then pressed carefully.
Clint's toes curled.
Natka's jaw dropped. "How did you do that?" she exclaimed. "Show me how to do that." She scrambled out of the chair and wedged herself onto the couch.
Phil smiled. He'd take a three-way interaction gladly, whatever form it took. He also made a mental note that teaching seemed to draw Bruce out of his shell. Maybe I can find something else he remembers from this age, and coax him into sharing with the rest of the class, Phil mused.
Bruce showed Natka some of the pressure points on Clint's feet that matched other places in his body where he tended to store tension. She stared intently, mapping them to what she had already memorized for other purposes. Bruce taught her how to make a loop with her hands to run along the whole foot at once. Natka pointed out the one ticklish spot that Clint had, just where the undersides of his toes met the balls of his feet. They worked around that.
Phil let his hand drift down to stroke through Clint's hair. Clint gave him a big sloppy grin, his head lolling against the arm of the couch. "Love you all so much," Clint said lazily. Phil petted him again. Clint's eyes rolled up and then slowly closed. He made the soft chirring sound that Phil remembered from the earlier session.
"I think he's going to fall asleep on us," Natka said. "I heard that Clint hurt his back on the range. What on earth did you give him to make him this loopy?"
"A backrub," Bruce said.
Natka's eyebrows went up. "Oh really?"
"Yes, really," Phil assured her. "I was there. I even helped."
Then Phil glanced around the room to check the rest of his "kids." Tony, Betty, and Steve had arranged themselves on the floor with the set of Concentration cards that featured hand-drawn elements from the periodic table. They were just about an even match for each other, all with a keen eye and reliable memory for what they'd seen. Their hands danced over the cards, turning over pair after pair.
"That game looks awfully easy for you," Phil observed. "Why don't you make it more of a challenge? Draw another set of cards and aim for trios instead of pairs."
"I'll get the paper and crayons," Tony said.
"I want colored pencils. Crayons are too clunky for this," Steve said.
"I can't draw that well. I'll just watch," Betty said.
Tony and Steve spread out their art supplies on the coffee table, tugging it farther away from the couch. "JARVIS, show us diagrams of the elements," Tony said, and a periodic table popped into view in front of him. Moving slowly so that Steve could follow what he did, Tony broke off the column of noble gasses from the right end and passed it to him. "Look, Steve, you can take this apart. Pick the piece you want." Tony separated hydrogen from the elements still in front of him. He caged the little cube loosely in his fingers. "Then you just --" Tony flicked his hand open, and the cube expanded into a diagram of one electron orbiting one proton. "-- and it pops out a picture for you to copy."
Steve gazed dubiously at the little stack of cubes before him. So far, he was willing to look at holograms but hesitated to manipulate them much more than moving a single picture or block of text around as if it were a solid object.
"Steve, give it a try," Phil coaxed. "Then if you still don't feel comfortable with it, you can do something else instead."
"I have books," Bruce said, looking up from Clint's feet. "Paper ones."
"... okay," Steve said. Taking a deep breath, he closed his fingers over the helium cube and tugged on it. Phil watched closely as JARVIS adapted from Tony's gracile motion to Steve's far clumsier version. The cube came free easily, following Steve's hand. He grinned.
"Now blow it up to see the picture," Tony prompted. He balled his hand and flicked it open again. Phil remembered how Tony had invented a whole new element with just such motions, yet here he was playing with someone whose computer knowledge would fit into a bottlecap with room left over.
Steve fumbled the little cube of light into his palm and closed his fist. It was a tighter grip than Tony had used, and if Phil was reading things right, that would normally have dismissed the hologram. But JARVIS already knew what Steve intended, so when Steve slowly opened his hand, the picture sprang into existence just as it was meant to do. Two electrons orbited a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons.
"I did it!" Steve exclaimed.
Phil clapped softly. "Well done," he said. He knew how hard it was for Steve to wrap his mind around the bewildering array of modern technology. Every step forward was deserving of praise.
* * *
Notes:
Sleep facilitates insight, making it easier to solve problems. Sleep changes the energy and chemistry patterns of the brain in ways that affect data handling. Tony's drunken engineering may take advantage of similar effects.
Abused children often try to be pleasing and compliant to other people. Male survivors can have issues with gender identity/expression. Working with abuse survivors to overcome the aftereffects is tricky and complicated. Phil does a lot of work on boundary maintenance because most of the Avengers have trouble recognizing appropriate boundaries.
Foot reflexology is a way of mapping the whole body in miniature; here's a sample map. For some people it seems to work really well, although others don't find that it does anything for them.
Concentration is a card-matching game.
See the periodic table of elements.
Uncle Phil uses praise liberally to encourage personal growth and other good behavior. While most often applied to children, this approach works with adults too -- especially those from a deprived childhood. Most of the Avengers are starving for praise. All Phil has to do is watch for opportunities to build esteem.
[To be concluded in Part 8 ...]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-31 05:59 am (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2013-04-01 06:29 am (UTC)Yep, they're back at play.
>>Steve's finally getting a bit used to technology. lovely update<<
It takes a while to build up enough of a foundation for Steve to start doing more complex things. Of course, having intelligent user-friendly equipment helps a lot. Tony's good at showing people how to do things, when he cares enough to bother.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-31 04:08 pm (UTC)*laugh*
Date: 2013-04-01 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-31 07:02 pm (UTC)Thank you!
Date: 2013-04-01 08:14 am (UTC)I love working with character emotions.
>> The part when they play the memory game and then decide to draw new cards was wonderful, it reminded me how good it is to just spend time playing and enjoying whatever activity with good friends, and with all the time in the world.<<
That is fun. I've done all kinds of wacky things with friends.
>> Not doing it often enough nowadays, I'm going to seriously think about this...<<
Good idea, if you've got folks to play with.
>> And I loved the part with Steve and the new technology, and JARVIS compensating for his clumsiness, and Steve being so happy about it. Very sweet! <<
It takes very careful coaching to get the bottom rungs on the technology ladder low enough that Steve will try to climb. He was never particularly good at mechanical things to begin with, and is just hopelessly intimidated now. But Tony and JARVIS are learning how to coax him forward. Once Steve understands what he's supposed to do to make things work, he'll develop more finesse.
>>Lovely update, thanks so much for sharing!<<
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.
For Steve's backstory
Date: 2013-04-01 02:56 am (UTC)Again, I love everything you've done with these characters, and cannot wait for how you work on others, particularly Thor being little when it's his turn.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-01 12:44 pm (UTC)You're welcome!
Date: 2013-04-01 06:30 pm (UTC)Thank you! That flair for description is standard for my writing. I've only got one setting that doesn't feature it; my dark fantasy world Penumbra has a very austere style.
Among my more intensely descriptive settings are any of the 'period' pieces (Hart's Farm, Fiorenza the Wisewoman, etc.) and the Schrodinger's Heroes stuff that focuses on character rather than plot (like "Attention to Detail" and "Pat's Place"). Oh, and there's my nature poetry on the nonfiction side: almost all of that is description-dominant stuff.
I think you'll get a kick out of "Splash" -- it's part of the current series but has a very different flavor in the description.
>> i know i go on and on about the plot and yes that is awesome but you also have a way of writing that is witty comforting and very vivid.. Awesome thank you <<
That's good to hear. As I go through this series, I'm practicing different techniques, so some stories are mood pieces, some are plotty, some are more about characterization, some focus on subjective experience, etc.
It's interesting to see which things appeal to different readers. So far I've had people say they've used "Turnabout Is Fair Play" as virtual hot chocolate and "Touching Moments" as virtual massage. Hee!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-09 06:35 am (UTC)i have a massage person almost as good as bruce i think!!! the first time she saw me she stayed for five hours - not all massaging, talking too, but five hours omg!?!!!!! very lucky.
(same nonny as yesterday)
Thoughts
Date: 2013-05-10 08:03 am (UTC)*laugh* Yes, people have described my writing as "flypaper for eyeballs." It can be hard to stop once you've started.
>>i have a massage person almost as good as bruce i think!!! the first time she saw me she stayed for five hours - not all massaging, talking too, but five hours omg!?!!!!! very lucky.<<
You are indeed lucky. Some people will do whatever it takes to get the job done.