ysabetwordsmith | Story: "Birthday Girl" (Part 2 of 18)

This story is a sequel to "Love Is for Children," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," and "Touching Moments," "Splash," and "Coming Around."

Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Hulk, Steve Rogers, Betty Ross, JARVIS.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Inferences of past child abuse. Current environment is safe.
Summary: Doombots crash a beautiful spring day in the park. The Avengers clean up the mess. This includes Natasha's rather confused longing for something she never had: a birthday party.
Notes: Asexual character (Clint). Aromantic character (Natasha). Asexual relationship. Teamwork. Canon-typical violence. Friendship. Confusion. Hulk is a genius too. Fluff. Making up for lost time. Birthday. Cultural traditions. Games. Gifts. Cake. The cake is never a lie! Tickling. Trust issues. Safety and security. Non-sexual touching and intimacy. Personal growth. Family of choice.

Begin with Part 1. Skip to Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18.

"Birthday Girl" Part 2

She shrugged. "No. I just never had the time for them. I do not see the appeal."

"Well ... because they're fun," Hawkeye said. "We used to sell 'em at the circus. Kids love balloons. They come in all colors, and the helium ones float." He picked up a purple balloon and turned to Hulk. "Here, buddy, hold out your hands." Hulk did. Hawkeye placed the balloon in the huge green palms.

Hulk gazed down at it resting safely in his grasp. "Pretty bloon," he said. Then he looked up at Hawkeye. "Show Bruce ... Hulk gentle?"

Hawkeye grinned. "You are a genius," he declared, backing a few steps out of Hulk's reach. Hulk shook his head. "No, don't give me that, Jolly Green. Bruce may be a hotshot with science, but when it comes to people, he's pretty much clueless. You are the one with the people smarts. Coulson, get a camera on us and film this, yeah?"

Agent Coulson tweaked the security apparatus to record the activity and sequester it in a secure location. "Ready when you are, Hawkeye," he said.

"And, action!" Hawkeye said. He held up his hands. "Hulk, toss me the balloon." The purple sphere wobbled through the air. Hawkeye caught it delicately. "Now I'm going to throw it back, and you do just what I did. Catch it real soft." Hawkeye lobbed the balloon at him.

Hulk cupped his hands again and caught the fragile thing with exquisite care. "Hulk do right?" he asked, hungry for praise.

"You did exactly right!" Hawkeye said. "Keep it going, big guy."

"Hulk looks so fierce, yet he is so tender inside," Black Widow said as she watched the game. "I am the opposite."

"We're all capable of being fierce or tender as the occasion requires," Agent Coulson reminded her. Some of us with more precision than others.

"It must be nice to live in that kind of world," she said, not looking at him. Her gaze fixed on the trappings of a childhood that she never had.

Hulk ambled over with the ribbon of a helium balloon pinched carefully between thumb and forefinger. Across the silver mylar, rainbow letters spelled Happy Birthday. Hulk held out the balloon to her and said, "Happy, Red."

She crossed her arms. "It's not my birthday. I don't have one."

"Everyone born, everyone have birthday," Hulk said in a stunning display of logic for someone who rarely used it. "Red here, have birthday." He moved the balloon an inch closer.

"He has a point," Agent Coulson said. It bothered him to see her shutting down her emotions so completely, but he knew better than to push when she got like this. The most he dared do was make factual remarks. I wonder what in the world set her off so badly, he thought. If any of the children got hurt, maybe ...

"Not me," Black Widow said in response to Hulk's claim. "That's one more thing the Red Room stole from me."

"Steal back," Hulk said. He gave the shiny balloon a tempting wiggle.

"Jeez, Black Widow, just take the darn thing from him already. You're gonna make him cry," Hawkeye said. He moved closer so that he could wrap an arm around Hulk's tree-sized leg. They touched often, now, after a battle.

* * *

Notes:

It is possible to play catch with a balloon filled only with air, although it's easier with a water balloon or some other weight. There are many other games and activities with balloons.

fannishliss has made an action-figure illustration of the balloon scene. :D

Hulk's genius stat is emotional intelligence, spanning both interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects. Conversely this is one of Bruce's weakest areas.

Gentleness is the virtue of being tender with people and things. It can be taught and learned. It is closely connected with power exchange. Notice that while the Avengers choose to continue their high-pressure profession, they compensate by cultivating a gentle home life.

The birthday balloon looks something like this.

Hulk really is using basic if-then logic. Black Widow is alive, therefore she was born, therefore she has a birthday. This is not Hulk's best mode, but he can pull it out of the shared brain and make it work for simple purposes.

The Red Room trained operatives in emotional shutdown. So Black Widow has a very flat emotional range, even now. Phil is working to help her expand that in more healthy ways, but it's a slow process.

[To be continued in Part 3 ...]

Current Mood: busy

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

From: (Anonymous)

Wow Hulk has so many good points to make here. Although he has a much less complicated line of thinking, he makes very important points that many people would skip over because they're so obvious. The Red Room stole Natasha's childhood right to a birthday and of all people, Hulk is the one giving it back. She has tenderness in her too, she just has to find it and let it out. Ah the return of sock Clint... :)

Thanks for the update! Now I can sleep and ponder Hulk's points of logic :)

--Siren

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> Wow Hulk has so many good points to make here. <<

Yay! I'm glad this worked for you.

>> Although he has a much less complicated line of thinking, he makes very important points that many people would skip over because they're so obvious. <<

Precisely. Also Hulk's strongest area of intelligence is one that society pays very little attention to, so he's coming from an uncommon perspective. That adds to the tendency to spot things other people have missed.

>> The Red Room stole Natasha's childhood right to a birthday and of all people, Hulk is the one giving it back.<<

Yes. The Red Room took almost everything, and Natasha ... usually pretends not to be bothered by that, in regard to the BAMFskills gained in the process. What she does not realize is how much the former can undercut the latter.

Hulk does not have this problem. He sees what there is to be seen. He also doesn't second-guess himself about anything. Once he spots a problem, he moves directly to address it. Although not good at handling big complex things, he is adept at grasping some small, immediate, concrete thing that he can work on.

That's going to startle the heck out of people who are used to thinking of him as the Smash Guy. But there's a lot more to Hulk than that.

>> She has tenderness in her too, she just has to find it and let it out. <<

True. That's going to take longer, though. It's like the slow process with Bruce-and-Hulk learning to communicate better. First Natasha has to learn how to open up, before she can figure out what's inside and how to use it.

Her tenderness is there, but it comes out very rarely -- up to this point, it's only been snippets with Clint, Phil, or Bruce-and-Hulk. It's just not something she's had an opportunity to learn before, let alone express. She doesn't know what to do, and that often makes her stiffen up.

>> Ah the return of sock Clint... :) <<

*laugh* Yeah, I think sock!Clint is becoming a thing. Hulk is so big, and Clint is one of the smaller Avengers, so if Hulk is standing up and Clint hugs him ... sock it is. He can't reach much higher.

>>Thanks for the update! Now I can sleep and ponder Hulk's points of logic :) <<

*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.

From:

sherza

Can I just say your Hulk is made of awesome and win? And that the mental picture of Clint and Hulk playing catch with a balloon had me going D'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwww? How the heck does a 12 foot tall ragemonster come across as so damn CUTE?

Also: Adding whoever of the Red Room controllers/training staff/whatever you want to call them is still alive to the 'burn in effigy' list. Because holy shit.

Also also: talking about the Red Room is making me think of Bucky, and whether or not he exists as Winter Soldier in your fic-verse, and from there 'oh, hell, the wreckage if he showed up and got rescued would be ugly'.

That said, I sincerely doubt that's something you'd be able to address somewhere in this lovely series. Just makes for a wince-worthy thought.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> Can I just say your Hulk is made of awesome and win? <<

Yay! That's good to hear.

>>And that the mental picture of Clint and Hulk playing catch with a balloon had me going D'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwww?<<

That would make a fun illustration, yes.

>> How the heck does a 12 foot tall ragemonster come across as so damn CUTE?<<

Context. The childlike aspects of Hulk match well with the props of childhood in this scene. But there's also the contrast between power and gentleness -- we've seen how much damage Hulk can do in ragemonster mode, and now we're seeing that there's more to him than that. All that strength, so carefully controlled, out of concern for others and a desire to play with something fragile; it's unexpected and potent.

It's cute for the same reason that a gorilla cuddling a kitten is cute.

And yes, I think of things like this when I'm writing.

>> Also: Adding whoever of the Red Room controllers/training staff/whatever you want to call them is still alive to the 'burn in effigy' list. Because holy shit. <<

Noted. They are creepy evil monstrosities. Useful, though, in reminding people that what makes a monster is not form but function; they are Homo sapiens but less human than Hulk.

>> Also also: talking about the Red Room is making me think of Bucky, and whether or not he exists as Winter Soldier in your fic-verse, <<

He does. Several folks have asked about including him.

>> and from there 'oh, hell, the wreckage if he showed up and got rescued would be ugly'. <<

Well reasoned.

>> That said, I sincerely doubt that's something you'd be able to address somewhere in this lovely series. Just makes for a wince-worthy thought. <<

The longer the series goes, the deeper territory it gets into. Now that the team is meshed, they have a support network in each other. So they can handle levels of challenge that would have shattered them earlier.

Whether the audience will follow me from sweet to bittersweet ... is a test of my skill as an author. Sometimes a series evolves as it goes along. That's a challenge, because people who join for one thing may or may not like another. On the other hoof, an unchanging series can get repetitive and therefore boring. So this is a chance for me to practice handling these matters in a relaxed context where I'm not trying to make money from it; that's useful.

One thing I've noticed is consistent: it's less about how badly things go wrong than about how badly people handle the inevitable misfortunes. I think I'd squick people a lot worse with a minor incident that the characters treated with indifference, than a major incident that made the characters pull together. That family-feel lies at the core of the series; it's about care as much as fluff.

Let's see what happens ...

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