Story: "Up the Water Spout" Part 7

[ysabetwordsmith]

This story belongs to the series Love Is For Children which includes "Love Is for Children," "Hairpins," "Blended," "Am I Not," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys,""Saudades," "Querencia," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," "Touching Moments," "Splash," "Coming Around," "Birthday Girl," "No Winter Lasts Forever," "Hide and Seek," "Kernel Error," "Happy Hour," "Green Eggs and Hulk,""kintsukuroi," and "Little and Broken, but Still Good."

Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Natasha Romanova, Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Betty Ross, Bucky Barnes.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: Mention of human trafficking and nonconsensual drug use. Slightly offstage sexual violence. Dubcon/Noncon.
Summary: Sometimes the Black Widow needs to hunt, and sometimes she needs help settling her personality afterwards. Uncle Phil arranges an extra ageplay session.
Notes: Hurt/comfort. Family. Fluff and angst. BAMF!Black Widow. Black Widow is creepy. Spiders. Coping skills. Asking for help and getting it. Hope. Nonsexual ageplay. Caregiving. Competence. Girl stuff. Toys and games. Gentleness. Trust. #coulsonlives

Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6. Skip to Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12.


"Up the Water Spout" Part 7


Uncle Phil brought out a handful of hula hoops, most of which actually belonged to Steve, relics of his exploration into fads that he'd missed while under the ice. First came a stack of hoops in plain primary colors and assorted sizes. Steve had quickly figured out that, at his size, he needed a big hoop. The heavy rainbow-colored hoop with ridged interior was his current favorite, intended for fitness training. The novelty hoops with spirals of holographic and glow-in-the-dark tape had been a whim. They had inspired Tony to make the last hoop, some sort of clear material with multicolored lights inside, which thanks to the Stark Industries logo were probably not ordinary LED and had seemingly infinite battery life.

Phil scattered the hoops on the floor. "All right, pick one and give it a whirl."

Betty stepped on the rim of a yellow hoop, deftly flipping it upright. She set it around her waist and began twirling it with expert grace.

"Does it matter which I pick?" Natka asked.

"Actually, yes," Phil said as he sorted through the choices. "The bigger the hoop, the slower it moves, which makes it easier to manage. The ideal size should come about to your waist when you stand it on the ground." He demonstrated with one of the holographic hoops.

Natka tried a few, then settled on a red one. "How do I make it spin?"

"Like this," Phil said, flipping his hoop neatly around his waist. He gave a quick thrust and twist.

The hoop clattered to the ground.

Both girls giggled.

"It's been a long time since I did this," Phil muttered. He picked up the hoop, determined to try again. His aikido master had made him spend a month learning how to hula hoop, to teach him the importance of circles and spirals. Phil concentrated, put the hoop in motion, and managed to keep it going for a few seconds before losing it again. "Drat."

"Here, it works like this," Betty said to Natka. "Hold the hoop around your waist. Throw it sideways to start it. When the rim touches your belly, push forward. When the rim touches your butt, push backward. You have to move fast." Betty suited actions to words, spinning her hoop. "It's just physics. Now you do it."

Natka tried to follow the instructions, but dropped the hoop. She picked it up again without hesitation.

Phil abandoned the lightweight hoop and tried the fitness one. He couldn't keep it going either. The darn thing weighed at least ten pounds. "What the ...?"

"That one is Steve's favorite, remember?" Betty said. "Just pull the sections apart and dump out the extra weights. It's a fitness hoop but the tubing only weighs about three pounds."

Phil twisted carefully to pop the arcs apart and spill the little lead balls inside another hoop. Without them, the hoop performed beautifully for him.

"Yay!" Betty said.

"I used to be actually good at this," Phil said, concentrating hard on his hips. The hoop whirled around him in slow, elegant arcs.

* * *

Notes:

Hula hoops are fun to spin. Read instructions or watch a video. There are games, activities, and tricks too.

See a hula hoop size chart and explore what size hoop to buy. Plain hoops come in assorted sizes. Fitness hoops are heavier. Many types of luminescent hoop are available. LED hoops are cool, though nowhere near as cool as Starktech.

Aikido is a martial art based on circles and spirals. Any kind of curving motion can be useful for training yourself to think in curvilinear ways.


[To be continued in Part 8 ...]

Comments

[somecrazygirl]

I'm proud of Natka: trying to learn to do something new in front of a bunch of people who are good at it has got to be scary for her.

I think Phil's being clever here in his selection, picking a lot of girl(-coded) games that are also very physical. These are things that he can be relatively sure she can pick up on with a little effort.

There's also a fairly clear line between success and failure, which means she'll know without being told that she's doing it right when she gets there. I've noticed a few mentions that Natka spends a lot of time mimicking others on game nights because she's not sure how something as nebulous as "being a child" or "having fun" is supposed to work. Being a little more clear-cut is bound to be more relaxing in that respect.

Betty's explanation doesn't seem like it would be quite the right one for Natka, but I'm not sure what would be. I bet that "it's just physics" rubbed Natka the wrong way, though.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I'm proud of Natka: trying to learn to do something new in front of a bunch of people who are good at it has got to be scary for her. <<

Sooth. It's utterly nerve-wracking for her. In her experience, failure = death threat. She hides it well most of the time, but it's there under the skin.

>> I think Phil's being clever here in his selection, picking a lot of girl(-coded) games that are also very physical. These are things that he can be relatively sure she can pick up on with a little effort. <<

Yes, exactly. These are also things that he and Betty can do well enough to demonstrate, but they aren't in current practice, so there's room for everyone to goof.

>> There's also a fairly clear line between success and failure, which means she'll know without being told that she's doing it right when she gets there. <<

That's true too. They're things that can be taught, or learned alone, so the amount of feedback can be flexible based on her taste.

>> I've noticed a few mentions that Natka spends a lot of time mimicking others on game nights because she's not sure how something as nebulous as "being a child" or "having fun" is supposed to work. Being a little more clear-cut is bound to be more relaxing in that respect. <<

That's a good point. Self-scoring activities have a clarity to them. She may not always understand the purpose but she can understand the activity itself.

>> Betty's explanation doesn't seem like it would be quite the right one for Natka, but I'm not sure what would be. I bet that "it's just physics" rubbed Natka the wrong way, though. <<

Like most nerds, Betty is better at figuring out how things work than at figuring out how someone else thinks. She's sociable enough that she can cross over if she thinks about it, but it's still easy for her to get in the groove and just say what's in her own mind. Which is physics.

Re: Yes...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Natka is enough to know that "It's just physics. Now you do it." is Betty's "apply skill, it behaves"

Play time for them includes all of them being themselves. It's like little Steve making his test swatches with the crayons. Bucky, knowing Steven when he was wee, can confirm he'd do that when he got stubs of carpenters' pencils, editors' red and blue...

Re: Yes...

[mdlbear]

I agree -- I think "It's just physics" would work for Natka. The further you get from pure Newtonian physics, the less predictable things get, and the harder to manage.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's doable, but it's still phrased in Betty's field.

I'm not sure what would be optimum for Natka. For adult!Natasha, the obvious approach would be, "Just pretend you're fucking it."

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Natka is enough to know that "It's just physics. Now you do it." is Betty's "apply skill, it behaves" <<

That may well be true. Natka can make sense of it, even if it's in Betty's idiom rather than her own.

>> Play time for them includes all of them being themselves. <<

Sooth. Little!Betty needs a place where she can be smart, and not criticized for it, or showed off like a dollie.

>> It's like little Steve making his test swatches with the crayons. Bucky, knowing Steven when he was wee, can confirm he'd do that when he got stubs of carpenters' pencils, editors' red and blue... <<

Any new material, really. And now Steve fools around with digital art the same way. He likes to learn things from the ground up.

Re: Yes...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I wanted to give some examples of Kewl Finds actualfacts wee Steve might have art-ed.

It is the best way to be in control of production and to know when to run with an upwelling of serendipity.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I think Stevie made art with anything he could get his hands on. Bucky was always watching out for things like pencil stubs and paper scraps. There's a mention somewhere of using half a can of blue porch paint to make monochrome portraits.

Re: Yes...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Indeed. Probably congealed ink bottles and other oddments too, all the things that are fussy. And on ends of butcher paper and squares of mismatched wrapping papers...

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Indeed. Probably congealed ink bottles and other oddments too, <<

Yep. Dried ink can be reconstituted by adding its carrier -- usually alcohol, water, or oil. All you have to do to identify the carrier is scrape out a bit of the dried ink and test what will dilute it.

Steve is more of a kitchen chemist than Tony or Bruce have quite realized yet.

>> all the things that are fussy. And on ends of butcher paper and squares of mismatched wrapping papers... <<

All the paper bags that things came in, especially places that used white instead of brown ones.

Re: Yes...

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I'm thinking that other than bottles it's still paper and string for much of that...

seeing mostly small bags for tiny things.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Grocery bags actually date back to the 1870s. During Steve's time, a lot of things were indeed wrapped in paper and string. But the brown paper bags were used, not just for carrying packages, but as firestarters, or wrappers, or art paper, or toys for kids, or shims under wobbly table legs, etc. Fancier places like bakeries or jewelry stores were more likely to have white ones; most were brown. A few upscale places had colored bags that far back, but rarely printed labels on them like everyone does now. My grandparents used paper bags for a ton of things, that's where I learned. I still use the plastic ones as home garbage bags.

Re: Yes...

[pinkrangerv]

I'm pretty sure the 'plastic bags as garbage bags' thing is universal...I saw a meme on Tumblr asking why everyone has a plastic bag full of shopping bags, and that's why--they fit nonstandard trash cans better than the typical trash bags.

I had a huge pile of cardboard that I was going to use for crafts, too, but I never ended up needing it and had to toss it when my neighbors gave me cockroaches.

can't wait!

[dialecticdreamer]

It took forever for me to learn to hula hoop. Or skip. Or jump rope even marginally.

The frustration, I can understand well. One of the problems I see for Natka is that, while her body behaves BRILLIANTLY well at physical things... she has been encouraged to simply NOT THINK about it. Either do, or do not, there is no try.

And that means that she hasn't learned the trick which allowed me to /finally/ jump rope, or knit, or any of a dozen other physical skills. I unpack it down to /one/ foundational motion and spend weeks if it takes that long, just learning it. But to unpack it requires more than just observation, or explanation; I have to understand how /I/ move. How /my/ body takes up space and the quirks that make /this/ move possible now, but /that/ one needs to wait for another support skill first.

Frex, belly dance. Friends suggested a /marvelous/ instructor, invited me along. I warned him that I was likely to be the worst belly dancer he'd ever met... and then I had to ask him to break down the hand motion called 'floriel' into the slowest repetition he could. I picked the starting point, copied it, and checked a couple of times, then tried to get the /one/ next motion. (Hand motions work with one of my strengths, are small enough to do anywhere without being odd, and are very distinctive, even within the different styles of belly dance; I didn't just say 'oo, I like that!)

Sure, I tried to do everything the class suggested, but the one motion I was trying to get right /every time/ was that starting hand position, plus one step. Then, just... next things. Add the next.

One of the things both Betty and Phil are modeling is the /unpacking/ part of learning; they analyse what isn't working for /them/ and take steps to correct it in ways she can /see/ are different than just "try again"-- Gah, I wanted to scream when that was the ONLY advice people would give me!

Re: can't wait!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> It took forever for me to learn to hula hoop. Or skip. Or jump rope even marginally. <<

I never did the hang of hula hooping. Skipping, no problem, and I'm adequate at jumping rope.

>> The frustration, I can understand well. One of the problems I see for Natka is that, while her body behaves BRILLIANTLY well at physical things... she has been encouraged to simply NOT THINK about it. Either do, or do not, there is no try. <<

Yes, exactly. She doesn't know how to play or explore with her body. Teaching was a matter of demonstrating a precise move and then abusing the kids until the survivors got it right.

>> And that means that she hasn't learned the trick which allowed me to /finally/ jump rope, or knit, or any of a dozen other physical skills. <<

Sadly so.

>> I unpack it down to /one/ foundational motion and spend weeks if it takes that long, just learning it. But to unpack it requires more than just observation, or explanation; I have to understand how /I/ move. How /my/ body takes up space and the quirks that make /this/ move possible now, but /that/ one needs to wait for another support skill first. <<

It's about experimentation, really -- knowing how to learn. If you don't know how to make mistakes, you can't learn very well, because your progress is more random. You're not able to distinguish between what works and what doesn't and see why. You just flounder.

>> Frex, belly dance. Friends suggested a /marvelous/ instructor, invited me along. I warned him that I was likely to be the worst belly dancer he'd ever met... and then I had to ask him to break down the hand motion called 'floriel' into the slowest repetition he could. I picked the starting point, copied it, and checked a couple of times, then tried to get the /one/ next motion. <<

Do what works for you. I'm good at bellydancing because I don't have to think about it; the music does the work for me. With something I have to remember, like swing or Irish, I'm much less adept and have a very hard time learning anything. I can maybe get one new step out of a lesson. I have a hard time convincing people that if I try to learn more, I won't retain any of it. Frustrating.

>> (Hand motions work with one of my strengths, are small enough to do anywhere without being odd, and are very distinctive, even within the different styles of belly dance; I didn't just say 'oo, I like that!) <<

It's a good idea to do the research, yes.

>> Sure, I tried to do everything the class suggested, but the one motion I was trying to get right /every time/ was that starting hand position, plus one step. Then, just... next things. Add the next. <<

Sooth. Novice bellydancers can do one thing at a time. Intermediates can do two or three. Advanced dancers can do it all at once.

>> One of the things both Betty and Phil are modeling is the /unpacking/ part of learning; they analyse what isn't working for /them/ and take steps to correct it in ways she can /see/ are different than just "try again"-- <<

I hadn't really thought about that, but yes, they are. It's important to analyze what you're doing and try to think what to change. So that's new and it helps.

>> Gah, I wanted to scream when that was the ONLY advice people would give me! <<

It took me a long time to realize that most people simply don't understand what they're doing well enough to explain it, not even most experts. A majority of instructions suck. It was bemusing to realize that my ability to analyze anything and break it down not just into steps but clearly worded actions that people can actually follow is rare enough to amount to a superpower. Seriously, I've had writing teachers tell me they're filching things out of my "how to write spells & rituals" book because it's the best instruction for writing that they've found. Well, yeah, I've read the ones that suck, I could do better so I did.

They don't mean to give useless advice. They just don't know what they're really doing, or how to describe it, or both. I've only ever found a few teachers who could really break things down in detail.

Re: can't wait!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Meta is hard, and there are lots of people that have followed their bliss and are doing what they are because it was 'easy' compared to what they weren't as quickly good at.

I had to learn lots of scaffolding to manage my spelling issues. Games with a light drill aspect to them would have helped. In the process I slurped up a fair amount of pedagogy etc. I worked very hard in Highland despite it taking a semester to be able to do a turn. But that also meant I learned the terminology (since that's my wheelhouse) and could convey which configuration of fling was chosen to the open dancer so when we went out she'd be doing the same steps with the mass.

I think a lot of teachers have been ill-served by the departments of education. It's an Augean stable of pseudoscience, authoritarianism, distraction and serving too many incompatible masters. It's not subject to scientific method, and depends entirely too much on "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain". Good teachers are too often left on rocks without hope of air support or resupply, and bad teachers in classrooms damaging students.

Re: can't wait!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Meta is hard, and there are lots of people that have followed their bliss and are doing what they are because it was 'easy' compared to what they weren't as quickly good at. <<

True.

>> I think a lot of teachers have been ill-served by the departments of education. <<

I agree. That's why I advise people to avoid it if they can. I care more about knowledge and sanity than the public education system. I'd prefer to have a thriving system, but if that's not an option, I'll warn people away from the seething La Brea that it has become.

Re: can't wait!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I believe in the proposition of public education, but long ago determined public education didn't believe in me. Only by the grace of other people's agitated parents and other sorts of luck...

Though considering that we've got women as angels (who thus can live on manna) and Prussia in one of the odder pairings even without the contrast of both from the federalist ideals.

Re: can't wait!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I believe in the proposition of public education, <<

Agreed.

>> but long ago determined public education didn't believe in me. <<

It didn't suit my needs either, and that was back when it was still halfway functional.

Re: can't wait!

[mdlbear]

I've often held that you don't really understand something until you can teach it to someone else. Not necessarily to *anyone* else -- sometimes there's an impedance mismatch, where what you're teaching doesn't match up with what they already know. Found that out trying to help my kids with their math homework; the way math is taught in schools tends to change drastically.

Re: can't wait!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Often true. It's more important to find a way that someone can learn to do something, than pressure them to use a specific method. The current one taught in schools seems to make sense to almost nobody -- which is great if you're trying to make criminals instead of citizens.

[(Anonymous)]

I_always_liked_water_filled_hoops.
They_like_to_keep_moving,_and_make_swishy_noises.