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ysabetwordsmithThis story was written for the Asexy Valentines Fest, partly inspired by aceofannwn. It also fills the "game night" square on my card for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
trope_bingo fest. This fest features fundamental motifs that will be familiar to most readers. It encourages writers to analyze storylines and characters, then reinterpret them in new ways.
Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, JARVIS
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: No standard warnings apply.
Summary: Phil Coulson is SHIELD's best handler for a reason: he can deal with the broken people that nobody else can manage but desperately need anyway. So he comes up with an unusual teambuilding idea to shore up the Avengers.
Notes: Asexual character. Aromantic character. Asexual relationship. Flangst. Dysfunctional dynamics. Mention of past abuse. Incidental self-injury. Non-sexual ageplay. Games. Cuteness. Teambuilding. Personal growth. Howard Stark's A+ parenting. Hurt/comfort. Trust issues. Making up for lost time. Odin's A+ parenting. Teamwork. Family of choice.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13. Read the sequel, "Eggshells."
"Love Is for Children" Part 14
Fury was pushy and ruthless, but he wasn't completely stupid. He didn't challenge the security on Avengers tower. He didn't accept anyone's resignation. He didn't follow through and attempt reassignments either, so there was no need for them to disengage from SHIELD and go independent. Besides, he didn't have anyone else willing or able to take on the Avengers. That had become spectacularly clear during the week Coulson was "dead." So the game nights continued undisturbed. Besides, Coulson was right.
The teambuilding exercise proved its worth in the field as promised.
One day, they were fending off a Hydra attack when Captain America shouted an order to Iron Man ... and Tony just followed it, without hesitating or arguing over the comm.
Then someone took aim at the Hulk with an anti-tank missile. Phil got the drop on the man and choked him unconscious. Oh yes, that felt good. He'd been yearning to do something like that for a very long time. Phil gave a happy sigh as he let the limp villain slump to the pavement. Then he tased the one trying to shoot at Iron Man.
Suddenly something hit the building next to him. Phil looked down and found another Hydra agent. From the trajectory and the bent gun, Hulk had caught the man aiming at Phil and thrown him against a wall. As Phil looked up, Hulk waved at him and bounded away to smash something else. Phil crouched down to fasten the three defeated enemies together with SHIELD-issue zip ties. That would hold them until junior agents could pick them up.
"Hawkeye, behind you!" Black Widow shouted. While Hawkeye whirled to shoot the enemies sneaking up on him, Black Widow took out the ones trying to lower themselves from above. They fell rather farther than they had intended, and landed on hard roof instead of soft Hawkeye. An arrow through the thigh dropped the one circling Black Widow.
She scrambled down from Hawkeye's building to the top of a bus, only to have several Hydra agents rush her. Black Widow kicked two of them in the throat simultaneously. The others knocked her off the bus.
Hulk caught Black Widow in midair, rolled to take the momentum, and set her gently back on her feet. A spray of bullets bounced off his green shoulders. With a roar, Hulk picked up the empty bus and smashed it into Hydra's formation of footsoldiers.
"Cap, assist!" called Iron Man, holding up his hands.
Captain America was almost a block away. He turned and passed his shield to Iron Man, who was in a perfect position to hurl it into the vulnerable underside of the Hydra troop transport. The vehicle went down with a gratifying amount of black smoke pouring from its guts.
After that it was just a matter of mopping up the last few enemies. Phil supervised the junior agents who came to take the Hydra casualties into custody. He kept the other half of his attention on the comm chatter as his team members called in. Everyone reported safe, except --
"Has anybody got eyes on Hulk?" Hawkeye asked in a worried tone. "I lost him after those guys tried to jump me on the roof."
This was not good. Hulk out of contact tended to mean Hulk wreaking unnecessary havoc on defenseless infrastructure, or worse, fleeing into the countryside to get himself good and lost. It had taken most of a day to find him on the previous two occasions when that happened. He hadn't done it recently, but still --
"Last I saw, he was standing on top of a wrecked Beemer," Iron Man said.
Just then, Hulk landed beside Phil with a ground-jarring THUD. He didn't look angry, despite the burnt patch on his pants that made Phil want to check him for injuries, nevermind that Hulk was well-nigh indestructible. He didn't look scared, either. He looked satisfied.
Phil announced over his comm, "Hulk just found me," then asked, "What can I do for you, Hulk?"
"Catch me, Uncle Phil," Hulk said quite clearly.
And just like that, Hulk was gone and Bruce was left in his place, knees already buckling. Phil hastened to grab him before he could fall. Phil hadn't been prepared for this; it was the fastest, easiest transformation he'd seen yet. Bruce proved surprisingly unwieldy in his arms. This was usually when ...
"Steve!" Phil yelled. "Come get --" your baby cousin, he almost finished, but managed to head off that part just in time. He'd said it so often, it had become almost automatic. That could be awkward, if he or anyone else let slip exactly what kind of exercise they were doing. Then again, role-playing was all over Phil's teambuilding manuals, and if "Saturday Pajama Party" was out of an abuse recovery book ... oh well, Nick Fury could just put on his big-boy shorts and deal with it.
"I've got him," Steve said, scooping up Bruce. It was no hardship for Steve to carry the smaller man tucked against his chest. Bruce gave a contented murmur and snuggled into Steve's grasp. The charred portion of Bruce's pants flaked away to reveal undamaged skin beneath.
"You sure do," Phil said.
"Good job, everyone. Let's go home," Steve said.
"Yes," Phil agreed.
Home. Steve had been right. Love could make anything real.
~ MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ~
aceofannwn. It also fills the "game night" square on my card for the trope_bingo fest. This fest features fundamental motifs that will be familiar to most readers. It encourages writers to analyze storylines and characters, then reinterpret them in new ways. Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanova, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers, Nick Fury, JARVIS
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: No standard warnings apply.
Summary: Phil Coulson is SHIELD's best handler for a reason: he can deal with the broken people that nobody else can manage but desperately need anyway. So he comes up with an unusual teambuilding idea to shore up the Avengers.
Notes: Asexual character. Aromantic character. Asexual relationship. Flangst. Dysfunctional dynamics. Mention of past abuse. Incidental self-injury. Non-sexual ageplay. Games. Cuteness. Teambuilding. Personal growth. Howard Stark's A+ parenting. Hurt/comfort. Trust issues. Making up for lost time. Odin's A+ parenting. Teamwork. Family of choice.
Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13. Read the sequel, "Eggshells."
"Love Is for Children" Part 14
Fury was pushy and ruthless, but he wasn't completely stupid. He didn't challenge the security on Avengers tower. He didn't accept anyone's resignation. He didn't follow through and attempt reassignments either, so there was no need for them to disengage from SHIELD and go independent. Besides, he didn't have anyone else willing or able to take on the Avengers. That had become spectacularly clear during the week Coulson was "dead." So the game nights continued undisturbed. Besides, Coulson was right.
The teambuilding exercise proved its worth in the field as promised.
One day, they were fending off a Hydra attack when Captain America shouted an order to Iron Man ... and Tony just followed it, without hesitating or arguing over the comm.
Then someone took aim at the Hulk with an anti-tank missile. Phil got the drop on the man and choked him unconscious. Oh yes, that felt good. He'd been yearning to do something like that for a very long time. Phil gave a happy sigh as he let the limp villain slump to the pavement. Then he tased the one trying to shoot at Iron Man.
Suddenly something hit the building next to him. Phil looked down and found another Hydra agent. From the trajectory and the bent gun, Hulk had caught the man aiming at Phil and thrown him against a wall. As Phil looked up, Hulk waved at him and bounded away to smash something else. Phil crouched down to fasten the three defeated enemies together with SHIELD-issue zip ties. That would hold them until junior agents could pick them up.
"Hawkeye, behind you!" Black Widow shouted. While Hawkeye whirled to shoot the enemies sneaking up on him, Black Widow took out the ones trying to lower themselves from above. They fell rather farther than they had intended, and landed on hard roof instead of soft Hawkeye. An arrow through the thigh dropped the one circling Black Widow.
She scrambled down from Hawkeye's building to the top of a bus, only to have several Hydra agents rush her. Black Widow kicked two of them in the throat simultaneously. The others knocked her off the bus.
Hulk caught Black Widow in midair, rolled to take the momentum, and set her gently back on her feet. A spray of bullets bounced off his green shoulders. With a roar, Hulk picked up the empty bus and smashed it into Hydra's formation of footsoldiers.
"Cap, assist!" called Iron Man, holding up his hands.
Captain America was almost a block away. He turned and passed his shield to Iron Man, who was in a perfect position to hurl it into the vulnerable underside of the Hydra troop transport. The vehicle went down with a gratifying amount of black smoke pouring from its guts.
After that it was just a matter of mopping up the last few enemies. Phil supervised the junior agents who came to take the Hydra casualties into custody. He kept the other half of his attention on the comm chatter as his team members called in. Everyone reported safe, except --
"Has anybody got eyes on Hulk?" Hawkeye asked in a worried tone. "I lost him after those guys tried to jump me on the roof."
This was not good. Hulk out of contact tended to mean Hulk wreaking unnecessary havoc on defenseless infrastructure, or worse, fleeing into the countryside to get himself good and lost. It had taken most of a day to find him on the previous two occasions when that happened. He hadn't done it recently, but still --
"Last I saw, he was standing on top of a wrecked Beemer," Iron Man said.
Just then, Hulk landed beside Phil with a ground-jarring THUD. He didn't look angry, despite the burnt patch on his pants that made Phil want to check him for injuries, nevermind that Hulk was well-nigh indestructible. He didn't look scared, either. He looked satisfied.
Phil announced over his comm, "Hulk just found me," then asked, "What can I do for you, Hulk?"
"Catch me, Uncle Phil," Hulk said quite clearly.
And just like that, Hulk was gone and Bruce was left in his place, knees already buckling. Phil hastened to grab him before he could fall. Phil hadn't been prepared for this; it was the fastest, easiest transformation he'd seen yet. Bruce proved surprisingly unwieldy in his arms. This was usually when ...
"Steve!" Phil yelled. "Come get --" your baby cousin, he almost finished, but managed to head off that part just in time. He'd said it so often, it had become almost automatic. That could be awkward, if he or anyone else let slip exactly what kind of exercise they were doing. Then again, role-playing was all over Phil's teambuilding manuals, and if "Saturday Pajama Party" was out of an abuse recovery book ... oh well, Nick Fury could just put on his big-boy shorts and deal with it.
"I've got him," Steve said, scooping up Bruce. It was no hardship for Steve to carry the smaller man tucked against his chest. Bruce gave a contented murmur and snuggled into Steve's grasp. The charred portion of Bruce's pants flaked away to reveal undamaged skin beneath.
"You sure do," Phil said.
"Good job, everyone. Let's go home," Steve said.
"Yes," Phil agreed.
Home. Steve had been right. Love could make anything real.
~ MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ~
Re: Welcome! (Well this ended up about a mile long but it's mostly nice things!)
Date: 2015-12-22 04:56 am (UTC)Yay, comment! :D
>> Thankyou. You're doing a good job! I hesitated a lot before deciding to comment here, but with the memory files available on you and your spaces I found I did feel safe to. So thanks for that! <<
I'm glad I could help.
>> My friend Ara saw your post the other day about guardians/protectors (the one where you linked that amazing article about veterans being awesome), and really wanted to comment but we didn't have the energy. But that resonated very strongly with them, and they wanted to mention how they'd noticed those guardian tendencies in you, too.<<
That's good to hear. It's okay to conserve energy when you're low. People are work. Sometimes being people is work!
I second Ara there, we love what you're doing.
>> ...Oh wow I get hugs and everything! Score. *offers hugs in return, if desired*
Re: squish - Oh hey, yeah! I recognized that word as soon as you said it, turns out it's stored in the shared memory here. Thanks! <<
It's a useful word. And *hugs*!
>> Huh. Yeah I guess it is. Thankyou. Though... I wouldn't call it a step forward exactly. We don't privilege this universe over the one we live in, or all the others we can visit in exactly the same way as we visit this one. It's no more valid, being here isn't better. But a big step... yeah. Yeah it is. It's good to hear you say it.<<
I was thinking of it not in the sense of privileging one universe over another (this one is not special just because I'm standing in it) but rather ...
1) Progress into a new area or activity is generally described as "forward" motion.
2) The multiples I know speak of their interface with meatspace as "Front." It can be like the driver's seat of a car or the cockpit of a plane. They speak of moving toward Front as "forward" and moving away from Front into their own headspace as "back."
>> Like I said, your stories were the reason I came here, and I gotta say, it's been so worth it. Your work is not only great storytelling but it's really healing stuff, too.<<
Yay!
>>Hah! Yep. Noticed. It's cool though, I'm kinda used to messed-up worlds~ *grins* I gotta say though, Homeworld (the universe we beasties live in when we're not here) is pretty awesome. Thanks for doing what you can for this one, I'm sure those of us who share your desire for a better world appreciate it (I know I do).<<
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service.
>>Yeah. Accessing info in shared, I can see that a lot of folks in the beasts really love your Polychrome Heroics stuff. I'm finding at least two 'tried & failed to post comment' reports here, but way more records of people just really enjoying reading it, and feeling grateful for it. (We're often without the spoons to talk to even our close friends and partners when we want to, so.) <<
It's okay if folks can't always comment. Feedback is welcome but not required. I'm glad you are enjoying it!
>>But while I'm rooting around in these memory records here, may as well throw some up for ya... Of the failed comments, one was for... there was this poem about a broken sink? And about community and supporting one another and helping an abuse survivor heal and learn life-skills. And that was all really awesome and helpful for us and made a gorgeous happy space to visit,<<
That's good to hear. Cassandra has had a really rough time, but now she is with people who can teach her a lot of life skills that she missed, and be patient when things go wrong like the sink.
Some other abuse survivor storylines are in Antimatter & Stalwart Stan (both Lawrence and Shiv) and Officer Pink whose poems don't have their own guidepage yet but you can watch for the ones about Turq. You might also like Turq because he is aspected: not exactly a multiple with wholly separate people inside, but he's kind of a different person in each shape. So far Ansel has met his human, caney, and ferret forms and their personalities are all distinct.
>> but someone here in particular really wanted to thank you for the character of Yona, who was in that. Because my friend here's a man who's given birth and he'd been feeling really, really excluded and feeling unwelcome and unsafe even in his own spaces (for other reasons than just that but yeah) and it made a huge difference for him that day.<<
I'm so happy to hear that! I have some ideas for more male-mother poems, if that's something you want to read then you can prompt for it.
Not collated into a thread, but appearing several times, is the trans character Hyperspaceman who was assigned female at birth and had a daughter while en femme. He is proud of being a mother, but other people are often weirded out by it.
"If You Do Not Change Direction"
"Through the Loop"
"Hostage to the Character" (not sponsored or posted yet)
>> And then there was Strong At The Broken Places, that was a real good pickup on a bad day for us, and we ended up coming back to read it again several times on other days when we were struggling. <<
There are several more in Gray's storyline, including "Switching Out" which is sponsored but not up yet, should appear later this week. They tend toward a lot of hurt/comfort. <3 my kinky gangsters, it is hilarious to me how different the various gangs are.
>> And It's Your Body - everyone loves that. The whole concept of the shop is just fantastic and awesome. We love the atmosphere and the philosophy there, the attitudes of everyone on board, and so many other things. It made us so happy. <<
I'm so glad that one resonated for you. It's an important place because it's one of the few where people really quash the cape politics and so the common ground among soups becomes more visible.
>> ...Hahah, yeah this body totally fell over asleep before the end of the next one I read anyway. But thanks. I do make sure to read warnings, yeah. Honestly, I'm glad it's heavy in places. A series like this, dealing with what this deals with, it'd be inappropriate for it all to be fluff in my opinion. Feels more like you're handling these issues with the respect they deserve, so thank you.<<
I'm glad people use the warnings. Once in a while people gripe that the warnings -- and the footnotes, my most popular feature! -- are condescending because "everyone knows that." 0_o But most people like them even if they don't always need them. Everyone has days of low spoons and then you just do not want to get hit in the face with something ouchie.
There is so much that conventional superhero comics just don't cover. They are all about the fight scenes and the soap opera angst, but there is almost no thought to how superpowers would affect politics, laws, family dynamics, sex appeal, etc. One of my more fascinating discoveries is that the crayon soups -- people with unusual hair/skin colors -- can often see ultraviolet and/or polarized light. Well, birds and insects use those to signal sexual availability. Even if you can't see the patterns, the UV reactivity in the colors makes them shinier or iridescent. So they look sexier to some people.
>>And like I saw you and another reader saying in comments somewhere - the overall feel of the series is still comforting because even when it's heavy it's safe. People are caring, supporting each other, and dealing with things in increasingly more healthy ways together. No-one's denying the gravity of the issues and you know it's gonna be alright.<<
I'm still learning this part of the hurt/comfort equation. I know how to write it well. Predicting which poems people will find tense or cozy is more challenging! But it is fun to practice. It does seem that the more comfort provided and thus the more positive the subjective experience, the more likely people will read it as hurt/COMFORT instead of HURT/comfort. Heck, Gray got tortured and the aftercare was so good that he came out of it mostly okay.