Story: "Hairpins" Part 15

[ysabetwordsmith]

This story belongs to the series Love Is For Children which includes "Love Is for Children," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys,""Saudades," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," "Touching Moments," "Splash," "Coming Around," "Birthday Girl," "No Winter Lasts Forever," "Hide and Seek," "Kernel Error," "Happy Hour," and "Green Eggs and Hulk."

Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, JARVIS, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova, Bruce Banner.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: This story is mostly fluff, but it has some intense scenes in the middle. Highlight for details. These include dubious consent as Phil and JARVIS discuss what really happened when Agent Coulson hacked his way into Stark Tower, over which Phil has something between a flashback and a panic attack. They also discuss some of the bad things that have happened to Avengers in the past, including various flavors of abuse. If these are sensitive topics for you, please think carefully before deciding whether to read onward.
Summary: Uncle Phil needs to pick out pajamas for game night. He gets help from an unexpected direction.
Notes: Service. Shopping. Gifts. Artificial intelligence. Computers. Teamwork. Team as family. Friendship. Communication. Hope. Apologies. Forgiveness. Nonsexual ageplay. Nonsexual intimacy. Love. Tony Stark needs a hug. Bruce Banner needs a hug. #coulsonlives.

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, Part 14. Skip to Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20.


"Hairpins" Part 15


Phil sighed. He picked out a handful of least-unlikely botanical patterns and saved them. Then he cleared the page again. "How about ordinary kiddie things," he said.

JARVIS obliged by calling up a fresh set of images. Unfortunately the selections here tended to be overly gendered, something that annoyed Phil in general when shopping for his littles. The prevailing blue palette was fine, but not the endless array of soldiers, cowboys, and knights. The subtle implication of conflict undercut the desired sense of comfort. Phil did not think that Bruce would like pajamas decorated with trains or backhoes any better. Judging from the sluggish rate of suggestions, neither did JARVIS.

"This doesn't feel right," Phil admitted. "Bruce doesn't have many positive memories of childhood. I'm not sure reprising that would help."

"It may be that we are approaching this from the wrong angle," JARVIS said. "What does Bruce get out of game night?"

"Safety," Phil said at once. "It helps him feel more secure about his place in the team. He's learning to express his emotions, now that people respect them. He likes being allowed to hide if that's what he needs."

"Protective camouflage," JARVIS murmured.

Phil shook his head. "No, Bruce hates the Army. We can't put him in camo."

"I was referring to cryptic coloration as it appears in nature, allowing animals to blend into their environment," JARVIS clarified. "For example, female birds often have drab plumage to disguise themselves while nesting."

"Bruce likes to blend in," Phil said. "He dresses to deflect attention from himself. Sometimes he acts as if he wants to sink into the carpet and disappear."

"He also avoids observation as much as possible -- not just on a physical level, as with shying away from cameras, but also on a psychological level," JARVIS said. "Bruce dislikes it when people try to read him. Sir is the only person who seems able to coax him out of his shell."

"At least they have Candyland," Phil said. Not long after the team moved into the tower, Tony had redesigned part of the lab space so that he and Bruce could share it. He also printed out an enormous sign with the title in classic candycane font, which he hung above the main door. It dated all the way back to some in-joke that Tony and Bruce had shared on the Helicarrier.

Phil flipped back to the collection of images he had of Bruce's clothes. Most were solids, but there were some with subtle patterns of stripes or dots, along with several soft plaids.

"Plaid is a traditional pattern for sleepwear," JARVIS remarked. "Children tend to dress in bright colors, but Bruce would probably prefer something quieter. The lines of a neutral plaid would blend into an indoor environment rather well."

"Good idea," Phil said. "Pull me some samples." The screen filled with fabric swatches in shades of brown and tan, similar to clothes that Bruce had worn in the past. Soon Phil found a nice mellow caramel. "Given Bruce's tendency to go through clothes quickly, we should probably pick more than one."

* * *

Notes:

Gendered clothes for children are a fairly recent phenomenon. This can restrict gender fluidity and cause problems for children. At this stage, Phil does not know what potential landmines he just avoided, but Bruce has some serious and deeply buried gender issues thanks to Brian Banner's A+ parenting, as seen in "Dolls and Guys" Part 10. Several of the Avengers are a little gender-variant in certain regards.

Gendered toys raise similar issues, hence Uncle Phil's resentment. They illustrate and enforce gender roles, causing difficulties for boys and girls alike. Note that Uncle Phil stocks the toy cabinet primarily with gender-neutral toys such as blocks and board games. Where there are gender-associated toys like dolls and trains, he encourages everyone to play with all of them, not split up by gender. There are only two girls in the group, and Natka isn't very girly; Betty is more likely to wind up playing girl things with Steve, Bruce, or Tony who all have different feminine aspects. Browse some good choices in gender-neutral toys.

Blending into a crowd is a useful skill for travel and survival. There are tips for blending in, avoiding attention, and not getting picked out of a crowd. (Notice the repeated advice on wearing drab, plain clothes.) This is what allows Bruce to thrive in foreign lands, as well as locally, and to elude capture most of the time.

Camouflage lets creatures to fade into their environment using multiple techniques. Here are some examples of protective camouflage in animals. Birds can adapt their camouflage, and often the females have dull colors for nesting safety.

Candyland is a game with editions in 1949, 1978, and other years. This box for the 1978 game shows the candycane font. Tony and Bruce would probably recognize this version, hence Tony's reference to it in The Avengers.

Plaid is a popular pajama pattern for children and adults.

Read about the symbolism for the color brown.


[To be continued in Part 16 ...]

Comments

Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Immediately and gratefully, thank you for the 'problem area' content warnings WELL in advance of the actual scenes.

Frankly, your writing engrosses me well enough that, so far, every difficult concept has been MORE than amply "rewarded" by the wonderful portrayals of the characters. You write not to simply show "hurt/comfort," but to show (and hopefully,subtly tinker with) the psychological, emotional, and mental underpinnings of the universe where the story takes place. That's a million worlds away from writing... gore, of any stripe, with the primary purpose of shocking the audience. (It may have other purposes, but I'm not sure, as my tolerance for that kind of "entertainment" is so low as to be measured with a microscope. An electron microscope.)

Phil and Jarvis are beginning to communicate, to truly collaborate. I am delighted! They will NEED that trust, however tentative, when they begin to communicate about more personal topics.

I think Phil's "superpower" is his insight into human psychology. So far, I'm not seeing hints that he survived an abusive or traumatic childhood (quite the opposite, in fact, given how naturally he acts as caretaker, both as Agent Coulson and as Uncle Phil). Did you set out intentionally to make him a "model of preferred adult interactions"? Really, one can pick a psychological skill and place any other character (save Nick Fury, who is conspicuously absent in any meaningful way, thank you!) in a spectrum from "least able to deal with it," to Coulson's "sane and competent, fully adult" mindset.

That doesn't mean he isn't strongly emotional, or strongly affected; it's his resilience and confidence (in most definitions of the word) that I find engrossing.

For example,if the topic is "physical touch and emotions," Tony is probably the least able to cope with ANY element thereof. In canon he is either wildly inappropriate and "handsy", overly sexual and promiscuous, or so touch-phobic as to refuse any object being handed to him in CASE there might be skin-to-skin contact. He's, quite frankly, "a bit nuts" and definitely all over the map -- as it relates to THIS aspect of life. The other Avengers are portrayed with differing amounts of comfort/need for physical contact, and each employs SOME primary form of touch interaction, with Steve being the least noticeably affected (I argue that Clint uses his high perches to avoid casual touch, and that it is still a default behavior for him, long after it would've developed as a survival skill.) Phil can adjust and interact with each of them in ways that imply that he is most aware of his needs and preferences, the other person's needs and preferences... Then he takes it a step farther and ADJUSTS his interactions accordingly. That implies a great deal more self-awareness than just "typical adults". Then you take things a step farther, and imply that he is aware of dozens of different subcultures and how those elements change an individual's reactions. Superpower, in a nutshell! I see him in your stories as an extremely thoughtful, proactive person, and have a chuckle at his apparent mental checklist, "Hm, assess, plan, test, measure results, review, repeat as needed."

You've done one thing that keeps him from being a flat, useless Mary Sue: he makes mistakes. Things go wrong, even with his arsenal of skills and his many years dealing with increasingly unusual situations with cool aplomb, neither he nor the universe you draw for us are perfect.

We, the readers, are about to be front row center for the element of Coulson's personality I think is largely overlooked by Marvel canon: integrity. I don't want to speculate "aloud" yet, but I will readily admit to trying to predict how the "hacking" discussion between Jarvis and Phil will play out. The one thing I can easily predict is that Coulson IS an adult; he will face the results of an earlier mistake with integrity. Nick Fury is horribly aggravating to me in part BECAUSE he tends to blow off other people's reactions to HIS behavior as THEIR problem, and not evidence of exactly how callous, militant and ruthless he can be.

[(Anonymous)]

sorry i didn't comment much lately 'cause i have been more sicker and having a bad time in my rl and so i don't have energy for commenting much but i read all of the stories you post and they make me happy.

i kept forgetting to ask but did you have any other stories that aren't on ao3 which have people from stories i might know? like ones with bruce or tony or harry potter or anybody like that with famous stories. not poem ones though, ones like stories - i don't know why but the poem ones take a lot more of my brain to read them and i don't have energy so i just want easy stories.

i don't feel much like reading stories i don't know at the moment because i don't have energy for coping when the stories have bad things and i know if i read yours they are really really safe because you always warn really well so i feel safe. actually i am going to read all the love is for children stories again from the start i think, but if you have any others that would be nice too :)

thank you for writing so much for us.
from nonny75

[(Anonymous)]

ALL of this. Every flipping bit of it (no pun intended) but... YES. You make me want to cuddle this, and your brain. May I internet-cuddle your brain? Or is that weird?

As always, I am eager for more, and awed by what you've gifted us already. Thank you.

-kellyc

[thnidu]

a nice mellow caramel

That's ever so much more comforting a phrasing than "a medium-light slightly yellowish brown".

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I'd think Tony would know the 1967 edition, which probably looks much like this but without the photograph of the kids. Candyland is for very small kids (I learned to read in first grade, because it was instructed not to 'teach' that skill early.) that don't know symbols for numbers. I played it with my mom at the library maybe twice, but then we started playing Battleship in favor to other offerings.

Bruce might well know this or even a later edition. How old was he when [redacted to avoid needing a trigger warning]?

Mass printed photography even in picture puzzles doesn't come until, mid 50s early 60s? And that is why puzzles were so popular, you could see a very large picture, that gave hours of entertainment. Plenty of people swapped, so for very little you might see Carnival in Mexico, the Grand Canyon, European Castle, Hawaii...

Single color printing of ephemera. Didn't have to be black, but lining up two plates cost more. Frozen food packages and breakfast cereal boxes were an exception.