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rae-is-typing · 5 years

Text

Universal Language

Description: You, music and the Avengers

Characters: You, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Thor, Bruce Banner, Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, Wanda Maximoff, Peter Parker and Pepper Potts because I love her

Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, mentions of little Stevie getting beat up, and mild language. If there is something I missed, please let me know.

Disclaimer: Some are longer than others, some have dialogue, and I couldn’t think of anything for Rhodey (I’m so sorry!) Tell me what you think, I was trying something new for this one. If you want something more in-depth, lemme know :)

Word count: ~ 2.5k

Tony took you in when you were a toddler. He knew jack shit about raising a child, and enlisted the help of a nanny,. That is until Pepper made him realize how much he was missing of his daughter’s life. He didn’t even know you started crawling. However, he knew the only thing that got you to stop crying was music. He also knew that banging on things rhythmically was your favorite pastime. From then on, he knew that he was going to have a little musician on his hands.

Tony

In Tony’s opinion, the only good things your mother gave you were life and your knack for the arts, especially music. Rhodey and Pepper saw it, too. You took to music the way Tony took to mechanics. He loved your adorable pout when you were figuring the notes out, and the way your face brightened the room when you finally played it right.

The first thing he got you was a toy xylophone when you were three. He would watch you try and replicate the music he was playing over his speakers. You’d look up at him with tearful eyes when you couldn’t get it. He would gently take the mallet from your hands and copy the music, then he’d give it back to you so could copy him. Your giggles of glee when he played were something he’d never forget. He used his knowledge of the piano to help you learn music.

You were six when he got back from Afghanistan. Even at that young age, you knew things would be different. Your father had been gone for months. His arm as in a sling and he looked sick. He pushed you away for a few weeks after that, only staying in the lab, not even letting you stay in the child-proof area he had set up all those years ago. You didn’t understand why he was different, you only understand that he was different.

One night, you were playing in the main room. Pepper was done for the day, and Obadiah was far away and wouldn’t be back for a really long time; you were all alone with only JARVIS looking after you. You were trying, and failing, to play Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. You kept hitting the wrong keys and messing up the rhythms. Frustrated, you huffed and crossed your arms.

Unbeknownst to you, your dad was behind you. He smiled softly, walked closer to you, picked you up, set you on his lap and played the phrase you were trying to. You demanded he play the rest. Soon enough, he had a sleeping kid in his lap.

You were eight when you had your first performance with an audience. It was a piano recital in a small auditorium at your school. He sat in the front, unashamedly cheering for you and loving you. He was there whenever you had solos, and he cried for a lot of them, not that he would ever admit that to anyone but you or Pepper. He records all of your performance, e even has videos of your progress from a four-year-old you playing Mary Had a Little Lamb to sixteen-year-old you busting out Beethoven like its nothing.

Now, he asks FRIDAY to play back recordings of you singing or playing. It helps him calm down, knowing he’ll always have a piece of what matters most to him with him at all times.

Steve

You met Steve when you were ten years old. It was the aftermath of the Battle of New York. Steve and the rest of the team, excluding Thor, had moved into the tower. While you were thrilled to see Natalie-Natasha again, you were a shy kid, opting to stay with Pepper or your dad and away from the others. The larger-than-life Captain America intimidated the shit out of you.

It wasn’t until you saw him sketching in the common are you began to consider him an actual human and not a walking action figure. You had been trying your hand at drawing for months, and while you had made considerable progress, your work always looked off for some reason. After watching him draw for weeks, you managed to snatch his sketchbook, flip through it when left to go get something from another room. He cleared his throat, startling you into dropping the book. You picked it up, heat in your cheeks, and sheepishly handed it back to him with a small, almost scared, “Sorry,”

He only smiled at you, ten-year-olds weren’t all that subtle when it came to spying. He sat you down on the couch, and began showing you all of the drawings he felt were appropriate. Some of them were memories of war-ravaged battle fields, and he didn’t want to give you nightmares. There were lots of old-timey Brooklyn, a man named Bucky, a vaguely familiar, but very beautiful woman named Peggy and Steve’s Ma, Sarah.

You pouted and explained that whenever you tried to draw, it never came out right. He nodded, then smiled. “I’ll tell you what, you help me learn Piano, I’ll help you learn to draw.”

Clint

Clint is a vent-dweller and, much like everyone else on the team, he struggles with PTSD. He uses the vents as a safe space, a way to escape the nightmares and the heartache from the past. However, he doesn’t like to feel alone. He often says above the lab to hear Tony’s loud music, snarky banter with his AI’s, and his empty threats to the ‘bots. Other times he’ll stay above the gym if he knows that Steve or Natasha are doing late night workouts. The soft grunts and the sounds of the equipment are sufficient to keep the loneliness at bay. On very rare occasions, he stays above the kitchen to hear Vision mutter to himself while attempting, and generally failing at cooking food.

Soon enough, he found the music room. Well, art floor.

You were up late, practicing a solo that you couldn’t quite get, but weren’t ready to give up on. He paused, getting clear tone with his hearing aids in. He soon found himself up above the floor whenever you were playing late. The music was a nice distraction, and he could feel himself become happy with your progress, small feelings of pride swelling in his chest at your success. One night, he even left a note on the piano asking you to learn and play Clair de Lune for him. The next week, you told him to be there at midnight, and sure enough, the beautiful piano tune floated up to the vents.

Natasha

You’ve known Natasha since she was Natalie. You mostly kept your distance until one day. You were struggling to play something. You fumbled with your instrument, while penciling something onto the sheet music. She watched you for a couple minutes before asking if you needed help. You huffed out a petulant “No,” before proceeding to struggle for another five minutes. Defeated, you asked for help. She managed to help you figure out the fingerings and the accidentals.

You took up dancing a little later on, and she began helping you after your regular class. With her guidance, you quickly became one of the best dancers in your classes, always rising to the challenge with the work-ethic she helped instill in you.

Even later on, you became her pupil once more when learning to fight. She knocked you on your ass more times than you can count, and still does all the time. But, with her help, you’ve learned how to kick some serious ass.

Thor

It’s no secret that Thor is a big guy. He doesn’t know his own strength,and often breaks things when he wasn’t careful. Out of all the original Avengers, he intimidated you the most.

One day, you saw him holding your violin, examining it like a specimen under a microscope. You panicked, dropped everything and ran to him.

You demanded he stop, resorting to pulling the bow from his hands. He was confused at the tiny child pulling the interesting midgardian play thing away from him.

“Let it go, Thor! You’ll break it!”

Thor frowned, still holding the violin.

“My apologies, young Stark. I do not know what it is, I was merely trying to find its function.” He says, handing it back to.

You relaxed a little, the initial panic wearing off. “It’s a violin, it makes music.”

“How?”

You got into position, put the bow to the strings and drug across the strings. A note rung put, and everything seemed to click in Thor’s mind.

The next time Thor came to visit, he brought Asgardian instruments for you to learn, try and play. You may or may not have cried out of joy.

Bruce

Bruce is a ball of stress, and that is evident to anyone that’s spent any amount of time with him. He uses music as an outlet, letting the sounds wash over him and makes some amount of stress go away. But there are days that things get too overwhelming, there are days where the headphones and opera don’t work, there are days where he needs something more.

Bruce knows that you play, he knows about your talent, and he’s even gone with Tony to watch you perform. There was a day when he shyly asked if he could watch you practice. You were all for it. You practiced in front of him, and he calmed don a lot more.

It became a routine of sorts, you playing, him offering some constructive criticism when he could and you even taught him a few songs on the piano.

Sam

You took the initiative of catching Steve up with modern music. One day, he sheepishly handed you The List, Working your way down, you finally landed on Marvin Gaye. Steve called his friend Sam in so you both could gush about the icon.

You and Sam ended up screeching singing Ain’t No Mountain High Enough for him, and managed not to scare him off. You called it a successful day.

After that, you had put together a playlist for him, and had your dad create a portable sound system for his wings so he could fly listening to his fave.

Bucky

Bucky came to the tower after his time in Wakanda. Tony was wary, anyone in his situation would be. He wanted you to stay away from the ex-assassin indefinitely, and you didn’t blame him. You knew what Bucky did. However, you tried not to blame Bucky either. Steve explained the situation as best he could to you, and you understood that Bucky had been taken advantage of, used and manipulated.

Now that he was in the tower, Bucky wandered around the tower when he couldn’t sleep which happened to be most nights. One night, he heard something familiar, something that tugged at his chest in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Somewhere over the rainbow,”

He remembers a warm breezy day, the alley he pulled Stevie out the night before, reaming him for fighting more than usual because of the big day they had coming up. He cleaned him up. He remembers holding a washcloth to a small blond Steve as he tried not to hurt him too bad while he berated him for fighting again that week.

“There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby,”

He remembers walking with Stevie to the theater, paying too much for the tickets and sitting beside his best friend watching color appear on a screen for the first time. Bucky smiles, letting the feeling of nostalgia and the longing for a simpler time linger for a moment longer before heading to another area of the labyrinth to explore.

Wanda

Wanda moved in when you were 13. You were so happy that you had another female in the tower to bond with. When she expressed interest in music, you jumped at the chance to teach her something, anything really. You tried a few things. You started with woodwinds, she couldn’t figure out the embouchure. You moved onto brass, she didn’t like the sounds. You settled on stringed instruments. Her choice was the acoustic guitar, and she was good. She picked it up almost immediately, easily learning the fingerings and chords. Her favorite thing were duets with you, and you often played together whenever you two had time.

Peter

You saw how good Peter was for your dad. He finally had a mentee to teach. Tony really tried to get you into science, he really did. It didn’t work the way he thought it would, and damaged your relationship for awhile until he back off, letting you do you.

You were jealous, admittedly. You weren’t used to sharing your father’s attention with another person your age.

Then you got to know him. You found out through your dad that he was in marching band, and you needed to know more. You began spending a little time together, swapping band stories and laughing at memes. Soon enough, Peter hung out with you before going to working with Tony in the lab for a few hours. It was fun.

You learned the Mii Theme, the Kahoot theme and even put together a duet of meme music to annoy your dad with together.

Pepper

Pepper is your mother. No, she didn’t birth you, and you didn’t call her mom, but she has been there for you through everything. Through your father’s time in Afghanistan, the battle with Obadiah, your first day of middle school, whenever your dad was busy and you were upset, your first period. It didn’t matter, she was with you. She listened to you when you worked hard on a piece. Hell, she even helped you pick out your first professional grade instrument, despite knowing very little about them.

She encouraged you when were feeling less than, she helped pick you up when you were down, she taught how to act around the business assholes in Galas and events.

Pepper loved you and you loved her.

When the proposal happened, Pepper asked you to sing at the wedding. You took this role very seriously, singing ‘A Thousand years’ by Christina Perri and ‘Future Looks Good’ by OneRepublic.

When Morgan was born, you sang to her whenever you could. When she was old enough, you’d sit her on your lap and let her smash the piano keys like Tony did with you.

Pepper couldn’t think of a better older sister for her baby; she couldn’t think of any better daughters.

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