A/N: I've never written for the Avengers before, so I hope I kept everyone in-character. Just a one-shot for now, because I couldn't do anything longer with these six, I don't think. This story focuses on the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia (more particularly, chromesthesia), which is something I personally find really intriguing. I don't have chromesthesia myself, however (I'm beginning to think I might have associative spatial sequence synesthesia, but we'll see), but every synesthate's experiences are unique, so I'm hoping I don't make too many glaring mistakes.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers.
when you speak all I see are flashing lights and it's blinding
Steve's head was pounding, and it wasn't due to illness (he hadn't been ill in years). No, it was due to the bright white lights flashing before his eyes, and the snaps of sound in his ears that caused them. And it was Tony, Tony's fault and Tony's voice, gloating because Cap had been compromised and Stark had to pull him out.
If it was anyone else that Stark had had to save, he wouldn't have said anything. But since it was Steve, the great Captain America, Tony couldn't let it go. The comments the other man made, now that they were away from the others, stung. Things such as, "Not so much of a hero," and, "Pretty good work for just a nobody in a suit," were laced with so much venom that the lightning he saw almost burned his skin.
"Stark, just shut up," he growled, trying not to rub his head, which was aching and heavy and slow. His mind wasn't up to the banter, to the argument, and he just wanted to go lie down somewhere quiet, maybe chat with Bruce, because Bruce's blue always made things better (odd how the voice of a man with anger issues could calm Steve down so much).
"Why? You never shut up when I mess up," Stark said, the pastel smudge of his words tinged with the light pink-red of immaturity. And there was the lightning again, white-hot and blinding, and Steve was sure of it, this time his face was burning-
He whipped around, turning away from Stark, and though the billionaire continued to chatter on, the colours were behind him, and not right in front of him. He touched his face but there was nothing wrong; it was smooth, just like usual, apart from the healing gash below his eye from being hit by rubble during an attack last week. His breath clouded up before his eyes, illuminated in pale, shimmering silver.
Christ, his head hurt.
A low moan escaped his mouth without him meaning to. It filled the air around him, seeping away from the corners of his eyes, a sinister dark green cloud. Stark's voice trailed away as Cap rubbed at his eyes, his temples, feeling as if he could keel over.
"Cap?" the billionaire asked, taking a step closer. "Rodgers?" Stark was now in his field of vision, and so was his voice, his words, and those freaking flashing lights, lightning strikes-
"Stop it!" he barked, turning his head away once more. "Stop talking. Now!"
"Why? What's wrong?" And maybe if Steve had been looking he would have seen the cyan traces of concern, but he wasn't looking, so he just wrote it off as his mind playing tricks on him. Because Tony Stark couldn't care less for him; they were teammates, nothing more. 'Friends' was a push, they both knew that, even if the other Avengers didn't. Good job they weren't here to see this, because if they saw Steve, their leader, fall apart, who was to say the entire team wouldn't?
"You need to stop talking," Steve said, and before he knew it, the words were spilling out of his mouth and he couldn't stop them. "You need to shut up because when you speak all I see are flashing lights and it's blinding and please, just be quiet." And Tony is demanding what he means, but Cap refuses to listen, refuses to see, and races away down the hall, back to his room, where he locks the door and throws himself down on the bed, burying his head and moaning.
And the next morning, when he rises, it's late, later than usual, and he's missed his run and the other Avengers are up. When he enters the kitchen they're all there, Tony cracking jokes and kissing Pepper and Natasha and Clint are bickering and Thor is trying to work the toaster and Bruce is giving him worried looks out of the corner of his eye. What he's worried about, Steve can't tell. Is it Steve himself or the inability of their friends to function? (And there goes the toaster, the third one this week and Tony is snapping in frustration at Thor but Steve can tell he's not angry, because the flashes aren't that bad.)
"You're up late, Captain," Natasha comments offhandedly during a lull in the conversation. "Something wrong?"
"Not really," Steve replied, "I guess I was just tired." And the others take it for the truth but Tony is watching him, and he knows Steve's lying, and he's going to ask and Steve hopes it's not here. Because Tony is better than that, right?
Wrong, because Stark is the next to speak and he says, "So what was that you were saying last night?" And Steve's frozen but he has to pretend, pretend it's no big deal when it really, really is.
"You're going to have to be more clear, Stark, I said a lot of things yesterday." Clint snorts but Tony really isn't fooled, and Steve's not surprised because it takes a lot of work to convince a genius.
"Something about flashing lights?" Tony said, and by now he was practically goading, in fact he was, the green flecks in his words proved it. Bruce meets Cap's eyes and there's a question in his face and Steve nods. Bruce's question changes, and Steve, after a moments hesitation, nods again. Only Natasha picks up the silent exchange, her eyes narrowing as she glances between them, her finger tapping a steady brown beat on the table.
"You mean the chromesthesia?" Bruce asks, and Clint frowns.
"The what?" the archer asks, and the group are united in a single conversation now, everything Cap didn't want.
"Steve has chromesthesia," Bruce said in way of answering. "It's a form of synesthesia, sound-colour synesthesia, to be exact. It's one of the more common types."
"You have synesthesia?" Tony asked, raising his eyes at Cap, and Steve can see the pink doubt in the flash of lightning that leaves him blinking, despite the fact that he knows there's nothing there.
"Uh- yeah," he says. Tony frowns, Clint looks mildly confused and Tasha's face, as always, is clean of any emotion.
"I do not understand," Thor says. "What is this synesthesia you speak of?"
"Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon that causes a person's senses to be linked, so that when one is stimulated, so is another. For example, some people read black-and-white documents in colours and others taste the sounds they hear or the textures they touch. Like I said before, Steve has 'chromesthesia', which means he sees the sounds he hears… That's right, isn't it?" Bruce glances at Steve, who nods, and suddenly he's not so tongue-tied anymore.
"Yeah, that's right…" he said. "I see colours more often then shapes, though I guess I see those sometimes, too." Tony raises an eyebrow at him.
"And last night?"
"Your voice is really bright, and it behaves almost like lightning- I had a headache," Steve said with a shrug.
"My voice is lightening?" Tony asked, something akin to a smug grin settling over his features. "That sounds really cool, even if I don't get it, at all." Steve sighs.
"It's not lightning, it just looks like it," he protests.
"So what does my voice look like?" Clint asks, sounding half-curious and half-hopeful (hopeful for something as 'cool' as Stark's, maybe? Steve, for one, was glad that Clint's voice was nowhere near as bad as Tony's.)
"It doesn't have a shape," he says with a shrug, glancing at the words. 'Shape' is a red pyramid, and around it is the plum glow that he's come to associate with the archer. "It's sort of a purple colour, though. Um, Tasha's is indigo, Bruce's is blue, Thor's is a darker blue, sorta like the ocean?" He frowns. it's not a perfect match for the shade of the god's voice, but it's close enough.
"What about Pepper?" Tony asks.
"Pepper's voice isn't a colour I can describe," he says with a shrug. The closest thing to it would be the sunspots that one saw after looking at a light to long, sort of yellow, sort of blue, a bit pink, but none of them at the same time.
And just like that, the conversation is dropped, and they turn to other colours, and Steve has never been more thankful for anything. The voices of his teammates, their words and sentences, they all blur together, and Steve feels like he's found another home. Because perhaps it's not the past, and maybe the colours here are different (in a way that words cannot describe), and he'll never get on with Stark, but at least they don't think he's crazy for commenting on the shades of their voices or complaining about how bright that guy's orange laugh is. At least he doesn't feel alienated, different, or insane, because now, thanks to Bruce, he knows what he sees aren't a sign of illness.
And what's one more phenomenon to the Avengers, who were pretty phenomenal anyway?
A/N: Yes, I realise I changed tense in the middle, but I couldn't be bothered to go and change it, and besides, I feel like it flows better this way. Review?