So, the last chapter was a little tense for Wee Steve, so this time is all just fluff and fun. A field trip to the art museum and hamburgers!
(A few people have asked, so, just a note about Clint-he does still have a family as we saw in Ultron, and they're not going to appear in this story, but you can safely assume that if Clint does not appear in a chapter, that he's at home on the farm.)
"So, is this a 1920's thing, or is this a Steve Rogers thing?" Clint asked, gesturing at the dining table and the tidy stack of art supplies. "Because I've got a nine-year-old, and Steve is a strangely neat child." Steve's crayons were tucked neatly back into their box in order of the color spectrum, pencil shavings and eraser crumbs had been carefully swept off the table and deposited in the trash can, and his morning's work was stacked up into a neat little pile of paper. Steve himself was in his room, returning his other supplies to their shelves.
"Well, Steve's always been neat," Natasha pointed out. She leafed carefully through Steve's pile of artwork. It was nothing like the stuff of his she was used to seeing, but it was still pretty good. "I guess to answer the 20's thing, you'd have to see if Bucky was neat."
"I was when I was a kid," Bucky said, coming into the room. "Not so much now, although, the little guy keeps cleaning up the room, so, it doesn't look too bad in there. Why?"
"I've never seen a kid this good at cleaning up," Clint said. "Just wondering where he got it."
"His mom," Bucky said. "Sarah Rogers was a nurse, and she ran a clean hospital and a clean house. I don't think she ever had to tell Steve to clean, though—he just did it because he saw her doing it."
Natasha smiled. That was sweet, and very Steve. Even as a grown up, he was frequently doing everyone's dishes, or tidying up the main living area.
"Mm," Clint mused. He leaned over Natasha's shoulder to look at Steve's drawings. "Kid's not bad. But did he go through a Post-Impressionist phase or something?"
Bucky and Natasha both turned to look at him, and he shrugged. "What? I know things."
"Post-Impressionist?" Natasha asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Steve talks about art sometimes. I listen," Clint replied. He gestured at the drawings. "Overly vibrant or arbitrary colors? Classic Post-Impressionist."
"Indeed," Thor said from behind them, surprising them. He stepped closer to the table and picked up one of the drawings. "Ah, yes. This one is very like your Earth artist, Gauguin."
Both of Natasha's eyebrows went up, and Bucky's eyes widened in surprise. "Okay," she said. "How do you know that?" she asked. Clint knowing art terminology was weird enough.
Thor shrugged. "There was a documentary on the History Channel. It was fascinating, though I prefer Van Gogh, myself. Steve's coloring is like Gauguin, though his subject matter remains rooted in the everyday, like Van Gogh."
Bucky shook his head and chuckled. "Wow. Learn something new every day. Anyway," he said, turning to Clint. "No, Steve never went through a Post-Impressionist phase. But until he got the super-serum, he did go through a colorblind phase."
Natasha nodded. That's right, Steve did used to be colorblind, didn't he? Or, well, not used to anymore, he just was.
"I do not know this term," Thor said.
"Oh, it just means colors look more dull to him than they do to other people," Bucky explained.
"Ah," Thor said, nodding sagely. "I see then how that could contribute to the brightness here."
"What brightness where?" Steve asked, coming back into the room.
"Oh, we were just looking at your drawings," Natasha said. "Clint really likes the colors you used."
"Oh." Steve smiled. "Thanks!"
"You know, I was thinking," Clint said. "We should check out a museum or something. I mean, if you like art, there's all kinds of cool stuff out there."
"That would be nice," Steve said, straightening his pile of papers back up. "Can we see one with Egyptian mummies and stuff?"
"Why not? I'll have to look up where something like that would be, but there's got to be at least one exhibit like that in the city."
"Do you wanna come, Mr. Thor?" Steve offered. "You can learn more about Earth."
"That sounds most enjoyable," Thor said. "Perhaps after lunch?"
"Yeah! You'll come too, won't you, Miss Natasha?"
"I would love to," she said. She assumed Bucky didn't get an invitation because as far as Steve was concerned, it was a given that he'd be going.
They had an early lunch and loaded themselves into Tony's minivan again, having picked up Wanda on their way down, and headed for the Met. At the front desk, Clint picked up a family guide for the Egyptian exhibit that included kid-friendly information and a vocabulary bank, a couple of activities, and a scavenger hunt.
One little blink of his puppy-dog eyes got Steve a ride on Thor's shoulders again, and he opened up the guide and propped it on Thor's head, studying it seriously as they walked. He would occasionally drop the guide down into Thor's face and ask him how to pronounce something.
"Wow," Steve said as they walked into the main exhibit room, complete with a stone structure in the middle that the signs labelled as the Temple of Dendur. "It says they moved this whole building all the way from Egypt here to New York!"
"Really?" Natasha said, having assumed it was a replica.
"How do you move a whole building?" Steve wondered. "Can you pick up a building like this, Miss Wanda?"
"I don't think so," Wanda said. "I've never picked up anything that big before. I would probably drop part of it."
"They took it apart and put it back together again," Bucky said, pointing to a display board over to the side. "There's some pictures of it here."
"Ooh! I wanna see!" Steve said, launching himself off of Thor's shoulders—a move that would have ended in disaster if Thor hadn't caught him and set him down. Steve didn't seem to notice. It was just a given that Thor would keep him safe, which wasn't unlike the way his adult self would fling himself off of buildings or out of windows, knowing he'd be caught by an airborne teammate.
After reading the description of moving the building, Steve returned his attention to the guide, then gave them all a mini-lecture on what an ankh was. One of the activities listed in the guide was to count how many ankhs were carved into the temple, so they set off on a search. Steve stuck with Bucky, holding on to his metal hand, and Natasha did wonder sometimes that the hand didn't seem to faze Steve at all. She knew Bucky tended to be self-conscious about it, wearing long sleeves in public no matter the weather and sometimes even a glove. It was probably good for him that Steve treated it so casually.
After the ankh count was complete, Steve carefully penciled in the total, and they moved to the inside of the temple to check out the carvings and find the ones listed in the guide's scavenger hunt. It was cooler and quieter inside, lit by soft yellow lights along the floor.
"It's awful dark in here," Steve said. "How did the Egyptians know where they were going if they didn't have lights and stuff?" he wondered.
"They used torches, no doubt," Thor explained. "See here, this blackened area of stone," he added, pointing to a soot stain.
"Or maybe some of them had magicians of their own," Wanda said with a smile, creating a ball of red light in her hand since there was no one but them around to see, making Steve grin.
They studied the carvings and read the little plaques, and once or twice Bucky had to tug Steve a couple steps back from the wall and remind him not to touch.
"That was cool," Steve said when they came out the other side, making a note of some sort in his guide. "But they didn't have any mummies."
"Well, sure," Clint said. "That was a temple. They didn't bury people in those. But I think they've got one over this way."
Beyond the temple were papyrus scrolls and pieces of pottery in glass cases, and a large golden sarcophagus set off behind velvet ropes. Behind that was a display with a mummy in a wooden coffin, encased in a temperature-controlled glass box. "It's so shiny!" Steve exclaimed, running to examine the sarcophagus. He circled it carefully, studying all the intricate little hieroglyphs and designs around the outside. "And it's so big," he added. "This must have been to bury a really big guy."
"No, it was for a normal sized-guy. See, you put the dead guy in a wooden box, then that box went inside the shiny one," Bucky said, reading the information card by the mummy.
Steve walked over, looked at the mummy, then shifted back so that Bucky was between him and it, though he peered around him interestedly. He seemed equal parts fascinated and frightened by it. "Is that a real dead guy?" he asked softly.
"Mm-hmm," Bucky nodded. He continued to read, though he extended one hand for Steve to hold, sensing his disquiet.
Steve's thoughtful frown deepened, and he stared at the mummy for several more minutes.
They moved on from Egypt then, Steve still clinging a little tighter to Bucky's hand than normal. They arrived in another large room, a display of sculptures from around the world in different ages.
"Hey, Steve," Natasha said, trying to distract him from his ruminations on the dead pharaoh. "What do you think? Could I be a statue?" She struck up the pose of the Greek Muse she was standing next to.
"Your feet aren't right," Wanda said. "It's more like this." She struck up the same pose and Natasha rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
"Oh, sure, you can do the ethereal floaty thing like her when you can actually float. Considering that I can't, I think I'm doing pretty good."
Steve giggled and Bucky nudged him forward. "You try it, Stevie," he suggested.
Steve did, managing to stay up on his toes for about half a minute before tumbling over and laughing. They moved from statue to statue, mimicking the poses and facial expressions. Clint ducked his head down inside his shirt to copy one of the older headless statues, earning a fit of delighted giggles from Steve, and Natasha couldn't help laughing at how ridiculous he looked. Thor enjoyed posing as mighty warriors and delicate wood nymphs with equal vigor, and Bucky and Wanda together attempted to recreate several of the Cubist and Surrealist sculptures, much to the amusement of the rest of them.
"You did really good at those statues, Miss Natasha," Steve told her as they walked out. "How'd you get so good at being all bendy and stuff?"
Natasha smiled. "Well, I keep in good shape for Avengers stuff. But I did a lot of training for ballet when I was younger. There's lots of moving and bending and holding positions in that."
"I didn't know you could dance," Steve said, impressed. "Can I see sometime?"
"Maybe," she allowed. She'd only recently been getting back into it, allowing herself to do it for fun and trying to separate the enjoyment from the unpleasant memories. "I could teach you a few moves next time we're down in the gym."
"That would be nice," Steve said. "I'm not very good at dancing, but I like music."
They made their way back to the van, though Clint insisted on steering them through the Post-Impressionist display on their way out. Since no one felt like cooking, they stopped for burgers on the way home. Thor was, of course, ecstatic, and since this was a nicer burger place, they ordered some of every flavor and cut of french fry, Steve's eyes going wide at the variety. They made sure to ask what was on them all, ensuring there was nothing Steve needed to stay away from (though Natasha knew that there was an Epipen in Bucky's pocket just in case, along with the extra inhaler of Steve's he always carried if they went anywhere).
At the soda machine, Steve tugged on Bucky's sleeve. "Do they have the Cherry Dr. Pepper? I want Cherry Dr. Pepper."
"You do, huh?"
Steve nodded. "It's my most favorite future thing."
"Really?" Bucky asked, filling a cup for him. "Even more favorite than M&M's?"
"Uh huh." He reached for the cup Bucky had filled, but Bucky pulled it up out of reach.
"Even more favorite than your Legos?" he asked playfully.
"I can't drink my Legos," Steve sighed dramatically.
Bucky laughed and handed the drink down. "But surely," he went on, his tone still teasing. "When you say your most favorite thing, you don't mean more favorite than me, right?"
Steve snorted. "You're not a thing, Bucky," he said, not looking up from where he was struggling to poke his straw through the lid of the cup and missing the emotion that washed across Bucky's face at the statement. Natasha saw it, though. Realizing you were really a person took a lot of getting used to, as she knew from experience, and Bucky wasn't very open with that struggle with anyone but Steve, but Natasha saw the look in his eyes sometimes. Steve's casual little statement had absolutely floored him, reminding him of his value without realizing that was what he was doing, because to Steve, well, obviously Bucky was a person.
Bucky smiled and knelt down next to Steve to help him with the straw, hugging him tightly as he picked him up and carried him to the table.
"So, what was everybody's favorite part from the museum?" Steve asked, settling into his seat. They all chatted and laughed until the burgers came, then they didn't talk much at all as they dug into their food and went through a truly obscene amount of french fries. It was weird how normal this whole Little Steve thing was starting to feel, but Natasha did appreciate what it was doing to them—reminding them of the family they'd built together. And when they got Big Steve back, Natasha resolved that she was going to work to make sure this part of it didn't go away.
Aw. A nice little educational outing for the group.
Up next, Steve explores the simple joys to be found in cardboard boxes.