Title: Five Surprising Avengers Talents
Fandom: Avengers
Rating: Gen
Length: 1100ish words
Author notes: Could not have done this even a little bit without skieswideopen who deserves the title co-author/beta/most awesome person in the history of ever.
Summary: Sometimes the best part of a superhero isn’t so super after all



The Avengers present a certain front to the world: one that highlights heroism and unity and a very specific set of skills. It's a front carefully managed by their PR team and threatened with ruin each time one of them carelessly destroys public property in pursuit of a bad guy or nearly a injures a civilian who has the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or when they all let loose in a too-human way. (There was one particular time they all went drinking together...the press had a field day with that one.) But those incidents aside, no one really looks behind this front, knows who Clint Barton or Natasha Romanoff or even Steve Rogers is. They just see Hawkeye and the Widow and Captain America, beautiful and perfect and larger-than-life.

But image is not reality, and if they hadn't already known that, they would have quickly discovered it once they decided to move in together. It sounds like a terrible idea at first, and sometimes it is, but it also means they get to know each other. Really know each other. Living side-by-side in the Avenger's mansion, they see each other at their best and at their worst, and learn that sometimes the best part of a superhero isn’t so super after all.

Bruce is the perfect person to go to when you are sick. If there's one thing he knows, it's how to be soothing, and he has the stock of tea to back it up. Of course gods and super soldiers don’t get sick all that often, but Natasha, Clint and Tony can all personally attest to Bruce’s skills as a nurse. (Natasha only got sick once. Everyone believed she was on a mission, when it reality she was hiding out in Bruce’s room.) Bruce, thanks to the Hulk, doesn’t get sick either, but he always makes sure he has supplies on hand so the team can rely on him. Even Coulson stops by one day under the pretense of paperwork. He spends two hours uninterrupted in Bruce’s lab and leaves headache-free. Bruce is more than happy to help - he didn't have the chance to look after people while on the run from government agents and his own alter ego. Its always nice to be appreciated for something besides his physical strength.

Natasha gardens. It takes a while for Tony to notice, since of course he employs (or well, JARVIS does) professional gardeners to do that for him. She's sneaky, though, and has her own patch in the back garden where hardly anyone goes. He only finds out because one day Steve bounces around the kitchen (he bounces around while doing everything) making what looks like stir fry and announces to a rushed Tony that he better eat up because Natasha grew the carrots. Tony really doesn’t want to mess with Natasha so he eats up fast. He wanders out to see what she’s up to a few days later, its cold so he spends only a few minutes watching her plant some kind of bulb into the cold earth. Later Clint tells Tony she chooses to garden so that she can have a weapon in her hands at all times, even if it’s just a spade. Really, she gardens so she can feel like she’s giving life to something for once, instead of taking it away.

Clint can sing. Bruce is the first one to find out because their rooms are near each other, and sometimes Clint sings in the shower. At first Bruce thinks it's the radio, but then one day he catches Clint humming as he comes out of his room at the same time Bruce does and he recognizes the voice he's been hearing. It takes a while to figure it out, as normally their timetables are so erratic that they hardly ever catch each other near their rooms at the same time. Bruce just smiles, nods, and because he’s not Tony he leaves it alone and heads down to his lab. If he was the one to suggest to Coulson that they have karaoke for team bonding night, well no one has to know. Clint loves to brag, but for once he doesn’t have to because the rest of the team applaud his rendition of American Pie so much that he doesn’t know what to say.

Thor doesn't hold many surprises. Or rather, his seemingly limitless abilities leave them inured to most surprises. However, even the Avengers are shocked to discover that Thor is an excellent dancer. And shocked again when he decides to teach Steve everything he knows. It happens like this: Steve was telling Thor part of his story, how he came to be in this world, and from there it segued into how he still felt out of place sometimes, like that night Tony dragged him out to a club where the music and dancing were nothing like he remembered, so that he spent the whole night on the sidelines, nursing his drink. The next thing he knows, Thor is clapping him on the shoulder and says “Steve, I shall show you how to dance. I have been viewing many episodes of Dancing With the Stars!”.
So Steve learnt to dance from a Norse God, and eventually Natasha joined them because although Steve could twirl and dip Thor easily thanks to the super strength, it felt a little better to dance with a beautiful redhead on his arm and think for a second it might be Peggy.

Tony is so dedicated to playing a particular role (genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist) that, like Thor, the other Avengers don't expect any surprises when dealing with him. But surprise them he does. Because everyone knows that Tony Stark doesn't play well with others. He agitates, He's direct. He doesn't take care of himself, and thus forces others to take care for him. And yet...

He annoys Bruce, who in turn gradually realizes that it's a relief to spend time with someone who isn't afraid to push his buttons. He always has time to show Steve how the modern world really works, without treating him like he was made of ice, ready to shatter at any moment. He jokes around with Clint, making him impossible upgrades for his bow and playing video games with him until all hours of the morning. Thor usually joins them and Tony never hides the pop tarts from him because he knows pop tarts are serious business. Natasha, as usual, notices it first. How Tony knows how to read everyone, treat everyone right and bring them together. How being in a team makes Tony a team player.

Everyone knows that Steve is the leader of the group, but the heart of the group is ironically the one that pretends not to have one.