Work Text:
"So...is anyone going to tell us where we're going?" Peter broke the heavy silence in the coach that the Avengers, much like cattle, had been herded on. Coulson, sitting at the front listening to JLS at obnoxiously loud levels, didn't deign to reply, and in the end it was Tony who had to look up from his phone - Coulson had given up after he confiscated the third only to find that Stark somehow had more hidden on his person.
"Either someone," he glared at Vision menacingly, "is fucking up my GPS, or they're taking us to a field somewhere. The only building for miles around is 'Alda's Centre for Rest and Relaxation', which -" at this, he jerked upright, and made eye contact with a winking Coulson in the rearview mirror. "Son of a bitch!" he screamed, and Steve, asleep beside him with his head on the window, blearily raised his head to swat at Tony inefficiently and mutter, "Mind your French."
"Je suis vraiment désolé," Tony replied without missing a beat, as though this was a discussion that they had frequently, "Steve, they're taking us to a centre for rest and relaxation."
Steve's eyes opened comically wide, and he sat straight up. "Son of a bitch!"
Muttering mutinously at each other, the group was led into a room reminiscent of high school gyms, large and empty save for them and a woman who looked suspiciously like a grandma, dressed in a bright yellow flowery shirt and yoga pants. She was standing at one of three workshops, spread out across the room, which incorporated large tables covered in various mysterious-looking tools. There was an ominous bang as the doors slammed shut behind them, Coulson taking their moment of shock to escape himself.
"Well," Steve announced, his loud voice carrying over the now-silent room, "this looks like fun." Even Sam, usually so up for anything, could manage no optimistic comment beyond,
"Yay teamwork?"
This statement was followed by a thud, and a small cry of "ow!" as Pietro attempted to escape by running full-speed into the doors, which only damaged his face and ego.
"What?" The grandma demanded of no-one in particular, Coulson - aka the only sane one - being long gone. "Who are you?"
"Ma'am, we're the Avengers? World's greatest superheroes? Ring a bell?"
"What you are," she poked a finger at Steve's polite, ridiculously well-chiselled, chest, "is trouble." Before, he could disagree, although from the look in his eyes he wasn't going to bother, Thor ran to the middle of the room, throwing his arms out and spinning.
"So much room for activities!"
The old woman's face turned from disproving to almost gleeful in an instant, as she introduced herself to Thor, "I'm Alda, and you are?"
"Thor," he returned her enthusiastic handshake with an even more aggressive one of his own, pumping her arm up and down. Her eyes raked over his body, and she nodded to herself.
Bruce was enjoying the relative peace and quiet, attempting to ignore how Bucky was already coming close to breaking the table and they hadn't even started yet, so he didn't hear Clint mutter under his breath, "Does the grandma think she can deal with us?"
Alda immediately honed in on Clint, her beady eyes staring him down as she replied, "Yes. Yes I can," in a voice that made it very clear that she would do anything to be sure of that.
"Natasha?" Clint's pitch took on a whining tone, "Are you gonna let her threaten me?" Natasha shrugged, hi-fiving Alda for 'girl power'.
"So," Tony leaned in close to Alba, his world-famous smirk firmly in place, "how much will I have to pay to get out of this?"
"What do you mean?" Vision asked, from where he was examining the workshops closely, "This looks perfect!" Peter, ever the typical student, respected anything that would give him time to sleep, and was already close to passed out on one of the chairs.
"Oooh, a rich boy," Alba taunted, leaning away. Tony's eyes flashed with confusion that she wasn't falling for his patented charm, "You can suffer through this like the rest of us. And trust me, it is suffering."
Scott looked around at his team, most of them grumbling or planning to fuck it up (he didn't like the glint in Wanda's eye), and pathetically cheered, "Go team!"
The first workshop was knitting. Alda patiently showed the group how to hold the needles, and slowly took them through the steps. She wasn't more than halfway through when Tony gave an exasperated sigh.
"I built my entire suit from scratch and you think I can't stick two needles together?" he scoffed, picking them up as though they were chopsticks and ignoring Alda's desperate attempts to stop him.
Five minutes later, a picture of him completely tied up in yarn as Steve desperately tried to free him was circulating the internet courtesy of Vision, and Alda had given up on teaching anyone since only Sam seemed to be listening.
Sam, bless his heart, seemed to be using this opportunity to show off how useful he'd be to Wanda if she decided that she wanted to stay with him, taking care not to drop any stitches and to keep them all in a perfectly straight line, as though the ability to knit was going to affect his prospects with her in the future. When he looked over, however, cheerfully showing Wanda how well he was doing, she was lounging in her chair, eyes closed and yarn nowhere to be seen.
"What?" he asked, wondering whether she'd murdered someone (probably Tony) with the needles and hidden the evidence. Without opening her eyes, Wanda nodded at Steve next to her, who Sam now saw had a knitted hat on the table next to him and was busying himself making matching gloves with Wanda's yarn.
"We used to do this in the war," he announced, hands still moving even as he took his eyes off the gloves to look each person that seemed close to judging him in the eye.
"You what?" Pietro coughed, spinning his head round to look at Bucky so fast that it was merely a blur, grinning at the mess that Bucky was making.
"Yeah," he sighed, looking mournfully down at his yarn, "and I always hated it. Steve?" he held his hands up pitifully, and Steve groaned, muttering something about a scarf that might clash, whilst Vision, who was also on his third piece of knitwear, agreed.
A yell came from one end of the table, and the team looked up, prepared to jump into battle to protect themselves and their knitting needles. The scene that met their eyes wasn't terrorists, or aliens, or giant wasps. Instead, it was even scarier. Clint was cowering behind a chair, and, towering over him, was Natasha, with knitting needles in her hand and a murderous glint in her eye. With another yell, Clint leapt up, over the chair and table, and in another leap that just missed Bruce's head he was behind Bruce's chair. Bruce didn't even look up from his knitting.
Sighing, Vision looked away from the scene that was unfolding before them, certain that as always Natasha would do nothing more to Clint that minor bodily harm, and also that as always Clint deserved it.
"Where is Scott?" he questioned, looking around for Ant-Man, who was nowhere to be seen. With a 'poof!' that wasn't actually part of the change but a sound effect that Scott added for extra excitement, he appeared back in his seat.
"Sorry," he grinned sheepishly, "I had to unpick a knot."
"Ruler of ants," Thor looked up hopefully, "would you be agreeable to minimising yourself once more to disentangle my yarn?" With another, slightly higher pitched 'poof!', Scott was gone again.
"You guys are superheroes?" Alda questioned, looking down at Pietro who had attempted to knit too fast and stabbed himself like 700 times in the process, while Peter gave up on making anything except nice patterns because, hey, a spider! "I fear for the safety of this planet."
"Oh well," she clapped her hands together, "next up is woodworking, because what could possibly go wrong if I give you all knives? You will all," she glared at each of them in turn, "make popsicle sticks, or else."
Bucky grinned, far too happy at being handed the tools, "This is more like it."
"Popsicle sticks?" Wanda asked, frowning at Alda, "Do we get popsicles though?"
"A girl after my own heart," Alda chuckled.
Soon enough, the group had settled down. Steve was dutifully going along with it, as was Bruce, although he was significantly less happy about this than the knitting. Tony had started designing weapons for everyone, which Alda let slide as long as he designed one for her too.
"Not again," Clint complained as Natasha sharpened her 'stick' to a fine point, but she merely grinned evilly and left him to fearfully nurse his wounds.#
With the Avengers, even a few minutes of peace was too much, and they should have known better than to relax for so long. With a bang, a crash, and a scream, sirens were whirring in the hall and the entire sprinkler system had been set off, drenching the team.
Alda was the first to speak, the words coming out of her mouth at a screech. "What the fuck?"
Sheepishly, Pietro raised his still-smoking block of wood. "I may have gone a bit hard?" he shrugged, avoiding her steely gaze. She sighed dramatically, pointing a quivering finger at a corner.
"You can go join Thor," she ordered, and the Avenger's followed the line of her arm to where the demigod was, indeed, sitting alone, surrounded by approximately 70000 broken blocks of wood. "Is anyone else going to cause any trouble?", she raised one eyebrow in contempt, and the sound of Peter beating out a rhythm using his as drumsticks stopped immediately, as well as Wanda's slight flinch every few seconds as Sam poked her in the side, under the ribcage, where Pietro had confided she was ticklish. "Good. How is everyone getting on?"
"Precision is key," Vision replied promptly, from where his popsicle sticks were exactly symmetrical, all the same shape and size.
"Yes, but for what?" Scott exploded, "How is this helpful?" He threw his file onto the ground, and silence followed the clatter.
"Who's up for origami? Even you guys can't fuck that up."
"You underestimate us," Scott growled, but he didn't turn it down.
Soon enough, the entire room was a mess. Bucky was proudly showing off his crane, and Vision very politely hid his creations of architectural genius to congratulate him. Tony had made a mini Iron Man suit, and Steve a flipping frog that he was racing with the one Peter made. Pietro had chosen one of the more complicated designs, and gifted Peter with an origami spider.
Wanda and Sam were playing with a chatterbox that she had made, and she was using the rose that he had made her for a hairpiece. Both Natasha and Clint were sparring, her with throwing stars that she had made and him with a mini bow of paper that actually flung the fitting arrows he had created too.
Bruce gave up about two minutes in and started making simple paper aeroplanes, and Thor then had the magnificent idea to have a paper aeroplane fight.
When Coulson and Hill returned to pick up their crew, there were crumpled paper aeroplanes covering the entire gym. 'In the interests of fair, same-size teams' Alda had joined in, and was beating the crap out of Clint in particular.
"Bring them back anytime you want, half price," she called jovially to them as they left. "It may not have been relaxing, but it sure as hell was fun!"