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Their PR team—seven full time employees, one for each of them including Bob and one for the whole team as a whole—were the ones to suggest the switch from the helmet to the beret so as to "further distance his image from the Captain America brand" as they put it. John isn’t too sure that a swap in headgear will do much to be honest, not when he’s literally wearing the same uniform but in black.
The helmet did have its drawbacks, he’ll be the first to admit. Wearing it for long periods of time made his scalp itch and there wasn’t much give in the reinforced material, so he couldn’t even reach under to scratch or fix his hair. It sat so snugly on his forehead that sometimes he got headaches, too.
However, it used to be really good at protecting his head and most of his face.
A beret? Not so much, it turns out.
He doesn’t even know where it is, lost somewhere when he got stabbed in the fucking face with a glorified letter opener. A tiny little knife really, blade barely more than two inches long by the feel of it, right in the middle of his right cheek. John is going to remember the whine of the metal scraping against his teeth until the day he dies.
The blade is wedged at an angle between his upper and lower molars so that he has to keep his mouth open halfway, the point poking painfully at his tongue. Blood is rapidly filling his mouth, some dribbles down his chin and some down his throat. He swallows desperately, mouth hanging open, and the taste makes him gag but he can’t do much with the knife still wedged into his cheek if he doesn’t want to shred his tongue to bits, so he stands there gasping and choking on his own blood.
The scientist who just stabbed him—ex-military by the way he moves—also stands there and stares at John momentarily frozen with his mouth gaping like he can’t believe he just did that.
John headbutts him so hard it’s a wonder the guy doesn’t sink three feet into the floor under the blow. He collapses to the ground instead, out cold, without even a sound. He hopes he just gave him a concussion serious enough that he doesn’t remember stabbing a supposed Avenger with a fucking multiool.
Aaand now he’s got a headache on top of the knife in his face.
So yes, fuck that fucking beret, he’s gonna go back to helmets.
It takes him a good ten seconds to realize that he’s being hailed on comms by Bucky’s somewhat strained voice. Science Rambo got the drop on him as he was reporting on his section being all cleared—which obviously it wasn’t—so all that stabbing happened while on open comms. His day just keeps getting better and better.
"I’m fine," is what he tries to say. In reality, what comes out is something that isn’t even really a word, followed by gurgling. More blood down his throat and this time the gagging becomes dry heaving and now John can add 'vomiting the blood you just swallowed because of the hole in your face' right above 'the sound of a knife against your teeth' in his ever growing list of worst nightmarish experiences in his life.
Once he’s sure he’s not going to pass out, he stumbles back to his feet and takes a look around. He’s in a secret, probably evil, science lab and while lots of corners get cut in this kind of clandestine operation, everything he’s seen so far is about as close to a proper bioengineering lab as he’s ever seen. He finally spots the first aid box on the wall next to the main entrance and makes his way there. He has to lean against a counter or two to keep himself upright and mostly straight, black spots dotting his vision, but he’s not sure if it’s the blood loss or the pain that’s making his head woozy. Are there important arteries in the face?
If he bleeds out and dies because he got stabbed with a fucking Swiss army knife his team is never gonna let him live it down.
The first aid kit is fully stocked and if the incident report table stuck to the inside of the cabinet is to be believed, it’s never been used. John reaches for a couple of gauze packets, leaving bloody prints everywhere, tears them open and slaps them on his cheek, around the knife handle.
He must’ve blacked out for a second, because the next thing he knows he’s slumped over a counter, halfway to kneeling on the floor with a chorus of alarmed "Walker!" being shouted in his ears. Super soldier serum means his hearing is more sensitive, so he’s set the volume at the lowest possible setting, but still he winces at the screaming.
"I’m fine", he tries again. This time it comes out as, "ahm fuhh", which is perhaps not fine, but better than the previous attempt. He’s still bleeding and choking with his mouth forced open.
It occurs to him that hearing a pained yell and then several minutes of what sounds like someone mumbling nonsense and drowning in their own blood without any context might perhaps be a little alarming.
He taps O.K. in Morse code on his receiver. There’s a collective groan from everyone as the comms screech and crackle with his taps, but Bucky gets it instantly. "Roger that, Walker, Ava is on her way to you. Can you walk?"
John is a little woozy, but he can walk fine. He won’t say no to some backup, however. With his luck, another wannabe hero will jump out and stab him in the other cheek. He taps a quick affirmative on his comms.
"C?" Ava asks. "I thought you were in Block B? Am I going the wrong way?"
"No," Bucky jumps back in. "That’s shorthand for af—"
.- ..-. ..-.
More shouts. "—firma—Yes, we got it, thanks," Bucky growls out. "You don’t have to tap the whole thing."
.. .-. -- .-
"Walker!"
- .. ...- .
It takes him the better part of a minute to zip tie the unconscious scientist one-handed with his non-dominant hand as he keeps the gauze pressed to his cheek with the other. He really, really wants to take out the knife, but after a cursory google search on the unconscious guy’s phone, he found out there is indeed an important artery somewhere in the face and in the end the embarrassment of potentially bleeding to death in a dumb way wins over the pain and discomfort of keeping the knife in.
He pockets the guy’s phone, in case there’s something they can use on it, and then slings the unconscious body over his left shoulder. His cheek is still bleeding and by now the gauze is completely soaked through and sticks to his face without needing to hold it there, but he’s found a somewhat workable solution by leaning his head slightly forward and down so the blood trickles out of his half-opened mouth instead of having to swallow it and be sick all over again.
It must look as good as it feels, though, because suddenly Ava is in front of him, materialized out of shock at the sight of him as far as he can tell.
He waves hello.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Walker."
There’s a mix of English and Russian swearing and shouting as soon as he and Ava get back to the others. ’Jesus fucking Christ, Walker’ seems to be general consensus, in spirit if not in actual wording.
They’re all standing outside their surveillance van, pretty fucking conspicuous in their Avengers uniforms, except for Bob who is all decked out in a black tactical suit, including unnecessary body armor and what John knows is an unloaded sidearm strapped to his tigh—though Bob protested, the rest of them all agreed that until he can actually shoot something without hitting his teammates he shouldn’t even try. He’s here too, because it was just a simple recon job after all and it seemed like a good idea to put him under stress in a real-world controlled situation to see if he actually could be useful.
John personally doesn’t think having a Sentry is worth the risk of unleashing Negative Bob even if he manages to get those two under some semblance of control at some point, but Bob is probably bored to tears after weeks of sitting around in the tower and John can understand wanting to be useful. If nothing else, they can definitely use him as a bulletproof shield.
The team spent a week in the desert in Nevada throwing everything short of actual explosives at him and, apart from shredding lots of clothing, Bob was completely fine every time, not even a scratch on him. He seemed to have fun, actually. Not as much as Alexei, but John knows for a fact that the two of them are planning another similar outing after accidentally overhearing them. He’s still debating on whether to tell Bucky and Yelena about that—on one hand, it’d be really funny if he didn’t, on the other, he wouldn’t put it past Alexei to escalate the whole thing to nukes or something and if it came out that John knew and didn’t tell he probably would end up being blamed for it somehow.
So in summary; not only John was ambushed like an amateur, but he also shows up at the rendez-vous with his teammates and the fucking intern looking like a horror movie victim of the tiniest stabbing known to man.
Could be worse he supposes. Could be raining.
"Uh, Walker..." Bob looks whiter than a sheet, like he—who still has all of his blood on the inside of his body—is the one who’s about to pass out. "You have a..." he gestures at his own cheek. John glares up at him from his hunched over vomiting zombie pose. "Right. You probably know that."
"Yeh, prohahly," he mutters.
It’s a mistake. His tongue gets sliced on the knife point and he can’t help the wince, which in turn moves the knife, which scrapes against his teeth with a hellish sound helpfully amplified by the virtue of it happening inside his head and he winces again at the knife cuts deeper and more blood gushes out and now eveyone is yelling and cursing except John who would very much like to yell and curse but can’t because he has a fucking knife stuck in his face and everyone is standing around like idiots instead of driving him to their own state-of-the-art, private medical facilities.
Between his cheek, the inside of his mouth and his tongue, he gets an even thirty stitches and a bandage, plus a dentist appointment in a weeks’ time to check the state of his teeth.
They shaved half his face to take care of the wound, and for all the blood and the pain, the bandage on his cheek looks tiny and inconspicuous.
John shaves the rest of his beard so he doesn’t look ridiculous and he ends up looking something way worse. The uniform is discarded in a pile in the corner at least, so he doesn’t have to look at the whole picture, frozen in the mirror, staring back at him. He has the irrational urge to rip off the bandage and the stitches beneath, reopen the wound and let it bleed freely so that he doesn’t look—
The cheap, plastic razor slips from his grip and clatters in the sink, startling him out of the staring contest he was having with himself. He stumbles a step back and then another, then he finally turns his back to the past and jumps in the shower.
When he comes out of his room, it is to the indignity of a team debriefing.
Once they officially became Avengers there was an attempt made at keeping up professional standards, but not even John who had striven to be a perfect cog in the ranks of the military machine, nor Bucky the actual congressman, nor Yelena with her newfound "public facing" ambitions could be bothered to sit around in post-mission meetings with agendas and minutes and power point presentations, so all their debriefs are done at what they call the Big Breakfast Table in the main kitchen area on the 84th floor.
John has no idea who or why they started calling it that, he can’t think of any one time when they all had breakfast together in the tower since they officially became the Avengers.
It is certainly big however. It can probably sit ten to twelve people comfortably, but right now it’s littered with opened and unopened beer bottles, soda cans and an improbable amount of take out boxes from at least three different places—three super soldiers on the team means daily calorie intakes that would make an Olympic triathlon athlete blush—as well as official looking papers, photos, phones and laptops.
And, of course, the Avengers.
Alexei is facing him and would be the first to see him, but he has his head down as he’s shovelling what looks like three whole servings of pad thai into his mouth, so instead it’s Yelena who notices John first. She glances up from the file she’s reading and then whips her head up in a double take so fast that it’s a wonder it doesn’t cause a sonic boom.
"Holeeee shiiiit, Walker!" She giggles. She actually giggles. "Who is this baby face? Who is this child? Is that you, baby Johnny Walker?"
He fucking hates being called Johnny. It takes everything in him not to groan out loud, he barely manages it, but he’s clamping down his jaw so hard the wound in his cheek flares up in pain and he can’t suppress a wince.
"Oh no, poor baby!" Yelena gasps theatrically. "You got boo boo?"
Ava blinks out from her chair. He’s expecting her, so he doesn’t flinch when she appears next to him. She grabs his chin and moves his head left and right as she considers him with narrowed eyes. Finally, she pats his uninjured cheek, "Very handsome, Mr. All American Blonde and Blue-Eyed."
John shrugs her off with maybe more force than necessary, but she just snorts and dematerializes again, before reappearing closer to the table, still chuckling to herself.
"Not as manly, but very handsome indeed!" Alexei thunders. He strokes his own unshaved beard, long and unkempt and peppered with pad thai. An alarmed look crosses his eyes, "I mean, manly still, but not as manly as with beard. But still very manly. Just not as very."
"Okay, shut up now dad."
Probably not the result their PR Team were hoping for when they made them attend all those sensitivity training and seminars.
Bucky doesn’t say anything, his stare barely even lingers in fact, but he was the only one who actually knew him before, outside of all the promotional material, after all.
Ava grabs an unopened beer and twists the cap off before offering it to John.
The elevator doors ding and Bob stumbles out, carrying three Krispy Kreme boxes. "Donuts are here!" He calls out, excitedly.
He catches sight of John. His eyes go wide and his mouth opens in a perfect circle and then he promptly walks into a pillar.
The stitches in his cheek are gone before he’s barely grown any stubble, so he has to endure his naked face long after he can be distracted by the barely there pinkish scar.
Enhanced healing doesn’t mean enhanced hair growth, apparently.
Make it make sense.
The lab gets shut down as a result of their recon—evil science being done after all, as if Dr. McStabface wasn’t a clue—all the assets seized and catalogued.
His beret is never found.