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Roughly a month after Valentina’s improvised press conference following Bob disappearing Manhattan and the people inside it, a box materializes in the penthouse.
Well, considering it’s got a FedEx delivering slip John supposes it came to be there the traditional way, via the lobby on the first floor and then again through the second lobby on the 80th floor right before the Avengers section. It’s unlikely it contains anything dangerous as it went through several state of the art scanners that check for anything from explosive to anthrax and apparently even magic—according to Mel, it’s something complicated Valentina concocted with the Sorcerer Supreme but who even knows with magic.
Point is, if it got delivered all the way up to the penthouse it’s probably fine.
Which doesn’t really explain why Yelena and Ava are staring at it like it might contain an armed warhead.
John doesn’t care really, he just came down from his room to watch football on the 100" TV, as there’s none on his floor his room only has a 55". The 84th floor’s common area has unofficially become the team’s hangout area when off-duty, mostly due to the 100" TV and the extra sofas and chairs Bob and Yelena requested so they can all enjoy it for sports and movie nights.
John wasn’t too convinced about the living situation—still fully isn’t to be honest—but he’s getting around to it. The amenities help.
He makes his way to the fridge to grab a beer, when Yelena lets out a startled gasp and his reflexes react before his brain by grabbing the first thing that can be used as a projectile and hurling it at the box. His aim is true, at least, and while it’s not a vibranium shield or the lesser version that got turned into a taco, the fridge magnet sails around Yelena’s body in an elegant arc and hits the box on its side.
The fridge magnet is actually a novelty bottle open in the shape of a beer glass that Alexei got at the abandoned gas station where Bucky detained them after the vault; even with the metal element at the top, it’s really not that efficient as a projectile. It clatters to the floor without much of an effect on the box.
Yelena and Ava stare at the bottle opener and then slowly turn to look at John.
He feels himself flush. "What? You screamed like it attacked you!"
Yelena sputters. "Oh! Oh! I did not scream!"
"You thought we were under attack and you chucked a magnet at it?"
He shrugs. "What, I improvised. I wasn’t gonna throw my beer."
Yelena stabs both her index fingers into the air like it’s gonna make her point doubly valid. "Once again, I did not scream. I was just jump scared by your ugly face."
"Jesus. I was just passing by, didn’t even say anything." Yelena really is an outright bitch sometimes. She may speak the truth occasionally, but she doesn’t have to be such a dick about it.
Ava rolls her eyes so theatrically that it distracts both of them away from the glaring contest they’re locked in. "No," she says, pointing at the box with a flourish. "Your face."
Now utterly confused and somewhat apprehensive, John approaches the box slowly. Sure enough, half-obscured by one of the folded flaps of the box is John’s frowning face, slightly larger than life. Well, he supposed he can’t really fault Yelena’s startlement when it looks like he’s trying to squint his way through a migraine. It’s not his most flattering look. Where does the picture even come from?
Oh, right. The photoshoot. John did his best to forget about it and now, almost one month, later here they are.
The elevator doors ding and out comes Mel in a rush. "Oh! They arrived!"
Seemingly unaware or uncaring of the various degrees of unease displayed by her audience of three, she opens the box all the way and reveals John’s full portrait. The photo depicts him from the waist up, shoulders angled one way while he’s squinting a glare at something off camera in the other direction. No shield, no helmet. Valentina had insisted: his uniform already looked so much like his old Captain America one, she didn’t want the extra reminders for this supposed rebranding. For once, John had completely agreed with her, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think the photoshoot wasn’t a stupid idea.
Staring down at himself printed on glossy poster paper does nothing but reinforce his initial assessment.
Mel is cheerfully unperturbed. She grabs the bundle of John posters and plops it in John’s arms. Underneath, Alexei’s face stares at them frozen in an unhinged grin. Yelena gags and even Mel loses her confidence for a moment.
She quickly recomposes herself, clears her throat. "Right!" She claps. "Where are the others?"
After an unenthusiastic reception from everyone except Alexei—who grabs one copy of each poster and five of his—and Bob—who is generally just happy to be there and doesn’t really have a horse in this race—the box gets shoved away in a maintenance cupboard and forgotten.
That is, until a few days later, when John and Bucky are changing in the gym locker room after training and he hears Bucky bite off a curse. John turns, halfway through pulling on his shirt, and finds Bucky standing there shirtless and scowling at his locker.
"What?"
Bucky lets out a sigh and gestures at the locker, so John pulls down his shirt and walks up to him to get a closer look.
With Bucky’s change of clothes framing it like stage curtains, hangs a mirror of Bucky’s current scowl, only slightly bigger and printed on glossy paper. Flesh and blood Bucky redirects his glare at John. The photographers truly caught his likeness.
John shrugs. "Don’t look at me, man."
Next one to turn up is the top half of Ava’s head staring out from behind a row of mugs, the bottom half of the poster hidden by the cupboard shelf and the bowls piled up on the shelf underneath. It’s been placed exactly where Ava likes most to emerge to startle everyone as they’re getting their morning coffee—at least two mugs have been lost to sleep-deprived people flailing as Ava’s upper body emerged from the wall.
Ava doesn’t startle though, she raises an eyebrow, shrugs, grabs a mug and then closes the cupboard.
Things escalate. John finds himself staring down at him from the ceiling one evening after he collapses in bed exhausted after a three-day long mission during which he hadn’t slept a wink. The ceiling in his room is almost 15 feet high, he can’t help but applaud the commitment.
When accused of being the prankster, Alexei points out that the posters he took are all hanging on the walls of his quarters and that the extra four spares he got of himself he carries with him when he goes out, in case a fan recognizes him. So he can sign and give the poster to them, he explains to their blank faces. So far he hasn’t given out any.
Yelena swears it’s not her. Or rather, she says, "Ew, Walker. Why would I want to set foot in your dirty room?"
John is willing to bet his quarters are the tidiest and cleanest out of all of them, but she does seem genuinely offended by the idea of herself being in the general vicinity of his room even just as a concept, so John believes her.
And so faces keep appearing in drawers, behind doors, inside cupboards, but it all comes to a head when Alexei’s weird grin gets plastered on the inside of a stall in the men’s toilets in the gym.
Bucky calls an informal meeting with all the Avengers née Thunderbolts. "Whoever it is, just cut it out," it’s all he says, a grimace scrunching up his features like it’s physically painful for him to scold a bunch of grown up trained assassins and spies like they’re little kids.
John can sympathize, feeling uncomfortably chastised even though he’s absolutely innocent in all of this. He catches sight of Bob then, off in the corner reading on the armchair he claimed as his and dragged near the floor to ceiling windows. He’s not in his customary relaxed slouch though, but rather sitting up straight, mouth pressed in a thin line that completely disappears his lips like he’s trying to keep himself from cracking up.
John comes to a realization.
The fact that all the posters were placed just in either the common areas or the male-access ones should’ve tipped him, really. Not because he thinks for a minute Yelena or Ava wouldn’t breach the sanctity of the men’s locker rooms for the sake of a prank even at the risk of seeing a stray dick or two, but because Bob is the only one of them nice enough not to break into the women’s one for it.
Bob notices that he’s being stared at. He turns his head fully to catch John’s eyes and he winks.
The little shit.
The day after, a poster appears in the kitchen of the 84th floor, hung up on the fridge with a magnet in each corner; it’s the ensemble photo of all of them. "The New Avengers," proclaims the bold lettering underneath the five of them.
This one stays up, though at some point somebody—John’s money is on Ava—adds an asterisk after ’Avengers’ and then writes ’*Thunderbolts’ in small text underneath.
They receive more promotional material proofs such as mugs, water bottles, hats, calendars and even towels—thankfully most of them with just the new logo rather than their faces. The water bottles are actually nice—made of steel and insulated—and so are the towels, so John snags a few for himself. Calendars he isn’t sure are very useful when everyone’s got a smartphone these days and besides he doesn’t want to stare at himself more than necessary, so he throws his in the garbage.
The mugs are added to their ever growing collection in what’s now called the Ava cupboard—that was the only poster that wasn’t removed, even Bucky admitted that it is kind of funny.
Mel also brings some extra ones, one for each of them personalised with outtakes from the photoshoot. Alexei’s mug has the cropped top half of his face, all bushy eyebrows and crazed eyes. Yelena is captured blowing a kiss, lips puckered up in an exaggerated duck face. Bucky just scowls at whoever took the picture and the resulting photo print looks like it’s uncannily following the observer’s eyes. Ava’s is just a photo of her smoldering at the viewer—in fact all her pictures from the photoshoot are the best, clearly the staff had a favorite. John’s was taken as he was in the middle of a sneeze, with his face all screwed up so that he looks angry and constipated at the same time.
Bob gets his own mug too. It’s a picture of him drinking from a mug. He loves it and keeps calling it his ’drinking mug’ with a straight face. Every time he takes the first sip from it, he schools his features and poses exactly as the photo printed on it and cracks himself up every single time.
It’s so annoying, John hates him.
Yelena cuts a printout of Bob’s face out and tapes it onto the poster on the fridge so that he’s also part of the lineup at least in the privacy of their kitchen. The photo is from the media coverage right after the Void disappeared half of Manhattan and, as Bob was in the background, it’s blurry and out of focus, but still Bob beams at Yelena, all white teeth and bright eyes.
It’s kind of weird having him floating there as a disembodied head, though, so John—who up until then was trying to drink his coffee and not intrude—grabs the marker they use to write the grocery list on the whiteboard taped to the side of the fridge and draws a stick figure body under it. He adds a cape and some stars and sparkles around him so it’s clear that he’s got the power of a million exploding suns or whatever.
Yelena mocks his artistic abilities—or lack thereof—but she’s having trouble keeping a grin off her face throughout the whole thing, so John doesn’t take it personally.
Bob’s eyebrows climb up to his hairline and then he bursts out laughing with such genuine joy and wonder, John can’t even look at him and has to pretend to be engrossed in the drawing, adding a few more sparkles, ears burning like he got sunburned.