Emotionally Unstable Little Duckie

New Avengers tower headcanons!

Bucky ends up as the leader of the squad, mostly because he was a congressman, and everyone just assumes that makes him qualified.

No one else actually wants to lead. Ava ghosts meetings (literally), John keeps suggesting push-up contests as conflict resolution, Alexei wants to be the mascot, Yelena cannot control the herd, and Bob just wants everyone to like him. So Bucky’s stuck with the job like a dad who didn’t mean to adopt five adult children.

Bucky pretends he hates the leadership role, but deep down he likes having purpose again. It's definitely a better purpose than his weird pretending-to-like-working-in-Capitol-Hill phase. 

The team starts buying Bucky mugs. Each one has some weird phrase like “#1 Cat Mom” or “World’s Okayest Boss.” One says “Don’t talk to me until I’ve punched a Nazi.” He drinks out of that one the most.

Bucky keeps a running list of everyone’s trauma triggers, dietary needs, and weird habits in a leather notebook he hides under his bed. He updates it meticulously. 

Bucky goes searching for Steve’s old room, not really knowing why. He finds it eventually by following faint pencil sketches along the baseboards—figures, landscapes, messy little self-portraits. No one ever talks about how good of an artist Steve was.

Bucky has a habit of cleaning and maintaining everyone’s weapons. No one asked him to. It’s just something he does. “Keeps my hands busy,” he says. John’s Taco shield has never looked shinier.

Bucky trains Bob in hand-to-hand combat because relying on the Sentry is a dangerous crutch, especially with the Void. “You gotta learn to throw a punch without leveling the city,” Bucky says. 

Bob asks for a gun. Bucky laughs until he realises Bob’s serious. “Okay… maybe a little gun.”

Bob’s sobriety is the center of his life. He counts days in his journal and scribbles tally marks. 

Bob goes to meetings anonymously. Sometimes online. Most times, he doesn’t say a word, just listens.

Bob asks for permission constantly. “Can I sit here?” “Can I help?” “Do you mind if I talk?” It’s not insecurity—it’s fear of taking up space, even though no one thinks so.

Bob sleeps with the lights on.

Bob has a habit of sitting outside people’s doors when they’re having a hard time. He doesn’t knock or say anything. He just lets them know he’s there.

Once, he sits outside Ava’s door even though the two were not that close to begin with. He said he wanted to make more connections. 

Valentina definitely tries to monetize the lower floors of Avengers Tower. She installs cheesy tourist attractions and even vending machines. Ava keeps stealing from said vending machines. Instead of going to the store, she just phases through the fridge door and snatches a Coke. “Why pay two bucks when I can just become intangible?”

Ava hoards those soda cans like a dragon. She has coke bottles hidden in the walls. Mini fridges stashed in ventilation shafts.

Ava keeps little things. Trinkets from missions, receipts from stores. A cinema stub when the team all went to see a movie together. It all goes into a shoebox labeled “Proof I Exist.”

Ava has mild motion sickness. Phasing feels fine—but when they get the jet, it was instant nausea. Yelena now carries ginger chews and hands them over.

Ava also disappears into the vents. Not intentionally at first—she phases away from one of John and Alexei’s overly intense arguments about European football vs American football and ends up inside the duct system. But then she discovers she likes it. 

In one of the vents, Ava finds a hidden alcove. It’s a makeshift hangout spot where Clint and Nat used to go. She finds old books, photos, arrowheads, and one of Nat’s worn leather bracelets. It’s all dust and forgotten. Ava collects it and brings it to Yelena and Alexei.

Yelena wears the leather bracelet now. Alexei frames one of her old books, insisting it’s “Soviet literature.” It’s Crime and Punishment.

Yelena keeps photos of Nat in weird places. Inside her wallet, taped to her mirror, tucked into her knife case.

Yelena drinks pickle juice straight from the jar, eats hot sauce with a spoon, and once tried to convince Ava that mayonnaise was a “traditional Russian face mask.”

Yelena always wins at Mario Kart. No one knows how. She plays with one hand and eats chips with the other.

Yelena bakes surprisingly well. It is now one of her healthier coping mechanisms. If there are lemon bars on the counter, someone pissed her off. If there are croissants, she’s feeling nostalgic.

Yelena absolutely makes fun of John Walker 24/7. Calls him “Captain America Lite” or “Diet Steve.” John is mostly unbothered by it now.

John is so competitive. Dodgeball? He will throw a tantrum. Chess? He flips a table if he loses. 

He takes tower fitness very seriously, insisting on morning drills at 6 AM. Only Bucky shows up. Sometimes. Alexei pretends he’s sick. Yelena flips him off from the rooftop.

John has questionable taste in music. Like Creed, Nickelback, and early 2000s workout playlists. He blares it in the gym. Bucky came in and broke the speaker once. “Oops,” he said.

John made a group chat called "Avengers 2: Electric Boogaloo” and got flamed by Yelena and Ava instantly.

John and Alexei have an aggressive friendship. After their first on-field mission together, the two supersoldiers tried chest bumping. They broke a stair railing doing this. Bucky banned them from jumping indoors.

Alexei introduces himself as "Russia’s Greatest Hero" to literally everyone— especially delivery drivers.

Alexei keeps a team scrapbook. It’s full of blurry photos, Polaroids, and captions written in Russian. He’s glued bottle caps and mission debris to the pages. It’s surprisingly sweet.

Alexei and Yelena bicker a lot, mostly because Yelena insists “my dad is embarrassing me.” She acts annoyed, but when he tells people she’s “more dangerous than 20 trained assassins, and very smart.” She pretends not to smile.

Alexei writes letters to “Mother Russia.” Like actual, physical letters. He reads them out loud on the roof sometimes. 

Alexei once saved the entire team on a mission by charging in on Bucky’s motorcycle yelling, “FOR MOTHERLAND!” It was completely off-script, but it worked. 

Alexei keeps Nat’s old locket in his drawer. It has a picture of the two of them from Ohio. He doesn’t show it to anyone. 

In the tower, movie nights are mandatory. John has a spreadsheet. Ava cheats and phases into the media server to override votes.

One time they all cried during Paddington 2. Even Bucky. No one talks about it.

They have a “Panic Button.” Literally a big red button in the common room. Press it, and everyone drops what they’re doing and comes running. Sometimes it’s a real emergency. Sometimes Bob just wants to show them a weird bird outside the window.

Someone (John) keeps starting a fire in the kitchen. Bob bought a fire extinguisher

They keep finding forgotten things. Steve’s old sketch pads. Bruce Banner’s old research paper in a drawer. A dusty pair of glasses labeled “Jarvis Specs: Do Not Touch.” 

The gym still has Thor’s old weights. No one can move them. 

The elevator still announces “Welcome, Mr. Stark” when it glitches. Bob once answered “Hi” out of reflex.

They found an old Avengers mug that says “EARTH’S MIGHTIEST INTERN.” Nobody knows who it belonged to. Bucky insists it was Clint’s. John thinks it was Darcy’s.

Nobody really talks about it, but they know they live in the ruins of legends. The Tower still has scorch marks from Ultron and the tesseract remnants from the portal they opened in the Battle of New York.

At night, they all gravitate toward the common room. There's always someone reading or cooking or watching TV. At night, together, they all feel like they belong there.