Fic: Food For Thought (Avengers)

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Title: Food For Thought
Characters/Pairings: Tony Stark (Iron Man), Bruce Banner (Hulk), Thor, Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Pepper Potts, Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Steve Rogers (Captain America)
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Small spoilers for the movie, crackish, mild swearing
Genre: Humor/Friendship
Word-count: 3,300
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this.
A/N: Written for the one_kitchen domisticity fanwork fest, for jesseofthenorth's prompt: Everyone takes turns cooking meals. Who is the best cook? Who is the worst? Who isn't allowed in the kitchen anymore?
Summary: It didn't seem like that big of a deal. Really. It didn't. But Tony should have predicted the ramifications of six superheroes and only one kitchen.

It actually starts out very simple. You see, when designing the new Avengers headquarters Tony… may have made a little mistake.

Well, no. Of course not. Tony Stark doesn’t make mistakes. He simply doesn’t. He is Iron Man for crying out loud. Mistake? Not even in his vocabulary.

(Okay, there was that incident in Portugal that maybe, possibly, would have been best avoided. And a few messes with Pepper. And the whole flying a bomb through a portal into another world and hurtling to his dead, but actually, when you think about it, that was as heroic and brave and awesome as it was stupid, so it doesn’t count.)

But this time… it might have been an actual mistake. You see, it didn’t seem that important in the beginning. First of all, the only ones actually meant to inhabit this place was him and Pepper, so obviously the designs would look like this.

But now there are five other people to take into account, plus minus hook-ups and pets and hammers that apparently need a whole separate room (yeah, Tony was not going to touch that one with a seven-feet pole, because it was just too weird, and frankly Thor was huge, and to be fair he himself had a whole separate section for his favourite armours as well and some would deem that just as weird.) (Even if it wasn’t, of course. Frankly, it was awesome. The hammer-thing was weird though)

At least he had taken the bathrooms into account. There was one for each room, plus a few scattered next to the living-rooms and one by the gym and another next to the lab. Tony didn’t even want to think of the mess of shared bathrooms. And not even for Natasha’s sake – he figured an ex-assassin who had lived her entire life in a male-dominated livelihood and surroundings wouldn’t be too squeamish about exposed skin and whatnot. No, it was more for Bruce’s sake, because the man could be so people-shy, bordering on people-frightened and also, Tony wasn’t completely sure what would happen if he accidentally nicked himself while shaving or something: another reason Bruce’s walls had reinforced steel in them. So it was for Bruce, and also Steve, because the poor Cap was, what, 70 years now, and hadn’t been laid ever and exposing him to too much Natasha-time or Natasha-skin might not be the best idea. While Tony held firm that it would be goddamn good, even healthy for the man, he didn’t want to break their beloved leaders brain completely either.

He also wasn’t sure his eardrums could stand the force of Thor’s mighty roar should he ever find out that they were sharing bathing quarters with one or several fair maids, thus endangering their purity and imposing on their privacy (the maids that is). Tony had several things to say to that statement, and most of them were so crude they were even censored in his own mind.

But that wasn’t the problem: the bathrooms were in order. The rooms too, neatly located with Thor and Clint near the top of the tower and the Cap in the middle like a home-beacon of a centre, all warm and snuggly and American. The living-rooms were great, there were enough so that there would be no maiming or carnage, or destroying of furniture as the world’s finest battled over the remote. The Avengers HQ was spacious and roomy and all in all, quite grand.

But there was only one kitchen.

And herein lay Tony’s biggest mistake.

If of course you didn’t count the mistake that was even having a kitchen in the first place.

--

To perhaps everyone’s surprise, it didn’t take very long before all of them were practically living in the HQ. Sure, most of them had other places to be (and Tony seriously had to convince Thor to take him to Asgard sometime soon: if ever there were a people that could throw a party it was the Vikings, and Tony was not going to miss that for the world), apartments or ‘nests’ if you’d have (Tony sometimes wondered if Clint was smoking anything funny, and was torn between asking him to stop and asking him to share), but little by little, they’d all settled mainly into the magnificence that was The Avengers Tower.

Dammit, but he was never getting tired of saying that. Even in his head.

Bruce had settled in immediately, before construction was even done, along with Tony and Pepper. The man, for all his fear of being around people, didn’t really want to return to his old haunts at the edge of the world. Steve had returned shortly after, simultaneously matured and disturbed by what he’d seen of his old neighbourhood, and understandably not quite wanting to settle all on his own in this new and strange world. It was only two days after that that Tony discovered Clint, who had apparently been there for almost a week already (and that explained where all of his Red Bull had gone, damn the man!), and then came Natasha, appearing from some mysterious place with a tan and a bandaged wrist, not to mention a shark-like grin that gave Tony nightmares for days. All they needed was Thor, and seeing as his little bunny-face was here on Earth, it wasn’t long before the god of thunder spent at least one night a week at the HQ, both with and without that perky little astrophysicist (yes, Tony was allowed to look, really, he was. He was in a devoted relationship to an amazing woman and Thor would crush him barehanded if something ever happened, so it wasn’t like he was going to do anything. He would never. That didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the view)

So, with all these capable, astounding, brilliant people, there was only one question up in the air.

Who was going to do the cooking?

---

 “Breakfast,” was Steve’s unusual greeting one shining Wednesday morning when Tony had actually managed to get out of bed at an early hour (well, it was early for him anyway: wasn’t his problem that the rest of the house was already up)

“Erm…” Now, it wasn’t that Tony didn’t trust the guy: hell, even if he hadn’t already started to consider Steve as one of his somewhat-friends, not to mention partner-in-avenging, the guy was too honourable to boot to even try to poison someone, let alone the son of an old friend who he had just happened to save the world with (‘cause they were awesome like that). But still. 70-year-old virgin. Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to trust Steve’s expertise in anything that wasn’t battle-related. There had to have been a reason for the not-getting-laid thing, and saving the world from Nazis just wasn’t a good enough excuse. Tony did world-saving and got lots of sex at the same time. Well, okay, not at the same time. Though that might…

Focus, Stark. Focus.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled, because he didn’t want to hurt the guys feelings and it was a nice offer and he could always go throw up from food poisoning later anyway, they had private bathrooms after all. And as Steve asked him how he wanted his eggs and started flinging kitchen-ware and ingredients around like they were his shield or at least like he had a good handle on it, well, Tony became a little more reassured.

It also helped that, at that exact moment, Clint walked into the kitchen, shouting: “Hit me!” to the Captain and seating himself next to Tony, while Steve went to make another plate of the Hawk’s apparently pre-ordered breakfast.

Right, okay, so Steve making breakfast wasn’t a totally unusual occurrence. How many times had this happened before? He really needed to stop sleeping half the day away.

As he cautiously took his first bite of eggs a la Stephen, Tony amended that statement. Getting up earlier was now on his personal to-do list, every day of the week.

---

“We should make a list for grocery shopping,” Bruce blurted out one day, while they were all sitting, lying and sprawling on various surfaces in one of the living-rooms, watching the news flash by on a frankly gigantic TV.

“That’s a good idea,” Steve said, at exactly the same time Thor and Natasha snorted, Clint raised a sardonic eyebrow and Tony’s eyes rolled around in their sockets like a hamster losing its footing in a hamster-wheel.

“No, it is,” Bruce insisted at their obvious displeasure. “We could take turns.”

“And what would be the purpose of this ‘grocery shopping’?” Thor asked, folding his enormous arms over his enormous chest.

“To get out among people,” Bruce continued. “It would reassure them to see us doing everyday things. Normal things. And some of us would benefit from being around them as well: especially Steve and I, and you Thor. Don’t forget, technically you are a foreigner.”

“Right, so it’s settled,” Natasha cut in. “You guys do the grocery shopping.”

“And will you cook then?” Steve asked.

Natasha’s nostrils flared. “What?”

Steve looked confused. “I just asked… oh no… what did I do?”

“It appears the wench cannot cook,” Thor said, neither of them noticing how Clint, Bruce and Tony immediately seemed to be ducking and flattening themselves against the walls.

“And why should it be my responsibility?” Oh, damn, if looks could kill. Even Thor looked a little unnerved.

“I didn’t mean… I just thought that… it was just because you said…”

“What, because I’m a woman, my place is automatically in the kitchen?” she bit out, and that’s when Tony noticed the small glint in her eyes, faint amusement and he had to stifle a snort. Natasha’s teasing was as lethal as her fighting skills it seemed.

“I didn’t mean that!” Steve shouted. “Please, we didn’t… WE’RE JUST REALLY OLD OKAY?”

Tony was still laughing half an hour later, after Thor had stopped acting insulted at being called ‘old’, Steve had profoundly apologized to Natasha fifty times and Clint had stopped teasing the Captain about his age.

That’s when he became sort of worried at the whole grocery shopping thing.

---

 “I was thinking spaghetti,” Bruce said, reaching up and pulling a package down from one of the shelves.

“Hm-hmm,” Tony mumbled in reply, completely engrossed in his phone. “Sure, spaghetti sounds good.”

“You’re not going to ask what I’ll be making?”

“Is it edible?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Does it have olives?”

“No?”

Tony shrugged. “Then I’m fine with it.”

“Huh,” Bruce said, pushing the cart as they started moving down the aisles again. “Pepper loves olives.”

“Yep,” Tony couldn’t help the silly grin at simply the mention of her name, okay, he just couldn’t. It wasn’t a sappy love-thing, it was an awesome Tony Stark-thing, dammit. Awesome. “So she can always have mine. No arguing about it. It’s perfect.”

Bruce snorted. “Sounds like it.”

That’s when the gigantic crash came, shaking the whole foundation of the shop. Okay. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was just Thor and Clint accidentally knocking over a whole shelf of canned tomatoes, and then getting yelled at slash yelling at one of the shop’s employers, as Thor kept insisting Clint had done it and Clint kept insisting that Thor had done it, because duh, huge and bulking, wild-swinging Viking versus sneaky, ninja-like assassin.

It took so long to sort out the entire mess that Steve, Natasha and Pepper had ordered pizza when they returned home, so there were none spaghetti-no-olives a la Bruce for them. Still, it was totally worth the video Tony now had on his phone of Clint smashing a can of tomatoes against Thor’s head. Well, it was on his phone and youtube by now.

---

As it turned out, Natasha really couldn’t cook. Tony was sure that, lost on a chilly and godforsaken mountain somewhere, she could catch, skin, boil and eat a rabbit in the matter of minutes, but when it came to normal edible food, he think he would prefer to eat his own cooking. And, as Pepper had told him, his cooking wasn’t fit for the trash-can, let alone a normal-functioning digestive system. (He could order pizza like a pro, though)

But no, Natasha Romanoff, assassin extraordinaire and a femme fatale that made Catwoman look like Ugly Betty, did really seem to hate the kitchen with a fiery passion. Or the kitchen possibly hated her. Either way, it seemed they were never going to get those knife marks out of the wood panelling ever again. But sending Thor and Steve to buy new pots and pans had turned out to be somewhat of a success, as they had come back with the sturdiest and near-unbreakable in kitchenware that ever was.

But pizza was getting a little old, even for Tony, and making some sort of household-plan, however nauseatingly domestic, did seem to be the lesser of two evils by now.

Natasha was ruled out for anything besides doing the washing up, as was Tony, Steve seemed completely limited to French toast and eggs, and while delicious, it wasn’t something he wanted to eat every moment of every day. That left Clint, Thor and Bruce. Now, Bruce… despite his brilliant suggestion of spaghetti, Tony wasn’t quite sure letting Bruce manage the food was a good idea. The man had lived by himself for so long, and Tony knew by personal experience what kind of non-edible things came out of the pots of bachelors. And Thor…

Tony really, really wanted to put off asking Thor to cook until or unless it became absolutely necessary. That left Clint.

“You want me to cook tonight?” he asked, peeking down at the billionaire from atop his spot on the roof.

“Yep,” Tony nodded. Clint seemed like a safe, good choice. While also a master-assassin with a questionable background, what little Tony had gleaned of it, it seemed more stable than Natasha’s and Clint had at least had a good, solid family at one point, even long-time lovers, so that the man at least knew how to mash together the basics didn’t seem completely far-fetched.

“What about Pepper? She seems like the type who’s good at everything,” Clint mused, hopping down in a neck-breaking whirl and landing perfectly safe next to Tony (who hadn’t covered his face so as not to see his friend smash out on the ground, no, he totally kept his cool. Totally)

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “And she is. I mean, she can cook alright. But she’s really busy you know, and she’s not our mother or housemaid or anything, we can’t expect her to always be there.”

Clint lifted an eyebrow. “Is that the speech she gave you?”

Tony sagged. “Yeah.”

Clint laughed. “It’s fair anyway. But I don’t know man… I’m not sure I can. What about… hamburgers?”

“Hamburgers?”

“Hamburgers.”

“… Hamburgers!”

---

Hamburgers.

 “You let him cook?” Natasha moaned, head hitting the table in front of her. “You left him in the kitchen, unobserved?”

“He’s a big guy,” Tony protested. “He can keep track of things. I think.”

“He can’t. He’s worse than me!”

“He said he was going to make hamburgers tonight.”

“Of course he’s going to make… wait a second,” she lifted her head so fast she must’ve gotten whiplash. “Why did you say ‘tonight’?”

“Um, because he’s making hamburgers tonight?”

“But why specify tonight? Why not just say ‘he’s making hamburgers’. You’ve already told me Clint is the one doing the cooking today,” she leaned in closer, eyes flashing. Tony gulped. Good lord, but this is what mob bosses and evil people must feel like when fixed under that stare. How had Loki not run screaming? For that matter, why wasn’t he running screaming right at this moment?

“I made him cook for the entire week,” Tony muttered.

“Oh gods,” she yelled, shooting up from her chair and running for the door.

“Where are you going?” he yelled after her, but the door had already slammed.

---

It turned out where Natasha was going was anywhere but here.

Because after five days of nothing but, hamburgers weren’t so great anymore.

“Really Clint, is this all you know to make?” Steve grumbled on the sixth day. Even his enthusiasm had died out sometime around day four.

“Hamburgers are great,” Clint snapped, looking ready to notch an arrow and let it fly towards the next complainers face. Tony kept his mouth shut. Except for the eating. Though maybe he should do that as well. He was getting sick and tired of hamburgers: he might become a vegetarian soon, just from overload of hamburgers.

“I like it,” Thor announced to the world at large.

“That’s great,” Tony said. “Then you can cook tomorrow.”

Right. He really needed to learn to think before he spoke.

---

“Oh my god,” Natasha said.

“Oh my god,” Bruce echoed.

“Oh my god,” Steve said too.

“Oh my god,” Clint joined his voice to the rest.

“Oh my god,” Tony said, sounding way more interested than the situation actually called for.

“Dinner!” Thor announced.

“It’s a pig,” Bruce said, clearly stating the obvious.

“It’s a boar, actually,” Clint remarked and Tony absently wondered if Clint knew a lot about boars. Had he taken a course, perhaps?

“It’s a pig,” Natasha mumbled. “A giant, dead pig.”

“In the living-room,” Steve said, his voice somewhat faint.

“It’s… how did you catch it?”

“Where did you catch it?”

“Are there any boars in New York?”

“Maybe they sell them on the black market.”

“Oh my god, are we going to have to eat an entire boar?”

Tony figured they were crossing Thor off the cooking-list too. Possibly for the rest of eternity – nevermind how cool this actually was… because it was actually pretty cool. Come on -  it was a giant pig in his living-room!

It was a giant pig in his living-room. Pepper was going to have a fit.

---

It was a week, three pizzas and two orders from the Chinese place around the corner later that Tony realized someone was cooking.

As in cooking actual food. In the kitchen. While humming.

The fact that the one doing the cooking in the kitchen and the humming in the kitchen while cooking in the kitchen was none other than the man who normally went around making lab explosions and sometimes turned into a green monster of destruction, somehow made the whole thing even more bizarre.

Or, well, actually it didn’t. That part seemed pretty normal. It was a testimony to Tony’s style of life, and he wasn’t sure whether to think it awesome or disturbing.

Possibly it was a bit of both.

“What are you doing?” he asked, walking up beside Bruce to look down into one of the pots.

Huh. Spaghetti.

There better not be olives anywhere.

“Food,” Bruce remarked. “Even you should be able to see that, Tony,” he added with a wry smile.

Tony blinked. “I didn’t know you could cook,” he said, and yeah, he might have sounded a bit sceptic, but he was allowed on account of a million hamburgers and a dead pig in the living-room.

“Cooking is just science,” Bruce said, stirring the sauce. “It’s actually very simple.”

Right. Simple.

There was a word that had never been used to describe any situation in his life, ever.

Huh. Simple.

As it turned out, it wasn’t simple.

It was fantastic.

“You have to cook,” Natasha said in-between stuffing her face. “Every. Single. Day.”

“Yes, please,” Steve mumbled after politely chewing and swallowing his food.

“Every day,” Clint timed in while licking his fork.

“It shall be our new and most sacred rule,” Thor decreed.

“God, I love my life. And I love you,” Tony said.

Bruce just laughed.