I originally wrote this on paper for my sister and gave it to her on her birthday in place of a birthday card. We always enjoy making movie characters go nuts, say dumb things, and act clueless. The Avengers are certainly no exception.

It was Director Fury's birthday, and he was going to be stopping by the Avengers complex for a short party in the evening. The day before, Steve Rogers had convinced the team that making him a cake would be the gift to top all gifts.

Though none of them had ever attempted such a task, they gathered in the kitchen and set to work early in the morning.

Unfortunately for them, security cameras captured the enire thing...

Steve Rogers clapped his hands together. "Alright, guys. Get ou the flour, eggs, butter,-,"

"I'm sorry," Tony interrupted. "Who put you in charge?"

"Come on," Steve groaned. "Don't start this already."

"Did he start it?" Colonel James Rhodes asked.

"All I did was ask a question," Tony pointed out.

"Yes, but it was a question to promote conflict," Vision said.

"Nobody asked the robot!" Clint yelled.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Scott Lang raised his hands. "Everybody stop talking. Now, let's start this over, work together, and make this cake. Alright? Easy!"

"I agree with the Man of Ants," Thor nodded solemnly. "This task shall be accomplished forthwith!"

"Yeah," Peter Parker agreed. "This is gonna be a piece of ca... oh, well yeah. Cake is always cake."

"Before we get too excited," Tony said, "do we have all the ingredients?" The cupboards were quickly ransacked and people began placing various items on the table. Bucky Barnes wandered downstairs and into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Making his way through the crowd, he opened the fridge.

"Aw, rats," he muttered.

"What is it?" Steve asked absentmindedly.

"We're out of milk."

The entire kitchen came to a horrified standstill.

"No," Natasha said. "That... I just brough a gallon home yesterday!"

"Check again!" Sam Wilson ordered.

Bucky stuck his head in the fridge for a full minute. The team held their breath until he finally came back out.

"Well?!" Tony prompted.

Bucky shrugged. "There's still no milk."

Rhodey instantly jabbed a finger at Thor. "This is your fault!"

"How dare you accuse the son of Odin!" Thor yelled back.

"You have three bowls of cereal for breakfast every day!" Rhodey continued.

"Your midgardian servings are much smaller than those I enjoy on asgard!"

"That doesn't give you the right to eat all the food," Sam shook his head.

Suddenly, Clint had a brilliant idea. "Hey, robot!" he called out above the argument. Vision looked at him from across the table. "How about you save the day by going to the grocery store for us?"

Vision sighed. He was always the errand boy. Whenever someone needed a coffee or left their wallet somewhere, it somehow fell to Vision to 'save the day'. "Of course," he said. Grabbing the emergency coin jar, he floated out through the wall, heading for the nearest supermarket.

"We might as well do what we can while we wait," Steve said once the argument had cooled down enough for him to get a word in. "Let's get all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl."

"Which items would that be?" Thor asked.

Steve blinked. "The... the dry ones."

Thor pondered this for a long moment. "Ah. Yes, that does make sense."

"Do you have a brain under all that hair?" Bucky asked.

"Ha!" Thor laughed. "Good one!"

"How much salt goes in?" Natasha asked.

"I don't know," Steve said, scratching his head. "Check the recipe."

Natasha pushed items around on the table, searching for the piece of paper. "And where is that?" Everyone soon joined in the search, but after five minutes of scouring the kitchen, it was clear that the recipe was nowhere to be found.

"Well this is going great," Clint muttered.

"How could it be missing?" Peter said. "We've barely started!"

"Can one of you stretch out your hand and have it fly to you?" Thor suggested.

"Only your stupid hammer does that," Tony rolled his eyes.

"It is not stupid! It's mighty! Much mightier than your pathetic metal-,"

"Found it!" Scott proclaimed, waving a sheet of paper. "It must have slipped onto the floor."

"What's it say?" Sam asked.

Scott began reading off ingredients. "Three bags of flour."

Steve frowned. "That seems a tad excessive, but okay."

"One pound of fresh mushrooms," Scott continued.

"What?" Clint sputtered.

"Eight cans of Progresso soup..."

"No!" Peter cried, snatching the paper. "That's the grocery list Aunt May wrote for me!"

"But we just emptied three bags of flour into the bowl!" Sam moaned.

"Way to go, Lang," Tony snorted.

"I didn't know!"

"Let's just put it back," Clint suggested. "Can we put it back?"

"The bags are torn up," Scott sighed. "We need rubber bands or something."

"Fine," Rhodey said, opening a drawer. "Let's just do that and get back to... Are you kidding me?! Where are the rubber bands?!"

Tony impatiently snapped his fingers. "Spider-boy. Run to the store and get-,"

"Spider-Man," Peter corrected.

Tony waved the interruption aside. "Go get some rubber bands before Rhodey freaks out."

"Fine." Peter took off, heading for the door.

While they waited, they poured most of the flour into a seperate bowl to get it out of the way. Then they got back to adding the other ingredients. The recipe was still missing, so they were forced to eyeball everything and hope for the best. Steve hovered a spoon full of salt over the bowl and was about to pour it in when Tony grabbed his arm.

"You're sure that's the salt?" he asked.

"Yeah," Steve nodded.

"It could be the sugar."

"The container said salt."

Thor raised a hand. "Ah, but perhaps some villian has switched them!"

Bucky face-palmed. "Just put it in, Steve."

"You should tast it first," Sam said at the same time.

"Nobody's switched any labels," Bucky said, frowning at Sam. "Just put it in."

"Taste it," Sam insisted.

"Shut up," Bucky told him.

"Make me."

"Will you two just knock it off?!" Steve shouted. "Honestly!" He dumped the spoon's contents into the bowl.

"Traitor," Sam muttered.

"He's known me a lot longer than you, Bird man," Bucky smirked.

Sam crossed his arms. "Do you like your nose?" he asked.

Bucky blinked, taken by surprise. "Why would you ask that?"

"Because I'm looking at it right now. And I'd love to mess it up."

Clint pulled out his phone and started recording. "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"No!" Steve snapped at him. "No fight!"

"Fight! Fight! Fight!"

"Barton, cut it out!"

"Darn it."

Rhodey went through all the ingredients on the table before slamming the last one down with a frustrated growl. "Does anyone know where the baking soda is?"

"This is a disaster," Scott whispered to himself.

Vision came floating back into the room. "I have the milk."

"Took you long enough," Tony said, snatching it from him. "Make it snappy next time, alright?"

"Yes," Vision sighed. "Snappy. Of course."

"Wet stuff in this bowl," Steve said, plopping another large bowl onto the table.

Thor frowned. "Which-,"

"The wet ones!"

"Ah."

"That includes eggs," Barnes said, bringing over a carton. "Two, I think."

"Consider it done, Soldier of One Season!" Thor proclaimed. With a grand flourish, he flung two eggs into the bowl, shell and all.

"Augh!" Rhodey cried. "You idiot! What are you doing?'

"I did as I was instructed!" Thor said.

"We don't want eggshells in the cake! How can you not know this?"

Steve stepped in with a solution for their less than helpful team member. "Here, Thor," he said, handing him a bag of halved walnuts. "Take these and break them into smaller pieces, okay?"

Thor nodded and took the bag. Sweeping a space clear on the counter, he started to pound the walnuts with his hammer.

Steve turned back to the rest of the group. "Okay. New bowl for the wet stuff and please tell me we have two more eggs."

"For once, we do," Clint said. "I guess miracles really do happen."

"Whoa, Scott!" Bucky said, stopping Lang. "Butter doesn't go in the wet bowl."

Scott looked confused. "But it's moist."

"Yeah, moist. Not wet," Natasha said.

"Not dry either," Tony pointed out.

"It's easier to mix into the dry bowl," Natasha insisted.

Scott looked from one face to another. "But... it's moist!"

"What, do you want a seperate bowl for moist now?" Bucky demanded.

"Put half of the butter in each bowl," Sam offered.

"Twitter says dry bowl," Clint informed them. Bucky pointed at Clint as if to say 'See? Told you'.

Scott moved the butter from above the wet bowl to the dry, back to the wet, to the dry, the wet...

"I'm not going to be responsible for this decision," he said, passing the butter to Bucky.

Barnes rolled his eyes. "Whatever." He moved it to the dry bowl, but then hesitated.

"Buck, what are you doing?" Steve asked. "Put it in."

Bucky looked up at him. "It is pretty moist..."

Tony snatched the butter from him and dropped it into the dry bowl. The room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Okay," Steve nodded briskly. "Thor, let's have those walnuts."

Thor handed him a bowl of brown powder.

"Wow," Scott said.

"Be they in small enough pieces?" Thor asked.

Steve nodded vigorously. "Sure, sure, sure. They'll... they'll be fine."

"I can continue to smash them smaller if need be," Thor offered.

"That won't be necessary, Goldilocks," Tony chuckled.

Nothing of consequence happened during the mixing. Peter returned with a large bag of rubber bands just as the slightly lopsided cake was being put into the oven to bake for half an hour.

"Let us view a moving picture while we wait," Thor suggested.

"A movie?" Clint asked. "Which one?"

"One of mine, of course."

"But yours are terrible!" Tony complained.

"Says the guy who only ever saves himself," Sam said.

"Don't pick on Tony," Rhodey said. "It's not his fault he keeps getting attacked."

"Sidekick fight!" Scott said, grinning.

"Shut up, Lang," Sam said. "It is too his fault. He makes all his enemies by running that big mouth of his."

"You want to bring up running?" Tony asked. "I think I remember a movie where you were running. And getting passed over and over and-,"
Steve raised a hand. "In his defense, it wasn't a fair race."

"It wasn't a race!" Sam argued.

"Says the loser," Bucky snorted. Sam lunged at him and it was all the other Avenger's could do to keep them from pummeling each other.

"How about we just see what's on TV?" Peter offered once things had calmed down a bit.

"Dibs on the remote!" Thor shouted, grabbing said device.

"Now remember what happened last time," Rhodey said slowly. "Just press the buttons gently."

Thor tried, mashing the buttons in. "It's not working!"

"You're holding it backwards," Tony pointed out.

"Don't be absurd," Thor scoffed. "I would never... oh." He turned the remote around and tried again. The television obediently turned on.

All three Hobbit movies later...

Clint gave a contented sigh. "So, how'd the cake look?"

Tony looked over at him. "I'm sorry, what?"

"The cake. When you took it out of the oven. How'd it look?"

"I didn't take the cake out."

Scott sat bolt upright. "But you went out there-,"

"To get popcorn," Tony said, gesturing to his snack.

Clint swallowed nervously. "And... you didn't take the..."

"I thought Steve was timing it," Tony pointed.

Steve's eyes went wide. "I thought Lang was timing it."

"I just put it in, that doesn't make me the timer!" Scott defended.

Bucky fidgeted anxiously. "So who...?"
"Did anybody take the cake out?" Natasha finally asked.

Her question was met with a long period of insidious silence.

"You mean it's still in the oven?!" Clint cried.

Thor spun his hammer and took flight. "NOOOOOOO!" he roared, smashing through the wall in order to get to the kitchen faster. The rest of the Avengers scrambled after him, arriving in the kitchen in time to see him rip the door off the oven and fling it aside. They all stared inside in bewilderment.

"Wh...," Peter tried to speak. "Where...?"
"WHERE'D THE CAKE GO?!" Bucky shouted.

Rhodey cleared his throat. "Uh, guys?" he began, pointing at the bottom of the oven. "There's the cake.

Everyone stared in horror at the two-inch thick pool of bubbling black sludge coating the oven floor.

Thor fell to his knees. "Why?" he moaned. "Why?"

"Our beautiful cake...," Tony whispered.

Sam sniffed. "It's gone."

Scott bit his lip. "Maybe it's not a total disaster, guys!" he offered weakly. "We... we should taste it!"

Clint gestured towards the mess. "Be my guest."

Not willing to give up, Scott grabbed a spoon and dipped out a small amount of the slowly cooling goop. He blew on it for a couple minutes before daring to put it in his mouth. "Hmm. Mm-hmmm. Yeah."

"So how's it taste?" Sam asked.

"You know how marshmallows taste when you get ash on them?" Scott said.

"Yeah."

"It's like that, but with a lot less marshmallow," Scott coughed. "And about a million times more ash." He went over the sink and spat into it.

Steve leaned against the wall, sagging with the weight of defeat. "Well that didn't work out."

"Forget about being Captain America," Clint scoffed. "You're Captain Obvious from now on."

"At least we learned a lesson from all this," Steve shrugged.

Sam cocked his head. "Don't trust Scott to do his job?"

"What?!" Scott cried. "I was never-,"

"No," Steve said. "The next time it's someone's birthday, we-,"

"We make them a birthday sandwhich," Tony finished.

"We buy a cake," Steve corrected.

"Cakes can be bought?" Thor asked.

"Yeah, of course."

"Then why did you force us to partake in this fruitless and torturous work?!"

"Because I thought we could do it as a team!"

"But we didn't have to do it at all," Tony pointed out.

I'd want a birthday sandwich, Bucky thought to himself.

"Well it doesn't matter," Steve shot back. "There's not enough time before he gets here, so it looks like Fury's not getting a-,"

"Ahem!" Vision cleared his throat behind them, startling them into silence. They turned to look. Without a word, he placed a plastic container on the table. Inside... a storebought chocolate cake.

Thank you for reading. :)

Don't ever come to me for baking advice. Or the Avengers, for that matter.