A/N: Complete 180 from the last chapter. This is more crack than anything, because angst isn't my favorite, and everyone could use a good laugh.

Operation Tribute began the next day. Thor and Steve were working with JARVIS to keep their secret and to see the results of their handiwork. The computer, once they confided to it what they were going to do to Tony and the purpose of their project, was more than happy to go along with them.

Thor and Steve were back in Steve's room, huddled around a screen that showed them Bruce's room. The man had just come back from a panel at Cornell where he spoke about the benefits of biomechanical engineering, and he loosened his tie as he came into his room.

Tony had insisted that he wear a full suit rather than the tweed jacket with elbow pads that Bruce had wanted to wear, and he was eager to get out of the stuffy, restricting outfit. He tried to open his closet door, but the handle wouldn't budge. He frowned and tugged again. No result.

Thor and Steve looked at each other, Thor's eyes sparkling with boyish excitement as Bruce started rattling the handle, growing more and more frustrated by the moment. Finally, he growled and ripped the door off its hinges.

The door fell to the side and hundreds of stress balls poured out of the closet and onto Bruce, bouncing harmlessly off his forehead and chest. Bruce picked one up and squeezed it, glaring at it before tossing it against the wall.

"Tony Stark!" he shouted. "You're going to pay for this!"

"He doesn't seem very de-stressed," Thor said as Bruce began throwing the white foam balls in every direction.

Steve grinned. "And he thinks it's Tony's fault. I would feel bad except Tony made another Captain Underpants joke yesterday."

"Ready for part two?" Thor asked.

Steve and Thor didn't spy on Clint to make sure that their prank worked, because it involved his shower, and they didn't want to violate his privacy by watching him while he was naked. Instead, they waited in the living room, pretending to watch TV and were rewarded ten minutes later by an enraged shout.

"Tony Stark! I will kill you, Director Fury's orders be damned!"

Clint stormed into the living room, a towel wrapped tightly around his waist, and Natasha, who had poked her head in to see what the commotion was all about, started laughing immediately. Clint's skin was tinged blue, thanks to the kool-aid that had been dumped on him while he was showering.

Steve and Thor exchanged covert high-fives as Bruce and Tony rushed in to see what was going on.

Tony skidded to a halt and tried not to laugh as he took in Clint's appearance, but he wasn't successful, and Clint glared at him.

"I will slowly dismember you," Clint promised.

"It wasn't me," Tony said. "I swear. You can even ask JARVIS." He didn't seem too upset with the fact that his life had just been threatened. Twice. He leaned against the wall and smirked. "Guess this gives a whole new meaning to having blue balls."

He doubled over laughing, and Bruce had to jump in front of him to keep Clint from hitting him.

"It wasn't Tony," Bruce said, wrapping his arms around Clint, keeping him from accidently hitting Bruce. "Something happened to me too, but it wasn't him."

"How do you know?" Clint demanded, his muscles bulging as he strained against Bruce's grip.

Bruce looked back at Tony, and the man stopped laughing long enough to take off his shirt, revealing a distinct ring of finger shaped bruises around his shoulders.

"I was already thoroughly interrogated," Tony said, slipping his shirt back on. The corners of his lips were still twitching, though, and he decided it was probably a good idea to laugh at Clint at least out of earshot of the man.

Natasha was next, and she was the one that Steve and Thor were most worried about. Surely she would notice if someone tinkered with her knives, and if she found out it was them then she would probably kill them. They waited until everyone was out of the house, and they wore rubber gloves to hide their fingerprints as they switched out her sparring knives for prop knives, the ones where the tip disappeared into the knife on contact.

They waited until they had thrown the gloves away at a trashcan at a McDonald's three blocks away before exchanging a fist bump. Tony had explained to them last week that that was how people congratulated each other in the 21st century. The first time they had fist bumped, they had nearly broken each other's hands, but they were getting the hang of it now.

The four male Avengers were sitting around the kitchen table, everyone drinking a beer but Steve when Natasha slipped in, a pleasant smile on her face.

"Have a good workout?" Clint asked.

She gave a delicate shrug as she wound her way towards Tony. "You could say that." She pulled Tony's chair out and slid onto his lap, straddling him. His eyebrows went straight up, clearly not expecting this.

"You're a bastard," she said, raising her knife and bringing it down on his shoulder.

He jerked back in response and threw her off his lap. "What the hell, Natasha," he said before realizing that he wasn't bleeding. He frowned and touched his shoulder. His t-shirt wasn't even ripped.

She held up her knife and pressed the tip in. "You were genuinely shocked. I guess that means you didn't switch out my knives."

Tony shook his head and ran his hand over his shoulder. "You're crazy, you know that?"

Natasha just grinned and sauntered out.

"This is going to be interesting," Steve whispered to Thor.

They were seated around the conference table, having been called to an unexpected meeting with Fury. All of the Avengers were there, even Tony, who was beginning to show the first signs of discomfort.

"It will be amusing," Thor said. "Loki would be proud."

There was only a shadow of grief that passed over Thor's face when he said his brother's name, and Steve gave a slight nod in Tony's direction to distract him. Tony's left hand slipped underneath the table, and the two conspirators shared a grin before turning their attention to Fury. They couldn't afford to give themselves away. Not when it was almost over.

Fury was droning on about something boring and bureaucratic, and Steve kept finding his gaze sliding over to Tony. He was leaning forward, resting on his right arm, trying to pretend that he was interested which was the first sign that something wasn't right with him.

The second was the slight movement in his left shoulder, and it didn't take Fury long to pick up on it.

"Stark, what the hell do you think you're doing? I'm trying to conduct a meeting. Hands on the table."

Clint snickered, clearly feeling that this was appropriate recompense for the fact that his skin had just returned to normal. Natasha hid her smile behind her hand, but no one was feeling particularly bad for Tony. Except Tony.

"As if your pretentious voice would ever turn me on," Tony said. "There's something wrong with my pants."

"Too tight?" Clint smirked.

Tony flipped him off. "They're unbelievably itchy."

"That's what happens when you buy them from a store instead of getting them custom made," Bruce said, grinning and dodging the pen Tony hurled at him.

"That is enough!" Fury ordered, and they all settled back into their seats except for Tony who was now wriggling in his seat, unable to sit still. "Are you serious? Go get whatever you've caught taken care of and come back here. We're not finished."

Tony didn't need to be told twice, sprinting out of the room without a snide comment. Steve and Thor had a covert fist bump underneath the table. They had come up with the idea of itching powder, but it was JARVIS who told them which pair of briefs were Tony's favorite. Steve wondered what kind of gift you got for a computer.

"What the hell?" Tony shouted.

Steve and Thor raced to the kitchen, Steve making sure to edge him out so he could see Thor's face when he saw it.

Standing in the middle of their kitchen was a cardboard cutout of Thor, but JARVIS had helped Steve photoshop a pair of gold MC Hammer parachute pants onto him. In one hand Thor was holding his hammer, in the other he was holding a STOP sign, more photoshop help, that read 'it's hammer time' beneath the white letters.

Thor didn't stand around to listen to the others laugh at him. Instead, he strode off, presumably to pout. Steve made a half-hearted excuse and ran after him, the grin never leaving his face.

"What is the meaning of this?" Thor demanded as soon as they were in Steve's room. "I thought you were my partner in crime."

"I am," Steve said. "But they're not stupid. If everyone got pranked but us, they'd know who was responsible."

"Oh," Thor said, calming down considerably and Steve allowed himself to relax. "I understand, though those pants were hideous."

Steve shrugged. "It's some joke I don't get. JARVIS said the others would think it was funny."

The laughter carried through from the other room proving that, once again, JARVIS was right.

Steve hadn't realized how Thor would've taken his explanation for the prank or he would've offered up a different one. It wasn't until he'd carefully combed his hair into place that he realized Thor had been up to some mischief of his own.

He was getting heading toward his door when he smelled something floral like the perfume that girls insisted on wearing. He wrinkled his nose and wondered where it could possibly be coming from. He didn't keep flowers in his room, and he certainly didn't wear perfume.

He sniffed his hands and looked over at his dresser, dread beginning to knot up his stomach. Thor hadn't. Steve sprinted over to his hair gel and opened it up, a curse on the tip of his tongue when the overwhelming scent of flowers made him gag.

"I didn't want you to get blamed," Thor said from Steve's doorway, a completely unrepentant grin on his face.

"Flowers?" Steve asked. "Really?"

Thor's grin widened. "Come, we must show the others that you have been wronged or all of this will have been for nothing."

Steve wanted to punch him because he knew Tony was going to call him Captain Buttercup or something equally ridiculous for the next week at least, but Thor was smiling, looking genuinely happy, and hadn't that been the point of all this?