A/N: Nat and Steve are a couple in this. So are Wanda and Bucky.
I don't own Marvel and all mistakes are mine.
Operation Red, White, and Blue – Strike Time: April 1st, 7 AM
Steve and Bucky had just returned from their morning run as they entered the kitchen, both had sweat dripping down their foreheads and their shirts were drenched. Rhodey waved hello to them as he began to mix his pre-workout smoothie, ignoring the package that was sitting on the counter. A curious Bucky walked over to it to read the label.
He handed it to Steve, "It has your name on it."
"That's weird, I don't remember ordering anything." The super soldier said as he began to open it. "Doesn't have a return address either."
Rhodey, who had only been half-listening at that point stopped the blender in alarm. Today's date flashed in his mind, "Wait—!"
Too late, he thought miserably to himself as the package exploded in a sparkly boom. Luckily he wasn't soaked in sweat or in the small vicinity like Bucky and Steve, who now resembled life-sized glittery dolls as red, white, and blue glitter stuck to their skin and clothes. Rhodey held back a laugh as Steve and Bucky coughed, sending some of the sparkles flying across the kitchen that would be a pain to clean up later on.
On cue, the small Roomba that Tony had purchased swept into the room to clean up the mess, shouting "Happy April Fool's!" Steve and Bucky groaned as they headed towards their floors to wash off, the persistent Roomba following them the whole way to pick up their glitter trail. Shaking his head at their naivete, Rhodey was glad he had meetings outside of the tower all day. Whoever was behind this prank had some serious brains and had clearly put a lot of work into it.
Steve stepped out of the shower after finally getting rid of all the glitter that had stuck to his skin like glue. He didn't even want to think about how it had gotten underneath his shirt and pants or why it had to take so long to wash off. The Roomba was still crawling around his bedroom repeating that annoying phrase, it was starting to grate his nerves. He vowed to find whoever did this and make them pay despite usually being a patient person.
He was just about to dry off when the ceiling vent slid aside, causing Steve to look up in suspicion. Hadn't Clint gotten the hint to not crawl in the vents near the bathrooms anymore? But to Steve's horror it wasn't Clint's face who popped out, but his girlfriend's.
"Nat?"
"Hi, soldier," her eyes twinkled dangerously as she pulled out a huge bag full of glitter. Steve's eyes popped out just as she released a storm of that hated substance down on him, having no time to run as it got all over him again. This time it was sticking to parts he knew would take hours to completely wash.
"Natasha!" Steve shouted at angrily as she snapped a picture of him.
"Happy April Fool's Day," his girlfriend blew him a kiss. "I promise this picture is just for my eyes only." She quickly sealed up the vent and left Steve to try to wash off the glitter yet again.
On a man-hunt for his girlfriend an hour later, Steve yielded no results by lunch. Instead, he ran into Tony who was muttering about malfunctioning A.I.s and cursing out Peter's name. Steve didn't linger to hear that story, he had a girlfriend to get revenge on and had already searched the entire tower twice. Bucky had even helped look for Natasha once he was done pissing himself at the fact that Steve got glitter-bombed again. His best friend was practically useless in the search because all he did was tease Steve about it, so when Wanda wanted to spend time with her boyfriend Steve happily let him go.
By the time noon rolled around, he accepted defeat and headed to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. Thankfully, there were no suspicious-looking packages or vents nearby that he needed to avoid. Peter wandered into the kitchen by the time he was done his sandwich.
"Hey, Cap," the teenager greeted him.
Steve waved back amicably, "I heard you got in trouble with Tony?"
Peter scratched the back of his neck nervously, "Yeah. Sort of. It was just a harmless prank though, I didn't mean anything by it."
Steve turned on his lecture voice, "I'm sure your intentions were good, son. But that doesn't mean pranks are funny."
"Like Nat's prank on you?" Peter asked while trying to subdue a laugh. Steve's ears flamed at the mention of it, it irked him that everyone seemed to know about the prank but not where the perpetrator was.
"Yeah. You don't happen to know where Natasha is, do you?" Steve tried to cover up his annoyance at the whole situation. It wasn't the kid's fault Nat had decided to prank him twice today – instead, he was going to need to think of a good revenge plan fast.
"Oh yeah, I saw her heading up to your room about a few hours ago."
Panicking at that, Steve raced to the elevator with a hurried "thanks" to the kid. If she had been in his room for several hours now who knows what else she could have done to his room. His anxiety rose quicker than the speed of the elevator, holding his breath when the doors opened to his floor.
Scanning each and every surface, he saw no trace of Nat or that anything was out of place. Slowly making his way throughout his rooms he didn't spot anything suspicious, nor were his instincts going off despite his paranoia running high. After searching for a half-hour, he admitted to himself that there was nothing here or it was so well-hidden that he wouldn't find it until he was meant to. At one point he thought he'd spotted a secret device, but it had turned out to just be the TV remote that fell between the couch cushions.
Shaking his head wearily, Steve headed towards the elevator to go to the gym. All of the stress of hunting down his girlfriend was getting to his head. Once on the floor, he walked in to see his girlfriend sparring with a punching bag, her face flushed and loose hairs falling out of her ponytail. She had clearly been here a while.
She raised an eyebrow as he approached, "Hiya, soldier." Her voice was husky from the physical exertion, and although she always looked really good when she worked out Steve ignored it in favor of glowering at her. Nat just flashed him a grin as she picked up her water and a towel to wipe the sweat off with, her eyes just watching him with a playful glint.
Crossing his arms, he refused to speak first. Not until she apologized. It took a full two minutes of glaring, but finally, Nat's shoulders slumped like a chastised child. "Fine, I'm sorry."
Steve's eyebrows rose in an unspoken question: For?
"I'm sorry that I dumped glitter on you twice." Nat scrunched up her nose as she took another sip of her water. "Do I have to apologize for Bucky getting caught in it too? It's kind of his own fault for being stupid enough to be near an unlabeled package on April First."
"Yes, that's the polite thing to do." Steve smiled, uncrossing his arms. He was about to explain more when a voice from above caught his attention.
"I'll call it even after this, Romanoff," Bucky said as peered down on the couple from the ceiling vent. Nat's eyes narrowed dangerously as Bucky released a bag of glitter – this one black and red-colored down on their heads. Steve's girlfriend tried to move out of the way but red pulses of magic held her in place, just as a red barrier surrounded Steve. Wanda chuckled from the sidelines where she had positioned herself as her boyfriend let the glitter rain down on Nat.
The assassin growled as she looked down at herself, covered in sparkles. Steve just watched his girlfriend try to clean herself sympathetically, but also thankful to his best friend for having his back. Once Wanda's hold released, he grabbed Nat so she couldn't hurt the poor girl or Bucky – he'd get her to wait a day for payback when they wouldn't suspect it.
Nat struggled in his arms for a few seconds before going limp, grumbling about looking sparkly as he carried her to her floor to shower it off. Steve knew she was already planning her revenge, but he couldn't pass up the opportunity to say, "Do you see why pranks aren't always fun?"
"Yeah, yeah, moral goodness, yadda yadda ya, pranks are evil…" Nat muttered under her breath as she tried to wash out the glitter from her hair. Steve suppressed a smile, knowing she really did know what he was talking about and was just putting up a front.
"So you promise no more pranks for today?" He asked as he held out the towel for her, guarding the spot underneath the ceiling vent in case Bucky wanted to make another visit.
Nat smiled softly at him, "Yes, Captain Morals. I promise."
Steve opened his arms to embrace her small form, "Tomorrow we can start planning our revenge."
"I knew there was a reason I loved you."
Steve simply shook his head, exasperated by the whole day. "I love you too." He would never understand why his girlfriend loved pranking so much but he'd learn to live with it because he loved her.
Undisclosed Location, April 1st, 10:36 PM
"Nat?" A small flashlight blinded her momentarily before she swatted it out of Peter's grasp.
"Don't do that, shchenok." She muttered as she rubbed her eyes, not used to the sudden brightness amidst the pitch darkness of their hideaway. Peter muttered an apology as he found the light switch on the wall and flipped it on without regard to Natasha's death glare as her eyes were forced to adjust so quickly.
"Are you part vampire?" He teased as his partner's eyes took a minute to adapt. Her glare located him hanging upside down from an exposed pipe in the ceiling of their yet-to-be renovated hideaway. Peter loved the little loft that Nat had found to be their secret lair, it had exposed brick, pipes to climb on, and tons of open space to practice any acrobatic moves for when he got too bored.
"I'm starting to think you're more bat-like than spider-like," Nat retorted as she moved to the whiteboard they had set up. She wrote out Barnes and Maximoff under the targets list, underlining both names.
Peter jumped down to ruffle her hair, which still sparkled despite her multiple attempts at washing it out. "Bucky and Wanda got you good, huh Sensei?" He jumped out of the way just in time as she threw a toy dagger at him, where it bounced harmlessly off the wall (One of the rules of their secret lair was no actual weapons so Nat didn't maim him when he was annoying like this).
Muttering to herself in Russian, Nat tried to focus on how to get Bucky and Wanda back for the reverse glitter bomb as well as still find time for their other pranks to take place. Peter, ever the energetic kid, just practiced his triple backflips until she asked, "How did Operation F.R.I.D.A.Y. go?"
"Really well," Peter told her eagerly as he landed on his feet perfectly. "He got upset but didn't seem like he was going to take any action yet."
"Good," Nat murmured. "For Operation Pink Surprise, we're going to need to make it look like someone else did that one. Spread out the blame."
"How come we didn't do that in the first place with our pranks today?" Peter asked as he started to juggle candy bars leftover from their Halloween stash when he noticed that they were almost out of Hershey bars, he'd have to make a trip to the store for more soon.
Nat still was studying the whiteboard, "We need Steve on our side as early as possible. I thought he would do something simple to get back at me and then I could show him how fun it is to prank someone. I guess in a way Bucky getting his revenge worked out, it got Steve to agree to team up with me for payback."
Peter looked over from where he was not lying on his back, counting the cracks in the ceiling. "That's an awfully complicated way to get your boyfriend to join our team, Sensei."
Nat shook her head, "Perhaps. But you know how he is about morals and 'treating others how you want to be treated'. It's fine on any other day of the year, but not April Fool's Day. Today should be the exception and I need to teach him that."
"That's very manipulative thinking towards your boyfriend."
"I won't ever take it too far, shchenok."
"Okay…" He said with a teasing grin.
"I don't judge your relationship with MJ. Stay out of mine."
"Fine," Peter agreed quickly. The last thing he wanted was for Nat to try and interfere with his crush.
"Now we need to focus," his sensei pulled him up from the floor and towards the whiteboard. She handed him a fidget spinner so he would have something to play with while she spoke, "Tomorrow we're going to lay low. Let everyone think it's over. Then in a few days, we'll launch Operation Pink Surprise. We just need someone to be our scapegoat…"
They spent the rest of the evening planning a whole month's worth of pranks which were guaranteed to start a prank war at the very least.
A/N: I feel like we all need some humor in our lives so I'm gonna do mini-series of pranks. There's no set plan yet so if you have any ideas leave a review! Updates might be infrequent since I have a few other stories I need to get done plus life and school will certainly get in the way, but please stick around if you like this :)
