"I don't get it. Is the inn saved or not?" Clint said.
"I think we're supposed to assume the snow is going to bring in a wave of skiers and the inn will be packed," Pepper said.
"Or they're putting the general out to pasture and this is their way of telling the old man he's appreciated before they shove him in a home," Tony said. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other."
Steve gave him a nasty look but peeled the wrapper off another cinnamon cupcake topped in cream cheese frosting and chewed without comment.
"Okay, so obviously, the song is the big deal in this," Clint said.
"It was the best-selling song in history for a while," Steve said. "According to some sources, it still is."
"And it's a darn nice song," Tony said with way too much enthusiasm. "Must make you feel nostalgic for the good old days watching this, huh?"
"It was filmed two years after I crashed," Steve said. "This is the first time I've seen it. The song was around before that, though."
"Geez, you really are older than anything ever, aren't you?" Tony said, popping a gingerbread truffle in his mouth.
"I am over one thousand years old," Thor pointed out, "as is my brother."
"Yes," Loki said, taking the straw of his peppermint milkshake out of his mouth. "I'm still getting used to the idea you lot have figured out the earth is round."
"That's a myth. People knew the earth was round in ancient Greece," Bruce said.
"The educated, I grant you," Loki said, stirring the contents of his glass and slurping again until the last dregs were gone. "This was remarkably good. No, the average peasant living in a hovel in the forests of northern Europe barely knew of the existence of England, let alone a round earth."
"A great deal has changed in a millennium," Thor said, putting the remains of a ham bone he had gnawed clean onto the table in front of him.
"Am I the only one kind of weirded out by that?" Bruce asked.
"I'm more weirded out by the girls in this," Tony said. "Rosemary Clooney looks like she's, what, fifty?"
"She was twenty-six when this was made," Steve said.
"Oh, come on," Tony said, staring at him. "That's gotta be wrong. The other girl looks a little younger maybe."
"Nope, he's right and you're wrong. Clooney was twenty-six and Vera-Ellen was thirty-three," Bruce said, scrolling through his phone.
"Then why does she look like she could be my grandmother?" Tony asked.
"Because she could be your grandmother," Clint said. "The timeline's about right."
"It's the eyebrows," Natasha said, getting up to throw the wrapper from her after-dinner mint in the garbage. "In the 1950s, women overplucked their eyebrows. It was supposed to look elegant. The women from that time just kept doing it, or their eyebrows eventually didn't grow back, so now you subconsciously associate it with someone who looks old enough to have been alive back then; hence, you think a twenty-six-year-old is near the half century mark."
"Also, Crosby was fifty-one in this, and Danny Kaye was forty-three," Bruce said.
"And yet they passed without comment on their age while a twenty-something is over the hill," Pepper said, giving Tony a look so icy that Thor, Steve, and Loki all backed up. "I wonder why."
"The guys weren't overplucking their eyebrows?" Tony said, wincing. "I'm sleeping in the lab tonight, aren't I."
"Regardless, it was a nice movie," Bruce said. "It had some fun musicals numbers, the dancing was good, and it has a happy ending."
"I like the thing where the guy whose arm gets injured in World War II ends up emotionally blackmailing his best friend for the rest of his life," Bucky said, grinning. "Steve, you wanna get me another bag of chips?"
Steve gave him a look but did get up to go to the kitchen.
"Anybody else want something? Nat, Thor?"
"Are there any more blueberry pies?" Thor asked hopefully.
"I'll check," Steve said.
"Decaf, two sugars, no cream, please," Natasha called after him.
"You drink decaf?" Tony said, shuddering.
"It's one a.m.," she pointed out. "I'm not going to try to go to sleep by counting my blessings, whatever Bing says."
"Wimp," Tony said.
"Okay, so can somebody explain why I have a very clear memory of this movie having a horrible, racist section in it about Lincoln's birthday?" Clint asked.
"Because you're thinking of Holiday Inn," Natasha said. "Still Bing Crosby, still saving an inn, still singing 'White Christmas,' only in black and white and with that cringe-inducing minstrel scene."
"There's a song about minstrel shows in this, though," Tony said. "No blackface, but still."
"I still don't understand how bringing in all the warriors from his former unit was meant to keep the inn from closing," Loki said.
"Also, if it's a ski lodge, why is there no mountain?" Thor asked.
"Fair point," Loki said, nodding. "Did they need to move in a mountain as well? It appears the general was cheated when he bought the place."
"Coffee, pie, chips," Steve said, dishing everything out before sitting down and taking a bite out of a chocolate covered pretzel.
"Well, I still like it," Bruce said. "It's cozy."
"I did like the impromptu crossdressing dance number the two men did to help the girls evade the police," Loki said. "Completely ineffectual but amusing."
"It did seem like something you would come up with, brother," Thor said.
"Perhaps," Loki said, shrugging. "While I would plot out an intricate plan involving subterfuge, talent, skill, and damn good foraged costumes, my brother would usually prefer to simply pick me up and hurl me at our enemies."
"It's worked many times," he said as everyone else looked at them as though they were insane.
"I admit, I cannot argue with the results," Loki said, grinning. "Also, while the idea of seeing you in a lovely ice blue chiffon gown is amusing, I think it might also scar the rest of your shieldmates."
"I wore a wedding dress that one time rather well, if I recall," Thor said, breaking the blueberry pie in half and eating it with his fingers.
"I thought that was just a story," Clint said.
"Oh no, that one was entirely real," Loki said. "Every once in a while, the Midgardians got things right."
"But not the horse thing," Clint said.
"No, for the last time, I am not Sleipnir's mother," Loki said, sighing as though he had been asked this one too many times. "My father has his faults, but riding his own grandson into battle is not one of them. Thor, this is what happens when Sif and the Warriors Three get into mother's mead. Hundreds of years later and that ridiculous tale is still making its rounds."
"It makes a good story," Thor said.
"It's ridiculous," Loki said.
"I'm still trying to picture Thor in a wedding dress, and unfortunately I'm slowly getting an image," Clint said. "It involves a mermaid silhouette and a fingertip length veil."
"Hey, you dress whatever way makes you happy, buddy," Tony said, thumping Thor on the back. "Anybody want eggnog?"
A general chorus of no went around the room.
"Okay, then does anybody want to chip in and save a skiing inn with no visible mountain somewhere in New England by putting on an elaborate song and dance show?"
"I'm in," Bucky said. "You want to break out your old USO routine, Steve?"
"A thousand times no," Steve said, laughing.
"Then everybody scram and let me vainly and pathetically attempt apologizing to Pepper for whatever it was I did earlier that I've managed to forget completely already," Tony said.
The rest of the room got up, chuckling, and as they headed towards the elevator, one male voice could be heard singing surprisingly on-key, "Lord help the brother who comes between me and my lover, and lord help the brother who comes between me and my mate!"
"We have weird friends," Tony said to Pepper.
"You're only just realizing this?"