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"Come in!" Claire was standing by her new, unfathomably wide bed, unpacking one of the duffel bags she'd stuffed most of her clothing into, beside the boxes she'd hastily packed up the day before.
She did not technically have to be out quite so quickly, but it was simply that this was a much better place to be, either way.
"Hi, we were just checking in - need any help moving anything?" A few months earlier, Claire would have been somewhat surprised at Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers appearing in her doorway offering to move furniture, but now she would have been surprised if they hadn't. Besides, The Hulk might win the prize, but she was surrounded by men who seemed to have just longed their entire lives for a little sister to come along so that they could be big brothers. Except Tony. And wasn't his paternal behaviour the surprise of the bloody century.
"Actually, yes. The couch in the living room is facing the wrong way. Could you turn it a quarter of a circle clockwise? Assuming even you guys can move that thing..." Claire shook her head. Every single piece of furniture in this place was completely huge. Trust Tony to go utterly overboard in every sense of the word. At least he was consistent.
Both the supersoldiers chuckled. "'Course we can," Bucky assured her, winking and pulling Steve back out of the room, undoubtedly to go and shift the massive, sixteen-seater sofa for her. Thank goodness for superhero-housemates. Not that she expected they would be much more silent than the last lot. As a whole, anyway - she could bet Banner was generally a silent person, while she knew for a fact that Tony absolutely wasn't. Ever. In any aspect of his life. She could only be grateful the tower was large and had thick enough walls that no one had to hear him and the hordes of models he kept on bringing home. At least she fervently hoped it was large enough.
As for the others, Natasha and Bucky were rather too silent, not to mention could be randomly found throughout the living floors - except in the private apartments, usually - polishing very menacing-looking knives, and Clint, she still hadn't been able to peg down. He was not there as much as most other Avengers, either.
Claire worked patiently with her unpacking, only stopping very briefly to shout a thanks when Steve called over from the next room that they were done. All in all, she was ready to go down to the communal kitchen around about dinner time.
Thus she surprised Bruce - who was one of their most common designated cooks - having already rinsed and prepared all the vegetables he had selected for his dinner recipe by the time he came down. Bruce, naturally, used this to tease the rest of the Avengers about how both he and the Hulk (as it seemed from their brief interview, anyway) preferred their new roommate to the rest.
The reactions to this were varied. Steve and Bucky, the other cooks in the house, merely chuckled, Natasha tilted her head looking too deadly to comment further in her direction, and Clint sulked. Tony, of course, childishly stuck his tongue out and then loudly assured them all that Claire was his favourite lab partner, too, instead of Bruce. To no one's surprise, the scientist took this calmly.
Tony then continued to note how he was perfectly happy to share a workshop with Claire but had felt the need to banish Bruce to his own lab. Doctor Banner took this calmly too. Maybe that was because it was clearly nonsense, what with him needing other equipment compared to the two engineers, or perhaps it was just that Bruce rarely got very worked up about anything. Likely, it was a mix between both.
