Authors' Notes: (We do not own the characters from the Avengers. Others that show up though are ours.) This story is based off of notes taken by Clint and Thor. It was then written by Thor and Bruce. More details at the end.
Baking a Cake
Upon the rest of the group's arrival, Steve, now wide awake, rushed Bruce off to the kitchen to start on the cake. Thor stood in the entryway for a moment, impressed. As far as Midgardian dwellings go, Tony's was extensive. Meanwhile, Bruce was finding Tony's (extensive) kitchen hard to maneuver in. It was cleaner and shinier and more expensive looking than anywhere he'd worked recently, and he was afraid to mess anything up. Not that Tony seemed to care.
A few minutes later, Clint finally managed to detour Thor from an investigation of the rest of the house (the last time Thor went 'investigating' the basement had become a swimming pool) and coasted him into the kitchen. There, they found Steve and Bruce fighting over the amount of baking soda they should put into the cake batter. Tony was in the next room, drinking soda and looking oblivious.
"Steve, it's basic chemistry."
"I know what I'm talking about, Bruce. You need to add three and a half teaspoons or else the cake will be too dense."
"That much NaHCO3 would react with the water in the cake and release so much carbon dioxide the cake could explode! Any high school chem student could tell you that."
"Do you even have a degree in chemistry?"
"Well, no, but I'm-look, I know what I'm talking about, okay?"
"Well, if you're sure. . ."
It was about then that Tony, perhaps out of concern for his kitchen or perhaps just peeved that he still wasn't the center of attention, came over to offer to help. For reasons immediately clear to everyone besides Tony, his offer was meet with a resounding "No."
Clint and Thor soon settled in the stools at the island, the best place to observe the chaos that is baking. After rushing around for a while, Steve left to for a bit, leaving the perfect opening for Tony.
"I can help," he said, or possibly threatened. Bruce tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade him, and eventually Clint had to scramble around the island to block his path to "helping". For a moment Clint entertained the idea of assisting Banner. He couldn't help but picture it, and an image of himself in a pink frilly apron crossed Clint's mind. Steve returned moments later and succeeded in batting Tony away. That's when Steve sneezed.
"You should be careful," Tony said, not sounding that concerned. "You might set Bruce off with a sneeze like that."
"I think jabbing him with pointy things would be a more likely cause of an incident," the soldier retorted, irritated.
"Well, your sneezes are superhuman."
"My sneezes would most definitely set Banner off," Thor commented, rather unhelpfully.
"Uh, guys," Clint piped up.
"What's up, Clint?" Steve asked.
"Well," he went on in a hushed voice, "this is all kind of stressing Bruce out."
They all looked over to see Bruce beating the batter into submission.
"I'm sure it's fine," stated Tony. "It's not like he can add radiation to it or anything." But he didn't sound that confident, because that's exactly what Bruce could do.
"I'll keep an eye on him," Steve assured them, and he went back over to help pour the batter.
"How do you turn the oven on?" Bruce asked.
"I'm not sure, give me a minute and I'll figure it out," Tony replied.
"No, Tony," said Bruce, sounding concerned.
"Why not?" Tony asked, baffled.
"Well, the last time you touched the oven you turned it into the Mk. VIII," Bruce pointed out.
"It was better that way," Tony insisted.
"I will assist you with the oven, Banner," Thor offered.
"Thanks, Thor," said Bruce
"Wait, you'll let the barbarian help you but not the genius whose oven it is? Offence intended." Tony was peeved.
"None was taken. And the Lady Jane owns an oven more complicated than this," Thor informed him.
"Fine, whatever." Tony went off to pout, again.
With the cake in the oven, Bruce and Steve found themselves stuck with a pile of dirty pans. Neither of them really wanted to spend a party washing dishes, particularly after spending the first part of it cooking. And so when they spotted Clint and Thor sitting on the kitchen island's stools and chatting, the same idea came to their minds.
"Clint, Thor, you guys clean the dishes!" Steve ordered.
"Yeah, I mean, we made the cake," Bruce added.
The designated dishwashers headed to the sink somewhat reluctantly, to be welcomed by towers of bowls. Thor was wondering if Steve and Bruce have any idea what they were doing, because there were way more dishes than there should have been. Clint was wondered how the kitchen would look from the top of the pile. They both set out on cleaning.
"Clint, why do you not use soap to scrub the dishes?" Thor said after a while.
"Oh, right. Yeah that might help," Clint admitted.
"Indeed," Thor admonished.
It went downhill fast from there. Thor did fine at first, but then he ended up breaking a beautiful, expensive-looking bowl with Mjolnir. To this day, Clint has no idea how Thor was washing it that way, but Thor does find a way to incorporate Mjolnir into almost every task. Anyway, after that Clint took complete control of dish washing. The idea of the frilly pink apron again crossed his mind.
Barred from helping, either with the cake or with the dishes, all Tony had to do was wait patiently. Unfortunately, that was one of his great challenges in life. Less than a minute into the required thirty he got bored, so he started going through his iTunes playlist for good songs. J.A.R.V.I.S., for some incomprehensible reason, had recently shuffled it on him, but he was in the mood for something different anyway.
"What song is this?" Clint asked from the sink, as mellow jazz began to fill the kitchen.
"I don't know, something from the 20s or whenever Steve's from," Tony said, not bothering to look up.
"Steve's from the 40s. . ." Clint started to point out.
"Whatever," Tony replied.
Steve might have responded, given the chance, but before he could think of an appropriately dignified retort, Bruce cut him off.
"Tony, did you get the chicken?" he called, head in the fridge. He'd been looking for more juice, only to discover that the chicken for the next day's chicken shawarma appeared to be missing.
"No," Tony said, sounding neither concerned nor repentant.
"That was your one job! We all did our jobs, which were numerous, by the way. You had one thing," Bruce said in disbelief.
"Hey, it's my house."
"But-"
"It's my house!"
Answer your damn phone Pepper! To his shame, Tony was currently huddled in the pantry of his own house. Pepper picked up with a sigh.
"What did you forget?" she asked.
"Why do you automatically think I forgot something?" Tony whispered into the speaker. He can practically hear her eyeroll. "I need you to get some chicken."
"Okay. I'll pick up some other thing you're running low on as well."
"Hey I know this song!" Clint exclaimed, after having to suffer through foreign tracks for several minutes.
"It's "Write Sins, Not Tragedies"by Panic! At the Disco," Tony informed him.
"Yeah, whatever," Clint said.
"I know this song as well!" boomed Thor. He then started singing and dancing around the room. Without any hesitation, Clint joined in. Tony rolled his eyes, but he was quickly pulled out of his seat by Thor and forced to join them. By the end of the song, they all appeared a bit drunk.
In the midst of the unfolding dance party, the cake finally finished baking. (About damn time, in Tony's opinion. He was running out of things to complain over.) Steve took the trays out of the oven, and after giving the cakes time to cool Bruce attempted to get them out of the pans. They wouldn't. So he got frustrated and started hitting things. Well, specifically the pans, and in all fairness he could've just been trying to knock the cakes out. But on the other hand. . .probably better not to take chances.
"Hey! Calm down there, big guy, don't want you breaking my house. It costs a fortune to repair," Tony said, trying to sound genuinely concerned, and succeeding mainly in annoying Bruce further. Which didn't really surprise Steve at all.
"Don't you completely destroy your house on a weekly basis, though?" Clint pointed out.
"It's my house," Tony told him.
"Fair enough."
In the meantime, Bruce was slamming a wooden spoon against the granite counter until it snapped in half.
"Steve, do something." Tony whined.
"Uh, okay. Hey, Bruce, it's alright. Here, let me do that for you," Steve said, trying to sound reassuring. He couldn't get the cakes out either. "Man, they're really in there."
"Let me try, my friends," Thor suggested, bringing forth his hammer.
"I don't think that's a very good idea. . ." Clint never got to finish.
After the dust settled from the resulting chaos it was decided that Thor's hammer, Cap's shield, and Clint's arrows would be left outside. There wasn't really anything they could do about Bruce, and Tony got to keep his repulsors, because, well, it's his house.
"Are you taking notes for Natasha?" Thor demanded. He'd managed to sneak up on Clint, startling the smaller archer.
"Shh!" Clint smiled guiltily.
"Clint, what are you doing?" called Steve from the other room.
"Nothing!" he called back. Thor gave him a look. Midgardians, he was discovering, all seemed to be in the habit of saying 'nothing' when they meant precisely the opposite. Clint sighed, and continued in a hushed voice. "Okay, yeah, I'm taking notes for Nat. And I know she probably won't care but I still want to."
"I will assist you then."
"Thanks, dude. I appreciate the help."
From that point onward they jotted down thing that they felt might interest Natasha. Clint's notes mainly consisted of good sniper locations, while Thor's talked a lot about Pop Tarts.
Meanwhile, Steve and Bruce were at work frosting the cake. Did it look good? Well, in their humble opinion, it looked great. Particularly when compared to Bucky's cooking. They even managed to bake the inside so that when you cut it open it looked like the American flag. Not that they got to enjoy it for very long. As soon as they cut it open, there was a surprise waiting for them.
"Is that an arc reactor?" Bruce asked.
"I was trying to help! Watch!" Tony told them. They couldn't tell if he was actually proud of himself or just being ironic. Steve glared.
At that point, the cake exploded, coating the kitchen and the gang with its delicious, red-white-and-blue insides.
Steve was the first to recover. "Tony, you're cleaning up," he said..
"I told you we should have danced to the cake gods," Thor reminded them.
"Can't I just give them money? That would be so much easier," Tony whined. He'd missed the dance to the T-shirt gods, of course.
"Nah, they won't take your money; they wouldn't want it - but if they did, I'd love for you to make a donation, believe me," Clint said, speaking with all the authority of a Cake God expert.
"We could make a sacrifice," Bruce suggested.
To his surprise, they actually considered it. They weren't sure if it would be worth either a sacrifice or a dance, seeing as the cake was already ruined, but then somehow an argument broke out as to what a worthy sacrifice would be. In the midst of the confusion, someone handed Clint one of the remaining cake pieces, which he immediately ate. Then Thor, who was fast becoming the group's expert on pagan gods and how to deal with them, determined that the cake's remains would be the most appropriate sacrifice. Clint began to hope they wouldn't try to sacrifice him instead.
Authors' Notes Con:
WHY ART THIS TAKING SO LONG TO POST. I AM JUST GOING TO DO THEM ALL AT ONCE. I APOLOGIZE MIDGARDIANS.
And here witness Earth's Mightiest Heroes failing utterly at simple tasks like baking a cake. From a mix, for pete's sake. Though in fairness, we were making a Captain America/American flag cake. Steve found the recipe on Youtube. I think it's on the Nerdy Nummies channel, or something. I actually made another one a month later for the 4th of July, and it came out fine. So I'm just going to blame this whole thing on the universe hating Tony Stark.