Chapter Text
Tony is, somewhat ironically, the one who institutes Team Night in Avengers Tower. Which in theory goes like this: One of the Avengers cooks dinner on a rotation, and whoever cooked picks “I don’t know a movie or whatever” that includes everyone, and they just chill as a team.
In practice it goes like this:
Every Thursday, whoever isn’t on a mission or otherwise away participates, with occasional additions of friends. The accepted list grows a bit with time, but usually winds up consisting of Pepper, Rhodey, Jane, Darcy, and/or Coulson. And once, memorably, strippers.
Tony was never allowed to pick the ‘entertainment’ portion ever again.
Tony is, however, allowed to cook, as long as Pepper’s there to keep an eye on him. He’s gotten good at omelettes, though sometimes Pepper has to steer him away from the stove and towards the delivery menus.
Bruce makes marvelous Indian recipes with mouth-watering spices. He even makes two dishes each time - one ‘mild’ and one ‘actually flavored’. Only three people can stand the spicier one: Bruce, Tony, and Jane. Clint tried once, and decided that ‘Team Science’ must have somehow re-engineered their own taste buds. Thor can barely eat the ‘mild’ version, and drinks at least ten glasses of milk each time. Bruce also always makes homemade naan, an Indian bread, to go with the meal because baking is ‘just basic chemistry’. Occasionally he makes lassi, and Indian yoghurt drink that Thor in particular loves. He also bakes cookies - lots of them - and they’re always gone before dinner is even over.
His entertainment is always animated kids movies, mostly Disney and Pixar works. It somehow winds up being his night more frequently than anyone else’s, apparently because he’s the least busy and active outside the tower, but Bruce suspects its more that everyone likes his cooking and the movies.
Natasha is an excellent cook, but she’s the one who is most frequently away. Her first turn, she made borscht and Tony refused to try it until she stared him down. (He still won’t admit that he liked it.) She usually brings out cards and has them play poker, bridge, canasta, and others. All betting games are done penny-ante with an even amount of cash for everyone at the start to make it fair, under Steve’s and Pepper’s insistence. Once, she introduced a somewhat violent game she claimed was called “Egyptian Ratscrew” that involved slapping cards. They stopped the game after Thor almost broke Tony’s hand in his enthusiasm.
At some point, Jane taught Thor how to make Spaghetti and Meatballs. Thor, surprisingly, is excellent at this recipe, and makes it every time. Everyone loves it. He joins Bruce’s mission of going through animated movies with childlike wonder, proclaiming them “Most excellent tales!”
Steve is the one who takes his nights the most seriously. He’s grown to love Food Network (and loves how plentiful food is now - he remembers the Great Depression, and sickness, and hunger) and he always winds up trying new recipes on the nights he cooks for the team. He goes out early the morning of, and hits a list of markets JARVIS sets up for what he will need. He gets heirloom tomatoes and vegetables, as fresh as he can, because they’re the only one’s that taste right. Modern supermarket vegetables often taste like wax and cardboard to him. (He remembers as a kid, his mother growing what she could in a tiny garden, and biting into a tomato picked right from the vine on a hot summer’s day.) He could get the concierge service to go for the ingredients, no matter how obscure, but somehow that feels wrong to him - he was just a poor, skinny kid from Brooklyn, after all.
The first time he went out like this, Steve wandered into a little hole-in-the-wall shop that said it sold comics and games. They didn’t have any trading cards except for something called “Magic” but that didn’t look like card tricks. They had all sorts of games around the store, though, including Monopoly (REAL Monopoly, too, in contrast to the strange versions he had seen that were themed in some way, or the one that didn’t use paper money), so he bought it. Now, Cap comes back with a new game each time to try them out. (Though he still doesn’t understand what this ‘Pokemon’ thing is.)
Clint doesn’t cook. He grills. Burgers, hot dogs, pork chops, chicken breast, vegetables, fruits - whatever. He’s picky about it, too. He uses a charcoal grill and refuses to use the quick light briquettes for reasons no one else quite gets, instead patiently kindling and tending the coals to the perfect temperature. He’ll grill in the middle of winter, when its snowing, but never when its raining.
Everyone agrees his burgers are the best they’ve ever eaten.
His activity is the team all watching TV, somewhat evenly divided between sports and ridiculously cheesy sifi or sitcoms. He seems to pick them at random - Tony asks him once, especially as he doesn’t seem to follow any particular show, or team, or even sport. Clint just shrugs and tells him that he just picks what looks interesting. (Everyone blames him for introducing Thor to How I Met Your Mother. Thor begins to watch it faithfully on Mondays and eventually drags Steve and Pepper into it, too. The team now has to sit through arguments about who Barney should marry, and where the heck the pineapple came from. And even Clint regrets it when Thor accidentally calls Agent Hill “Robin”.)
Overall, team nights were good, light-hearted fun for a group of people who semi-regularly saved the world and their associates.
If only the movie nights would stop causing problems.
Bruce thought that animated movies - made for kids after all - would be a nice way for the team to relax and help both Steve and Thor learn more of modern American culture. He started with some classic Disney, of course. Bambi went fine with just a few sniffles from the crew, as did classic fairy tales - Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella - all had no problems except Natasha’s occasional snark in the background.
Beauty and the Beast was the first problem, and it was Bruce’s own. Jane and Darcy had joined them that night, though, and when Bruce left the room and didn’t come back after a few minutes, Darcy followed. Jane’s the one who found them after the movie, asleep together on the couch in Bruce’s lab. (They were fully clothed. Tony teased them anyway.)
The Iron Giant wound up being the next problem. Tony poured himself a glass of whiskey halfway through the movie, and when it was over he hid in his workshop until Steve pulled him out two days later.
The very next movie was The Lion King. Thor started bawling after the stampede, and wondered aloud if Scar could be redeemed. A minute after that, Darcy (who had started showing up on all of Bruce’s nights, on the insistence that she really liked Disney movies) slipped out of the room for a minute. Jane appeared as soon as the movie ended, and took Thor in hand.
When Anastasia turned up, everyone carefully not-noticed that Natasha was curled into Clint’s arms as he handed her tissues.
Everyone shed a few tears at WALL-E, but within three days Steve had called all the women “Peggy” at least once, and then looked distraught. He stopped after Pepper talked to him privately, and they all looked past the fact that his eyes were red and puffy the entire rest of the day.
The moment Clint heard the words “And tonight’s potential disaster is... “ out of Tony’s mouth, he got a sinking feeling.
When the sentence ended with Lilo and Stitch, Clint knew he was fucked.