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It all started when the team stumbled back from a particularly intense battle, and immediately fell about getting completely smashed, because by this point it was the best way to deal with the neverending onslaught of supervillains trying to take over Earth. They were telling stories, drunkenly insulting each other in a loving, painful way when Peter brought up a problem that all of them had noticed but none of them had mentioned.
"Thor, stop leaving Mjolnir on the toilet seat!"
"But," Thor wagged a finger in the direction he thought Peter was in, and nearly took Clint's eye out, "then I wouldn't know if the great toilet was worthy."
"Thor, all a toilet does is take our shit. Literally! It doesn't need to take your classist crap as well."
"Classist?" Thor looked as though he would be insulted if he understood what Peter meant by that.
"You know, ranking toilets based on whether they can hold a hammer," Peter seemed aware that he had used the wrong word and spent the next ten minutes frowning aggressively at the floor as he tried to remember what he had meant.
"Did you know," Natasha began, bored of watching Peter's petulant pout while Pietro nudged him to attempt to lighten him up, "I once filled a toilet with toilet paper to block it, and as a punishment we all had to use it for a week." She grinned up at Clint, revelling in the knowledge that he would share her sense of humour. "So worth it!"
"How does one 'block' a toilet?" Thor seemed genuinely intrigued, which was a flashing warning sign that it was in the best interests of everyone to swiftly move along in the conversation, a fact that became even more apparent when Vision opened his mouth to begin to explain.
"If you put something too big in, that's all," Bruce jumped in, and Thor had enough faith in the hulk's scientific knowledge to accept that without turning to Vision, to everyone's relief.
"I thought they could suck anything away," he muttered, sounding heartbroken that his naive fantasies about the abilities of toilets had been shattered in one fatal blow.
"How do you have so little a grasp of basic physics?" Vision replied condescendingly, as though knowledge of the breaking points of toilets was the most important thing one could know and would ever be helpful in life. To escape the fate of having toilets explained to them, the team quickly disbanded for bed, leaving Vision reciting formulas and engineering strategies to an empty room far beyond the time they were all asleep.
It was as though the knowledge that toilets weren't indestructable had broken a dam in Thor, and all that he could think about was how to prove (or disprove) this fact. It was his new life aim to block a toilet, almost as important to him as saving the world, and he took this new job seriously. However, in a subtle way unbeforeseen in someone as open as Thor, he kept his new obsession quiet, sneaking around at midnight to attempt it.
One time, Sam caught him, but when Thor mumbled something about a midnight snack he took him at his word, probably because 'my team-mate is desperate to block a toilet' isn't the first assumption one jumps to, even when said team-mate is looking suspiciously guilty and holding Captain America's shield.
Thor had long-since discovered that merely toilet paper simply would not do with these toilets. Tony Stark himself had spent extortionate amounts of money on them, because Tony Stark spent extortionate amounts of money on everything, and then when a group of superheroes had taken over Tony and Bruce had single-handedly redone the plumbing. There hadn't been a malfunction since, which had previously been seen as a good thing but was now hindering Thor in his goal.
No matter how good the plumbing was, though, Thor was certain that he would find something that it couldn't take. He tried Captain America's shield, Iron Man's helmet, SpiderMan's webbing, and yet the water somehow managed to flush past everything without dragging it down. It was a fit of good luck in the end that Thor watched Natasha present Clint with an arrow for his birthday that, once triggered, would release a boxing glove.
"May I borrow this, comrade?" He boomed, making sure that there was no trace of laughter in his eyes, and Clint rather warily allowed him to. That night, sure that this would be the night all of his dreams came true, Thor pressed the button and shoved the arrow into the toilet bowl.
"Well," he muttered as he watched the water pool up around the blockage, careful to keep his voice down, "that was anticlimactic." Without another thought on the matter, he retired to his room, free to sleep at last now that the great burden of his true purpose in life had been lifted by one arrow. He slept so soundly that he didn't notice the water beginning to seep under his door.
Screams awoke Thor, first just Quicksilver yelling, then Wanda and Peter and Tony adding to the raucous until everyone seemed to be shouting about something. Immediately awake, he grabbed Mjolnir and swung out of bed, ready to face whatever enemy had attacked his friends...only to yelp in surprise when his feet landed in a large, cold, puddle.
"What nefarious plan is this?" he growled, the newfound obstacle only serving to make him more determined to put an end to the madness before it could do any more harm, and waded towards the door. "What villain hast attacked us in our sleep?" he roared into the hallway, thrusting Mjolnir, crackling dangerously, into the air.
Most of the Avengers were already gathered outside his room, and as one they turned to watch his grand entrance.
"My arrow," Clint replied, and Thor noticed that he was kneeling on the floor, cradling his arrow in his lap as though clutching a dying loved one, and he looked almost tearful. "The one I gave you last night?"
No matter what anyone thought, Thor wasn't stupid, and he immediately connected the dots. "Has it been overtaken by some evil maniac?" he asked, but his voice had lost its usual gusto, and everybody noticed.
"Thor, did you put Clint's arrow down the toilet?" Steve sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Thor could see that he already knew the answer, but was saved from having to respond by Tony reappearing from his shared room with Steve, wearing his suit and wailing;
"Why does my helmet smell like toilet?"
"Strange Midgardian customs?" Thor suggested, unable to keep the smile of his face, and Steve looked as though he was considering walking out. "Man of Iron, it is only toilet water, there is no need for your suit."
"Yeah, Tony, take it off. You're not helping." Steve ordered, ignoring Tony's winked response of
"Why don't you take it off for me?"
"We have a problem!" Wanda called from the bathroom that had started it all, and the group ran over to where she was stood in the doorway, freezing a fountain of water in place from where it was spurting out of the broken toilet.
"I didn't do that," Thor hastened to save what little dignity he had left, and Natasha nodded knowingly.
"Probably happened when we took the arrow out. Wanda, can you hold it in place while we shut the door?" Wanda shrugged, always game to try, but her concentration slipped at the same time as her foot did, unable to find purchase on the wet floor as she walked backwards, and the group ended up soaked from head to toe.
"I can help!" Thor suggested, looking round for a mop.
"Thor, just," Steve shook the water out of his hair, "go sit on the naughty step."
"But it's wet!"
"We're all wet," Bucky responded, and the angry emphasis on the 'all' was enough to send Thor fleeing to the relative (if slightly damp) safety of the top step.
"We're not mad, you know," Bruce told Thor, leaning over the top of the bannisters and looking relievingly chill for someone who's entire floor had been flooded. "We're just a bit wet. But -" he held up a finger when Thor opened his mouth, "But we've all done worse. I can't even begin to count the amount of stupid things Tony has done, and Clint, and Pietro," one side of his mouth quirked up, "even Steve, though he's normally our perfect leader. When we're all dry, we can laugh about this. Besides," he threw a friendly wink as he wandered back over to help the clean-up, "the tower needed cleaning anyway."
By the time Thor joined in with the cleaning, it had turned into one massive waterfight, not that anyone was complaining. It was a free-for-all, everyone against everyone, that ended with them all still wet but laughing, when Scott bounded up the stairs from where he had been on a weekend holiday with Cassie.
"What...happened?" he questioned.
"Oh, it's fine," ever the happy one, Sam waved off his concerns with a literal wave of water.
"Are you kidding? Jail is cleaner than this?" Scott groaned, slapping a hand over his face.
"Why are you complaining, it's Stark's first shower in weeks!" Pietro stuck his tongue out at Tony, hi-fiving Peter who was hiding behind him from Clint's splashes. "Just come join in." With a little more faked reluctance, Scott restarted the fight, and soon the tower was filled with childish giggles and shrieks once more.
When Fury walked in, it was to Pietro's yell of, "Oh, Peter, you made me wet!" whilst Peter blushed a terrific shade of red and simultaneously splashed Bucky, who had been sneaking up behind Pietro. When he looked down, he noticed that his trenchcoat was swishing in a deep pool of water that covered the entire floor, and immediately made to call a clean-up crew and, watching his team messing about, maybe a psych eval.
Then he saw the way Wanda leapt on Sam's shoulders, laughing, to escape Clint and Natasha's dream team, and how he dunked her under immediately, surfacing with a cheeky grin. He saw the way they were enjoying this moment of peaceful, childish play, and left, making a mental note to call Coulson about clean-up when they were done enjoying it.
The pictures of a shocked Tony Stark attempting to escape waves of water attacking from three directions at once was more than worth some wet patches on his coat, anyway.