Work Text:
Bob stood in the Thunderbolts’ safehouse kitchen, sleeves rolled to his elbows, the faint hum of the oven warming the steel counters. Flour dusted his forearms like fresh snow. He’d promised the team cookies, real ones, not the supermarket ones they usually choked down, and he meant to deliver.
First came Cranio’s batch. Bob cracked three bars into the bowl: milk, white, and dark. The chocolates melted in slow rivers, folding into dough until it gleamed like a triple eclipse. He scooped mounds onto the tray, each cookie getting three different chocolates to represent the madman’s brain helmet skull. “Three kinds for brains,” he muttered, sliding the sheet into the oven.
While those baked, he started on Danny Boy. Cinnamon burned his nose as he sifted it in, the scent sharp as a four-leaf clover pressed between pages of a grimoire. He pressed a metal cutter into the dough, four perfect leaves, edges crisp, and laid them out like lucky talismans.
Last, The General. Bob shaved a bar of eighty-percent cacao until it looked like gunpowder. He shaped the cookies into tight disks, regulation size, and baked them until they cracked like old parade grounds. Then, adding some lemon jellies for a sweet-sour taste, Bob spends too much time on TikTok and sees all kinds of recipes.
The oven dinged three times. Bob pulled the trays, steam curling around his face.
Footsteps echoed in the hall. The team filed in Ava first, then Alexei, then the rest, drawn by the smell. Bob set the platters on the table without ceremony.
“Pick your treat,” he said.
Yelena went for the triple-chocolate, biting in with a soft moan. "Bob, you are a hero in the kitchen, what would we do without you?".
Bucky snatched a clover, grinning around cinnamon heat. "This is not bad at all, Bob, it reminds me of my grandma cooking...God rest her soul."
Alexei swaggered in last, boots thudding like artillery. He surveyed the empty platters, the crumbs, the satisfied faces, then fixed Bob with a grin sharp enough to cut glass.
“Three cookies,” he announced, plucking the last triple-chocolate from Ava’s fingers, the final clover from Bucky’s plate, and the lone dark disk John had been eyeing for seconds. “One for Cranio, one for Danny, one for the General." Alexei smashed three cookies into a sandwich and shoved it down with one bite."
After minutes of mouthing," I just ate your entire rogue gallery, Bob. You’re welcome.”
"Oh! Come on! I barely got two to eat two," John was offended. Until Ava appeared next to him with one saved for him.
"I saved another one for you, what would you do without me?" Ava teased John.
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(Learn more about these villains the cookies are based upon here: The New Age of The Sentry.