Avengers Team Fic

[icarus_chained]

For a prompt on comment_fic on the subject of the Avengers and healthy eating.

Title: Care and Feeding
Rating: PG
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Characters/Pairings: Tony, Clint, Pepper, Natasha, Bruce, Steve, Thor, Jane, JARVIS. Team, Tony/Pepper, Thor/Jane, Tony & the Bots
Summary: Pizza night at Avengers tower becomes an argument on dietary health, the value of comfort food, and Dummy's culinary endeavours. It's amazing how much you can learn from how people eat
Wordcount: 1363
Warnings/Notes: Warnings for mention of Bruce's suicide attempt, Tony's various health issues, implied comfort eating on Clint & Bruce's parts, random bits of backstory for all concerned. General fluff and angst
Disclaimer: Not mine

Care and Feeding

"You know," Tony said, staring absently into the middle distance, "there is a part of me that honestly can't believe we're having this conversation. I mean, not me and Pep, me and Pep have this conversation all the time. It's the rest of you that I'm having trouble believing."

Clint leaned over him to snag another couple of pizza slices, handing one across to Natasha and almost dropping it in Tony's lap in the process. Tony refocused enough to glare blearily at him.

"Hey, you guys started it," Clint said, saluting Pepper idly. "We're just finishing it. Always gotta finish the fight. You lose your reputation otherwise."

Pepper blinked at him, and smiled languidly. Tony, having learned something these past few years, bumped hastily back out of the way, abandoning Clint and giving her a clean line of fire without a qualm. Clint never even blinked.

"I didn't imagine it was a fight," Pepper murmured gently. "You're Tony's friends. I saw no reason not to spread a little friendly concern your way. You all have a dangerous enough lifestyle without inviting heart disease or liver failure on top of it."

As one, the team looked at Tony. Who looked right on back with cheerful abandon.

"Nope," he said. "The liver failure, yes, but heart disease is all you guys. My ticker had a lot of problems, but that wasn't really the main one." He patted the space where the arc reactor had used to be, and it was a sign of the sort of company he was keeping that none of them hastily averted their gaze.

"I highly doubt I need to worry about heart failure either," Bruce murmured lightly, with a crooked sort of smile. "If a bullet didn't cut it, I don't think cholesterol is going to." He paused. "Not that I object to a little healthy eating, though. It's just that after a few years living rough, you get used to eating, well, most of everything, really. Most of my money went on herbal remedies and equipment. Everything else, you just fill in around it as best you can."

Pepper looked sympathetically at him. "You don't have that problem any more," she reminded gently. Bruce smiled at her.

"No," he agreed. "But habits have a comfort, in an uncertain world. A little unhealthy eating for relaxation's sake won't hurt me."

"What he said," Clint agreed, leaning back with a smug smile and a smear of tomato sauce at the corner of his mouth. The shadow in his eyes was only small, really. Nothing worth bothering about. Natasha, equally sated and equally saturnine, leaned back against his shoulder and offered them all a bright, easy smile. Pepper shook her head at them.

"I'm disappointed in you," she told Natasha, solemnly and with ever so straight a face. "You traitor you."

Natasha saluted her with a pizza crust, all that remained of her slice. "A professional one," she agreed, with equal seriousness, and then grinned softly. "If you wanted a fellow health nut, you should have looked to Captain Clean over there." She nodded in Steve's direction. "I'm taking my cheese and dough while I can get it."

They looked lazily over in Steve's direction. Tony smirked, wagging a reproving finger in his direction. "A traitor, too, Captain? For shame. Us menfolk are supposed to stick together, you know."

Steve only smiled. "If you're all expecting me to be ashamed that I can now afford to eat fresh and in bulk, without having to worry about allergies, you can think again," he said, leaning back with his left-over lasagna and scraping the container clean. "I have time and space to cook, and the money to afford actual ingredients. If you didn't want me to use it, you shouldn't have given me enough refrigerator space to billet an army."

"Aye!" Thor rumbled somewhere from the background, perched out near the windows with Jane. "Though there's much to be said for take-away also."

Jane snorted softly. "Thor, honey. I've seen you down ten horns of mead, a roast pig the size of a semi, and probably the better part of an orchard. So long as it comes in bulk, you're happy with anything."

He smiled down at her, tucking her head under his chin. "Not quite," he argued. "It must come in bulk, and it must be edible. There have been many things I've tasted in this realm and others that were not, no matter what the locals may have tried to make us believe."

Bruce snorted, lifting his tea mug in agreement, with Natasha not far behind him. "Here here!" he said, an almost fond smile of memory crossing his face. "Lets see what the foreigner will swallow. Always a favourite."

Tony blinked at them. "You guys must hang out at the wrong places, then. That shit's never happened to me." They blinked at him, a little, and then JARVIS decided to intervene, and let Tony down gently.

"Statistically speaking, sir, it's probable that it has happened at least once. However, given that you willingly drink whatever Dummy puts in front of you in the lab, things, I might add, whose only redeeming virtue is that they are not immediately fatal, I suspect that you simply did not notice."

Tony blinked lazily. "That's defamation," he said, waving a hand in the direction of the ceiling. "You take that back. Dummy's an awesome smoothie maker, and a dab hand with a toaster, too."

JARVIS hummed, a bland, not at all doubtful electronic noise. "I couldn't possibly comment, sir. I'm only circuits and electricity, after all. I'm sure I've no opinion on the edibility or otherwise of Dummy's culinary endeavours."

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Some big brother you are," he retorted, crossing his arms. "You're a culinary snob, JARVIS. I never would have thought."

"I'm culinary Switzerland, sir," JARVIS corrected blithely. "And Dummy has never yet been offended. There are times I'm honestly not sure that he understands the difference between energy drinks and gasoline. They serve roughly the same purpose, after all."

Steve, who had on occasion accepted a smoothie from Dummy, mostly in the interests of being a good guest and not hurting the bot's feelings, suddenly looked a little grey. "Well," he murmured. "I guess it's a good thing I'm not allergic to anything any more. Or as vulnerable to poisoning, either."

"Yeah," Clint agreed, staring at Tony. "But that doesn't explain him, does it? How the hell are you not dead yet, Stark?"

Tony grinned, lots of teeth, lots of joy, and pointed back at Pepper with gleeful malice. "Funny you should ask," he said. "You remember I said me and Pep have this conversation all the time?"

Pepper smiled tightly herself. "A little dietary supervision does wonders, wouldn't you say? As well as the occasional stomach pump. And a full supply of supplements and antitoxins on hand." She eased a little, reaching over to pat Tony's knee. "He doesn't do so badly, though. For a forty year old drinker with a history of several massive chest traumas and an absentminded robot chef, that is."

"And doesn't it say so much about our lives," Jane noted from her position in Thor's arms, "that that last sentence doesn't sound the least bit abnormal anymore?"

"Hell yeah," Clint grinned, snagging his glass of soda off the table so he could raise it above his head. "Here's to abnormality, pizza, and robot chefs!" Natasha coughed gently beside him, looking at Pepper with bright eyes, and Clint conceded the point. "And a little dietary supervision, perhaps. Tiny bit. Now and then."

"Why thank you," Pepper drawled wryly, but held up her glass regardless. "To supervision, pizza, robots and abnormality. May they never mix in the wrong places. Here here!"

While the roar went up around him, cheerful agreement from all the whacked out insanity that was now his life, Tony found himself raising his glass mostly to her, that vaguely disbelieving smile still on his face, and sending a slightly more private toast her way.

From the soft twinkle in her eyes, wry and knowing as her glass tipped towards his, she returned it, too.


A/N: I've no idea of the validity of any of these interpretations of Avengers + food. Especially Steve, although I did look up an interesting American Food Timeline for eating habits in poor 1930s Brooklyn. I was guessing it was access to fresh that was the main problem? But yes, complete guesswork on my part -_-;