D3 / MCU Breakfast Mingle

[honeyibrokeharlem]

Who| Bruce Banner, the whole MCU cast, open to people who live in D3 or would drop in on D3 during breakfast time
What| Bruce is a stress cooker. He made a lot of food during the night. Now everyone has to eat it. MCUers have gathered to help with this.
Where| D3 kitchen and dining area.
When| Early morning after the first night under curfew.
Warnings/Notes| Possibly discussion of past violence. Twitchy old people with tribbles.

Bruce doesn't do well when he feels trapped. He felt very trapped during the night and didn't have even a wink of sleep. So he kept himself busy with cooking.

And boy, does it show.

There is a ton of food, all over the counter and on the table. Some is still cooking in the oven or on the stove. There are familiar things, like crepes and popovers and pancakes and muffins and bacon, but there are also completely foreign things from other countries, primarily from Latin America, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and India. And to go with all of this are a ton of different spreads, some of which are clearly not even from the continental United States.

There is also, of course, hot coffee and cold juice to drink. Or tap water, if that's what you feel like.

Honestly, it looks like the weirdest breakfast buffet ever.

Comments

[atoner]

The good thing about Natasha is that she's adaptable. Knowing that every situation is constantly changing and being able to switch up her behaviours, if not her attitudes. Which is a good summary of how she acts around Barnes these days. He's here to stay, and he's Steve's friend. He's different from the man who almost killed her on the bridge, somehow. So when Natasha spots him at Bruce's little get-together, she approaches him with a plate.

A plate with a pancake on it. With a whipped cream smiley on its face.

"You should eat this," she says, mostly because it'll amuse her. Because when your life is about as shitty as hers, you have to take every opportunity to cheer yourself up. And making a deadly HYDRA super-soldier eat a whipped cream smiley is one of life's greatest joys.

[tookthewheel]

Well, that was unexpected.

Bucky had mostly zoned out when she approached him, eyes fixed on the tabletop up until a smiley-faced pancake interrupted his line of vision and well, he can't ignore that.

Nor the person who put it there.

He still doesn't know quite how to feel about this new Widow still but she is Steve's friend and that counts for something in terms of how willing he is to deal with her. That doesn't mean however he knows how to deal with her, or any surprise gestures that she might make towards him. "You made that?"

[atoner]

"No. But the whipped cream? That's all me," Natasha replies, biting into a muffin. It's blueberry, and it's...actually really nice. She absolutely cannot cook to save her own life, so she has to settle for enjoying other people's work. Mostly because she never really got the chance to learn how.

This isn't a peace offering, but it's something. She hasn't forgotten the fact that he shot her twice, but she also knows what it's like to do things without having a choice in them.

Call it a gesture of sorts.

[tookthewheel]

Bucky lifts his gaze from the plate to Natasha's face, eyes settled firmly on hers like he's trying to get a reading on her intentions.

"Why?"

One word, multiple questions. Why is she bringing him pancakes? Why put the smiley face on there? If she chooses to answer one or both is down to her, his lack of specification opens the question up to interpretation after all.

[atoner]

"Because I felt like it," is all she's going to say, because that's pretty much all there is to say. Natasha wanted to, felt like it would be funny if he did. And also, because she figures that he hasn't had much time to take in whipped cream, which is a shame because whipped cream is excellent.

"Don't worry. It's not poisoned."

If that's what he's expecting of her.

[tookthewheel]

He looks back down at the pancakes, toying with his fork in his left hand for a long moment.

No, he doesn't think it's poisoned, he doesn't think someone who claimed to be Steve's friend would do that to him knowing how Steve would likely react to it. Unless of course they thought he was too dangerous to trust around Steve... he pushes that thought away quickly. It's more that he thinks it would make more sense for her to be angry with him, to hate him; not to be nice to the man who... who... the echo of a rifle in his hands fills his senses for a moment before it's gone.

It's fine. He's fine. Bucky cuts his fork into the pancakes. "Thank you."

He still doesn't know whether this is truly genuine or not, but as far as the pancakes go he doesn't see reason to refuse.

[atoner]

That's right. He's Steve's friend, and Natasha respects Steve to follow his calls on this. If he thinks Bucky's stable enough to be left to his own devices, well. She'll just have to trust him on that. If he didn't, she knows he probably has it in him to do something about it.

The bullet he put in her still aches sometimes, even though it's long gone by now. It will ache until the day she dies, a reminder of what he has done to her.

Still, Natasha watches him begin to eat the pancakes and considers her work here done. "Enjoy," she tells him, with a casual shrug of her shoulders.

[tookthewheel]

"They're good."

He offers the words after she tells him to enjoy them, looking up at Natasha with a smudge of cream on the corner of his lip. The pancakes taste better with it, he concedes the point but still doesn't see the point of putting it on as a smiling face.

Bucky can't tell what is going on inside her head but she is not like the Widow who was here before, that much is clear to him. He knows what to expect from this one even less.

[atoner]

He's got whipped cream at the corner of his lip and it's a really amusing sight, to be honest. Exactly what she needed from this man at the moment. Not that she really needs to be reminded that someone like him is more human and less of an ill-used, forgotten weapon. But it's a good moment.

"You got a little something," she hands him a napkin, but she'll leave it at that. He doesn't trust her, she doesn't trust him. They're not friends. There's no reason to push this.

"I'll see you around, Barnes."

[tookthewheel]

Bucky reaches up and takes the napkin automatically after registering the meaning of what she'd said. He nods and nothing more when Natasha says what amounts to a goodbye.

Afterwards he followes her direction and wipes away the cream from his mouth before eating the pancakes down to last crumb.