Fic: Game Night, Chapter 3: Whodunnit?

[bookishwench]

“This time we’re really going to have fun.”

It wasn’t what Tony was saying but the way he said it that made Bruce wince. A missing “or else” was heavily implied at the end of the sentence, hanging in the air like an unspoken threat.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to almost lose an eye this time, so that’s already an improvement,” Pepper said as she set the board on the middle of the table and began taking out pieces. “At least, not unless you get really creative with the tiny wrench.”

“Wait, don’t use those cards,” Tony said, swiping the originals off the table and dumping them back in the box. He reached into the pouch of his black AC/DC hoodie and pulled out a small stack of index cards. “I redid them.”

“Why is this making lots of red danger lights flash on and off in my brain?” asked Bruce.

“As long as they’re not green, we’re all good,” Tony said, handing them to Pepper. “There ya go. All set. We’ve got ten people playing, so I had to get a little creative.”

Pepper looked at him like he was treading dangerously close to the edge of insanity, but she took them and put them on the table.

“What are we eating tonight?” Bruce asked hopefully as Tony ducked into the kitchen and emerged carrying half a dozen paper bags from different takeout places.

“Kind of a smorgasbord,” Tony said, grinning. “We’ve got Chinese, sushi, Mexican, and good old American with cheeseburgers and fried chicken.”

With each kind he listed, he ripped open a bag and started spreading containers and condiments all over the bar until it looked like a particularly ambitious buffet dinner from a cruise line.

“Do you have any money left?” Bruce asked, looking impressed.

“I’m a billionaire, Brucie,” Tony said, dumping a container of rice into a serving bowl.

“And I repeat, do you have any money left?” Bruce said as he began slapping chopsticks, forks, knives, spoons, and skewers into an empty bowl on the bar. “Tony, we all need to chip in on this. It’s not fair to expect you to foot the bill for something this, this—”

“Ostentatious? Gargantuan? Extravagant? Crazy?” Pepper supplied as she put out napkins and plates.

“Yeah, kind of all of that,” Bruce said, surveying mounds of kappa maki, spring rolls, tacos, and burgers.

“Thor is coming,” Tony said, glancing up from a large platter of dim sum. “That alone should explain it. I’m not even sure if this is enough.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Pepper said, half-jogging towards the fridge. “Bruce, can you help me set out the drinks? Just slap them in the coolers with the ice.”

“On it,” he said, grinning as he saw his favorite ginger ale prominently featured.

Just then, the elevator doors opened to the usual crowd of people and the Bifrost erupted on the roof.

“I’ll get the weirdos by the elevator, you handle the freaky Viking aliens,” Tony said to Pepper as he walked over to greet everyone.

“Thor, Loki,” Pepper said, opening the door. “Good to see you.”

“Lady Pepper,” Thor said, stooping to kiss her hand as he entered. “I am also delighted to see you once more.”

“Good evening,” Loki said, handing her a bouquet of exotic flowers. “Mother thought you might like these. They are from her garden. She says, and I quote, ‘Thank you for sparing Asgard from the expense of feeding my sons this night.’”

Pepper laughed, then sniffed the flowers, which were shaded in purple, red, and pink and looked something like a cross between calla lilies and birds of paradise.

“How thoughtful of her. They’re lovely,” Pepper said. “Please thank her for me. Should I put these in water?”

“Only if you wish to kill us all when they explode,” Loki said, making Pepper’s jaw drop before he grinned. “Just joking. Yes, water will be fine.”

She hit him over the head with one of them playfully and went to the bar to find a pitcher to put them in, leaving Loki chuckling quietly.

“So what horrible catastrophe of a board game do we have tonight that can put half of us into therapy and the other in the hospital through bizarre accidents?” Clint asked, then sighted the bar. “Whoa, forget what I said, is that real fried chicken? As in, really fried, not baked or grilled or any other healthy yet ultimately unsatisfying thing, which I will deny saying if anyone tells my wife?”

“It is,” Tony said. “Everybody, dig in. Then, we’re going to have a murder.”

“Okay, I wasn’t expecting that to be a bonding activity, but hey, you’re providing a terrific last meal, so I’m not complaining,” Bucky said, filling his plate with an odd mix of cheeseburgers, California rolls, and nachos. “Who are we killing?”

“I volunteer as tribute!” Peter said cheerfully, but when almost everyone else stared at him with varying degrees of confusion and horror, he frowned. “Geez, only joking.”

“I actually got that one,” Steve said, patting him on the shoulder. “I read it last week. Good book. Little grim, though.”

“I am not partaking in human sacrifice as a bonding ritual,” Loki said, then quietly added, “again.”

“You people all have issues,” Tony said as he snagged a cheeseburger off Bucky’s plate, earning a glare that would have made most people go into cardiac arrest. “We’re not actually killing anybody. We’re just playing Clue.”

“Okay, as board games go, that’s a pretty decent choice,” Clint said warily. “What aren’t you telling us? You look way too happy.”

“Well, we’re changing the rules a tiny bit,” Tony said. “Since there’s ten of us and only six tokens, we’re going to add four new players to the game and four more murder weapons. The rooms stay the same.”

“I do not understand,” Thor said, who had taken the entire serving bowl of rice and was pouring it over his collection of quesadillas. “Who has died?”

“Mr. Boddy,” Peter said immediately.

“How droll,” Loki said, rolling his eyes. “Was he killed by Mr. Murderer, by any chance?”

Natasha slapped him on the back of the head with a burrito as she casually walked past with her plate.

“The set-up is someone’s killed him somewhere in the mansion, and we have to solve the murder,” Peter explained to Thor, who nodded as he tried to spear a quesadilla with a chopstick. “Cards with the murderer, weapon, and room are in an envelope in the middle of the board. The rest of the cards are dealt out, so you know whatever is on your own cards isn’t part of the solution. Then you roll the dice to move your piece through the mansion until you get to the room where you want to make an accusation. You say that room, who did it, and what weapon. Then the person on your left tells you if they have any of those cards, and if they do, they show you one, and your turn is over. If they don’t, then it keeps going around to the left until either someone shows you that you guessed wrong or you win because you guessed right.”

“So, we are the detectives?” Thor said.

“Sort of,” Tony said. “We’re also the suspects. But even if you killed the guy, unless you happen to have your card, you wouldn’t know it.”

“How would I not know if I had killed this Mr. Boddy?” Thor said.

“Amnesia?” Natasha ventured.

Thor thought about it, then nodded.

“Fine. If your Midgardian soap operas are anything close to accurate, you are all afflicted with that disease often,” Thor said.

“You’ve been watching soap operas?” Steve asked as he filled his plate with sushi.

“Oh, no. Jane enjoys them,” Thor said quickly. “I merely keep her company as she watches them. I find them rather silly and tiresome.”

“And they call me a liar. He’s practically a resident of Genoa City,” Loki said to Peter, who giggled.

“Right, so, we’ve got the usual six tokens: Miss White, Mr. Green, Prof. Plum, Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, and Colonel Mustard,” Tony said, dropping the handful of tokens on the board. “Then, for tonight only, we’ve got four more suspects.”

He reached into the pocket of his hoodie again and took out four bottles of nail polish.

“Those are mine,” Pepper said with a note of weariness.

“Oh, right. I forgot to ask. Can we use these?” Tony said, looking apologetic.

“Fine,” Pepper said in a voice that suggested this was not the first favor he’d asked for today. “Just try not to spill it.”

“Thanks, Pep,” he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “People, meet Sir Grey, Captain Cocoa, Dr. Pink, and Commodore Marigold,” Tony said, placing the matching-colored bottles with the other pieces. “So, who wants what?”

“I’ll take Plum,” Bruce said, putting it on the board in one of the spots marked start.

“I call Colonel Mustard,” Bucky said, moving his token into position.

“Captain Cocoa,” Peter said, grabbing the nail polish.

“I believe I shall be Miss Scarlett,” Thor said.

“Okay, I did not see that coming,” Tony said.

“Red is my lucky color,” Thor said, grinning.

“Well, Thor picked my usual, so I’m taking Mrs. Peacock,” Natasha said.

“I’m Mr. Green,” Clint said.

Loki glared at him but said only, “Dr. Pink.”

Tony snorted but handed him the nail polish.

“Miss White,” Pepper said.

“Fine, I’ll take Sir Grey,” Tony said. “Who’d we skip?”

“I guess that makes me Commodore Marigold,” Steve said with a sigh, picking up the bottle.

“There you go,” Tony said, stifling a laugh. “Okay, so four of us have no spot for a start, so one goes between the billiard room and library on the edge, one between the kitchen and the dining room, and one between the study and the hall. The last one doubles up with Captain Cocoa over there, who goes first because Peter’s the youngest.”

Steve obediently moved his nail polish next to Peter’s bottle. Peter smiled at him apologetically.

“Sorry you have to bunk in with me,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Queens,” Steve said, slapping him gently on the back, which still made him sway. “I’ve been stuck in tighter spots with much worse company.”

“Now, the weapons are traditionally a revolver, a rope, a lead pipe, a candlestick, a wrench, and a knife,” Tony said, throwing the six replicas onto the center of the board.

“A revolver?” Loki said. “What is this? 1923?”

“Probably,” Tony said. “It’s supposed to sort of look like that era.”

“Well, if that’s the case, we could use a bit of appropriate music,” Loki said as the sound of a jazz orchestra from the Roaring Twenties started playing quietly in the background. “I rather liked that time, all told. Particularly the flappers.”

“Thought the dolls were cute, huh?” Bucky said, grinning.

“Considering I was one at the time, yes, they were gorgeous,” Loki said, taking an elegant sip of his black cherry soda as his appearance briefly switched to a clone of Louise Brooks wearing a stunning golden fringed gown with emerald glass beading and then flickered back to his usual appearance.

“Okay, and I’m ignoring that because, were I a single man, I would so have tapped that if I didn’t know who you were, and that is deeply disturbing me,” Tony said as what sounded like Duke Ellington continued to provide subtle atmosphere and Loki smirked. “Anyway, to keep things workable, we’ve got to have four more weapons.”

He then took out tokens from Monopoly, making several of them involuntarily cringe at the memory.

“Seriously?” Clint said, pointing at Tony’s choices. “I get the cannon. Loud, impractical, but fine, you could potentially murder someone with it. And yes, okay, the iron is weird, but no weirder than the candlestick, so that’s fairly logical. But the car and the wheelbarrow?”

“You can kill someone with a car,” Tony said defensively.

“Inside a dining room?” Clint asked.

“I didn’t say it would be subtle,” Tony said, shrugging. “Then again, neither is the cannon.”

“And the wheelbarrow?” Clint asked.

“Completely possible,” Natasha said with absolute certainty as Bucky nodded in agreement. “Actually, the top hat or the cat would have worked too. You just need to be creative.”

“So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with blood, beside the billiard room,” Peter said, smiling a little too angelically.

“Thank you, William Carlos Williams,” Tony said. “It was either that or somebody gets killed with a thimble, and that’s—.”

“Also possible,” Bucky finished, with Natasha stopping to think for a moment, then giving him a thumbs up in agreement.

“Y’all are weird, frightening people,” Tony said. “What did you want me to do? Use one of the little plastic houses and have somebody drop it on Boddy?”

Steve smiled in satisfaction and said, “It’s been done before.”

“Can we get on with this?” Loki said, rolling his eyes.

“Fine. One suspect, one room, and one weapon go in the envelope,” Tony said, sliding them in while being sure no one could see them, then shuffling the remaining index cards. “Okay, now we deal the rest out. Everyone will get two or three.”

What followed involved Loki trying to peer at both of his neighbors’ cards, Bruce squinting at Tony’s handwriting until he shrugged, and Thor suddenly yelping in pain and coughing in ear-splitting spasms.

“What?” Tony asked, staring at him.

“This sauce,” he croaked, pointing at it. “It possesses a very strong effect.”

Bruce’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he realized what he was looking at.

“Thor, how much wasabi did you put on that quesadilla?” he said.

“All of it?” Thor said uncertainly, still coughing. “My brother said it was delicious, and I did not wish to double dip again.”

Loki snickered but continued to eat his taco feigned innocence.

“Okay, so, Thor remains clueless about condiments, sauces, and dips, and Peter will you please roll the dice so we can get out of here quickly before he throws up on my rug?” Tony said pleadingly as Thor ate half a dozen buttermilk biscuits to dull the effect of the wasabi while Pepper gently patted him on the back, handing him a very large glass of water.

Peter rolled the dice and moved Captain Cocoa out onto the board. As was typical, no one got into a room on their first roll, but on the second go around, Natasha landed Mrs. Peacock in the dining room.

“I accuse Professor Plum, in the dining room, with the revolver,” she said, picking up Bruce’s token and the revolver and putting them into the room.

Tony, Thor, and Pepper couldn’t disprove her, but everyone knew the chances the first guess would be right were astronomical.

“Nope,” Clint said and showed her a card. “One possible permutation down, 899 to go.”

“Is that math right?” Bucky said, looking ill.

“Yes,” Tony said. “I am going to personally blast someone with a repulsor if they repeat a guess.
And, I’m in the kitchen, so, kitchen, Mr. Green, rope.”

Thor shrugged apologetically, still quietly sputtering, but Pepper leaned over and let Tony glimpse one of her cards.

“And now we’ve got 898 left,” Tony said, sticking a wad of almond chicken in his mouth and chewing sullenly.

“Fine, I am certain we shall finish before dawn,” Thor said optimistically, moving Miss Scarlet into the library. “I accuse my brother of murder with a knife in the library.”

“Are we still playing the game or am I under arrest?” Loki asked as he deposited his pink nail polish in the library. “You should know that’s something I would never do. I wouldn’t want to risk splattering any of the books.”

Pepper and Clint shook their heads, but Bruce took a card from his hand.

“Not it,” Bruce said, showing it to him.

“For once, you are innocent!” Thor said, clapping Loki on the back. “I am glad!”

Everyone immediately crossed Dr. Pink off their lists as Thor winced, realizing he had inadvertently broken the rules of the game.

“Hey, you just eliminated not one but ninety possibilities,” Tony said consolingly. “Please. Screw up more often.”

The players continued guessing, each time being rebuffed, and spirits started to sag.

Bucky put Colonel Mustard in the conservatory and said, “Okay, fine. Commodore Marigold, cannon, conservatory.”

Loki and Steve had nothing, but Peter shook his head and showed Bucky something.

“By the way, what’s a conservatory?” he asked.

“A room where sometimes people kill people,” Tony said. “Who cares?”

“It’s another word for a greenhouse,” Pepper explained.

“Is it? Huh. I’ve got like five of those and I didn’t even know it,” Tony said.

“Good for you,” Loki said condescendingly. “The palace has seven. Now, Miss White, you hit poor Mr. Boddy with a candlestick in the study, you naughty thing.”

Loki threw the candlestick into the room after pausing a moment to remove the lead pipe Peter had jammed into it in place of a candle. The guess produced a good deal of excitement as eight people had none of these. Peter began nervously speed-eating a taco until it was Bucky’s turn to show any cards, and he did have one.

“Here we go,” Banner whispered to Thor. “We’re in the home stretch.”

“I do not understand,” Thor said. “Enlighten me?”

“Well, we know Loki’s accusation is probably partially right since only he and Bucky could have cards from it,” Bruce said. “Both of them have only two cards. One of Bucky’s cards disproved the guess, and he might have another one. Loki himself might have one or two of the cards from his guess and was just trying to throw everyone off.”

“Something he would do,” Thor whispered conspiratorially.

“That’s a good point,” Bruce agreed. “Still, something’s up. Going off of statistics, I’m guessing he’s got at least one of them right, possibly two.”

“Uh, you do realize we can all hear you, right?” Tony said.

Bruce and Thor looked up to realize everyone was staring at them, except for Bucky, who was up at the bar grabbing his third plate of spring rolls.

“Yes, well, at least I am not alone in my misstep this time,” Thor said, punching Bruce’s arm rather cautiously and then nearly drinking Peter’s chocolate milk by accident. “I do have a question, though, if I may?”

“Oh, this should be fun,” Loki said, leaning forward.

“On my list of suspects, it says there is a cah-low-nell Mustard,” Thor said. “Is this a relative of Bucky’s character?”

“Nope, that’s just how the word colonel is spelled,” Bruce said, hiding a smile as he bit into a spring roll he’d stolen from Bucky’s plate.

Thor stared at the list again.

“There is no R in colonel?” Thor asked.

“Nope,” Tony said.

“And the first L is not pronounced?” Thor asked, frowning.

“It’s silent,” Natasha said, patting his hand consolingly. “English makes no sense, Thor. It’s not you. To be honest, it’s probably the weirdest word in the whole language. There’s lots of other silent letters, but nowhere else is an L pronounced like an R.”

“I like it,” Loki said, grinning. “English spelling is chaotic. You just throw about consonants and vowels wherever you please and everyone pretends it makes sense. It’s like the Emperor’s clothes; no one wants to admit English is running about stark naked.”

“Yeah, well, Russians make their R’s backwards,” Tony said snippily. “That’s weird.”

“That’s not an R. It’s pronounced like ya. Our R looks like a P,” Natasha said, then took a bite out of her burrito.

“Still wrong,” Tony muttered, pouting as he stuffed the rest of his cheeseburger into his mouth. “Commie.”

“I think I’m up,” Steve said. “Okay, I accuse Miss White, in the lounge, with the candlestick.”

Once more, this wasn’t it as Peter immediately showed Steve a card.

Since Peter was already in the lounge, he said, “Okay, Miss White, lounge, wheelbarrow.”

This too met with a no, this time from Bucky, who was the only one besides Loki to know which one of his guesses was incorrect. Natasha rolled the dice and went into the kitchen.

“Right, it’s Mrs. Peacock, in the kitchen, with the candlestick,” Natasha said.

Tony smugly produced a card and waved it under her nose with a hearty, “Nope!”

She nodded, but squinted at the board, obviously trying to figure something out.

“Fine, my turn again,” Tony said, winding up in the ballroom. “Okay, Captain Cocoa, wrench, ballroom.

Pepper pulled her own card out and showed it to him with a satisfied smile, “Not as fun when it gets shoved in your own face, is it, sweetie? Anyway, I’m staying right in the lounge and accusing Colonel Mustard with the candlestick.”

Clint shook his head and showed her a card. A general feeling of futility was starting to fall over the room. Loki was eating a cheeseburger with an expression of such boredom that at least three other people began to physically move away from him, concerned about what he might do to liven things up. Bruce was beginning to doze, and Tony was drumming his fingers manically. Natasha, however, continued to stare at the envelope in the middle of the board with unblinking intensity. Play continued for a few more turns without anything of note happening except for Peter accidentally spilling a bowl of plum sauce, earning a grateful look from Thor.

When it was Steve’s turn again, he moved into the kitchen, declaring in an uninterested voice, “Miss White, candlestick, kitchen.”

Once again, eight players in a row had nothing at all, including Bucky. Loki’s face lit up as he showed Steve a single card, earning a deep frown from the captain and a look of disapproval. Peter rolled next and wound up in the kitchen as well.

“Uh, Sir Grey, candlestick, kitchen?” he asked uncertainly.

Again, the players went around one after another declaring they had nothing until they got all the way around to Steve, who showed him a card.

“Okay, so that’s not it,” he said.

Natasha, who was next, continued to stare at the envelope.

“Natasha, if you were a mage, that envelope would have caught fire by now,” Loki said as she rolled the dice.

She looked up and glanced at everyone in the room, then nodded and rolled, winding up in the kitchen beside Peter.

“It’s the kitchen. It’s also the candlestick. And it’s not Miss White,” she said slowly. “It’s also not Dr. Pink, or Prof. Plum, or Miss Scarlet, or Commodore Marigold, or Mrs. Peacock, or Sir Grey.”

Her frown deepened.

“Something is very off here,” she said. “Okay, if I’m wrong, I’m out, but I don’t think any of us killed Mr. Boddy.”

Peter stopped with his taco stuck in his mouth, eyes comically wide.

“Huh?” Clint asked intelligently.

“No, see, I’ve got Miss Scarlett and Commodore Marigold, Thor let slip that Dr. Pink isn’t the murderer, and Thor has Colonel Mustard.”

“How did you…”

“Colonel is abbreviated on the suspect list, so you would only know how it was spelled from having it on your card,” Natasha said. “And Loki has Miss White, obviously.”

“Why obviously?” Loki asked, looking grumpy. “I’m an excellent liar.”

“Steve was angry when he saw your card because he realized you lied and played a false guess that had everyone running around the board thinking Miss White did it, slowing the game down. Also, Mr. Excellent Liar, you’ve got a tell,” Natasha said. “All of you do. Except for Peter, who doesn’t lie at all, so if he has a tell, I have no idea what it is.”

“I have a tell?” Thor said, sounding disappointed.

She nodded but continued, “Pepper has Mr. Green and Captain Cocoa.”

Pepper said nothing, but glanced down at her cards.

“You put your cards in alphabetical order, didn’t you,” Natasha said.

“Uh… yes?”

“You’re highly organized. It’s a habit,” Natasha said. “I could tell from when you pulled them out before. So if I put everyone’s guesses together, the envelope shows Mr. Boddy died in the kitchen due to the candlestick and the wheelbarrow. Has anybody got any of those?”

There was dead silence.

“I’m checking,” Natasha said, opening the envelope and taking the three index cards out. She smiled in satisfaction, then slapped them on the table. They did indeed say the kitchen, the candlestick, and the wheelbarrow in Tony’s nearly indecipherable handwriting.

“Okay, how did that happen?” Tony said.

“They must have been put in the envelope wrong,” Bruce said.

“Well, what idiot did that?” Tony yelled.

“That would be you, dear,” Pepper said.

“Oh,” Tony said deflating. “Right. Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“I am glad!” Thor said, beaming. “My own missteps look but little next to yours, so I am redeemed through your blunder! This is far better than Peter spilling plum sauce. By the way, Lady Pepper, do you still have any of the stomach medicine from last Christmas? If so, I would dearly love some.”

“On it, Thor,” Pepper said, popping up and kissing Tony on the temple sympathetically as she left.

“So Mr. Boddy wasn’t murdered,” Clint said. “Was it a suicide or a freak accident?”

“I tend to think it was an accident,” Bruce said, considering. “But why would he have a wheelbarrow and a candlestick in the kitchen?”

“Maybe he’d come in from the garden with something big in the wheelbarrow for the kitchen, like a huge pumpkin or something,” Peter said.

“And what?” Loki asked, putting his chin in his hand and staring at Peter, daring him to come up with something plausible.

“And he lost control of the wheelbarrow, which knocked over a candlestick that happened to get him in the jugular?” Peter suggested.

Everyone stayed quiet for a second.

“I for one am willing to accept that very likely, entirely plausible explanation for the death of Mr. Boddy,” Bucky said. “Where’s the dim sum?”

The rest of the evening was spent with everyone eating from a wide variety of takeout containers and laughing a lot more than usual. A selection of cheerful Jazz Age music continued to play in the background, and at one point Bucky unexpectedly twirled Natasha across the living room as strains of Louis Armstrong’s “Struttin’ with Some Barbeque” filled the air. By the end of the evening, Pepper had passed around the antiacid to just about everyone, but they all looked pretty happy.

“Okay, snafu or not, I think this was a successful night,” Tony said.

“So tell us,” Clint said. “What deep lesson did we learn from this highly important team bonding night?”

“Wasabi should be used sparingly,” Thor said.

“Very true,” Bruce said, patting his own stomach.

“There’s something else,” Pepper added, looking at the envelope still lying in the middle of the table. “We assumed there was a murderer because that’s what we were told, just accepting the information we were given without testing it. When Nat started questioning that, we were able to figure out what really happened by talking to each other instead of keeping our clues to ourselves. We work better as allies.”

“The game manipulated us into being suspicious of one another, so we were,” Steve said, nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, except for the one time we trusted someone to be telling the truth, getting us to run around the board, accusing Miss White a billion times when the whole time he knew she was innocent and was setting us all up,” Clint said, glaring at Loki.

“Sometimes suspicions are warranted,” Loki said with a shrug, popping a single edamame into his mouth and grinning. “Sometimes they’re not.”

“Okay,” Tony said after a long pause, “those are pretty darn valid revelations, so I am definitely not giving Fury the satisfaction of telling him that.”

“Well done, Lady Pepper,” Thor said, bowing. “You are as wise as you are fair. And I think perhaps it is time for this evening’s merriment to be at its close.”

“I’m pooped,” Peter agreed.

Several take-home boxes of various foods were dished out and plates, cutlery, and napkins were stacked to be washed. By the time Peter had texted Happy that he was ready to go home, it was nearly midnight. The rest of the humans gathered near the elevator, all of them carrying enough leftovers for a week, and Thor and Loki walked towards the door to the roof.

“Be sure to remember to thank Frigga for the flowers,” Pepper called as Thor and Loki nodded, then walked out the door, the sounds of Bessie Smith’s “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do” fading away as they were engulfed by the Bifrost and disappeared. “I really hope intergalactic travel doesn’t ruin those egg rolls.”

“We lead very weird lives, Miss Potts,” Tony said, throwing himself on the couch and patting the spot next to him, which Pepper promptly filled as she snuggled against him.

“We do,” Pepper said, “but we’ve got good friends.”

“They’re weirdos, Pep.”

“So are we, Tony,” she said, patting his hoodie fondly.

“Then I guess they’re our kind of people after all,” he said, smiling.

Five minutes later, they were both sound asleep.


A.N. For the curious, here's who had what in order of play:
Peter (Capt. Cocoa) – Cannon, Lead Pipe, Iron
Nat (Mrs. Peacock) – Miss Scarlet, Com. Marigold, Conservatory
Tony (Sir Grey) – rope, ballroom, Mrs. Peacock
Thor (Miss Scarlett) – library, Col. Mustard, Knife
Pepper (Miss White) – Mr. Green, Captain Cocoa, car
Clint (Mr. Green) – Plum, Billiard Room, Wrench
Bruce (Prof. Plum) – Dr. Pink, Dining Room
Bucky (Col. Mustard) –Study, Lounge
Loki (Dr. Pink) – Miss White, Hall
Steve (Com. Marigold) – Sir Grey, revolver