Funny and Cute Thanksgiving Short Stories

The Thanks of a Mortal [Avengers Thanksgving] by triptotheearth

by triptotheearth for the Thanksgiving Contest

The Avengers assemble... for an early Thanksgiving dinner, and they all have to cook themselves! But a somber turn of events takes the group to Paris, where saving the day might be too late.

Read the original The Thanks of a Mortal here.

***

Pepper had been the only one who wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving. The Avengers thought having a turkey dinner two weeks earlier than everyone else was a great idea, since Thor needed to return to Asgard, Tony's always busy with meetings and functions and galas, and Hawkeye would rather spend the day with his family. So Pepper did not object.

*

"It's Friday the thirteenth," she reminded Tony as he walked into the top floor of the Stark Tower with Vision. The last pieces of his Iron Man armor retracted into hidden compartments in the floor.

"So we'll have bad luck?" He gave her a quick kiss. "You believe in that?"

"Not with you around. But it's the Thanksgiving dinner. And you're supposed to be making a dish."

"Just call up some caterers then." He picked up a business card lying on the table and tossed it to her. "These people should be fine. They did a turkey at the gala last year."

"That's not what we agreed to. You have to cook it yourself."

"These people come highly recommended, and they might even do a better job than me."

"This isn't some business dinner, Tony. You're making the dish for your friends."

"For the record, they're not my friends. They're colleagues."

"Mm-hmmm." Pepper slid closer to him.

"Fine. I'll cook." He went to kiss her again.

"Should I prepare a dish too?" Vision asked. Pepper couldn't decide if he was uncomfortable or contemplative. His expressions always seemed only half human, and Pepper still found his calm-and his red skin-a little too different, maybe even more than Dr. Banner's angry alter-ego.

"If you want to," Pepper replied.

"How come he gets a choice?"

"He was born a few weeks ago."

Tony grumbled something about that being technically inaccurate because of Jarvis, then disappeared into his lab.

Half an hour later, when Pepper had finished making her cranberry sauce and gravy, she went to check on Tony. He was busy in the lab, surrounded by holographic displays and tinkering with a new machine about the size of an oven. Around it sat four lumpy packages.

"You're not actually cooking it," Pepper commented as she bent to examine the roughly round bags, poking them with a finger. A little squishy, but they held their shape.

"I'm doing more than cooking it."

He joined her and opened up the nearest package. Inside sat a headless turkey, which he dangled in front of Pepper before placing it into his machine. He pressed a button on his controls. Immediately, the arm-like robots waiting nearby moved in, thawing the frozen meat. It only took a minute, and then one robotic arm was slicing under the skin, another was rubbing a layer of butter where the first had finished cutting, and a third was combining the ingredients for the stuffing. The first arm, finished with its cutting, suddenly burst into flames right beneath the turkey, charring the skin and scorching the meat.