Doreen shrugged. "He told me to call him Barnes, and he likes snickerdoodle cookies," she said. She was surprised, though, that he hadn't even responded to Natasha.

Tony just gaped for a moment.

"That makes absolutely zero sense," he said finally. "No sense at all, there aren't words for how little sense that makes."

"I asked him what kind of cookie he preferred." Doreen shrugged. "Pestered him, actually, took me a bit to get him to respond."

Tony gave her a strange look and then walked away, muttering to himself. Clearly, they had been going about getting Barnes to talk in entirely the wrong way.

Doreen watched him go, her eyes narrowed a bit. She knew she'd just avoided a mine field, but she also figured it wasn't the last she'd hear of it. So she went to go find Laurel.

Laurel was sitting in the living room, going through some of the video clips she'd taken of the Roombas.

"Which of these should I gif, do you think?" she asked when she heard Doreen come in.

"Not that one, we'll be dead," Doreen said, grinning at the bit of video of Natasha watching a Roomba too closely. "How about this one?" It was a pretty harmless video of Clint feeding three Roombas.

"I like that one," Laurel agreed, grinning. "What about this one?" She pointed to one of Thor and his Roomba-surfing.

"That one is epic," Doreen agreed with a grin. "I can't not vote for Thor Roomba-surfing."

Laurel snickered and opened the Roomba-surfing clip.

"This one's getting gif'd first," she said, grinning.

"Go for it." Doreen settled back to watch, relaxing for now while she could.

Laurel grinned and got to work. She wasn't the best one at making gifs, but she was good enough that she could post them when she was done. The Roomba-surfing set, however, she set aside for the moment. She wasn't going to immediately post those, not yet.

Doreen settled back to let her work, just watching for the moment. But when she got to a decent starting point, Doreen looked off to the side.

"Tony caught me coming out of Barnes' room."

"He did?" Laurel asked, pausing what she was doing. She looked at Doreen. "What happened?"

"Tony flailed and swore and yelled. I told him I was fine, and I told him I got Barnes to talk a little. He walked away looking thoughtful." And everything but that last bit was just fine with Dori. It was the thoughtful bit that had her worried.

"Thoughtful?" Laurel asked. She was thinking the same thing as her friend. "That's not good. I've been listening to them all, they haven't been able to get the guy to say a word, let alone reveal his favorite kind of cookie."

"Maybe it's because I asked about something as harmless and irrational as a cookie," Dori suggested with a shrug. "I mean, I doubt he'd tell me anything else. He's only actually spoken a few times. But I don't like thoughtful, thoughtful is bad."

"Yeah, no, thoughtful is bad," Laurel agreed. "We'll have to see what he ends up scheming. Because he'll scheme, it's what he does."

"Him and Natasha." Doreen shook her head. "I'm hoping it's nothing much or it's something I can veto."

"Hopefully," Laurel agreed. She slowly began to work on the gifsets again, chopping the video clips into manageable gifs.

Doreen settled back to watch her work again and hoped that no one would bring it up at dinner, since the group was mostly back to normal dinners.

It didn't even take that long. Not ten minutes later, Steve came into the living room and went right over to Doreen.

"You got him to talk?" he asked, looking at her. His expression was somewhere between hope and pain.

"Sort of," Doreen said cautiously. "I got him to give me a name and his preferred type of cookie with much pestering."

"How?" Steve asked. He didn't press for the name, not yet. He was dreading what it would end up being.

"I go in every day and sit there and talk. Mostly I just talk about inconsequential stuff, things that don't need comments. I make sure he has food. I bring him cookies." Doreen shrugged. "That's all I've done, Steve."