Chapter Text
- cooking
Steve was always the earliest to rise amongst everyone. Most people assumed that it was the soldier in him recalling the light sleeping schedule soldiers adopted during a war, respousing to an ingrained routine that hadn’t quite yet died. The same people never quite seemed to remember that Sam, retired or not, was Air Force and so was Colonel Rhodes, and he was still active. Whenever Jim dropped by for a few days, he was never in the first five to come up (or down, depending on where he was sleeping) for communal breakfast. Hell, sometimes not even in the first ten to rise. With all the new additions to the team, and more people actually coming to breakfast, Steve was finding that there were a lot more people to account for than normal.
He didn’t mind, though. He never did. He didn’t think he was supposed to, anyway. Everyone on the team deserved to be on the team; so what if there were a lot of people to keep track of? No one else was complaining, so Steve really had no leg to stand on there.
Team breakfast had been his idea, but initially everyone had been wary of it. He had pitched the idea as team bonding, since he knew that coming from Captain America, they were going to listen. Captain America just had that effect on people, thanks to decades of propaganda, and Steve was not above using the voice and the posturing to suggest a few things here and there. It also sounded logical, that he would want the team to bond over food, which was an easy stepping point. Still, Steve definitely had understood the panic on everyone’s faces when he announced it, as well as the fact that the first one up would be the one to start. Everyone knew that it was him when he was there, and he knew the reputation the early 1900s had for boiling everything. He also knew that he hadn’t cooked in the 21st century before for them, so they didn't know he had a few cooking skills that he had picked up from his mom and the Howlies. Especially Dernier.
(Dernier’s food was just... well, Steve was going to say that their few days of leave in bombed out town had been spent with Dernier’s cooking skills and little else.)
Steve had instantly won everyone over after the first breakfast. They had all said that they wouldn’t mind boosting morale like this if the food was this good. The voice inside his head—proud and French—always whisper-yelled words of encouragement and derision alike whenever he made breakfast from then on.
He had soon forgotten that everyone thought he was boosting team morale, or whatever excuse he made for them to just eat. It simply became something of a routine for him. Wake up, brush his teeth, use the bathroom, wash his face, get dressed in running clothes, start the coffee, go for a run, come back, shower, drink a cup of coffee, make breakfast and wait for everyone as they trickled in while listening to the morning news. It was somewhat of a flexible routine, as the run was often canceled out if he woke up a little later than normal.
Today was one of those days, though he had actually wanted to go out on a run to shake out a few remaining feelings after last night’s nightmare. It wasn’t a problem, though. Today also happened to be one of the rare few days where everyone was here and together. And really, as Captain, he couldn’t shirk breakfast duty to go on a run. Breakfast was successful and he had to keep on doing it for the team. Well, had in the sense that he would feel guilty if he didn’t.
Bucky had always said that Steve liked to mother hen to the best of his abilities. Even when he needed that same treatment himself more often than not. Steve firmly held the stance that he did not, Bucky was just being overprotective again, quit it jerk, I can do it by myself!
The swirls of a comforting memory began to fill Steve’s mind when the first person of the day came into the kitchen. Loudly.
“Cap, I love you, will you marry me?”
Steve chuckled to himself. That was Darcy, which was a little bit of a surprise. He thought that she’d be busy trying to get Jane, Bruce, Betty, and Tony to sleep in the middle of Science! The way Darcy said it, science was either a verb or an event that was capitalized and put together with an exclamation mark. Or so he imagined. She was a bubbly person; it could have been easy to mistake her upbeat personality for an exclamation mark. The capitalization though, that was non-negligible. Proper noun and all.
Yeah, Steve really should have gone on that run if he was going to go down a path of trying to make science a proper noun because of the way Darcy said it. Or a morning, post-breakfast nap.
He turned around and gave her a friendly smile, handing off the first plate to her. Already on the table were all kinds of syrups, honeys, whipped creams and fruit additions. Muffins were in the oven (he had made the batter last night) and a few coffee pots were running, plus a pot of tea. Once person number four came in, he was going to start the bacon, making sure to apologize to the few people who were vegetarian for running out of other food options. He had used the last few eggs on pancakes.
“Are the scientists sleeping?” Steve asked, starting the next round of pancakes. This, at least, had become second nature. He didn’t have to think about it or ever worry about pancakes burning; his body was basically on muscle memory.
Steve wasn’t scared to admit that he liked cooking for other people, it gave him something to do.
“I sent them all to bed at ten,” Darcy said, sounding extreme pleased with herself. The sounds of metal scraping on ceramic and a pancake cooking were the only noises in the room while Steve processed that.
He couldn’t believe that she managed to get all four of them out by ten, Darcy ‘miracle-worker’ Lewis or not. “How?” Steve knew his voice bordered on a goddess-worship tone and skepticism, but given the context he thought it was alright.
“They were trying to come up with some kind of a strategy for something that flew over my head and hitting nothing but frustration, so I decided to ask Jarvis to play that mariachi song Tony hates so much until I got their attention. I gave them all a pep talk, and after being distracted from Science! for more than eight minutes, they fell asleep,” Darcy smugly explained, and Steve heard the sound of a cap being flipped. Probably from the whipped honey she loved so much—Steve had tried it once and privately thought it was amazing, though his stomach did not, even with the serum.
Steve flipped the pancake onto the plate and set the plate aside for whoever next was going to come in next. As he grabbed another plate, he complimented her, saying, “That’s incredibly clever. Beats pretending to knock them out, anyway.”
He could practically hear Darcy’s jaw drop. “What?”
He ladled batter onto the pan. “Tony was being incredibly stubborn this one particular time and I told him I dosed DUM-E’s monstrosity of a smoothie with sedatives. His body realized how tired he was when he was gaping at me and not doing science, kind of like what you did, and he slept. Pepper genuinely thought I knocked him out until JARVIS had to confirm I didn’t. JARVIS then told me it was a brilliant use of the placebo effect. But I just read it somewhere.”
“That’s sneaky,” she approved, a smile in her voice. “Damn, son.”
“Thanks,” he said, hearing the arrival of another person. By their confident, yet tired footsteps, it was Pepper.
“Hey, Pepper,” he greeted, turning around to slide the plate towards her. The two women struck up a conversation, and Steve absentmindedly listened to the news as more people poured in and the room filled with chatter. Thankfully, even with twenty-one people (Steve, Tony, Natasha, Clint, Bruce, Thor, Sam, Pepper, Jim, Betty, Jane, Darcy, Phil, Maria, Sharon, Peter, May, Kate, Wanda, Pietro, and Scott) it wasn’t hard, as Steve had long ago mastered selective hearing. Mainly because of B—nope.
He wasn’t going to touch anything related to a few decades ago until he had a punching bag in front of him.
Steve internally sighed. He wasn't going to get through this breakfast if he didn't fully plaster the Cap mask on and let the persona take control. So he let his spine stiffen, and his expression tighten everywhere but the mouth, where he gave an easy, rehearsed smile. Just like that, he was putting on a nice show, going through the motions that were also muscle memory. It was better than selling bonds at least. This show didn’t involve cheesy gimmicks.
When the tables were clear and everyone but one gone, he finally relaxed a touch, collecting plates and used cutlery. Darcy was still there, but she wasn’t really the type to bring up painful memories. The closest person she reminded him of was Peggy, and he had made peace with everything involving her a while ago. Darcy also wasn’t the type to say anything intrusive and deep just to provoke a reaction out of him.
Well, unless she was stuck in her own mind.
“You know, I didn’t really ever think that Captain America was the type to cook,” Darcy said, handing him a few plates.
“Yeah?” he asked, taking them from her and putting them on top of the pile. He started washing the plates manually.
Darcy stared at him for a second, surprised, before taking the wet, but clean plates he set aside and drying them. It was the same look most people gave them when he manually washed dishes, followed by the look they gave him when they thought he was an old-fashioned man. Honestly, Steve just liked the calming motion of doing something familiar. He put the dishes in the dishwasher more often than not nowadays anyway.
“It makes sense though. Learning how to cook so you can help the team come together as a family. Clever, too, I mean, no one’s going to say no to free food. But where did you get the crepe recipe from yesterday?”
He didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know where to begin.
“I actually learned how to make those from Jacques,” Steve said, wondering if everyone thought the same as Darcy, that cooking was a Cap thing, not a Steve thing. Not that he could blame them much.