Chapter Text
Natasha takes in the expressions around the table and files them away to her extensive mental archives with mild curiosity and amusement. Clint is not-so-subtly taking pictures with his phone, Bruce’s face is doing that funny and endearing thing when he’s going through the multiple trains of thoughts at the same time, and the few SHIELD agents present are failing so hard at keeping their faces straight that Natasha feels a vague professional pressure to kick their asses out of the room and back to the basic training.
Steve has clearly noticed the weird mood in the room, but decided not to address it. He’s stumbling with his words, his confused glare jumping between the mission briefing presentation on the wall and the people staring at him. Stubbornly, he ploughs on with the briefing.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Tony who puts the stop on Natasha’s entertainment when he enters the room, twenty minutes late to the meeting, loudly banging the door open.
“Alright, let’s get to business. Give me the ‘too long, didn’t read’ version, and let’s go, I’ve got a dinner date in-”, Tony starts, and then stops. He points at Steve. “Woah, woah, woah - Rogers, what’s that?”
“A cigarette,” Steve says slowly, pronouncing the word carefully around the cigarette in his mouth and looking at Tony with a raised eyebrow.
“I know that,” Tony snaps. “Why is it in your mouth?”
“Christ, I wonder why,” Steve says. “You want me to smoke it in my ear?”
Tony walks up to Steve, snatches the cigarette right out of his mouth, throws it onto the floor and steps on it with his foot, all the while glaring at Steve. Then he points at the ‘No smoking’ sign on the wall. “Learn to read, Capsicle. Keep those cancer sticks out of my tower.”
Steve stares at him with his jaw dropped.
“Fuck, my battery ran out,” Clint mutters at his phone. “Phil is never going to believe this.”
“JARVIS, send me the briefing,” Tony says and turns around to leave the room. “I don’t have enough caffeine in my bloodstream to deal with any of this this early.”
The door bangs shut after him and Steve blinks out of his shocked silence. “What the hell is wrong with that guy?” he grumbles, already reaching for a new cigarette in his pocket. “‘No smoking?’”
“Welcome to the 21st century, Rogers,” Natasha says.
Steve stares at her. “You’re telling me that was not just Stark being Stark?”
“Nope.”
“What the hell is wrong with this century.”
“Actually, it’s more of ‘what the hell was wrong with the 20th century’, Captain,” Bruce says apologetically.
Natasha stands up. Tony’s got the right idea; they really don’t have time to waffle around about this right now, as entertaining as it has been. “We’ll fill you in on the details after the mission, Rogers.”
—
After the mission, they do just that. There’s even a neat PowerPoint presentation dug up from the internet.
“I can’t believe this bullshit,” Steve says, with a sharp edge to his voice. “They are unhealthy?”
Bruce nods. “Lung cancer. Throat irritation. Chronic bronchitis. Shortness of breath, even asthma.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“He’s not,” Natasha says.
“I spent my spare coins on Lucky Strikes whenever I could since I was, what, ten? And you’re telling me they made everything worse?”
“The powers of lobbying, propaganda and immorally led businesses are, well, terrifying,” Bruce says. “Your doctor told you they would help, right?”
Steve stares at the pack of cigarettes in his hand, with the look of a man who’s been deeply betrayed by the world. “Yeah.”
“Well, the good news is that the serum must have fixed all the damage they did on you,” Bruce says. “So. Uh. Even if smoking did make those pre-serum years harder on you than they had to be, it’s all in the past.”
Natasha hasn’t known Steve Rogers for a long, so she’s not yet very familiar with the man and his expressions. She would have expected Steve to be just simply angry at such blatant lies told to the public back in the day, or perhaps resigned about yet another sign of humanity’s failings, but the mix of emotions running through his face is more complex than that and harder to decipher.
Finally Steve sighs and runs his hand through his hair, messing it up. “I should have realized. There were people who suspected that smoking was not all it was pitched to be, but I just… brushed those theories off. Thought they were paranoid, believing in such conspiracies. I was a bloody idiot. I can’t believe I…” His voice trails off, and he closes his eyes, pinches his nose, and takes a deep breath. “Fuck.”
“Well, now you know,” Clint says with a shrug and extends his hand. “Give me those and I’ll throw them away. Intervention time over.”
Steve looks down at the packet. “Yeah.”
After waiting for an awkward moment for Steve to hand over the packet, Clint clears his throat. “Cap?”
“It would be bloody weird to quit, though,” Steve says slowly. “I’ve always smoked. And… it’s not like they can do any harm to me now.”
“If you continue, you’ll just continue to give more money to the industry,” Clint says.
Steve frowns. “Well…”
The thing is, Natasha may not know Steve very well, but she does know a thing or two about utilizing questionable coping mechanisms to get by. And as grumpy cat as Captain can sometimes get, it suddenly feels like a cruel idea to try to snatch away one of the few familiar comforts he has left.
“I can get you the address to the nearest tobacco warehouse,” Natasha says casually. “It’s only the buying and spending money on the cigarettes that profits the companies.”
“Tasha, no,” Clint says.
“Uh,” Bruce says.
Steve’s face lights up.
—
“That’s terrorism,” Tony says the next morning, gesturing wildly with the croissant and glaring at the two of them over the kitchen island. There’s a video feed of news playing on the huge TV in the background. “That’s attacking the legal, American business. That’s attacking freedom and capitalism.”
“I’m pretty sure Nazis called us terrorists too,” Steve says, smugly smiling around his cigarette. “Learn to read history books, Stark, and see how much we cared.”
“You can’t seriously think we had anything to do with that, Tony,” Natasha says and nods towards the TV, where the news reporter is interviewing the warehouse manager after the ‘mysterious break-in’. “We’re not some petty criminals.”
“JARVIS recorded your conversation yesterday. As well as your return with dozens of illegally obtained boxes of cigarettes. This is my tower, and Captain America has turned it into the headquarters of the smuggling ring-”
“You were bloody spying on us?”
“You’re so bad at this, Rogers,” Natasha says. “Rule number one: never admit anything.”
Tony throws his hands in the air. “Why am I even trying? I didn't sign up for any of this.”
“Sir, may I remind you that the air ventilation filters around the tower are well capable of handling-”
“I know, JARVIS,” Tony snaps. “Whatever. Smoke your sticks, Cap. I don’t care. I can’t believe PR is planning a whole series of PSAs for you to do. Good luck on not exploding from hypocrisy.”
Steve frowns. “They’re what now?”