Work Text:
“Can I hire your services or something?” Sam asks when they’re halfway through a pizza, while Natasha viciously deletes the things that Steve has DVR’d on her television. Well. Technically it is Tony Stark’s television, since it resides in Avengers Tower, but everyone knows that this lounge is her personal favorite and thus it’s Natasha’s.
She stops before deleting the fourteen episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives that Steve has already watched, and gives Sam a look that implies a raised eyebrow without putting forth the effort to actually raise her eyebrow.
“As a super-spy,” Sam hastily adds, “not anything murdery.”
“Why do you need a spy?” Natasha is genuinely curious. Sam’s a capable sort of fellow who has astonishingly few enemies for an Avenger. She’s seen at least four nightly news polls naming him the Avenger least likely to destroy a major city, which… fair.
“My cookies keep disappearing.”
Natasha blinks. It’s not that she expected something life-threatening, it’s just… Sam looks deadly serious. About cookies.
“Your cookies,” she says flatly, “are disappearing.”
“See, at first, I thought it was Steve, because can that boy eat,” Sam explains. “But he keeps swearing it wasn’t him.”
Natasha points silently to the TV. There is an entire season’s worth of American Pickers about to be deleted. Steve has never once confessed to being the one to hijack her DVR, and yet, here they were, cleaning up after his reality-tv binges.
“Yeah, I know. But then he did the Captain America I’m telling the truth thing, and I kind of believed him,” Sam says. “But that means someone else is sneaking into my kitchen right after I’ve taken cookies out of the oven and stealing them all before they’ve even had a chance to cool off, and I need to know which super powered ass I need to kick.”
“Did you access the security cameras?”
“I turned those damn things off. Ain’t nobody getting my grandma’s secret chocolate chip recipe,” Sam says. “And I double-checked, because we know that Tony’s favorite game is I Spy.”
Stark does indeed have a problem with information hoarding. Natasha wonders if they should submit him to Hoarders, just to see his face when he got the letter, then she viciously deletes even more reality crap, because it’s starting to infect her.
“Fine,” she says. “But I get the first batch of non-stolen baked goods as payment.”
“Deal,” Sam says and seals it with a fist-bump.
*
Sam whips up a batch of cookies the next day. Natasha is banned from the kitchen until they’re safely in the oven and the ingredients put away, and she admires Sam’s dedication to familial culinary secrets. When the timer dings, Sam slides the cookie sheet out of the oven and carefully puts it on the cooling rack.
Natasha reaches for a cookie, only to get her hand smacked with an oven mitt.
“Respect the cookie,” Sam says seriously.
“You wouldn’t have this problem if you ate them gooey and molten like everyone else,” Natasha points out, and settles on a barstool to guard the cookies. “You have tried just… sitting with them, right? You said this has happened four times?”
“No, Nat, I somehow didn’t think of that cunning plan,” Sam says. They stare at the cookies.
Four minutes into the stare down, Tower security goes haywire.
“A breach,” Natasha says, glancing down at her phone. “Lobby’s under attack. Steve says to assemble.”
“Damn,” Sam says, looking down at his own message. “You stay right there,” he tells the cookies firmly.
“Are you sure we can’t just… grab a few and eat them on the way?” The kitchen smells heavenly and kicking ass always works up Natasha’s appetite.
“They aren’t perfect yet,” Sam says stubbornly, and yeah, Natasha can see why he and Steve get along so well.
She gives the cookies one last mournful glance before retreating to the lobby.
*
Steve’s in the lobby, but he’s not battling foes, he’s buying iced coffees for a group of sweaty protesters. “Stay hydrated,” he tells them seriously as he hands each one a bottled water as they leave. “It’s a scorcher.”
“Did you ask us down here for coffee, too?” Sam asks. “Because that’s not the Avenging I was imagining.”
“Huh?” Steve says, furrowing his brow. “I didn’t ask you down.”
“The cookies,” Sam says, and races back to the elevator. Natasha gives Steve a narrow look, which he meets blandly.
Predictably, the cookies are gone when they reach Sam’s kitchen.
“Ha!” Steve says, because he’s an asshole. “Told you it wasn’t me.”
“It had to be somebody,” Sam says. He pokes sadly at the cooling rack, bereft of all chocolatey goodness.
“So let’s find out,” Natasha says, sitting on the counter and digging a tablet out of her bag.
“There’s no cameras in here,” Sam reminds her. “That recipe is sacred.”
“Check the hallway,” Steve suggests. “Maybe the cookie-nabber went out that way.”
Natasha obligingly pulls up the security feed for the hall, which shows no one entering or leaving Sam’s quarters after they did.
Then she smirks at Steve, and pulls up another feed, this one to the camera she hid on the fridge right after Sam told her about the cookie thievery.
“What’s that?” Steve says. She knows him well enough to know when he’s covering up slight panic.
Sam’s voice doesn’t bother trying to hide his panic. “Did you film the process? Natasha you don’t understand, my grandma’s gonna know.” He pulls out his phone and stares at it in horror. “Any second now, fury is going to rain down on me.”
On the screen, the Winter Soldier lets himself down through a ceiling tile and shoves the cookies -- some of which break in half gooily-- into a paper bag before climbing back up through the ceiling and settling the tile back into place.
Silence reigned in the kitchen.
“Did… Was that…” Sam turns to Steve. “Did your super-soldier semi-brainwashed former-assassin BFF just steal my motherfuckin’ cookies?”
“I’m as shocked as you are,” Steve tries to lie, but even his inner Brooklyn-asshole can’t quite overcome Captain America’s innate goodness.
“Did he share the spoils of his crimes with you?” Sam demands. “You did eat my cookies! You monster! I believed in you, Captain America.”
Steve doesn’t even have the decency to look abashed.
“You overplayed your hand when you lured us down to the lobby yourself,” Natasha informs Steve. “Rookie mistake.”
Steve shrugs. “Bucky only left me two last time.”
From the ceiling, a muffled voice says, “You sold me out? Fuck you, Rogers, I‘m not sharing any this time. And it was all Steve‘s idea.”
Steve quickly saved face with a, “Bucky’s the one who’s been filling your DVR with House Hunters, Nat.”
“Remember our deal,” Natasha reminds Sam, taking a deep breath and reminding herself that this was a non-murdery mission. Some things were sacred, and a girl’s DVR was one of them.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to baking, the second you get the camera and assassins out of the woodwork.”
“Happily,” Natasha said.
From above came the sound of boots scuffling quickly away. Steve, unfortunately for him, wasn’t quite as adept at fleeing.