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A frustrated sigh escaped his lips as he rubbed a spot on his chest that felt particularly tight. He found himself absently staring out the window he stood in front of, thinking.
It made no sense to him, his chest feeling tight and the coughing. As far as he knew, he shouldn't be able to get sick easily, if at all. A cold made less sense, because it was nearing the end of spring, beginning of summer, and even pre-serum he had never caught a "summer cold."
His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar tickle of his throat, causing a momentary coughing fit, spreading the tight feeling across his chest.
"See anything interesting out the window, or are you just creeping on civilians?" a voice asked from behind him once his coughing had stopped. He turned to face the speaker, only to be greeted by the grinning Tony Stark.
"I'm surprised you didn't announce yourself entering the room," Steve greeted in response, shaking his head.
"At least I gave you time to catch your breath before I graced you with my presence." Tony said in his defense. "You didn't answer my question, by the way."
Steve opened his mouth to speak, but was forced to pause and cough again before he could do so. "Nothing really." He finally replied. "I was just thinking."
"About?"
"I think I'm getting sick or something," it was a partial truth, as he knew it shouldn't be this easy for him to get sick, but he had no other explanation for it. "If the coughing wasn't a giveaway, my chest feels kinda tight."
Tony thought for a moment, taking in the information. "You were an asthmatic, right?"
The question seemed random, catching Steve rather off guard, as the idea hadn't crossed his mind at all.
"Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?"
"It sounds like when a person's asthma is acting up, or that feeling you get right before a minor asthma attack." Tony shrugged.
The comment made less sense to Steve than the idea of him having caught a summer cold. "I thought that the serum cured it. It fixed everything else."
"Just hearing about it, I didn't think it would," Tony said, reaching into his pocket. "Dad talked about your medical history pre-serum, and I'm surprised it seemed to fix everything it did."
From his pocket, he took a piece of plastic shaped very generally like a red piece of elbow macaroni with a white cap and a small bottle poking out of it. Steve had no idea what it could possibly be, but caught it when it was tossed in his direction.
"What is it?" He asked.
"It's an albuterol inhaler," Tony explained. "I figured you might need one eventually, because again I didn't think the serum would have fixed your asthma. If it didn't fix it completely, I thought you'd probably have intermittent asthma, and I really thought it would have been the change from winter to spring that got you or allergy season, since those are common triggers for intermittent asthma, but spring was pretty cold this year, and the shift in to summer so far has been sudden heat."
The confused look on Steve's face prompted Tony to continue explaining the inhaler.
"When you're getting that tight chest feeling," he said, taking out his own inhaler to provide visual aid, since it was about time for him to take it again anyways. "You take the white cap off, put the open end in your mouth, and push the bottle down while you breath in through your mouth. You do that twice, every four hours as needed."
Steve nodded, seeming to understand. "Thanks, Tony."
"Don't worry about it. I mean, we have to keep our old man around for as long as possible."
The comment earned Tony a jokingly aggravated groan, and a roll of Steve's eyes.