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“Think fast, Captain America!”
Steve catches the bagel out of reflex. It’s a whole wheat bagel, and Steve almost wishes he had let it fly past him, over the side of the helicarrier and down into the bay. Almost. Food is food, and the scrawny boy who lived through the depression is never going to let something just go to waste like that. At least not on purpose. “They didn’t have—“
“They didn't have sesame seed,” Tony says as Steve takes a resigned bite out of the bagel. It tastes like disappointment.
He chokes down the thought, along with another bite, and starts trying to convince Tony that they should restart the Avengers.
#
A brown paper bag rustles in Tony’s hands. Today is their first day in the tower as a team, and Tony has gone out to get breakfast for everyone from the nearest bagel shop. He could have had someone else do it, but he has always seemed to enjoy the role of doting host. Steve realizes then that he has sorely missed living under the same roof as Tony.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Tony smiles.
“Sesame seed?” Steve asks, hopeful.
“Sorry,” Tony says, with an apologetic purse of his lips. “They were all out this morning. Blueberry? Everyone likes blueberry.”
Steve doesn’t. But Tony is being so thoughtful, and he doesn’t want to hurt the other man’s feelings. Steve takes the proffered bagel and smiles at Tony.
#
“I specifically asked if they had sesame his morning,” Tony says proudly one morning, as Steve follows him down the steps toward the breakfast nook of the kitchen. “If they didn’t, it was going to be breakfast from that granola bowl place that Jessica likes.”
Steve is glad on multiple fronts for this. The granola place is weird. Their menu has lists of ingredients, and some are just patently made up. Call him old fashioned, but love and kindness are not edible.
Unfortunately, when they walk into the kitchen, they find Luke Cage with the sesame bagel already half eaten.
Steve looks desperately in the box, hoping there is another.
Alas, no.
Tony looks acutely embarrassed. “Knew I should have gotten more than one. Sorry, Steve.”
Steve pulls out a poppy seed bagel and begins slicing it. It will have to do.
“It’s the thought that counts. Thanks, Tony,” he says.
#
Steve has an honest-to-god sesame seed bagel in his hand. After all the previous bagel breakfast days, he was expecting to be stuck with something like pumpernickel or cinnamon sugar. But this time, not only is there more than one sesame seed in the box, Tony has earmarked one in a brown paper bag with his name written in big blocky letters.
Unfortunately, no sooner has Tony presented them with breakfast than the Avengers alert sounds. There’s trouble in D.C. and the Avengers are needed desperately.
Their first priority is getting the quinjet into the air as soon as possible. Breakfast gets thrown into the aircraft, along with the rest of the team, and Steve takes the flight controls. Everything but the mission is forgotten in the space of those few minutes.
Trouble turns out to be a powerful energy mutant, who also happens to be capable of taking down large flying objects.
As the team watches their scuttled quinjet sink beneath the waves of the Potomac, taking their box of bagels with it, Steve thinks that he really should have eaten on the way.
#
“S-Steve.”
Steve enters the kitchen, hair still damp from his post-run shower, to find Tony covered in flour, upturning a pan into the garbage. Another pan is still sitting on the stovetop next to a pot of boiling water, and Steve sees a few blobby lumps laid out on it that look vaguely bagel-shaped.
They are coated liberally in sesame seeds.
“Are those what I think they are?” Steve’s eyes get big.
“Um,” Tony glances at the homemade bagels. “Well, I just thought that since you never seem to get one…” He trails off and rubs at the back of his neck, surveying his handiwork. “Clearly following a recipe is harder than I thought. I was going to start over and--”
Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat, strolls over, and steals one of Tony’s bagels.
The thing is big. Much too big for a normal bagel. Tony hasn’t taken the dough’s expansion into account. But it tastes right. Steve shuts his eyes and savors the nutty taste of toasted sesame seeds. “I’ll take them,” he says. And for once he’s not saying that because he abhors throwing food away.
“Steve, it’s okay, I can make more.”
“You do that,” Steve says with a grin, scooping the rest of the first batch into a bag. “I’ll take them all.”