Queen

Chapter Fifteen-Assemble

Nat and I draw the eyes of everyone in the room when we walk in, so just Steve, Tony, and Clint. Their eyes all widen, and Nat slips away from me and heads towards Clint.

"Did you shower together? Because I wouldn't be against seeing that." Tony teases. I roll my eyes at him.

"Well, no one else was joining her, so..." Nat says playfully, bringing a blush to my cheeks once again. Tony laughs and Clint smirks, but Cap's face just turns even more surprised as he looks at me. I head over to Tony and Steve sitting on the couch. I put a hand on Tony's shoulder and kiss Steve's cheek, noticing the space left between them.

"She was kidding." I tell Steve. He makes an oh sound but it sounds fake and teasing.

"Hey, Queen. We saved you a spot." Tony says proudly. I pat his shoulder with a giggle and nod thankfully.

"Thanks, Tony, but I wouldn't want to come between you and Steve." I wink at both of them. "I'm going to grab some food." I tell them and walk over to the kitchen. As soon as I open the fridge and see eggs, I grab them and put them on the counter. I jump a little when I hear a sharp metal clang behind me. I whirl around and find Steve setting a pan on the stove. He smiles sheepishly at being caught helping, but I think it's sweet. I go over and put my hands on his newly shaved face. He grins and puts his hands gently on my wrists.

"I didn't know that if I didn't take you up on your offer you'd find someone else." He teases. I sigh with playful exaggeration.

"We didn't shower together. She brought me some clothes and braided my hair and we just talked. Really." I explain. Steve chuckles and runs his fingers down my braid.

"Uh-huh. I like the braid by the way. And the sweatshirt." He tells me. He leans down and his breath tickles the hairs by my ear. I giggle as he whispers, and I can hear the smile in his voice when he does. "It looks much better on you than on me." Then he lets me go and grabs the eggs from the other counter. "Now, let me make you some eggs." I laugh and nod.

"Deal. Bacon?" I ask, already spinning and grabbing it from the fridge. He hums in confirmation and grabs a pan for me. I get a fork from a drawer as he sprays the pan. I turn the stove on and smile when the bacon sizzles when it touches the hot pan. As the bacon cooks, I grab a clean plate and put paper towels on it to absorb the grease. I remember seeing Steve doing the same thing before. I glance at him as he cooks and take note of the little things he does. His eyebrows furrow just a tiny bit with concentration as he stirs the eggs in his pan, making sure he's not too rough so it spills. Every once and a while when it gets close to spilling I see his shoulders stiffen and his lips get white from pressure before the tension fades and he releases a breath, as if he just avoided a crisis. It's incredibly cute. I reach up on my toes and kiss his cheek, unable to resist him. "You know, you're really cute and sexy when you cook." I tell him quietly, moving pieces of bacon to the prepared plate. I look back at him and find his cheeks brushed with pink. I purse my lips to stop my ear to ear smile and ask him a question instead, "So who taught you how to cook?"

"Well, my mom was a fantastic cook. We didn't have much money for a lot of ingredients, so she learned to get really creative with the things we could afford." He chuckles lightly, "I remember almost every week we'd have a stew made up of whatever was leftover and it was almost always delicious. No idea how she managed it. But she always let me help with something, so I guess that's where I get my love for cooking from. Actual experience probably came after my mom passed away. I lived with my best friend...Bucky." He hesitates slightly before saying his roommates name, but when he does it's as if someone pinched my heart.

"Bucky?" I say the name and it sounds familiar and affectionate coming out of my mouth. Steve doesn't notice, too caught up in his memories.

"Yeah. It was one of our first few days of living together and I was trying to do something nice for him. He was letting a skinny punk with asthma live with him, so I figured the least I could do was make him a good breakfast. Relatively, anyways." I focus back on Steve as he tells this story, although Bucky's name keeps echoing inside my head. I keep my eyes on the task in front of me, listening to Steve intently. I don't have to look at him to know he's smiling softly as he speaks. "I failed miserably. I burnt the toast and the spam to hell, even catching the toast on fire." He chuckles and shakes his head. "I was seconds away from setting our apartment on fire when Bucky came crashing over, throwing the pan and the toaster in the sink. He put water on everything then gave me this look, it was a sort of mix between admiration for messing up so bad and anger for almost killing us both. But Bucky, he just shook his head and put his arm around me, squeezed my narrow shoulders and said, 'I've got to teach you how to cook before you singe off your eyebrows and burn this place to the ground.'" He smiles wildly at the memory, but when he's finished his eyes are a little shiny. "So, Buck taught me how to cook after that so I didn't murder the both of us and burn all our food." He ends and so does our cooking, everything is done. I move the pan off the heat and turn towards him, pushing the annoying itch that Bucky's name brought up.