A/N: Here we are again! I recruited my best friend for some help with this one, hehe... Thanks for all the reviews and favorites and follows! :3

Prompt 4: Salt

"Don't do that."

Steve reached a hand out over the bowl of broccoli between them, almost protectively. Judging by the slight frown and furrowed brow he was wearing, protective was probably not too inaccurate of a judgment.

Natasha blinked at him, her salt shaker-bearing hand still raised just above the bowl. They stared silently at each other for a moment, as if figuring out what the other had been thinking.

For Steve it was, who the hell puts salt on broccoli? For Natasha it was, what the hell does he have against salt on broccoli?

Finally, Natasha raised a curious eyebrow. "You afraid of a little salt, Cap?"

"No, but on my broccoli? Sure, if 'afraid' is what you want to call it," Steve said, carefully retracting his hand as if expecting Natasha to pounce the bowl of broccoli the moment he uncovered it. "Why would you put salt on broccoli?"

"Why wouldn't you?" Natasha countered in a bored tone, pulling the salt back to herself. She turned her attention back to the food on her plate - mashed potatoes and steak - and proceeded to christen them with the salt.

Steve actually looked appalled and maybe even offended. "Why are you putting salt on mashed potatoes? And steak?!"

"Flavor," Natasha said in a deadpan before setting the salt back down on the table between them. "Don't worry, Rogers, you cook a mean steak - courtesy of Sam Wilson, of course - but it just needs a little salt."

"You're weird." Steve just shook his head, serving himself from broccoli. "New rule: you can only drown your food in salt after you've put it on your plate. Because I don't want salted broccoli, or whatever…"

"Fine. But there's nothing wrong with a little salt," Natasha said as she took a bite of her mashed potatoes - covered in salt, of course. "What do you have against it?"

"I don't have anything against it, I just prefer my non-salty foods to be...well, non-salty."

"Boring," Natasha drawled, picking up her glass of water.

Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "My eating choices are not boring," he said. And they really weren't...how could they be? It was the twenty-first century, and he had so many different food options available at his fingertips! This was nothing like his life before the War, which probably had the so-called 'boring' culinary decisions that Natasha believed Steve to be making today. "I just don't like salt as...religiously, as you."

Natasha snorted into her drink, and Steve sighed. She gave him a small smirk after pulling the glass away from her lips. "I thought you were Catholic. You know, the whole salt of the Earth thing and all of that. In the Bible."

Steve actually rolled his eyes that time. "Just because it says humans are the salt of the Earth doesn't mean I'm going to eat salt on everything." He gestured to her. "By that logic, you're the Catholic here."

She didn't really reply, other than a soft laugh, instead refocusing her attention on the food. Steve did the same, and they ate in a comfortable silence. Ever since Fury had begun partnering them up for missions the year before, Steve had spent a lot of one-on-one time with Natasha, meals being no exception. Though spending their free time alone together had been awkward at first, it quickly became comfortable as neither Steve nor Natasha were people who needed verbal communication to make an encounter less awkward.

Now that they were out of work, though, they spent less time alone, as the Avengers were pretty much everywhere within a ten-foot radius of Steve and Natasha inside the Tower. After Fury's departure from the cemetery a few months prior, both Natasha and Steve had gone their separate ways for a little while, before ending up back together in Avengers' Tower after only a few weeks. Sam Wilson had convinced Steve to go back, and Steve had heard that Clint had done the same for Natasha; apparently, neither Natasha nor Steve were good at hiding the fact that they kind-of-sort-of-actually-really missed each other. Badly.

So this little - PLATONIC, Steve and Natasha had both practically yelled to everyone all day - dinner-date was a bit of a retreat from everyone else's hustle and bustle for a little while. Steve cooked, Natasha 'supervised' (read: set the table in, like, thirty seconds, and spent the rest of the time just poking fun at Steve about whatever she could think of), and they ate together.

After a few quiet minutes, Natasha looked up at Steve again, a small grin tugging at her lips. "Okay, if you don't like salt, how do you feel about pepper?"

Steve met her gaze thoughtfully. "The spice or the person?" He wouldn't put it past Natasha to trap him into saying something bad about Pepper; she and Natasha just loved to trick and tease and trap everyone. Steve had been victimized quite frequently, if not the most, second only to Tony or maybe Clint.

Either way, Pepper and Natasha teaming up was never a good thing; it was a very scary thing. So Steve wouldn't be surprised if Pepper was off somewhere eavesdropping on this conversation so she could plot 'revenge' on Steve for saying something bad about her when he'd really been talking about the spice.

Natasha laughed. "Why not both?"

Interesting answer, Steve noted. "Well...I'm okay with lowercase-'p'-spice-pepper, but, like salt, you won't see me putting it on all of my food, especially food it doesn't belong on." He gave Natasha a pointed look at that, and she nodded her surrender and acknowledgement of the claim. "As for uppercase-'P'-person-Pepper, of course I like her; she's a close friend."

Natasha held her fork up and pointed it at him. "Watch it, Rogers; she's mine," she warned, and Steve raised his hands in defense. He briefly remembered how furious Natasha had been when she found out about the Mandarin crisis from the year before; Natasha had been torn between helping Steve finish whatever mission they'd been on and abandoning him altogether to go see Pepper. The way of best friends, Steve thought to himself, feeling both happy for Natasha and Pepper's great friendship and sad for the current state of his and Bucky's. Just thinking of best friends or friendship always seemed to remind Steve of Bucky, since he now knew his best friend was still alive out there, somewhere. Steve missed him so much.

"Steve?"

His slight slip in his emotions must have shown on his face, as Natasha was now looking at him, concerned. He forced a small smile onto his face and sighed.

"It's nothing, Nat, really."

Despite his reassurance, Natasha was excellent at reading him. Her expression turned more sympathetic. "We'll find him, Steve."

He didn't even bother to ask her how she knew he was thinking about Bucky. It probably had something to do with some microexpressions or facial tells he had whenever he did, or something. Natasha always noticed things like that. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Natasha nodded, sounding optimistic for once. Normally, it was the other way around; Natasha was negative, while Steve was positive. It was part of what made their partnership work so well. "After we get Bucky back, maybe we can go on a best friend double date."

Steve actually laughed at that, because, what? Had the words 'best friend double date' just come out of the mouth of Natasha Romanoff? What on Earth… "A best friend double date?"

Natasha rolled her eyes, trying to appear irritated but still smiling. "Clint dragged me on one recently with Bruce and Tony. I'm not even sure it's a real thing or if they just made it up, but it was fun, nonetheless. Although, it'd probably be fun to actually go with my female best friend…"

The idea of Natasha sitting at a table with Clint, Tony, and Bruce to celebrate friendship and best friends was just too funny for Steve to picture without laughing some more. "Alright, Nat, you have a deal. We'll all go on a best friend double date when we get Bucky back."

"I'm holding you to it," Natasha said, scooping some more broccoli onto her plate. "Pepper will be thrilled."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "And you?"

Natasha shrugged. "I'll find enjoyment in it somehow." She set the serving spoon back into the bowl and turned to her plate. Before she picked up her fork to resume eating, she looked up at Steve and smiled sweetly.

"Can you pass the salt?"

Steve groaned.