"I want you to punch me in the face."
Phil pauses with a forkful of salad halfway between his mouth and his plate. Steve is staring him down from across the table with the strangest look of determination. The agent closes his mouth and lowers his fork slowly.
"What?"
"I said, I want you to punch me in the face," Steve repeats.
"Why on earth would I do that?" Phil wants to know.
"So we're even," Steve answers.
Phil makes a vaguely annoyed noise before viciously stabbing his fork into the bowl of leafy greens before him, drawing the concerned gaze of a few other agents. Alright, so he's using a little more force than strictly necessary… so what? Don't they have better things to be doing than watching him murder a salad?
"Steve, just eat your sandwich please," he says.
"Phil, I punched you," Steve says insistently, continuing to ignore his sandwich. "I broke your nose, for Christ's sake."
"You punched me because my mind was being controlled and I had a gun aimed at Pepper," Phil reminds him. "It's called collateral damage."
"I don't care what it's called, I hit you, I hurt you and I'm not budging on this until you agree to—"
If there were agents who weren't staring before, they are now. Phil cuts off Steve's sentence with a hard jab, delivered with enough force to snap his head back and nearly startle him out of his seat. Steve presses a hand to his nose, his blue eyes wide with surprise as he settles back into his chair.
"That actually hurt," Steve says, sounding perplexed by the notion. "Wait, am I bleeding?"
"Let me see," Phil says, shooing the captain's hand away. He hums lightly. "A little bit."
He hands his partner a few napkins. Steve wads them up and presses them beneath his nose. They sit in silence for several minutes as Steve watches Phil and Phil pays more attention to his salad than anything else. Steve notes there is about a fifty foot radius between their table and the nearest agent. The majority of the agents in the place look a little spooked.
"Eat your sandwich," Phil says.
"You know," Steve says slowly, "when I asked you to punch me in the face, I didn't really mean here."
"You didn't specify," Phil answers.
"I think we scared our co-workers," Steve says, nodding towards the groups making a tight fit of the tables furthest away from theirs.
Phil looks up. Some of them notably flinch and Steve sees at least one junior agent drop their tray and run to the nearest exit. Phil shrugs, seemingly unconcerned.
"They can do with a good scaring now and then," he says. "It keeps them on their toes."
Looking at the huddled masses, Steve's not as convinced as Phil is. He looks down when he feels a hand patting his and finds that Phil is doing so while sipping at his coffee.
"Love you," the agent murmurs over the rim of his coffee cup.
"Love you, too," Steve answers. "But I don't think I'll be asking for another punch any time soon."
"Good, because I think I may have fractured my hand."
Steve fights back the urge to sigh. Well, back to medical it is.