Chapter Text
Steve Rogers stepped off the train with a crick in his neck and that stiff, numb feeling that comes from sitting too long. Back in the military, he’d slept everywhere and anywhere the chance arose. But now, not so much. He was sidestepped by two of his fellow passengers getting off the train; a wizened old lady with a very large cat basket, and a man in overalls who hadn’t seen a razor i n around thirty years. He looked around the tiny platform, scanning the crowd for a familiar face. The station building had probably been there since the railroad first came here, but had been patched up and repaired so often that none of the original timber was left. Waiting on the corner of it was Sam Wilson. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was leaning on the wall next to a still running SUV.
Sam had been in the Air Force, as opposed to Steve in the Army, and they’d met after both had left, at a Veterans’ Association meeting in which Sam had been the peer counsellor. At the time, Steve had felt guilty for being there. He was still healthy and whole, where some of his friends had not been so lucky. But meeting Sam had been a lifeline for Steve all the same.
Sam had taken a year out from the VA, wanting to come out west for a summer and aiming to be back by Christmas. But he’d gone and met a wonderful woman and landed a good job at the town high school - as a guidance counsellor cum gym coach - and decided to stay. He’d invited Steve out ostensibly to be best man at his upcoming wedding, but there had also been mention of private construction work that was available. Steve got the impression it was a ‘two birds, one stone’ situation. Sam gets his best man, and Steve gets a change of scenery. ‘It might give you some direction,’ Sam had said. So here he was, pulling into Convergence, Wyoming with a duffel bag full of clothes and a single pair of boots.
“Hey, man. Long time, no see,” Sam grinned and the two men met with a tight hug . “Good trip?”
“I’ve had worse. Glad it’s over though.”
“You gotta be hungry, right? Nat got the night off, there’s steaks waiting for us at home.”
Dinner and a bed sounded awesome, so they quickly hopped into the car and made their way through town. Convergence was a small place, although growing little by little, tucked into a valley where a highway and a railroad met at the end of a mountain pass. It was a far cry from the Brooklyn he’d left behind. Now he found himself in the kind of town where few buildings had three stor ies and everyone knew everyone else. Sam waved at a lot of the people they passed. Steve glimpsed the school where Sam worked, and a hospital, both of which probably served the whole county. At the start of fall, the sun was setting - further obscured by the mountains in the distance - by the time they pulled into Sam’s driveway. His was a little dormer house on the other side of town, with pale green cladding and a knee-high wooden statue of a falcon by the front door.
As soon as they set foot in the house, there was the homely smell of their dinner wafting through from the kitchen. A petite redhead appeared in the hallway and greeted Sam with a kiss. She shook Steve’s hand as they were introduced, and Steve was a little surprised by how firm it was. He already knew Natasha Romanov was one of the local police officers and punched well above her weight, but Sam’s emails and messages had always described her as, well, a bit of a dork. And here she was sultry, spoke softly, yet firm in a way that brokered no arguments, leading Steve and Sam to the dining room.
After dinner and dessert, Sam slid a scrap of paper with a phone number and ‘Tony Stark’ written on it. So far, they’d made conversation about Sam and Natasha’s wedding plans, or what Steve had been up to in the past but now they had come to the main reason Steve had come all the way out here some months before his duty as best man was required. According to Natasha, the Starks were a local family done good. They did a lot of charity work, and funded a lot of local institutions that kept Convergence from withering in the shadow of bigger cities. They owned one of the best, though not the biggest, ranches in the state of Wyoming - The Lone Star Cattle Ranch - and were responsible for the dinner on their plates that evening. There was some small scale construction work being done that needed a helping hand, and Sam had put a good word in for Steve. All Steve had to do was give them a call and ask for the job. He felt a little forward, phoning the man when he might still be at dinner, out of the blue. But his call was answered and before long he was hanging up again with the slight sensation of having bitten off more than he could chew. There had been some kind of inquisitorial feeling about the whole thing.
“So, what’d he say?” Sam asked, after Steve had returned to the table. There was coffee ready waiting for him and he took a big gulp, never mind the scalding heat.
“He said we can ‘scope each other out’ tomorrow, if I can get a ride out there?” Steve said, not managing to shrug off the uncomfortable mood of the phone call. It had been like he was being tested, like there were about half a dozen other people listening in.
“Sure thing,” Sam agreed to drop Steve off at the ranch before heading to coach Saturday Soccer at the park. But Steve retained an air of introspection, and Natasha fixed him with a steady stare.
“He seemed kinda skittish, though. That normal?” Steve asked, shifting a little in his chair.
“I hear Stark gives potential employees the third degree these days,” Natasha said almost conspiratorily, “ever since Stane he rarely trusts anyone.”
“Who’s Stane?”
Natasha leaned forward, holding her hands out and excited to start what she clearly thought was a saga. Steve instantly felt like he was in some fantasy movie or other, the hapless hero about hear the tale that would set the course of the story. There was a feeble little idea that he should get out before he became embroiled in some local scandal. But he shook it off as nonsense, he was just tired and listening to a mix of contextual history and gossip.
“Obadiah Stane,” Natasha began, “The ex-foreman. Worked at Lone Star for decades, back when it was run by Howard Stark and Peggy Carter.”
“Tony’s father,” Sam cut in, “and not Tony’s mom.”
“They were business partners. The ranch has been in the Stark family for generations but Stark Industries was founded as engineering works - parts for farm equipment - but they moved into engines for airplanes and army vehicles during the second world war, which was where Peggy Carter came in. After the war, they won military contract after military contract and it made them billions.”
If that was the case, why on earth was Stark doing his rebuild with ranch staff? With big money at his disposal, surely he could bring in a design team and construction company. But obviously that was only the beginning of the story and Natasha continued.
“So years pass, Carter goes into government, Howard keeps the business going but he needs someone to take care of the ranch. He brought in Obadiah Stane. Everything goes well for years. Then, Howard and his wife die in a car accident. Now, with hindsight, lot of people around here started to talk about whether or not Stane had something to do with it. So far, there’s no proof of that.
“Anyhow, Tony takes over the business, he lets Stane continue to handle the ranch. Now ranching isn’t as big business as it used to be, but that was okay, it’s not a huge scale thing at Lone Star. But the money just wasn’t coming in. And it just got worse and worse and worse. Enough to make Tony think about selling it off to cover the deficit. But a couple of years ago, Tony’s wife found out Stane had been embezzling money. And we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s why the place had been such a sinkhole. Tony confronted him about it and Stane shot him in the chest,” Natasha dramatically mimed firing a gun with her fingers, “Set fire to the foreman’s cottage while Tony was still in it.”
“What? How’d he get out?” Steve asked, even after his years in the military he was still a bit shocked at his fellow man’s capability for brutality.
“His missus had called two of their buddies before Stark went out there and followed right behind. They stopped Stane making a break for it and got Tony out.”
“I heard Stark’s lady got Stane with a cattle prod,” Sam said, in an impressed voice.
“I can neither confirm or deny this accusation,” Natasha said with a wink, smirking with satisfaction at her story, “It was a close call, Stark was in the hospital for a long time and he’s never really been the same again, even with things starting to look up. They couldn’t save the house though. That’s what you’ll be rebuilding.”
Steve let out a whistle. It was quite a tale, like something out of the Wild West. Sam dug out an old newspaper, showing him articles about Obadiah Stane’s arrest and speedy trial for attempted murder, as well as ones about Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts taking over as CEO of Stark Industries in place of her husband. There were still pending fraud charges on Stane but, because the investigation was still ongoing, Natasha couldn’t divulge much more about it.
They spent plenty of time with Sam and Natasha filling Steve in on each other’s exploits over the last year or so. Sam told him about all the hijinks country kids got up to in high school, including, but not limited to, driving several towns over to buy a brood of chickens that were then set loose in the school building on graduation day. Or when they’d ‘acquired’ one of those mechanical riding bulls from some place and raised money by trying to break all their damn necks. And the embarrassment of having one of his senior pupils tow his old hatchback out of a snowy ditch and all the way to school with their ancient pick-up truck. Natasha’s stories involved fewer teenage antics and more bar fights.
When it was time to hit the hay, Steve was introduced to possibly the creakiest pullout bed west of the Mississippi. Even so much as scratching his nose and his futon let half the neighbourhood know about it. But he settled down with a sigh and a squeak and tried not to let his brain chatter away too much. He wondered if this really was the thing to be doing, carting himself all they way out here for a job he’d never considered before, in a landscape that was alien to him. He hoped that once he got into it, some of the out of place feeling would dissipate, otherwise he’d miss Bucky and Clint something awful.
***
Sam dropped him in front of the large farmhouse first thing that morning. ‘Farmhouse’ was probably a bit of a misnomer: the house sprawled out into several wings, at least three stor ies high, with classy looking granite and slate. It had been built in stages, rather than all in one go, the evidence of generations of success and renovation. With nicely-trimmed trees around the yard, and hens pecking away underfoot, it made for a pretty picture. The front door opened and onto the porch strode a man that Steve assumed was Mr Stark; middle-aged, middling height, he had a thin black goatee and wore a neatly pressed burgundy shirt with dirty jeans. A strange mix of a rich guy and one who worked hard for a living, who swaggered slowly with the confidence of a man who ruled all he surveyed.
“Mr Stark? Good morning,” Steve chirped, standing to attention before he could catch himself, “I’m Steve Rogers. I called about the, uh, construction job.”
Stark stepped down off the porch and held his hand out for Steve to shake. Just as he clasped the proffered hand, Stark raised his eyebrows and said, “ Captain Rogers, isn’t it?”
“Steve’s fine, sir.”
Stark gave him an apprehensive look and started walking him around the property, giving him a clipped overview of what they did at the ranch, what Steve might be expected to do beyond construction. He asked him all the reasonable questions - what sort of experience he had with livestock, machinery, record-keeping - but every time he answered, Steve got the impression he was being sized up rather more thoroughly than was normal for a ranch hand. They hopped into a bashed-looking white pick-up and Stark told him they’d drive out to the construction site. Steve wondered if he was expected to already know he was helping to rebuild the foreman’s cottage, or why it needed rebuilding in the first place. Stark wasn’t saying. Steve sat somewhat tensely in the passenger seat, wanting to think of some way to make conversation but coming up empty. They followed a lot of well-worn farm tracks, through pastures with either newly harvested crops or herds of chunky cattle. Stark honked the horn and waved out the window to a group of guys tearing down a rotten old fence, before turning to Steve with the still piercing gaze.
“So, what brings you all the way out here anyway? It’s not exactly local for you, New York to Wyoming…”
Steve shrugged, “Fresh start, I guess, and a change of pace. Got out of the army, couldn’t go back to the old life. A friend said there was work out here, figured it was as clean a slate as any. At least for a while.”
It was an honest enough answer, if not an in-depth one.
“That’ll be Sam Wilson. Your friend?”
“Yes, sir. He worked here about a year ago.”
“I remember. He did a spring and a summer before he landed the job at the school. Solid guy.”
They pulled into a driveway surrounded by overgrown bushes and parked next to a pile of charcoaled wood. In the centre of a neglected garden lay the foundations of the foreman’s house and the beginnings of the new timber framework. Stark explained that this was all his existing staff had managed until now. There’d be more time for it now they were heading into the fall, but Steve was still needed to lighten the load. Stark didn’t look at him much, just gazed sadly over the empty plot and knee-high weeds.
“With all due respect, sir, how come you’re doing this all in-house, so to speak?” Steve asked, smiling a little at the pun. Stark didn’t budge, just turned to look at him like he was trying to spot a hair on his head moved out of place. “Not that I’m complaining. But why not just bring in a construction company?”
Stark considered him a moment longer and looked down at the burnt out wood lying in piles around the garden . “Let’s just say I’m not big on trusting outsiders. Which you technically are but it’s a lot easier for me to vett one guy than it is to look over a whole construction outfit. Don’t tell me the grapevine’s letting you down already, Rogers. If you’re in with Sam Wilson, surely Natasha told you all about Stane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tony. You don’t need to call me sir.”
“Habit,” Steve shrugged.
For the first time, Stark cracked a tiny smile and gestured to the meagre start of the house, “Well, job’s yours if you want it. If Sam’s vouching for you, I reckon you’re not here to rob me blind.”
“Thanks, boss,” Steve said. They shook hands once more and climbed back into the truck. On the ride back, Stark was much more vocal, spouting off about which building was which, more details about the operation of the ranch. He’d be given a couple of uniform shirts, with the ranch’s logo on the front, but he could generally wear what he wanted. There was room in the bunkhouse if he needed it, which made more sense than sleeping on Sam’s couch.
They arrived back at the house and Tony beckoned him inside, through a soft and clean hallway to a large kitchen where he could hear people setting up for lunch. A long wooden table filled most of the space, with benches either side. Though the granite countertops looked classy, there was a distinct feel of a kitchen in constant, hectic use. There were large sinks and bulk packs of household items. And there were two beautiful women setting the table. He was introduced to Tony’s wife, the elegant and willowy Pepper Potts, and a shorter, curvier young woman. She had dark hair that draped in loose waves over her shoulders and smooth pale skin. Stark stood behind her and placed both hands on her shoulders.
“This is my daughter Darcy,” he said, sounding prouder than he had of any part of the ranch . “She’s handling payroll and paperwork until this foreman mess is fixed. She’ll sort you out so you can start on Monday,” he tilted his head to look at Darcy, “Sweetie, can you set the new guy up, please? He’ll need the bunk Thor ain’t using.”
“Sure thing, Dad,” she said with a little bit of an embarrassed smile, and started towards the back of the house. Steve followed and left Tony in the kitchen where he began whispering to Pepper. Darcy lead him down a hallway, padding in her socks on the wooden floor. Steve looked down at his own boots and wondered if he should have left them on the porch. Darcy stopped at an oak door and turned to see Steve inspecting the floor and his own feet.
“Don’t worry, you’re not actually trailing horseshit through the house this time, so you’re fine. But next week it’ll be boots off indoors for sure.”
“Yes, ma’am,”
“Ugh, don’t call me that: Darcy,” she screwed up her face mockingly. She opened the door to an office cluttered with stacks of paperwork. There were invoices and account books that looked like they were years old, piled up on every available surface. Tucked into corners Steve could see bagged up documents marked ‘EVIDENCE.’ Darcy booted up a sleek new computer that sat on a heavy, old-fashioned desk and dug out a form for new starts from the filing cabinet.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said, handing him the form and clearing a space at the desk.
“Looks like one helluva job…”
“Yeah… but it needs doing when a guy embezzles thousands of dollars from your father’s business,” she said sadly.
Steve filled out his form; bank details were pretty standard, his medical stuff took up plenty space - he’d been a real sickly kid - and he’d put ‘James Barnes’ as his next of kin for lack of any other option. If he was kicked half to death by a steer, he wasn’t sure what Bucky was going to do about it - back in New York and missing an arm - but they were brothers all the same, just not in blood. Darcy dutifully copied his information into the computer, periodically firing off questions or reading him the rules. No boots in the main house or the bunkhouse. No smoking in the barn. What size of shirt did he need? Did he have a clean driving licence? There were times for breakfast, lunch and dinner but he wasn’t obliged to attend. There was no official curfew but he’d be playing catch-up all day with no sympathy if he didn’t get a decent amount of sleep. With a couple of signatures and a photocopy, he was ready to roll.
“Welcome aboard, Captain,” Darcy said with a wink, “We can move you in tomorrow if you like, otherwise just bring your gear on Monday.”
Tomorrow suited him fine, he wasn’t really enjoying being ferried around by Sam. He’d feel much more at home when he could get his motorbike brought out. And bunking with a host of other guys wasn’t exactly new to him. Darcy filed his paperwork and they headed back to the kitchen where the population had swelled. There was the smell of cheese sauce and fresh bread wafting over the heads of several work-worn guys; those he’d seen pulling up fence posts and a few more besides.
“Everyone say hi to the new guy!” Darcy hollered, “This is Steve. Steve, this is everybody.”
There were several simultaneous calls of greeting and he was introduced more specifically to some of the other guys who were working on the house. Brock Rumlow and Grant Ward had been on the ranch for a few years now, from just after the whole Stane business came to light. And Thor Odinson, who had started earlier in the year to support himself and his girlfriend. Thor had done the majority of the rebuilding work so far, and Steve could see why. Thor was a good half-head taller than him and a fair bit broader in the shoulders, like he could give a draft horse a run for its money. Ms Potts steered Steve to a seat at the already crowded table, where he found himself next to Darcy. They were close enough that their calves touched under the table. But Darcy didn’t react and Steve figured she was used to being in close quarters with the guys.
A lot of information was thrown at him over lunch, which Steve tried to boil down to basic facts: Darcy had finished a Political Science degree in the spring, Thor was an electrical engineer, and his other half, Jane, was a theoretical astrophysicist. A title greatly at odds with the tiny, haphazard looking woman in sweatpants. Rumlow and Ward tried their best to fill him in on the daily grind, teasing him about getting him on a horse or encountering bears and wolves. It made Darcy roll her eyes and shake her head.
“They’ll try to teach you how to wipe your own ass but don’t let them get away with it. They’re not the boss of you, Dad’s the boss of you,” she whispered, leaning in while Rumlow was deep into some story about cattle rustlers. Steve noticed that Tony’s studious gaze only let up for his daughter or his wife. The rest of the table was subject to the same guarded stare, though it seemed to go unnoticed.
Once they’d eaten their fill, the other workers filed out with a nod of thanks to the ladies and got back to the rest of their day. Tony wavered about following them or staying put to watch Steve who was kind of at a loose end.
“You got someone to pick you up, or you need a ride into town?” he asked.
Darcy piped up before Steve could answer, “I’m going to the store anyway, I can drop you.”
“If you don’t mind, that’d be great,” Steve said. This way he wouldn’t have to hang around until Sam finished work or squirm under Tony’s scrutiny. Tony looked from Darcy to Steve and back again before nodding, grudgingly. He gave Pepper and Darcy each a kiss and headed on out the door.
“You, uh, need a hand washing up?” Steve offered, to which both women grinned brightly. The ladies set him to sweeping the floor and putting things away on high shelves. Darcy washed pots and pans, and Pepper loaded the dishwasher.
“Our caretaker, Mr Jarvis, does this through the week,” Pepper explained, “but he’s not so easily charmed by young gentlemen.”
“He’s probably sitting in his room waiting for us to get the hell out of here so he can do it his own way,” Darcy said, with just a hint of pink in her cheeks. After drying her hands, she grabbed a long grocery list and a small jacket from the hall, and stood in the kitchen doorway. Pepper took the sweeping brush from Steve and used it to shoo him in Darcy’s direction. She led him out and around the other side of the house, to a large multi-car garage that was home to a veritable menagerie; from trucks that had been beaten every day of their lives, to restored classic roadsters. Barring the vintage cars, and an enormous dark green Pinzgauer, all the vehicles had the Lone Star Ranch logo on the side: a white star with gold outlines over a light blue circle.
“There’s spare spaces if you have a car or anything,” Darcy mentioned, punching in a code at a wall-mounted safe. It opened to reveal a carefully arranged and colour-coded array of keys, presumably for all the cars. But Steve was sure he could see one labelled ‘gun case’ as well.
“Uh… I’ve got a bike but it’s still in a storage unit in New York,” Steve said, a bit forlorn. The lack of his own transport was sure to grate, but he also simply missed the bike, “I’ll get it shipped out eventually.”
“Well, when you do, it can have a home here,” Darcy picked out a big grey SUV and clambered up into the driver’s seat.
Steve kind of liked the sound of that.