Chapter Text
“There in the attic of forgotten shapes
(Old coats in plastic, hat boxes, fur capes,
Amongst the smells of mothballs and cigars),
I saw the doll house of our early years”
- “The Doll House,” A. E. Stallings, 2001
Here are a few things that Steve Grant knows about himself:
He has blonde hair and blue eyes.
He’s 5’4” and weighs around 110 lbs.
He’s short-sighted and deaf in one ear. He has asthma, a bad back and a list of allergies probably taller than him.
He speaks French fluently and can get by in German.
His birth certificate says that he’s 25 and that he was born in Brooklyn, NY.
He’s a recipient of the Art and Humanities Scholarship for the Howard and Maria Stark Foundation.
He’s an undergrad in Art History and French Literature at NYU.
He rents a small loft above a French coffee shop in the Village and works as a part-time barista there.
Here’s something else that Steve knows about himself:
The day Captain America took the Infinity Stones and defeated the alien Thanos, Steve was hit by a car in the post-Blip chaos and woke up in a private hospital inside the Avengers Tower, with no memory of who he was or how he got there.
The man who hit him was Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts’ personal driver and bodyguard.
His medical bills were all paid by Stark Industries, and Miss Potts’ lawyers gave Steve a hefty check in exchange of an NDA, no matter how many times Steve told them that he had no intention of suing.
Here are some things that Steve doesn’t know about himself:
He doesn’t know why he moved out of Brooklyn and to Manhattan.
He doesn’t know why he chose to work as a barista or why he decided to major in Art History and French lit.
He doesn’t know what he was doing the day of the Blip. He doesn’t know if he was scared or in pain when he was hit by Miss Potts’ car.
He doesn’t know anything about his life outside of the papers Stark Industries’ private investigator tracked down for him.
In the hospital, while recovering from what felt more like a terrible flu than a car accident, he looked at the pile of papers, all of them copies with the SI logo in the top corner. He spread them out before him, instinctively putting them by color, like a flavorless Pantone chart, ranging from beige to eggshell white. He looked at this paper trail, his birth certificate, passport, social security number, driver license, report cards from a public school in Brooklyn, high school diploma, application for NYU, application for the Stark scholarship, medical files detailing his long list of childhood illnesses, his mother’s death certificate, he looked at it for hours on end and yet he had no idea whose life he was staring at.
If he’s honest with himself, he still doesn’t.
Sometimes, when Steve lays awake at night, staring at the ceiling of his small loft, he feels like an imposter.
He feels like he dropped down from the sky and someone put him inside Steve Grant’s life. He feels stuck and breathless, like a doll that someone twisted into itself to make him fit inside the paper house of Steve Grant’s existence, placing him in his empty seat at NYU, dressing him up in his apron at the coffee shop, putting him down to bed in his blank apartment, without any personal effects except for a non-descript wardrobe and a few black and white photos of the Grand Canyon on the walls.
He feels like a thief, who stole someone else’s identity.
He feels like a lost item, that someone took by mistake and put back in the wrong shelf.
There is one thing in Steve Grant’s bland, impersonal life that feels vaguely close to home: an old MP3 player that he found at the bottom of a sock drawer, like an afterthought. On his first night after being discharged from the hospital, he laid in bed, unable to sleep, and scrolled through it, hoping it might reveal something about who Steve Grant is.
The music inside made absolutely no sense, like puzzle pieces that someone put together haphazardly, careless to the fact that they obviously didn’t fit together.
Some songs he felt like he vaguely knew, like the Trouble Man album by Marvin Gaye, which made him smile even though he had no idea why. Others were like distant echoes that made his heart beat faster, like the AC/DC collection. Some were puzzling, like the Russian melodies that made him think of a little red-haired ballerina spinning inside a music box. Others were vintage songs, full of piano and jazz and smoky voices and broken promises of slow dancing in the moonlight.
None of these songs fit inside Steve Grant’s flavorless life and yet they fit inside Steve like a sharp piece of glass fits inside a palm or how a blade fits neatly between two ribs.
He never leaves the house without them.
Steve Grant’s phone was crushed during the car accident, so Stark Industries gave him a brand new model for free.
Steve never touched any of the settings and he never put it off the silent mode.
He doesn’t need to, because no one calls or texts him.
He has a grand total of five numbers on his phone: the number of the private clinic inside Avengers Tower which he was told to call if he experienced any symptoms from his accident, the number of a psychiatrist recommended by Stark Industries which he was told to call to help him deal with his amnesia, the number of Stark Industries’ Head of Human Resources which he was told to call if he had any financial issue in the future, the number of the Howard and Maria Stark Foundation’s Head of Human Resources which he was told to call if he had any problem with his classes at NYU, and the number of the building/coffee shop manager downstairs which he was told to call if he had any question about his apartment or his shifts.
Steve never calls any of them.
A few days after he was out of the hospital, while sitting around his apartment, helplessly waiting for his memory to come back to him, Steve decided to research the day of the Blip, hoping that looking at videos and interviews of half of the planet reappearing after five years of absence might trigger something.
All it triggered was a piercing headache and the hopeless feeling that he would never know how to be Steve Grant and that he would have to spend the rest of his life pretending to be someone he only knew through the paper trail and MP3 the man left behind.
Steve likes the coffee shop. It’s small, filled with mismatched chairs and colorful mugs and the smell of fresh bread and croissants permeates the whole building, making Steve Grant’s loft feel slightly less like a page from an IKEA magazine come to life. The café is called La Cage à Oiseaux, which Steve instantly knows means the birdcage, though he can’t recall any of his French classes in high school. Aside from him, there is only one other employee, a grumpy woman in her fifties named Marie-Jeanne.
Marie-Jeanne has a mane of black hair streaked with grey and white, which she keeps in a messy bun on top of her head and in which she sticks a multitude of items, from pens to spoons to paint brushes to a small pair of plastic green glasses which she always complains about displacing, no matter how many times Steve reminds her are on top of her head.
Marie-Jeanne used to own the building before the Chitauri attack, which caused so much damage she had no choice but to sell. When Steve asks her who she sold the building and the coffee shop to, Marie-Jeanne makes a dismissive hand gesture and grumbles about American capitalist pigs, which Steve guesses means either a bank or a big real estate company. If Steve ever calls the building manager, he should remember to ask, but he never has to since Marie-Jeanne keeps acting like she owns the place and happily bullies Steve around, teaching him how to use the coffee machines and how to make café au lait and how to assemble the perfect butter and jam toast (“Tartine, Steve! Not toast!”).
Steve isn’t sure why the manager even bothered hiring him, since Marie-Jeanne seems more than able to handle the business by herself. La Cage à Oiseaux is stuck between a Starbucks and a New Age brunch place which serves strange drinks like lavender lattes and rose-matcha frappes. Without the office crowd or the hipsters, there is not many people left to step inside their little French corner and Steve spends most of his shifts munching on Marie-Jeanne’s pastries and studying for his classes, occasionally preparing a cup of allongé or café noisette for the few people who wander inside, most of them being Marie-Jeanne’s friends and neighbors.
On several occasions, Steve tried to ask Marie-Jeanne what she knew of him before his accident, but she never gave him much of an answer: from what the building manager told her, Steve had only moved in a few days before his accident and he was supposed to come work at the café for the first time when he was hit by Miss Potts’ car on his way home after his classes.
It’s infuriatingly vague but still better than what Steve managed to get out of his classmates at NYU, which was nothing. Steve was apparently sick a lot before his accident so he took most of his classes online and, aside from the administration, no one seems aware of his existence.
Steve Grant, he decides, was boring as hell.
It’s the six months’ anniversary of the Blip.
There are Captain America decorations all over New York and the news on Steve’s SI tablet (they keep sending him the latest model without him ever asking for anything) is stuck on a loop: homage to Captain America, interview of Tony Stark saying it should have been him giving his life for his country, conspiracy theories about Captain America not being actually dead, interview of someone who found their life in pieces after the Blip, homage to Captain America, rinse and repeat.
After thirty minutes of scrolling through the news, Steve has to lay down with a cold towel over his eyes in the backroom while Marie-Jeanne putters around, bringing him tea with ginger and honey and a flaky pastry filled with applesauce which she calls chausson aux pommes and charges an outrageous amount for.
“I know, mon poussin,” Marie-Jeanne tells him after he lets out a particularly pitiful moan, “that’s what living in America feels like.”
It’s the end of the day and Steve is about to close the coffee shop when a man stumbles inside.
He’s wearing an expensive-looking suit and big sunglasses even though it’s past sundown, and he looks thoroughly drunk. Steve is pondering whether he should call a cab or 911, when Marie-Jeanne lets out a colorful string of insults, most of which Steve doesn’t understand in spite of his strong grasp of French, and starts yammering about American capitalist pigs. That is when he realizes that the man is Tony Stark.
After spending so much time signing papers with the Stark Industries logo on them, whether they were for the scholarship or his medical bills, Steve feels like he at least owes the man the opportunity to sober up in peace.
So he shoos Marie-Jeanne away and approaches Tony Stark with one hand outstretched in case he stumbles on his way to a chair.
“Can I get you some coffee?” he asks when Stark finally manages to get in a sitting position.
The man looks up, blinking behind his sunglasses, and suddenly tips to the left. Steve grabs him just in time and almost gags at the smell. Bourbon, his mind supplies immediately, even though the only alcohol he’s had since his accident had been a sip of Grand Marnier while Marie-Jeanne was showing him how to make crêpe suzette.
“Top notch service,” Stark says once he’s mostly upright in his chair again, “and they say the good old days are gone.”
Then, he giggles, like he made a particularly clever joke.
Since Steve has no idea what to answer, he says: “I’m gonna get you some coffee,” and then slowly backs up toward the counter, keeping an eye out in case Stark decides to tip starboard again.
He makes a strong brew and pours it in one of the big bowls Marie-Jeanne drinks from in the morning, since apparently the French only start using mugs after 10am. Then, he decides to add a chausson aux pommes. Considering that most of the money in his bank account comes from Stark Industries, Steve can afford to offer Tony Stark a pastry.
When he gets back to the table, Stark is busy talking to someone named Friday in a slurred voice and doing strange things with a hologram coming out of his glasses. Steve can feel the beginning of another headache coming so he decides to quietly put down the coffee and pastry before making a safe retreat toward the counter. Except that the minute Stark smells the coffee, he waves his hand in the air, making the hologram disappear.
He eyes the bowl and the plate with a raised eyebrow before looking at Steve up and down.
“So… how is everything?”
Steve has the vague feeling that this was meant to be a rather solemn question, except that the man hiccups so hard he nearly dislodges his glasses.
“Good. Can’t complain.”
This is obviously the wrong thing to say, since Stark scoffs openly.
“No, you never do, do you?” he hiccups.
Steve isn’t sure if ‘you’ means students, baristas, the Village population or the French. If he knew Marie-Jeanne, he would know all the French ever do is complain.
“Do you need me to call you a cab?” he offers instead of replying.
Stark rolls his eyes and raises the bowl to his lips, and his hiccup sends some coffee splashing alongside his wrist and on what looks like a very expensive watch. Out of habit, Steve gets the dishrag from the pocket of his apron and offers it to Stark.
“Oh, for the love of… Seriously? Aren’t young people supposed to be aloof and glued to their phones? Start acting your age!”
Tony Stark, Steve decides, is a mean drunk.
“That wouldn’t get me a lot of tips,” he replies dryly, leaving Stark with the dish towel to clean his mess himself. Steve prepares for closing, putting the café's mismatched chairs upside down on the tables. Maybe that will give Stark an incentive to sober up somewhere else.
“Sarcasm!” The man exclaims. “Now this is much more age appropriate! Didn’t think you had it in you, old boy!”
Steve rolls his eyes but keeps his back turned. His memory might only stretch back to the past six months, but he wasn’t born yesterday and he knows there’s no point arguing with a drunk.
There is a blessed minute of silence, only interrupted by the sound of chairs being cleared, until Steve hears Stark dragging the plate across the table, followed by a surprised moan.
“Dear God, this is good. Haven’t had one of those since Marseilles in ’08. Garçon, another one!”
Then, the man has the audacity to snap his fingers.
Steve turns to glare.
“How about ‘please’?”
Stark glares right back.
“How about ‘I own this building and everything inside it’?”
This takes Steve by surprise. No wonder Marie-Jeanne left without (too much) protest.
Stark smirks and Steve is even more annoyed when he notices that his hiccup is gone.
“Chop, chop, old boy. Coffee’s getting cold.”
Biting back some of the French insults Marie-Jeanne taught him, Steve goes to fetch another apple pastry, putting it on the table with what he hopes is his best expression of disapproval.
“You know, just because you own the place doesn’t mean you have to be rude.”
Stark’s smile grows cold and brittle.
“I know, isn’t it annoying when people do things even though they don’t have to? Like, how they don’t have to be a goddamn martyr every single time? How they don’t have to foolishly run head on into what was very obviously a terrible idea? How they don’t have to take the infinity stones when a plan had already been agreed on?”
Suddenly, Steve feels like an absolute moron. The six-month anniversary. The Captain America memorabilia. The interviews.
No wonder the man got drunk as skunk. His friend’s dead and Steve is giving him shit for being rude.
Nice one, Steve.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, earnestly, and this seems to throw Stark off.
“What are you sorry about?” he laughs, with a hint of something like panic in his eyes.
“About your friend. Today must be difficult for you.”
Stark is very still for a moment, until he deflates like a balloon, his shoulders sagging.
“Yeah, I guess I’ve had better days.”
They both stay silent after that, Stark obviously lost in thoughts and Steve shifting his weight from foot to foot awkwardly. Then, he decides to take a page off Marie-Jeanne’s book and goes to get a pain aux raisins from the display case. When he puts it in front of Stark, the man looks at the snail-shaped pastry like Steve is a cat who brought his owner a dead bird.
“What sort of Parisian monstrosity is this?”
“Pain aux raisins. It’s made with custard and raisins.”
“Raisins? I tell you I’m grieving and your first instinct is to get me raisins? What, have the French forsaken chocolate?”
Steve can feel another headache coming.
“Just try it before being an asshole.”
Stark looks vaguely scandalized.
“Language,” he mumbles as he tears a piece off and pops it into his mouth.
His eyebrows shoot up to his forehead.
“Alright, I’ll hand it to the bastards, only the French can make raisins taste like that.”
Then, seeing Steve’s pleased expression, he freezes.
“Did you make these?”
“God, no. If I started cooking, the CDC would probably close us down. Marie-Jeanne made them.”
Stark keeps eating, flaky pieces of pastry getting stuck in his mustache.
“That would be the fine French woman who was here before, I’m guessing? I hope you give her the speech about being rude.”
“She isn’t your biggest fan. She used to own the building before she had to sell it.”
Stark makes a flippant hand gesture. “Friday, remind me to send a fruit basket to Marianne.”
“Marie-Jeanne,” Steve corrects just as he hears a tiny voice reply “You got it, boss” from somewhere around Stark’s person.
As the man looks ready to go back to his pastries and settle in despite the late hour, Steve says through gritted teeth, “The Starbucks next door is open twenty-four-seven.”
Stark smiles at him wolfishly.
“Yes, but I wouldn’t get such a stellar service at Starbucks.”
“You know, you make it really hard for me to be grateful.”
Stark snorts.
“Grateful? What do you have to be grateful for? Climate change? The post-Blip migrant crisis? The inevitable implosion of our sun?”
Steve blinks and makes the unilateral decision to get Stark some more coffee. Then, he takes the opportunity of facing away from him to say his piece. Steve Grant’s life might be outlandish and depressing and about as exciting as a glass of lukewarm water, but it’s still more than a lot of people have right now.
“I meant your foundation. The Howard and Maria Stark foundation. I’m on a scholarship at NYU thanks to you. And thanks to your company, I don’t have to worry about paying my rent until I finish my undergrad so… thank you. I’m grateful. Even if sometimes it feels like I can’t take a step without stumbling on the Stark name,” he chuckles, bringing the steaming bowl back to the table.
He expects Stark to make the same flippant gesture he’d done about Marie-Jeanne, or maybe to be slightly embarrassed about being reminded of his philanthropic work while completely hammered.
Instead, the man frowns. Like Steve brought up a problem he hadn’t expected instead of paying his thanks.
“That sounds terrible. To feel like someone else is basically controlling your life for you. Like the cards have already been laid out and you just have to play along.”
His tone is dead serious and Steve suddenly has a hard time swallowing. That’s exactly how it feels. Like someone locked him inside a Stark Industries-issued dollhouse and he can’t get out of it. Except it’s not a dollhouse, it’s Steve Grant’s life and Steve needs to show some goddamn appreciation for it.
“Yeah,” he shrugs. “It’s real hard to be financially independent in Manhattan and not have to worry about student debt. I don’t even know why I bother getting up in the morning.”
Stark squints at him from behind his sunglasses.
“Christ, you’re a sassy little thing, aren’t you?”
Steve blushes.
“Do you need me to call you a cab?” He asks again, hoping Stark will finally get the hint.
“Sweetheart, you do know I can fly, right?”
Sweetheart.
Jesus.
“I’m pretty sure that’s even worse when you’re drunk.”
Stark scoffs: “Don’t worry about me. Friday will get me home safe, won’t you, Friday?”
The same tiny voice chirps out “Always, boss.”
Stark then polishes the last of the pastries and gets up. He starts to tip dangerously to the right before catching himself on the edge of the table, sending more coffee splashing everywhere.
This time, he has the decency to wince: “Sorry about the mess. Just send me the bill.”
Steve starts to seriously wonder how many times he can roll his eyes before they start popping out of his head.
“It’s a coffee spill on a table. It needs a wipe, not a dry-cleaning bill.”
Stark waves him off.
“Whatever you say, old boy. Keep up with the… I don’t even know. Waiter thing? Student thing? Whatever makes you happy. If anyone deserves a vacation from this shitty world, it’s you.”
Steve frowns, worried about the nonsense coming out of Stark’s mouth, but the man is already making his way toward the exit. Steve follows, his hands stretched out cautiously just in case, but he only stumbles once more before getting out into the cold night air.
Then, just when Steve is about to lock the glass door behind him, Stark turns back, whip fast.
“You are happy though, right?”
It’s such a strange question that Steve is taken completely off guard.
No one asks that kind of question. People ask him if he’s well, if he’s fine, if he needs anything. Not if he’s happy. Which is all for the best really, because those other questions, he knows how to answer them. Yes, ma'am, he is well. Yes, sir, he is fine. No, he doesn't need anything more than he already has, thank you.
But is he happy? Happy in Steve Grant’s empty shell of a life? Happy in his bland apartment, with his blank wardrobe and even blanker walls? Happy in the middle of the empty row of seats during his classes?
“Not really,” he answers before he thinks better of it.
Stark, bless him, is too inebriated to do more than frown and sway on his feet, tripping over thin air.
“Then do something about it,” he snaps before walking away in a more or less straight line, Friday’s tiny voice chirping directions to him.
So maybe it’s an act of rebellion when he decides to take Steve Grant’s life for himself.
Until then, he’d been tiptoeing around the man’s life, carefully walking around the shattered remains of who he was supposed to be, like a cat set loose in a china shop, neatly squeezing himself in the empty spaces that Steve Grant had left behind.
After six months of waiting for Steve Grant’s memories to come back, he decides to stop being a cat and to turn into the proverbial bull instead.
He starts by asking Marie-Jeanne if she has anything he could use to decorate his apartment. Her eyes glitter behind the green plastic rim of her glasses – she found them on her own for once – and soon, the black and white Grand Canyon pictures are thrown into the trash, replaced by Art Nouveau prints by Alphons Mucha and vintage posters advertising French movies from the 60s. Then, because Steve’s feeling particularly sick of unicolor tees, beige plaid shirts and straight blue jeans, he gathers up his courage and asks one of his classmates if she knows any good thrift shops to get clothes.
The girl, who has been sitting behind him since the semester re-started a month after the Blip, looks at him like he sprouted a second head but ultimately says she’ll get back to him.
And she does get back to him, catching up with him at the end of the lecture on the queer literature of Jean Genet, and asks him for his phone. Steve extends it gingerly, and the girl taps her own SI phone against his, instantly downloading their contact info.
“I’ll send you some addresses later today.”
After Steve thanks her, she looks him up and down, eyeing his tee-plaid shirt-blue jeans combination from behind her bubblegum pink bangs. Half of the people in Steve’s art history and French lit classes have pastel hair, ranging from hot pink to baby blue to every color of the rainbow.
“We can go together this weekend if you want,” she eventually says with what sounds an awful lot like pity in her voice.
“Yeah, I’d like that,” he answers, because as much as he desperately wants to get rid of the remnants of Steve Grant’s flavorless personality, he has no idea where to start.
“I’m Steve, by the way,” he reaches out, introducing himself formally.
His classmate gives him the same bewildered look as before, but she does take his hand and shakes it.
“Erin,” she answers. “I’ll text you the details for this weekend.”
They wave and part ways. Then, Steve takes his phone out again, and gleefully takes it off the silent mode.
You hear that, Grant, you sorry bastard? We’re gonna do something with your life.