Chapter Text
Steve Rogers hadn’t always been a stickler for routines. Between his mother's passing, job-hopping, Bucky dragging him places at odd hours, and a World War waging in Europe and ruining everyone’s plans in the States, there had never been an opportunity to find a routine once he hit adulthood. Joining the army had changed that – everything was organised (or tried to be), everything was planned (so much as it could be given the circumstances), and Steve had taken to that way of life like a duck to water.
This newfound fondness for the inanity of routine did not change just because he’d found himself seventy years past his used by date in a world that’d kept on moving without him.
So it was that, a couple of weeks post The Battle Of New York, he was going for a run, as he did every day, at promptly four o’clock in the afternoon, around the all-new Manhattan that he was still getting used to.
He’d tried to live in the Brooklyn apartment SHIELD had supplied once he got back from his spur-of-the-moment road trip. He’d politely taken up Stark’s offer of accommodation on the third day, unable to deal with the ghosts that haunted every street.
Steve had been running for the hell of it even before he’d been given the serum. A doctor had once told him that the exercise might strengthen his lungs. It had worked about as well as could be expected, but it gave him something to do besides lose his mind on the days when he was out of work and praying that they’d make rent – he’d found an odd job by literally running across someone in need of a hand more than once. At the time, he was one of the few people doing it, and only on days when he wasn’t feeling particularly feeble, but he ran all the same.
It was nearly the opposite in this new century. There were a lot more people around these days, for one thing, and a decent portion of them were exercising whilst out and about. A good number of them were ladies, too, which made the part of his heart filled by his memories of Peggy and her stubborn independence incredibly happy.
And other things were… different, too. Huge screens holding dynamic ads the likes of which he’d never imagined, streets that were both cleaner and dirtier than they had been before, endless tourists, signs on storefronts in languages he’d never even heard of, shops he remembered which were still operating, shops full of things that hadn’t existed when he’d last been in New York…
It was a lot to take in.
Running and taking it in every single day helped make it more normal.
Beyond that four o’clock run, his life was really very boring. He preferred it that way – he knew his limits, and every time he saw an ad for some program or new-aged doohickie or, god help him, a sex toy (he would never be over that incident, and he didn’t think the team would ever let him live it down either), he got uncomfortably close to those limits.
His schedule usually went like this: every day he woke up and made himself presentable. He ate enough breakfast that even Thor would have commented on the size of his appetite, had he been present, then he milled around Stark’s convenient but ugly tower for a while before lunch rolled around and he ate yet more food.
He would be worried about gaining unnecessary weight, but if he ate any less, he started losing muscle with alarming speed. The Howling Commandos had been the best fed soldiers in the whole world during the war, all thanks to his metabolism.
After lunch, he milled around more. The milling took up most of the day, and could be spent either sinking into despair over the nonsense he read on the internet, working off the despair at the gym, or leaving the tower, which he refused to do unless ordered to.
Or until afternoon cartoons started playing on the ridiculously large television in his apartment, at which point he got off his ass, or got out of the gym, and ran.
He noticed new things every day on his run, but there was the air of routine even to that. For instance, every day at a certain stretch of road a few blocks south of Central Park, in part of the city that could’ve been yanked straight out of 1930, he would fall in step beside a fellow jogger, a tanned brunette woman with wireless headphones (such a sci-fi concept, his little nerd heart sang every time he saw them) snugly in place over her ears. They never spoke, though they’d taken to polite nods and wry smiles every time one or the other was a little late and had to run a little faster to catch up, and jogged at her pace until she turned down a street on the left. Some days he wanted to follow, or even just open his mouth and talk, but he never did. He liked his silent companion as she was, and imagined she felt the same.
Eventually, he would turn right down another street on his own, passing a uniformed schoolboy walking on the other side of the road and in the opposite direction. The kid, a teenager, would invariably smile and wave at him every day for no reason, or maybe just because he recognised him because he was there every day, and it was a small gesture that made Steve’s steps a little lighter for the next few minutes. It was nice to be recognised because he was a neighbour, instead of because of the suit he sometimes wore. It made the city feel more like home.
Today, however, proved different.
Tony had made a nuisance of himself around the shared commons of the tower that afternoon, so four o’clock become four-thirty by the time he got out the door. He ran with borderline superhuman speed, trying to make up time without making it obvious that he was, in fact, superhuman, but only managed to catch a glimpse of his running partner as she made her turn off. Quietly disappointed, he continued onwards at a normal pace just in time to find out where the smiling schoolkid ended his own trip every day.
Steve caught sight of him on the other side of the road, smiling on seeing him and grinning on being smiled at. He would have continued without much further thought, grateful just to have had at least that part of his routine uninterrupted, but then he spotted where the kid was headed and frowned. The boy removed his tie, pulled out his wallet, and walked into a clearly marked bar without so much as a shred of hesitation. Was he trying to buy himself a drink? Unlikely – he was young enough to be laughed out of the room – but it wasn’t the sort of place Steve thought a kid that age should be.
He ignored the very Bucky-esque voice in his head that pointedly reminded him of their childhood escapades, and turned to follow the boy into the bar – checking both ways before crossing the street because if one thing had remained constant in New York, it was that there were too many cars and no one could drive any of them halfway well.
The entryway was a dimly lit hall that hosted one staircase going down, one going up, and not much else. A door on his immediate left led to a large, much brighter room, filled with tables and chairs and a bar at the wall opposite the door.
When Steve took a step inside, the black (African American, he scolded himself) man behind the counter looked up from the huge tome propped against the bar top and smiled. “Welcome to the Dragon’s Tongue,” he said amiably, voice soft and flavoured with an English accent of some sort, “Come on in. Little early for a weeknight, but I don’t judge.”
“Ah, I’m-” Steve started, and then did as he’d been told and entered. The kid was nowhere to be seen, at least, which eased some of his concerns. Though where he’d gotten to if not the bar was also somewhat worrying.
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, stowing his book under the counter, leaning comfortably against the sideboard behind him, framed by the shelves of liquor that stretched up to the ceiling.
“Just a water, thanks. I was just curious, when I came in,” Steve said, part-polite and part-awkward. Alcohol was pointless for him anyway, and he was fairly sure you weren’t supposed to have it while you were exercising.
The barkeep nodded and pulled out a bottle from one of his many fridges. “You look like you’ve been running. Pass by here often?”
“Every day,” Steve admitted, “I, uh, actually came in because I saw a kid come in? I didn’t really know what to do, so I came in to make sure he wasn’t doing something… bad…” he trailed off as the barkeep grinned, the amused expression accompanying the tall glass of water that was placed before him.
“Crazy black hair, pale brown eyes, cute little button nose?”
“That’s him.”
“That would be my son; we live upstairs.”
“Ah,” Steve said, too embarrassed to say more. He focussed on his water instead for a moment, and blinked when a shot glass of pale green liquid was placed before him.
“On the house, for a first timer,” he was told, “I’m Harry, by the way. I own this place; had it for more than ten years now.”
“Steve,” he greeted, and accepted a firm handshake with all the dignity he had left. He glanced down at the little glass and asked, “What is this?”
Harry grinned. “Try it and I’ll tell you.”
Steve stared suspiciously at the almost-yellow liquid before throwing it back. The inside of his mouth and throat immediately set alight, and when he took a breath to cough he instead felt as though he’d been assaulted by an angry ice cube.
“What- what is that stuff?”
Harry pushed the glass of water back towards him with a grin that could really only be described as “shit-eating”.
“Loki’s Breath.”
Steve’s eyes narrowed immediately, but Harry only tutted at him in response.
“I named that drink a long time before his arse-holiness descended to start shit here on Earth. I’ve got liqueurs for Thor and Odin, too, and I mix a mean cocktail for Frigga.”
“So why is this one Loki’s Breath?”
“Loki’s traditionally portrayed in mythology as either half or full Jötunn – Frost Giant,” he said to Steve’s lost expression, “Big, icy people. But some people think he may have also been a god of fire or hearths. Depends on who you’re reading – there’s some arguments on the matter.”
“So hot and cold for both sides of him.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s a fickle asshole who tried to take over our planet even though his brother seems like a nice guy.”
“It’s a possibility.”
Harry grinned. “I stumbled on that formula accidentally. I’d forgotten a barrel of Jötunheimr in the back of my storeroom and when I tested to see if it was any good, I got that. Didn’t die, thought it’d be funny to name it after Loki, since he’s from Jötunheimr anyway. People keep buying shots of it and asking me to pour them down the sink since The Battle, which is a waste, but I suppose it’s better than them pouring it on the floor. Or setting it on fire. Had to ban that after some idiot nearly burned the place down.”
Steve nodded bemusedly and sipped his water. It sounded like something Clint would do; the man still habitually attached pictures of Loki’s face to the heads of his targets in the Tower’s range when he dropped by.
“Do you name many of your drinks after mythology?”
Harry nodded and pushed off the bar to gesture at the bottles behind him. “All of the ones I brew and bottle myself are named after myth, from all over the world. Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, Mesopotamian. I have different versions of Chinese myths, and a collection of creatures from Japan, because yokai are great source material. I have Native American stories, from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia. Hawaii will be with the Polynesian and Australasian stories when I get around to them. I’ve just started on India, but it’ll be a while before any of that is ready to crack open.”
Steve’s mind boggled a little as he realised that every bottle on the wall represented some facet of some culture’s mythology. If that was a fraction of the ones out there, and Harry had only just started on an entire subcontinent, he had a long way to go.
As he read the ornately decorated labels, he realised that he himself had a lot to learn. It was a big world, even if Manhattan sometimes felt too big for him these days.
“I have more under the counter, and some variant flavours,” Harry finished, “As well as the normal drinks for boring people.”
“How do you find the time?” Steve wondered, “That’s a lot of variety for one man to make, even in ten years, and you look too young to have been doing it for that much longer than that, no offence.”
“None taken. You don’t look half bad yourself, for a geriatric.”
Steve frowned. “You recognised me.”
Harry shrugged, unfazed, “I was in that bank that you dropped into, during The Battle, with all those other people. You saved them all that day.”
“Just doing my job.”
“I was a police officer for nearly two years before I decided that Hero-ing was a job better suited to anyone but me,” he said very seriously, eyes uncannily sharp. “What you did went well beyond anyone’s job description of law enforcement, or military, or whatever it is you do these days. Trust me.”
Steve hadn’t thought of a response before a call from the hallway interrupted them.
“Dad! What’s the function of sowilo when you tilt it forty degrees to the left and- oh. Hi,” the boy finished lamely. Steve took a moment to examine the teen, and found that beyond the hair there didn’t seem to be that much of his father in him. He was markedly paler – Steve had assumed he was Caucasian – with a heart-shaped face, the hints of dimples on either side of his mouth, and eyes as eerily golden as his father’s were green.
“Hi there,” he replied, smiling.
The boy nodded back with one side of his mouth ticked up, and then continued to the bar at a trot. “Anyway, one book said that it increases power, but the one that Nan gave me said that it’s for foresight and clears thought. Do you know?”
“What’s the context?” Harry asked, holding out his hand for the papers his son was waving around. Steve watched, silent and utterly lost, as the man read the sheet on top and smiled slightly. “When it’s used in this sequence, tilting it doesn’t change anything at all.”
“It's a trick question?” he exclaimed, “That’s not fair!”
Harry laughed. “It’s Runes, Teddy. Every symbol has a dozen meanings, even when they’re right way up and all on their own.”
Teddy grumbled as he took the sheets back and glared at them, practically stomping back up the stairs to the apartment above.
Harry smiled indulgently and with obvious fondness at his son’s tantrum.
“Takes after his mother?” Steve wondered lightly.
Harry took his empty water glass and refilled it with a grin. “You have no idea. If I’d known he was going to get all moody when he hit puberty, I would have left him back in England; I had enough of that when I was a kid.”
“I heard that!” the teen in question yelled from upstairs.
“Do your homework or I’ll flirt with your history teacher next parent-teacher meeting!” Harry hollered back. There was a terrified squeak, and then silence.
Steve fished for a topic as Harry fiddled with bottles, and was promptly saved from his failure to make small talk about by another shot glass appearing on the scene.
“Thor’s Hammer; may as well try you on all the stuff you know before I start trying to explain Chinese snake demons.”
Steve stared.
“They were nice demons. They use the word demon differently in China, I think. Drink the shot, mate.”
Steve decided not to ask and picked up the glass. “Bottom’s up.”
For a moment he felt nothing, and then there was a tingling feeling racing from his stomach all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes – almost like he’d been zapped by something low voltage. He shuddered through the strange feeling, and wondered how a drink had the power to do that to a person.
“Magic,” Harry grinned, and Steve coughed as he realised he'd asked the question aloud.
“Magic? Really?”
“Would I lie?”
Steve didn’t know, but he also found that it didn’t really bother him.
So he remained at the pub for another two hours, occasionally interrupted by a query from Teddy, and even as the after-work crowd started trickling in and actually paying for their drinks while Harry gleefully placed shot after free shot in front of him.
“You make a great drink tester, I don’t even have to worry about you having too much!”
By the time he was ready to leave, he felt he’d racked up a fair tab, but on trying to pay it he got a stern glare and a wave.
“I’m not taking your money, just no. Come back sometime, though – bring a friend. I’d love to hear about what you lot get up to in that tower.”
And as Steve made his way back to said tower, he couldn’t help the spring in his step. Harry had only mentioned his identity all of twice, and Steve hadn’t been expected to be anything he wasn’t for the whole visit. It was good to be Just Steve to someone after spending so long as a symbol.
He decided that adding the occasional visit to the Dragon’s Tongue to his routine couldn’t hurt.