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“You sure about this, Cap?”
Fury says it like he says everything–-with just a hint of a threat. Steve thinks, at the end of the day, that Fury’s heart is in the right place, but Steve isn’t comfortable with the way he justifies things. Once upon a time, the bad guys were the ones who made weapons with alien technology. There has to be a line, and he’s not sure that Nick Fury is acquainted with it.
“I’m sure,” Steve says.
“We could really use you. There are a lot of crazies out there.”
Ah. Now for the guilt. He didn’t expect SHIELD to accept his choice with any particular grace, and tried to anticipate every argument Fury would use on him. So far, he’s been right on the money.
“Seems like you have plenty of people to fight those fights,” Steve replies. A whole team, in fact.
“They’re not team players,” Fury says. “Not unless they have someone to pull them together. You’ve seen that.” When Steve appears unmoved, he goes on. “Agent Coulson believed in you, and he was right.”
It hurts to think of Phil, and Fury’s banking on that. At one time, Steve might have let that get to him. But in this gleaming future, he is learning.
“I’m glad I didn’t let him down.”
Fury shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re just going to walk away and let good men like Phil take the hits.”
“I’m going to walk away from an organization whose values don’t match my own, and heal from my own hits,” Steve says, keeping his anger in check, because he won’t give Fury the satisfaction. “That’s what soldiers are supposed to do nowadays, isn’t it?”
Fury stops just short of snorting, and stares at Steve. It’s clear that he thought Steve would be an easy target, and that he would be able to talk him out of officially separating from SHIELD without much effort. Steve can see him pondering. Changing strategies in his mind.
“Peggy Carter built this. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” he tries. And yeah, if Steve hadn’t already visited Peggy to try to make sense of everything, that one might have worked.
“Does it mean anything to you?” Steve fires back. He’s got some nerve, invoking her. “I’ve been to visit Peggy, and she told me that I need to live my life, and sometimes the best we can do is start over. Now, are we done here?”
“We are never going to be done, Captain Rogers.” Fury’s voice rises. “You have a responsibility–-”
Steve stands up and walks out. He has nothing else to say. He never signed a contract; Fury isn’t his employer or commanding officer, and there’s no contempt here other than the interpersonal kind for a person who has done nothing but try to manipulate him since he woke up. Fury follows him into the hallway.
“You know this means you’ll get no more help from SHIELD,” he calls out. “No apartment, no lawyer to help sort out your back pay. You aren’t even legally alive yet. You’re heading out there with nothing.”
“Good thing I’ve had nothing before,” Steve snaps over his shoulder.
“I give it a week,” Fury says, condescension thick as molasses in his voice. “Then you’ll be back.”
Steve supposes no one ever told Nick Fury how obstinate and stubborn the man behind Captain America could be. And how would they, anyway? Other than Peggy, they’re all dead. None of them know him. No one knows him.
He realized very quickly that this future and its people don’t want Steve. They want Cap. Trouble is, the two can’t really be separated, and Steve is not a blind rule-follower. It was one of the reasons he was chosen. The military didn’t appreciate it then, and it’s clear that they appreciate it even less now.
If Fury had bothered to do any research at all, he would have known that above all else, Steve Rogers hates bullies.
He steps out the door, and he doesn’t look back.
There is still some money on his MetroCard, so he can try to get back to the apartment before SHIELD does. It had crossed his mind that they might be surveilling him after Fury’s little deception, and he knows he’s right when there are two agents stationed outside his door. He uses the camera on the mobile phone to see them from the stairwell. Steve goes right back down the stairs. There isn’t much in the apartment anyway.
He would have liked to keep the compass, and the shield. A change of clothes would have been nice. But he’s not going to beg those men standing at the door. Fury wouldn’t have sent anyone that would cave to compassion.
He walks, the movement helping to put some kind of order to his racing thoughts. He’s not new to this; he wasn’t lying to Fury on that front. Ten months after his mother’s death he was put out of their apartment. Really, he couldn’t blame the landlord. Steve could only make money to pay rent when he was well enough to work, and he was rarely well after her passing. His lungs were bad, and his mind even worse.
Back then there were shelters, but they weren’t a place you wanted to go unless you were truly desperate. There were the flophouses on the Bowery, if you could scrape together a little money each day. Steve was lucky enough to be able to rely on the church when there was nowhere else; his mother was devout, and kind, and the priests and nuns that had known her wouldn’t turn her son out on the street. He slept on a pew more than once.
He has a feeling he won’t get the same reception at the church now. The flophouses are gone, gone just like everything else. The shelters…maybe they’re better, but Fury will probably have them watched.
His feet have carried him to the park. Steve sits and weighs his options.
As it stands, he has eighteen dollars in his pocket, twenty four on his MetroCard, and his wits. He considers keeping the phone they gave him, but even two weeks of limited understanding of modern technology is enough for him to know they can track him with it. He’s better off selling it.
An hour later, Steve asks a disinterested teenager at a store to help him erase and reset the phone, and then sells it to a random man on the street for two hundred dollars. It’s probably less than it’s worth, if the man’s eagerness is anything to go by, but even two hundred dollars seems patently absurd to Steve.
So. Two hundred and eighteen dollars. He buys a warmer jacket, a small blanket, a hat, gloves, and a backpack at a thrift store. He has to be ready to rough it.
That plus dinner brings him to one sixty two. Steve briefly considers buying a bus or train ticket to somewhere warmer. It would be smart to leave, in case SHIELD tries to find some sort of way to press charges against him to force his hand. But no. They don’t get to take New York from him. Foreign as it is, it’s still home, and he can survive here better than anywhere.
Things have changed, but not everything. There is still work to be had for cash in hand. It takes a few days, but eventually Steve finds a restaurant willing to pay him under the table to bus and wash dishes. They don’t ask any questions. He keeps his head down and works.
At least now he’s healthy. That keeps his income steady. Back in the day, there were always interruptions, times when he had to scrounge because he was too ill to work and people got fed up with him. Taking art commissions helped; those one-time deals kept him afloat. The temptation to go out and see if any of the signs or storefronts he painted still exist is strong, but he can’t bring himself to do it.
The good thing about working seven days a week, he reflects, is that it doesn’t leave one much time to think. Or wallow. He just has to keep going.
So he does.
Steve gets into a routine. Work, get cleaned up at the $9.99 a month, 24 hour gym, find somewhere to steal some sleep, repeat. It’s familiar because it’s not all that different from the rhythm of a soldier’s life. His whole existence fits in one pack, and the mission is to survive. It’s only been a few months, no matter what the calendar says; his body hasn’t forgotten.
The hardest part, just as it was back then, is not always having enough to eat. This body can’t tolerate it the way his original body could. It needs too many calories. That’s why he never actually exercises at the gym he pays for, even though he likes running. It would just make him hungrier.
Mariano, the line cook stationed closest to him, hears his stomach growl one too many times and starts duplicating orders on purpose. Steve tells him to knock it off before he gets in trouble–-most days there’s a staff meal and he doesn’t need extra no matter how his stomach protests–-but Mariano just laughs and tells him to eat because he’s not going to pick him up off the floor if he passes out.
He has a point; a kitchen isn’t a good place to faint. There are no soft landings. Steve shuts up and shares whatever comes his way with the busboys and wait staff.
That isn’t the only way they take care of him. They include him even though he keeps mostly to himself. Pull smiles out of him when it feels like that should be impossible. The only expectation in return is that he shows up and does his part. In the kitchen, he learns a bit of Spanish, and plenty about cooking. He learns an awful lot, too, about modern social norms and pop culture.
It’s almost enough to make him feel like he belongs.
The weather is getting warmer, and he’s getting close to having the means to rent a room from a cousin of one of the other guys in the kitchen. He’s got a good thing going. And then, when he goes out to bus a table one day, Clint Barton is there.
His eyes follow Steve around the restaurant. It’s not a coincidence. Clint is there for him, and he doesn’t seem inclined to go anywhere. He nurses a drink at the bar until lunch rush dies, and Steve knows he has to go out there and talk to him.
He tells the bartender to take a break, and Patrick is only too happy to do so since he smokes like a chimney and can barely make it two hours without a cigarette. Steve brings the clean glassware out and parks himself near Clint to restock.
“Did Fury send you?” he asks, over the clinking of glass. He’s not sure what to expect. Sure, he was part of a team with Clint, and he definitely respects his talents, but he doesn’t really know him.
“Good to see you, too,” Clint says, with a half-smile. He looks a little rough, like he had too much to drink last night. His hair is sticking up and there’s a stain on his shirt. Steve remembers that Clint is still getting over being mind-controlled by an alien psychopath and lets himself soften a bit.
“Sorry,” he says, and sets a glass of water in front of Clint. He should probably drink that instead of whatever whiskey is in his other glass.
“I get it,” Clint shrugs. “I know it didn’t end on a high note with Nick.”
That is an understatement.
“So, did he send you or not?”
“No. Tony, Nat and I tracked you down.”
“Why?”
Clint nudges the whiskey away and sips the water. “For a wellness check.” He drains the glass, and Steve tops him off. “You’re better at hiding than we thought.”
“I spent over a year behind enemy lines. It wasn’t just throwing a frisbee.”
“So we learned,” Clint nods.
“Well, you found me,” Steve says, irritated for a reason he can’t define. It’s partially that he’s hungry, but there’s something else. A feeling of…intrusion, almost. He knows he should have tried to contact the rest of the Avengers somehow, to say goodbye if nothing else, but he couldn’t chance it if he wanted to stay off SHIELD’s radar. And now Clint is here in broad daylight, casually disrupting his hard won anonymity and stability. “I’m fine,” he bites off.
“You’re sleeping in the park and you eat one meal a day. You’re not fine.”
“I don’t see how it’s your business.”
“Steve,” Clint says, tone gentle. “We want to help. That’s all.”
He understands why Clint is the one they sent. Steve wouldn’t have trusted Natasha because of her loyalty to Fury, and he and Tony are like oil and water, though it got better by the end of their Avengers run. Clint is loyal to Fury, too, but much easier to read than Natasha.
“Are you getting help?” Steve asks, not making eye contact. SHIELD talked a big game when he thawed out, about therapy and trauma and there being help for shell shock now, but the reality was different. What Clint went through–-Steve has seen guys crumble over less.
“Yeah. I’m on leave. Therapy twice a week, R&R the rest of the time.”
“Good.”
Clint is quiet for a while.
“You know, Nat has a theory. She says that people who are helpers are often really bad at accepting help for themselves.” Clint fiddles with the black straw in his water. “Especially if they’ve been alone most of their lives. It creates a kind of…hyper-independence.”
“Thanks for the reminder that I’m alone. I’d almost forgotten,” Steve grumbles to the rows of liquor bottles. There isn’t much bite to it. One of the hardest things for him in the early days of the Howling Commandos was just letting other people play their parts. He’d spent so long after his mother died going it alone that it became automatic to rely on no one but himself. But out there in the war, he couldn’t possibly do everything on his own, and asking for help wasn’t viewed as a weakness. It was necessary. That was what a team was, and a good leader had to know his own limits and let others shine in their roles. That was the only way to get it done.
He has most definitely reverted back to that old Steve Rogers these last few months. The camaraderie of the restaurant has helped, but it doesn’t extend past the door. Damn Natasha and her perceptiveness.
“The point is,” Clint says, “I know it’s hard to ask for help, especially when you aren’t sure who you can trust. So I’m here to tell you that I have an apartment in Brooklyn. Nat is the only one who knows about it. It’s not bugged. And we would really like for you to stay there, instead of being out in the cold.”
Steve sighs, pride and habit rearing twin snakes in his chest. “Clint, I can’t pay you.”
“I don’t give one single solitary shit about money. We’ll figure it out when you get your back pay.”
Steve shakes his head. He gave up on the idea of the back pay a while ago; he’ll never be able to afford a lawyer, and it’ll bring too much attention.
Clint sets an envelope on the bar, and cash to pay his tab next to it. “Think about it. Please. We just want to take care of our own.” He doesn’t say anything else; he puts his jacket on and makes his way out without looking back.
Steve sighs again, and picks up the envelope.
We just want to take care of our own.
He would have done this for any of the Howlies, and they would have done it for him. But they…they were actually friends. He isn’t friends with the Avengers.
“Yo,” Patrick the bartender says, bringing a waft of cigarette smoke with him as he returns, “do you think that was Hawkeye? He looked like him, right?”
“Maybe,” Steve shrugs, with a smile.
“I bet it was him. An Avenger! That is so cool.”
“So cool,” Steve agrees, and heads back to the kitchen to hide for the rest of the night.
He manages a few days without checking out the apartment. But luck is not on his side the fourth night; he doesn’t get out of work until almost 3 in the morning, and that’s much too late for the church gate to still be unlocked. There are people in his usual spot in the park already. There’s always the subway; he’s ridden a few lines from one end to the other to escape the cold and catch a nap before. But he needs more than a nap; he’s wiped out, and due back at the restaurant at 11.
If he was smart, he would let himself fall into one of the casual relationships that seem to happen among the other employees and their friends; more than one person at the restaurant has made a pass at him. It might be nice to be touched, and share someone’s warm bed every now and then. But Steve doesn’t think he’s ready for that yet.
For tonight, though, he either doesn’t sleep, sleeps somewhere he isn’t sure is safe…or he tries Clint’s apartment.
He’s too fucking tired to play the head games with himself. He gets on the subway and goes. One night won’t do any harm; he’ll figure out some way to pay Clint back.
The building ain’t high society, and he is glad of it. He can hear television and voices and babies crying–-signs of mundane life. The door sticks, the mattress is lumpy, and there are definitely mice in the walls. It feels familiar, and Steve falls asleep so fast that he’s disoriented when he wakes up six hours later to a few pinpricks of light filtering through the holes in the blackout shades. He finds the bathroom, takes a piss, and goes back to sleep. His watch will wake him up forty minutes before he’s due at the restaurant.
It’s tempting to just stay in the bed, but no. He doesn’t think John would fire him, but Steve isn’t going to jeopardize his income when he’s just starting to get his feet under him. He takes a minute to look around the apartment before he goes.
It’s a crash pad. The only thing in the fridge is a box of baking soda, and the fruit bowl on the counter is full of bottle caps. The cabinets yield an enormous container of coffee, but there don’t seem to be any mugs, or cups of any kind. In a more pointed sweep, Steve finds three guns, a taser, and two knives. Those are definitely Natasha’s.
He sighs, staring at the paper that was folded around the keys in the envelope Clint gave him. It’s a list of phone numbers–-different from the ones he had programmed in his old phone. Private lines that SHIELD can’t monitor.
They really do just want to help.
He takes everything with him and locks the door behind him. He’ll decide tonight if he’s going to come back.
There are no TVs in the restaurant, something Steve is endlessly thankful for. He can usually get a feel for what’s going on, anyway, because people talk about whatever is happening (or not happening) and watch clips on their phones. That’s how he figures out that they’re talking about Captain America today.
SHIELD has offered nothing on the identity of the man who wore the suit and fought with the Avengers during the Chitauri invasion. Acknowledging that it’s the real Steve Rogers would mean the world would know he’s alive, and Steve would have recourse for legal matters. Fury doesn’t want that. So they just keep saying No comment.
That, of course, whips curiosity to a frenzy. It seems that most people don’t believe it could be the original Captain America brought back to life, and that’s good, but Steve is still seeing much more of his own face than he’s comfortable with. Granted, he’s either wearing the cowl or covered in dirt and grime in all of those images, but it still makes him nervous that someone will eventually recognize him.
And what will he say then? He’s not sure.
Lately the same questions keep repeating in his mind: Did I do the right thing? Am I letting people down?
He does feel guilty. He sees the news on people’s phones, or the television monitors that seem to be everywhere. People are afraid after the invasion.
His job used to be to give people something to believe in, in the face of strife and evil and pain. He used to have a say in how to protect them. He gave that up when he walked away, but Steve isn’t certain how much of a voice SHIELD would have given him, anyway. They can’t shut Tony up, and Thor can just leave, but the others all stand to lose something if they step out of line. Fury made it clear that Steve wasn’t any different, no matter how much he’s already lost.
He can’t shake it–-that feeling of wrongness. It was there from the moment he woke up, and not just because they tried to deceive him. Something is off about SHIELD.
He doesn’t blame Fury. He’s met some others who spent too much time out there, right up in the face of humanity’s ugliness. It changes people. Add aliens into the mix, and it’s easy to see how they might blow right past their own lines in the sand.
Steve isn’t sure where his lines are in this changed world, and there’s no way he can be sure he’s helping anyone until he gets his bearings. Thankfully, there are other people who can keep an eye on things while he figures it out. Steve isn’t the only one anymore.
Sometimes, that’s the sole thing that keeps the guilt from eating him alive.
“Hey,” Jamarcus says, when Steve is on break. “I don’t want to hassle you, but do you think you’re going to have the money for the room anytime soon?”
“Probably,” Steve says, frowning as he does some mental math. He would have had it already, but he has a serious problem with keeping his money in his pocket around someone who seems to need it more than him. He knows he has to stop buying folks sandwiches and groceries and diapers, so he can buy himself sandwiches and groceries (thankfully not diapers). It’s just really fucking hard. “Why? What’s up?”
Jamarcus looks nervous. “It’s just that my cousin, his best friend broke up with his girl and he needs a place to crash. But I know we promised it to you.”
He’s been very aware of the fact that the offer probably came with an expiration date. But now, right after Clint’s visit, it kind of feels like a sign. And like a decision made.
“It’s okay,” Steve says, nodding to himself. “He can have it.”
“You sure, man?”
“Yeah. Tell Qadir I really appreciate the offer.”
“I will,” Jamarcus says, all relief. He didn’t want to leave Steve high and dry. Good man. “Thanks for being so chill about it.”
It’s better this way, he realizes, as he locks the many locks that are almost certainly Natasha’s contribution behind him. Living with other people would put those people in danger, if SHIELD or anyone else ever came knocking. Here, he’s alone, and he would almost certainly have warning and be able to clear out so no one got hurt.
He sighs and sets his shopping bags down. If he’s staying, he needs cups. And non-plastic silverware. And something to put in the fridge other than baking soda. The dollar store and bodega were good for all of that, to the tune of $38.
He plugs in the hotplate and makes himself ramen noodles, and then he goes to bed and sleeps for eight uninterrupted hours for the first time since he thawed out.
Steve sends Clint a text from a computer at the library the next morning.
It’s Steve. Thank you.
He still doesn’t feel great about not being able to pay Clint. Steve thinks about resorting to Depression tactics of storing little bits of money around the apartment for Clint to find; eventually, it would add up. Not to anything close to what this apartment would go for in this time, but better than nothing. He thinks it would probably amuse Clint and Natasha, too.
He nods to himself. He’ll rework his budget and see if he can set aside twenty dollars a week. Maybe more if he can swing it, but he doubts it. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about the money for the room, he should probably get a phone. It’s ridiculous that the phone will cost twice what the room would have, or more; Steve finds the cost of the little machines to be personally offensive. But he has to admit the smartphones are pretty amazing devices.
It’ll take a few months. Maybe after that, he can think about asking John for a day off.
He must be doing something right, because two weeks later one of the servers doesn’t show up. It’s busy, so John tells Steve to change his shirt and get out there with a notepad. With his memory, Steve doesn’t need it, but he does need help with the computer system. Thankfully, the other servers are very patient, and by the end of lunch he pretty much has it down.
That other server never comes back, and John declares that Steve is her replacement. It’s more front-facing than he wanted–-interacting with so many people every day–-but he makes far more in tips than he did working in the back, because this is something he’s good at. Steve spent all those months on the road with the USO, schmoozing with people, charming them into buying war bonds. He hasn’t flexed that muscle in a while, but it comes back easy as anything.
It isn’t the real Steve–-never was, because real Steve wouldn’t bite his tongue when confronted with a rude person–-but it is effective. He has enough to buy the phone well before he expected to, and the pay-as-you-go plan to go with it. It’s a bit complicated because he doesn’t have a bank account, but he manages with cash. At least now he has an address. Sooner or later someone would’ve figured out that the one he’s been writing on forms doesn’t exist anymore, in anywhere other than his memories.
He asks Mariano to take him to his barber for a more modern haircut. And then, with some reluctance, Steve lets his beard grow in. Many men seem to wear beards now, but it just wasn’t all that popular where he comes from, and it’s taking some work to get over that. But the less he looks like that soot-covered, flag-emblazoned man in the news coverage, the better, if he’s going to be waiting on half of New York, and a bunch of tourists besides.
He puts the three phone numbers Clint gave him into his phone. He doesn’t call or text, but they’re there. In case of emergency, he tells himself. That’s all he needs from them. They’ve already done enough.
Steve asks for a day off, and John gives him one and a half. Steve has been working seven days a week for almost nine months. All of a sudden he has Sunday evenings and all day Monday to himself.
He feels equal parts intensely guilty that he’s not doing something, and intensely relieved that he can get a little rest, not to mention time to catch up. There’s still so much he doesn’t know about this time and world he’s awakened to. With his phone and the library, which gave him a library card even though he doesn’t have an ID, he can try to comprehend what he’s missed.
It’s a lot, and much of it isn’t pretty. He spends many hours on the lumpy mattress frowning up at the ceiling. It starts to get to him, and Steve knows he needs to slow down. Do something else. Something enjoyable. It’s been all work, all the time since he woke up.
The next time some of the cooks and servers are going out after work, Steve goes with them. They’re surprised but delighted, and it is fun to goof around and have a few beers. Of course, as the night wears on they all descend into varying levels of drunk while Steve stays stone-cold sober. He makes sure everyone finds their way home, gets himself a dollar slice on his walk back, and eats it on the stoop while the sun comes up.
It was nice, he decides, even if he can’t feel that carefree buzz anymore. Nice to laugh and feel like part of a group, nice to have an arm slung around him. Nice to see Taffy the hostess kiss her girlfriend and nobody bat an eye about it.
Sometimes, when he’s up to his eyeballs in those books or documentaries, it’s easy to feel like the world has just gotten worse and worse. But the problems aren’t new; they’re just different, and people are by and large the same as they ever were. There are some good things out there, too. The accomplishments of science and medicine in the last seventy years are incredible, and the progress socially, while still far from perfect, is encouraging.
Maybe one day, if Steve wanted to kiss another fella in public, he could.
He goes to a Mets game next. It is a little lonely sitting by himself, but the nosebleed seats feel like home, and it’s a beautiful day. Baseball is mostly the same, too.
Thankfully it isn’t a boring game. The Mets eke out a win by one run, and Steve leaves the stadium with a crush of happy people, a little sunburned and full of hotdogs and cheap beer.
Then, when he gets home, for reasons not understood by anyone, let alone him, he cries like a baby until he can’t feel anything at all.
The last thing he does for his sanity is buy a sketchbook. He waited too long, probably, but this is one thing he knew he had to shell out some money for, if he wanted quality supplies. Besides, he hadn’t felt particularly creative after he woke up, and it was all he could do to get through his long days when he first struck out on his own. He probably wouldn’t have done anything but stare at the page (or fall asleep on it) back then.
Now he can sneak an hour or two of sketching in every couple days. Steve is happy to find that it still works; his mind still sinks into the act of creation and everything else fades away. Even so, he knows instantly that it’s Natasha when she sits down next to him on the bench.
She’s done her best to make herself bland and forgettable. She is neither, but Steve appreciates the effort.
“Hi, Steve,” she says, like they meet like this every day.
“Natasha,” he acknowledges. He can feel her studying his drawing of the people (and dogs) who are having fun in the fountain across from them. He was thinking of strolling through later; it’s a hot one today.
“You’re good at that.”
Steve shrugs. “I went to art school.”
“Steve Rogers, iceberg,” she comments. “What other secrets lurk beneath the water?”
“It’s not a secret. My enrollment was public record. It’s just not what people are interested in.” He closes the sketchbook. “What is this? Another wellness check?”
“Well, you’re not the most communicative.”
“Didn’t realize that was a condition.”
She holds his eyes for a moment, as unreadable as ever. “It’s not.”
“Okay.” He takes a breath. He doesn’t know why he feels so prickly when he’s around them. Maybe because he knows, deep down, that things with SHIELD aren’t over. “I do appreciate it,” he makes himself say.
“I know.”
It’s funny; Natasha is the real iceberg here, by a mile.
“You can tell Tony and Clint that I’m fine. Really. Got a roof over my head, a job, food. I even get to have fun once in a while.” It’s not perfect; there are still lots of things Steve can’t do, on account of not actually being alive or having any documents. It’s still paycheck to paycheck, and some weeks are better than others. But he knows how to live like this. It’s second nature. “You should tell Fury, too,” he adds. “I’m sure it’ll burn him right up.”
She frowns. “Nick knows he took the wrong approach with you. He regrets it.”
Steve laughs out loud. “I’m sure he does.” Does Fury always send Natasha to make his apologies, or is she taking it upon herself? He’ll never know.
“Believe it or not, he has everyone’s best interests in mind.”
He considers her. For the first time, it occurs to Steve that maybe she can’t feel what’s off about SHIELD because her former employers were so much worse. This is going straight for Natasha. These are the good guys, in the eyes of someone who has never actually worked for good guys.
Steve wants to say that to her, but something tells him it wouldn’t be well received. No doubt many of the people who work for SHIELD, Natasha included, are good people. It’s just…who on Earth would greenlight weapons development of the same kind that nearly destroyed the world in 1945, and think it made them any better than Red Skull?
“How are you?” Steve asks. This can be a two-way wellness check, like it was with Clint.
She smiles, just a little. “Clint told me you’d ask. I’m fine. In D.C., mostly, running ops with Alpha Strike.”
He lets her silence hang in the late summer air, and they both chuckle when a soaking wet dog shakes its coat out all over a group of children, who squeal like it is the greatest thing ever to happen in the world.
“It’s kind of dull, actually,” she continues. “Most of them have no sense of humor, and Rumlow keeps hitting on me.”
“Break his fingers,” Steve suggests.
“I’m afraid he’d like that. He’s one of those ‘order through pain’ weirdos.”
Steve blinks, not sure that he heard her correctly. “Wait, what?”
“Oh, you know. The type that thinks pain and suffering builds character. Makes you pure.”
He takes hold of her arm, gently, and that finally gets her eyes back on him. “Natasha, those words–-that exact phrase–-that’s Hydra ideology.”
She shakes her head. “Hydra is long gone, Steve. You saw to that.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Hydra might be gone, but their ideas are still out there. And if someone that works at SHIELD is spouting that garbage? He’s bad news.”
Natasha blinks at him. “He has an exemplary service record, Steve. I think he’s just a creep. I’ve met a lot of them.”
No doubt she has. Nonetheless, he can’t get his hackles to go down. It’s the first tangible thing (other than the weapons made with the Tesseract) that lends any weight to his gut feeling.
“Be careful around him,” he says. “And anyone who thinks like him.”
She shrugs her arm out of his grip. “I think you’re seeing ghosts. Might want to talk to your therapist about that.”
It’s a bit of a low blow, since they both know he can’t afford one. It occurs to him that she might have been hurt by him leaving; maybe it felt like a rejection of their strange little team. It wasn’t, but she doesn’t know him well enough to be sure of that.
“Oh, is it pathological to want to look out for your teammates now?” he returns, nudging her shoulder with his.
Natasha stands down at the obvious (and accurate) dig; she’s the one who came here to check on him. “You know,” she muses, “you’re pretty smart.”
“I’m not sure why people are always surprised by that.” He didn’t get picked for the job because of his muscles, after all.
“It’s good,” she says. “Keeps people guessing.” She sits and thinks for a while longer, and then nods to herself. “I’ll look into it.”
“Good.”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“I would love for it to be nothing.” Steve’s eyes narrow. “Still think you should break his fingers, either way.”
Natasha grins. “I just might.” She gets up, fixes her sunglasses, and says over her shoulder, “Bye, Steve.”
Steve just sighs. Does this mean, God help him, that Tony is next? He might need a tranquilizer for that.
“Oh, hey,” the cashier at the art supply store (Siena? No, it’s Sierra) says, the next time Steve is in to buy charcoal. “You work in a restaurant, right?”
She has a good memory; Steve had mentioned it once, in passing. “Yeah,” he nods, wondering where the conversation will go. Sometimes people ask for freebies or an in for a table on a busy night, or just an honest review of the food. On other occasions, they take it as an opportunity to air grievances, which Steve has little patience for, because he knows the folks who make the food and they’re all fucking brilliant.
“The Art Students League offers discounted Monday courses for people in the industry. I wasn’t sure if you knew that.”
“I didn’t,” he says, surprised at how thoughtful it was of her to tell him. “That sounds great. Thank you.”
“No problem,” she says, with a smile that is equal parts shy and elated. She can’t quite make eye contact with him.
Ah.
Steve knows, objectively, that he is easy on the eyes. The attention that came with the serum has not let up. The beard, in particular, really seems to do it for people in this time. That’s still hard to wrap his brain around, since he would have been told he looked like a hobo and to shave it off in the forties. In any case, this isn’t the first time someone has had a crush on him. Nor is it the first time he’s considered acting on it.
Sierra is attractive, and kind, and talented. So are many of the people who have flirted with him in the last year. But they all seem so young, and so rooted in this time. Sierra can’t be more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and technically, he isn’t that much older, in years actually spent awake, but it feels like a gulf that can’t be crossed. Or maybe he’s just afraid to try.
He smiles at her, takes his charcoals, and heads home.
He looks up the Monday course offerings. There are three, but two are graphic design-centric and he absolutely cannot afford a computer or tablet right now. He’s not sure he’d be any good at it, anyway. Thankfully, the third course is basic life drawing. It’ll be a little tight, finance-wise, but he can swing it.
Steve figures that if he can get back into art, it will go a long way toward helping him cope (always did back then), and he might be able to supplement his income by selling drawings and paintings. He doesn’t expect anything substantial, but an extra twenty or thirty bucks is always welcome.
He signs up the next Monday, and for the first time in a long time, he has something to look forward to.
Steve is a little nervous, going in. He knows he’s better at drawing than most, but he never had enough time to feel confident in his art after his hands - his whole body - changed. He had bigger fish to fry. As the war dragged on, he would go weeks without ever opening his journal, which doubled as a sketchbook. There were definitely times he wanted to, but if he had downtime, he learned early on that he had to use it to sleep.
He’s been practicing, but it will be nice to have an instructor to tell him where he’s going wrong, and what he can do to fix it. It’s good to get back to basics. To something other than fighting. He knew some of what he was getting into when he signed up, but not all of it, and maybe he never realized the only time he wasn’t fighting, even before the serum, was when he let art carry him away.
All he wanted back then was the chance; he didn’t think too far beyond that. He was aching for meaning, and so tired of being told he couldn’t do things. And yet, art is what he would have done with his life if the SSR had never taken him. It feels right to return to it. Like a second chance.
That feeling solidifies as he files into the classroom with the others. He picks his spot and sets up. It’s a small class, twelve spots total, and he definitely recognizes at least one woman from the industry commute home (or to the bar) after restaurants close. There’s a platform for the model or subject in the front, which is unoccupied so far.
The instructor, a ponytailed man named Robert, introduces himself and talks about the structure of the course. It’s an all-levels class. Some of the attendees have never drawn before, and some have experience. Each Monday they’ll do a short lecture portion on technique and then spend the last 60 to 90 minutes actually drawing.
They introduce themselves next; hi I’m Steve, I did some art school a long time ago but I’m very out of practice. Then it’s straight into lecture, and Steve likes Robert immediately. He’s clearly passionate about both art and teaching, and knows how to critique gently, in a way that makes the most inexperienced among them want to come back.
As for Steve himself, Robert watches him for a few moments, and says, “Relax your shoulders. And your wrist. You’re too serious.”
Steve is used to having a pretty big weight on those shoulders. Robert is right, though; nobody’s life depends on whether or not Steve can execute this still life. He takes a breath and tries to remember how he used to do this. Curled up on the fire escape, or pretzeled into whatever position was comfortable for his back. He doesn’t have to worry about that now, but it’s funny how this perfect body didn’t magically give him the perfect life he always imagined when he was young and sick and in pain.
He tries his best to relax, and it’s no surprise that Mondays become his favorite day.
It isn’t until four Mondays later that there is an actual model. He’s there after their post-lecture break, still mostly covered in a dark blue robe. He’s attractive, but it’s his hair that Steve immediately notices; it’s cut and combed like a fella from the forties. Steve can almost smell the pomade.
Things do come back around, it seems.
Steve is so distracted by his hair (and, alright, his face, he has a nice face, he’s a bit of a knockout actually) that he didn’t notice that the left sleeve of the robe is empty. Not until he shrugs it off and takes his spot on the platform.
He sits and gets comfortable like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Steve recognizes the set of defiance in his posture, though. He recognizes it very well. It was a tactic he used once upon a time: I dare you to feel sorry for me.
Steve puts charcoal to paper and immediately gets lost in trying to capture it. The model’s lean muscles, his precipitous cheekbones, the purposeful, languid boredom of his posture. He has no concept of time or anything other than the drawing until Robert touches his shoulder and startles him out of it.
“I like the cigarette,” Robert chuckles, aware of how far away Steve was. “It’s a nice touch.”
Steve flushes a little. Something about the pose called out for smoke coiling in the air. It’s still a bit strange to Steve how few people smoke nowadays. He doesn’t miss it; it was hell on his asthma. Nevertheless, it was an ingrained part of life, and he wasn’t prepared for it to be gone along with everything else.
“You finally relaxed,” Robert continues, smiling.
Maybe he relaxed a little too much; everyone else is already gone or in the process of packing up. The model patiently stayed still for Steve even though time was up. A little smile plays at his lips as he reaches for his robe.
“I used to…really be able to lose myself in it,” Steve gets out, around a very confusing jumble of emotions. Been real lost in other things, lately.
“Feels good, doesn’t it.”
Steve nods and tries to pretend that collecting his supplies is the same as collecting himself. It has to be, for now.
“Take your time,” Robert says, like he knows.
Steve does, grateful for the time and the indulgence.
As luck would have it, he walks out at the same time as the model. He’s dressed in black joggers, a ripped acid-wash sweatshirt, and slip-on shoes that somehow go perfectly with the whole ensemble. He looks effortless, although Steve knows from breaking his arm as a kid that nothing is effortless when you have one hand in a world made for two.
“I saw you looking at my hair,” the model says in the elevator, after their initial acknowledgement of one another. He winces, suddenly self-conscious. “Does it look ridiculous?”
“No!” Steve exclaims, aghast that his staring might have come off as something critical. “Not at all. I just haven’t seen that hairstyle in a while.”
“It is pretty vintage,” he agrees.
It’s Steve’s turn to smile a little. “Yeah. But it looks great on you.”
The model shifts on his feet. “Thanks. It’s my first real haircut in a while. I’m still processing.”
“Believe me,” Steve murmurs, “I get it.”
The elevator pings, and the doors open. They both hesitate to let the other off first, and then they both step out at the same time, bumping shoulders and laughing at the mutual awkwardness.
“Hey,” the model says, pausing at the exit and biting at his lower lip. “Do you want to grab a coffee?”
Steve has said no to that question a few times; he’s come to understand that it’s often used as a test drive for indication of romantic interest. Easy to exit as friends if needed, easy to escalate if the chemistry is there. It’s not that he doesn’t want friends or lovers; he does, more and more lately. There just has to be a point where he’ll run out of commonalities, and he’s afraid to find out how quickly he’ll hit that wall.
But he feels… something from this guy. Something he hasn’t felt from any of the others who asked. A tentative call and return; he’s uncertain, adrift just like Steve, but determined to push forward. If he’s brave enough, Steve can be brave enough.
“Sure. Know anywhere good?”
“You won’t get in trouble, will you?” Steve asks, struck by the thought as they walk into the coffee shop.
Bucky the art school model laughs. “For what? Fraternizing with students? They don’t care what I do as long as I show up and sit still.”
“You didn’t have to do that, by the way.”
Bucky glances at him, questioning.
“Keep sitting when the time was up.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t mind.”
They order and find a table near the window, where tendrils of a dozen plants hang down in an artful cascade and soak up the sunlight. He’s already discovered that it’s easy to be silent with Bucky, which he appreciates, but he finds that he wants to talk.
“It’s been a long time since I zoned out like that.”
“You had this look on your face, like you were solving world hunger, or something.”
“Nothing so noble,” Steve chuckles.
“Would you, if you could?”
What a question. “Of course. Do people say no to that?”
“I’ve never asked anyone else.”
“What’s next, my thoughts on the last fifty years of foreign policy?” Steve asks. He has those. Lots of them.
Bucky laughs. “No, no. I guess I should start with the normal stuff. Where are you from, what do you like to do…you know.”
“I’m from Brooklyn,” Steve answers, “and I’m still figuring out what I like to do.”
“Art, obviously.”
“Yeah. My first love, I guess.”
“But you haven’t done it in a while?”
He shakes his head. “I, uh, was in the military. Just got out.”
“I knew it,” Bucky says, shaking his head and rapping his knuckles against the table. “It’s like we can sense each other.”
Steve can’t refute that; it had crossed his mind, observing Bucky, even in this short time. “That a good thing or a bad thing?” he asks, hoping it’s not a mark against him.
“Neither,” Bucky says honestly, in a way that tells Steve that Bucky has some complicated feelings about his service. He understands that; it is complicated.
“What about you?” Steve asks. “Where are you from, what do you like to do, have you hand-fed any orphans lately?”
Bucky smiles, and it’s a very charming smile. “Does my friend’s kitten count?”
“Absolutely,” Steve declares, and a moment later their drinks arrive.
By the time they decide to relocate for dinner, Steve knows where the night is going to go, and he has no plans to fight it. Conversation flows easily between them. He feels at ease in a way he hasn’t in a very long time.
Steve knows now that Bucky was born and raised in Indiana. Steve doesn't remember Indiana, although he knows he drove through it and probably did USO shows in Indianapolis, at least. Bucky seems to recall home with a combination of fondness and familiar disdain.
“Put it this way,” he says, “there’s a reason I’m not still there.”
Steve doesn’t ask what the reason is, but he can field a few guesses.
Bucky was born into a military family. Every male relative for the last 3 generations had served. It was assumed he would do the same, and he begrudgingly accepted that since it might help him to pay for college without taking on crippling debt. Might help him see the world, too. But the furthest he ever got was New York.
“My unit was the only one that made it to Manhattan before they closed the bridges and tunnels,” he says, over twice-fried diner fries. “Just in time for them to try to nuke us.”
Steve knows what nukes are now. He didn’t, not at first. A weapon, obviously, one Howard had helped to invent. But he didn’t know the whole of what that bomb would have done to Manhattan had it detonated. He didn’t know it would melt people’s skin off, burn their shadows to the walls. Scourge the land and fill people with cancers. Millions of people. A last resort. An acceptable loss.
He can’t pretend to know what he would have done to stop the Chitauri, otherwise. On paper, emotions and morals and ethics aside, losing one city to preserve a world full of others is tactically sound. But Steve had never been able to accept that big a price for victory. If ever there was a point for Nick Fury, it was that he refused to accept it, too.
“You all right?” Bucky says, bringing him back to the present.
“Yeah,” Steve says, blinking.
“Were you here? That day?”
Was he ever.
“I was,” he nods, nearly choking on the irony.
“What a shitshow,” Bucky sighs. “Anyway, we didn’t get nuked, thanks to Iron Man and the Avengers, but I did lose my arm.”
“Jesus,” Steve mumbles, and rests his forehead in his hands for a moment.
“Too much information?” Bucky asks, sneaking a fry under the little fortress Steve’s arms have created and wiggling it around. “I have been accused of oversharing before.” Steve has to smile. Bucky seems outwardly okay with things, to the point that he can joke offhand about it, but Steve knows very well how it often seems easier to do that than let people see how you really feel. People have never been comfortable with grief.
“No,” he responds. It’s a heavy topic for a first date, for sure, but it came up naturally, and Bucky losing his arm is part of the story. Part of who he is. What Steve wants to say is: the invasion was just the cherry on top of a massive shit sundae. But that would require him to explain said shit sundae, and…
Nope.
“I think I’m still processing that whole week,” he says instead.
“That makes two of us,” Bucky agrees. “But hey. We won. We have preserved the french fries and the diners for future generations. You know, the important stuff.”
Steve picks up his beer. “To victory.”
Bucky clinks his glass with his own. “Hard fought, well won.”
Hard fought is right. Steve thinks about the shock of pain when the Chitauri blaster laid him out. He’d needed Thor’s hand to get up from that one; it hurt like hell. He wonders if that’s what took Bucky’s arm off.
He’s focusing on the wrong things, though. What’s important is that they’re both still here. It’s not the right here for Steve, but it’s still some version of home, and slowly, he’s getting used to it. Maybe one day he’ll wake up and forget that there was ever anything else.
For now, though, he’ll take waking up next to Bucky.
The sun is angling down by the time they leave the diner. Bucky looks at him.
“Do you wanna–” he says, gesturing vaguely in an easterly direction. Toward wherever home is.
“Yeah.”
Steve doesn’t intend to pay all that much attention to the interior of Bucky’s apartment - it’s Bucky he’s interested in, after all - but he can’t help noticing the drying rack full of lingerie in the middle of the galley kitchen. Bucky follows his eyes and sighs, a little flustered.
“I guess I should have told you I have a roommate,” he says. “She’s never here. Except apparently today, to do laundry.”
“I wouldn’t mind if they were yours,” Steve says, with a little smile.
Bucky considers him, eyes flickering over his body. “That almost makes me wish they were.”
Steve raises an eyebrow, and yeah, maybe it’s a dare. Not one to act on today, but he’s hopeful there will be another time. Bucky steps into his space, neck craned up, and all Steve can do is look at his lips. Full, pouty, perfectly kissable.
He gives in. For the first time in this new century, he lets himself reach out for connection, and the spark on the other end is consuming.
It almost doesn’t seem real. Kissing Bucky, following him down the hall to his room - it feels like some kind of hallucination. A nice dream that he’ll wake up from.
“You with me?” Bucky whispers, just inside the door.
“I think so,” Steve says.
Bucky’s hand drifts south, and, well, someone is with him. Enthusiastically.
Bucky smirks and kisses him again, nudging him back into the door so their bodies are pressed together, and God, Steve has forgotten that this kind of heat exists. Bucky is warm everywhere, lithe and fragrant, and his tongue plies Steve’s gently but insistently until there’s no room in Steve’s brain for anything but him.
Bucky sucks in a breath when Steve hitches him up by the thighs. He knows he shouldn’t use his strength like that, but it’s not impossible for a regular person to do. And he just…wants to.
“There you are,” Bucky says, pupils dark.
Steve deposits him gently on the bed and peels him out of his clothes. He’s already seen Bucky nude, but the context couldn't be more different, and it’s like seeing him for the first time. He’s beautiful; a piece of art that Steve could never capture adequately with his charcoals. Three exquisite dimensions to feel and touch and taste.
He’d better get to work.
It’s - well, it’s really fucking good. But sharing a bed afterwards with a lover made sweet and dopey with pleasure is almost as good. There are a lot of emotions competing for space in Steve’s body, but he’s used to that. He wants to be more used to this.
If it’s one night he’ll be glad he got it. If it’s more, he’ll give it everything he has. All he can do right now, though, is match his breathing to Bucky’s and try to drift off as if his greatest concern in the world is what happens in the morning.
Bucky wakes him with a kiss around nine.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he says, hovering over Steve from his perch on the mattress. He looks and smells freshly showered. A drop of water drips from his hair onto Steve’s chest.
“Good morning.”
“I have to leave for class in forty five minutes.”
“Modeling, or…”
“School.”
Steve wants to know more, but he isn’t sure if the door is still open. He stretches and then sighs. “I have work at eleven.” Back to the real world.
“The bathroom is two doors down. Come eat breakfast when you’re ready.” Bucky kisses him again - forehead kiss - and steps out.
That’s…that’s a good sign, right?
Steve gets himself together and braves breakfast. He meets Bucky’s roommate, Alexandra, who does not apologize for leaving her underwear in the kitchen, and Steve likes that about her. Bucky makes him avocado toast. He’s seen other people eat it - it’s on the brunch menu - but never tried it himself. It’s delicious.
It’s also over too soon. Steve finds himself at the door. Thankfully Bucky pushes a scrap of paper into his hand and says, a bit breathless, “Text me later, okay?”
“I will,” Steve says, equally breathless.
And of course - of course - Tony is waiting for him back at the apartment. Inside the apartment. That’s one thing that gets to Steve about him; unconsciously or not, Tony acts like everything is somehow his.
“Nice place the Spy Kids set you up with, here,” he comments, not even giving Steve a chance to put his bag down. Steve can tell that he doesn’t think it’s nice at all, but he’s trying not to be sarcastic about it. Which is, maybe, growth for him.
“Better than the park,” Steve replies. Sorry it’s not an 85th floor penthouse.
He has spruced it up a bit. A few pieces of art rescued from thrift shops, three plants he got for free from cuttings from a neighbor. Books. It doesn’t feel like a place someone goes to dwell on their mistakes anymore.
Steve doesn’t wait for Tony to say anything else; he goes about his routine. He’s not going to be late for work on Tony’s account.
“What are you doing?” Tony asks, perplexed by the lack of attention.
“Getting ready for work.”
He frowns. “You know, I could put some lawyers on your back pay case, and you wouldn’t have to do all this.”
It’s not that simple, and they both know it. Besides, Steve likes having his own life. It isn’t always easy, but it’s laughable that Tony thinks he could ever sit idle, back pay lining his pockets or not.
It is nice of him to offer, though. Steve knows those lawyers wouldn’t come cheap.
“Romanoff says you think Hydra is still active.”
That’s not exactly what he said, but close enough. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Tony sighs, fidgeting with anything and everything that’s on Steve’s table. “I guess not.” He straightens up, picking at invisible lint on his suit. “Look. Fury is nervous about something. I don’t know what, and Natasha isn’t talking. But something’s brewing.”
There it is.
Fuck.
“Couldn't you just hack SHIELD like you did on the helicarrier to figure it out?” Steve asks.
“I tried, but they improved security since I did that. My own fault, really.”
Steve fixes him in an incredulous stare. “You’re telling me you can’t do it?” He doesn’t believe it for one second, and he’s fairly certain it wouldn’t take much to dare Tony into it.
“Oh, I can. I’m just not sure I’d be able to stay out of jail.” Now he’s thinking, eyes narrowed slightly. “Secretary Pierce isn’t terribly fond of me, and made it clear that I will be the first suspect in any security breach.”
Steve would imagine Pierce isn’t fond of any of them; Tony’s hacking had led to the discovery of the weapons made with the Tesseract, and Steve and Thor both made such a big stink about it post-invasion that those weapons were dismantled and destroyed. Steve has no regrets; wrong is wrong. It does lead one to wonder, though, what else SHIELD is working on.
He met Pierce not long after he thawed out. Charming man, handsome and put together, in command of himself and everything around him. Unquestionably competent. But Steve got the feeling he wasn’t someone you wanted to cross. And though the entire World Security Council voted to drop a nuclear bomb on New York City during the Chitauri invasion, Pierce was presumably the one who hit the button without so much as a flinch.
He would put Tony in jail.
“I guess you have to find a way to do it undetected,” Steve says, reaching for an orange resting in the fruit bowl that now holds fruit instead of bottle caps. He kept the collection, just in case Clint has a particular attachment to them.
“America’s goody-two-shoes, encouraging me to illegally hack a government agency,” Tony says, with mock chagrin. “Pepper would be very upset with you if she knew.”
“I imagine she’d also be upset if you went to prison.”
Tony makes a distinctly Tony-like face to concede the point. “I’m working on it.”
Steve eats his orange one segment at a time. Tony isn’t done, but he better wrap it up soon. Steve has to leave in twenty minutes.
“Can I have an orange, Steve?” Tony asks. Steve can count on one hand the amount of times Tony has used his actual name to address him. It seems like he’s consciously trying it on for size.
“No,” Steve replies.
“Why not?” Tony’s fucking with him; he’s having trouble holding the fake pout he plasters on.
“You broke into my apartment.”
“Who, me? Nothing’s broken. Do you see anything broken?”
The sanctity of my morning after, Steve thinks to himself. Thank God he heals quick or he’d have hickeys and Tony would have a field day with that. All things considered, though, Tony has been relatively tame. He must really be worried.
“I have to leave soon,” Steve prompts, gently. “You can tell the others I’m fine.”
“You really are,” Tony muses. He sounds surprised and sort of impressed. It’s a backhanded compliment if ever Steve heard one, but he’ll take it. “Look, all I want to know is, will you be there if something goes down?”
Steve has asked himself that question a thousand times. Every time, he reaches the conclusion that he doesn’t want to fight, but he absolutely will if people need protection. It was what he signed up for then, and he’s still more than willing to do it now.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ll be there.”
He texts Bucky on his way to work, and gets an immediate response. Steve has never really understood the appeal of the instant communication and gratification of mobile phones until now. Every message from Bucky that comes through is a little spike of excitement.
It’s not going to be just one night. He’s not sure how he went so long without even that. It’s a bad habit of his to treat life like it’s an endurance event; sometimes that was the only way to make it. But it doesn’t have to be. Not anymore.
He texts Bucky back every chance he gets, and by Thursday, he’s falling into bed with him again.
It escalates very quickly from there. Soon Steve is spending three or four nights a week at Bucky’s apartment. It isn’t just about the sex, although that is great, and frequent, and there’s pretty much nothing better than having Bucky underneath him, moaning prettily. Bucky just…understands. And even if he doesn’t, there’s no judgment.
Steve comes to realize that Bucky acts the way he wishes others would. He lives the acceptance he never got. One big reason he’s not at home in Indiana is because when he finally decided to come out to his family, after more than decade of being closeted and a traumatic, life-altering injury in the line of duty, his parents couldn’t accept it. His sister supports him, and while his falling-out with his parents wasn’t as bad as it could have been, they’re still estranged. Constrained to awkward holiday and birthday phone calls, and periodic questions about whether he’s done with all that and ready to settle down with a nice girl.
Bucky grits his teeth and redirects them, but that’s only because they’re family and he loves them. For everyone else, the one thing Bucky doesn’t accept is assholery. Steve thinks that’s what he likes about him the most. Come as you are, unless you’re a dick.
“There’s something about almost bleeding out on the pavement while aliens zoom around above you that makes you realize, I don’t have to put up with those people anymore,” Bucky remarks with a shrug. Steve never had any patience for those people in the first place, but apparently, in the Midwest, being unfriendly is one of the greatest sins imaginable.
“I’m just glad you put up with me,” Steve says.
Bucky puts on an affected face. “Well, it’s a chore…but you give really good head.”
Steve laughs, and realizes he hasn’t felt this happy in a long, long time.
Sometimes, as the weeks pass, Steve rolls over at random times during the night and Bucky is laying awake beside him, staring at the ceiling. Other times, he’s got this crimped look on his face. Steve comes to recognize that it means he’s in pain.
“You’d think when something wasn’t attached to you anymore it would stop hurting,” Bucky huffs one night. The birds are just starting their dawn chorus outside.
For a moment, Steve can’t respond. His old life wasn’t a limb, that’s for sure, but it still feels like a part of him that’s gone but impossible to forget. A persistent ache.
He gets up to grab Bucky’s medication. Bucky doesn’t like taking it because it makes him groggy, but it helps. He takes the pill grudgingly, and curls into Steve to try to doze off again.
There’s no pill for Steve. Or maybe there is, but he can’t afford it, and it probably wouldn’t work, anyway.
“Steve,” Bucky murmurs into his chest, “what branch of the military were you in?”
They’ve talked about their service, but Bucky tends to dominate those conversations. As Steve suspected that first day, his feelings about the military are complicated, and he’d not had a sounding board he felt he could trust until Steve. Bucky is perceptive, too; he sensed that part of Steve’s quiet receptiveness was the fact that he wasn’t ready (or able) to talk much about his own experiences.
“Army,” Steve replies, breathing in the smell of the product in his hair.
There’s a pause, and Bucky says, “What about SHIELD?”
In that instant, he knows that Bucky knows. He can’t disguise the way his heartrate kicks up, and his body starts to prepare for fight or flight.
This moment was going to happen eventually; Steve knew he couldn’t stay anonymous forever. He didn’t anticipate that it would be with the person he’s falling in love with. But why not? Bucky is the only person who’s gotten more than a surface glimpse of who he is. He’s the only one who deserves to know.
“I never formally joined,” he forces himself to say, around the fear in his throat. Fear that this will be the end, right when he’s really starting the freefall. “After the invasion, I…declined their offer.” If it could rightly be called an offer.
Bucky inches back, so they can look one another in the eye. “I’m sure you had your reasons,” he says, cupping Steve’s face. And that’s it. No judgment. No accusation. No how could you walk away.
Steve lets out a shaky breath. He didn’t realize how certain he was that the reaction to his identity would be condemnation. But maybe that’s his own guilt and emotional stew talking.
Steve can’t help the tears prickling at his eyes. It’s everything; he’s lost so much, but found things, too.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Bucky whispers, kissing the corner of his mouth.
He wants to say it back - me too - but it isn’t enough of a truth yet. But damn, is Bucky working hard to make it one. Instead, he chokes out, “I’m glad I’m with you.”
Bucky smiles, and then burrows back into him. A few minutes later, he’s asleep, leaving Steve to reel until exhaustion claims him.
He’s…a little off at the restaurant for the rest of the week. It’s to the point that John calls him into his office and asks, palpably awkward but powering through, “Steve, what’s wrong with you? Are you, uh…you know…okay?”
John has his flaws as a manager; namely, a distrust of technology and a good case of CRS, which Steve quickly came to understand means Can’t Remember Shit. They get by with Post-It Notes and a huge wall calendar, but at least once a week there are I told you this three weeks ago! exclamations followed by scrambling to fix whatever John forgot about. But for all that, Steve also knows that he’s bailed one of the line cooks out of jail, told immigration to fuck off more than once, and will hire people that most other employers wouldn’t even consider. People who have made mistakes, and people like Steve, with no ID and no (recent) work history.
What can Steve say to him? He’s in love with Bucky and he can’t think straight. Their conversation the other night stirred everything up, and he does mean everything. Steve is a wreck.
“I know I’m not having my best week. I’m really sorry.”
“I don’t give a shit about people getting the wrong potato with their order,” John says, waving a hand. “I give a shit about you. You’re not doing that vigilante crap at night, are you?”
Steve blinks at him. “...What?”
“Like that Daredevil guy. That’s not you, is it?”
Steve has no idea who Daredevil is, but it sinks in, what John is asking. And what it means. He sighs.
“No. No, it’s not me,” he says.
“Good.”
Steve feels very tired, and kind of stupid. “How long have you known?”
“Since you walked in my door.”
“Thank you for not saying anything.”
John shrugs. “It’s not my business. But you look like a zombie this week. Why don’t you take the rest of the week off–”
“No, no,” Steve interrupts, hands up. “That’s really kind of you, but I need the money.”
John scoffs and shakes his head. “You should be sleeping on a bed made of cashmere and hundred dollar bills. Not in my restaurant scrounging for tips.”
It’s a kind sentiment, if not one Steve would ever be comfortable with.
“It was never about money.”
“You’re a saint,” John says. He grins. “I’d be taking them for everything they’re worth and fucking off to Bali.”
Steve has to laugh, and he leaves John’s office feeling somewhat recalibrated.
Slowly, over the next couple weeks, he starts to talk to Bucky about some of the things he couldn’t before. It’s not easy; no matter how much he knows it’s bad to hold things in, he was raised to keep things to himself. His mother never mocked his emotions or told him not to express them, but the rest of the world sure did, and there were already enough things people could pick on him about. When she died, Steve did his crying alone.
It doesn’t have to be that way now. Even so, he worries about burdening Bucky. He has never wanted to burden anyone.
“We’re just talking,” Bucky says, whenever he frets. “Boyfriends talk.”
They are together now, officially. Steve has even met Bucky’s sister, Rebecca, when she was in town. She’s lovely.
He doesn’t have any family to introduce Bucky to. Just his restaurant friends, who are the closest he’s got. They’re uniformly happy for him, including John. It still seems kind of surreal that he can just be with another man in this time; point for the future.
Maybe one day he’ll introduce Bucky to the other Avengers. He finds, however, that he wants to keep that aspect of his life away from Bucky for as long as possible. Steve told Tony he would be there, and he meant it, but it won’t break his heart if they never need him.
That’s wishful thinking, and he knows it.
That is driven home two weeks later, when John calls him into his office again.
“Steve, I think you should see this,” he says, grim.
He has a small television in the office, for background noise and baseball games. It’s on a breaking news broadcast now.
Director of SHIELD murdered; Black Widow prime suspect.
“No,” he says out loud. There’s no way.
They’re playing shaky footage of Natasha escaping SHIELD headquarters in D.C. They are shooting at her with intent to kill. Their own agent.
His stomach sinks as things fall into place. Natasha is an easy mark for this kind of thing. Russian national, checkered past, mysterious femme fatale. Anyone who didn’t know her could believe, without much convincing, that she was a double agent, and her intent all along was to infiltrate SHIELD and steal American state secrets. It seems like that’s what SHIELD is going with.
“Do you think she did it?” John asks.
“No,” Steve says, absolutely certain. “She and Director Fury were like family.” He doesn’t know how deeply Natasha is capable of loving, but there was certainly affection and respect there.
The footage loops, and he sees how close they were to hitting her. Something angry and protective flares in him. Natasha doesn’t need his protection, but whatever this is, she can’t fight it alone.
He fumbles his phone out of his pocket and dials, knowing before it even connects that the first thing she would have done was ditch her phone. It just rings and rings. Steve swears under his breath and hangs up.
There’s only one other option. One other person she would trust.
He dials Clint, and he answers on the third ring with a cautious, “Hello?”
“Clint. It’s Steve. Is she there? Have you talked to her?”
Clint blows out a sigh. “She’s been in touch. She’s okay.”
The relief has Steve leaning against the back of a chair for a moment. He realizes, though, that this isn’t a conversation he can have around a civilian. Anything John overhears puts him at risk, and the same for everyone else at the restaurant. He has to go.
“I’m going to call you back in thirty minutes,” Steve says.
“I’ll be here.” For a second, Steve would swear he hears children giggling, but that can’t be right, can it?
The line goes dead. He looks up at John.
“Think I gotta call out for the week.”
His boss nods solemnly and says, “Come back in one piece.”
No matter how much his brain wants to insist that this can’t be worse than literal alien invasion, Steve has a gut feeling that the stakes are infinitely higher.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Bucky–-”
“I saw,” Bucky interrupts. “You have to go?”
“Yeah.” Steve swallows. He feels a strange compulsion to keep talking, to lay bare the depth of his feelings for Bucky. “You know, being here, in this time…it feels like I’m always holding my breath. But with you, I can exhale. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Bucky says, voice a little shaky. They’ve said it before, but it feels heavier now, more meaningful. “But if you don’t stop talking like you’re not coming back…”
Steve closes his eyes and just breathes for a minute. It’s always a possibility, but he’s going to fight like hell to keep it from becoming a reality.
“I’ll call you when I can.”
“You better.”
Almost four days pass before he can call Bucky. They’re some of the worst, most frustrating days of his life. But at the end of it, those killing machines are in pieces and the people responsible are dead, in custody, or on the run, tails firmly tucked.
It’s not satisfying to have both Natasha and Fury tell him he was right. That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted the future to be above the conflicts and ideologies of the past. Did any of what he did in the forties even matter, if he’s still chasing Hydra in 2014?
“Of course it matters!” Bucky says, vehement. “If Red Skull had won, that would have been the end! You saved the world!”
And yet, here they are.
“What scares me,” he whispers, “is that they were just a fringe movement then. Their own government didn’t want them. But now they’re everywhere.”
It’s a nightmare.
“Oh, Steve,” Bucky says. There’s not much else he can do.
Steve gets back to New York at 2:47 in the morning. He doesn’t go to the apartment in Bed Stuy. There’s only one place he wants to be.
He lets himself into Bucky’s apartment with his key. Alex is in the kitchen smoking a bowl with the window cracked and a plate of cheese in front of her. To this day, Steve has no idea what she does with her time, or who she does it with, but he likes her.
Amiably, she holds the pipe out. Steve shakes his head and continues on to Bucky’s room. He can see that Bucky tried to stay awake; the bedside light is on, he’s still holding his phone, and there’s an unfinished energy drink next to him. Steve sheds his pants and shirt and climbs into bed as carefully as he can.
He manages not to wake Bucky. He probably hasn’t slept much the last few days, either.
Steve burrows into him and hopes that maybe his brain will finally, finally shut off now that he’s here.
It does, and it stays off for a good long while. Even when he’s awake, Steve feels like he can’t move or formulate a thought. It’s even worse than it was when he first woke up. Mainly because he’s allowing himself to feel it.
His phone buzzes. He knows it’s Natasha or Tony or their new friend Sam. He just…can’t.
“Steve,” Bucky says gently, after a while. “I swear I’m not spying on your messages, but the one that just popped up says they’re going to activate tracking and do a group wellness check if you don’t answer.”
Steve groans. They all have his number now; it won’t be hard for Tony to track him. He doesn’t want them here. It feels like Bucky and his apartment are the last sacred things on Earth.
He knows he is, perhaps, being a bit dramatic, but it really feels like all his sacrifices have amounted to a zero sum. He gave his life to end Hydra, only not really, on both counts. He’s alive, and Hydra is, too, worse than ever. Steve doesn’t see how he can keep living the life he carved out for himself now. He has to do it right this time.
Doesn’t he?
He drags himself out of bed, showers, and responds to the texts.
I am fine. I am fine.
Not one of them believes him, but they don’t push. They’re not fine, either.
A day later, he agrees to meet them at Clint’s apartment. He has to admit that it is good to see them. They’ve still got some cuts and bruises in various stages of healing, but everyone looks better. He can see the purpose settling back into them.
Steve isn’t sure why he’s so reluctant. He never was back in the forties. But then again, as the war dragged on, and the false glamor of fighting wore off, it became harder and harder to leave whatever brief moments of respite they got. He saw so much, and never allowed himself to slow down to process any of it. He couldn’t. But this last year and a half, all he’s had is time, and his brain has gone where it wants.
Add to that everything he’s read since waking up, and his talks with Bucky, and it’s hard to muster any desire to go out there and fight again. Not because he doesn’t want to protect people; that’s hardwired. It’s because he doesn’t trust these agencies (and governments) to point him like the weapon he is. Especially not now, knowing that Hydra has infiltrated everything.
If he’s going to fight, it has to be different.
He makes everyone coffee and pancakes. He can at least be a decent host.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Natasha says, her little smile telling him that she’s being sincere. “Always thought it needed some books.”
“How do you not kill plants?” Sam asks. “Mine always die.”
“It was a learning curve,” Steve admits.
“Is there any prosecco for this orange juice,” Tony mutters to himself, as he roots through the cabinets. They’re still a bit bare, but Steve has done pretty well to make it feel like a functional home. “Steve, why don’t you have any prosecco?”
“Bubbles are for celebrations.”
“Are we not celebrating preventing the deaths of 750,000 people and exposing a nefarious Hydra plot?” Tony asks, bewildered.
Huh. He hadn’t thought of it that way.
“Besides, bubbles are for whenever you want them,” Tony scoffs.
Steve can’t help himself. “Sure, when you’re rich,” he needles, entirely on purpose.
“Oh, come on, a mediocre bottle costs like twelve dollars!”
“Do you know how many hours of work it took to make twelve dollars in 1938?”
“Are they always like this?” Sam asks Natasha.
“And since when do you buy mediocre bottles?” Steve accuses, but he can’t quite keep his lips from twitching into a smile.
“Okay, okay,” Tony gripes. “You have a point.”
“Can we maybe…focus?” Natasha says, in a tone one might use when babysitting unruly children.
“Steve started it.”
Steve doesn’t deny that. He just sets the plate of pancakes down and turns to get the syrup.
And it’s…it’s not at all what Steve expects. Sure, a good bit of it is shop talk - where they are, plans for going forward - but they also present him with a gift.
“These are for you,” Natasha says, pushing a legal envelope toward him.
Steve takes it cautiously, with no idea what could be inside. Is it a new contract? A proposal for some new organization? New suit designs?
It is none of those things. The envelope contains a wallet, a passport, and a birth certificate. The wallet has a drivers license inside, as well as a bank card, a credit card, and a social security card.
He forgets to breathe for a moment, petrified that this means everyone knows, or is about to know that he’s alive and somewhat well in the twenty-first century. Then he realizes that the name on these documents is not Steven Grant Rogers. And the birthdate is July 4, 1986.
“What…” he manages.
“You made a life for yourself,” Natasha says. “You should live it.”
“Comfortably,” Tony adds.
Steve’s hackles immediately rise. “Tony, if this is your money–”
Tony is smiling, and it’s a bit wicked. “Oh, it’s not my money. It’s Hydra’s.” He looks very satisfied with himself. “Arnim Zola isn’t the only one who knows his way around an algorithm.”
Steve struggles with that – struggles mightily. He doesn’t want Hydra’s blood money. Tony can read it on his face, and he leans forward. “Do you want me to give it back to them?”
“No!” Steve nearly shouts. He does understand that no organization can operate without money. Crippling them financially is a huge part of shutting them down. That’s just not his usual branch of warfare.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I…but…”
“The intention,” Sam says, “is for someone we know is good and fair to redistribute their money. Feed it into good programs. Things that will grow our communities, work against Hydra from the ground up.”
Oh fuck. Fuck. That’s a great idea.
“Meanwhile, the three of us will be tracing where the money came from,” Natasha chimes in. “That will give us names, locations, projects. Everything we need.”
“We might have to call you sometimes for muscle,” Tony adds. “It’s not total retirement.”
It’s not retirement at all; Steve has no idea where to start with rerouting Hydra’s money. But he is more than equal to the task, no matter how much work it takes.
“What about the public?” he asks. They’ve seen him fighting on their televisions, twice now. They’ll ask questions.
“Oh, there are some good theories going around,” Tony says. “My personal favorite is that you’re a clone Hydra made from the original Cap’s DNA that turned against them.”
That was one of his nightmares; he made Peggy and Howard promise they would destroy any DNA samples the Army scientists managed to harvest. Steve became an expert at ducking his “physicals”. They wanted blood - and worse - every time.
“I think my favorite is that you’re an android that Tony built,” Natasha smirks.
“But what are you actually going to tell them?”
Tony shrugs. “That you’re a friendly who isn’t interested in the spotlight, or a full-time gig.”
It might work, for a little while. Still, it’s better than Steve expected. He stares at the driver’s license. It’s the first time he’s ever had one. He doesn’t even want to know how Natasha got these documents.
“You’ll keep me posted on what you uncover?” Steve asks. That he does want to know. It will make him angry and sad and everything in between, but he has to look it in the face.
“Weekly briefing,” Natasha nods.
“And you’ll update us on what you’re doing with the money,” Sam adds.
Good. That will soften the blow of Hydra’s ugliness a little.
Steve blinks a couple dozen more times, still not fully comprehending that this is happening. Natasha pats him on the arm and says, gently,
“Have some pancakes, Steve.”
Sam is the last one to leave, and Steve catches his arm as he’s heading out. Steve doesn’t quite know how to ask his question, so he just points to the drivers license. Specifically, the first name they gave him.
Riley.
“Ah,” Sam says, with a nod. “Well, Natasha thought we should each pick part of the name, and she banned Tony from picking the first name because she knew he’d pick something ridiculous.”
“Thank you,” Steve says, because she was one thousand percent right. If Tony had picked the first name, he’d be Adalbert or Zebulon or some acronym he’d made up that stood for something prodigiously rude.
Sam nods again, smiling, but he has to look down at his feet a moment later. “I figured, Riley was the best guy I knew. And that you could do the name some justice.”
It’s only been a week, but he knows that that is the highest compliment that Sam can pay anyone. He takes hold of Sam’s shoulder.
“I’ll do my best to honor it,” he says, trying to convey how deeply he means it.
“I know you will.” Sam squeezes his forearm, and then takes his leave.
Riley Steven Gable III.
Riley, after Sam’s best friend. Maybe more. Steve doesn’t know yet.
Steven - obviously Natasha’s pick. It’s logical. People already know him as Steve, so Steve has to be somewhere in his name, or else he’d have to come up with explanations as to why he goes by Steve. Lots of people go by their middle names. And it kept him from losing one more thing, which he appreciates more than Natasha will ever know.
Gable’s got to be Tony’s pick. He was probably browbeaten into selecting something reasonable, and went with a famous person of Steve’s time. Everybody knew Clark Gable. It’s a reminder of the past, but it doesn’t feel malignant like it might have a year ago. He’s certain the letters stand for some private joke in Tony’s mind, and that’s okay. He knows how to handle Tony now.
As for The Third, it screams Clint Barton. Loudly.
He smiles, and gives up on trying to figure out what the hell he’s feeling.
Steve goes back to Bucky’s apartment that evening, intending to cook dinner for him as thanks for putting up with his depression spiral. However, Bucky has other plans. He pulls Steve toward the bedroom, insistent but oddly shy, and shucks off his robe.
Steve’s brain grinds to a halt.
“I wanted to do something to cheer you up,” Bucky says. “Do you like it?” He asks the question the same way he asked that first question about his hair, so long ago in the elevator at art school.
Does he…like…
He can admit that when he tossed out that line about not minding if Alex’s lingerie belonged to Bucky, he was half joking. He was mostly trying to put Bucky at ease. But this is…
“It’s incredible,” Steve breathes. “You’re incredible.”
Bucky blushes, and it blotches up on his neck. He’s nervous. And maybe a little turned on.
That makes two of them.
The lingerie is black, and seems to be made of ribbons, twisted and sewn to look like soft, feminine bondage gear. It’s edged in lace. Definitely custom-made, because Steve can see the thought that went into making it easy for Bucky to get on himself. Lingerie is only supposed to be removed by someone else, although Steve is pretty sure they could have found a way to make it sexy to put on.
“Alex helped me pick it out,” Bucky says, fidgeting.
Steve moves close and puts his hands on the stretch of Bucky’s bare skin between the bodice and the two-layered underwear. One a sheer black short cut to show off Bucky’s ass, and the second a faux-leather-trimmed jock strap.
“Do you like it?” Steve asks. That’s just as important. He wants Bucky to be comfortable.
Bucky swallows. “Yeah.” The red blotches are creeping onto his chest, and the jock strap is starting to tent. He’s a sight.
“It’s almost too pretty to take off,” Steve teases, around a kiss that turns hungry.
“I don’t think you have to,” Bucky replies in a whisper. And, well, that’s about all he can take. Steve walks them back toward the bed, hands gliding over the cool, slippery fabric of the lingerie before he gets two good handfuls of Bucky’s ass and pulls Bucky down on top of him.
He wakes and reflexively glances at Bucky. Steve finds him awake in these moments less and less lately. He’s worked out a better pain regimen with his doctor, and he’s going to therapy every other week. Something Steve knows he needs to look into.
Right now, though…he feels a new purpose thrumming in his body as he drifts away from the warm contentment of sleep. Steve has felt helpless and alone in a lot of ways over the last year or two, some of them real, some of them just in his own mind. But today he feels righted, like a capsized, battle-weary boat that has found a way to float again.
Tony was right, yesterday. While it’s awful that Hydra still exists, they were thwarted when it mattered most. With four people and a handful of real, uncompromised SHIELD agents, they stopped them and blew their cover (and weapons) to bits. Now Hydra is in retreat, without any of the advantages secrecy afforded them, and while Steve isn’t a betting man, he’d put cash on the folks in pursuit.
It is worth celebrating, even if the victory came at a cost. Bucky has taught him that.
He resists the urge to squeeze his still-sleeping boyfriend. There was a time when he would have felt guilty for being happy when the world seems like it’s in shambles, but there’s just no room in him for that right now. He worked hard for this. He deserves it. He swallows the swell of affection and emotion rising in his chest and guides his thoughts to the next step.
Steve knows that war isn’t only about the fight; it’s about cleanup, too. And rebuilding. He’s just never been on this side of things before. He thinks he’s going to like it.
He takes a deep breath of Bucky’s scent and lets it out, exhaling until his ribs ache, and then gets up to make breakfast.