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Steve had always had a superior control over his body. Well, technically not always given how he was once a scrawny asthmatic kid on the verge of dying whenever the flu came around. But after the serum he could stay up for days at a time without sleep, run for hours on end without falling over from exhaustion and—quite annoyingly—he couldn’t for the life of him get drunk. Well, there had to be some downsides to not being able to die from an asthma attack anymore.
But still, with all of these perks, there were limits to his control. More specifically his bladder control.
After drinking half a gallon of water during the first trek of his morning run from Brooklyn to Central Park during a particularly warm morning, he felt a distinctive need to find a restroom.
Badly. So when he made it past Stark Tower—Steve was certain he wouldn’t make it back to his apartment in Brooklyn before he peed himself—he made the decision to swing by the Starbucks right next to the reception.
Howard Stark wouldn’t have minded. So surely Tony Stark wouldn’t either. It seemed the Starbucks-manager did though, as there was a big fat ‘Customers only’ sign on the door to the restroom.
So five minutes—and a bought (and hastily chugged) coffee later—Steve was finally able to open the door to the restroom. And it seemed the future had made some changes in places he could never have predicted. In public restrooms, for example. The unisex restrooms.
Luckily there was no line (and no ladies) so he rushed right in and did his thing.
. . . . .
It was with a sigh of relief that Steve zipped up his pants. Some things never changed, luckily—Steve swore he would find a way to resurrect Howard Stark only to smack him if he had woken up to find that he had invented another way of closing his goddamn pants—so he leaned forward to press the button that was bound to be on top of the toilet to flush the toilet, just as there was at SHIELD, but-.... where was the button?
Steve blinked once. Twice. Then he bent slightly to one side, then the other, trying to inspect the sides of the toilet for a hidden button that would allow him to flush. But there was no button in sight.
Huh, he thought to himself, wondering what he had missed. Maybe this was one of them newfangled loos, where the button was hidden? He had definitely been told about those. And from the expert (*cough* Darcy Lewis *cough*) at SHIELD all he had to do was wave at it.
So he did.
At first it was a small, awkward salute at the toilet. But when that didn't work, he sighed and gave a small casual wave. When that didn't work either he started waving his hand, hovering it over the toilet at various places, trying to figure out what triggered this thing.
And when nothing seemed to do, he leaned his hand forward to rest on the wall over the toilet, his other hand clutching his forehead in frustration as he pondered if it would have made a difference whether he had been on ice for 70 or 7000 years as he felt just as lost as he might have had in an entirely different millennia. Oh, wait, this was another millennia. Never-fucking-mind then.
Then all of a sudden, he was startled by an aggressive flushing right beneath him. Steve startled, falling back against—and almost through—the door behind him. The man in the next stall knocked back and with a hyaena-like laugh, followed by a hacking coughing fit he commented:
“It won’t come out, eh?"
Steve flushed, not wanting to be rude but definitely not wanting to dignify that comment with an answer either.
So he focused on the self-flushing loo. He lifted his hand, looking intently at his palm, then back at the wall, then back at his palm. Tentatively, Steve reached forward and placed his hand on the wall, where the tile had been replaced with a smooth piece of plastic.
The toilet flushed again. And back was the hyaena-like laughter. God, where do these people come from?
“Won’t go down either?” the man from the stall next to him commented.
What was with this decade? Century? Millennia? Take a pick.
Deed finally done and over with, Steve exited the stall with a sigh and turned around to wash his hands. Only to find that the fixtures on the sink had no knobs and there were no bars of soap. For Christ’s sake. Was this the future or the middle ages? How was he supposed to wash his hands?
Taking a deep, calming breath — “Calm down, Steve, just another minor hurdle” which was answered by the creepy man in the stall: “That won’t come out either?”, cue ridiculous laugh and a distinctive plop sounding from the stall — Steve straightened his back and walked towards the line of sinks like he was walking to his own execution.
He tried the same logic he used for flushing the toiled. He waved and saluted at every single surface on the table and on the wall and when that didn’t work he tried again, only awkwardly hovering his hand above everything this time.
He only managed to get a small box on the wall to drip a sticky liquid onto the table and to turn on the sink for a period of exactly four seconds.
Okay, no soap then.
When he had finally managed to figure out how to operate the sink, and he had washed his hands as thoroughly as he could. Without soap, of course, because this was apparently a place of pure heathens.
And then there were no fucking towels.
Steve looked around him. Nope. No towels here. No towels there. No towels anywhere. And he was just about to give up looking until he spotted a grey, rounded box hanging on the wall with the words Dyson Airblade printed on it. It had an opening at the top and down the sides that looked like it was meant for a pair of hands.
…Was he supposed to…?
Steve looked down at his hands, back at the box, back at his hands and back at the box again.
Nope, he thought. He was beyond done with this place.
So Steve merely shook his hands over the sink to get rid of most of the moisture, drying his hands on his shirt before walking out the door, only-… Wait. Steve paused right beside the Dyson Airblade with an indecisive look on his face.
Ah, screw it, he decided, putting one hand in the opening at the top and ripped the ridiculous thing out of the wall. Right as a flush was heard and the door to the only occupied stall opened.
A balding executive with a crooked tie and his pants still half unzipped walked out.
“Ah, that went down we-what the fuck?”
“Yeah, this wouldn’t come out either. Good day, sir,” Steve grumbled, throwing the fucking thing on the floor right by the man’s feet before walking straight out of the bathroom and out of the Tower as fast as his legs could carry him.
It took twenty seconds before his phone started ringing. He answered it without looking at the display. He didn’t need to look. He knew exactly who was calling him.
“JARVIS told me you broke my Dyson Airblade. I could have you arrested for destruction of property, you know,” were Tony’s first words to him.
But then again, greetings had apparently become quite obsolete on the phone since his days.
Steve rolled his eyes.
“How about you spend your time wisely and get yourself and your Tower some towels instead?” he replied, to which Tony snorted.
“You are such an old ma-“ he managed to say before Steve disconnected the call.
“Dyson Airblade,” he muttered, pushing his phone into his back pocket and transitioning his swift walk into a steady run.
Best get as far away from Manhattan as possible and back to Brooklyn, where he had yet to see one single fucking Dyson Airblade.
. . . . .
When he retold the story at lunch, Darcy almost fell off of her chair from laughter (and wanted Tony Stark’s phone number so she could harass him into relinquishing the footage).
He may or may not have indulged her. Strictly to annoy Tony, of course. Naturally.