Chapter Text
Steve liked to keep to a routine. It was comforting to have that as a framework for his life, even if it was so often interrupted by every other aspect of his life. Even if he had nothing else to go back to, he still had The Routine. It made a surprisingly good companion. Its demands were simple and straightforward and easily accomplished, usually without any dilemma worse than trying to decide what to have for dinner. Its simplicity - verging on the banal - made Steve feel normal. Or at least it let him pretend that he felt normal, which was not the same, but it was as close as he was going to get. He made himself be satisfied with that.
Part of The Routine was going for a run in the morning and that was how he first noticed Sam, before he knew that Sam was named Sam, or anything else about him other than the fact that he was a man with a routine as well. They didn’t run the same route, but he was always out there, every morning, just like Steve. Their paths usually crossed a few blocks before Steve reached the Washington Monument, the other man still fresh as he started his run and Steve sweaty and slightly winded at the end of his. Steve would wave and say good morning as he went by and he would get a wave in return and it was almost like they were friends. They both had A Routine and Steve allowed himself to imagine that this was some sort of silent, unspoken bond between them, because it was amusing to let himself engage in these absurd little fantasies in the privacy of his own head. Anyway, a one-sided non-friendship with a man who happened to go jogging at the same time as him was about the most Steve could handle at the moment.
If he were more honest with himself, he would have been forced to acknowledge that there was also something about the other man that intrigued him for reasons that had nothing to do with the routine. It was something that took the form of a broad chest and strong legs and a face that was handsome and wore a smile that was small but genuine. In fact, because Steve was himself and he tended to be honest to a fault, he had acknowledged that interest and then carefully packed it away out of sight and not touched it since. This unwillingness did not spring from prudishness or anxiety about his sexuality, as some might have assumed, but because it was important to handle hazardous materials with proper safety equipment and he was singularly ill-equipped to handle anything outside of The Routine that wasn’t a mission. He didn’t want to care about someone else when he could barely take care of himself.
It was not that he was struggling, because he wasn’t. He was holding it together, and he was pleased with that accomplishment. It was just that holding it together was all he could do. It was like learning to juggle and he’d finally figured out how to keep all three balls in the air. He was doing well, but he hadn’t even learned how to add a fourth ball yet and adding a whole other person to the mix was more akin to adding a chainsaw to his juggling act. It just wasn’t a good idea and he knew enough to know that someone was bound to get hurt if he tried it.
Then one day Steve got a late start and he realized that he’d probably missed his morning greeting and therefore missed part of The Routine. This was hardly the first time that had happened and it certainly didn’t matter. The important part of The Routine was getting out for a run in the morning, because that kind of physical exertion kept him in the present. It forced his mind into the here and now and kept him moving forward, moment by moment, instead of allowing him to drift into the past and dwell there on the mistakes he’d made and the things he’d lost.
Therefore it was ridiculous to change his route till he caught up his fellow runner, but Steve found his feet taking him there anyway and he let it happen because The Routine was important but sometimes routines became ruts and, anyway, it was harmless. Probably.
Afteward, he found out the other man’s name was Sam. He packed that information away, along with his feelings about Sam’s ass, and the way Sam’s hand felt in his when he’d helped him up, and the sudden feeling of kinship and connection that came with realizing that Sam was a veteran, all in the hazmat box so that he could examine them later, when they’d stopped being radioactive. He didn’t have time to think about the half-life of emotion because Natasha arrived in a car so sleek it looked like it might be breaking the speed limit even when it was in park, and shortly after that he had other things to worry about, which were both more complicated and more simple.
Going to visit Sam when he got back from the mission with Natasha was definitely not harmless but he did it anyway, in part because sometimes it was important to take risks but mostly just because he wanted to talk to a person who didn’t have five agendas nestled in each other like a matryoshka doll of espionage. In the end, he said almost nothing, which ought to have mitigated the harm that visiting Sam did, but instead just left him yearning for a longer conversation. He had to wonder if that wasn’t worse, in a way. Wanting things did him no good right now.
And yet he did want, no matter how many boxes he tried to put that emotion in.