Chapter Text
1
Steve Rogers’s patriotic eyebrows jump up. “Holy cow.”
That was not what Tony would have expected from Captain America. “‘Holy cow’? Did the history books mess up? Was your family from India and not Ireland?”
“Fuck off, Stark. I ain’t shitting on what comes out of your mouth, so you better leave my goddamn cows alone as well.”
Tony doesn’t know whether to feel awestruck or betrayed. “You,” he says and points at Rogers, “are nothing like I expected.”
“Sorry to be a fucking disappointment,” Rogers says with a scowl and pulls his ridiculous helmet on, covering the sleekly styled brown hair. It was astonishing how even Rogers’s golden hair had been false propaganda -- but of course, America had wanted to present its figurehead as Aryan perfection in the time of eugenics. “Suit up, everyone. Let’s get this shit done.”
2
“I need a gun,” Steve Rogers says, and everyone turns to stare at him.
“But… but you don’t use guns. You have the shield,” Clint says.
Steve glares back at them all. “Seriously? You think I fought in the war with only my fists and my frisbee?”
Silence.
“Seriously? Goddamnit, get me a gun. Three guns. I want a pistol, a sniper rifle, and an assault rifle. And knives. Lots of knives.”
“I can get you a four-in-one deal,” Tony says. “But for the record, you asked for it. I didn’t corrupt the American icon. Everyone here better confirm that when the media demands to know why you’re carrying a new StarkTech gun.”
3
Steve tends to be the last one up in the mornings, so the communal breakfasts/brunches/lunches have naturally moved to his floor.
The few Avengers who are currently staying at the Tower are lounging in Cap’s suite, waiting for the man in question to get up. It’s a perfectly normal morning until Steve’s bedroom door opens and a young woman, wearing only an oversized Captain America t-shirt, steps out with her hair a tangled mess and her neck full of hickeys. She freezes at the sight of the Avengers sprawled around the living room.
“Eep,” she says, and disappears back to the bedroom.
A moment later, Steve pushes the door open. He’s scowling, which is not a surprising sight since it’s only a little past 11 AM. “Everyone fucks off to the actual communal floor. I have guests, for fuck’s sake.”
“Guests? As in, plural?” Clint asks, his eyes wide.
“Yes,” Steve snaps and shuts the door with a bang.
“Tasha, you weren’t supposed to be this good matchmaker,” Clint hisses.
Natasha rolls her eyes. “That dog doesn’t need my help in getting laid, but you have no idea how hard it is to get him onto a real date.”
“How did that man go down in history as pure and wholesome?” Tony asks. “Seriously. I want to invent time traveling just to go talk with his PR team. Actually, no, I don’t. Everyone thought he was boring until he got here. Nevermind, I’ll happily continue embracing my scandals.”
“Must have been the lack of the internet,” Bruce says. “No leaked sex tapes.”
4
It’s unholy early hour and Sam Wilson is making his morning run.
Steve Rogers is not going to wake up at five o’clock, thank you very much. As long as the world doesn’t need saving, he’s going to sleep until noon. Falling asleep is hard enough as it is. No reason to get up in such an inhumane hour.
Also. He’s actually in New York City and not in Washington DC at the time.
5
Based on everything everyone knows about Steve Rogers, the Tower’s tech lab is the last place anyone expected him to spend the majority of his free time in.
But Tony is starting to get that nobody knew who Steve Rogers really was under the Captain America farce.
“We should get Iron Man suits for everyone,” Steve says. He is disassembling and cleaning his new five-in-one Stark Tech gun (Tony ended up including a grenade launcher as well), with a cigarette dangling between his lips.
“No,” Tony says. “Being inside a suit would wreck Natasha’s and Clint’s fighting style. And Bruce’s. And yours.”
Steve puts out his cigarette. “Okay, you’ve got a point. But imagine Natasha who could fly.”
Tony looks up from the robot he is performing surgery on. “That’s… terrifying.”
Steve’s smile is even more terrifying. “Exactly. So maybe not suits, but boosters? Jetpacks?”
Tony taps a pen against his chin. “What about… wings?”
---
Two hours and a quinjet flight later they’re breaking into a warehouse.
But they’re not the only ones.
“Aw shit. Of course, when I finally find a way in, you guys are here too,” a grumpy voice grumbles. Gun’s safety clicks off. “Hands up-- What the hell? Captain America and Iron Man?”
And that’s how Falcon gets recruited to the team.
---
“What were you planning to do with those wings?” Steve asks Sam later.
Sam shrugs. “I’ve been in VA for two years, teaching people how to move on after their tours, but the thing is… I’m a goddamn hypocrite. Every time I see one of you supers on TV, I start thinking… Damn, I could do so much if I just had my wings back. And what right do I have to sit out from all these battles?”
Steve gives him a glare and drowns his whiskey. “Fucking punks everywhere,” he mutters and shakes his head.
Sam raises his eyebrow. “Who’s the hypocrite now? Everyone knows your story. Lil’ Steve Rogers, volunteer for the serum just to get his chance to get onto the battlefield--”
“Yeah, and you sound just as moronic as he- I was,” Steve says. “Guess I know who to pass the shield on when it’s the time.”
6
Natasha is appreciating Asgardian muscles on display when she realizes that she isn’t the only one.
She turns to Steve and smirks. “So… Blondes, huh?”
“What?” Steve says absent-mindedly, well distracted by Thor who is shirtless and showing off his hammer, swinging it around. He looks at Natasha, sees the smirk, and after a second makes the connection. “Uh, I don’t- What-”
“It’s alright, Cap,” Natasha says and takes a sip of his wine. “Pretty sure that he’s taken, though. But there’s that beefy blonde in the reception--”
Steve groans. “Nat, c’mon. I’m not interested in dating anyone.”
Natasha sighs and lowers his wine glass onto the counter. “Cap. You need to let go of the past.”
“Says who?” Steve asks, and his lips twitch in a way that Natasha has learned means that he’s going to say soon something assholish. “Not so easy for all of us, Tasha. Or do you have some of those Soviet brainwashing techniques in your back pocket?”
---
They end up fucking. It’s something between angry hate sex after a lot of bickering and drunken friends-with-benefits, and honestly, Natasha can only wonder why exactly they haven’t done this before. Steve really knows his way in the bedroom.
It’s dark outside, but neither of them has yet fallen asleep. They’re both lying on Steve’s bed, Natasha’s head on Steve’s chest, her ear against his skin, listening to the steady, even heartbeat.
“It wasn’t about hair color,” Steve says suddenly.
“Hmm?”
“Thor.”
Natasha smirks. “I know. Who would notice his hair when that body is on the display, right?”
“Believe it or not, but it wasn’t even about that.” Natasha feels his fingers playing with her hair. It’s nice. “He just reminded me of someone. Who was as much of a little shit and show off.”
“Who?”
Steve is silent for a moment, and then he moves to kiss the top of her head. “Maybe I’ll tell you one day.”
“Maybe I’ll figure it out.”
“Probably. Get up, I gotta go to pee.”
“Oh James, your lines are so sexy,” Natasha drawls but moves to let him get up from the bed.
Steve is almost at the door when he freezes and turns to look at Natasha.
Natasha stretches and smiles lazily. “What?”
“What did you call me?”
Natasha smiles innocently. “‘James’. Like James Bond.”
Steve narrows his eyes. “Who the hell is that?”
“He’s a character in a bunch of movies. A spy. It’s not his real name, though. It’s just a title he’s carrying. Nobody knows who he really is or how he came to be.” Natasha closes her eyes and lets her smile turn smug.
Steve glares at her for a moment, and then mutters, “You’re fucking worse than Peggy.”
Natasha opens her eyes and winks at Steve. “Thank you.”
“Not a compliment,” Steve says darkly, but his scowl breaks into a grin before he leaves the room.
7
“His name is Winter Soldier. He is a weapon of mass destruction, a wild card. Everyone knows that he’s only used as the last resort by whoever has him.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing stealthy about him. He is unstoppable, but also unpredictable. During the cold war, he was Russia’s secret nuclear weapon. It was well known that launching him could bite back whoever was aiming him. There are only a few instances in the last fifty years when he was verifiably used.”
“I’d like to be a last resort as well,” Steve muses as he pulls his helmet on. “Sounds like a lot of free time.”
Natasha rolls her eyes. “Be less effective in stealth missions and the SHIELD will have less use for you.”
“Sound strategy,” Steve says. “So, Winter Soldier. He’s an unhinged, enhanced patriot?”
“Nobody knows much about him. He’s a legend in Russia. It’s said that Soldier is not as much a patriot as he’s a man on a revenge mission against his enemies. He lost someone dear to him in the war when the Allies betrayed him and it’s said that he is set on showing the world that motherland never forgets the wrongdoings done against her. He’s a ghost who refuses to rest until he has avenged his lover.”
“That’s way cooler story than mine,” Steve says.
“It’s a tragic sob story created for propaganda.” Natasha narrows her eyes. “But the Soldier is unhinged and irrational, no matter how true that story is or not. He can’t be bribed or talked down. He fights his every battle like a man who is set on dragging everyone to hell with him. I don’t know who is in control of him now, but bringing out Soldier is not good news.”
“No shit. My whole apartment building is gone because he went little overboard with his assassination on Fury.”
“Like I said. He has no stealthy bone in him. As apparently you neither, because you threw your shield so dramatically at him.”
“Hey, give me some slack, Tasha. Usually, the bad guys don’t keep the shield and run away with it.”
x
“Give that fucking shield back!” Steve yells at the Soldier.
He’s enraged. Not only has Soldier stolen the shield from him, after all this time he has taken care of it, but now the original colors have been erased and the shield has been repainted silver-black-and-red to match Soldier’s metal arm.
What is even more enraging is how well he fights with it. Better than Steve. Almost as good as--
Steve kicks the Soldier hard on his face, and the muzzle flies off.
Soldier turns, and his hair -- long and dirty blonde, unkempt and messy -- is all wrong, but he would recognize that face anywhere.
“Stevie?”
+1
“In my defense, I never faked anything,” Bucky says, his hands behind his head and his eyes on the ceiling.
“You faked your whole identity,” Clint says.
“Not… exactly?” Bucky says. “I just… never corrected anyone after I was pulled out of the ice. But it wasn’t like I was faking to be anyone else than who I am.”
“It would have been very easy to just say, ‘hey uh, you actually have the wrong hero, I’m not Steve Rogers’,” Clint says and throws a popcorn at him.
Bucky catches it from mid-air. “Yeah, but… I didn’t want to take away his legacy. And I’m not a hero, but then there were all this agents talking about how that's exactly what the world still needs, blah blah, and... well. One thing led to another.”
“How come nobody ever realized?”
“Peggy got rid of a lot of footage of us and told everyone that it was Steve who crashed the plane and not me. She thought I’d have a better chance of getting found that way.” Bucky snorts. “She was right. SHIELD never stopped searching for 'Steve', but do you think they would have ever wasted so much resources searching for me?”
Clint pauses, a popcorn on its way to his mouth. “That’s… sad but also accurate.”
“Yeah,” Bucky sighs and smiles fondly. “She shouldn’t have done it, really. But she’s just as stubborn and mulish as Steve when she sets her mind on something.”
“Good thing that she did. But uh, how are we all going to explain this situation to the public?”
Bucky looks down at his lap, which is covered by the real, sleeping Steve Rogers. The long, dirty blonde hair obscures half of Steve’s face. Bucky brushes the hair away from his ashen pale face. “Don’t fucking ask me. I was never the man with the plans. But I can keep going as Captain America as long as he can't.”
Clint shakes his head. “I thought my childhood was ruined before, with your foul mouth and everything, but now he’s here and… Geeze.”
Bucky smiles fondly. “He always had a gift of gab.”
“That’s one way to put it. Nobody warned me that Captain America's specialty was villain monologues.”
“Hey, they’re not villain monologues. He’s just… a little brainwashed and confused still.”