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The door is already unlocked when Steve gets home. That kind of thing used to be cause for concern - and probably still should be - but now it just means that Natasha’s in town, briefly back from wherever she’s been establishing yet another intricate secret identity. She drops in for a few hours at a time these days, never warning him beforehand, frequently sporting a different haircut, and always refusing his offer to just give her a key already.
(Steve: “It would be so much easier, Nat, come on. Sam has one.”
Natasha: “Please.”)
He and Sam have been gone a lot, on and off, trying and mostly failing to grasp at threads Natasha told them not to pull. It was non-stop for the first several months, jumping from country to country, chasing increasingly farfetched leads, not sleeping, not sure what they were even doing. Finally, when Sam broke his arm while following a trail in Australia that had long ago gone completely cold, they had to reconsider their approach.
“Steve, man, I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he said, wincing as he readjusted the position of his sling. “I mean, you know I love you, but you have to remember that I’m not a super soldier. I want to help, I do, but also he - please don’t take this the wrong way - he can’t get any more lost than he already is, you know?”
Steve sighed. He knew.
So that’s where they are now. Not giving up, but reevaluating. They’d been out tonight, talking about their next move because Steve had heard about a sighting that was probably nothing but could conceivably be something, thanks to one of Fury's connections in Europe. It's all still moving, just at a less punishing speed. At a certain point, Steve knows, even Captain America can’t sustain that kind of motion without stopping.
Nat never seems to have to check up on anyone to make sure that Steve is home; she always knows and is almost always in the apartment with food before he gets there. He can smell pizza from the hallway.
“Honey, I’m home?” he ventures, locking the door behind him.
“Took you long enough,” she calls from the living room.
“Hey,” he says, walking over to give her a hug. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other. Her hair, which was short and black the last time, is long and red again. “You look good.”
“You don’t,” she smiles as she leans up to kiss him on the cheek. “Rough day?”
“Kind of, I guess. Sam and I are trying to figure out where we’re going from here.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s better. I still feel bad about dragging him into all of this.”
“He wouldn’t help you if he didn’t want to. He offered.”
“I know, I just...I feel like we’ve lost a lot of momentum and I don’t want to waste his time. He has a real life.”
“It’s a tough position to be in.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it some more or do you want to eat some pizza and watch Mad Men and come back to this later?”
“The second one.”
The Mad Men thing had started because they didn’t want to ever worry about finding something to watch together, since channel surfing has a tendency to turn into an hours-long ordeal and their time was always limited. Steve had let her choose a show for them to get into, although in all honesty Natasha knew almost as little as he did about current American TV. (She really only watched it with Clint, who was still making his way through the first season of Dog Cops at a glacial pace, and who still recorded everything on an honest-to-goodness VCR.)
Steve had laughed when she decided on something set in the past - “You missed the 60’s, Rogers, this will be educational for you”- but sure, why not spend his free time watching a twenty-first century interpretation of mid-twentieth century society? It was meta, or something.
So it had started casually, almost as background noise, just something to have on while they ate their takeout before diving into their real conversations about injuries and conspiracies and espionage. Until it wasn’t just that anymore.
Until they realized that this show was not going to be some kind of mindless distraction. That it was full of miserable people lying about who they are and what they want because the world would destroy them if they were honest. That everybody had either made choices that caused them to hate themselves, or would be doing so shortly.
“This is...heavier than I thought it would be, Nat,” Steve had said a few episodes into the first season, after it had become clear that a major plotline dealt with constructing a false identity and running from the past, and that the secrets were only going to spiral out from there. “Why couldn’t you have picked a sitcom or something? Have you ever seen Parks and Recreation? Sam likes Parks and Recreation.”
“No, we’re watching this,” she said. “I think this is relevant.”
It was relevant, to a degree that Steve was not expecting. It was set in a decade that he had missed, sure, but one that came into existence only fifteen years after he froze. He is technically the same age as some of these characters. He understands their references. If they were real people, he could conceivably have known them. Not the wealthy, successful advertising executives, maybe, but definitely the young woman who lives with her Irish Catholic mother in Brooklyn. Whose name, coincidentally, is Peggy. He feels like he knows her.
She reminds him of his Peggy, of course. Not in appearance (although she is beautiful), but in talent and competence, and in the way she challenges the expectations of the men who try to belittle her. He and Natasha watch the entire series, and see as she works her way up from ignored secretary to sought-after copywriter. It makes him think of Agent Carter in the days after the war, being relegated to busy work until she proved beyond a doubt that no one else could possibly be in charge. He likes watching this fictional Peggy succeed and thinking about how the real one did, even if it makes him sad.
“She’s my favorite,” he had told Nat early on, and she had smiled.
“I had a feeling she would be.”
They’ve seen every episode more than once now, having decided that they’d clearly found the most important TV show of the 21st century, so why look for anything else? It’s something familiar, frequently sad but often funny, and it’s comforting to have around. The two of them are so close now, and real friends need these shared pop culture experiences. Just like siblings have that movie they watched on repeat until their parents felt like they would lose their minds and couples have “their song”, Steve and Natasha have their show.
She knows, for example, that he teared up at the speech about nostalgia in the season one finale. He knows that she gave an involuntary little gasp when one character was told by her mother that not every girl can be who she wants to be because “the world could not support that many ballerinas.” They both know that the first time they heard the line “It will shock you how much it never happened,” spoken in the aftermath of a confusing, traumatic plot twist, it was like being hit in the chest, maybe for different reasons, but with the same feelings.
So it was part of the routine now, a regular step in any night they hung out: Roll eyes at unlocked door, roll eyes at suggestion of a key, watch an episode of Mad Men. Tonight it’s one of Steve’s favorites, where the normally unflappable Joan, in a fit of rage about her horrible husband, throws a model airplane at the office’s inept receptionist.
“She always reminds me so much of you,” he says to Nat when it ends.
“Because we’re both bossy redheads?”
“Because you’re both smart, competent, slightly intimidating redheads.”
“Uh huh. But you know if that were me, I wouldn’t have to throw anything. I could get revenge in ways you couldn’t even see. On that receptionist and the husband.”
“Oh, I know.”
“Just so we’re clear,” she says, and reaches over to turn the TV off. “So. Now. Want to tell me how you’re doing?”
“I’m really doing fine,” he assures her. “I mean, there’s not really anything to report. What about you? Why don’t you ever tell me what you’re up to?”
“No,” she says with a half smile.
Steve laughs. “It was worth a shot.”
“You have any leads?” she asks.
“Sort of. Not really. I have a vague report of a thing that might be a thing.”
“Sounds like solid intel,” she smirks, and Steve makes a sort of huffing sound. “No, sorry,” she says. “That was unnecessary.”
“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I just don’t know what to do. Right when it all happened we were so focused on finding him and now it’s been almost a year and we’re in pretty much the same spot. We’ve been all over the place and people have gotten hurt but nothing has happened.”
“I know. And I’ve offered to help,” she says, tapping him on the shoulder.
“No, you’ve got your own stuff. This is on me, it has to be on me. But I feel like I’m not doing anything, you know? I see Sam, and we do what we can, and I see Peggy, but she remembers less every time I talk to her, and I just can’t put any of this on her. And I have you, but I never get to see you, and when you are here we just sit here and watch Mad Men for the fourth time.”
“We don’t have to do that anymore if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s our thing, I like doing it, that’s not what I meant. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m sorry.” He sighs and slouches down lower on the couch.
“How is Peggy doing?” Natasha asks softly. Steve doesn’t talk about her much. She figures that it’s something too private, too painful. Peggy’s the last tangible link Steve has to his past, his real timeline, and she’s fading away before he has a chance to come to terms with it.
“The same.” He shrugs a little. “I went to see her today, and it’s just so hard. I love her, obviously, I’m always going to love her, but she’s just...here less and less.”
“I’m sorry.”
Steve shakes his head. “Sorry. It’s just that nothing makes sense.”
“That is truer for you than it has ever been for any human,” she agrees.
“I guess,” he says, sitting up. “How long are you here for?”
She grimaces. “Not long.”
“‘Not long’ like a day, or ‘not long’ like you really should have left already?”
“‘Not long’ like I should probably be going within the next five to seven minutes.” She stands up, picks up the empty pizza box, and goes over to the kitchen to throw it away. “I’m serious, though, let me know if next time you want to actually work on something, or go out with Sam, or whatever. We can see each other in different contexts. This doesn’t have to be the only thing we ever do.”
“Okay”, Steve says. “I’ll think about it.”
“The new season starts really soon, though, so…”
He smiles. “Okay.”
Natasha walks back over to the living room to hug him goodbye. She looks up at him for a second and sighs. “There’s a lot of things you missed, in a lot of years, and in a lot of ways. But there’s also a lot of things you have now, and more that you potentially could.”
Steve nods. “Thanks.”
“Alright, well, I’m going to go try to convince Clint that one of the things he could potentially have is a DVD player, and then I can’t tell you where I’m going after that. But it was good to see you, and I’m not going to let it be this long before I see you again.”
“Okay. Bye, Nat.”
“Bye, Steve. Don’t give up. And don’t start any new episodes without me. I have snipers.”