Work Text:
Playlists
The music system didn't throw him. The window-like computers were straight from a Saturday matinee, but once he got used to the idea of touching the screen with his fingers, the file directories on the wall screens set up were clearly enough labeled. The little picture of a folder was intuitive enough that he could play music from the gym folder at a touch. Someone had even conveniently set up groups of music by BPM, so the line at the top, the 90 bpm, was for Clint to sit in the middle of the room with his eyes closed and the 140 was for the big bag and the 160 was for the little bag.
He wouldn't admit to anyone, least of all Howard’s smirking son, that he hadn't noticed the extra folders under the folder marked gym, one for each of them. Touching his own name gave him a column of musical notes labeled with names he knew: Glenn Miller, Kate Smith, Tommy Dorsey. With a fingertip, he touched Bing Crosby and with a crackle and hiss, he was standing with Bucky and it’s Christmas and they’re watching the girls with ribbons in their hair go by, and he can’t catch his breath because it’s wrong, wrong to be standing on a springy floor in a building that didn’t yet exist when Bucky died in the mountains.
He missed the square red stop symbol in his haste and had to blink before he could silence the noise.
Debrief
He winced as he peeled away the shirt. The mail had taken the brunt of the force and had kept his skin mostly whole, but there was a fine grade texture to his ribcage and a few dozen macabre smiling faces, upward pointing arcs, where the edges of each ring had cut through the liner, the shirt, and his flesh. He winced as he leaned into standing, as he put weight on his ankle.
“Are you well, Captain?”
“Sure, Jarvis,” he answered automatically, then paused. “No, not really, but I will be. Shower, a little sleep and I’m good for the next fight.”
“Yes sir. Colonel Fury has requested your presence to discuss the situation.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Ninety minutes, sir.”
Steve sighed. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Shampoo and a sandwich didn’t take the place of rest, but it helped, and he limped into the room they tended to gather in. Clint was stretched out, taking up the full length of the couch with pale blue icepacks on his shoulder, head, and knee. A football game was playing on the television, with a scrolling banner at the bottom with breaking news of the attack. “How long does it stay breaking news? We broke ‘em.” Clint lifted a scratched hand in silent acknowledgment of what, Steve admitted, was a weak joke.
“We’re meeting? Where’s the Colonel?”
Tony poked just his head around the door. He’d not showered and one foot was still encased in the armor. “On his way to Estonia, racing the diplomats.”
“I thought we were debriefing?”
The screen flickered and Fury stared out at them. Steve felt himself stiffen into parade rest and Clint rolled to sitting, rearranging the ice packs as he moved.
The Brooklyn Dodgers
“California?”
Coffee Shops
He weighed the cacophony of the city, where he’s decided that the construction noise isn’t any louder, just more omnipresent, with the shushed hum of the recycled air of the building, then shoved his current sketchbook into the bag that rode at his hip and walked out of the building, nodding at the SHIELD agent in the lobby. He was free to walk until his lungs gave out, but he’d forgotten that the city was on an island and that now the street under his shoes would give way before he did.
He considered the bridge to Roosevelt, then turned and came back in, past new signs on old storefronts. The architecture of the city was familiar except where it wasn’t, old buildings mixed with new, and the people were hatless and nearly naked, save for an occasional older woman in knee length skirts and the comfortable familiarity of a shawl. He caught the refrain of something he recognized from a doorway he didn’t. The scent of coffee and a bright blue feather caught his attention and he held the door for a couple leaving, ducking in behind them only to stand, stunned by the aroma of sugar and baked goods and coffee.
“That smells so good.” The fellow behind the counter grinned in apparent agreement. A young woman glanced up and smiled in his peripheral vision as he stepped past her to the counter. “One cup of coffee, please, and um, the cake. No, the muffin. Um…”
The man in the apron hesitated, his hand floating over the pastry rack.
“Right, large coffee, and both.” Steve reached automatically into his pocket for change, then twitched as he went for his wallet instead. He swiped the nondescript black card through the reader, ignoring the numbers on the screen. He’d been briefed on monetary conversion and the inevitable inflation of seventy years but the posted prices made his stomach sink. One more thing to get used to. He juggled everything to a table near the window at the front, and planted himself and his sketch book, just doodling, trying to capture the juxtaposition of the sheer smooth glass behind the rougher texture of weathered stone of older buildings. He was digging for the moldable eraser that he’d wanted to try when an all-too-familiar whoosh of displaced air preceded a bone shaking rattle and the window at arm’s length shivered. He dropped by instinct to one knee, tucking himself under and to the side of the exposed glass, his right hand dropping to where his holster would have been if he weren’t wearing jeans and kneeling in a coffee shop on 1st Avenue. The piercing beep of the backup alarm carried over the shouts of the foreman and his crew across the street.
“Road demo. From when the Goblin and Spiderman came through last week, you saw the news? They’ve been hammering the shit out of that intersection for days now,” the counterman offered. Steve nodded and made a futile effort not to blush as he rose from his crouch back to the chair. The woman against the far wall was studying her book with fierce concentration as the man moved from behind the counter, a white cloth in hand. He stood three careful paces away from Steve, staring over his head out the window. “So how long’ve you been back?”
Steve considered the truth, then a lie. After a slow breath, he resorted to humor. “Today’s the fourteenth, right?” Not entirely false, he thought, and no less true than seventy years plus three months. “Not long enough, I guess.”
“Yeah well, I know the reflex. Folks bitch about the VA, but the one here’s pretty good. Try to get McRary. If you want. Free advice and all that.” He swiped the spotless table with his cloth and returned to the back of the store.
He needed to ask Jarvis about tipping etiquette. A nickel didn’t buy a cup of coffee anymore.
Fashion
“That’s not true. Natasha’s costume is sensible for the work she does, just as I wear chain mail, and the bicycle shorts make sense for bike messengers – no trailing cloth or pants hems to get caught in the spokes.”
Natasha leaned into the room. “What’s got you shouting?”
“I am not shouting,” Steve grumbled.
“I could hear you from the hallway.” She shifted her glare to Clint. “What are you doing to him?”
“Wha? I’m not doing anything. Tony sent him to Fug or Fab and asked for an opinion.”
Steve muttered to the screen of the laptop, “Though I don’t know why, as I’m certainly not in a position …”
She cut him off. “Because he’s an asshole and looking for a reaction.”
Steve tilted his head at something on the screen and replied absentmindedly. “No, I’m pretty sure that’s why he sent the link to pornography sites. Is that metal?”
Clint answered, “No, that’s Lady Gaga.”
Natasha jabbed at her phone, snarling, “Fucking Stark and his fucking jokes.”
“Not that big a deal, really.” He smiled when she looked up. “Amazingly, your grandma and others of our generation had sex too, you know. As did the generation before us.”
She closed her eyes as though in pain. “First, please do not make me imagine that ever again, and second, do not challenge Tony or he’ll rickroll you to goatse.”
“What’s goatse?”
Clint pointed at the url bar on the laptop screen helpfully. “Here, type it in.”