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Chapter Text

On summer nights when the air wasn’t too humid, usually after a midday rain so the fire escapes were wet and the asphalt was shiny with puddles, he and Buck would sit on the back stoop.

Steve lay flat on top of the almost chilled concrete, the slightly damp slab of it seeping in through the fabric of his shirt. Bucky was flipping through the pages of Wonder Stories, ‘cause it was still his turn, and he paid the 10 cents out of the 15 as opposed to Steve’s 5, so he got longer turns anyway.

Waiting, impatient, Steve held his thumb up to the shine of the moon. He covered it with his nail, squinting up at it with one eye.

He sighed after a few seconds. “Is there another Legion chapter in there?”

“Shhsh,” Bucky said, not even turning to look at him. “M’reading.”

Steve sighed again. “You gotta give me a turn sometime.”

“I will after this part, jeez.”

“Don’t let my ma hear you talking like that,” Steve muttered. Bucky kicked him with the side of his shoe.

A few minutes later Bucky leaned down next to him. “Check it out, Stevie.”

Steve sat up, his shirt unsticking itself from the stoop. Bucky angled it into the light and jabbed his finger down on a glossy page in the middle of the book.

There was a copper and turquoise illustration, brilliant and detailed, of a man in diving suit, hopping through mid-pane. There was a glowing golden city in the background, all spires and shiny domes. ‘A MARTIAN MAN IN THE CITY OF THE FUTURE.’

Steve snorted. “How are we gonna live there like that when all the real Martians are busy running stuff?”

“We’ll take care of ‘em before we move in.”

“Buck, you just can’t kill ‘em,” he said, sounding scandalized.

“Aww, Steve, I dunno, maybe we’ll split the whole planet down the middle, and they’ll live on one half and we’ll live on the other.” Bucky looked at him. “Would that make you happy?”

Steve nodded. Bucky huffed, and pointed back down at the magazine, flipping to the next page. “Lookit, they’re talking about his diving suit.” Steve followed Buck’s finger with his eyes as he kept narrating through the story. “They’ll have to pump in all the air for people to breathe, so it’ll always be real, real cool, and clean. You’d do just fine up there.”

Chapter Text

After they wake Steve up, and after a few weeks of puttering around the bunker, he asks about going back to his old work. If they could just send him out, so he could do what he was good at— pulling people out of warzones, helping out on the battlefield.

The woman they assigned as one of his handlers, not Nancy who’s nice but Ava who looks at him like he’s sad and always talks a little bit down to him, wrinkles her nose and says, “Captain Rogers, war is…very different from how it was when you were in action. United States’ involvements are more about diplomacy, and covert operations, largely remotely operated. We simply don’t have a need for,” she pauses, obviously looking for the right word. “…Large shows of military strength, as we did in your days.”

He says that he could be non-military, if they needed him to be. Do humanitarian work. Go wherever they needed him. “I just want to be of service,” he says.

Her nose wrinkles again. She lays out a short timeline, of similar programs, 20, 30 years back. A top secret project that was actually modeled after Rebirth, one that sought to bring the special and super, army recruits and ingenuitive civilians alike, into the public spotlight, to push them as modern day heroes. To save the world.

The pictures she puts up on the holo are nothing less than disastrous. As are the headlines she floats up there, timestamped and shouting in big block letters— AVENGERS LEAVE NEW YORK IN RUINS. CASUALTIES REACH MILLIONS IN SOKOVIA. IRON MAN QUITS, ON “EGO TRIP” ACCORDING TO OFFICIALS. HULK ON RAMPAGE AGAIN— FURY STILL CLAIMS CONTROL.

“It goes without saying that the public is not ready to trust even a man of your record, if he has your abilities,” Ava says, pulling her documents back down onto her tablet with a flick of her wrist that Steve is working on not seeming impressed by. She continues, “Especially if he was operating with government support.”

Nancy says she disagrees, one night, when they’re getting drunk in his government-issue apartment. Well, Nancy is getting drunk, Steve is politely taking shots even though they’re not affecting him. (He neglected to mention that to her when she came over with a bottle of bourbon and said they could “hang out”.)

“I think we could use your reputation as an asset, Steve,” she says, only slurring slightly. “If we worked it right, we could get the ‘Captain America’ thing to overshadow any sort of distrust people still have from the Avengers initiative.” She sighs, and takes another drink, talking over the silly sci-fi movie she’d put on his TV in the background. “That whole thing was a missed opportunity. I mean, when I was a real little kid, I loved watching them on TV.” She drinks again and Steve remembers to down one right behind her. “Sure, there were some screw-ups, but…I think Fury and all of them, they belieeved in the work they were doing.”

Steve stays mostly quiet. He likes Nancy, with her army look and her frank attitude. She’s not high up enough to get him the clearances he’d need in order to do what he wants, but he lets her ramble about it anyway. He likes hearing anyone talk, really, for all the time he spends by himself in this underground box.

“To Black Widow!” she says, holding up her shot glass, not really waiting for him to drink or follow suit. “To goddamn Thor!”

 *** 

He keeps wandering around the bunker, keeping to himself. They run a lot of tests, take a lot of labs and have him run the treadmill with wires running all over. There’s a headshrinker who’s supposed to help him “adjust”; after they realize he’s not talking to him, they switch the guy out for an army chaplain. Their meetings are just as quiet, but a little more comfortable.

Aside from those appointments, though, his time is his own. There’s a gym, and a little garden where he does some quiet sketching. They give him almost unrestricted access to the glorious wonder that is the internet, as long as he promises not to “post” anything about his location. He finds it pretty intuitive after some people explain a few things. (He still has to make a call to IT every time the wireless gets kicked out or something, but after talking to Nancy he determines that’s sort of normal.)

One of the things he’s most amazed at is the sheer volume of information out there— all from different angles and perspectives, films and TV shows and articles and things called “wikis” that turn out to be goldmines. Nancy helps him sort out what’s trash and what’s not, and Ava gives him clearance to get an incognito forum account running, so he can actually type out questions, and then people will actually answer them, if he’s lucky.

He finds himself watching a lot of documentaries. Vietnam War retrospectives, histories of the JPL, Smithsonian-sponsored specials that go decade by decade through all the time he’s missed. He feels a desperate sort of sense to catch up.

When he hits the sixties, he sits in quiet reverence on his couch, and watches Armstrong step down on the moon, six or seven times.

 ***

One night Nancy is drinking with him again on the couch— he’d already fessed up that he couldn’t really get drunk, finally too anxious about wasting her alcohol, and had been relieved to find that it hadn’t stopped her from wanting to “hang out” and watch bad movies.

During a quiet lull in the middle of a movie about robots falling in love, Nancy tucks away a few of her short braids that had fallen loose behind her ear. “Hey, Steve?” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I’m like, gay. Like. Really gay. I just had the thought all of a sudden that maybe I was leading you on or something, and you’re all from the 50s or whatever and you might not be able to read the signs, but I’m— I like women.”

He can feel his face getting hot. He wants to say something like, ‘we had bulls in the 30s, too,’ but he worries it might be rude. “I…it wasn’t really on my mind, Sergeant Bello.”

She grins a toothy smile. “Okay, cool.”

*** 

Once he figures out just how easy it is to get questions answered on the internet, he spends a lot of time trying to keep himself from asking a few of them. But one night, feeling tired and lonely and the queer sort of homesickness you get for an entire world that’s missing instead of just one corner of it, he types in Margaret Carter. After he remembers what Shane from IT told him about search keywords, he types in Margaret Carter SSR 194*.

Her obituary is lovely, and mentions her illustrious career post-SSR. It lists her surviving grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. After her he finds the pages for Howard, and the little information out there on the Barnes family.

He can’t reconcile that it all feels like a few months ago, rather than a near-century. 

*** 

One of the other guys in IT, when he’s down there after breaking another tablet by accident, shows him how he can put things on a phone, and that he can keep headphones with him. The slim little rectangle is less breakable, he’s told, and waterproof, and though he can’t make calls like he could if he was outside of the bunker, he can still do a lot with it. When Shane and Kal show him the little features like a camera and a flashlight and a world clock (even a compass that doesn’t work down here either) he thinks about the little communication disks you could strap onto your arm in Wonder Stories. Bucky woulda loved the future.

Podcasts are a little jarring in the overfamiliarity with which the hosts seem to speak, but it’s enough of a bridge from the radio he remembers that he finds it comforting. When he takes his walks around the bunker, or his runs on the treadmill, he pops in the little white earbuds and listens to a soothing woman talk about the annexation of the West Bank. When that gets depressing, he switches over to Modern Science.

The rush of information keeps his mind occupied. It makes things quiet. It convinces him that this weird version of the future is probably real.

*** 

After three months or so, Nancy starts dropping hints that it might be time for him to get pushed out of the underground concrete nest. Ava straight up tells him that they’re kicking him out. She and he are at one of her infinite empty-conference-room meetings, where it’s just the two of them at one end of a huge cherry wood table, sitting in plush and roll-y chairs that always seem to keep her slightly elevated and staring down at him, like an army sarge or a Mother Superior who has found him incompetent. She slides a few glossy folders across the table towards him. “These are some options we’ve laid out for you. Your backpay will make you…comfortable, for whatever you decide you want to do. We can set up a number of new identities, or if you wish to be in the public eye with your moniker, maybe to do something philanthropic, we will help make that transition.”

He takes the folders in his hands, fiddling with them. When he’s quiet for another minute, Ava clears her throat and says, “These are, of course, just suggestions. If you have an idea of what you’d like to do, we will do our best to accommodate you.”

He’s still quiet, blinking at the unopened options in his hands. Ava makes another small sound, not really definable but not impatient. “Take your time, Captain Rogers. Review your options and get back to me.”

 ***

He’s never been a person of inaction. Even when there wasn’t much he could do without sitting down for a breather every quarter hour, he still did it. He worked three jobs when he lived with Bucky, ran around the city between the art classes he scraped up for, took shifts as a busboy, a porter, at fancy restaurants. Collected scrap for the metal drives, went to rallies and protests and meetings, handed out pamphlets in the street that got thrown back in his face. Hit the pavement until he choked on humid air.

Looking at all of Ava’s folders he begins to feel a familiar buzz in his fingertips. An itch, to move.

 ***

When he meets back up with Ava a week later, again at one of her prized conference tables, he’s armed with a few pieces of folded-over paper. Kal said it was kind of old fashioned, but he was helpful in setting up a printer. Steve just wanted something concrete, something he could hold in his hand.

“So, Captain Rogers, have you made a decision?” Ava says, some almost-wisp of amusement, or maybe fondness, on her usually expressionless face. He thinks she’s grown to like him over the past few months.

It falls away when he slides the print-out about the Ares missions across the cherry wood.

Chapter Text

They all think it’s a crazy idea, and maybe somewhere quiet deep in himself he agrees. Space travel isn’t like he and Buck thought it would be— it’s not a free market of huge ship fleets that cart people to Mars; there’s no golden elevator to the Moon; there’s no generation ship far out in the darkness. Space isn’t for everybody. It’s for very very few people, he’s told. Inwardly, he doubts, and he agrees.

But outwardly, he butts out his chin and furrows his brow and he asks them, politely, to try. It’s what he wants to do, he says.

Ava seems ready to pull her hair out, and they bring in higher brass men in suits to frown and tell him it’s impossible. Nancy intervenes and he’s grateful for her yet again. He doesn’t see any of it, but he imagines there’s some whispering, some cajoling, some compromise. Eventually they tell him they’ve organized a meeting, or a tour, someone calls it, of the Jet Propulsion Lab, out in California. He infers that this is their attempt at pacifying the wild idea of the war hero. “Let’s give the guy a real ride, and settle him down.” He doesn’t care. He wants to see the spaceships.

He white-knuckles it through the private jet flight to the west coast, and tries not to let anyone see. It’s the first time he’s been on a flight since…well, since. And he was unconscious for them freighting him back from the Arctic.

But the plush seats and smooth, turbulence-free ride of the luxury liner: they’re nothing like the rocking crash of the Valkyrie. He tries to hold onto that, and to remember that, hey, it seems unreal, but he’s never been this far west across the American landscape before. He looks out through the little porthole window and the sun arcing above them and thinks, Never been this far west or this far west or this far west. He keeps it up until they land.

***

He doesn’t quite get to see the spaceships. But holy cow.

Wonder Stories couldn’t have predicted any of this. They wouldn’t have had the ink.

The future has been disappointing in some ways. He can’t quite conceptualize the way that computers got really big and really powerful and then really fast and really small. Small enough to fit on the head of a pin. That’s too abstract to really sink in with him, even for all he admires the outcome as it applies to his little phone and his podcasts.

But here. This. When he stands in the middle of a white room and shakes the hand of a man who can point at a machine and say— yeah, that, that is what we use to put people in space.

This. He can barely contain himself.

***

That meeting leads to another, and another. Ava’s point staff hauls him back and forth across the country, their reactions ranging from outlandishly perplexed and encouragingly amused. He gets over his fear of flying.

He meets more people in white coats. He goes back to JPL, to Houston, to Goddard. He feels a little out of place, because he’s not sure if the men and women he’s meeting are aware of the pie-in-the-sky request he’s made, and because he certainly can’t keep up with them. Astrophysicists, and, and, mechanical engineers, and— literal rocket scientists. Before the army he drew cartoons, for Pete’s sake.

But for the most part they all seem just as excited to meet him, which is bewildering. A lot of them ask for a photo. His main contact at Goddard, a Dr. Foreman, even has a little action figure of him on his desk, which makes the both of them turn red.

The first time they NASA folks get really excited, when he first sees a gleam in the eyes of some of the JPL staff, is when they put him in a rig for mobility testing. He thinks it starts as another round of pacification. Let’s let the war hero play astronaut.

But then he does it. The resistance simulation feels like a cakewalk.

They put him in the tumbling, spinning gimbal rig. He feels the slight pull of a sense memory, of how susceptible he was to sea-sickness when his inner ear gave him so much trouble, but that was 10 or 100 years ago. He takes a breath and passes with flying colors.

They take him down a long series of corridors, and they try him in the vacuum, simulating the effects of microgravity. He sees the change in the NASA team’s eyes, when they go from bemused to actively curious, when they start putting fingers to their lips and hemming and hawing as they watch him perform. One of them comes to his side after a trial and seems to start muttering, half to Steve and half to himself, about studying the effects of bone compression. He can’t quite be sure he’s not imagining it, but he thinks he sees the handlers from Ava’s team growing more concerned as the NASA men and women grow more enthusiastic. While they’re busy making jokes as they put him in an actual suit, stuffing his fingers deep into stiff white gloves, he spots Ava’s PA Ralph making a call, a furrowed expression on his face. Steve smirks slowly to himself.

Chapter Text

Ava Martinez Olivo is not pleased. Fortunately, she knows that she’s not alone in her frustration.

“First of all,” Vincent says, despite the fact that it is not at all the first thing he’s said, “I don’t understand how I was not informed that we were giving frequent and private tours of every facility we have to a dead man from a comic book.”

Teddy Sanders isn’t impressed by the outrage. Ava is privately thankful she’s not some sort of overexcitable space fanatic, because sitting across the table from the Director of NASA might have impressed her a little. He sighs and says, “I think I got an email about it and I didn’t even read past the subject line. Why on God’s Earth would it be important?”

Vincent does a wide eyed shrug. “Security concerns?”

“Wow, Vince,” Mitch says, voice dry as a bone as he rests his chin in one hand. “D’you really think Captain America is stealing our top spaceflight secrets? From the tour we’ve given to boy band members? It pains me to say it but you really have too little faith in bureaucracy.”

“Second of all,” Kapoor says, charging ahead, “are we actually saying that we’re seriously considering this?”

“Dr. Foreman,” Teddy interjects, drawing everyone’s attention to the mousy looking man at the far end of the table. “You seem to think there’s some validity to the situation?”

There are far too many scientists in this room, Ava thinks. That’s the problem with NASA— they’re not quite military, not quite private. Just fully didactic. Fully a pain in her ass these last couple of months.

Dr. Foreman nods without speaking for a moment, and then coughs. “Yes, yes I do.” He floats an image up to the main SmartScreen, and she recognizes it as one of Rogers’ scans. She furrows her brow when she realizes it doesn’t look like one of theirs. No one had said he had consented to an MRI from some unknown labcoat at the goddamn Goddard Space Center.

Foreman’s suddenly in the middle of a spiel about bone density, about recovery time and unknown longterm effects— he sounds excited. Ava is working on schooling her face into her usual cool and attentive persona, rather than her cool and bored one. “Over the years we’ve certainly made strides in counteracting the effects of zero-G living, through various exercises and centrifugal gravity where possible, but it’s still of immense concern when it comes to considering longterm space travel. Captain Rogers is a wildcard as far as the effects the environment might have on his physiology. If we did have the opportunity to study—”

“Wait, are you saying that, that, practical applications of this venture include, what, administering the unreplicatable super serum to every American astronaut?” Vincent says, rising higher in his seat as the disbelief in his voice grows.

“No,” Foreman says, sounding frustrated. “We have absolutely no idea what the applications of this kind of study might be, that’s the point! Not to mention the fact that he’s responded stunningly to every test we’ve thrown at him so far—”

“He has no sort of formal education,” Teddy says, tone verging on dismissive. “No college degree, as far as I’ve been informed.”

For the first time, the thin blonde woman to Teddy’s right speaks up. Though she mentally kicks herself for the thought, Ava can’t help but think she looks out of place, the only woman in this room full of men with beer bellies and suits. Ava herself should know better than to underestimate her.

Annie speaks boldly,  her face twisted into a “Welllll” sort of expression. “Wellllll,” she says, “I’d remind everyone that we do actually have precedent for sending up non-formally trained candidates. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time we sent someone as a PR move.”

A few people speak up simultaneously. Dr. Foreman mutters something like, “I’m not talking about PR,” while Mitch drones out, “Please tell me you’re not using poor Christa McAuliffe as an example of a successful deployment.” Teddy turns to Annie, looking shocked, and says, “You’re already on board with this?”

Annie puts her hands up as if to throw off blame. “I’m not on board with anything.” She reaches down and pulls out a tablet, though doesn’t float anything onto the board behind them yet. “I’m just saying that it wouldn’t necessarily be bad press. Or unprecedented. I might also be saying that I already drew up some hypothetical plans for media coverage.”

She doesn’t let it show on her face, because she’s very carefully not demonstrating either support or rejection of this whole Mars scheme, but Ava can’t pretend not to like the chick.

Teddy seems to have his head in his hands now.

“Honestly, if we are actually considering this, and for the record, I am,” Dr. Foreman says, voice picking up fervor, “I think we need to get started on crashcourse training him now. As in, today.”

Vincent starts bickering with Foreman, and Teddy is either moaning or on the verge of banging his head into the cherry wood table. Annie starts trying to show him something on her tablet, finger jabbing into the screen as she tries to fit the device into the gap between his head and the desk.

“Ms. Olivo,” Mitch says, addressing her for the first time since the meeting began. Quiet falls and all eyes flick to her. “You’re his primary contact, yes?”

She replies, “Yes,” with a deferential tilt to her head, keeping one hand flat on the leather face of her agenda.

“I’ve heard tell that you’ve grown a tad fond of him.”

She blinks slowly and works not to clench her jaw. It’s true, though she doesn’t know who the hell he heard it from. She doesn’t like the feeling of being off-kilter. “I suppose you could say that, yes.”

Mitch gives her a grandfatherly smile, eyes creased thin. “Yeah, I get a bit of that in my job.” He shifts higher in his seat. “As Flight Director, the well-being of my crew is my chief priority. Can you tell me why Captain Rogers would wake up from a century long coma and decide that he wants to be an astronaut?”

She takes her time again, feeling them all looking at her. She takes a drink from one of the tall glasses of water they provided. She still prefers her own conference rooms back at base, of course.

Ava breathes in through her nose. “When Captain Rogers woke up, as you say, he flew through a short recovery time, and we very quickly had to break the news that there were several career paths no longer available to him.” She looks down at her notes, ticking off mentally in her head. “Military didn’t want him, none of the three-letter agencies had any use for him. Small scale humanitarian efforts didn’t seem to interest him.”

Mitch is raising an eyebrow. “He’s that desperate to get back to work? Hell, I think I’d feel like I deserved a vacation.”

 She tries not to scoff. “We laid out a few very comfortable courses of action that he might take— in the 1930s he was actually an art student, and we thought he might like to retire in the city, continue with his life prior to the military. Draw cartoons, or something.” She looks up at all of them to find the various scientists and officials rapt to her words. She blinks, and speaks again more slowly, choosing her words carefully.

“I think what’s important to remember about Steve Rogers is that, though to us he remains an age-old war hero, to him, he’s a man not yet 30. He doesn’t want to retire. He wants to do something with meaning.” She splays her hands out in the direction of the large conference table. “This is what he seems to have picked.”

They’re all quiet, thinking. Ava distracts herself, looking at the SmartScreen once again, at the floating illustrations of Rogers’ muscle and tissue, the underlying bone. She purses her lips. She has in fact grown to like the old man. She finds herself hoping that he’ll settle for something calm and relaxing, but, smiling to herself, she knows that if he did, he wouldn’t be the man she admires.

Chapter Text

More tests, and yet more tests. He knows NASA’s interest has gone beyond the cursory, now, though Ava and Nancy can’t tell him anything solid. He doesn’t like being kept in the dark, but he almost doesn’t care— this first flush that actually feels like training, it makes him feel like he did back at boot camp, with Phillips and Peggy watching. The rush that comes when there’s a task at hand, when he has to prove himself. Every day he feels the most awake he’s felt since the Valkyrie.

Weeks pass. The physical tests get less important, though Foreman and his team ask for endless medical exams. Someone official from Ava’s team has to be there to oversee the process at every step, because his blood is still in some ways patented, confidential, government property.

But what comes next are the intellectual evaluations, the personality tests, the mental stability exams. He wasn’t much one for arithmetic before the serum, but some combination of its effects plus learning under literal combat fire made him pretty solid with trigonometry and calculating trajectory. Some of the long and complex chemistry problems he simply has to leave blank. But his proctor seems impressed by his problem-solving, by his critical thinking skills. His sharp memory, his ability to redraw first a road map, then the layout for a long dashboard of buttons and controls after looking at it for under a minute. The old man with the white mustache hems and haws and takes down notes.

They bring in someone who feels more like a social worker than a scientist to ask him personal questions, as they sit across from one another in plush chairs.

“Do you have a grasp of any other languages in addition to English, Steve?” she asks, and from her open body language he can tell they’re starting out with a low-ball.

“Well, uh, I mean, I picked up a little bit here and there on the front. Enough French to ask where the closest bathroom is,” he says, trying to be loose or charming or something, but the woman just nods attentively. Headshrinkers make him nervous. “Uh, some German, about the same. I had some basic Polish and Italian from my neighborhood in Brooklyn, but I’m not sure I could pull any of that up anymore.”

“Mmm, that’s very good. We look for German and Russian speakers in particular, as many of our missions are internationally cooperative. The French might be beneficial as well.” Her eyes flick across to him before she says, tentatively, “Captain Rogers, can I ask if it would trouble you to work alongside those of a different nationality?”

He furrows his brow and thinks of Peggy, of Dernier, and says, “Pardon?”

She tilts her head to the side. “In particular we will have a German national on the next Ares mission, a chemist named Alex Vogel.”

He thinks about Erksine and creases his brow even more. “I…don’t anticipate it being a problem, ma’am.”

She clears her throat. “What about those of a different ethnicity?”

He blinks. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but where do you think I was raised?”

***

Eventually they tell him that it would be more efficient if he moved onto the Houston campus. Foreman has to reluctantly hand over lead on the project (tentatively codenamed Stars and Stripes) to someone at the Johnson Center. Steve gives Foreman a pat on the back and thanks him sincerely for all he’s done.

Foreman quirks an eyebrow, looking incredulous. “What, do you think I’m sitting on the bench from here on out? I’ll see you on the next conference call, Cap. I want updates. Regularly.”

Nancy has a similar reaction when he tells her he’s leaving the bunker. There’s a part of him that wants to hold onto her apron strings like a child, that wants her to come with him, maybe all the way to Mars.

But Nancy’s got her own job, her own life, outside the walls of the bunker. There’s a little sister in college that she looks after. There’s a woman that she met online recently, who makes Nancy smile into her palm when she comes up in conversation. She likes science fiction, too, apparently.

Steve gives her a fierce hug, nearly picks her up in his grip around her waist, until she laughs breathily and pats at his back, saying, “Ow, ow, Steve. Buddy, there’s still Skype.”

He has to ask her to show him what that is, but once he’s got it he thinks for the thousandth time, wow, the future is cool.

 ***

At the Johnson Center he’s greeted by a whole new team of scientists and bureaucrats, administrators and directors. An older woman named Nisha Patel is the project lead. She has a broad smile and a strong handshake. Steve trusts her.

He still spends his nights obsessively cramming, forgoing the sleep he doesn’t really need in order to catch up as much as possible. But this time it’s not an errant TV show, this time he has a purpose— there’s an entire research assistant whose sole job is picking out necessary texts for him to consume on a nightly basis. Chemistry lessons and schematics and mission plans, yes, endless drills, but also the history of the spacecraft, International Space diplomacy, of the first and then second Space Race, manuals on the maintenance of relationships in longterm confinement, documentary after documentary. Packets from a Public Relations firm that’s preparing him to step into the limelight, to speak as a symbol of America that has changed so dramatically since it was his country.

He’s happy to dig down, to learn as much as he can. He catches himself, often, looking down, staring at his own feet, imagining the touch of the sole of his shoe to chalky red soil. Armstrong’s voice rings in his ears. Bucky’s fingers on the page of the book.

He clenches his toes through the thin material of his sneakers.

Chapter Text

As far as Chris can tell, Mark heard the news and then immediately went home and learned how to whistle the National Anthem. Also “America the Beautiful.” Also “Home on the Range,” which Chris doesn’t think Mark really understands the context of. Slouching down onto his crossed arms, Watney lapses into the final chorus of buuuuuuuut our flags are still there, as he has done every single time someone refers to Spaceflight Participant Rogers.

Martinez giggles every time, but Chris has largely lost patience.

“Mark, buddy,” he says, voice pleading, “we get it. It’s funny. It was funny the first time and it was funny the hundredth time.”

Lewis interjects, sternly, “And you’ve all had your fun but it’s time to start taking this seriously.” She’s staring with serious eyes at everyone.

Martinez snorts and wheezes a little trying to get his laughter under control.

“Um, I’m sorry, Commander, but there’s no way I’m going to be done having my fun with this before launch date. There’s no time,” Mark replies, eyes big and guileless like the big kid he is. Chris watches as he puts his hands behind his head and gives a groan, “God, I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this mission if he ends up being a tight-ass.”

Johanssen musters up a small grimace herself, looking down at the glass table they’re using for another debriefing meeting. They’re in the off-and-on cohabitation phase of training, where they have scheduled weeks living together on provided housing on the Houston campus. The converted dormitory townhouse doesn’t exactly replicate the conditions of an Ares mission, but the goal is to get them as comfortable with each other as old roommates.

It also means he’s seeing Beth in her PJs, scrunched up around a cup of coffee at 9 in the morning. He’s trying not to stare as she directs her grimace into her mug, face morphing from the doubt she’d just expressed to the disdain she has for what’s in her cup. Martinez used the last of the International Delight. All they had left was Beck’s skim milk.

He watches her and looks off into space, mentally agreeing with her expression of doubt. Lewis is going into another spiel about how they all need to be committed to making the new team dynamics work. Chris tries to school his face into an attentive expression but it’s hard.

Everyone’s been a little on edge, ever since they were informed of the change to the mission plan. They’re meant to be adaptable to a wide array of circumstances, astronauts are, but usually not changes that…fundamental. Immense. Philosophical.

A virtually untrained civilian, a war hero, and a dead one at that. Joining Ares III as some sort of publicity stunt. It was unthinkable, especially this far along into the training process.

And, though Chris prided himself on being level-headed, open minded, and generally optimistic as to the character of people he’s yet to meet, the man had grown up in the 1930s. How were they supposed to see eye-to-eye with someone that predated even the oldest of Baby Boomers?

Captain America and his rise from his icy grave was being reported on by every imaginable news outlet. It had been a minor blip in the 24 hour news cycle earlier in the year, when they’d fished the plane wreck out of the Arctic— at the time, government officials had been very shifty about answering questions, very hush-hush about whether or not they’d recovered any remains. Some conspiracy theorists had drafted up some speculations saying that they had found the supersoldier’s body, and were using the specimen to recreate the military’s once-great success. But beyond that, no one really cared about the story.

That was, until a tall, blonde, and shyly smiling Steve Rogers was introduced on a cable news network, beside a four star general, a PR director that stood beside him like an agent, and the President of the United States who was (…posthumously) awarding him the Medal of Honor.

It was a few weeks later that the Ares crew was informed he’d be joining them on their flight.

“Are we really going to be expected to hold this guy’s hand all the way through mission protocols?” Watney breaks off again.

If she wasn’t so cool, calm, and capable a woman, Lewis might have gone so far as to blow the hair out of her eyes in frustration. Instead she just tilts her head, and says wryly, “You do understand he served on the Western Front in World War II. I doubt he’ll be needing any handholding.”

“I don’t like it either,” says Vogel, voice definitive in the way that means he is not seeking any input on his statement. “He will have no working experience. He is to be putting us all in danger.”

“Not to mention he’s a kid,” Martinez mutters, chewing at one thumbnail. “Younger than Beth, even.”

“He’s something like a hundred and twenty, Rick,” Beth replies, voice incredulous.

“He’s also, like, 25!”

“27,” voices Chris, quietly. He’s read the file.

“Whatever!” Rick says, waving a hand at Beck.

“That’s enough,” Lewis says, and it isn’t just her eyes that are serious. That’s the Commander speaking. Mark even sits up a little straighter in his chair.

“I understand, maybe best of all of you, the stresses that this is going to put on the team,” she says, looking around at them. “But I promise you, we are prepared for it. We are as strong and solid a team as Mitch or anybody at the agency has ever put together.” It’s the earnestness in her voice that always gets to him, and Beck can see it’s working on the table. She continues, emphatically, “That’s why they trust us with this. They know we can handle it, that we can take the hit and keep on going. We are astronauts, folks. We take what we’re given and we follow the protocol.” She looks each of them firmly in the eye. “And I will expect each of you to fulfill your duty as the compassionate and capable professionals that I know each of you are.”

There’s a beat of silence, a palpable sinking-in, before Watney says, “Aww, Mooom.”

Chapter Text

Steve likes Houston. The weather is nothing like anywhere he’s ever lived. Even the swampy heat doesn’t really bother him when he compares it to the haze that falls over Manhattan on a late summer day.

He misses Brooklyn, quietly, but he knows that Brooklyn of today won’t be the Brooklyn he remembers. And he’s secretly glad he got somewhere warm before winter hit. In his room in the bunker he asked for three sets of fleece blankets— Nancy had even brought him a nice furry shawl, too, which he brought with him to Texas. He’s run warm ever since the serum, but now, any flash of cold brings him back to fuzzy memories of ice and crushed metal.

So Texas is good.

He makes friends with members of the research crew— history buffs and World War II fanatics, some of them, which makes him feel a little awkward, but he finds Art majors there, too, and veterans who are in the middle of a career change, just like him. They all seem to speak very fast and make references he doesn’t understand; they laugh raucously at jokes that pass him by, but once the gleam in the eyes of some of the bigger “fans” dies away, he’s left with a solid bunch of men and women. Oh, a solid bunch of people, he reminds himself, thinking of Zayne with the turquoise-framed glasses, who uses the pronouns that he has to practice on his own time. Zayne puts hir book in hir bag. Zie likes hirself. One of his briefing booklets even had a little chart.

The future. It’s a ride.

But when the rest of them go home to their families, Steve’s left largely to his own devices. He goes through his briefings, he watches his documentaries, he does sets of pushups at fifteen minute intervals, even though it’s hard to work out hard enough to have any impact on his muscle tone. He just doesn’t like the idea of sitting around on the couch becoming a lug. He did enough of that when he weighed 90 pounds and couldn’t breathe right.

He’s seen images of inhalers that kids today have, little white things the size of a marker, with shiny replaceable canisters that put albuterol into your lungs. He’s struck every day, here, by something that his childhood self would have loved, by something Bucky would have marveled at. When that pang hits he usually gets down for another set of one-armed pushups.

One Saturday, when the facilities are sparsely staffed and lights are off in parts of the dormitories, Steve has no plan for his day except to try out a recipe for fajitas that he found online (he ate those once with Nancy and they blew his mind) and maybe to take another run around the Center’s grounds. The place is so huge— he’s sure there’s always going to parts of it he doesn’t get to see.

But when he finally gets out of bed and into his kitchen/living-space (he’s making a beeline for the fridge to get cereal for himself and also the ingredients to make the marinade, so the chicken can sit in it all day) there’s a blinking blue light on the counter’s console. Message from K.Line, marked urgent.

That’s Kara, one of Director Patel’s many administrative assistants. There’s a number to call her back at. He sets down his cereal bowl and goes over to the console first.

“Captain Rogers,” she says in reply to his hello. The entire staff always speaks with so much decorum. Her voice with its slight Australian accent is less stressed than he was expecting, though. Pleased, maybe. Excited?

“Would you be open to having visitors this morning, Captain? There’s someone in my office who didn’t have an appointment but especially wanted to get to see you today.”

Steve frowns. Ava fields a lot of his important invitations for meetings. And someone on Patel’s staff always gives him a few days advance notice if there’s a PR event or an interview he needs to attend, someone’s hand he needs to shake.

If someone got into Kara’s office without an appointment, they must be pretty damned important.

“Uh, sure, I’m not busy. Should I come to you?”

There’s a pause as Kara relays a question to the guest.

“She says wherever you’re most comfortable.”

Steve frowns again.

“How about I get dressed and head down to the cafe, on the lower level. In about, say, 20 minutes?”

Kara pauses again and then says, “Righty-o.” He hides an amused snort at the phrase, and hangs up.

***

When he finally gets down to the cafe, he’s surprised to see it…empty. Cleared out. One lone cashier at the front, standing up straight with widely opened eyes, a nervous expression. It’s usually slow on Saturdays, but…

Then he notices the men (people, he self-corrects again, you don’t know their gender identities, Rogers!) in black suits and earpieces. They form somewhat of a wall around a table against the far side of the little restaurant. Some deep-seated tactical-driven portion of his brain says that it’s the spot farthest from the bank of windows that also provides clear line-of-sight.

Where before he’d been briskly walk-jogging through the hallways, he slows down as he approaches the table. He threw on a nicer shirt and a clean pair of dark wash jeans (something he had to get used to being considered “casual wear”) but now he feels like a rube. The burn in his gut isn’t certain if he’s walking into a dignitary’s meeting for which he’s underdressed, or a fight that he needs better shoes for.

The black-suited figures part, one murmuring into an earpiece. Behind them an older woman, white-blonde hair streaked with gray, is sitting elegantly at the small table, a cup of coffee before her, a white cup on a small white plate. Beside that, a notepad inside a leatherbound planner, old fashioned pen and paper. A pang goes through him at the sight, and his lips quirk up in a smile without him meaning to.

She stands as she sees him. “Captain Rogers,” she says, and her voice is dry and sturdy. Competent, is the read he gets off of her. In charge. Though that could also be the swarm of bodyguards.

He shakes her hand, says, “Good morning, ma’am,” and she smiles, warmly but without showing teeth, pale orange-pinkish lipstick unsmudged inside the age-lines and creases around her mouth. She takes a seat and gestures for him to do the same. She takes a sip of her coffee as he gets situated in the awkward metal chair.

There’s another pause after she finishes her sip. She just seems to look at him, blue eyes piercing behind thinly framed glasses. He sits stock-still.

Just as he’s about to interject, to angle for an introduction, she sits back in her chair. “First off, Captain, I’d like to thank you for your service.” He does the close lipped smile and nod that has become his standard reply to that sort of statement, but she cuts him off— “And to say how astounding, and how admirable I find it that you would consider dedicating more of your life to this country, after everything we’ve put you through.”

He looks up at her sharply. “Well, ma’am, thank you, very much.” He tilts his head in consideration and looks away from her sharp blue eyes. “I’d say, though, that I don’t consider the country as having put me through much of anything. I signed up for it every step of the way.”

Her grin is small and wry. “As you are continuing to do now.”

He nods, acquiescing. Though he can’t help but add on, “Though it’s really more like they’re letting me do something I’ve always wanted.”

Her smile grows. “Is that so?”

He nods again. “Ever since I was a little boy.”

There’s a pause again, with her looking at him, until it’s broken off. “God,” she says with a short sigh, “You just…I’m sorry, you’re like a picture come to life.” She shakes her head, and starts rummaging through the back pockets of the planner on the table. “I’m getting far ahead of myself, I apologize, this must be a very strange conversation for you— and, you can imagine, for me as well—”

There is where she pulls out a small stack of photos, sepia-toned with white backing. If not original print then a very fine copy.

It’s him, and Peggy, bending over a table in Howard’s design lab, studying a scrap of paper together. CONFIDENTIAL is stamped at the top of the picture. The photo below that one is one that he recognizes, one that Peggy took of him, with the little box camera she’d had acquisitioned. She caught him mid-laugh, face tinted even though you can’t see the color. There’s more, and more. There’s one they all posed for, him and Peggy and Howard and the Howlies. And Bucky. His heart almost stops.

“My name is Sharon, Sharon Carter. Well,  ah, Director Carter, these days.” He can’t look up at her from the photos, even as she keeps talking. “Margaret…Peggy…she was. Well she was my Aunt Peggy. She was very near and dear to me, I have to say.” He hears her make another move and pull something else out of her bag. “She helped raise me, practically. Sometimes I think all the way through my early thirties she was still raising me,” she says, a laugh on her voice, “though…she passed before she got to see me lead the Agency.” He feels a pang in his chest and puts a finger to Peggy’s face in one of the photos.

“Her diaries are a great comfort to me,” Carter continues. “And you—” that is where he looks up at her, to see those blue eyes pinning him again, “—are a subject of a great many entries.”

He can feel himself flush, overwhelmed by this woman, this, this connection to Peggy, and now sharply embarrassed— Heaven knows what Peggy wrote about him. He glances down and sees that her wrinkled hands rest firmly on top of the cover of a small, dark brown book.

She strokes it, fingers soft on the material. She seems to sigh. “I thought you might like to keep this one. It covers the time period that, well, you were around for.” She smiles at him again and Steve feels himself blush a little redder. She chuckles. “Don’t worry. She wouldn’t have been my aunt if she didn’t value, ah, privacy. This thing is half in code. I have a transcript that’s been worked out, but I thought you might—” she slides the book across the table, and it looks almost painful for her to leave it there, “— I thought you’d like the authenticity of the real thing. I like knowing that she held these, however long ago.”

Steve picks up the book. “Thank you,” he says, sincerely. “I’ll take good care of it.”

She smiles again. “I know you must be busy with your training.” Steve nearly quirks an eyebrow, thinking of the cereal waiting him back home. “But do you have some time to talk to an old woman about the good old days?”

He huffs a laugh. “Ma’am, I think I’ve got you beat by about a hundred years. I have plenty of time.”

She grins back. “Let’s get you a cup of coffee.”

Chapter Text

They put together a shindig for them all to formally meet. It’s held in the nicest atrium-turned-ballroom at the Center, and they’re all dressed to the nines— the press will be present, of course. He’s heard frustrated murmurs from Lewis that this isn’t how this should have gone down, that they should have all had private meetings with him, to meet on their own terms.

Watney is the only one that seems jazzed, surprisingly. But then again he's always happy to go somewhere with free food.

He half expected Beth to help him tie his bowtie, but when he asked she looked at him like he had three heads and shrugged helplessly. It ends up being Martinez who helps him out, which is…plenty embarrassing.

Still. He tries to keep his chin up. Going to go meet an American hero and cultural icon. A guy who’s come back from the dead, and all that. Plus, y’know, the free food.

They feel like a weird and scrappy bunch, all put together. Lewis is in her dress blues, and her husband Robert is around in his college-professor-wear. Martinez’ wife is in attendance, since they apparently found a sitter. Vogel is back home in Germany, happy, Chris is sure, to be with his wife and kids— he’ll have to meet Rogers in the more personal setting Lewis is imagining, he guesses.

The food is good. Lots of little bite size appetizers on trays, being carried around by catering staff. The five of them, plus the resident spouses, all kind of hang around and get a little tipsy at the open bar, except Valena, who’s breast-feeding. Mitch is there, but he’s not much one for smalltalk. The higherups make a show of greeting them by name, but Teddy and all of them always feel strangely out of reach, never taking their eyes off their phones for long, giving off the air of attending to important business.

He elbows Beth and she makes big eyes at him, telling him she agrees with how awkward this feels. Like they’re at high school prom, and waiting around for Prom King to be announced.

And then, half an hour into the festivities, he arrives.

The applause when he enters makes the moment feel like a grand and planned entrance, but Captain Rogers looks a little overwhelmed by it. Wow, Chris thinks. He really could have been a movie star.

They watch at a distance as he shakes hands with Teddy, with Annie, with Mitch and some other higher ups. He greets some members of the research staff, some guys in Information, weirdly, with big hugs and smiles, like they’re old friends.

When he finally makes his way over to the five of them, standing stiff like uninvited guests, it’s Lewis he stands in front of first. Chris vaguely recognizes that he’s in semi-dress, in winter green, and could be wearing a lot more medals than he is—

Rogers whips into a salute in front of Lewis. Chris can see her startle, minutely— he’s not certain, but he doesn’t think Navy salutes as much as Army, and she’s semi-retired anyway. But she’s Lewis, so she recovers her ground quickly. She salutes back, and he falls back at ease with a Cary Grant smile. “Ma’am,” they can all hear him say, and he finds it funny to hear the slightest edge of a Brooklyn accent still in his voice. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’ve read a lot about your service record and I wanted to say that I am very much looking forward to working under your command.”

If Lewis was a lesser woman she might blush, and though she's maintaining her cool, her husband is almost giving her away, painfully trying to hide an amused snort behind her shoulder. Rogers moves through the line gracefully, though, not seeming to notice. He shakes Robert’s hand, and then moves onto Martinez, his wife, and then Beth, whom he dwarfs. He has compliments and words of encouragement for all. He seems…genuinely excited. All of them, even Beth, step away from the man with starry looks in their eyes, and it’s not hard to understand why. Good Lord. Working with this man is going to take some getting used to.

Rogers turns with his hand outstretched to shake Chris’, who was kind of hanging back behind Johanssen. Chris steps forward, with a shy half smile on his face, his spare hand in his pocket.

When he touches Rogers’ skin, though, the man jolts back.

And when he looks up into that movie-picture face, it’s morphed. Waxen, like clay. The warmth that was just there has gone out of it. Rogers’ big blue eyes are open wider, and glassy. His mouth is tight.

Chris coughs. “Sorry,” he says, because it feels automatic, and he sticks out his hand again. “Hi. I’m Dr. Beck, Dr. Chris Beck.”

It takes another second and he can feel the rest of the crew’s eyes boring into the back of his head, but then Captain Rogers seems to twitch, and kick back into drive. When he smiles again it seems wooden, but he twists himself through an introduction, vigorously shaking Beck’s hand. It stops after a few seconds, and then Rogers gets a foot or so of more space in between them.

“Would you all excuse me for just a minute, I need to go check on something,” he says, not looking at Beck and only half looking at anyone else as he gestures behind him.

And then he basically runs for the exit.

***

Fifteen minutes later, after Beth has poured another drink into him (which is about Beck’s limit, since he’s such a lightweight) Rogers finally comes back. He sticks to the opposite side of the atrium, meandering and making small talk, shaking hands as he’s flanked by a serious looking woman in a black pantsuit. When Chris looks he sees that movie star face again; whatever mask had slipped for a moment when they first shook hands, it’s back in place now.

He and Beth sit at the barstools, drinking some weird pink concoctions that she ordered for the both of them (they taste delicious). They watch as Rogers makes the rounds with everyone on the team. He hangs out with the Info and PR crew for a little bit, the guys that seem to be his pals; he lets Lewis’ husband interrogate him for a while— Robert’s a history professor, seeing the guy is probably a walking wetdream. (Oh gosh, Beck thinks, he gets so crass and loopy when he drinks, even in his thoughts.) Watney cracks a couple jokes at the guy, Martinez’ wife feels up his bicep subtly, with a wide, red-lipstick smile. The Captain makes his way through everyone but Chris, whom he avoids like the plague.

“Jeez,” Beth says, halfway through another Mango Tango. “Did you kill the guy’s dog?”

“Oh, God,” Chris says, eyes big and voice plaintive, “so it’s not just me?”

“Nah,” Beth says, slurping through her cocktail straw. “It’s def weird.”

“Yeah,” Martinez says, who happens to be swooping by the bar. “It’s weird that he’d hate Beck. Everyone loves Beck. Everybody loves you, Doc!” he says, clapping Chris on the back. It doesn’t really make him feel better.

“If you excuse me,” says Rick, slurring his words only a little, “I gotta go save my wife from the evil clutches of Captain America.” Chris looks over to the Captain and Valera; she does not look like she particularly wants to be rescued. Doesn’t stop Rick from looking determined as he marches off in their direction.

Beck bangs his head on the bartop. “Ow,” he says, whining. Beth rubs his shoulder, saying, “There, there,” before slurping again from her drink.

Chapter Text

Over the next few weeks, Chris watches as Rogers bonds with all of the other members of the crew. Everyone except him.

The higherups don’t make the guy move in to their little cohabitation dorm, and at that point Chris is grumpy enough to think of it as special treatment— but he’s around all the time anyway. Martinez warms up to him pretty fast after he stops flirting with his wife. Chris eats breakfast with Beth in the mornings and they watch Rick lace up his running sneakers, waiting for Steve to show up for a morning jog. Which he does, looking ungodly coiffed and peppy for how early they’re all awake. He doesn’t come inside the front door, but stands on the porch while Rick finishes getting ready. He gives a smile and a wave to Johannssen, who’s not really awake enough to register it, and a…nod sort of maneuver to Chris, without looking him in the eye.

Rick and he do a bunch of sparring together, too, in the gym after hours. They all know that Rick was almost Golden Gloves at the academy when he was younger, and Steve apparently used to be a bit of a boxer. “Well,” he said with a grin, once when they were all making dinner before the two guys went off to spar, “less boxing, more ‘me getting beat up in old alleyways.’” They all laughed, even Chris, because it’s a hard thing to imagine. Watney was still laughing his ass off even when the rest of them stopped. “I’m just, I’m just,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “How do you think Captain America’s bullies felt for the past like, hundred years?” He cackled again.

Even Watney and Steve were getting along. Steve has less of a stick up his butt than Mark thought, evidently, and he apparently has a penchant for silly movies, which is up Mark’s alley. The two of them have been throwing some movie marathons— Steve even has a pal of his Skype in to watch, which surprises the hell out of Beth (she’d been taking bets that he wouldn’t know how to use a phone). They’re all invited to the movie nights, though Martinez and Lewis usually bow out— so it’s Mark, Beth, Chris, Steve, and Steve’s friend Nancy in a little corner of the TV. Steve is civil towards him, but doesn’t say a word to him beyond quietly asking him to pass the popcorn.

Beth pats his hand comfortingly while they watch.

***

“So,” the woman says smiling, “how are you faring with the rest of the crew?”

Steve furrows his brow. The social-worker-type lady is back. He kind of thought he was through with the psychological evaluations phase of testing. But meeting the team revealed that he was very wrong.

“Ah, pretty well,” he says, staring at the floor. “I think it’s going…as well as to be expected.”

“Hmm,” she says, writing something down, and he fights not to roll his eyes. Shrinks.

“How are you adapting, with the presence of Steve Rogers?”

“Oh, I think I love the dude,” Rick says. “No, like, really. Good sparring partner. Like, he bruised up my ribs almost? Felt really bad about it, too, I guess he doesn’t know his own strength— but I tell you, that’s just the super serum BS talking! In a fair fight I think I’d have him!”

The lady writes that down, squinting at him. “Hmm. Would you say you two are having a lot of conflict?”

Rick groans.

“He’s definitely not as much of a fossil as I thought he’d be,” Beth says nonchalantly, sighing and slouching into her oversized sweatshirt. It might be Beck’s, actually. “I was worried about him not having the tech skills to make it on the ship. I might still be doing some IT runs for him now and again but he can hold his own, surprisingly.”

The therapist quirks an eyebrow. “Was there a worry, there, about him being a burden to the rest of the team?”

Beth sighs.

“I have to admit,” Lewis says, sitting up straight on the couch cushions, “when I heard the news I was a little…intimidated. How was I going to be Commander to a man who is, well, who’s the entire nation’s Captain? How could I make a crew hierarchy work like that?”

“Mmm hmm,” the woman says.

“But he’s been very respectful,” Lewis says, “very concerned about maintaining propriety, sticking to a code. Like what I remember from my academy days. Even in just our group meetings, he seems fine with letting me take point.” Lewis smiles close-mouthed. “I’m optimistic.”

“Mmmm,” she says.

“Mmmm,” Lewis says.

“To tell you the truth, doc, I’m a little pissed off.”

She leans forward, looking intently at Watney. “Hmm. Tell me more about that.”

“Well if we’re being totally honest here, ma’am, I’m supposed to be the big American hero! I’m the likable guy! That’s my whole thing! What, and then big Mr. Captain America swaggers in like John Wayne but without the racism, and I’m supposed to compete with that? Not cool, man! I’m the protagonist here!”

“It is fine,” says Vogel. “Honest, I do not see the big deal. He is Captain America? Pshhh. I am not American. I am not to be ‘starstruck,’ or whatever this is.”

“Uh huh,” says the doctor. “There had been some worry when he was assigned to the Ares III mission, about him working with a German national. After, well, coming from the time period he is accustomed to.” She looks up at him. “Are you experiencing any tension as a result of that situation?”

Vogel blinks dully.

“How have you been, Dr. Beck?” Dr. Anderson says with a smile. She’s always liked him, maybe because they have degrees in the same field. Well, one of his degrees is in her field, at least.

“Fine,” he says, looking at his fingernails.

“I’ve been talking to your fellow crew members today about the addition of Captain Rogers to your team. Can you tell me how you’ve been feeling, since he’s been around?”

Chris picks at the line of dirt underneath his thumbnail, sliding his other thumb underneath the white. “It’s been fine,” he says.

***

“So,” Mitch says, “how are they doing?”

Dr. Anderson is flipping through her notes, clucking her tongue. “Well, really, it’s quite strange— we had predicted some tension between him and Commander Lewis, since he’s used to being in charge, but they seem to have navigated that very well on their own. He, Martinez, and Watney are all meshing very well. The issues we thought might arise with he and Vogel were…well, let’s call them red herrings. Even Beth Johannssen seems to have a grudging respect for him.” She looks up across the conference table at Mitch. “But it’s always the thing you don’t expect— it’s he and Beck. The others all reported something being fishy between the two, and neither one of them would even talk about the other.” She looks back down at her notes before continuing. “And that’s really not like Chris.”

“Hmm,” says Mitch.

Chapter Text

Steve is knocking through bag after bag in the training gym. He asked someone to special order a stack of punching bags. He knows from experience that he can burst seams when he’s working through something.

He isn’t sleeping. The documentaries and the podcasts and the lesson booklets aren’t distracting him. Even Peggy’s diary, with its careful handwriting and ink blotted pages, hurts more than it helps. He likes getting to know his new crew members but. Every time he goes near their house, he’s there.

He lands another one-two punch and jab. He can hear the lining creak.

He’s not mad at the doctor. The man seems very nice. There’s no goddamn reason for Steve to have a problem with him, and no goddamn reason for him to look the way he does.

He’s not even distantly related to the Barnes line. Steve should know, he looked up his ancestry using information taken from his personnel file. He's allowed to access those. Doesn't stop him from feeling like a cretin for it.

Steve lands a kick.

What is this world trying to do to him? His life already feels like it could be an edition of Amazing Stories. Man who lived the life of a genetic experiment dies in horrific plane crash. Wakes up in torturous hell existence that looks like the distant future but isn’t. (He twitches, hearing his mother scold him for comparing this place where he’s got individually brewed cups of flavored coffee waiting for him every morning to actual h-e-double L.)

He jabs, jabs, right hook. But did he really need this? On top of everything else? Did he really need the ghost of his best friend following him around?

All the way to Mars?

He hears the creak of the back door to the gym open, but doesn’t stop with his routine. It might be Rick. He could use a round in the ring—though, he winces, thinking of Martinez’ purple ribs, he should really take his aggression out on the dummies and not his crewmates.

“Excuse me,” he hears, and turns around.

“Someone on Director Patel’s staff said I could probably find you here,” Chris says. Kara, most likely, good Lord, Steve thinks.

God, the man looks good. Standing there under the yellow gym lights. Hair less coiffed than Bucky kept it with his pomade. Wearing a soft looking sweater.

“You found me,” Steve croaks out, because it’s the only thing he can think to say.

Dr. Beck bites at his lip. Those are just like Bucky’s, even if the mannerism is not. Pale and pink and wind-chapped. God, Rogers, stop staring. And stop taking the Lord’s name in vain, for Christ’s sake!

“I just got out of a meeting with Mitch Henderson,” Chris says, breaking through Steve’s reverie. “I don’t know if you know the man all that well yet, but, he’s like a father to the lot of us.” Chris breathes out through his nose. “And he’s worried.”

Steve blinks. This is the most he’s heard Chris speak, and he’s making an effort to focus on the words and not compare the minutiae of his accent to a Brooklyn one.

“He’s worried? About what?”

“About the team dynamic. About you and me,” Beck says, voice quiet.

Steve swallows.

“Look,” Chris starts, “if I did anything to offend you, that made us start out on the wrong foot, I really do apologize, I really don’t know—”

“No, no, I’m sorry, no, you didn’t do anything—” says Steve.

“—but, and I know this sounds like grade school stuff, but it seems like you really don’t like me, sir, and it’s just, that really does have an effect on the rest of the—”

“Oh God,” Steve says, “please don’t call me sir, I think you’re older than me.”

“—And I just, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make this team work, Captain. I really am,” Beck says, pleading in his voice as it sounds like he’s finished.

Steve stares at him across the room. Cripes, Rogers, you’re such an ass.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Beck,” Steve says.

“You can call me Chris,” he interjects.

Steve manages a smile. “Well then you can call me Steve.” He walks forward, pulling the glove off his right hand. “And I really, I mean, I really do apologize. It’s had nothing to do with you,” Steve says, thinking, just your face. “I’ve made an ass of myself,” he says, holding his hand out to shake Beck’s.

Chris reaches out tentatively, staring him in the eye, and gosh he really must have done a number on the guy. He didn’t mean to.

“Do you, uh,” Steve says, mentally fishing for something cordial and appropriate and fittingly apologetic to say, “do you like coffee? The apartment they set me up with, it has one of those little things that makes lots of flavors of it.”

Chris seems to break the waxy, nervous expression he’d had stuck on his face, and smiles, just a little. “Yeah, yeah I like coffee.”

 ***

They sit. They talk. Steve asks questions that he hopes aren’t too probing, that let him draw up a mental t-chart.

Beck is an only child. Bucky was the only boy out of six.

Beck grew up in Connecticut. Brooklyn was as much a part of Bucky's DNA as anything else.

Beck asks about his art schooling, having considered studying textiles before he got more interested in flight and the hard sciences. Steve can just imagine Bucky staring slack-jawed and eyebrows raised.

Beck is a certified genius, multiple degrees that led him from the Airforce to medical school and to NASA. Steve learns that they’ll be working together quite a bit on the Hermes. The reason they wanted to put Steve and he on the same boat was so Chris could continue his research, and this time analyze the effects of the serum; Beck wrote his second thesis on musculoskeletal alterations, and the effects of longterm space travel.

Small differences crop up over the course of the simple conversation, enough that they start to sketch out a whole person in between the gaps. Steve takes note of how he takes his coffee— hazelnut creamer, three sugars, where Bucky always took it black. He notices the little mannerisms, how he sits in his chair, how he keeps biting at his lip. He doesn’t know how Beck would take it if he ever told him, but— he’s a softer man than Bucky. Gentler around the edges. People were kinder to him in his youth, encouraged his passions, told him to pursue his dreams. The only thing the world ever did for Bucky was throw him into a war he wanted nothing to do with.

If he had to tell Beck all of that, he would mean it as a compliment.

They drink their specialty coffees. Beck starts sketching out the ways he’d like to maintain his research on the ship. He fiddles with his pen, he smiles at his paper. He really is nothing like the man Steve knew.

But God if he isn’t as beautiful.

Chapter Text

Lewis compliments him, in the next few weeks, on how much he’s repaired things with Rogers. “I tried to tell you not to worry so much— people can’t help but come around to you,” she says, smiling and briefly touching a hand to the back of his head. Beck smiles. He isn’t sure what did it, really, but there is a marked improvement.

He can’t run with Steve or spar with Steve, he can’t have silent and manly mornings on the porch like Vogel does with Steve; he doesn’t have the same shitty taste in movies. But he finds out that Captain Rogers is a dedicated, voracious learner. When he finally has someone to bounce ideas off of, to ask relentless questions, someone to study with him, someone to watch documentaries and talk about his latest Big Science podcast—when Steve realizes Chris could do that for him, he seems to bloom and soak up the attention like water.

And Chris is nothing if not a professional academic. He’s nothing but eager to jump in.

***

One Sunday, late in the afternoon, Steve sends him a message through the home console— inviting him to his apartment. 

When he gets there, Steve answers the door not even a second after he's rung the bell— like he was waiting there by the entryway. He's wringing his hands as he ushers Chris inside. He really never thought Captain America would be this. Shy? Nervous? Socially awkward?

It's not a negative, necessarily, just surprising.

"I thought, uh, well, Beth mentioned that you liked to cook, sometimes," Steve says, and as he leads Chris into the kitchen he's met by a full array of cooking supplies. There's some chicken defrosting in a bowl of water, shakers of spices pulled down from shelves, a big green onion and peppers and mushrooms ready to be chopped on the counter. Ingredients for baking, too, it looks like— flour and molasses and a yellow packet of yeast, a little bowl of nuts next to it. The oven is already preheating. 

Chris holds back a "wow." Steve does team-bonding hardcore. 

They cook a simple stir fry that smells delicious long before it's ready to eat. Steve also says he's been wanting to try his hand at baking bread— he found a recipe online, he says, that's written to be done while watching TV. It's a little "yell-y," he says mysteriously, but it reminds him of his mom kneading dough and taking breaks to listen to the radio while it rose. They put on some documentary TV show with gentle narration, and they eat the stir fry with plates on their laps. By the time they're on the next episode, they have chunks of warm and sweet bread in their hands, honey butter spread overtop before it melts instantaneously. 

***

He's teaching Steve how to play foosball one day (the techs have tables scattered all over the Center, weirdly enough) when Lewis walks by talking with a team of administrators from the flight crew. Steve stops what he's doing (letting Chris score an easy goal on him, no less) to stand up straight and say, "Ma'am." Lewis spares him a glance, and he wonders if Steve knows the Commander well enough yet to be able to accurately read the warmth in her eyes, even as her face remains neutral. Without slowing her step she gives the two of them a diplomatic nod of her head. That seems to release him from the semblance of parade rest he'd been standing in. 

He smiles curiously at Steve as the man goes back to the game, haphazardly jerking the controls (basically just slapping them around). "Why do you do that?" Chris asks. 

"Uh, I'm really not too clear on how to work these yet."

Chris snorts. "No, to Lewis."

Steve looks up at him from where he'd been staring down at the little plastic soccer players, eyebrows raised. He shrugs. "You all have your ways of showing her respect, don't you?"

Chris thinks about it for less than a second before replying, "Yes."

Steve shrugs, and then slams his third line of players right when Chris isn't expecting it. The little ball rolls straight into the goal. The childlike smile that Steve gives him at his victory is pretty damn dazzling. Chris can't help but grin back. 

***

"But why," Steve says, and he never sounds more like a plaintive kid than when he's stuck up against something he doesn't understand. Chris laughs a little. 

"It just happened," Watney says, trying to explain. "It's better now, but the whole program went unfunded for a decade or so. We were still sending out telescopes and all, working on longer projects, but for a while there we had to piggyback off the Russian and international rockets just to get to the ISS." 

Steve furrows his brow. "I just don't get, I mean, how can you not fund space exploration?"

Chris shrugs and takes over again. They're sitting on the porch, drinking long neck beers, and Steve's trying to discuss the stuff he's learning in his briefing books. "I think people considered it an unnecessary expense," he says. "A luxury, when the general public thought we should be putting money towards fixing the healthcare system, building up the military."

"And people got tired of seeing people go to the moon really fast," Watney interjects. "It was like, 'whoo hoo!', the first time, and then, 'cool,' the second time, and then they wouldn't flick the channel away from like, The Brady Bunch or whatever people liked in the 70s."

"You have no respect for the decade," Lewis says wryly from her chair. 

"Plus, you were asleep for a lot of it, Cap, but I gotta tell you there were some times when the economy wasn't doing too well," Watney says, ribbing him. 

Steve just glares harder, not at any of them, but more at the world in general. "I was awake for the Depression, you know. We still managed to fund the arts and sciences."

"Yeah, but you also had like, a dictator president who served four terms and could do whatever the hell he wanted," Mark says, clearing trying to get a rise.

"Are you talking about Roosevelt?" Steve exclaims, sounding scandalized and like he might actually want to fight Watney. They all cackle, and Chris thinks they're all in agreement that it might be cool to see Captain America put Mark in a chokehold. 

***

Sometime a few weeks later, back in the shared house, Beth jumps in on them watching a documentary on “Planned Obsolescence,” a topic which baffles Steve to no end. Johannssen hops over the back of the couch in between them, falling heavily between the couch cushions.

Chris likes the warmth of those two bodies with him; they’re two of his favorite minds in the house, at this point. But he feels an awkward buzz across his skin with Beth sitting up against him, knowing she’s touching Steve on the other side. He can’t place the feeling. He doesn’t know if he wants it to go or stick around.

When the movie ends Steve pays his goodbyes and leaves to trek across campus back to his apartment. While the credits are still rolling, and something about an extinct species of whale is gearing up to play next, Beth turns her head to stare at Chris. She raises her red-tinged eyebrows.

“What?” he says.

“Nothing,” she replies, voice light and playful. “I’m just glad you two have warmed up to each other is all.” 

***

They are warm. Warmer, he and Steve, that is. It's like they released a pressure valve, just by talking, and the house, the team, the whole Johnson Space Center begins to feel less and less like he's running out of air. 

Sometimes, though. Sometimes he'll catch Steve looking at him, out of the corner of his eye. His expression somewhere between the blankfaced stare that he'd worn when they fist met, and some emotion that Beck couldn't put a name on if he had a million years. 

***

They start passing group tests and evaluations with flying colors. The simulations they’re running are getting more dynamic and detailed; they involve complex mission directives and heart-pounding emergency scenarios. But it works. They work. Steve is a strong leader, but bows easily under the force of those with more experience than him; Watney is there cracking jokes but working diligently, the rest of them completing their tasks with a brutal and focused efficiency.

When they exit the modulator after a successful crash landing simulation, they’re greeted by cheers and claps on the back. Chris is laughing, the team is buzzing, Lewis looks proud. Steve looks damn near beatific, meeting his eyes as he smiles his movie-star grin.

 ***

One sleepy Saturday afternoon at the house (Steve is spending more and more time there, more away from his apartment than not) Chris stumbles into the living room to find Steve on the couch. The TV's off; the shades are pulled up to let in natural light. From the angle of his position, Beck can see the large sketchbook balanced over his knee. He moves closer, curious, angles himself to see the layout of the page.

Grey-toned lines, charcoal shading. He’s surprised at the detail, the realism— he can pick out the clear profiles of Vogel, of Lewis, of Watney mid-laugh. A doodle of Martinez hitting the bag, sending it flying. Beth frowning in consternation.

The righthand page is devoted entirely to him.

Well, two versions of him, really. He recognizes himself in the man on the right— it’s him, in his favorite pullover sweater, smiling nicely in the way that his mother always asks him to for photos.

The man on the left…

It’s him, if he had gone the route of a male model instead of astronaut. It’s him but gaunter, just a little, enough so that his jaw looks more defined. His hair is styled in a way he would never wear it. The look on his face, it’s…not angry, but chilled, distant, faraway and full of fire in the eyes.

He doesn’t think he’s ever looked that way around Steve.

He must make some noise on the linoleum floor because Steve sits up, turns, and snaps the portfolio closed all in one smooth motion. When he finishes he’s dead-eyed, staring at Beck. Again. 

“I—” Chris says, not really knowing where he wants that sentence to go. “They’re…those are really beautiful.”

He can visibly see Steve swallow. “Thanks,” he mutters.

Beck turns and runs upstairs to hide in his room.

Chapter Text

They avoid each other for, well. At least a few days. Nearly a week. It’s an echo of the way they were around each other before their talk. They see each other at group dinners and strategy meetings, at prep for the next simulation round. But on their own time, Steve ghosts out of the room every time Chris comes near. He’s unsure, both of what he saw in that portfolio, and what he’s done wrong now.

He hates that feeling.

Beth makes him some tea, and lets him watch some weird hacker show from the early 2010s while he rests his head on her lap.

***

It takes days and days, but he finally gets contact again. It comes as a text, and comes with the surprise Beck always feels knowing that the World War II relic they live with has figured out messaging. Steve doesn’t use it much, preferring to meet in person or send voice messages, so each one is still a novelty.

I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting. Again. Can we meet?

***

Steve finds him in the dorm room Chris has occupied for all these months of cohab, the room he shares with Martinez when he isn’t home with his wife, like he is for this week. Chris is sitting on the bed, but stands when Steve knocks at the open door.

“Hi,” he says, weakly.

Steve waves back, and the gesture makes Chris smile. It also makes Chris notice what’s in his hand. A small brown book.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been avoiding you again,” Steve says, looking at the floor, and Chris blinks in surprise— he didn’t think Steve would be so up front. Though maybe he should have guessed, having gotten to know the guy.

“It’s— I’m sorry, it’s the same reason I was so...awful, to you, when we first met.” Steve is looking down at his little book, feeling it with both hands. “You saw my sketchbook, I’m sorry about that too. They were just…” Steve breaks off, shrugs his shoulders in a silent sigh. “I don’t know what they were.”

“What is this about, Steve?” Chris asks, quietly. He’s not trying to be combative. He’s just tired of being confused.

Without looking up or saying another word, Steve walks closer to the bed, but to the far right, by Chris’ college-issue desk. He places the leatherbound book he has on the table, and unsnaps the band holding it together. Chris is surprised to see it looks very, very old, handwritten, paper yellowed. Steve leafs through it carefully, going to a page he must know very well. He pulls out an old-style photograph, printed on white backing.

He holds it out with the tip of his thumb and finger, not looking Chris in the eye.

When he takes it, his mind stutters for a moment. He’s looking at a picture of himself. Or rather, that version of himself that existed in Steve’s book— a hard-edged him, a prettier him, one with five o’clock shadow and gelled back hair, in a military uniform and in sepia print.

He’s standing between a pretty woman, in period dress, and. Captain America. In all his glory.

He looks up at Steve. “I don’t understand.”

Steve’s still looking at the table. “I, I was kind of surprised no one ever said anything. Or that you had never seen a picture.” Steve strokes one finger over the book. “I guess he’s not really covered, in, y’know, history classes.”

Chris swallows, looking at the photo again. “Who is he?”

Steve finally looks up, though his smile is thin and his eyes are sad. “James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. My best friend.”

Chris flashes onto a distant memory, a history lesson on Captain America and his Howling Commandos. A brief mention of his childhood pal, how they fought the Nazis side-by-side. It was a fable, practically. A children’s story.

Chris vaguely remembers seeing a blurry group photograph in the back of a textbook, once. All the Commandos together. This mirror self of his must have been there, in the bunch. But history was never his subject.

Steve keeps talking. “I, I don’t know, it feels like someone’s playing a trick on me. And it has nothing to do with you, Dr. Beck. It doesn’t.” He looks at Beck and shakes his eyes, eyes pleading and sincere. “It just. It hit me like a truck when I first saw you.” He laughs a little hysterically. “I read everyone’s personnel files but I didn’t look at any pictures beforehand.”

“Steve…” Chris says, his voice going out.

“It’s…he died in ‘45, and it’s such a strange feeling, because to everyone else he died more than a century ago.” Steve breaks eye contact, looking at the back of the photo still clenched in Chris’ hand. “But to me…God, it hasn’t even been a year.”

He looks back up. “You’re your own person, Chris, and believe me, I know that. But. God. You look just like him.” Steve huffs a wet sounding breath. “My best friend.”

Chris can’t fully breathe. His modus operandi is useless here; he can’t put any of these facts or dates into an order with any logic to it, he can’t step back from what he’s feeling and see the larger picture. Steve is standing there, cheeks pink, eyes looking hurt and overly excited, desperate, in his hands a picture of a dead twin and a dead hero, and they’re both just standing there, fingers nearly touching where they meet by the photograph, just a foot apart from each other, until they—

Aren’t.

Steve’s lips are as soft as they’ve looked all this time. He’s gentle, and stilted, like he’s a little out of practice, and Chris should know— he hasn’t kissed a man since college. He forgot the feel of it. The sense memory of someone else’s stubble against his cheek. He brings up a hand to feel Steve’s jaw, but changes his mind just as he raises it, and jumps back instead.

A few more feet of space between them then there was before. When he gets up the courage to look, Steve’s eyes are closed, his mouth lax and pink but his brow furrowed.

“This is a bad idea,” Chris says.

With his eyes still closed Steve lets out a breath that sounds like the ghost of a mmmhmm.

“I mean, it’s…we really can’t. It could compromise the entire mission,” Chris continues.

Steve is nodding along with his words.

“I want to,” Chris says. He wants to.

But there are too many ‘buts’. But what about Ares. But what about the team, what about Beth, what would Lewis say.

But you just want me because I look like a dead man.

Chris is out of words, or out of voice to say them with, so he’s so immensely grateful when Steve picks up the slack. “I know. Chris, I know.” Steve is suddenly in front of him— not close enough that a stranger would think it inappropriate, but. Closer. “It’s okay,” he says, “It won’t happen again.”

With that, Steve grips his bicep with one palm, squeezing gently like you would to say goodbye to an old friend, and then he’s out the door.

Chris sits down heavily on his dorm room bed, feeling the warmth left behind on the face of his left arm. It feels like a hundred-year-old pain, one that doesn’t really belong to him.

Chapter Text

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

Steve is breathing strong. He likes the relative silence of the shuttle module, the cockpit of the Hermes. The press conference beforehand was an absolute zoo, and even with the buzz of a million voices in his headset, with six crew surrounding him, he prefers this solitude, this feeling of his heavy gear weighing him down.

You’re in a spaceship, Rogers, he thinks. You’re a future-man, on the way to Mars.

Lewis is at the head. Their seats fall in a half-diamond formation, distributed for weight. Beth’s across from Mark. Martinez across from Vogel.

Steve across from Beck.

They run through the checks that they’ve simulated a million times before. Mission control runs through call after call in his headset. After all he did to get the ball rolling, they let Dr. Foreman be the one to initiate protocol. It’s his voice in Steve’s ear after the last check goes through, the final no/no-go from the launch director, from the Test Director, from what seems like a dozen other men and women. (Damn it, Steve, people.) Then he hears it: “All systems initialized, prepare for launch sequencer.”

He can nearly hear the buzz in Foreman’s voice, under the formality of his tone. “T-2 minutes, close and lock visors.”

From his position in the back, Steve can see each of the team as their heavy gloved fingers reach up for their visors. Rick spares a moment to cross himself, touching an imaginary rosary to his lips. Beth takes the time to turn around, to share an excited grin with the each of them. She’s nearly giddy as she locks her helmet into place.

“Transfer from ground to internal power, T-51 seconds.”

When Steve turns to his right, as much as the rigid suit will allow, Chris has already locked his visor. Steve can’t see his face through the shiny chrome.

“T-16 seconds.”

Steve knocks his foot out into the middle of the console, wanting to get closer. God, this is happening. This is really happening.

“T-10. 9. 8.”

He feels the returning answer of a solid touch against his boot, and turns his head to see the shiny, bulky orb obscuring Beck’s face pointed in his direction. He presses hard against the boot pressed against his, and feels Beck push back a little harder.

“4.

3.

2.

1.

Solid rocket booster ignition. Engaged.

We have liftoff.”  

*** 

1927 

Steve is near dreamy with sleep and the press of hot air around him. Bucky has given up the book and they are both lying flat on the stoop, Wonder Stories laying splayed open on Bucky’s chest. They’re staring up.

Steve yawns.

“You really think we’ll get up there, Bucky?”

Bucky yawns back and knocks him in the knee. “Ow,” mutters Steve.

“Yeah of course, you dumb punk. You and me. The moon, and then off to the red guy, to meet the Martians.”

“Mmm,” says Steve, on the verge of sleep. “Yeah. The moon, and then the red guy. Meet the Martians.”