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Time flies. It’s already noon. You yawn and rub your eyes. Around you, the Sunday market has started to dwindle. You should probably head home.
This is what you get for staying up until five in the morning. You always stay up until five in the morning. Even later, if you can help it. You like to extend your days as much as you can, which usually means staying awake until you pass out.
You almost always have an assignment you’ve been putting off that you really have to do the next day.
Slurping your boba, you chew on the pearls and watch carefree-looking passersby with envy. You have a three thousand word essay due tomorrow. You haven’t actually started. Well, you have all your notes.
Your attention snags on a couple cackling loudly across the street. They’re sitting on one of the sidewalk tables of that expensive cafe you’ve only ever visited once, and only because your friend was shouting.
The obnoxious laughter is garnering some intense side-eye from other people. You catch one old biddy shaking her head in disapproval. Another elderly couple walking past you grumble unhappily under their breaths.
You follow their retreating hunched backs with your eyes, honestly looking forward to the day you’re a bitter old hag yourself. Then you wouldn’t be worrying about assignments.
The elderly couple turn to your go-to cafe. There’s a big guy half-blocking the entrance. He seems preoccupied on a wireless earbud, and instead of stepping out of the way, he moves for the door handle. What a douche canoe.
To your surprise, he doesn’t actually cut inside.
The elderly couple cluck in approval. He’s holding the door open for them.
Once they head in, the dude lets the door fall shut. His gaze traces the direction they came in and completely slides over you. You’re just another frazzled college student dressed in the same hoodie and sweatpants you slept in.
You do a double take.
You’re used to running on four and a half hours of sleep, and at the moment you’re juiced up on about seven hundred mills of milk tea with a hundred percent sugar, so of course you recognise him.
It’s a really crappy disguise, just a baseball cap and a pair of fake glasses. Not even tinted sunglasses, they’re one of those hipster-looking ones with the clear lenses.
You would have to be blind and living under a rock not to recognise him, because it’s Captain America: war hero, the first Avenger— and also the world’s most wanted.
He’s even bigger in person.
You know how they say the camera adds ten pounds? You’re pretty sure it’s the opposite in this case. The cameras have to be taking at least ten pounds off him. Probably twenty, actually.
Not that he’s been seen on camera for a while, ever since the whole turning against Iron Man and all fifty states of America and the rest of the world thing.
You feel morally obligated to report him. You also feel morally obligated to pretend like you haven’t seen anything, because it’s Captain America.
Captain America seems to choose that moment to become aware that he’s been made.
He has a beard and everything, but it’s definitely him. His eyes meet yours behind those crappy hipster glasses. You open your mouth without thinking.
“Does that disguise really work?”
The silence stretches on for a second. Then Captain America drops his head and huffs out a laugh that sounds less humourless than disbelieving.
“You know,” he starts, shaking his head. His voice is wry. “It actually does.”
Hey, those are your words.
It takes a second for your brain to catch up.
Wait. Those are your words.
You can feel your eyes widening into saucers. He— you— but you— Immediately, you fumble for your phone. No way. No freaking way. Your soulmate is a freaking criminal.
In a flash, Captain America is standing right in front of you, prying the phone off your hands. It’s the latest Starkphone—you just bought it—and the astonishment in Captain America’s eyes is clear as day.
He looks genuinely surprised that you were going to call the police on him.
Him. Your soulmate.
Your soulmate.
Whoa.
Crap.
But whoa. It’s Captain America.
You can’t believe that disguise actually works.
The phone looks tiny in his hands. For one horrible moment, you seriously think he’s going to crush it into little bits and pieces.
The thought makes your stomach drop. You spent six whole months saving up for that thing, even relegating basic necessities to Afterpay. You know your priorities.
Captain America snaps it cleanly in half.
The edges where the break is splinter into smaller grains of glass. A distressed whine escapes your throat.
“I’m sorry,” he says, pocketing the broken pieces instead of just dumping them on the side of the road. Well, at least he doesn’t litter. “I can’t take that risk.”
You’re too intimidated to fight him over it. He’s Captain America.
The government says he’s technically a super villain now, and some people are even bandying around the words domestic terrorist—terrorist! Captain America!—but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still the first superhero you ever learned about.
And also that he’s your soulmate.
Your soulmate.
Your soulmate.
Captain America is your soulmate.
You don’t actually want to turn him in. Mostly. Even if he did just destroy your brand new phone with his bare hands.
His eyes are flickering between yours, then he appears to be canvassing your face, as if committing your features to memory.
“I’m sorry,” Captain America says again.
You watch him beat a hasty retreat. As ginormous as he is, he blends in seamlessly with the rest of the crowd, and— oh, that’s what he means about the crappy disguise.
It’s not long before you lose sight of the leather jacket and, eventually, the cap.
Cap is gone.
So is your phone.
You’re starting to feel like the punch line of a bad joke. At a loss, you turn and head for home. You really do need to get started on that essay.
At least you still have your old phone.
A little more than a week later, a new phone arrives in the mail. Your confusion gives way to suspicion almost immediately.
It’s definitely not Stark tech. Not Apple, either, or Samsung, or Vivo. You turn it over in your hands, looking it over for any markings, but the thing is all steel frame and sleek glass.
It does come in a box, though.
You already know who it’s from even before you read the note, which is conspicuously unsigned. The only thing that’s actually written on the slip of paper is If you ever need anything, contact this number.
Captain America has neat handwriting.
Well, you would know. You’ve been carrying around his handwriting since you were born.
You should probably Google him.
The Second World War enters the curriculum around middle school, so every twelve-year-old learns about Captain America and his Howling Commandos. You really only remember the basics. He’s never been your favourite Avenger, oops—well, he’s not even an Avenger anymore—but Hawkeye isn’t exactly your soulmate.
You get the phone all set up and immediately forget what you planned to do until much, much later, when you’re just about to sleep. Yawning, you pull up the Wikipedia page for Captain America, last updated a day ago by some user called MrsChrisEvans.
Steven Grant Rogers, it reads, then open bracket, born July 4, 1918, close bracket, known as Captain America, is an American fugitive wanted for aiding and abetting, blah blah blah. Formerly an Avengers contractor, Rogers previously served in the United States Army, blah blah blah. In 1945, he went missing in action, blah blah blah. After the 2016 terrorist attacks in Vienna and Berlin, Rogers was dishonourably discharged from the military.
The article goes on, with sections divided into Early life and World War II service, then Avengers, then Court martial, then Investigation, then In popular culture.
You’re about to skip to that last one— your favourite Captain America movie is actually the one from the seventies where he’s played by a young Robert Redford—when the phone in your hand dings.
There’s a new message.
‘Wikipedia’s not exactly a reliable source.’
For a couple of seconds, you just stare at the screen uncomprehendingly.
The contact name says it’s someone called Nomad, but when you go into your contacts to check, the only names there are the ones you imported from your old phone. There’s some guy from one of your electives, another couple from this society you joined.
No Nomad.
You put two and two together. There’s only one person it can be.
Curiously, you open a new tab and go into your university library. When you enter Captain America into the search bar, the results turn up a number of peer-reviewed journals. Between clicking into the first one and downloading the PDF, a second message drops down from the top of your screen.
‘Or you can just ask me. Call,’ he adds. ‘Don’t text :)’
Call him. Him. Captain America. Captain. America. He typed out the smiley face instead of using an emoji. You have to sit up in bed to type out your own reply.
‘What if it gets traced??????’
‘Weren’t you trying to turn me in?’ he asks.
Oops.
‘Sorry,’ you answer. You were panicking at the time. ‘Changed my mind.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
You can almost hear the dryness of his tone through the phone, even though your only conversation with him lasted less than five minutes.
‘The line’s secure,’ he assures you. ‘Trust me.’
Trust him. Him. You don’t think you’re ever going to get over this. Your soulmate is a living legend. Your soulmate. Half of your soul is actually extraordinary.
So extraordinary that he’s coming in first on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
You know. You checked.
The phone beeps again. There’s just another smiley face. The emoticons feel a little passive aggressive. If Captain America tells you to call him, you call him.
“Hi,” you say tentatively when he picks up. Even you can hear the question mark at the end of your greeting.
You can’t believe you’re on the phone with Captain America. Somehow, this is even more nerve-wracking than seeing him in person. At the time, you thought you were just looking at Captain America the criminal.
Now, he’s Captain America your soulmate.
“Hi,” he says kindly. “Doing okay?”
“Yes, sir,” you say formally, star-struck. You’re addressing an honest-to-God superhero.
“Steve,” he corrects. He sounds amused.
First name basis with one of Earth’s mightiest heroes. You don’t even think of him as Steve in your head. You don’t think you can.
It’s strange. Most people say that when you meet your soulmate, you’ll feel an inexplicable tug to them. The reason you meet each other in the first place is because the universe is trying to pull you together.
You’re not exactly feeling any of that. Maybe it’s because Captain America is on the same level as Abraham Lincoln in your head. It’s hard to think of him as a real person, let alone half of your soul.
Part of your brain wonders what use Captain America even has for a soulmate. He seems like the kind of person who should have been born with a whole soul. He’s larger than life. Like the Rock.
You ask the first question that crosses your mind. “Why’d you pick a terrorist over Iron Man?”
The answer comes immediately, full of reproach. “He’s not a terrorist.”
“Iron Man isn’t a terrorist.”
Actually, Iron Man is the first superhero you seriously believed in.
Before aliens invaded New York, Captain America was just another bedtime story. Iron Man was the real deal, every kid’s hero, living and breathing and flashing like a giant Christmas bauble.
There’s silence on the other end for a moment. When Captain America finally speaks, all he says is, “My friend needed me.”
His friend. The terrorist.
Even now, no one’s sure who exactly the Winter Soldier is. The government says it’s a Howling Commando, but the government is also full of crap.
Conspiracy theorists also say the same thing, though. You probably learned about the guy at school, but you can’t remember. You’ve never liked history.
“Iron Man probably needed you,” you mutter.
The Avengers breaking up last year royally sucked. Then One Direction broke up two months later.
It wasn’t a good year.
The silence is longer this time. “There’s nothing I can say that’ll make you understand.” Captain America doesn’t sound amused anymore. He just sounds tired.
“You sound like an old man,” you tell him, discomfited.
He makes this noise under his breath that sounds like a very soft scoff. “Older than you,” he says.
“How old are you?” you wonder. You’re already trying to do the calculations in your head.
If Captain America was born in 1918 and he went under in 1945, then he was technically still in his late twenties when he woke up from the ice about six years ago, which puts him in his early thirties now.
“Technically?” he answers. “Ninety-nine.”
Thirty-three, you guesstimate. That’s really young.
There’s a lull in the conversation— not that it was much of a conversation in the first place. The silence isn’t comfortable, but it’s not uncomfortable, either.
To be honest, you’re not too sure if you like him as a person. Maybe everyone who’s eighty years older than you are all naturally patronising.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Captain America sounds surprisingly like an old white dude from the forties.
The next night, you get another text message from Nomad.
‘Still on Wikipedia?’
Oops. You push yourself up on the bed and call him again instead of replying.
You haven’t told anyone you met your soulmate. You’re not planning to, either. What are you supposed to say? “I met my soulmate but he’s a criminal”? You don’t think so. The government will probably put you under surveillance.
Actually, the most likely scenario is that no one will believe you. It’s Captain America.
He answers on the first ring.
Well, Captain America seems to have some down time. You put him on loudspeaker so you can go back to scrolling through his page. With your internship on top of your part time job on top of all your classes, you’re too busy during the day to do any personal homework.
There’s no section for Personal life unlike most celebrities, but the movies always give Captain America love interests. Robert Redford falls in love with Barbra Streisand’s Jewish nurse. There’s also a movie that came out the year you were born where Gwyneth Paltrow plays a German spy in a star-crossed love affair opposite Brad Pitt.
Brad Pitt is so dreamy.
Then there’s the eighties love triangle with Patrick Swayze, Michelle Pfeiffer and Brooke Shields.
Wait. Maybe Captain America had a soulmate before you.
“Did you have another soulmate?” you ask suddenly. “Before?”
It’s rare, but it happens. Reincarnationists believe that the same two souls are reborn for each other in every lifetime. You were born almost an entire eight decades after Captain America was.
“No.” He returns the question. “Do you have another soulmate?”
“No,” you answer.
You can hear his breath. He might have shaken his head. “I know,” he says.
There are actually some people out there with two soulmates, their souls split in three and overlapping like a Venn diagram. It sounds pretty cool to you.
You only have one set of words wrapping around your wrist, in the same cursive writing that the note that came with the phone was written in. It’s easy to keep it covered with random bracelets.
An external link on Wikipedia redirects you to a long list of movies and serials.
“Oh,” Captain America observes wryly, clearly watching whatever you’re doing from wherever he is. “IMDb now.”
“Have you seen any of your movies?” you ask him curiously.
The most recent one was actually released the same year he was defrosted, starring the guy from The Office, but it bombed in the box office. Back then, no one wanted to see a superhero movie when they could just go to a Stark Expo.
Unless it was The Dark Knight trilogy.
No one can make superhero movies the way Christopher Nolan made superhero movies.
“I have, actually,” Captain America says, surprising you.
“This one?” You click the title at the very top.
“Shouldn’t even be on the list,” he tells you. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say he was grumbling. “They completely made up a new character and just gave ‘em my name.”
As it turns out, Captain America has seen all of his movies. He was a literal actor in the forties. He had an affair with Lana Turner.
His opinion ranges from outright disdain (the serial with the impostor Captain America) to chagrin (the 2010 erotica) to lukewarm praise (the 2011 film, but only because it’s better than the porn) to actually somewhat delighted (the space cowboy series that ran from 1965 to 1967, starring Clint Eastwood).
He prefers the cartoons, though.
You slide down the quilted headboard to lie back down on the springy mattress. Stifling a yawn, you tell him sleepily, “It would be nice if you weren’t a criminal.”
“That would be nice,” Captain America agrees.
He doesn’t say anything else.
You don’t think you’ll be receiving any soulmate benefits from the government any time soon.
That first week, Captain America is there on the phone with you every night. You’re lucky to have a single room to yourself. You’re not sure how you would explain this to a roommate.
Then he tells you he’ll be gone for a while and you don’t get to talk to him for three weeks straight.
When he does come back from whatever it was he was doing, he lets you know by calling you around the same time you were calling each other before he dropped off the face of the earth, except this time it’s a video call.
You answer without thinking. You’re in bed, wearing a Yoda face mask. At the sight of you, Captain America actually laughs.
It’s a nice laugh.
“Thanks,” he says. “I needed that.”
“Omigosh,” you say, barely processing his words. He looks mostly the same as the last time—the first and only time—you saw him. Longish hair, beard. He’s devastatingly handsome. You’re pretty sure you’ll die if you have to look at his face while you’re talking to him.
You kind of just stare at him for a long moment. It’s Captain America. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s definitely used to people ogling him.
“Can you take that mask off?” he says.
“Wait,” you say, distracted by his face, “I have another ten minutes.”
You take him with you to the sink in the corner of your shoebox room once the timer’s up, propping the phone against the mirror in front of you while you peel the sheet off your face and put a layer of moisturiser on. Then you bob down in front of the sink and smile stupidly at him.
“Hi.”
He smiles back. Your heart does a little flip-flop in your chest. He’s so pretty, oh my gosh. “Hi,” he says.
You learn a lot of things about Steve Rogers.
He was poor growing up. His parents were immigrants. He became an orphan not long after his high school graduation. He went to art school afterwards.
None of these things are in the biographies.
For obvious reasons, you’re not at all surprised to learn that the history books just made up a lot of crap.
The phone calls happen whenever he’s free. Sometimes, there are weeks of radio silence. You worry but not really. Mostly, you worry because you’re not worried. Part of you still believes, childishly, that Captain America is invincible.
Other times, he’s there almost every night. By now, you’ve come to the definitive conclusion that Steve is an old man from the forties. He finds texting tedious. He’ll actually sit there quietly on the line while you work on your assignments. You think he actually likes the utter mundanity of your life.
Whenever he talks about himself, he rarely brings up his time with SHIELD or the Avengers. It’s always the past. You learn more about the Great Depression and the Second World War with him than you did at school.
Steve was a Blue Spader before he assembled his Howling Commandos. The love of his life passed away last year. He likes dancing. Real dancing, not what he calls crap from the twenty-first century.
You’re kind of affronted by the snub, but you take the high road and just ignore it. You’ve had plenty of practice with your parents and grandparents. Older generations just don’t appreciate the youth.
He can play the piano. He can carry a tune. He always wanted a dog, but first he had asthma, then he was in the army, then he was a superhero, and now he’s a fugitive.
He doesn’t like any new music. You figure that’s another generational thing, like how your dad doesn’t like songs that came out after the eighties, or how your grandma only listens to Frank Sinatra. Steve’s generation goes back to your grandparents’ parents.
They’re all dead now.
Every night you spend on the phone with him, you grow more and more discontented.
You have no idea how you’re soulmates, or even why. You realise pretty quickly that, for the last six years, ever since they pulled him out of the ice, Steve hasn’t really been living. Just existing.
You find yourself wishing that someone would invent a time machine already and send the poor guy back to his own time. If your situations were reversed and you found yourself dropped in the middle of post-war America, you’d be just as miserable.
Maybe you’re his soulmate because you’re supposed to help kick him back to 1945.
Your studies aren’t exactly in the time travelling business, though. You seriously consider switching your degree.
It doesn’t sink in until much later how significant it is that if Steve does go back in time somehow, it doesn’t even occur to you to go with him. Most pairs can’t bear to be apart, but you haven’t actually been together in the first place.
Steve, you learn soon enough, is a fairy godmother.
You make it a point to never check how much money you have, otherwise you might just throw yourself in front of a moving school bus, traumatise future generations so they grow up smarter than you.
Three whole months go by before you realise none of your bills have been taken out of your bank account.
You have to pay board every month, which includes the communal meal plan, and your phone plan also gets deducted automatically. Except you don’t have a phone plan, because Steve obliterated your phone and then sent you a replacement as an apology.
To be honest, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed if you weren’t planning to splurge on the latest release Starkpad. No one does Cyber Monday like Stark Industries does Cyber Monday.
When you check your bank account, you have to blink a couple of times, log out and log back in, blink some more.
You’re not... broke.
You exit out of the app and go back in again.
You actually have money. Your transaction history says nothing’s been taken out of your wages, other than your occasional grocery shopping.
It’s not rocket science. You figure out who’s behind it pretty quickly. You’re not even sure where he’s getting the money from, considering he’s a criminal. Aren’t all criminal bank accounts frozen?
You try talking to him about it later that night, but Steve is totally unapologetic. “Why not?” he answers, when you ask him why.
“They’re my bills,” you say, dumbly.
“You’re my soulmate,” Steve says.
“But,” you object, “I’m a struggling college student.”
“You’re my soulmate,” he repeats.
“But,” you say again, at a loss, “it’s my responsibility.”
Steve raises an eyebrow. It’s a common expression on his face, usually when you do something vaguely stupid.
“My responsibility,” he says carefully, “is to look after you. I’m already...” He seems to frown at himself. “It’s the least I can do.”
Ugh, he’s so pretty. Especially when he has that crease between his eyebrows.
“You’re kind of like my sugar daddy,” you tell him, propping your cheek up on the palm of your hand so you can just gaze at him and sigh longingly.
The eyebrow goes back up. “Your what?”
“You know,” you say with a shrug. “Old dudes who give young girls an allowance in exchange for stuff.”
“Stuff?” Steve is clearly trying not to smile, which— how the hell does Captain America know what a sugar daddy is?
You grin and crinkle your nose. “You know.”
“I think I can guess.” His tone is dry as sandpaper. “Seriously?”
“Well, you’re a hundred,” you point out.
He shakes his head. Strands of his beautiful hair catch the light. He’s really, really, so unbelievably pretty. Way too pretty to be real. He can’t go to prison, you realise solemnly.
“You’re ridiculous,” Steve tells you.
“I can also look after myself,” you quip.
“I know.” The look he gives you is meaningful. “But I’m still doing this.”
You huff, aggrieved. “But what about you?”
His gaze is so soft. And selfless. And soft. “You don’t need to worry about me,” he says.
And stupid, you think sullenly.
Of course you worry about him.
At the crack of dawn, your alarm goes off and you drag yourself out of bed to line up outside the store. It’s one of your rare days off, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
There are already two dozen people in the queue. You and your housemate hit the back. The store opens at nine, so it takes another six hours before anyone is allowed inside. Luckily, you brought a whole bag of junk.
You snack on candy and chocolate and chips that will probably give you UTI, drink two bottles of blue Gatorade, and end up having to take several trips to the bathroom.
The rest of your time is well spent catching up on Peaky Blinders. You’re finding this latest season kind of convoluted. The first two are definitely much better.
At long last, the doors finally open. Some asshole tries to shove you out of the way and cut in line, but your friend swears at them and almost throws hands. You pull her away before security can kick you both out.
The incident is immediately forgotten the moment you get your hands on the product. You have the Starkpad Mark VIII in the coveted red and gold colour scheme. Nothing, nothing, can dampen your mood.
And there are no threats of a renegade super soldier waiting around the corner to snap your newest gadget in half with his bare hands.
Safely back home, you spend the rest of your day playing with your new tablet. Hiro transfers all the data over from your old device. He’s actually the best virtual assistant ever. Leagues better than Siri and Alexa.
You’re so preoccupied that you miss Steve’s call twice. He eventually catches onto your situation, because the next time your phone rings, it actually rings instead of just vibrating, which means he turned it off silent remotely from wherever he is.
Oops.
“Sorry,” you say sheepishly, standing your phone up against the beanbag. On the rug in front of you, the tablet has also started to ring. “Hang on.” You hit answer. “Hi, Mom.”
There’s a short exchange about screen sharing and cable adaptors that ends with her telling you not to stay up too late and you nodding along and saying, “Okay,” but not really, “Bye. Love you.”
Then you go right back to fiddling with your tablet.
After a while, Steve, forgotten, pipes up from the sofa, “New toy?” He sounds chipper, even though you totally just forgot about him.
Incorrigible, you hold up your brand new red and gold tablet to show off. “I was Team Iron Man,” you tell him, grinning.
He snorts. “I figured.”
Night goes into midnight. Steve doesn’t interrupt your fiddling, but once you’ve yawned one too many times, he seems to decide enough is enough.
“All right,” he says. “Come on, honey. Get to bed.” He manages to coax you to your feet and over to the bed.
Curled up under the blankets, you’re only half awake when you mumble reflexively, “Night. Love you.”
If Steve replies, you don’t remember. In the morning, you can’t even recall saying the L-word.
Three nights go by before you get him on the phone again, but you’re aptly entertained by the updated holographic display on your new tablet.
Steve looks tired. He usually does. You don’t know how to help him, if you even can. How do you help a superhero? You wish you can ask someone for advise, but no one knows about your soulmate situation. As far as your friends and family are all concerned, you still haven’t met your mysterious other half.
That tends to happen when your soulmate is a fugitive.
The phone call is mostly silent, as usual. Steve has his old music playing quietly in the background. You’re catching up on your readings for two different classes tomorrow. They’re about fifty pages long, and you keep getting distracted by your tablet, but Steve is there to tell you off.
“Off,” he says, whenever your attention strays. “Come on.”
It feels like someone has actually poured sand in your eyes by the time you finish. You settle into bed, huddling under your blankets to trap the heat in there with you. You know Steve will stay with you until you’re fast asleep.
“Hey,” he says, before you go. “I love you.”
“Love you,” you mumble sleepily.
You wish you can hug him.
Christmas comes and goes.
Steve is away heroing most of the time. He seems much busier than normal during the whole holiday season, actually. Maybe crime rates really do go up.
You’re pretty sure he’s technically a mercenary now, which, in your humble opinion, sounds very cool, but when you ask him if that’s the right term for his current profession, Steve actually scoffs and says that if anyone ever paid him, it might be.
Captain America really is a jaded war veteran.
Everyone you know goes home for the holidays. Too bad you live across the pond. It’s too expensive to fly back and forth just for two weeks, and you’re still too busy with your classes, anyway, but that’s the beauty of the latest Stark tablet. With the built-in projector, it’s like you’re all together in spirit.
Spirit holograms. It’s so cool.
You celebrate Christmas and New Year with a friend instead, as usual. Her humongous family includes you in their gift-giving festivities, and you come away with a new scarf and socks and matching ugly Christmas sweaters. It’s nice and warm, and everything smells like gingerbread.
Steve sends you a present. It’s the new Stark watch you’ve been eyeballing for a while, but you spent all your money on presents to ship back home. Fucking postage costs are off the roof. You curse freights all the way to the North Pole.
Not for the first time, Steve is telling you to watch your mouth.
He’s a firm believer in respecting your elders. Part of that includes not swearing in front of them. You suspect he’s also the type to berate you for putting your feet up on the dashboard. Boomer.
But he gets you the watch, in red and gold, because evidently he can put aside the bad blood between him and Iron Man if he feels like it. There’s a small, unsigned Christmas card that just says Merry Christmas in his flowing script.
The next couple of months pass by quickly. In between several one-to-two-hour exams and ten-to-fifteen-page essays, you study until your eyeballs threaten to fall off and work until your back hurts and talk to Steve until you pass out in the middle of the phone call.
At least the semester break is coming up soon. You apply for a bunch of short-term exchange programs. Multiple offers get back to you, including one from a non-profit outreach centre in Oakland. The trip isn’t actually to California, though, but some place called Wakanda.
Wait— Wakanda.
You’ve heard that name before. A quick Google search reveals that it’s the name of that super advanced, super secret country that just went public a couple of weeks ago.
They have a superhero, too.
Everyone seems to have a superhero nowadays.
“I didn’t even apply for this,” you tell Steve suspiciously. The position is for an undergraduate assistant. You are an undergrad, and you did apply for assistant roles, but this sounds way too good to be true.
What if Cat Man is in cahoots with the UN?
What if they know?
Steve laughs. It’s like a second sun comes up. “Cat Man,” he says, still laughing. You stare at him, bewitched. You love that sound with a wholesomeness that makes you want to melt into a puddle. “Don’t worry, babe. He’s one of the good guys.”
Not that you ever get the chance to accept. Before spring break, some purple alien decides to wipe out half the population of the entire universe, including you. Soulmates are two halves of one whole.
Your name joins the other three hundred million carved into the memorial walls erected all over the country. Steve visits every week, just to sit there quietly.
You would think by now that he’s gotten used to loss.
When everyone is finally brought back, you find yourself on a street that looks amazingly like it’s on location for The Walking Dead. A number of weather-worn furniture have been abandoned on the sidewalk, piles of old crap littering the streets.
You’re not alone.
There are other people standing around, looking about as lost as you feel. After a moment, you all decide to congregate. Theories pop up, mostly along the lines of alien abduction. You’re pretty sure you got probed, because the last thing you remember is walking home from the bus stop.
Authorities—what remain of them, anyway—eventually round you all up in an abandoned school gymnasium. A mild panic ensues after they break it to the crowd that you’re all part of the missing half of the population who vanished five years ago.
Five years.
That’s half a freaking decade.
You feel something like dread settle in the pit of your stomach. Everyone is scrambling over each other to make a phone call to their loved ones. Your own phone is gone— you guess you probably dropped it when you turned to dust five years ago.
You’re itching to call your family, but you wisely choose to stay out of the stampede. The people trying to sort you out somehow manage to wrangle everyone into a line. It’s a dishearteningly long line.
The setup isn’t isolated, either. Apparently, there are hundreds of other makeshift centres being organised all over the city. It’s going to take a while. You’ve all been advised to stay put.
You’re starting to regret not memorising the emergency number Steve gave you. You put it in your contacts all those months—all those years—ago and promptly forgot all about it. Who even memorises phone numbers?
After a couple of hours, someone rolls a TV into the gym. International news channels are all covering the same thing and regurgitating the exact same information: alien invasion five years ago, the Avengers lost, half the population disappeared.
Five years and another alien invasion later, the Avengers clearly found a way to bring everyone back.
No one knows how, though. There’s some shaky footage of upstate New York where the Avengers HQ is— well, where the Avengers HQ used to be, because it’s completely decimated now.
Those rumours of a boss fight seem to be true. There’s no official word yet. The only thing anyone knows for certain is that Captain America is most definitely an Avenger again, but no one knows if the superhero squad took any hits.
As far as you know, Steve’s okay. Everyone says you’ll know if your soulmate’s dead. You don’t feel any differently, so you’re pretty sure Steve is okay.
You’re not too worried about him. He’s literally a superhero. Mostly, you’re worried about your family.
Some people get reunited with their loved ones within the day. You witness their reunions with a pang of envy, hoping the people you care about are better off than you are.
It’s cold, and you’re surrounded by a bunch of strangers, and everything you own is probably gone.
Fuck.
Cots are somehow acquired. For a lack of anything better to do, you help everyone set up around the gym. Others seem to follow the same train of thought, and with hundreds of people working together, the shelter gets fixed up pretty quickly. You think this is kind of like disaster relief.
Dinner that night is canned mushroom soup and bread rolls. Several shopping carts containing basic necessities go around. You only manage to grab a toothbrush and a toothpaste. All the blankets are gone, but luckily the girl next to you offers to share the one she managed to snag.
It’s too early in the spring to be anything other than cold. Huddled together in one cot, you both pretend like you’re at a sleepover with a friend.
“Can I tell you something?” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and her eyes are wide in the dark. You’re both lying on your sides, facing each other. At your nod, she swallows and hesitates, before finally admitting, “Is it bad that I hope my boyfriend disappeared?”
“I hope my family disappeared,” you whisper back, with a lot less shame. If that’s bad... Well, your soulmate was an international criminal at one point, so maybe it’s in your blood. You figure that a family that disappears together stays together. No time has passed for you at all.
“He’s not my soulmate,” she says, sniffling. “Five years is so long. What if...”
“What’s his name?” you ask.
Her face crumples after she answers. “He’d be twenty-seven now,” she says desolately. In the back of your mind, you remember that’s how old Steve was when he woke up from the ice. “What if he... What if...”
“You should be happy for him,” you tell her unthinkingly.
Well, you are thinking, but not about her boyfriend. You’re thinking about your soulmate, who never really moved on from 1945. Poor guy.
You catch the broken look in her eyes and squeeze her hands, apologetic.
“Did you have a boyfriend?” she asks despondently. You pull your sleeve up to show her the words on your wrist. At the sight of it, she starts crying. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”
You were all told earlier that if you had—or hopefully still have—a soulmate, they’ve spent the last half decade without you.
“No, no, it’s okay,” you’re quick to reassure her, startled by the sudden display of emotion over your mark. “We didn’t know each other long.”
She still looks absolutely dejected. “Do you love him?” she asks. Then amends, “Her?”
Everyone loves Steve. “He would’ve been my best friend,” you say, unhappy with the reminder.
A little self-centredly, you don’t really mourn the missing five years. It’s not like it affected you, considering you weren’t actually around to be affected by it.
But Steve was.
You have to remind yourself that, and the resulting contrition leaves you feeling down in the dumps.
You were friends. Five years is a long time. You wonder who else he lost. You hope he got to keep Bucky.
If not... Well, you hope he moved on. Maybe even had a family, but that might be a stretch.
It’s just that you heard that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have a baby now, and you find yourself wishing that Steve’s gone and done the same thing.
Knowing him, though, he probably spent the last five years encouraging other people to move on with their lives while doing absolutely nothing himself. Hypocrite.
You remember those annoying videos they used to make you watch at school. You got stuck in detention more than once. What did he say? Something about how the only way to be cool was to follow rules? Loser.
There’s a reason Gen Zs don’t like Captain America.
A now-familiar voice pulls you out of your thoughts. “How did you meet?”
The question brings you back to that day in the city. It was just any other day. You were just another face in the crowd he was trying to blend in to. And failing, because he’s Captain America.
“Kind of randomly,” you admit.
Serendipity. A happy accident. Except he was a war criminal.
But he’s not anymore, if there’s any truth behind the rumours going around the centre. Everyone’s still trying to catch up to five years’ worth of updates.
“What’s his name?” she asks.
“Steve.”
It doesn’t even occur to you until much later, when your siblings proceed to shit on you for keeping such an important thing to yourself, that the first person you’ve told about your soulmate is a stranger.
“That’s nice,” she says.
Not really. Steve is a kind of a lame name. Like Frank. Or Bob. Or Greg.
“How old would he be now?”
“Um...” You have to do a quick calculation in your head. Steve would be a hundred and five now, technically. Or he will be in about three months. Physically, he should be about... “Thirty... nine?”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, he’s older.” Those eyebrows wiggle suggestively, even as she sniffles. “I hope he’s rich.”
“I think he gets hazard pay,” you say earnestly. You’re not sure how much they actually pay superheroes.
Her grin is watery, but it’s a start. You grin back and huddle closer. It definitely feels like a sleepover.
You spend the rest of the night giggling like twelve-year-olds. It’s a personal victory to make a friend at the end of the world.
The next day, there’s more waiting.
People are slowly trickling out of the centre, collected by overjoyed friends and family members. You’re not too optimistic. Your family is on a different continent altogether, and with your luck, the friends you have here probably all got dusted as well.
Unlucky attracts unlucky. Look at your soulmate. He had to fight Nazis, then he had to fight aliens, then he had to fight the UN. Then he had to fight more aliens.
You’re realistic enough about your situation as an exchange student that you don’t even bother lining up. They’re still registering names, and with the influx of resurrected people, it’s no wonder that the database keeps crashing. Their servers probably aren’t even running on SI.
You nudge your bunkmate. “Wanna go for a walk?”
Her eyebrows furrow. “Like, leave here?”
You shrug. At this point, everyone’s just sitting around doing nothing, waiting for either good news or bad news. Or both. There’s nothing else to do. The air is getting stale with all the mingled respiration of way too many people. They’ve thrown open the doors and windows for extra ventilation, but you’re too far in to feel the breeze.
Fresh air sounds really nice.
Even the smallest chance of reuniting with their loved ones sounds much nicer to other people, though.
“What if...” she trails off. She looks hesitant to go anywhere.
You save her the trouble. “I’ll be right back.” You bend down to tug on your shoes.
“Where are you going?” She sounds alarmed.
“Wanna check out my campus.” Entire universities went out of commission, apparently. Luckily, yours only closed down a couple of colleges.
The streets are still deserted. You really do feel like you’re in the middle of zombie apocalypse, except there’s no Rick Grimes anywhere in sight. Unlucky.
Naturally, that train of thought has you wondering which celebrities stayed and which didn’t.
Oh my gosh, you haven’t kept up with the Kardashians. Maybe Kourtney and Scott are back together. Maybe Kimye got a divorce. Who knows?
Not you, that’s for sure.
You can’t wait to get your hands on a computer. This is the longest you’ve been away from the internet. You hope your uni kept your student credentials.
The walk from the relief centre to your college doesn’t take too long. The campus is eerily empty. There are no grad students lounging in the grass, no undergrads rushing from one class to another. You come across maybe one or two people in the courtyard, but when you approach them, they tell you they’re just out for a stroll.
Disheartened, you make your way to the college library. It’s an immense relief to find the place still open.
There are actually students inside. The traffic is nowhere near as crowded as you remember, but no one pays you a second glance, so it’s simple business to occupy one of the empty computer terminals and try to login.
Try. The university database doesn’t recognise you. It’s been five years.
Without much preamble, you wheel your chair over to the person sitting next to you. “Excuse me. Hi.”
The dude pulls out an earbud. “Hi?” He looks confused to be addressed. You know you’re infringing on unspoken library rules, but needs must.
“Sorry to bother you,” you begin, before deciding to just get right to the point. “My login’s not working. Do you mind if I use your computer for a sec?”
His eyebrows furrow. “You can contact IT—”
“I just wanna check Facebook,” you say, cutting him off. “Please. It’s been five years.”
The guy frowns. “Five years,” he repeats. Then understanding seems to dawn on him. “Hold on, are you—”
You nod. “I just came from the relief centre,” you explain. “Lost my phone in the snap. Can I—”
“Oh.” Hastily, he starts fumbling for his pocket. “God. Sorry. Yeah, you can use my phone.”
It’s a Starkphone, you recognise longingly. Not an old model, either, but a new one that feels startlingly like a slap to the face.
You’ve missed out on five years’ worth of new models.
The realisation is more upsetting than anything else you’ve been dealt with since you reappeared on the sidewalk the other day.
Trying to ignore your heartbreak, you push the phone back towards its owner. “I don’t remember anyone’s number,” you say, sniffling.
“Oh,” he says again. Clearly, he can sense how upset you suddenly are, because he’s starting to look uncomfortable. After a moment, he hurries to his feet and frees up his seat. “Sorry. Here.”
Finally in front of a computer, you open up a new window and log into Facebook. Your timeline is predictably dead on your end, but there have been messages posted every year on your birthday from friends and family who apparently didn’t get dusted.
Your mom is one of them.
You click into her profile. She’s always been embarrassingly active on Facebook, constantly posting pictures of her cooking and those cheesy texts that all middle-aged women seem to love. At the present moment, her account is unhelpfully offline.
Hoping she’s with your dad already, you shoot her a quick message to let her know which centre you’re in, then you resume scrolling through her feed.
You don’t get very far before one of her posts has you pulling up short.
The guy whose computer you’re on also stops in his tracks. He’s been hovering somewhere behind you, trying to give you some semblance of privacy, but now he leans forward to gawk at the screen.
“Is that... Captain America?”
Pictures of your mom and, bewilderingly, Steve appear on her timeline. The most recent post of the two of them is dated to Thanksgiving last year. They’re with a group of about half a dozen other people. Some unseen photographer evidently took the picture from the head of the table.
“Um.” You zoom in to double check the person sitting next to your mom. “Yeah.”
There’s a beat.
Then the dude says, “Oh,” as if it all suddenly makes sense. When you turn around to shoot him a questioning look, he gestures awkwardly to the screen in front of you. “Sorry. Stark Industries started funding support groups after... you know. I heard Captain America was running a few of them.”
Oh. That’s so nice.
But your mom has never cared for therapy.
You wonder how they met. Steve probably sought her out. At least she likes the support group enough to make them FB official.
You flick through the pictures distractedly before remembering you’re on someone else’s computer.
Logging yourself out of Facebook, you thank the stranger whose work you interrupted, then make your way back to the gym.
The streets are no less empty than you found it. It’s a chilling experience, but also kind of thrilling, to traverse what you remember as a normally busy street in almost dead silence. The air feels cool and clean around you, a far cry from the ever-present stuffiness of the gym.
You resign yourself to the long wait.
As it turns out, the wait isn’t that long. It’s only late in the afternoon when a sudden hush falls over the hall.
You perk up curiously. At first, you can’t see over the throng, but the swarm of bodies is slowly parting like the Red Sea. The person in front of you mutters, “Holy shit.”
You see the suit first, the signature blue and red, the star on his chest.
Then you see him.
You leap to your feet. “Steve!”
Something in his expression crumples at the sight of you, but his steps don’t falter. He crosses the last of the distance between you and seems to collapse over you even as he gathers you into his arms.
Whatever the suit is made of, it’s unyielding. All you can do is stand there while Captain America crushes you against him. You can’t even bring your arms around him.
If you somehow get absorbed into his body, you wouldn’t even be surprised. He’s holding you so tightly. Your heart is pounding.
Once your blood stops rushing in your ears, you realise that the wild, hammering sound isn’t coming from you.
It’s coming from him.
You can hear Steve’s heartbeat, clear as cling wrap, where your ear is pressed against this chest. The thunderous rhythm inside his rib cage is a jarring contrast against the surprisingly steady beat of your own heart.
It feels like forever before he draws back.
Steve never breaks contact, only holds you at arm’s length so he can look over you. He looks like he’s in a lot of pain. When your eyes meet his, his expression crumples some more, and he reels you in again.
You can feel him shaking around you.
It takes you a second to remember that it’s been five years for him. For you, it hasn’t even been a week. You were just on the phone with him three nights ago.
You want to hug him back.
You squirm until Steve loosens his grip enough to give you enough wiggle room to reach up and wrap your arms around his neck, which is the most giving part of him at the moment.
The minute tightening of his arms around your waist is the only warning you get before he lifts you up.
An actual squeak escapes you. Your legs are dangling in the air, and you scramble for purchase around Steve’s legs. You’ve never climbed a tree before, but you imagine it might be like this.
At your pathetic flailing, Steve’s hands slide underneath your thighs and secure you around him. You have the presence of mind to lock your ankles around his waist.
Up to that point, you’ve actually forgotten about the crowd.
Then they start cheering for Captain America.
You bury your face in his neck, embarrassed. Under the faint smell of soap, Steve still reeks of blood and smoke.
He cradles you against him and exhales, long and deep, and—
Okay. Okay. This is really nice.
Steve brings you to your family, most of them also conveniently dusted, so no one’s had to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with being the only one who was left behind. Luckily, your mom is a well-adjusted person.
She also adores Steve.
While everyone is busy catching up, she announces that he paid off the rest of the house, much to his embarrassment. Your mom couldn’t afford the mortgage with your dad gone, but Steve is loaded. He’s been looking after her for the last half a decade.
It’s weird to watch their interactions. Your mom and Steve know each other. They’ve known each other even longer than you’ve known him. They’re actually friends. Somehow, that all happened without you around to facilitate it.
She fusses over him the same way she fusses over you and your siblings, clucking at him to take his shoes off and change into more comfortable clothes. Steve is much nicer to her about it than the rest of you are.
Honestly, you never thought you’d be introducing him to anyone you know, let alone your family.
Actually, if you’re being perfectly honest, you never even thought that far ahead. It’s Captain America. He was an actual war criminal.
World governments are too busy trying to put themselves back together to pay him closer scrutiny at the moment, but tweets from the current POTUS are firmly dismissive of pursuing prosecution. Steve literally saved the world. Again.
And Iron Man and Black Widow are dead.
The news throws you off balance. Suddenly, you’re back in your dorm again, alone for the holidays for the first time in your life, learning about Carrie Fisher’s death. It leaves the same sickening feeling in your gut.
Outwardly, Steve is stiff and stoic, like someone who’s been dealt with another blow after one too many, but his grief is bone-deep and bleeds into you uncomfortably.
You know empathy is one of the peskier byproducts of this whole soulmate thing, but you don’t remember experiencing it before. It’s not common, but it happens.
Discomfited, you kind of wish it would stop. You’ve never dealt with loss before in your life. Or any actual hardship, really.
Steve grew up in the Great Depression. All he pretty much knows is hardship.
He stays the night. You hang around the living room with him. When he returns from the kitchen after helping your mom with the dishes, he finds you sprawled out on the sofa.
Steve hunkers down on the floor in front of you with a grunt and just sits there with his head tipped back, using your stomach as a pillow while you type away on your brand new phone. It can’t be a comfortable position, but he ignores you.
Your bunk buddy from the centre has reunited with her boyfriend, who has also recently returned from the dead. Good for her. She’s telling you to thank Captain America for helping her out.
It’s past midnight now. Everyone else in the house is fast asleep. You’re still awake, obviously. You have five years to catch up on.
The political climate is a mess. There are two presidents, too many members of the senate, not enough patience to go around. You don’t really care about politics, though.
You move on to more pressing matters. Like showbiz.
Predictably, not a lot of movies came out during those five missing years. The Stranger Things kids have all grown up. Keanu Reeves was taken by the snap, which is a crime against nature.
After you learn that Christopher Tolkien passed away three years ago, you call it quits. You’ve had enough for one day.
You put your phone down and turn your attention to Steve. He’s still leaning against the couch, arms crossed over his chest, the sturdy build of his upper body rising and falling steadily with his breaths. His eyes are closed.
He looks... peaceful.
He looks heart-wrenchingly beautiful like that.
You reach over to pet his hair, idle. “I think I like the beard.”
Steve’s cheeks are baby-smooth. The cuts and bruises from the alien showdown have already faded, but there’s an alarming laceration along his forearm that still hasn’t healed completely. Clutching you like there’s no tomorrow hasn’t helped. Miraculously, the stitches are still in tact.
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Yeah?” Gently, Steve reaches for your hand where you’re touching his cheek. He shifts closer. “Maybe I’ll grow it out again,” he muses, pressing a kiss to the back of your hand.
You grin and hug his head. His hair smells like the heat of a flat iron, but you know it’s just from overexposure to sunlight. Steve snakes an arm around your waist, then two, then he’s sliding into the couch with you.
He’s way too big to fit, but he manoeuvres you on top of him with a thoughtless kind of ease. For the second time that day, you can hear his heartbeat where your ear is pressed right up to his chest.
It’s steady this time.
Steve kisses the top of your head. You still don’t know why he’s your soulmate, but he’s warm and solid around you, and that sends you right off to sleep.
He leaves in the morning to attend Iron Man’s funeral. Pepper Potts has extended an invitation to you, but you can’t go. You can’t. It’s Iron Man.
So Steve goes to his friend’s funeral by himself.
Later, you might regret not going, but you’re young. You have plenty of room for regrets.
When he returns later that night, his heartbreak is an acute feeling in your chest that makes you want to claw out your own heart.
Steve doesn’t say anything, and since you’re a big fan of avoiding uncomfortable conversations, you don’t ask. He just lays down half on top of you while you’re preoccupied with the brand new tablet he’s brought back.
The next day, he takes you to his apartment in Brooklyn.
It’s nice. It looks lived in. The matching upholstery on the armchair and sofa is plaid tweed, and the shelves are lined with worn books and old records. The turntable on the four-by-four is so ancient it has one of those horns sticking out of the top.
You wander around the space Steve has occupied for the last five years. The kitchen table is littered with art supplies and leather-bound journals filled with unfinished drawings, mostly of the same beautiful woman.
You recognise her straight away.
Steve used to tell you about Peggy over the phone, recalling stories from his old World War II days the way your dad used to tell you stories before bed of his tech-free childhood in the seventies. Steve’s love for her is heavy and full of regret and lost time. The weight of it is way beyond your comprehension.
You have your whole life ahead of you. You still need to fall in love, learn how to drive, vote. You’re not exactly looking to the future or anything optimistic like that, but you like to think you’re pretty grounded in the present.
Where else would you be? It’s your time. Your youth.
Steve is a centenarian. He carries the past like Atlas carries the globe. You don’t know how to take some of the burden.
Just looking at Peggy makes your heart twist, but you can’t be sure if that’s really your heart or Steve’s. You wish you could’ve met her.
“You can,” Steve says nonsensically.
You’re only half paying attention. “Huh?”
You’ve gathered up all the sketchbooks in your arms and deposited them on the coffee table where you can look through them more comfortably. The carpet is only marginally softer than the chairs in the kitchen.
Steve drops into the armchair behind you and tosses you a throw pillow to sit on.
There are charcoal renders of the New York skyline and the Hudson River, watercolour paintings of Central Park and some botanical garden, still life compositions of odds and ends, quick sketches of strangers he passes in the street or sits across from on the subway, careful portraits of people he loves.
Most of them are easily recognisable.
There’s Sam Wilson’s famous smile in graphite. In another sketchbook, Steve has reproduced the Falcon’s wings in probably perfect detail.
“Might be dropping by later,” Steve comments.
You whirl around to face him. “The Falcon’s coming?”
“Just Sam,” he says, amused.
It takes you another second to process that. The Falcon might be dropping by. He’s your second favourite Avenger. You fucking love birds. They’re the last of the dinosaurs.
You heard Hawkeye went nuts after the snap and proceeded to go on a killing spree from South America to East Asia for the better part of half a decade, massacring entire cartels and wiping out remnants of the yakuza.
In your opinion, that just makes him a vigilante, but your morality is grey enough that some people would probably consider you a shitty person.
Well, you’re not sure how what Hawkeye’s done is any different to the crusade Captain America took against Hydra when you were still in high school.
After SHIELD imploded back in 2014, the death toll for neo-Nazis was going up, like, every week. There were even protests, especially after some racist fuck tagged Captain America in a violently white supremacist tweet and Captain America replied with an actual threat.
And then Iron Man retweeted.
Some movement actually tried to get Steve prosecuted for several counts of first degree murder, but those cases always got thrown out the window. Back then, the US government would never have allowed their national hero to be taken to court. How the turn tables.
Anyway. The Falcon.
There are a couple more drawings of the jet pack, or whatever the wings are called, but mostly the sketches vary, from something like a tiny chihuahua in motion, jumping up to catch a tattered tennis ball mid-air, to a random study of how light falls on a sphere from a bunch of different angles, to a haunting portrait of a girl with long dark hair and such a lovely face that you stop for a moment just to stare at her.
You know who she is. The Scarlet Witch.
And there are several sketches of the Black Widow.
You’ve only ever seen her on TV, back when the Avengers used to be the Avengers and threw press conferences on a pretty consistent basis. In those public appearances, Natasha Romanoff never failed to look closed off and downright unapproachable.
In most of Steve’s drawings, she looks the exact opposite.
Her enigmatic face is warm and open, full of love. The sheer warmth of her is startling. She’s even more beautiful through his eyes than she is on camera. You can see the care Steve has taken in every stroke of the pencil. He really loves— he really loved her.
If you ever love someone that much, you’re pretty sure you would actually die if anything happened to them. You wonder how Steve can even function. He’s lost, like, everyone he’s ever loved.
Well. Almost everyone.
A portrait of the Winter Soldier brings you up short.
In this particular scene, Bucky is ostensibly passed out on a cot. Steve must’ve been occupying a chair nearby while he was sketching this picture, from the angle it’s in. There’s a baby goat sleeping on Bucky Barnes’ chest.
Steve notices your fascination.
“That was in Wakanda,” he says, leaning over you to peer down at his work. The numbers scrawled across the top right corner of the page date the drawing back to 2016. His fingertips tap the paper absentmindedly. “Got along with the animals.”
After that, all the drawings of Bucky give you pause.
In some of them, he has short hair and he’s clean shaven, and he looks ridiculously sweet, with plump cheeks and big blue eyes in oil pastel. Those must be from Steve’s memories, because Bucky looks really young.
You wiggle backwards into Steve. He spreads his legs wider to bracket you on the floor. You continue flicking through his sketchbook, his fingers playing with the end of your braid.
He’s drawn the Abu Simbel across the Nile, painted an old colossus cut into the Apennine, reproduced the intricate mosaics of a great mosque in Damascus.
You turn to face him so he can name them for you.
There’s a silent reverence to all of Steve’s work. You can imagine him walking in these places, small and young in the shadow of these ancient monoliths.
Once you get to the last page, you let the sketchbook fall shut and reach for his hands. They’re a lot bigger than yours, the pads of his fingers hardened over, his palms roughened from years of beating enemies to a pulp.
Casually, Steve links your fingers together. “You gonna ask me how we did it?”
“How’d you do it?” you ask gamely.
In all seriousness, he answers, “We built a time machine.”
You blink. Say what?
“A time machine?” you parrot.
You can’t believe it.
Yes, you can.
At Steve’s nod, your mouth drops open in awe. “Cool.” Then, suddenly, probably the most important thought of your life occurs to you.
You grip Steve’s hands. “Dude.” When he doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring at you with that unreadable look in his eyes, you grip his hands even tighter and say again, “Dude.”
Steve squeezes back. “I know.” He doesn’t seem to want to discuss it at the moment, so you drop it.
Your mind is racing, though. Steve must be able to sense your impatience, but he just stays seated on the armchair, looking totally impassive. Your resolve breaks in less than a minute.
“Steve,” you whine, because time travel.
The inscrutable expression on his face shifts to one of amusement.
You’re still on the floor between his legs, your elbows propped on top of his knees. Steve keeps his fingers intertwined with yours. The most he does to help you expel your new bout of energy is swing your joined hands idly, left to right.
For the first time in a long time, he’s in no rush.