a/n: Alternatively Titled: "Fic. Molly's Fic. AU, angsted not fluffed." courtesy of Grace, or sharpestsatire on tumblr. Without her, this fic would be abandoned a few sentences in. With her, it would have been a hell of a let less angsty.
Steve Rogers is something of a constant at Natasha's cafe. He comes after hospital volunteer work on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, and before his volunteer slot at the foodbank on Thursdays. (He tries an animal shelter, too, before realizing just how allergic to cats he really is.)
But when he's not volunteering, he's there as a permanent fixture in the corner, drawing ghosts in his moleskin sketchbook.
He doesn't know what draws him to the little cafe. The coffee is good enough—though after five years of army coffee, he's not sure he's exactly a connoisseur. Maybe it's how quiet it is. Maybe it's how, though he's never really spoken to her, Natasha's smile grows warmer with every visit, from remembering his name to remembering his order, or simply the pleasantly home-y feel of it. The way it doesn't try too hard to be fancy, or corporate, or modern.
Maybe, he thinks that Peggy would like it.
He describes it in his e-mails to her, from the wide, stretching windows that either clatter with rain or let in so much light that Natasha turns off half the lamps, to the blue-and-white tiles in flowered patterns on the floor. He tells her how sometimes Tony Stark visits, and sometimes Tony Stark smiles at him like Natasha smiles at him. How sometimes Tony Stark will make dumb jokes that he can overhear well enough to tell her about. When she can reply back, she says she's excited to visit, and that he should get Tony Stark's autograph while it's still worth anything.
Whatever the reason may or may not actually be, it remains one of the only places Steve goes to anymore.
(You should get out more, his therapist had said, however many Mondays ago.
Where would I go? He asked.
Go out. Make friends. She repeated.
He had looked at her blankly because, he has friends. Only one of them's in Afghanistan, and the other one is...well, says his church, somewhere.
The other one is in his sketchbook, in his nightmares, in his prayers.)
Some days, like today, he'll leave behind his books and his laptop and just come to sit in the chair by the window and watch. Watch the city bustle and move and live, watch mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and people who look like they have everything and people who surely must have nothing. When someone strikes him just-so, he'll draw them.
(His books are filled with portraits of people he'll never see again.)
He's drawing a woman, now, sketching her out in broad pencil strokes. She'd had an upturned nose and big eyes and worried brows, only she'd been walking past, so the best he can manage is a messy profile. It's a minute before he realizes that there's a shadow on the top half of the book, having been focused on trying to get the collar of the woman's blue coat to be pointed right. He looks up, not annoyed, but mostly curious, to see Natasha looming over, staring at his drawing intently. He smiles at her.
"Sorry," she says. She looks a bit startled, even if it had been she who'd been leaning over him. "I just—I always wonder what you're drawing."
He shakes his head to dismiss her apology.
"It's fine," he says. He's not insecure about his drawings—it's not something he takes seriously. They're all faces he doesn't own, so he can't properly be protective over them.
"It's good," she comments. Her fingers lightly brush the edge of the page appreciatively, then she taps it. "Is she someone you know?"
Steve shakes his head. "No, ma'am." His mother had always told him to be polite about addressing people. It sounds dated, even to his ears, but he's grown accustomed to it, and the Army had helped, too. "I don't draw people that I know."
Drawing people you knew put too much pressure on the drawing. You could never hope to capture everything about them in a single drawing. The way they laughed or moved, the way their mouths curved when they were happy or upset or the simple presence of a person were impossible to capture with graphite. When you didn't know what a person was like, you could project anything you wanted on them, make them look however you felt without really changing their appearance at all.
(The exception to him is only ever Bucky. Bucky is the difference between trying to draw a growing flower, attempting to capture all of its thriving beauty, and plucking it to press between pages, to preserve even after long being taken from its roots.)
Natasha nods, and taps the paper thoughtfully again.
"Is she someone you made up, then?" she asks. He shakes his head again.
"No, she's—" He begins, then stops for a second, words faltering and fading on his lips. It sounds stupid to say, "She walked past the window fifteen minutes ago, and I thought she looked sad, so I drew her." It sounds stupid to say that of anyone in his book.
"No, it's okay. She's yours, I shouldn't have asked," she says, drawing her hand back from the paper.
Steve shrugs. She's not at all, he thinks, but he still doesn't know how to phrase it.
Natasha shrugs back. "Which ever way, it's beautiful," she says. "D'you want some more coffee?" she offers. Steve's eyes flicker to the mostly-empty mug of coffee and then to his watch. He figures he can stay a little longer, finish his drawing before heading home.
"Yeah, that'd be great, thank-you," he answered. Natasha nods and grabs his mug from the corner of the table, and Steve turns back to his drawing. He starts to work more on the woman's face, and decides to draw her happier than she'd looked, walking in a rush past the cafe's window. He draws her eyebrows less furrowed, her mouth more upturned, and her eyes brighter, crinkled around the edges.
He wonders if the woman was sad or worried all of the time, or if she'd just been having an unfortunate day. He hopes for the latter, obviously, but he likes drawing people happier than they are. It feels like helping, almost, though that's ridiculous because he's not actually doing anything. Just drawing them differently than he sees them, it's no more helping than an author making up a perfectly happy character, only he supposes that he's less original than that.
He wonders what they would think if he'd found out what he'd done, if they'd laugh nervously or laugh honestly or be offended, in the way that people are if you seem to get too close to knowing them. Disarmed, maybe, caught off guard.
Natasha returns as he's brushing the eraser dust from the woman's nose, bringing his mug of coffee and setting it down next to him. Steve smiles at her.
"Thank-you," he repeats, taking the hot mug in his hands. "After so long enduring army coffee, yours is a welcome change."
"You were in the Army?" Natasha asks, curiously.
"Yeah," Steve answers, shrugging. Is, was. Same, difference.
He fully intends to go back.
"Oh," Natasha says, lips pressed tightly like she wants to say more. "Then it's a comfort to know my coffee is better."
Steve gives her a gracious grin. "Trust me, it is."
Natasha bounces slightly on her toes, again like she'd like to say something more, but doesn't, or else doesn't have an excuse to leave but doesn't have anything else to say. And Steve would like to go back to his drawing, or else not sit awkwardly without anything to add.
Luckily, neither of them have to.
Tony Stark walks in with a flourish, with a ring of the bell that sits, waiting, on top of the door, and an audible clack! of his black shoes that were probably worth more than the entire building they were sitting in.
Steve doesn't outwardly react to Tony, besides a smile, but there's still a boyish excitement to see someone so famous standing in front of you like any other normal person. You feel special—blessed, maybe—to be able to look at them. It was something you could tell your friends and family later, guess who I saw! Tony Stark! Would you believe it?! And even though Steve had seen him many times before, as often as he visited the cafe, the childish wonder at him had not yet completely gone.
"Having a party?" Tony asks, nodding towards Natasha and Steve.
Natasha gives him a pleasant, if long-suffering smile and Steve feels decidedly out of place with them, since clearly Natasha is comfortable with Tony in a way Steve is definitely not. He doesn't know much about them—except what he's tried dutifully to not overhear but still heard. Just that they're friends and he's not, and that Tony always gets the same black coffee that he himself does.
"I don't see how this is a party," says Natasha easily. Tony snorts.
"I don't know. Could be. Some weird Russian drawing party. Is he Russian, too?" Tony says, inclining his head towards Steve. Steve goes blank for a moment, unsure whether he's actually supposed to answer, or if Tony was being sarcastic, and also slightly surprised that Natasha was Russian. Her accent—or rather, lack there of, didn't give away anything but that she'd been raised here all of her life. Though he guesses the before, seemingly random, Russian pastries that she sold made more sense now.
"Uh—" Steve starts, still unsure. "No, I'm not...Russian, no." Tony makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs, hands in his pockets.
"Too bad. I can't pronounce half the stuff Nat's on about, honestly. Their language is ridiculous." Natasha rolls her eyes in response, and yes, Steve thinks, they definitely have more of a history than just Stark visiting her cafe often enough to build a familiarity.
"Are you here for a coffee, or just to rag on my mother tongue?"
"I was hoping for a bit of both, actually. Actually," Tony repeats, "I am mostly here for coffee. And tea, for Pepper." Steve wonders who Pepper is, before a vague memory of some newspaper a few months ago that had mentioned her, something like a girlfriend. Wife, maybe. He remembers it was when he'd switched from weaponry to clean energy but he can't quite recall anything else.
Natasha nods. "Coffee run, then? I thought you had servants for that." Servants? Steve wonders. Maybe it's some sort of inside joke he's not in on.
"You should know. You were one of them."
Something of his confusion must show, because Natasha turns her head towards Steve. "I used to work as an assistant in Stark Industries," she explained, "Until he fired me." Ah. That certainly made more sense than anything else they could've meant by it. He just nods in response, still feeling like he was an unfortunate bystander in the conversation, rather than an active participant.
Tony holds up a finger in protest, mouth slack-jawed, before responding. "That was a mercy firing, I think."
"Anything involving ending a relationship—be it familial, friendly, or purely professional—with you is a mercy, Stark," Natasha says smoothly. Steve raises an amused eyebrow, but doesn't laugh, just in case. It seemed rude, anyway, like laughing at a joke while eavesdropping.
Tony just looks highly offended, one hand splayed dramatically over his heart, and his eyes wide with fake surprise and hurt. "I'm offended!" he states. "Offended and you still haven't taken my order. See if I ever come back here again, this is horrible service."
"Where else are you going to go? Somewhere else you might have to pay for your coffee." Steve blinks. To his knowledge, Tony's got more money than practically the whole of New York City combined. He could pay for the whole of New York's coffee and then some.
"How dare you! There's a Starbucks not two miles from here."
"There's a Starbucks not two miles from everywhere, Stark," Natasha says, already walking off to the kitchen. Steve can't help but agree to that. "Black coffee and chai, right?" she calls back.
"When has it ever not been?" Tony replies, with a toothy grin, that must be entirely for show except no one's around to see it. Natasha doesn't answer back, maybe because she's already started on their coffees, or maybe only because she doesn't have anything to say to that.
Steve sits awkwardly, unsure of exactly what to do. He'd like, he thinks, to return to his drawing, but then that seems rude with someone in front of him.
"So," Tony begins, still with a cheeky grin, "Sorry for kind of third-wheeling you there. Didn't mean to. I'm Tony Stark. Gunna go off a limb, here, and say you know that." Steve blinks. It's not, generally, a thing someone is forward enough to apologize for, even if they feel bad. It wasn't like it was Tony's fault that Steve didn't know him at all, and only knew Natasha slightly more than he knew the people he drew.
"It's fine," he says, then shakes his head. "I'm Steve Rogers. I, er—know who you are." You'd have to be very sheltered to not have heard of Tony Stark, Steve thinks. Even as far away as he'd been, he knew who Tony Stark was.
Tony clucks his tongue. "'Course you do," he says—there's an odd sound of disappointment to his voice. "Anyway. Nice to meet you, Steve Rogers."
"You, too." Steve nods, since Tony didn't extend a hand to shake. There's silence for a moment, in which Steve doesn't stare and Tony doesn't bother trying to look like he's not staring. He taps his notebook with the eraser end of his pencil so as to have something to do with his hands. After a moment, he coughs and looks back up at Tony, who still hadn't bothered to not look like he was staring.
"So, uh," Steve tries. "How did you and Natasha meet?" He figures Natasha would be the only thing that they sort of have in common at this point.
"She was my assistant. Had scary-good qualifications—some kind of weird government job, I guess, that she's not allowed to tell me about," Tony says. Steve raises an eyebrow. She didn't really look like she would've had a government job—but then when Peggy was in her civvies and had make up on, neither did she, really, and her presence as a soldier was not to be diminished. "So, worked for me. Let's just say, I liked her too much to let her continue working for me. Let her go with enough money to start whatever sort of business she wanted, and I get free coffee for life."
Ah, then. So that at least explains the "you'd have to pay for your coffee" comment.
"That sounds like a good arrangement," Steve says.
"Yeah, it's pretty great. So...you two, then. Friends? Lovers? Secret affair? Or are you like, spy buddies, because I'll be honest with you, Steve, she doesn't talk about you."
Steve shakes his head, laughing quietly. "No, no, nothing like that. I just come here a lot, I guess." They were acquaintances, at best. The most he knew about her now what her name, and thanks to Tony, her previous jobs, and all she knows about him was that he was in the army, and likes his coffee black.
Tony clucks his tongue and shakes his head, as if disappointed. "Damn. I could've really used some information on her. I've got nothing. I saw her records and I still don't know anything."
Steve laughs, then, at the absurdity of it, shaking his head at Tony. "I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but why are you talking to me?" He can't think of why Tony Stark would take an interest in him. Maybe he was just talking to talk. Some people were like that, Steve thinks. They were incapable of not talking to someone. For them, the awkwardness of not speaking outweighed the potential awkwardness of any conversation they could possibly have.
Tony shrugs and scratches the back of his neck. "I dunno. Nat was talking to you, so I'm talking to you. Good enough?"
Steve nods his head.
"Yeah, no, that's—that's fine. I just—you're Tony Stark." I'm nobody, he thinks.
Tony groans and rubs his forehead, as if this is something he's dealt with many times before. He probably had, come to think of it. "You make a couple bajillion dollars, maybe one or two robots, and all of the sudden you just can't—talk—to anyone," he mutters, mostly to himself, and there's a sadness to his voice, almost a tangible...loneliness.
Natasha returns with two paper cups in hand before Steve has the chance to apologize. Tony accepts them with a grin that looks falser than it did walking in and a thank-you that all but lacks a bow. He walks out with the same amount of flourish and dance as he did entering, though.
Steve shuts his notebook, the drawing of the woman half-finished and messy, and stands up to leave.
Natasha smiles at him. "Leaving so soon?" she asks.
"It's been two hours, around, hasn't it?" Steve says. Two hours his hardly soon, and he should get back to his house and—do something, he guesses. Eat dinner. Email Peggy, though he doesn't think she'll be able to respond for at least another week or two.
He'd sure like to know what she thought of this, if she got such a kick out of just smiling at Tony Stark, wait until she heard what happened today.
"I know. See you soon?" she asks.
Steve smiles at her and nods. "Of course."
The night that Baldur dies, there are two missed calls on Loki's cellphone.
He ignores them.
The day after, there are twelve. He needn't bother look at who was calling—it was always Thor, always Mother, and once Odin. (He nearly answered then, from pure shock. The phone had sat in his numb, shaking hand, but his fingers refused to press the answer button, so he simply stared at the buzzing phone until it ceased.)
He goes through his day as if he does not feel as if he has been drugged, somehow. As if his fingers do not feel too heavy and too light all at once as if the turning, moving, world isn't too loud like he doesn't wish it would just stop because can't they see what's lost? What they're missing?
It should be falling around him, he should be, and yet the whole world turns just as in sync as it did the day before. He does, too—completes his daily routine and finishes his work and not once, does he stop to scream.