“Seems to be your thing,” Pepper agrees, and stays with him, holding his hand tight.
The early morning sunlight glints of the surface of the river, the slow moving current throwing glittering sparks across Steve’s vision. A breeze ruffles his hair, washes cool and welcoming against his skin where he’s got the suit pulled down to his waist, arms loosely knotted around his middle. He’s lying back on the grass of what he knows as the Brooklyn Bridge Park, looking out over the river and Manhattan. He’s walked miles and miles to get here this morning, sneaking out past Shield and the others who had all been firmly of the opinion that he should stay in the apartment. He understood their concern to a point, but he’d felt so restless and cagey after the previous days revelations that he’d had to get out. Exploring the city has been a welcome distraction, helping him feel marginally purposeful instead of like someone incompetent who needs to be constantly babysat.
The park – as he’s found with the rest of the city - is not quite the same. The 1920’s carousel is still there, and with piercing clarity Steve remembers the day Tony took a forty minute diversion through hellish traffic to show it to Steve, apparently on nothing more than a whim. He’d pulled up – illegally – on the side of the street, pushing Steve out of the car with impatience and the words 'come on, it’s the one thing around here that’s actually older than you are.'
The crowds had been excitable and loud, the queues simply mind-boggling, and Steve had been completely and utterly taken aback that Tony had even spared a thought to consider that Steve might like to see the old fashioned carousel.
But now the Park is deserted, the carousel is still and silent, and there’s no Tony wearing sunglasses more expensive than Steve’s motorbike and bitching about a parking ticket, adamant that it wasn’t fair because 'we were here for like five minutes and you’re a national icon, they can’t ticket a national icon, that’s just un-American – hey, stop looking at me like that, you know I’m right. Cap, get a pen, write that America objects on this ticket.'
Steve feels a lump in his throat as he stares out over the glittering river at the alien skyline of Manhattan.
Fucking Tony.
How the hell is he supposed to even process the fact that it seems inevitable that he’ll end up with the guy? Married at worst, only sleeping with him at best? God, Steve hasn’t ever thought of Tony like that and he can’t understand it. It’s making him feel horrendously uncomfortable, like there’s a ticking time-bomb in his chest that will one day blow and he’ll end up falling in with Tony whether he likes it or not.
God, he’s supposed to be thinking about how he’s going to get home, what he’s going to do to sort this mess out, not about Tony. For not the first time, he pushes away thoughts of Tony and manages to turn his brain to what it’s supposed to be doing.
He finds himself toying with the idea of walking back into the misty part of the city where he’d first appeared, to see if there’s anything there that will help him make head or tail of this mess. He’s not got many other ideas, and he’ll be damned if he just sits about and does nothing for much longer.
“Hey.”
He cranes his neck around at the familiar voice, and internally cringes as he spots Seven walking towards him. Just what he needs; Tony Stark’s goddamn husband to come and make everything more complicated and confusing. He’d possibly rather deal with Shield’s over-protectiveness right now, as disconcerting and frustrating as it is.
But no, maybe that’s unfair. He can’t be a dick to Seven just because he somehow thought it was a good idea to marry Tony goddamn Stark, however tempting it feels. After the morning he’s had he realises he would have to be a dick to nearly every version of himself if he truly wanted to object to the decisions that they’ve made across the multiverse.
“Hey,” Steve replies evenly as Seven wanders over and sits next to him on the grass, one knee pulled up to rest an elbow on.
“Shield is both annoyed and impressed that you managed to sneak out,” Seven says matter-of-factly. “I think he and the Commander were about to orchestrate a city-wide sweep.”
Steve just shrugs. “Had to get out,” he says unapologetically. “How come they didn’t?”
“I said I’d come find you,” Seven says. “They knew one guy would draw less attention than a whole search party.”
“Still worried about this Director fella finding me?”
Seven nods. “He’ll be interested in you, that’s for sure. Though it’ll probably be harder to find you when you’re out and about. He could pass you in the street and not know you were any different.”
Conceding the point, Steve nods. He looks exactly the same as the others after all; there’s no light shining on him to mark him out as different, no billboard that declares ‘I am not quite dead,’ no flashy lights like the adverts of the twenty-first century seem to find necessary. Only his heart that still beats away in his chest, the fluttering of his pulse, the warmth in his skin.
“So. How’re you doing?,” Seven asks, shifting to get comfortable on the grass. “I assume not all that great considering the escaping act.”
Steve hums noncommittally, eyes on the not-quite right arrangement of buildings that make up what should be Wall Street. “Well, I’ve been asking around, and I’ve found three Steves that married Peggy Carter, ten that married or were involved with someone called Sharon, twelve that were invested in relationships with other women, five who admitted to sleeping with Bucky and thirty-one who have somehow become involved with Tony Stark, including two who married him. And that’s not counting the ones who admitted kissing or sleeping with Tony whilst involved with someone else.” He shrugs, fingers pulling at the grass by his hip. “Seems I am an awful cad throughout the multiverse.”
“No, it seems you have a thing for Tony Stark across the multiverse,” Seven says, unapologetically, turning his face up towards the sun and shutting his eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”
“For you, maybe,” Steve sighs.
“Thought about it?” Seven asks suddenly.
“No,” Steve says abruptly, but he’s not quite sure that’s the truth anymore. His mind keeps drifting towards what if more times than he’s comfortable with. He keeps rethinking over everything that’s ever happened between him and Tony with this new context in mind, and he’s alarmed to find how easily it could fit together. He knows it’s different to how things are with Bruce or Clint or any of the others, and he hates that he now recognises it.
“Have you really never thought about it?” Seven asks, sounding curious and not altogether convinced.
“No,” Steve groans, flopping down onto his back so all he can see above him is clear blue sky. “Not until now, anyway,” he continues, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the brightness of the sun. “And it’s stupid. If I start thinking about it…” he trails off. “When I get home, I’m going to be seeing everything differently, even if T- even if everyone else isn’t. It’s going to be awkward enough as it is. What do I say? ‘Hey, Tony, remember the time you got me almost killed? Well it’s okay because there’s a whole goddamn gang of Steve Rogers’ out there across the multiverse that are actually swooning over you.’”
Seven laughs at that, shaking his head. “I don’t think swooning is the right word,” he remarks.
Steve pauses, squints over at Seven who is idly twisting blades of grass between dexterous fingers. He feels the question on the tip of his tongue, wants to force it back down. He doesn’t quite manage it.
“What is the right word then?”
Seven breathes out, and it’s clear he knows exactly what Steve is asking. “It wasn’t some instant falling in love thing,” he says, beginning the explanation that Steve still isnt sure he wants. “It was…he’s like the goddamn sun. So intense, so in your face and just…hell, I don’t even know. It’s not always pretty, and we fight like cats and dogs some days. But we both know that we’re in it together, we’ve always got something underneath it all.”
Steve swallows, because that’s exactly how he’d describe Tony some days. “How did you…” he asks hesitantly. “How did it change?”
Seven smiles crookedly. “Not really sure. We were fighting because there’d been an inter-dimensional breach and we’d been given orders by SHIELD to remain on standby. Of course Tony didn’t listen and stormed off without me to go and raise hell; I could have throttled him for that.”
“But you didn’t,” Steve says.
Seven smiles again, quiet and warm. “But I didn’t,” he murmurs.
“And the whole…” Steve ventures. He clears his throat. “Being married, thing?”
“Years later. We were fighting,” Seven pauses, grimaces. “Hell, what a broken record. We were fighting about changes to the initiative that the government were proposing, and he made some awful comment about us not actually being on the same side, like he didn’t believe I’d side with him when it mattered. Gets right up in my face and has the balls to say ‘why the hell should I assume we’re on the same side with anything?’ I dragged him to the City Clerk’s office in Brooklyn and walked up to the counter, asked to apply for a marriage licence. The look on his face. I think he thought I was bluffing, so out comes the ID, he signs the form with this look on his face, like he’s daring me to do it. Neither of us backed down, and there we are with this valid licence, and Clint’s behind us yelling that we’ve completely lost the plot, bow in hand and scaring the hell out of the woman behind the counter.”
“I’d side with Clint,” Steve says, and Seven laughs again.
“Yeah, everyone else did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Coulson speechless before.”
“And you went through with it?”
Seven nods. “Yep. He locked himself in his workshop, I was ready to knock down the damn door and drag him out, but of course there's an alert and I had to go with Clint to deal with a situation in Michigan. When I got back he was sparring with Thor, and the ass turns around and says ‘if you wanted to pussy out you could have hid in Brooklyn, didn’t realise it was that bad that you’d consider Detroit as the better option.’”
“Oh God,” Steve groans, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes because he knows exactly where this is going. He can imagine exactly how he’d react to a statement like that.
“Yep,” Seven says. “An hour later and Coulson has managed to hustle the guy who used to be the Mayor into the tower, Natasha has got her hands on a pair of rings that fit damn near perfect, and Clint is insisting he gets to be best man and waving a bunch of flowers around. Tony glares at me throughout the whole thing, and then after he just says ‘I don’t do divorce, I’d be a walking cliché, so suck it up Rogers.’”
Steve starts to laugh, because really, what else is he supposed to do? “Still in the suit?” he asks.
“Still in the suit,” Seven nods. “Clint tried to pin a veil to the helmet and Tony nearly decked him. Bruce wore it instead.”
Steve just laughs harder, because the mental image is not only bizarre and terrifying but completely hilarious, and it would be so like him and Tony to end up married out of sheer bull-headedness. He thinks his laughter is erring on the side of hysterical, but he thinks it’s perfectly understandable. After a few long moments the laughter fades, and he rubs vigorously at his face with his hands.
“Did it work?” he finally asks, dragging his fingers down over his cheekbones, pressing his fingertips hard to his mouth. “Did you stop fighting?”
Seven just looks at him. “What do you think?”
Steve breathes out, looking up at the sky again, thinking about what Shield had said regarding Seven’s marriage and the aversion of the war that appears to have scarred some universes. “I think you stopped the serious kind of fighting,” he says.
