Post AoU for starkingenuity

[starspangledspandex]

He's old. Old enough to have settled down. Old enough he's letting other people save the world and only stepping in from time to time. There's no 'Honey I'm home' when he steps through door. There's silence and quiet. He makes dinner for one. His bed is cold. He sits and reads the paper while he watches the world move on outside. There's laughter in the hallway. Footsteps. No one knocks on his door. He eats leaning against the counter in the kitchen. Alone. All alone. 'I got no plans tomorrow night' echos in his mind.

Suddenly, no one is on the streets. There are no numbers in his phone. Everything empty and gone and there's just Steve. Steve standing in nothingness. 'Man out of time' 'Nothing but a soldier' 'You can't live without a war' 'Go home, Steve'

He jolted awake, hand raising to rub at his face and it shouldn't have been a nightmare at all but it is anyway. How alone he felt in this century. His friends helped, they did, but they couldn't always be here. He lived and breathed his life as an Avenger. What else did he have? Nothing. He shook it off, like he always did and got dressed, laced up his boots. Most of his team was out of the picture right now. Off doing whatever they did on leave.

Steve paced his room at the New Avenger facility, paced the hallways and spoke to the Agents that were here. He took a walk outside and thought of Tony. The billionaire visited every once in awhile but it'd been awhile. He didn't even know what the man was up to now but Steve... Steve needed to connect with someone to shake off the dredges of his loneliness, someone that wasn't just working here, someone he had a connection to.

So he called Tony.

Comments

[starkingenuity]

Romanoff told him not to bother. Tony told her that he'd take her wishes under consideration but that he wasn't looking for her. Banner had been his tie to reality when the world was going to shit. He actually cared, he talked to him, he played along. They were great together, better in so many ways than Pepper was. Not that Pepper wasn't great, but she had a company to run and sometimes that was more important than the man who gave her that company.

So Tony searched for Bruce Banner most of his waking day. He didn't have leads to follow, not like Sam did for Steve's missing in action bestie, so he was just having Friday run through every satellite scan in the last few months. He didn't know what else to try except that grid approach and it was wearing him out.

When the phone rang, when Friday told him who was calling, Tony almost told her to send it to voice mail. He was lonely. The Vision had his own thing going on and he wasn't JARVIS anymore. Pepper was at another convention, this one in Singapore he thought. Maybe Shanghai. Something with an S at the front, in Asia. He couldn't be bothered to remember. Banner was back on the run again...

So Tony cleared his throat and had Friday put the call through.

"Cap? What's our replacement band doing this time? Same old covers of the old songs we use to?"