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Steve is on the floor in the far-too-large garage that juts off one side of the mansion. It's one of the few places he's almost guaranteed privacy, since Tony usually doesn't want to talk when he comes in to work on his own vehicles and no one else has much reason to come in here at all.

For his part, Steve is working on the vintage Harley Knucklehead he still can't believe he owns. Even the one he had way-back-when ("way-back-when") technically belonged to the US government. This one, though, is his. A gift from the Avengers, Tony had said, for the Captain's first twenty-first-century birthday. Or his ninety-fourth. Whichever way he felt like looking at it.

The older man had made it seem like nothing. Steve couldn't possibly have disagreed more.

So there he is, checking every bolt and rod, humming quietly to himself as he does so.

It's The Star Spangled Man, for the curious.

Jane Foster is stuffing a piece of toast in her mouth and trying to read one set of notes around another armload of notes as she makes her way from the SHIELD offices in Times Square to the subway. She could take a company car, but she still hasn't quite accustomed herself to reliance on SHIELD, and given her recent track record, she'd as soon let someone else do the driving.

Coulson is being Coulson. In other words, he's early to a meeting with Tony Stark, expects Stark to be late, and so is watching Project Runway on one of the mansion's several big screen TVs in one of its several lounges.

Supernanny reruns are on next.

Tony Stark watches the clock and carefully makes himself late to his meeting with Agent Coulson, who is currently - according to JARVIS - sitting three floors up and five rooms over watching reality TV. Tony is on his third martini, has decided that martini glasses are for squares, and is now drinking out of a mug as he works one of JARVIS's projected simulations of a new suit design while sitting on a couch in one of the small libraries. This suit is tailored for high-altitude subsonic flight and work in other cold, low-oxygen environments. He's been thinking a lot lately about what happened to Rogers. This is his way of getting it out of his system.

"JARVIS. How much longer until Coulson's show is over."

"Twenty-three minutes, sir."

"Let me know when he's two minutes from the good parts."

"Of course."

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Olivia frowns a little, but everything in his expression and body language screams that who and what the flowers are for is a touchy subject, and so instead of asking, she just nods a little in response.

"Take all the time you need," she says quietly, glancing past him to the fountain. "I'm not going anywhere in a hurry, and I promise I can take care of myself in the meantime."

"Thank you. It really will just be a minute."

He manages a smile at her, then looks both ways before jogging across the street and into the park. One of the street vendors near its entrance looks up and nods to him, and he nods back - the man is a Vietnam vet, Steve discovered on his third visit to the place. Even not knowing why the Captain comes here every Saturday like clockwork, leaving flowers on the fountain rim, the guy still knows it's important and it's private. There's a kind of brotherhood in it that Steve finds grounding. It's like shared mourning, almost, for things lost that others can't understand.

The Captain slows when he reaches the tables, carefully avoiding the eyes of those present. Most of them don't look up. They're busy with papers, meals, a Saturday at work or a weekend business meeting. Life at high-speed in a city that's forgotten what it means to be a home front.

Steve stops at the fountain and sits down on the rim, turning the flowers over in his hands again. Quietly, enough that's it's almost drowned out by the falling water, he says, "The woman at the shop said this one is for courage and bluntness. I thought... I figured you'd appreciate that, even if the flower isn't your taste."

He starts to set them down when someone hails him. "Captain America! Or excuse me, Captain Rogers. Dennis Turing, The Daily Globe. I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time."

Olivia watches Steve out of the corner of her eye, just enough to keep him in sight without invading what little privacy is possible even in a park this small in Manhattan. She's not watching him out of impatience - she's just concerned, in a half-conscious, completely illogical way that she's going to blink and he'll vanish, and then not only has she lost the one person here really invested in helping her, but she has to explain to SHIELD what the hell happened. All in all, maybe best if she just keeps an eye on him.

When she notices someone approaching him, though, she turns to look straight at them, expression suddenly intent. She's not about to head over just yet - maybe the man's a friend, and even if he's not, Steve can probably handle it on his own - but it's obvious the Captain wants a moment to himself just now, with whatever this is, and something in her bristles at anyone invading that.

"Mr. Turing," Steve says, and stands, his expression going closed and neutral at once. "I'm afraid interviews need to be scheduled through our press relations office."

Not that Steve can't or won't give impomptu interviews- on the contrary, Agent Glass seems to find it one of his most annoying habits -but here, now? No.

"Come on, Cap, you know how hard those interviews are to get."

Turing is drawing attention now, and Steve feels himself fold up a little inside at the looks the flowers are getting. Curiosity, excited whispers, people apparently craning their heads to spot a woman alone.

"No, Mr. Turing. I'm sorry."

Even from this far away, it's obvious the man isn't planning to back off, and what's more, he's drawing attention, and Steve's looking uncomfortable. Olivia sighs and takes off her helmet, stowing it in the bag along with Steve's before she slides off the bike and jogs across the street.

She might not have a badge in this universe - and she's not even dressed in her usual suit-and-trenchcoat uniform - but she can still manage a certain air of 'official and on a mission' with about as much effort as it takes to breathe. "Excuse me, Captain, I'm sorry to interrupt," - she can't help shooting a pointed glance at the reporter at that - "but if I can borrow you for a minute...?"

She catches his eye, raising her eyebrows ever so slightly. He can brush her off if he wants, and that's fine, but the out's there if he'd like to take it.

The absolute relief on his face at Olivia's appearance should be answer enough as to whether or not he plans to ignore her. "Of course, Agent Dunham," he says, laying the flowers down and gesturing back toward the street. "We should be going in any case."

"You're the redhead," the reporter says. "Aren't you. The one that's been staying at the mansion."

"She's our FBI liason," Steve says, because it's not exactly a lie. "If you'll excuse m-"

Turing cuts him off. "Seem to recall Stark saying a little more than that. Showing her the old haunts, Cap?"

"I'm sure you've done your research. You know I never would have come here," Steve says, his normally even temper rising.

Edited 2011-09-29 00:26 (UTC)

Olivia's jaw tightens, restrained annoyance flaring to actual anger in her eyes. It's subtle, easy to miss, but there's a certain, sudden stiffness to her posture - not a reaction to a perceived threat, because this man isn't, he's just irritating, but certainly a silent warning that he might want to back off now.

She manages a smile that doesn't even approach amusement, and snaps, "And Tony Stark is obviously a reliable source of information on that matter." She steps forward, placing herself very slightly between the reporter and Steve, and gives the Captain a glance and a little nod toward the bike before turning her attention back to the other man. "Look, whatever you're after here, you're not going to get it. So stop."

Steve submits to her implied order without a word, turning away and heading for the exit. At least most of the crowd is still sitting down, though a few have pulled out camera-cellular-phones and it's all Steve can do to keep himself calm and his expression neutral.

Turing gives Olivia a frustrated look, yelling, "Cap, wait!" before turning to her. "Look- Agent Dunham, right? Either I splash your name and image all over tomorrow's paper with nice big headlines about your relationship with the Captain-next-door or you let me follow this lead."

He leans around Olivia again and yells, "I know who the flowers are for!"

Steve stops, his hands fisting, grief and anger knotting up painfully in a spot too deep in his chest to be physical. He hears the manufactured click-whirr of several phones and forces himself to start walking again.

The punching bag in the gym is probably going to need replacing when he's done with it.

"Hey!" she snaps as he leans around her to shout, reaching out automatically to catch him by the shoulder and force him a step back. "That's enough."

Olivia glances over her shoulder to Steve just as he starts walking again, and winces a little. Son of a bitch. But between splashing a lie all over the news and digging up some obviously painful parts of someone's personal life for no good reason... She won't even be here for much longer, and then she won't have to deal with unfounded rumors, and they'll probably fade away for him in their absence. That's an easy choice.

She turns a cold smile on Turing. "Go ahead. It's so nice to see journalistic integrity is still alive and well. Ambush him again, I guarantee you'll regret it." She can't actually follow through on the threat, but as long as he thinks she might be able to, maybe it'll give him pause.

She backs away a couple steps, giving the man a flat warning look she hopes will convince him not to follow, before turning and heading briskly after the Captain.

"You definitely will, sweatheart!"

The jeering call comes at a distance- apparently the reporter is bold enough to insult Olivia, but not dumb enough to do it where she can get an easy grip on him. Steve is already at the street when Olivia catches up. His fingers twitch in their fists, his effort to keep himself under control showing. The vet at the cart rolls himself between Steve and the entrance to the park, a tiny barricade against the curious.

"Thank you," Steve says, quietly. "Tony told me coming every Saturday was a mistake, he said I should change up the days, but-" He shrugs, drags in a long, slow breath and says, "Thank you. For what you did back there. You didn't have to."

He glances down at her and then at his shoes. "Really, thank you."

Olivia ignores the reporter shouting from behind her - he's not following, and that's all she cares about right now. She stops at Steve's side, and though she doesn't drop the stiff, military posture, her expression softens a little as she looks up at him.

"Yeah, I did. I owed you one. But you're welcome anyway." She glances around, and sighs. The camera phones haven't all gone away yet. "Much as I hate to admit it, I think Tony might be right. We should probably get out of here."

Before any more pictures of the two of them together get taken, or that reporter changes his mind...

He obeys again, silently, climbing on the bike and not looking toward the park and the cameras. He waits only until Olivia is in place before gunning it and streaking out between cars, dodging around clumps of traffic, and turning rather than stopping for red lights. It's tempting to just go blazing through one- and then he remembers he has Olivia riding with him and that speeding is a catharsis that endangers everyone around him.

Steve slows and stops, pulling over now that they're what he gauges to be a safe distance from the park. "Sorry. About the... maneuvering. I wasn't thinking." It's first thing he says, followed by a pause and then a quiet cough. "And... You don't understand. Neither does Tony. It has to be Saturday. There's no point, otherwise."

He kicks the stand down on the bike and rubs the back of his neck. "Though I might have to skip a week or two." Even more quietly and with the faintest ghost of amusement, he says, "She'll never let me hear the end of it."

Edited 2011-09-29 22:53 (UTC)

Olivia doesn't protest the speed or the darting through traffic, simply tightens her grip around his waist and hangs on until they slow down again. She lets out a soft breath as they actually stop and she lets go of him, and smiles a little as she shakes her head. "Don't worry about it."

She pauses for a moment after he goes on, glancing across the street with eyes unfocused. It's not hard to understand. Something in his tone hits painfully close to home for her, in more ways than one.

"Who was she?" she asks finally, softly. "If... You don't have to say."

Who was she.

Those three words are kind of like someone stomping a blade into the base of his throat. For - for he's not sure how long, a second, a minute, more - he can't say anything, and then instead of answering he just reaches into his jacket's breast pocket and pulls out the compass Agent Lewis gave him.

It's battered, barely stays closed - after seventy years of ice and thaw the needle it permanently forced out of shape and seems to rotate almost at random. But the picture tucked into the lid is new. A glossy little sepia-tone image depicting a woman with perfect lipstick, sharp features and hair falling in dark curls around her face. It's the eyes that stand out, though, more than anything - fierce, almost unforgiving, but more than that steady. The expression of someone who knows her own mind and isn't afraid to express it.

Steve looks down at the picture and runs his thumb along the rim of the compass. He doesn't dare touch the image - he doesn't want to ruin it - but he can't help the one small caress.

Then he hands it to Olivia and climbs off of the bike, deciding he can't stay still and he doesn't trust himself on wheels just now. "Agent Margaret Carter with the Strategic Scientific Reserve. She worked on Operation Rebirth, the project I was part of, the program that was supposed to create an army of super-soldiers to fight an army of fanatics. Instead they just got me. Dr. Erskine died and the research went with him, but Peggy- She was the only one who thought I'd be enough."

Edited 2011-09-30 13:18 (UTC)

Olivia winces a little at that silence after her question - she'd forgotten, for a moment, that however long ago the loss was... the wound's still fresh and raw for him. It's too late to take it back now, though. She takes the compass carefully as he holds it out to her, and studies the picture as he speaks.

"She's beautiful," she says with a faint smile. "And she sounds like an amazing woman. I take it she was right?"

"She is," he says. Was. The word sticks and he can't correct himself. Steve focuses on her question instead. He squints up at the tops of the buildings across the street as he speaks, hands clasped behind him. "I rescued four hundred prisoners from behind enemy lines because she said I could do it, believed in me enough to put herself at risk getting me half-way there. Every one of Schmidt's factories we destroyed, when we got back to the base camp or the citadel, she'd say it took us long enough, that we were late, that the tea would be cold by then."

He's smiling, even though it hurts. "She was right. She was always right. And I was always late, just to hear her say it."

The smile fades. "Except the last time. I-" He tries to figure out how to put it. It's not that he didn't want to do what he did. He had to. It wasn't an option. He wanted to. Not to die, but to save lives. Not to leave her, but to protect the people they'd set out together to save. "Schmidt, Johann Schmidt, he'd been building a plane with weapons that- It would have turned the whole east coast into Hiroshima."

And what a nightmare that was to read about. What a horror to realize his own country did to the Japanese what Schmidt had been planning for the US. "I couldn't stop it. I had to crash it. She told me she'd be waiting, a week next Saturday at the Stork Club. This fancy jazz bar. That she'd teach me how to dance. That I'd better not be late."

Steve huffs a spiritless laugh. "It's gone now. The club. The park is where it used to be. I'm glad I guess that it's someplace public, that I can even go there at all, but..." He holds his hand out for the compass, looking at it instead of at Olivia's face, because he's not sure he can at the moment. "It's the one place I can go to talk to her where I feel like she'll hear me."

Edited 2011-10-01 02:04 (UTC)

Olivia hands the compass back to him, watching his face while he's not looking at her. "I'm sorry. And I understand. Coming here like you do... and not wanting to give that up." She pulls her hand back and huffs a sigh, glancing away again. "A restraining order might help with that guy from the park. He's not going to be the only one to figure it out, but..."

She pauses for a moment, and then swings her leg over the bike to sit sideways on it, facing him. "If you want to be alone, I wouldn't mind walking back to the mansion." Olivia pauses, and then smiles, very faintly. "Our escort from SHIELD probably won't appreciate it, wherever they are, but I think they'll survive."

Something in him unknots at her reaction. The tension in his shoulders drops, the prepared courteous responses go out of his head. He takes the compass back, glancing from it to Olivia, and he smiles. It's not the shy or polite expression the cameras know - that Olivia would know - but lights up something from the inside out and makes him look more like a kid than ever.

"No. It's all right. Thank you." Steve finally takes note of where they ended up. "Would you like coffee before we go back? ...I get the feeling neither of us will be allowed out of the mansion without a real escort for a while."

Olivia hadn't expected that smile out of him, but it's so bright she smiles back at him without thinking. "Sure, why not? Might as well enjoy our freedom while we've got it, right?" It's meant as a joke. Given what she recently escaped from, there's a sting and a seriousness to it even she hadn't anticipated, but she manages to shake it off without letting her smile waver.

He hesitates, then reaches over to put an awkward and protective arm around her shoulders again. Peggy would never let him do it, not in public, not even surrounded by men who knew that a joke at her expense would mean being impaled through the toes by a sensible heel. Only in brief and private moments stolen from the chaos in storage rooms and between rows of files. A clasped hand, a brush of fingertips against her jaw, a love affair played out in glances.

Steve relaxes into holding Olivia close, because compared to that, this is just... Well, it's friendship. And a reminder that as long as she's here, she's safe. "We can always climb the fence if they get too insistent," he says. There's utter sincerity in it, but the laughter of his smile is still very clear on his face.

Olivia tilts her head to look up at him in momentary surprise, but like the first time, she doesn't make any move to shake him off. It's nice to have that reminder.

She actually laughs at his comment, her grin flashing brighter. "Well, I'm sure that would be an adventure. Are you sure Stark doesn't have attack dogs or something? They'd certainly fit right in with the place..."

"Um... Unless he built them himself, probably not." He gives her a little squeeze and lets go, mentally remapping their current position and where he knows the little shop he likes to be. He feels lighter somehow, having explained things, having her not act like he's some tragic museum piece or an anachronistic faerie-tale figure.

It's not much of a walk, and the coffee shop looks decidedly out-of-place in the wealthier neighborhood. Through the windows, it looks like someone's study multiplied several times in size with a counter installed near the back. There are swinging doors behind the counter, presumably leading to a kitchen area, but most of the space is dominated by shelves of very used books and chalkboards decorated with the drawings of visitors. The words Second Story Cafe are emblazoned across the door.

Steve holds the door for Olivia before entering himself, and the three employees behind the counter - one boy, one girl, one he's not sure enough to guess - whistle or wave in greeting. "I like it here," he says.

Edited 2011-10-02 03:35 (UTC)

"Why am I not reassured by that?" she asks, but it's with a smile.

That "little squeeze" gets a small huff of breath squeezed out of her - he's stronger than he looks, and he's not exactly small or delicate-looking in the first place. Olivia blinks after him in mild bemusement for a second or two before she shakes her head and follows, about a half-step behind him.

She ducks her head in silent thanks as he holds the door open for her, steps through, and pauses a short distance inside, taking stock of the place. "I can see why."

"Cap!" The guy waves him over, and Steve goes obediently. A few of the patrons look up as he passes - most of them look like college students or older socialites - and then promptly go back to laptops and books.

The barista peeks around him at Olivia and hisses, "Dude, is she with you?"

"Yes?" Steve blinks. "Oh- no! No, no. Um. She's a friend of mine."

"Excellent."

The girl, Steve doesn't notice, brightens up as well.

"Agent Dunham," Steve says, gesturing at Olivia and then to the three at the counter. "Rodney, Anna and Jo."

"Agent Dunham's kind of formal for here, Cap," Rodney says. Anna is already setting a blue mug of coffee on the counter and Jo is making faces through the display case at a nearby baby.

"Did you bring anything today?" Anna turns the cup so the handle is pointed his direction and Steve shakes his head.

"No, I left my sketchbook at the mansion. I did what you asked though- next time I'll bring it, I promise."

Olivia does notice the girl brightening at the confirmation they're not together, and quickly smothers a little smile.

"Just Olivia is fine," she says to Rodney, flicking a glance to Steve as she says it. He's more than welcome to call her Olivia too, at this point, but she's not going to argue if he'd prefer to stick with 'Agent Dunham'. She pauses, and then tilts her head at Steve. "You draw?"