usavatar | I WAS MADE TO HIT IN AMERICAAAA

I WAS MADE TO HIT IN AMERICAAAA

He should know not to go out at night by himself. Not because he's in any danger - Captain America in New York City on a less-than-average day doesn't have much to worry about. But because, almost without exception, he gets lost. Steve tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and squints up at the buildings around him, ignoring the college student who staggers by, stops to stare at him, and bursts out laughing before moving on.

He's used to that, too, by now. Apparently dressing conservatively these days isn't a reflection of care for the resources of the country, or a side-effect of living life as a soldier for two years - it's just "dorky." At least he doesn't feel like someone's taped a sign to his back, not since he asked Darcy - Agent Lewis - why he kept getting that reaction.

Of course the fact that she had to explain what 'Because you're a dork' meant didn't really help his... street cred. He chuckles to himself, only a little ironic, at managing to use both terms in one train of thought.

A few streets later he's getting very confused. Usually he's able to find at least one familiar street or landmark to point him in the general right direction, at least until he finds a cab to get him the rest of the way back to the mansion. He's done this enough in the months he's been here that his assigned SHIELD shadows don't pop a vein unless he's not back by morning - in this case, though, that's probably working against him.

Finally Steve sighs and digs into his pocket to pull out his cellular phone. He looks at it for a moment, smiling to himself and wondering what Howard would make of all this. Tiny phones with tinier batteries and communicators and jets that don't need runways to take off.

Well, for all Steve knows, Howard invented most of it. He still hasn't been able to bring himself to look at history texts to see how his friends lived out their lives. There's something too much like admitting he's never going to see them again in doing that.

He flips the phone open gingerly, poking the tiny buttons with his pinky because he's not sure how else to manage the thing, and dials in what he's fairly sure is Darcy's number. Agent Lewis's number. He could try calling someone else, but she's friendly, in her own way. She doesn't treat him like a loaded gun waiting to be pointed at the next Big Bad Guy.

Steve lifts the phone to his ear with a frown. "Uh. Hello?"

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It's nice. It reminds Steve a little bit of the bunker underneath London, army shades of army colors. He relaxes without realizing it, feeling more at home below-ground than is probably normal. "Hi," he says, and carefully closes his phone before tucking it away. He sticks both hands in his pockets and flashes and awkward little grin. "I can definitely see why you don't come out."

Edited 2011-08-31 04:07 (UTC)

"Hey. Just, uh. You know. Sit anywhere, really." He turns to grab at another leaning pile of books before it falls over and sets it slightly-less-than-precariously on the floor. Once he's sure it won't spill everywhere, Bruce tries to casually run a hand over his hair to make sure it's not a total bedhead situation.

"Oh, thanks, but. It's less that than... Well, I don't know New York all that well, and it's been a while since being in a city this big, and." It's slightly easier to forget that he's not stuck here when he doesn't have to wait on the S.O.P. escort of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents when he wants to go take a walk. "Just easier to stay in here, for everybody."

He sits, easing himself into a chair in the study area with the ramrod-straight posture of a soldier. It doesn't occur to him how much he still acts like one- as far as Steve is concerned, he still is one. He settles, unconsciously listening for the sound of bombs falling, the rattle of the ceiling and flicker of lights. When he catches himself at it he coughs and looks up at Bruce.

"Well, if you're going to stay in. It's a nice place to do it." He smiles again, trying to be inviting and get the nervous man to calm down. "I could try showing you around some time. ...In Brooklyn at least. The orphanage where Bucky and I grew up is still there - they made it into a community center in the sixties, I guess."

Bruce sits himself down on the edge of the bed, looking confused for a moment as to where to put his hands before settling on letting them dangle, elbows on his knees. He can't help the answering smile, and it gets slightly wider at the offer.

But after the moment of quiet fan appreciation, the reality sets back in. A frown flickers across his face before the smile returns, tired and the slightest bit forced. "No, that's. It's a really nice offer, and I appreciate it, I do, but. There's forms, and there's. Me going out at all means a whole to-do, and y-" His ears turn red and his eyes drop down to the carpet while his shoulders go up in a shrug. "You probably get enough attention walking around without a goon squad doing guard duty on me."

The fanboy in him is entirely bemoaning the loss of an opportunity that if he were twelve would have made him the envy of the Captain America Club.

Steve shrugs. "I'm used to paperwork."

Technically he's used to Colonel Phillips doing the paperwork while he and the Commandos go out and smash things. "I'd like to go back, but I don't know if I'd want to alone."

Not true, either. He could easily go back alone. He would happily go back alone, and he has. Bucky's death is still fresh and still painful, and walking the old playground and dormitories is something like a one-man funeral procession. He looks down at his hands, his smile fading into something like nostalgia. "The first time we met, he had two guys at his back and was beating the tar out of me. After a while he got tired of me getting up again, and one of the other boys tried to take a swing. Bucky floored him. He said if anyone was going to punch the runt, it would be him. He dusted me off, and..."

Steve shrugs and drags a hand through his hair, not quite looking at Bruce. He's not sure where that came from. Peggy is probably the only one who's heard that story before now, and it feels a little funny telling someone who, despite the months in the mansion, is still a near stranger.

Edited 2011-08-31 06:10 (UTC)

Bruce peeks up at him with the wide eyes of a kid at story time. Going along with Captain America to where it all began, helping him go back, that's. He's not sure how he can say no to that. Then a small wrinkle forms between his eyebrows because... 'Runt'? It's hard to imagine Steve as some scrawny kid on the playground, as being anything less than what he sees here.

"...I never really got that at school," he offers tentatively, unsure if this is the right way to go. "I got shoved in a few lockers, but. Mostly I was just, uh. Ignored." His fingers tap together nervously, then he blurts out, "Which was okay, I mean, it wasn't that bad, and. I don't know."

Rubbing the back of his neck, he pulls his legs up onto the bed as he puts his back against the wall. "Why, uh. I mean, you don't have to answer it at all if you don't want, obviously, but. Why were you getting hit on? Er, that's. I mean, beaten up. I get that you couldn't have always been so." He gestures at Steve vaguely. "But were you, uh. Really that small?"

"I had asthma," he says, ticking the conditions off on each finger as he talks. "Low blood pressure. Hypoglycemia - didn't even know what that meant back then. Not as a kid, anyhow. I had scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, sinusitis, heart problems, chronic ear infections. Got the flu pretty much every time it came around, colds every time the weather changed."

Steve shrugs, his grin bright and ironic. "And I was kind of a runt."

Edited 2011-08-31 06:36 (UTC)

"...Huh."

He blinks, taking that all in and trying to fit that to a kind of mental picture of a 'runty' Steve Rogers. It doesn't work out so well.

"So you went to having... All that to being all this." Bruce nods slowly. "Well. Then. That's..." Another nod. "Uh. Impressive." Not that it wasn't before, but definitely more so now. Bruce himself did the hardest kind of cardio for the better part of six years but he's never managed to look like Steve.

"Yeah. It really is." Steve hooks one shoulder in a shrug. "It was Dr. Erskine. All I did was lie on my enlistment forms until someone noticed. I'm just lucky it was him and not an MP."

The grin hasn't gone away, even if the doctor and what happened to him are a little hard to think about. Steve never gets to talk about all this. Everyone just knows. It's nice of Bruce to let him ramble.

"I was the smallest guy in basic. The other fellas used to call me Erskine's gerbil- Peggy told me later that Colonel Phillips actually started that one."

He laughs. "That's when I met Howard, too- well, after that, after the doctor confirmed me for the program. He- Howard Stark - he designed all the machines Dr. Erskine used, plus all the weapons the SSR used in the field."

He goes a little distant then. "Sometimes Tony reminds me of him. Just for about a second, there are times when he really looks like Howard's son."

Howard's son. When Howard was older than Steve, not even considering a steady girl let alone a family life. Steve looks at his hands again. He would have liked it, he thinks - raising kids next to his war buddies, seeing who they found to stand beside them when it was all over. "He was a good man."

"Well, compared to Tony, I'm pretty sure most people are good." It's out, cynical and a little bitter, before he even realizes what he's saying, and the moment he does is obvious - his eyes go wide and a hand claps over his mouth. "Sorry," comes the muffled apology, followed by slightly less muffled babbling. "I shouldn't have- I don't know where that een- Sorry, that's. Sorry."

Bruce shifts in his seat awkwardly as he wrings his hands together in his lap. After a few moments (that seem much longer than they actually are) of awkward silence, he tries to get things back on track. "Uh. S-so. How did that all... Happen? I mean. Most of the stuff I've r- It's not really. The beginning isn't ever really discussed that much. I mean. If you want to talk about it, you obviously don't have to if y- I don't mean to be all nosy or anything."

Being a part of the team and part of S.H.I.E.L.D. has given Bruce some sort of clearance level, he's pretty sure, but. There's something that seems very rude to just go and look through people's files and folders just because he can.

Steve watches him, silent, that kind of calm that Bucky always found a little inhuman. "He could learn a little restraint," Steve says finally. "He could remember not everyone thinks the way he does. But like I said- he reminds me of Howard sometimes."

Cap's face lights up again for a brief, brief moment. "He kidnapped me once for fondue in Lucerne, right in the middle of a mission. It was kind of a running joke. Howard could seem totally irresponsible. He made passes at pretty much every woman he ever met. But he never forgot where we were or what we were trying to do. That's what folks didn't understand about him. He knew he was a celebrity, and he gave people something to talk about that wasn't the War. He kind of looked at it as another duty I guess."

Steve shakes his head, grinning at the floor. It takes him a second to remember the rest of what Bruce said. "Oh. Uh... well, there was this procedure. It worked. And then... Schmidt made sure it couldn't work again. His guy... blew the place up. Murdered the doctor."

His hands tighten into fists and his jaw works a little as he remembers Johann Schmidt and the operative that killed Erskine. "I caught the man who destroyed the project and he killed himself, right there, while I held on to his shirt."

Steve blinks, jerking slightly in surprise at his own vehemence and the words that just came spilling out. "Sorry."

Edited 2011-09-01 03:45 (UTC)

There's a number of things that Bruce could say Tony could stand to do - a great number of things, really - but he doesn't say any of it. It all gets shuffled down the queue and shelved away with all the rest that he tries to ignore.

"No, no, it's. That's something to get all... About. You don't have to apologize, and, I mean. Especially not to me. I'm kind of pretty much the poster guy for anger issues." He tries to smile an apology there, make it seem slightly less of a deal than it is, but. It only halfway works.

"I wouldn't say that." Steve smiles at Bruce again, more of his stage expression in it this time. Talking is starting to get uncomfortable. It's starting to run memories through his head in unpleasant succession, one disaster after another, from Erskine to the train to the frozen air hitting Steve's face during the last conversation he'd ever have with Peggy Carter. He can almost feel the pressure of the doctor's finger tapping against his chest.

A good man.

Steve closes his eyes and gathers himself, focusing on Bruce again. "What about you? If you don't mind me asking. I heard a little bit about before you came here." He feels a little twinge of guilt for looking at the files. "You must have seen a lot of the world."

He fidgets a little, recognizing the uncomfortable and knowing it's mostly his fault. He's never been good with words, or even at the basic interactions with other people.

"No, I don't mind, it's. You've gone and shared, so the least I can do is go and do the same. Uh." He rubs the back of his neck, his head going back to quietly thunk against the wall. "I guess I have, though I wasn't really, you know. Paying attention to the scenery a lot. Been through most of the Midwest, upper East Coast, um. Ended up heading along the Rockies into Alaska... Then down through Mexico and that whole part of Central America. Spent the most time in, hm. Brazil and Canada. Then here, of course." He bites his lip thoughtfully. "I liked the rain forests down there. Humid, really humid, and hard to move around in, but there was just so much color. Just... Popping everywhere, and all of it bright and vibrant." Even after every flower he brought back with him after his hikes turned out to be a dead end, he could still appreciate the aesthetic of it. And walking alone in the jungle, you could feel like you were the only person on the planet.

Bruce assumes Steve's read at least a little of his file - being as up until these past few months he was one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top priorities, he also assumes that file is as comprehensive as can be. It's just how things are. He can hope that the Captain's missed or skipped over some things, but. Hope's not really gotten him much of anywhere.

He scrunches up his face, trying to imagine being in the middle of a jungle. The woods in Europe were more than enough. He'll take the city any day - the city, and hundreds of thousands of people. Being alone would be...

Well, it would be lonely, obviously. He likes being surrounded, actually enjoys the noise and activity of the mansion.

Steve shakes his head. "It sounds... Well, it definitely sounds different." He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck, laughing with an extra dose of awkward. "Sorry, I just have a hard time picturing it. I mean, I've only been here and on the Western Front, and it's pretty much like New England weather with more languages thrown in."

"Yeah," Bruce chuckles quietly. "Different is... That's definitely one way to put it." He shrugs at Steve, a little half-smile on his face. "I heard nice things about it. Uh, both New England and old En- I mean. Europe. In general. But the languages are always a thing." His fingers steeple and flop apart again as he mutters, "I still don't have a good handle on Portuguese." He'd meant to keep at it, even if he didn't need to know it anymore. It was something to help pass the time, to set a different part of his brain working to give the cure-driven section a break.

Of course, here time isn't something that he's in huge supply of here. Most of it's spent either heading out on missions and sleeping off the aftereffects of his episodes. Then there's the meditation exercises, which he's need to up a bit, given certain housemates and their tendency to rub his nerves raw, and catching up on the stuff he's missed. Remembering to eat now and again pretty much rounds it all out, at least in between experiments.

"I heard that, uh..." Bruce stops there, reminding himself of just when Steve was over there in Europe, and that no matter what time of year, nice didn't much enter into the scenery. "Er. ...Well, it's been a long time since I was in a city big as New York. I mean. For an extended period, that is. There was the one time I came up this way before and that... That. Didn't go so well." His ears burn and his eyes go off to the side to avoid looking at other man as he remembers Harlem burning from the helicopter's windows.

He remembers reading about the incident with the former soldier, Emil Blonsky. He remembers having a hard time imagining what it must have been like to see the creature Blonsky turned into ripping up a Harlem street. Not quite as hard any more, but still.

"From what I understand you pretty much saved the lives of everyone involved."

He huffs quietly, too hollow to be a laugh, even a self-deprecating one.

"Sorry, but. You must've heard pretty wrong on that one since. Well. That's just not how it happened."

Cleaning up things that only could have happened because of your own stupid mistakes doesn't make you a hero. Certainly not when 'cleaning up' just ends up making a bigger mess of things across the board.

Steve just looks confused. "The report said you jumped out of a plane to uh... induce, after Blonsky started tearing things up. That you went one-on-one with him when nothing else was working, and that you had the chance to kill him and didn't take it. You gave him a chance. Seems pretty clear to me."

"I jumped, yeah, but. Everything else though, that... That wasn't me. That was all, you know." Bruce hates saying that stupid codename. So much. And so he avoids doing so whenever possible. "So whatever It ended up doing... Everyone's just lucky that's how It decided to be that day instead of going and making everything worse."

He shakes his head and tries to find the words. "It's like when you set a second fire to go and fight a bigger, first one. You don't go and, uh, congratulate that second one, you just go and count your blessings the wind was the right way and things didn't burn twice as fast."

"You made the choice." Now he sounds confused, too. "Whatever th- It did after. You had faith enough to believe you were making the right choice."

He's not sure what to do with this entire conversation any more. "...Well. If you say it like that. What Dr. Erskine did was just lighting a new fire, too. All of us, the whole Avengers thing. You can't just let the world burn. Besides I think it's more like... fighting a rock with another rock."

"It wasn't faith, or the right choice, just. There wasn't anything that could have stopped it, and. Enough people had gotten hurt already. Way more than enough."

Bruce squirms a bit in his seat, more than a little uncomfortable. It's one part his usual not knowing what to do in conversation, more parts talking about his episodes, and even more parts being uncertain what to do with being called a hero. So he latches onto something else.

"Erskine? That's." His forehead wrinkles a bit, trying to remember where he's heard that name before. "I think I've read some of his work," he says slowly, chewing on his lip until it hits him. "It was mostly B- Uh. Another scientist's focus than mine, I was all in--" There's a general hand-wave as to where he was before getting back to point. "Anyway, what little the General let us see, you know, in between the edits, that is, it was. It was brilliant stuff. Th-"

Wait, something does not make sense. Bruce had assumed that Dr. Erskine was just another scientist Ross had contracted on another project, and he hadn't presumed that he knew the community well enough to know everyone. But if Steve...

"How did you know him?"

"Didn't I-?" He scratches his head and grins sheepishly. "He's - he was the head scientist of Project Rebirth, the program I was recruited for. ...He was the doctor that Schmidt had killed."

The smile drops off his face and he looks at his hands. "His serum was misused by the Schmidt, Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra. It changed him, kind of like it changed me - except t made him the Red Skull. It's what the Nazi soldiers who'd seen him, the ones who got out alive, who weren't part of Hydra? It's what they called him."

Bruce may be awkward, and sometimes he can't see the forest for the trees, but it can never be said that he's dumb. All the information clicks together in his head and his mouth makes a small 'o' of realization. Now things make sense, or as much sense as things ever do in his life these days. It's still hard to picture a sickly and scrawny Steve, but a serum akin to what Betty had produced from Erskine's notes wou-

Once his brain starts though, it keeps going, and the realization goes from quiet to pained.

Ross had Erskine's notes. Ross would have known - he'd had to have known where those notes came from. And Ross had wanted a weaponized result. A super soldier. A whole slew of Captain Americas.

If he'd needed another yardstick to measure his failings against, well, Bruce sure has it now. Sitting across from the real reason for his research, what it all should have resulted in, and what he himself was now...

"Damn it," he mutters as he starts slowly and methodically pounding the back of his head against the wall.

Steve knocks his chair of lunging to his feet. He grabs Bruce's shoulders, a little knot of fear twisting in his gut at the thought that Bruce might be losing control- but that vanishes when he sees the man still looks very much himself, albeit somehow more miserable.

"Woah woah hey, stop that, fella." He's doing his best not to look worried or alarmed. "What's wrong? What happened?"

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