trickyarchangel:

What if…

Steve breaks out of the containment room he wakes up in and he runs. He takes out a few men pretending to be Army, avoids the fake women, and runs. He gets out onto the street, feet taking him fast and far despite their tingling awareness of “awake”. He runs until his body feels like his own again, shoving past more people until one body doesn’t move.

Steve slams into them, spilling hot liquid -he thinks it’s hot- down the fronts of them both. Steve is more shocked that the guy hadn’t moved, too shocked to really take in the surrounding city yet. Part of him registers the smell of New York, something that never changes, but another part registers too much noise.

But the man hadn’t moved.

“Well, I certainly hope you can afford drycleaning, handsome,” the man says, peering at Steve over red-tinted glasses.

“You didn’t move,” Steve says dumbly.

“Generally not when I’m perfectly taking up my own space. Especially not when someone looks like a purse snatcher.”

“Purse snat-what?” Steve is panting, arms akimbo, confusion and distress probably radiating off of him like crazy.

The man cocks a brow then his head.

“Pretty hardcore jog you got there. Late for a date?”

Steve’s heart is ground to dust beneath the man’s expensive-looking heel. His head is reeling, his soul aching. He looks around at the ad-ridden Square and takes a breath, buries it all deep down.

“Actually, yeah… Yeah, I had a date. She’s… She’s probably long gone by now.”

The man is quiet for a moment and looks off to Steve’s left.

“How about that?” He says to himself then smiles at Steve, and Steve is struck by a sense of familiarity.

“Turns out I just spotted someone I really don’t want to speak with, so you’re going to let me buy you a coffee while I replace mine, and you can tell me all about this pretty lady you let get away.” he takes Steve’s elbow, and Steve… lets him, and guides him into a shop that doesn’t smell like coffee at all, but as the door swings shut behind them, a girl behind the counter calls out.

“Another already, Mr. Stark?!”

Wrong face, same smile.