Christmas In New York
Title: Christmas In New York
Summary: How Captain America met everyone's favorite wall-crawling web-slinger.
Rating: hard G to soft PG (XD)
Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers, Peter Parker, Nick Fury
Warnings: slight violence, crossover, excessive Christmassyness
Spoilers: Captain America: The First Avenger and Spider-Man: The Animated Series
Disclaimer: Spider-Man: the Animate Series and everything related to it belongs to Marvel Films Animation, FOX, or both. Captain America: The First Avenger and everything related to it belongs to Marvel Studios, Paramount Pictures, or both. No money changed hands and no copyright infringement is intended or implied.
Author’s Notes: This is a cross with the 1994 animated Spider-Man to the movie's Captain America. It is set a few years post-TAS and a little after Captain America. This requires a bit of canon hand-waving, but nothing terribly extravagant. Certainly no worse than what the comics ask people to do.
This is something I dashed off while working on polishing my Criminal Minds/White Collar crossover up enough to post it. That one is still coming. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, folks!
*~*~*
Steve waited in line at a coffee shop near SHIELD headquarters. It had taken a long argument with Army brass to get his back-pay for the past seventy years released, but after Fury made some bureaucratically threatening comments about “fallen American heroes” and “public relations,” the Army had grudgingly located the paperwork he had meticulously filled out and submitted in order to release just enough of his money for him to do some Christmas shopping.
Granted, it wasn't as if he had a lot of people to shop for, but he'd been bored doing nothing but beating up punching bags and brainstorming for the Avengers Initiative. Even Fury did more with his days.
Another one of the many patrons of the coffee shop jostled him as they got into line.
Okay, so that was different. Christmas had always made the shops busier in the Forties, sure. But he didn't recall holiday shopping being a full-contact sport before. And he'd certainly never been sworn at for getting to the last of a book on the shelf “back in the day.” His expression at that little incident had set Fury, his handler for the day, laughing so hard that he'd had to lean onto one of the nearby shelves to keep from falling over. So, after they'd exited the Barnes & Noble-followed by the poisonous looks of that woman he'd beaten to the punch-Fury had suggested they get coffees to relax before returning to SHIELD.
Some relaxing. This “Starbucks” store-thing was just as busy as that bookshop had been. Though it did smell wonderful.
Steve scanned the menu over a few more times as he wondered how he could thank Fury for his help. Ever since he'd woken up to a very changed America, Fury had made it his business to help him acclimate. He'd answered all kinds of questions, shown Steve how to use the internet to search for things, and patiently taught and retaught him how to send text messages. Steve had been fairly excited when he'd finally sent one that did not leave the recipient giggling for days on end afterward.
So, while taking him Christmas shopping was a bit unusual for Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, it made perfect sense for Nick Fury, concerned friend. And Steve appreciated it.
Finally, they were able to collect their drinks and start towards the door. Steve was able to take one sip of this deliciously warm and wonderful-smelling thing called a “café misto” when a man burst in dressed in a skintight green outfit with-and surely here his eyes were mistaking him-a tail of multiple sections sprouting from his back. Or…no, it wasn't precisely a tail. It was attached to a pack of something strapped to his back, and had a nozzle at the end. And a blade.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Fury exclaimed, his hand moving to his hip where-normally speaking-his gun would have been.
“So this is not some new holiday character,” Steve surmised.
“One of our home-grown bad guys,” Fury bit out.
The man pointed his tail-nozzle-knife-thing at the women working the counter-without using his hands to do it, which was interesting-and said, “I'll have a grande peppermint mocha and all the cash you've got in the register!”
“Now you've really got to be kidding me!” Fury said, rolling his eyes.
“And I'll have a little less talking from the peanut gallery!” the man shouted, turning and aiming the tail at Steve and Fury. Steve tackled Fury to the side just as some kind of fluid spat from the nozzle and hit the trash can they'd just been standing in front of. Acid, Steve realized as the fluid began to melt the hard plastic, which released an awful smell.
He held his hands up. “No talking. You got it.”
The man turned back to the counter and said, “Well? Coffee and money! Now!”
One girl started emptying the cash register while a second, shaking like a leaf, quietly asked, “Could you repeat your order, please, sir?”
Fury quietly worked his cell from his pocket and started furiously typing on it. Steve had a feeling this would not end well, and sure enough, as the terrified patrons in the coffee shop grew mostly silent, the sound of the little keys clacking seemed to grow louder.
The man turned.
“Try to drop a dime on the Scorpion, will you?” he yelled. Once again, he aimed his tail at them, but this time a mass of white goop flew through the air and straight down the barrel at the end of his tail. Whatever the stuff was, the man didn't seem eager to try and shoot any acid through it.
“Hey, Scorpy! Knocking over a coffee shop would be a new low, even for you, but doing it during the holidays is really beyond the pale,” a voice announced from the doorway. “Did Santa leave you a lump of coal in your stocking?”
Steve turned to see a…head and shoulders. They were covered in a red fabric with a black spiderweb pattern that centered between two white eye coverings, hanging upside-down from the top of the doorway.
Steve was about to ask if this was who he thought it was when the man robbing the shop said, “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, just your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man spreading the Christmas cheer!” the red head announced, as one of his hands appeared from above the doorway to wave at them. “I hadn't seen you in a while and thought I'd say 'Merry Christmas.' I'm starting to think you're avoiding me, Scorpion. I'm hurt! Really!”
“Is he always so…smart?” he asked Fury, who nodded.
The robber-Scorpion-heard him, and apparently misinterpreted what he meant by “smart.”
“A fan, are you?” His tail whipped out and wrapped around Steve, pinning his arms to his sides with surprising strength. Then he leaped towards Spider-Man's head, which disappeared above the doorway, leaving Nick Fury behind them cursing loudly and creatively.
Scorpion landed out on the sidewalk gracefully. Steve, however, was smashed head-first into the concrete pavement.
“Leave me alone or I'll kill your fan here!” Scorpion shouted.
Steve blinked, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind, and tried to push out of the tail-thing Scorpion was using to hold him. However, whatever it was made of was strong indeed, because it barely budged.
“Leave you alone? But Scorpy, I thought you wanted us to be together!” Spider-Man replied, swinging out of reach of the blade on that tail using ropes that seemed to blossom from his wrists. Steve had a feeling he would have been impressed if he hadn't been busy being astonished that Spider-Man had actually just said what he had and trying to get free. Whatever this thing was made of, it was really strong. He could really do with his shield right about now. Or his gun. Either way.
Scorpion let out a yell of indignation and leaped at Spider-Man again. Behind them, Steve could hear Fury issuing orders, liberally sprinkled with some inventive invective, into his cell as Scorpion chased Spider-Man up the side of a building.
Spider-Man didn't cease taunting Scorpion for one second, but Steve soon realized there was a method to his seemingly-careless manner. On the roof, Spider-Man would have much more space than he had in the coffee shop, and considerably fewer bystanders. And he was clearly agile enough to evade Scorpion if he chose, but instead he stayed frustratingly at the edge of his range. Leading him on.
Okay, Steve decided. That was good, then. Get the civilians out of the way, then pummel his would-be kidnapper. He could get behind a plan like that.
Scorpion swarmed over the edge of the building to the roof. Spider-Man was nowhere to be seen. Steve renewed his efforts to get loose.
Scorpion turned around and snarled at him. “Don't worry. I haven't forgotten you.”
“Good,” Steve returned, which seemed to surprise the man.
From the side, Spider-Man came swinging in on one of his ropes, both-feet-first into Scorpion's jaw. The surprise caused him to loosen his grip on Steve, who dropped to the ground and stepped back to assess the two.
“I'm going to tear you to pieces, Spider-Man!” Scorpion yelled.
“Didn't you mother ever teach you to play nice with the other kids?” Spider-Man answered, with an acrobatic flip-kick-throw maneuver that nearly made Steve dizzy to see it. The next one, however, didn't go quite as planned.
Scorpion ducked the punch Spider-Man aimed at him and caught Spider-Man in the stomach with his tail, sending him flying across the roof with an inarticulate yell-though Spider-Man did manage to toss Scorpion just barely off the edge of the roof anyway. Spider-Man smacked into the brick housing for a massive vent and hit the ground with a dull thud.
Steve ran over to his side. “Are you okay?” he asked, watching as Scorpion's fingers appeared on the edge of the roof.
“Fine,” Spider-Man replied, already getting up. “He just caught me off guard.”
“What can that guy do, anyway?” Steve asked, as they saw the third man climb back onto the roof and start looking for them.
“He's stronger and faster than most humans, and he can cling to walls. The tail you've already seen,” Spider-Man answered, standing.
“How much stronger and faster?” Steve asked.
“Imagine a scorpion the same size as him,” Spider-Man replied, rolling his shoulders.
“Ah,” Steve said. “Good.”
“Good? How on earth is that good?”
“It means I don't have to hold back,” Steve replied, already marching towards Scorpion, who had finally located them and was charging in at a run.
“Wait! Mister!” Spider-Man shouted.
Scorpion saw him coming and whipped his tail around to sweep him off his feet. Steve saw the tail coming and simply jumped over it, landing right inside Scorpion's space. He brought his right fist smashing straight into the man's face, lifting him off his feet a bit, before he collapsed in a a heap.
“Stay down,” Steve instructed him.
Scorpion made an inarticulate noise that was probably agreement.
“Wow,” Spider-Man remarked. “Somebody's been eating his Wheaties.” He bound the man up in a wrapping of his wrist-rope-stuff. Which, quite logically now that he thought about it, looked like spiderweb strands. And he did it surprisingly fast for someone who-as far as Steve could tell-was not actually a spider.
“So…you've practiced doing that,” Steve said.
“Not exactly. I've just…done it a lot,” Spider-Man replied. He lowered Scorpion down the side of the building and left him dangling about half-way to the ground. Then he turned. “What's your story, then? Mutation? Genetic manipulation?”
“Serum infusion followed by saturation with vita-rays…whatever those are.” He had thought this would be a safe enough answer. After all, who was likely to know the details of Dr. Erskine's experiment, anyway?
“You mean like Captain America?” Spider-Man replied. “Wait a minute…” He stared at Steve's face.
“Oh, don't say it,” Steve said quietly.
“You are Captain America!” he exclaimed. “I don't believe it! I suppose the cell regeneration extended your life-span, then?”
“How on earth could you possibly recognize me?” Steve demanded.
“I used to love your films growing up,” Spider-Man replied. Then he paused for a moment and added, “Which must be an odd thing to have people say to you.”
“It is a little surreal,” Steve agreed, grateful that he could actually say so to someone.
“Anyway, after my…well, after I became Spider-Man, I started doing research into neogenics and genetic manipulation. Well, more than I already had been. Erskine was a genius. His experiment that resulted in your…you-ness…well, it's one of the most famous in history. Even now we can't duplicate his work,” Spider-Man said.
Steve hadn't heard that. “But! But you people can do everything now! Put computers in your pockets and go to the moon. Erskine's work is seventy years old! Surely you can duplicate some of it.”
It was hard to tell, but Steve had a feeling Spider-Man's eyes narrowed behind his mask. “So you haven't been around all these years. But…have you heard of Dr. Bruce Banner?”
“The Hulk? Sure, we've spoken a few times.” Steve replied, afraid he knew what was coming next.
“Right. Well, his condition is the result of an attempt to recreate the super-soldier project that made you. And he's the closest anyone has come.” Spider-Man shrugged. “Some people are geniuses even compared to other geniuses. Erskine was one of them.”
Steve felt a new wave of sadness for the man who had died far too soon. He'd known he was brilliant, but he had never gotten the chance to appreciate how much.
Spider-Man laid a friendly hand on his shoulder, bringing him back to the present.
“Sorry. From what you said a minute ago, I get the feeling that you experienced a fairly sudden transition from your disappearance at the end of the war to your reappearance now. And you must've known Erskine. I should know better than to go on like this,” he said quietly.
Steve blinked. “It's all right. It's…it's good to know people haven't been forgotten.”
“Not a chance. A scientist like that will be remembered for a long time.” Spider-Man glanced over the edge of the building. “Well, we're fairly high up. How about a ride down?”
On the street below, several miniature black SUVs pulled up to the Starbucks and about ten little men and women in black suits piled out. A tiny Nick Fury began gesturing with his arms at the little agents.
“Close as you can to that chaos without getting yourself caught?” Steve suggested.
“No problem.”
It required some slightly awkward closeness, but Steve was shortly back on terra firma watching Spider-Man swing away past the skyscrapers.
He went over to Fury and reported himself unharmed before indicating Scorpion on the side of the building Spider-Man had hung him from.
“So, you've met the Amazing Spider-Man,” Fury observed. “What did you think?”
“I liked him. He talks a lot, though,” Steve said. Then he groaned. “Ugh. We're going to have to do our shopping all over again aren't we?”
Fury laughed and gestured to one of the nearby agents who delivered Steve's Christmas shopping and a new cup of coffee before vanishing, almost into thin air. Steve looked curiously at Fury, who had another cup of his own coffee in his hand.
“I'm the director of a national security agency. I can have just about anything delivered overnight from anywhere in the world, Steve. The shopping is just an excuse to let you get out into the world a little more.”
Steve looked at the bags and decided not to ask if they were the same ones he'd had earlier. Then he looked back up and said the only thing he could say to a pronouncement like that.
“Merry Christmas, Director Fury.”
“Merry Christmas, Cap.”
*~*~*
Author's Notes: Okay, yeah, so it's a little cheesy. It's Christmas. Sue me. :P
This story was inspired by one of Spidey's comments in the cartoons lamenting that bad guys never invaded bakeries. Starbucks is not precisely a bakery, but it's in the right ballpark.
My comments about Steve's troubles getting the Army to actually pay him his wages are based on my brother's actual experience with the actual Army over exactly the same thing after one of his tours in Iraq. It took months. Seriously.
Yes, I am assuming that SHIELD isn't making any particular secret of Steve's return. However, I'm also assuming they aren't exactly publishing it, either. Nor is Captain America doing any interviews with anyone for the forseeable future. I know popular fanon is that it's classified out the wazoo, but I can't find any direct support for that in the canon, and I can't imagine a good reason for it to need to be all that secret. The Avengers, sure. Cap's return, not so much.
My dad is a total technophobe and learning how to text is, for him, a work that remains in progress. This struck me as something Steve would've had trouble with as well, though him I see eventually mastering it. For my dad, I think the cell phones won the war.
Summary: How Captain America met everyone's favorite wall-crawling web-slinger.
Rating: hard G to soft PG (XD)
Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers, Peter Parker, Nick Fury
Warnings: slight violence, crossover, excessive Christmassyness
Spoilers: Captain America: The First Avenger and Spider-Man: The Animated Series
Disclaimer: Spider-Man: the Animate Series and everything related to it belongs to Marvel Films Animation, FOX, or both. Captain America: The First Avenger and everything related to it belongs to Marvel Studios, Paramount Pictures, or both. No money changed hands and no copyright infringement is intended or implied.
Author’s Notes: This is a cross with the 1994 animated Spider-Man to the movie's Captain America. It is set a few years post-TAS and a little after Captain America. This requires a bit of canon hand-waving, but nothing terribly extravagant. Certainly no worse than what the comics ask people to do.
This is something I dashed off while working on polishing my Criminal Minds/White Collar crossover up enough to post it. That one is still coming. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, folks!
*~*~*
Steve waited in line at a coffee shop near SHIELD headquarters. It had taken a long argument with Army brass to get his back-pay for the past seventy years released, but after Fury made some bureaucratically threatening comments about “fallen American heroes” and “public relations,” the Army had grudgingly located the paperwork he had meticulously filled out and submitted in order to release just enough of his money for him to do some Christmas shopping.
Granted, it wasn't as if he had a lot of people to shop for, but he'd been bored doing nothing but beating up punching bags and brainstorming for the Avengers Initiative. Even Fury did more with his days.
Another one of the many patrons of the coffee shop jostled him as they got into line.
Okay, so that was different. Christmas had always made the shops busier in the Forties, sure. But he didn't recall holiday shopping being a full-contact sport before. And he'd certainly never been sworn at for getting to the last of a book on the shelf “back in the day.” His expression at that little incident had set Fury, his handler for the day, laughing so hard that he'd had to lean onto one of the nearby shelves to keep from falling over. So, after they'd exited the Barnes & Noble-followed by the poisonous looks of that woman he'd beaten to the punch-Fury had suggested they get coffees to relax before returning to SHIELD.
Some relaxing. This “Starbucks” store-thing was just as busy as that bookshop had been. Though it did smell wonderful.
Steve scanned the menu over a few more times as he wondered how he could thank Fury for his help. Ever since he'd woken up to a very changed America, Fury had made it his business to help him acclimate. He'd answered all kinds of questions, shown Steve how to use the internet to search for things, and patiently taught and retaught him how to send text messages. Steve had been fairly excited when he'd finally sent one that did not leave the recipient giggling for days on end afterward.
So, while taking him Christmas shopping was a bit unusual for Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, it made perfect sense for Nick Fury, concerned friend. And Steve appreciated it.
Finally, they were able to collect their drinks and start towards the door. Steve was able to take one sip of this deliciously warm and wonderful-smelling thing called a “café misto” when a man burst in dressed in a skintight green outfit with-and surely here his eyes were mistaking him-a tail of multiple sections sprouting from his back. Or…no, it wasn't precisely a tail. It was attached to a pack of something strapped to his back, and had a nozzle at the end. And a blade.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Fury exclaimed, his hand moving to his hip where-normally speaking-his gun would have been.
“So this is not some new holiday character,” Steve surmised.
“One of our home-grown bad guys,” Fury bit out.
The man pointed his tail-nozzle-knife-thing at the women working the counter-without using his hands to do it, which was interesting-and said, “I'll have a grande peppermint mocha and all the cash you've got in the register!”
“Now you've really got to be kidding me!” Fury said, rolling his eyes.
“And I'll have a little less talking from the peanut gallery!” the man shouted, turning and aiming the tail at Steve and Fury. Steve tackled Fury to the side just as some kind of fluid spat from the nozzle and hit the trash can they'd just been standing in front of. Acid, Steve realized as the fluid began to melt the hard plastic, which released an awful smell.
He held his hands up. “No talking. You got it.”
The man turned back to the counter and said, “Well? Coffee and money! Now!”
One girl started emptying the cash register while a second, shaking like a leaf, quietly asked, “Could you repeat your order, please, sir?”
Fury quietly worked his cell from his pocket and started furiously typing on it. Steve had a feeling this would not end well, and sure enough, as the terrified patrons in the coffee shop grew mostly silent, the sound of the little keys clacking seemed to grow louder.
The man turned.
“Try to drop a dime on the Scorpion, will you?” he yelled. Once again, he aimed his tail at them, but this time a mass of white goop flew through the air and straight down the barrel at the end of his tail. Whatever the stuff was, the man didn't seem eager to try and shoot any acid through it.
“Hey, Scorpy! Knocking over a coffee shop would be a new low, even for you, but doing it during the holidays is really beyond the pale,” a voice announced from the doorway. “Did Santa leave you a lump of coal in your stocking?”
Steve turned to see a…head and shoulders. They were covered in a red fabric with a black spiderweb pattern that centered between two white eye coverings, hanging upside-down from the top of the doorway.
Steve was about to ask if this was who he thought it was when the man robbing the shop said, “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, just your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man spreading the Christmas cheer!” the red head announced, as one of his hands appeared from above the doorway to wave at them. “I hadn't seen you in a while and thought I'd say 'Merry Christmas.' I'm starting to think you're avoiding me, Scorpion. I'm hurt! Really!”
“Is he always so…smart?” he asked Fury, who nodded.
The robber-Scorpion-heard him, and apparently misinterpreted what he meant by “smart.”
“A fan, are you?” His tail whipped out and wrapped around Steve, pinning his arms to his sides with surprising strength. Then he leaped towards Spider-Man's head, which disappeared above the doorway, leaving Nick Fury behind them cursing loudly and creatively.
Scorpion landed out on the sidewalk gracefully. Steve, however, was smashed head-first into the concrete pavement.
“Leave me alone or I'll kill your fan here!” Scorpion shouted.
Steve blinked, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind, and tried to push out of the tail-thing Scorpion was using to hold him. However, whatever it was made of was strong indeed, because it barely budged.
“Leave you alone? But Scorpy, I thought you wanted us to be together!” Spider-Man replied, swinging out of reach of the blade on that tail using ropes that seemed to blossom from his wrists. Steve had a feeling he would have been impressed if he hadn't been busy being astonished that Spider-Man had actually just said what he had and trying to get free. Whatever this thing was made of, it was really strong. He could really do with his shield right about now. Or his gun. Either way.
Scorpion let out a yell of indignation and leaped at Spider-Man again. Behind them, Steve could hear Fury issuing orders, liberally sprinkled with some inventive invective, into his cell as Scorpion chased Spider-Man up the side of a building.
Spider-Man didn't cease taunting Scorpion for one second, but Steve soon realized there was a method to his seemingly-careless manner. On the roof, Spider-Man would have much more space than he had in the coffee shop, and considerably fewer bystanders. And he was clearly agile enough to evade Scorpion if he chose, but instead he stayed frustratingly at the edge of his range. Leading him on.
Okay, Steve decided. That was good, then. Get the civilians out of the way, then pummel his would-be kidnapper. He could get behind a plan like that.
Scorpion swarmed over the edge of the building to the roof. Spider-Man was nowhere to be seen. Steve renewed his efforts to get loose.
Scorpion turned around and snarled at him. “Don't worry. I haven't forgotten you.”
“Good,” Steve returned, which seemed to surprise the man.
From the side, Spider-Man came swinging in on one of his ropes, both-feet-first into Scorpion's jaw. The surprise caused him to loosen his grip on Steve, who dropped to the ground and stepped back to assess the two.
“I'm going to tear you to pieces, Spider-Man!” Scorpion yelled.
“Didn't you mother ever teach you to play nice with the other kids?” Spider-Man answered, with an acrobatic flip-kick-throw maneuver that nearly made Steve dizzy to see it. The next one, however, didn't go quite as planned.
Scorpion ducked the punch Spider-Man aimed at him and caught Spider-Man in the stomach with his tail, sending him flying across the roof with an inarticulate yell-though Spider-Man did manage to toss Scorpion just barely off the edge of the roof anyway. Spider-Man smacked into the brick housing for a massive vent and hit the ground with a dull thud.
Steve ran over to his side. “Are you okay?” he asked, watching as Scorpion's fingers appeared on the edge of the roof.
“Fine,” Spider-Man replied, already getting up. “He just caught me off guard.”
“What can that guy do, anyway?” Steve asked, as they saw the third man climb back onto the roof and start looking for them.
“He's stronger and faster than most humans, and he can cling to walls. The tail you've already seen,” Spider-Man answered, standing.
“How much stronger and faster?” Steve asked.
“Imagine a scorpion the same size as him,” Spider-Man replied, rolling his shoulders.
“Ah,” Steve said. “Good.”
“Good? How on earth is that good?”
“It means I don't have to hold back,” Steve replied, already marching towards Scorpion, who had finally located them and was charging in at a run.
“Wait! Mister!” Spider-Man shouted.
Scorpion saw him coming and whipped his tail around to sweep him off his feet. Steve saw the tail coming and simply jumped over it, landing right inside Scorpion's space. He brought his right fist smashing straight into the man's face, lifting him off his feet a bit, before he collapsed in a a heap.
“Stay down,” Steve instructed him.
Scorpion made an inarticulate noise that was probably agreement.
“Wow,” Spider-Man remarked. “Somebody's been eating his Wheaties.” He bound the man up in a wrapping of his wrist-rope-stuff. Which, quite logically now that he thought about it, looked like spiderweb strands. And he did it surprisingly fast for someone who-as far as Steve could tell-was not actually a spider.
“So…you've practiced doing that,” Steve said.
“Not exactly. I've just…done it a lot,” Spider-Man replied. He lowered Scorpion down the side of the building and left him dangling about half-way to the ground. Then he turned. “What's your story, then? Mutation? Genetic manipulation?”
“Serum infusion followed by saturation with vita-rays…whatever those are.” He had thought this would be a safe enough answer. After all, who was likely to know the details of Dr. Erskine's experiment, anyway?
“You mean like Captain America?” Spider-Man replied. “Wait a minute…” He stared at Steve's face.
“Oh, don't say it,” Steve said quietly.
“You are Captain America!” he exclaimed. “I don't believe it! I suppose the cell regeneration extended your life-span, then?”
“How on earth could you possibly recognize me?” Steve demanded.
“I used to love your films growing up,” Spider-Man replied. Then he paused for a moment and added, “Which must be an odd thing to have people say to you.”
“It is a little surreal,” Steve agreed, grateful that he could actually say so to someone.
“Anyway, after my…well, after I became Spider-Man, I started doing research into neogenics and genetic manipulation. Well, more than I already had been. Erskine was a genius. His experiment that resulted in your…you-ness…well, it's one of the most famous in history. Even now we can't duplicate his work,” Spider-Man said.
Steve hadn't heard that. “But! But you people can do everything now! Put computers in your pockets and go to the moon. Erskine's work is seventy years old! Surely you can duplicate some of it.”
It was hard to tell, but Steve had a feeling Spider-Man's eyes narrowed behind his mask. “So you haven't been around all these years. But…have you heard of Dr. Bruce Banner?”
“The Hulk? Sure, we've spoken a few times.” Steve replied, afraid he knew what was coming next.
“Right. Well, his condition is the result of an attempt to recreate the super-soldier project that made you. And he's the closest anyone has come.” Spider-Man shrugged. “Some people are geniuses even compared to other geniuses. Erskine was one of them.”
Steve felt a new wave of sadness for the man who had died far too soon. He'd known he was brilliant, but he had never gotten the chance to appreciate how much.
Spider-Man laid a friendly hand on his shoulder, bringing him back to the present.
“Sorry. From what you said a minute ago, I get the feeling that you experienced a fairly sudden transition from your disappearance at the end of the war to your reappearance now. And you must've known Erskine. I should know better than to go on like this,” he said quietly.
Steve blinked. “It's all right. It's…it's good to know people haven't been forgotten.”
“Not a chance. A scientist like that will be remembered for a long time.” Spider-Man glanced over the edge of the building. “Well, we're fairly high up. How about a ride down?”
On the street below, several miniature black SUVs pulled up to the Starbucks and about ten little men and women in black suits piled out. A tiny Nick Fury began gesturing with his arms at the little agents.
“Close as you can to that chaos without getting yourself caught?” Steve suggested.
“No problem.”
It required some slightly awkward closeness, but Steve was shortly back on terra firma watching Spider-Man swing away past the skyscrapers.
He went over to Fury and reported himself unharmed before indicating Scorpion on the side of the building Spider-Man had hung him from.
“So, you've met the Amazing Spider-Man,” Fury observed. “What did you think?”
“I liked him. He talks a lot, though,” Steve said. Then he groaned. “Ugh. We're going to have to do our shopping all over again aren't we?”
Fury laughed and gestured to one of the nearby agents who delivered Steve's Christmas shopping and a new cup of coffee before vanishing, almost into thin air. Steve looked curiously at Fury, who had another cup of his own coffee in his hand.
“I'm the director of a national security agency. I can have just about anything delivered overnight from anywhere in the world, Steve. The shopping is just an excuse to let you get out into the world a little more.”
Steve looked at the bags and decided not to ask if they were the same ones he'd had earlier. Then he looked back up and said the only thing he could say to a pronouncement like that.
“Merry Christmas, Director Fury.”
“Merry Christmas, Cap.”
*~*~*
Author's Notes: Okay, yeah, so it's a little cheesy. It's Christmas. Sue me. :P
This story was inspired by one of Spidey's comments in the cartoons lamenting that bad guys never invaded bakeries. Starbucks is not precisely a bakery, but it's in the right ballpark.
My comments about Steve's troubles getting the Army to actually pay him his wages are based on my brother's actual experience with the actual Army over exactly the same thing after one of his tours in Iraq. It took months. Seriously.
Yes, I am assuming that SHIELD isn't making any particular secret of Steve's return. However, I'm also assuming they aren't exactly publishing it, either. Nor is Captain America doing any interviews with anyone for the forseeable future. I know popular fanon is that it's classified out the wazoo, but I can't find any direct support for that in the canon, and I can't imagine a good reason for it to need to be all that secret. The Avengers, sure. Cap's return, not so much.
My dad is a total technophobe and learning how to text is, for him, a work that remains in progress. This struck me as something Steve would've had trouble with as well, though him I see eventually mastering it. For my dad, I think the cell phones won the war.