Little Wars ☆ Steve Rogers

03

STEVE AND BUCKY played Little Wars regularly until they were fifteen or sixteen. There was an art to it. Or at the very least, there were rules. Strategies. All of it had long been worked out among themselves, too; there was no rulebook for the particular Little Wars so often played on Sarah Rogers' living room rug.

They laid pencils across the floor to mark boundaries, and they used the linear designs of the rug as the standard increment of distance. They balanced books sideways, placing soldiers along their spines and behind their covers for inclines, walls, and shelters. They sat on either side of the battlefield and took turns, as in chess. They gained and lost distance as soldiers were hit with projectile weapons (a flicked penny).

He sometimes considered that had they been born a lifetime later, the game could have been more elaborate. He would sooner choke than admit it aloud, but Steve was envious that he and Bucky never had an Xbox.

Steve went to his office after he called Natasha about the bioweapons. He was awake until seven in the morning, planning, thinking, staring at the ceiling. At 7, he rested his head against the back of his chair for just a moment, and he dreamt of dead soldiers scattered on an endless expanse of his mother's red rug. He turned one of the bodies over. It was Bucky. He woke up with the disorienting sense that some indefinite amount of time had passed.

Steve glanced at his watch, but found it frozen at 2:13. He didn't wind it yesterday morning, instead letting it tick away uselessly in his gym bag as they scoped out the warehouse. It had worn itself out while he slept. He unbuckled it from his wrist and closed it in his desk drawer.

The wall clock called it 9:02. He was late for his meeting—the one that he'd called. He sprung into the hallway, then took a brief mental detour, because there was something hopelessly attractive about the way Maisie rolled her eyes at him. When he'd nearly collided with her, she had taken on that cool, unenthused manner of hers which made it difficult for him to force words out, like they'd gotten stuck and clumped up in some old scar tissue on the way out of his lungs. When he recalled the task at hand, he ducked into the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth with the vigor of someone who'd been personally wronged by his own enamel, exacting further destruction upon the already worn out bristles of his travel toothbrush.

He frowned at himself in the mirror. He smoothed his hair the best he could without pomade. He ran his hand over his jaw. He needed to shave. He hoped Maisie hadn't smelled his breath. He spat into the sink and rinsed his face with water.

In the hallway, a screen blinked the time to 9:07 in digital blue numbers. Why was he always late?

The door of the conference room banged against the wall when he opened it. He sat between Sam and Natasha. He looked around. Tony wasn't there yet.

"How'd you sleep?" Sam muttered.

"Just fine," Steve said. "Where's—"

Tony strolled in at the same moment. "Is this the right room for group therapy?" he asked, looking around. "Ugh, I hope not. You all look like you have long, tragic back stories."

"It all started when I was born," Clint said dramatically. "I opened my eyes and—"

"Can you speed this up?" said Tony, sitting down next to Bruce. "We're not gonna have time for me to talk about myself."

"I remember my birth too," Vision told Clint.

Side conversations branched off. Wanda and Vision muttered together. Natasha and Sam were checking on Steve again. Steve was about to start the meeting when his ears pricked—

"What's your intern's name again? Molly?" Tony asked Bruce.

"Maisie," Bruce said.

"Maisie," Tony repeated, committing it to memory. He didn't elaborate, and Bruce didn't seem to care enough to ask him to. Steve wanted to go the hell back to sleep.