Steve Rogers had been having a pretty good day.
Woken up early, 'forgot' his phone at home as he met Sam for a run. Their favourite post-run coffee shop hadn't had a line, and Steve's favourite muffins had just come out of the oven, fresh and warm.
A good, simple day.
He comes out of the shower already thinking about maybe indulging in some painting time later, as long as no crisis comes in, when Bucky walks in with his phone in hand. He forgoes his usual comment at Steve being in the kitchen in just a towel in favour of waving his phone at Steve. Steve doesn't catch the headline of the article, too busy admiring how relaxed Bucky's shoulders are, how at home he looks in their shared kitchen.
"Have you been on twitter at all?"
"No." He opens the fridge and frowns. "We're out of milk."
"I think that was Nat," says Bucky in a way that makes Steve think it was probably him. "They're blowing up over something that happened in your comic again."
This isn't news. This happens every few months. Steve has little say (read: no say at all) at what they print in there, so he just tries to ignore it. There will always be people who think the comics are an accurate portrayal of him, and he's given up on trying to convince them otherwise. He'd rather waste his time arguing about things he can actually change.
"Do I wanna know?"
"Probably not."
Steve gets out the eggs and starts to make an omelette. "Did you want one of these?"
"They're saying you're Hydra now."
Crack. Well, that egg was... shattered, now. Steve blinks down at the egg, then turns to Bucky, who is seated at the kitchen table, scrolling through his phone casually, although his eyebrows are creeping up his face as he reads on.
"...What?"
"Yeah. You've apparently been a Nazi this whole time. Dammit, Rogers, you really had me fooled."
Steve can feel an anger boiling in him, but it's broken up by just how absolutely ridiculous this is.
There's a knock on the door, and even though Steve's sure he locked it after he came in, Natasha walks into their kitchen a moment later. She steals an apple from the bowl on the counter, and sits on the table by Bucky.
"Hey, soldiers." She smiles at Steve over her bright red apple. "Or should I have said that in German?"
"I do know German," Steve reminds her. The egg in his hand is dripping onto the floor. He tosses it in the sink to deal with later, and starts attempt at omelette number two. "I picked it up in World War II. You know, when I was fighting the Nazis."
"Don't have to convince me." Natasha doesn't look like she's leaving any time soon, so Steve grabs a second pan, starts that heating up too. "Do you think this is worse than the time they had everyone convinced we were all aliens?"
"I liked the time when you and Bruce were in a tragic romance," pipes up Bucky, which earns him the eye roll he must have been going for.
The phone is ringing. It's his cell, and it's coming from their bedroom, so Steve shoves the spatula at Natasha and says "watch breakfast" before he goes to deal with whoever is calling.
"Hello?" he says, already preparing himself for some nonsense.
"Rogers!" It's Clint. Okay, so it will be nonsense, but at least it won't be someone who actually believes he'd be Hydra. "How's the Red Skull? You still friends?"
"Fuck off, Barton," he responds, more out of instinct than actual anger.
"Be careful, man. Better make some calls. It turns out I had a wife and kids and a farm I didn't know about. Talk about surprises." There's a beeping that sounds suspiciously like a fire alarm, and Clint mutters "aw, breakfast" in that resigned way of his.
"I'm making omelettes," Steve offers.
"Really? You're alright, Captain. For a racist, out of date übermensch." Clint hangs up before Steve can tell him to go fuck himself, again.
Steve sighs, and goes to make sure Natasha hasn't added anything weird to his breakfast.
"Barton's on his way over," he says, and Natasha nods, because she probably listened to the conversation, and Bucky doesn't even react, because he's probably already texting Barton, and Steve kind of just wants to go back to bed, except he still wants to take advantage of the way the light is coming in through the windows of their living room, and he hasn't had a chance to touch his easel in ages, and surely no one is going to want him saving the world today.
"Stark's calling me," says Bucky.
Steve takes a moment to wonder why he's calling Bucky, when he's sure it's Steve he wants to laugh at. He guesses that Stark's finally noticed his calls to Steve's phone always go straight to voicemail.
"Tell him if he wants to come to breakfast too, he has to pick up milk."
It's just going to be one of those days. Those long, exhausting days. Steve takes the spatula back from Natasha to see that one of his omelettes is now a suspicious shade of pink.
"And more eggs."
Steve doesn't know exactly what happened, only that there are suddenly a lot of people in his modest kitchen, and Stark has just handed him an armful of two litre jugs of milk. Steve eyes them suspiciously, in case they are part of the ribbing that Stark no doubt plans to give him, but they seem to just be jugs of milk.
Stark actually doesn't seem like he has any plans for teasing Steve. Instead, he looks downright mad.
"It's disrespectful," Stark is telling a patient-looking Pepper. "After what those people gave for this country, my father included-"
Steve smiles a bit at that. He likes when Tony Stark decides to surprise him.
Something buzzes by him, and the milk is now out of his hands. He looks around, and spots Pietro by his sister, drinking a glass of milk and nodding at something Wanda is saying to Janet. He catches Pietro's eye, and Pietro motions that the rest of the milk is in the fridge, so Steve is left with nothing to do, since Sam had shown up a few minutes before and promptly kicked him off omelette duty.
"...and sure, we haven't always gotten along, but he is our father, there's no doubt about that," says Wanda, and Janet nods in understanding.
"After that movie came out, Henry actually tried to call me to 'talk about it'. I thought we were past that, but apparently..."
There's a gaggle of kids in the corner of his living room, and he thought Kate was in California, but no, she's in his living room. He sees that Eli's with her, and moves over to them in time to hear Kate's voice, full of indignation.
"A daddy's girl. A daddy's girl. Have they met my dad? No, of course they haven't. But honestly, they could at least pretend to respect that my mom, who is dead, was a better parent than Dad ever tried to be. My sister keeps threatening to sue them, but I told her it's not worth it."
"At least they remember you exist," grumbles Eli, and Billy winces while Teddy pats him on the back. "And they don't give your codename to fucking Nazis. No offence, Cap!" he adds quickly, when he notices Steve standing there.
"None taken," he replies. Bucky had mentioned that, that he might be going by Patriot in the comics now, which makes about as much sense as everything else that's happened today.
Billy shoots him a sympathetic look. "Sorry about all this, sir. I can't believe I used to want to write for them."
"You were just a baby fanboy, you didn't know better." That's Cassie, tucked between their Vision (Jonas, Steve remembers) and a girl with curly brown hair and an American flag top. Steve feels bad that he doesn't know that one, he does try to keep up with all the legacy heroes, but there's been a lot of them, and he's been semi-retired for a few years now. "I'm not going to lie, it was kinda nice when I was dead. At least then I knew they weren't doing anything too weird with me."
A few of the group nod in understanding.
"Keep your heads up," Steve says to them all. "You've been doing good work lately. The comics just don't know what to do with heroes that are good at what they do."
This gets him a lot of bright smiles and 'Thanks, Cap!'s, and he walks away from them feeling a bit better about the whole mess.
Bucky finds him hiding in their room. He's got a sketchpad out, and he's trying to capture the feel of the living room, because even though most of the people in it were frustrated, it still felt so full of friendship and camaraderie.
"This is for you," Bucky says, and shoves a plate of fresh fruit he definitely did not have in his house an hour ago at him. "I figure you didn't actually get any of the eggs you were making."
"Thanks, Buck." He darkens the line of Wanda's hand gesture, and then moves on to try to capture Rhodey's eye roll at whatever Stark had been going on about. "Hope you weren't looking to have a quiet morning."
"Would I live with you if I was?" There's the soft touch of Bucky's lips on Steve's forehead, and he leans into his fiance's warmth, as he erases and redraws the shape of Gwen's smile. "There's something else I wanted to show you."
"Hmm?" Bucky slides his phone into Steve's field of vision, and Steve scowls. "I'm really not interested, Buck."
"No, trust me, you are." Bucky flicks to Twitter, quickly types something in, and hands the phone back. Steve takes it with extreme reluctance, and looks down.
#GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend is there to meet him.
"What?"
"It blew up last night. Before the comic came out, but it's still going pretty strong."
Steve looks over at Bucky, who's grinning at him with that look of danger in his eye, the one he's had ever since they were just little punks on the streets of Brooklyn.
"I know we were talking about making the engagement public. You think now would be a good time?"
"Couldn't think of a better one."
The kiss is grounding and reassuringly real, real like all of the friends taking up space in his living room, real like the texture of the paper underneath his fingers. Like this, he can forget about what was happening to fictional versions of him. This is Steve Rogers. This is his life. And right now, it's pretty good.