Steve was sitting all alone in his bedsit apartment, the tiny room illuminated by only one dim bulb. Out of pride, he had refused the blanket invitation for all of the Avengers to take up residence in Stark Tower, and had only grudgingly allowed SHIELD to pay his rent for him – accordingly he had signed a lease for the cheapest studio flat he had been able to find at such short notice. Of course he still visited the Tower frequently for meetings and training, in fact he'd been there only this morning when Tony had managed to dig out Captain America's 'schematics' as he called them from among his father's old notes. Steve tried to feign indifference as Tony frowned over the diagrams and equations that equalled Captain America's very existence, as Bruce looked on with interest.

"You realise that you're practically immortal, Cap? Doctor _'s made a note here saying 'indefinable life span – impervious to all known toxins and poisons'."

"Yeah, that was mentioned to me. I can't even get drunk."

Tony whistled lowly, "That sucks. You sure there's no loophole? Give me a minute with these stats, I'll see if I can figure out exactly how well you can hold your liquor."

Tony frowned for a few moments, his lips moving soundlessly as he recited endless numbers, making additions and multiplications in his head faster than Steve could read the equations on the page. Eventually the Captain hazarded, "So… How much alcohol do you think I would have to consume to get drunk?'

"You really looking to take up drinking?" Tony quipped without looking up from the papers.

"N-no," Steve blushed, "I'm just curious…"

"Well according to this, my estimate would be roughly two metric fuck-tonnes."

Steve looked nonplussed.

"It was a joke Capsicle. You literally can't get drunk. You physically cannot ingest alcohol at a faster pace than your super-metabolism processes it at. Typical of dear old dad really; the bastard drinks himself half to death then makes sure his Rocky can't enjoy the same fate."

Steve didn't understand the reference but remained silent. He had spent a lot of time watching Tony and the others drown their own problems with alcohol and had been at once repulsed and fascinated; he often felt like he could use an escape like that, but thus far all of his attempts at getting drunk had been to no avail. Tony and Bruce missed his look of disconsolation as they buried their heads in his old medical records, and Steve had left the Tower without saying anything further to anyone else.

Back in his lonely apartment he glanced at his watch – still working after more than sixty years on ice – and saw with some surprise that it read 0300 hours precisely. He didn't think that he would ever get used to this new twenty-four hour world, where traffic still roared and honked outside his dingy window at this time of morning. Still, he supposed, if he had gone to bed at his usual, reasonable time then he would probably be sleeping through the noise right now. But reasonable Steve was AWOL tonight, owing to a conversation overheard in Stark Tower earlier that day, before the discovery of his 'schematics', but just after he had mastered dialling phone numbers on a smart phone;

"Do you really think Steve's ever going to learn how to fit in to the 2000s?"

"I don't know, it's a pretty big culture clash, the guy is probably always going to feel a little displaced."

Only Natasha had stood up for him in his perceived absence, saying curtly, "He will learn to fit in. Give him time."

Grimacing, Steve poured a measure of clear liquid into a glass and swallowed it, his face contorting as he did so at the trail of fire that it left down his throat; reasonable Steve was out, but reckless Steve was still here, and reckless Steve wanted one last shot at getting drunk, regardless of physiological impediments. He once again hefted the industrial-looking bottle and poured more liquid into his glass, his vision beginning to slide ever so slightly as a warm red flush rose in his cheeks – he intended to get drunk tonight, even if it meant downing the entire bottle of methanol that reckless Steve had quietly stolen from the Stark Tower labs to fuel his own experiment.

Three more glasses of the toxic drink followed in quick succession, and suddenly Steve felt very ill. He rushed to the bathroom and threw up violently, liquid splashing out of his mouth and burning twice as badly on the way up as it had on the way down. He gagged and spluttered, still retching even after the contents of his stomach was emptied and he was coughing up only bile; it appeared that if his super metabolism couldn't process a poison it was programmed to eject it as quickly as possible.

He slumped on the bathroom floor, the tiles cold through the thin material of his sweatpants, as he waited for his body to stop shaking and contemplated his inescapable loneliness… Not even drink could offer him any comfort in these early morning hours of darkness, when the city somehow still throbbed with life… A city he had never seen in his own time and which he certainly couldn't understand in this new and confusing time.

He screwed up his face, trying to control the rush of emotion that was welling up inside his broad chest, but he could not stop two fat tears from spilling down his cheeks as he heard the echo of Natasha's thoroughly Americanised voice - "He will learn to fit in. Give him time."

What did she know? In his time a Russian spy – even a female one – would have been executed without trial, and now she was the only person in his small circle of 'friends' who stood up for him. He covered his face with his hands, trying to calm his erratic breathing and stem the flow of silent tears that threatened to cascade across his vision at any moment.

Natasha, the Russian spy. But the more he thought about what she had said the more he realised that perhaps she did understand some of what he was going through. After all, she was the only other full-time Avenger to have been born into a different culture, a different world… Surely Cold War era Russia was just as dissimilar from their modern day circumstances as 1940s Brooklyn had been? She had escaped the martinetism of her native country, overcome a severe language barrier, and built herself a new life and career (albeit one of crime) in a brave new world. Surely Steve could, in time, do the same?

He had stopped crying, but he felt suddenly exhausted as he leant his head back against the tiled wall and his hands drooped in his lap. He wondered vaguely where Natasha might be at that moment – he knew that she had been due to leave on a mission that evening, but no more particulars than that. He imagined her infiltrating some society ball, looking dazzling in a bejewelled evening gown and charming dance partner after dance partner, each man discarded as soon as she got the information she wanted… He knew for certain that she wouldn't be huddled all alone on a bathroom floor, surrounded by the smell of her own vomit and feeling the bitter burn of alcohol in her throat.

"I must be the loneliest guy in this whole damn city," he muttered brokenly, closing his itching eyes in despair.