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"I thought you'd be taller."
Steve frowned, looking up from the half finished doodle in the margin of the briefing on the six odd decades he'd slept through. He'd stopped reading somewhere in the 1970s to save his brain the confusion of 'disco'. The man in the doorway wasn't a doctor, at least. He was dressed far too nicely to be one. Steve had had enough poking and prodding and scans to last him a lifetime (two if you counted the time in the ice) as they tried to figure out just how he managed to survive being thawed from the ice.
"Beg pardon?" Steve ventured once it became clear the man didn't seem to have anything more to say on the matter. He seemed more concerned with the state of the room, scrutinizing it with the sort of focus that gave Steve the strangest sense of deja vu. He'd been getting a lot of that lately, though.
"Taller," he repeated, enunciating the work with the precision of a school teacher. "The opposite of shorter."
It was only then that his attention swung back to Steve, giving him a smile that was the kind you'd expect from some movie star. Not SHIELD either, the sensible part of his brain supplied. SHIELD agents wore sensible, bland suits that tended to cause them to blur together after seeing so many. But this man's suit probably cost more than Steve's old apartment in Brooklyn and was flashier than anything even Howard Stark wore. An agent, he was not. "Well, those posters really didn't do you any justice, did they?"
Steve could feel himself turning red despite his best efforts. He still didn't expect those sort of comments from women, let alone some strange man wandering around SHIELD headquarters. "Do you work for Colonel Fury?"
That managed to get him to stop smiling at him like that at the very least. He covered quickly enough with another bright smile that did not quite reach his eyes, stepping into the room. The smile and the suit made him look very much look like a shark who had scented blood. "You could say that," the man said.
Before he could respond, there was was the swift click of heels on the floor outside. His SHIELD nannies most likely, here to rescue him from this strange man.
"Your meeting is upstairs, Mr. Stark," the lead agent said, taking a deep, calming breath.
Inhaling sharply, Steve jerked his head to the side to stare at the man. He was at the very least a decade older than Howard had been, but looking at him now... he could almost see it.
Stark sighed, giving the agent an exaggerated pout. "I'm just introducing myself to my--" He laughed. "I mean Iron Man's--new teammate. I promise I wasn't trying to corrupt America's golden boy."
"Nevertheless, Mr. Stark," the agent said, not rising to the bait. Perfectly calm and in control of the situation. "This area is off limits. If you'll please follow me..."
"And leave poor Steve--" He looked over at Steve, flashing another rakish grin. "--I can call you Steve, right?" Instead of waiting for a response, he just barreled on ahead as though the question hadn't even been asked. "How can you ask me to leave my new buddy Steve all alone?"
The agent took another deep breath before checking his watch. "You are now three minutes late for your meeting with Director Fury," he reminded Stark, stepping to the side to show the other agents waiting just behind him. "You can have playtime afterwards. Please don't make me ask Agent Romanoff to escort you there personally."
Stark sighed again, shooting Steve a look like he could hardly believe this treatment. "She adores me," he insisted, but he was moving nonetheless. "I'm quite charming, you know."
That last part was possibly said for Steve's benefit.
"Of course you are," the agent said in the same, even tone. He turned his attention over to Steve, nodding respectfully. "Captain."
"Sir," Steve replied out of habit, looking from the agents to Stark, then back again.
The lead agent smiled briefly, nodding again. "All in the briefing, sir."
"Only flattering things about me, I hope," he could hear Stark say as he sauntered out of the room, trailed by the rest of the agents like a mother duck.
Maybe if he just skipped over the 70s, he could get to where Howard had a child. Who was older than the man Steve remembered. Good god, the future was a strange place.