post-and-out replied to your post: Hi. I’m the anon who requested the divorce au. I…
I think you should write a bit where Steve gets the signed papers couriered to him, and realises this was a terrible idea.
>.> <.<
“Captain Rogers?”
Steve looked up from the file he’d been not-reading for the last twenty minutes. One of the newer SHIELD recruits was standing in the door to the conference room Steve hadn’t bothered to leave after the briefing ended. He was doing that a lot lately; staying in places after he should have. He’d been trying to stop. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir, but there’s a courier at the front desk who is refusing to leave until they can deliver a package to you and get a signature confirming receipt.”
Steve had a brief visual of being blown up in the lobby of SHIELD HQ, but cleared the tablet screen and stood up. He’d had the same sort of random flash halfway through the briefing about putting his hand through the conference table. He nodded to the recruit on his way out the door, but his voice had faded in his throat again, so he turned down the hallway without saying anything.
The elevator doors slid closed and Steve reminded himself there was no justifiable reason to use the emergency override that would lock the elevator until it reached the lobby. There was no sound but the white noise of machinery, and a distant part of him missed the echo of rock music and chatter. Steve refused to think about it. Instead he turned to face the window and watched the lower roof of HQ come closer and closer until the car sank into the shaft and the view was cut off. It wasn’t claustrophobic, even with the sudden switch from full sunlight.
The echoing space of the lobby was empty except for the SHIELD personnel manning the doors and the front desk. The bright red shirt the courier was wearing stood out more than a little. They noticed him after a second and stopped leaning against the desk. “Captain Rogers,” they said, and between the buzzcut and the baggy shirt Steve couldn’t tell if they were a woman or a man, not, he thought as they held out a Starktech tablet, that it mattered. “I’ll need your signature please.” There was a thick envelope tucked under their left arm.
Steve took the tablet and pointed at the envelope with the stylus. “Has that been checked,” he asked, already halfway through signing for it.
“Yep, they scanned it before they let me in the building.” They took the tablet back and offered the envelope. Then said all in a rush, “this is really unprofessional of me, but it was an honour to meet you, and thank you so much for your service.”
There was never a good answer to that. Or if there was Steve had never figured it out in over a decade of avenging and being a soldier. “Thank you,” he said and took the envelope. There was something in it other than papers, but the agents at the door knew their job so Steve didn’t bother to worry about it. He nodded to the courier, and turned back to the elevator.
Once it was on it’s way back up to the secured floors Steve opened the envelope and pulled out the papers. Even expecting it, it felt strange to be holding the completed divorce papers in his hand, and stranger still to see Tony’s signature next to his own as he flipped through them. He turned the envelope up and shook the rest of the contents into his hand just as the elevator cleared the shaft and took him back into the sunlight.
His old dogtags glinted against the palm of his hand, far too light for the sudden weight that seemed to be pressing down on him from all sides. He checked the envelope twice more before he realised he was looking for Tony’s wedding ring and made himself stop.
