NINA THOSE HEADCANONS!!! KILLED ME!!!! What other headcanons do you have of when Ryan wakes up in the present time? Does his family still lives? Or Shane's?
[Captain America Ryan / Winter Soldier Shane AU]
I sure do, actually lol
Ryan wakes up to a world he doesn’t know but remembers some parts of it that have survived, like the fact that their families are still in LA. From Shane’s direct family, there’s no survivors since both, Shane and Scott went MIA and none had children…
But from his side of the family, Jake survived the war, got married and had children. His brother is no longer around, but his wife, his children and grandchildren are. And Ryan doesn’t know how to approache them.
To his surprise, they approache him by visiting in Washington when he gets assigned an apartment and steady job with missions.
His in-law and youngest daughter comes to see him one afternoon a few days before Thanksgiving. He recognizes them right away because of pictures and god, it’s so awkward.
Eventually, she tells him they would like him to come meet the family because they all grow older hearing about him and they legally “represent” him after he went into the ice.
He goes for Thanksgiving. To his parents’ old house that is now bigger, whiter and brighter than he remembers. He mees his extended family and holds in his feelings when he sees they have pictures of Shane included between the family pictures in the living room.
When it’s time to have dinner, he can’t hold it anymore when he sees, like his mama used to do, they put in the middle of the table a little box with pictures of his parents, Jake, his in-law parents and “uncle Shane” in it because “it’s family dinner time”. This is the first year they don’t have to put uncle Ryan’s picture.
He is Disappointed But Not Surprised at how Shane being LGBT is debated and taken a rumor or a disrespectful joke between people, let alone him being LGBT. Things become worse when he is told to stay quiet about it “for the time being”.
Like the original Cap in the movie, he visits the exibition about him and the War in the museum in secret and spends long minutes looking at recordings and pictures of the people that is gone.
He eventually learns about what happened to Helen and the Commandos, later gets to actually meet members of their families as he learns to use celphones and e-mails. Ryan also gets to know them when going to events and so.
Funny enough, he becomes close to Helen’s family as she’s still alive and visits her often.
He is happy to know the families are close to each other and hasn’t stopped being friends in years.
When he meets his new team mates, things go as well as you can imagine. Eventually, he settles up and becomes fast friends with the Black Widow, Sara, who at some point a year later, will trust him enough to tell him a few things about what she has gone trough, and he will be able to open up with someone who gets it.
They become a strong unit and work great together, which makes them go on missions more often. They share beds and rooms, and soon he is hearing about the man that trained her and how she wishes she remembered more of him, and could have done something to save him when she escaped.
She starts going with him to family reunions. Sara doesn’t have a family, so it’s kinda weird for her at the beginning and Ryan shuts up about how he notices she is, in fact, excited about it.
More often than not, she mentiones to him how Shane looks so familiar to her. “You may have seen him in history books”, “Yes, but he is just… closer. Familiar.” “Uh.”
When he can’t sleep, he reads a lot of stupid shit on the internet. Not even “useful” stuff, just… everything he can get his hands on. He loves conspiracy theories, sue him. And he loves to read what kids say about him, the commandos, Helen and Shane.
Once he finds a forum with a thread of people talking about how much it means to them that, apparently, Sgt. Madej was LGBT. It makes him cry because kids like them still suffer so many years later.
When he finds fanfiction, he tries his best not to touch him. He ends up reading a few, then promises he won’t again. Because it hurts.
He enjoys fanart, though.
After he meets Eli (Falcon), he gets that social media everyone was praying he would get. Eli helps him with it and Ryan is already a fast learner so he becomes a little addicted to Twitter and then instagram.
He outs himself by accident when liking stuff on instagram and twitter. In spite of what he was told, to say he is just an ally, he decides ‘fuck it’ and says the truth: he is bisexual. Deal with it.
Eugene, aka Iron Man, can’t shut up about it and starts to invite him more often to things.
There’s a disaster in the world. He doesn’t give a fuck, and starts getting tired of how much they tell him to hold it together and behave.
As time passes, he starts putting attention at the conversations his likes on twitter causes. Because he RTs art and all, sometimes it includes “ship art” of him and Shane, and people wonder aloud about their relationship.
He thinks of telling the truth, that he loved Shane and was sure Shane loved him that way back but never got to tell him or act of his feelings. But then, his superiors already hate him and maybe it’s not really his place to talk about it, about Shane.
Eli and Sara think that since there is no one else to have a word about it, he could just say the truth.
He was going to, when he met the Winder Soldier.
