Re: the townhouse
He stood at the intersection of the sidewalk and the lawn. Cement gave way to lush, suburban green. Steve looked at the house. He took in the closed curtains, the careful tucked-in facade of an empty house. But, light still slipped through, like a glow worm's gossamer thread, where drapes weren't perfectly pulled together. Cracks in the mask. Another, the music that spooled out quietly from the roof. If he'd been anyone else but himself, he might've taken the backdoor. He would've laid low and slipped in, broken a window with fabric over top of it to muffle the sound. He'd done it before, when he had to. But, it wasn't his M.O.; it wasn't the Captain's. His body was emblazoned in patriotic regalia, spangled in red, white, and blue, and nothing about his large frame was subtle. Matt's handlers, his people, AEGIS, they probably all would've preferred it if Mrs. Neighbor-Next Door couldn't peep out her window and espy a man who was supposed to have never existed, except in the pop-bright pages of comic books and the fading memories of a dying generation. But, Steve didn't care what anyone preferred. He went to the front door. He listened through, but the cold, heavy metal betrayed nothing of what was inside.
He spared the neighborhood behind him a glance, then, with just the brute force of his shoulder, he rammed against the door until the bolt tore through the metal of the strike plate, tore through jamb, tore open. It didn't gape. The door just hung open about six inches and Steve pushed it the rest of the way. But, rather than a small explosion of sound to accompany the displacement of air and the force of the impact, there was nothing. A void. Swift gaze struck the television, then shifted to a dark head just visible above the spine of the sofa. And, assuming that dark head didn't swivel around, Steve closed the door behind him. He wasn't naive enough to think his presence was undetected by everyone in the house. Based on the information given to him by the "Avon Consultant," he knew there might be people with powers that could easily discover him, whether there was sound or not. Shield up and with the roar of silence pressing on his eardrums, he moved toward the hallway, one eye kept out for the kid on the couch. If the boy came after Steve, then he would react. Otherwise, just like sneaking in, attacking an unsuspecting person (especially a young person, too reminiscent of those he'd seen die in droves) just wasn't his way of doing things.