Predictable. It was a pretty accurate label for James when it came to how he approached the people in his life during specific times, even if James often felt unpredictable. Maybe it was who he was as a person or how he had been raised or one-time choices turned habit or some combination of all three – whatever it was, the fact remained that James reached first for sparring when it came to Steve Rogers. It didn't matter whether it was over some struggle about his feelings when it came to versions or his father or it was just James reaching out to spend time with Steve, somehow the physicality was the dominant choice and not, say, wanna talk? There was sometimes the concern that the Steve(s) of the moment might think he had some weird desire to try and beat them up, but with the ones who knew him – and James continued to be so damn grateful that this Steve actually knew him – James was fairly sure they were aware it was about the challenge presented. James Rogers was the product of two people dosed with super-serum of varying kinds, but he wouldn't ever be as peak human as his origin-timeline biological father.
Besides, he'd been in Fight Club forever now and he sparred with all kinds of people over the years, some frequently. It wasn't like he was only picking Steve for this. It also wasn't like he was currently winning this round.
Seriousness having been lost somewhere around the time he'd called Steve old man a time too many, James decided to end the round by falling dramatically to the mat over something he could have competently blocked. The tight ball in James' chest had eased some time ago and made room for the remarks and jokes and irrepressible smartassery and, as now demonstrated, behavior that highlighted the fact that, sometimes, James was very easily entertained.
"Tell them I died well," he pronounced, then dropped an arm across his face.
Steve could easily tell that James had obviously let that strike through, though whether it was because he wanted to be dramatic or because he was setting Steve up for something… well, he wasn't sure yet. He could tell something was eating his son up and he'd tried to pry but James had his mother's (as far as Steve could guess) skill at bottling up the issue and preferring to work it out physically. Or rather so had the Natasha he'd known, pre-Vallo. There'd been many times he'd sat and wondered what kind of life James must've had, and they'd talked about it some in his previous visit here. He had to admit that if he'd gone through so much loss, repeatedly, with no real world stability (thanks dimension hopping), he himself would likely struggle with it.
And the fact that James could still smile and joke through it all, genuinely, made him proud to even be considered a dad.
"I'll tell them you tripped over your own feet," responded Steve, moving over to offer his hand to James.
"Wow, talk about betrayal of the father," James said with a light scoff, but he was grinning beneath his arm. "You just expect me to let that happen? Not a chance."
He moved his arm from his face to take Steve's hand, easily making it to his feet after, but James let the grip linger longer in a way that said he was considering saying something before he changed his mind. After a distracted shake of his head, he tilted it toward the table that had folded out of the ever-morphable walls of the training room, where half the mountain of food he had ordered was sitting, waiting for him.
"I don't know about you," he said, "but I'm starving now. Call it a tie for now?" Tie would be stretching it a little.
"Tie it is," answered Steve, amiably. He was pretty sure something was on James' mind, but he'd never really been the type to pry if someone wasn't ready to talk about something. After all, that's why he figured he was here for the food and spar - to help James work through something. He himself generally found that presenting himself with a challenge was a good way to get his thoughts in order, maybe it was the same for his son.
He made his way over to the table and looked at everything James had ordered. It was definitely more food than he could eat, but he wasn't concerned about waste. They knew plenty of people that would make sure it was all eaten. Steve piled a few things on a plate while he thought about the future of the food (he wasn't sure why his thoughts went that direction anyway) and glanced over to James. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Okay yeah, he was still a bit old school.
James' hand paused in midair over a bag at the question. He wasn't surprised Steve had been casual-but-direct about it. He just wasn't certain he was ready to put the words in order and say them out loud. Sure, there was an element of the forever-need to not have any version of his dad find him wanting, but mostly it was that James knew he wasn't the only one affected when it came to the instability of the population numbers in Vallo. After all, Steve had been the most recent victim of it.
"That should probably get adjusted for inflation, just saying," he said, snickering to himself. It wasn't that he found himself particularly funny – specifically right now, at this moment – so much as being a smartass was a coping mechanism as much as it was part of his personality. It was a lot easier to deflect with people who didn't know him or couldn't extrapolate from their own behaviors to figure James out. Deflection with Steve Rogers? Not so much.
"Good point," answered Steve, putting together the beginnings of a sandwich with some of the things he'd collected. Satisfied with what he had so far, he raised an eyebrow and glanced over at James. "Standard market value for your thoughts, when you're ready?"
James looked down at his plate and frowned slightly, debating with himself. He had plenty of thoughts and Steve hadn't added a category to the thoughts in this figurative transaction. James prodded a pile of boneless wings before finally speaking.
"I don't hang out with you just to have somebody to complain to," he said, "you know that, right?"
He poked the food again before picking one up.
"So there's a thought, for half the going rate."
And stuffed the chicken into his mouth.
Steve watched for a moment to make sure James didn't choke himself on a full wing instead of taking a bite, then he shrugged with a half-smile. "I don't hang out with you just so you have someone to complain to, either. But now at least I know you have something to complain about." That was at least his way of saying he knew something was bothering James, even if his son didn't want to talk about it. "Not that I needed the confirmation. A Rogers always deals with their feelings with fists and food."
Hell, Steve himself had put a few punching bags out of business when he was overthinking something.
James' long sigh was only marginally put out, because it was nice to be known well enough for someone to have your number, even if it meant them having your number. And it would never, ever, not if he lived to be hundreds of years old ever get tired of hearing things like "a Rogers this or that" and feeling that inclusion, that sense of belonging, even if these roots weren't fully biologically his.
"I dunno, I always feel like I'm the one bringing huge suitcases worth of baggage to these kind of conversations," he said, gesturing broadly, "but I'm not the only one that this revolving door of people smacks in the face. I mean, from your side of it, it kind of came at you in reverse this time."
"Ah," answered Steve, setting down his sandwich. "It's because you're constantly having to deal with Steves and Natashas across multiple dimensions? And I imagine you weren't immediately sure if I was a new version of me or not, just to add on more to it." With a nod, Steve looked over at James with sincerity etched across his face.
"I already know I don't have any control over it. But you have my personal pledge to you and the universe, I'm sticking this out now and through any other dimensions if there's any kind of way to make that stick. So you get me until the end of the line, James. The only way I'll step aside is if your real dad shows up and even then I may try for joint custody."
The sincerity was what hurt, because James knew Steve meant it, he knew he'd fight tooth and nail if these worlds gave even brief warnings before throwing them back and forth. But these worlds would always cast those promises to the wind in the end. But the comment about his father, who had been in Blackpoint so briefly, at least made him smile a little and, years later, it was still a slightly baffled smile.
"He's the one Steve Rogers you don't have to worry about, he'd be the first to suggest it and hammer out some kind of plan. Even if he was fresh from telling his best friend to take his kid and run, and his grown kid was being an asshole, he'd still try to be fair."
It would have been easy to detour there, embarrass himself before anyone else could by telling the stories of those times. But Torunn was the only one left who even could.
"But don't promise me you'll stick around dimensionally. It's not that I don't want you to, I do," he said, putting down his plate to drag a hand through his hair, "and it's not that I don't want to hear it. It's that it- it's just this impossible promise. It won't happen, because nothing lasts. There are clocks ticking and Kate," he made a frustrated noise and hissed out a breath, because that had been the thing that set him off, Kate cheerfully announcing Natasha had been here a year and making the clock suddenly tick twice as loud, "Kate just doesn't get it."
He shook his head and then, finally, looked at Steve directly.
"Bucky promised. He was the last hold out. Even when he was here, but not him at first, his memories came swinging in here on that promise. But he's gone. The memories didn't show up this last time. He's gone and so is that future and Vallo couldn't even let you come back before he was gone. You woke up and the world had changed - again."
And that, ultimately, was what hurt the most now that he was giving it all a voice. Not what had been done to James – though it was nearly tied still, even after all this time, even after accepting it was just his and Torunn's fate – but what had been done to Steve. His dad had deserved a break, not to wake up once again feeling like no time had passed only to find people gone.
Steve set everything down as it looked like some floodgates of emotions and thoughts were pouring out of James and he wanted to give his full attention. He was at first happy to hear of another Steve that wasn't someone he'd want to punch in the face, because he was still occasionally upset to hear about the actions of the one Molly knew (which, he noted, Molly was gone now, too).
When James finished, he walked around the table and just wrapped James in a dad hug. He didn't say anything at first, or even for a few minutes, letting James breathe or cry or yell or whatever he needed to do. Honestly, he hadn't realized how much all of this affected James, though he could see now and understand what kind of toll it would have. If he'd had even half the background of this young man, he knew for a fact that he'd very likely react the same way.
After however long it required, Steve hadn't been counting the minutes, he released his grip but kept his hands on James' shoulders. There might've been a couple of tears at the corners of his eyes. "James. I'm promising anyway. If Torunn has been able to stick by your side, we know it's possible. You can get mad at me if I fail, but don't let yourself sit around worrying and getting mad at what you think is the inevitable. Everyone here… everyone knows their time is finite in a place like this. They try to enjoy what time they have, and the time they have with others that they care about, because of that."
James had more experience with this dimension-hopping than he did, and therefore had a lot more reason to worry about the way it worked. Maybe it had made him a bit more bitter about it. A lot of maybes. But Steve knew, he knew, that James didn't actually feel like other people were being foolish about how things worked here. People needed to celebrate the small things, to enjoy the events they were a part of, instead of miserably awaiting the end.
He smiled at his son and tried to be as reassuring as he could. "I think Kate gets it just fine. I think you do, too."
Maybe someday actions like this freely and easily given hug from his dad would be freed from this arbitrary category of something that didn't surprise him at all and yet somehow still caught him off guard, but James wasn't sure when that someday would come. Of course this was exactly what Steve would do, it was who he was. But if James was really honest with himself, it boiled down to still questioning why any Steve Rogers who didn't have any obligation to him by timeline or blood would choose that obligation when presented with the real James Rogers. After years and years, the answer to that question was obvious but James just still couldn't reconcile it.
It didn't mean he wasn't going to wholeheartedly take that hug and everything offered, though, and that was what James did with a ferocity he didn't have to adjust for with Steve. He may not have been crying but he certainly needed to breathe, so he clung until he could get it together again, at least enough that he wouldn't word vomit like that again, and then a little longer so he could at least listen to whatever was going to be said next.
So James listened, he fought the urge to stop Steve the minute he said the word promise, and he even managed to not audibly scoff when Steve said, so confidently, that James got it. James knew exactly what Steve was really saying, because the only thing for James to get was the flip side of his bitter, jaded position on their existence in worlds like Vallo. The side Kate lived. The side others lived. The side Steve lived.
"I don't know how you do it." He had voiced the same statement to Tony while Steve was gone, while dealing with disorienting versions of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, and though it was aimed at two different men with two very different experiences, for James it was from the same place. How did these men, the dads he admired and loved so much – so much that he wouldn't hesitate to put anything on the line, including his life, to protect and save them – live through losing all the things they had lost in a myriad of ways and then openly embrace a place that could take, and had taken, away anything at any time.
"It happened to you too and you're here picking me off the floor." He blinked at Steve. "I don't even eat pancakes anymore."
"If you hold onto all of this bitterness, it will eat into your heart. You can't have love without loss, James." Steve stepped backwards once to take in a good look at this young man, this son, and provided him another warm smile. "If not for Vallo, I'd never have gotten the opportunity to meet you. If that ends tomorrow, then I'm happy I spent every minute of that time knowing you and having this time together. Focusing on what might happen and how you'll feel when it does… it just poisons the now. You've been through this likely more than any of us, so I can't tell you how to feel. But I can tell you how we do it."
It was tough for James, he knew it. He didn't even know how many times he'd seen copies of loved ones come and go, and he knew his childhood was borne from loss as well. "I can't let you give up, son. I won't. You deserve all the happiness the universe has to offer and if I'm here, count on me doing what I can to improve it. And I'm making you waffles later."
James was pretty sure his heart had already been eaten into, again and again, but listening to his dad talk was a strange kind of filler to those spots – not fully, but enough to make it less suffocating. He had struggled with such a young version of Steve Rogers because he had felt so out of reach, but his dad didn't feel that way in the slightest. This was a version of the man who wanted family anywhere he could find it, like the universe presenting him with a son from another time and place. This was a version of the man who looked at the multiverse and saw the possibilities. This was a version of the man who didn't hesitate to fight for James, even if it was just James' hangups needing fought. He'd really, really missed the man in front of him and he almost grabbed his dad again as the feeling squeezed James' chest tight.
And then Steve mentioned waffles and James snorted instead, found a small smile, and the urge to tackle-hug Steve eased.
"So it's okay to let go." It wasn't the bitterness he was asking about letting go, James realized. Not really. It was letting go of the sources of the bitterness, one reason at a time. James wasn't actually mad at Kate, not truly, so that was easy to let go of once he stopped trying to use it as the more timely shield for all the stuff that wasn't so timely. Like Bucky. James hadn't known it at first, he hadn't even known it at the start of the conversation, but now it was growing more clear that James had been subconsciously waiting for Steve Rogers, the person his brain would accept as the only person who could give him… permission? Permission, or something close to it, to declare the end of the line, so James didn't feel like he'd betrayed Bucky by letting go. "Because I stopped knowing where the end of the line was after it didn't really end."
"I don't want to call it letting go. How about carrying on? The people who've touched our hearts will always be there, taking up some space, and that's okay. But it's important to make sure that space doesn't fester and turn against you." Steve stepped forward again and put his hand on his son's shoulder. "And have a big enough heart to make room for new people." Like Kate, since they seemed to be getting along well and that, he knew, had to be new for Vallo.
He was inwardly ecstatic to get a snort from James and the smile was heartening as well. "Now, you want to get back to this food or should we find someone to donate it to?"
At that, James laughed outright, and playfully ducked under Steve's arm to get at the food again. The subject wasn't suddenly solved, but it could be put aside now to be worked on over time. Frankly, James wanted to spend some time with his dad that wasn't coping and therapy.
"There's not gonna be much left to donate," he vowed, retrieving his plate. In went another boneless wing and after his mouth wasn't full, James spoke.
"So how was dinner last night?" He was genuinely curious, but there was also sheepishness to his smile now because his tendency to lash out hadn't been a great reason to miss it. Necessary to do it, absolutely, but not great.
Steve was once again cheered to see James perk up, though he inwardly worried that fear and sadness was still taking a backseat. But as long as it was in the backseat, they could work with it and coax it out entirely eventually. So he kept his smile on and went back to his sandwich and a few finger foods as James wolfed down some chicken, but stopped to reflect on the question.
"It was great, thanks for asking. The most relaxing and enjoyable night I've had in… I don't even know how long."
James grinned at that, genuinely pleased by the answer. The weight of the talk wasn't gone, but there was room now for this and more.
"So you and Mom had a good time?" he asked, slanting a look at Steve from under the section of red hair that fell forward over his face. (He was probably due for a haircut.)
Subtle it was not, but James wasn't out to be subtle. If there was a place and time where Steve and Natasha would be together, he was going to get shirts with Team Romanogers and wear the hell out of them. Maybe stickers too. Stickers could be fun.
Steve raised his eyebrows and spared James a bit of a knowing look. "I see what you're getting at, young man," he joked, raising his sandwich to his mouth. For a moment, he definitely saw the Natasha side of his son, the way the not-at-all-subtle leading type of question was spoken through loose hair as it were trying to help make the intention less easy to discern. Definitely part Romanoff.
"But yes, we had a great time," he answered, then shoving the sandwich in his mouth to keep from answering any further questions.
"Oh, a great time," James said, with plenty of emphasis and an unrepentant grin. Like Steve shoving the sandwich in his mouth was going to stop James from trying. He was a master of shoving food in his mouth to try and delay some conversation and it didn't always work with persistent people. James knew how to be persistent.
"Are you going to have a great time again any time soon?"
Swallowing his mouthful, Steve gave his son A Look. "I'm sure we will," he answered, adjusting his eyebrows to say 'that's all you'll get out of me.' Instead of trying to dodge more questions, he instead switched tactics and moved to turn the conversation around.
"How about you and Torunn? Everything going well?"
The eyebrows got an eye roll from James, and a second eye roll nearly followed when Steve tried to change the subject. Fine, James would let him have it, but only for a moment.
"Things with Tor and me are as great as they can be with Vallo being Vallo. Hey," he said, perking up like he had just thought of the best idea - and honestly, measured within the parameters of all things related to his alternate timeline parents, it was a best-level idea, "you know what, me and Tor and you and Mom should go do something together soon. Like soon-soon. You have any plans with Mom we'd need to work around?"
No, James wasn't giving up on this subject with the same level of dedication that Steve was trying to end this subject. That was a key thing about this father-son duo, after all.