#stever

And the man who was seated next to you? He wasn’t bad on the eyes. Blessing number two in the last minute. He was even kind enough to shuffle over a little to give you a little more room. You smiled over at him with appreciation. He returned it and then went back to what he was looking at. Or doing, rather. Trying not to appear to be too curious, you did chance a look.

He wasn’t reading like you originally thought. He was drawing. Using a charcoal pencil to sketch in some details of the building that was across the street. All of the lines intersecting to show off the architecture of New York’s infamous style. It was really good.

“What do you think?” His voice said, surprising you. You felt a little flushed. Caught sneaking a peek. He chuckled at your reaction, the way that you turned your head to try to appear like you hadn’t been looking when he knew that you were. “Honestly.”

“Oh, um - I’m not really an art critic,” You started off by saying.

“And I’m not really an artist,” He said, turning the book so that you could see more of it. Well, since he was asking, you did take a closer look at it. Eyes scanning the page, at each of those very dark lines.

“You could be,” You admitted. “It’s really good. The lines are umm - they’re simple but they’re good. Clean is the word that comes to mind. And the subject is very identifiable if that helps. Yeah, I think that’s something worthy of signing,” You said, noticing that nowhere on the page was his signature.

“When I’m done, maybe,” He said, taking the book back, closing it, and putting it inside of his coat, an inner pocket. You gave him a smile and then looked back out towards the street. The bus was five minutes late. But you were still feeling alright. You weren’t in a huge rush to get home. The only things waiting there were Netflix and your dinner plans. You leaned back against the bench, holding your bag close to you, and let out a little sigh. You were mostly just happy to be off of your feet. “Long day?” The stranger asked.

Normally, talking to strangers was a no no. Be polite to try not to piss them off but don’t go engaging in full on conversations. But this man seemed to be different. He seemed nicer. So you would answer. “Yeah,” You nodded. “Job searching in the city. Fingers crossed though. I think today is the day.”

“Good luck,” He said with a nod, and he held up his own hand, middle and index fingers crossed. It gave you an incredible view of his biceps, the material of the fabric squeezing them tightly. Oh lord. You had to look back out to the street. Feigning looking for the bus. Hoping for a breeze. You weren’t usually the swooning type but between the bright blue eyes that you saw and those arms, you were feeling it. “I hear it can be quite hard these days.”

“It can be,” You admitted. Understatement. You had to have handed out a hundred resumes and filled in a couple dozen online applications. “But it’s not something you can just give up on. Just keep swimming, as Dory says.”

The man tilted his head a little to the side. His eyes showed no trace of recognition.

“Dory, the blue fish from Finding Nemo? Sorry, it’s a - it’s a kids film, it’s a bit of a silly reference. Good movie though. You should check it out.”

He nodded and brought a small notebook out of his pocket. A notebook and a sketchbook. He was like a walking stationary store. He flipped through a couple of pages and used the charcoal pencil to write ‘Finding Nemo’ underneath Fight Club. You couldn’t help that peek either. It was his own fault really. He caught you looking at his art, obviously you were going to look at his notes too. He had a list of movies to watch. That was - kind of really cute. “Thanks, I will,” He said with a smile, flipping it closed and then putting it back into his pocket.

“Yeah, no problem. I hope you like talking fish,” You laughed. He gave another smile and then went back to his sketching. You went back to looking for the bus, feeling a little awkward. Hope you like talking fish. What a stupid thing to say, y/n. You licked your lips and went back to counting down the seconds until the next bus was supposed to come. Thankfully, it wasn’t in the hundreds, for a minute later, it turned around the corner and towards your stop.

You got up, secured your bag around you. Had your Metrocard ready. “Have a nice day,” You said quietly to the man that you had been speaking to and stepped up onto the bus. Scanned the card. If he replied, you didn’t hear it because of the sounds of people getting off and others lining up behind you to get on. It wasn’t the rush hours so it wasn’t too cramped. You were able to get a seat, settling in comfortably, having room on either side of you.

And the handsome stranger got on a few people after you and sat directly across. Your chairs were facing each other rather than towards the front of the bus. Another little bit of awkward eye contact. He gave you a little wave. You smiled and waved back. Nothing was really said, this was a New York bus after all. People were talking on their phones, to each other, playing music without their headphones on, singing to themselves. A melting pot of cultures, but also a melting pot of different noises. You were used to it, but it could get overwhelming if you weren’t. You centered yourself, thinking back on the interview. Did you say anything that might have cost you the job? You really needed this job. You really WANTED this job.

The man across from you was sketching again. You couldn’t see what it was, of course, only seeing the front cover but he looked concentrated on it. You didn’t bring a book with you today, didn’t want your bag to look too bulky in front of the job interviewer. You were regretting it now, of course. So you brought out your phone instead. Played a few games on it. Just passing the time until your block was announced. Fifteen more to go. Fourteen. Thirteen.

A lady started to yell about some men speaking a foreign language on the back on the bus. Eyes were turned that way. Phones were out to capture the entire thing. Maybe if she throws enough of a fit, a video could go viral, the people here could make a couple of bucks from it. You shook your head. It was a sad state of affairs, all of it. The racism. And the people that would film it but not do anything about it.

“Excuse me,” You said, standing up. Cameras turned to you. You put a hand in front of your face, not wanting to be filmed but it was a bit too late, alas. You knew what you were stepping into, unfortunately. “Hi, ma’am, would you mind keeping your voice down?”

“You’re asking me to keep my voice down?” She asked with a venomous sass to her tone. “I am an American citizen! And last I checked, we are in America! And in America, we speak ENGLISH here, ENGLISH.”

Oh. Okay. So it was one of those. “I’m sure that as an American yourself, we here believe in a thing called freedom, and that includes the freedom to speak whatever language you’re most comfortable speaking in,” You said, keeping yourself calm, leaning against one of the poles for people to hold onto. “But if you feel so inclined to listen to people talk, you can come and sit beside me and we can have a conversation. There’s no need to try to eavesdrop on other people.”

There were a couple of snickers from people holding their phones. But you ignored them. You just wanted to do a bit of conflict resolution. You didn’t want to embarrass anybody here. That wasn’t your plan. You weren’t going to go around calling her a Karen or anything, getting things even more riled up by yelling and inciting some sort of violence.

And apparently that wasn’t the sort of reaction that this woman had been expecting. She had come on the bus today, ready to complain. Set out looking for it. To have people to blame for her bad mood. Even if that meant yelling and snapping at innocent people.

“Well, they could be talking about anything! Anything at all! Don’t you get worried about that?” She asked, a smug little look on her face like she just had an a-ha moment.

“I suppose that’s true, they could be talking about anything. Just like a lot of people on this bus that you can’t hear. Maybe they’re talking about their kids or how much they love their wives. How happy they feel to be in a country with a lot more opportunities than the one that they had come from. Perhaps even how thankful for they are for the public transit system, which was only running a little late today rather than very late. Or what they’re going to have for dinner tonight. A movie that they just watched. So yes, they could be talking about anything. I don’t really see that as worrying. You could have been talking about anything to someone today and I don’t see any reason for it to be a worry.”

She paled. Of course that was no guarantee that she was going to calm down but at least I can say I gave it my best shot. Her beady little eyes looked around the bus, saw the cameras that were still on the situation. Baited breath on what she was going to do. What she did was pull sunglasses out of her purse, slip them on over her eyes, and turned her face out the window, nose held high. A couple of disappointed sighs from the videographers and I sat back down. I got myself comfortable again.

I had my phone back out. It didn’t look like I was going to be making the FYP anywhere since a fight didn’t happen, thankfully. I leaned back and returned to counting how many stops I had left. Eight. Seven. Getting closer now. Reaching home. God, I couldn’t wait to get home. To just collapse onto the couch. As I made myself comfortable again, I looked across from me at the handsome man. The artist. It looked like he was back to sketching again. His pencil was making many marks, and he had his darker-colored brows furrowed in concentration. He must have felt you staring again. More than once in one day. You were getting really bad at this. His blue eyes shot up and caught yours. He smiled sheepishly. You did the same and looked back down at your phone.

Six.

Five.

The man across from you rang the bell. You could see it out of the corner of your eye. That muscular arm stretching up above him to plink at the yellow cord. First try. That was impressive for these older buses. Usually you had to give them a really good tug. He scribbled something on the bottom of the paper. Signed it, maybe. Had finally finished what he had been working on before? Stop thinking about him, dammit, it’s getting creepy now.

He got up. His sneakers were pretty close to yours, you could have tapped his toes. But they didn’t move towards the back of the bus right away. His shadow covered you. So you looked up. The sunlight from outside created a sort of halo against him, making his hair shine brightly too. He was holding something out to you. “It’s - for you,” He said, a smile curling against his lips.

You took it the small piece of paper in your hands. It was turned so that it was perfectly facing you, not upside down. It wasn’t what you thought that it was. Rather than it being the architecture of earlier, it was a drawing of a person. A person sitting on a bus. You. This handsome guy, Steve Rogers according to the neat signature at the bottom, had gotten onto this bus and used his time to not only draw you, but to give it to you as a gift.

“Wow,” You said, noticing the detail that he had put in though it had been such a short time. Your hair was in the way that you had worn it this morning, the wind hadn’t damaged it too much. He even went in with the outfit. The shoes. The bag that was leaning against your side. And the face. You had such a look of patience and yet determination. He caught the moment when you were looking at the woman who was acting a fool on the bus. “Thank you,” You said, sincerely, bringing your eyes back up to meet his. “Steve Rogers.”

“You’re welcome,” He said, that cute smile still on his face. He didn’t linger. He stepped on away with a nod of his head and off of the bus before you could give him another thank you. Before you could even tell him your name. Anything.

Four. Three.

Steve Rogers. What a simple name for a man like him. Old fashioned. Who even drew anymore, on pad and paper? It was usually all digital art now. Tablets and electric pens.

You didn’t want to put the picture in your bag. You didn’t want to ruin it. You didn’t want it to get crumpled. This wasn’t the old days, the Elizabethan era where everyone had portraits done of themselves. You didn’t have anything of yourself that someone put work in, unless selfies counted, but you didn’t think so. So this - this was special.

Two. One.

You rang the bell. You got off the bus and started the walk, carefully holding the paper in your hands. You were smiling on the walk back, and not just because of your interview, not this time.

--

His face was all of the news. The Steve Rogers that had drawn you a picture was the same Steve Rogers that was Captain America. Fighting aliens in the center of the city. A lot of damage was done, but at the same time, who knows how many lives were spared. You kept this to yourself, though your friends did know about the handsome man that had drawn you a picture. They just didn’t connect the dots yet. You enjoyed it being your little secret.

Though there was destruction, you still had to go to work. You took the bus, which was running only half of the time that it was supposed to. A lot of them had gotten damaged in the attack. Making more was in the docket but this was public transportation, the cities weren’t going to put it anywhere near number one. The mayor’s focus was mainly on the corporation offices that had been damaged. Always in the pockets of those corporations.

You entered your workspace. It was still a disaster. It was a wonder that you weren’t let go, all things considering. But the owner had a good nest egg and was using it to rebuild, and keep as much staff on as they possibly could. It helped that you offered to work the clean up as well, even if that wasn’t your job. Thick boots on your feet, gardening gloves on your hands, and armed with a broom and dustbin, you started working on the debris. Another coworker came in with coffees for yourself and for her, which you appreciated. You took drinks between chores, but the getting things into the trash and disposing of them was a big task when it was things like ceiling tiles, concrete from the sidewalks, and all manner of city dust.

You were thinking about taking a break when you heard a throat clearing from the makeshift door. Okay, so it was basically a door that your boss has unhinged from his own house and brought to the business with a padlock on it to try to keep looters away, not that there was anything in there. You turned your head to give this person directions or whatever it is that they wanted, and paused when you saw it was Steve. Not Captain America, he wasn’t wearing any sort of uniform, but rather the tan trousers and very fitted white t-shirt of any citizen of the city. You leaned on the broom, looking at him. He still looked tired. Exhausted. After everything, of course he would be.

“So you got the job?” He asked, his blue eyes somehow still sparkling despite the dark circles beneath.

“I did,” You nodded. “And managed to keep it. Did you watch Finding Nemo yet?”

He laughed at your question. “Yeah, I did. Dory gives out some pretty sound advice.”

“Just keep swimming,” You reminded yourself out loud. “I’m glad you liked it.”

“I did,” He said. And then he looked almost shy fofr a moment there. Boyish. “Did you ... keep it?”

The drawing. What else could he have meant. “I did, Steve, I did,” You said, even showing that you remembered his name. “I never got to introduce myself either. I’m y/n,” You said. You thought you heard a little squeal coming out of your co-worker who was watching the whole interaction, but did your best to ignore them. Steve would step in further, hopping a bit over some cinder block that you hadn’t been able to move on your own and approached. He shook your hand. You shook his. For it being Captain America’s hand, it was actually pretty soft to the touch. You had assumed that all superheroes had calloused hands, unsure why.

“Do you need some help?” He asked, looking around the place after. “I’m sure you two got it on your own but - I’m here, I’m offering.”

You were still holding onto his hand as he put that forth. You would finally let it go, only to look around yourself. “That’s an offer I’ll take - as long as you let me buy you dinner later.”