CA:TWS vignette: Cum Laude
Cum Laude
5700k words | PG-13 | Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, etc.
Summary: Steve navigates the sometimes choppy seas of being a celebrity in the twenty-first century and finds the time (and the courage) to fulfill a twentieth century promise and return to school.
"How bad is it?" Steve asked, putting one hand over his eyes and peeping through a space between his fingers at the paper Tamika had handed him. His schedule for the next two weeks, printed out and color-coded because she knew he was going to put it on his fridge and that it, not the various beeping reminders that emitted from his phone, was going to be the version most frequently consulted as he organized the rest of his time. "I've been a good boy."
Tamika was his publicist -- Captain America's publicist -- and thus effectively in charge of his non-mission work schedule. She was the one who organized his appearances on chat shows, in hospitals, at parades and military bases, and anywhere else it was deemed "good optics" for him to be seen. Tamika and her staff also handled media requests, fan (and hate) mail, merchandising, and the social media business Steve didn't want done even by proxy, but the schedule was the reason he trudged to her office fortnightly. They'd figured out early on that while they could discuss it over the phone or over email, in person they could both get a better deal -- Steve could get out of more of the frivolous things he hated and Tamika could get him to agree to the appearances he really didn't want to do but were important for reasons he didn't always appreciate. It had cut down on the mutual frustration considerably.
"You have been a boy of only moderate virtue," Tamika replied easily. "Don't think I didn't figure out who'd scheduled that training session that got you out of the trip to Boston. But because I am generous and forgiving and kind, I am not taking it out on you."
They'd gotten off on a wrong foot at first. Still very overwhelmed by his suddenly-accelerated reintegration after the Battle of New York, he'd been a little ungracious in his resentment of so many appearances being scheduled for him so early on in his return to public life and he'd carped loudly that he'd felt like a USO chorus girl again. Tamika, for her part, hadn't really known very much about either Steve or Captain America before she'd gotten the job and had assumed that he'd (a) not understand what a Public Relations Manager did and (b) have trouble taking direction from a woman, let alone a black woman, and so she had shown up ready to do battle against a dinosaur. Once they'd both calmed down, they'd realized that they actually liked each other and things had progressed much more smoothly.
"Then why am I going on Late Night again?"
He'd come to really dislike the late night talk shows since he'd gotten back. He'd been no great fan of the talk shows before, either, but there'd been a gentility to them, a politesse, that was utterly lacking in the current version. Maybe it was the hour they were broadcast at, but the questions he got asked now tended to be cruder and more on the gotcha level than the softly guided conversations he'd had before the cameras and microphones back in the 1940s or the long-form interviews now. Especially now, when the newness and novelty had largely worn off and the hosts were no longer surprised that Captain America was capable of sarcasm and, on a good day, wit.
"Because they've got a new host," Tamika answered. "This one's not as 'edgy.' You're not going to be asked to grade Captain America dildos again."
Steve gave her a dubious look; that had been the definite lowlight of his talk show appearances, worse even than the morning show when he'd had to spend the better part of the twenty-minute segment discussing whether he'd been dating since he'd woken up and what he looked for in a woman. (He'd ended up describing Peggy, which the hosts hadn't picked up on even if all of his friends -- and Peggy herself -- most certainly had.) In a different context than "a television show that would be broadcast to millions," the dildos would have probably been pretty funny. If it had been something Tony had whipped up, for instance. But as it was, it had been embarrassing and awkward and while Steve had had the stage presence to keep his cool and select the model that had the most vibration options as probably best for users, he'd made it clear to Tamika afterward that that was the last time he'd be doing that sort of thing.
"They promised nothing raunchy," Tamika assured, grimacing a little because yeah, she'd sold enough BS to be able to smell it when it was on sale. "But they also promised to ask you about the Cap's Kids Fun Day event, so I think you should take one for the team here."
She had worked with him long enough to realize that he could be browbeaten into a lot if it was for charity. The event was a good one, a day of games and picnics and movies for Gold Star kids -- children who'd lost a serving parent -- to be held at bases around the country; Steve was going down to Fort Hood to attend the one there.
"Fine," he sighed, resigned to his fate. "But if they so much as mention the Captain America condoms, I've got six months off from TV appearances."
The rest of the schedule wasn't very interesting or very contentious and they worked through it quickly because there wasn't a lot on it; he had a mission on tap for three weeks from now and he needed time to plan and prep that. Especially because he was working with a strike team he hadn't worked with before and there'd been a learning curve with some of them.
"And further down the 'pike," Tamika said as they were wrapping up, "Cooper Union has asked if you'd be willing to accept an honorary degree from them in May. It'd be a speech and the usual gladhanding, but they also want to pull together a retrospective of some of your work -- it's why they're asking so early."
Steve's 'posthumous' recognition as an artist of note had taken him completely by surprise. It had also embarrassed him completely, possibly more than having to consider dildos on national television. He hadn't been an artist of note; he'd been a kid in art school who'd never had the chance to fully develop anything close to a unique style or express a vision with any clarity. But he hadn't gotten a vote in how history and posterity had chosen to record things and so he'd woken up in 2011 to find pages from his sketchbooks and some of his studio work from Cooper in serious private collections and even in a few museums. Some of his later drawings -- what he'd done during the war as a Howling Commando and not as a USO performer -- weren't bad, he could admit. There'd been a visceral element to them, even in the portraiture and landscapes, that he thought accurately represented where he'd been in mind and in body at the time and probably showed best what he could have been as an artist if he'd lived out his life as he'd supposed to. But the rest? His doodles from his teenage years or his insipid sculpture and metalwork attempts from Cooper, those didn't belong on display anywhere. Nor, for very different reasons, did his sketches from his bond tour days. (Historians had had a field day picking out features and resemblances to actresses he might or might not have spent personal time with back in '43.) And yet they all were on display. Pepper liked to send him links to where his artwork was being auctioned or on exhibit; she did it out of pride and he didn't have the heart to tell her it usually made him cringe in shame because he felt like he was an unwitting and unwilling con man waiting to be caught.
"Honestly? I'd be more interested if they were offering to let me finish my actual degree instead," he said as he stood up. He'd meant it as a joke when he'd spoken the words, but at Tamika's considering gaze, he realized that maybe that hadn't come across and, in hindsight, whether that had been intentional.
"Hmm," she mused, tapping her finger on the edge of her keyboard. "Let me see what I can do. How close to finishing were you?"
He shrugged. "I had a year left back in '43," he answered. "What it would be now, I don't know."
Tamika might have been about to say something about it, but then her phone rang. She looked at the number on the display, rolled her eyes in a silent "gotta take this one" gesture, and Steve replied by nodding and indicating by a thumb over his shoulder that he was going to go.
"Don't forget the autographs!" she called after him as he opened the door.
"Do I ever forget the autographs?" he asked Cheryl, Tamika's assistant, who was parked right outside the door. "I don't ever forget the autographs. How could I forget the autographs? There is always a giant stack of pictures waiting for me whenever I step into this den of iniquity."
Cheryl, who heard this routine once every two weeks, laughed dutifully. "You've got black and blue this time."
"Now isn't that a metaphor for the whole experience," Steve replied with a sigh as he went over to the table where the stacks of glossies, along with the black and blue markers, awaited him.
The next few weeks were thankfully more about soldiering than being a celebrity. (To be honest, they usually were, but he tended to get self-pitying when television appearances were on the schedule.) The mission -- take out a waypoint in Belize being used by both drug runners and terrorists to move materiel north into the US -- was fairly straightforward but required a lot of delicate planning because the Colombians had equipped it with better security than most embassies. They were also going in without informing the host country first, seeking forgiveness instead of permission because even if the latter were granted, it would only come after first warning off the people they were coming to get. The strike team was pretty easy to work with; Lieutenant Commander Corrales seemed more amused than annoyed to be working with an Avenger, which was sadly the exception to the rule, and he was an insightful planner if a bit casual when it came to requisitioning needed materials from the quartermasters.
The new Late Night host turned out to be a decent fellow, personable and welcoming away from the cameras and the audience in a way his predecessor had not been; the show's crew was happy and joking and that told Steve more about the man than the firm handshake or the camera-ready smile. On stage, he got some good-natured guff about a recent ladies' magazine interview in which he'd admitted that the last few movies he'd seen had all been kiddie fare ("You're over ninety, I'm pretty sure they'll let you in to an R-rated movie without adult accompaniment.") which segued smoothly into talking about Cap's Kids and the nationwide fun day. There was also a bit of ribbing about coming in third in a Sexiest Man Alive poll, but he'd gotten much worse from Clint and Tony over email, so he shrugged, expressed dismay, and seemed to consider the suggestion that he lose his shirt in combat more often. "It's not as easy as it sounds," he warned. "There are a lot of buttons and zippers involved." "Find a bad guy with a magnet. I'm pretty sure People will be willing to hold a casting call for that."
The mission to Belize did not involve any shirtlessness, which was for the best because it also involved a lot of shooting, more than either he or Corrales would have liked. There were a few more people and a lot more guns on site than either satellite imagery or intercepted communications had indicated that there would be, something that didn't become clear until they were already on the ground. But they did what they came to do, escaped without any serious casualties, and set off an explosion that made it clear to the folks in Belmopan what had happened before SHIELD placed a courtesy call.
Two days later, he was on a flight out of LaGuardia to Bangor, Maine, to welcome back a battalion of soldiers from Afghanistan. The Maine Troop Greeters really didn't need the help -- they had the coffee, cake, flags, and hugs all covered -- but the battalion had been hit hard by casualties over the course of the deployment and had lost six men in the last two weeks and the USO had called and asked if he could spare an afternoon. He could, of course he could, and he would have even if Tamika hadn't already agreed on his behalf because she knew him well enough by now. He could spare the afternoon and then some of the evening, staying until the last soldier had transited on to their next stepping stone home.
Back home to New York to finish up the paperwork on the Belize mission and go to one of the training sessions on the new computer system SHIELD was moving to at the end of the year. He wasn't computer illiterate by any means, but he had learned each system ad hoc and not as part of any generalized computer savvy and he wasn't sure he could take what he knew and apply it to the new system without help. The new system was supposed to be simpler, they'd been promised, but all it meant was that there were a lot more pictographs to decipher and, it seemed, that tasks that used to take three steps now took seven. In the end, he filed it under "helpful but not necessary" and nodded sagely when the other attendees predicted mass chaos upon implementation.
A week after that it was a charity ball, white tie, and Steve didn't even have the option of trying to get out of it because it was being hosted by Tony and Pepper on behalf of the Maria Stark Foundation. He'd needed help with the costuming because while he had a tuxedo, that wouldn't work for him here and he had consistently refused the suggestion that he wear Army dress. He wasn't in the Army anymore, something the Army occasionally seemed to forget, and he didn't want to give them any hope that he might, too. Pepper had sent him to Tony's tailor, as she had when it came to the tuxedo, but there was nothing to be done for the fact that he still couldn't dance and Peggy consistently refused to be party to his excuses not to.
"How do you feel about being an undergrad again?" Tamika texted him one evening. "CU said yes. Check your email."
He did and saw an email with an attachment that turned out to be a PDF of a letter from a dean at Cooper saying that, in essence, they'd be willing to give Steve his long-delayed BFA if he took 20 credits worth of courses (there was a breakdown of specific requirements, but it was mostly studio time and then electives) and submitted his senior presentation. The rest of what he owed toward his degree would be considered completed 'extra muros,' for which there was precedence. It was suggested that he consider 'refreshing his graphic design scholarship to reflect the passage of time,' although he was free to complete the requirements in any fashion he chose. There was more, but the upshot was that he could start in the fall if he wanted to fill out a lot of paperwork quickly.
"I feel great. Thank you," Steve texted back to Tamika before looking at the clock and deciding it was probably too late to call Peggy. He did go over to the picture of Bucky on the mantle, a goofy photo of him with a silly look on his face, holding his rifle in one hand and a stuffed rabbit toy in the other like a trophy. "Are you happy now?" he asked the picture. "I said I would. Just took me a while."
Bucky had made him promise to go back to school a half-dozen times at least, even after Steve had pointed out that he probably didn't need the art degree to get a job, if the Army even let him go after the war.
"You gotta do this," Bucky had insisted with rare vehemence. This hadn't been the team sergeant keeping his CO from doing something stupid. This had been Bucky, with the same urgency he'd once had when telling Steve to stop trying to mess with the Mills Brothers no matter what they were doing. "Even if they don't want to let you go. Especially if they don't want to let you go. This isn't about the greater good. This is about you doing something for yourself. You worked your ass off to get there, to get a chance to be an artist for real. Don't tell me it's not something you don't want or need anymore because I'll call you a liar."
In the end, Bucky was right, as he so often had been when it came to what was best for him, even if it had taken him a few years -- plus a few decades -- to realize it.
In the morning, he sent an email to Neal Tapper, the Avengers' liaison/wrangler/body-burier for SHIELD after Coulson's passing. He didn't think SHIELD would care too much one way or the other; he didn't have the same kind of responsibilities as a regular field agent and, he suspected, Fury and Hill and Tapper went looking for things for him to do to keep him busy. Now they wouldn't have to and, besides, it would head off any further (invariably awkward) discussions about his willingness to rejoin the civilian world.
"I think it's cute," Tony said when next Steve saw him, which was over lunch after Steve had willingly played training dummy while Tony worked out some kinks in the new armor he was building. "You'll be in class with kids young enough to be your great-grandchildren. It opens up the potential for a very tasty February-December romance. Hugh Hefner would be proud."
Steve didn't know who Hefner was, but suspected he didn't want to. "I don't consider myself to be ninety-plus," he pointed out, not for the first or fifth time. "But I'm not looking at it as a field full of co-ed flowers to pluck."
Tony snickered. "Well, you're not the only one who gets a vote," he said around a mouthful of salad. "Captain America sitting in class in his jeans and t-shirts? It's going to be moths to the flame with you. We're going to have to get you the human equivalent of bug spray. JARVIS, does Axe come in gallon-size jugs?"
Steve knew better than to start protesting; it would only egg Tony on. They both knew he could extricate himself from those sorts of situations just fine; he'd gotten plenty of practice in the last couple of years to keep his skills sharp.
When the time came to actually show up at class, those skills were possibly necessary, but not nearly to the degree that Tony had anticipated. Or that would require the Axe spray that Tony had given him and which Steve had promptly triple-wrapped in plastic bags and thrown out after catching a whiff. There were no groupies or fans because nobody seemed to realize who he was, for which he was very grateful. Being an art student had been Steve Rogers's domain, nothing to do with Captain America, and this was part of an exercise to work on being Steve and who that was; he had had plenty of practice being Cap. Toward that end, he'd made an informal agreement with the Cooper administration -- while the attention the school would get for announcing the rematriculation of one of their most famous pupils would be great indeed, it would also be very disruptive, not only to Steve, but to the entire student body. The news would get out eventually and, at that time, the school could issue their statements. But until then, Captain America could just be plain old Steve, working on his BFA after a long leave of absence.
Getting back into the student mode was both easy and very hard. He'd spent the balance of the summer working to catch up, re-reading art history books and getting used to extended drawing sessions because the odd evening of doodling on the couch while the game was on television wasn't anything like five hours of studio time. He had had to retrain his muscles and his attention span and he had found the work to regain that kind of focus difficult but rewarding. It had been a very long time since he'd been able to look up from the page and realize it had been hours since he'd put his pencils down.
He kept himself to himself a bit in class, being friendly without inviting friendship partially because he felt bad lying to people about who he was and partially because he wanted to enjoy the benefits of those lies for as long as possible. He had coffee and the odd meal with classmates, but when he had to miss a week of time to go hunt down bad guys hiding in the Basque Region, he let everyone think he'd been sick without ever lying by commission. He'd also gotten Tamika to agree to a little less face-time publicity in the civilian media, sticking to radio and podcasts and print and internet media where they could use a stock file photo of him with his cowl on; the hospital and base visits, of course, remained as usual but the photos of those tended to be on Facebook and of inferior quality and he had the cowl on for half of them anyway.
The gig was up in November, though, when too many Veterans Day news segments made it impossible to hide. Cooper Union issued their statement confirming his return and requesting privacy for Captain Rogers and his fellow students to minimize disruption. SHIELD provided additional security anyway, calling it a donation. Steve's classmates and acquaintances took it pretty well, maybe because they'd all grown up in a world where social media and the internet had made celebrity privacy rarer than a pink elephant. They got over their initial hurt quickly enough and, graciously, renewed their offers of joining them at Cafe Orlin for brunch. This time Steve accepted, even if he had to sign a few autographs while on line waiting for a table.
Christmas break was spent catching up on studio time. He'd missed a fair bit of it around Thanksgiving because a few crates of World War II-era HYDRA blasters had turned up in West Virginia and Steve had gotten to relive plenty of unpleasant memories before Fury had emerged victorious from the bureaucratic battle royale and gotten permission to raid the abandoned mill plant outside Parkersburg, which Steve had led and thus had had to plan. He also caught up on both fieldwork and PR work, payment for the lighter load during the semester. He did more than a few interviews where he had to explain his decision to return to school and what he hoped to get from the experience. He thought the answers were all fairly self-explanatory, but gave them just the same. Only once, to Stars and Stripes, did he mention his promise to Bucky and that was almost an afterthought in a longer exposition on the importance of making an effort to not just leave the battlefield behind, but also to embrace what he'd come home to. That he had a problem practicing what he preached, well, that he could keep to himself.
It sometimes frustrated Tamika that he gave his most thoughtful answers to the outlets with the narrowest circulation profile, but talking to soldiers, even indirectly, was always much easier than talking to chat show hosts or profile piece writers.
The spring semester was more of the same, except with more computer work at home for his graphic design courses and that his absences from class were due to a quartet of thugs granted superpowers by Loki the other year. He spent the better part of six weeks putting together his senior presentation, for which he'd received permission to not only use some of his pre-war coursework, but also some of the work he'd produced during the war. He'd thought he'd have to use reproductions for a couple of the pieces because they were privately owned, but it turned out not to be a problem, largely because of the murkiness of the provenances -- it was hard to claim ownership of artwork Steve had never willingly given up in the first place. Tony and Pepper had long ago offered use of their lawyers to reclaim his lost property, but he'd said no then (with one or two exceptions, none of which had required lawyers) and was saying no now. He had no intention of demanding the return of all of his sketches now; as embarrassing as it was that they were prized collector's items, they clearly had value to other people and he saw no gain in the action. At least not personal gain. The exhibition was on display for two weeks, a ridiculous length for a senior presentation, but one that drew long lines and a few thousand dollars in suggested donations to Cap's Kids because of who he was.
On a rainy Tuesday in May, Steven Grant Rogers was finally granted his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Everyone attended, if not all recognizable as such (Natasha was wearing a blonde wig and a chunky cardigan with a cat brooch), although Tony made enough of a spectacle for everyone. Peggy came, too, and she was the first person he went to when he got off the stage. Which he didn't get to do until after he gave his speech. He spoke about art and war, the theme of his senior presentation, but also about a fight most of his fellow students would be more familiar with and more likely to face: the fight to be true to their art and to themselves, to believe in both, and to return to that faith in the darkest moments that would come in their futures. "Tony Stark told me that commencement addresses are supposed to be about bright futures and wearing sunscreen, but I'm a soldier who has seen a lot of war, not all of it on a battlefield, and I know that a little truth won't hurt on a day with so much champagne. You should all wear sunscreen, though, just for the record."
There was a party at the Stark-Potts penthouse, to which Steve was late because he'd spent so much time at the commencement shaking hands and posing for pictures and answering questions from the press who'd shown up early but had been kept penned in the back throughout. It was a nice party, as they all were, and it was small, which most of them were not. And when it was done and Steve got back home with his diploma, now nicely framed, he re-arranged the items on the mantle to put it next to the photo of Bucky. He touched the photo now, fingertips on Bucky's chest, and took a deep breath because however he wanted to count the time, seventy years or less than five, the absence -- and his role in that absence -- still hurt like it was fresh.
"Got any more bright ideas?" he asked the photo, wishing for an answer and knowing none would come. Knowing, too, that he could probably guess very well what it would have been. Don't put away the art supplies, find a way to get studio time, keep making time to do art because that's who he was, as much as (Bucky would say more than) he was Captain America. Which was all well and good in theory, but terribly hard in practice.
As if on cue, his phone started beeping for a text message. But it wasn't from SHIELD, just from Tony with a link to the Bugle's front page for tomorrow's early edition, which was a photo of Steve giving his speech with the headline: "The Nazis Ate My Homework: Cooper Union honors oldest-ever graduate as Steve Rogers finally gets his diploma." Which, coming from the Bugle was actually pretty tame. He'd bet Clint $5 on them putting the Red Skull or Hitler on the cover. Maybe the Post or the Daily News would come through.
The following afternoon, a day off, he took his notebook and his pencil case and a baseball cap and went down to the water to sketch. After all the work he'd put in to finishing up his projects and his senior presentation, it felt indulgent to be drawing for fun. He sketched the scene around him, the gussied-up waterfront park (God, Bucky would laugh at how they'd cleaned up the Fulton ferry landing) and the cyclists and roller-bladers and runners, the kids on their training wheels, the hipsters on their skateboards, the old woman fishing bottles out of the trash for the deposit. He was shading things in when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone sit down on the bench next to him, too close to be stranger-distance. He looked up, saw who it was, and went back to his shading.
"Is this what they call a busman's holiday?" Clint asked, face still tilted back to catch the last of the evening sun, eyes closed. "School's out forever, Big Boy. You got your fancy paper."
"I know," Steve agreed, not pausing in his work. "Something come up?"
He hadn't been expecting Clint and he hadn't told anyone where he'd be, so the odds of their meeting randomly in a Brooklyn park weren't high.
"Nah," Clint replied and Steve unpacked the tone of voice to mean that yes, something had happened, but it didn't involve Steve, might not involve the Avengers at all, and Clint would not explain even if prompted. At least not to him; Natasha, if she didn't already know could pry it out of him. Steve offered a different kind of comfort, he supposed. "Got cut loose early and figured I'd come collect on the fiver you owe me, but you weren't home. I came here to kick around a little before trying again or going home and here you are."
Steve made a noncommittal noise that Clint could interpret many ways, one of which being that Steve was choosing not to call him on his baloney. "You want to blow your winnings on pizza and beer?"
Clint snorted. "In this neighborhood, that's an 'or' and not an 'and.'"
"Technically, that's not even an 'or' unless you want to go to the bodega and buy a single can of something cheap," Steve agreed. "But we're working men, we can cover both pizza and beer."
They ended up at Juliana's because Grimaldi's line looked daunting.
"So what's next?" Clint asked as they waited for their pies. "You gonna be Cap by day, Picasso by night?"
"I think some of our mutual employers already doubt my sanity, day or night," Steve replied with a grin to Clint's smirk. "I don't know. I got an email from Tamika saying that people are already asking her when I'm going to exhibit and whether I take commissions. It's all a little ridiculous."
He didn't think he was ready for any of that yet; take away the celebrity and he was just another guy straight out of art school, still figuring out what kind of artist he was. He didn't need to sell work for money and wasn't sure he wanted to put his artistic development back on stage, subject to professional criticism and the slings and arrows from the peanut gallery. Reading what serious critics had thought of his pre-sleep work had been horrible enough.
"It's not ridiculous at all," Clint replied, drinking down his water. "It all makes sense. You're you. This can't be a surprise."
"It's not," Steve admitted, exhaling loudly. "But I don't need to cash in on my fame. I don't want to cash in on it."
"Dunno if you get to hide your light under a bushel anymore," Clint pointed out. "Going back to school reminded everyone of who you were before the cowl and you can't unskin that cat."
Steve smiled. "As Tony is always reminding everyone, the half-life of anything newsworthy is less than a day. In a couple of weeks, nobody will even remember that I graduated."
Which turned out not to be true entirely, but true enough for Steve's purposes. There was a burst of attention on his art, especially some of the pieces he'd used in his senior exhibit, and a bump in sales of what was privately owned -- and then a few editorials on how wrong it was that his work was selling for so much when he'd never seen a dime, including one horrible editorial likening it to Nazi stolen loot. But then things really did slow down as attention moved on to more salacious topics than Captain America's artistic abilities. Steve moved out of the arts section and back to the news, especially after another raid in Central America provided clear ties between Medellin and wherever al-Qaeda was hiding these days. He stopped being the most interesting Avenger entirely after Tony decided to pick a fight with a European industrial concern. It was, in Steve's ever-changing metric, almost normal for life in the twenty-first century.
Also posted at DW.
5700k words | PG-13 | Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, etc.
Summary: Steve navigates the sometimes choppy seas of being a celebrity in the twenty-first century and finds the time (and the courage) to fulfill a twentieth century promise and return to school.
"How bad is it?" Steve asked, putting one hand over his eyes and peeping through a space between his fingers at the paper Tamika had handed him. His schedule for the next two weeks, printed out and color-coded because she knew he was going to put it on his fridge and that it, not the various beeping reminders that emitted from his phone, was going to be the version most frequently consulted as he organized the rest of his time. "I've been a good boy."
Tamika was his publicist -- Captain America's publicist -- and thus effectively in charge of his non-mission work schedule. She was the one who organized his appearances on chat shows, in hospitals, at parades and military bases, and anywhere else it was deemed "good optics" for him to be seen. Tamika and her staff also handled media requests, fan (and hate) mail, merchandising, and the social media business Steve didn't want done even by proxy, but the schedule was the reason he trudged to her office fortnightly. They'd figured out early on that while they could discuss it over the phone or over email, in person they could both get a better deal -- Steve could get out of more of the frivolous things he hated and Tamika could get him to agree to the appearances he really didn't want to do but were important for reasons he didn't always appreciate. It had cut down on the mutual frustration considerably.
"You have been a boy of only moderate virtue," Tamika replied easily. "Don't think I didn't figure out who'd scheduled that training session that got you out of the trip to Boston. But because I am generous and forgiving and kind, I am not taking it out on you."
They'd gotten off on a wrong foot at first. Still very overwhelmed by his suddenly-accelerated reintegration after the Battle of New York, he'd been a little ungracious in his resentment of so many appearances being scheduled for him so early on in his return to public life and he'd carped loudly that he'd felt like a USO chorus girl again. Tamika, for her part, hadn't really known very much about either Steve or Captain America before she'd gotten the job and had assumed that he'd (a) not understand what a Public Relations Manager did and (b) have trouble taking direction from a woman, let alone a black woman, and so she had shown up ready to do battle against a dinosaur. Once they'd both calmed down, they'd realized that they actually liked each other and things had progressed much more smoothly.
"Then why am I going on Late Night again?"
He'd come to really dislike the late night talk shows since he'd gotten back. He'd been no great fan of the talk shows before, either, but there'd been a gentility to them, a politesse, that was utterly lacking in the current version. Maybe it was the hour they were broadcast at, but the questions he got asked now tended to be cruder and more on the gotcha level than the softly guided conversations he'd had before the cameras and microphones back in the 1940s or the long-form interviews now. Especially now, when the newness and novelty had largely worn off and the hosts were no longer surprised that Captain America was capable of sarcasm and, on a good day, wit.
"Because they've got a new host," Tamika answered. "This one's not as 'edgy.' You're not going to be asked to grade Captain America dildos again."
Steve gave her a dubious look; that had been the definite lowlight of his talk show appearances, worse even than the morning show when he'd had to spend the better part of the twenty-minute segment discussing whether he'd been dating since he'd woken up and what he looked for in a woman. (He'd ended up describing Peggy, which the hosts hadn't picked up on even if all of his friends -- and Peggy herself -- most certainly had.) In a different context than "a television show that would be broadcast to millions," the dildos would have probably been pretty funny. If it had been something Tony had whipped up, for instance. But as it was, it had been embarrassing and awkward and while Steve had had the stage presence to keep his cool and select the model that had the most vibration options as probably best for users, he'd made it clear to Tamika afterward that that was the last time he'd be doing that sort of thing.
"They promised nothing raunchy," Tamika assured, grimacing a little because yeah, she'd sold enough BS to be able to smell it when it was on sale. "But they also promised to ask you about the Cap's Kids Fun Day event, so I think you should take one for the team here."
She had worked with him long enough to realize that he could be browbeaten into a lot if it was for charity. The event was a good one, a day of games and picnics and movies for Gold Star kids -- children who'd lost a serving parent -- to be held at bases around the country; Steve was going down to Fort Hood to attend the one there.
"Fine," he sighed, resigned to his fate. "But if they so much as mention the Captain America condoms, I've got six months off from TV appearances."
The rest of the schedule wasn't very interesting or very contentious and they worked through it quickly because there wasn't a lot on it; he had a mission on tap for three weeks from now and he needed time to plan and prep that. Especially because he was working with a strike team he hadn't worked with before and there'd been a learning curve with some of them.
"And further down the 'pike," Tamika said as they were wrapping up, "Cooper Union has asked if you'd be willing to accept an honorary degree from them in May. It'd be a speech and the usual gladhanding, but they also want to pull together a retrospective of some of your work -- it's why they're asking so early."
Steve's 'posthumous' recognition as an artist of note had taken him completely by surprise. It had also embarrassed him completely, possibly more than having to consider dildos on national television. He hadn't been an artist of note; he'd been a kid in art school who'd never had the chance to fully develop anything close to a unique style or express a vision with any clarity. But he hadn't gotten a vote in how history and posterity had chosen to record things and so he'd woken up in 2011 to find pages from his sketchbooks and some of his studio work from Cooper in serious private collections and even in a few museums. Some of his later drawings -- what he'd done during the war as a Howling Commando and not as a USO performer -- weren't bad, he could admit. There'd been a visceral element to them, even in the portraiture and landscapes, that he thought accurately represented where he'd been in mind and in body at the time and probably showed best what he could have been as an artist if he'd lived out his life as he'd supposed to. But the rest? His doodles from his teenage years or his insipid sculpture and metalwork attempts from Cooper, those didn't belong on display anywhere. Nor, for very different reasons, did his sketches from his bond tour days. (Historians had had a field day picking out features and resemblances to actresses he might or might not have spent personal time with back in '43.) And yet they all were on display. Pepper liked to send him links to where his artwork was being auctioned or on exhibit; she did it out of pride and he didn't have the heart to tell her it usually made him cringe in shame because he felt like he was an unwitting and unwilling con man waiting to be caught.
"Honestly? I'd be more interested if they were offering to let me finish my actual degree instead," he said as he stood up. He'd meant it as a joke when he'd spoken the words, but at Tamika's considering gaze, he realized that maybe that hadn't come across and, in hindsight, whether that had been intentional.
"Hmm," she mused, tapping her finger on the edge of her keyboard. "Let me see what I can do. How close to finishing were you?"
He shrugged. "I had a year left back in '43," he answered. "What it would be now, I don't know."
Tamika might have been about to say something about it, but then her phone rang. She looked at the number on the display, rolled her eyes in a silent "gotta take this one" gesture, and Steve replied by nodding and indicating by a thumb over his shoulder that he was going to go.
"Don't forget the autographs!" she called after him as he opened the door.
"Do I ever forget the autographs?" he asked Cheryl, Tamika's assistant, who was parked right outside the door. "I don't ever forget the autographs. How could I forget the autographs? There is always a giant stack of pictures waiting for me whenever I step into this den of iniquity."
Cheryl, who heard this routine once every two weeks, laughed dutifully. "You've got black and blue this time."
"Now isn't that a metaphor for the whole experience," Steve replied with a sigh as he went over to the table where the stacks of glossies, along with the black and blue markers, awaited him.
The next few weeks were thankfully more about soldiering than being a celebrity. (To be honest, they usually were, but he tended to get self-pitying when television appearances were on the schedule.) The mission -- take out a waypoint in Belize being used by both drug runners and terrorists to move materiel north into the US -- was fairly straightforward but required a lot of delicate planning because the Colombians had equipped it with better security than most embassies. They were also going in without informing the host country first, seeking forgiveness instead of permission because even if the latter were granted, it would only come after first warning off the people they were coming to get. The strike team was pretty easy to work with; Lieutenant Commander Corrales seemed more amused than annoyed to be working with an Avenger, which was sadly the exception to the rule, and he was an insightful planner if a bit casual when it came to requisitioning needed materials from the quartermasters.
The new Late Night host turned out to be a decent fellow, personable and welcoming away from the cameras and the audience in a way his predecessor had not been; the show's crew was happy and joking and that told Steve more about the man than the firm handshake or the camera-ready smile. On stage, he got some good-natured guff about a recent ladies' magazine interview in which he'd admitted that the last few movies he'd seen had all been kiddie fare ("You're over ninety, I'm pretty sure they'll let you in to an R-rated movie without adult accompaniment.") which segued smoothly into talking about Cap's Kids and the nationwide fun day. There was also a bit of ribbing about coming in third in a Sexiest Man Alive poll, but he'd gotten much worse from Clint and Tony over email, so he shrugged, expressed dismay, and seemed to consider the suggestion that he lose his shirt in combat more often. "It's not as easy as it sounds," he warned. "There are a lot of buttons and zippers involved." "Find a bad guy with a magnet. I'm pretty sure People will be willing to hold a casting call for that."
The mission to Belize did not involve any shirtlessness, which was for the best because it also involved a lot of shooting, more than either he or Corrales would have liked. There were a few more people and a lot more guns on site than either satellite imagery or intercepted communications had indicated that there would be, something that didn't become clear until they were already on the ground. But they did what they came to do, escaped without any serious casualties, and set off an explosion that made it clear to the folks in Belmopan what had happened before SHIELD placed a courtesy call.
Two days later, he was on a flight out of LaGuardia to Bangor, Maine, to welcome back a battalion of soldiers from Afghanistan. The Maine Troop Greeters really didn't need the help -- they had the coffee, cake, flags, and hugs all covered -- but the battalion had been hit hard by casualties over the course of the deployment and had lost six men in the last two weeks and the USO had called and asked if he could spare an afternoon. He could, of course he could, and he would have even if Tamika hadn't already agreed on his behalf because she knew him well enough by now. He could spare the afternoon and then some of the evening, staying until the last soldier had transited on to their next stepping stone home.
Back home to New York to finish up the paperwork on the Belize mission and go to one of the training sessions on the new computer system SHIELD was moving to at the end of the year. He wasn't computer illiterate by any means, but he had learned each system ad hoc and not as part of any generalized computer savvy and he wasn't sure he could take what he knew and apply it to the new system without help. The new system was supposed to be simpler, they'd been promised, but all it meant was that there were a lot more pictographs to decipher and, it seemed, that tasks that used to take three steps now took seven. In the end, he filed it under "helpful but not necessary" and nodded sagely when the other attendees predicted mass chaos upon implementation.
A week after that it was a charity ball, white tie, and Steve didn't even have the option of trying to get out of it because it was being hosted by Tony and Pepper on behalf of the Maria Stark Foundation. He'd needed help with the costuming because while he had a tuxedo, that wouldn't work for him here and he had consistently refused the suggestion that he wear Army dress. He wasn't in the Army anymore, something the Army occasionally seemed to forget, and he didn't want to give them any hope that he might, too. Pepper had sent him to Tony's tailor, as she had when it came to the tuxedo, but there was nothing to be done for the fact that he still couldn't dance and Peggy consistently refused to be party to his excuses not to.
"How do you feel about being an undergrad again?" Tamika texted him one evening. "CU said yes. Check your email."
He did and saw an email with an attachment that turned out to be a PDF of a letter from a dean at Cooper saying that, in essence, they'd be willing to give Steve his long-delayed BFA if he took 20 credits worth of courses (there was a breakdown of specific requirements, but it was mostly studio time and then electives) and submitted his senior presentation. The rest of what he owed toward his degree would be considered completed 'extra muros,' for which there was precedence. It was suggested that he consider 'refreshing his graphic design scholarship to reflect the passage of time,' although he was free to complete the requirements in any fashion he chose. There was more, but the upshot was that he could start in the fall if he wanted to fill out a lot of paperwork quickly.
"I feel great. Thank you," Steve texted back to Tamika before looking at the clock and deciding it was probably too late to call Peggy. He did go over to the picture of Bucky on the mantle, a goofy photo of him with a silly look on his face, holding his rifle in one hand and a stuffed rabbit toy in the other like a trophy. "Are you happy now?" he asked the picture. "I said I would. Just took me a while."
Bucky had made him promise to go back to school a half-dozen times at least, even after Steve had pointed out that he probably didn't need the art degree to get a job, if the Army even let him go after the war.
"You gotta do this," Bucky had insisted with rare vehemence. This hadn't been the team sergeant keeping his CO from doing something stupid. This had been Bucky, with the same urgency he'd once had when telling Steve to stop trying to mess with the Mills Brothers no matter what they were doing. "Even if they don't want to let you go. Especially if they don't want to let you go. This isn't about the greater good. This is about you doing something for yourself. You worked your ass off to get there, to get a chance to be an artist for real. Don't tell me it's not something you don't want or need anymore because I'll call you a liar."
In the end, Bucky was right, as he so often had been when it came to what was best for him, even if it had taken him a few years -- plus a few decades -- to realize it.
In the morning, he sent an email to Neal Tapper, the Avengers' liaison/wrangler/body-burier for SHIELD after Coulson's passing. He didn't think SHIELD would care too much one way or the other; he didn't have the same kind of responsibilities as a regular field agent and, he suspected, Fury and Hill and Tapper went looking for things for him to do to keep him busy. Now they wouldn't have to and, besides, it would head off any further (invariably awkward) discussions about his willingness to rejoin the civilian world.
"I think it's cute," Tony said when next Steve saw him, which was over lunch after Steve had willingly played training dummy while Tony worked out some kinks in the new armor he was building. "You'll be in class with kids young enough to be your great-grandchildren. It opens up the potential for a very tasty February-December romance. Hugh Hefner would be proud."
Steve didn't know who Hefner was, but suspected he didn't want to. "I don't consider myself to be ninety-plus," he pointed out, not for the first or fifth time. "But I'm not looking at it as a field full of co-ed flowers to pluck."
Tony snickered. "Well, you're not the only one who gets a vote," he said around a mouthful of salad. "Captain America sitting in class in his jeans and t-shirts? It's going to be moths to the flame with you. We're going to have to get you the human equivalent of bug spray. JARVIS, does Axe come in gallon-size jugs?"
Steve knew better than to start protesting; it would only egg Tony on. They both knew he could extricate himself from those sorts of situations just fine; he'd gotten plenty of practice in the last couple of years to keep his skills sharp.
When the time came to actually show up at class, those skills were possibly necessary, but not nearly to the degree that Tony had anticipated. Or that would require the Axe spray that Tony had given him and which Steve had promptly triple-wrapped in plastic bags and thrown out after catching a whiff. There were no groupies or fans because nobody seemed to realize who he was, for which he was very grateful. Being an art student had been Steve Rogers's domain, nothing to do with Captain America, and this was part of an exercise to work on being Steve and who that was; he had had plenty of practice being Cap. Toward that end, he'd made an informal agreement with the Cooper administration -- while the attention the school would get for announcing the rematriculation of one of their most famous pupils would be great indeed, it would also be very disruptive, not only to Steve, but to the entire student body. The news would get out eventually and, at that time, the school could issue their statements. But until then, Captain America could just be plain old Steve, working on his BFA after a long leave of absence.
Getting back into the student mode was both easy and very hard. He'd spent the balance of the summer working to catch up, re-reading art history books and getting used to extended drawing sessions because the odd evening of doodling on the couch while the game was on television wasn't anything like five hours of studio time. He had had to retrain his muscles and his attention span and he had found the work to regain that kind of focus difficult but rewarding. It had been a very long time since he'd been able to look up from the page and realize it had been hours since he'd put his pencils down.
He kept himself to himself a bit in class, being friendly without inviting friendship partially because he felt bad lying to people about who he was and partially because he wanted to enjoy the benefits of those lies for as long as possible. He had coffee and the odd meal with classmates, but when he had to miss a week of time to go hunt down bad guys hiding in the Basque Region, he let everyone think he'd been sick without ever lying by commission. He'd also gotten Tamika to agree to a little less face-time publicity in the civilian media, sticking to radio and podcasts and print and internet media where they could use a stock file photo of him with his cowl on; the hospital and base visits, of course, remained as usual but the photos of those tended to be on Facebook and of inferior quality and he had the cowl on for half of them anyway.
The gig was up in November, though, when too many Veterans Day news segments made it impossible to hide. Cooper Union issued their statement confirming his return and requesting privacy for Captain Rogers and his fellow students to minimize disruption. SHIELD provided additional security anyway, calling it a donation. Steve's classmates and acquaintances took it pretty well, maybe because they'd all grown up in a world where social media and the internet had made celebrity privacy rarer than a pink elephant. They got over their initial hurt quickly enough and, graciously, renewed their offers of joining them at Cafe Orlin for brunch. This time Steve accepted, even if he had to sign a few autographs while on line waiting for a table.
Christmas break was spent catching up on studio time. He'd missed a fair bit of it around Thanksgiving because a few crates of World War II-era HYDRA blasters had turned up in West Virginia and Steve had gotten to relive plenty of unpleasant memories before Fury had emerged victorious from the bureaucratic battle royale and gotten permission to raid the abandoned mill plant outside Parkersburg, which Steve had led and thus had had to plan. He also caught up on both fieldwork and PR work, payment for the lighter load during the semester. He did more than a few interviews where he had to explain his decision to return to school and what he hoped to get from the experience. He thought the answers were all fairly self-explanatory, but gave them just the same. Only once, to Stars and Stripes, did he mention his promise to Bucky and that was almost an afterthought in a longer exposition on the importance of making an effort to not just leave the battlefield behind, but also to embrace what he'd come home to. That he had a problem practicing what he preached, well, that he could keep to himself.
It sometimes frustrated Tamika that he gave his most thoughtful answers to the outlets with the narrowest circulation profile, but talking to soldiers, even indirectly, was always much easier than talking to chat show hosts or profile piece writers.
The spring semester was more of the same, except with more computer work at home for his graphic design courses and that his absences from class were due to a quartet of thugs granted superpowers by Loki the other year. He spent the better part of six weeks putting together his senior presentation, for which he'd received permission to not only use some of his pre-war coursework, but also some of the work he'd produced during the war. He'd thought he'd have to use reproductions for a couple of the pieces because they were privately owned, but it turned out not to be a problem, largely because of the murkiness of the provenances -- it was hard to claim ownership of artwork Steve had never willingly given up in the first place. Tony and Pepper had long ago offered use of their lawyers to reclaim his lost property, but he'd said no then (with one or two exceptions, none of which had required lawyers) and was saying no now. He had no intention of demanding the return of all of his sketches now; as embarrassing as it was that they were prized collector's items, they clearly had value to other people and he saw no gain in the action. At least not personal gain. The exhibition was on display for two weeks, a ridiculous length for a senior presentation, but one that drew long lines and a few thousand dollars in suggested donations to Cap's Kids because of who he was.
On a rainy Tuesday in May, Steven Grant Rogers was finally granted his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Everyone attended, if not all recognizable as such (Natasha was wearing a blonde wig and a chunky cardigan with a cat brooch), although Tony made enough of a spectacle for everyone. Peggy came, too, and she was the first person he went to when he got off the stage. Which he didn't get to do until after he gave his speech. He spoke about art and war, the theme of his senior presentation, but also about a fight most of his fellow students would be more familiar with and more likely to face: the fight to be true to their art and to themselves, to believe in both, and to return to that faith in the darkest moments that would come in their futures. "Tony Stark told me that commencement addresses are supposed to be about bright futures and wearing sunscreen, but I'm a soldier who has seen a lot of war, not all of it on a battlefield, and I know that a little truth won't hurt on a day with so much champagne. You should all wear sunscreen, though, just for the record."
There was a party at the Stark-Potts penthouse, to which Steve was late because he'd spent so much time at the commencement shaking hands and posing for pictures and answering questions from the press who'd shown up early but had been kept penned in the back throughout. It was a nice party, as they all were, and it was small, which most of them were not. And when it was done and Steve got back home with his diploma, now nicely framed, he re-arranged the items on the mantle to put it next to the photo of Bucky. He touched the photo now, fingertips on Bucky's chest, and took a deep breath because however he wanted to count the time, seventy years or less than five, the absence -- and his role in that absence -- still hurt like it was fresh.
"Got any more bright ideas?" he asked the photo, wishing for an answer and knowing none would come. Knowing, too, that he could probably guess very well what it would have been. Don't put away the art supplies, find a way to get studio time, keep making time to do art because that's who he was, as much as (Bucky would say more than) he was Captain America. Which was all well and good in theory, but terribly hard in practice.
As if on cue, his phone started beeping for a text message. But it wasn't from SHIELD, just from Tony with a link to the Bugle's front page for tomorrow's early edition, which was a photo of Steve giving his speech with the headline: "The Nazis Ate My Homework: Cooper Union honors oldest-ever graduate as Steve Rogers finally gets his diploma." Which, coming from the Bugle was actually pretty tame. He'd bet Clint $5 on them putting the Red Skull or Hitler on the cover. Maybe the Post or the Daily News would come through.
The following afternoon, a day off, he took his notebook and his pencil case and a baseball cap and went down to the water to sketch. After all the work he'd put in to finishing up his projects and his senior presentation, it felt indulgent to be drawing for fun. He sketched the scene around him, the gussied-up waterfront park (God, Bucky would laugh at how they'd cleaned up the Fulton ferry landing) and the cyclists and roller-bladers and runners, the kids on their training wheels, the hipsters on their skateboards, the old woman fishing bottles out of the trash for the deposit. He was shading things in when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone sit down on the bench next to him, too close to be stranger-distance. He looked up, saw who it was, and went back to his shading.
"Is this what they call a busman's holiday?" Clint asked, face still tilted back to catch the last of the evening sun, eyes closed. "School's out forever, Big Boy. You got your fancy paper."
"I know," Steve agreed, not pausing in his work. "Something come up?"
He hadn't been expecting Clint and he hadn't told anyone where he'd be, so the odds of their meeting randomly in a Brooklyn park weren't high.
"Nah," Clint replied and Steve unpacked the tone of voice to mean that yes, something had happened, but it didn't involve Steve, might not involve the Avengers at all, and Clint would not explain even if prompted. At least not to him; Natasha, if she didn't already know could pry it out of him. Steve offered a different kind of comfort, he supposed. "Got cut loose early and figured I'd come collect on the fiver you owe me, but you weren't home. I came here to kick around a little before trying again or going home and here you are."
Steve made a noncommittal noise that Clint could interpret many ways, one of which being that Steve was choosing not to call him on his baloney. "You want to blow your winnings on pizza and beer?"
Clint snorted. "In this neighborhood, that's an 'or' and not an 'and.'"
"Technically, that's not even an 'or' unless you want to go to the bodega and buy a single can of something cheap," Steve agreed. "But we're working men, we can cover both pizza and beer."
They ended up at Juliana's because Grimaldi's line looked daunting.
"So what's next?" Clint asked as they waited for their pies. "You gonna be Cap by day, Picasso by night?"
"I think some of our mutual employers already doubt my sanity, day or night," Steve replied with a grin to Clint's smirk. "I don't know. I got an email from Tamika saying that people are already asking her when I'm going to exhibit and whether I take commissions. It's all a little ridiculous."
He didn't think he was ready for any of that yet; take away the celebrity and he was just another guy straight out of art school, still figuring out what kind of artist he was. He didn't need to sell work for money and wasn't sure he wanted to put his artistic development back on stage, subject to professional criticism and the slings and arrows from the peanut gallery. Reading what serious critics had thought of his pre-sleep work had been horrible enough.
"It's not ridiculous at all," Clint replied, drinking down his water. "It all makes sense. You're you. This can't be a surprise."
"It's not," Steve admitted, exhaling loudly. "But I don't need to cash in on my fame. I don't want to cash in on it."
"Dunno if you get to hide your light under a bushel anymore," Clint pointed out. "Going back to school reminded everyone of who you were before the cowl and you can't unskin that cat."
Steve smiled. "As Tony is always reminding everyone, the half-life of anything newsworthy is less than a day. In a couple of weeks, nobody will even remember that I graduated."
Which turned out not to be true entirely, but true enough for Steve's purposes. There was a burst of attention on his art, especially some of the pieces he'd used in his senior exhibit, and a bump in sales of what was privately owned -- and then a few editorials on how wrong it was that his work was selling for so much when he'd never seen a dime, including one horrible editorial likening it to Nazi stolen loot. But then things really did slow down as attention moved on to more salacious topics than Captain America's artistic abilities. Steve moved out of the arts section and back to the news, especially after another raid in Central America provided clear ties between Medellin and wherever al-Qaeda was hiding these days. He stopped being the most interesting Avenger entirely after Tony decided to pick a fight with a European industrial concern. It was, in Steve's ever-changing metric, almost normal for life in the twenty-first century.
Also posted at DW.