Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or any of its property (aside from an Iron Man key chain).
"Hey, Mister, mind if I took your picture?" a voice quietly asked him.
He'd seen the girl here before; a rather average looking twenty-something year old who mostly kept to herself. She never started a conversation and only really seemed to speak to order her coffee. She always took the small corner table, only two tables from his own usual spot, and would fiddle with her laptop as she sipped her drink.
There wasn't anything particularly special about her compared to other women he'd seen and met. Her hair was a simple one tone brown that made Steve think of chocolate. It was always plaited in a short braid that just reached the top of her shoulder blades, and her forehead was hidden by straight cut bangs. She wore rectangular black rimmed glasses and seemed to use little or no makeup. But the petite woman who could have been no more than 5'4" had managed to pique his interest. So he subtly watched her, ignoring the part of him that said what he was doing was inappropriate and creepy.
So when she walked up to his table, three months since he first noticed her, he immediately assumed she'd caught him and was about to get an earful. Instead, she asked a question.
"Uh, may I ask why?"
"Yes you may." He gave a small smile at her quick reply.
"Why do you want to take my picture?"
"Well, with the light coming in from the window, and the general setting of this café, I thought I could get a few good shots." Steve nodded and considered her request.
"Alright, but only if you do something for me."
"What exactly would I be doing?"
"Um… sitting still for maybe twenty minutes," he answered, though it almost sounded like a question.
"I see. And what will you be doing?"
"Drawing you." He motioned to his sketch book that sat closed on the table.
"Fair enough, portrait for a portrait. So you're in?"
"Yes, Ma'am." She grinned and dropped her knapsack onto the ground by the table leg, and then slipped the small messenger bag off her shoulder and placed it on the table. He watched as she pulled out a camera and a small lens, switching it with the one that was already on the camera. When she finished adjusting things on the camera and pointed it in his direction, Steve suddenly felt flustered.
"Wha– what do I do?" A reassuring smile was sent his way.
"Not much, just sit there and look pretty." He didn't feel any less nervous and the brunette seemed to notice. "Okay, why not look out the window and count how many purple cars pass by?" He did as he was told and kept a look out for any purple automobiles.
He resisted the urge to face her when he heard a shutter going off and kept his gaze on the snow covered street outside. Several snaps later he decided to fill the mostly-silence.
"Purple car count, nil."
"Sure? I saw like ten on my way here." Another snap.
"Yeah, but there was a van with purple lettering on it; does that count?"
"No, and I said cars, not vans. Take a sip of your coffee please?"
"While looking out the window?"
"You can look wherever you want." He decided to point his eyes toward the pastry display. Two snaps in quick succession.
"How many are you taking?"
"One more," she replied absently. "Look at the camera." He saw her leaning backward slightly, an elbow braced at her hip, one eye closed, the other looking through the eyepiece. He smiled and then heard a snap. She took a seat across from him and he deduced that she was looking over the photos. "Sweet, thanks…" she abruptly returned to the shy girl he'd been observing, her professional front gone and replaced with a bumbling and uneasy character. She seemed just as bad as he usually was with women. And then Steve realized quite belatedly that she was a woman.
"Uh… no problem. Oh, I forgot to ask your name, Miss."
"Melinda. Mel for short." Mel met his eyes briefly and then looked away. They sat in an awkward silence, Steve periodically drinking his coffee, and Mel focusing on putting her equipment away. When Steve finally felt that anymore silence would cause something to implode, We're Off to See the Wizard from The Wizard of Oz began to play. Mel smiled sheepishly and retrieved a black rectangular object from her pocket and began to speak into it.
"Hi, Jack. Already? Okay, I'll there in fifteen minutes."
"Everything alright?" Steve asked when she slung her bags onto her shoulders.
"Yeah, some clients at work came in early so I have to get going." She paused before adding, "Thanks for, um, you know." She gestured to the camera bag.
"Will you be here tomorrow?"
"So long as there aren't any asteroids headed here," she joked with a small smile.
"See you tomorrow then, Mel," he chuckled.
"Bye, Steve."
0-0
"You look happy, Cap."
"Something wrong with that, Stark?" the super-soldier snapped, immediately on the defensive and wondering why on Earth he let them convince him to move into Stark Tower.
"No, not at all. I'm just wondering what's got you in such a good mood. Care to share?"
"No." Steve quickly left the room, a glass of apple juice in-hand, before Tony could irritate him any further.
Tony turned to Bruce, who was reading a newspaper.
"Think it's a girl?"
"Could be. And don't meddle Tony," the scientist added seeing the other man's expression.
"Me? Never."
0-0
She walked in at exactly 7:30AM, just as she always did, and went up to the counter to order her coffee. Instead of taking her usual corner table, she walked straight to his table and sat down, stowing her bags by her feet.
"Morning, Steve," she greeted quietly.
"Morning, Mel." He noticed she also had a paper bag with her today along with her coffee. She reached into it, pulled out a muffin, and silently offered it to him. "Thanks," he said and bit into it, not really questioning the random muffin gift. It was chocolate chip– his favourite. She reached into the bag again and took out a bagel and a packet of cream cheese. After quickly spreading the cheese onto the two bagel slices, she practically inhaled them. She stopped halfway through the second when she spotted him staring at her with a half-grin.
"Sorry, didn't mean to gross you out, I probably look like some starved animal eating its first meal in days."
"Don't worry about it. It's nice to see a gal who doesn't seem to starve herself." He thought back to the times he'd seen women in this time eat, and always noted that there wasn't much on their plates.
"I could never go on a diet; I eat like four times a day and then still want dessert before bed." She finished off the bagel and to his surprise pulled out another from the brown paper bag. "Want half?"
"Sure." She handed it to him and slid a packet of cream cheese and a knife across the table to him. "You don't want any?"
"It's cinnamon raisin, which I prefer without cheese," she replied and then took a large bite of the bagel. Steve on the other hand took the time to spread a thick layer of cream cheese onto his slice before devouring it.
"Well," he began hesitantly, "When do I get to draw you?"
"Now, if you want."
Steve opened his sketch book to a blank page and picked up his pencil. Mel shifted awkwardly, not quite sure what to do with herself. She settled on taking out her BlackBerry and playing solitaire.
"So," she said, uncharacteristically being the first to speak, "You from New York?"
"Yeah, this city's home for me." Or at least it was, he thought. "What about you?"
"Nope, moved here a few months ago." Steve lifted his eyes from his sketch to look at her.
"Where from?"
"Here, there, pretty much everywhere, most recently D.C."
"You moved a lot?" he asked and continued the outline of her hair, braided and peaking over her shoulder.
"Yeah, but when I was old enough to live on my own I settled down in D.C…. sort of. I had a friend there who let me room with her for a few years."
"What did you do there? College? University?"
"Not really, I managed to get a couple degrees. Somehow. You?"
"I studied fine arts for a bit before I joined the army." He wasn't sure how much of his real life he could use. He definitely couldn't tell her about the serum or that he was Captain America, but he never really warmed to the idea of lying to people about himself. Natasha and Clint had given him some tips about keeping a secret identity, but it still meant lying to some extent, and Steve didn't like discrediting human relations by doing that. Even if the world around him was already running that race.
"Hmm… Military," she mused. "You look the part," she added mostly to herself, though he heard it and blushed faintly. "Are you still with them?"
"Ah, no, not really. I'm a government consultant now." She could tell the subject was making him uncomfortable (and she being very familiar with uncomfortable turns in conversation) so she changed the subject, whether subtly or not-so-subtly she didn't quite care.
"I have your photos, want to see them?" He nodded but continued his drawing. He was trying to get her nose right, but couldn't seem to get it. An envelope was tossed onto his sketch pad, easily disrupting his concentration.
Steve opened the envelope and found three 5x7inch photos of himself inside.
"I'm certain you took more than three photos."
"I did, but these three were the best. The others didn't meet my standards." The first was of him looking out the window watching for purple cars, but in the single photo he looked to be thinking deeply about something. It was taken from a low angle, and though Steve didn't know much about photography, he thought it was a good picture. The next showed him drinking from his mug, the front window and the street outside it as a soft background.
"Purple car count– one." He pointed to a violet sedan (that was leaning more toward being a smudge than a car) nosing into the shot and was rewarded with a smile. The last photo was when she told him to look at the camera. Each pictured showed clearly the warmth and glow of the café. "They're really good," he said and pushed the pictures toward her, only to have them pushed right back. He looked at her quizzically.
"Let's call it an early Christmas present."
"But you paid to develop them, they're yours." He slid them back toward her.
"First of all, I used a digital camera, so no film was used. Second, I didn't pay to print them. I work at a photo portrait studio and get to print as many photos as I want and it doesn't cost me a penny." She pushed them back again.
"You took the photos therefore they are your creations and are yours." He punctuated his sentence by shoving them to her fingertips.
Mel sighed in exasperation and took the photos, though she couldn't help but smile a little on the inside. She tucked the photos into the envelope and then sealed it with a quick lick to the edge of the flap. Grabbing Steve's pencil she scribbled something onto the back and then, rather formally, held her arm out, the envelope once more being given to Steve.
Steve quirked a brow and took the envelope. On it, in messy writing, was written:
To Steve, From Mel
Merry Early X-mas
"Mel, you can keep them, seriously." She suddenly developed a devious look that did not fit with the image of the shy girl he'd seen before.
"I get it, you don't like the photos…" she said miserably, frowned with the slightest of pouts, and trained her gaze on the floor. Steve immediately backtracked and tried to amend the situation. A small part of him knew that she was toying with him, but the larger part fell back on his usual ineptness with the opposite sex.
"N-no! They're amazing, there's absolutely nothing wrong with them! It's just… I mean I… it wouldn't… You're enjoying this, aren't you?" he sighed.
"Just a bit," she admitted with a tiny grin. "We could try a compromise."
"Better than this endless back and forth."
"You keep two photos, I keep one."
"How 'bout I keep one photo and you keep the other two." She stared at him for a long moment.
"Fine, I'm not going to get any closer than that, am I?" Steve shook his head 'no'. She plucked two photos from the envelope after tearing it open. Once the photo of Steve smiling nervously and of him drinking his coffee were safely put away in her bag, they fell into a mostly-comfortable silence– Steve continuing his sketch, and Mel starting another round of solitaire. When a wall clock chimed nine o'clock, Mel had to go, to the displeasure of Steve who still hadn't gotten her nose right.
"See ya, Steve."
"Bye, Mel." It never occurred to him to call her 'Ma'am' now that he knew her name. Even without counting his time in the ice he figured he was older than her. He could call her 'Miss', but he doubted she would like that. No, if he was going to even try to fit in, at least a little, in this strange world, he would have to adapt to a few changes.
He hoped that maybe Mel could help him with that.
