Of Chats and Predators.
Steve stared at his phone while he ate his breakfast. Eleanor had just arrived at her school for her day of classes and he hadn't decided what he was going to do for the rest of his day. The possibilities were endless, and he was starting to get tired of doing nothing, his trip to DC had been a nice break from his normal routine. He was considering trying another book or heading out to try and buy.
He was brought out of his thoughts when Pepper walked into the room. It was Tuesday, and so she didn't start work until noon, because she mostly dealt with the West coast part of the company. Still, despite it only being 8 o'clock, she was up and moving about. She sat at the counter and they exchanged greetings.
"What are your plans for the day Steve?" she asked, more for conversational purposes than anything else.
"I'm not sure yet, I've already gone on my run, and I'm running out of activities."
Pepper nodded her head and took a sip of her coffee. "You seem to be getting restless, we've noticed you've been spending a lot of time out of the tower"
Steve acknowledged her with a nod. "I can only train so much before I get out of my mind."
"You could ask SHIELD push your medical evaluation forward." Steve stared at her for a minute. Eleanor had also mentioned working with SHIELD to get back into doing something, putting his life toward a goal. He liked the idea of reenlisting into the program that his friends in the 40s had put together piece by piece, still, he knew that'd take him away from New York. Clint and Natasha spent most of their time in DC. While it was only a few hours away, it felt like forever. New York had always been his home- New York or with Bucky—and now it was all he really had left, even if it looked nothing like it did when he was growing up.
Pepper was moving around the kitchen once more looking for something.
"I don't know," Steve said carefully. "DC is a ways away."
"That's true, but change is good. I was born in Sacramento. It's nice to visit, but it was hard to grow there." She touched the counter and it lit up like a computer screen, she seemed to be flipping through a few recipes. "Aside from us, there's not much keeping you here, right?"
Steve's mind went to a certain brunette. He had a lot more than the Avengers residing in the tower to think about. As if she'd read his mind, his phone – face down- vibrated right after the picture of her grin in his head had disappeared.
Pepper glanced at her own phone before looking at his, bewildered for a second that she wasn't the one being massaged. Her eyes shot up to meet him, eyes narrowing "Who's texting you?" That specific weekend, everyone was in the tower so while not unfounded, usually the team just asked JARVIS to pass on a message.
For this reason, Steve knew who it was—Eleanor—and felt a bit protective over her identity. What would Tony do if he met her? What would Ella's reactions be? She may have a bit of a spark and the more he'd gotten to know her the more she seemed to be a bit of a fireball – quick with wit and sarcasm. However, he still worried the team was overwhelming. Steve watched his phone vibrate once more before quickly pulling it off the table and pocketing it.
"Just a friend." He could feel the imaginary Bucky in his mind cringe. He'd always been a really bad liar.
"A friend?" Pepper smirked and lifted an eyebrow, leaning forward onto her elbows. "Is this the same person you've been spending all your time out of the tower with?" Caught. Steve wasn't sure how much the rest of those living in the tower knew, but they HAD noticed him going out more often and for longer periods of time.
Steve tried to think of a way around the topic, but he was cornered at that point "Don't tell Tony about her".
Pepper looked positively playful. "So it's a her?" She pressed.
"Yeah. Eleanor. I met her in the park. She's a teacher." He put a hand to the back of his head and felt a bit uncertain on how much information to give the Co-CEO of one of the biggest companies on the entire planet.
"Have you done a background check on her?"
Steve just stared at pepper. First, where would he get the resources for a background check? Secondly, "a background check?"
"Yeah to make sure she's not actually someone sent to spy on you?"
His rush of protectiveness came out in a flurry. He couldn't think of a less genuine person than Eleanor. He may not be a fully trained Shield Agent, but he was very good at detecting lies. And even then a spy was very unlikely to get mugged and have to sit on the phone canceling all of her accounts. Eleanor even had to go to the DMV to get a new license and she showed him the process of filing a police report for robbery. "She's not a spy," He said unyieldingly.
"People act Steve. Catfishing is-"
"I know what catfishing is" Steve interrupted. Eleanor had explained it to him when they sat on her couch one day and she was buying a new textbook off of craigslist. Steve wasn't super sure what the website was for, but she'd explained that there was a new era of dating and information sharing that sometimes got people into trouble.
"Okay. I trust you. I'm sure she's a nice woman. You've been in a good mood for a while." Pepper backed up and encouraged the conversation some more.
"She's been very helpful to my adjustment and—I haven't had a friend to make me feel normal in quite a while. I can just get out and be myself." The redhead in front of him nodded her head in understanding, smiling at him softly.
"I'm glad you've found someone that makes you feel like that. Is she pretty too?"
Steve felt his face gain a bit of color. Moving to the photos on his phone, he flipped the phone around to show Pepper a picture of Eleanor at the baseball game. She was pointing at the field behind her and making a funny face, her lips pursed and pushed to the side with her eyes as wide as they go. If you held the picture down, it'd show the seconds after it was taken when she laughed and began to shake her head.
"Oh wow. She looks super sweet. You should invite her to dinner sometime, I'd love to meet her."
"I want to I just don't want her to be—" Steve tried to think of the right non-offensive word.
"Overwhelmed?" Pepper suggested.
"Yeah. The tower is just- a bit much. Sometimes for me too."
"Hence why she's been kept a secret." Pepper winked. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone."
Steve was relieved that she seemed to understand where he was coming from. It felt very good that now there was at least one person know who knew what he was up to and where he was. Someone he could confide in at the very least. For a few minutes, they chatted about how Eleanor and Steve met and their weekly lunches, which eventually turned into spending more and more time with each other. It gave Steve a lot of confidence to talk about the things he had done on his own, and his education on pop culture and technology. As the conversation continued, Pepper nodded her encouragement at him and asked questions about different topics that he'd covered and the type of life that Eleanor lived, gaining more and more of a full picture. They sat until pepper's coffee was cold and almost finished.
Pepper opened her mouth to ask another question, but the elevator binged, and Bruce walked out of it. Instead of bringing it up, Pepper grabbed her coffee mug to walk it back to the kitchen for another cup and she fluidly changed the topic. "Well, if you want any ideas for your next dinner or want to talk more about it, I've got a whole list of places that I've heard are good. If I wasn't in a cooking experimental phase, I'd definitely be working my way down the list." Steve felt an overwhelming sense of thankfulness toward Pepper as she winked at him and tipped her glass to Bruce, asking him how his morning was going.
Steve glanced at his phone realizing he never sent a message back- Eleanor's had been on her newest lesson plan continuing a "literary techniques" unit. She'd just been complaining that alliteration was possibly too advanced for the seventh graders in an Urban school. Sending a message back asking about the class size and what exactly she meant by alliteration, Steve slipped his phone into his pocket on silence and re-entered the conversation with Bruce and Pepper.
Ella was having a relatively good day at work. After talking with some of the teachers at the middle school, it sounded like one of the English teachers in the high school was going to need a maternity substitute to take over her classes right after Halloween, and she was very excited to chat with Eleanor about the possibility, and Eleanor couldn't help but feel a bit of relief at the idea of having a steady job for two or three months.
During the classroom breaks, she'd sent Steve a text or two, mostly about the students she was teaching and the ridiculous questions they'd asked her thus far. She loved Seventh graders, but they were so clueless. They thought they were the center of the world and nothing else mattered. It was nice to hear their blunt thoughts and opinions, however, their lack of understanding on how the world worked made it more and more difficult to communicate. Also-Slang? She wasn't sure what it meant for something to be 'crank' but it sounded alright?
When lunch rolled around, she grabbed her container of leftovers from the night before and moved toward the staffroom. When she opened the door, she realized it most definitely was not the staff room. Instead, she'd walked into the room of what looked to be a biology teacher. She was lucky that he too was on a break and there wasn't a class in session.
With the door opened abruptly, the man spun on his heel. He was tall but slightly shorter than Steve, his dark hair had the occasional speck of grey in it, face friendly and his glasses were slipping down his nose. The button-down shirt he wore was long sleeve but it had small pictures of boats speckled throughout it. He gave her a smile at her entrance.
"Hello?" He said questioningly, waiting for her to state the reason she'd entered his classroom.
"Oh! Hi. I thought this was the Teachers room. Eleanor, I'm subbing today" She took a few paces further into the classroom to shake his hand.
"Harold. You missed it by two doors. Let me grab my lunch and I'll show you." The man pulled a container out of his cabinet. He motioned to the door. The two walked out and over to the teacher's room, which had a sign on the door she should have noticed when it was first pointed out to her. She heated up her lunch first and sat with one other teacher at the table who seemed to be munching on some type of ramen lined with kimchi. The smell emitted across the whole room.
Harold and the female teacher sitting chatted cordially over her very strong-smelling food, and they all talked about how well their day had been so far. Eleanor kept shifting her mind back to the idea of working at this school for a few months. The atmosphere was friendly, the teachers were friendly. The students were still low income, but she liked working with the ones that struggled more—the rewards were bigger. And she could really do with some more long term subbing on her resume.
A few moments before lunch finished, she stood up with the biology teacher and walked with him back down the hallway they came. Their conversation was friendly, finishing on how his favorite book was in the Sci-fi genre and didn't match his biology Major degree in college. With a wave, she moved to finish out her classes.
As the day ended, Eleanor grabbed her bag from the desk and shut and locked the door. On her way to the office to drop off the key, she noticed Harold standing outside his classroom, watching the students as the stragglers finished grabbing their books and started to leave the school. He'd spotted her first and was already waving at her.
She gave him a smile and a wave in response, and he motioned her over. Making her way across the hall he spoke to her first. "I was going to swing by your class in a minute, are you already headed out?"
"I am, the substitute doesn't get nearly as much work as the teacher, right?" The Biology teacher nodded. He motioned into his classroom.
"Come have some tea before you leave, I'd love the company." Eleanor looked at him closely but all he did was smile. She'd heard the students talking briefly about how he wasn't a bad teacher (not as bad as the Mathematics teachers). Shifting her bag on her shoulder she nodded, also not wanting to seem rude or unapproachable—especially considering she might be subbing once school came around. Once she was inside, He shut the door behind him when he walked in and moved closer to her.
"Just put your bag on the table, I keep the kettle on my back table."
Thanking him, Eleanor set her bag on a desk in the front of the room. She glanced at her phone to see she had one message from Steve, asking her if school had finished. She felt her lips quirked up. He had been texting her a lot more recently. He needed a job or a different hobby.
Leaving her phone in her bag pocket, she made her way to the back of the room, only to realize that there wasn't a kettle in the back where Harold stood. He looked at her not-so innocently. Immediately she knew she'd made a mistake. He approached her and invaded her personal space, pushing her back was against the wall his mouth too close to her face to be pleasant. "Oh, come on baby, I know you want it. You were begging for me at lunch." She pushed him away half in shock and half in anger. Eleanor felt her face turn more and redder as the seconds past. "Don't be so uptight" He told her.
Her mind was almost blank, her heartbeat shifted to thumps in her ears as her adrenaline spiked. She needed an immediate plan of action. First, she had to get around him to the door. "I thought you wanted that maternity position. I've got good pull with the principle here." She paused for a second, but more for what he was suggesting. He went out to reach for her and pull her closer once more, but she dodged around the table. Once she'd grabbed her bag, she spun on her heel.
"You're sick." She pointed right at him; he'd made half an attempt to follow her before realizing she wasn't going to reconsider. After spitting out the words Eleanor was out the door in a flash, speed walking down the hallway and past the last students in the building. She swung by the office, said a polite goodbye and slipped out the door for the subway. Only when she was on the train was, she able to relax. Taking a few breaths, she glanced down at her phone once more. She felt a wave of anger wash over herself once more.
How dare he? He was a Teacher. She immediately googled her options to call the school and inform them of the incident. She wasn't NOT used to catcalls—she lived in New York after all, but the mere audacity of someone to assume someone wanted to sleep with them in a public space. This was uncalled for and while for a long time she thought New York was progressive… Frustrated by both the fact she'd had a spike of adrenaline just a few weeks ago when she was mugged and this one came so quickly afterward she couldn't help but try to find a way or two to relax. She needed space from the situation and just something to calm her down. In seconds of brainstorming, her hands still shook a bit as she hit the dial button.
"Hello?"
"Hey. What're you doing?" She asked Steve, she tried to seem as nonchalant as possible and his immediate pick up made her feel a lot better. Honestly, just having someone else on the line did. It seemed to calm her anger.
"I'm sketching. School finished? How were the rest of your classes?"
"Got a bit lost on the way to the lunchroom and met this asshole, but classes were good. Students were cute. A seventh grader asked what year in school they'll read the bible. What're you sketching?"
"Asshole? That's strong language. At least you're done for the day. And did you tell the kid that they're only going to read the Bible in church and not to complain? Grammar school and bible study sucked in the 30s." She heard Steve laugh to himself, probably recalling his own memories of the horrid teachers and classes he had to deal with. "I'm sketching the aerospace museum- well, what I can remember of it." Of course, he was, and while he said it so humbly, she knew that he could probably remember every single detail that he saw.
They kept the conversation going, It dropped when they went through one of the tunnels, but she immediately called Steve when she got her signal back. They laughed over the ridiculous expenses of a Stark Phone, and how Steve had never lost service in his life. Over the phone, Steve could tell that something wasn't 100% right, but Eleanor was looking for a distraction, so he followed along with what he could and focused on some of the things he'd done that day. When Eleanor got home, she'd decided she would send an email to the principle and worry about it no longer.
After hanging up when she got off the subway with Steve, Ella walked past the ridiculous gang sitting on the curb, eyes boring into the back of her head and narrowing at her as she approached the building. They seemed to follow her up the stairs and toward her door. When she looked down and spotted Vic, he seemed to cross his arms. This wasn't normal behavior for them—she took note. Were they expecting something to happen? Ella reached the door to her apartment and paused, looking down at the handle. Beyond the guys outside, something felt… off. She turned and looked off the outdoor balcony to see if anyone was watching her, and then glanced at her door again. She unlocked the first two locks, only for the door to almost swing open because the deadlocks were not in place. She always put them into place. Today was really really not her day.
A/N: Review! Favorite! Follow!
Fun fact of the day: My apartment in the Middle of Nowhere Asia has been WATERLESS for a WEEK. Do you know how hard it is to live with only 5L of water? (And that's if I buy a plastic 5l water bottle every day). Life is crazy. While I cry about my inability to wash my hair, here's another chapter. I know I'm on a roll~ I'm excited to have more time to write this summer.
Thanks For Reading
Lots of Love from MONA (Middle of Nowhere Asia)