Thanks to everyone who read and to Qweb, 1983Sarah, TheShadowArchitect, Ratiq, Borrowed Twenties, Book girl fan, A, and cztelnik for eviewing. I'm still around, just very busy.
Steve appreciated the opportunity offered by the community center. He really did. After all, he didn't have any relevant work experience, and the only computer knowledge he could claim was from working on the machine Tony had given—loaned—him. And they were paying him good money...he knew it wasn't much by today's standards, but compared to what his mother had brought home it was even more exorbitant than what he was paid at the grocery.
Having said that, he was very close to wishing for another alien invasion.
It wasn't that the data entry job he'd been given was difficult, difficult would have been fine. He'd always been one to enjoy a challenge. No,the job was just repetitive. In the extreme. It wasn't the same kind of repetitive that unloading trucks for the grocery store was, either, at least there he was up and moving around and burning off some energy. Here he was alone in a small room sitting and staring and typing. And typing. And typing. He knew the clock on the wall wasn't broken, he could hear it ticking faintly, but the speed at which it was ticking…maybe it needed to be wound. Or shot.
It wasn't like he was learning from what he was typing either; that would have made it more bearable. But all he was doing was transcribing what seemed to be an endless string of names and numbers—at a guess from sign-in sheets—and the closest it got to interesting was when he had to decipher some particularly bad handwriting. Oh, sometimes he'd start to type a name and the machine would finish it for him—names he'd already typed a few times before, as far as he could tell—but it didn't happen nearly enough for his tastes. Apparently this was how stuff actually got into the computers here in the 21st century when JARVIS or someone like that wasn't involved.
The door creaked, and he tried to keep the relief off his face as he looked up to see the woman who'd given him the assignment, Mrs. Anderson, enter. Hopefully she had something else for him to do for his last two hours here today. He was barely a third of the way through the pile of papers he'd been given which meant that he'd have to finish dealing with it at some point, but right now he needed a break. "Ma'am," he greeted.
"Mr. Rogers. How's it going?"
"I'm making progress." It was true and as enthusiastic as he could be under the circumstances.
"How much have you gotten done so far?"
He indicated the pile to his right and tried not to think about the pile on his left.
She gave him a skeptical look. "You understand that you need to enter every name on every page, correct?"
"Yes. I marked the 'check' box for any that I wasn't sure of, as you said."
Her frown didn't fade. "The temp agency didn't mention that you were a particularly fast typist."
Oh. Oops. He'd been trying so hard to get through that stack that he probably had been typing faster than the average person would have been. Or possibly could have been. Keyboard keys were in the same places that typewriter keys had been once upon a time, after all. The angle was a little different, and the function of some of the special keys still escaped him especially since this computer wasn't exactly like the one Tony had loaned him, but that didn't really matter for names or phone numbers. "I've been focused," he said.
"Hm. Well, would you mind taking a break and giving us a hand? We've got a pre-K party in the back room this afternoon, and we can't find the stepstool. I think you might be tall enough to hang balloons without it."
"Sure, not a problem." At all. Anything to get him out of this room and away from the pile of papers. He marked his current page and set it aside—on his left, unfortunately—and stood.
Mrs. Anderson didn't seem to be one for small talk, but an older woman throwing tablecloths over some long tables in the room she led him to smiled brightly at Steve's entrance. "Hi, you must be our in-lieu-of-stepladder. I'm Carrie Lopez."
"Steve Rogers, ma'am. Nice to meet you."
"You as well, and I'm guessing you're from the military," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Just got out?"
"Not long ago." At least not in his view. The eighty years in the ice that he couldn't remember didn't really count.
She nodded. "It took my son a while to get used to not calling everyone sir and ma'am all the time too."
As far as Steve was concerned that had nothing to do with the military and everything to do with proper manners, but she'd already turned away to collect something from the table behind her. And it would have been rude to contradict her anyway.
"If you could just take these streamers and put them up around the room," she said, turning back around and handing him a roll of thin paper and some tape. "Preferably high enough that a bunch of jumping five year olds won't be able to pull it down. It looks nice if you twist it a few times as you go, and then where the tape is attached just put a balloon over it."
The pile of balloons she meant was obvious enough, and he nodded.
"So Margie says you're the one we pulled in to finally transcribe the visitor logs," Mrs. Lopez said as he started to work.
Margie presumably being Mrs. Anderson, and he nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"That's quite a job. It'll be nice to have it done, though. Somehow it always feels like we're a few years behind the times here. Suppose that's the nature of the beast when almost everything comes from donations, though. You should have seen the mess it caused when we finally upgraded the phone systems. I'm still not sure what some of the new functions are."
That was a situation that Steve was entirely too familiar with, and he nodded in sympathy. A few more minutes and he had the last of room circled in paper, and he moved on to the balloons as she dug around in one of the wall cabinets and retrieved a stack of brightly colored plates. "Do you hold parties like this a lot?" he asked.
"Oh, every couple of weeks, I'd say. There are all different themes. This one is a pre-K graduation party for some of our ESL kids, there are holiday parties to showcase different cultures year round, once in a while someone gets a room for a birthday although those we have to charge for so that's less common. That kind of thing."
"And you're the organizer for all of that?"
"Mona—that's Mona Walker, I don't know if you've met her yet—and I take turns. Officially I'm the activity director for the center and she's the cultural director, but with a mostly volunteer staff everyone pitches in where they can. For example I'm pretty sure that basic self-defense classes aren't cultural, but Mona's on the phone right now trying to wrangle us a new instructor. Ours just left for a higher paying job somewhere in Manhattan." She shook her head. "I can't blame him, he's got bills to pay too, but that kind of thing happens a lot."
Steve paused, one arm still reaching up with a balloon in his hand. "I can teach self-defense." He'd like to teach self-defense. Why hadn't the temp agency told him that a job like that was available?
"I'm…." She broke off for a moment, seemingly searching for words. "I'm not sure that military style training would work for most of our students," she finally continued. "We're generally looking for people with some background in teaching as well as martial arts ability. Do you have anything like that?"
"No, I mean, I've never taught anything formally, but I've helped people before. And I know more than military style. Honestly, I didn't have a real growth spurt until after I was already in the army." Which was perfectly true, even if the 'growth spurt' he'd had hadn't been entirely natural.
When she turned to face him she looked a little dubious, but after a moment she nodded. "Well, the first class we need an instructor for is tomorrow evening so if we don't find a teacher with the specific qualifications we were looking for in our advertisement, we might let you give it a shot. It'll be on a trial basis, though, and only if you're sure you're interested. We can't pay much, like I said, and when we change teachers multiple times in a month it makes it hard on the people who come to learn."
"I'm willing to try," Steve agreed. That kind of thing sounded like something he'd be happy to volunteer for even if they couldn't pay him at all. "Is it an open class, or a children's class, or something else?"
"Tomorrow night is the open class for ages sixteen and up, but Andy also taught women's and children's classes on Saturdays."
"So how goes life in the working world after six am, Spangles?" Tony asked as Steve stepped off the elevator.
"I don't think I'm a good fit to spend my days typing," Steve said with a shake of his head.
"Typing what? Have they've got you writing grants or something? You should talk to Pepper, she knows everybody in the nonprofit department." He frowned, turning in a circle. "What am I doing down here?"
"I don't know. You were here when I got here. And I was typing names and phone numbers."
"Hm." Tony waved a hand. "Well, it'll come to me eventually. Why don't people type their own names and phone numbers?"
"I think they're all from sign in sheets."
Tony shook his head. "Tablets, people, tablets. Oh, right. Oven."
There was no connection between those two statements that Steve could see, but Tony turned and made a beeline towards the public kitchen. Where one of his robots had broken the oven, as Steve suddenly recalled. "Can I help?"
"Sure, that'll save me from getting You involved again."
"I—" Steve broke off with a shake of his head. "Why did you name your robot You? It makes things kind of confusing."
"It does, doesn't it? Dummy was a much better choice. Come on, help me get this thing out."
It would have been easier for Steve to move the oven himself, but Tony had already hooked his fingers around the back and started tugging so Steve just stepped in on the other side. It was more awkward than heavy, but eventually it slid free and Tony was able to get the job done. Steve couldn't have done it himself, but he did see where the part Tony pulled from his pocket went, and apparently wiring that was all that was needed because five minutes later he was helping Tony push the stove back.
"Excellent, one thing crossed off my to do list. So I take it that means you won't be going back to the community center tomorrow? Does the temp agency have anything else lined up for you?"
Another random swing in conversation, but that was pretty common with Tony, and Steve shook his head. "No, I'll be going back. I said I'd finish entering the data from the sign in forms." He wasn't going to go back on his word, however little he was looking forward to it. "And besides, Mrs. Walker didn't find anyone this afternoon so they're going to let me teach a self-defense class in the evening." Like he'd told Mrs. Lopez he'd never officially taught anything before, but he'd done it plenty of times informally with the Howling Commandos, and he was surprised at how much he was looking forward to it.
"Why didn't they sign you up to teach the self-defense class to start with and find someone else to type names and phone numbers?"
Steve shrugged. He didn't know how job agencies worked. "I don't have exactly the qualifications they want so maybe that's why my name didn't come up."
"Being Captain America doesn't qualify you?" He shook his head before Steve could point out that he wasn't advertising that part. And besides, it didn't come with a teaching qualification either. "What kind of self-defense, anyway?"
"Basic hand to hand. The general adult class is tomorrow, but there are also classes for women and children on the weekends."
"Oh, I'm sure the women there will just love you."
Steve flushed at his smirk. "It's a class, Tony."
"You think that'll make a difference?" He shook his head and his grin grew. "I ought to come along and take pictures."
Steve's first reaction was 'don't you dare,' but he was very sure that Tony did dare. And would probably take unholy glee in the entire thing. Maybe he could enlist Bruce or Pepper to keep Tony far away. "I still have to do well tomorrow to be allowed to teach more," he said. "Shouldn't put the cart before the horse."
"Welcome to the new century, we have cars these days. I have a flying suit of armor. Oh, you know what else you ought to do? Take before and after pictures of you to the children's class and tell them to make sure to eat their veggies. That'll make the mothers love you too."
"That's dishonest."
"What, Captain America doesn't think children should eat their vegetables?"
"Of course they should, but—" Steve broke off with a shake of his head. "Do you need help with anything else on that to do list?" Tony was in his favored uniform of jeans and t-shirt so he probably didn't have any official Stark Industries business to be getting to—or, if he did, it wasn't soon enough that JARVIS felt the need to warn him about it—and right now Steve really wanted something to distract Tony from any more ideas about what Steve should do for his possible new job.
"I have a to do list?"