Draw Me Your Worries | S. Rogers x Reader

Ch. 4 - Still-Life

Steve was gone for the next week due to being on a mission in some other European country. He wished he could say that it was familiar, but working for SHIELD wasn't at all like leading the Howling Commandos. It was stressful and mentally draining.

And beneath all those suits and ties, sunglasses, and spy gear, Steve just knew that there was something that SHIELD was still hiding. He uncovered a major flaw in their system when he was first on their heli-carrier, who's to say that they weren't hiding anything more? Something they are either totally aware of and not telling him, or it may even be something they're completely unaware of. Either way, something just didn't sit right with him.

Half the reason he stayed was because he felt like he was helping people, and the other half was knowing that Peggy helped found SHIELD.

He missed a week's worth of those art classes, which he was disappointed with. He really liked the first two classes he went to and he wanted to attend more. He wondered what the class did the last few days.

What did y/n do while he was gone? Did she wonder where he was? Did she still sit in the same spot or did she move to sit next to someone else?

He admired her. She was an amazing artist, and undoubtedly a future scientist. MIT was where Howard graduated from, and he assumed Tony went there too. Perhaps she aspired to be like them in terms of intelligence. The fame and the riches? Even though he didn't know her that well, he just couldn't imagine her wanting that.

Steve found himself longing to sit beside her again, to hear the faint scratches of pencil on paper as the art class he quickly grew to find comfort in worked on their sketches. He got back on Sunday, just in time to get some much needed rest and go to that red bricked building the next day.

He sat down at his seat right at 3:00, every few seconds he glanced at the entrance to see when she would come in. He didn't have the slightest clue as to why he wanted to see her so badly. He just did.

And when she did show up, he was ecstatic.

She approached her usual spot with a dazzling smile on her face, tucking her supplies close to her chest. "And where have you been in the last week? I was beginning to think you quit."

Steve had forgotten to come up with an alibi as to why he had been absent. So he simply said, "I had something for work."

"Oh, what do you do?"

"...I'm an Agent." That wasn't even the half-truth.

"Federal?" she asked obliviously, sitting down.

"...Yes."

"Ohh, so I probably shouldn't ask what you were doing, huh? Top secret agent type stuff."

Steve chuckled at her teasing, pink dusting his cheeks. "Probably not."

The instructor then told the class what they were to do that day, which was drawing a still-life.

Curtains were drawn over the large window and the lights were turned off, all except for a lamp shining down on a cluster of white vases, cloth, and three-dimensional shapes the same color. This was supposed to help them practice their shading. The class brought their seats up to sit closer to the still-life, and Steve ended up right next to the girl once again.

Sitting there, less than a foot from her, in the dark, was sending his heart into overdrive. He could barely focus on the shadows under one of the square blocks, but he forced himself to pay attention to dragging his pencil back and forth in circular motions and then carefully blending the lead with a Q-tip.

He could compare this exercise to his own life at the moment. It seemed so black and white to everyone else. Everyone assumed he was fine after waking up alone, and that because he was Captain America, that infamous symbol of hope, that he didn't bat an eye when he lost everything.

But Steve could see in between the black and white lines. He saw the creases in each fold of the white cloth, the gradients of the flat surfaces, and how the light hit each item differently. His life was the same. He was the only person who saw his pain.

So he drew those shadows and gradients like the paper was his pain. He ran straight through a couple pencils, having to get new ones from his case every time one went dull.

And once again, when class ended and the lights turned on, she left quickly. Reasoning with himself, he told himself that she just had somewhere important to be and that she wasn't avoiding him. She talked to him at the beginning of class, so why did her leaving early bother him so much? Steve slowly put his chair back at his desk before going back to his apartment.

He sat at his dining table for a few minutes, just thinking. He had nothing else to do anyway.

That underlying feeling of guilt was weighing him down again. He took out his compass and opened it in front of him on the dining table. Peggy's eyes staring off into the distance with the slightest closed-mouth smile on her, from what he distinctly remembered, red-painted lips.

He got attached to people easily. With both his parents dying when he was 18, he was left with no family. Bucky was pretty much the only friend he had, and no girl was lining up to dance with a guy they might step on. He was so deprived of love that he fell a little too hard when someone showed him even a little amount of affection.

And Peggy, Peggy showed him a lot of affection. She was his first love.

But now that he'd lost everyone and everything he ever cared for, he was left wondering if he'd ever have that again.