Unexpected

Memory Lane

I watched Steve's reaction out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge how he felt about having an exhibit. His face was blank though, steadily so. After what felt like a solid minute of silence between us I finally spoke up, "Steve."

"Hm?"

"You okay?"

A few seconds passed before he responded again, "Yeah."

"So... what do you, I don't know... want to do about this?"

"Let's check it out."

"You sure?"

He nodded determinedly and we set off in search of the Captain America exhibit. It was on the first floor on the other side of the museum. As we approached we caught sight of banners with Roger's face in uniform plastered on them. Going down the escalator I saw a wall at the front of the exhibit with a quote from President Ellis welcoming the Captain back. Next to the entrance was the title of the exhibit, "Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage". Over a speaker a narrator spoke, calling Steve a hero to our nation, a symbol. Keeping our heads down so as not to attract attention to ourselves, we made our way past a mural of the Captain, a patriotic and stoic expression on his face, with the American flag in the background.

"I knew you had a bit of a big head, Steve, but this is ridiculous." I joked warily, still trying to gauge Roger's mood.

He grinned back at me, "At least it's not as big as Tony's."

I chuckled back at the genuine smile. He was taking this all rather well. Catching up to him we wandered into a section dedicated to pre-serum and post-serum Steve. Old pictures of scrawny little Rogers, of his family, and of 1940's Brooklyn littered the exhibit's show cases. Strolling up to a pair of large screens depicting pre-serum Steve I read his statistics.

"You used to be five-foot-four?" I giggled standing next to the picture as the real Steve watched me, grinning with his arms crossed as he watched my antics, "Dude, you were shorter than me!"

"I was shorter than a lot of people."

"Aw, but you were cute, look at-" I cut myself off as I turned around to see that the screen had shifted images to show Steve as he currently was, post-serum.

He rolled his eyes, scooping my arm in his and dragging me away, "Enough of that now."

We moved to check out a wall that had the song, "The Star Spangled Man with a Plan" along with a picture of a line of red, white, and blue show girls. In the center of the picture was Steve lifting a motorcycle with three girls on it over his head. "Oh, I need a picture of that!"

"No you don't." A blush was creeping onto Steve's face again as he tried to steer me away from the picture.

"Yes I do. Go pose next to it! I need to show Rumlow this and Nat too when she gets back!"

"No way."

"Let's do a selfie in front of it then! It'll block most of it out! Come on!" I pulled at his arm, trying to bring him down to my level as I struggled to get the both of us in the picture while also capturing as much of the snapshot of the performance as I could.

"Want us to give you a hand?" An older couple asked, noticing my struggle as they passed by.

I blushed, not usually one to strike up conversations with strangers, "Actually, yeah, that'd be grea-"

"No need!" Steve tried to insist, cutting me off.

"Here." I handed them my phone before Steve could swipe it from me, dodging below his arm.