Platonic Parker/Steve Rogers, "I'm a rebel just for kicks"
“Ma’am?”
Parker looks down. There’s plenty of ‘down’ to see, hanging upside down from a rig dangling over a gilded, lit box softly glowing in the dark, near-abandoned museum. There were no guards–she’d checked–but somehow her screening must have missed exactly one giant man, blinking up at her with very blue eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Hm…” Parker said. The rope rotated slowly, giving her a view of the open sketchbook on his lap. No guns or knives on him that she could see, though there was something in his shoulders that made her think of Eliot and the way he used his body as a weapon. “What’s it look like?”
That got a startled, half smile from him. He looked familiar. But Parker honestly had trouble placing a lot of faces that weren’t printed on legal dollar bills.
“Stealin’,” he said. He sounded like Brooklyn.
The rope kept spinning. She tried to make it look like it was on purpose. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
Parker hummed. “Saw it in a movie once. Thought it looked like a challenge.”
He huffed a laugh. “Guess that’s as good a reason as any,” he said, a little softer than before. “What’re you gonna do with it?”
Now there was a question. And he hadn’t run screaming for any security. In fact, the mystery of how he was there without anyone watching was getting curiouser and curiouser. Parker squeezed the belayer to sink down a few more feet and he still didn’t twitch or tense.
“I thought I’d fix it,” Parker said. Her gut said it was the right thing to be honest. Sure enough, this guy only blinked. “Then give it back.”
He put his pencil down, closed his sketchbook on a half-finished drawing of this big round room, and much more detailed drawing of a sad, shaggy-haired man wrapped in a flag. “Huh,” he said after a long moment.
Parker slid down the rope until her feet touched the floor next to the hermetically sealed display for the American Constitution. “The movie said this one’s a decoy,” Parker said, feeling the glow light up her face. “I’m not too sure.”
She reached out and offered him a wrench. “Wanna help?”
Steve Rogers grinned, a bright reckless smile.
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A/N Holy shit, is that Beth Riesgraf in the music video??
