SHIELD had forcibly taken up Steve's schedule for the next two weeks, but this time Steve sent a text to Y/n to let her know he was going to be gone. He thankfully missed the rest of the time that the nude model would be there. By then Steve was more comfortable working with Agent Romanoff and was able to joke and laugh with her.
He got back just in time to start the painting unit, which would take up the rest of the class times. While they were practicing landscapes outside, Y/n asked him to come over to her apartment that night. He agreed, and they set up plans to meet that evening.
His thoughts wandered while he swiped a bit of brown onto his paintbrush. Was it wrong of him to think of holding her? Actually touching her? The only physical contact they'd had was those few times they'd hand each other something and their fingers would brush together, or that first date when she held his waist, or when he dropped her off at her apartment and she kissed his cheek.
But he thought about taking her in his arms and holding her close to his body. He thought of the way her front felt against his back and imagined his torso flush against hers instead. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and inhale her scent over and over until he was practically intoxicated with it. His mind even went so far as to think about softly pressing his lips to hers.
He'd never initiated a kiss before, but he could try. Because he really wanted to kiss her. He's wanted to for a long time now.
He shaved again, was dressed presentably in khakis and a button-up, and had bought her a bouquet of flowers. He drove to her apartment on his Harley, keeping the wrapped flowers under the large seat so they wouldn't get ruined. He knocked on her door at exactly 7:00pm, the time they agreed he'd come to her apartment. She opened the door.
Steve's heart swelled with affection. His desk partner was kind enough to invite him into her home and teach him about the present when she had every right not to. He didn't even ask her, she offered. That's how kind she was.
"Hi, Steve. Come on in." She opened the door wide enough for him to fit through, and he went inside.
Her apartment has much more inside than his, but that was understandable. He wasn't much of a decorator and he didn't know where to buy a lot of things in the present. So he never bothered to fill his apartment with things other than what SHIELD gave him and some necessities.
His head almost smacked against the top of her doorway as he stepped inside, so he took the precaution of bending his neck forward. The doorway was much smaller than his.
"I made some food if you're hungry," she said, gesturing to a set table.
His eyes widened at the gesture. "You didn't have to do that, Ma'am," he said softly.
"No, it's alright. I wanted to."
Eating the dinner that she made, with her, in her apartment, felt very intimate. She sat right next to him while they ate, their eyes meeting while they talked amongst themselves.
He made her laugh a few times, and each time she covered her mouth in embarrassment. Steve wanted to hear it a million more times and then some. It was most definitely one of his favorite sounds.
"So we should probably start with the internet, huh?"
He had heard about this, "internet", but nobody told him what it was. He always assumed it was what those devices everyone carried around were for, phones. He had one, but it didn't have the internet on it.
"If you'd like."
She got her laptop from a separate room, inviting him to sit on her couch with her. She opened it and signed in, when she did it opened up to a white background with a logo that said, "Google".
"So this is the most widely used platform. There are different ones, like Bing and Yahoo, but it really just comes down to preference or what you grew up learning. You can find these platforms on basically any device."
"Okay. So you can... search for things on the internet? How does that work?"
She shifted closer to him, their thighs brushing together. The urge to pull her close was overwhelming. "That's what Google is for. You type a question into this bar here-" she pointed to the top of the screen. "And you hit the "Enter" key."
"And it just... answers it?"
She hummed. "Do you want me to do an example?"
He nodded, and she took another device in her hand.
"Wait what's that?"
She looked at the smaller device. "Oh, this is a mouse. It controls the little arrow on the screen and allows you to click things on the screen. Like this-"
She moved the mouse and the tiny arrow moved around, then traveled to the bar she mentioned and she clicked on it.
"You can also use this pad here," she said, pointing to a squared-off section of her laptop. "So, what do you want to know?" she asked him.
"What do you mean?"
"Well you can find pretty much any bit of information on the internet, all you have to do is ask."
He thought for a moment, then said, "How did we win the war? How did it all end?"
He crashed into the ice in '45 and was told 70 years later that the Allied forces had won the same year. That the Axis had surrendered and that Captain America was simply a history story.
She shrugged and he watched her type in, "How did WWII end", then hit enter. The screen loaded for less than a second and then a ton of words popped up.
Time flew and they spent the next hour and a half looking up things that happened while he was in the ice. He learned about VE Day, the Baby Boom, the Korean War, the Red Scare, and many many technological advances.
And all of this just happened from 1945 through till the '50s. He missed a lot, but he was optimistic about learning more.
She taught him how to do it himself, and she let him handle her laptop whilst she cleaned up dinner. He studied the major events in the '60s, like the assassination of the President, the Civil Rights Movement, everything on Martin Luther King Jr., the founding of SHIELD, the moon landing, and the Vietnam War. He was fascinated by all these things happening and that he would have gotten a chance to see it all, maybe even be a part of these changes, if he hadn't gone and crashed that bomber plane.
His thirst for discovering everything led him to being in the middle of reading this, "I Have a Dream" speech that MLK gave in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the Civil Rights Movement. He found it inspiring and even got chills, but he was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder.
Steve looked up and saw Y/n smiling down at him. He had disregarded the fact that he was at her apartment, and he felt guilty for using her laptop for so long.
"Hey, it's 10 o'clock, so I was just thinking it's time for you to head home... I have school in the morning."
"Oh, right. Sorry." He set her laptop on her coffee table and stood to his full height, feeling a tad dizzy in the head after sitting still for so long. "Thank you so much for dinner, and for teaching me about the internet. I owe you."
"You don't, I'm happy to help you, Steve. Oh– I almost forgot! Hang on a sec."
She rushed out of the room, confusing him with where she left off. Nonetheless, he waited for her to come running back, holding a red notebook in her hands.
"I got this for you, it's so you can write down all the stuff you see or hear about that you want to make sense of. I wrote down a few things already; like big fashion movements, movie and song titles, other major events in pop culture. I hope it helps."
He took the red notebook from her, the rough pads of his fingers grazing against her soft ones. This was the first real gift he'd ever received from her, and he just knew he'd treasure it forever.
"Thank you," he said softly.
"Of course." She smiled at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
After a moment of hesitation, in a burst of confidence, he decided to lean down and kiss her right cheek. His lips lingered there longer than necessary, but from where he was he could smell her, feel her, and touch her waist gently with one hand. His nose brushed against her cheekbone as he pulled away.
As Steve drove to his apartment, he thought about why she was helping him. She'd only known him a short while, and no one else in the present had done anything close to the kindness she'd been showing him. All the little things; asking him genuine questions, teaching him about the present, and giving him this red notebook. They showed him that she truly cared, more than anyone else did here.
That's when it really sunk in that Steve liked her. He liked her a whole awful lot.
~~~~~~~
Watched Spider-man No Way Home twice, final episode of Hawkeye is coming out tomorrow, Christmas on Saturday, Boba Fett is coming out soon, I'm feeling good.