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Sasha does a quick headcount. The street is not terribly busy, but it's not empty either, which means it's the very best time to be collecting funds. No one is in too much of a hurry, and no one is just chilling, either, so they won't have to worry about getting shoved to the side or interrupting someone's R&R time. Now, for their first donor! Someone with an actual dog would be preferable for starters, someone how likes animals, but hey, there's the leggy white blonde with an angry Chihuahua in her purse. Sasha elbows Nicky and starts to walk her way, but then she zeros in on a cute guy across the street. He looks like he might be waiting for someone, but not, like, anxiously. He's standing ramrod straight, hands in his pockets, watching the street before him with rapt attention, but he's not bouncing or anything. His jawline looks like he likes animals.
He's not surprised when they approach, but he does seem a little shocked when Nicky starts talking to him, and his eyes dart to the side, then back to their clipboards. Nicky takes a deep breath and blinks a couple of times, which she usually does when confronted with a cute boy, and boy, howdy, Sasha thinks.
Yet the guy continues to say nothing, even when his eyes soften and he smiles the most adorable little smile. "It won't take long," Nicky says encouragingly, and yep, Sasha is behind her 100% on this one. This guy is cute, with a capital everything, from his shoulder-length hair, gathered in a bun on the back of his head, down a fitted sweater and an obviously hand-made scarf, to skinny black jeans. Add an earring or two and he'd be fit to grace her poster wall.
He can't even be that old, but whatever, with a face like this who'd bother asking for a birth certificate. Even if he's thirty, or worse.
Eventually they get a tight nod to go with the adorable half-smile, so Sasha launches into their spiel starting with "fur is murder." Technically they are looking to support a local shelter tonight, but it never hurts to remind people of the bigger picture.
This seems to confuse the cutie-pie, however, which has never happened before. He doesn't attempt to interrupt or excuse himself, so they proceed with their presentation, which, for the record, has also never happened before. Sasha starts palming her phone in excitement. First proper day on the job and they get to convert a cute guy to the cause! She hopes he's a vegan. He looks like a vegan. His eyes sparkle and everything, although that might be the neon lights advertising kebabs on the other side of the road.
It's all going swimmingly, and Sasha is this close to asking for a selfie (hello: guy this cute? No way he's getting away without photo-evidence. Sydney will just die), when Nicky turns the page and the guy… disappears.
"What just happened?" Sasha asks, her iPhone at the ready to capture empty space. "Where did he go?" The orange sweater was pretty distinctive, no way he just bolted in either direction. What the heck?
"I don't know?" Nicky looks around frantically, clutching the open binder to her substantial chest. Ugh, Sasha hates her sometimes. Not that her own boobs are small, but Nicky literally made a guy drive into a lamppost once, when she wore that amazing pink sweater. "I swear I only looked down for, like, a second!"
"Aww! He was so cute!"
"Right?"
"Bucky?" someone asks, and the sidewalk is not that crowded they don't immediately see him.
"OMG, that's Captain America!" Nicky squeals.
Sasha finds the presence of mind to close her mouth, but that's it. It is Captain America. Who does he thinks he's fooling with the obviously fake hipster glasses and a baseball cap is a mystery. On the plus side, he's wearing a very nice blue blazer. He's also holding two cones of ice-cream in his hands, and Sasha knows for a fact that the store they're standing in front of serves vegan products only.
#StalksAndSprouts will so be trending once she gets on Twitter tonight!
"Hi," Nicky says a little breathlessly.
"Good evening," he says, not quite paying attention. "Bucky!"
"Did you lose someone?" Sasha asks bravely, even though she is squealing inside.
The Captain pays them half a mind, but clearly makes the effort to at least sound courteous, even when he's jittery with nerves. Could it be he got stood up by a date? "Yes – he's about my height, dark hair, wears an orange sweater and a knitted scarf. Did you see him?"
Oh! Captain America knows the cute guy! That will be the selfie that will win Sasha the prom crown, hands-down, in your face, Sydney! "Oh—he kind of disappeared."
Both the cones go down a level, and tip dangerously. "Disappeared?" Captain America says flatly.
"We were just talking to him about protecting the animals," Nicky says and shakes the open binder.
Cap looks down at it, stares for exactly three seconds, then his eyes meet Sasha's, and all she can think is uh-oh.
"You showed these to Bucky?" he hisses, and the ice-cream cones go flying. Sasha barely registers a slender red-headed woman snatching them both out of the air and helping herself to a bite.
"We're gathering donations to—"
"You showed Bucky pictures of animal carcasses?" Captain America shouts, only not really, 'cause his voice stays on the down low, gaining volume when it gets to Sasha's ears and no sooner.
"We didn't—"
"What possessed you, coming up to people on the street with photos of that!?"
The red-headed woman raises a brow and smirks. Something about her is so familiar, but Sasha can't quite focus. Captain America somehow manages to get in both hers and Nicky's faces at the same time, honest-to-god growling. Growling. Captain America is growling at her.
"We're sorry," Nicky manages. She closes the binder and clutches it to her chest, like a shield. "We didn't mean any—"
"You should be! Bucky's is extremely fragile right now, you can't go 'round showing him pictures like these! What the fuck were you two thinking?"
Holy shit, Captain America is swearing at me, a part of Sasha thinks in excitement. Swearing. Captain America is swearing at me! What are the odds it'd ever happened to anyone else? Granted, it's a tiny part, the one whose job is mainly running the Twitter account @NYgirl1997, because the rest of her is friggin' terrified. She's pretty sure she's not in any actual danger – this is a busy street! – but her knees start to tremble all the same.
"We were just—"
"It wasn't a question!" and yup, he's shouting now. At least Sasha assumes he's shouting, her ears are kinda melting down from the inside, but they're gathering an audience and that's a dead giveaway. Let it never be said New Yorkers can't appreciate a good show. "You can't come up to people and show them photos of skinned dogs, good god! I don't even like dogs and I think it's revolting, and Bucky liked—likes dogs!"
"We're sorry!" Sasha blurts out, on the verge of tears. "We didn't know—"
"Didn't know what, that people might not want to look at detailed photos of bloody remains of dogs in the middle of the street? You needed to be told that nobody likes to look at dead animals, let alone mutilated carcasses of animals?"
"Steve," the red-head says.
"What on earth is wrong with you!?" Captain America shouts, and if he wasn't a full foot taller than both Sasha and Nicky (well, a foot and an inch for Nicky, Sasha's the tall one, between the two of them), he'd certainly be taller now that they both shrink into the pavement, swallowing tears. "Go take your sick little games to someone who enjoys it and get out of my sight!"
"Alright, enough." The red-head grasps his arm, pulls until Captain America stumbles into the attractive black fellow who's been watching from behind her, and points up. With the Captain's attention diverted, she steps up to them and pulls out her wallet. "You're with PETA?" she asks, and Sasha doesn't have it in her to say that no, not exactly, she has her doubts, but the shelter is sponsored by PETA, but totally legit. She checked! "I'm sorry to say I was a proud owner of a fur coat at one point, and I don't really support your organization. Still, you've earned it. Make sure it goes to your animal shelter." She stuffs a couple of hundred dollar bills into the can Sasha's holding and offers them both tissues Sasha's fairly certain she pulled out of Nicky's bottomless pocket. "Now, try collecting in front of the vegan burger place three blocks away. If this ends up trending on social media, in any shape or form, I will find you, and you will regret it. Have a good evening."
Nicky blows her nose as they round the corner. They're both out of breath and shaking, but not quite so badly that they stop when they are out of sight and cautiously peek at the street they just abandoned. The gathering is slowly dispersing, now that the yelling is over. The red-head is terrifying, and that's not just Sasha's quivering knees talking: she's currently staring down a police officer who'd ambled over in the middle of Captain America's rant. Clearly she has powers, because the chubby uniform takes one look at the situation and wanders off, shooting a worried look at the sky above.
Nicky's fingernails dig into Sasha's shoulder. "He's on the lamppost," she hisses, and yeah, Sasha can almost make out a shadow crouched on top of the lamppost, hidden from below by the glaring bulb and the garlands of decorations strewn over the street.
"Who does he think he is, Batman?" Sasha mutters to herself, but then she glances at Captain America and that other cute guy, who are both having a chat with the lamppost. "I am so taking a picture," she says, but when she grabs her phone she finds herself in a staring contest with the red-head, who raises an eyebrow and holds up two fingers, spread in a V-shape, to her eyes, then points at Sasha. "Never mind. Let's go."
Maybe they'll have better luck in front of the burger joint.
#CapAgainstPETA is trending the following morning, and Sasha nearly dies on the phone with Nicky, but the video is blurry and they are hardly recognizable, except to people who already know them, so there's that. Maybe she won't get murdered in her sleep, this is clearly not her fault! On the flip side, however blurry, there's a video of her crying on the internet, which: not good for her chances at making the prom queen ballots, let alone the crown.
On the bright side, while #CapAgainstPETA is making the rounds at a respectable pace (700,000 retweets that same night!), #ACapAndHisBoy goes viral faster than a vid of a tiny hamster eating a tiny burrito: this one's no less blurry, but Captain America is still clearly recognizable as the tall blond who stares up at the sky, holding out his arms, only to have a slim shadow in an orange sweater drop into them from on high and stay there, face tucked into Cap's neck. You can tell the cute guy is magic: Cap doesn't even stagger when the extra weight hits him. Sasha is a cheerleader, she knows her applied physics. It's a feat, to stick a landing like that.
"Man, he was so cute," she says mournfully. "And an athlete!"
"The cutest," Nicky says on the other end of the line. "And I knooooow."
Sasha does win prom queen, despite the video, and proudly delivers the five-hundred forty-six dollars they hauled in for the shelter that evening. She keeps her head down about that, however, just in case, and sometime later congratulates herself, when she remembers why the red-head seemed familiar.
Goddamned Avengers.