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cap_ironman2008-07-03 07:32 pm
elspethdixon.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2008-07-03 07:32 pm
Entry tags:
Alphabet challenge preview!
I'm jumping the gun a little bit by posting the first of my several "A" prompt ficlets today instead of tomorrow, because my main source of reliable internet access (the public library) will be closed for the 4th of July -- the wireless I use at home only works about 1/3 of the time, so just in case I can't get internet access on the 4th, here's "A" ficlet #1 (to be followed by 2-7 tomorrow, my neighbor's wireless connection willing).
Title: A is for Artist
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elspethdixon
Rated: G
Disclaimer:The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work.
A is for Artist
The winter Steve had been nine, they hadn't been able to pay the heating bill, and the heat in the Rogers' tiny apartment had been turned off. It had happened to three other families on their block that January. 1930 had been a bad year for everyone.
His parents blamed the lack of heat when he got sick -- a deep, racking chest cold that got worse and worse and wouldn't go away -- and after several angry late-night arguments that Steve wasn't supposed to have heard, Joe Rogers took his wife's jewelry to the pawn shop and came back with enough money to get the heat turned back on and take Steve to a doctor.
The bronchitis went away after that, but Steve still ended up spending almost two weeks in bed, so bored that even doing the lessons Arnie brought home from school for him was a welcome diversion.
After what had probably been several days of sustained whining -- Arnie was not allowed to come over and play, because he might catch whatever Steve had -- his father had come home with a pack of eight Crayola crayons and a notebook.
He'd managed to make enough money on the docks that week to get Sarah's wedding ring out of pawn, and there had been just enough left over, after paying the butcher and the grocer, for the art supplies.
Steve didn't find out about that part until later, though. Crayons were for little kids, and nine was much too old for kid stuff, but he loved them anyway. He went through four more notebooks before the crayons were finally worn down to nothing. By that point, he was twelve, and his father was gone, and he threw the worn-out stubs of crayons into the river and pretended that his eyes didn't tear up when he did.
He used pencil and ink, mostly, these days. Sometimes charcoal, or prismatic markers. Tools that let you do fine detail work. He didn't pick up crayons again until decades later, when Scott Lang joined the Avengers and brought his little girl with him.
"You can have the Barbie Dream Rock Star coloring book," Cassie announced, with the air of one conveying a great favor. "I'm going to color in the Disney Princess one."
"Thank you," Steve said gravely. He sat down crossed-legged on the floor next to Cassie and opened the proffered coloring book to a random page. "I need yellow for Barbie's hair," he added, after a surveying the black and white picture for a moment.
Cassie dropped an entire fistful of yellow crayons in front of him, everything from a light, lemonade-colored yellow to orangey-yellow to a yellow so dark it was nearly brown. "You should use the shiny one that looks like gold," she instructed. "And put in blue streaks."
"How many shades of yellow are in this box?" Steve asked, startled.
"A lot, I guess. It's one of the great big boxes, with," she squinted carefully at the label, "ninety-six crayons. My Daddy got it for me. Except it's not really ninety-four, because I lost two of the red ones."
"That's a lot of crayons," Steve observed. Then he selected the two shades of yellow that would look the most natural for blonde hair, dug through the massive box to find two more crayons in light brown -- 'tumbleweed' and 'raw sienna,' the paper labels said -- and concentrated on filling in the individual strands of Barbie's hair. The light in the picture, he decided, was coming from the upper left, where the star-shaped stage lights were, so the left side of her hair needed more highlights than the right…
"My dad got me crayons, too, when I was your age," he told Cassie after a few minutes, moving on fill in Barbie's skin with 'apricot.' "No coloring book, though. I'd draw pictures with pencil and color them in."
"Wow." She sounded deeply impressed. "Crayons have been around forever. Was your box of crayons as good as mine?"
"Every bit as good," Steve told her, and realized, with a faint touch of surprise, that he meant it.
Jarvis hung Cassie's picture of Princess Jasmine on the fridge in the Mansion's kitchen. At her insistence, he hung Steve's picture next to it.
* * *
Because my sister and I always wanted the one of the giant 64 or 72 packs of Crayola Crayons (we had a 48 pack).
Title: A is for Artist
Author:
elspethdixonRated: G
Disclaimer:The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work.
A is for Artist
The winter Steve had been nine, they hadn't been able to pay the heating bill, and the heat in the Rogers' tiny apartment had been turned off. It had happened to three other families on their block that January. 1930 had been a bad year for everyone.
His parents blamed the lack of heat when he got sick -- a deep, racking chest cold that got worse and worse and wouldn't go away -- and after several angry late-night arguments that Steve wasn't supposed to have heard, Joe Rogers took his wife's jewelry to the pawn shop and came back with enough money to get the heat turned back on and take Steve to a doctor.
The bronchitis went away after that, but Steve still ended up spending almost two weeks in bed, so bored that even doing the lessons Arnie brought home from school for him was a welcome diversion.
After what had probably been several days of sustained whining -- Arnie was not allowed to come over and play, because he might catch whatever Steve had -- his father had come home with a pack of eight Crayola crayons and a notebook.
He'd managed to make enough money on the docks that week to get Sarah's wedding ring out of pawn, and there had been just enough left over, after paying the butcher and the grocer, for the art supplies.
Steve didn't find out about that part until later, though. Crayons were for little kids, and nine was much too old for kid stuff, but he loved them anyway. He went through four more notebooks before the crayons were finally worn down to nothing. By that point, he was twelve, and his father was gone, and he threw the worn-out stubs of crayons into the river and pretended that his eyes didn't tear up when he did.
He used pencil and ink, mostly, these days. Sometimes charcoal, or prismatic markers. Tools that let you do fine detail work. He didn't pick up crayons again until decades later, when Scott Lang joined the Avengers and brought his little girl with him.
"You can have the Barbie Dream Rock Star coloring book," Cassie announced, with the air of one conveying a great favor. "I'm going to color in the Disney Princess one."
"Thank you," Steve said gravely. He sat down crossed-legged on the floor next to Cassie and opened the proffered coloring book to a random page. "I need yellow for Barbie's hair," he added, after a surveying the black and white picture for a moment.
Cassie dropped an entire fistful of yellow crayons in front of him, everything from a light, lemonade-colored yellow to orangey-yellow to a yellow so dark it was nearly brown. "You should use the shiny one that looks like gold," she instructed. "And put in blue streaks."
"How many shades of yellow are in this box?" Steve asked, startled.
"A lot, I guess. It's one of the great big boxes, with," she squinted carefully at the label, "ninety-six crayons. My Daddy got it for me. Except it's not really ninety-four, because I lost two of the red ones."
"That's a lot of crayons," Steve observed. Then he selected the two shades of yellow that would look the most natural for blonde hair, dug through the massive box to find two more crayons in light brown -- 'tumbleweed' and 'raw sienna,' the paper labels said -- and concentrated on filling in the individual strands of Barbie's hair. The light in the picture, he decided, was coming from the upper left, where the star-shaped stage lights were, so the left side of her hair needed more highlights than the right…
"My dad got me crayons, too, when I was your age," he told Cassie after a few minutes, moving on fill in Barbie's skin with 'apricot.' "No coloring book, though. I'd draw pictures with pencil and color them in."
"Wow." She sounded deeply impressed. "Crayons have been around forever. Was your box of crayons as good as mine?"
"Every bit as good," Steve told her, and realized, with a faint touch of surprise, that he meant it.
Jarvis hung Cassie's picture of Princess Jasmine on the fridge in the Mansion's kitchen. At her insistence, he hung Steve's picture next to it.
* * *
Because my sister and I always wanted the one of the giant 64 or 72 packs of Crayola Crayons (we had a 48 pack).
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I love the drawing with Cassie, it's all at once such a Steve thing to do and yet kind of out-of-sync for "Captain America"
You know he secretly enjoyed it, too, even if he might deny doing so later when Clint or Tony or someone teases him about it.
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Sorry; you didn't sign up for "tell me about your childhood" time. Consider it a compliment; you tapped in to a very large part of being a child with consummate skill. It's difficult at times to remember that Captain America is a person as well as an ideal, but it's impossible not to feel closer to a person who shares a memory and experience that I also hold dear. ♥
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That's it exactly! It wasn't that my sister and I actually needed three times as many crayons as we had, it was just that there were so many colors.
Consider it a compliment; you tapped in to a very large part of being a child with consummate skill.
It was a total accident, I swear ^_^. The original ficlet was going to end after little!Steve tossing the worn out crayons away, but I wanted it to be happy, so I added the Cassie bit, based on coloring Barbie coloring books with my much younger cousin.
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I always made my parents by me the huge boxes of crayons (with the sharpener in the back!), but my older sister would take them and break them.
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Thanks! *grins* Steve
has professional prideis a artist in his spare time, so I figured he would feel compelled to do a good job coloring the picture even if it was a picture of Barbie performing in a pink-themed Rock & Roll band.no subject
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*grins* Every time
Steve's first crushArnie in something about Steve's backstory, it's entirely due to you ^_^.no subject
The story also reminds of the number of adults I know who buy colouring books just because it reminds them of their childhood. And because they're fun, obviously ;)
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The story also reminds of the number of adults I know who buy colouring books just because it reminds them of their childhood. And because they're fun, obviously ;)
If there were Iron Man or Captain America coloring books, I would totally be that adult (as it is, I used to xerox pages from my mom's old Bulfinch's Greek Mythology coloring book that she used for her middle schooler class and color them with coloredpencil).
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Well, I totally just went into flashback mode, so before I ramble on even more I just want to say how much I love this fic. The image of Cap coloring in a Barbie doll coloring book is just too adorable.
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We kept our crayons in a big ziplock bag, because the box broke very quickly (and never had a sharpener, of course, because it was a 48 box).
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Thanks so much! I kind of have this mental image of Tony or someone coming along and finding Steve and Cassie while they're still coloring, at which point Steve has gotten totally into it and is completely absorbed in giving Barbie's back-up singers appropriately-highlighted hair, too, and just grinning in amusment and quietly watching for a bit.
Clint, of course, will tease Steve mercilessly when the picture go up on the fridge. Because that's Clint's job.
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Captain America with crayons and a Barbie coloring book - priceless^^
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"wenn scho, denn scho" (dialect, NOT correct German)
It means that when you do something - regardless of what it is - at least do it properly and stand up for it...
like coloring a Barbie coloring book, Steve.
Clint is going to tease him for that forever^^
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They canz have that many crayons?
I brought a big box ages later when I came across it, but they didn't work.
Steve is lovely.
Re: They canz have that many crayons?
You can apparently now buy a package with over a hundred crayons in it. It's like pure capitalist excess distilled into a colorful waxy form.
My younger sister had both 24 packs and one much-beloved 48 pack at various points (this was in the early-to-mid 90s). The 48 pack was a birthday gift from relatives, I think. The cardboard boxes themselves never lasted more than a month or so, and the crayons would inevitably end up all combined together in a gallon-sized zip-lock bag.