Anonymous asked: u wanted prompts: steve takes it upon himself to stand outside planned parenthood clinics and fight people who attack and harass pp
Listen, I see and observe your ‘Steve’ up there, but I raise you Forty Percent of the Marvel Universe because I am bitter about the current direction of the whole comics thing at the moment. *Max Rockatansky voice* I guarantee you, a hundred and sixty days out, there’s nothing but salt. Anyway, if you’ve read my Claire Temple AO3 fic that may or may not get more stuff added to it when I feel inspired, this is technically that universe, but prior knowledge IS NOT REQUIRED, okay good let’s do it. Also I believe that movie canon only applies to me when I feel like it so everyone is in New York and the Avengers live in the Tower, no one is dead and everything is F I N E. I dunno, this is only like the first half of a much longer thing that covers this whole day and, if I had my way, would be a full-blown elaborate media fic with tweets and Trish’s show and everything. But here, it’s real long, so I left it alone. It’s on AO3.
Steve got the call pre-dawn, just as he was leaving the Tower for his run.
“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY said politely from the ceiling, “you are receiving a call from an unknown number with a New York City area code.”
“If it’s a reporter, let it ring out,” Steve said, knotting his running shoes.
“Reporters do not have your personal cell number, Captain,” FRIDAY said, and there was a trace of genteel condescension in the artificial voice this time that made Steve grin down at the floor.
“Where in the City?”
“Hell’s Kitchen.”
Steve frowned, straightening up. “That might be Daredevil in trouble. You better put it through to my phone. Thanks, FRIDAY.”
“Of course, Captain,” FRIDAY said. Steve’s top-of-the-line, not-on-the-open-market-yet, Jesus-Cap-does-your-shit-phone-even-text-here-let-me-replace-it StarkPhone rang, a jaunty tune that sounded distinctly like the National Anthem, and even more distinctly like the foreboding of Bucky getting his ass kicked.
“Steve Rogers,” Steve answered, hitting the green button and raising the phone to his ear.
“Um…hi, Captain Rogers,” the voice on the other end said hesitantly. “This is Claire Temple, I don’t know if you remember me, but–”
“Of course I remember you, Miss Temple,” Steve said, grinning. “You pulled a piece of rebar out of my chest, hard to forget a first meeting like that.” She laughed, the same slightly worn chuckle he remembered from her. “And it’s just Steve, please, ma’am. I think once you’ve been up close and personal with someone’s lung tissue you can probably skip the ‘Captain.’”
“Fair enough, Steve. Then, Claire is fine,” she returned, a smile adding an audible lilt to her voice. “I got your number off Jessica, who I think got it off Matt, I hope it’s okay that I called.”
Steve nodded, automatic and pointless. “Sure, Claire. D’you mind if I ask what fire’s burning down Hell’s Kitchen at, uh–” He twisted his watch and squinted through the dim dawn light streaming through the wide window occupying a wall of the penthouse entry way. “What, five-forty-eight in the morning on a weekend? I thought I was the only person who got up this early, ‘cept for Sam.”
“Oh, no, nothing urgent, I just.” Claire stopped and sighed, and Steve pictured her pinching the bridge of her nose, brow furrowed and eyes closed as she ducked her head—he could tally the number of hours he’d spent in the Night Nurse’s company on his fingers and still have plenty left, but he knew the face she pulled when she was frustrated by the way her life was panning out. “Listen, I have a weird fucking request from an old friend of mine who called me at five in the A-M, and I don’t have the greatest decision-making track record at that hour, so I called you.”
“We specialize in weird fucking requests here at Avengers Tower, ma’am,” Steve said dryly. “Unless you ask my PR team, then we specialize in truth, justice, and the American Way, whatever the fuck that means these days.”
Claire barked a laugh and let out another huff of breath. “Well, you remember how you got arrested along with like twelve other people at that BLM protest a couple weeks back?”
“Sam got arrested too,” Steve said defensively. It had been a long talk with Nicole when she fished the pair of them out of the holding cell, mostly directed at Steve—Sam, she had said with supreme disinterest, was some other poor sucker’s problem. Nicole, the last surviving member of the PR team assigned to the Avengers right out of the gate, was now the captain of Steve’s personal publicity squadron, or so she liked to call herself, and she had Opinions about the sort of trouble he usually got into.
“Yeah, but nobody I know has the Falcon’s phone number,” Claire pointed out. “But so the point is—Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this is what my life is like now. Anyway. My old friend, she and I knew each other in college. We haven’t talked much, but it turns out that she’s helping to manage and run a women’s health clinic about an hour or so north of the City.”
Steve had a sneaking suspicion that this was about to become the next thing Nicole was going to yell at him for. “Yeah?”
He heard Claire take a deep breath and hold it, followed by a couple of hollow thudding sounds that he guessed were her head against the wall before she blurted, “She’s been picketed for three days by the local pro-life jackoffs, and yesterday they were scaring off the girls who came to get treated. She needs a couple people willing to play escort. I already asked Luke but he doesn’t have today free, and Matt wasn’t answering his phone so probably he’s not back yet, so if you know anyone who can take the day…?”
Head tipped back against the wall, Steve grinned up at the ceiling. “I can think of one or two.”
“Steve,” Claire said, clearly warning him, “if your publicist comes after me next–”
“Don’t worry about it, Claire,” Steve said easily. “Nicole knows what I’m like, and besides, Fox News started trying to take cheap shots at Bucky again. Gotta give them something else to talk about.”
“Jesus Christ,” Claire said again, sounding close to awestruck horror.
“Listen, you text the address of your friend’s place to this number and I’ll see what I can do.”
“This is the worst solution I could have come up with.”
“Cheer up,” Steve said, almost bouncing on his toes. “This is a win-win situation, your friend gets help and I get to do something more interesting than playing Hide ‘n Seek with a bunch of fuckin’ spies.”
“Who the hell lets you people out in public?”
“I’ll talk to you later, Claire, I’m going to go ask around,” Steve said, and hung up on Claire’s inarticulate sound of distress.
Two hours later, a nondescript van spilled out a number of people onto the asphalt between a line of sign-bearing protesters and the brick façade of a low-slung building bearing a sign that read Lacks Family Planning Institute. Steve was the one to walk up and knock on the still-locked front door of the building, dressed in a pearly grey shirt with #IStandWithPP in purple across his chest. The woman who appeared was heavyset, quite pretty, with smooth dark skin and a round face that was crinkled into a distracted frown.
“Sorry,” she called through the glass, absentminded. “We’re clo—what the fuck?” she blurted, her eyes snapping up to Steve’s face and the frown melting away into shock.
“Hi,” Steve said, grinning. “Claire called us, said you needed some escorts?”
“Who the hell–?”
“You’re Shauna, right, ma’am?”
“You’re…”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s me. Could you unlock the door, please?”
Shauna’s hand dropped to the lock and she blindly fumbled the door open, lips parted in confusion. “Listen,” she said as she dragged the door open, “is Claire fucking with me? I mean…”
“No, ma’am, I got the impression she was running out of options and she had my number,” Steve said, offering his hand. “Steve Rogers, but you can call me Steve, it’s a pleasure.”
“Shauna Harrison,” she said, numbly shaking his hand, and there was a long beat as she stared at Steve and he smiled at her. Steve, when she had released his fingers, folded his hands behind him in a tidy parade rest, waiting patiently for her to muster up a sentence. “If you don’t mind me asking,” she finally asked, “how the fuck does Claire Temple have Captain America’s phone number and—is that the Black Widow?”
Steve glanced over his shoulder to where Natasha was smiling at a protester whose sign read Adoption, Not Abortion. Natasha’s smile was very thin-lipped and very toothy, like a lioness lazily baring her teeth to a pinned antelope, and the protester’s sign was trembling a little more than the light breeze could justify.
“Yeah, Nat has some opinions,” Steve said. “Claire did me a favor one time, she knows some good folks. Some other people might show up later–”
“There are six of you,” Shauna interrupted flatly.
“Yeah, we picked up Kitty and Piotr on the way.” Steve raised a hand, and Kitty paused in her serious conversation with her teammate to wave excitedly at him, her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. All six of them had opted for civvies—Pepper had helpfully pointed out that it was probably better to do this as private citizens—but nothing could make Piotr’s six-three self look less intimidating. Bucky hadn’t even pretended to try for a disguise, dressed in a menacing expression and a tank top that said Women’s Rights are Human Rights in pink block letters, his arm whirring softly as the plates shifted. Sam, standing beside him and watching the protesters slowly evaluate the new arrivals, had dropped his smile for an expression of outright disdain.
Steve pressed his lips together to hide a smug grin. “I’ll keep everyone out of trouble, ma’am.”
Shauna blinked at him in shock, and laughed, sounding baffled. “Okay.”
“And I think Miss Walker wanted to swing by around noon for an interview, should I direct her to you?”
“Miss—Trish Walker?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shauna leaned back against the door, one hand pressed to her chest. “I mean. Sure thing.”
“Great,” Steve said, smiling. “If you need any help with anything at all, you just grab one of us, all right, ma’am?”
“You know how to escort girls?”
“Yes, ma’am, Natasha has some experience.”
“Of course she does,” Shauna said, and glanced at her watch. “Well, it’s eight-oh-three, so the first ones should start showing up soon. I’ll just go…?” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, trailing off.
Steve nodded, and rested a hand on her shoulder as he gave her his most reassuring don’t-worry-really-I-know-what-I’m-doing smile, silently appreciating that Bucky was too far away to offer commentary on it. “We can take care of ourselves, ma’am, and if you come out and don’t recognize someone working with us, don’t worry about it. We’re expecting at very least Hawkeye within the next two hours, and probably some others later today.”
“Naturally,” Shauna said, dazed, turning on her heel to walk back into the building as Steve turned back to the others.
“Are we good?” Sam asked, spreading his hands as if to say sometime today, Rogers.
Bucky, ever willing to call Steve out, just went ahead and drawled, “Whenever you’re ready, Stevie.”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Steve confirmed. “Nat, did you say you had Sue Storm’s number?”
“Well,” Natasha said consideringly, “I said I could get ahold of her, that’s… not the same thing, but yes. She and Ben might come give us a hand.”
“Oh, we know Johnny,” Kitty volunteered brightly, gesturing to Piotr beside her. “Reed and Sue are out of the state right now, but Johnny can probably bring Spidey with him, if you can get us in touch with the Baxter Building, Miss Romanoff.”
Steve grinned and nodded. “Great, go ahead and call them. I think Jessica is planning to show up with Trish at noon and—is that a car?” He shifted and looked past the crowd on the grass and sidewalk. “I think they’re worried about hitting protesters,” he added, dry, and Bucky made a derisive noise in the back of his throat.
“Oh, well, I can help with that,” Kitty said, all but bouncing on her toes. “I’ll be back!” And she dove straight through the front rank of the sign-bearing protesters, slipping effortlessly through them as they yelped in alarm.
“I like her,” Natasha said approvingly.
“Katya does not believe in tact,” Piotr remarked, dry, and Natasha grinned again, just as toothy as before.
“I really like her.”
Bucky drifted up beside Steve, his footsteps unnervingly silent on the asphalt, and said, “So you’re supposed to be keeping us out of trouble today, huh?”
“Well, listen, just don’t actually make physical contact with any protesters or cause them any actual injuries,” Steve said. “We’re here to help the people trying to go to the clinic, not pick a fight.”
“Quick, someone check him for a fever,” Sam called, and there was a burst of laughter that rippled warmly through the air as Natasha pulled out her cell phone. Kitty appeared on the road, a wide-eyed woman in her thirties holding her hand as Kitty drew them both straight through a sign and a set of hedges. Kitty’s lips moved, and the woman laughed in surprise as Kitty beckoned Piotr over, and Natasha bared her teeth at the protesters again, raising her phone to her cheek. Sam had been politely flagged down by the young man who worked at the reception desk inside the clinic, and they were having a quiet conversation about the logistics of making sure the road remained clear. Bucky was still beside Steve, hands tucked into his pockets as a pair of protesters flicked nervous glances at the red star on his bicep.
“It’s going to be a good day,” Steve said, smiling.
“Seventy years and you’re still crazy.”
“A good day.”
